#that’s one down and [checks notes] four to go! cricket’s up next I think.

[kyngsnake]

⚡️⚡️⚡️

[xandriagreat]

Fate Be Changed

Chapter 5: The Houseboat and Past Client/When We're Human 

First chapter | Last chapter | Next chapter

Author’s note: just to let you all know, we did add some of the songs but the songs are planned instead of random singing. The song’s lyrics are going to be bold and italic. 

Notice/warnings: yelling/shouting, CAPs, running/chasing, quicksand, knock out

▪▪▪

On the hot air balloon, Moe, Herbert, and Webs explained what happened to them to Diane.

They were warming up with the blankets (in the cool Summer breeze other than the hotness of the city) and the heat from the fire that's keeping the hot air balloon up. 

It’s still going and they were away for about two hours and they were still in the starry night air, going over the woods with the sounds of crickets chirping and wind blowing.

“Dark Magic?!” Diane asked angrily after the three explained what was happening. "You mean to tell me this all happened because you were messing with a stranger that you guys shouldn't trust?! What were you guys thinking?! Did any of your families didn't even teach you three about being more skeptical and check if it's a scam or not?!"

"He was somehow very persuasive! Like a trance thing!" Moe said angrily and guilty. “Besides, we didn't even realize it was a scam until it was too late.”

"Well, it serves you right for getting tricked into something that you should have avoided in the first place!" Diane said, pointing at him.

“We were desperate!” the ‘wolf’, ‘snake’, and ‘tarantula’ said together in a groan.

Diane rolled her eyes and sighed. “You can't even run away from your problems, you know? You got to work through it and face it head on.” she said, shaking her head in disappointment.

Diane was about to add more to her talk but noticed Herbert was doing a tail motion by his neck as if to say, ‘Don’t say more’.

Diane was confused until she looked at Moe again.

Moe looked offended as he glared at Diane. “You think that’s what this is? A run away from problems?” he asked in a growl.

“Exactly!” Diane said loudly.

Moe growled more.

"Do you have a problem with that?!" Webs asked, glaring at the ‘fox’.

Diane looked and stared at the glaring ‘tarantula’. “What do you mean ‘I have a problem with that’? I’m just saying how it is! It’s also more of not taking responsibility.” Diane started, glaring at the three.

Just then, they heard the flame go out and, to make things worse, the hot air balloon popped when hitting something on a lookout tower and getting caught by it.

It made the four fall out of the basket and land on the pile of leaves and dirt.

They were terrified and checked each other if everyone's okay.

"Is everyone ok?" Herbert asked, looking at everyone.

Moe and Webs nodded a yes while Diane stood up, dust off her dress, which was now very dirty and muddy. “I AM NOT OKAY!” she shouted, looking mad at them before looking at herself. “Oh! Look at me! The dress that Emmy Lou gave me is ruined!”

“Ok, calm down! We don’t want to attract anything.” Herbert said. “Everyone just take a deep breath.”

Everyone took in a few deep breaths before calming down and started to walk away from the damaged hot air balloon.

“So… Who’s Emmylou? Is she your seamstress?” Moe asked, a confused look on his face as he looked at Diane again.

Diane started dusting some of the dirt off of her. “Emily Lou is a friend of mine. She was the one hosting the party and she gave me this dress.” she explained, starting to adjust the dress a bit so it didn’t slip off of her. 

Then Diane stopped and looked at the other three ‘animals’, who also stopped walking. She noticed that their faces were confused and started to be angry.

“What?” the ‘fox’ started, sounding confused as she looked at them.

“So you’re not the owner of that mansion?" Webs asked, pointing at the direction where they came from.

Diane stared at her for a moment and then looked at the direction that they came from before looking at her again and replying, “No.”

“So you’re not a rich daughter! No wonder the kiss didn’t work!” Webs explained angrily, pointing at Diane. “You lied to us!”

“I never said that I was some rich daughter!” Diane sassed, pointing back at her.

“If you’re not a daughter of some wealthy parents, what are you?” Moe asked, glaring at the ‘fox’.

Diane felt something inside her just snap as she stared at the ‘wolf’.

“I am a graduating, top of her class, college student, who is planning on going to Howard University To be a politician. I am also a Planned Parenthood receptionist and waitress at Coles. And lastly, I am also a daughter of a white German woman and an American black police officer.” Diane growled as she stomped over to Moe. “So I’ve experienced real hard things and gotten to know that life isn’t a fairytale!”

Moe glared down at Diane before growling, “Oh you think you’re the only one who’s been through trials and tribulations? Look at the three of us! We’ve been through a lot too!”

“We have to calm down!” Herbert shouted at everyone.

“Calm down?! This is not ok!” Diane shouted, pointing at them. “You three tricked me!”

"Woah, woah, woah! How is it OUR  fault?!" Moe asked, anger in his voice and he pointed at Diane. “We didn’t trick you because of your greed!”

“Greed?!” Diane exclaimed angrily.

"Okay everyone break it up!" Herbert shouted, stopping the fight as he got in between Moe and Diane. He shoved them away from each other before anything happened.

Everyone stopped yelling at each other and took in a breath. 

When everyone finally calmed down, Diane looked at Moe again, who was being hugged by Herbert. "Wait… Isn't your father fabulously wealthy?" she asked him, pointing at him.

“Yes. My father is fabulously wealthy." Moe explained with a groan, rolling his eyes as Herbert stopped hugging him. "But he won’t give any of it to me yet until I marry a woman from an also wealthy family and take over the family business. Even though it's not my future and my LIFE! That’s why I ran away.”

"And I had to come with him because his father wouldn't accept our… homosexuality." Herbert said, rubbing the back of his neck with his tail.

"I also joined them because they wanted help and I have friends who could help them." Webs said with a shrug.

Then Webs noticed something mushy that she was stuck on. She looked down to see that she was slowly sinking. "Quicksand! Quicksand! Quicksand! Somebody help me!" she screamed, trying to get out as she continued to sink.

Diane sighed and walked over to her. She carefully grabbed and picked up Webs, freeing her from the sand, but now the ‘fox’s’ right foot was stuck now, slowly sinking up to her leg. She growled as she looked at the other two and asked, “Mind helping?”

"I got you!" Moe said, running over to help them out. But he didn’t notice a root sticking out, making him tripped and land face first into the quicksand, now stuck in it.

Herbert tried not to laugh at them but started to laugh as the two young women glared at him.

“Mr. Herbert Cedric Scale, we DO NOT have all night. So, if you could PLEASE help us, that would be most appreciated.” Webs said, warning in her voice. 

The ‘snake’ stopped laughing as realization hit him. “Alright.” Herbert said as he wrapped himself by a tree to support and hold him before helping them out. 

When he was fully stable with the grip of the tree, he used his tail to grab Moe by the waist and began pulling him out of the quicksand.

Moe started to cough when his head was no longer stuck in the quicksand and took in some fresh air.

“Moe, are you ok?” Herbert asked, checking to see if Moe was ok as he laid him on the ground far away from the quicksand. 

Moe stared at him and said “Yes, though I do feel a bit light headed.”

Herbert sighed softly with a soft smile. “Just rest and breathe until you feel normal headed.”

Moe nodded and breathed as he rested.

Then Herbert  wrapped himself by a tree again and helped get Diane and Webs out of the quicksand by wrapping his tail around Diane’s waist, pulling her out of the quicksand. 

Daine sat down on the ground when they were out of quicksand.

Everyone started to take in a few deep breaths to calm down as they rested. Then the four look at themselves and notice that they are dirty. 

“We need to find a place of water to clean up.” Webs said, breaking the silence.

The others nodded and got up to find a place where they could wash up.

◇

The four wash themselves up by a nearby creek to get the dirt off of themselves.

“So, all that I’m getting from you guys is that you three are runaways and cowards. But yet, you guys have the guts to call me greedy?” Diane said as she got the dirt off of herself. “To me, it’s just lying to get away from problems.”

The three glared at her. 

Before anyone could say anything, there was the sound of a gunshot being fired, making the four jump and hide.

The four looked at where it came from and they started to hear hunter voices.

"We gotta get out of here." Herbert whispered.

The others nodded and they quickly left, not getting detected by the hunters.

As they were running, their outfits got torn more and more in the process.

“It was not a lie! We fully intend to get out of here and be human again! Once we get some help and a new place to stay, we’ll be out of here for good!” the ‘wolf’ said as they ran.

They begin running and looking around to find any place they can get away from the hunters.

There were a few gunshots fired but thankfully missed them.

The four ‘animals’ looked around quickly to see a cave in the distance. They ran to it and went inside to the darkness, losing the hunters that were chasing them.

It was a big cave with a medium size entice.

The four sat down and caught their breath.

“I think we lost them.” Herbert said, catching his breath.

“Yeah. But look on the bright side! It looks like we found some place to sleep for the night.” Webs said, looking around at the cave.

“Good!” Diane shouted, catching her breath. Then the ‘fox’ carefully went out and got a broken log before going back to the cave.

The others were confused at what she was doing. 

“I'm going to set this up!” the ‘fox’ said angrily before she got the tall broken log up right and against the entrice as a door. 

It was still clear that she was still angry at them as she went back to them.

Diane began drawing a line from the dirt between her and the three. “I know that this is childish but this line splits off the two sides.” she said after drawing the line and then pointed at the sides. “My side. Your side.”

“What?!” Webs, Herbert, and Moe asked angrily.

“Don't tell us that you are still mad at us like a spoiled rich woman.” Moe said, standing up and looking down at Diane, who was glaring at him.

Diane was offended by it. “You don’t know me.” she growled, standing up.

“You don’t know us!” Moe shouted at her.

“Okay everyone calm down!” Herbert said, getting in between the two before it gets out of control, then he wiped the drawn line away in the dirt.

“Hey-!” Diane started but was cut off by Herbert interrupted, “Let’s calm down and not act like children.”

All of them began to calm down and sat down.

“Look, guys, it's been a long night.“ Herbert said, when everyone was calmed down. “We should get some sleep. Since tomorrow will be a big day.”

Moe nodded. “Agreed.”

The four laid down on the floor and fell asleep… or one was trying to.

Webs was awake, not able to sleep.

She sighed softly in defeat before noticing Diane wrapping her arms around herself with her tail, trying to shield herself from the cold.

Webs crawls to Diane and laid down next to her, feeling comfortable to sleep.

Diane begins to smile in her sleep.

Webs began to smile and fell asleep.

◇

In the morning, when the sun rose, Diane woke up to see the gang was still asleep.

She looked at herself, realizing it was not a dream and she groaned loud, which woke Webs up.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.” Webs said like a hopeless romantic.

Diane looked down at Webs and rolled her eyes, but smiled a bit and said, “Hey.”

Webs got off of Diane as Diane got up, began stretching her whole body, and went to the self made door.

The ‘fox’ got the door down and looked out for hunters.

The hunters were gone.

Diane sighed in relief before looking at the two sleeping ‘animals’, who were being woken up by Webs.

Moe sat up, rubbing his eyes a bit, while Herbert yawned as they both woke up and got up.

“The hunters are gone.” Diane said to them. “We gotta get back to LA and undo this mess you guys got us into in the first place.”

The three glared at her for a moment before all four went out of the cave.

The rest of the three stretched their bodies as they walked for a bit.

The woods felt and sounded so peaceful early that morning.

It all gave them good memories. 

Moe remembers going to the woods by himself sometimes just to enjoy some nature as a kid. Webs went to a favorite tree in her old school just to get some peace and cry where she started learning and reading about the latest technology. Herbert remembers hearing a snake while camping by himself and it felt peaceful for one moment. Diane also had memories of the place where she used to walk around barefooted and often played with her parents, enjoying the fresh air and the sounds of nature as a toddler.

Diane was trying to find some sort of way to get back to Los Angeles but realizing how far it was, she had to think fast. Also she wasn’t used to the many smells that her new nose could smell and it was starting to overwhelm her that she had to cover her nose with her hand for a moment.

‘This might get some getting used to.’ Diane thought as she also had some ears picking up. She started getting used to her new found sensitive hearing.

Her vision turned out to be in good use.

Diane remembers learning and reading about foxes from some books she got when she was down with the flu and had to stay home from elementary school back in 4th grade and she also remembers in her sophomore biology class in high school. But never thought that she would become one herself.

The other ‘animals’ noticed that she was starting to get overwhelmed.

“How about we get some help?” Moe offered, walking over to her.

Diane stopped and looked at him for a moment. “How are we going to get help without being hunted or tested like lab rats?” she asked with sass, removing her hand from her nose and pointing it out to their situation.

Moe got quiet as he started to think. 

Then they noticed Webs going up a nearby tree. “Webs?” the ‘wolf’ asked, looking at the ‘spider’ climbing up the tree.

“I’m going up to see if there’s a way for us to get back.” Webs said, glancing down at the three before continuing up the tree.

“Anything that’s transportation will work. Like a car, van, or even a boat!” Herbert calls out to her.

Webs got on a branch on the tree and looked around.

The three ‘animals’ watched Webs and waited for a couple of minutes.

Then Webs started to climb down to talk with them.

“Any ideas for some transportation to get to Los Angeles?” Diane asked when Webs got a few feet to them.

Webs smiled at them when she got to their level. “Yes!”

“What is it?” Herbert asked.

“A boat. There’s a houseboat on a river that’s nearby.” Webs said, pointing at where the transportation was. “It’s straight ahead. Pass a few trees.”

The three looked at where she was pointing at.

Moe and Diane started to go to the direction as Webs hopped onto Herbert’s hat on his head. Herbert didn’t mind as he slithered over to catch up with them.

They soon got to the river and there it was.

An old houseboat.

The three smiled and looked at Webs again. “Great job, Webs!” Moe said to Webs before he and Diane went to check it.

Both ‘canines’ were so focused on seeing if the boat works that they didn't see the two glowing eyes coming in the distance from the water.

Webs and Herbert noticed the eyes in the water.

“Ummm… guys?” Webs said, looking at the eyes as she tried to warn the others.

“Not now, Webs.” Moe said, still checking the boat.

Webs and Herbert began to notice fins and movement in the water.

Herbert picks up a branch that was about half his size to defend them as Webs clings onto his hat.

Then all of a sudden, a piranha jumps out of the water and shouts, “Surprise!”

All four were surprised and stared at the bitey fish, which landed in the boat.

The piranha looked at both Moe and Diane, who both jumped on one of the nearby crates and were looking at him with wide eyes.

“What are you doing by our boat-” the piranha started but was cut off because Herbert hit the bitey fish on the head with the branch, knocking him out.

The four stared at the knocked out piranha.

The piranha didn’t look like a normal piranha with being a bit bigger than the normal size and having a small body, like a toddler.

“A… piranha…-like-mutant… in the United States?” Diane asked, very confused as she and Moe got down from the crate.

She looked at Moe, Herbert, and Webs, who all were confused too. 

“We’re confused too.” Moe said, looking at Diane before looking back at the ‘piranha’.

“How does he get to have legs and a body?!” Herbert asked, pointing at the piranha’s small legs. 

“Now, now, let's not be judgeful.” Diane said, looking at the ‘snake’.

The four looked at the ‘piranha’ for a moment.

“The colors almost look like a mango.” Herbert said, poking at the piranha with the branch.

But then Webs remembers the thing they learned about different piranhas.

“This is a Red-bellied piranha.” Webs said, looking at them.

“Really?” Diane asked, curiously. She never saw a woman interested in fish before (besides Pam or Emily Lou). Her tail started to wag a bit but Diane didn't notice as she blushed a little.

“So… what do we do with the piranha now?” Moe asked, still looking at the piranha.

Everyone shrugged.

Herbert saw a necklace tag around his neck. “Look, there’s a name tag. It might show his name.” he said, getting into the boat and getting the name tag off.

The four began checking the name tag.

The tag reads: Pepe Ladrón

“Pepe?” Diane, Moe, and Herbert read, trying to sound it correctly.

“Ladrón. That’s the Spanish name for a thief.” Webs said after reading the tag.

Diane now sort of remembers, though she was fluent in German, and learned different languages like Swahili and French during freshman year of college, she is not that very good at Spanish. Well maybe a bit, only the basics.

The other’s eyes widened as the four looked back at the knocked out piranha.

“But this doesn't make sense. Unless… Couldn't he be from somewhere like Mexico or Bolivia or somewhere that a piranha would have come from?” Diane asked, trying to make sense of the situation.

The other three looked at her and shrugged again.

Before anyone could say anymore, the ‘bitey fish’ groaned and slowly woke up, which made everyone jump.

“Ow…” Pepe said, rubbing his head as he slowly got up and looked at the four.

Herbert was about to hit the piranha with the branch again when the piranha shouted, “Wait! Wait! My name is Pepe Fin!”

Webs recognized the name and quickly got on the branch. “Stop!” she screamed at the ‘snake’. 

Herbert stopped the hit and dropped the branch.

Webs jump off the branch and land on the floor of the boat.

Herbert had a confused look on his face along with Diane and Moe when looking at Webs.

Webs looked and walked to the ‘piranha’. “Pepe?” she asked him. Pepe looked confused at her as the ‘spider’ continued, “It’s me. Webs. The person who helped you and Lou.”

Pepe’s eyes widened in excitement. “Webs!” he exclaimed with a laugh, hug attacked Webs, which caused Webs to laugh too as she hugged him back.

Diane, Moe, and Herbert were very confused by this.

When all has calmed down, Diane asked, “Sorry to break up the party but what’s going on here?”

Webs and Pepe looked up at the three. “Oh right! Sorry, guys.” Webs said, crawling up to be on the railing. “Guys, this is Pepe Fin, a past client of mine.”

Diane, Moe, and Herbert got confused. “Huh?” 

“Wait, wait… How did you guys meet?” Herbert asked, a confused look on his face.

“I met him and Lou about two years ago.” Webs said, pointing at Pepe.

Moe and Herbert didn't hear about them before. “How come you haven’t mentioned them to us before?” Moe asked. 

“You didn’t ask about clients.” Webs said, looking at the ‘wolf’.

“I didn't know you worked. I thought that you're on the run. Though it makes sense. You'll have to earn money somewhere.” Diane said, still a bit surprised.

Webs look at her confused before saying, “You didn’t ask if I worked, sweetheart.”

Diane began to blush at that comment.

Then Pepe cleared his throat, getting the four’s attention. “So, Webs… who are these?” the ‘piranha’ asks, pointing at Moe, Herbert, and Diane.

“Oh! My apologies!” Webs said before she introduced Pepe to them. “The snake is Herbert Scale. The wolf is Mason Wolf, everyone calls him Moe. And the fox is Diane… Foxxy.” 

“Foxington.” Diane corrected. “Diane Foxington.”

“Right! Thank you.” Webs said, pointing at the ‘fox’.

Pepe hummed and nodded. “Nice to meet you all.”

Webs look back at Pepe as she jumps from the railing and lands back down on the floor of the boat. “I now have some questions.” she said to him.

“Oh? Go ahead.” Pepe said, nodding.

“First of all, how on earth did you just turn into a piranha and second where's Lou?” Webs asked, pointing at him and then looking around to see where Lou was.

Pepe was quiet for a moment as he began to remember. Of course some of his memory might be a bit blurry of the events of the transformation.

Pepe scratched his head for a moment. “Well… right now, Lou is getting some food. But the memories from what happened to the both of us…. They're blurry though…” he said, looking at the four.

“Tell us about those blurry memories” Diane asked, crossing her arms.

Pepe thought for a moment. “Well… I think it’s best that everyone sits down in the boat.” he said, tapping on the floor of the boat.

Everyone looked at each other and then got in the boat, sitting down.

“It was a couple of days after Webs helped us. We were in LA, trying to find another place to live until this man wanted us to come with him.” Pepe explained, trying to remember. “We refuse and try to walk our way but… the man said all of the right things… It was like a trance spell thing… He had us in his grasp and we followed him into some sort of place like a Bodega or something.” 

Then Pepe pauses as his memory begins to clear up a bit. He began to remember what happened next.

“It was just a blur… first it was just cards of past, present, and future… then We were chained up.” Pepe continued to explain. “All that I remember of the man was that he had these monsters that he called ‘friends’.”

Webs, Herbert, and Moe were able to recognize what he was talking about. “That’s Marmalade!” Webs exclaimed.

Pepe started to remember more as he continued, “Of course, he then showed us the cards of our past, present, and future. We didn't ask him and friends but we were so oblivious of the future cards.”

Webs, Herbert, Moe, Diane’s eyes widened at Pepe. “Really?” the four asked.

Pepe nodded.

“Okay when do you find out that you would transform into this?” Diane asked.

“All that we remember was the bright lights around us, a LOT and I mean A LOT of pain, passing out, and then finding out that we transformed after we woke up. Then we ran away to get here on the boat.” Pepe answered, looking at the ‘fox’. 

Diane couldn’t believe it. “I… no… No! That can’t be it!” she shouted, standing up and looking down at Pepe. 

Everyone was surprised by this.

“That’s all that I remember!” Pepe exclaimed, angry and worried. “Just Lou and I bumping into the man, the cards that the man showed, PAIN, then waking up, and then going here on the boat that Lou owned!”

Diane looked at Pepe for a moment, her anger became apologetic. “Sorry…” she said, stepping away from him before looking away to look at the surroundings. “I… I hope you don’t mind me asking but, how long have you two been living here? On the boat?”

The worriedness on Pepe’s face faded a bit. “So, we lived on the boat for a year and a half, but stayed at Granny Gumbo for some time… she tried to help us return to being human. But as you can see, she tried.” he explained, gesturing at his body. 

“Wait, Granny Gumbo?” Webs asked, seeing if she heard him right. “Who is that?”

Pepe nodded and then thought for a moment of how to describe Granny Gumbo. “She’s like a… uh… sorceress of some kind. Also has magic like that man but uses it for helping and good. She’s very sassy but also kind.” he said with a chuckle.

Webs, Herbert, Moe, and Diane hummed.

“Mind taking us to her?” Moe asked, some hope in his voice.

Pepe stared at him for a moment before nodding. “Sure, but remember she did her best to help Lou and I back to being human, so the chances of turning back human are small. But, hey, she could have found another answer this time.”

Diane shivered with fear at the idea of turning back human is small.

Then Pepe looked at the woods as he stood up.

Webs, Herbert, Moe, and Diane look at the woods to see what he was seeing. 

There was nothing.

“Um… what-?” Herbert started to ask but was cut off by the boat engine turning on.

“Hunters. We need to get going.” Pepe said, getting the boat ready to drive. “Hold on tight!”

Webs, Herbert, Moe, and Diane held onto their seats as the boat moved quickly on the water.

◇

Once everything slowed and calmed down, the five ‘animals’ started to talk a bit more about each other, about their wants.

Diane noticed in a photo while they all talked.

It was a photo of two men, a black plus sized human with a small afro and a latino human with dyed green hair tied in a low ponytail. They were on the docks of the arrivals area and the skyscraper next to them in the background and written on the white part of the photo was ‘Arriving at Los Angeles, 05/03/1998!’

“Pepe,” the ‘fox’ started, getting Pepe’s attention before pointing at the photo, “I hope you don’t mind me asking but, is this you and Lou?”

Pepe looked at her before looking at the photo, smiling softly. “Yep. That’s Lou and me when we were human. That photo was taken when we were arriving for the first time in LA.” he said with a small laugh, going back to driving the boat. “Oh, I still can’t believe that was taken 2 years ago!” 

“I can’t believe it was a long time too.” Webs said, remembering that day.

Pepe chuckled softly as he got the boat to slow down to a stop before looking at the four to talk with them as he sat down.

“How long have you and Lou known each other?” Moe asked curiously, pointing at Pepe and then at the photo.

“About four years.” Pepe answered.

“Four years?!” Diane said, shocked. “Wow!”

Pepe nodded and chuckled more, smiling warmly.

“How did you guys meet?” Diane asked, very curious.

Pepe’s warm smile faded to a frown, as if it was a sensitive topic. “I-um… I would rather not talk about it now.” he said, looking down and hugging himself.

Diane hummed, started to feel bad for asking that. “Okay that seems understandable but I meant in this state? Have you two met here in the states or somewhere else?” the ‘fox’ asked, trying to get to know a bit more but try not to push it.

Pepe looked back at the four ‘animals’ again and nodded, starting to smile a bit. “We met in New Orleans, Louisiana.”

Diane was pretty surprised that they met at New Orleans (or ‘The Big easy’ and she heard a lot about the place as a kid).

“I didn’t expect that.” she said with a chuckle.

“Eh, not a lot of people do.” Pepe said with a shrug before pointing at Webs. “She was one of those people.”

Webs put her hands up and said, “Guilty as charged.”

That got the five to laugh a bit before it died down.

There was still an awkward tension in the air as everyone got quiet.

“So… once we get to this Granny Gumbo and return back to being human, what are your plans after we go our separate ways?” Webs asked, breaking the silence while looking at Pepe. “Is it still the same as last time?”

Pepe looked at Webs and smiled more, nodding. “Yep. When Lou and I become human again, Lou will start his fashion career and I will continue to make music as a career while we get a restaurant set up.” he said, getting up and stretching a bit.

“Seems cool.” Herbert said, begin chill.

Pepe nodded and was about to get the boat up and running again. But then Pepe got an idea, to make the ride more entertaining. “Do you guys mind if I sing a song?” Pepe asked, glancing at the four. “It’s ok if it’s a no.”

Diane and the others look at each other before they all nod yes.

Pepe’s eyes lit up in excitement. 

Then he ran to get something from inside the house part of the boat. He came back about a minute later with a microphone and a recorder.

“Just to let you four know, it’s in a draft, so it’s not perfect but it’s good or alright.” Pepe said, looking at them.

The four ‘animals’ hummed in understanding. They were curious about it as Pepe began making sure he was in tone before singing his lungs out.

Then he pressed play and music started playing.

It was up beat and jazzy.

Pepe smiled as he started to sing; “When I'm a human being again, I'd head straight for Los Angeles and I'd sing so loud and clear, for the world to hear! You've heard of Ne-Yo, Ms. Shakira, if she’s there! All those guys are gonna step aside when they hear this old ex-fish sing, just listen!”

Then Pepe began to hum a tune and begin turning on a tune as if it was a sound system.

“When I'm human, as I hope to be, I'm gonna sing so loud and clear, 'Til the crowds cheer and everyone's gonna dance and sing along with me!”

The four were very impressed that they clapped for him as he pressed the pause on the music.

“Thank you! Thank you! Oh, thank you!” Pepe said, bowing to them and smiling big. 

“Is there more?” Moe asked.

Pepe’s smile faded a bit. “Uh… well it’s not done yet. It was just Lou and I working on this song. I don’t want to sing his part because it’s his part.” Pepe explained, setting the microphone down and going to get the boat moving again. “We also didn’t have different perspectives until now. If you guys want, you can sing into the mic.”

They all looked at each other before looking at the mic.

Moe’s eyes shined with excitement. “If that’s ok.”

“Go for it.” Pepe chuckled and nodded.

“Then it's my turn!” Moe said in excitement, getting the microphone and turning the music on. He began filling the rhythm in his bones.

“All right, here I go… one two three!" Moe counted himself in and then he sang, “When I'm myself again, I want just the life I want a brand new chapter with my love.”

“That doesn't sound too bad, yeah?” Moe asked, looking at Herbert, which made Herbert blush.

“With my friends by my side, a new adventure every day! Life is short. When you're done, you're done! We're on this earth To have some fun and have a great experience. When I'm human and I'm gonna be, it’s going to be a great life and that’s freedom guaranteed.”

Everyone, except for Diane, started to clap for him.

“You are still running from your past!” Diane said, her arms crossed her chest. 

“All right, All right.” Moe said, looking at her as he paused the music. “Don’t get upset at me for trying to be happy.”

The two ‘canines’ glared at each other for a moment as Pepe glanced at Herbert and Webs, asking, “Do you want to sing?”

Herbert was stubborn not to sing. “No way, you can't make me.” Herbert said with a deadpan tone.

Webs didn’t feel like singing. ���Me either.”

“Come on, give it a try.” Pepe said, smiling softly while looking back at where he was driving.

Herbert groaned and rolled his eyes as he got the microphone from Moe. He looked at it for a moment and then said into the mic, “No.”

Then he hands it to Diane before resting his head on one of the crates.

Diane's eyes lit up when handed the mic. “Well, then. After all these times of doing karaoke with my friends is finally paying off.” Diane said with a chuckle.

She got the music back on again with a smile.

“Your modesty becomes you and your sense of responsibility. I've worked hard for everything I've got and that's the way it's supposed to be. When I'm a human being at least I'll act like one. If you do your best each and every day. Good things are sure to come your way. What you give is what you get! My father said that and I'll never forget! And, maybe, I’ll commend it to you.” Diane sang.

“Yeah, you got it, girl!” Webs cheered.

The boat ride felt more fun as the ‘bitey fish’, ‘wolf’, and ‘fox’ all began to sing together, “When we're human and we're gonna be”

“I'm gonna sing my song.” Pepe sang.

“I'm gonna live the best life!” Moe sang.

“I'm gonna do my best to take my place in the light!” Diane sang.

But then the boat got stuck on some sort of log. Diane got a big branch and started to push the log away. Herbert started to help by carefully pulling the log out and out of the way. 

“When we're human!” all five ‘animals’ sang as they got it out and the boat started hopping and splashing the water.

All five of them had a lot of fun and laughed as the boat skipped along the surface.

[avalordream]

Oneshot Check-In

I wanted to make a My Hero Oneshot thing and here's the progress I made with like-

the first one with Sero-

I-I-

I tried my best- and I still have to finish IT-

ITS BEEN THREE MONTHS

Edit: Four months.

Puddles

Pairing: Hanta Sero x Fem!Reader

Warnings: N/A 

The streets were quiet as the birds slept in their cozy little nests. The night was calm although working heroes begged to differ. Anything could happen in the dark, unseen by all but sensed by very few. The same could and can apply to all forces and magnitudes of every kind. But tonight....

        Tonight was different.

        The rain trickled down against the window panes as the lamplights turned on to illuminate the damp sidewalks, the raindrops creating ripples in the puddles that had already formed there. You sighed blissfully, leaning your cheek against the palm of your hand as you stared out the window as the steady fall of water eased your mind, sending you into a subspace of sorts...

which was rudely interrupted by a shout from the living room where the family TV resided. 

        You sighed, trying to block out the noise from your older sister as she watched some cricket, cheering loudly now and then. It never bothered you before now but at the moment, you had a physics test to study for the following day. 

        You were a student in the support course of UA. You already knew your quirk wasn't strong enough to stand alongside those in the hero course and didn't have the courage or unfaltering drive they seemed to magically possess. At first, you had accepted it. Facts were facts and that was perfectly fine. Eventually though, it became abundantly clear after the UA Festival...that they lived in a world completely separate from normal civilians or even other students in the academy. It never really bothered you until you carefully looked at how the media, people and society perceived it. Heros, heroes-in-training- and heck - even the students who were studying to become heroes themselves were guaranteed the spotlight from day one. They were always - and usually - painted in an honorable light- like the ray of justice that would pierce the cold gale of villainy. Admirable as it was, what about the people who supported heroes from behind? Like those who made their gear complement their quirk and fighting styles? Why weren't they given the recognition they deserved? Maybe it was you being selfish but the thought itself wasn't...incorrect.

        You sighed, shaking your head as you put your pencil down. Maybe you were just being overdramatic and a bit spoiled. This was too much to think about for one day…and with everything that happened… You needed a break. 

        “Hey- Sis-! I’m going out for a bit!”, you called out to the living room, shrugging on a (f/c) coat and tugged on your rainboots. She finally looked up from the tv screen, her eyes darting from your notes scattered about on the kitchen table and then to the clock on the wall. "At this time of day?", she commented, her eyes holding a glimmer of concern as she absentmindedly turned down the volume of the TV to carry her voice over to you. At this point, you'd already put on your yellow raincoat and boots, grabbing an umbrella by the door as the rain pounded against the sidewalks. You really needed to get out of here...rewire your focus and rewind.... yeah, that sounded like a great idea. "Y/N? Hello?", you faintly heard a voice call out as you felt three sharps raps against your hair, wincing as you stepped back. "Wha- Hey!! That hurt!", you huffed indignantly, reaching out to snag a bucket hat from the closet.  

        Your sister's expression soured instantly, crossing her arms as she stood in front of you. "I'm hearing a hollow head instead of a brain! Are you out of your mind!? There's a thunderstorm scheduled tonight!", she argued as you simply huffed stubbornly, shaking your head. It didn't matter...not anymore... Next thing you knew- the torrential downpour drowned out your sister's cry as you dashed out into the night, letting the rain guide you along as your eyes adjusted to the dark...

        Your quirk was Instinct...and the hero name that you chose for yourself as a child was Guidance, the Trump Card hero....as if dreams were anything more than dreams. You wished desperately to be put into the hero course...as did everyone else...but...

        A puddle caught your eye and you jumped into it without a second thought, splashing water everywhere as your rain clothes protected you well... You wish they hadn't so you could feel anything but the numbness taking over. Your quirk was just good as a luck quirk, if only you could summon it at the right time. In a time of dire crisis - at least what your body perceived to be dire crisis of some sort - your quirk would activate, giving you a sort of..."nudge" to achieve the best course of action. Those nudges came in various forms...sometimes an image...sometimes an intense urge to do a certain action... And sometimes you wondered how it was overlooked by the staff. You didn't like sounding like a brat who didn't get her way but it just felt...horribly disappointed. 

        A flash of a taxi driver flooded your mind as you looked up, seeing one race down the road in your direction. Amidst the raindrops, you could make out a puddle on the side of the road, guessing your fate was to be drenched- or something close to it.

If only your reflexes worked as fast as your mind. 

        The driver didn't see the figure by the road, revving past as its tires splashed a torrent of water toward you as you tried to back away, using your umbrella as a shield between you and the incoming downpour that would inevitably send you home. The vibrant yellow headlights blinded your eyes as you had the queerest feeling of something wrapping around your waist, lurching your body backward as your head spun- the umbrella leaving your grip as raindrops suddenly hit the back of your neck, trinkling down your coat and into your clothes. Your back met something firm yet soft as your surroundings finally stopped spinning, a dull throb spasming through your forehead, an aftershock from your quirk coupled with the sudden jerk from...wait...

        You slowly held your forehead to look down at your waist, straps of white binding around you as its clear transparency distantly reminding you of tape as your mind struggled to keep up. "Uh- You ok?", a voice broke through the confusion and haze of your mind, turning to look at them.

───────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────────

That's all I got so far- and it's only like-

omg

1,111 words long. I'm not even close to done yet.

;-;

[macwantspeace]

"You're getting older..."

My left arm from time to time is a flaming bundle of twigs attached to my body.

I mentioned that to my regular doctor.

Years ago it was an owie when I moved like [and I would demonstrate].

Three years ago it was a continuous ache so I got sent to get Xray, thence to the specialist.

Yep, the shoulder was rusting and had a floating calcium chip.

I got a bag of rubber bands and advice to do the exercises.

I did pulls and pushes and twists twice a day for a while and things changed. I canceled the follow-up appointment.

Slowly disregarded exercises or hated when it hurt crazy bad to do them.

So the ache came back. I said so. Back to Xray, off to second specialist.

This time the shoulder is still rusting but the chip is gone.

And they moved the offices for Orthopedics. Didn't even adjust signage much. I wandered. Finally poked my head in at a random office and asked.

It's in Pediatrics now. M'kay.

I went in. Got eye contact. Ducked under the Fiesta decorations. Showed a picture ID.

"Whut?"

Well, it was my Senior bus pass, but it has a picture and my name.

Turns out they didn't even know that Orthopedics had moved.

Cute footnote: four desks to check in. Each one has a tiny sign that you can't see denoting category. Later noted that three were Pediatrics.

Told to sit. I sit. Have my hearing aids turned up. I can hear crickets farting a hundred paces away. A child screams every fifteen seconds in agony for the next forty five minutes. Nobody else reacts. My brain hurts.

Get called in. Wow, I actually heard it this time.

Or more clearly, called out. Had to go back out into the main hall and down to another entrance.

Into the maze. Usually I get weighed and temped and blood pressured. This time they asked me for my opinion.

Wait for the specialist. Who arrives. Fires up the computer.

Has

my

info

on

screen.

"What are your conditions? What are your meds?"

I mention that it's up there on screen.

"I want to hear it from you."

This derails my brain. I did not know there would be a quiz. Even tho I printed out a page for the two Xray encounters and the last specialist.

I did a pre-visit check-in online....twice. All my stuff entered....twice.

I could not recite everything and I got a failing grade.

Hmph.

"Well the shoulder joint is deteriorating."

and "This is a normal part of aging."

And here....

I shit you not.

Imagine if you will a man sitting on a bus bench holding a model car the size of a box of chocolates. A feather floats past.

"Life is like a cad - illlac."

He focused his stare at the wall to my left and launched into a speech about taking care of my cad - illac.

I almost started giggling.

My cad - illac is so freakin' far past warranty.

Meanwhile I refused to get a steroid shot every three months forever.

Becuz....

When he asked me about how much pain I had on a scale of 1 to 10.

I was thinking that making myself visit the doctor again and again and again was 23.

[gyusbambi]

humph; han seojun (pt 3)

click here for humph masterlist!

part 1, part 2, part 4

story: frenemies to enemies to lovers, high school au

synopsis: seojun and you have known each other since kindergarten. you’re neighbors and even attended the same singing and piano classes. despite knowing each other for such a long time, you don’t enjoy spending time with seojun. even though you are aware of his unfairness, you keep spending time with him. when will you finally leave your childhood frenemy?

note: humph! is a story inspired by pentagon’s “humph! / 접근금지”. originally, this is a seungyeon fanfiction, which i posted on my wattpad. words: 4.3k

after what seems like forever, the bus finally arrives at the location. the rest of the bus ride went alright, except that suho kept turning around in his seat, checking if you’re doing well. because of that you simply decided to text him that everything was fine: seojun wasn’t even talking to you. on the contrary, he acted quieter than usual, looking out of the window the whole time. 

speaking of: how lucky seojun felt that you didn’t seem to notice the truth behind his behavior. after all he’s a person incredibly difficult to read. one moment he’s mean only to remain silent in the other. even his friend with keen sense of perception, chorong, struggles to detect the real meaning of the boy’s actions. however, he’s definitely not about to give up, after all he spent the whole night planing the ultimate reconciliation. 

han seojun himself, has no clue how to act. yet, one matter is clear: he wants to make up with you. the whole time he suppressed that he misses being near you, constantly trying to fight back the thought of wanting you. well aware that it’s easier said than done, he thinks of a way to overcome his stubbornness. in the first step, he needs to distance himself a little, though the concept of that seems more difficult than it sounds.

after everyone gets settled into their hotel rooms, it’s game time. outdoors you stand next to your roommates sua and soojin, as your teacher explains the simple rules for the tug of war game. your teacher’s suggestion of separating the teams classwise gets absolutely rejected by chorong, who claims that the game wouldn’t be exciting that way. therefore, your teacher hands the rope to chorong himself, stating that he should choose his opponent and divide into two groups.

at the sight of your friend grinning from ear to ear, you narrow your eyes in suspicion. is it that big of a deal from him?

but you’re even more surprised when he chooses his closest friend han seojun as his opponent to which the latter doesn’t react well. 

“woah, you betrayer.” seojun tilts his head with a frown on his face before brushing his hair away from his forehead,

“game on.”

“okay, i’m the first one to choose and i choose y/n!” enthusiastically chorong pulls you to his side a little too fast, causing you to bump shoulders with him.

something seems off today.

two equal groups finally get created, a line separating them from each other. kim chorong and han seojun face each other, positioning themselves in the very front. purposely, you stand near the back, gripping the rope tightly with your hands since you don’t feel that strong. 

right when the game is about to start, chorong suddenly groans in pain while holding his stomach,

“i don’t feel so good. someone else should take my position.”

“oh, well then suho should-”, you raise your hand to suggest who should replace chorong but you get interrupted by chorong immediately,

“y/n, thank you so much for volunteering. my strongest player!”

everyone watches you with confused eyes, probably thinking the same thing that’s running through your head. strongest player?

overwhelmed, your helpless eyes search for suho’s and it doesn’t take him long to react,

“if you’re not comfortable i could-”

“y/n, come on! what’s taking you so long?” sua gently grabs your shoulders from behind to push you to the front while laughing nervously. 

as stupid as it sounds, once again you’re not able to hear her whispering something certain to your group members, while you are too busy observing the boy on the other side of the drawn line. 

the whole team is lead to confusion when your friend tells them to let the rope go on the count of three. 

on the sign of your teacher, the two groups start pulling the rope to their direction, trying to get the other members to their side. certainly, it’s difficult and requires a lot of strength. while tugging the rope with force, you look up to see han seojun doing the same thing, completely focused on the game.

“three.”

his veins are visible on his arms.

“two.”

his hair slightly covers a part of his forehead.

“one!”

all of the sudden everyone in your team, except for you, lets go off the rope, causing you to lose balance and stumble forwards.

some of the opponents fall down while the others are able to find balance in the last second.

letting out a small yelp, you find yourself falling into han seojun’s arms. however, when you grab onto his shoulders to prevent yourself from falling, he quickly reacher for your waist. before he knows it, both of you fall on the ground. 

han seojun lays beneath you. 

eyes tightly closed, your head hits his chest. with embarrassment you look up, to find him doing the same. the boy looks more than just shocked. his grip is still steady on your waist, hair messy, gaze on you. 

are you starting to find him attractive?! (a/n: good morning, y/n)

and as you eventually notice the rosiness on his almost pale face, you cough more than just once.

“you just fell for me.”

it seems like it’s the last straw for you, when these words leave han seojun’s mouth with teasing tone.

now your stupid heart rate is speeding up again and you are sure that it’s able to explode any moment. not to mention, the boy beneath you can possibly hear it due to the extreme closeness. 

therefore, you’re happy to come to your senses and stand up swiftly. after seconds han seojun does the same, watching you brush the dirt off your jeans. 

he smiles at the sight of you and for once decides to ignore kim chorong grining like a cheshire's cat.

mission complete.

_

in the next game you have to build groups with four members and stand on a piece of newspaper. the group loses the moment one of their members step out of the paper. 

lee suho instantly tugs at your sweater, asking if you want to be in a group with him. a smile forms on your lips and you nod to his request with joy. sooner than think, soojin approaches the both of you, questioning if she could join you. chuckling you playfully hit her shoulder to show that obviously she could,

“of course! now we only need one more person. how about sua?”

“i think sua wants to stick to her boyfriend.” soojin giggles while observing the couple clutching to each other.

as all three of you look around for a last person to join you, kim chorong pushes han seojun to your direction forcefully, causing his back to hit your own. with a look of puzzlement you turn around.

“sorry, seojun! we’re already four people. you gotta join their group.”,

kim chorong whines in a false upset tone before focusing back to his own group. once again, you fail to notice the grin on his face.

before it can get awkward between the four of you, you indicate them to step on the piece of paper. you wish you could overlook suho and seojun exchanging annoyed looks. it seems like both of them could start a fight any moment. thankfully soojin steps forward, standing between you and suho. 

soon the host starts the game. everyone holds each other closely, your own arm around seojun’s back. you don’t fail to notice a smile appearing on soojin’s face when suho wraps an arm around her, holding her tightly. amused, you try to hold in your laughter but soon freeze on spot when seojun swiftly pulls you closer to his body before you can lose your balance and fall backwards. your own grip on his jacket tightens. both of you look at each other at the same time, taken aback by the sudden closeness. seojun coughs, a faint tint appearing on his ears, and looks away a little too quickly. meanwhile suho looks like he’s about to explode.

in the next round you intentionally squeeze yourself between the two boys, so that they don’t have the chance to throw fists at each other. 

“why does suho ruin my plan!”

further away from you, chorong complains to sua and taehoon. the latter sighs with disappointment while shaking his head,

“i don’t know.”

“it’s almost like he likes y/n.” chorong scoffs sarcastially, eyes focused on lee suho.

but soon shock hits all three of them. chorong and taehoon avert their gazes from suho to look into each other’s eyes in horror,

“oh, no.”

_

the last day at the countryside is colder than usual and remains extremely silent, only sounds of crickets can be heard. that being so you choose to stay in the hotel room, watching tv dressed in jeans and a cozy hoodie. fully prepared for bed, you even removed your contact lenses and wear you specs, hair up in a messy ponytail.

however, the unexpected sight of your two roommates dressed up in their winter coats and combat boots causes you to sit up with surprise written in your face. both sua and soojin do the same when they spot you sitting on the couch lazily. after a short silence with the sound of the tv playing in the background, you finally break the awkward quietness,

“are you two going somewhere?”

“why are you still in those?”

instead of answering your question, sua looks you up and down with a confused expression. reacting to her statement, you push your glasses up your nose, eyes unable to meet hers,

“i thought we were staying in.”

“of course not! we should have fun on our last night.”, soojin chuckles while sitting down next to you, taking your hand in hers.

after nodding understandingly, you return soojin’s smile,

“that’s right. have fun, guys! i think i should stay in.”

before your friend sitting next to has the chance to reply to your decision, sua throws your jacket on your face softly,

“no way! you’re coming with us, y/n.”

removing the piece of clothing from your face, you’re met with sua staring at you with troubled eyes. resigned, you sigh before putting on your jacket which causes both of your friends to cheer. yet, this time you notice sua’s body losing its stiff posture while letting out a huge breath.

_

meanwhile han seojun walks outside with his hands in his pockets, feeling the cold air on his face. a shiver goes down his spine as he passes several students, who seem to enjoy the last night outside at this terrible weather. in fact, the young boy would rather stay in his hotel room if it wasn’t for his stubborn friends, who basically force him to attend the talent show. although, he thinks their several excuses are nothing but ridiculous (”it’s the last night”, “you should sing”, “sneak around in the woods” etc.) he still leaves his room at the mention of you. kim chorong never misses the chance of bringing you up in tangled situations, well aware of seojun’s reaction.

the moment they arrive at the talent show, which takes place near the forest, han seojun instantly spots you a few steps away from his friend group. completely uninterested you stand next to your friends, impatiently tugging at sua’s coat. at this sight of you, dull eyes visible under your specs, a few loose strands of hair falling down from your ponytail, he can’t help but smile at your disinterest. a few seconds ago he was feeling the same way but this changed thanks to your appearance.

minutes pass as everyone waits for the host to appear on the stage. students already found their seats on the floor, absorbed in their own conversations. somehow, chorong finds a way to sit close to you with the help of sua. the boy sits between you and han seojun with relief. moreover, he focuses on being as far away from lee suho as possible. fulfilling his plan, soojin luckily approached suho first, causing the cupid team to achieve their goal.

finally the host makes an appearance on the stage and lists the number of performances before the first group comes into view. seven girls from your grade, dressed in the same shirts and skirts, start dancing to a girl group song. at the sound of nonstop by oh my girl your disinterest disappears suddenly, replaced with excitement instead. to be honest, you really enjoyed this song, although it isn’t really your type.

while the girls are performing, chorong nudges seojun’s side with his elbow next to him, who seems rather bored.

“did you know this song is about someone who crushes on their best friend but is unable to confess?”

chorong’s sudden statement catches seojun’s attention and he turns his head to his friend next to him with a confused face,

“so what?”

“ah, i’m just saying.”, his friend shrugs with a playful pout before focusing back on the performing group.

what’s wrong with him?

before seojun can further question chorong’s odd behavior, his eyes unintentionally land on yours.

“saljjak seollesso nan!” (my heart fluttered a little)

viewing you bopping your head to the song happily causes seojun’s expressions to soften and without knowing his eyes linger on you with admiration.

_

the talent show ends after the last performance. unfortunately the air is even colder now causing many students to rush back to the hotel with almost freezing bodies. unquestionably, you start walking the same way as them, expecting your friends to follow you only to get pulled back.

sua loosens her grip on your jacket when you turn around to face her,

“how about we sneak around the forest, huh? what do you say?”

“forest?”

“apparently it’s haunted. isn’t that crazy?”,

she noticeably grins at you with excitement.

“yeah, that’s crazy.”, uneasily you mumble since you have bad memories with forests.

“come on, y/n! you love adventure.”

eventually you give in and follow sua and taehoon into the woods, still concerned about your decision.

seojun doesn’t seem surprised when his friends appear in front of him as he’s about to return to the hotel.

“let’s go ghost haunting!”

“ghost haunting?” he repeats chorong’s words with a questioning voice,

“forget it. i’m going to sleep.”

“why? are you scared?”

at the teasing tone seojun rapidly reacts,

“scared? me? what do you take me for!”

without having to try harder, the friend group follows seojun into the forest.

_

by some way the woods correspond exactly to your memories from your middle school time. you observe dark tree trunks around you as the moon shines through a lattice of leaves. with every step the undergrowth cracks and you hear the sound of wind slipping through the leaves. breathing in the cold air, you smell the scent of rich earth.

it’s almost like you’re experiencing that certain traumatic moment once again but luckily you aren’t alone.

to the sound of a flutter of wings, sua nervously clutches on taehoon’s coat while holding your wrist in the other hand. abruptly, her boyfriend stops in his track with wide eyes, causing both of you two stumble forward.

“w-what?”

“did you guys see that?” taehoon speaks without averting his gaze from the trees standing a little further away.

sua gulps, “see what? is there something?”

her voice has gotten quieter and more nervous as she follows her boyfriend’s gaze,

“this was supposed to be a mission and now we’re going to die.”

“what mission are you talking about?”

hearing your question, taehoon rapidly turns around to face you.

“nothing.”, he nudges sua with warning eyes before stepping forward,

“it’s probably nothing. do you guys really believe in ghosts?”

although he sounds quite confident, his steps are still cautious and the nervousness on his face is impossible to overlook. with each step, all of you feel your hearts pounding against your chests.

“kim chorong, where the hell are you?” sua mumbles under her breath impatiently, yet so quietly that you can’t understand a single word.

your skin shivers from the cold air and you feel your muscles tightening. trying not to shake, you grip on your friends clothing, waiting for taehoon to check what’s behind that mysterious tree.

and for one second all three of you stand still in complete silence when suddenly a tall dark creature stands not so far away from you. all of you scream in fear at the same time and before you know it you all sprint off to the opposite direction.

your legs move in extreme speed as your heart races in your rib cage. sua and taehoon are in front of you, running even faster with every second passing. frightened, your friend checks behind her and sighs in relief when she sees that you’re still with them.

from there, you run without thinking about stopping. after what seems like minutes your legs give in after you suddenly trip over a bumpy root. a small gasp escapes your mouth the moment you fall down on the slippery earth, wet and dewy leaves sticking on your palms.

without wanting to waste any time, you swiftly look up in hope to see your friends but unfortunately you’re only met with clumps of bushes, tall trees and barely visible black trails snaking through the undergrowth.

standing up, you brush the dirt off your hands and knees. hopelessly, you look around one more time to find someone but unluckily, you’re all alone in the haunted woods. the fact that it’s utterly dark makes everything worse and you try your best to suppress some terrifying memories.

although you’re shocked and frightened, you try your best to remain calm. it’s only a matter of time until you eventually find a way out of this stupid forest and return to your hotel. what could possibly happen to you? the woods are probably safe anyway, considering that the whole story about the ghosts is only a legend.

taking a deep breath, you look up to see stars in glimpses through tree breaks. it isn’t completely dark. seojun would always tell you to look at the moon and the stars when you’re afraid of the dark.

it seems like the track is endless as you walk further into the woods, fog covering your sight slightly. with your arms wrapped around yourself to keep your body warm you continue following the path. the further you go, the more you start to worry about where to go. there is nowhere to go. indeed, you are lost in the middle of the dark woods with nothing but yourself.

a look of concern crosses your face when your knees feel weak, causing you to stop in your tracks. carefully, you approach a random tree next to you and sit down completely exhausted. slowly, you were struggling to breathe normally. nothing but your heavy breathing and the sound of branches moving in the wind could be heard.

fidgeting with your fingers, red from the intense coldness, you try to come up with a way. yet, your head is only filled with memories from the time you were lost in the forest.

you remember every single detail from that night. how you left seojun stubbornly, your body shivering from the cold, dark shadows surrounding you, leaves crunching under your feet and tears streaming down your eyes.

these horrible memories cause you to feel uneasier than you already are and you feel your eyes tearing up.

you’re scared. nothing but fear takes over your shaking body. in this huge forest you are lost and completely alone. wrapping your arms around your knees, you cry quietly, heart beating faster than it should. time passes and you lose track of time while tears run down your cheeks.

out of the blue, a voice echoes through the forest with a worried tone to it. from all the panic and fear, you don’t bother looking up. soon the familiar sounds are easier to hear, pointing out that the person is near to you.

“yah, kim chorong! where are you guys?”

han seojun?

“if you guys don’t come out now i’m leaving without-”

when you’re sure that it’s han seojun’s voice, you look up to find him standing only a few inches away from where you’re sitting.

“y/n?”

han seojun’s shocked eyes find yours in a matter of seconds. the young boy stands there in his leather jacket with worry written all over his face. it hurts him so much to see you in this state and all he wants to do is to hug you.

it doesn’t take him long to squat down in front of you. carefully, he caresses your almost freezing face with his warm hands after brushing your hair out of your face. sadness crosses over his face when he wipes the tears off your cheeks. seojun’s heart aches when you look into his eyes with a mix of fear and relief, teary from crying the whole time.

“are you hurt? what happened to you?”,

he asks with a low tone, eyes never leaving yours.

at this, you squinch your eyes shut, only crying harder than you were,

“i got lost here. all alone.”

usually, you would feel embarrassed to cry or say something like that, especially in front of han seojun. but right now, you don’t care at all. on the contrary, you feel so happy that seojun found you, once again.

eyebrows drawing together, he lifts your chin up to take a better look at you,

“look at me.”

attempting to stop yourself from crying, you look into his eyes.

“it’s over now, y/n.”

“seojun-ah-” you trail off when you notice your voice shaking slightly, still taken aback by the whole situation.

“you’re not alone anymore. i’m with you.”, seojun wipes the last tears away from your face before pulling you in for a tight hug, strong arms wrapping around your figure. you feel relieved when he rubs your back comfortingly.

taking in a breath, you wrap your arms around his body, hugging him even tighter. face resting on his chest, you’re eventually able to calm down as he hums caring words into your hair with soothing voice.

_

fortunately, both of you find a way out of the woods. the whole time seojun held your hand tightly in his to make you feel safe. silence took over both of you, no single word leaving your mouths. now and then his thumb rubbed the back of your hand which helped you calm down.

but it definitely didn’t help your poor heart. instead of slowing down, it only beat faster.

isn’t it strange how seojun is the one who found you again, when you were lost in the woods? what’s even stranger is the fact that you feel differently near him. needless to say, you enjoy finding yourself in his arms. you also liked falling asleep on him in the bus ride.

it couldn’t be...

eventually you arrive at the hotel. eyes darting around your surroundings, you cough shyly,

“we should uh, we should go in now. again, thank you, seojunnie.”

seojunnie?

instantly your eyes widen in horror at the fact that you decided to call him by the nickname you gave him when you were younger. embarrassed, you’re unable to make eye contact and rub your neck before letting go off his hand after mumbling a good night under your breath.

however, before you have the chance to leave, seojun reaches for your wrist and pulls you back lightly. the boy tries to hide his pleasant smile and stares at you. surprised, you wait for him to speak.

“it may be a little too late. it also be not the right time or place to say this. but i just have to tell you that i’m sorry.”

sorry?

seojun notices the frown on your face and continues after taking a deep breath,

“i’m sorry for everything. i’m sorry for treating you nothing like a friend, i’m sorry for annoying you all the time, i’m sorry that i stole your audition and i’m so sorry for telling suho to stay away from you.”

the boy talks nervously, a look of guilt appearing on his face.

“it’s my fault that our friendship ended like that and i should have never done those things. i-i don’t know why i went that far and didn’t question your feelings but... but i just want you to know that i sincerely feel sorry. i’m sorry, y/n.”

utterly absorbed in his speech, you don’t notice him taking a bracelet made out of flowers until he wraps it around your wrist carefully. the feeling of his fingers brushing over your wrist causes butterflies to appear in your stomach.

“i hope you forgive me.”

after putting the bracelet on your wrist, seojun watches you staring at it with a look of surprise. the poor boy feels nothing but nervous standing in front of you, waiting for your reaction. after all, he’s content that he’s finally able to apologize, which took him long enough.

“i do. it’s okay, seojun.”

when you smile at him with happiness written in your eyes, he can’t believe his ears. how can you forgive him so easily? the young boy stands there silently in shock.

“seojun-ah?”

“you forgive me? really?”

hearing his excited tone, you nod while playing with the bracelet, eyes not leaving his,

“i’m happy we’re friends again, seojun.”

abruptly, he pulls you in for another hug, spinning you around,

“i missed you.” he mutters under his breath while you chuckle with amusement,

“i missed you too! but i think i’m gonna fall.”

after putting you down, seojun grins at you with loving eyes, happier than ever.

will he be able to overcome his feelings this time? needless to say, he likes you more than just a friend. but for now, he just wants to be near you again.

“race you to the rooms, zombie.”,

after pinching your cheeks, seojun sprints away. soon you follow him, laughing at the nickname,

“hey! you didn’t count!”

_

to be continued...

[dumdumsun]

The Loveliest Lies of All

A/N: Welcome back ❤️

Warnings: none that I'm aware of

Word Count: 3599

—————————————

Chapter Two: Hard Times at the Huskin' Bee

The chirping of crickets, gobbling of turkeys and the honking of the soaring geese above indicated the morning creeping up on the trio (or quartet?). The sound that accompanied the early morning chat of the nearby animals was Greg blowing raspberries to feed his short attention span. Scout was mildly surprised that Wirt hadn’t yet snapped at him, but then again, the teen boy was skilled at blocking out his younger brother.

For the fourth time in the last hour, Scout’s leg had given out on her slightly, causing her to stumble a bit. What she would give to have a chair, a couch, a bed to rest her wounded leg for maybe half an hour. A full one, perhaps? Maybe even two?

“You know what? I think we’re gonna find a town soon,” She chirped. “I can feel it.”

“Well, we need to,” Wirt sighed, staring up at the sky that rained rays of sunshine upon them. “It’s almost morning. We should’ve found one by now. This is the way the Woodsman told us to go, right?”

“Yes, Wirt.”

Greg blew another raspberry before glancing up at his brother with big eyes. “Have you listened to anything I’ve been saying? For the last couple hours, I’ve been saying… Pbbt! Pbbt! Pbbt-”

“Well, that settles it,” He finally snapped. “I’m gonna walk up ten feet ahead of you.” He frowned and walked past the two. Scout sighed and shook her head at her friend in amusement. She failed to notice the boy stop his walking when he heard a voice call out to him.

“I hear something!”

Scout turned to Greg and started towards him. “Wirt, Greg heard something!”

“It’s probably nothing. Hey, look,” Wirt crouched down in front of a sign nailed to a nearby tree. “‘Pottsfield, one mile’. A town! Let’s go this way.”

“Okay. After this, though.” She turned away from him and joined Greg’s side. The boy had been digging into a bush and talking into it. Behind her, she heard Wirt’s footsteps before he was by her side.

“Greg, stop talking to a bush.”

“Okay.” The boy shrugged before reaching into the bush again. Seconds later, the same bluebird from the previous night flew out of the bush and flapped her wings above them.

Scout widened her eyes at the bird. “You!”

“Thanks! I owe you a favor. So, um, you guys are lost kids with no purpose in life, right?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Um-”

“How about I bring you to Adelaide of the Pasture, the Good Woman of the Woods? She could help you get home!”

As the two boys stared at the bird in awe, Scout narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. She didn’t trust this bird for one second. “Adelaide, huh? How’s she gonna help us?”

The bluebird scrunched what would’ve been her brows. “She has powers.”

“What kind of powers?”

“Powers that’ll get you home.”

“Why can’t she just show us the trail that leads us out of here? And why does no one else seem to know the way?”

Wirt exhaled and waved his hands about. “We don’t need magic talking birds leading us to fairy godmothers in the mysterious- I’m going to Pottsfield.”

“Yes. Pottsfield. C’mon, Greg.” Scout grabbed the boy’s hand and followed behind her friend.

“What about the favor?” The bird called.

Greg turned to her with a bright smile. “I’ll think of my wish later!”

-------------------------------------------------

Scout irritably sighed at the feeling of claws softly digging into her left shoulder. “Hey,” The bird softly started in her ear. “I think we got off on the wrong foot here. What’s your name?”

“Just call me Scout.”

“Wait, seriously? Scout?”

The girl snapped her head to look at the bird. “Wanna get off on the wrong foot again?”

“Whoo, someone is sassy,” She gently tapped her cheek with her wing. “Well, Scout, you seem like a very capable young lady. What if I say… we ditch these goons and you come with me to Adelaide?”

Scout rolled her eyes and batted the winged creature off of her shoulder. “Then I say no. Never.”

Rolling her eyes, the bluebird huffed and flew next to Greg, no doubt attempting to convince the poor boy to ditch his brother and walk off with some stranger. Scout knew that Greg was smarter than that, better than that, so she didn’t bother scolding the bird. Noticing her now flapping above his shoulder, the boy brightly smiled. “So, let’s small talk. My name’s Greg. What’s yours?”

“Beatrice.”

“My brother’s name is Wirt.”

“Who cares?”

Wirt frowned and glanced at them over his shoulder. Scout sighed and shook her head.

“And my frog’s name is Wirt Jr.” Greg gently rubbed his frog’s back. “But that may change.”

“Okay. That’s great,” Beatrice lowered her voice as to not alert the two teens in front of them. “How about you and I ditch your brother and his girlfriend?”

Greg hummed in uncertainty and looked away. “Maybe later.”

Scout nearly tripped over a large pumpkin nestled within the patch they walked through. Wirt didn’t notice this and kept his gaze forward. “So, Scout, you’ll do the talking when we get there. Right?”

Huffing, the girl placed her hands on her hips. “If I must, you big wuss.”

“I-I’m not a wuss! I just- Aha!” He cheered and raised his fists triumphantly, the four now standing just above a town. “Civilization, see? Now-”

Scout tried to warn him, but the teen had walked right into a pumpkin. She watched silently with narrowed eyes as he kicked and wiggled his leg out of the vegetable before flinging it to the side. Regaining his composure, he turned forward and set his fists on his hips. “Alright. Let’s rejoin society.”

The “society” the group had walked into lacked one element. A society. There were plenty of houses littering the land, yet not a soul in sight. Rounding a corner, they walked between two houses as Wirt called out for any residents. “Hello? Hello? Hm… See anybody?”

“No,” Greg scanned the area before his eyes landed on his brother. “Oh! I see you!”

Without gaining the others’ attention, Scout slipped away to check inside the houses. They seemed… cozy. Each house was the same; small, single-roomed, and nearly empty. “These townsfolk need to invest in… well, everything…” Scout whispered as she shut the door to the fourth house she inspected.

“Scout!” Wirt called from beside a haystack. “Find anything?”

“Poor interior design, but nothing to help us.” She sighed before joining her friend at his side. “Where’s Greg?”

As if on cue, the young boy poked his head out of the haystack. “Do you hear that?”

From a barn within the distance, cheerful singing could be heard. Scout gasped and helped Greg out of the hay, frowning at the small pumpkin he must have stepped in a while ago, still on his foot. Shaking off her confusion, she let the boy keep his new shoe and followed Wirt into the barn. Peeking in, the group set their sights on something otherworldly.

The townsfolk- is that what they were?- were pumpkins. Well, their bodies were made of pumpkins, string, and actual clothing like hats. Each person had a distinct face drawn onto their pumpkin face, which sent a chill down Scout’s spine. Within the barn, the folk participated in all kinds of activities. Dancing around a tall string object, bobbing for apples, peeling apples, unhusking corn. The likes. They seemed lively, carefree.

“Oh, pardon me there.” A figure spoke as they shoved themselves between a frozen Scout and Wirt. Turning, one of the pumpkin townsfolk faced the group. “Say, you folks ought to don your vegetables and celebrate the harvest with us.”

“Uh… Oh! You’re wearing costumes!” Wirt realized.

“Well, sure. Pumpkins can’t move on their own. Can they?” He shrugged before walking away. Scout gripped Greg’s hand as she watched the pumpkin man go.

“Huh… Well, good thing you’re still wearing that pumpkin shoe, huh Greg?”

Said boy grinned up at Scout. “Yeah! I’m dressed for the occasion!”

Beatrice blinked. “You guys find this place as creepy as I do, right?”

“Absolutely.”

Wirt shrugged as if to reassure himself. “So, it’s some kind of weird cult where they wear vegetable costumes and… dance around a big thing. They seem nice enough.”

Feeling the hollow eyes of one of the townsfolk on her, Scout absentmindedly shuffled closer to Wirt. “There’s something off…”

“Well, maybe I can find someone here who will give us a ride home,” Wirt patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Scout, watch Greg. Greg, listen to Scout. Beatrice, thank you, but you can leave.” He waved the bird off.

Beatrice sighed. “I can’t leave. I’m honor-bound to help you since you helped me. That’s the- bluebird rules.”

Scout raised a brow as Wirt hummed and walked away. Greg’s eyes trailed up to his tea kettle hat that Beatrice sat upon. “Beatrice, did you know that Scout is the best dance partner ever known to man?”

“Awe, shucks, Greg…” Scout chuckled and let the boy lead her onto the dance floor.

“I’m not dancing with you.” Beatrice snipped, but Scout only grinned.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“It’s too late,” She giggled as she and Greg twirled to the music. “We’ve already started.”

Beatrice rolled her eyes and watched as Greg and Scout joined hands with the frog before dancing in a small circle. The bird noted that there was no way she was going to separate the girl from the young boy. She clearly cared about him, if she was willing to dance around like a fool in the middle of a festival hosted by pumpkin people. And not giving any lip about it, at that. Instead, she threw her head back and laughed joyfully with Greg just before a voice broke out and silenced the entire room.

“Leave Pottsfield?! Who wants to leave Pottsfield?!”

The second the townsfolk began crowding around them, Scout pulled Greg into her side, whipping her head in every direction. Greg, oblivious to the danger, smiled casually. “Oh, are we leaving already?”

“Let’s leave immediately!” Beatrice yelled just before the barn went dark. Someone had shut the doors, trapped them in.

“I’m just trying to get home.” Scout heard Wirt’s shaking voice just before he bumped into her side.

The townsfolk backed the group into a wall of more pumpkin heads and bodies as they whispered out,

“They’re not supposed to be here.”

“Maybe he’s here to steal our crops.”

“To ruin our party.”

“Or take off our pumpkin shoes!” Greg chirped, gesturing to his trapped foot.

Wirt widened his eyes and shook his head. “Uh, no. I, uh-”

A deep voice from above chuckled. “Now, hold on, everybody. Heh. Let’s not jump up to any conclusions.”

It appeared that the tall stringed object had not been an object at all. In fact, it was a body for the most menacing-looking pumpkin-folk in the entire barn. He had to crouch just to peek through the shadows, his face drawn to show a large grin of wide teeth, hollow eyes staring into the souls of the children before him.

Wirt and Scout instantly joined hands out of fear.

“Enoch,” The townsfolk who ratted them out called. “What shall we do with them?”

“Now, let’s see here, children,” Enoch detached two strings from the ceiling to act as his arms. “How’d you end up in this little town of ours?”

In a jumbled mess, Wirt and Scout spoke over each other,

“We needed to get home-”

“We were lost in the woods-”

“Then we saw your farms-”

“And your very interesting houses and thought that this was a normal place to ask for help.”

“And we all stepped on pumpkins!” Greg grinned before Scout shook her head.

“I-I didn’t! I didn’t step on any pumpkins!”

Wirt tightened his hold on her hand. “Yeah! Well… Yeah! A-And then we heard the music from the barn, and well… uh…”

“What if we just left?” Scout tried.

Enoch chuckled yet again, contradicting the very tense atmosphere within the barn. “Now, let me get this straight: you come to our town, you trample our crops, you interrupt our private engagement, and now you wanna leave?”

She blinked. “Well, when you put it like that, it makes us look bad…”

“You’ll never convict! You have no proof!” Greg shouted, almost tripping on the pumpkin his foot resided in.

The same elderly townsfolk walked over to the group, a struggling Beatrice in his hands. “This one’s trying to escape!”

“Let me go!” She cried out. “I don’t know these clowns!”

“Children,” Enoch started. “It saddens me that you don’t wish to stay here with us… particularly because I simply have to punish you for your transgressions.”

“I knew it,” Scout whispered in Wirt’s ear. “I knew they were messed up here.”

Enoch started out his next words in a sing-song tune. “So, by the order of the Pottsfield Chamber of Commerce, I find you guilty of trespassing, destruction of property, disturbing the peace… and murder.”

“Murder?!” The teens shrieked.

“Oh, no, not murder,” Enoch snorted. “But for those other crimes, I sentence you to…”

Scout held her breath.

“A few hours of manual labor.”

And then slowly let it out.

-------------------------------------------------

“Is that the last of it?” Scout asked after plunging her rake into the ground.

“Yup. That’s all the hay.” Wirt wiped a line of sweat from his forehead. “Guess that means we move onto… picking the pumpkins, right?”

“Girl!” A voice shouted out. The group turned to see a townsfolk walking up to them. “Not so fast, young lady. We need you for a special job.”

Scout and Wirt shared a look. “What… kind of special job?”

“We need a scarecrow. Need someone with nimble fingers. Gather this hay here and follow me.”

“Uh, yes, sir.” Scout quickly dumped the pile of hay into a wheelbarrow and pushed it behind the retreating pumpkin figure. She sent a reassuring smile over her shoulder at her friends. This seemed to almost do the job for Wirt, the poor boy wringing his hands together.

“She’ll be fine…”

After picking pumpkins, loading them onto a wagon, and then being bullied by turkeys (this was specifically Wirt), the group minus Scout was directed to the cornfield, baskets in hand. When approaching the clearing, the three reared back at the horrible figure displayed before them.

Its haunting grin stretched across its straw face, gangly limbs made of hay and straw, the body propped on a wooden pole. The top of its head lay open, some hay trickling from it. Beside the scarecrow was a ladder, now being climbed by Scout, who beamed at the boys and Beatrice. “Hey, there!”

“Whoo, that thing sure is ugly.” Beatrice whistled.

“He’s my pride and joy.”

Wirt wordlessly started picking the corn as Greg ran up to his friend. “Scout! I missed you so much! You missed it! The turkeys took Wirt’s hat right off his head and wore it! You should’ve seen the way Wirt jumped all around to get it-”

“Alright, Greg, that’s enough.” Wirt muttered. When Scout cackled, he snapped his head up to her. “Hey, what’re you laughing at? Your scarecrow’s head isn’t even closed! He looks like… like he’s lost his mind! Ha!”

“Stop worrying about my scarecrow and worry about your corn!” Scout pointed at him just before a stalk of corn Greg let go of had smacked the teen in his face. Wirt cried out and fell onto his back. He turned his head to the side to see Beatrice smirking at him. “Hey, guys?” Scout quietly called.

“Yeah?” Wirt turned to his friend, who stared off in the distance.

“They’re watching us like hawks…”

Once their work in the cornfield was finished, the four were sent to a large mass of empty land. Their only instruction: dig holes. Seeing as Greg was a very young and short-spanned kid, Scout took it upon herself to help the boy dig his hole and Wirt dug his own. “Scout?” Greg quietly called out, slightly winded from the work. “What if we find buried treasure?”

The girl hummed. “You think that’s why they’re having us do this? To find treasure?”

“Could be,” He shrugged before gasping. “Wait, that means we’re doin’ all the hard work and they get the pay!”

“The ways of the world, Gregory.” Scout tapped his nose. “But I’ll let you snag some.”

The two shared a laugh before Scout plunged her shovel into the ground, coming into contact with something. “Oh, hey, I found something!” She gasped.

“Buried treasure! Wirt!” Greg called out, catching the attention of his brother and their bluebird companion. “Scout found buried treasure!”

“Whoa, really?” Wirt awed as Scout ducked down to check what she found. “See, Beatrice? What’d you find, Scout?”

Wirt and Beatrice hadn’t expected to hear the girl’s frightened scream. They both flinched at the sound as Scout’s head popped up. “Greg, don’t touch it! Oh, god, get me out of here!”

“What?! What is it?!” Wirt widened his eyes and watched as Scout scrambled her way out of the hole. Greg smiled and shifted his body to reveal the skeleton laying in the hole.

“A skeleton!”

“Don’t touch it, Greg!” Scout warned. “We don’t know who that is!”

Wirt moved back and cried out in fear as Beatrice raised her brows, slightly amused. “We’re digging our own… I-I-I was wrong. I was wrong all along. I-I don’t know how to get us home. U-Use your little feet to pick our locks!”

“Oh, ho! Now you want my help?” Beatrice sassed.

“I don’t want your help-”

“Yes, he does!” Scout shouted. “Beatrice, please! At least get Greg out first!”

Any other words of plea died on her tongue at the sight of Enoch’s form moving towards them from a distance. Wirt whirled back to Beatrice, terrified. “Yes, she’s right, I want your help! Beatrice, serio-”

“Your time is up!”

“Aah!” Wirt screamed at the whole town who now crowded them once again. Scout sank back down into the hole and pulled Greg close. Shaking in his spot, Wirt stared up at Enoch, who only glanced down at the holes.

“Have the holes been dug?” A townsperson asked.

“Uh… yeah.”

“Splendid! Well, then-”

“But no.”

“No?”

Wirt blinked down at his feet before snapping his head back up to the townsfolk. “Right! Yeah… Uh, you know, we were digging, and there were too many rocks. You guys don’t like rocks, right?”

Scout narrowed her eyes as they all agreed with Wirt. “What is he doing…? We need to get out of here.”

Within the next second, Beatrice flew down into their hole, her foot free of its chain. As Wirt continued to babble, she freed Greg and then Scout, the three (plus the frog) booking it out of Pottsfield. By the time they were back in the woods, Scout’s chest burned and her leg pulsed in pain. Leaning against a tree, she sighed out and scanned the area around her. “W-Where’s Wirt?”

“Uh… Back with the pumpkin people?” Beatrice shrugged.

“What- Why?! Did you free him?!”

“Yes! I don’t know what that fool is doing!”

Scout let out a grunt of frustration. “Okay, okay. Just… watch Greg, don’t move. I’ll be right back!” She turned on her heel and rushed back towards the empty field. Cutting through the grass, she found her friend lying on his side. “Wirt!” She whispered.

He whipped his head to her, eyes wide and angry. “Where the heck did you guys go?!”

“We escaped! Why didn’t you?!”

“You guys just left me!”

Scout rolled her eyes and pulled Wirt to his feet, the boy realizing his ankle was free of its chain all this time. Dumbfounded, he let her lead him back into the woods. When he snapped back into reality, he broke into a sprint, eventually making his way to his brother and Beatrice. Bracing his hands on his knees, he took very deep breaths. “Are they chasing us?”

“No.”

He let out one last breath before standing up straight. “I-I thought you guys-”

“You’re welcome.” Beatrice smiled a bit. Wirt bowed his head.

“Thank you… I guess we’re even now, huh? You aren’t honor-bound to help us anymore?”

“I wish,” She rolled her eyes. “But you weren’t actually in any danger with those weirdos.”

Wirt grinned. “Oh, yeah! Then you still have to help us get home!”

“I got it!” Greg picked up his frog. “I wish Wirt Jr had fingernails so he could play the guitar better!”

A beat of silence passed before a voice cut through, “An odd time to tune in.”

The three turned to Scout, who approached them with a limp. Wirt frowned at this. “You weren’t running with me?”

“No, I told you they weren’t chasing us.”

“O-Oh…”

Beatrice hummed and turned back to Wirt. “So… yeah! I’ll bring you to Adelaide. I mean, that’s where I’m going anyway.”

As they began their journey ahead, Wirt wrapped Scout’s arm around his waist to support her. “Oh, yeah? What’re you going to Adelaide for?” The girl asked with a small smile.

“I guess, in some ways, I’m trying to get home, too.”

“That’s vague,” Wirt tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Scout sharply inhaled. “Touchy…”

“Well, I sure hope Adelaide is more helpful than that Woodsman was. I think his directions were… not very good.”

Scout nodded her head in agreement, leaning into Wirt’s shoulder as they continued down the autumn-decorated wood.

—————————————

Taglist: @kirishimas-manly-eyeliner

[bigskydreaming]

In a mood and I’m trying not to be, but oof. Not easy at the moment. Real life stresses are kicking my butt and I’m decidedly limited in resources for addressing that at the moment, so might as well get this off my chest, lol. Already lost the usual fifty followers or so I lose every single time I post about stuff the way I did the other day, so what’s some more, y’know?

So earlier today I tried to get my mind off things with some fic, and happened across one I hadn’t read before that promised Jason and Dick talking things out and bonding. Halfway through I sighed and went oh, this is familiar, and skipped to the bottom to check the end notes and comments to see if there was any mention of this next part, but nope. The reason for the sigh was it took me about halfway into the fic to realize that it was blatantly inspired by my post about what if Jason was missing some memories from his death/resurrection and the Pit, like specifically the ski trip they took, stuff like that. Now I’m not so egotistical as to think nobody but me has certain ideas, but its fairly easy for me to recognize when someone is basing something off a post of mine because of specific turns of phrases that I use and like, they hit ten or so bullet points from my post without missing a one. Like, there’s parallel evolution and similar ideas, and then there’s going down a check list, y’know?

And don’t get me wrong....I don’t mind people basing stuff of my posts, being inspired by them, etc. I WANT that. I’m GLAD to have that happen.

The part I mind is the way this all ties back into my interaction with fandom as a whole....and this fandom’s interaction with me. Which I don’t tend to hear NEARLY as much about as I tend to have people giving me shit about my impact on fandom....but ONLY the negative impact.

In the four years or so that I’ve been active in this fandom, I can think of only three people who have given me some kinda shout out for being the basis of one of their fics. Three people. And in that time I’ve come across literal dozens of fics that I am almost certain can trace their way back to popular posts of mine. There’s the post about Jason’s memories and the ski trip for one - this fic isn’t an isolated occurrence, I’ve found a good half a dozen or so I feel fall into the same pattern. There’s fics based off my posts about how fucked up the blame Dick got for Spyral was, with my certainty based on the fact that I know I’m the only fucking person who ever brought up various key phrases like “Bruce not having an extraction plan for Dick’s highly dangerous undercover op, leaving him stranded when Bruce got/(chose) amnesia.” I made a big deal about that in a few posts because of the fact I NEVER saw that particular element raised in any fics, and a couple months after I started including that bit regularly, I was seeing the words ‘without an extraction plan’ in every other new post Spyral fic. That’s not a coincidence.

There’s been stuff that included bits and phrasings from my post about Dick and Jason being partners who focused on helping kids who had been abused specifically....oh wait, no, my bad. The two fics I’m thinking of there lifted straight up entire lines from that post but just made it about Jason and TIM doing that instead, despite like.....the entire basis of that headcanon stemming from Dick’s juvie origin but whatever. There’s been stuff based on juvie posts of mine, stuff based on posts I’ve made about Mirage, there’s been stuff based on the post about Jason looking into why Dick was undercover as a mob enforcer and then Renegade, there’s been stuff clearly inspired by my headcanons about Jason calling Dick for advice after the Garzonas case. I could go on. There’s a fucking LOT.

I don’t try to give myself too much credit but I’m not unaware of being a loud voice in this fandom and that having an impact. And like I said, I’m not adverse to inspiring people to make their own stuff based off an idea they initially saw me present. That’s fine. People should feel free to do that. My problem is that none of this exists in a vacuum. It exists in a fandom where I regularly get people lecturing me on my presentation, people hyping up how negative I make fandom, my condescension, my anger, my hostility, etc, etc. 

But the thing I never see is any awareness whatsoever that like....dudes, I’m literally just a guy on the internet. And that goes two ways. Yeah, I have an impact on people, but they have one on me too. And I’m tired and frustrated by it being acted like this is a one way street and everyone is just helpless victims of my bullying, while meanwhile SOME OF THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE GIVING ME CRAP FOR MY NEGATIVITY are ACTIVELY adding to their own fics with stuff that I JUST posted about.

And like, I see people vagueblogging about the negativity on their dashes and its impact on fandom right after I have a Dick Grayson rant blow up and get a few hundred notes......but its acted like I DID that to fandom, that’s my negativity and mine alone when its like....y’know, if you’re not following me yourself, and this stuff is still on your dash, you uh....have to be following people who reblog my negative posts for some reason or another. And given that there are obviously reasons you follow THOSE people, maybe instead of worrying about what I’M doing all the time, you can spare a thought or two for the fact that I don’t have any power to make people reblog anything, and for whatever reason, something about my oh so negative post resonated with those people reblogging it onto your dash, which also kinda suggests it wasn’t negative in THEIR eyes, but was actually a kind of validation of thoughts or feelings they already had?

Trust me, there’s no mind control ray at work here. This mood is also brought to you by the cricket sounds that come every time I fucking BEG people to reblog and signal boost posts I make about rape/abuse fandom trends and depictions from my POV as a survivor, specifically. Like I mentioned, I LOSE followers every time I bring that stuff up. It doesn’t benefit me in any way whatsoever, in fact my notes tend to go comparatively radio silent for a good couple weeks after I go off on one of those jaunts, because idk, people don’t want THEIR mutuals and followers to think they agree with some of my oh so controversial stances?

Actually, I say idk, but I do know is the thing, because people actually go on anon and tell me they appreciate me posting stuff like this, and its like.....that....doesn’t actually make me feel good? Because I never expect any single person in particular to reblog me, but when I say crickets after I post on those topics, I mean CRICKETS. I’m lucky if I can get five reblogs on those posts in total, and those are usually all from the same people. It actually kinda sucks knowing that people agree with me and what I have to say there, but they won’t put it on their own blogs because this fandom is so fucking STEEPED in its views, they don’t want to risk their friendships or back-and-forths with certain popular fandom authors by rocking the boat.

Because meanwhile I’m making myself target practice for the people who really would like me to shut up on certain topics but are too cowardly to ever confront me directly about why they dislike what I have to say there, in the vain hope that other people might finally even just START to pass some of that on even for consideration....because I can make waves by myself just by being loud and consistent, but I can’t do shit to actually make CHANGE without other people agreeing in PUBLIC so that fandom is forced to confront the fact that no, certain opinions aren’t just one loud asshole being annoying, there’s an actual viewpoint here that people actually have in greater numbers than we realized and we DON’T have as much of a monopoly on this topic as we thought.

I have anons who give me shit accusing me of driving off certain authors by making this fandom not fun for them anymore, when like, I never even fucking INTERACTED with the authors in question. Some of the names I’m accused of driving off I don’t even KNOW. I’m called an ‘abusive survivor shaming cunt’ with zero irony or self-awareness that they’re literally doing the exact same thing because they don’t like the stance *I* take as a survivor posting about how ‘some survivors use dark fic/rape fantasy to cope’ shouldn’t be treated as a monolithic defense of such things if it leads directly into the same kind of survivor shaming other people view criticism of such fic as being in the first place.

I’ve had to unfollow mutuals because I post about how reblogging posts about purity culture is a direct fucking slap into the face to people like me whose stances on fandom culture are directly based on our own personal experiences and the intersection those have with various popular fandom takes.....like you don’t have to agree with all my takes obviously, but if you can’t see how framing a naive pursuit of ideological purity as the only possible reason people object to certain fandom trends when I’m literally standing right here saying no actually, the way these fandom trends impact me is the reason for me saying the things I say when I say “here’s how this fandom trend impacts me”.....like.....c’mon. 

And I’ve had mutuals unfollow me because despite following me because they liked my takes on social justice issues THEY care about, I just ‘post too much about what’s really just a personal issue’ and has no larger social relevance whatsoever, obviously. LOL. (Oh and this of course has nothing to do with them getting friendly with various popular authors on discord, who happen to be vocal about ‘disapproving’ of any fic criticism whatsoever. Just FYI, there’s a reason I haven’t followed anyone new or made any new mutuals in like....a year. I have my reasons for being....not quick about that).

I get condescended to constantly about not minding the tags, and then radio silence when I list literal examples of ways in which people haven’t tagged things correctly, tagged things at all, or literally used the tags in an attempt TO trigger people they just don’t like. 

And meanwhile, allllllll of this keeps happening while the general narrative is I’m this loud asshole guy with zero concern about anything but his own personal likes or dislikes and who makes fandom a negative place that’s unwelcoming in general. And with basically zero mention of all the ways in which I’ve contributed to this fandom, the amount of content I’ve made that has DIRECTLY inspired people, and the productive conversations I’ve started which have resulted in people actually changing the way they approach various characters or dynamics in fics.

Its THAT part that bugs me, specifically.

Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now.....I’m not anyone’s victim. Negative fandom interactions are negative fandom interactions. All this complaining I’m doing here - lol, that’s all it is. I’m venting. I’m pissed off and I think its relevant to a greater fandom dynamic or tendencies a lot of people unknowingly or consciously reinforce, and so I’m just fucking SAYING it because while its not something I EXPECT this post will do much to change, if at all, I would still like it to change so any effort towards that end is still better than no effort at all...hence, my posting this rather than bottling it up so at least people have it to consider. 

If you don’t agree with it, if you don’t like that it exists at all, if it ruins your day to have to consider whether or not you or people you know or even like are active participants in what someone else is describing as y’know....fairly day-ruining in its own way? Hit that unfollow, that block, that make new text post button of your own and have your own rant about what a douchebag I am.

Literally all I’m trying to express is like.....fa*ndom’s got a lot to say about the stuff I have to say about fandom, but like....this is a two way interaction. A lot of people make a big deal about MY impact (again, JUST the negative though, lol) but I don’t ever see anyone ever addressing anyone else about hey maybe you could spare a thought or two about YOUR impact for a change as well.

I mean, what if....just maybe...what if.....a lot of my behavior or attitude has a lot to do with how people approach or talk about me BEFORE that display of attitude or certain behavior? Weirdly....I feel like maybe something that could then have a transformative effect on the kind of behavior or attitude people dislike from me....is.....them acknowledging or addressing things they might have done to prompt certain responses from me?

I don’t actually like being whiny or negative or down in general, just to be clear? If I see something I have a problem with or think could use change or improvement, I say so - but I pretty much always put an effort into expressing both WHY and HOW I think possible change could look - because I’m not generally interested in being negative for the sake of just being negative. I just....want things to be better. That’s not an obsession with purity or perfection, btw, I will NEVER understand how people think that survivors of rape and abuse (which include a lot more ‘antis’ than anyone else seems to want to acknowledge) and the like EVER expects perfection or thinks that the world will ever produce that - lol no I’m actually pretty clear that things being perfect is pointless, I’m just interested in BETTER.

But I mean, I like being goofy and silly and also analytical and contemplative and also creative and spontaneous. I like lots of things. I like lots of moods. I like producing, creating, generating, interacting, engaging, I like a million things more than I like THIS kind of mood, THIS kind of post.

But I’m just not someone who is content to sit and stew in that sort of thing when I know full well that the problem does not actually stem from something broken or flawed inside of me, because I’m also someone who does believe very strongly in periodic bouts of self-reflection and honest self-assessment.....so that I can change things about myself when and where I feel necessary. But this also has the effect of me also being VERY aware of when the problem is not internal, but actually just me having a perfectly valid reaction or emotional response to outside stimulus. Aka fandom’s interaction with me, every bit as much as my interaction with fandom.

So....posts like this. I’ll do my usual rituals, get myself back onto my preferred trains of thought soon enough on my own, because ultimately that is all I can control and just because I make posts like this doesn’t mean I ever EXPECT any specific result - or a result at all - to come from it. 

But, y’know, sue me for being hopeful.

I know. What an ass am I?

[slater-later]

Clarence x Reader Flirt at the Bar

Audience: General

Warnings: None, flirting

Notes: At Y/N, insert your own name, pronouns, and preferred complimentary words. That way, Clarence uses what you like!

Read below the cuff!

For: @da3m0ns-exe

The two of you had met at an Irish pub a few blocks down the street. Dimly lit under the cheap green ‘chandeliers’, at least, they were trying to be, hanging over a narrow line of booths. A green shamrock sign buzzing in the corner window, listing O’ Conners next to the four leafed sign buzzing beside it.

It was a fine dump, gritty and warm and thick with cigarette smoke. A few old geezers sat at the bar, buzzing back large thick dark beers as they chatted in Greek. It was Detroit after all, and everyone was welcome. The D brought everyone together. And if you had a few bucks to spare, it would make your night worth while. The jukebox buzzed in the corner, firmly set from the 70’s and stacked high with classic 45’s. A quarter would get you two songs, and it would flip through the rest. Buzzing Marvin Gaye’s Through the Grape Vine through the open speakers. There were a few TV’s in the corner of the bar, one showing a Tigers baseball game and the other the racetrack. A chestnut filly bending over the corner and splitting from the pack. Her jockey lit a firecracker from out under her behind as he rode her to the front, cracking his crop as they crossed the finish line. Taking home 50k- something a brod in the corner was upset by. Throwing her hands up as she watched, swearing! Because she had bet the bar that #5 would win. California Folly, the chestnut mare, bit her for the win, and she slapped up her cash to the house. Her buddy chuckled to himself at her anger. The bartender greedily took her cash, smirking, as he slipped it into the cash register. He changed the chalk boards odds for the next race. A commercial flashed across the screen.

It was a bettin’ bar, and it was a Friday night. That meant, the race tracks were on. They even caught the signal from the tracks out West. Meaning people could get drunk and lose their money all night long. At least, far enough into the night to be firmly fucked by 10, and either pissed from losing their money or giddy because they made a decent buck. Either way, it meant the crowd pounded back drinks. The bar took home a load whether it was packed full or filled with crickets. 

Clarence was seated up at the bar, his army jacket slipped off and hanging on his chair. He slowly leafed through his comic, head buried deep in his book. He slowly drank, the rum and coke sitting at the edge of his lips, relaxed and quiet after a long day at work. 

He had closed up shop and came in for dinner, a burger and fries, and read the newest edition of Deadpool in his freetime. He actually had a small stack of them next to them. He had cashed his check and sorted the freshly delivered boxes before he locked up. Making a mental note to pay the old man in the morning- he would stuff the bills in the register tomorrow morning.

The new stuff sold fast, and that was exactly why he needed to make his pick before it hit the shelves. He had to be strategic! Take advantage of the perks of running the store!

You slid into the stool a few spots down, gesturing over to the bartender as he made his way over. He was built, wearing a plain black shirt that hung over his body. A gold chain that hung from his neck. He looked kind and quiet, gentle. He had worked there for several years.

“Whatcha’ having?”

  “Pabst,” You nodded, popping out your wallet.

“Pint or pitcher?”

“Pint.”

“Alright, but they’re $7 until 11.” He collected your cash and made his way up the bar, pouring your drink.

Clarence’s nose was in the comic, one hand holding the bridge of it while the other slowly set down the beer. Reaching out for a fry and mindlessly dabbing it into ketchup before it crawled to his mouth. Slowly inching closer. 

His long and shabby fry broke off, falling into his lap and getting on his jeans. You couldn’t help but to laugh. “You okay over there bud?” The bartender handed you your beer, curling in the glass as you took a sip. The foam made a fine mustache on your upper lip.

“Jesus!” He bit, pissed. He had just gotten to a good spot- he fucking didn’t want to stop! “I don’t know man.” He shook his head, nabbing a handful of napkins out of the dispenser and cleaning his lap. 

He finally looked up as you set down your glass. Catching the side of your face- “I ain’t pulin’ your chain, but ya got somethin’ on your face,” He grabbed another handful, passing it over. “A lil’ on here,'' He rubbed his upper lip, brushing his faint five o’ clock shadow.

You grabbed a napkin from him, quickly wiping it away before you got too embarrassed. Shit happens. “Thanks,” You muttered with a smile, softly laughing. Folding it afterwards and placing it under your glass. 

He nodded, reaching for his comic again. 

You were in a good mood and company always made it better. You had the urge to chat, he was attractive, after all. “So, whatcha readin’?”

He looked over, eyebrows raised. “It’s uh, Deadpool. Issue #7,” He put his thumb on the page and flopped it over to the front. Reaching out his arm to show you the cover. “It’ll hit the shelves tomorrow.”

“How’d you get your hands on that?”

“Oh,” He flashed a guilty smile. Caught. “I work at the comic book store down the street, this is next week's issue,” The cover showed Deadpool stepping forward, gun in hand, his red and black latex suite dressed with a heavy white jeweled overcoat and flashing plants. He was wearing the iconic Evil Presley suit, black wig and sunglasses and all. Finger-pointing at a very unpleasant Cable, probably cursing Wade for being alive. Or was it that he can’t die?

“It’s the new Deadpool and Cable issue. It’s a new series they’re doing, do you wanna look?” He offered it and you happily accepted. Taking your time as you flipped through the pages, reading the inside insert. The introduction.

He rattled on, “It’s not as good as some of his other series but then I saw the front cover. I wanted to grab it before we ran out. I’m a big Elvis fan,” He smiled softly. Watching you read.

“Oh?” You peered up, raising an eyebrow. A hook- Elvis wasn’t exactly your man, but it didn’t deter you. “Is he your favorite?”

He beamed as he sipped his glass, nodding as the glass left his lips, setting it down on the wet napkin. “Favorite? It doesn’t begin to describe how much I love that man,” He could rattle on for forever. Even blab again about how much he wanted to fuck Elvis. But, usually, that wasn’t the most widely loved small talk conversation? He was better off tabling that conversation for a later time. Unless he wanted to blow his chance when flirting with a hot person. A man needed to get lucky sometimes, alright? Sheesh, he didn’t think some bisexuality was a bad thing. Isn’t that, a, you know? A sexual fantasy for some folks?

He drilled a finger into the side of his temple, elbow up on the bar as he watched you. How your feet shifted in your sift as you curled up closer to him, leaning in, tenderly turning the page of a secretly, newly loved comic. Mashing up the two things that made him bounce up and down with pure excitement. He was delighted.

“I’m a huge fan, I’ve always been since I was a kid. My dad used to listen to him while I was growing up, and I’ve had the itch ever since. He changed rock n’ roll forever, for the better,” He would watch old tapes of his dancing and performing on stage, having become familiar and comforting to his body. It was something he could return to, regardless of how he felt, and know he felt comfort in.

That, and watching him dance up on stage was light lightening. A friend and a lover.

“What’s your favorite song?” You smirked, flipping a page. You were more interested in his eyes than the panel. Wondering if he had caught on. 

He slid from his seat to the one next to you, dragging his beer along with him. The bartender snapped up his long forgotten dinner. Wiping down the table. “Do you mind?” He gestured to the seat, checking in.

“No,” You shook your head smiling, your delight so easy to read. “Not at all,” You swore you could feel your heart skip a beat. Your body felt fresh, warmed by the flash of heat spreading through your cheeks. You hoped another drink of your beer would help, at least to calm the giddy building up inside of you.

You would cut yourself off at two beers. At the rate of your drinking, you’d been in the hole after three. Too drunk to drive and by the soft patter of the rain outside, you didn’t want to be stuck in the rain. Trying to wave down a cab as it poured, head buzzed and tired, ready to flop down in your bed and forced to make it back. Getting fucked up was fun, but getting home could be a challenge.

  The thought already sounded miserable. You’d much rather be here, with the jukebox, under the warm hum of the bear and its speakers. It switched over to You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine by Lou Rawls. 

“Good,” He smiled with a surprising amount of soft charm. Voice low as his pinky mused with his lip, eyes slow as they took in your body. 

He had to look away. 

FUCK! It wasn’t polite to do that shit, he was either going to get a drink thrown in his face again or something!

He kept his eyes up at the bar, tongue flashing across his teeth as he chuckled to his mind. He could be so fucking stupid! This Y/N was going to beat him. 

He fisted for his cigs in his flannel pocket, offering you one.

Okay, this guy was an idiot, but a cute one.

“Thanks,” You took a cig and slipped it between the side of your lips. Grabbing  your lighter in your coat pocket, prepared as a common smoker should. You lit both of your cigarettes.

“So, you didn’t answer my question,” You shot, releasing a draw downward. 

He snapped it out of his mouth, square in hand as he shook his head awake. “Shit, what was it again?” He laughed, he was losing his head around you. You sucked all the smarts out of his brain.

You elbowed him lightly, amused. “What’s your favorite Elvis song?”

He paused for a moment, getting his mind in gear. Quickly shuffling the different songs on his head- “Hound Dog, and then Blue Suede Shoes, and All Shook Up,” It was the fast, catchy beats of Elvis’s drawl that got him. The electricity that he exuded, that made him want to dance and grab the hand of a friend, a stranger, even an old person! 

It made him want to boogie to the music.

You snickered, he hit right on the money. Damn, this guy had taste. Of the few you knew well, those were it. “Where does Jailhouse Rock rank?”

“8th,” He said clear as day, pointent. It was clearly not his favorite, but a hot contender. He had, in fact, listened to every single god damn song Elvis had published. Including the Hawaiian soundtrack album, which was a partial wash. He thought Elvis was at best when he was shaking it for a crowd, not trying to play at movie making. Yet, it hadn’t stopped him from consuming them all. “I paused not because I didn’t have a top three, but because…” Shit, he got himself in a hole? Wasn’t he playing the ‘cool guy’ really well?

“Because?” You flicked into the ashtray, bringing your arm in for a draw. Raising your eyebrows at him as you drew, feeling the air.

“Because I was thinking about you,” He slipped both elbows on the bar, facing forward towards the line of liquor and head turned towards you. Smirk painted on his lips, shameless in his expression, “You’re very Y/N.” He smiled, eyes stilling on you as they peered into yours eyes, then passed down your shoulder. “And I don’t normally get to talk to a Y/N like you.” Usually, they either weren’t interested in talking about comics and Elvis. So, what was there to talk about? Stupid small talk they he didn’t know much about? It was much harder, trying to find a Y/N with similar interests.

Your face felt warm again. You finished off the rest of your drink. Quenching your fuzzy head with the sharp inhale of nicotine, trying to peel the flush off of your cheeks. You couldn’t hide it- his soft pink lips looked beautiful when they moved. Especially when they were saying such sweet words.

You slicked a hand across your face, hiding the bite of your red cheeks, “How about we get a booth in the corner? And you tell me a bit more about yourself?” It seemed like a good idea. And it would give you a moment, to collect yourself, before continuing your chat.

You raised a hand to the bartender. He turned and you held up two fingers. A pint for you each. 

“Hmph!” His spiky eyebrows peaked up, elated. “Sounds good to me!” He snickered, collecting his stack of comics and waiting for the drinks to come. You two stepped to the back to back of the bar, sliding in next to each other at the dark spot in the room. A place, where neither of you would be bothered. Holed up, until the bar closes, chatting about sweet nothing while you got to know each other. Maybe get, caught in the rain together, under his umbrella. Before turning in, to his apartment. 

It was, in fact, closer than your apartment.

[wherethewordsare]

Fire Lizards and Flirting

I wrote some self indulgent fluffy nonsense cause i’ve had a shit week. This was supposed to be a drabble... tell me how I ended up with over 1400 words. 

I just wanted Geralt to do science... enjoy?

------

Geralt preferred the field work to the lab work. He hated sitting there, plugging numbers into the sheets, having to answer emails, and dealing with the office supervisors. So when the chance to do the ecological survey along a particular stretch of the Appalachian came up, he moved heaven and earth, and four reams worth of documents to get the assignment. 

He and Roach had pulled into the empty lot at the head of the trail, early that morning. Roach gave a soft “boof” as she knew what came next. 

“I know, I know. I’m moving as fast as I can.” Two giant paws pressed against his shoulder followed by another boof as Roach’s whole body seemed to vibrate. “You don’t think I’m excited too, huh?” Geralt rolled his eyes as he climbed out of his truck, moving just in time as Roach leapt the center console and bounded out the door. 

Geralt let the huge dog make her little circles around the truck, her whole back end wagging as she did. This. This was exactly why he preferred field work to being in the lab. He answered to no one but an overly affectionate great dane. 

The trail was easy enough, sloping down towards the river with lazy winding cut backs. He made note of the small rivulets that cut down the side of the hill and stopped a few times to check out the rot in logs, taking samples when he remembered to. He was nearly to the river, the sound of water over rocks steadily growing louder when he realized that it wasn’t the only sound. 

He called Roach to him, having her walk closer as they made their way down to the bank. Geralt had seen some pretty strange things in his years of ecological study, but the man standing in the center of the river with what Geralt would bet good money on was a lute, strumming softly was something he still wasn’t sure he was seeing. 

Roach saw him too though. Giving an excited bark, she took off, splashing into the water. The man that had been standing on a smooth rock turned quickly in surprise; too quickly. Geralt watched as he lost his footing, tumbling down into the water, Roach bounding after him happily.

“Shit, fuck, damn, fuck! ROACH!” Geralt was dropping his pack and peeling out of his over shirt as he ran in after the dog and the man who had fallen. He was sitting up now, the water shallow in this stretch,  pushing a soaking mop of hair out of his eyes, spluttering as Roach attempted to climb into his lap. 

“No no no… Oh no, I am so sorry. She is… harmless! But… very… Roach, down! Very friendly. Far too friendly.” Geralt tried to wrestle the dog away from the sopping musician who, in the struggle, slipped back into the water, coming up coughing.

Not coughing. Laughing. Hard, his head tilted back as he looked up at Geralt, striking blue eyes blinking away river water. “Sir… I believe you’ve lost control of your horse.” 

“Uh.. great dane, but close enough.” 

On cue, Roach gave a happy boof and sat on the rock that she had just knocked the man from. 

“Proud of yourself, are you?” Geralt grumbled affectionately. “Please excuse her. She was raised by wolves.” He offered down a hand and tried not to get completely lost in those eyes. 

The man took his hand and let himself be pulled up from the water, giving his head a shake. “That’s okay. No better cure for the blues than a lap horse in the middle of nowhere followed by a tall handsome stranger.” He flashed Geralt a smile that was competing with the sun to be the brightest thing lighting up the riverbed. “Did you call her Roach?” The man tilted his head as he shook water from his lute. 

“It’s a fish.” Geralt said flatly, scowling. 

“Jaskier.” The man, Jaskier, held out his hand chuckling softly. “That sweet girl is an absolute queen and you named her after a fish.” Jaskier was having a go at him but there wasn’t anything unkind about it. 

Taking his hand, Geralt raised an eyebrow. “Geralt. Well, she swims much better than some musicians I’ve seen. I think it’s apt.” He had to bite the inside of his lap to stop from grinning wide at Jaskier’s overly dramatic noises of shock. 

“I will have you know, I am a fine swimmer when I haven’t been snuck up on.” Jaskier puffed his chest up but the effect was immediately ruined when his teeth began to chatter. 

“Shit. Let’s get you dry.” 

Geralt helped Jaskier to shore, carrying his lute and reaching into his backpack for the absorbent towel he always carried for when Roach got into water. She would have to drip dry this time. There was a stretch of open grass along the bank and Geralt decided it was as good as any place to stop for lunch. 

“Why are you out in the middle of a river with an actual lute? I haven’t seen one of these since college.” He handed the towel and the lute to Jaskier who began to work the towel over the soundboard with practiced fingers. 

“Well if you must know,” he seemed to wince. “Getting over a bit of heartbreak.” Geralt’s face must have done something because Jaskier just shook his head, huffing. “Oh nothing like that. There was a competition and I was robbed, is all.” He scowled at nothing in particular before giving a put upon sigh. “Honestly, there is no accounting for tastes these days.”

Geralt bit down on the inside of his lip again, looking away to hide the amused raise of his eyebrows. “Well from what I heard before Roach took you out, you sounded great.” He looked down just in time to see the dark tail retreat under a flat rock by their feet. “Would you care to meet a Desmognathus ochrophaeus?” he reached down, one hand cupped as the other lifted the rock. 

“I… bless you?” Jaskier tilted his head, confused. 

“Or the Allegheny Mountain dusky salamander. It’s why I’m out here.” Geralt gave him a small smile as he opened his hand, revealing a sleek little body with beady little eyes. “I’m surveying indicator species in the area and picking up some water samples.” he held up the wriggling salamander gently between his fingers, turning it this way and that as he checked for signs of sickness while holding it up for Jaskier to see. 

As he held it up, it turned its head, biting down onto Geralt’s thumb. “Ah, shit.” Geralt laughed as he pulled a notebook out. “Got a fighter on our hands. That’s a good sign too.” He knew he was doing that thing Eskel was always getting on him about with the critters. Roach laid out next to him, her tail thumping heavily on the ground as she huffed. 

Jaskier was looking at him with his head tilted and his eyes soft. “And why is that?” Geralt was used to people mocking him for his enthusiasm for this job. There were very few things he found himself able to really talk about admittedly. But there was nothing but curiosity and a fondness that had Geralt suddenly a little self conscience. 

“Well most of these are common as crickets,” Geralt indicated the salamander with a tilt of his hand before releasing him back into the grass, “so they’re usually easy to find if you know where to look and if they’re healthy, then the river usually is too.” 

“So you just walk around the woods all day with your horse-dog, cooing at fire-lizards and knocking poor unexpecting gentlemen into rivers. For science?” Ah there was the teasing. Geralt found he didn’t mind it terribly.

“Amphibians. I’m not sure why they’re called fire-lizards. They’re neither made of fire nor are they lizards.” Geralt went digging into his pack, fishing out a couple of apples. He turned to find Jaskier pulling his shirt over his head and he nearly dropped them on the ground. 

There was something about the line of his shoulder that made Geralt want to throw himself into the river. 

“They sleep in logs.” Jaskier said, wringing out his shirt. He gave a small shiver and tilted himself so the sun fell across his back. 

“I… what?” Geralt knew he sounded distracted. He was distracted. 

“Back in the days before central heating, in the winter people would bring in firewood. The salamanders would be asleep in them and wake up from their winter naps to find their little hiding places on fire. What would you do?” Jaskier laid his shirt over the log between them, reaching down to tug off his sneakers. “So all they would see were these little lizards appearing from the flames and running around. It just kind of stuck, I guess.” He was twisting his socks up when he looked over at Geralt. “What?”

“I… who are you again? I find you, in the middle of nowhere, there’s no other car in the parking lot, in the river, with a lute…” In the back of his mind, Geralt remembered the old stories about Fae his father would tell him and his brothers. 

“Well, if you must know,” Jaskier turned to him fully, smiling. “My mother, and only my mother calls me Julian. My friends call me Jaskier, and my students call me Mr. Pankratz.” He squinted up the path that Geralt had come from and hummed. “You took A lot. There’s a second parking lot from over there,” he pointed down the bank on the other end to where Geralt could see the start of a cleared path. So, promise, not a witch or ghost or what have you.” The teasing was back and it went along with the kind of smile Geralt could get used to. 

Fuck. Might as well…

“And… What do your dates usually call you?” he was busying himself with rummaging for a water bottle. 

Jaskier laughed, his grin growing wide. “Why don’t you ask me and find out.”

@jaskierswolf @artistsfuneral @thetinymm

[justasparkwritings]

Codename Cupid: Chapter 23

Previous: Cricket & OT7, Return to Sender

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x OFC

Genre: Secret AgentAU, Government AgentAU, Angst, Some Fluff

Rating: PG15

Word Count: 4.7K

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of Consensual Sex 

Summary: Black Panther & Codename Cupid meet, Golden Maknae & Black Panther attempt to find a solution 

OR 

What happens when you're confronted with an undeniable lie you've been telling for nearly a year?

(like ... it’s hella long and I only love like... part of it) 

Codename Black Panther Meets Codename Cupid  

Present Day

           It’s awkward, sitting in your office knowing a team of high level, highly intelligent men sit no more than a block away, surveying your every move. Taehyung and Jimin are in their truck, the bugs they’d planted months ago still in use, their sight line into my office unobstructed. So what do you do when you’re under surveillance? No more rapping Childish Gambino at the top of my lungs, no more dancing to ABBA when I’m tired of sitting… No more pretending to work and billing hours when I’m reading conspiracy theory blogs. No more making out with Jungkook when he stops by or whispering filth into his ear when our temperatures are escalating and the need for each other surpasses the need for air.

           I have to remind myself what the most important aspect of being under surveillance is: Act like you aren’t.

           Cupid enters my office in what I can only describe as a knockout outfit, head to toe Chanel, complete with a Birkin and what I can only assume are Hermes sunglasses. She looks stunning, more so than usual.

           “Euna, so good to see you,” I say, gesturing for her to sit. She glances at the chair and shakes her head.

           “For how much I pay you, you should be able to afford nicer furniture,” She hums.

           “Can I get you a water?” I ask, the anger attempting to pull my smile from my lips.

           “Please, Pellegrino?”

           “Yes, lemon and regular,” I inform her.

           “Lemon please,” She says. Cupid takes her sunglasses off and waits patiently for me to return.

           “We have a few updates to discuss,” I tell her. “I have done a little more research on the –

           “I came here to tell you that I will no longer be needing your service,” Cupid interrupts.

           “I’m sorry, have I done something?” I ask, surprise willingly seeping through my features. “I know we had a tense conversation the last time you stopped by, but I didn’t think you wanted me to stop my work.”

           “I have done some digging on my own and have come to the conclusion that it’s incredibly unprofessional of you to engage with Jeon Jungkook in a manner that is far more than casual lovers. He is not who he says he is, and I will not have you investigating your own boyfriend.”

           “Euna, how do you know?”

           “I have my sources,”

           “I thought I was your source,” I counter.

           “You are,”

           “Then, who else are you working with?” I ask again.

           “That is not for you to know,”

           “Okay, but you are clearly mad at me, or frustrated with me, specifically regarding my love life, which is not up for discussion. I want to fix whatever is causing this, but I can’t do that if you don’t tell me.” My voice reaches the gravel pit my Speech Therapist told me is unhealthy, ravaging my vocal cords. I can’t tell what her end game is, but I know mine.

           “I do not feel comfortable with him being near my family and being with you means he is. I won’t associate with someone so…,” Cupid scolds me, unable to finish her thought. “Further, I believe you have gone above and beyond what I initially requested, and I am satisfied with the work you have done.”

           “Why is my relationship with Jungkook so-

           “You have love in your eyes,” She says. I gnaw at the dead skin of my bottom lip. “You are no longer leading this investigation with a clear head, and I need someone whose mind isn’t filled with hope to get to the bottom of this. However he knows them, Jeon Jungkook is dangerous.”

“If you tell me, I can ensure he isn’t. We’ve been together for a while, Euna, he isn’t, he isn’t whatever you think he is,” I could easily be lying, in this moment, I have no idea who Jungkook is.

           “Be careful, Y/N, you do not know what they’re capable of.”

           “Euna,” I start again. How does she know he knows them? What intel does she have that I so clearly do not? “What are they capable of?”

           “You don’t want to find out. Here is your last check, bonus included for your exceptional work. I do have one request.” Cupid stands, slipping her shades back over chocolate eyes.

           “Okay?” I ask, standing to mirror her.

           “Burn it all,”

           “Burn it?”

           “Whatever documentation you have from my time working with you, it would be in your best interest to burn it,” Euna chooses her words carefully, a trait of being a CEO. I swallow thickly, nodding my head.

           “Okay, and Euna?” I ask.

           “Hmm?”

           “I’m sorry this wasn’t everything you wanted it to be, and that I couldn’t find Yoongi,” I concede.

           “Oh, don’t apologize. I would be a terrible businesswoman if this was the end of my plans.” Replacing her frown with a gentle smile, she walks towards the door. “When you see Min Yoongi, tell him I’ll be waiting.”

           “What makes you think I’ll be seeing Min Yoongi?”

           “Oh Y/N, I have a little faith.”

           I watch her leave and decide that banging my head against a wall regarding what Cupid knows and I don’t is worthless. I guarantee Namjoon has another file waiting for me with all the answers to the questions he’s assuming I’m going to ask. He isn’t wrong, I do have a million questions, ones for Jungkook, ones for Namjoon, about nine million for Yoongi, and a few for Jimin. Yoongi was so smug, arrogant, rude, a complete ass hole. I hate him. But I also deeply respect his game. I also completely understand why Jun-Seo fell for Jimin, he is by far the most gorgeous man I have ever seen up close, next to Taehyung. And Jungkook. In person? Holy fuck, Park Jimin can fucking get it.

           Speaking of the man in question, who is now a suspect to Euna, is waiting patiently for me when I come home. Jungkook’s not stalking in the darkness, slinking through the night to find me, catching me off guard once I close the front door. He’s silent in his approach, waiting patiently for me. But tonight, either in an effort to smooth things over or out of the pure goodness of his heart, he’s home. He’s got takeout waiting on the table, glasses of water and booze sitting in the appropriate places, necessary silverware set in place. This isn’t fucking Thanksgiving, it’s a goddamned Thursday night. He himself is waiting patiently on the couch, lying down, eyes closed and soft snores coming out of his mouth. He looks cozy in ripped jeans and a sweatshirt, his hair growing long again, bleached, a look I was thoroughly against until I laid eyes on him.

           Walking. Sex.

           That’s the only way I can describe him.

           “Go home,” I purposefully slam the door, jolting him from his slumber.

           “I am home,” He responds.

           “I can’t do this with you,”

           “We need to talk,” he sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes.

           “I don’t want to talk right now, JK, I want to go to sleep,”

           “JK?” His eyebrows raise to say hello to his hairline.

           “Yes, I don’t want to talk, go home.”

           “Cricket, you haven’t eaten dinner yet,” He reminds me.

           I can feel the tears prickling again, the ones I’d shed in front of OT7, the ones I’d born in the car, the ones I’d been bottling up for the last thirty-six hours, trying to not be so obviously heartbroken as I stared Lee Euna down. I’m too sad to fight him, so I don’t, letting him stand and guide me to the table where the Thai awaits. Dropping my bag down, I walk through to my bedroom, into the bathroom and shut the door.

           “I’m showering first,” I call, ignoring the protest in his eyes as I walked away.

           It’s a little too spot on to blast Adele, but I don’t fucking care. I turn it as loudly as my neighbors will tolerate and sing my sorrows. Tears mixing with cleanser, the poetry of their juxtaposition not lost as Adele fades into Ben Platt, and I’m sobbing as I release the words, noticing the magnitude of the change of phrase:  

Now my heart is in your hands, please don't give it up / This is not a temporary love / This is not a temporary love / No, this is not a temporary love / Now your heart is in my hands, please don't give it up

           I know Jungkook will be waiting for me to finish showering, and I know he’ll be ready to listen. He’ll beat himself up over whatever I say, he’ll listen when my voice raises, when it cracks, when it shakes. He always does. I guess that’s the thing about Jungkook, no matter how inexperienced he feels about loving someone, taking care of them, supporting them, he always does it and does it well. He shows up, even when he feels like he can’t. It’s been over a year, never once have I doubted his dedication, his steadfast love, not when he walked into the meeting with OT7, or when he tried to follow me after, or in the voicemails and texts he’s left since. I’ve never doubted Jungkook.

           I shuffle from the warmth of my bathroom towards the kitchen table, where Jungkook is sitting.

           “I reheated your plate,” Jungkook says. He’s sitting quietly, eyes full and downcast.

           “Thanks,”

           “Do you want to eat then talk, or talk first?” He offers the two options, knowing which I’ll pick.

           “Eat,” I sit across from him, noting how he placed my food as far from him as possible, a notable decision that not only highlights how deeply he knows me, but that he still fucking cares. “You ate already?”

           “I, yeah, I couldn’t wait,” He’s shy, a blush on his cheeks.

           “Why? You always wait,”

           “I’ve been on a small mission for the last twenty-four hours, no food, and I’ve been so anxious about us that I just… Seeing you just made all that stress disappear, so I ate,” Jungkook tells me. He sniffles, his tears starting to fall.

           “A small mission?”

           “Mm, to find out what happened to Bow and Arrow in 2012 and 2014 respectively,” He answers.

           “Did you find out?”

           “Yeah, but, well, you haven’t been onboarded. But one of our rules is that you don’t discuss work outside of headquarters,”

           “Right, sure, makes sense,” I nod. I glance at him again, nose red, tears still falling. “I can’t eat if you’re crying.”

           “I’ll sit on the couch,” He stands and shuffles towards the grey clothed piece I scrimped and saved for. It’s beyond worn out, pills of fabric piled on the edges of cushions, stains from mishaps and craft projects I should’ve done at the table. It’s housed many naps and a few guests. Jungkook looks nestled amongst the pillows.

           I eat my food quietly, trying to figure out what it is exactly that I want to tell him. I’m not entirely sure I know what will come out of my mouth when I have to stare into his Bambi eyes. But I think I know what will come out of his, and I don’t want to hear it.

           “I’m sorry,” Jungkook starts. The dishes are cleared, and he’s waiting patiently for me on the couch. I don’t sit down, just stare at the spot above his head.

           “How long have you known?” It’s better to just rip the bandage off, right?

           “Four months,” Jungkook answers.

           “How long have you known Jimin?”

           “Eight years. How long have you known about my connection to Jimin and Taehyung?”

           “A year,” I whisper. My sin seems far worse than his.

           “A year?” Jungkook’s astonished. “You’re mad at me for a few months that were direct orders when you’ve been what, suspicious for a year?”

           “You lied to me, fundamentally lied about who you are, I asked you for one fucking thing in this relationship, and you broke it.” I yell.

           “Technically, you asked me two things, and I have followed through on both of those.” Why is his voice measured? Why doesn’t he yell when I yell?

           “You lied!” My voice rises another octave, “What was your goal, to perpetuate the lie for as long as possible?”

           “I had a job-

           “I had a job!” I counter.

           “My job requires me to do certain things without asking,” Jungkook’s tears continue to fall. “I asked if I could tell you, and I told you what I could.”

           “You spied on me, gave all my evidence and –

           “I didn’t spy on you,” His teeth are gritted, bunny smile lost to the nasty snare he’s tightened across his lips.

           “Your friends spied on me,” I correct myself.

           “You spied on my friends!” Jungkook countered.

           “Your friends? The men that until two days ago I didn’t know were part of a giant governmental body that’s going to take down the largest conglomerate in the world? Who even are they? Who the fuck do they work for? What the fuck do they even do? I didn’t know you could be a secret organization without like, the federal government or Interpol knowing who you are but to my surprise, you can!”

           Jungkook rolls his eyes, it’s aggressive and sharp, seeing his entire brain as they roll. “I had to lie. You, you knew and didn’t say anything. Why not say something?”

           I sigh, I can tell him why I didn’t say anything, but I can’t tell him why I didn’t say anything. You know?

           “I had no real proof that you really knew them,” I begin, “all I had was a hunch, a reaction they had that made it seem like they knew you. I put a few pieces together, but I didn’t have any real evidence that would hold up in court or against your withering stare. And, what if you were dangerous? OT7 is dangerous, you all could’ve hurt me. Why couldn’t me hiding it be about my safety?”

           “You’re grasping at straws. If you had thought I wasn’t safe to be with, you wouldn’t be here a year later.”

           “Tell me this, Jungkook, why, in front of all of your best friends, did you fucking let Namjoon tear me to pieces? Why, Jungkook, did you not say anything when you were left off my list of romantic partners? Do they not know about us? Do they not know you, we, love each other? Is this not what I thought it was?” Ah, and there the tears are.

           “I wanted to be off the list,” He whispers.

           “Why Jungkook? From where I’m standing, it fucking feels like you’re trying your hardest to erase me, like, like this almost year and a half that we’ve been together means nothing because I’m just a god damn mark. Is that what I am? Have I been reduced to that?”

           “No!” He stands and shakes his head repeatedly.

           “Then who am I to you? Am I your girlfriend? Am I your best friend? Or am I a piece in a larger puzzle that you are trying to solve?” I demand, pausing minutely to gasp for air. “I know what you are to me, I know how I feel about you. All my feelings have done in the last year is grow. I love you more than I did last week, I care about you more deeply than I did when you told me about how you were raised, a slight lie, but still honest. I see us, our life together more clearly than I ever have, but two days ago I.” I let the tears fall, pulling my mascara, never waterproof, and eyeshadow down with them. “I looked like the fool. I was the little girl attempting to play dress up with the fucking Tony Award winning cast of Catch Me if You Can. So, if I’m not the butt of the joke to you, who the fuck am I Jungkook?”

           He wipes his eyes on his sleeves, which have covered his hands and are balled beneath his fingers. I’ve never seen him this upset. I know I’m not prepared for what is going to come out of his mouth.

           “Namjoon tells people that we’re the one who knocks, but we aren’t. We’re the ones who send in the team to knock, we call all the shots, gather all the data, work the case until it is made out of marble. There are no cracks unless we have intentionally left them. We work as a unit, I don’t breathe without Hoseok knowing. I don’t brush my hair without Jimin catching it. We exist because of each other.” He sighs, “I took myself off the list on purpose. Your existence in my life is a threat. People know who I am, and if they know you…”

He shakes his head, a flash of what I experienced a few weeks ago, the idea of not coming home to this, to us… It’s in his eyes and it’s breaking my heart.  

           “I know we can keep you safe. I have full faith that our team will always protect you, but if I’m on that list, if there’s a trail of me to you, or vice versa. We’re at risk. I cannot, and I will not, lose you. I will not let my work put your life at risk, I will not sacrifice myself if it means I won’t come home to you. At the end of the day, isn’t that our promise to each other? I love you, and I am so sorry I lied to you, but my hands were tied. I can’t step out of line without risking everything OT7 is and does. I won’t do it.”

           “I’m not asking you to be a coward,” I whisper.

           “What?” Jungkook asks, for the first time in a few days, his eyes are softening, confusion replacing hurt.            

           "In Charmed, Phoebe asks Cole to back down, and he responds by saying he would do anything for her, except be a coward. He begs, please don’t ask me to be. I’m not asking you to be a coward, Jungkook.”

           “I know you’re not. I asked Namjoon if I could tell you, about my job,”

           “I remember,”

           “I didn’t give specifics about who you are. I didn’t tell OT7 because I didn’t want you to be used in this case, I didn’t want this to be happening. But I walked into the offices and there you were, your photo, your stats, your codename,” A shiver runs over my spine at the mention of a codename, something so intentional, deliberate, precise. They’d taken the time to include me. “I didn’t know that Jimin and Taehyung had been following you for months or had interacted with you. They asked me point blank and I couldn’t lie. I wouldn’t lie about you, you’re too important. Namjoon gave me orders, and I’m obligated to follow them.”

           “You lied to me,” I repeat.

           “You lied to me, too.”

           I stare at him, I don’t know how to fix this.

           “We don’t have to forgive each other, or understand one another or work through it, now or ever. But I think that would be a disservice, a betrayal, of our relationship. You did ask me who you are to me, and the best way to explain it is this,” He grabs a paper off the coffee table and hands it to me, “Namjoon had me write it down.”

           Cautiously I take the paper from him, typed and unedited, it’s longer than I expected. “Is this a twisted love letter?”

           “You could say that,” Jungkook’s soft smile returns.

           “Read it to me,” I hand it back.

           Sniffling, “I’ll keep crying,”

           “Please?” I ask again, sitting on the couch. He nods gently and sits next to me.

           “Can I hold your hand?” He asks. The flames have been handled, dulled to hot embers as we sit, thigh touching thigh, his tattooed covered hand engulfing mine.

           “Y/N and I began dating after meeting in a bar. I was struck by how stunning she was, how much I wanted to understand the flush of her cheeks, the curve of her jaw, the cadence of her laugh. We flirted, and I bought her drink. That first night in her apartment, where I now spend almost all of my time, I was overwhelmed by how much it felt like home… which is insane and I’ve never told her, but that night, I could just see us there, our future, all enfolding in front of me... Her apartment doesn’t turn you away or disinvite you once you’ve arrived, it’s far too warm and cozy, just like her. It’s my favorite place in the world, she’s my favorite place.

            We spent the night laughing, kissing, getting to know each other. It was something in her eyes, in the way she absentmindedly traced my tattoos, how she fell asleep so easily in my arms. The next morning, we got breakfast, and I asked her out for a date on Monday. Dinner and a movie, classic. She let me hold her hand, and skillfully argued why she should pay for dinner. I compromised, she bought the movie tickets and treats. I barely paid attention to the movie, I just wanted to watch her laugh. Since that night, she’s all I ever think about.

           She said she wanted to know what she was going to drown in before she dove in, and I knew in that moment that I loved her. I’ve never heard such poetry spoken, let alone about me, to me, before… She just, she was vulnerable without hesitation. I didn’t understand how she could be so delicate with me, so exposed, so willing to let me in. Her vulnerability welcomed mine, embraced it, and I’ve been loving her ever since.

           I’ve never loved someone quite like her. She is brash, she makes decisions and sticks with them regardless of how difficult they make her life. She works side projects for neighbors, unpaid, to ease their lives. The man she rents her office from has a few kids, and in the summers, she takes a day a week to watch them. She hates cooking and brushes her teeth for over the recommended time because she’s terrified they’ll rot. She buys packs of the same popsicles and never leaves without a full water bottle. She hates sports, would rather sit in silence and stare at a wall than watch a football game, but she’ll check up on the highlights if it matters to me. She listens to the same music on a loop and adds in songs I love to her playlists because she wants to feel close to me, to understand me, to see me.

           I could continue listing all the things about her, that I love, or all the things I love about our relationship… how we compromise, how we talk through our squabbles, how we respect each other, how we can communicate without speaking but know each other’s voice is our favorite sound. I love that she’s perceptive and asks for alone time when she needs to recharge and can sense from the tone in my voice when I need the same. I love how she sees me, listens to me, brings out the parts of me only OT7 knows. Like I said, I could keep writing… but it’s easier to put it this way:

           Y/N is the love of my life, and I will do anything to protect her, to love her, to come home to her every day and every night that she’ll have me.

           I will not break my promise to her. Lock and key.”

           Jungkook sets the paper down and doesn’t look at me. I’m openly balling next to him, sobs ripping through me in quick succession.

           No one has ever loved me like this.

           I’ve only dreamed of love like this, I mean, no one has this, right? He’s offering it to me, no strings attached, no secrets, love for the sake of love. Love without penance or an additional cost to it. Here he is, all ink and doe eyes, holding me, the woman who lied to him, deceived him, was suspicious of him for months, hoping he still holds that love for me.

           “You’re just, you’re the love of my life,” I wail, hands still covering my face as snot gloms onto my palms.

           “Cricket,” Jungkook wraps his arms around me as his tears fall onto my body. “I love you.”

           “I’m sorry I lied, I’m sorry I kept it from you. I just, I didn’t know and I,”

           “Shh, Cricket, it’s okay,”

           “Bunny,” I say, “I’m sorry. I forgive you. You don’t have to forgive me.”

           “I forgive you,” He tells me.

           “You do?”

           “Yes. I’ve watched every member of OT7 lose their relationships, be beaten up over a fake relationship with a mark, giving themselves to someone to have it crumble under direct orders. Jimin is still trying to unravel the Arrow if it all. I didn’t, I didn’t want work to ruin us.”

           “You wouldn’t let it,” I assure him.

           “I wouldn’t, but there’s always the threat,”

           “Are you secretly more cunning than I give you credit for?”

           “Absolutely,” He smirks.

           “I missed you,” I whisper. Can he hear my heartache? We’ve never gone 36 hours apart… not since our first month or two dating. It’s horrible, I hate it.

           “It hasn’t been two days,” His chuckle is light, a sniffle accompanying the sound.

           “I know, I missed you though,” I nuzzle deeper into his side, my nose brushing his neck.

           “I missed you too,”

           “I don’t want to ever fight like that again,” I tell him.

           “I can’t guarantee that we won’t,” He reaches his free arm around his torso, knitting his hands together, solidifying my body to him.

           “Can you promise me something?” I ask.

           “Yes,”

           “I promise not to quote Runaway Bride in its entirety,” I start. “But I will still quote it,” I sit up, eyes swollen and red, finding focus on his marble cut features. “Promise me that when things get tough, when one or the both of us wants out, we’ll remember that we made it through this, and we can make it through anything.”

           “Do you know in your heart that I’m the one for you?” He asks.

           I hate that he leans into my vulnerability, that I’m unable to hide myself from him. I’ve never been able to, not the first night, and not now.

           “I will regret it, every day of my life, if I don’t make you mine,” I recite.

           “Promise me something,” Jungkook starts.

           “The moon and the stars,” I tell him.

           “That you won’t lie to me,” He says.

           “I promise,” I stick my pinky out.

           “You’ll come home to me, always,” He loops his with mine.

           “I promise,” I kiss my right hand, he mimics the gesture. “Do you think, maybe we should –

           “Move in?” He finishes. His gaze holds mine, all hope, no expectations.

           “Yeah,” I nod.

           “Yes, here?” It’s hard to imagine he was just crying, the excitement sweeping over his entire body as he stands up and shakes his fists.

           “Is your lease up?” I laugh, he’s beyond cute.

           “Fuck the lease,” He laughs coming back to the couch. His hands cup my cheeks, fingers gently pressing on my neck, thumb softly caressing my cheeks.

           “Bunny?” I whisper, eyes flicking to his lips.

           “Cricket,” He answers.

           “Lock and key,”

           “Lock and key,”

           “You and me,”

           “You and me,” He leans forward, lips finally meeting. The anticipation of having him in my arms, the ache of his absence over the last day and a half, the unsteady calm of opening your heart to someone… it’s all there in how his lips move against mine, how his tongue gently passes my lips, how his hands move down my body. The opposite of hope is fear, the opposite of pain is joy, as we move together, bodies joining, sweat mixing and names said in pure ecstasy, Jungkook and I solidify what we’ve always known about each other and our relationship.

           Lock and key, him and me.

Next: OT8

[bibliocratic]

post-160, jonmartin (cws in the tags)

Martin shivers, a whole body shudder that gallops through his system as the sleeping bag is unzipped. The backdraught is ungodly and he groans vocally as the movement allows a Baltic gust of air to infiltrate the confines previously occupied by the muggy sleep-thick warmth he's been slathered in.

“Christ, Jon,” he complains, trying to yank the material back around him, giving it a bit of a petty tug on his quest to return to the dozy weight of almost sleep he was happily bubbled in.

“Oh hush. It's not that bad,” Jon replies in a grumbling rhythm, showing no remorse, the arse, and Martin winces and hisses like he's been caught by spitting oil as Jon's frigid ice-cherished body curls around him like a bracket. He snuggles in like he's trying to unsuccessfully burgle his body heat, knees pressing into his back.  Martin kicks him with a double-socked foot to complain at this flagrant abuse of privileges.

“Nothing out there?” he mumbles into the angled pillow of his own arm. Thought Jon would be up for a while yet with his thoughts, on his usual pretence of 'checking the perimeter'.

“All quiet,” says the stiflingly-close bundle breathing into the back of his neck, making the skin feel sweaty with condensation. Martin stretches out a little before coiling up again, feeling bony fingers clench at his hips before encircling his waist like a particular committed lock.

Martin doesn't say anything else. The warmth wreathes about his limbs. The small fire they're letting die for the night is still warm enough to throw out a mild corona of heat.

Jon is apparently in a restless mood. His long hands and fingers tracing little idle circles like an spirograph at the skin he can reach. Martin's stomach, his pyjama-covered thighs, his hips, like he's trying to smooth the skin out.

“Would you settle down?” Martin says,  mumbling, mildly grumpy. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

Jon's lips are at the curve of his neck, mouthing softly. Not even kissing, maybe he's too tired for it, just motioning his lips over the skin. He's a looming question-mark shaped man, towering over Martin by half a foot, poor posture giving him a natural stoop, and his hold makes Martin feel enclosed, bound up in the intimacy of the space.

“Sorry,” he says, without sounding sorry in the slightest, almost cheeky. He bestows another kiss that is not a kiss to Martin's neck, scraping a little with his teeth.

“Sleep,” Martin repeats, groggy but firm, and traps the soft, unblemished skin of Jon's hands in his own.

“Fine,” Jon still sounds inordinately pleased with himself, but he seems to calm. Burrowing himself so close Martin's running out of room. Arms grip around him, winching tighter.

“Sleep,” he parrots Martin.

Martin tries. Really he does.

Something is stopping him. Some sensation of calm let out when the cool air swept in. There's a  prickling at the seat of his spine.

He fidgets a little, before he turns over, extricating himself from Jon's vice with difficulty, thinking that the change in position will improve things.

Jon's staring at him with a considering smile that curls the edges of his lips like the end of a spiral. They've a solar-powered camping light set up nearby, shaped like a lantern, stolen from a gutted B&Q, and the illumination begun to dim hours ago. Martin watches the artificial light highlights Jon's pale white skin, the upshot of scrubby blonde hair like sun-dried grass already sticking up at the back in a cowlick.

They're so close that Jon's eyes are crossing a little to look at him.

“They'll get stuck like that,” Martin chides roughly.

“Hmm?” Jon asks. He doesn't blink.  

“Your eyes,” Martin repeats. “You keep them like that and they'll get stuck.”

There's a pause, and then Jon's eyes snap up to normal like they're elasticated, seated dead-centre as  bullseyes.  His face beams in a wide smile that rips up to the same level as his ears.

“You're so funny, Martin,” he breathes. Delighted, a childish light ringing in his big green eyes. “Tell me another joke.”

Something fizzes at the bottom of Martin's chest. He wonders if he's eaten something off.

“Errr,” he starts, and it's harder when he's just so close, so crowded up against him. “Jon?”

“Yes, Martin?” Jon replies. He says his name as though he likes how it feels in his mouth, the flavour of the sound, the way it travels down his throat. It's the same way he said it on their first date, when he introduced Martin to his parents, when they got married.

“Can you...” Martin tries to clear his throat of the stifling air. “In my wallet. There's something... something I found earlier. I want to show you.”

“A surprise?”

“It's your birthday soon,” Martin says – August, his brain supplies with a dull clunking mechanism of recollection – and Jon pauses a beat before his lips curl back four-fold like petals and he says happily, like he's touched Martin's remembered.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is soon, isn't it. I'd almost forgot what with everything.”

The cold air siphons in as Jon clambers out. Raking through the bags with his long bony fingers, before he gives a triumphant here we are! and bounds back into the warmth of their cocoon, shivering from the chill, making an exaggerated brrr noise. He passes Martin the worn-down wallet before burrowing up against his side, heated like a furnace as Martin flicks it open.

“It's a surprise,” Martin reminds him, and Jon whines good-naturedly, spoilsport, but moves his head from where it lay on Martin's shoulder. Studies him unblinkingly with those eyes.

“Have it your way then.”

In the wallet section where he might have kept notes if paper currency still existed, Martin pulls out a folded paper. It crackles as he rights it into the bent photograph it is. Studies the fixed and frozen memory there; himself bundled up in two fleeces topped off with a cagoule slitted and damaged by unnatural rains, a slightly fire-singed bobble hat pulled down to smother hair that's been left alone to grow out into a frizzy unkempt afro, holding out the Polaroid camera at arms length to fit them both in frame. The thin-lipped but genuine smile of the man next to him, short, dark stubble maturing into the promises of a beard. Brown eyes faintly sunken, tired but happy, his arm anchored against Martin's. They took two pictures like this one, assurances, Jon had called them, and Martin knows Jon won't have it with him now if he asks to check.

Martin's hand doesn't shake. Doesn't look at Jon, at the man he went on a first date with to a pub where they had the football on too loud and someone was being rowdy at the fruit machine, and Jon ordered a whisky even though he told Martin later he hated the stuff, just wanted to impress him; at blonde hair he knows, has loved, has combed between his fingers while they've watched Jon's pretentious BBC Four documentaries; at green eyes he's seen sleepy and happy and angry and thrilled. Jon who is tapping his elongated fingers against the fabric of the sleeping bag almost impatiently, whose eyes are too yawning, too flattened for the well-boned structure of his face.

Martin has a knife in his pocket. He always has a knife in his pocket these days.

“Did you kill him?” he asks, almost breathless, more silent than sound.

“Hmm?” Jon replies, and Martin stabs him in the throat.

Jon skitters backwards out of the sleeping bag on legs that are fast becoming not. Cradling his throat, gargling out a confused 'Martin?' even as his eyes slide further down and off his face.

Martin's staggering up too, wondering if he has time to go for the cricket bat on Jon's side, the one he's abraded with roofing nails, the cross heads of screwdrivers. The knife feels too small in his fist and Jon looms, spine splaying out of his skin like a tent pole pushed through canvas, and he asks Martin? even as he stretches as though rolling out dough.

“Did you kill him?” he repeats, and his voice does not, will not, tremble.

Martin, the voice strings out like a melted chewy sweet. The bars of confectionery that stuck in Martin's teeth when he was a child; the sound drags and droops and pulls and echoes and it is not kind any more.

It reaches out again, and he thinks manically that it might be going to hug him when something hard and solid and remarkably identical to what a cricket bat decorated in roofing nails and screwdrivers might look like if someone swung it into marshmallow.

Jon screams and the sound cuts  and it swings around with a freakish rotating of its legs in time to be struck across the cheek, sending its nose and freckles and one side of its mouth slopping off to one side like a ship near cap-sizing.

“Get down,” Martin is told and he feels his body submit, drop and hunker down despite itself, and so he does not see what makes the thing that is not Jon howl like wind scratching at a windowpane, like a sound trapped between stations,  doesn't listen to whatever wordless command is shouted that undoes it loudly and aggressively from its mockery of life.

“I – Martin,” comes the voice again. Unsure now. Braided through with worry and exhaustion. “Please, I'm sor- ….Y-you – you can get up now.”

Martin's body can move again. He stands, legs shaky, feeling like  a nerves been trapped somewhere under the skin. The cold is pimpling the flesh of his arms. He observes the dark-skinned, dark-eyed man in front of him. Cricket bat painted with gore along with the front of his coat. Martin doesn't let go of the knife, and the man doesn't ask him to.

Martin holds up the picture. Compares the awkward smiling man of his photo, lower half of his face almost lost to a thick scarf, pock-mark scars trailing over his cheek and up to edge onto his forehead,  to this midnight terror decked in the aftermath of violence. Panting, a large slash across his forehead like he's been attacked, the wound which even now is sucking closed.

The man doesn't move. Waits for Martin to bridge the gap. There are two sets of memories wedged and warring in his head, and both of them are so real and it hurts, rifling through stuffed in remembrances of weddings and birthdays and picnics, Jon drunk off cider and his serenading more like caterwauling; Jon ashen, a machine breathing for him, his skin splintered with the ricochet of masonry and plasterboard and foundation stone;  arguing over money and house prices and their cramped flat in Dagenham; Jon, his trousers soaked and stiff with sea-salt as they tramp across an desolate beach;  sleepily swaying against one another like tired skittles in a game of ninepins at their station as they wait for the early morning commuter train.

 And it's not, it's so real but they aren’t, not all of them can be, not when the corpse of their architect is hollowed out and ripped up,  the air of it hissing out underfoot.

Jon – Jon whose scars decorate him like medals, Jon who is holding himself like he's hurt, Jon  who drops his bat in a heartbeat when Martin closes the gap and grabs him, trying to shake off the false memories like water droplets – Jon shivers like he's frozen, and his hold is a grasping gripping panicked action. Martin, he says as though a placeholder to a hundred different things. His voice is low and raspy and ever so soft.

Jon, who is the realest thing Martin knows.

Martin holds him until he can trust in that again.

[lewispandawrites]

Prompt for your "Valkyrie".AU. Brienne has a seat in the back of a conference room. Jaime is giving a presentation with a crap ton of power point slides. So, she gets to listen to him talking about "market penetration" and stuff for a while...

Only after writing it did I realise it didn't fit the setting you requested perfectly but I still hope you'll enjoy it!

Also on ao3.

The fic under the cut.

This was bad. This was very bad, not good at all.

Why had Brynden Tully and Arthur Dayne had to decide on a merger? 

Brienne, as a member of Tully’s team, was sitting now in the conference room, as far away from Mr Jaime Lannister, also known as GoldenLion, as she could. Thankfully, he was the most important member of Dayne’s team, so he sat directly opposite from Catelyn. Who was two persons away from Brienne.

At first, she tried to reason with herself. Why on Earth would Mr Jaime Lannister record audio porn? Surely, he had more important things to do and an array of other forms of entertainment. He could play golf, cricket, purchase sports cars, do anything more fitting to his position. But over the recent weeks she had become very well acquainted with GoldenLion’s voice, and it had to be him. GoldenLion had a great recording equipment (now Brienne knew exactly how he had been able to afford it) and the smooth voice that carried across the table could only be his.

Brienne thought she was doing quite alright. Even more than quite alright. She had mastered a completely blank face years before and she was putting that skill to a good use now. She was also sitting completely still in her seat, save for an occasional note written on her stack of files. No one seemed to be the wiser to her avoiding looking directly at Mr Lannister, let alone what she had been up to last night.

The worst thing was, not looking at him didn’t exactly help. GoldenLion had recorded a very, very good office fantasy, and back then Brienne had been foolish enough to imagine it taking place in this conference room  - where she had barely spent time and wouldn’t be distracted by the memories of it. Or blush every time she entered. But now she was sitting in the very same room with GoldenLion’s voice washing over her in person.

“You know well, Mrs Stark, that both Mr Blackfish and Mr Dayne have been considering external growth and since they know each other well, they decided a merger would be the best option.” Jaime’s voice brought her back from her inner battles and Brienne wished it hadn’t. She almost chuckled at the ‘external growth’.

“Hostile takeovers are also an option,” Catelyn replied. It was no surprise to anyone that she wasn't exactly favouring her uncle’s plans but her hands were tied. She was only here to represent him. 

“But coming together is a more pleasurable option.” Brienne could swear Mr Lannister purred those words, and judging by Jon’s sudden cough, she wasn’t mistaken.

“You seem to be taking pleasure in it,��� he purred as her mouth pulled off of his cock, a line of saliva connecting the head to her mouth. His fingers were tangled in her hair and his stump raised her chin so she would be looking at him.

Brienne looked down to doodle a tree in her notebook.

“But takeovers are more common. We’ll have to prepare for being scrutinized.” Robb chimed in, trying to earn his five minutes in the spotlight.

“You seem to like this pair,” he said, hooking his finger into her panties. The sight of him, kneeling at her feet, had her mewling. His lips were so close to her sex that she felt every word he uttered. “I like them as well. You made all those beautiful sounds when I lick you through them.” Just to drive the point across, his tongue drew a line from her opening to her clit, his mouth very familiar with the shape of her. “But they do keep me from tasting you. Don’t you think we should rectify that?”

“With businesses of the same size, mergers run more smoothly,” Mr Lannister added to a point Mr Marbrand had made.

When they had been standing together before, she couldn’t help but think how he was almost as tall as her, a rare thing. Not only did Brienne usually tower over everyone with her 6’3” - she had been working exclusively with the Starks and Jon for much too long to remember what it was like to be around someone her own height.

But it didn’t matter, when he drove into her from behind as her torso was flat on the table. Or maybe it made all the difference, because his lips attached themselves to the nape of her neck, the languid kisses a stark contrast to the harsh snap of his hips. 

“Sweetling.” His breath tickled her skin. His fingers were working her clit mercilessly, rubbing her through her second orgasm. “That’s it. You’re such a good girl. One more, for me. Pretty please.”

Her walls clenched around nothing and this time she had to shift in her seat, regretting all the more her wandering thoughts when she felt the slick between her folds.

“We need more details on your market penetration strategy,” Catelyn asked, looking through the files already presented to them.

Brienne made the mistake of looking at Mr Lannister in that moment. His eyes were staring right at her, pinning her in place and making her feel like a deer caught in the headlines. He was in her yesterday, but also wasn’t. There was no logical way he could know, yet he kept looking at her, his eyes leaving hers to trace down her face and neck.

“Of course. But could I ask for a five minute break?” he asked, looking back at Catelyn. “This merger will take weeks anyway.”

“Yes. I think a break would do us good,” Catelyn agreed and Brienne heard Jon’s relieved sigh. They had been sitting there for much too long.

“Could we also open the window?” Jaime asked, standing up. The others followed him, with Jon even going as far as trying to discreetly stretch his legs while standing. Mrs Peckledon giggled at his antics and he blushed then shrugged. 

“I’m afraid not but I could ask someone to change the AC settings,” Robb replied.

Mr Marbrand stretched his arms above his head and asked Pia if she wanted anything to eat. “But it’s only five minutes. Four now,” she replied, anxious, and Brienne felt for her. She had been in her place. Maybe they could get a drink, once it was over. She wasn’t vain enough to think she could mentor her, as Catelyn had done for her, but sometimes talking about things made a difference.

“We’ll start again in fifteen minutes,” Catelyn told Mrs Peckledon then glanced at Addam to confirm this. 

“I might be running to mine after work, just to get some feeling back into my legs. Do you want something?” Jon asked.

“No, I’m alright,” Brienne replied then watched him go. And she was alright, or at least much, much better than she had been a moment ago. She needed to focus and not let her mind wander again, not in that direction. There was no way she would ever listen to his recordings again, she thought sadly. It would not only feel inappropriate but also extremely awkward, and might mess up with her work. She would have to make do with others, or maybe find someone new. It would do her sex life good, broadening her horizons. She should also make a trip to the bathroom before the break was over, because the slight slickness was making everything awkward.

“Hi. You look much better already.”

She hadn’t heard him move, too deep into her thoughts again, so she almost strained the muscles in her neck as her head snapped to look at him. He was standing next to her with a cup of water in his hand - a cup that was then brought closer to her. “Would you like some water?”

“Thank you,” Brienne replied, not knowing what else to do, and accepted the cup with a nod. “Mr Lannister,” she added quickly.

“Please, call me Jaime.” Of course, they had already introduced themselves before the meeting, and he had called her Brienne. Oh, she was making it even more awkward. “I wanted to check if you were okay. Forgive me for being so forward but you looked very flushed from across the room,” he explained awkwardly, shifting from one leg to another. “And forgive me for assuming-”

“No, it’s alright. Thank you. I’m much better now,” she cut in, thankful that he seemed as awkward as she was. Yet when he shot her a very charming, grateful smile, she began to question that assessment. 

“You made a really good point, about the name. I’ve been trying to bring it up with Arthur for a while now but he thinks it’s not important,” he started again after a moment of silence. Her traitorous brain was telling her he was trying to keep conversation going but she quickly shot it down. They were the only two people in the room now, so he was probably just trying to be polite and not really interested in her. Or he was trying to dig some info.

“Thank you,” she said, again. Then berated herself for it. “I hope this will go smoothly,” Brienne added, wanting to contribute more to their conversation.

Jaime replied with a grin. “Those things never do but I do believe a merge between those two will be the most pleasant one in history. I’m actually surprised why it didn’t happen sooner. But, maybe it was meant that way,” he added, not taking his eyes from her. 

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 13

“Okay,” Makado says, straightening my lapels. “Your name is Roan Merriweather. You’re in Admin but I pulled you because you know how to work a camera and you’ve always wanted to take a trip down into the Pit. Sounds good?”

“This is my cover story?” I ask, giving her a dubious glance.

“Something like that,” she shrugs. “Just play it cool.”

“You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here,” I tell her, trying not to let her hear a note of panic in my voice. We’ve been waiting outside the door of the barracks for a solid five minutes now, while Makado checks her phone periodically and texts Peter. We’d dropped him off at a different barracks earlier; neither of them would tell me why. Finally Makado rolls her eyes and shoves her phone back into her pocket.

“Don’t worry about it,” she tells me. “Just be cool, and we’ll get you into the Pit.”

I can hear rollicking conversation from within the barracks, sounding like a solid six or seven people all having a decent time. “Showtime,” she murmurs to me, and then Makado knocks briefly and saunters in, leaving me to trail along in her wake, the conversation stilling so suddenly that I imagine I can hear crickets.

Inside there are about seven or eight people, all in various states of undress or relaxation; there’s a dartboard on the wall, cots pressed against the sides, an attached bathroom and a general air of levity. I imagine I can smell it, like walking into what I imagined a field barracks somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq might have been like, the same lazy air of general superiority, the same sense of cagey, feigned easiness that at the first sign of trouble could evaporate into a coordinated machine, each of its members greasing together like fitted gears.

Makado clears her throat and silence falls, with a last subtle clink as someone nudges a bottle somewhere out of sight with their foot. Eight pairs of eyes swing around to meet ours, gazing with mixed curiosity and indifference. I shift uncomfortably, not knowing where to look.

“Gentlemen,” Makado says, voice colored with what sounds to me like a suppressed grin, “I have a couple of late additions to the team.”

“And lady,” someone calls out from the back in a low-pitched but identifiably female voice, and the silence breaks like an ice sheet and everyone laughs, and even Makado rolled her eye, an expression of tolerant levity rising on her face.

“Alright, Elena,” she sas. “And lady. Ladies, I should say, now,” twisting around to nod at me. I don’t understand what she wants for a moment but then I realize and I take a step forward and peer out at the faces peering out at me then raise my hand in a perfunctory greeting.

“Uh, hi.”

Dead silence. My eyes scan over rugged faces, bearded and beardless, all seemingly male. Whoever Elena is she must be all the way at the back. There are grins and chuckles and nudges but I expected that somehow, it doesn’t surprise me. I’m an intruder; this is a team.

Someone wolf-whistles and even though I nearly burst out laughing, from next to me I hear Makado suck in her breath, I could practically feel her temperature shift from tolerably warm to unbearably frosty, and then the woman who’d called out before, Elena, stands up and grins at me.

“About damn time!” she crows, looking around at the rest of the guys. “Too much of a damn sausage party in this team!”

And then everyone laughs again and I’m smiling in spite of myself, I can’t help it. Elena motions to me and I look over at Makado, feeling a little like I‘m a new kid at a playground asking my mom if I could go play with all of these weird kids I’d never seen before. She grins at me, openly then, and again I think I see what Peter saw four years ago. Something in me aches and I think Makado must have seen it as well because her smile lost a couple of molars; she looks at me cautiously for a moment before clapping her hands to regain the room’s attention.

“Everybody,” she says, “this is Roan, uh, Merriweather. She’s from Admin, she’s going to be accompanying you on your expedition.”

Somebody groans and makes a face at me, and someone else from the back yells out “Admin sucks!”

Back to playing a role, I think to myself. Then, a second later, I shrug. Everybody loves an Uncle Tom.

“Yeah, Admin sucks,” I call back. “That’s why I’m here!”

Cheers and scattered whooping. I nudge Makado, lean in towards her. “Thanks,” I murmur. She gives me a friendly squeeze on the upper arm, and then pushes me away gently.

“Don’t fuck it up,” she tells me.

I make my way through the ranks over to Elena, flash a hesitant smile at her, and she grins and makes a space for me next to her on the bunk. She’s talk and slender and very pretty, a messy shock of bleached-blonde hair over a fine-featured face. “Christ,” she says, “it’s been way too fucking long since we’ve had another girl in this outfit. How many trips you done?”

“Sorry?”

“You know,” she says, giving me a look. “How many times you’ve been down?”

I take my eyes off of Makado, now speaking to a tall, shirtless, blonde-haired man with muscles so rippling his chest looks like the start of an ocean, and glance over at Elena. “Uh, this’ll be my first.”

Over on the other side of the barracks the game of darts is starting back up again, and on the bunk next to us a wiry black man with a goatee is reaching down under the cot and taking out a bottle of liquor surreptitiously, his eyes still on Makado. He sees me watching and grins, then reaches out his hand for me to shake.

“Ellis,” he says. “Ellis Hughes. I’m the resident nerd.”

His palm is very warm but also very dry.

“Roan,” I tell him. “I’m the camerawoman.”

“You want some?”

“Maybe later, I don’t drink much –“

“This is your first trip?” Elena interrupts, her voice serious. Ellis leans over, frowning.

“Say what now?”

“What’s the big deal?” I ask. “I’m just there to –“

“What’s the big deal!” Elena laughs, a rough edge of anger lurking beneath it. “Are you serious? This is going to be your first trip?”

“Well, yeah,” I say, feeling myself flushing. “Is there something wrong - ?”

Elena gets up in a hurry and storms over to Makado, pushing the blonde man out of the way, who rolls his eyes and makes a face at her before sauntering over to the dart game and throwing his arms over the shoulders of the two others who were waiting to play. I look over at Ellis. “Did I say something wrong?”

He licks his lips and thinks about it for a moment, clearly trying to decide how best to put it. “Let’s just say that this isn’t going to be a picnic.”

Something in me bristles at that. “I can assure you I’m more than capable –“

“And I’m sure you are too,” he says quickly, flashing another bright grin at me. “But like I said, this ain’t a picnic. Just being ‘capable’ might not cut it. I mean, do you know how to use a personal stent? Or a laser cutter? Or –“

“Oh, give it a rest, Ellis,” someone groans from the floor on the other side of Elena’s cot, and then the speaker sits up and a shaggy head rises into view. He tosses his head, knocking some of the hair out of his eyes, and looks me up and down. “She’s gonna be fine.”

Over near the door Makado’s eyes flick over to mine and then back to Elena, still speaking to her animatedly, talking, I now feel sure, about how unsuited I was for whatever expedition they’re going on. I feel a hard little knot writhing in my stomach but I do my best to quash it; instead I look over at the man on the floor. “So what’s your thing?” I ask him.

“Eh?” he grunts.

“You know,” I shrug, cutting my eyes over at Ellis. “He says he’s the nerd. What do you do?”

“Fumi does maps,” Ellis says. “We get lost, it’s his fault.”

“It isn’t my fault if you lot don’t understand how to read a three-d projection,” Fumi says. “When we got lost in the Village two months ago –“

“See,” Ellis says to me, “Fumi talks a lot of shit, but –“

The door creaked open again and we all quiet, staring over to see who it is, and then Peter walks in and the barracks explode. Even Fumi, who I had initially taken to be the reserved, laid-back type, bursts out a quiet profanity and bolts to his feet to join the crowd gathering around Peter, shaking his hand and clapping him on the back and asking him where the hell he’s been, man, we all thought he was dead!

Mixed feelings. On one hand, good to have attention taken off me, especially if I’m going to have to pretend to be someone else.

I cast a weather eye over at the crowd. Peter’s smiling harder than I’d ever seen him smile before and I feel happy for him. I’d had no idea that he was so loved here. He must have really made friends during the period he worked for the company, after the disaster. And then there’s Makado, standing then, moving closely to Peter’s side and grinning broadly, unable to even pretend to be reserved. They stand side to side there for a long while and while I can’t see through the crowd surrounding them I would like to believe that they’re holding hands.

Eventually everybody crowds out; I think there was some talk of a trip to a pub or bar or something. Either way, I’m left alone in the barracks. I feel distinctly forgotten. I pick out one of the unused cots and lay on it for a long while thinking, until finally sleep comes to me. Later on, when everyone comes back in, loud and drunk and merry, I wake but pretend not to. I watch through slitted eyes as Elena, smelling a little of alcohol, comes and crawls into the cot next to mine.

She watches me for a long while, laying there on her side, staring, her pretty little face knotted in a frown, but just as soon as I decide to open my eyes fully and ask her what she’s staring at, she rolls over and lets out a little huffing sigh and falls asleep.

 * * *

 The next punch whips out low and fast and I just barely twist out of the way in time. I purse my lips, glare at Elena. “You know,” I tell her, “I thought we were supposed to be boxing.”

“We are boxing,” she says, tossing her head to flick an errant curl of bleached-blonde hair out of her slate eyes, waggling one gloved fist at me.

“You don’t sucker-punch in boxing.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, trailing off. I can see a shift in her movement, see her eyes flick downwards at me, and I know instinctively that she’s going to try something. I let myself roll onto the balls of my feet, let my knees bend slightly. “I’ve never been good at following the rules,” she grunts, snapping out another punch right at my gut. This time I’m ready for it.

The four years of Karate I took in college had never really served me very well, but there was one advantage I’d had that I think Elena wasn’t expecting from me – I went to a hardcore dojo, not a belt factory. Sparring three days a week, stretches and warmups intense enough that I barely was able to stumble my way through the material afterwards…but I adapted after enough time pushing myself and then it wasn’t so bad, once I was able to rely on my body’s newfound strength.

I’d hated it at the time. I don’t know why I bothered to keep up with it once I’d completed that first-year PE credit, but something kept bringing me back. Maybe it was the way one of the instructors, a tall, swarthy man named Ali, would grin at me after he’d cajoled me into dipping down a couple of inches deeper into a straddle split, or raising my leg a couple of inches higher in a kick hold, maybe it was the way that I went from not being able to break a single board, even if I really tried, to being able to break three with a punch and not even feel it afterwards. Something about the tangible improvement tickled some sort of progress-happy funny bone in my psyche and from then on I was hooked.

I made it halfway to a blue belt before I’d graduated and had to move away from Oklahoma. In Karate terms that’s still a little baby, really, but if Elena thinks I’ve never learned to dance she’s going to have another think coming.

I push my arm down and block the blow, deflecting it downwards. Her fist skids off the flat of my thigh and I barely feel it. Then I take a step to the side and spin, whipping out a roundhouse and halting it just next to the side of her head. To her credit she barely flinches, just flicks her eyes over and considers my foot as though it’s something mildly repulsive. The tendon in my groin down the inner base of my thigh is throbbing a little and I know I’ll regret the maneuver later but for the moment I’m alright.

“Didn’t realize you knew MMA,” she snarls, clamping onto my leg before I can react, twisting it and sending us both to the ground. I fall awkwardly and feel the sting as the hard foam mat slaps me in the palms and the chest. Then she clambers over me before I can roll back up onto my hands and knees, getting me into an impromptu sleeper choke. I know how to get out of one while I’m standing but from the ground is a different matter entirely. I squirm a little, trying to work my hands back around behind her, but she tightens her forearm around my neck and I stop.

“You gonna tap?” she purrs into my ear, sounding angry. She smells hot and spicy and aggressive, sweat mingled with a vaguely floral underlying arona. I struggle a little, try and find the weakness in her grip, but there isn’t one, she has me dead to rights.

I reach out slowly ahead of me and tap the mat three times. Elena squeezes a little harder for a moment and then slowly disengages from me and rolls away. I flop onto my back and glance over at her. “You realize I’m just here to work a camera, right? You guys are going to handle all the fighting.”

“I’m not even going to tell you why that’s a fucking stupid sentiment,” she says. “What if something grabs you down there and nobody else is around to help?”

“What, I’m supposed to get it in a sleeper choke?”

“No,” she says slowly, as though I’m stupid, “you’re supposed to fight back however you can.”

“I don’t think I –“

She offers me her hand, the glove hanging loosely from the strap, and pulls me up. “Take initiative,” she suggests. “Be proactive,” she says, and then before I can react she reaches up with the other hand, still gloved, and pops me lightly in the face. It’s clearly not designed to injure, she hits about as lightly as she can, but something about the physics of it tweaks something in my nose and I feel a twinge and then a trickle of fluid down the front of my face. She stares, incredulous, at the blood on her glove, and then shakes her head and gives me a helpless, resigned grin.

“Look at you,” she says. “I didn’t even mean to do that. I’m so sorry, here, let me -“

And then she reaches up and wipes the blood from my lip with the back of her hand. I see it staining her skin red. My heart is pounding in my throat. What if she doesn’t wash her hands before she eats something? What if she rubs her eye, or scratches herself, or -

When I act it feels like time compresses and it seems as though I’m moving a million miles an hour. I step forward and grab her by the wrist and tug her along towards me, or at least I intend to. I was going to drag her off to the bathroom and make sure she scrubbed every last speck of blood off of her skin, make sure that she was safe, but instead she jerks her hand away from me and stands there staring, her fingers half-curled into a fist.

“What the hell is your problem?” she barks at me, and I realize that everyone in the training room is staring at us, squared off again across the mat, my hand trembling slightly. I look down at the bloodstain on her palm and then, not knowing what else to do, I wipe my nose hurriedly, contaminating my own hands. My eyes sweep the floor frantically but I can’t see any telltale carmine drops anywhere.

“Elena, please, please -“ I start, but she spins on her heel and stalks away to the showers, giving me a withering look over her shoulder.

“Fuck off,” she tells me. “Don’t you ever grab me like that –“

Then she’s gone. I can feel my cheeks burning. I avoid a forest of stares and scramble after her, trying not to feel like I’m scurrying off with my tail between my legs.

As I round the corner, trailing my fingers along the inlaid tile, the faint coarse griminess gathering reassuringly at my touch, I realize that the shower isn’t running and I have a brief moment of despair, guessing that Elena’s already been and left, before I turn the corner and I’m staring at her naked back, long and muscular, a curving v-taper nudging downward into the swell of her hips and a whole heap of emotions flutter around me. Before I can tear my eyes away she looks back at me and our eyes meet for just a moment, her sharp-eyed predator’s gaze boring into me, and then I snap mine away and hurry over to my locker and start to change. I can feel her looking at me but I keep my face forwards, don’t meet her gaze.

“You bitch,” she hisses, and I jump, I cringe.

“Elena,” I mutter, cutting my gaze sideways at her, “don’t.”

I can see her hands, the red of my blood deepening as it dries. She hasn’t washed her hands yet.

She gets up, pads past me, the force of her anger practically slamming me into my locker as she passes. She’s naked, heading for the showers, a towel thrown over her shoulder. She doesn’t spare even a glance at me.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt, just before she turns the corner. “I didn’t want to - I didn’t mean to - I’m sorry.”

She stops, looks back at me. Her eyes are very hard but they soften gradually, and she heaves out a sigh, leans her long lithe body against the corner of the tiled wall.

“Is your nose okay?” she asks. I haven’t even thought about it. I reach up and pat at it gently.

“Yeah, it’s still there,” I tell her, and I can see her crack an unwilling smile before she hides it, glances down.

“I’m sorry I gave you a bloody nose,” she tells me. “I didn’t mean to. I was just going to bop you.”

I swallow hard. “Elena, you have to wash your hand. Like, scrub it, I mean.”

She frowns at me. “What’s eating you?” she asks. “It’s just blood. It isn’t like I’m licking it up,” she laughs, miming it, but her eyes sharpen as she sees me practically jump out of my skin. I make it a few steps towards her before I stop myself and try to turn it into some casual gesture or movement, but there’s no way to disguise it. I can see her eyes narrow with the same intensity as my cheeks flush.

“Roan,” she says, “what’s going on? Why are you acting like this?”

“I can’t - look, just make sure you scrub your hand, okay?” I ask her. She shakes her head.

“Tell me why,” she says. “Why’s it so important?”

I stare at her and hope the anguish writ large in my expression is enough to convince her. And perhaps it works, for she shakes her head and pads around the corner. I listen as she takes a shower, while I dab at my face and clean myself off, and she looks mildly surprised to see me when she comes back out again. Her hair is fluffy and unkempt and she has the towel wrapped around her waist and something about the way her messy curls fall over her face makes me want to smile. She holds the hand out to me, turns it over for my inspection.

“Clean enough for you?” she asks, and I nod. We stand there in silence for a while, effectively side by side, rummaging in our lockers, while Elena gets dressed and I change back into my regular clothes.

“Cat got your tongue?” Elena asks me and I grunt, look over at her, then shut my locker.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking.”

“What if you didn’t come with?” Elena says, and I process that for a moment, and I shake my head.

“I don’t understand you,” I tell her. “First you’re happy to see me cause there’ll be another woman in the group, and I can understand that. Then you’re concerned because I’m not a crack special ops Green Beret motherfucker –“

“That isn’t –“

“And now when I’m justifiably worried about goddam blood-borne –“

“Jesus Christ,” she groans. “I wasn’t going to actually lick my hand. I didn’t even mean to give you a nosebleed! I just…” she trails off. “Look,” she says. “You should back out. Reconsider coming on this damn-fool errand we’re stuck with. You can tell Veret no, you know that, right? She’s Sec, you’re Admin, she has zero jurisdiction over you. You can tell her where to fucking stick it and she can’t say shit.”

It takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about Makado. “What if I want to go?” I ask.

Elena looks me dead in the eyes. Hers are very grey, the same color as a cloudy day. “You’re going to die down there,” she assures me.

I blow an exasperated breath out. “You care that much?” I ask her. “Seriously? You’ve barely spoken a word to me since the day we met. It’s like you’re mad at me for – for just having the misfortune to be here. You think I have control over this? They need someone to run the camera, I’ve got the experience. Between, well, everyone gradually realizing how useless I’m going to be down there and my pathetic performance the other day at the range –“ I wince to myself at the memory of it - “I’ve had a goddam miserable time here and I don’t want this entire expedition to be like that. Do you have a problem with me?”

“No,” Elena says firmly.

“Then what the hell are you treating me like this for?”

She thinks about it for a moment then shrugs. “Trying to scare you off, I guess,” she explains. “If nothing else you’ve got guts. I just don’t want you to get killed because of overconfidence –“

“Oh, trust me, I’m far from overconfident.”

“No,” Elena says, “I suppose you aren’t. There’s some sort of angle you’re working, isn’t there? Did Miller put you up to something? Spying on Veret, or on –“

“Who’s – “ I start, and then stop myself. Clearly this Miller is someone I ought to know. “No,” I tell her. “There’s no angle. I just want to go down there, see what it’s like. I’ve seen videos,” I say, thinking quickly, “I’ve seen footage, but that’s not even close to what it’s really like. Isn’t it?”

“You’re right,” Elena laughs, “it isn’t.”

And then she turns away, sits down on the bench to do up her shoes and I stand there staring at her for a moment before I shake my head and gather my things and turn to leave. I almost make it to the door before she calls after me.

“I don’t hate you,” she says, and I turn and look at her, meet the gaze she’s flinging at me with what I hope is stoniness, trying not to feel like a lonely puppy. I’m tired, I’m fatigued, part of me wants to go the hell back home and get out of Gumption but another part of me wants to see what the hell is down there in the Pit. I’ve barely seen Peter since that first day and I haven’t seen Makado at all, and I haven’t had the guts to pull out my phone and call anybody from work, or any of my friends. I can feel my heart practically flipping over onto its back and begging for belly-rubs no matter how hard I try to stomp down on it.

And then, of course, there’s the little voice in the back of my mind that keeps whispering about whether or not I might be able to get my hands on some ballast…

No, it’s stupid. It isn’t an option. They’ve probably got it locked down so tightly –

Focus, Roan. One thing at a time. Don’t be such a goddam nitrogen queen.

“I know you don’t hate me,” I tell her, taking a step back towards the door. “But you’ve sure been doing your best to make it seem like you do.”

She offers me a slow smile, and as she rises I once again take the chance to admire the wiry strength of her arms, the sloping incline of her thighs, the taper of her stomach. She’s very pretty, after all; I don’t know what it is but I was expecting something more like Vasquez from Aliens, a wiry woman constantly on-edge, not willing to take any shit at all, but Elena is much more –

“You checking me out, Merriweather?”

I blush instantly and reluctantly drag my eyes back up to meet hers. She looks smug. “No,” I tell her, but even to my own ears it sounds like a lie. Was I checking her out? Of course I wasn’t. That’d be ridiculous.

“Riiight,” she says, nodding at me. I think she is looking at me a little differently afterwards, but I can’t tell whether it’s in a good way or a bad way. Then Elena tells me she wants to show me something and we leave the gym together, and she takes me not towards the barracks but out the other way, into the scrub grass and clear wind.

 * * *

 “What about…” I squint. “Eleanor Kovacs?”

“It’s pronounced Kovacs.”

“Oh. What happened to her?”

“Cratered when a BFR she thought was bomb-proof wasn’t so bomb-proof after all.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

Elena laughs. “A BFR is a Big Fucking Rock. Down in the Pit it’s mostly calcium deposits that that refers to, so they’re not really rocks. It’s just old caving slang left-over from the guys in the 70s that explored the place for the first time. ‘Bomb-proof’ means that it’s secure, if you tie a line to it and let yourself down it won’t drop you.”

“And ‘cratered?’”

“I’m sure you can guess what that one means.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. I liked Eleanor, she was nice, but you never trust a BFR.”

Down here, around the bend and down a ways, over the tiny trickle of a stream that bubbles over dusty rocks and down into a drainage ditch and from there beyond the fence, past another thicket of brush, there is a small cemetery with about eight headstones in it, and green grass, and a few still fairly intact wreaths that look like they’re only a couple of days old.

“How long ago did that happen?”

Elena thinks for a moment. “About a year ago. So probably a little before or after you got hired, right? I think you said you’d been here for a year.”

I did say that. I’d debating going a little shorter, maybe six months or so, but I felt like if I pretended I’d been here for much shorter than a year it’d be suspicious as to why Makado had picked me out specifically instead of someone with more seniority.

“That’s right,” I said. “I think I might have heard something about it? I think it was like a month before I joined.”

“You said you were a photographer before this?”

“Um,” I grunt. I want rather much to get away from talking about my fake history, especially because it’d be fairly easy for me to give away that I don’t actually work here and not even know it. “That’s not entirely accurate, but close enough.”

She looks at me for a moment then shrugs. “Alright, miss mysterious, be that way.”

“What about this one?” I ask, pointing to one of the more weathered headstones. Elena peers at it then shakes her head.

“I don’t know, that was before my time.”

“When did you join?”

“Three years ago. Got out of the Coast Guard and didn’t really know what else to do, somebody here had heard about me and sent an offer my way and I said ‘what the hell’ and signed on.”

“You were in the Coast Guard?”

“Yeah, I was a cave diver.”

I look at Elena, really look at her, thoughtfully this time. She’s staring at the headstone, she hasn’t drawn the long aquiline arch of her neck back up. She’s thinking about something, some inward private musing that, even if I asked her and even if she wanted to tell me, I would never be able to know the length and breadth and depth of.

A sudden crazy impulse makes me want to reach out and touch her hand and hold it in mine but I restrain myself. Her eyes flick over to me and she frowns. “What?” she asks.

“I was just thinking.”

“You do a lot of thinking while you’re just staring at people?”

I shrug diffidently. “It’s a bad habit of mine.”

I can see her trying not to smile.

The radio clipped to Elena’s belt bleeps at her and the moment is instantly shattered. She tugs it out, muttering a muffled curse, and clicks it on. “Yeah?”

“Elena, it’s Fumi. We’re finally getting briefed in ten, where are you?”

“At the gym,” she says quickly. “Just leaving now.”

“You are? I’m at the gym.”

Elena closes her eyes and makes a face at me; I clap a hand over my mouth so I don’t laugh. “Must have just missed you,” she tells him.

“Have you seen that girl from Admin, too? They told me to call everybody but I can’t get ahold of her.”

“She probably left her radio with her stuff,” Elena says, flashing me a little smirk. “Fucking Admin.”

I feign affront. Over the radio Fumi laughs.

“Fucking Admin,” he agrees. “Still, though, Admin or not, have you seen her body? I wouldn’t mind –“

“Oh, shut up,” she snaps. “Keep it in your pants,” she tells him. “Out.”

“Out,” he laughs.

I laugh but it sounds wrong, I sound nervous. Or maybe just awkward.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Elena tells me. “Just guy talk.”

“Mm,” I grunt, then look down at myself. “Not sure what he meant, to be honest.”

“Eh?”

“Well, if he likes skinny little skeletons, I guess…”

Elena laughs again. She has a low, slow laugh, like waves, like granite. “I don’t think that’s how I’d put it.”

“Oh yeah?” I say. I use the upcoming prospect of having to leave for the briefing as a pretense to pat myself down, make sure I have all of my effects (none of which I took out, of course, but even so). I see Elena’s eyes narrow fractionally but in an even-tempered way. “How would you put it?” I ask her.

She looms over me and something about the weight of her presence makes my breath catch.

We’re very close now. I can smell her, something vague and salty and fresh-smelling, like how I imagine a particularly clean crocodile might smell. I can hear her lips draw back in a smile.

“How I would put it?”

“Yeah,” I breathe. I swallow hard and try to think, but the way she smells is making it hard to.

The radio squawks again and I jump slightly. Elena sighs and then turns around and walks away, very deliberately not looking back at me. I stare after her, and then pretend I wasn’t when she turns, radio near her chin. “Yeah,” she says into it, “I found her. Tell them we’ll be there in five.”

“Ack,” the radio crackles, and then falls silent.

“Ack?” I ask.

“Acknowledged.”

“Oh.”

Then there is nothing more to say and we walk back together and I use the time to wonder what the hell I’m doing and how deep a hole I’m digging myself into.

 * * *

 “This is what we’re after,” Makado says, clicking to the next slide. I frown.

“What the hell is that?” someone asks from up near the front row – I think it might be Crookshank, the heavy-set, bear-faced man that Ellis had introduced to me as the team’s resident medic.

“That, Mr. Crookshank,” Makado says, her eye flashing, “is a resonating pressure crystal.”

“What the hell is a resonating pressure crystal?” he asks, and I hear a few chuckles from the middle rows. Makado grins at him.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s need to know, and…”

“And we don’t need to know,” a half-dozen voices intone simultaneously, prompting more titters afterwards. Some sort of in-joke.

“How big is this thing?” Ellis asks.

“The team that initially discovered it down near Blue Matter reported that it was roughly two hundred kilograms or so. Dimensions are…I don’t know, a dresser? Chest of drawers? Something like that.”

“Are those bits sharp?” someone asks.

“I don’t know,” Makado says, a thin whisper of impatience lurking in the back of her voice. “Probably.”

“Where is this crystal now?” Fumi asks. Next to me Elena uncrosses and recrosses her legs.

“This is the part you probably aren’t going to like,” Makado says. “The team that had found it called for help retrieving it, and one of the cargo IAVs was dispatched down to assist. We lost radio contact with the team halfway down, and when the IAV got there, the team and the crystal were gone.”

“Whose team was it?” Elena asks. Whatever levity might have been fluttering around the room before is long gone by now.

“It was a science team,” Makado says. “Nobody you all would know, most likely. I believe the leader was Nguyen, he’s a researcher.”

“And this crystal is important enough to send us down after it, even if we don’t know what the hell happened or where it is?”

“Yes,” Peter says, squinting against the light of the projector as he looks over from the computer desk up at the front. “It’s that important.”

“But you can’t tell us why?” I call out. I don’t know what makes me do it. Just wanting to be part of the team. Makado gives me a look but a very subdued one.

“No,” she says, “I can’t. You all know me,” she says, her eye lingering on me. “You know if I could I would, if I could bend the rules, even, and tell you, but I can’t. And, the point I was going to make before we got sidetracked, we actually do know exactly where the crystal is. The science team managed to fit it with a tracker before whatever happened happened.”

She takes a breath, blows it out. “We found copepod castings at the site, and the tracker shows the crystal is currently in the barrows.”

It’s Greek to me but everybody else reacts hard. Elena leans forward and puts her head in her hands and half of the rest of them get to their feet, gesticulating, Ellis and Fumi among them.

“Hell no,” Ellis says.

“That’s a goddam suicide mission,” Fumi tells Makado, and when I flick my eyes over to her to judge her reaction I can see that she thinks so too; it’s there in the cast of her face, just for a moment, before she composes herself.

“Everybody relax,” Peter says, and, miraculously, almost everyone does.

“Look,” Crookshank says, still on his feet, pointing at the crystal still on the screen, “even if this thing is so goddam important that we die getting it back, even if we manage to beat off the hundreds of fucking copepods down there in the barrows, how the hell are we going to get it up here? Another IAV? They can’t fit into the barrows, the passages are too tight and twisting. We can’t carry 200 kilograms up here, we can’t –“

“Crookshank,” Makado says, voice icy, “sit down.”

He wavers for a moment but sits. Makado clears her throat.

“You aren’t going to carry it.”

I frown. The crystal on the screen looks damn near impossible to carry anyway. A wicked constellation of dagger-sharp jade barbs and spikes and serrations surrounding a gnarled, crenellated core. Even if it were smaller and lighter I don’t know how you could pick it up without hurting either it, yourself, or both. Elena looks over at me frowning and I shrug; I don’t know where the hell Makado is going with this.

“He is,” she says, pointing over at the door.

As we all turn, it opens softly, and with careful, hissing, precise steps, a machine walking upright on two pistoning, powerful, articulated legs steps inside, one of its immense blocky arms reaching backward and catching the door by the handle and shutting it very softly behind it. Its head is a cube with a few careful angled shavings taking out of it, and in the recesses they create lights blink, but there is nothing so crude as a camera lens to show that it looks at us as it swings its face back and forth, like a lizard tasting the air.

The room has gone so silent that the only sound I can hear is the whine of servos as it steps further in, and a clenching fist of terror closes around my heart and squeezes, the ancient timbre of fight-or-flight peaking in my brain as this animate, impossible thing stomps towards us.

Continue with Part 14

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[coraxaviary]

Spier(s)

Summary: A discussion about the name Speirs, and what it implies.

Word Count: 1.5K

Author’s Note: At end

Warnings: Basically none.

Taglist: I don’t think this kind of fic is what taglists are for

.

“So uh, you ever wonder why his name is Speirs?” Skip says from one of the barn beams, far above. He has a single straw of hay between his teeth, and he talks around it, slurring slightly.

“Whatcha mean?” responds Malarkey, who lazily cranes to look up at Skip, whose legs are dangling so he can’t see his face. Malarkey absently worries his rifle strap between his fingers, and lays farther back into the hay. “You mean his first name?”

“Nah, his name. Speirs,” says Skip back with overly hollowed-out vowels, and he spits out the hay. “Like, why?”

“Don’t think it does good to wonder anything ‘bout him,” says Penkala, sitting against the wall, fiddling with a field ration package. The sky is darkening outside, and there are only a few rays of sunlight that slip through the cracks between the wooden slats in the barn. Soon there would be none. Penkala moves into the spotlight of one last white streak of light, and makes small foil crunching sounds until the bag opens.

“His name is Speirs. But, like,” says Skip, echoing from above. “Two of ‘em. Two Speirs.”

“It’s not spelled the same,” says Malarkey. The barn door creaks open, and the three men see a pair of silhouettes slip inside and close the door.

“Hey fellas,” says a strange voice. It’s not exactly deep, but it is familiar.

“Sir?” says Penkala, straightening in sudden fear.

“Hell naw,” says Luz, bursting out in laughter. The other tall man -- Toye, it seems -- laughs quietly behind Luz. “It was that good?”

“Yeah,” says Penkala shortly, and he goes to sit back down in the hay.

“Hear y’all talking about Speirs,” says Luz loudly, and all the other men shush him. “Not like he’s gonna appear if ya say his name.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” says Skip.

“How’d ya get up there?” asks Toye, looking up at Skip, who is swinging his legs but not really able to do anything but sit.

“Ova there,” says Skip, pointing to a ladder that leads to a shallow loft. “Climbed on the beam.” Skip looks down at the ground, a long distance away. “Maybe I should get back, huh. Should get some sleep.”

Toye doesn’t say anything, just hums in passive agreement. Penkala eats his rations, staring somewhere distant.

“So, whatcha think, Luz?” says Skip, voice moving back eerily in the barn as he scoots along the beam back to the loft. “Why ‘Speirs?’ Why ain’t he named ‘Speir?’“

Malarkey snorts. Penkala chews. Toye moves around fluffing up hay to find a good place to sleep, and Luz shuffles.

“Ain’t names just... passed down?” says Luz. Malarkey mm-hmms in agreement.

“I guess,” says Skip, who is now trying to dismount from the beam and get into the loft, hanging awkwardly with one leg and both arms hooked over the beam, and his other leg -- too short -- scooping for purchase, inches away from the loft floor. He untangles himself, hangs by only his arms, and makes it onto the loft with a hollow bang and a cloud of dust. “But his name. Implies there may be a Speir. A single Speir.”

There’s silence, broken at this point only by Skip thumping down the creaking ladder and Penkala spooning more rations into his mouth with a clack of teeth on metal.

Luz makes a sound of revelation. “I got a story.”

“Thought you were gonna answer my question, Luz, but okay--”

“It’s the answer.”

“Oh, alright,” says Skip, finally on the floor, and he crashes down next to Malarkey, sending flicks of hay into the air. Malarkey coughs, waving a hand uselessly through the dust.

“So, uh,” says Luz. “I read somewhere in an article or something--”

“Didn’t know you read, Luz,” interrupts Malarkey.

Luz continues, unperturbed. “That sometimes you got siblings, like twins or something. But one’a them doesn’t make it. Dies, I think. Can’t exactly remember.”

Penkala shifts uncomfortably, and shoots a glance out a crack in the wooden panels to look in the general direction of Dog Company.

“So, like, inside the mom, like... the womb,” says Luz, “One’a them eats the other. And they become, like, uh, one kid.”

There is silence for a few beats.

“You’re saying his name is Speirs because he ate his twin in the womb,” Malarkey says sarcastically, not so much a question as a sarcastic statement of conformation.

Luz nods uselessly in the darkness. “Yeah.”

Malarkey turns to Skip. “Ask dumb questions, get dumb answers,” he says.

Penkala suddenly laughs through a mouthful of food. “So there were two’a them Speirs and then he ate one? He’s actually two combined separate Speirses?”

“Well, where else would he get his creepy personality?” says Luz.

“Hey, he’s not creepy,” interjects Toye. “Just got some dark rumors around him.”

“Rumors which are based on reality,” says Malarkey. “Remember I told you, when I was walkin’ away after he handed ‘em all--”

“Yeah, yeah, you told us this story a thousand times, Malark,” says Skip. “But I mean, it would explain some things if he did eat a twin in the womb--”

“Wait, wait,” says Penkala. “You got this all wrong. For Speirs to have his name, it got passed down by his dad, right?”

The men chorus a series of mm-hmms, except for Malarkey, who sighs.

“So it was someone way before his dad. The original Speirs. The original Speirs started out a Speir, and it was him who ate his twin.”

“Hey, this is all based on an assumption,” Malarkey begins, sitting up straight with his M-1 in his lap. “I’m sure Luz isn’t even right about eating babies. It sounds like bullshit news to me--”

The barn door creaks, and all the men go quiet, eyeing the door with trepidation. It’s someone tall and straight-backed, an officer. Toye stands up, and all the others do too, until a voice from the door tells them to go back to whatever they were doing.

“Just checking up,” says Winters with a comforting nod that is lost in the dark to half of the men. He gives no sign that he had heard their conversation, except perhaps a slightly raised eyebrow. The men who notice tell themselves that they are overreacting. Winters wouldn’t believe they were seriously discussing the eating of babies, would he? He drums on the door with his fingers, and starts to close it. “Goodnight, boys.”

“ ‘Night, sir,” the enlisted men say, and the door shuts with a creak and a small thud. The men stay in silence for a while, thinking, and the sound of crickets rises in the distance. Someone shifts against the hay, and Penkala rustles with the last of his ration pack, and clangs around with his spoon.

“Hey, guys?” says the voice of Skip into the silence. Malarkey groans, already thinking he knows what Skip is going to say. If it isn’t what he predicts, it would probably still be a brain-dead statement anyway. “If Speirs ate the other Speir and that’s why his name is Speirs, then did Winters eat a Winter?”

The silence that follows is short and shocked. Penkala and Luz gasp momentarily, and Toye sputters out a sound of indignance.

“Oh my God,” said Malarkey, and he settles back deeper into the piles of hay, trying to close his eyes and drift off to sleep.

The sounds of argument drift far over the barn and out past the thin wood slats, carried by the cold French wind eastwards over Dog Company. Ronald Speirs, at the edge of his company, sitting by himself with a can of rations, wonders what the men in the barn are talking about.

He lights a cigarette for himself, and takes a drag, feeling the burn in his lungs and the smoke going down and then circling in his sinuses when he blows it out through his nose. Someone on the border of Easy stumbles by in the deep, murky darkness, and he swears to himself, kicking at the rock in his path. Speirs can’t tell who it is, but he still keeps his cigarette case in his hand, knowing the low flame-colored glow of his lit one will illuminate a small area in the relative dark.

“Cigarette?” asks Speirs into the impenetrable black of night.

“N-no, sir,” gets out the man, who lingers for a second before absconding westwards into the safety of his company and the seeing eyes of the watchers stationed around the border.

Speirs almost smiles to himself, tucking the case back into his pocket, and he enjoys the cigarette while it lasts. It doesn’t last long, like most things, and he drops it onto the ground and watches it sputter before grinding it into the dirt with the heel of his boot.

He listens to the drifting conversation of the East men in the barn until it becomes wavering static, and the sky and its stars become too bright.

And he thinks briefly of his family -- Mother, Father, and the four others. He lays down in the grass and dirt, and then thinks of the one who had been.

It is not now, and yet a part of him. He smiles, eyes sparkling and teeth gleaming, and he lets himself dig deep, for a millisecond, for the other.

And then they sleep.

.

Hi, this is a 2:00 am random idea that me and my sister were scream-laughing about: Why is Speirs plural? And what do the men think about it?

I don’t usually write in present tense, but today it kind of came out and I think it lends the prose a kinda weird, immediate, present feel, kinda like you enter the void of starless night where you encounter Keter-class abominations and eldritch terrors for one dream a day and then this strange universe that contains a nightmare Speirs is what plays in your head lol

As always, this is not meant to reference the real historical soldiers. This is based on the fictionalized HBO versions.

I made art for this, by the way.

.

[ordonianhero]

The Rat, the Wolf and the Lion

A LU short between Legend, Twilight and Warriors. Characters are from JOJO’s Linked Universe.

Authors notes: this is a one shot, so sorry for spelling and grammar. I wrote this out as quickly as my brain thought it.

Legend and Twilight set up a scheme to prank warriors in his sleep. >:)

———————————————————————

After a long day’s journey. The group settled camp along a crystal clear lake bed. It was teaming with fish and other wild life. Time and Twilight took it upon themselves to go gather up some fish for the group. Hyrule and wind gathered up wood for a camp fire. Legend spent some time going through their inventory, see if there was anything they may need if they were to come upon a village.

Warriors was showing Wind a few sparing sword moves. While Four was showing sky a few things about native plants and such. Wild was prepping to cook up whatever Time and Twilight brought back. Legend after some time sat down against a log watching Warriors and Wind. “Come to judge us pinky?” Chuckled Warriors as he flourished his sword at Wind. Legend snorted at Captain’s comment. “Wasn’t counting on it. Beside- you aren’t even worth putting rupees on, after the stunt I saw wind pull on Wild.” He snarkily replies. Wind laughed at the statement. Warriors smirked, “well at least I won’t be the one so easily spotted in battle. You’re one giant flag to anything near by.” Legend crosses his arms and huffed. He knew this would happen. Though Twilight had explained the look was temp and would fade over time.

Most of the group had gotten their giggles and jokes out. However warriors still find a way to jab him for it. Legend abruptly got up and went to go check on how the fishing was going. “Yeah well, whatever.” Wind could sense it was still a sensitive subject still. Warriors, paused for a second. He probably over stepped that one. He then was caught off guard as wind whacked him with the flat side of his sword.

Legend sat down hard beside twilight. Time looked over. “Everything okay there?” He asked cautiously. Legend said nothing. Time then let it go, Legend blood boiled with frustration. Twilight could feel Legend’s frustration radiating. Then suddenly as it was there, it seemed to disappear. The calming sounds of the water lapping the lake side. The frogs croaking, birds twittering away. Nature had calmed whatever fury was raging. “It’s beautiful out here.” Legend then spoke. Time nodded in agreement.

Twilight just smiled at Legend. “Sure is.” The the clouds in the sky started turning a purplish pink as the sun started going down. Twilight and Time had managed to successfully catch good amount of fish for dinner. They both stood up, but legend stayed seated. Time looked at Legend and then to twilight. “Here, I shall take our catch to the chef. You two can stick here.” Twilight nodded. He Carly handed over his catch and Time went off to give Wild the fish to cook.

Twilight folded up his rod. Tucking it into his pouch. Legend still sitting, let out a sigh. Then tosses a pebble into the water. Twilight looked around and found a flat stone and flung it in a way it skipped across the water. Before he took a seat beside Legend. “Show off.” Huffed legend. Twilight flinched. “Sorry.” He softly chuckled. Legend softly smiled. They then just sat in silence for a bit. Before Legend let out another, but softer sigh.

“So.” He spoke. “You said the hair color will fade sometime?” Twilight tore his gaze from the water and over at Legend. “Yeah. I mean- you weren’t under the crystal for long. So I am certain it will fade away.” Legend nodded. “Good, cause the captain won’t let up and I got nothing to tag him back with.” Legend sighed, plucking up another stone into the water. A near by by frog croaked.

Twilight shifted his sitting potion, bringing his knees up, feet flat to the ground and leaning back on his hands. “That can easily be fixed.” Legend looked over. “Oh no, you know what happened the last time you schemed rancher.” Legend replied, but he face went into a full smirk. “But, do go on.”

Twilight smiled back at Legend. “So, I was thinking, why not mess with him in his sleep.” Legend’s eyes grew wide and a evil grin stretched across his face. He turned his full body to face twilight. “Oh I like this Rancher. Let’s maybe stick his hand in warm water?” Replied legend. Twilight paused and tapped his chin, “classic, classic. But too simple.” They sat their quietly. Legend bent over with his to hands clasped together, resting his insect fingers to his lips. As he deeply thought. A cricket hopped between the two of them. Stopped. Rubbed its legs together and then hopped off.

“Ah ha!” Twilight states cheerfully with a finger in the air. Legend was slightly startled. A sly smirk splayed across twilight’s face. A look that wild has often worn when he is plotting something wild like. “So, how bout we take the night watch, before dawn. We set up a raft, place warriors on it, and set him out to wake up in the middle of the lake.” Legend was surprised, rancher sure knew some good plans. Assuming being around where he was from, the children of his village- he is not shocked.

“For being stoic rancher, you sure know some evil pranks. I like it.” Chuckled legend, crossing his arms. “What evil pranks?” Came a voice from behind them. There stood the captain. Twilight just smiled and stood up. “Oh, just a few stuff the village children played on me.” Legend smiled in returned. “Shocking, the rancher has some very clever pranksters.” Warriors raised an eyebrow. “Oh. Well uh the old man sent me to tell you two food is ready.”

“Oh good, I am ready to eat.” Smirked Twilight, patting the captain’s shoulder at he walked by. “Same.” Replied legend, as he was about to walk past Warriors. The Captain stopped him. “Look, sorry. I crossed a boundary and I shouldn’t have.” He said looking at Legend with an apologetic look. Legend softly smiled. “No worries. I need to learn to just go with it.” With that he walked on. Leaving warriors looking out at the beautiful sun set upon the lake. He then turned around and followed them back to camp.

Time handed twilight and legend their food as they sat together. He could see a look on the pups face that said Legend and him seem to have good talk. Warriors then came and sat over by Wind and Hyrule. The group all seem happily chattering away, then they all turned to talks of what the plan was for the next day. It then turned to who was to do first watch. “Ah Legend will take final watch together.” Twilight spoke. The group all looked at Twilight, “that’s a unique position for you. Often you like first watch.” Spoke Four. Twilight shrugged. “I don’t often sleep well. So I will just stay up with Legend. Two eyes before sun up.” Time wasn’t ganna argue with him on that. “Okay.”

Once everything was cleaned up. Twilight went off to do one last patrol for the night. He also took the time to find some good logs he could tie together and make a rafted into. He brought them back to Came to tie together. Time was taking first watch that night. Twilight looked at the camp, the rest of the guys had settled to sleep. Time raised an eyebrow at twilight and the logs. “What’s that for?” He asked quietly. “Hm, something to hopefully get me to be tired out.”

Twilight set the logs down in a way to make a small rafted. Time melted his ears and eyes out for enemies. Twilight worked quietly. Using reeds, weaving them into a rope like. Strong and sturdy. Before tying the logs together. Time was rather impressed with the pups random skills. Clearly some stuff learned from his own travels. Twilight then yawned and laid on top of the raft and falling asleep. Time chuckled and went back to his watch.

When it came to Legend’s time for watch. He was woken by sky. Then legend woke twilight. “Our turn.” He quietly spoke. Twilight shifted awake. His hair sticking out awkwardly. “Hm...okay. Let me get this raft to the water and test it out.” Legend nodded. Twilight scooped up the raft and took it to the lake. Legend made sure the camp fire was still going. Twilight quietly places the rafted in the water. He put his own weight on it. It differently wouldn’t sink and tying it together worked.

Twilight sat beside Legend and whispered. “Well he won’t sink at least” Legend chuckled quietly. They sat quietly and took on the watch. As it crept closer to dawn. That is when Twilight got up and quietly went over to warriors. Poked him. No movement. Sleeping beauty was sleeping dead beauty. Twilight scooped up the captain and carried him with his blanket to the raft.

He carefully set him down on the raft and tucked him in. Then kicking off his boots. He bent over and carefully pushed the raft out into the water. He stepped in and eased into the cool water pushing the raft out more. He then stopped And let the raft drift on its own. The watched it for a bit and smirked. He turned around and gently swam his way back to shore. He picked up his boots and made it back to camp where he dried off and sat across from Legend and smiled. Legend smirked tiredly.

As the sun came up, the group slowly stir awake. Legend and Twilight were released from watch. As members were awaking up it was Wind who took noticed warriors was missing. “Oi, where’d the Cap go? He bedding is gone too.” Twilight was busy helping pack up camp. Legend sat beside Four. Time upon hearing the Captain was missing looked about frantically. “Ah, sure he is fine. He may of went off to patrol,or something.” Legend states calmly. The camp then all went quiet as they hear the sound of a large splash and a scream from the lake.

The group all rain to the lake. As they arrived, warriors, drenched and dripping with water, was walking up to dry land. The look on his face was not one of amused. Time could see the raft that Twilight built that night. He shot Twilight and look. Twilight gave him a flustered look and smile. Legend let out a chuckle “good morning sleeping beauty. Wasn’t sure you would wake. So the water was the best alarm clock.”

The group then all laughed. Time eyes both Twilight and Legend, they could tell as much as he was furious with them, he also found it amusing. “Well let’s get you warmed up and fed.” Time states taking the wet bedding and fling it to twilight who caught it. Then lead warriors back to camp to get warmed up. “You two are on laundry duty for a week.” He states as he passes Twilight and Legend. Legend groaned and Twilight just chuckled “okay sir.”

Once everyone was fed and the Captain was dried off, They were ready to hit the road. They cleared up camp and off they went. Warriors walked up to Twilight and Legend and flung his arms around them both. “So, ah this was be a glorious sight of watching you two suffer as you do my laundry.”

“Ah it won’t bother me much. At least I had loads of practice with cleaning up soiled clothing from my days of caring for babies and children.” Chuckled twilight. Warriors huffed and pushed away Twilight. Legend laughed. “Whatever. Warriors huffed before walking off whipping his still damp scarf into Twilight’s face. Twilight and legend chuckled and tapped fists together.

~ fin.

[brigirl3]

A Trial Story! Please give me feedback ;w; ( DBD )

I always overthink everything so I started this draft because I was fed up with myself.  Please let me know what your thoughts are.  I am currently on the fence if I should continue this or not...

Think of this as chapter 1 I suppose :s

The entity is a hard thing to understand, one minute it’s pitting its victim against each other and then the next they are granted hours to do as they please.  Without any known way to escape this hell, both the killers and survivors are forced to play this twisted game.  Or so that’s what they think, no one is really sure what is out there.  

On the far side of the twisted rows or corn lay a barren field before giving way to a tall pine forest.  Here, the survivors come from time to time to de-stress and take in the sweet smells of the forest.  It is unknown how vast the entity’s world expands but it does have some nice areas surprisingly.  A soft fire began to cackle as a few gathered around to take in the warmth.  Claudette hugged her knees tightly looking into the flames, her expression was tight.  Unlike the others, who either chose to lie in the low hanging branches or cook food she wanted to be alone.  Finally having enough she quietly moved to find a better spot.  It took a bit to get far enough from the light so it wouldn’t be too bright but eventually she stumbled upon a neat little hideaway.  A patch of bushes giving a little leeway to an under path, crawling through it she found herself encased in a circular space surrounded by shrubbery.  Low hanging branches made for a soft roof with a leafy opening for the moonlight to hit her face.  Claudette was left speechless, all she could do was situate herself to stare up through the opening at the beautiful night sky.  “ I.. didn’t know the entity could create something like this..” she said to herself, barely as a whisper.  The sweet smell of the forest wafted around her as she continued to stare at the view, unaware that the lull of it all was getting to her.  

Back at the camp, the others continued to enjoy the scene together.  Meg cooked up the fish they caught by the fire and Jake hummed a tune under his breath as he brought back the fire wood he collected.  David told stories of his fights in various bars and tidbits of his previous life before the entity claimed him.  His stories were riveting and never failed to entertain, a few were gathered around but Cheryl was especially drawn in as per usual.  Bill and Dwight were on the side having a private discussion, sharing notes about what they found within the Entity.  “ Francis came back from the South, no matter how far he went it didn’t seem to end,” said Dwight, his expression was a cross between fatigue and frustration.  “ Quentin basically reported the same thing,” Bill let out a long sigh, “ So is it safe to assume that this place doesn't have walls outside the trials?”  Dwight placed a hand on Bill’s shoulder, “Unfortunately, but we can’t give up.  Let us rest up for tonight, have fun and enjoy our fellow survivors before we are summoned.” With a final nod they both rejoined the rest of the group, just in time as Meg called out the food was ready. 

The group gathered together to enjoy a nice meal, everyone was content as the smell of freshly cooked fish filled the air. “ You seem to be opening up a bit more now Cheryl.” Meg chuckled a bit before handing a blushing Cheryl her portion, “ I am glad that someone is helping you warm up to us~” Meg glanced in David’s direction who was too busy not paying attention.   “So anything new Dwight?” Meg looked up, a small sliver hope in her eyes.  Dwight choked on his fish at the sudden change of topic, “Um. Unfortunately no, our original plan to try and find the perimeter was a bust.  There doesn’t seem to be one.”  A moment of silence fell over the group, only the sound of the fire cackling and chewing continued.  “ .. We are going to die here aren't we..?”  “Cher-,” Jake was cut off as Cheryl stood up beginning to yell, “ NO!! We are! There is no way out and we are forced to play this sick game!!” she began to breathe erratically, putting her hands on her neck as she let out several wheezing noises.  “ She is having a panic attack,” Jake got up to try and comfort her but she pushed him away, distrust was written all over her face.  “ Don't..- touch..”  Meg turned to David but he was already on it, “ Cheryl take deep breaths, it’s ok.  No need to work yourself up.”  He approached her cautiously before putting his hand on her shoulders to steady her.  “ Look at me, breathe.”  Her eyes locked with his, her hands relaxed from her throat as she synchronized her breathing with his.  Not before long she was back to normal, staring deeply into his eyes still matching his breath.  The fire illuminated their faces and made them seem so far away from everyone else.  Cheryl quickly looked away, she mumbled sadly, “ How can we be sure there IS a way out? What if there isn’t one?”  A look came across Dwight’s face but he quickly replaced it, “  If there isn’t a way out, then we will make one.  Don’t give up so easily, we keep fighting till the end.  We are survivors and we will keep going no matter what.”  “Hell yea Dweet!” Nea fist pumped the air in approval, a few others cheered in response.  The night carried on with a more upbeat vibe as the survivors forgot about their troubles and enjoyed each other’s company.

A sharp whale of a siren pierced the air startled the group, the sound was very familiar.  A warning that danger was coming a change of some sort, whether they moved or not was optional but who would choose to stay with potential danger?  The survivors hustled around, putting out the fire and gathering up the remaining food to take back to the main Fire.  Panic slowly took over the group as they left a mess in their wake.  Some of the food was left behind along with kicked up dirt and strewn logs that were meant to keep the flames going all night.    Before a matter of minutes they were gone, leaving behind a faint wisp of dying fire smoke.  Not even a few seconds after they left, a gangly figure appeared out of the darkness.  Her figure loomed over the fire and strewn pieces of food.  Letting out a high pitched noise she happily began to feast on the dirt fish.  “ Oh come on Lisa, you are better than that.”  Another figure appeared to the left of her, surveying the area.  “ It seems like we just missed our friends...”  Lisa didn’t respond, her attention was entirely on the delicious(?) meal in front of her.  God it had been so long since she had some fresh meat, she didn’t care if they were covered in freshly turned mud and twigs.  “ Slow down,” he said in a gruff tone, leaning down to snatch up the remaining fish.  “I can try to clean it for you.  Pretty sure there is a stream nearby if I remember correctly..?”  The only response he got was a snarl and a mean look, “ Come on you can’t be mad at me for looking out for you.”  He rolled his eyes, turning a fish in one hand, “ We will probably have to start this fire back up anyway to dry the fish, might as well hunt for more meat.”  At the mere mention of more food her expression softened and again, high pitched noises ensued; yet they sounded kinder.  She reached out a hand to touch his leg as a way to say thank you, surprised by her sudden gesture he jumped a bit only to compose himself quickly.  “Don’t start acting nice now that you want something..” he stood up and was quick to disappear with a few fish in hand, heading off in an unknown direction. 

There was darkness for a while.  Nothing was happening nor could anything be seen or smelt.  It went on like this for a while until moonlight appeared above, illuminating the dark.  All around there were hills, valleys that stretched on all around. The scenery was colored with a dim blue light, a steady sound of a stream could be heard.  Crickets chirped and the owls sang a melancholy tune.  Weirdly, trees appeared out of nowhere along with a steep drop where the water cascaded down into nothingness.  Inching closer and closer to the edge felt right, gravitating towards danger but there was no sense of fear or urgency by the ledge.  Looking down there was darkness, no light nor sound just black.  There was a strong urge to dive right in, so much so that it felt natural.  She didn’t know what to make of it but before she knew what was happening, she found herself falling head first into the abyss.  “ GUha!!”  Claudette jumped from her nap and made friends with a cute low hanging branch.  It smacked the shit out of her forehead nearly knocking her glasses off and knocked her flat on her back.  Dazed she stayed on the ground for a while, her head throbbing violently making it hard to concentrate or see straight.  A few minutes passed before she attempted to touch her forehead, the pain felt less and less with each touch.  The moonlight continued to shine brightly through the canopy opening, but nothing could be heard other than the sounds of the forest.  She held her breath listening hard for her friends.  After several minutes of silence, she came to the conclusion that she was either too far away or that everyone has settled down for the night.  With a sigh she slowly gathered to her feet only to be startled by a rustling sound.  She froze mid stance, not daring to call out to the unknown.  A figure started to part the bushes entering into, what she thought, was her private little getaway.  With a panicked motion, her feet began to back slowly until she could feel the leaves of one of the walls tickle her skin.  Using one of her legs, she rubbed the wall searching for the way she came in.  An arm was visible now and more was coming through the far side of the bush.  She felt her calf go from brushing up against leaves to being greeted with a cool gust of air.  Without hesitation she got on all fours and crawled out backwards quickly, checking to make sure the figure couldn’t see her.  As she escaped, she noticed huge brawny arms with tubes sticking out.  Just before its face could be seen, she could see a pair of milky eyes glowing coming closer and closer until it was in full view.  It was the Doctor, by the time he came all the way through, Claudette just barely made it through the under bush and dashed to one side of the opening.  She could hear his heavy breathing as he moved around a bit, as if he was searching for something.  “ …..” He was talking to himself but she couldn’t make out exactly what.  Regardless she cautiously began to make her way back to the campsite, it was this way right?

  God it was too dark to tell where she came from, she followed her gut and made a sharp right.  Several minutes passed and Claudette found herself going deeper and deeper into the forest.  This doesn’t seem right.. She felt like she was a lot further than she did when she found her napping spot.  A rapid gust of wind blew past her unexpectedly, the damn thing nearly pushed her over.  Hopping a few times forward in an attempt to not fall, she lost her battle with balance and tumbled down into a steady roll.  She felt gravity take her over a hidden drop straight into a cold lake.