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princeresnikov · 2 years ago

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it's in my nature {Tangerine} // 2

two. tangerine: retroactively fucking yourself.

Chapter Summary: Lemon and Tangerine face Schrodinger's Threat when they can't figure out if 1) The Scorpion is on the train with them, and 2) if she's a threat to them or to The Son. When investigating, however, Tangerine finds who he assumes to be the Wrong Clementine, who is much more alive than when they'd last spoken.

{ Masterlist }

A/N: 4709 words. This might be a rambling nightmare. hello to all my lovely new tagged friends, and all the people reading this too! i love you all very much already, and finally thought to turn on my asks (and anons) because i didn't realise my tumblr mobile fucked up and left them off, SO NOW THEY'RE ON AND I WOULD LOVE TO TALK TO YOU GUYS AND HEAR ANY FEEDBACK !! i finished this at 6am so there might be a bit of a quality drop off, but i would love if i could get feedback on how the characterisation is going?? maybe i just need some sleep but i think tang might be a bit ooc?? hm not sure. HAVE FUN I LOVE YOU

Warnings: Don't be surprised when the OC is a terrible person and is implied to have done terrible things along with the rest of them. There will be smut in the future chapters.

Chapter Warnings: Discussions of death and violence.

Taglist: @venusthepirate @malar-region @tangerinesgf @esmaada @sarcastic-sourwolf @djjskfkskjf @eefjedegraaf @justshutupmars @somikesoc @chachadelight @andydre4m @evangelineflowers @darkchai @basementsoup @bellatrix124 @kunikidaswhore @thewinterschildren178 @felhomaly @perksofbeingamultifandomm @aniglio18

[ always open, just message or comment! ]

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There is not enough money in the world to make rescuing this pain in the ass worth it, Tangerine thinks to himself ruefully, the only real value is his life in all of this, not willing to throw himself on a sword in front of The White Death because he couldn't cope with his asshole Son. Lemon makes it marginally more bearable. Marginally. Only because if he's off on a tangent about Thomas and Friends, The Son isn't talking at all. Fucking microbial miracles at this point, but he'll still take them.

"You're not even listening to me," Lemon's expression deadpans, train-adorned sticker sheet still in one hand.

"Can't imagine why," Tangerine offers dryly, almost on instinct, the banter between them as easy as breathing. Lemon sours, but tucks the sticker sheet back into one of his inside pockets. Thomas & Friends safe and sound next to someone else's blood stain, he must have missed that episode as a kid.

The Son is still looking at the door.

Maybe he's planning an escape, is Tangerine's first thought, but the kid's uncharacteristic rigidity doesn't exactly scream confidence, or even a desire to get closer to whatever's caught his attention so dramatically.

That's probably not a good sign.

"What's wrong with you?" Finally Tangerine breaks the silence and tries to follow The Son's gaze, "look like you've seen a ghost or something." The door, and the window to the other side, look exactly as barren and nondescript as every other door in the room, but still this guy is transfixed.

"Big fan of doors, are you?" Lemon glances over his shoulder too now. At first sarcastic, he does follow it up with, "the Shinkansen's interior really is quite sleek, I'll give it that."

A nerve in Tangerine's cheek twitches.

Thankfully, the way The Son's mouth began to mimic a gasping fish, opening and closing for several long seconds without ever making a noise quelled their impending squabble. Very suddenly his mouth closes and he's glancing suspiciously between the Twins; that's almost definitely a worse sign.

"Penny for your fuckin' thoughts?" Tangerine's lip curled derisively, leaning into The Son's space. Not enough money in the world, he again thinks when The Son just blinks, deliberately being obstinate despite Tangerine's intensity.

"It's probably nothing," the kid fucking shrugs like it isn't a big deal. There's something in his voice, however, like he doesn't quite believe that.

"Not according to the look in your eyes just a second ago," Lemon, just as unconvinced as Tangerine, doesn't let him out of it that easily. The Son starts to buckle under both their scrutiny, clinging to his nonchalant act as he looks instead to the window.

"It wouldn't make sense for it to be who I thought it was," he mutters tersely.

"And who exactly did you think it was?" Tangerine asks. The Son's glances at him out of the corner of his eye for just a moment, then to Lemon, and finally to the door.

"She has a lot of names," finally, he relents, looking back to the window, "she works for my father," then, quieter, almost as if sulking, "it's not her."

"And why," Tangerine, voice venomously low as he remains unconvinced, flowers at The Son's desperate attempts to not look at him, "would it be a problem if it was her?" This time The Son bites back, turns and meets Tangerine's gaze and energy with malicious ease.

"Because it means my father set you up to fail."

Silence; The Son is all barred teeth, fear and fury, and Tangerine feels his own anger rise at the implication.

"She'd be here to kill you, is that what you're saying?" Lemon interjects for clarification, far more level than Tangerine, as, it would seem, he always is. It does, thankfully, steal some of The Son's intensity. This time when he sits back, Tangerine does too; he watches the door through wary eyes. There's a flash of blonde hair, a glimpse of a woman on the phone in the luggage space between cars, but she seems to not be paying their car any attention. The Son, Tangerine reasons, has every right to be paranoid, but his apparent lack of faith in The Twins was grating.

"If she is acting alone, perhaps," he deliberates for a long moment, tipping his head to the side as he looks them both over, almost like he was evaluating them; Tangerine fights the urge to scowl, "but both of you should be cautious if she's here on my father's orders."

"She'll try and kill us?" Lemon frowns, sounding exactly as sceptical as Tangerine felt. The Son gives very deliberate pause in the face of that question, silence thick with implications unspoken; it's 'will' not 'try', but he won't say that out loud. Instead, he gives a small huff.

"If it is her."

"So it'd be best for all of us if it wasn't," Lemon nodded as he processed the information. Then, after a long beat, "You gonna give us anything more to go on anyways? A name, if we'd know her? You know, in case we do have to save your life again."

Even annoyed, Tangerine knows he should be tuning into this conversation. The Son shifts a little in his seat, glancing furtively between them both once more, brow furrowing. His sudden hesitance did him no favours in Tangerine's eyes.

"What? You don't remember her name?"

"I feel sick with irony," The Son answers through his teeth, meeting Tangerine's hard glare, "I call her Clementine."

"Don't." Immediately Lemon turns on Tangerine, even reaches out and snaps his fingers in his face, as if to keep him from going on a mental tangent.

"You put your fingers that close to my face again, you'll bloody well lose them," Tangerine snaps, smacking his hand away fervently as he played dumb and offended, like his mind hasn't already fixated on the last Clementine they'd met.

"Just keep your head in the job, man."

"Keep my head in the fuckin' job? Where else would it be?"

"New York," Lemon says like it's the easiest thing in the world; Tangerine's nose scrunches up, "you went there, I saw it in your eyes." Lemon is earnest, as if it's simply an uncomfortable truth he's learned to endure, like flies in the desert, or sweat in the Summer. Tangerine, irate but conflicted across the small table, has to bite his tongue and figure a way to play it off, like her name hasn't just run through his mind again.

She had been smiling, and then, very suddenly she wasn't.

"It's called word association, Lemon," Tangerine's gambit is a weak one, but at least it's consistent with a lot of the other bullshit he knows he's prone to saying, "pretty sure every human does it, and last I checked it's not a crime."

"'s unnerving," Lemon tells him bluntly.

"Good, I think more people should be unnerved by me."

"No, 's unnerving that you rediscover the concept of guilt every time you're reminded of that concierge," unimpressed, Lemon mirrors him, arms crossed, seemingly about two seconds away from outright rolling his eyes, "it was months ago, man."

"My father hired a pair of fucking idiots," The Son sighed, slouching almost painfully against the window, the arrogant notes in his tone leaving a sour taste in the back of Tangerine's throat.

"If that's the case, which it's not," Tangerine can't help himself, the irritation reads on his face, but he doesn't care, "given the situation I think that says more about what daddy dearest thinks of you." The glare he receives from The Son is particularly petulant; he'll take it as a victory.

"And guilt, Lemon?" Tangerine finally gets back to his brother and his the character assassination he'd endured, "that's worse than fuckin' swearing at me. That's slander, that is; defamation. If I cared about collateral damage, I wouldn't find job satisfaction in our line of work," he turns to The Son, even going so far as to jab the kid with his finger for emphasis, "I'm bloody fucking good at my job, okay? And so is Lemon. Sometimes too effective, sure, but no fruity, little brat is killing you; your dad hired us for a fuckin' reason, you hear me?"

His words hang, pinned by the severity with which they'd been spoken, and it even takes a few moments for Tangerine to comprehend what he'd just said. The Son retreats into his seat, though it seems to be less out of any sort of fear, and more like a distaste for Tangerine's whole attitude. Dick. Not like Tangerine gives a shit about his opinion anyways.

"Fruity, little brat?" Lemon, however, is bad at hiding his obvious amusement, immediately taking the sting out of Tangerine's rant. A smirk tugs at his lips, "and if it isn't guilt, what is it then?"

"It's not guilt," Tangerine answers possibly a little too sharply.

"Okay sure, then what is it?"

"What's it even matter to you?"

"Maybe it can be medicated, maybe it can be stopped; it makes you all weird -"

"Weird?!"

"For like half an hour," Lemon insists, "and defensive!" He gestures emphatically to Tangerine, who narrows his eyes, lips pressed to a thin, frustrated line. He knows Lemon's right, and that's the worst bit, that he's sitting here, defensive as he ever gets, arms crossed so tight it's probably going to crease his damn suit jacket, and anything he says will just keep proving Lemon's point. The smug look in his brother's eyes is very nearly smackable, at least if there wasn't more important things to focus on.

"Does she go by anything else?" It's Tangerine who breaks the moment, looking to The Son. The kid is confused by the tonal whiplash, while Tangerine fights to roll his eyes, "the girl who might be here to kill you, her name's Clementine, right? Does she -"

"It's not her name," The Son seems almost confused by the assumption, "I call her Clementine but that's not her name."

"So what is her name?" Seriously, it's like pulling teeth with this kid, Tangerine's already frayed patience is wearing dangerously thin. Especially when The Son can't seem to answer, "how do you even know this girl if you don't know her name?" Again, silence. The heir apparent is conflicted, shame and fury manifesting in the way he glared at the table despite how he's flushed and fuming.

"She shadowed my father, obedient little lap dog," he managed through clenched teeth, lip curled with malice, "I don't know if he made her into a monster or if she always was one," he barks a cruel laugh, "I suppose fuck me for wanting better for her than that." When The Son finally raises his gaze from the table, the look in his eyes is shallow and malevolent; "everyone knows her, my father made sure of that; Clementine - my Clementine -" he spat with disgust, "became The Scorpion because of what that bitch did to me and my family."

Ah, fuck.

Yes, anyone who is anyone in the underbelly of the world knew of The Scorpion, knew of her burned status and subsequent life-debt to The White Death. Everyone had heard the rumours; the way The Son was behaving seemed to confirm quite a few of them.

Immediately Tangerine looks to Lemon; if there was ever a time to take The Son seriously, this was probably it. God, he hopes it's a case of mistaken identity. This was meant to be the easy part of the contract, it was a bloody train ride for fuck's sake! Now The Son's runaway bride may or may not be here to kill any one of them.

"You think you saw The Scorpion through that window?" Lemon's voice is carefully, painfully calm, pointing over his shoulder. Both brothers are looking at The Son now; it's there in his eyes, he knows they're finally taking him seriously.

"Like she was looking for something. If it was her, I don't know if she properly recognised me, but I think she did see me."

"Do you think she knows he's being guarded?" Lemon instead opts to address Tangerine directly, who's checking his clip. The movements are smooth and rote, tension building in his shoulders.

"Depends why she's here," he responds, and glances to the door again, "safest bet is yes, so we should make the first move either way." If their possible assailant already scoped out the full situation and has any idea of who either of the Twins are, then they're fucked, but there's no sense in waiting. "If it's just some look-alike, no harm done, but if it's The Scorpion we might be able to get the drop on her."

While The Son doesn't exactly seem happy about this turn of events, he is at least mercifully quiet, watching as Tangerine tucks the gun in the holster at the small of his back, fixing his jacket. His sullen gaze catches Tangerine's attention as he slides from his seat, and for a brief moment he leans in, voice dropping to a whisper.

"You have fucking shit taste in women," he admonishes harshly, fury radiating from him despite his quiet words. The only response The Son gives is to flip him off, despite his restrained hands.

"Seriously though, The Scorpion? You some kind of masochist?" Lemon levels his judgemental gaze at their charge, clearly as baffled by The Son's well known infatuation with the ruthless killer as Tangerine was, while Tangerine himself heads in the direction of the door to the luggage storage between cars three and four. If The Son has any proper answer to give, Tangerine doesn't hear it.

He has no plan.

He should have a plan. He wants to have a plan. He had no time for a plan, so now he has to wing it. If it's not The Scorpion then he'll have no issue sweet-talking his way through the misunderstanding. If it is The Scorpion then he will immediately have bigger issues to deal with. He doesn't need a plan then, he reasons, not really. For a moment he focuses on the feeling of the holster at his back, wondering what he could disguise his gun with to passers by if he were to ready it.

It's not a short walk, and by the time he's a the door he's got about 'hey, so sorry love, my friend over there is a bit shy but swears you're the spitting image of -' but there's no way he could have ever prepared for who was on the other side.

His Clementine shouldn't be here. Half her head is still splattered on that hotel wall behind the reception desk back in New York, at least as far as he's aware. He shouldn't recognise her smile, or her tell-tale, dainty clementine-charm necklace, and he shouldn't, for even a split second, feel glad to see her.

When her eyes light up with recognition, it's the final nail in the coffin. Automatic, instinctive, familiar. Except it only takes half a second for reality to seemingly crash down on her because her face falls, the light leaves her eyes, and she smacks the close door button almost immediately.

"The fuck is happening?" Sure it's taken him a moment to adapt to this new reality, but at the very least whatever guilt-adjacent feelings he may or may not have been suffering from seem to have cleared up into confusion and distrust. Of course she was able to collect her bearings before him, it's only news to him that she's been alive this entire fucking time! He smacks the open door button with more force than was necessary. It hisses open, as sleek and clean as any other part of the train.

Instinctively he feels as though she's going to give chase, to try and escape explaining herself and he'll have to chase her through the goddamn train for any kind of answer. The only relief in that moment is that it's the wrong Clementine, which means neither he, nor his brother or their charge are in immediate danger.

"Small world," it's that faint Brooklyn accent he'd grown so used to, surprising him as Clementine is waiting by the vanity area between carriages, across from the luggage. It's disarmingly fond, the way she's smiling at him with her head just slightly tilted, almost as if his confusion amuses her. She's blonde now, but it suits whatever looks she was going for here, pristine collar is slightly askew; clearly she'd tucked her necklace beneath in the brief moment she was given, not that he knows why she'd even bother. Her gaze flicks to the door in this momentary stalemate, watching it close as Tangerine finally finds his voice.

"Either I'm going mad, or you better start explaining who the fuck you are," his heart is beating in his ears - what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck -

"Not mad," she assures. Each word is as carefully chosen as the last, everything she said so considered; this is familiar too. She tips her head to the other side. Something subtle changes about the way she's looking at him but he can't begin to comprehend what, "it hasn't been that long has it?"

Finally, Tangerine gives himself a moment to breathe. Clementine's smile widens. Everything about this moment feels very wrong, but the shock begins to wear off.

"Clementine."

"That is what they tend to call me," something about her wording feels uncomfortably deliberate, despite her cheery tone. When she asks him if something's wrong, she calls him by the name he went under in New York. This is the Clementine he knew. This is the Clementine he watched die.

"I can think of several things that are wrong," standing a little straighter now, Tangerine takes a step forward, now taking up most of the arched entrance to the tiny vanity area. He sees the way Clementine's eyes move, darting all around him, assessing the situation, probing for exits and finding none; it takes barely a second, someone less trained may have thought she was simply checking him out. But the moment isn't a particularly foreign one; he's seen her mind work like this before. How had he never registered it properly before? Her smile hasn't waivered. Alarms are growing louder in the back of his mind, "top of the list; I watched you get shot in the fucking head."

It feels kind of like sea-sickness or deja vu, but his expression is a mask of anger, keeping his thoughts privately in line.

Clementine steps forwards, steps close in the little space, and raises her hand to push her fringe back. The leather gloves. Her gloves. Never once has he seen her take them off, and even now that remained true.

"Here?" There's something in her eyes that seems almost like a challenge.

Stalemate. Tension so thick it could suffocate a weaker man. Tangerine's gaze slides to the middle of her forehead, where the red, glowing dot had appeared the last time he'd seen her. Clementine's always been covered in scars of every variation; most she took great pains to hide during the day, but there were still some faint and raised on her face, made up and mostly invisible unless she was nose to nose like this. Back in New York, in one of the many moments where it had just been the two of them, she'd laughed as she'd talked candidly about having a 'doomed upbringing', how unlucky she had always been. The scars he knows are all still there, all real and familiar, even the ones that get deeper, more painful to look at, the ones that start near her throat and extend well past her collar. But there is no evidence of the headshot. His frown deepens. Carefully, he reaches out and pokes her with a single finger.

"Yeah, right here; that kind of sight tends to stick with a person," he doubles down, refuses to be gaslit about this. Clementine's reaction is unexpected, however, as her mouth falls open with pleasant surprise.

"You still think about me?"

It takes Tangerine a long few moments to process that, finally stepping back again and pinching at the bridge of his nose, starting to grow sore from how tense he's been. Clementine, again surprising him, though he has no idea what he should be expecting, doesn't move, doesn't try to run or even leave.

"What is wrong with you that that is your important take away from all this?" It comes out as a frustrated sigh. Clementine seems nevertheless pleased, "I half thought I'd be coming face-to-face with a murderer and yet you've thrown me for more of a loop," Tangerine admits.

"A detective's work never stops," Clementine muses sagely. Tangerine gives pause for a brief moment before, ah, right, that was the cover story in New York. The fact that she remembered makes him feel... something, but in this moment he's not quite sure what, so he just agrees. Then, "you thought there was a murderer on this train?" This too is familiar, the earnest intrigue she had about him and the things that went on in his life.

"Just a suspicion is all, dead end, thankfully no murderer," not counting Lemon and myself, Tangerine thinks wryly to himself, "train's safe; you're welcome." There's something unreadable in Clementine's expression, taking a moment to process this information. Her smile is strange.

"But you found me."

"Yeah, instead I found you," Tangerine watches the way Clementine delicately leans against the wall by the vanity, her arms crossed, expression scrunching up for reasons he can't even begin to comprehend, "this is the part where you start explaining yourself, by the way," he adds dryly. Finally, however, he does feel himself start to smile when Clementine does.

"I wish I had the time," she almost sounds sincere, but something in her tone is colder than just a moment ago. It's starting to feel wrong again. Her necklace is still tucked in, why had she bothered? "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Wrong answer, Clementine," he tells her, "I thought you were smarter than to try that -"

"As much as I love you taking that tone, I really do have to keep moving," in any other situation Clementine's teasing would be more than welcome, but now it echoes with a burning familiarity; the evasiveness which he'd once chalked up to strangely rigid professionalism, the attempt to deflect with humour, the clear discomfort when attention was focused solely on her -

"I think you can make time, in fact," there's that anger again, deep in Tangerine's chest as he steps back from her, hooking his left thumb into his belt loop closer to the holster resting at the small of his back, "I think you should." Clementine's gazes flicks down and follows the movement, lips twitching into a thin smile. Then, slowly and deliberately, her gaze slides back up to meet his. Right. She knew about the holster.

"Are you threatening me?" Her voice is so soft, so fucking helpless in that moment. Maybe it's the look in her eyes, or the way her demeanour changes, or the way she fidgets with her gloves, but Tangerine almost regrets taking such a hard stance.

"I'm just asking for an explanation is all," but he refuses to back down, refuses to stop taking up space, refuses to let her squirm her way out of any of this.

"I don't have time for this," she insists, still soft and demure as a moment ago, "if you're staying on the train for a while I'll come and find you, I'll tell you everything," she insists, "but I'm here as a tutor for a girl I've left in first class, I was asked to fetch her something from this end of the train. I need to get back."

"No, I think I'll find you," Tangerine finally concedes, "first class, right?"

"Seventh car."

"Okay," giving a definitive nod, Tangerine finally feels like he can breathe again. But he can't look at her, "you know what I do for a living, Clementine," she nods through the warning, like a child being reprimanded at school, "I trust you understand why I can't let this sketchy shit go easily."

"I know. I'm sorry." At least she sounds like she means it. Whether or not Tangerine can really believe it is up for debate right now. She doesn't know the full truth, doesn't know what he really does for a living, what he's capable of... but there's lies on both sides, clearly. Clementine can't meet his gaze either.

Everything feels wrong and off-centre; he watches her step out from the vanity nook, darting past him through car three's door. Following a few seconds behind, he catches the attention of The Son as Clementine is passing their table in a rush, and thinks little of it, simply shaking his head. By the time he's reached them again, she's already through the other door.

"Wrong Clementine," he says with a strained smile. When he'd left, Lemon had taken his seat right beside The Son, so Tangerine sits opposite them both by the window. He'd gotten up with no plan of how to explain himself, and he sits down with the same dilemma, opting to be direct.

"Wrong Clementine?" Lemon frowns, while The Son seems bewildered. Both remain on edge, but given the circumstances Tangerine doesn't blame them.

"Twisted little case of mistaken identity; the aforementioned New York based Clementine is not only alive and well, but on this train," settling back, Tangerine can feel his gun still sitting firm against his back, secure, but thankfully unneeded. He meets their confusion with an unsettling serenity, as if fully aware and at peace with the ridiculousness of the situation he was presenting.

"Same Clementine whose head was partially blown out in front of us several months ago?" Lemon's scepticism is still warranted.

"As I'm lead to believe."

"Is this a bit? Are you doing a bit because of what I said earlier?"

"Does it seem like a bit?"

"Seems like you're having me on."

"She's a tutor now," Tangerine says like this is the most normal conversation in the world, "travelling first class, can you believe it?" When he glances to the doors ahead, this time between second and third, he sometimes catches glimpses of what he's pretty sure is Clementine moving around there.

"I actually can't," which is a fair response from Lemon, given the situation, drawing Tangerine's attention back, "how is she even alive?"

"Didn't have time to explain, gonna head up there in a bit to talk-"

"Of course you let her talk her way out of it," when Lemon rolls his eyes Tangerine copies the gesture, both equally exasperated with the other.

"No Scorpion?" The Son asks carefully; Tangerine's smile doesn't reach his eyes, tired of being undermined in this conversation.

He confirms as much to The Son, and his attention is caught when Clementine, now looking far more frustrated, steps out of the between-car luggage storage. In the aisle for car three, she walks far slower, picking and fidgeting with her gloves. All the while she's glancing over, searching the other passengers with her eyes. Every so often her gaze flicks to Tangerine and she quickly looks away. Finally, however, she's just a few steps away from Lemon, behind him in the aisle, still fidgeting with her gloves. Despite Tangerine looking directly at her, she won't look to him, instead scrutinising the back of The Son's head. Eventually Lemon follows Tangerine's confused frown, as does The Son.

Immediately Clementine scowls.

"Our Clementines are the same person," The Son glowered under his breath, low enough so that only the Twins even caught it. But it changes everything.

At the end of their table she stands, poised with tension. One by one she looks at each of them, breaking first from her standoff with The Son, looking to Lemon, whose own expression appeared to grow neutral as this new reality sunk in for him. Finally, Tangerine. Everything about his expression was stern, which Clementine met in kind. Inside, his perception of her had shattered, leaving room for the furious distrust to grow vines through his memories.

"Clementine."

As in 'tell me this isn't true, that this is the world's least funny bit, that there's some other explanation; alien intervention would be preferrable, just tell me I didn't sleep with The Scorpion'. It's all he can say.

"Tangerine."

A name he'd never told her. An answer in itself.

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the-blind-assassin-12 · 4 years ago

Text

A Bad Option for Close Quarters

PART OF THE VIPER & THE WILD THING COLLECTION

A/N: Hey there, Prince Oberyn party people! Before we get started in this one, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone for all the encouragement and kind things that you had to say after I posted the first part of this collection. I was and still am nervous to take on Oberyn, so reading the comments that you left really made me feel less nervous. You are Great!!

A/N 2: And now I have to talk about serious stuff- this part does have some sensitive material in it that may be difficult for some to read. I don’t normally put big red warning stickers on my work, but this one feels like it warrants it. Please as always read the content warnings and if you are still unsure, know that you can always send me a message to ask specifics.

Warning: language, violence, blood, injury, abuse (physical & sexual in nature) death, NO LIKE ALL THE WARNINGS APPLY. general brothel un-pleasantry.

Word Count: 4.9k

Summary: Oberyn has made it clear that you are his favorite way to pass the time while he is in King’s Landing, and you are perfectly happy with that. But not everyone is.

“‘Bout fuckin’ time.”

You heard him before you saw him, lined up a few heads behind the front of the procession of prostitutes spilling into the brothel’s main chamber, but there was no mistaking his rough voice or the lowborn accent he tried so hard to hide when he spoke in the presence of others. Shit. You had known him long enough to pick him out from a legion of men by sound alone. Or smell.

It was Gannon Yast, a foot soldier in the Lannister army who had saved up his coins for years to purchase his surname from a forger on the black market. Like you, he had been born on the streets of King’s Landing, and like you, he was just another drop in the bay, another bastard bearing the name Waters. But unlike you who knew what you were, Gannon had always been subject to outlandish fantasies and truly believed the lies he told about himself and his upbringing. He had been spinning them in his own mind for so long that by now there was surely an elaborate tapestry depicting the lineage of a House that had never existed.

House Yast. The very thought made you roll your eyes. His sigil could be the pot he bought himself to piss in on a shit brown background.

The penalty for falsifying documents such as the ones that Gannon had illicitly procured ranged from execution to public flogging and time in the dungeons beneath the Red Keep. To him, imprisonment in a cell was no worse than suffering the flea bitten life his birth name chained him to. Since he wasn’t so bold as to impersonate a nobleman, he knew that he wouldn’t lose his head, and to him it was worth the gamble.

You didn’t share his viewpoint. You had heard stories, rumors, about female prisoners and the things that had been done to them at the hands of the Gold Cloaks, and while you had no idea how true they were you were not at all interested in finding out. If you were going to get fucked by Lannister guards and soldiers, you may as well be paid for it. Forged proclamation of respectable provenance wasn’t the only way out of King’s Landing, and you’d also been saving your spare coins, few and far between as they may be, for passage across the Narrow Sea and out of Westeros. Even if it would take you a lifetime to save, you would rather hoard what you could over decades than spend even one night in those dank caverns.

Unless Oberyn actually… You had done your best not to dwell on the offer he had made you to leave the city with him, to live free in the Kingdom of Dorne. He hadn’t mentioned it again though you had been with him several times since. Six. Six times in eleven days. It wasn’t as though you were the only one of Litlefinger’s whores that the Prince and his paramour came to see. The only one he chose every time though. The only one he spent an entire night with. You shook your head and followed Dria, one of the other girls who had been there nearly as long as you had, into the chamber where Gannon and two others were waiting. Even if he truly meant to make good on his offer, his departure from King’s Landing was still weeks away. Anything could happen in that much time. He could make promises to half the whores here about-

The thin curtain separating the hallway from the main reception chamber was still billowing near your ankles when you felt Gannon’s meaty hand close securely around your wrist. He yanked you straight out of line, much to the dismay of the other men in the room, the girls in front of and behind you scrambling out of the way so as not to get tripped up by your sudden departure from the lineup. Biting the inside of your cheek to hide the grimace on your face at the twisting and pinching of your skin beneath his rough fingers, you stumbled into his hold. Shit. From the corner of your eye you saw Dria sneering at you as she draped herself over the shoulder of one of the other infantry men, and you knew it was because she was bitter about how much time you’d been spending with Oberyn and Ellaria while she and the others were left to serve the lesser customers like Gannon and his acquaintances. Jealous witch.

You didn’t have the chance to sling a glare back at her, Gannon spinning you around to catch your chin in his free hand, the other releasing your wrist to grab at your ass. Squeezing both to the point of pain, you let out a small muffled sound as he brought your face close to his own.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t that fuck-drunk prince’s prized little cunt.” His breath reeked of stale ale and whatever the slop stalls were serving up in their brown bowls that week, his clothes and hair soaked in the bodily stench of a soldier who had been away for long months. He drew his lips into a vicious grin, continuing to grope your flesh through the gauzy sash that barely covered you. The stark contrast between his touch and Oberyn’s made your skin crawl and your stomach turn. You knew that the next time you saw the Prince you’d likely be riddled in bruises and marks left behind by Gannon’s greedy grip and forceful fingers. What will he think of that?

Your mind provided a quick answer, the way he had looked at you when you told him how you ended up working as a whore in King’s Landing flashing in your memory, his eyes filling with pain, anger and dark fire. He won’t like it. At all.

Dria’s shrill laughter met your ear as the man she’d been pawing at picked her up and brought her into one of the private pleasure chambers, the door slamming behind them. The third man in the room seemed happy enough where he was, two of the remaining girls already stripping each other of their sashes and teasing him with the perfumed fabric. Those unselected by the men were already shuffling back down the hall, waiting to be called when the next batch of customers arrived. You longed to join them even if it meant forgoing pay for the afternoon, but wishful thinking wouldn’t get you out of this.

Nothing could.

You’d been anticipating this encounter since you caught word that the Lannisters were bolstering security around the city leading up to the Royal Wedding. You knew that meant low ranking soldiers like Gannon would be flooding the inns and brothels. The fact that Oberyn had been monopolizing you, keeping you from giving Gannon the homecoming he clearly thought he was entitled to only exacerbated the man’s jealous anger, his lack of patience, his belief that he was owed things from you and your body.

The man who was currently claiming as much of you as his fingers and thumbs could fit between them broke through your thoughts, continuing to snarl his displeasure over your recent unavailability. “You had me settle for scraps while you fucked that southern shit,” he snarled, spit flying from his lips to land on your cheek. “Every time I came looking for this,” the hand that had been squeezing your ass slipped between your legs as though you of all people needed him to explain why he was in a brothel. You winced, every last fiber of your being trying to recoil from him and finding nowhere to go. “Every fucking time, you were in that room bouncing on that peacock’s prick.” He turned you roughly towards the room that you had utilized several times with Oberyn on his visits and shoved you towards it. “I could hear you in there. You made me fuck scraps while I listened to that and-”

“I didn’t make you fuck anything, Gannon.” Knowing that you were only making him angrier in your struggle didn’t stop you, and even though he was twice your strength you did what you could to resist the way that he was steering you into the private chamber. “It isn’t my fault that you have to buy time in bed with a woman because no one who wasn’t forced to fuck you ever would.” You bit your words at him only because his flesh was too far from your teeth. “It isn’t my fault that-”

He timed his backhand with the slamming of the door that he had just pushed you through, releasing his grip and driving the knuckles of his right hand across your face so that you fell hard to the stone floor. Your knees and palms made blunt contact and you knew that as soon as the white hot ache tearing through your skull subsided, pain would erupt over those areas too. Fuck. Letting out a small groan, you tried to crawl away if only just to turn back towards him to see the next blow coming, one scuffed and scraped palm coming up to your already swelling cheek. You could feel warm blood pooling in the shallow cut there, saw a drop fall to the floor as you inched yourself closer to the wall, and though you knew it was likely that he would hit you again, while your body throbbed with the raw, abusive way he was handling you, you didn’t regret saying what you did.

Gannon Waters was a pile of shit in the gutter, and no forger could change that no matter how fancy the calligraphy on the falsified lineage documents looked. He was foul and filthy and that had nothing to do with which surname he paid for. He was a rotten being and it had nothing to do with where he was born or how many golden coins he could rub together, and suddenly you couldn’t bear to keep those opinions from leaping from your tongue. Not when you’d seen and known better men well before you ever even met Oberyn. The men you served were not always like Gannon, seeking only to assert dominance and demean the unlucky prostitute who didn't feel quite as unlucky until he put his hands on them. Not all of them were despicable and suddenly you had reached a threshold for what you were willing to accept without at least letting loose your venomous feelings, consequences be damned.

Before you could get too far though, you felt his tight grip wrap around your ankle to yank you back towards him, your knees both hitting the floor again as he did. You let out another involuntary cry, trying in vain to kick free of his grasp, aiming for his chin if at all possible. He thwarted your attempts with another hard pull, dragging you closer so that he could hold himself above you, trapping you between his limbs with one hand pressed firmly over your mouth. “You’re going to regret the day you turned me down, you little cunt.” He seethed as he tore at the sash that somehow still covered your lower half as he dropped his heavy weight on you, the hilt of the sword he still wore and the buckle of his belt scraping at your skin to leave indents. “You could have been my wife, could have had a name, but you wanted to be whore, and I am going to make you regret that choice no matter how many times you fuck that Dornish dog. I’m going to make you regret that until the day that you die, do you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

It was Oberyn’s voice that you heard next, and at first you thought it was just a trick that your mind was playing on you, dizzy from the strike and the fall, wishful thoughts sweeping in to carry you away from consciousness. What? How is..?

The dangerous vibration in Gannon’s voice, the unhinged way that his eyes were twitching, the crushing grip he had on you, all of it made your world shrink to just those things, just what you could see and feel and hear. Which meant that you hadn’t noticed the door bursting open, hadn’t heard the shouts or the hurried footsteps of two figures as they rushed inside, hadn’t fully registered what was happening as Gannon was hoisted off of you and slammed into the hardwood table that stood in the center of the room. Someone was pulling you to your feet, wrapping a pair of warm arms around you, murmuring your name and pleading with you to look at them.

Shaking in shock, you managed to turn your head and focus your eyes, blinking them furiously to force the room to stop spinning. Ellaria? As soon as you recognized the woman you let yourself collapse into her, feeling as she let out a sigh and strengthened her hold on you to keep you on your feet. “You’re alright now.” She spoke softly in your ear as she led you closer to the small table beside the bed where a wash bin and cloth had been set out. “Come here.” Without letting go of you, she reached for the white cloth and dipped it in the cool water before bringing it up to your cheek, the soothing relief of the soft fabric instant as she gently pressed it there. She continued to hush and soothe you, letting you lean into her, and more quickly than you would have thought possible you felt your breathing return to normal, the adrenaline still pounding behind your eyeballs, but allowing you to make sense of what was happening at least.

Oberyn and Ellaria… they must have come in just after… and then they-

“I heard you,” Oberyn growled at the man again as he used his agility to duck Gannon’s reactionary swing, slamming him into the table’s surface once more. Using the momentary disorientation, Oberyn disarmed the man before Gannon could fully unsheath his long sword, simultaneously forcing the man into a seated position in one of the chairs that hadn’t gotten knocked to the ground in the fray. “Now tell me why I should let you live.” He moved one hand to the back of Gannon’s neck and pressed hard until the man began to choke out, gasping and gesturing to the Lannister crest emblazoned on the leather chestpiece he wore, and Oberyn released his grip enough to lean back and glance down at the embroidered lions, a look of mock appraisal pulling his handsome features into a cruel mask. “A soldier? Is that what you are trying to say? That I should let you live because you are a soldier?” He scoffed, shaking his head as he tossed the sword aside. “No, no, no,” Oberyn chided, the skin over the knuckles of his left hand stretched tight over the other man’s neck as Gannon fought to free himself from the Red Viper’s hold. “You are not a soldier.”

The dented steel clattered noisily against the stone floor, skidding halfway across the room to where you and Ellaria stood, the woman stopping its momentum by placing the sole of her sandal atop the flat width of the blade. She still had one arm around your waist, the opposite hand still covering yours to help you keep the cool cloth pressed to your bloodied cheek. Eyes never leaving Oberyn, she turned only enough to whisper into your ear. “He’s going to make that swine pay for what he did to you,” she told you, leaving a comforting kiss on your uninjured cheek. “I promise.”

You didn’t doubt it. Ignoring the ache, your upper lip curled as you eyed the man who struck you. “Good.” From the corner of your eye you saw Ellaria’s mouth lift into a grin at your response while Oberyn shifted his grip from behind Gannon’s head to one of his wrists, forcing his fingers to splay open atop the carved wood.

“You are not a soldier,” the Prince went on, “I am sure of this because a soldier would know better than to draw his longsword in such close quarters. No, I don’t think Lannisters have soldiers. That word implies training. Dedication. Skill.” Leaning closer, he paused to allow his voice to fill with disdain, then looked over to where Ellaria’s foot held the weapon in place. “You are just a sack of meat with a pointy sword that is too far away to save you now.” Gannon began a string of swears then, but Oberyn didn’t let him finish it, cutting him off with a question. “Do you know why King’s Landing is such an ugly place?” He used his free hand to grab the sniveling, shaking excuse for a soldier by the jaw.

You shivered, watching his fingers dig in with enough force to leave deep bruises if not crack the bones beneath them. How are those the same hands that he- With a rough twist he forced Gannon’s face in your direction, left hand still pining the other man’s wrist to the table. The man who only moments before had been holding you down even more harshly actually had the audacity to shoot you a pleading glance, the fear in his eyes begging you to call off the attack. Fuck you, Gannon. You narrowed your eyes at him and spat blood onto the blade Oberyn had stripped him of.

Dropping his level he lined himself up directly beside the coward. Releasing the man’s chin as roughly as he’d grabbed it, he turned in your direction. You saw a quick flash of pain in his eyes as he looked at you, and though it was gone before you were truly sure it was there, you felt it in your chest. Oh, Oberyn, it’s… I’m alright.

As though he could hear your thoughts, he blinked and the remnants of the flash were gone, replaced with renewed anger. He swiveled his head to face Gannon once more. “Because worthless fucking shits like you destroy all the beautiful things.” With lightning speed he reached for the short dagger hanging from his own belt to unsheath it and dragged it across the tabletop. Gannon’s chair shifted as he tried in a desperate panic to distance himself from the glinting edge of the razor sharp weapon, the rounded legs scraping the stone floor as Oberyn brought the crooked dagger to hover over the man’s pinky finger. “Do you know what we do to men like you in Dorne?” He rested the edge of the dagger between the top and middle knuckles of Gannon’s last two digits, a thin crimson line appearing beneath the blade before it had even had the chance to bite into the skin there.

“Oberyn, wait.” You called out his name, raising the hand you’d been clutching onto Ellaria’s forearm with to stop him from removing Gannon’s fingers. His forehead creased in confusion, the woman beside you drawing a breath to protest your seemingly merciful request. But you only waited long enough for a spark of relief to flicker in Gannon’s eyes, your own burning with hate- for Gannon and men like him- and that flicker fizzled to nothing as he realized that you had no plans to grant him mercy. “It was the other hand that he struck me with.”

Flashing a grin as quick as the blade he held, Oberyn switched Gannon’s hands so that it was his dominant one to take the punishment, and in a testament of just how sharp the Red Viper of Dorne kept his knives, removed the top portion of the man’s four fingers with almost no pressure needed, the detached parts rolling over the table, no longer a piece of the man’s body, now just bits of waste. Gannon let out a nearly inhuman howl of pain as he keeled over onto the floor in a bloody heap, clutching the gushing stumps above his knuckles that used to be fingers. Though you had never had a digit cut off and couldn’t begin to guess at how it would feel, the sounds coming from the man were twisted, inverted almost, turning into a shriek, his face contorted as though he was being consumed in flames you couldn’t see. Finally, writhing his way to his feet, Gannon scrambled from the room, his screams still audible even as he fled the brothel.

You hadn’t even realized that you’d stepped away from Ellaria, not until you were reaching for the handle of the dagger that Oberyn had released once he’d finished carrying out the sentence he had passed on Gannon. But before you could close your fingers around the hilt, you felt and then saw Oberyn’s hands coming from behind you to cover yours, stopping you. Pressing your hands into your own stomach, he pulled you back gently but urgently into his chest, his lips immediately finding a home behind your ear where he kissed your name. “You’re safe.” His breath hit your skin in a wave as he slowly turned you in his arms to look you over. Satisfied that you hadn’t been more seriously injured than you were, he relaxed but only slightly.

Sticking one hand out wordlessly behind himself, he waited for Ellaria to pass him the cloth she had been using to clean your cheek, his eyes glued to your face as he brought the cloth there, dabbing so feather light that you hardly felt a thing. You did feel the weight in his eyes as he looked at you though, and you could tell that what he and his paramour had walked in on had shaken him. Just as your lips parted, intending to whisper his name, his eyebrows came together, a crease forming between them to turn his expression even more grave and it silenced you. Cradling your face between his large palms, he kept you framed between his bent forearms as he spoke. “You must never touch one of my blades unless I place it in your hand, do you understand?”

Sucking in a breath, your eyes widened as they flicked back to the blade where it still sat atop the table. You had heard the rumors about the poisons that the Dornish Prince coated his weapons with, and as the sunlight filtered through the window, you saw it shining a dark sickly green color and everything fell into place. That was why he was in so much pain, that’s… he- You looked back at Oberyn then, your chest heaving as you wrapped your head around everything. “You… poisoned him?”

“He deserved worse.” You watched his nostrils flare, something fiery roaring to life in his eyes. “For what he did to you, he deserves-”

“Will he die?” You asked without flinching, without your voice wavering, giving him no reason to believe that you were off put by how he had handled Gannon.

His upper lip curled slightly as he answered, his voice dropping lower. “Not right away.” You inhaled a breath through your nose. He will, then. You caught what he wasn’t saying, that the poison he had used was not only responsible for the increased pain sensitivity, but that it would also masquerade as infection soon enough, sickening the man well beyond the point of saving before he’d even shown signs of illness.

“Good.” You narrowed your eyes to add emphasis, wanting him to know that you were entirely supportive of the fate he’d subjected Gannon to. He did it to himself.

Oberyn tilted his head to one side as Ellaria stepped around to take the cloth back from him, the pair of them existing in such harmony with each other that they didn’t even need to communicate verbally. She laid her hand on his arm, moving closer to press her lips to his bicep, kissing him through his robe. Though she didn’t even make contact with his skin, the action was so intimate that their connection was almost tangible. They’re so… Despite the pain you were still in and the shock that still coursed through your veins, the pure beauty in the way that they loved one another wasn’t lost on you. Most people would never have even a fraction of what they gave each other, what they allowed one another to have, what they encouraged each other to experience. You knew that no matter how long you would be involved in their lives, even if you did end up going back to Dorne with them, there was nothing that you or anyone could do to come between Oberyn and Ellaria. It was gorgeous, the way that they respected and supported each other, and you knew that most people wouldn’t understand it, but that didn’t matter to you, or to them.

Ellaria leaned over to tuck a piece of your hair out of your eyes, sweeping her fingertips over your swollen cheek. “This will fade, I promise.” She gave you a smile then that was softer than you had a feeling she liked to appear to anyone but Oberyn, then leaned in to speak into your ear. “Let him take care of you. He… he needs to know you’re alright.” Dropping a soft peck to your eyebrow, she pulled back and gave you a minute nod, and then she was heading for the door without another glance or word.

Once it had clicked shut, Oberyn took both of your hands in his and led you slowly backwards to the bed, pausing when he felt his calves hit it to shift his grip to your waist. As he sat on the edge, he pulled you into his lap, and you let him fold you close to his body. But instead of staying there, he slid his arms beneath your legs and around your torso, moving both of you backwards towards the pillows until he had enough space to lay you down. Completely bare, the sash you’d been wearing torn in bloodied pieces on the floor, he let his eyes roam every bit of you, taking stock of the bruises and scrapes, the scratches and red marks that you’d received before he and Ellaria had come to your aid. Then, without warning, his eyes were on yours, and they were spilling over with need, but it wasn’t the same kind of need that you’d seen there before.

He needs to know you’re alright.

You heard the other woman’s words echo in your mind, and you knew that this was what she meant. Licking at your lips, you reached for his jaw, fingers grazing the deceptively soft hair that covered it, and you felt him lean into your touch, eyes closed for several beats. “I’m alright, Oberyn,” you kept your voice as even as you could, knowing that it would help convince him that while you were hurt, it could have been far worse. “I’m alright, because you and-”

“I am sorry that I could not stop him sooner.” He hadn’t waited for you to finish speaking, nor had he opened his eyes, and the way that the muscles in his throat contracted as he swallowed told you that there was more to what he was feeling than you knew.

“I...Its-” His eyes opened as you swept your thumb over his cheek. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Yes- I do.” He shook his head slightly and took your hand in both of his. Bringing it to his lips, he fit the knuckle of your middle finger between his lips, dragging it along the seam of them before kissing the very end of it. “I have my reasons,” he said, “for why I… why seeing this happening was-” he swore under his breath and swallowed again. “Something…monstrous happened to...to my sister.” You felt your heart break at the sadness in his usually vivacious tone, and you wanted to say something to comfort him, but you fought the urge, remembering what Ellaria had said. “I do not wish to talk about that with you tonight, not while you are…” He brought one hand to your abdomen, fingers finding a divot left there by the press of Gannon’s metallic sword hilt against your skin. “Not while you are in need of my care.” He carefully lowered himself to lay beside you, letting his touch travel over your body to caress each bruise, and then his lips were raking over the cut on your cheek, impossibly close but so gentle that even though the skin was raw and angry, it didn’t hurt at all. “I will tell you about her one day. I… I want you to know me, understand me. And you cannot do that without learning about her.” You wanted to know whatever he would tell you, even if hearing it would shatter your heart all over again. “But not tonight. Tonight…” he looked into your eyes then, that need still there. “Tonight, let me take care of you, my wild thing.” Though it wasn’t sexual, the burn in his desire to tend to you purely to help heal your wounds, you couldn’t help the way that your stomach flipped and your heart lurched, because that somehow made it mean even more. “I will not rest, he went on as you hummed at the sensation of the backs of his fingers trailing over the purplish marks on your arm, ��until I have made my penance to every part of you that he touched.”

You fell asleep that night to his fingers in your hair, his lips resting against the crown of your head as you lay against his chest, not a single mark left untended by the Prince.

THANK YOU FOR READING! If you would like to be added to or removed from the tag list please feel free to let me know. And like I said up top: if you have any requests or ideas that you would like to see for these two, send an ask and I will see what I can do!

tags: @something-tofightfor @gollyderek @pheedraws @valkblue @alraedesigns @beefcakebarnes @persie33ik @fific7 @g0ldenlush @insiespeckagain @thisgirl-knm @writeforfandoms @paracosmenthusiast

#oberyn martell fic #oberyn martell x reader #oberyn martell x ellaria sand #oberyn martell x you #pedrostories #game of thrones fanfic #got fanfic #the red viper of dorne #oberyn martell #the viper and the wild thing #pedro pascal characters #TV&TWT #please read warnings

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prose-for-hire · 4 years ago

Text

Vampires Suck

Pairing: Spike x reader (gender not mentioned)

Request: not requested. I couldn’t sleep and this was the result. In my fictional land anyone can give blood (mlm and anaemic people included). This fic includes a magical loophole where (chipped) Spike can bite so long as the human agrees.

Warning: Biting. Blood. Swearing. Very heated kissing. Sex references. Reader smokes a cigarette.

A/n: Moral of the story is, give blood. You never know who might need it ;)

You had always given blood regularly. Since you were old enough you went and gave a pint of the red stuff. Not just for your free snack after. It was just a part of your life now. However, you never realised that the blood you had donated might have gone to someone looking for their own kind of snack.

It was dark out, you had only been able to come for your appointment in the evening. You had been outside waiting, you had come too early again. You didn’t want to go in yet or face the miserable receptionist who made it her mission to make you feel unwelcome in the cheeriest way possible every time you came here.

You were stood in the parking lot of the medical centre as you started to hear a rustling sound. You turned and the parked donation van was moving and someone was cursing loudly from inside. You frowned, deciding to investigate.

You walked over to the van and opened on of the doors to find a man trashing the area. It was the type of van that could allow for someone to give blood in there should it be full in the centre.

The man had slicked back, bleach blonde hair, he was painfully attractive and he was holding an empty blood bag and staring straight at you.

“Uh, are you okay?” You inquired.

“Does it sodding look like it? All out of the good stuff in here only got the fancy gourmet kind”

“What?”

“Talking blood. Y’know, kind that gives you life... makes you hard” He said as if it was obvious.

“Right. Yeah. I’m going to go now” you shook your head in disbelief. He was certifiable and you had just made it your problem.

You walked back to your waiting spot and hoped he wouldn’t follow you. The noises coming from the van stopped, he was thinking. And now he was coming your way. Perfect.

He stood for a moment, looking you up and down before shrugging to himself and taking something out of the inside pocket of his leather duster.

“Cigarette, love?”

“Probably shouldn’t. I have an appointment soon”

“Don’t make it taste much different. Kind of... smoked I suppose”

You just stared for a moment and took the cigarette he was still waving in front of your face. If anything it was to shut him up.

He smirked as he handed you his lighter and you lit the smoke and inhaled. That receptionist was going to have a field day when she smelled it on you. She wouldn’t know which disapproving expression to use first.

“Do you have an appointment too or are you just on day release?” You asked and he actually snorted at the question, almost choking on the smoke. He was enjoying this interaction.

“Just looking for blood as I said” He explained before inhaling again. It was often easier to just loot a blood bank, charming someone into agreeing to give him their blood could take effort that often wasn’t worth it.

“Why?”

“Guess” He said and you sighed, but bit.

“You’re a vampire” you said without missing a beat. It was the lamest thing that you could think of.

“That was quick” he said actually surprised, “Bloody Drac” he then muttered realising it was probably his fault you had guessed so quick.

“Funny” you mumbled through the filter as you inhaled the thick smoke into your lungs. You weren’t convinced in the slightest.

“No, really”

“If you were a vampire you wouldn’t tell me unless you were gonna-“

“Go on” His eyes glinted dangerously as he gestured with his head.

“I think it’s time for my appointment, thanks for the smoke” You rushed the words out, crushing the cigarette under your feet. The hairs on the back of your neck had started to stand on end, you stared at the entrance to the centre but didn’t move fast enough. As if you were willing him to stop you.

And he did as you took a step away. He grabbed your arm and pulled you back. He was strong. Crap.

“Hear me out, love”

“Get off my arm, idiot” he did let go very slowly. He was starting to really like you. You were kind of rude but in a fun way. And you were extremely attractive to him. Which is how he came to his proposition.

“Won’t take nearly as much as those leeches in there would and I’d treat you to better than a cookie” he raised an eyebrow to try and entice you further.

“There’s no way that you could be a-” You started but you watched as his face shifted briefly. Fangs protruded from his mouth, his forehead bunched and ridged at the centre, “-holy fucking shit!”

“Yeah, right. Come here” he was interested to note you weren’t scared, just trying to process a lot at once. He was also hungry so he grabbed you by the wrist and pulled you back up into the back of the van and slammed the doors closed behind you, “I need you to agree” He said as he sat you down on a swivel chair.

“You want me to sign a fucking consent form before you drain me of my life?! What is this some new-age vampire shit?”

“I’m hungry, your blood is at least half-decent and you’re all I’ve got”

“What’s in it for me?” You squinted.

“The eternal gratitude of a man that will actually live for ever”

“Doesn’t mean anything if I won’t be alive to feel the gratitude”

“Bloody-“ You were irritating him, you had an answer for everything, “look, I can’t bite unless someone agrees to it. I’ll take a pint, maybe less. You’ll get something from it too, I promise”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, but pain and pleasure kind of go hand in hand, right love?”

You smiled slightly at that and he smirked even more. He had definitely picked the right one. To think he was gonna try and charm that cow of a receptionist again in his desperation.

You made up your mind. What did you have to lose?

“So you-?” He pressed.

“Agree. Consent. Go for it” you offered with a shrug so he could take his pick. You really weren’t sure why he needed it. His face instantly shifted. His demeanour darkening. It was only as frightening as it was hot. Or, that’s what you told yourself. You weren’t convinced he was going to make it as good for you. You came here expecting a small pinch and a bravery sticker, maybe a biscuit. So, anything more than that would just be a bonus. You tended not to get your hopes up to avoid disappointment.

You didn’t realise you were about to be pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly surprised.

He sat on the seat beside you, he leaned into you, pulling your chair from underneath and dragging it towards him. He jerked your head to the side. His fangs protruding from his mouth and you closed your eyes.

He didn’t hesitate, his teeth sunk into the soft skin on the left side of your neck. He pierced your skin, making sure it was deep. His jaw locked around your neck. He retracted his teeth only slightly and allowed your blood to start to run before he began to suck on your neck.

You hissed as he had penetrated your skin. It stung at first before it started to melt away. The dull ache in your neck still there but it gave way to a much richer feeling. Euphoria.

The sensation of him sucking the blood from your wound felt insanely good. Your head started to roll back, you didn’t notice the way he firmly grasped the back of your skull. Your head moving further to the side. For deeper purchase on your neck and for your comfort. You were lost in this feeling. It was nothing you had ever felt. Pure ecstasy. It felt so good you didn’t know whether to touch yourself or him.

He drank deep, taking you in completely. Your hands started to move, your fingers crawling up his back in desperation. Willing him to drink deeper. Harder.

Your nails started to drag down his back, he enjoyed this sensation you could tell. You wanted him closer, everything about him enticed you no matter how much danger you felt you were in. Your brain was screaming and you couldn’t figure out how much of it was fear and how much was pure desire.

Your breathing was heavy and you didn’t care about anything anymore. Only him. His touch. The way his mouth felt. His smell was so delicious you weren’t sure if you weren’t going to snap and start biting him in return.

He really didn’t want to stop, your blood was the sweetest he had ever tasted. Nectar of the Gods. Your heightened arousal was affecting him too, he could taste it it was so strong. He just about managed to unlatch his fangs from your neck before he rounded into headache territory.

But he couldn’t let go of you. Usually this was transactional for him, even amusing to watch the human in their desire.

But he wanted more of you. To soak up every drop. He didn’t question it. Why this stranger made his head almost as dizzy with want as theirs. He no longer knew where your arousal ended and his began. But he didn’t think about it. He just enjoyed it.

His mouth met yours roughly, his hands were everywhere at once and you desperately missed the way his mouth felt against your neck. You kissed him with such passion, writhing against him. You wanted him inside you just like he now had you in him. Coursing around his veins.

His kiss was hot, urgent. And you couldn’t hold yourself back anymore. You started to fumble to unbuckle his belt for him but he took your wrists and restrained you, pushing you against the side of the van. Your back pressed hard against the wall. He assaulted your mouth instead, the metallic taste of your own blood mixed with saliva.

He had you there, in your mind he could do anything to you and you would have taken it gladly.

Your face was covered in your own blood, he enjoyed the sight. That he had done this. Even that you had wanted him to.

He moved, kissing down to your neck where the bite mark was still fresh. There was still some residual liquid that he caught on his tongue. He lapped at the wound lightly and you moaned into his ear making him smirk. He wanted to play that sound over and over in his mind. He kissed back up to your mouth He was almost struggling keeping your wrists at bay. Almost found it cute you were trying to struggle against him. He caught your mouth several times, your lips the best he had ever felt against his. He was enjoying this too much for something that he expected to last a mere moment. He was hungry for you in such an innate way.

You started to slow your movements, becoming exhausted.

He slowly felt the come down of your arousal approaching. He cursed it, wishing it wouldn’t. He was having too much fun. But you might want to leave it there and he was going to give you that choice. I mean, he wasn’t a complete animal.

He stepped away and you whined. You slid down the wall as he let you go, he had been the only thing keeping you up. He just stared as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes boring into you. You felt so exposed.

You managed to slide to sit in the seat you had started in. You fought to slow your breathing down, wiping your own blood from your face as he watched you come down from the euphoria.

You now felt a little embarrassed as his eyes wouldn’t leave your form. He didn’t even seem to blink. He had stepped back from you, as if he couldn’t trust continuing to be in such proximity. You definitely hadn’t planned on doing what you had just done and he knew it. Which is why against his better judgement he had held you still.

“I-“

“Hope it was as good for you as it was for me” he smirked, starting to turn to the doors and leave the van with you still trying to form words. The wound on your neck was throbbing, but you knew you would have done it over again.

“I-“

“Yeah?”

“Don’t know your name”

“Spike” he said, offering his hand to you to help you out of the truck too. You were a bit wobbly getting onto your feet, which he was expecting. You were surprised he hadn’t left you there. To be fair, in the past he usually would.

You started walking away from the medical centre, with him by your side. You were still in a daze and he wasn’t that much far gone from being a gentleman he wouldn’t walk you partly where you needed to be (so long as it wasn’t out of his way).

“Maybe we could make it a regular thing” he posed the question innocently but there was a devilish look in his eye. You acted as if you were thinking about it. Truthfully, your mind was screaming out yes. He waited, he for some reason actually cared for the answer.

“You’d have to buy me dinner first this time” you warned but smiled as his own lips tugged into a small half-smirk.

“It’s a date”

#Spike #Spike btvs #Spike x reader #Spike imagine #Spike x you #btvs #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #buffy the vampire slayer imagines #btvs x reader #btvs x you #btvs imagine #gender neutral #gender not mentioned #tw blood #tw biting

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peralta-guaranteed · 3 years ago

Note

i randomly remembered when enzo broke his arm around a year ago, i know it sounds mean but could you possibly do one of mac/maya doing the same (nothing major to cause it)

"It's okay." Amy hears herself repeat the phrase for probably the hundredth time now. "It's okay." It's probably supposed to calm them all down, all three adults and one little crying, screaming boy in the car, but it's barely working.

"It's not!" Jake hisses into her direction, the fear and panic and worry in his eyes more than obvious as he clutches Mac's head against his shoulder some more, tightens the grip around his back.

"It's gonna be, though." Rosa says from the driver's seat in front - she was clearly the calmest of all of them after what happened, so she'd grabbed Amy's purse, pulled their car keys out of it, and then pushed all three of them into the backseat before starting the car. And now she was making her way to the emergency wing of the hospital at about 15mp/h higher than allowed in the inner city. "The arm's broken, but not in a bad way. It's gonna heal."

"How can a bone break in a good way?" Asks the man who once stated that as long as his blood was still inside him, things were obviously good. Mac starts wailing a little louder in his arms.

"You're stressing him out." Rosa states, matter-of-fact, before slowing down just a little before a right turn so the kid in Jake's arms doesn't get jostled too much.

"It hurt." Mac sniffles and looks over at Amy with the reddest, most tear-filled eyes she's ever seen, and it takes a lot not to cry with him.

"It's gonna be okay, peanut. The doctors like uncle Jorge are going to fix it." She tries to calm him, and maybe Jake a little bit, who nods and scratches through Mac's hair like he does when he's trying to lull him into sleep.

-*-

They make it to the emergency room in record time, frankly, and if Rosa's rushed past some traffic lights and speed radars, Amy's not going to complain once the tickets come in the mail.

A bored-looking nurse informs them that there’s only enough space for one parent in the room during the x-ray and the cast and treatment, and Jake wants to debate for the first time in his life, because that’s obviously bullshit, but Amy puts a hand on his arm and then lifts Mac out of them.

“Sit with Rosa”, she says in that voice she’s started using after Mac, that mom-voice that’s always right, “Calm down, and we’ll be back before you know it. And it’s all going to be fine.”

She’s off with the crying toddler and nurse before Jake can really protest, and Rosa is already sitting in a corner of the waiting area, so he drops down next to her instead and buries his head in his hands.

“Dude, you’re blowing this out of proportion. Kids hurt themselves all the time. He’s gonna bounce back like always.”

“I broke his arm, Rosa.”

There’s a beat of silence between them as the weight of that statement settles. Rosa gives up her nonchalant pose to lean forward as well, trying to get into Jake’s field of vision, but it’s kinda hard when he’s staring down onto the floor.

“You did not.” She hisses. “Jake, you didn’t. He fell. He was climbing. It happens.”

“I helped him up on that tower, he’s too little for it-”

“It’s on the playground, he was gonna go for it eventually-”

“I was right next to him-”

“So were Amy and I-”

“You were talking-”

“So at least you were paying better attention-”

“I coulda grabbed him, I shoulda-”

“You did what you could, immediately and without question. It’s not your fault the kid drops faster than a cannonball.” Rosa ends their little squabble, and the old lady across them lets out a little harrumph, but Rosa shoots her the deadliest glare she can muster, which means a lot. “You were over there in a flash, Jake, I’ve never seen you move so fast.”

“Wasn’t fast enough. Wasn’t good enough.” He mumbles into his hands, rubbing across his face and his hair that’s already a mess. Rosa watches him for a moment, and calculates. Pieces together the evidence, like she does as a detective, and comes to a solution that most people probably won’t like, but those usually get her results.

“Do you want to leave?” She asks, and he looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “Amy’s got it under control, she told you. It’s probably gonna take a while, anyway, we can dip out for a drink to calm down and come back and they’ll be none the wiser.”

“Are you insane?!” Jake hisses back now, giving her exactly the reaction she’d expected. “I’m not going to leave my son in the hospital to go to a bar-”

He stops and stares at her, and it seems like his own detective brain is finally catching up with his panicked dad brain, because he sees what she’s doing. So she nods.

“You’re still good. You’re still better.” She says, and they don’t need to mention who he’s better than. It was the first of his stories that he told her, after he hurt something in his wrist at the academy - how that wrist never really healed right anyway, not since he was 5 and Bobby Linder drove over it with his tricycle by accident and his mom had to rush him to the hospital and his dad asked ‘what is that?’ with beer on his breath when he showed him the cast later. They’d known each other for barely a month back then, and Rosa was still refusing to think of anyone as her friend, but the way he’d looked at his wrist in its bandage and smiled the most broken smile she’d ever seen had set something off in her head. Something that yelled Protect at her every time he mentioned his dad later, something that made her threaten Roger Peralta with one of her knives after their graduation when Jake was in the bathroom ‘real quick’, but she knew he was hiding in there so no one could see his hands shake. Good thing Rosa never gave a damn about going into the men’s toilets anyway, because she sure as hell went after him when Roger had dipped out as usual.

She watches Jake’s tense shoulders drop with another sigh.

“Being better doesn’t make me good. That bar is set so fucking low.”

“I’m not having this entire discussion with you again, Peralta. We’ve been through this way too many times anyway. You. are. a. good. dad. One accident doesn’t change that.”

“Okay.” He nods, and she can tell he’s trying to imprint her words into his brain, so she continues.

“Mac’s going to hurt himself, and others are going to hurt him, and things are gonna go bad sometimes. You’ll probably be back here in the hospital a few times, considering how much he seems to love danger. And it’s going to be okay, just like Amy said, because you’re going to be there, and you’ll help him through it, and take care of him while he heals.”

“Yeah.” He nods again, and Rosa leans closer to him some more, and finally gets into his field of vision.

“And you’re not going to even think, for one second, that you could be anywhere as bad of a father as that piece of shit. And you’re not going to believe, whatever anyone says, that Mac doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you as a dad.”

He nods a third time, and she remembers how he jokingly told her once, after a few drinks, that the little screaming voice of conscience in his head always alternates between either Amy’s voice or her voice. She hopes she’s given him some new tracks to replay if he needs to.

“Thank you, Rosa.” He says, and leans back in the most uncomfortable chair either of them have sat in, and they’ve both been to prison. He tilts over when she leans back too, lands his head on her shoulder, and she doesn’t shrug him off for once. She can have a soft spot for the Santiago-Peraltas when no one else is there to see, she supposes.

“You looked like you wanted to punch out that nurse.” She says with a quick grin, and hears him snort.

“Was thinking about it. Not enough space for two parents, what kind of bullshit is that?!”

“You couldn’t throw a proper punch anyway.”

“Hey, I know how to hit people. I trained to do it just as much as you.”

They share a giggle as the exhaustion and stress of the last hour flows out of them, and the old lady across them seems mildly shocked rather than annoyed by now, but who cares.

-*-

Amy comes back with Mac in her arms an hour later, and they’re both all smiles. Mac sports an impressive new sticker collection on his shirt, and a lollipop that’s painting his lips orange. (Amy’s have a slight tint to them as well.)

The cast on his arm is bright green, and he carefully lifts it to show Jake as he switches from his Mama’s arms into his. (Jake had jumped up from his chair so fast he almost threw Rosa, who was also getting up, to the ground.)

“Like ninja!” he says around the lollipop, and Amy wipes a bit of spit away before it can drop on Jake’s shirt.

“Yeah, just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, buddy.” Jake nods because of course he understands his kid’s train of thought better than anyone else, and kisses Mac’s temple, stays there a second longer for that perfect toddler scent, even as it’s mixed with hospital disinfectant and playground mud.

“Look, RoRo!” Mac yells into his ear and leans over to show Rosa as well. “Turtle shell!”

“That’s pretty cool, dude.” Aunt RoRo answers as she inspects the cast to see if it’s well done or if she has to go back there and punch out a nurse herself. “Let’s get you three home.” She says after concluding that the cast is acceptable enough to let the poor hospital workers alone.

-*-

She was planning to drop them off, park their car and then head for the precinct where her bike is waiting for her, but Amy invited her up for some coffee for ‘her nerves’, and Jake offered dinner as a thanks, and Mac absolutely needed to show her the new toy he got in that package from abuela, and then suddenly she’s on a playmat on the floor for an hour after Chinese takeout and pretending to be a Ninja Tortoise or whatever. That soft spot is gonna be more trouble than it’s worth, she thinks for a second before Mac smiles at her as his Jedi figure shoots lasers at her turtle doll, and immediately realises it’s worth so much more than any trouble. Mac looks at his cast a little worried, whenever he thinks no one is watching him, and god, could he be any more like his dad? At least she and Amy already have a good instructions booklet on how to handle him, in that case.

“That green cast is pretty cool.” She says when she catches him look once more. “But you know what would make it even cooler? Drawings.”

“Drawies? On my arm?”

“Yeah, buddy. We can draw on it with a sharpie.”

He’s up and running to Amy, asking for a sharpie, in no time at all and yep, he is just as easily distracted as his dad. Mac grins wide and unworried now as he climbs on Jake’s lap on the couch, asks Amy to draw something when she returns with a set of markers, calls Rosa over to draw something too.

Amy does a little bear, his favourite animal at the moment. Rosa does a rocket ship and a pirate ship, the two best ships in the world, as they both agree. Jake does a Ninja Turtle cartoon face yelling PIZZA!, which is obviously Mac’s absolute favourite the moment it’s done.

When Jake wants to cap the Sharpie after his work of art, Mac grabs his hand and pulls it back down. “Steady, peanut. Don’t wanna scribble over Aunt RoRo’s cool ship, right?” He says with a grin over to her as she rolls her eyes. Mac’s already tried to cover several walls, most of his storytime books, and the kitchen table with his drawings as soon as he’s handed any sort of writing tool, so Jake won’t let go of the marker just to be safe, but he does let Mac’s little hand guide his big one as he makes him draw a wonky heart, right on the cast over the back of his hand, and then places a kiss on the same place on Jake’s hand.

You’re not going to believe, whatever anyone says, that Mac doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you as a dad the little Rosa voice in Jake’s head repeats as he smiles at her, and she actually smiles back.

#B99 #Brooklyn 99 #Peraltiago #Jake Peralta #Amy Santiago #mac peralta #auntie roro #rosa diaz #my writing #ficlet

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passivenovember · 4 years ago

Text

Enclosures.

Harringrove April, Day Ten : Peaches.

Steve's gig at White River State Park is, more a less, glorified babysitting.

The hiring manager insisted that the Indianapolis Zoo was in the game of education first, and even though Steve would be working with kids between the ages of four and eleven, escorting them around the park and providing answers to stupid questions and Band-Aids for skinned knees, it wouldn't be juice keggers with kids all year.

Because during the off months, when the city scape was covered in layers of snow, Steve would get to wander the grounds with his favorite activity bag, post up under a shady awning in the jungle, and feed the fruit bats.

So that's why he took the job.

Zoo Academy Monday through Wednesday and vibes on December weekends. Moments of solitude doing the job every keeper wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.

That was the deal.

Written in stone, as far as Steve is concerned. This is what he was put on this Earth--

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Steve nearly drops the slice of mango in his hand, starling when that deep, husky voice cuts through the air like a machete in the jungle.

“Fuck.” Steve wipes his hands on his pants, turning to face.

A new keeper.

Dressed in standard fatigues. Tan overalls and goulashes, ham radio crackling like desert heat against his waist.

New Keeper points to the ring of wire in Steve’s hand, mimicking the way he’s been feeding slices of fruit over thick, unruly steel. “Takes too long if you do it that way,” He says.

But, listen. “I’ve always done it this way.”

“So?”

“I was taught to do it this way.”

New Keeper shuffles up to the cave entrance, leaning his forearms on the steel barrier that keeps Steve’s bats from dive-bombing kids and grandmas.

He’s wearing aviators, so Steve can’t see his eyes, but. New Keeper gives him the once over--

Steve is 85% sure--

Before spitting a wad of saliva on the ground next to Steve’s boot. “Who taught ya to string the fruit like that, pretty boy?”

“I’m not.” Steve shouldn’t be flushing deep red. He shouldn’t be salivating. “I’m not--”

“Was it Rachel?” And New Keeper says it with so much malice. Like, “None of these keepers are worth the paper their degree is printed on, I swear--”

“It wasn’t--”

“Y’know I caught Travis in Rhino Valley trying to give food as positive reinforcement?” New Keeper shakes his head, neck muscles chording dramatically. “Everyone knows they take better to physical affection as a reward, alright?”

“Yeah, I mean--”

“Everyone knows that.” New Keeper concludes, watching as Steve’s head bounces around frantically.

“Everyone knows that.” Steve agrees.

Fucking idiots.

New Keeper’s mouth ticks up at one corner, almost like he could laugh if he wasn’t busy dealing with his own body. Ripping biceps and pectorals that should pop the seams on his overalls when New Keeper rolls his spine.

“They told me you’re in charge of the bats.” Steve feels those eyes on him again, head to toe and back up again. “That true?”

Steve shrugs, fiddling with his name badge. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Don’t sound so sure.”

“Yeah, well, I mean.” He gestures to the line of steel rings that have been there, permanently, for as long as anyone can remember. “If I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time I don’t wanna claim ownership.”

New Keeper grunts, like.

The salt of the earth, red blooded American asshole he is. He tips the aviators, letting them slide down his nose until blue eyes. The bluest Steve has ever fucking seen, pin him in place.

“You’re not a keeper, are ya?”

Steve tries not to get lost. “Well. No, I’m--”

New Keeper turns to face him, clasping his wrists together and allowing his chest to. Puff. Distract, holy shit, when his biceps follow suit.

Steve tries to tear his eyes away.

Fails.

“What do you do then?”

Steve watches a bead of sweat trail from jawline to collarbone, just. Ruining his life. He blinks owlishly. “Sorry, what?”

New Keeper is almost smiling. “Your job. What kinda.” His tongue flicks out to wet. Pretty, red lips. “Services. Do you provide.”

Steve realizes, distantly, that they’re flirting.

And.

He’s familiar with the concept, alright, but. Steve’s never flirted while wearing hiking boots covered in goat shit, so.

He gestures to his name tag.

The goofy, pixilated staff picture of him and a title beneath that reads; Zoo Academy : Supervisor. Steve wonders if it’s obvious that he works with kids, given the plethora of googly-eyed animal stickers covering the majority of his name tag’s plastic casing.

New Keeper whistles low, removing his aviators entirely, and.

Tugging.

Steve forward by his title. Eyes glowing bright.

“Kinda training you get over in the Education Department teach you anything about fruit bats, princess?”

Steve sorts through the absolute trough alphabet soup flooding his brain. Opens his mouth and closes it again, when. New Keeper rubs the pad of his thumb along the largest, most gaudy of the animal stickers.

New Keeper raises his eyebrow and Steve.

Jolts into motion. “No. Um. I have CPR training, and. First aid training.” Steve lets himself be tugged forward again. Just close enough to smell the mix of Earth and Hay that all the keepers have clinging into their skin, and.

Cologne.

Heady and sweet, underneath all that. He blinks again, trying to clear his head as New Keeper smiles at him.

Really smiles.

For the first time.

Steve nods. “I work with shitheads.”

He isn’t expecting it, when. New Keeper laughs. Loud and sudden, and. So warm. Startling the fleet of bats that have come by looking for their afternoon peaches.

“Tell me about it. They stick you on Bat Duty without any training?” New Keeper nods, finally, finally, releasing Steve from the weird spell he’s put him under. He turns, gesturing to box of fruit at their feet. “I’m gonna have to remedy that, pretty boy.”

Steve nods, like. “Steve.” Before sticking his hand out.

New Keeper nods it away. “Billy. Your training starts on Friday.”

Billy puts his aviators on and.

Starts to walk away.

Kicking up a cloud of that woodsy, delicious scent. Steve scrambles after him. “Okay, training. Friday.”

They round the corner into the section of the jungle that houses a waterfall. The biggest, most breathtaking in the Midwest.

New Keeper keeps on walking. “Yup, see you then.”

“Yeah, listen Keeper Man--”

“Billy.”

Steve runs into a wall of muscle, shying away from the pair of hands that steady him.

He nods. “Billy.” Cheeks flaming bright red as New Keeper smiles, soft and sweet. Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, and like. I totally want to do what’s best for the animals, especially the fruit bats, but. I don’t think I need any training.”

Billy looks him over again. Up and down. “I beg to differ, Bambi.”

“Yeah, I--”

“Won’t have any untrained preschool teacher working with my animals.” Billy says. Matter-of-fact, like, “No matter how annoyingly cute they are.”

Cute.

It hits Steve like an under-ripe peach to the back of the head. He shuffles, nervously, before puffing out his chest, and. Deflating again, when Billy raises his eyebrows.

“Just what am I doing wrong, exactly?”

Billy removes his sunglasses, rolling his neck. “You got an hour?”

Steve smiles sharply. “Gimme the basics.”

“Alright, pretty boy.” Billy stars listing things on his fingers. “Well, first off? You don’t need to peel the fruit. Bats get a lot of their nutrients from the rinds that come on the fruits themselves. If we deplete those nutrients they gotta be replaced another way and I don’t exactly have the time to administer vitamins to four hundred fruit bats, two hundred flying foxes and a handful of pissy vampire--”

“Alright, got it.” Steve sucks his teeth, because. The fruit comes like that. Ends up in the box, along with the steel wire and the gloves he’s supposed to wear but never does, just like that. Sans peel.

Billy grins at him--

Looks him up and down. Steve wishes he’d stop doing that--

Before pointing at his feet. “Doc Martens are not work boots.”

Steve looks down. Around. “What’s wrong with my docs?”

“Nothing,” Billy shrugs, like, “They’re fine if you spend all day dragging screaming brats around the zoo. Answering questions and painting booger-stained cheeks, but. They aren’t work boots. Aren’t keeper boots.”

Steve doesn’t understand. “I’m not a keeper,” He says, because. As much time as he’s spent in the jungle. Learning about the animals and feeing his bats, Steve.

Isn’t.

He wishes he could be, but.

Billy shrugs again, massive shoulders drawing Steve’s attention. “No, you aren’t a keeper. Not yet, anyway.”

Steve turns the words over in his mind, trying to discover the meaning.

Billy tugs on Steve’s nametag again. “See you Friday, pretty boy.” He drawls, and then.

He’s gone.

Steve makes a note to stop at Cabella’s on his way home.

#harringrove #harringrove april #day ten #peaches #LISTEN #i worked at a zoo for two years #I was in charge of zoo academy #and i miss it so much #miss my lil fruit bats #aah #billy wasnt there to flirt with me though which #fucking sucks

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harryspet · 5 years ago

Text

rogue angel [5] bucky barnes

[Warnings] dark bucky barnes x reader, forced age regression, dd lg dynamic, angst, fluff, panic attack, extreme violence

A/N: Lots of both angst and fluff in this one! I made myself cry a little while writing this lol. Enjoy!

series masterlist

word count: 2.7k

The abandoned warehouse smelt of ash and fire, it’s walls covered in soot. Bucky scowled as he took in the scene before him. Sam was standing over the dazed man, his foot having just landed a kick to the man’s stomach.

“Hard to find,” Another kick, “But easy to take down.”

“Sam,” Bucky sighed, “He’s down, okay? Thank you.”

Sam stopped, taking a look at his friend. Something was different about him. Bucky was usually moody but, after seeing him for the first time in weeks, he couldn’t help but noticed that something had changed. For now, he couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad change.

Sam knew about you, of course, and he’d spent awhile trying to convince Bucky not to take you. You knew now how that turned out.

Still, Sam was as loyal as ever.

The man groaned, struggling in the vibranium handcuffs wrapped around his ankles and wrists. He spat blood onto the concrete and then whispered some curses in Sokovian.

Bucky crossed his arms, “Who’s looking for her?”

The man chuckled, choking a bit on his own blood. He was middle-aged but his hair was completely silver, his face so scratched and burned that even Bucky was struggling to look at him. If gore was a person, this was him.

“You think you’re the only one with a score to settle with that one?”

Bucky didn’t have a score to settle. He only wanted to help her but, if the crowd this man ran with thought it was the opposite, it was a good thing.

“Who?” Bucky continued, his patience wearing thin.

“She’s killed hundreds of people including my wife. Unlike you, Barnes, she’s going to pay-”

“She’s been brainwashed,” Bucky countered, “Hydra was the enemy so you should give up on your little plan for revenge. She’d probably kill you faster than either of us could anyways.”

“I don’t care,” The man spoke through gritted teeth, “I’ll look into those eyes if it’s the last thing I do.”

Bucky wouldn’t let that happen, not when you’ve come so far. You were finally starting to adjust to the new life he had planned for you. He’d protect you like Hydra never could. Bucky reached into the waistband of his pants, pulling out the black pistol he had stowed away in his truck earlier.

The sound echoed through the warehouse and the forest surrounding them as the bullet entered the man’s leg. The man screamed, the terror evident in his scarred face, as Bucky cooly lowered the gun, “Tell us who you’re working with and I won’t send you to hell with your wife.”

Bucky felt no sympathy for the man. It was likely his wife was a low life just like him.

Sam could handle blood and gore but not this version of Bucky. Bucky had been a killing machine when they first met and didn’t take killing lightly after his recovery. Sam knew that something had to be seriously wrong for Bucky to go this far.

“Fuck!” The man cried out, unable to provide himself any source of comfort in his tight bonds. He cursed some more in Sokovian and Bucky felt nothing seeing him in pain, not when he was trying to kill his little angel.

As Bucky lifted the gun again, the man spoke, “I’ll see Rogue Angel in hell then. She’ll die soon anyway-”

Bucky fired and the bullet landed precisely between the man’s eyes. Bucky moved to walk away and Sam hurried after him, “What the hell was that? I spent all week tracking him down!”

“He either wasn’t going to tell us anything or he didn’t know anything at all,” Bucky stated firmly, “We have to move on. Follow another lead.”

“Is she really worth this much trouble, Buck?” Bucky paused, facing his friend.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done, Sam. I just ... “ Bucky’s voice trailed off, his anger starting to boil over as he tried to search for the words that wouldn’t make him come off like an asshole, “Yes, she’s worth it. I can’t let them get close to her.”

Sam nodded, understanding, and Bucky was eternally grateful for it. He was so on edge at the moment and now he was regretting even leaving his little angel.

“Rory?”

The boy set the princess crown on top of your head, adding more accessories to your new look, “Yeah?” His tongue was out, a focused look on his face, as he began to add small stickers onto your cheek.

“Does … d-does your Mommy ever punish you?”

Rory snapped out of his daze for a moment, looking at you with one of your yellow bows in his short hair. You were sitting on top of his bed and he stood in front of you, “Sometimes,” He spoke as he placed a star sticker on your cheek.

“What does she do?” You continued.

“It depends,” You noticed his face was turning red, “I like some better than others. I don’t like spanking and I don’t like going to time out.”

You nodded, understanding. Bucky had yet to spank you and your punishments usually ended up with you tied to your bed, “Does she touch you … down there?”

Rory blushed even more, “On my little boy parts? Yeah but I like those punishments.”

“You’re okay with it?” You looked up at him with a furrowed brow, “It doesn’t feel weird?”

“It feels nice,” Rory nodded, grinning, “It kinda hurts when she keeps going after I … you know but it’s worth it. Even when she doesn’t let me … you know, she lets me touch her mommy parts and cuddles me after.”

He spoke so casually that it made your eyes widen in shock, “Oh.”

“You don’t like it when your Daddy touches you?”

You immediately shook your head, “Of course not,” You answered quickly and Rory frowned as if you had rejected his feelings with your words, “I mean, I don’t think so. It’s just weird.”

“I used to feel the same,” Rory spoke honestly, turning your head so he could give you earrings. They were plastic, clip-on, and had fake red rubies but Rory thought they suited you, “Most of the time it doesn’t really feel like a punishment because I know how much my Mommy cares about me. I never had anyone like that before her.”

You thought about it for a moment. Bucky punished you because he cared for you? Like most of this situation, it didn’t make much sense to you.

You could tell Rory liked playing dress-up with you and part of you didn’t mind looking so pampered. It was like how you enjoyed drawing, you were expressing your creativity. As you pretended to put lipstick and blush on Rory’s lips, you imagined he and you were going to a ball together. Like the party in the movie Frozen with lots of royalty there and fancy dresses.

“Hey, kiddos,” Wanda entered the room, a white apron on her hips, “Don’t you two look pretty!”

“Mommy, look!” Rory’s face seemed to light up at the sight of the young woman, “I did her makeup, see!”

“I can see that,” Wanda nodded, coming closer to where you two sat on the twin-sized bed, “You did such a good job, baby.”

You watched him become extremely bashful, it almost made you smile, “Thank you, Mommy.”

“I did his makeup too,” The words left your lips faster than you could stop them. Why did you say that? You didn’t need her praise?

Wanda’s eyes widened with both surprise and joy, “Wow, Bucky told me you were an artist but I didn’t think you were this good! Great job, princess,” Part of you was satisfied that she had recognized your work.

You used to go on mission after mission, killing and getting back unscathed and you never got a pat on the back for that.

“If you guys are done playing dress up, what do you say we go make some desserts in the kitchen?

You’d never baked anything in your entire life but Wanda and Rory were there to walk you through every step. Wanda would get all the materials together and then allow one of you to add it to the mixing bowl, “Mommy, can I show Y/N my big boy trick?”

Wanda grinned, handing the boy a brown egg. Rory looked for your reaction as he cracked the egg only with one hand without getting any shells in the mixture, “That’s really cool,” You spoke shyly but Rory beamed at the compliment.

The two seemed to work together despite the fact that you knew Rory didn’t originally come here willingly. Both their eyes lit up in the presence of one another. Watching it … was nice. You wondered if you’d get to that point with Bucky … Before you could think about it for long, Wanda’s voice interrupted your thoughts.

“Why don’t you try cracking it against the table, darling?” Wanda handed you an egg of your own and you took it hesitantly, “Tap it gently a few times and then slowly open it.”

You did as she said, exhibiting the most patience you had in your entire life. As you made a small dent in the egg, you held it over the bowl, letting the egg drop into the bowl, “You did great!” Rory exclaimed and a small smile spread across your face.

Baking allowed you to only think about the task at hand, not what tragic thoughts your mind usually wandered too.

The batter you and Rory made ended up going into a tin cupcake tray. This was the first time you could remember even being around sweets for the longest time. Being a supersoldier meant keeping your body in peak physical condition and sweets were never apart of your diet plan.

After waiting for the cupcakes to bake and cool off, you were back at the kitchen table decorating them. Rory chose to layer his cupcakes with ten layers of icing and sprinkles. You went the route of pink icing and slices of strawberries that you used to make cute designs.

You were so into decorating that you almost hadn’t noticed Bucky had returned. He was a little disheveled but, ultimately, grateful to be gazing upon you.

“There you are, Bucky. We’re almost done decorating,”

He immediately kissed your forehead, lifting your body so he could move in the chair beneath you, seating you firmly on his lap. Your kept your face stoic despite that beating in your heart. You simply grabbed another cupcake and began to ice it.

Bucky took in Rory’s appearance, assuming you had something to do with it, “It seems like today’s been a fun day.” Bucky touched your waist and, out of the corner of your eyes, you noticed what you assumed was gun residue on his fingers.

“We had to get ready for the ball,” Rory confirmed and Bucky grinned. Wanda was right about this being a good idea. You looked more comfortable in the new dynamic.

“I’ll grab some Tupperware so you can take your cupcakes home, darling,” Wanda walked to the main part of the kitchen.

Rory slumped in his chair, frowning, “Mommy, does Y/N have to go home today? She hasn’t seen Toy Story, I wanna watch it with her.”

Wanda returned with the plastic container, swiftly handing it to Bucky, “It’s a long drive back, baby, so they have to leave soon. We’ll have another playdate soon.”

Rory crossed his arms, tensing up at the idea of his new friend had to leave. You had to admit too that this was the most fun you’d had in a while, “You and your Mommy will come to visit us next time and I’ll build a campfire for us and … guess what?”

Rory perked up at Bucky’s words, “What?”

“We’ll make s’mores and you can meet our puppy, Archie.”

Our. There was a lot of weight on that word.

“He can do lots of tricks,” You confirmed, much to Rory’s delight.

“Woah! Mommyyyy,” Rory whined, “Can we get a puppy too?”

After a long drive home and a bath, you waited on Bucky’s bed for him to return from the shower. He’d helped you into a fresh pull-up and a red onesie that said: “Daddy is my superhero” in white letters.

You held Lucy in your lap as your eyes gazed around the room. It seemed Bucky trusted you enough to leave you alone like this and, part of you wanted to prove that you could be good and that you wouldn’t run at the first option. That part of you liked that Bucky trusted you.

Maybe you were worthy of someone’s trust.

You slid off the side of the bed, dragging Lucy with you as you gained your balance. You could hear the rain hitting the roof and the house rumbled as lightning struck in the distance. You didn’t mind the rain but … the storm was another thing. You put one foot before the other, using your weak legs to the best of your ability.

You approached the window across the room slowly, pulling back the red cream colored curtain in order to look outside. It was like you were looking into the abyss. It was pitch black outside and you could barely even see the outlines of the forest.

You stared up at the dark blue sky, your breathing starting to get heavy. The black clouds seemed to gather together before lightning ripped through them, the white zig-zag line was closer than you expected.

The booming thunder came next and your body tensed up as you fell back.

“Shock her again.”

“I need them. I-I need my family.”

“Again.”

Bucky was running a towel through his hair when he heard the thud. He dropped everything as he rushed from the bathroom, finding you laying in the fetal position by the window. You were gasping for air even though there was nothing blocking it from you.

You felt no control at all and the terror seemed to flood every part of your body, paralyzing you. “Y/N, breathe in and out. You have to breathe,” Bucky kneeled down beside you, his heart racing, as he saw that fear in your eyes. He knew you were having a panic attack, he’d gone through so many himself, often by himself. He wanted to be there for you because no one had been there for him.

“Again! Shock her again!”

“In and out,” He showed you what to do, breathing in and out himself.

It took you a long moment but you finally started to catch your breath, “I-I betrayed them,” You spoke shakily, starting to hyperventilate once again, “They’ll kill me! I betrayed them-”

Bucky laid down beside you, and you stared back at him, “Breathe, please breathe,” Bucky continued, reaching over to wipe your tears, “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Y/N, I promise.”

“I-I can ... protect me.”

“You don’t have to anymore,” Bucky assured you, reaching to grab Lucy who had fallen to the side. He placed her in your arms and you gripped her to your chest. “I’m going to take care of you. I know you’re scared, we live in a scary world, but Daddy’s going to protect you.”

“I …. I didn’t want to hurt those people …”

Bucky understood what was happening, all the realization was hitting her, “Of course you didn’t. You’re a good girl, angel.”

“I-I’m good?”

Bucky nodded, his blue eyes seeming to soften, “You don’t have to hurt anyone else.”

You stared at him for a long while, taking in his every feature, and your gaze met his lips. You leaned into him, and Bucky grabbed your waist, sliding you closer to him. As another bolt of lightning lit up the dark room, you pressed your lips to Bucky’s.

As he leaned into you, Bucky noted how your lips were soft, curious, and inexperienced.

When you opened your eyes and pulled your lips away, Bucky had a soft smile on his face. He’s wanted to do that with you since he found you in London. Your face was unsure but you knew one thing. You didn’t want to be alone tonight.

“C-Can I … Can I sleep in your bed, Daddy?”

“It would be my honor, princess.”

Predictions for the future? Imagines?

if you’re in the mood, send me a “get to know you” ask or check out my recent drabble!

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arvandus · 4 years ago

Text

Touch (Pt 2)

Pairing: Dabi x Fem!Reader

WARNINGS: 18+ only please! Drug abuse/withdrawal, adult language/themes, heavy angst, past trauma/abuse, anxiety/panic attacks, PTSD, fluff, pining, slow burn, eventual emotional SMUT. *please pay attention to the chapter tags as these warnings will apply at different times*

Synopsis: When you first joined the LOV to lend your healing quirk, Dabi terrified you. Not interested in attachments, he wanted to keep it that way. That is, until he needs your help. (Slow burn, soft Dabi).

Time Frame: Right before the League meets Overhaul

Additional notes: I took some liberty in giving Reader a backstory that fits in with the BNHA world and is important for the story. If that bothers you, I apologize - just think of it as role playing! Also, this’ll probably be broken up into 8-10 parts, roughly. JUST KIDDING - this has now turned into an epic (roughly) 40 chapter series. Oops.

Please let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future chapters.

Recommended Chapter Song: Cradles by Sub Urban

Part 1

Artwork credit to @hellowon31 on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hellowon31)

Part 2 - A Crack In The Armor

The pain came back, just as you said it would. What you didn’t mention was that the numbness would gradually fade away. It might sound nice to some, but Dabi hated it. He felt like he was driving towards a cliff in slow motion, waiting for the crash, unable to turn the wheel. He had no control. He hated this feeling of helplessness and traded it for anger instead. Why did he even ask for your help to begin with?

His answer was given to him as soon as your quirk’s effect finally stopped. Dabi stared angrily at the empty pill bottles. It was amazing how quickly the brain adapted, his body acting as if he’d never had to deal with his damaged nerves before. He had half a mind to hunt you down and demand you take care of it. He didn’t, of course, pride the deciding factor. The scars were his, a series of choices made, a patchwork flag he wore into battle. They were his burden and a reminder of his fight; he wasn’t going to give that up so easily. Still, he couldn’t deny the temptation that surrounded him like a cloud, even if all he did was entertain the thought.

Dabi waited all day for your visit until finally your characteristic knock on his door rewarded his patience. He stood from his bed and cooled his features into their typical mask before opening the door. There you stood, keen eyes already assessing him.

“Can I come in?” you asked. Like the day before, he stepped aside just enough to let you pass. He had discovered yesterday that he liked having your presence close to him… it gave his pulse a little rush. He caught a whiff of your shampoo as you gingerly passed him and felt the softness of your shirt as it brushed against his own like a whisper. His grip on the doorknob tightened.

As soon as Dabi closed the door behind you, you got started. You were determined to be strictly business. “How’re you feeling?” you asked, keeping your tone even, the perfect balance of concern and professionalism. Dabi wanted to laugh. Were you always this serious?

“Like shit.” He grinned. “That quirk of yours is potent stuff.”

You couldn’t help but let a grin escape in response to his candid words, a fracture in your hastily built armor. “Not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“It’s a compliment.” He stated.

You felt your throat go tight. Stay on task. Stay on task. You cleared your throat slightly as you averted your eyes from him. “Well, let’s have a look.”

With a little less flair than yesterday, he removed his jacket like before, followed by his shirt as he turned around to display his back for you.

You could see that the bandages were seeped through. You had laid them on thick since you knew you wouldn’t be able to check on him as often as you’d like – he was still going out to do Shigaraki’s bidding and you had others to look after as well. You were planning on seeing him daily, but it looked like he’d need more.

Your little checkups were far from over. You couldn’t help but wonder what he thought about that. You honestly weren’t sure what you thought about it yourself.

“I’m going to use my quirk and then change your bandages. I’ll check on you again tomorrow morning before you leave.”

“How often do we have to do this?” Dabi asked. His tone was difficult to decipher. Concerned? Annoyed? …Hopeful?

You cleared your throat again, desperate for a glass of water, as you began to remove the soiled gauze. “I’ll probably visit you twice daily for the first week, then reduce it to once a day or every couple of days for the second week. We’ll see where we are by then. It’ll take at least a few weeks before it’s fully healed. That’s only if you’re good though, and don’t go out and use your quirk for a bit.”

“I won’t make any promises.” He replied.

You sighed. “Well, at least your honest. Really though, you should at least try not to use it.”

“That’s up to the Crusty Hands.” Dabi replied. “He’s the one sending me out there to try to recruit members and gather intel.”

You rolled your eyes at the nickname for Shigaraki. “Couldn’t you ask him for a break then?” You asked, your head tilted. “No point in making you hurt yourself over lackey work.”

The question was innocent enough, but Dabi turned around and stared at you like you grew a second head. Ask Shigaraki for time off? The thought made Dabi bristle for so many reasons.

You quickly caught on to his shift in mood and tried to repair your previous statement. “Look. I get it if that’s an issue for you. Maybe I could be the one to ask him. I can make it a medical request, since I’m the healer.”

That option almost seemed worse. He didn’t need to be excused from his duties like a child with a sick note. And he most certainly didn’t want you putting your neck out for him.

“Look, I know your still kinda new here. So, let me break this down. There is no ‘sick time’ in the League of Villains. No vacation, no hazard pay. We all got our jobs to do.”

Now you bristled, your shoulders tensing up and your arms crossed in front of you defensively. “Yeah. And my job is to make sure you crazy idiots don’t kill yourselves before we complete our mission. You know, the big long-term one where we change the world, not the pointless dirty work Shigaraki’s got you doing.”

“Pointless dirty work? That dirty work is how we reach that long-term goal, sweetheart.” Dabi grinned devilishly. “I didn’t realize you had such strong opinions about how we do things here.”

“Just the part about using your talents for recruiting street thugs. Most of them are idiots that can’t tell Stain’s message from an anarchist bumper sticker.”

You were right, of course. Dabi chuckled. You were more interesting than he thought.

“Look,” you said, your voice quieter as you uncrossed your arms. “We’re all in this together come hell or high water, and I’m really hoping we can all see it through to the end. If that means taking some time off to let your body recover, then I’d think that’d be worth doing.”

Dabi stared at you silently while something tightened in his chest. Your need to hold everyone together like glue was admirable and almost… endearing. He felt a sinking feeling in his gut. He knew there was a high likelihood they wouldn’t all see the end of this, if the end ever even comes. Did you know that but stubbornly hold onto your optimism? Or were you really that naïve that you believed there was a chance that everyone could come out unscathed? When the worst happens – which it inevitably will – will you blame yourself?

The thought bothered him.

For the first time Dabi’s mask slipped, and for the briefest of moments you could see the pity in his eyes.

“Thanks for the concern doll, but I got it under control.” Dabi said, his voice unusually calm. “Besides, if I took time off every time I hurt myself with my quirk, then I’d never be any use.”

Between his eyes and his words, there was no room for discussion, so you let the topic drop.

You let out a defeated sigh. “Well then, let’s get started.” You placed your hands on his back.

Once again, the sweet balm of your touch spread across his skin, bringing back the relief he had missed. His body responded instinctively. His breathing slowed; his muscles relaxed. He closed his eyes, relishing in the sensation. You noticed the slightest drop in his shoulders and a pang of sympathy washed over you like a wave. You wished you could do more for him, but you had to conserve your quirk for the others too.

You cleaned his wound quickly and applied fresh bandages without any more talk. As quickly as it had begun, it was over. Without missing a beat, he pulled his shirt back on while you packed your items.

You turned to leave, but paused for a moment before turning back slightly, your eyes bravely locking with his. “Try to get some rest… it’ll help your body heal faster.”

Dabi didn’t respond with his usual quips. Instead, his electric blue eyes stared at you in a way that made your blood pulse in your ears and the air burn in your lungs. You stood captivated for a moment, locked in his gaze, before finding your way out of the maze of his eyes and left his room, hearing the quiet click of the door behind you.

Without a word, Dabi sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands. His brow furrowed in confusion.

This was supposed to be a game. A game of walls and mazes and misdirection. He was the ‘Asshole,’ full of snarky comments and flirty quips all while withholding his true self. He didn’t need friends, just coworkers so he could carry out his mission and bring Stain’s vision to life before his quirk killed him. But your magic hands dismantled his walls, allowing you to walk right in and get in his head with your stubborn heart. He had cared. For the briefest of moments, he cared.

It was his game. Why did he feel like he was losing?

______________________________________________________________

Part 3

__________________________________________________

Taglist: @lemonfvck @vs-redemption @inanabsentia @sheedaabee @toshiuwuu @marydragneell @chillinwithmybakubros @genuinelytodorokisbitch @sam-i-am-1025

#Dabi x reader #Dabi #Dabi fanfic #bnha #mha #bnha imagine #soft dabi #fluff #slow burn #pining #long talks #intimacy #dabi is a todoroki #touya todoroki #dabi is touya #angst #trauma

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pandemilkbread · 4 years ago

Text

devil 007 (prologue)

devil 007 (Bakugo Katsuki x Reader)

summary:

(demon!au)

Turns out Bakugo Katsuki never wanted to eat your soul, rather he just needed someone to play video games with.

ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ's ɴᴏᴛᴇ: ʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʀᴏʟᴏɢᴜᴇ. ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ :>

☆ ☆ ☆

𝑖. 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑒

“That was a fucking accident.”

“An explosion that big is not an accident!”

You might be wondering how the hell were you hanging on the tallest building in the underworld holding on to a pipeline for your dear life. While your notorious partner-in-crime Bakugo just watched as you dangled ninety feet in the air.

“I swear if I die I will shitting haunt you for all eternity! You’d be fed up with all my shit the moment my soul reaches your territory. Just imagine, me annoying you fore—“

“Jump.” He grumbled.

No. Jump? Hell no. You’d rather die than jump into his arms. Bakugo was more likely to miss, and you’d fall (probably five storeys) before he dare tried to save you.

You wanted to scream. How all this happened in the first place, you hardly remember. No, you did remember.

It was all because of that stupid book.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

It was a mishap, really. The wrong book got delivered to the wrong place at the wrong time, and exactly the wrong thing happened as a consequence.

You were a college student who had just finished the semester, and frankly... a miserable one you were. Failing a quiz was one thing, but you had to mess up your finals so badly a retake wouldn’t suffice. You had to take up the subject all over again.

Sighing, you lay flat on your back. The ceiling had this magical property to suck up all the negativity in your life.

(it didn’t. but you’d like to think so.)

You had all the time in the world to repeat the subject. The problem? Cash. Having a scholarship at a prestigious university wasn’t easy. One measly failure could mean bye-bye free tuition fees and hello student loans that could last centuries + a liver.

Doomed you were, honey. You groaned. At least the treasury board approved the student allowances; which meant? The poor student (you) finally bought the heavy shitass syllabus for your major. The subject you failed.

It could take weeks for the parcel to arrive. What did you expect? You only ordered it days ago. The sooner it gets here, you’d be studying your ass off until 5 A.M. for weeks. Hooray.

A sudden ring of the doorbell awoke you from your senses. Huh, it did arrive earlier than you expected. You scooted towards the door and twisted it open. There lay a box wrapped in tape, a sticker with the words ‘fragile: handle with care’ shone in bright yellow.

You picked it up and shook the item. It was lighter than you expected. How the heck did a 700 page book become as light as a diary? Did they send you the wrong thing? Crap. You scoured the whole box to find neither details about who the recipient nor who the sender was.

Oh, well. Did that mean you could keep whatever was inside? You grinned. Opening up the box, you find out it was a vivid red book entitled:

Ultimatum Wishes: The Ultimate Spellbook for Summoning Demons! All your wishes will come true! Follow the instructions inside.

Yeah, right. Like you could summon a demon to send you a trillion yen.

(apparently, doubt didn’t stop you from trying.)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

First of all, what the actual fuck.

Your curiosity got the best of you. The instructions were pretty easy; sugar, salt, dirt, water, a jar of mayonnaise, a drop of blood— basically, the usual ingredients for summoning demons. Like that’s shitting normal? You had to mix them all together and spread them into the circle you drew on earlier.

Second, did you really summon a demon?

You were obviously not in your dorm room. It was bigger, darker, and colder to what you were accustomed to. After saying a stupid chant, you make a wish and boom! demon comes to you. So the instructions said.

It was a joke, really. You never thought the book was actually real! Once you said your wish, a bright light flashed and... you were here. A basement like room devoid of light, making your fingers the only things you could see at the moment.

You were sprawled on your back, staring at your hands. If only your eyes could adjust to the light then you would be on your merry way to finding the exit. Except, that you didn’t really need to adjust. The lights opened with a flash and you were met with red eyes:

“Took you long enough, brat!”

Lastly, who the hell was this?

The moment you and this miniature bomb exchanged looks, and he realized that you weren’t the person he was hoping for, the man grabbed the collar of your shirt lifting you high up to the ceiling.

“How the fuck did you get here stupid human? Pretty gutsy of you to just waltz in like you own the place, hm?” He growled, slightly shaking you with every syllable he uttered.

You barely registered it, you-know before you were lifted up, but this person in front of you was terrifying. He radiated waves of “answer properly or i’ll rip you into shreds” and you didn’t want to die.

(not at least before smacking this crappy brute.)

“Put me down you—you crappy dog! Treat me nicely and I’ll tell you everything,” You choked.

He scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. “You’re really haggling with me now, maggot? The last time I checked I could easily squeeze the fucking life out of you—”

“T-The book! Shitty book! Followed it and I’m here!”

And with that you were dropped onto the floor. You yelped upon impact, rubbing the area of your neck with your fingers. That hurt. Your eyes hovered to your assailant and saw his frustration building up. Hoo, a little bit more and he’d be on fire.

“...How’d you get it?”

“Sent to my doorstep. D-Didn’t think it was real I thought—”

“You opened it knowing it wasn’t yours?”

“Oh, no you aren’t! Don’t blame me for your shitty mistake in the first place!”

“Watch your tongue, human.”

You sighed. Everyone knew you were someone who wouldn’t back down from a fight, but your senses told you otherwise. There was a fine line between pissing him off and stabbing you in the heart, you knew you were likely closer to the latter part of the scale.

“Fine. Whoever that package was sent to, it came to me instead. Why am I here?”

He contemplated for a while, searching for the right words to spout out. Oh God no. Were you brought here as a sacrifice? You shook your head. Anything but that! Sweat dribbled down your forehead. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

“...to kill...”

Yeaph. And with that, you blacked out.

(imagine, fainting from your own demolition. oh, you hope you didn’t actually break a bone or two.)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

You awoke to a strange tapping noise, more like a smack, and groans of infuriation. The vivid colors of black, pink, and yellow caught your attention, making you stare in awe. Was that Mario Kart...?

The clicking sound came from the blonde who sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes drawn to big television screen in front of him. While you were on a black couch around three hands away from the man. Seemingly, he could sense your tiny movements as you sat up, compelling him to chuck a controller at you.

“You gonna play or what?”

Huh? You took the object, feeling the texture in your hands. It’s been a while since you held a controller; even longer since you played a game at all. The game home screen flashed, the cursor hovering over the “new game” button. He clicked it forcing the game to switch into the character screen.

The man picked Bowser. Ah, not surprising. You grinned as you chose Princess Peach.

The game began immediately after and you thought, wow. You sucked at this game! Your cart hit track walls, bounced on boulders, special items that you sent managed to hit you instead. Rigged, this must be rigged! Just because the last time you played the game was ten years ago, doesn’t automatically mean you were shit at it.

Your companion thought differently.

“You’re crappy at this game.” He sneered.

You rolled your eyes. “It’s just the first game! A warm-up, you’ll see.”

And yes, he did see. See you fail round after round, time after time, the twenty games you played seemed to only prove your awful skills at a simple multiplayer game. You groaned. How was it possible to lose this much? Even the computer controlled characters beat you senseless.

Gently placing the controller on the sofa, you wrapped your arms around your knees. Was this a test? A test to see whether if you were worth killing? Oh boy, you would have been slaughtered at the first playthrough.

“Are you going kill me now?” You murmured.

If this was how you were going to go, at least you had fun. Well, you did lose more times than you could count. But hey, it was enjoyable.

“Ha. You think I’d let you go that easily?” He stood up, turned and grabbed the controller. “You made a pact with me, and now you’re gonna run away?”

His other hand reached for your chin and pulled it up, your eyes meeting his.

“What’d you wish for, princess?”

alright. so that’s the prologue! thank you for reading. i’ll have the chapter one ready soon. so pretty much, what happened was: you received a package. bored as you were followed the instructions and summoned a demon. except, you were actually summoned somewhere else to bakugo no less.

the introductions come on to the next chapter!! please leave a like if you like it aaaaa it would mean alot ;;;;

#bakugo katsuki #bnha scenarios #bnha imagines #bnha fanfiction #boku no hero bakugou #bakugo x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugo x you #boku no hero imagines #boku no hero scenarios #bnha fics #devil 007

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saharamae21 · 4 years ago

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Vapor (Part 2)

Hey guys! Here is part two! I still don’t fully know how I feel about this, but please let me know if you like it. This chapter is a little dark... I’ve beem watching a lot of Criminal Minds. Please let me know if you want more. Also I tagged everyone who commented last chapter and everyone I tagged last chapter. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

I’ll continue writing if you guys like the direction it’s going in...

Warnings: Mentions of violence and kidnapping

Get Added To The Tag List!

__________________________________________

I sat on the beach with Kie, watching Topper and Sarah walking together. I didn’t want to watch them together. I didn’t want to look at them. I focused my eyes on Kie as she talked and tried to ignore Topper at all. She was going on about preserving the beach and what we can do to help. It’s not that I wasn’t into the whole preservation idea, but I’ve heard her talk about it a million times, so it wasn’t my favorite topic.

Just as I was about to change the subject, there was yelling. I turned to see JJ and Topper fighting over what looked like a drink. I watched as Topper was protecting Sarah from what looked like no threat and got up to help defuse the situation. I was too late though. Topper threw the drink all over JJ, which most certainly sparked a reaction. JJ was yelling as John B held him back. I grabbed onto Topper to try to tell him that it wasn’t worth fighting over. He never really listened to me though. He yelled something back and John turned and shoved him in response. Topper slammed into me, knocking me down into the sand. He didn’t even check if I was okay. He just walked up to JB and threw the first punch. I listened to Top say such horrible things as he kicked John through the water. The fight escalated and it got to the point where I was screaming at Topper to stop. He had John’s head under water and it was bad.

“Top! Stop it! You’re gonna kill him!” I was screaming my lungs out. I told Sarah to do something. I knew if anyone could stop him, it was her and not me. Kie was yelling as well and I was starting to really think Topper was going to kill him.

There was nothing for me to do. There was nothing anyone could do. Sarah was screaming at Topper and he wouldn’t listen. Someone had to do something. I watched as JJ confidently walked up to Topper and held something to his head. We all knew what it was. Everyone was screaming and moving back, but I was frozen. I could hear the yelling from my friends and I could see the events in front of me, but more traumatic memories filled my head. JJ let Topper go as he yelled for everyone to get off their side of the island. Then two warning shots were fired into the sky. While everyone else ran, I dropped. My hands covered my ears as I went into the position they teach you in school for weather drills. Memories of gunshots and blood swirled around me. Memories that I hadn’t thought about in years. I felt a hand on my back as the ringing subsided. My breath was a gasping pant as my anxiety attack consumed my body. I looked up and JJ was kneeling in front of me. I motioned to my mouth and he yelled at Pope to grab the inhaler in his bag. I shook my head no though.

“Joint,” I said, trying to calm myself down. I fumbled in my pockets, searching for anything I could breathe into my system. I pulled out my pen and took a hit. As soon as the vapor filled my lungs, I relaxed a little bit. “I’m sorry Addie,” JJ said. He was the only one who knew I hated guns. He was the only one who knew the trauma I went through as a kid. To this day, he still blames himself for it too. My hands were still shaking as he grabbed the inhaler from Pope. “C’mon, puff up.”

He placed the small red tool in my hand. On it were some stickers from school that I had gotten before I went to the Kook Academy. It was the same inhaler I had him carry around for me when we were kids. He had kept it and carried it around all these years. I took two puffs of medication and stared at him. Why was he so confusing?

I took another hit from my pen before sliding it back into my pocket. I forced myself to my feet, but my legs wobbled a bit. JJ stared at me.

“I’m fine,” I said. “That was years ago, JJ. I should go.”

“Adelaide w-” he said. I had turned around and started walking away though. I needed to get out of there. Between the overwhelming memories and feelings of confusion and jealousy, I was emotionally drained. I needed to get home and into bed.

The shower felt good against my skin, but the clean bed sheets felt better. I curled up in bed and tried to shut my mind off. I watched the moonlight dance around my room, but it was a little soothing to me. Ever since I was 8, I’ve been scared of the dark. It was after that accident that my fears ran wild. I tried not to think about it as I closed my eyes and drifted off.

Every nightmare was the same. It was bits and pieces of the incident, but never the whole thing. I knew what had gone on, but over the years the memories faded. They only presented themselves to me in dreams. They made me watch them over and over.

The first part is always me looking at a leash with no pets. No dog, but he insisted there was. I glanced back at JJ. He was so little, but he didn’t want to leave the playground. White Chapel had the best playgrounds and he never wanted to waste a minute there when my mom and I would bring him along. My mom had run into the store across the street when he approached. He couldn’t find his dog.

I followed him as he walked around the park. He told me he needed to grab a toy from his car. He said maybe his dog would come back for his favorite toy. I was eight. I didn’t know not to follow him. I screamed as he grabbed me and put me into the trunk of his station wagon. I screamed so loud for JJ. The door shut and the trunk smelled so bad. It was so bad that I threw up. I cried. I remember kicking and trying to get out.

After that was a bit of a blur. I remember being in a house and asking for JJ. I wanted my mom too. I thought I would never forget that man’s face, but now it was all a blur. I remember the house though. It was clean and meticulous. He got mad when I left fingerprints. He tried me to the chair and listened to me cry.

It was dark before the police sirens surrounded us. I felt the man pull me into the garage and told me not to be scared. He knelt in front of me as I asked him for JJ. I told him I wanted to go home now. I felt a cold metal object press against the side of my face. He stared at me as the garage door opened. He told me not to be scared and then a gun went off. My eyes had been squeezed shut, but then there was a commotion. I opened my eyes and saw the man in front of me lying on the ground. A pool of blood spread across the floor, staining my shoes. I let out a scream as an officer picked me up. He told me not to look. He took off my shoes and set me down on the road outside the house. I cried and begged for JJ.

Right on cue, I heard him. I heard him screaming at an officer that he needed to be let in. Then my eyes landed on him. I cried and yelled at him. I watched as he kicked an officer and took off running. He ran straight into me and held me tightly against him. I cried into his chest.

“I’ll never let you leave my sight,” he said. “I’ll always protect you.”

I woke up with the image of my dead abductor fresh in my mind. I thought about how I found out the smell in the trunk was another kid. I thought about the body they found. The dead body I had laid next two while he drove me to another location. I thought about how if they were even a minute later, I would’ve just been another dead body in the trunk of his car. I gasped for air as I sat up and wiped the sweat off my face. I needed fresh air and open space and I needed it now. I climbed out onto my roof and sat there. It’s crazy that this still haunts me eight years later. I thought it would go away by now. I glanced over at Topper’s house and wondered if someone like Topper could ever fill the hole JJ left when we stopped talking. JJ and I had been through it all together. I pulled out my phone and looked at JJ’s number in it. The cell towers were down from the hurricane, but I don’t think I would’ve called him even if I could. We just weren’t close anymore...

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Tag List : @jjmaybangme @thebendslikebendover @justcallmesams @jellyfishbeansontoast @prejudic3 @jjtheangel @jiaraendgame @obxmxybxnk @waywardbarbie @talksoprettyjjx @obbx-tings @agirlwholovescoffee @thoughtsofthestars @outerbankslut @potterheadhollander @baby-pogue @lindzaylove @obxlife @queenofthebees003 @rockyyc77 @beth-winchester21

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narutowtfareyoudoing · 5 years ago

Note

Okay so it's totally understandable if you don't want to do this. Love your blog either way! ❤ but I'd love to see headcanons or scenarios about Kakashi, Itachi and whoever else you want smoking weed with the reader! I think it'd be hilarious!!! Again totally cool if it's a no if you don't smoke or are against it.. love you!

Glad to hear you love the blog!💚💚 LMAO I’M SO DOWN WITH THIS 😂💚 I’ve been around marijuana most of my life in different aspects so I’m excited to write this! 💚💚 I also assumed the reader was their S/O. ---

Kakashi Hatake:

Kakashi’s been smoking weed since he left the ANBU. After being in desperate need of an escape and generally needing to calm down. Now it’s a daily ritual.

Though he generally sleeps better now that he gets to crawl into bed with you he usually smokes before bed.

He’ll always share with you, he’s not possessive over his stash at all. Help yourself if he’s not around S/O.

Why is he so lax about it? He’s never had to pay for it.

That’s right, years ago Kakashi helped out an elderly couple and turns out they ran a weed farm. As a show of their thankfulness anytime Kakashi comes around he gets a handsome baggy for free.

You went with him once and they think you’re lovely, they’re vert happy someone’s loving and taking care of their broody hero. You get a cute little baggy of your own for free too.

Having the nose of a trained Ninken means he knows the good stuff when he smells it.

So the stash you two share is some potent stuff. It’s that good stinky shit my dude.

Kakashi has got a large double percolator bong covered in dog stickers you’ve put onto it that he hides beside his dresser in case anyone decides to drop by unexpectedly. Guy came by once and Kakashi swears he was lectured about it for three days straight.

Watching Kakashi take hits with his mask still on always makes you laugh, the way the smoke comes up from the inside of his mask should look really cool but it just makes you burst into a fit of giggles. Which is why he still does it sometimes. He thinks your laugh is cute and nothing makes him laugh more than your own laugh.

You two usually smoke in bed, the plan is always just to get a little stoned and get some good sleep. Oh, how you two rarely follow the plan.

You two can stay up for hours talking. Sometimes it strays into serious and philosophical topics and other times it’s a giggles fest of lame excuses he’ll use on his students later.

You two even have little smoking games. One of his favourite is where you two read Icha Icha and whoever finishes the page last has to take a hit, the more you lose the harder it gets to read. But as the room gets filled with more and more smoke it gets harder for the winner to keep focus too. Kakashi usually wins this game never the less though.

To spite what his reputation as a Shinobi is and how he can come across Kakashi is in fact a gigantic nerd and it comes out full force when you two are stoned. His comfort with you paired with the weed is enough to have him drop down any barriers and he tells you all this fan theories about the next Icha Icha books, how he came up with the names for his Ninken. Come on one of their names is Biscuit!

Speaking of biscuits. Kakashi doesn’t have a huge sweet tooth but that man can pack it away. You two have definitely walked down to Ichiraku’s for a late night second dinner. You’ve run into Shikamaru and Asuma there too along with a number of other faces. There’s a good reason Ichiraku’s is open late, he knows his clientele.

You two eventually make it to bed so late that it’s early. Both your heads light and bodies heavy as you cuddle up, conversation slowly turning into snores.

Itachi Uchiha:

Itachi’s been familiar with marijuana for medical use for quite some time.

It’s what’s most easily accessible on the road, not every Village has well trained Medical Nin but there’s always at least one person in every Village that sells pot.

At first he only took medical marijuana oil that had a low THC to avoid effects of grogginess on missions.

But when you came into the picture with your gummies and potent oils things changed.

He still rarely uses anything with THC on missions but when he’s off his missions he enjoys it more than he thought he would.

Edibles are something he enjoys, he has a sweet tooth no matter what he says. You made edible Dango once and he adored it.

He can’t take any hits from bongs or blunts but with you he’s become very fond of shotguns and hotboxings. Shotguns usually end in a kiss and it gives him all the more reason to smile. The lightheadedness from the weed and your lips leaves him with what could be considered a dorky smile by Uchiha standards.

Then of course you introduced him to the world of THC body oils. Heaven you introduced him to Heaven.

When he comes back from missions physically sore you break out the oil and give him a massage. Itachi was a little hesitant at first, brushing you off politely but with some insistence from your end he agreed.

It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy the thought of you giving him a massage, it’s that he worries sometimes the relationship you two have is skewed too much in his favour. You often have to remind him you love him and you do this not because you feel like you have too but because you want too. Plus you often jokingly tease him by grabbing his butt and that’s your Heaven so it’s worth it.

His body is usually sick an uncooperative when it comes to physical forms of love with you but sometimes just the right combinations of medical grade oils and high THC can have his body feeling well enough to try. And if you’re receptive at all he doesn’t miss a chance to try.

Buzzing high on THC and blissful orgasmic relief is enough to knock you and Itachi into sleeping the next week away.

He never would have thought being high would give him such a semblance of a normal life. Laying, cuddled up to the person he loved so dearly, body and mind relaxed, death far from his thoughts. It all gave him a moment of maybe what his life could have been and he relishes in it.

When he’s stone he smiles more, breathy chuckles make their way our of him not many but more than you��d normally get. He already smile around you more but when he’d stoned it’s more constant.

He chooses not to get philosophical when he’s high with you, all his philosophical’s have to do with death and he wants that as far as possible from the conversation when he’s trying to be present in the moment with you. It’s something you two have talked about, you already knew the reality that Itachi was going to die and it was going to be bloody...he didn’t need to remind you of it every second so instead he just lets himself enjoy the hazy moments he has with you.

Itachi’s nerves are shot from dangerous Jutsu he’s used over the years but being high feels to heighten his sensitivity and your little touches of affection are something he wishes he could bottle up and take with him on long missions.

Kisame is aware of almost everything you are when it comes to Itachi and he’s got no problem with it and he’s gone so far as to remember the strains you told him help Itachi the most and will pick them up if he sees them. Kisame doesn’t see the appeal himself since he’s highly resilient. Seriously check it out fish aren’t susceptible to THC

Some of Itachi’s best days are spent with you stoned out of your brilliant minds.

Yamato:

Can you guess who was a bad influence and is to blame for this? I’ll give you two guesses but you’re only gonna need one. That’s right, say it with me: Kakashi.

What started as a way to appear cool and bond with his Senpai has over the years become a personal hobby.

Yamato is absolutely paranoid at times that someone will catch him smoking. It’s not illegal but it once was and sometimes he still gets worried he’ll get in trouble or worse get shamed for it.

So he only exclusively smokes at home by himself, with you or guiltily sometimes with Kakashi to spite the fact Kakashi teases the living Hell outta your poor boyfriend.

You do too a little. You can’t help it. You’d think he’s a teenager hiding it from his mom instead of a grown man who lives with you, his adult partner by the way he acts.

He locks all the doors, puts towels at the bottom of every single one, closes every window and latches them shut, he lights candles to stop the smell, he got so worried once he even used his wood Jutsu to seal the door and windows tight. Which caused the most incredibly intense hotbox of your life.

To spite the fact he’s been smoking much longer than you have you typically have to light up first to help him feel more comfortable about it. He still has a worry in the back of his head you’ll judge him for what he was raised with is a nasty habit.

But as he take a few deep breaths he calms down. One of the root reasons why he smokes is to calm himself down and to unravel the tight spiral he spins himself into.

He mainly smokes joints, they’re easy to hide and if he’s positive if he ever needed too he could convince someone they were just hand rolled cigarettes.

He’s a talker. Going over imaginary scenarios that get more and more ridiculous the higher he gets and he used to be able to talk himself into a panic but when you laugh at the insane lengths he goes too it calms him down and make him realize that he is being a little silly...but just a little.

You sometimes have to steer the conversation a little, telling funny stories of when you were in school and someone dared you to eat a roach claiming it would get you high. It didn’t.

If you can get him going he’ll absolutely in be stitches as he laughs away. And it’s adorable to see Yamato cut loose like that.

Sometimes he’ll tell his famed ghost stories but instead of his Dead Eyed Ghoulish Stare having it’s usual chilling effect it makes you lose your mind and laugh. It should be terrifying with his pupils enlarged, red blood vessels brimming his big eyes as they stare at you but there’s just something so funny about it when you’re high. And eventually after he has a brief moment of bruised ego he laughs along with you.

About two shared joints in the best way to describe him is dopey.

Dopey eyes, dopey grin, dopey compliments on how he’s so thankful for you and that you’re here with him, years ago he never would’ve imagined he’d get to come home to someone, especially someone as pretty and wonderful as you.

When he gets this dopey he just wants to be held, so much of his life has been starved of touch and it feels so wonderful with the way his nerves and buzzing. If you run your nails through his hair he’s an absolute goner.

He likes to wait for all the hotbox smoke to dissipate into nothingness before he dares to open a window or a door. So this usually means you two spend hours together like this.

He greatly prefers smoking now that he can do it with you. He however to prefer or approve of your pranks like the time you snuck a joint into his flak jacket pocket. He freaked out desperately trying to hide it and you were in so much trouble when he got home.

~Admin Coral.

Buy Me A Coffee?

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mysticm3ss · 5 years ago

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what comes next | zen oneshot

i’m not even gonna try and pretend this is a reader insert, i didn’t even switch out my name haha. this is just a recount of how i felt in the emergency ward, and what might have happened if i hadn’t had to answer ‘no’ when the nurses asked if there was anyone they should call. writing this was purely theraputic, but if it can help anyone else, then maybe it was all worth it.

if suicide, hospitals, needles etc are triggering to you, don’t read this.

word count: 2k

_____

Everything happened so fast.

The muscles in my legs twitched as they pulled back my hospital gown, a pastel violet that was too happy for the solemn concentration on the nurse’s face. He pressed stickers over my breasts in short, sharp actions, and had I been free of my medicated haze, I’d have been embarrassed. As it was, his urgency only confused me.

“Does this work like a brain scan?” An EEG. I meant an EEG. Like I’d learned about in my psychology class the past semester. It felt simultaneously so distant and so close.

How ironic that a psychology student ended up here.

“Kind of.” His words were dismissive, and wires weighed down my chest as he plugged me into the machine. I admired his earrings.

“Stay very still.”

I did.

This wasn’t a big deal; why were they making such a fuss?

Someone murmured about pulse abnormalities and serotonin syndrome while the other nurse, or maybe she was a social worker, turned to look at me. The badge on her shirt labelled her as Nico. She asked me to tell her what happened, why I was here.

I shook my head.

Did it have to be right now? It was so loud. People were prodding at my muscles and hitting my knees. I couldn’t think.

“In a little bit?” she compromised.

I nodded. “In a little bit.”

Nico smiled, but there was an emotion behind her eyes that I couldn’t place. It sung of sadness.

“We need blood.” I thought his name was Mario, but I couldn’t be sure. Even with my shirt off, and my history with men, I felt safe around him.

Something about those earrings.

I tried to focus on his voice as the needle lodged into my arm, but my breathing came in sharp gasps, and I felt dizzy, even though my eyes were squeezed shut.

“Breathe, honey. You’re okay.”

His voice was soothing, but my head was spinning, my mind fraught with pins and needles. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. My legs jolted. My palms were sweaty.

“Deep breaths.”

I tried to focus on his voice, but it disappeared too soon. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I’d never breathe again.

If only.

“Is there someone you need us to call?” A woman’s voice, a lilting Irish melody that sounded like home. His name comes without thinking, and with it, an onslaught of tears.

“Hyun.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d even come.

The doctors left with empty promises of returning, and suddenly, I was alone.

There were people everywhere, voices echoing into every corner of the room. There was a man in handcuffs slumped in a chair, a swearing sixteen-year-old girl who had to work at eight am the next morning. The air was abuzz with the beeping of monitors and the footsteps of overworked nurses.

I’d never felt more isolated.

The sheets were falling down the head of my bed, and the thin blanket draped over my calves was far from warm, but somehow, despite everything, I slept.

When I awoke, there was an angel at my bedside.

The skin around his eyes was puffy and as red as his irises; his face was pale, teeth worrying his lower lip until it bled. His hand gripped mine tightly, and I sluggishly blinked until the blurriness cleared.

“Z-Zenny?”

His eyes shot to mine instantly, and I’d never seen him look so desperate.

“Leah.”

It was a sigh of relief, yet none of the tension drained from his shoulders. His back was stiff, his jaw tight. My stomach tightened with an uncomfortable mix of guilt and nausea.

“You came.”

“Of course I did.” Zen’s voice was thick, the words clogging in his throat.

“But— you had to work tonight, didn’t you? What about the show?”

Zen swallowed, eyes closing as he shook his head and chuckled humourlessly. “The show can wait. It’s not important right now.”

I threaded my shaky fingers with his. Hyun’s grip was warm, familiar, comforting.

“Are you mad at me?” My voice was timider than I’d have liked, but I needed to know.

A muscle twitched in Zen’s jaw, and he shook his head. “I’m mad. But not at you. Never at you.” His voice broke, and a tear streaked down his cheek. He wiped it away with a clenched fist.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered. “About— about today? I had to find out from Seven what today was, and I— why wouldn’t you tell me something like that? I could’ve stayed home, looked after you, then you’d— you wouldn’t have—”

Zen stopped short, his clipped words coming out as a muffled sob.

“I didn’t want you to worry.” I knew the answer was weak, but it was the only one I had.

“And you think this is better?!” Zen beckoned to the bustling emergency ward, to the beeping heart monitor, to the hospital bracelet caging my wrist.

I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing a sob. “I wasn’t supposed to deal with this part.”

I’d never seen Zen’s expression drop so quickly; anger flipped to devastation, a hollow, pained guise that pummelled me with guilt. He brought my fingers to his lips, holding them there as his shoulders trembled.

“Thank god you’re here to.”

“Teleah?” a nurse asked, and I looked up, nodding. She had a kind face and tired eyes, which glanced at Zen.

“Can you give us a sec?”

Zen looked at me for consent, and I nodded, accepting the kiss he placed on my forehead as he stepped away and let the nurse pull the curtain shut.

“I’m Tash, we just need to give you another ECG.”

I nodded numbly, watching as she worked. She had a lot of piercings; I liked her conch one in particular. I told her so, and she smiled.

“Thanks. Some people think it’s unprofessional, but I say fuck ‘em.”

I laughed. The sound was foreign on my lips.

“How you feeling?”

My laugh faded to a tired scoff. “Okay.”

We both knew I was lying, but Tash didn’t call me out. “Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head.

“I think you have another visitor,” she added as she collected the print from the machine. “A Luciel Choi?”

I swallowed. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. A lot of people called in earlier for you, too, but they left when they heard you were asleep. He and your boyfriend were the only ones who stayed.”

“Why didn’t he come in?”

“We only let in one visitor at a time. Covid, y’know?”

Oh. Right.

“Talk to your boyfriend; he might want to switch out and let your friend come say hi.”

Tash left, and instantly, Zen pulled her aside, murmuring questions about the results. When he seemed satisfied, he settled by my side again, taking my hand and tracing his fingers along my arm.

“Seven is here?”

Zen nodded. “Yeah. They said only one of us could see you, I— I had to,” he whispered.

I smiled weakly, squeezing his hand before kissing his knuckles. My lips were dry and chapped on his smooth skin.

“Do you want to see him?”

“Maybe for a little bit.”

Zen swallowed, nodding. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be right outside though, okay, babe? And tell him not to take too long, I— I don’t want to be away from you right now,” he confessed. I relieved his worries with a tiny nod, and time barely discernably passed before a flash of red hair streaked towards me.

Saeyoung’s glasses were askew, under eyes marred with dark circles.

“You said you were okay.” His voice was accusing, betrayed. “When I called, you— you said you were okay. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what more there was to say.

Saeyoung exhaled shakily, hands curling into fists at his sides tight enough to draw the blood from his knuckles easier than the nurses had drawn blood from my veins. Before I could fumble for an excuse, he was hugging me.

His grip was tight, the rims of his glasses digging into my shoulder, and I felt dampness on his neck. Saeyoung’s heart pounded frantically through his shirt, and his shaky breaths stirred my loose hair. I could feel his crucifix pressing into my stomach, and I wished I could have even half of the faith he had in a higher power.

When he pulled back, he was tangled in ECG wires. “Shit, fuck,” he hissed, trying to unwind himself without setting off my heart monitor.

I smiled wryly. “Thanks for coming, Sae,” I managed eventually.

Saeyoung’s eyes were heavy with unspoken words, his tongue leaden with them, but he only smiled and nodded. “Of course.”

Tash returned, her sudden appearance making me jump. Her mouth twisted apologetically.

“Well, you’ve been cleared medically, and they’re ready for you in the psychiatric ward. Wanna come for a walk with me?”

I nodded slowly, exhaling shakily, and Saeyoung gave me one last hug.

“Good luck,” he whispered into my shoulder, squeezing me tightly. His fingernails pressed into my back. I nodded again.

When I’d changed out of my hospital gown, I pulled back the privacy curtain to see Zen leaning against the reception counter. He straightened immediately as I emerged, rushing to my side, an arm curling around my waist as he took my hand.

“Are you okay? Do you need me to carry you?” he asked, eyes glistening with worry.

I smiled, and shook my head. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

He didn’t let go of me.

Tash showed us to the psych ward, and we were buzzed in.

“Okay, I’ll leave you here,” she said tiredly. I looked at the clock; midnight.

“Can I stay with her?” Zen asked immediately, and Tash shook her head.

“Sorry; the psych ward visiting hours are over. You can come back tomorrow,” she promised.

“So— I’ll be alone?” I asked, voice wavering.

“There’ll be nurses who’ll check on you, and you’ll be sharing a room with some other patients,” she said. “But… yeah.”

I exhaled shakily, eyes stinging. When I looked up at Zen, his eyes were shining with tears. He cupped my face with large, warm hands, smoothing the tears from under my eyes.

“I’ll see you first thing tomorrow, okay, babe? They’re going to keep you safe, everything will be okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to me.

A sob wracked in my chest, and Zen wrapped his arms around me, burying his nose in my hair as he clutched me to his torso. He smelled of leather and disinfectant that the hospital had no doubt thrust upon him at his entry. Sharply foreign and familiar all at once.

Though I wished he’d hold me forever, eventually, he had to let go. He placed a chaste kiss to my lips.

“I’ll see you in the morning, okay? I love you, princess. So much, okay?” Though his arms were no longer around me, both of his hands were wrapped around mine.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I love you.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow, and he grazed one last kiss to my knuckles before letting go of me entirely.

Tash touched my shoulder, and her hand was soothing. “Best of luck,” she murmured, her voice lost in the barren, timeless hospital corridors. She guided Zen away, and the doors closed behind them. I heard footsteps approaching, and looked away from the man I loved, his scent still clinging to my hoodie and the taste of him still on my lips.

I turned, and faced whatever came next.

__________

sorry for any typos, i literally just wrote and posted, no proofreading at all. kudos to you if you actually made it to the end of this.

#suicide tw #mm zen #mystic messenger #mysme #hyun ryu #zen x mc #hyun ryu x mc #mm

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jadekitty777 · 4 years ago

Text

Doomsday Dinner Party: Chapter 2

Me? Updating a story from 2018? It’s more likely than you think. I’ve been wanting to write a continuation to this one for a long time.

Day 3: AU Day @taiqrowweek

Rating: T

Words: 9,000

Summary: The world might be over as they know it, but that didn’t mean their still wasn’t time for a road trip.

Ao3 Link: Doomsday Dinner Party (This link leaks to chapter 1, since reading it is kind of required and it’s been a long time)

June in the south was miserable and Qrow had not missed it one bit. Especially when that meant waking up with his clothes sticking to him like an uncomfortable, sweat-soaked blanket. It didn’t help that Tai was practically a furnace, and such an extreme cuddler it was as if he was trying to make it into the next Olympic sport.

He carefully wiggled his way out of the other’s grip, his efforts proving successful when he stirred but didn’t wake. As he sat up, he bit back the groan as his entire body ached in protest, every muscle sore from last night’s desperate escape. His shoulders were particularly knotted up, but he didn’t dare try to rub at them. Not with his fingertips still scraped raw from the failed attempts to grab the edge of the concrete wall he’d tried to vault himself over.

Qrow glanced over at Tai, still slumbering away.

He remembered that split second of dread that had shot through him, when he called for Tai’s help and the man, already safely straddled on the fence, looked the other way. He had thought, this was it. Tai was going to jump to the other side and leave him to die. He couldn’t describe the feeling that overwhelmed him when Tai only chucked their bags over before joining him back on the ground to help him over, putting himself in danger to save him.

After every other loss Qrow’d endured – friends, coworkers, his father, civilization itself – he was certain that nothing else could faze him. Oh, how the universe loved to prove him wrong. For the dread he felt when he was in trouble was nothing compared to the all-encompassing terror that engulfed him when it was Tai’s life on the line instead.

He’d almost lost him last night and the thought alone still shook his very soul.

It wasn’t even supposed to be like this. His plan had been simple: Team up with the trained soldier and travel from Montana to Texas. Try to locate his sister in Wichita Falls. Then, get a free pass into the military safe haven in Archer City. He was just supposed to use Tai’s connections to save his own skin, not fall for the guy.

And yet, here he was, a foolish man gently stroking his knuckles across Tai’s face, heart jumping at the little smile that elicited.

Damn it.

Qrow pulled away, before getting to his feet and picking up his scythe as he headed for the door. He opened it only a crack at first, listening carefully for any out of place noises – shambling feet, hissing breath. Anything that might indicate a Stalker nearby. When nothing caught his ear, he widened it, took a quick visual sweep of the area, before determining it was safe and walking outside.

Though he had no skill in reading it, the sun wasn’t too high yet, so he guessed it was only a bit past eight. Despite the early hour though, the summer heat was already settling in thick. He turned on his heels, getting another gander of the area. Even in the light, there wasn’t much to the facility. The wall surrounded the perimeter, only broken by an iron wrought gate that was probably only ever opened for vehicular traffic. He spotted nothing beyond the metal bars, so the horde that had chased them had thankfully continued on, rather than lingering in wait for them. Within the walls, there was only the small office building they’d holed up into and the white tanks that potentially held some water.

Possibly a back-up supply in case of a tornado emergency? He wasn’t sure, but it would be worth investigating after Tai got up.

For now, he had a different task in mind as he settled on the ground in the shade of one of the tanks and rested his weapon in his lap. Having been so exhausted, he hadn’t cleaned the blade last night like he should have. It was going to be a chore to do so this morning, now that the blood had had time to dry and crust over. It would have to be done before they moved out though, so he set himself to work on the arduous task.

It wasn’t until he was nearly done that Tai finally emerged, lumbering his way over to sit down beside him.

“Breakfast?” He greeted, shaking a bag of almonds at him.

“Sure.” Qrow accepted a handful, throwing them all into his mouth before picking back up his grit stone and moved it along the sharp end of the scythe. With the sound too grating to talk over, they shared the meager meal in silence. Not that there was much left to sharpen. Only a few more strokes and the task was done.

It was worrisome that the bag was empty in just as little time.

To avoid thinking about it, he rapped his knuckles on the tank behind them. “Was thinking there might be some water in here.”

“Doubt it.” Tai said, appraising the unit with a skeptical eye.

“Oh yeah?” He challenged. “What makes you so sure?”

Without breaking eye contact, Tai pointed to something above Qrow’s head. “Well that, for starters.”

He looked up at what he was indicating, spotting the bright yellow sticker with big, bold letters that said: Caution – Fire Hazard.

Not missing a beat, he said, “Could still be water. It’s a hazard to fire.”

Tai chuckled. “Oh, I see. It’s one of those badly translated stickers from Peru then.”

“Peru? Why not China?”

“Because my people have standards.”

“Your people?” Qrow arched a brow. “Tai, you’re like the whitest Chinese person to ever exist.”

He gave him a once over. “Kettle, black. Or in this case, white.”

“Hah. Clever.” He mocked. “Least I got the Asian eyes.”

“And they’re very pretty.” Tai reached out, roughing up his hair until most of the shaggy locks were covering his vision. He laughed Qrow off when he tried to swipe at him in retribution, scuttling back and getting to his feet. “Come on, we should get moving before the sun gets too high.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He stood as well, pushing his hair back into place, grimacing at the grime and grease that kept it into place like a self-made hair gel.

God, what he wouldn’t do for a shower.

As they headed back to the little metal building, he said, “So my thought is we head back to the car. Salvage it if we can. Ransack it if we can’t.” They’d left a lot behind in yesterday’s escape, including a canister of gas and some spare water.

Tai nodded stepping inside just long enough to grab their packs. “Shouldn’t be a problem. The freeway should be mostly clear now, so we can probably hotwire something new if need be.” He headed towards the gate, handing Qrow’s bag over as he passed. “We can probably go scavenging in a few of the small towns on the way, but if all goes well, we can definitely make it to Wichita before nightfall.”

Qrow froze.

It took the other man almost a dozen steps before he noticed. He paused, glancing back, “Qrow?”

He shifted his weight uncertainly, dropping his gaze. “Yeah, ‘bout that. I was thinking maybe we should just… skip Wichita and head straight for Archer City?”

The silence that followed allowed Qrow to feel lower than the dirt he was staring at. And though Tai wasn’t a violent man by nature, at least where the living folks were concerned, he still flinched all the same when the man approached him.

But the most Tai did was lay a hand on his shoulder, voicing softly, “Are you sure?”

“Last night was the first time we’ve encountered a crowd of that size. We barely made it.” He replied. “If we couldn’t handle that, how are we going to handle Wichita being like that from end to end?”

“You don’t know that.”

He finally rose his gaze. “No, but I do know better than to gamble on a losing hand.”

“But,” It was hard to catalogue the pinched expression that formed on Tai’s face. “But she’s your sister.”

He swallowed down the sudden grief that was trying to crawl its way out of his throat. “Yeah. Truth is though, I know she’s not there. She either got out, or she didn’t. I only wanted to go for me. To find peace with it, I guess.” He laid his hand over Tai’s, feeling the scars on the knuckles and the warmth of his skin. Alive. Here. “But I don’t want to lose you by chasing ghosts.”

Those soulful, blue eyes searched his face carefully. Then, for no reason at all, Tai pulled him into a hug, whispering into his hair. “Okay.”

It was almost like he was trying to comfort him. He didn’t know why though. He was fine.

Qrow buried his head into Tai’s shoulder.

…He was fine.

Qrow was nothing if not masterful at ignoring his own emotions.

“What do you think?” Qrow asked as he splayed himself over the hood of a Ferrari. “Perfect for the next calendar?”

“Qrow no.” The smile gave his partner away.

“Oh you’re right, the ladies like the open shirt look.” He teased, reaching up to undo a few of the top buttons.

Tai shoved a hand in his face, pushing him. “Cut it out porn star. We gotta actually work.”

He gave a mournful sigh. “My career, ended before it could take off.”

Qrow hopped down from the car, trailing after the other man. As they’d feared, their little hit and run last night really did a number on the Camry. The back wheels were now pitched up on a hill of squirming, hissing Stalkers. There was really no hope of getting it loose without a tow and even if they could, the potential damage the vehicle sustained probably negated the effort.

So they made their way to the freeway as planned, now eerily empty except for the few dead still stuck in their seatbelts. They made sure to avoid those ones.

“Oh, what about this one?” Tai pointed out a Jeep Wrangler, eyes practically sparkling. “Be good for some off roading, yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘cept that gas guzzler ain’t going to get us very far.” He nudged him onwards, peering into the windows of the cars they were walking by, trying to see if there were any abandoned snacks or water bottles to snag. Unfortunately, the best he could seem to find was a pack of Winterfresh gum, the sticks so old they crumbled.

They ate them anyways.

After about an hour of scouring their options and many failed attempts to get something working that hadn’t had something wear out from disuse and time under the hot sun, they finally managed to get a little Hyundai purring to life. Qrow eased it down the grassy slope, the whole frame shaking roughly as they made their way to the side road they’d been traveling on. Once they hit it, it was smooth sailing from there, Qrow pulling down the window to stick his hand out while Tai hummed showtunes beside him and mapped out the safest route to their final destination.

They reached Sterling within the first ten minutes. The small town, boasting only an original population of 800, was like a ghost town to drive through. A shambling straggler could be seen here or there, but mostly they went through uninterrupted – stopping only to check an already well-ransacked Dollar General. Temple, the next village down the 65, was not much more impressive and with tiny stores just as empty. They pulled over halfway down on the 70 to wash up in the Red River (not quite the shower he’d been hoping for, but it would do). They collected some spare water to boil later, before moving on.

Soon enough, they were turning onto the 79 and crossing the state border, driving through Byers, a town so miniscule, it wasn’t worth touring.

“Maybe we should just keep going.” Qrow said as they entered Petrolia, finding the show to be the same as the rest: lifeless streets decorated with only the occasional Stalker and nothing else. “We really aren’t getting anywhere with all these stops.”

Tai ran a hand through his hair, already dry as the early afternoon sun bore down from above like a heat lamp. “Suppose so. We’re only an hour or so away. Turn right here.”

He did as told, eyeing the signs as he did so.

Tried to ignore the heaviness in his heart as he realized they were turning away from Wichita Falls.

He focused twice as hard on the asphalt stretching for miles before them, avoiding the occasional abandoned car or, in one case, tractor. There wasn’t much to see on the countryside of Texas, even less so now. It was nothing but wide, open fields, overgrown with weeds that had gone untilled, interspaced by the occasional barn or house. Any livestock there had been seemed to have escaped from their pens or frozen during the winter season.

They both looked away from the dead horse still tied to its post in the corral.

It took only twenty minutes to hit the next city. Despite it being three times larger than the other towns, they made it through Henrietta without incident.

They were just going under the overpass of the freeway when Tai suddenly exclaimed, “Wait! Turn around!”

“What? What is it?” Qrow asked, U-turning in the middle of the road.

“We need to go there!”

He followed the direction he was pointing, eyebrows going up to his hairline. “Pecan Shed? The fuck you want to go there for?”

“It’s a gift shop.”

He waited a beat. “And?”

“It has things… and stuff?”

Qrow rolled his eyes. “What a concept. Next you’ll be telling me hardware stores have nails.” He turned onto the side street all the same, pulling into the parking lot within seconds. He gave the building a once over as they got out of the car.

It was a fairly large. Two stories tall and long as a barn, with a fancy awning in front that mimicked a shed roof and a patio with seating that stretched all across the front and down both sides of the property. The name of the place was in big red letters at the top story, something that would be easily visible from the freeway when passing by. The front doors were made of glass, surprisingly still intact and, more importantly, unlocked.

They stepped inside with caution at first, but a quick sweep of the open floor and a few calls to garner attention with no response told them they weren’t in any immediate danger.

Which meant…

They shared a glance, before immediately tackling the still semi-stocked junk food station in the middle of the room. He ripped open a package of Ruffles, stuffing half the bag in his mouth at once. It tasted like heaven. Stale, over-salted heaven.

Beside him, Tai was inspecting a bag of what appeared to be shelled peanuts while tipping back a bag of Fritos.

He swallowed down another handful, saying, “Save those.” They would keep better longer and they were good fillers when they had nothing else.

“Ye’I’no.” Tai garbled out, his normal southern politeness completely abolished in the sightline of food.

Qrow, who had no politeness at all, just tossed the empty bag over his shoulder and reached for the Funyuns next.

By the time they had their fill, there was a small collection of litter at their feet. He sighed, plopping down onto the nearby checkout counter, smoothing a hand over his belly. They’d had to ration for so long, he couldn’t even remember the last time he felt safe to overindulge. Too worried about what he’d need tomorrow to worry about the ache in his stomach today.

“Sir, how much will this cost?”

Qrow looked up, smirking as Tai stood before him with two hand baskets full of goods. “For what? The food or my sexy ass?”

He winked. “The food. Your ass is priceless.”

“Least you know quality when you see it.” He hopped down, taking one of the baskets and following the other out to the car.

They fell into an easy rhythm, scouring the shop top to bottom for anything worth nabbing. Drinks, trail mixes, jerky, matches, candles, blankets, batteries, knives. Even things like books and magazines were useful for campfire tinder – and maybe a bit of reading for those really boring nights.

Then again, Qrow thought as he placed a few shirt-wrapped bottles of wine in the back, there were always other methods of entertainment.

He slammed the trunk closed, before heading back in for one last sweep through of the back aisles. He zigzagged around the store, triple-checking the sections they’d already emptied. A selection of colorful novelty mugs caught his attention and he chortled over the one with the cartoon Corgi surrounded by a heart and flowing text framing it that said, ‘This is the Corgkey to my heart’.

Tai had always said he wanted a dog, hadn’t he?

He plucked it off the shelf and made his way towards where he could spot the familiar head of blond hair peeking above the displays. He wheeled the corner, about to call out – only for it to choke in his throat when he realized what the other man was doing.

Tai stood in front of a rack of wooden baskets, each one filled to the brim with stuffed animals. He seemed to be in a silent debate over whether to take the fuzzy teddy bear or the brightly colored unicorn, as if it were the most important decision of his life.

He looked so… lost.

Qrow inched forward hesitantly, moving loud enough that he knew he was there, but quiet enough to not disturb him.

It seemed Tai wasn’t completely stuck in his own head though, for when he finally stood at his side, he spoke, “I used to bring Yang here a lot.”

He tilted his head, surprised. “Your daughter?” Tai hadn’t talked about his girls much; whether it be out of a simple habit of privacy or a necessity to keep himself focused on survival instead of agonizing over his children’s fate was unknown to Qrow, but either way he’d never pried.

“Yeah. When I’d take her to go visit her mom, if the trip didn’t go well – and it rarely did – I’d bring her here. She loved the dinosaur exhibit that’s in front of the truck stop. I’d let her play there as long as she wanted and then we’d eat at the Steak N’ Shake.” He waved a hand at the store around them. “Then we’d come here, get some of the specialty fudge to bring home and Yang would pick out a stuffed animal for Ruby. Somehow, she always knew which one she’d love the most.” He laughed. It was a strained, wounded sound. “I’m afraid I don’t have her intuition though. I can’t even remember if Ruby was still in her unicorn phase before I left.”

Qrow swallowed down that same, awful grief from before that was trying to escape. Instead, he forced some cheer into his tone as he said, “Well you know what I do when I can’t make a decision?” He turned to the baskets in front of them and pulled one right off the rack, dropping it down between them, “I get them all.”

Tai blinked down at it, before a genuine smile broke free. It was like watching the sun come out after a rainstorm. “Qrow, we can’t bring them all.”

“Watch me.” He pulled another one free and balanced it against his hip as he hefted it towards the car.

Ten minutes later, they were peeling out of the parking lot, about a hundred pairs of eyes watching the road go by from the backseat.

And Tai didn’t stop smiling.

A semi-truck was parked sideways along the two-laned road that cut across the lake on the 172, it’s front fender partially submerged in the murky water, effectively blocking the way. Qrow didn’t think much of it as he turned them around to take another route.

He grew more suspicious when they encountered multiple semis parked in a line across the 174.

Tai lent forward, eyeing the trucks with narrowed eyes. “These are barricades.”

“And people don’t set up barricades if they aren’t trying to protect something.” Qrow determined, switching into low gear. “Come on, we can drive around it.”

“Wait!” He grabbed his wrist, keeping it from touching the wheel. “If the military set these up, then the fields are probably mined.”

He considered that for a moment, before shifting into reverse. “Alright then we’ll try up the highway.”

Around they went, the detour taking them nearly a half hour – and sure enough, right at the juncture that converged the highway with the freeway, another blockade halted their forward motion. But this time, there was a message left for them in bright red paint along the bodies of every truck:

TURN AROUND OR DIE

“The fuck,” He breathed, a shiver running down his spine. He looked to the man beside him, whose face had gone white. “Tai?”

Tai set his jaw, before pulling out the map. “Come on, let’s get closer than we’re walking it.”

“And what are we doing about that?” Qrow snapped, pretending his voice didn’t hit the octave of a screeching bat.

“You don’t have to come with me.”

The words were like a blow to the face. “What?”

He pointed out the frontage entrance a few miles south. “I’ll go, and then I’ll come back and get you if it’s safe.”

His heart slowed down from its 100-mile a minute pulse line to only about 80. He pulled the car around, grumbling all the while, “Like hell you will.”

Despite his words though, as they neared the off ramp, the desire to just hit the gas and keep going overcame him so strongly, it was like his foot was fighting against a two-ton weight. He looked again to the man beside him, tried to draw strength from his unwavering nerve. Tai had the look of a man who was about to go to war with the whole world if it dared stand in his way of him and his kids – and if Qrow just became another obstacle, he had no doubt on where he’d end up on that side of the battle.

He wished he’d had even an ounce of that same backbone for his sister.

He beat down his shame and jerked the wheel to the right, heading down the ramp and following the way back up to where the street met another. He turned onto it. The road was immediately rough, more dirt than asphalt, rattling the frame of the car harshly as they slowly trudged between the empty farming fields.

Halfway down the road, they came to a pair of dead ash trees, one on either side. Hanging from their blackened and brittle branches were about half a dozen empty nooses. But one was not.

Instead, in its snare, was the body of a decaying crow.

A promise and an omen.

An eerie silence fell between them as they passed underneath it, the air stifling, suffocating.

Qrow coughed and said, “I think that was my cousin.”

Tai snorted, smacking his arm. “Shut up.”

His own snickers were practically hysteric. The buzzing that had started in his nerves from the first warning sign had turned into a crawling feeling, like a line of ants were marching along his skin. To combat it, his grip on the wheel tightened.

This was insane. People had done all this. Blocked the roads, painted the warnings, hung the signs. All in an effort to keep other survivors from coming close. Was it all just the military’s doing? Scare tactics because they were overcrowded? Or was it something worse?

Just what were they walking into?

“Hey.”

Qrow sucked in a sharp breath, looking down at the hand now covering his own.

Tai ran a thumb over his knuckles, the movement as gentle as his voice, “It’s okay if you want to stay back, really.”

“Fuck that.” He snapped. “You would of come with me to Wichita, no matter what, right?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” Was the immediate assurance, followed shortly by, “But that doesn’t mean you owe me your life.”

He thought, again, of last night. Their shared panic as they ran across the fields. The wall that loomed ahead, cutting off their escape. Tai’s frantic orders as he helped him over.

Had he been alone, that would have been it.

He couldn’t stomach the thought of Tai being in a similar situation – needing him to look out for him. And him just not being there.

“No.” He avowed, meeting his eye. “We’re in this together. So unless you’re gonna throw me out of this damn car, you can cut it out with the martyr shit. Okay?”

The hand over his pulled his off the wheel, Tai clutching onto it almost fiercely. “Okay.”

Qrow let him keep it, slipping his fingers between Tai’s own as he turned back to the road.

As they neared its end, he noticed an assortment of industrial standard wind turbines. Perhaps once in use to provide power to the few speckled barns and homes on the horizon. He turned north, driving between them, peering up at them. The blades were whirling lazily in the breeze as the metallic forest caught the bright, summer sun, gleaming harshly bright.

He had to wonder if the buildings out here still had power. Or, if not, if a bit of tweaking to the structures might be able to bring them back to life. He was long removed from his university days when he would dabble about in engineering, and he’d never actually studied the ins and outs of wind energy converters, but the temptation to try was irresistible. To be able to cook their meals on a stove again or, god, have a hot shower. He had to bet there were some independent water wells out here and the land was still prime for growing too; it wouldn’t be hard to get their own crops growing. With time, they might even be able to find some livestock again. And a dog, too.

Qrow got lost in the fantasy of it.

So much so, Tai almost made him jump when he suddenly spoke up, “Here too?”

He blinked away the afterimages of him and Tai playing house during the apocalypse, focusing on the reality before him.

Scoffed at the sight of the pickup truck parked sideways across the road. He rolled to a stop, eyeing a side street in the rearview mirror a short-ways back. It was even less maintained than the ones they’d been traveling down so far, promising a ride that would rival a go around on some bumper cars.

“What do you wanna do? Walk it or keep going?” He asked gruffly.

Tai hummed thoughtfully, eyeing the map once more. “We’re not too far off at this point. Ten miles at most.”

“Not far off, he says.” Qrow mocked under his breath, even as he parked the car.

His partner laughed, undoing his seatbelt. “It’ll be good for you. Your scrawny legs could use some definition.”

He opened his mouth to retort, reaching for the keys to turn off the car –

When the one in front of them roared to life.

They froze, staring at the truck.

“What?” Tai whispered.

To assure they hadn’t misheard, the engine revved loudly.

Then, the wheels rotated towards them, the axles squealing as the truck came barreling towards them.

“Oh shit.” Qrow barked, throwing them into reverse and slamming down on the gas pedal.

Tai yelped as he was thrown into the dash as they rocketed backwards several meters. Another quick gear shift, and Qrow twisted the wheel around, flying down the road he’d spotted before. They hit a pot hole hard enough to throw them up from their seats, but he didn’t dare slow down.

His arms trembled and sweat started to bead from his brow. “What the fuck.”

He looked at the rearview, seeing the truck taking the same corner, gunning after them.

“What the fuck!” He shouted again.

“I don’t know!” Tai shouted back, scrambling to get his seatbelt back on.

“There’s someone in there.”

“You think?!”

He smacked the wheel. “Well what the fuck do we do!?”

“Calm down.” Was the sharp reply, Tai twisting around in his seat to keep an eye on their pursuer. “We just need to lose him.”

“Oh, that’s all? Brilliant!”

“Qrow.” The commanding tone shut him down immediately, his partner leveling him with a look. “Listen to me. We’re going to be fine. Just focus on driving. We’ll find a place around here, a home, a barn whatever. Just something with some cover.”

He took a few deep breathes, trying to steel his nerves. “Alright, alright.”

Except, it became abundantly clear that plan was sunk, as they sped past the first side street, completely blocked off by rubbish and vehicles. It was the same story with the next one.

Tai cursed under his breath. “He’s corralling us.”

“Maybe we should ditch the car? Head out into the field and make a run for it?” Qrow suggested.

He shook his head. “We’ll be too exposed. I think our better bet is to figure out where he’s leading us.”

“And then?”

“Then we’ll talk this out with whoever this guy is.”

“And if he doesn’t want to talk?”

Tai’s expression smoothed out into something cold. “Then you’re lucky I’m a good shot.”

Qrow swallowed, not arguing further.

He knew Tai could do it, if he had to. That’s how the military had trained him. But he hadn’t had to go through any of those tough regimens like his partner. Hell, up until eight months ago, he’d been living a rather lavish, uncomplicated life helping his old man upkeep the business fixing transmissions and rotating tires.

He was a mechanic! How the hell did he end up in a high-speed chase in the middle of fucking nowhere?

A blare of the truck’s horn made his heart jump into his throat. What was this guy gonna do, once he got them where he wanted them? Would he really start shooting?

God, he didn’t want to kill anyone. Not someone alive at least.

Another rough bump shook the thought down, so he tried to focus on keeping them steady instead. Another mile on, and the road ahead became blocked by another pickup truck, forcing them to take a hard right.

As he turned, he spotted movement in the front seat of the car.

A sense of foreboding swept through him and once they got far enough down the road, he braved a glance. Sure enough, the rearview told him they were now being pursued by two cars.

“Tai.” Qrow hissed in warning.

But Tai wasn’t looking at the situation behind them, instead pointing forward. “Look.”

He did, squinting a bit. Though still a good few miles off, he could just barely make out the shape of a large building of some sort – taller than any of the other buildings around these parts. Unnatural and out of place.

“What is that?” He asked.

“Dunno. But I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”

The suspicion turned to truth as they continued down the road, the structure looming ever closer. Until he could make out it wasn’t a building at all, but rather a massive fence, at least two stories tall. It was made of a mismatch of materials, including timber beams, chain link mesh, and aluminum sheet metal.

It had to be sturdy though, because as they rolled up to the front gate, he could spot half a dozen people standing on platforms attached to it, three on either side of the gate.

Every single one of them held a rifle.

“What now?” Qrow barely got out around the knot in his throat.

“I…” Tai looked frantically from side to side, as if an escape route would just materialize from thin air. When nothing did, he looked to him, and for the first time since this all started, Qrow could see the fear in his eyes. “I don’t know.”

They both looked back as they heard the sound of car doors closing, the drivers of either car stepping out and heading towards them. One was a man with short brown hair, the front of it pulled up like a plumage of feathers. His shirt was sleeveless, boasting well-toned arms that promised an ill-fate for his opponents. Yet, even he seemed slightly dwarfed by his companion – a tree of a woman, solidly built, and tall. She was swinging around a giant mallet like it weighed nothing.

The two of them split, flanking their car from either side.

The man knocked on Qrow’s window, pointing down.

Getting the hint, he rolled it down.

The man rested a hand along the top of the door, leaning in. “Where y’all heading? The zoo?”

He blinked, confused – and then he remembered the army of stuffed animals in the back seat, and scowled. “Clever, asshole.”

That only seemed to amuse the other, as he chuckled. His voice was smooth and calm. He knew who was in charge here. “This one’s got some bite, don’t he Elm?”

“Sure does.” Elm replied. “And look, they’re just your type. A couple of pretty boys.”

The hair on the back of his neck stood up uncomfortably. The fuck did that mean?

Beside him, Tai took a deep breath, saying slowly. “Look, we’re not trying to start any trouble. We were just passing on through.”

“Were you now?” The man drummed his fingers on the roof above him, the noise unusually grating with Qrow’s nerves so shot. “And you just happened to come this way? Didn’t happen to see any of our warnings or blocked roads?”

“You guys did all that?” Qrow realized too late the question only made him sound falsely innocent.

“Cute. Real cute.” The easygoing smile disappeared, replaced with something rigid and dangerous. “Alright that’s enough small talk. So, let me explain how this is going to work. The two of you are going to get out of the car. You’re not going to struggle or try anything stupid, ‘cause if you do…” He lent in even further, as if he were trying to share a secret with them. “You see those people up there? They don’t have the best of aim, but they sure do got a lot of bullets. Quantity over quality and all that.”

Qrow’s hands tightened over the wheel he still hadn’t let go of. Tai’s breath hitched.

Neither of them moved.

The man gave a longsuffering sigh. “Come on now. Don’t make us drag you out.”

Another beat passed.

Then, with a reluctant click, Tai undid his seatbelt. Opened the door slowly.

“Attaboy.” The man praised, before turning his gaze to him. “Now you.”

Qrow shut his eyes, counted down from five, and finally managed to pry one hand loose. Shakily, he pulled the car into park, before doing the same as his partner and stepping out of the car.

“That’s it, nice and easy.” The other coached. “Now, arms out.”

Once, when he was young and stupid, he got pulled over for drunk driving. So, he wasn’t unfamiliar with a pat down. This was a lot more… thorough. The asshole even managed to find the swiss army knife in his back pocket.

From where he was being given much the same treatment by Elm, he heard Tai ask, “Can’t we talk about this?”

“You can sing like a bird, but it won’t do you any good until the chief gets here.” She replied.

The chief? What kind of society were they running? A tribe?

“Alright, this way.” The man tossed all his weapons onto the seat of the car, before clapping a hand down on his shoulder, pulling him forward. “Gonna need you front and center.”

Qrow reluctantly followed, fighting the urge to curl away from his touch. He grunted a bit when the other forced him down, his knees cracking painfully on the ground. Tai was manhandled into the same position beside him, grunting a bit as Elm forced him down even more roughly.

The man called over them both, “Where’s the chief?”

The tiniest of the firing squad, a dark-skinned woman with boyishly short hair, called back, “Almost here!”

“Clover.” Elm said urgently from behind them. There was a light jingling noise that Qrow couldn’t place but recognized as something passed between them.

There was a few short seconds of nothing, and then suddenly Clover was marching around them, kneeling down in front of his partner. In his hand were Tai’s dog tags. “Where did you get this?” He asked darkly.

Tai looked between them and Clover, murmuring, “They’re mine.”

“Really?” He flipped the face of it around, reading it aloud. “So, your telling me your name is Taiyang Xiao Long?”

His lips pressed into a firm, defiant frown. “Yes.”

“Bullshit.” Clover spit in his face. “Who’d you take this from?”

“I didn’t steal it from anyone.”

“Fuck off with that you-”

Qrow’s fingers clenched into fists, his own temper flaring. “Hey! Why don’t you fuck off! It’s called remarriage jackass – or is that too hard a concept for you?”

It probably wasn’t the best thing to do, if the flash of panic that passed over Tai’s face was any indication. But Clover just leveled him with a glare before getting back to his feet, letting the chain dangle from his fingers. “You know, I heard her people liked to take souvenirs from the dead. But a soldier’s tags? That’s just vile. How many of my friends’ bodies did you desecrate back at the base?”

‘Her people’? ‘Bodies’? What was this guy prattling on about?

“Wait. Just wait a second. The base?” Tai took a shaky breath. “Archer City base? You’re from there?”

Elm smacked the heel of her hammer into the ground right behind him. “We both were. It was all real nice, until your little buddies came by and slaughtered the lot of us.”

Qrow felt his stomach plummet at those words.

Tai had gone pale, his composure barely hanging on. Desperately, he croaked out, “How many survived?”

Whatever he thought of his reaction did nothing to temper the acidic hatred Clover stared down at him with. “You’re looking at ‘em.”

Had Tai been one of his actual enemies, Clover may have been proud to know how devastating a blow he’d just delivered. Regardless of it all, the damage was done. And Tai?

Tai broke. It wasn’t loud, like the way glass shatters. Rather it was subtle and unfixable, like the snapping of a flower stem.

Qrow’s own heart fractured at the way he whimpered, curling in on himself. The fleeting sunflower, already beginning to wilt and die, now that his roots were gone.

He reached out for him, hand coming to rest on his back, not caring if the lumberjack of a woman behind him smashed his entire arm flat for it.

“She’s here!” One of the squad from above called. The chain link rattled as someone ascended the platform from the other side.

Qrow paid it all only half an ear and eye, more concerned with the defeated man before him then anything this chief was going to do with them. Though, when he heard the telltale stomp of boots from above, he offered a cursory glance skyward.

She was a tall woman, with wild black hair and a curvy, powerful figure. A bandanna covered the lower half of her face, and she seemed equally disinterested in them, instead speaking with the petite woman who’d spoken before.

“Not much to say about them boss.” Clover reported. “One of them’s got some stolen tags from a Taiyang though.”

That grabbed her attention immediately, her body jerking around as she looked down at them with intense interest.

Even from here, Qrow could tell her eyes were blood red.

And then he couldn’t see them at all as, without warning, she practically raced back to the ladder as she shrilled orders at her people, “LOWER YOUR WEAPONS AND LET THEM UP! OPEN THE GATES, NOW!”

There was a sudden, confused cacophony of voices. Another sharp command and then, an equally snappish retort that bellowed above them all, “You heard her, open it!!”

Qrow caught Clover and Elm sharing a worried look between them. He felt his guard rise higher, confusion and fear melding into one. What was going on? Was she coming down there to kill Tai herself? He shifted over, trying to block Tai’s body with his own as he heard the latch of the gate come undone, slowly starting to roll open.

The chief could hardly wait for it, practically squeezing her way through.

Except at some point on the way down, she’d ripped away the mask. This close, there was no mistaking her.

“Oh my god.” Qrow whispered. “Oh my god.”

Then he was on his feet, shoes scrambling for purchase and hands clambering over the dirt to get himself up as fast as possible, taking off at a run. The rest of the world fell away, the only thing left the woman running just as fast for him – and despite it being mere seconds, it was entirely too long when they finally collided.

Her name burst from his lips like a prayer he never thought would be answered. “Raven! Oh god, Raven.”

It was impossible. She was here. She was here!

His heart beat as wild as his sister’s hair, the mane of it seeming the surround him as she buried her face into his neck and sobbed. “Qrow. You’re alive. I never thought – How’d you even get here?”

His response came out in a stammer. “Me? B-But you-! And I, I,” Oh, he was crying too.

So he stopped trying, just held on tight and let the tidal wave of emotion hit him. The grief he’d been ignoring. The guilt of having given up. The hope he never let live. The relief of her being safe. The unbelievable happiness knowing she was actually and truly alive.

“I love you.” The words burst out of him, sudden and uncontainable. As if he needed to make up for lost time. All the years he should have said it more, after the divorce had split them across the country and the forced separation left them bitter even with each other. Until the phone calls went from every day to almost never. Until they only caught up on the occasional holiday. Until he thought there was nothing worse than becoming invested into something he was destined just to lose.

But he’d been wrong. Feeling like he was completely alone was much, much worse.

“That wasn’t an answer.” She spoke around tears. “But I love you too, you stupid idiot.”

“’Stupid idiot’? Really bringing out the big guns with that one aren’t ya?” He laughed and she shoved him a bit. It was just like the old days.

“It’s just such a strong character trait, it has to be said twice.” Raven assured, wiping her face.

He was about to retort when Clover cut in between them. “Hey uh, I don’t mean to interrupt your reunion, but I think there’s something wrong with your friend.”

Qrow’s head snapped around. Like that moment in the gift shop, Tai seemed to be lost in his own head – but even further this time. He didn’t even respond to the way Elm shook him or tried to encourage him to his feet.

“Shit.” He breathed, before racing back to his side. He waved the other woman aside, kneeling down next to him. “Tai, babe? You in there?”

Nothing.

“Come on, don’t do this to me.” He murmured frantically, reaching out to hold his hand.

His sister approached, and though she appeared to be oddly taken aback, her voice was sharp and commanding, “What happened?”

Qrow waved vaguely to his left. “Your little boy scout there is what. Told him his family died.”

“What?!” The soldier barked, holding up his hands, “I did no such thing.”

He leveled him with his best glare. “’You’re looking at ‘em’? That’s what you said about the survivors. His daughters were there, asshole.”

At least, that was what Taiyang was hoping. He had banked everything he had that his little girls had made it to the safe zone and were just waiting for him to return. The unshakable belief had been the only thing keeping him sane.

Now that it was gone, he had nothing left to hold onto. Qrow didn’t know what to do, or even had the faintest clue how to pull the other back from the sea of despair he was drowning in.

Clover looked horrified. “I, but I-I didn’t-!”

“It’s fine.” Raven asserted.

“What?!” Qrow shouted. “How can you just fucking say that?!”

She leveled him with look he couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Just. Let me.”

Without any further context then that, she settled on the dirt next to them. She reached out, gripping Tai’s jaw and turning his head to face her and in a gentle octave Qrow’d never heard her use, said, “Tai, can you hear me? I need you to come back. Yang and Ruby are here.”

At the sound of his daughters’ names, Tai finally blinked, some light returning to his gaze. Encouraged, Raven lent in closer.

“They’re alive. They’re safe. But you need to wake back up if you want to see them. Can you do that for us?”

He felt the hand in his slowly starting to grip back. Whatever his sister was doing was working – and while Tai’s brain was starting back up, Qrow felt like his was doing all sorts of mental gymnastics just to catch up. How did she know Tai’s kids? Were they really beyond those gates? Did they talk about their dad enough that she just knew who he had to be?

The real answer turned out to be exceedingly more simple and absolutely mind-bending, because Tai finally croaked out, “Rae?”

His sister smiled and responded as if it were the most natural thing on earth, “Yeah, it’s me.”

The words echoed on repeat in his ears. Rae. As in, Tai’s first girlfriend Rae. Yang’s mother? Was also Raven, his sister?!

Qrow felt like he was going to need one of these quiet-talk therapy sessions because now he wasn’t sure he was entirely all here anymore.

The world was still intent on moving on whether he was there or not though. Tai inhaled shakily, practically pleading, “And, the girls? They’re really-?”

“Come see for yourself.” Raven stood.

Taking a moment to gather himself, Qrow followed suit, pulling Tai up with him. He led him towards the entrance, shooting a look at his sister that promised they were going to talk about this.

She avoided his eye and fell in step with them, calling first to the firing squad still above them, “Hey, show’s over! Back to your jobs!” Then to the soldiers, “Clover, Elm. Bring in that car and then get back to your posts.”

“Yes ma’am.” Clover saluted. “And uh, Qrow, Tai?” Only Qrow looked back – holding up his hand to catch Tai’s tags when he tossed them his way. “Sorry.”

He nodded, pocketing them. He made a mental note to make sure the other man gave twice as good an apology to Tai when his lover was more present.

They stepped through the gate and it was like entering a long-forgotten world. The road continued on straight – but the acres of fields on either side were busy with tents, motor homes, and even a few trailers, everyone making do with whatever shelter they could find. People were milling about, doing all sorts of things. He could see some older men in lawn chairs, enraptured by a game of Chinese Checkers. A team was working with various gardening tools to clear up some free land. Another team was working on the skeleton of a structure against one of the walls that was looking like the beginning of a home. Pens were built towards the back, a few cows and a chicken coop in view and there were a few fire pits speckled around the facility, once in use as several people boiled and stored water.

A sense of surrealism enveloped him. They’d been on their own so long, he almost forgot what normal life could look like.

“This almost doesn’t feel real.” Qrow admitted, eyeing a young pair sparring in the shade of the wall.

“You get used to it.” Raven replied, leading them towards the west side of the colony. “We all keep pretty busy. Everyone’s got a job here; a way to contribute. We take care of each other, keep each other safe.”

He scoffed. “That why we got chased halfway to hell getting here?”

“It’s… preventative.” She explained. “We just want to make sure everyone comes to the front door.”

“So you can shoot them.”

“If they give us reason to.”

He gaped at her, aghast.

Raven sighed, walking in-between the space of two parked RVs. “This world doesn’t have rules anymore and there are a lot of bad people willing to take advantage of that.”

“Like at the base.” It was a surprise to both of them to hear Tai speak. “What happened there?”

Something dark flittered along his sister’s face, before she looked away. “Another group wanted what we had. So, one night, they rammed down the gates with a few semitrucks filled to the brim with biters to get it. There was over a thousand of us there. Now there’s only a little over a hundred of us.”

“Christ.” Qrow cursed. He couldn’t even fathom it. What kind of mindset did someone have to have to do something so willingly vicious?

“These people already lost everything twice over now. They’re looking to me to make sure they don’t lose more.” She stood a little taller, her voice strong and confidant. A voice people would find faith in following. “So yeah, I’ll scare even God himself away from our gates if that’s what it takes.”

If there was a concern to take away from all that, the day had been much too harrowing and long to put any honest consideration to it. So, he just let it lie, a gnat in the back of his thoughts for now.

He figured any other conversation was probably moot anyways, as when they rounded another trailer home the field opened up to what appeared to be a small picnic and playground area. In the center between the various tables and play equipment was a canopy tent, providing shade to the small gathering of children underneath it. They were all sitting in the grass, listening to the woman before them as she read aloud.

Tai’s grip had become iron tight, breath shallowing out.

As they drew near, Raven spoke up, “Summer, mind if we interrupt?”

The disruption drew everyone’s gaze on them, eyes wide and curious at the strange newcomers in their midst. Their teacher, Summer, seemed as equally spellbound, the book she’d been reading falling right out of her hands.

From the front, Qrow caught movement as one of the students stood, and he saw his niece for the first time. For even if the color was Tai’s, there was really no mistaking that wild mane for anyone other than a carbon copy of Raven’s – no matter how much those flimsy pigtails tried to tame it. She had to of been around eight or nine and she had a gangly appearance about her, the same way he had been during most of his childhood while he was still growing. He hoped she wouldn’t get his outrageously long legs.

Beside her, another girl stood. Had he not already known she was only two years apart from Yang, he would have mistaken little Ruby for being even younger. She was tiny, something that would probably follow her all the way through to adulthood. Unlike her sister, who seemed to be a mismatch of both her parents, she was practically a miniature version of the woman just behind her, right down to the silver eyes.

“Dad!” Yang shouted, shoving her way through the crowd recklessly. With her clearing the path, Ruby had no trouble following, letting loose a shrill cry of her own.

Whatever trance Tai had been transfixed in broke immediately, and he tore away to clear the distance between him and them, falling to his knees as they reached each other. Finally, finally after what had probably felt like an eternity to the father, he was able to scoop both of them up into his arms and hold them close, sobbing with unashamed abandon as he bestowed them with kisses and I love you’s.

Qrow heart melted at the sight, blinking away tears of his own as a delirium of happiness overtook him.

Raven wound an arm over his shoulders, pulling him against her once more. It grounded him, reminding him this was all actually happening. The little farm home he’d envisioned earlier crumbled away. In its place something new and bigger formed. His sister, Tai’s girls, and this little piece of land and community – their Beacon of hope in the middle of nowhere – was all part of his reality. Their reality.

They were home.

#qrow branwen #taiyang xiao long #Taiqrow #taiqrowweek #rwby #fanfiction #Chase Firekitten's Tale

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route22ny · 4 years ago

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I grew up in the Bay Area at the height of AIDS panic, and all of that era’s sex paranoia remains burned into my brain, repurposed for Covid-19 and the act of commingling wet breath. A few weeks into this crisis, I found myself having a ten-foot-distant conversation with my neighbor Patty, both of us incredulous at people who still tried to talk to us in-tight face-to-face, like we weren't all suddenly barebacking reality with everyone they'd chit-chatted with that day and everyone in their lives, etc. Patty allowed that she should be able to strike people she considered a threat. I mentioned Florida's attitude toward this legal principle and firearms. I suggested she become militant. I tell that to a lot of people, but I attenuate the humor of it for the audience. I tell every teacher I know to strike.

There are more sirens now. It's hard to tell, because unlike New York, everything isn't quiet. Cars are out on the road—fewer, but enough that hearing a siren can still be vehicular idiocy and not a more sinister house call. But I still hear more of them.

I don’t know why Luke asked me to write about Coronavirus in Florida. I mostly stopped writing last year when a good friend dropped dead in front of his family. (Subscribe to my Substack—we don't update regularly!) Before that, I felt increasingly overborne by events. Things ground to a halt in 2019, but the machine began to break down long before. I ended the 2016 campaign periodically sitting under my desk, high, feeling secure because I wasn't writing anything stupid and feeling good because I was appropriately afraid of everything, but people thought I was exaggerating when I mentioned it.

I wish I could say my seriousness about the novel coronavirus stems solely from believing in science and peer review and that I would take it seriously regardless, but my spouse is immunocompromised, and my father, who lives out in the Bay Area, had Covid-19, back in March or early April. He didn't tell us kids until he was out of the woods, but for days he had fevers over 103º. My stepmom, a former emergency room nurse, couldn't get him admitted anywhere, because he wasn't having respiratory problems. He woke up the same every day: It felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen on him.

We're supposed to say he's out of the woods. I'll believe that when he dies of old age, or something more reasonable that kills men in my family, like colon cancer or car accidents. Sometimes I think about him dropping dead like my friend, only from whatever post-Covid-19 effect triggers the brain’s forgetting to tell the lungs to breathe—or from the one that leads to storms of strokes, like a brain's blood vessels recreating the burning energies depicted on a CRISS ANGEL MINDFREAK poster. Then I wonder how I would die, or my wife, or my friend in Atlanta, or my brother. I think about drowning in open air, alone in a hissing world, and being incapable of saying the overdue apologies I ran out of time for.

After a while I realized that basically all Luke wanted was to hear from a coward living in the mismanaged kleptocracy of Florida, and the thing is, I can do that! I’m frightened right now!

I considered opening with, Every day I wake up frightened, to throw a fucking jolt into a piece about facing down a pandemic in a place where they have a paradise just for the cheeseburgers. But the joke is, I'm not wastin' away here in Coronaville. Sometimes I wake up and just have to pee, on the rare days when I don't wake up from the sensation of my son elbow-dropping my head because—how rude of me—it's 6:45 already.

In this respect, I am serene: My son and I exercise outside to burn off his energy, so I'm out in the sun for hours a day. I'm tanner, I've lost weight, and my phlegm feels looser. I grew a lushly indifferent goatee. My haircut looks like something that belongs on the gatefold cover of a concept album about a form of locomotion by a band named after geography. While the term "Lebowski Phase" has been applied to my appearance and to the fact that my leg injury and medical-marijuana prescription have collided with the reality of never having to drive anywhere again, I must insist that in many respects I have come to look like Jesus Christ. I am pro life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

As I have said, I am frequently awakened by my son, whose full name is My Beautiful Five-Year-Old Son Maitland. He is a treasure who spends quarantine within earshot of 24-hour news, regurgitating West Wing Democrat observations of mine with five-year-old precocity to harvest follows for Instagram. Maitland is an influencer already on record as supporting L’Oréal, opposing Medicare For All, and, when I first read him the shaggy start to this piece, he said, "Not a good look." He's a natural.

Waking up is violent but easy. The problem is everything after that. By the time I close my eyes, I'm not sure what I felt most on any given day—anger, sadness, impotence, a resentful churning need for vengeance, despair. Any one can seem like a day's dominant emotional dysfunction and then suddenly be overwhelmed by the dread that suffuses prolonged thought about the world outside.

I am one of the people who is Taking It Seriously. Seriously Taking It Seriously, though—not the people who say they're taking it seriously and then tell you about:

• Going to a recent indoor birthday party.

• Having a multi-course dinner at a fancy restaurant, "But it was okay because it was [extremely not-worth-a-life celebration]!"

• A full-contact playdate their kid had recently with two other children.

I abhor these people. I have an existential loathing of these people, and a granular scientific indictment. I enjoy reading new articles to learn new ways in which they are a danger to me. My apprehension is rich and exquisite. May their friends shun them, and may they be abandoned by their gods.

Sooner or later, every day, I think of the threats arrayed against me and my family. Each day, I see the most recent thing said by my governor, Ronald Fuckface DeSantis, in which he explicitly endorses and declares his intent to pursue actions that all available data say will kill Floridians by the thousands. Each day, I think about how, if I do so much as suggest fostering a free exchange of ideas about the proportional value of using every means to stop him, I will be arrested.

Every day, I bounce the "Evil or Moronic?" debate around my brain. I check in with an alumna buddy in Atlanta to see whose governor has shown more recent determination to murder his citizens. I gotta give Brian Kemp credit, because he's really holding his own. Naturally, this leads to wondering if either of them have a natural or acculturated advantage in terms of idiocy and malevolence. DeSantis' enrollment at Yale and Harvard and service in the military problematizes the idiocy narrative only for as long as it takes to remember all the people you've met who've gone to any of them and were dumber than dogshit. It would seem like fate to be murdered by an oaf, but I don't know that it's not merciful to at least be murdered purposefully rather than contemptuously and indolently.

Eventually, this leads to spending some time thinking about DeSantis as a kind of lethal bro angel. It's hard not to see his shitchyeah, brah, people are dyin', it's classic! expression and recognize that the state's chief executive resembles a lout you don't want to run into walking alone at FSU after a home loss. I prefer my jokes about the governor, but my friend David Roth nailed it when he said that DeSantis seemed like a person who would describe himself as “kind of a DUI guy.”

I know there's supposedly a culture war out there. There's a truck in my neighborhood with a Q sticker, and another with a Three-Percenter sticker, and there are more than a few neighbors of the "easily victimized white dude who owns a $50,000 truck he rarely takes off the pavement and who becomes physically belligerent when you correct him" variety, but there's a reason why you really only see “war” shit on YouTube. Few Americans are hostile to general safety protocols, and even fewer act out against them. I live where hate groups and old fashioned unaffiliated redneck trash drive in from the county to make a show of rebel flags, rolling coal and honking to intimidate protests, but people line up six feet apart at Home Depot, wear masks at Publix and get takeout at the pizza place outside without insisting on barging in. Most wars don’t need one side of them to be this manufactured.

Most of my friends and colleagues from this gig live in New York, so I've already sat through weeks of descriptions of streets silent except for ambulances, and I’ve already woken for weeks to the half-twilight of nightmares where friends died in a spare white hallway. There aren't a lot of surprises in store for Florida, and no images I can describe that would make you want to turn back now. It's like we're waiting for the rolling premiere of a franchise blockbuster. The dead won't really start packing them in for a few more weeks, but all the scariest shit hit YouTube when it opened in New York a thousand years ago. The coronavirus as an image, what it functionally is, as a horror, feels as familiar as the Scream mask, and the context that makes that scary as hell already feels dangerously been-and-gone, like an apprehension that Florida had for too long before the actual scare came.

There's a hope that all this will come to little again. Despite Governor DeSantis' refusal to take the initiative on shutting down the state until the last dollar was wrung from the last snowbird, the original shellacking never came. The Tampa Bay Times sampled smartphone data and concluded that Floridians overwhelmingly took the initiative to stay home, and they were aided in their quarantine process by the fact that Florida is car-dependent and atomized.

The heartbreaking realization, as you gradually run across more people who are Not Taking It Seriously or are Expressing Moronic Skepticism, is that for a month there about 80 percent of America was on board with doing the right thing. We, a people who suck at doing the right thing even for the wrong reasons, stood on the side of doing the harder thing if it helped people who weren't even us.

I really can't tell if I feel more anger than sadness at the fact that those who were meant to encourage us in safety, to serve us by offering difficult guidance, wasted our sacrifice and our trust. They squandered the patience given by a beggared and exhausted people. All they had to do was the right thing, and if they weren't sure what that was, they could have erred on the side of saving people’s lives and hoping it counted, and they failed.

Instead, more people will die, and we'll be shut down again, and we will realize we are fundamentally unequipped for life with Covid-19. Florida is built on enclosed air-conditioned spaces: It's dependent on divorcing yourself from Florida as a climate and place. Asking Floridians to generate a public life under the unshielded rage of God’s angriest sun and baked from beneath by a sprawling pave-ocalypse requires asking them to rebel against everything their infrastructure has taught them for as long as they can remember. It is a car culture to the flesh and bone, and a restaurant relocating indoor tables to a road patio would park its diners inches away from eternity.

A picnic day like that is months off, again. It's time to go back inside and resume Inside Time. Inside Time melts away. I saw a headline around the Fourth of July, from the New York Times, that read, "In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both," and I remember seeing colleagues tweet, mmmm, so true, and, gets at something crucial we aren't talking about, and shit like that, and I was like, "Buddy, let's get in the DeLorean and visit March." I have nowhere to go, anyway, and all life is timeless.

We have no family in the area and have had no break. It's the three of us, like No Exit, but if most of the dialogue was the word "no" and a lot of stuff about poop and butts and farts, good guys and bad guys, and what Lego Star Wars would do, but with a lot of excruciated pleading for silence because Mom and Dad Are Working Right Now and We Love You Very Much but Jesus Christ Please Stop for the Love of God I Will Give You a Dollar If You Go in Your Room and Be Quiet and Play That Kindle App That Teaches You to Read That You Pay Attention to More Than Us Even Though I Would Read You a Fucking Novel If You'd Just Shut Up and Sit Still.

I'm resigned to staying in here until 2022. I’m screaming, but I will do it. I'm lucky in that I have access to a community pool and a neighborhood where my son and I can roam around on bikes and romp and look at water and birds and turtles. When we're lazy, we have a porch where we can feel nature without feeling exposed. We have a dependable (ok!!! haha!!!) income, and I can do irregularly scheduled work that allows me to be Parent rather than Employee. Exercise, meals and stories take up enough hours that I might as well lean into it.

But we’re lucky. We have a house and prescription mood-altering drugs and one thousand years of undersleep, but we are in less immediate danger than most. The state, almost reflexively, reaches out to open more doors even as Covid-19 blows past reopening benchmark after reopening benchmark.

The inexorable march for commerce doesn’t even come from malice in many cases; people in charge just don’t know how to do anything else but extort and scold people into working under any conditions, so long as it devours most of their time. All the exploitive principles are expected to work the same even if the world they built is fraudulent. We feed meat and the virus into the machines, irrespective of what the data says, and pray for rain. Watching Florida government on the state and local level is like watching two parents bring an alcoholic home after he got kicked out of rehab and deciding that the best course of action is leaving him with $5,000 in an apartment up the street from a dive bar and then going to Cancun for the week. It was on the calendar already, there wasn’t any choice, he looked very healthy at the time!

We have friends who are teachers, and we are scared for their spouses and kids. I don't know what Florida's plan for its teachers is other than to murder them. Again, I don't know if DeSantis is an idiot for flirting with giving enormous bipartisan sympathy to arguably the most effective labor group in the state, or a genius for flirting with finally eliminating a lobbying obstacle to conservative governance by simply liquidating its members as a class.

I worry if I start listing all the things I'm scared of, they'll never stop, but every day I see my son reach for something he should be able to reach for, and I either have a low-grade panic response and stifle it, or I have the panic response and yelp at him to get his attention and tell him to stop, startle him, and add another layer of gun-shy haunting to his day. I'm afraid he'll eventually become an animal in a Skinner Box in which all the buttons and levers are electrocuted, and there are no prizes.

I'm afraid that my son will always be emotionally arrested at two years behind the development of people the same age who had siblings in their house, or who, like many kids in my neighborhood, had parents who thought kids were invincible to Covid-19 and let them play with whomever they wanted. I worry that he may pay a price year after year even into adulthood because other kids got to practice socializing as we rode past. They got to hang out with people their own age and run around and do vitally stupid shit and say "butts" a lot, and he got look at me heartbroken and knowing empirically and epidemiologically that he couldn't play with his friends anymore but still needing to know why, and knowing that I couldn't tell him anything more sophisticated and anything less terrifying than, "So we don't get sick."

The other day he started crying and then screaming, "I hate the sickness! I hate the sickness!" repeating it in a higher and higher register, until he was up even past that piercing birdlike screech that prepubescent boys make whenever trying to sound like lasers or dinosaurs or squealing brakes. Every day I worry that I see another little bit of his capacity for happiness is dying—that the same awkward process of terror that took me from happy little kid to profoundly unhappy teen to scarred adult is even more rapidly at work, and each day another sparkling and joyous little light of childhood winks out in him, replaced by fear as a necessity of life.

I know that there is no plan for us. Conservatives don't want to be taxed or have their businesses lose money, so people are being kicked off unemployment and sent back to work with no test and trace protocols, irregular access to PPE, overwhelmed hospitals and often limited access to any care. We're doing all this as Florida blooms scarlet like paint being spilled into a mold shaped like the state. We're sending the men in the gasoline suits right at the heart of the fire.

It's a cruelly lazy little culling genocide of the working class, a Wall Street gamble that the blow to the labor force won't be more than a blip on the Dow and, a little recession aside, the One Percent will come out ten years later owning an even greater percentage of the United States. To the extent that there is a plan, that's the plan, and whether you land on the dead or the living part of any of those exchanges is more of a Your Problem than a Their Problem.

For now, it's enough to be hermits and hope the rest of Florida goes on strike by going inside and staying there and writing letters to representatives threatening to never come out. Cooking the same things, getting the same exercise in the same places, having the same awkward conversations on VOIP delay, and living every moment outside like we're three drinks in so we’re ready to get belligerent with anyone who is getting too close. Living every moment with some low-level neurasthenia that grows spine-deep and for the rest of our lives sends shuddering disequilibrium at the thought of air that never seems to move, hallways that lengthen without exits, and objects that seem both unavoidable and unclean. It’s fine. We’re all fine, here, now. How are you?

I feel a sudden Git Offa Mah Land thing about my son, a resolute commitment to homeschooling for the foreseeable future and to keeping the gummymint away. It sucks so much. I was so happy to send him to the public school just a few blocks away, instead of the shitty little charter schools nearby, but now that it’s Plague or Parents, he’s got his parents. Between us, he'll have access to 1.5 first-class educations. I still have my grandpa's service weapons from WWII, the last time America was in a war with fascism, when we took the opposing side. I'll empty a couple magazines into anyone who comes onto my property and tries to stop me from teaching my son critical race theory, Howard Zinn, and Leonard Levy's Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side. I refuse to turn my back on the heritage of my youth, of watching thousands of hours of MASH, by refusing to wear a mask outside or in fact any time I am doing anything other than drinking gin that I made in a tent.

Outside, records fall and progress rolls on. A governor whose go-to pejorative for opponents of all ages and sexes is very likely still “queef” watches as even the president concedes that a Republican National Convention here would be too lethal, as the state repeatedly sets records for daily deaths, beats out all of Europe in terms of new daily cases, leads the nation in cases per day, then tries to set them again. And then, every day, our governor makes his ahegao-but-for-ethnic-cleansing face and psychotically clangs a bell indicating that Florida just became the 15,000 customer at Leadshoe Larry’s Kicked-in-the-Dick, and it’s time for all us lucky winners to line up and drop our pants.

Florida’s lethality is so tacky that it’s almost camp, but there is no satisfaction in being right about how wrong everything is. Nobody gets a prize for correctly guessing the surplus death toll. All you have to do is look someone else in the eye working in life under Covid.

I’m old now, so I have Humiliating Injury Syndrome (HIS), and somehow in the month between the Super Bowl and the pandemic, I tore a rotator cuff, a labrum, or both, by throwing a (mini!!!) football with friends. After four months, I broke down and went to get an MRI. I skulked down corridors and lurked in a corner of a waiting room, like playing spies with an opponent who was the air. Even the clean and modern fixtures felt miasmic and corrupted, like they were a parking garage in an Alan Pakula film.

Eventually a nurse emerged from an office, crinkled her brown eyes, waved and surprised me by asking after my family by name. She lives three blocks away from me and had hosted me at a party once. Later that day, as my car coasted down the approach to my house, I saw a garage door open and my neighbor’s son walk out on his way to his shift at the same grocery store that I treat emotionally like a Superfund site.

I thought about how much I unconsciously held my breath where they work, and how I unconsciously associate those places with poor choices. The danger of the world outside is so massive that I reflexively need to cordon off the threat into areas of blame and blamelessness. In a moment of crisis, years of conservative rhetorical conditioning in the discourse have taught me to reflexively pathologize those in harm’s way. There is less chaos if someone is at least responsible for something. There is less risk to me, if it turns out someone else’s epidemic is someone else’s fault.

But it is someone else’s fault. And it’s not some poor fucker doomed to sit in a box somewhere and accept paper money and hand metal money back and point at where toilets are, because that’s how he keeps the lights on. It’s not the person consigned to some life-sucking task that, on the best of days, is too humiliating and cruelly impoverished of purpose to ever be a reason why someone should die. It’s not the person around whom you hold your breath because you don’t know where they’ve been. It’s the person and people who put us all in position to suddenly feel like we’re suffocating together.

I hate that I sometimes unconsciously hold my breath around strangers, and I hate that they have heard it. I think of my neighbors, and of the workers on whom we’re dependent, and the permanent uncertain shortness of breath I feel, and I want every moment of their anxiety and mine gathered up and then rained on those who shepherded it into being, those who nurtured it and feasted on it, those who profited from it and were indifferent toward it. Those who consider themselves DUI guys and those who pay to elect them and give them sinecures and who are simply too rich to be arrested for boating under the influence anymore.

I think of how I hold my breath near good people and near vulnerable people in places I am wary of and that we all need to share, and I wonder if we will simply hold our breath for the rest of the year, and if we’ve bargained for standing near each other and holding it for all of the next. And I wish so eagerly that all our suspended futures and the air between us might catch at the throats of those who put us here. That justice for a man like Ron DeSantis might be a permanent and sucking terror: stuck always in an involuntary startled gasp at the sight of responsibility, afraid at the approach of every stranger, incapable of drawing a full and restful breath, and never knowing peace again.

Jeb Lund used to write about politics for Rolling Stone, The Guardian and Gawker, and a bunch of other places, and was the Spectacle of Trump Editor at 50 States of Blue. He and David Roth have a podcast about Hallmark original movies that is mostly funny and exasperated and not unkind, and it's not ultimately about the movies anyway. It's fine and people enjoy it. Don't make it weird. He also has a podcast where he watches every Dennis Quaid movie in a row. That is also completely normal.

Ok here’s me again with a couple more things.

You’ll want to read this in the New York Times today about a forthcoming documentary on ICE. After it was completed the filmmakers were apparently threatened with legal action by the agency over the inclusion of parts that made ICE look even worse than they already look doing literally everything else they do.

Some of the contentious scenes include ICE officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes and mocking them after taking them into custody. One shows an officer illegally picking the lock to an apartment building during a raid.

At town hall meetings captured on camera, agency spokesmen reassured the public that the organization’s focus was on arresting and deporting immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But the filmmakers observed numerous occasions in which officers expressed satisfaction after being told by supervisors to arrest as many people as possible, even those without criminal records.

“Start taking collaterals, man,” a supervisor in New York said over a speakerphone to an officer who was making street arrests as the filmmakers listened in. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,” he said.

Here’s one disgusting detail among many.

They followed Border Patrol tactical agents who took pride in rescuing migrants from deadly dehydration even as the agents acknowledged that their tactics were pushing the migrants further into harm’s way. They showed how the government had at times evaluated the success of its border policies based not only on the number of migrants apprehended, but on the number who died while crossing.

***

source:

https://luke.substack.com/p/all-they-had-to-do-was-the-right?utm_source=Brooklyn+Today&utm_campaign=dd6f63665c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_28_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1ba554d7d5-dd6f63665c-125128182

#long reads #florida #covid #genocidal dystopia #Jeb Lund

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callboxkat · 5 years ago

Text

Second Chances part 6: Run Away

Author’s note: I decided to fill some prompts and got carried away. Anon(s), I would just like to remind you that you asked for this. Sort of. Also, believe it or not, this is the less angsty version of what could have been.

Warnings: homelessness, stealing, food mention, violence, humiliation, hunger, cold, hypothermia/frostbite mention, censored swearing, homophobic slurs, death threats, non-descriptive vomiting, injuries, blood, knife. It’s possible I missed something because this is a doozy, but those are the major ones.

Word count: 7165

Second Chances Masterpost!

Prompts (that middle one made me laugh, thank you):

...

The outdoor market was bustling with life, crowds of people heading this way and that, different vendors selling clothing, jewelry, baked goods, handmade soaps and candles, paintings, and whatever else you could think of to buy spilling out of neat rows of colorful tents. The sounds of laughter, conversation, music, and the popping of kettle corn filled the air along with an array of pleasant aromas. It looked like a very nice place to spend a few hours, whether or not you planned to buy anything.

Roman wished he could be a part of it. Instead, he walked around the edges of the market, never venturing within, looking for a good place to sit. He wanted to find somewhere where he would be out of the way, but near one of the most travelled walkways. He felt very out of place among the marketgoers, clutching a ratty cardboard sign and dressed in dirty, mismatched clothes, shuffling along on limbs stiff with cold and sore from night after night of sleeping on barely-cushioned concrete.

Yes, it was true. He, Roman Prince, was looking for a place to sit and beg. The very idea felt unthinkably demeaning, but the young man had been homeless for three months now, and his situation didn’t seem to be about to improve any time soon. He had perhaps not been the most frugal with his money, so he had run out some time ago. Things were… not good. He hadn’t eaten anything in two days now, the weather was getting colder every day, and he was growing desperate. So, he’d gotten his hands on some cardboard; and he’d borrowed a marker to make his sign. And now here he was, getting ready to beg for pocket change.

Eventually he found what he deemed a fairly decent spot, and he sat down against the wall of the building, propping the sign up against his legs. He took a small, beat up plastic cup out of his pocket and set it down in front of himself, dropping a small rock inside to weigh it down. Here, he was in a slight alcove, more sheltered from the wind, but still visible, and not in anyone’s way.

Plenty of people passed by, on their way to and from the rows of tents across the street. Music drifted his way, along with the tantalizing, heavenly smell of food, a smorgasbord of temptations vying for his attention. It felt rather torturous, to be sitting so close and to be unable to buy any of it, but Roman hoped that perhaps people would feel generous. At the very least, maybe they’d be willing to part with the coins that they received as change from their purchases. No one liked to carry around a purse full of heavy coins, right? At least, that was his hope.

...

Roman had been sitting in his spot on the sidewalk for more than three hours, and the market would be closing down soon.

In Roman’s cup sat a handful of change, pennies and nickels and dimes, along with a crumpled $1 bill. Not a great haul, but he knew it could have been much worse.

Would this be enough to buy something? Roman peered down at the cup. Probably not at the market, unfortunately; but there was a McDonald’s a few blocks away. He could go there. Their dollar menu had been a blessing these past few months, and sitting in the restaurant meant he would get to be inside for a little while. He could even pick up some ketchup and salt and pepper packets while he was there. It wasn’t the most glamorous thing, but he could use them and some water to make a sort of tomato soup. It was a tip he’d been given by another homeless man he sometimes bumped into around the city, a man named Juan. And the workers never cared enough to say anything about it, as long as he bought something. Sometimes they even heated up his cup of water for him.

Decision made, Roman started getting ready to leave.

He had just started packing up his things, putting the change in his pocket, when he noticed it: a fairly full shopping bag, just sitting there about five feet away, perched on the edge between the sidewalk and a patch of weed-filled dirt that could be perhaps be called a flowerbed once spring arrived. It was clearly from the market based on the cheery design, and a few languorous curls of steam rose from within.

Roman’s mouth started watering at the sight. He looked around for the bag’s owner. There were a few people here and there, but no one was looking at the bag. Was it possible that it had been forgotten?

He waited a moment, watching, biting his lip uncertainly; but the temptation proved to be too much. He hurriedly folded up his cardboard sign, stuffed that in his coat with a plastic bag of his other belongings, and snatched the shopping bag.

“HEY!”

Oh, sh*t.

Roman took off. He didn’t think. He just ran, dodging people and cars and tents, focusing only on getting way. He sprinted through the crowd, barely avoiding smacking into a burly man holding a tiny girl with braids; and something fell out of the bag he’d just pilfered. He didn’t look back to see what it was, let alone try to retrieve it.

“Get back here, you—!” Whatever the man said next was interrupted by the sound of a car horn, but Roman could guess that whatever it was wasn’t exactly friendly.

Roman made it away from the market, nearly getting hit by a car in the process, and ducked down an alley. He slowed down only somewhat, hoping to be less conspicuous, and continued on foot for several blocks. His breath billowed out behind him, creating clouds of steam in the cool air. The shopping bag clutched tightly in his fist felt like it weighed an extra twenty pounds, thumping against his leg with every step.

Half convinced he was still being chased, Roman didn’t stop moving until he came to a small pocket park a good distance away from the scene of the crime. He found some overgrown bushes there and ducked down to hide.

Ten minutes went by. Roman’s feet started to go numb from how he was crouching, the pebbles and twigs digging into his knees. Finally, not hearing any sign of pursuers, he slowly sat up. He peeked through the foliage, then cautiously emerged when he saw no one. He sat on a bench, nearly invisible to the road thanks to the bushes and a pair of well placed trees, and opened up his prize, swallowing his guilt and telling himself that it would be worth his efforts.

Or at least, that was what he thought until he saw what was inside.

Whatever had been creating the small cloud of steam, the food he’d been after in the first place, was gone. It must have fallen out back in the market.

What was in the bag were some simple white boxes, carefully packed in with tissue paper, and a small box of gourmet chocolate truffles. Not a complete waste, then, at least.

Roman pulled out the truffles and set them in his lap, already salivating at the thought of them, and then opened the first of the white boxes to see if it was something he could use.

Inside the box sat a very, very expensive-looking watch.

Roman’s eyes widened, and he nearly dropped it. His mouth gaped like a fish.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, staring at it. He slowly set the watch down. This was a lot more serious than stealing a few baked goods. This was bad. Probably the worst thing he had ever done, at least from a legal standpoint.

Roman simply sat there for a while, letting the reality of what he had just done sink in.

Of course, guilt wasn’t very filling, and after a few minutes, Roman’s stomach growled. Barely taking his eyes off of the watch, he slowly picked up the box of truffles. He figured he might as well have them—the mistake was already made, after all. He peeled off one glove, barely feeling the cold, and tore open the package. He barely tasted the sweets as he stuffed them into his mouth, one after the other. Roman’s mind was elsewhere.

If this watch was in one of the boxes, he thought, then the other boxes probably contained items just as expensive, if not more so.

Roman had just wanted some food, not this. He would be well and truly screwed if he was caught.

That was when he caught a glimpse of the actual price tag on the watch box, a small sticker in the corner with numbers printed in a neat black font. He momentarily forgot to breathe.

This watch had cost somebody nearly four hundred dollars. And it was on sale.

Suddenly Roman knew that he absolutely could not be caught with this. He had to get rid of it. He impulsively shoved the box back in the bag, rolled up the top of it, and shoved the whole thing into the bushes he’d been hiding in earlier. He got to his feet, stuffed the empty chocolate box in a trash can, and quickly walked away, sweating despite the cold.

…

A couple of hours later, sitting in the enclosed space under a bridge that currently served as his “home”, the truffles were not sitting well in Roman’s stomach. It felt like they were trying to claw their way back out. He shifted uncomfortably, the paper shopping bags layered underneath his blanket crinkling in complaint.

The bags were meant to help keep out the chill from the concrete slab beneath him, but it was debatable how much of a difference they actually made. Sometimes it felt as if they did nothing at all, given that the air was almost if not just as cold as the concrete. Still, Roman kept them, since they created a (perhaps pathetic) cushion between his body and the hard ground. Truthfully, they probably were helping to insulate him a little, even if he still wasn’t exactly staying in a five star hotel.

Sitting atop those paper bags, Roman glanced over towards where a couple of figures stood talking. It was dark, and Roman had a feeling that they were probably not supposed to be doing whatever they were doing, but it wasn’t any of Roman’s business. People like that showed up sometimes in this part of the city, but they seemed to know that Roman wasn’t going to bother them, so they usually ignored him, too. He was just another random homeless man, after all. Who cared about him?

Except now, after what had happened earlier that day, Roman found himself more paranoid than usual. He watched the two figures out of the corner of his eye until they were done with whatever they were doing and started walking away in different directions. Neither moved towards him, thankfully. Roman released his breath. He leaned his head back and looked up at the bridge overhead. A car passed by, rumbling over the bridge. Its headlights cast a faint glow in the air until it disappeared.

Roman adjusted one of the napkins he had shoved in his gloves, one of which had been poking him and making his wrist itch. Then he pulled the blankets tighter around himself and lay down on his crinkly bed. He hid his face under the blanket, putting his nose in the crook of one elbow to try to keep it warm. It took him a while to fall asleep, more due to nervousness than the cold or the uncomfortable position he lay in; but, eventually, he managed to drift off into a fitful sleep. His dreams, as always, were filled with visions of the life he could have, should have had.

And as always, he woke up to his own harsh reality.

Roman sighed as he opened his eyes. A bit of frost had formed in his hair overnight, which crackled as he uncurled his stiff limbs from the awkward position he’d slept in.

It was still fairly early, watery gray light leaking over the horizon; but the occasional car ambled down the street. There weren’t many people venturing outside on that crisp Sunday morning, and Roman wasn’t too worried about being bothered. Most people usually chose to ignore Roman, if not outright avoid him.

As if to confirm this, a man and a woman, some of the few daring to walk to work in these temperatures, chose that moment to pass by. As they did, they actually stepped into the street to avoid being too close, as if Roman were going to give them the plague. As if homelessness were contagious.

Rude, but understandable, he supposed.

Roman lay back down for a while and contemplated going back to sleep. But he really had to pee, and his stomach felt like it was trying to gnaw its way out of his abdomen; so, eventually, he reluctantly pushed his blanket to the side and sat up. He pulled a comb through his hair, arranging the greasy locks as neatly as he could. He double checked that he still had the money he’d gotten the day before (several times before, he’d woken up to find some of his things missing, especially in the beginning before he’d learned to keep them better protected). Then he pulled a blanket around his shoulders and got to his feet. He grabbed the plastic bag that held most of his possessions, anything that anyone might want to steal, and set off.

He lumbered down the sidewalk, one untied shoelace skittering across the pavement with each step, the blanket wrapped tightly around himself. The morning was quiet and still, almost pleasantly so, if only it weren’t so cold. Roman missed summer.

He sighed in relief when he made it to the McDonald’s. He ducked inside, nodded awkwardly to one of the cashiers, and made his way over to the restrooms. He did his business, even taking the time to wash his face and hair in the sink. By the time he reemerged, the breakfast menu had been changed to the lunch menu, which was fine by Roman.

Roman ordered a cheeseburger and somewhat sheepishly asked for a cup of hot water to go with it.

While he waited, Roman set down his things at a table and sat down, drumming his fingers absently on the tabletop.

His number was called, and he picked up the bag and the cup with a small, grateful smile. He grabbed far too many packets of ketchup, some salt and pepper, and a straw, and sat back down. He opened up the bag, and swallowed against a lump in his throat when he saw a small order of fries inside along with his cheeseburger.

He decided not to draw any attention to it, not wanting to get anyone in trouble, or worse, risk someone taking the extra food away. Instead, he just ate his cheeseburger and fries, and then made his makeshift tomato soup, stirring the ketchup, pepper, and salt together in the hot water with the straw. He put the rest of the condiments that he hadn’t used in the bag with his other belongings.

He took his time drinking that concoction, not eager to go back outside, but eventually he couldn’t stall any longer. It was approaching midday, the restaurant was growing more crowded, and he figured it was only a matter of time before someone started objecting to his presence. So Roman gathered up his things and took his leave.

…

Roman spent most of the day wandering the city. He didn’t have much else to do, and sitting under a bridge like some kind of troll grew old pretty fast. He avoided the part of the city where the market was set up, just in case the person whose belongings he had stolen returned to try to find him. Under different circumstances, he might have been able to convince himself that he was just being paranoid, but the price tag on the watch kept flashing in his mind’s eye. No, he was going to avoid that area for a while.

Finally, the sun was going down, and Roman made his way back to the bridge.

Other than about thirty cents left over from the day before, Roman only had a dime that he’d found in the street during his wandering. He certainly didn’t have enough money to buy anything for dinner. It seemed he’d have to make do with the ketchup he had left over from his earlier meal. Not exactly a meal fit for a prince, but it was better than nothing, if not by much. He probably should have gone and tried to beg again, but staying in one spot with the same sign as the day before only seemed like a more sure-fire way of being recognized. And if the owner of the watch had gone to the police, they were probably on the lookout for him.

Roman tugged on the collar of his shirt—a Saint Gabriel Academy of Fine Arts shirt, turned inside out—and winced. Just look at what his life had come to. He was supposed to be away at college, right now, pursuing his dreams of becoming an actor. Instead, he was homeless, jobless, penniless, and now, a thief. No better than his brother, after all.

Juan was sitting at the opposite end of the bridge when Roman returned, on the other side of the road. Roman nodded vaguely in his direction, too tired to give more of a greeting. The other homeless man didn’t acknowledge him, busy methodically stacking a pile of plastic bottle caps in different arrangements.

He sat down amongst his paper bags and dirty blankets, and he set down the plastic bag of his belongings. He was hunched over, digging through it for the ketchup packets, when he heard someone’s shoe scrape on the sidewalk. Roman paused, glancing up towards a small group of men, one of whom had just pulled to a sudden stop. He glanced away again just as quickly, not looking to draw unwanted attention.

Too late.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Roman’s blood ran cold. He knew that voice.

“Hey! Get back here!”

“What, you know this ugly f*cker?” one of the other men laughed, coming up to stand next to the first. His dark hair was wild, his eyes glittering.

“Oh, hell no, I don’t. This dirty piece of crap just owes me some money is all.” The man crouched, sneering at Roman, his ice blue eyes piercing right through him. “Ain’t that right?”

Roman scooted back, eyes widening, searching for a way out. Adrenaline hummed in his veins, and yet he felt frozen to the ground. They’d found him. Of course, they’d found him. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, words failing him in his sudden panic.

“This the guy who stole your stuff?” A third man asked, going to stand in front of his other friends, casually blocking Roman’s only escape route.

“This pathetic f*ggot? Really?” said the second. “Man, Mikey, you’re getting robbed by bums now?”

Mikey rolled his eyes. “Shut it,” he growled. Almost immediately, he looked back to Roman with a crocodile grin, crouching down to stare directly into his eyes. “Now, how about it? We don’t want any trouble. So why don’t you just give me back what you took, and we can all go on our merry way?”

Roman’s breath left him in a wheeze. He didn’t have what they wanted. Not anymore. But he knew they wouldn’t believe that. He practically pressed himself against the concrete wall at his back, as if with enough effort he’d be able to pass through the barrier that kept him trapped here with these men.

Mikey’s eyes hardened at Roman’s lack of a response. “Come on, I’m trying to be reasonable here.”

A fourth man, who hadn’t spoken until then, said, “Guys, maybe we should just call the cops, let them take care of this.”

“I bet you sold ’em already, right? What, traded ’em for some drugs or sh*t like that?” The second man, standing at Mikey’s side, sneered.

“You some kind of mute?” the third asked at the same time. They were all clearly growing impatient. Roman had to say something.

“I—I don’t….” Roman stammered, fishing for the right words, for anything that could help get him out of this situation. He looked desperately around them, towards the other side of the street, but Juan had conveniently disappeared, and no one else was around. He wasn’t getting any help. He was alone.

“Ah, he speaks!”

“I paid good money for that stuff,” Mikey said. He squared his shoulders and stepped closer. “So you’re going to tell me… what you did with it. NOW!”

Roman got to his feet and scrambled away so fast that he nearly fell over, tripping on the blankets in his haste. “I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking—Agh!”

He was cut off as a fist sank into his gut, forcing him to bend over at the waist. Tears stung his eyes and he gagged, bile dripping down his chin.

Mikey took him by the shoulders roughly. “Now, lets try that again,” he whispered in Roman’s ear, too loud.

“Mike, I don’t think—”

“Shut up,” Mikey said, still right next to Roman’s head. “Go home if you don’t want to be a part of this.”

A second passed. Roman’s harsh breathing grated on his eardrums. One set of footsteps retreated. Roman choked, still struggling to pull air back into his lungs and straighten back up.

“Third time’s the charm,” the second man suggested, sounding all too happy to join his friend. His breath smelled strongly of menthol. “Where’s my buddy’s sh*t? You see, he paid a lot for it, and it sure would be a shame if he didn’t get it back, wouldn’t it?”

“Might make him angry,” added the third voice, now much closer than before. He shoved Roman, and his back hit the concrete wall, making him cry out.

“I don’t have it,” Roman said desperately, knowing they wouldn’t believe him. He was still looking around, desperate for an escape. But the street was deserted.

Hands appeared on Roman’s back and shoved him forward, sending him sprawling to the ground. Roman’s head smacked the concrete, and he tasted the iron tang of blood as he bit his tongue. His hands felt scraped raw, even inside his gloves, and a painful pins and needles sensation ran through one of his knees. His rib cage felt like it had been hit by a bowling ball.

Roman groaned. A pair of shoes stepped into his field of vision.

“What’s this you’ve got here?”

“Noth—nothing,” Roman offered weakly, not even sure what they were talking about. He was definitely going to have some impressive bruises come morning. If he lived that long. “Just… trash.”

“Hm, then you won’t mind if I have a look, would you?” Roman heard the rustle of plastic as someone, probably Mikey, dug around in the bag he kept his things in. Apparently, the contents—specifically, their lack of any of the items Roman had stolen—didn’t please him. He kicked it to the side. Roman heard some of the items roll into the gutter.

Mikey’s friends dragged Roman to his feet and pinned him against the wall. Roman put up a struggle, but it was almost obligatory. There were three of them, and only one of him. He couldn’t fight them all off if he tried. And if he called for help, would anyone even hear? Would they come, if they did? Or would he just make things worse?

“Where is it?” Mikey snapped, impatient.

Roman was very aware that the odds of him keeping all of his teeth were getting slimmer by the second. “It’s—they’re… they’re in the park. This park, like five blocks from here, I swear. I left them in a bush, you can go right now—”

Smack!

Roman’s head jerked to the side, and he whined despite himself as blood began to drip from his nose, closing his eyes tight. He’d been trying to answer them! This wasn’t fair!

Menthol Breath put his hand on Roman’s neck, his fingers digging in painfully. The smell of menthol was dizzying. Or maybe that was the head wound.

He heard a loud crunching noise, and opened his eyes to see that Mikey was stomping on Roman’s bag of belongings as hard as he could, clearly trying to break them. He picked it up and smacked it repeatedly against the edge of the sidewalk to do even more damage. Bits and pieces of the contents flew out, rips appearing in the plastic.

The two men pinning Roman to the wall laughed at the sight.

“Aw, hell, Mike, you’re gonna make ’im cry,” Menthol Breath cackled. “Little f*ggot gonna cry?”

“’Nooo, please, not my garbage!’” the other mocked in a rude, falsetto voice.

“Now, I know you didn’t just throw my sh*t in a bush,” Mikey said, emphasizing his point by stomping on the bag again. “So you best tell the truth. Right now.”

One of the men, the one who didn’t smell like menthol, let go of Roman and started tearing through his setup, upending his blankets and the paper bags that made up his “bed”. Roman would have taken this opportunity to run, but Menthol Breath was still on him, grinning like the Cheshire cat, and Mikey blocked the way out.

Of course, the man came up empty. Because Roman didn’t have their stuff anymore.

Mikey stomped on the bag again, angry, then started cursing. “God f*cking d*mn it, what the hell? What is this?”

Roman’s eyes drifted down to Mikey’s legs, one of which was splattered with a messy arc of red. He must have stomped on one of the ketchup packets.

“You good, M?”

“Urgh, disgusting.”

Mikey ignored his friends, stalking forward to stand in front of Roman.

“Answer me, now!” Mikey snarled. He reared back and kicked Roman in the stomach, making it rather difficult for him to do as the other man asked. Dark spots swam in his vision as he gagged once again.

Roman was heaved back upright, a dribble of bloody bile dripping from his chin onto his shirt. “I panicked,” he offered weakly, gasping for breath. “I didn’t… I just… wanted food… I didn’t know… the other stuff was in there… swear.”

“Right, right,” said Mikey. He put his foot on top of Roman’s and slowly leaned all of his weight on it, crushing his toes, his face barely an inch away from Roman’s. Roman resisted the urge to spit in it, his eyes watering.

“You believe this guy?” asked the other man. A distant part of Roman, either left over from his theater days or hysterical from fear and pain, decided to dub him Henchman Number Three.

Mikey stared at Roman for a moment longer, eyes narrowed. “You know, he’s just pathetic enough that I actually kind of do,” he said. He stepped back, and Roman gasped slightly as the weight was lifted from his poor toes. “So… here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to tell me where this park of yours is. My buddies and I are going to go there. And you, you are going to hope and pray to God that my stuff is still there. And if it isn’t, I think you know what’s gonna happen.”

Roman swallowed. Or tried to, at least. “It’s—it’s the pocket p-park, the one on Lincoln,” he quickly stammered. “It’s g-g-got those bushes, by the bench. It’s right there, I swear, you can j-just go there, and find them.”

Mikey looked at him appraisingly for a few seconds.

“Drop him.”

Roman was tossed to the ground for a second time, and he barely avoided receiving a second bump on his head to complement the first. He tried to push himself back up, but didn’t make it very far before collapsing back down.

“You sure about this?” Menthol Breath asked skeptically. Roman could feel his eyes on him. “He’s seen our faces.”

Mikey scoffed. “Come on, like he’s gonna go to the cops. He ain’t that dumb.”

Henchman Number Three snorted.

Menthol Breath hummed. “Still,” he said, kneeling next to Roman, “why take that chance?” Roman tried not to choke, barely able to breathe with that overwhelming smell so close to his face. “Who’s going to miss a dirty homeless thief? We’d be doing the world a favor.”

There was a thoughtful sound. “You know… you do make a good point.”

Roman tried to squirm away, eyes wide, but a foot pressed down on his back, pinning him down. He kept struggling, gasping, trying to get up, begging for them to just let him go, but the weight on his back only increased. And then something cold and sharp pressed against Roman’s face, and he immediately went still and silent. The blade slowly traced a line of ice across his cheekbone and down to his neck, settling just under the jawbone.

Roman’s heart felt like it just might explode.

Menthol Breath exhaled right in his face. The blade nicked his skin.

“Oh, f*ck, he’s pissed himself!” someone shouted. Chaos erupted, cackling and various sounds of disgust echoing around him as the men scrambled away from him. The knife disappeared from his neck.

Three sets of footsteps pounded down the street, leaving Roman a battered, shivering heap on the sidewalk.

…

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, sprawled on the concrete, trembling and bleeding. But eventually, he dragged himself over to what was left of his belongings.

Inside, along with the remains of pretty much everything else he owned, was Roman’s cell phone. It had been off ever since he realized that it could be used to track him; but he’d kept it because… well, he wasn’t quite sure why. As a reminder? A comfort item? Perhaps for situations like this, just in case?

Did Roman want to call the cops? An ambulance? Hell, his parents?

He reached into the bag and pulled out the device that had somehow gone unnoticed by his attackers. He wiped off the disgusting mixture of ketchup, toothpaste, and dirt with one of the paper bags, then simply stared at it.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the phone screen, chunks of glass falling out or missing at the edges. The case had broken under the onslaught, hanging off in two pieces. One corner of the phone had bent harshly, and the metal was scraped

For a long moment he just lay there, taking it in. Then, he reached up one hand and pressed the power button, holding it down. He didn’t know why he bothered. He wasn’t even sure if the thing was still charged after so long.

The screen flickered. Random colors spasmed across it, purple and green and blue, odd lines and shapes that followed the cracks like contours on a topographic map.

And then, without any fanfare, it died.

Roman bit back a sob, shoving the useless phone away from him. He didn’t know why he was so upset. Who would he have called, anyway? Who would have answered?

Roman rolled onto his side and struggled to sit up, grimacing as he took in the dark stain on his pants.

How brave he was.

…

After a few hours, Roman found the strength to get to his feet and limp over to the closest open building that he knew had a public restroom. The smell was, admittedly, a strong motivator, as were the sticky feeling of blood and bile on his face and chest and the stiff, cold feeling of his trousers.

He gathered up all of his things—what was worth taking, anyway—and set off. He didn’t plan on returning to the bridge.

Feeling more humiliated than he ever had in his life, Roman shuffled inside the gas station, not making eye contact with the cashier, and made a beeline for the restroom. Thankfully, it was empty, and he locked himself inside.

Roman leaned his head against the closed door and let out a shaky breath, then turned to the sink.

One small miracle was that some of Roman’s clothes hadn’t been in the plastic bag, so he had something to change into that wasn’t covered in ketchup, toothpaste, and bits of broken glass. He set these on the sink and then turned on the faucet, washing his hands and then his face. He rinsed out his mouth, cupping his hands together and spitting out bloody water. He didn’t dare look in the mirror until he was done, afraid of what he would see.

A friend of his in high school who had gotten his front teeth knocked out in a fight had once said that he hadn’t felt any pain. In fact, the guy hadn’t even known that they were gone until he looked in a mirror. At the time, Roman had found the idea surprising, almost laughable in how strange that was, to not even feel your own teeth being knocked out; but now he just felt afraid. Roman knew that he hadn’t lost his own front teeth—he’d actually checked, probing at them with his painful tongue on the walk over—but that didn’t mean another surprise wasn’t waiting for him.

Finally, when the water in the sink ran clear, Roman slowly lifted his head to see the damage.

His right eye and cheekbone were swollen and red, obviously bruised. He would have an impressive black eye in the coming days. A thin red line ran along the opposite cheekbone, down his cheek, and ended in a shallow, inch-long cut just under his jaw. That side of his face was also tinged pink and felt hot to the touch, swollen from the blow he’d received. His nose, meanwhile, had stopped bleeding a while ago, but one nostril still felt clogged. Roman didn’t dare try to clear it, afraid that it would start bleeding again. At least his nose didn’t seem to be broken, even if it was quite tender.

Next, he slowly opened his mouth, taking in his poor bitten tongue with a wince, and gently pulled back his split lip to inspect his teeth. All appeared intact and still in his mouth, where they belonged. He sighed in relief.

After that, Roman moved on to getting out of his disgusting clothes—the pants and underwear went straight in the trash, even though he knew he should try to clean them. At the time, he just wanted them gone. He did, however, do his best to clean the shirt in the sink. He didn’t want to lose that—he knew that his future at Saint Gabriel was as unsalvageable as his shattered phone, but he wasn’t ready to let go of this last relic of that alternate timeline quite yet. While that soaked, he got some damp paper towels and cleaned himself up, wincing whenever his hand passed over the scrapes and bruises.

Occasionally, there was a knock on the door, but Roman just called back “occupied!” in a hoarse voice, and he was left alone.

When he finally emerged, still feeling like garbage but at least relatively clean, there was a worker standing just outside the bathroom. They peered past him, clearly expecting the bathroom to be trashed or something. They turned back towards Roman, probably about to demand why he had been in there so long; but at the sight of Roman’s face, they came up short, their mouth simply hanging open.

Roman looked away and made his way outside without a word.

He left the gas station almost feeling a bit better—almost—and headed straight to the train station.

Obviously, Roman did not plan to stick around. Not with Mikey and company still out there. He didn’t think they would go to the police, not after what they’d done to him in retaliation for his theft, but that wasn’t what Roman was worried about. What if they didn’t find their stuff in the park? What if they did, and they still decided Roman couldn’t keep his mouth shut? What if Menthol Breath just wanted to have some fun?

No, it was better to leave while he still could.

Not that he had a ticket, or the money to get one. But he had to try.

Ideally, he would head somewhere south. Somewhere warmer, where he wouldn’t have to worry about frostbite and hypothermia as the weather got colder. But, truthfully, he would be willing to go anywhere. Even just the next town over, if it meant putting more distance between himself and his problems.

Sometimes it seemed Roman would never stop running from his past.

…

Roman set up shop on one of the benches at the station. His cardboard sign now had a reverse side, which read, “Need Ticket To Anywhere. Anything Helps. God Bless.”

By mid morning, with a grand total of about five dollars and a stick of gum, Roman was starting to nod off. The waiting area of the train station was heated, and the sounds of people walking to and fro, and even the trains when they arrived, settled into a rhythm that felt unexpectedly soothing. He hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, which only made the temptation harder to resist.

As he drifted in and out of a doze with only a minimal amount of his own input, Roman began to grow paranoid that someone would try to steal his earnings, so he reached forward and took the money out of the cup, sticking it in his pocket instead. He left only the stick of gum and a pebble behind. A little more at ease, Roman leaned against a nearby pillar, closing his eyes and going back to listening to the background noise around him.

Another train or two came and went, and Roman was eyeing the vending machines despite himself. He was starving, but he really needed this money for a ticket. He needed at least twenty dollars, or he wasn’t going anywhere.

A few coins clinked as they were dropped in his cup.

“Thank you,” Roman murmured, unsure at that point of who had even given them to him.

Only fourteen and a half dollars to go, and he was out of there.

…

”…this?” a voice asked.

Roman forced his eyes open, blinking, to see a small hand stuck out in front of him, holding a granola bar. He stared uncomprehendingly.

“Do you want this?” the voice repeated more insistently.

Roman looked up. A kid stood there, certainly no older than 10 and probably younger. Her parents stood behind her, looking a mixture of impatient, exasperated, and wary.

“Yes, please,” Roman croaked.

The girl set the granola bar in Roman’s cup with a small, satisfied nod. Then she looked back up at him. “What happened to your face?” she asked.

The girl’s mom shifted, glancing up from her phone. “Ella, you shouldn’t ask people things like that.”

“It’s okay,” Roman said, straightening slightly. He looked back to Ella. “I had a battle,” he told her after a few seconds, “with a mean old dragon witch.”

“A dragon witch?” the girl repeated, tilting her head.

Roman nodded sagely.

“You’re messing with me.”

“No, no, they’re real,” Roman assured her. “They’re not very nice, though. I had to fight one off.”

“Did it take your ticket?” she asked, frowning.

Roman hesitated. “No,” he decided. “I just need to go someplace else is all. I think the dragon witch might come back, you see.”

“Ella, we need to go,” her mom said. She kept eyeing Roman, probably wondering if he was crazy.

“Okaaay, mom,” she sighed. She turned back to Roman even as her parents pulled her away. “Bye. I hope you beat the dragon witch.”

“Bye, Ella. I hope so, too.”

…

Roman spent several days in that train station, begging during daylight hours and sleeping uneasily on the benches at night, never straying far while he healed from his ordeal and attempted to collect the money for his fare. The setup was, he found, much nicer there than it had been under that bridge. It seemed that the owners of the station didn’t bother turning off the heaters after hours, so Roman (and several stray cats) had a warm place to stay at night.

At one point, he briefly considered going out into the city to find Juan and tell him about it, knowing the other homeless man would probably appreciate a heated place to sleep. And then he remembered how Juan had abandoned him, had left him to be beaten into the ground by Mikey and his friends.

He couldn’t exactly blame the guy. They weren’t exactly close, and what could Juan have done, really? Even if he had helped, it would still have been two against three—four, counting the man Juan had had no way of knowing would back off—and Menthol Breath had had a knife. Juan had been right to run when he did.

Still, the thought of facing him again made Roman’s blood boil and his stomach twist in knots. So he didn’t. Maybe he should have felt bad about that, but he didn’t at the time.

Regardless of any of that, as nice as the train station was in comparison to his previous setup, it was not somewhere that Roman wanted to stay for much longer. He didn’t feel safe there, knowing that Mikey and company could show up at any time. That fact made it all the more stressful each time he had to use some of the money he had collected to buy some food from the vending machines, since it meant he had to stay even longer.

On the morning of the fifth day, when those final quarters were dropped into his cup, Roman almost cried.

Clutching the money, he hesitantly entered the main building, where the tickets were sold. He waited in line, practically shaking with apprehension. But before he knew it, he had his ticket, and he was standing in the crowd of people waiting to get on the train. Maybe most of them avoided standing too close to him, whether due to his obvious homelessness or his still battered appearance, but Roman found that he didn’t mind it that day.

He got onto the train, settling into a seat with all of his possessions piled into the one beside him. He stared out the window, feeling a sort of excitement he hadn’t felt in a long time as the train began to move. The landscape slid by as the train picked up speed, taking him to a new city, and, he hoped, something better.

#this was supposed to be like 2k tops #anon(s) tricked me #sanders sides #roman sanders #thomas sanders #sanders sides fan fiction #fanfiction #ts fanfic #ts roman #ts sides #ts creativity #second chances fic #SPOILERS AFTER THIS TAG!#the thing I like about the ending I gave this is that it can be interpreted multiple ways #is it positive because it's hopeful?#negative because with the rest of the story we know that roman has years more of homelessness ahead of him?#positive because this train is what eventually brings him to meeting logan and patton and everyone else and turning his life around?#is it bittersweet for all these reasons?#it's up to you how to view it

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