#the coat has a place for a holster on the inside of it which is where he keeps his gun

[jellyskink]

Ford seems more scared of everyone then anything in your au but I’m curious has he ever lashed out at another human?

Humans occasionally come in to clean the Fearamid, in the rare times between parties. Ford doesn't like other humans intruding and insists on monitoring them. He takes notes and gets rather aggressive if they do something he doesn't like

[wendigoruble]

Playtime: Oneshot

[This is like softcore af.. Like more than I intended it to be]

Franco had dressed himself in his freshly cleaned white pinstripe suit for tonight. No blood stains or dirt stains, fresh pressed and no wrinkles. On any other man it would look impeccable but it hangs loose against Franco's body. The sleeves and pant legs are just slightly too long, over hanging with lightly bunched fabric. For once he has the pristine coat buttoned up but only to hide the pacifier he keeps around neck at all times. It's pressed to his chest and he can feel the dull plastic edge rub against his purple dress shirt every time he moves his arms. It's a small discomfort but he'd found it a touch easier to pick up women with it concealed. He could never understand why that would turn someone off.

His gaze sweeps the area as he brings the glass of whiskey to his lips. The drink makes him internally cringe like a spoonful of medicine had been forced into his mouth. Even with its smoothness he doesn't like it, but the boniface refused to make him a wolf's milk and it's not like he can unstrap lupara from her holster and make the demand. Not tonight. He has personal business to attend to.

The club is packed with people wall to wall dancing to the soft jazz and murmuring among each other. Groups of friends chatter away close by and the odd couple are necking here and there.

Franco had himself seated at the bar. No one sits by him, no one attempts to go near him but he isn't concerned over that. People must really fear him. After all, he’s the button man for one of the largest mobs in the area (and he has his gun holstered across his back). Who would ever try to approach him unless they're looking to make a payment or there to gravel at his feet?

He takes another sip from his glass and holds it in his mouth before spitting it back out. How do people drink this stuff? It never feels right or tastes right, it's far too fluid. He turns to the bartender, about to complain, when someone catches his eye.

A woman is walking up to the bar and the very sight of her makes Franco feel warm. She has shoulder length black hair, long eyelashes, and a stern look about her smooth round face which is accented by pouty red lips. The black dress she wears shows off her shoulders and hugs her curves and well endowed chest. The fabric stops mid thigh and Franco's gaze travels all the way down to her shoes. Those black stiletto heels that click against the wooden floor really seals the deal. They make her at least three inches taller than him at that.

His heart is already thudding in excitement the closer she gets. He can barely hide his anticipation.

Before she even has a chance to talk to the bartender Franco is slipping off the barstool and placing his gloved hand on the counter in front of her. He stands too close and she seems little more than annoyed at him. Glaring down with the smallest hint of a sneer.

“Whatever the lady buys is on me.” He says while smiling up at her.

“Really?” She puts a hand on her hip before her sneer turns into a sly smirk,”Whatever I want?”

“Anything for a lady as beautiful as yourself.”

She seems to think for a moment, tilting her head up with judgment clear as day in her eyes. This little deformed looking man is offering to buy her drinks and she can see his plan from a mile away. It's pathetic in a very endearing way and she can read the glittery look in his pale blue eyes. A want, a joy barely contained with a crooked buck-toothed grin.

“Mmhm. What do you really want, kid?” She mocks.

Franco can feel that warmth growing inside when she spits at him like that. A coiling heat in his lower stomach springs to life. He has to swallow so he doesn't make a sound he'd regret. With a smooth exhale he tucks his hand into his jacket, ready to grab the money from the inside pocket. He never takes his eyes off her.

“Ain't yous a forward woman. I was just wonderin’ how much it'd cost to have an evening with ya.”

She very nearly laughs at him before seeing the thick stack of bills he's got pulled halfway out. She smiles, steps closer, grabs his wrist, and takes the money right out of his hand. She can hear an audible shaky exhale then and looks down to see him staring directly at her chest which is about as close to his face now as she can get without touching him.

“I think this should be enough.” She pushes him back by his shoulder.

“Wwhh.. Say, what's ya name?” Franco bites his bottom lip as he resteadies himself and rolls his shoulder. Normally he'd be pissed off should anyone touch him but he can make an exception this time.

“What would you like it to be?”

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

“Ohhhh mutha!!” Franco cries out into the cold air of the motel room,”Baby's been bad!”

Tears are welling up in his eyes, his face is flushed and he holds his hands together tightly. Biting onto one of his thumbs in anticipation of the next firm smack against his bare skin. He jumps when that sweet sting of pain radiates out followed by a soothing rub. Oh his ass has to be red raw at this point. She's been at it so long he's bound to be bruised. Probably wont sit right for a week.

He dares pass a look back at his dear mommy for the evening. That sadistic joy glimmering in her eyes damn near makes him fawn all over again. What a good mommy she is. Breaking him down and making him cry, making him feel small and insignificant. Before he can even open his mouth to shower her with compliments he's spanked one last time. Tears slip over his cheeks as he moans and grinds against her thigh. Rolling his hips with a high pitched whine as his cock twitches and leaks pre that smears against her skin.

“Awhh is my baby boy having a good time?” She coos.

Franco can do little more than huff in response while he steadies himself.

She smooths over the bright red irritation with her palm. His skin is hot to the touch and she makes it a point to drag her nails across it before placing her other hand around his neck. Squeezing ever so slightly, urging him back and making him stand up so she can so delicately kiss his cheek. A red lipstick print is left behind. A mark he'd wear with pride should it never be washed away.

Her fingers curl around his throat and it's a welcome restraint. Franco leans into her hand enough to make his breathing hitch. She leads him down onto his knees. He stares at her with such adoration as she slots her leg between his. Pushing the point of her heel into his groin makes him visibly tremble. She applies further pressure with the toe of her shoe, pressing against his cock as he wraps both arms around her leg.

“You like that? Like playing with mommies shoes?”

Franco nods as he rests his cheek against her thigh and begins to rut on the sole of her stiletto. Pressing into it hard enough that it actually hurts. He gives her the most innocent look he can muster before faltering into a series of loud huffs and high pitched groans. He turns his head slightly and drags his tongue along her smooth skin before biting down hard enough to leave a bruise.

With an airy moan she rests back on her palms and watches with amusement as he pleasures himself with such vigor. She's happy his desperation is so evident because it makes it all the better when he pulls her leg away just before he cums. He's left on all fours just trembling and blushing with those big glassy eyes. Whimpering as precum drips from the tip of his irritated prick. He makes a move to grab her leg again but she leans up and smacks his hand away.

“Please..”

Again Franco reaches out to touch her only to be swatted back once more. She looks at him through half lidded eyes and with a firm tone she says,”Lay down.”

He obeys implicitly. Laying back on the floor despite any discomfort it gives him because it's worth it. It's worth it when she stands up and presses that heel into his chest. His gaze rolls up to see her dragging her hand up between her legs. His lips part with his tongue between his teeth only to have that heel then moved up to his neck, then his cheek. Forcing his head to the side so he can't look at her.

“Filthy baby boy aren't you?” She muses.

She doesn't get a response, she doesn't expect one. Especially not when she notices him beginning to stroke himself rapidly. For a moment she does consider stopping him again but he's so eager she allows him to finish. He cums on his lower stomach in thin white ropes before dragging his hand up through the mess.

“Guess you really are a filthy baby boy, hm?”

[cleavetheclover]

Like a Shitty Little Guardian Angel

Cypher doesn’t trust Iso.

Like Chamber, his record was just a little too excellent. Served in the Chinese military, moved to a special unit and received specialized Radiant training, defected and began a search for organizations that would make “better use of his talents.” A plain story. Right at the same time that Valorant was looking to hire another Agent.

Inconspicuous and conveniently at right place at the right time…

Just enough so that it tickles the instincts in the back of Cypher’s mind.

Ah, but Cypher is getting ahead of himself. He has no concrete evidence against Iso. Chamber, on the other hand, showed up with the exact blueprints and coordinates and passwords of the entire Fracture site— including information he certainly wouldn’t have access to if he were merely an optical engineer as he described. That was blatant. Something didn’t add up there, and Cypher still hadn’t been able to figure it out.

Not so much with Iso.

Until he was alerted of a Sheriff missing from the Range Armory.

Under normal circumstances Agents could borrow equipment from the Armory for practice drills. Cypher had set an alarm to notify him of any missing equipment, on a timer of six hours or if equipment left the Range. Most of the time they were false alarms (Phoenix, please stop leaving your pistols in the locker room…), but today was different.

Cypher checked the time. A Sheriff had been removed from the Range two minutes ago, half past midnight. Definitely not during draining hours. He flicked through the security system, looking for the culprit, and found the 24th Agent on his way out of the Armory.

Curious. He was carrying the Sheriff by his side, clearly conscious that he had stolen it.

Cypher stood from his chair and slipped out of his office, deciding to tail the Duelist just in case. His own Ghost was holstered on the inside of his coat (a little exception that he technically shouldn’t have, but if anyone knew, no one had ratted on him so far.)

Iso was making his way through the corridors with decisive strides. Every few seconds, Cypher would note his pathway and check the rooms ahead to see if anything of importance might be there. Just in case, he also prepares to activate an emergency call for Sage and Brimstone. They could help if things went south.

Nothing for ten minutes. Their paths cross at about the five minute mark, Cypher intercepting from behind with Iso none the wiser.

The Duelist had passed by all the rooms housing important power banks, servers, computers, laboratories, and workshops. What was he after, then?

Cypher checks the cameras of the rooms ahead. Killjoy’s workshop, darkened. She is out on a mission now. His own workshop (yes, Cypher had ironically circled back here without intending to). Chamber's workshop, dark, the frenchman was a morning person who enjoyed early bedtimes. Omen in a room further ahead, tending to his favorite bonsai.

(He never said it was his favorite, but Cypher knew because it was the one he was always most careful with.)

Cypher leans his back against the wall, watching Iso continue his path down the hall through his cameras. The Duelist shows no interest in any of the workshops, which is a relief to the Sentinel.

Until Iso stops at the room Omen is standing in, and takes aim at Omen's skull.

Omen doesn't even look up.

Cypher curses under his breath and breaks into a run. An assassination? Why? He braces himself for the sound of the Sheriff’s fire and what he knows he must do afterwards— take out Iso, take Omen’s corpse to the medbay, and get Sage to revive him as soon as possible—

But even as he catches up to the corner, no sound has come. Only silence.

Cypher switches to his cam, where he has a good view of both Iso and Omen. The Sheriff is poin muted at the back of Omen’s head, held evenly in Iso’s hand as he stands out in the hallway. The revenant is none the wiser, continuing to clip away at the bonsai.

Iso does not fire. Five seconds. Cypher holds his breath, preemptively drawing his pistol from his coat.

But Iso lowers the gun.

Iso, for whatever reason, has spared Omen’s life. Instead, he has left a device on the table beside the Controller, one too small for Cypher to examine through the camera.

Cypher rounds the corner, leaning against the doorframe as the duelist once again enters the hallway. The Chinese man stares him down, daring him to say anything. Cypher maintains his gaze and wordlessly rolls a tripwire across his knuckles, playing innocent even though both of them know that Cypher was fully aware of the actions Iso had almost taken.

Iso returns the nod.

Good. Now Iso knows that Cypher is keeping an eye on him, and hopefully he won’t try and pull any of this bullshit again.

[rwby-necromancer-au]

OK BECAUSE AT LEAST ONE PERSON SHOWED INTEREST

I’ve been thinking about songbirds a LOT lately

I have such a vivid image in my mind of how these guys would look and how it’d look to be on one of these stolen ships taking people out of Atlas to save them. How they’d care for these people and try to keep them safe.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of giving them a uniform of some kind. Instead of them looking like ordinary people.

I think them being dressed in all black would be a cool counterpart to Atlas’s Pursuers wearing only white.

In this hypothetical uniform, they’d wear masks. (specifically plague doctor masks bc I’m predictable and they offer a lot of versatility in design considering they’re called songBIRDS)

And also I’ve always imagined them with black captain hats or black chauffeur hats:

LOTS of layers, like a LOT.

They go everywhere, so they need to be prepared for any kind of weather. The hottest of the hot and the coldest of the cold.

I figure these guys may also just use dark colors, not necessarily black

Like brown, dark green, or whatever matches their mask, which will entirely depend on what role they have on the ship. Role = what kind of bird you are.

Here are the roles and their associated birds:

- Captains are Crows or Ravens

- Second in Commands would be Passerines

- Healers/Medics are Hummingbirds or Kinglets

- General songbirds without a specific role are Blackbirds

- Caretaker songbirds (ones that care for orphaned children or the elderly) are Cardinals

- Psychiatric Songbirds are Starlings

- Chef/Cafeteria Songbirds are Swallows (see what I did there? Hehe)

I imagine they wear trench coats, which I think would be a nice callback to where Oz got the idea for his own trench coat and why he likes them so much.

Another fun callback is how Qrow has his own plague doctor/songbird mask.

And how Glynda wears similar boots to the songbirds.

They probably wear cargo pants with lots of pockets, and bodysuits that go all the way up over the head (apart from the face), these can be swapped out for short sleeve version too. Work gloves and steel toed work boots are a must, so are lots of bags and holsters. I imagine they also have a harness that has some bags on it too.

All hidden beneath a heavy trench coat, that also has pockets.

I imagine these holsters and pockets are used to hold guns, flash bangs, other forms of weapon that can temporarily disable an enemy, knives, etc.

And most of these holsters and bags have a cover to go over them, to keep the things inside in place.

Can’t have anything too restricting, they need to be able to jump, run, roll, etc.

I imagine that they whistle, sing, hum, and that every song means something different.

Rarely do they ever actually speak to each other when they’re working, only use non verbal or musical communication. The only time you’ll see them converse is when they’re on the ship itself and not in danger.

They have to give up their entire identities to do this job, only being referred to by “Songbird” or their title of songbird (I.e “Blackbird” or otherwise)

They are covered head to toe. No skin is allowed to show really.

Those with long hair must either tie their hair up in a way that their hat and bodysuit will cover it, or cut it (Most usually cut their hair).

All songbirds must know how to speak in sign language.

All the boats that are used to take people out of Atlas/Mistral must be stolen from Atlas/Mistral or made to look identical to their ships. That way they can avoid detection

But yeah, those are some of my thoughts about them!!!

I really love thinking about these guys!

[biskael]

LITTLE CHARACTER THINGS

just a fun little character game. fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by. repost & tag away !

tagged by: .

tagging : anyone who wishes to do this .

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS:

001. arrogance .

002. seriousness .

003. self-confidence .

004. pride.

005. dedication .

VOICE / GREETINGS / SPEECH PATTERNS :

001. possesses a noticeable german accent . so , his Ws become Vs , his Vs become Fs , etc . a region-specific dialect is to be determined , personally .

002. his specific patterns are particular . his vocabulary seems to be quite formal . but , i do personally believe his delivery can be interpreted as casual .

003. has a very loud and commanding voice . also , occasionally rolls his Rs , a trait both in english and japanese ! thank you !

COLORS:

001. crimson / scarlet . namely in the form of his glasses . lends an almost uncanny look to his appearance, or an intimidating one , in the right light .

002. white . as in his uniform .

003. silver . with strong blue undertones . the silver cage . the color of manipulated reishi .

004. green . representative of forests dark and looming . a place he had spent much time in , when outside of his military duties .

005. black . the supposed color of his aura . interpreted as the conqueror . intense . harsh . the absence of light .

SCENTS:

001. leather , being deeply polished and cared for . the tanned hide of a kill .

002. blood , but not his own . blood of man , blood of monsters .

003. sweat , something he washes away daily . of course , his duties are physical , and exercise is a hobby . it's bound to happen .

004. metal , gunpowder , and the iron scent that comes off of rust . hot smoke . cold steel . there is something menacing about it .

005. pine , as forests deep and dark . a man's cologne . from the woods of the hunt . something natural .

CLOTHING:

001. his wandenreich uniform is a slightly altered variation on the standard . garnered with a thick , dark belt , leather heeled boots & a white mantle . it's the little details that mark him as an important , commanding figure . stupid little hat included .

002. favors leather & fur , all sourced from his hunts or purchased and eventually tanned himself . has more than one fur coat . owns a fur-lined red and white cloak for more formal wandenreich ceremonies . it is worn on top of his regular uniform ( minus the mantle ) , and paired with two decorative , red-handled sabers . all of his black-colored accessories he wears are leather .

003. outside of his uniform , quilge's fashion varies . usually , though , he wears fancier , dandy-types of clothing . being from a noble family historically , quilge's family could afford such . even in adulthood , he thusly dresses rather elegantly . colors and styles vary , of course , but he could also be described as having a more eccentric taste , as well .

004. whatever THIS is . absolutely post-war looks .

005. giant platform boots with a big , ol' heel . or , even just boots with heel , in general . click click click click . that's all .

OBJECTS:

001. his military saber & personal sword .

002. the sternritter medallion , which houses the captured spirit of zangetsu . timeline dependent , as per my plot with eli's ichigo . :)

003. his belt is modified to holster and reinforced various tools / objects . namely smaller in nature , such as his hunter's horn , a number of knives , rope , etc .

004. a small , pocket-sized journal . has larger ones he keeps inside of his personal chambers at silbern . but , quilge enjoys what can be kept on his person , as he travels and hunts often . he journals when he hunts , as it helps him sort his thoughts when he's alone . during his deployment to hueco mundo , he wrote about it . he keeps notes about his fellow sternritter . he keeps notes about his hunts , his prey , even thinks of publishing hunting guides based on this information . he will draw the anatomy and bodies of monsters he's hunted . quilge is a rather talented artist in a technical sense .

005. owns a vast number of weapons from numerous eras and cultures . a personal collection . some of it is brought to silbern . most of it is at his ancestral home , a jagdschloss in the german forests . quilge personally favors bladed weapons , but knows how to use a variety of guns , as well as other types of weapons .

VICES / BAD HABITS: 

001. sadism . of any kind . quilge is a man made by his cruelty . it is flesh and bone real inside of him . in a particular reply , he had said that it is also his "food and drink." that might be an exaggeration , in that context , but someone like quilge , it feels like he was made to make others suffer .

002. zealotry . quilge , very obviously , has a deep faith in yhwach , his beliefs and his goals . one core belief he holds is that yhwach will succeed in the merging of realms , and that everyone quilge knows will thusly be reborn in this new world . and he screams about it every time he gets the chance to . of course .

003. the culling of the weak . sure . let's consider his low tolerance for weakness and fear a bit of a vice . it ends in killing , and that's always a vice for him . he will make plenty of excuses to be absolutely barbaric to even his own men .

004. a competitive attitude . quilge always never really liked his siblings . he easily deemed himself better than them . an absolute cain instinct . while not always manifesting in bloodshed, however, his competitiveness still drives in numerous ways . with his comrades , it can be more lighthearted . with his enemies , it will be deadly . he can AND WILL sit atop a pile of corpses when he's finished .

005. possessiveness , and an ultimate desire for control . the conqueror . the jailer . the butcher . the hunter .

BODY LANGUAGE:

001. a very straight posture when standing . extremely practiced and perfected . it's almost intimidating .

002. conversely , there's times when quilge is sitting down , and his posture can be more of a wicked slouch . he does this purposely . almost always crosses his legs with sitting , as well . hand on his chin or a carved cheek .

003. the slight gesturing with his hands . pointing , holding an open hand , waving his finger back and forth teasingly . sometimes , however , quilge's gestures are far more theatric and dramatic , taking up a lot of his space around him . it depends on his mood .

004. quilge has deep , widened smiles . normally , they are quite dark and indulgent . he smiles easily , and it's usually associated with his cruelty .

005. this is a special aspect for my ship partner @guadanya , but quilge and nnoitra share specific whistles and motions with each other . it is practiced between them , and only something they share . should they be separated or apart , visuals and auditory cues between them could be vital . this was , obviously , quilge's idea .

AESTHETICS:

001. the hunt . aside from torture , the hunt is his favorite . his sacred gathering . his holy work .

002. torture devices . divine instruments for the angel of torture .

003. chains , hooks , rope , riding crops . a double meaning for a man like him . ties directly into his work & his play .

004. german folklore / german fairytales . stories that were passed on from his parents to him , and take some presence in post-war . upon returning to germany , quilge shares some of these stories with his husband . his reishi sword is also named for a german folklore story , as well .

005. angels . views himself as one of god's angels . he deems what he does "holy work," and will often claim that he is "tormenting the wicked" by what he does . of course , given his vollständig's appearance & his zealous mind , it's not too surprising that he thinks so highly of himself .

SONGS:

001. ich tu dir weh // rammstein .

002. leather terror // carpenter brut .

003. prelude to das rheingold // wagner .

004. human trophy collectors // filmmaker .

005. bait and switch // KMFDM .

[clericofshadows]

trust doesn't come cheap

Description: Regis learns who brought his body to Cerberus, has a productive conversation with Miranda, and finds comfort with Zaeed and their budding relationship post-meeting with Kaidan and rekindling their triad.

Pairing: Regis Shepard/Kaidan Alenko/Zaeed Massani, primarily Regis Shepard/Zaeed Massani

Rating: E

Note: Sequel to feeling numb, lost in time. Title is from Take a Bullet - Nothing More.

Regis ran his hand down his coat, feeling for the hidden pocket where his N7 Eagle laid inside.  “Ready to get some answers?” He said, shouldering his bag.

Zaeed nodded, pulling out his Talon from his bag, connecting it to an empty holster on his belt.  “Sure, but are you ready for whatever you’re going to hear?”

Regis pulled a face.  “I have to be.  I need to be.”

“You know this already, but don’t let it show.”

He appreciated the concern, despite already knowing how to handle Aria.  Regis wasn’t sure what he thought about her.  Did he like her?  No.  He nearly blasted her head off when she suggested that she could find him a nice man to help him loosen up.

Chances are she feels the same way about him.  He’s perfectly okay with that.  

She’s a valuable resource and nothing more to him.  He wouldn’t shed any tears if something happened to her, but better the enemy you know than the one you don’t.  

With one last look at the apartment, they left and locked the door, ready for when whoever else in their family needs a safe and accessible place to recharge and regroup.

“I do, but thanks.” Regis nodded, throwing his sling bag over his body.  

Afterlife wasn’t far from the apartment, and soon they both walked past the growing line, heading inside without a second glance at the bouncer.  The pounding music filled the air, normally a backdrop Regis loved.

Now it’s merely the soundtrack to a conversation that could easily go south.

They approached her couch, the guards parting at the sight of Regis and Zaeed.

She crossed her legs, leaning into the couch with barely a glance.  “Meeting up with an Alliance soldier.  You’ve been productive.”

“Nothing misses your gaze?” Regis asked, staying standing.

“You didn’t deny it.”

“Why would we?” Zaeed interjected.  “You know what happened.  No need to challenge it.”

“Which means I might have an idea why you are here.” She dismissed the guards around her with a wave.  “Ask.”

“Liara T’Soni met up with you regarding my body, correct?” Regis asked point blank, keeping his tone neutral.

Aria’s face slowly broke out into a smirk.  “She did.  Did Vik tell you about what little they knew?  Shame they didn’t take up my offer.  Omega misses them.”

If they weren’t surrounded by guards and loyalists, Regis would take her head off for the comment about Vik alone. 

But to have that direct confirmation that T’Soni was the one who brought him back, who had the means to let him rest and give his family closure, to possibly get his goddamn ring back…  

Regis found himself nearly consumed with anger.

“They don’t miss you,” Regis said, not missing a beat. She didn’t react.  “So, it’s true then that she was working with Cerberus in order to get my body?  Why was it even on Omega in the first place?”

Her expression darkened. “Blue Suns were going to exchange it with the Shadow Broker to give it to the Collectors.”

The Collectors wanted his body?  Why?  Nothing about this made any sense.  Were they interested in his visions?  So much about the Collectors were unknowns, and yet here they were kidnapping human colonies for some purpose.

“It sounds like you weren’t too happy about that,” Regis observed.  “Not too happy about Collectors involved on your station?”

“No one’s happy about Collectors,” she replied.  “But yes, you could say that.  Did a major favor for me clearing out most of the trash when dealing with Archangel.”

“In other words, the idiots dumb enough to sign up for that mess of an operation,” Zaeed said.  “Wasn’t sad to see it happen.  Org has gone to shit since I left.”

“Vido is still at large,” she commented, turning to face Zaeed, who looked none too pleased at the mention of his name.  “Perhaps one day I’ll see new leadership.  Anything else?  I think you’ve learned everything you wanted to know.”

He did, not that he was particularly happy about any of it, knowing how he has all the cards to approach Lawson with what he knows.

An unpleasant conversation was waiting for both of them.

“I think we’ve covered everything,” Regis said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” she said, stopping both of them in their tracks.  “I’m going to ask you something in return: What was your relationship with T’Soni?”

Despite his growing anger, Regis had to hold back a snort.  “Why do you care?”

“I don’t, but I am curious as to why she went to all these lengths to bring you back when you obviously find it offensive that she did it.”

“I rescued her last, refused any sort of meld to gain information, and tried to get her off my ship as I saw her as a liability.  I believe she took what was mine, and I’m going to get it back,” Regis replied, staring her down with his glowing eyes.

“She’s in Illium,” she offered.  “If you’re so hell-bent on confronting her.”

Regis nodded, already aware of her location but thankful she told him.  “Are we done here?”

“We are,” she replied, sitting back down.  “Get rid of the Collectors.  They are a stain on this galaxy.”  The guards returned.  She made herself comfortable back on the couch, her stance loose and relaxed even under Regis’s scrutiny.  “I’ll be happy when we stop crossing paths, Shepard.”

“I share the same sentiment,” he replied, turning his back on her.  Zaeed followed a step behind him.  “You likely won’t see me again once I’m back with the Alliance.”

“And I look forward to it.”

Regis walked down the stairs and quickly made his way out of the bar, the tails of his trenchcoat flowing behind him.  He stopped once they were at the entrance to their dock, leaning against the wall by the doorway.

“What now?” Zaeed asked, giving him a concerned look. 

“Going to confront Lawson because I want more answers from her.  She lied to me about not knowing who had my body, who probably has my fucking dogtags,” Regis muttered, shaking his head and taking a deep breath, trying to regain his composure.  “I’m not sure who I hate more. “

“What are you more angry about?  Being brought to Cerberus by her or being revived by them?” Zaeed asked, his voice soft despite his usual gravel.

Regis frowned, his thoughts swirling with anger, betrayal, and a sense of loss.  “She had the means to inform the most important people in my life that my body was found at the bare fucking minimum.  If I didn’t have you, I may not have ever answered any call or reached out to anyone I cared about.  And who knows what would’ve happened between Kaidan and I, or the Alliance and I…” 

He wasn’t sure if Kaidan would have forgiven him for working with Cerberus, if he found out in the midst of his posting…

“But you do have me, and I’m here however you need me,” Zaeed replied, leaning in close.  Regis closed the distance between them, more free and open with his affection now that he met up with Kaidan, that they were able to clear the air and open the possibility for more.  That their triad can and will continue one day.

Zaeed pushed him up against the wall, the same spot where Regis first saw him on Omega, threatening a target. The feeling of the cold, hard panel sent a shiver down Regis's spine, heightening the intensity of the moment. Regis let out a pleased sound, letting Zaeed take over despite where they were, submitting to his advances.

Someone cleared their throat a short distance from them.  “I wouldn’t say this is the best time and place, Commander.”   

“And why is it that you care, Lawson?” Regis asked with a hard glare, his earlier desire replaced by irritation at the intrusion.  She stood with an arched eyebrow, a hint of curiosity in her expression. She folded her arms across her chest, seemingly unfazed by the situation, her confidence unshaken.

Changed out of her normal Cerberus dress “whites,” she wore a long coat belted around her body with a pair of black pants and boots, a clean and pristine look that suited her well.  

Out of all the fucking people to interrupt… but perhaps this was a good opportunity to go ahead and get that damn conversation out of the way. 

Zaeed slowly pulled away, tilting his head to the side as if to ask if Regis was going to go ahead and deal with what he learned from Aria.  Regis nodded, answering the silent question.

“I assumed you wouldn’t want the crew to gossip about your love life,” she replied, keeping her expression neutral.  “Or perhaps even beyond that.  Word travels fast about you.”

Regis wouldn’t have called it concern, the barb at the end seeming to signify she was talking about the Alliance being aware of him… and all his connections there. As if she was baiting him, dangling the knowledge that she knew about his relationship with Kaidan.  And what that could mean if he were to learn of this "affair."

“You’re right.  Word does travel fast about me.  Shame that it took me a while to learn who exactly handled my body here on this fucking station,” Regis said, watching her eyes widen in recognition.  The truth hung in the air between them.

She stepped back.  The gravity well stirred.  

“I knew your word was full of shit, but I never expected this,” he continued, staying against the wall.  “We are going to have a long talk.”

She almost seemed like she wanted to run, remembering his clear threat from their last conversation about his resurrection.  Her expression was tight, hands poised in such a way to cast a mnemonic at any moment.  

Zaeed took pity on her.  “All he wants is the goddamn truth.”

She took a deep breath.  “And where are we going to have this talk?”

“My family has an apartment.  Small, quiet, out of the way,” Regis offered, kicking off from the wall.  “Zaeed’s right. At this point, I’m so fucking tired of being misled, lied to, and used.  I want the full story.”

“And after?” 

“We’ll see where it goes.”

Lawson nodded, and Regis led the way.  Zaeed followed them a step behind.  Regis didn't really want to use the apartment for their conversation, but it was neutral enough and safe from wandering ears. 

Once back inside, Regis motioned for her to take a seat.  She declined the offer, staying standing.  Any easy escape, perhaps, but Regis didn't want to make good on his threat, not really. 

Not when there was more to gain from Lawson.  

"How the hell did T'Soni even get involved in this?  Did you get a motivation out of her?  Was she paid off?" Regis started, firing off questions. 

"Somehow, she got word your body was on Omega, and we got word that the Shadow Broker wanted it.  She was… rescuing it, you could say, and we gained a partnership.  You had quite the impact on her if she wanted to risk everything to save a corpse," Lawson explained, answering his rapid fire questions without a blink of an eye, wanting to please him, perhaps, or get him to stand down. 

Regis continued with barely an acknowledgement, "And that's the problem!  She had the means to inform the Alliance, to give my mother and my family some peace about my body, but instead she sold it to you and conveniently left that juicy little tidbit to herself."

"It seems like you are more angry about her involvement versus us bringing you back," she observed. "Am I wrong?"

The same damn dilemma Zaeed presented to him.  Regis figured at this point, she knew too much about him, what was one more fucking secret.  “No, not really,” he sighed, sitting down on the couch, letting his guard down.  He was tired, no longer caring about putting up a front.  “Sure, I’m still pissed at the lack of autonomy I’ve had here.  Your organization could’ve spinned something more interesting than just keeping me hostage.  But you didn’t and I’m still here, so what does that say about me?” 

Zaeed kept a concerned eye on them from the kitchen.   Regis didn’t meet his gaze.  “Ever since Torfan, the one thing I’ve fought for is my autonomy.  I’m not some fucking dog for the Alliance who isn’t afraid to rip a target to shreds.  You’ve seen my service record.  You know what I’m capable of.”

“You fought back and made your own path,” she said, sitting down on the far end of the couch.  “Noble.”

He scoffed.  “Hardly.  I didn’t want to be used.  Still don’t.  Didn’t.  Whatever.”  He turned to face her.  “All this to say, why did you lie?  You knew I wanted answers, you knew I would cooperate better knowing the truth.  So why hide it?”

She almost seemed to be fighting with herself, her expression twisting until falling flat.  “I was wrong about a lot of things concerning you, Shepard.  I started to realize that during our first conversation that I was misled by T’Soni.  I could tell that you were ready to strike back, and I didn’t want to lose you to that.  All I cared about then was the mission.  And you were an obstacle to that.  But now?  I was wrong.”

“And it pains you to admit it?” Regis asked, keeping his voice neutral.  “I don’t necessarily blame you for wanting to protect your mission, even if you’ve put your lot in with the wrong group.  But you saw how important my own body and personal effects were to me.  And you brushed it off like it was nothing.”

“I’ve never been able to feel truly at home in my own body,” She admitted, turning away from him and staring down at her folded hands in her lap.  “I joined Cerberus to get away from my father who created me as a genetic dynasty based on his template.  I never had a life, a personhood away from him.  Everything he did was calculated to make a perfect individual.  I’m sure you’ve read my file.” 

Regis nodded.  “I did.  You were quite thorough on your abilities.  Clearly full of talent, not much field experience but that could’ve been improved on.  But why tell me this?” 

A sign of surrender, perhaps.  Maybe the beginning of a truce.  Both of them were tired of holding up the standards they had set for themselves at the beginning of the mission, a Cerberus loyalist and a trapped Alliance soldier.

Lawson sighed, a deep, almost reluctant exhalation. She finally met Regis's gaze, her normally confident demeanor faltering. "I tell you this because I want you to understand, Shepard. I may have been wrong, but I also know I can't change the past. What I can do is acknowledge my mistakes and try to make amends.  I was built for perfection, and you… you challenged that.”

“By being an imperfect resurrection?” He challenged.

“I consider you some of my best work,” she said with a sense of pride. “Even if you did wake up early.  You were a marvel.”

“I hope that you at least plan to use what you learned for the greater good.  Hell, I might even be inclined to help if you decide to abandon Cerberus.  The interfacing changes you made to my amp port are exactly the kind of advancements we need for all our biotics,” Regis said, praise evident in his tone.  “Look, I’m still angry at you, don’t get me wrong.  But I can admit you are competent at what you do.”

“And you are right to feel that way.  I shouldn’t have hid that from you.”  A calculated risk she made that backfired on her.  He knew he was an important asset, and he can begrudgingly admit that he would have immediately gone after T’Soni the moment he learned the truth.  Now that he only just found out, he’s going to bide his time some more.  Maybe try to get some more information out of Kaidan about Wren’s surveillance.  

“No, but at this point, it’s in the past.” He ran his hand down his face, rubbing at his beard.  “Let’s start over.  We may never fully agree on anything, but this mission needs as many hands as I can get, and I’m losing out by not at least giving you a chance.”

She nodded. “We definitely did not start on the best of terms.  I’d like to get to know you beyond reports.”

He held out a hand, glancing at Zaeed out of the corner of his eye.  His arms were folded against his chest, but he looked pleased, a small smile gracing his features.  “Regis Lucian Shepard.  N7 Sentinel, Human Spectre, and cybernetics specialist.”

She shook his hand, a subtle sense of relief in her touch.  “Miranda Lawson.  Cerberus officer and biotic and medical specialist.  It’s good to finally meet you.”

He nodded in response, pulling away and leaning back against the couch.  “For what it's worth, I hate that Cerberus was the only way you could get away from your father.”  He met her gaze and gave her a slight smile.  “I’ve made it clear what my stance on Cerberus is.  When we get out of this shit alive, you know I’ll help get everyone out, not questions asked.”

“I’ll… consider it.  At the very least, I’ll let the crew know in case they wish to go to the Alliance,” she said.  “I haven’t told many about my past.  We may be enemies, barely even acquaintances, but… you understand what it’s like to have a legacy.”

Legacy… Yeah, he understood.  Having a feeling from the beginning that he and Lawson were cut from the same cloth, a part of him mourned the loss of an interesting friendship, marked by Cerberus associations.

“When I enlisted, they expected another Hannah Shepard, and they got something completely different.  Her legacy followed me even after Torfan, and I almost imagine that if she didn’t have the history she had with the Alliance, I may have gotten a different reaction out of them publicly.”  Regis closed his eyes.  “But I embraced it anyway.”

They may not get there anytime soon, and he won’t deny the trauma that Ceberus has brought him… but one day, if they survive this, she could be more than just a useful pawn in the chase against the Collectors. 

“That you have.  It feels like I’m talking to another person now.”

“Figured someone like you would be familiar with that.”

“I am,” she admitted, tucking her hair behind her ear.  “We all have many faces.  Good to meet what I think is the real you?”

“Dare I say the same about you?” He challenged, and she laughed.  

Regis made a motion with his head, and Zaeed rejoined them.  He made some space for him, scooting over closer to Miranda.  She raised an eyebrow.  “I guess I should also apologize for my earlier comments, but I don’t think I was wrong to call you out.”

Zaeed chuckled, waving it off.  “No hard feelings.  It was his goddamn fault anyway.”

“You didn’t push me away.  You were the one that pushed me against the wall.  Hell, you knew what the spot was, didn’t you?” Regis accused, pointing a finger at his lover.

He shrugged.  “Complain all you want about it.  You wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.”

Regis hated that he was right.  One thing they all shared was the thrill of being caught, playing around with the dynamics of being just in sight, waiting for someone’s wandering eyes to catch them in the act.

“There was history between you two, yes?” Miranda asked, watching the two with clear interest.  “Didn’t come up at all.  You both did well hiding that you knew each other.”

Regis nodded.  “We met a few years ago.  Lovers for a short time, then friends, and now back to lovers.”

She glanced away from them for a second before turning her gaze back to them.  “Sorry for asking but… what about Alenko?”

Of course she would know about him.  Not that they really hid their relationship, and with the photo in his cabin, anyone could see there was something between them.  He had to appreciate her being concerned about something that in reality should never have bothered her.

“Let me rephrase.  The three of us were lovers, then friends, and now back to a triad,” Regis amended.  The change didn’t phase her, merely acknowledging him with a nod.  Speaking of Kaidan.  “Where did you get that photo of him if you didn’t retrieve my personal effects?”

She sighed.  “As you could probably guess, T’Soni gave it to us along with a few others.  I’m not sure why she did.  Maybe to help by giving you a reminder of what you were fighting for?  I almost deleted them.” Miranda admitted, folding her arms against her chest.  “I thought it was a bit much.  Why give us something so precious?”

Regis's expression darkened, and he clenched his jaw.   “Either way, she had no fucking right.  When I saw that photo… I saw it as a threat.  I almost didn’t get in contact with him to clear the air.”

“That’s why you organized this leave,” she realized.  “Smart.”

“Not going to chastise me for spilling all your dirty secrets?”

“Well, since you’re talking to me, it seemed like you didn’t have much time.  Alenko’s moving up in the Alliance, and we couldn’t get much information about him.  Still, we gave you free reign on the ship, and we knew the risks.  I won’t stop you from getting closure or going out on requests that concern your skills and the ship.  Or anyone else, for that matter.”

Regis inclined his head. “I appreciate that.”

"She’s right.  If we had our way… this would not be how we would be spending our time in this apartment,” he purred, not at all caring that they weren’t alone.  Damn him.  

Regis sighed and shot Zaeed an exasperated look. "Zaeed..."

Miranda shook her head at them. "What have I signed up for… Well, if there's anything else you need from me, I can leave you to the rest of your leave, now that you’re behind closed doors.”

Regis felt his face turning red.  "No, no. We're good, Miranda."

“Right, it’s not like we have that much time left,” she said, standing up from the couch.  “I won’t push it, but the next mission that’s coming up… the convict recruitment–”

Regis saw where she was going and interrupted her. “I need to start evaluating you and Taylor, but this upcoming mission is meant to be a transfer.”

Zaeed shrugged.  “Remember our record so far?  Be prepared for the worst.”

Having to cure a plague, rescue a damn vigilante from three different gangs, and figure out what to do with a krogan in stasis was not in any of the dossiers.  Regis was sure that the handoff wasn’t going to go well, but he wasn’t about to say it out loud.

“Fine, but I’m blaming you if it all goes to shit,” Regis muttered.  “Sure, you can come.  Might not be a bad idea to have two biotics evaluating them.”

“Thank you, Shepard,” she said.  “Let me know if you need anything?”

“Same for you,” Regis said, standing up.  “We’ll follow you out.  Might as well get back on the ship.”

“I have to ask.  What did you do to Moreau earlier?  He seemed subdued…” Miranda trailed off as Regis moved to open the door for her.  

“Zaeed and I both changed his worldview a bit,” Regis chuckled.  “Gave him a little too much information about our past.”

“Shame you can’t always use that.  I like him, but someone needs to put him in place on occasion.”

“Is that why you set up EDI next to him?” Zaeed asked, amused.   Miranda didn’t say anything and only gave him a smile in response.  

“She’s great, isn’t she?” Regis said with a smile, locking the door behind them.  “I even looked into parts of her code.  She’s quite special.”

“Not about to remove her locks, are you?” Miranda asked, though not accusatory.

“Not going to say I won’t ever do it,” Regis said.  “If you know my cybernetics background, you know how interested I was in VI.”

“It came up, yes,” she said.  “It’s why we leaned so hard into getting EDI for you.”

“Like I said, she’s great, and while at first I figured my background had to do with her involvement in our mission, I also knew she’s quite the important asset.  Do you happen to know where she came from?”

She shook her head.  “I was given access to a lot of things, but not her project and origins.”  This time, Regis felt he could believe her.  

He nodded.  “Another mystery for me to solve.”

She merely smiled at him, and they continued their walk back to the Normandy in silence.

– –

Back on board the ship, Regis headed straight for his quarters, knowing nothing was on the agenda until the next day shift tomorrow, back to work after the short leave.  Just a day’s leave, nothing much to it.  

But the crew seemed to appreciate it enough.  Despite his earlier hostility, at the bare minimum, he wants them all functioning.  Important for the mission.

He’s still not happy with any of their career prospects, especially the yeoman who insists on keeping track of everyone’s daily on-goings next to him at the galaxy map.

Zaeed followed behind him as Miranda popped into the armory, likely to speak with Taylor.  Regis needs to get to know him more and start evaluating him as well, knowing the man was former Alliance–Corsairs.  He didn't know much about them, but was curious to find out why he left.

Zaeed pressed the console to summon the elevator.  Thankfully, it was already on the second deck, and they quickly went inside and headed to his cabin.

Once back inside, Regis dropped his bag in his desk chair, removed his gun from his coat, set it on the desk, and sat down on the couch, putting his head in his hands.  Zaeed put his Talon on the coffee table and sat down next to him.  “Regis?” He asked, scooting over so that their thighs were touching.

Ever since he learned that T’Soni was the one who betrayed him, who thought she had the right to make that choice for him, a feeling of anger and disgust was growing inside him, waiting to be unleashed, waiting to get the revenge he craved so goddamn much.  

Now he only felt tired, exhausted by what he learned.  Unable to do a damn thing about it except wonder why?  Why did she focus on me?  

“I prioritized her mission last,” Regis let out a sigh, his voice heavy with resignation.  “I didn’t think we could get much out of her.  An estranged daughter forging her own path?  I figured saving her would be more of a burden. The priority was getting Benezia and saving the colony, finding leads on Saren. Then Virmire happened, and I nearly lost everything."

Zaeed leaned against the couch, and Regis allowed himself to lie on his chest.  “I almost had to make a choice between saving Kaidan or my best friend, I said no and saved them both anyway, nearly jeopardizing the mission.  At that point, I had been yelled at, bossed by, and dismissed by the Council, and we still didn’t know where Saren was headed.  We had one lead left, and it was her.”

Regis closed his eyes, recalling the mission.  “We rescued her in the nick of time.  She had trapped herself in some Prothean contraption, likely for days.   We used a mining laser to get her out and it triggered a collapse of the ruins.  We barely got us and her out.   Once back on the ship, we gave her the medical attention she needed. But when I pushed for the Council to place her in protective custody, they shot me down.”

“And what happened next?” He asked.

Regis grimaced at the memory.  “She suggested melding with me.  With her prothean knowledge and the cipher and the beacon in my head, she could likely pinpoint where Saren wanted to go.  I refused.  I didn’t even want to meld with the asari that had the cypher, but there was no way around it.  This… I fought back.  She was young, naive… I didn’t trust her in my head.  Instead, I gave her detailed accounts of my visions, and we managed to figure out where Ilos was with some cross-referencing of galaxy maps and her own knowledge.  She stayed on board until after the battle, and left voluntarily.”  Regis finished.  “Sure, you could say I was too hard on her.  But I was ready to end Saren and I considered her a liability.”

“And she had no goddamn reason to be so attached,” Zaeed murmured.  “I’d almost understand if you did meld with her.  I’ve done it before, and it’s intimate as hell.  Even among friends, it feels like it leaves traces, changes you, changes them. I've never regretted it, but it definitely leaves its mark.”

Exactly what he was afraid of.  “So, I wasn’t wrong to feel the way I do,” Regis said.  “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“We will get them back.  I’m sure she’s waiting for you to come to her at some point.  Illiuim’s not a long flight from here.  Maybe after we get the goddamn convict?”

Regis rolled his eyes and continued to make himself comfortable in Zaeed’s arms, sighing.  “All I want is to have my fucking dog tags back.”

Regis shrugged.  “I’m almost waiting to get back in contact with Kaidan to get more information about her surveillance.  She’s being watched by an old friend of mine, Wren.  Don’t want to fuck up whatever they are doing.”

“And to tell him what you learned.” Zaeed shook his head.  “She gave you a gift in the worst goddamn way.  You said it yourself.  Who knows what would’ve happened if you didn’t reach out?  Kaidan’s seen the worst of Cerberus.”  Did Zaeed know about his missions, about what the Alliance had him doing?

Regis sighed.  “We both have blinders on when it comes to them.  I can’t wait to tear this organization and The Illusive Man apart.” His biotics reacted to his anger, a thin corona of purple wisps surrounding him.  “I wouldn’t have blamed him if he refused to even consider speaking to me.”  And would it be mine or her fault?

“Don’t think it would’ve gotten that far, babe.  He–we–still loved you.  Would probably be scared for you–hell, I was when I saw you walking towards me back when you were recruiting me.” Zaeed’s voice softened.  Regis raised up and leaned in for a kiss, soft, slow, and sweet.

They maneuvered themselves so that Regis was now on his lap.  Regis started kissing down his neck, at the Blue Suns tattoo, mouthing against clean, vanilla scented skin.  Zaeed tilted his head back for better access, tangling his fingers in his hair.  “Dare I say you’ve gotten even goddamn better at that?”

Regis smirked against his skin, taking a moment to toss his own coat on the couch before working on Zaeed’s.  He stilled him, taking it off himself and wrapping his arms underneath him.  “Let’s move this to the goddamn bed.”

Zaeed picked up him effortlessly–fuck, he forgot how strong he was–and placed him on the bed, climbing on top of him.  Zaeed pinned his arms above his head and he traded places, kissing down Regis’s neck and his tattoo.  “You and your damn turtlenecks,” Zaeed said in a low, throaty growl. 

“Gives you a challenge,” he teased, nearly gasping out the last word as Zaeed kissed that sensitive spot just underneath his ear.

“You know I like a goddamn challenge,” Zaeed purred, full of warm smoke.  “Let me know what you want out of me?”

A question posed as a command.  Needing to set boundaries, what they wanted out of this.  Regis nodded.  “Same as before, mostly.  Just don’t put too much pressure on my neck.  Not sure if… I ever want to do that again.”

He nodded.  “Of course, love.  Anything else?  Stay with the traffic light system?”

“Yes, but if I want it all to stop and want you to be here with me, take care of me, I’ll say ‘oxygen.’”

Zaeed stayed stoic, but pain flashed behind his eyes.  Regis furrowed his eyebrows.  “Too much?”

“Don’t like thinking about how you died, but it makes for a good word because of that.  Mine is still ‘Suns.’  Not much has changed for me either.  Though, I found a new appreciation for being manhandled…” He trailed off with a knowing look in his eye.

“Kaidan’s so good at that, isn’t he?” Regis said with a smile.  “Wonder if he’s already back on Horizon.”

“Might be.  We can send him a picture or two later.”

“Maybe he can send some in return.”

“That would be so goddamn nice.  So, Regis, what do you want out of me?” He asked again, leaning in, his lips brushing against his.  

Regis chased after him.  “Whatever you want to give.”

“I think I’m going to take care of you.  Something nice and slow, soft.  Take it easy.  Been a while since I”ve been able to appreciate you,” Zaeed said, moving to toy with the hem of Regis’s turtleneck.  “How does that sound?”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Good,” Zaeed said, and he surged forward, claiming his mouth once more and tugging off his turtleneck.  They broke apart briefly to get rid of the offending garment.  Regis reached to take off Zaeed’s shirt, pulling it over his head, taking in the expanse of rough, tattooed skin, his gaze falling back on the new flowers on his hip.  Zaeed positioned himself so Regis could get a better look at the ink, tracing it lighty.  

“A perfect recreation,” he murmured, looking at his own porcelain flower sleeve.  

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Zaeed turned to meet his gaze.

Regis responded by kissing down his chest, lightly teasing his nipples, tracing the lines of ink down his chest.  Zaeed let out a pleased sigh, a hand tangling in his hair as Regis made his way down, tracing and kissing new scars, new lines of ink, relearning and reacquainting himself with the man in front of him.  Before continuing, Regis deftly removed his pants and boxers, tossing them aside. He sat back down on Zaeed's clothed lap, gently grinding into his slowly hardening length.

Zaeed took in the sight with a seductive grin. "I have an idea," he purred. "Turn around for me, back against my chest.  Grab the lube and condoms before you do.”

Regis immediately knew where he was going, quickly moving to do what he asked.  He leaned over to grab the lube and condoms he stashed in the side table, glancing back to see Zaeed tugging off his boxers, revealing his leaking, hard cock.  Regis’s mouth watered, wanting to worship all of Zaeed with everything he has. 

He’ll have to promise to take care of him later, taking him apart with his mouth and biotics.  

Regis grabbed what he requested and slowly turned around to face Zaeed, his heart pounding with anticipation. He placed the supplies within easy reach and settled himself back against Zaeed's chest.

Zaeed's hands roamed Regis's body, tracing lines of ink and contours of muscle. "You know, I've missed this," he rumbled. "Feeling your warmth against my skin, knowing you're mine."

“I’ve missed this, too,” Regis agreed, closing his eyes and losing himself in the feeling of Zaeed’s hands roaming down his body, his lips teasing his neck.  “I’m yours.  Both of yours.”

Zaeed's skilled fingers worked their magic, one hand lightly resting on Regis's neck, exerting just enough pressure to send shivers down his spine, mindful of his earlier warning.  A soft touch was good.  Regis nodded, whispering, “Green” when Zaeed’s hand stilled, waiting for confirmation.

The other hand moved lower, seeking the heat and need between Regis's legs.  “Just enough for a tease,” Zaeed whispered into his ear. 

With skilled precision, he took Regis's cock in his hand and began to slowly work it, his rough, scarred hands providing a perfect balance of pleasure and friction. Regis fought the urge to thrust into Zaeed's grasp, knowing that his impatience might lead to an early end. He moaned Zaeed's name, squeezing his eyes shut, surrendering to the sensations as Zaeed masterfully guided him closer and closer to the brink. He was leaking all over his hand, providing the perfect lubricant. 

"Just a tease," Regis gasped, echoing Zaeed's words, even as his body ached for release. "The man says. Always such a bastard."

Zaeed's hand stilled, and he whispered a playful warning, "Careful, this bastard is your key to getting what you want."

He’s going to play that game, hm?  Regis will gladly join in, remembering back during their days on Omega, cleaning up their messes and getting to know each other beyond the battlefield.

“And what is it I want, exactly?”

Zaeed leaned in, nipping at Regis's earlobe, his voice gravelly and full of desire.  “You want me.  All of me.  And you��re not going to get it unless you play nice, baby.”

“I’ll be nice,” Regis gritted out.  “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

"That's what I like to hear," he purred, his voice heavy with desire.  “Let’s see if you’re good at listening.  Get on your knees, resting on your thighs.”  Regis moved into the position, feeling Zaeed settle back behind him.  Zaeed's lips found his neck, placing soft kisses along the sensitive skin, removing his hand to grant better access to his tattoos.  “Perfect,” he whispered, his approval evident.

With a soft click, Regis heard him open the bottle and coat his fingers with lube, teasing downward until reaching his waiting entrance, teasing his hole in soft, slow circles before pushing a finger in.  Regis threw his head back and moaned out his name, hearing him chuckle as he slowly worked him open.  

“You’re doing so good, babe,” Zaeed praised, slowly pushing another finger in.  “Relax and let go.”

Regis let out a shaky breath, smiling as Zaeed rested his chin on his shoulder, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, distracting him with words as he pushed yet another finger in.  “Think you’re ready for me?  Tell me what you want.” 

Regis wasn’t afraid to beg, to ask for what he wanted.  “I want you to fuck me, Zaeed.  Hard and fast, slow and soft, whatever you want.  Please,” he begged, nearly sobbing when he slowly removed his fingers.

“Now I’m asking what you want.  I got you right where I want you,” he said.  Regis looked back and watched as Zaeed stroked his cock, keeping his composure steady as he rolled on the condom and slicked up his cock with expertise.  

Regis knew exactly what he wanted. 

“Fuck me, Zaeed,” Regis said again.  “I want it hard.” 

Zaeed leaned in for a kiss.  “Gladly.”  With a single, controlled thrust, he pushed inside, drawing out long moans from the both of them.   He stilled once inside, letting Regis adjust to the feeling.  So perfect and thick, Zaeed always made him feel so full.  

Regis was almost tempted enough to do it, thinking about what Kaidan’s reaction would be back on Horizon, likely about to make good on his promise to smoke Regis’s cigarettes he stole.  “Don’t tempt me,” He moaned, pushing back against Zaeed’s thrusts.

Zaeed wrapped one arm around his chest, his hand resting close to Regis’s nipples.  The other rested on his thigh, grabbing it tight and wrenching his legs further apart.  “Going to have to tell Kaidan all about this,” Zaeed purred into his ear, starting to move his hips in shallow, quick thrusts, working Regis up to more.   “Maybe get that drone out of yours, record you moaning his name as I’m the one fucking you, showing him how much we need him here.  How does that sound?”

“Maybe after,” Zaeed murmured, picking up the pace.  His lips found Regis's neck, leaving biting kisses, marks to show off later.  “We can send him a picture like the two of you did.  Teasing me with what you had.”  He punctuated his statement with a hard and deep thrust. “So goddamn cruel of you.”  

Regis choked out a moan, moving to grab his leaking, throbbing cock, desperate for release, but Zaeed batted his hand away, replacing it with his. “I’m going to get you off,” he said, stroking his dick lightly, a firm grip made all the better with his calloused, rough hands.  “When I say so.  When I do.”

Regis could barely think, much less speak, all at mercy to Zaeed.  Every roll of his hips, every bite against his neck, every scratching tease against his nipples brought him closer and closer to release.

But it wasn’t enough.

Zaeed whispered, pausing his thrusts for a moment.  “You said you wanted it hard?  I can make it rougher for you.” Regis whined at the loss.  

“Remember the last night we shared… you rode me, and before you came on my cock, I pushed you face down into the bed on Kaidan’s orders.”

“How much?” Regis groaned, tears filling his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath.

Regis remembered, the night haunting his fantasies and dreams long after.  Kaidan loved to watch them, not always participating directly but making the scene his in every way with every order he made.  

"Yes," he moaned, his voice shaking with need. "Do it, Zaeed. Make it rough."

Zaeed didn’t respond.  Instead, he pulled out of him and pushed Regis against the bed, putting his weight on top of him, grabbing a fist full of hair and pulling just enough for it to burn, to bring tears to his eyes.  “Regis?” He asked, his voice low.  Another affirmation, another check in. 

“He loves it when you yank on his curls,” Kaidan said from the armchair, legs crossed and fully clothed, a direct contrast to Zaeed and Regis on the bed.  “Oh, he might complain that you’re messing up his routine, screwing up all his time and effort.  Don’t listen.” He wanted to argue with Kaidan, to bite back for revealing all his secrets.  He couldn't.  Zaeed had stuck his fingers in his mouth, to lick and suck on as he was getting prepped, likely keeping him from being mouthy.  His cock twitched at their words, betraying how much he enjoyed behind an outsider to their conversation.  “I’ll keep that in mind.  He likes to fight, doesn’t he?” “He does.  And I love that about him.  It’s all talk to rile us up.  He’ll submit in the end.  It’s his favorite thing.” “That I figured out right from the goddamn beginning.”

“Green,” he replied, grabbing fistfuls of the sheets.  “Fuck me.”  He punctuated the reply with a pulse of his corona, letting it surround him in a wave of purple, his fingers ready to twitch and send it careening towards Zaeed.

Zaeed pushed back inside with one swift thrust, setting a hard, brutal pace, keeping Regis’s head pulled back with his grip on his hair, the other resting possessively on his thigh.  All Regis could do was surrender to the intense pleasure, letting out a stream of grunts, moans, whines, and writhing beneath Zaeed's warm, heavy body.  The pain from his hair being pulled and the pleasure of being fucked and filled was a delicious sensation, one that Regis didn’t want to ever end.  

Every forceful thrust drove them further toward the brink, and Regis knew he was teetering on the edge and his release was rapidly approaching.  Zaeed had to be close too, his grunts slowly being turned into vocal moans.  “Goddamn, you feel so good.  I’m getting close, love.”

In response, Regis could only whimper and moan, unable to form coherent words, barely able to think beyond the haze of pleasure.  “Please,” he choked out between sobs, grinding up against the soft, silky sheets.  His corona flashed with every thrust, his control waning, his biotics betraying how close he was to letting go.

“Wrap those biotics around me,” he ordered, his thrusts losing their rhythm and becoming more erratic.  Regis gripped the sheets tighter, threatening to tear, raising one shaky hand to force the barrier outward, enveloping both him and Zaeed into pulsing waves of violet.  Without warning, Zaeed cried out Regis's name as he found his release, his hips slowing as warmth filled the condom inside him.

Regis couldn't hold back any longer. He let go, channeling his biotics to intensify the pleasure, sending shockwaves of ecstasy down to his throbbing cock. He came with a shuddering release, moaning loudly as he painted his chest and the sheets beneath him with his come, trembling with his release. 

Zaeed collapsed on top of him, his weight a pleasant, grounding sensation as he pulled out of him.  Regis stayed where he was, feeling his come and sweat drying on him, the room suddenly cold.  

Zaeed rolled off of him.  Regis watched him dispose of the condom, tossing it in the bin by his bed.  He settled down back beside him, reaching for the box of tissues on his night stand.  “Let me clean you up, babe,” he murmured, careful to not sit in the wet spot.

Regis rolled over, feeling utterly wrecked, whining as Zaeed slowly wiped off the drying come on his chest and on his oversensitive cock, his body aching with every movement.  “I might need more than that,” he groaned, feeling content and sated. 

“Wasn’t too rough, was I?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing in concern.

“It was exactly what I wanted.  Love you,” Regis said, reaching up to caress his face, fingers gently touching the scar around his white eye.  “But not the brightest idea I’ve had with our mission coming up.”

“Probably not,” he chuckled, tossing the dirty tissues in the bin. “I love you, too.  I missed this.”

“Me too.”  Regis closed his eyes.  “Still want to send Kaidan that picture?”

Zaeed activated his omnitool with a gleam in his eye.  “Of course.”

Regis settled against Zaeed's chest, knowing that they must look thoroughly debauched after their evening together. His frizzed, sweaty hair framed his face, bite marks and scratches adorning their bodies.  Zaeed took the picture with a smirk on his face, sending it to their private chat.

Regis’s own omnitool pinged with the message.

ZM: Payback is a bitch.  We’re missing you already.  [Image Attachment]

They settled in their afterglow, knowing they should get up and trade out the sheets and get a little cleaned up before tomorrow, but neither wanted to move just yet.  The conversation he had with Aria and later Miranda weighed heavily on his mind even after all the distractions he tried to do to set it aside for now.

Their omnitools pinged.  They shared a look, Zaeed moving in to peck Regis on the lips before he opened the message.

KA: Payback is a bitch, huh? Here’s another view to remember while we're apart. Glad you two are making it together, it’s a beautiful sight.  [Image Attachment]

The photo was a picture of him on a balcony on what must be Horizon, sitting out in the late-night air. He was shirtless, and the picture showed him smoking a cigarette, looking impossibly handsome and relaxed.

“He made good on his promise to smoke my damn Astras,” Regis said, shaking his head.

“That he did,” Zaeed said, staring fondly at the photo before turning off his omnitool.  “Want to vid call him?”

Regis nodded.  “Not that I want to ruin what’s going on here, but I need to tell him.  Hopefully Hackett and his team can figure out what they want to do with her next.”

Regis pressed the request to call and Kaidan answered it right away, the stub of a cigarette between his fingers.

He took them in and his smiling face immediately morphed into one of concern.  “What’s wrong?” he asked, putting out the cigarette in a nearby ashtray.

“T’Soni brought my body to Cerberus,” Regis said after taking a deep breath.  “Aria confirmed it, as well as Lawson.”

Kaidan covered his mouth with his hand, looking away from the screen.  “Fuck.  This whole goddamn time, she knew where you were, she knew where your body was and gave it to them!”  His hands were balled into fists.  “I’m so glad now that Vik was able to give me that footage so we were able to keep an eye on her, but I never anticipated this.” His voice was laced with venom.

Kaidan didn’t have the same reservations about T’Soni the way Regis and even Ashley did, but he wasn’t quick to trust her either.  No one was, not when they were so close to pinning down Saren, not when they had no time to integrate her into the crew.

Not when they all saw his violent reaction against a mind meld.

“Does this mean she has your dog tags?” he asked, motioning to his own against his chest.

“That’s my working theory.  I hate to say it, but I trust that Lawson wasn’t lying to me when she said Cerberus never retrieved them.” Zaeed’s arms tightened around him.

“Yeah, I read through all those reports.  Gave them to Hackett as well.  I also talked about them with Vik,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair.  “You were missing armor and other parts, but most notably your whole damn chest piece was gone.”

“I didn’t like the implications of that either, but one way or another, I’m going to find out what happened to them.”

“I’ll contact Hackett and see what Wren thinks and you can go from there.  Illium is in your territory, right?”

“More or less,” he shrugged.  “I have some freedoms, believe it or not.”

“Probably to try and get our goddamn guard down,” Zaeed muttered, pressing a kiss into Regis’s hair. 

“Still, it works in our favor.  You heard what she said earlier.  I’m able to do as a please to some extent,” Regis said.  “I’ve come to an understanding with Lawson,” he amended for Kaidan’s benefit.

“Is that wise?” Kaidan asked, though no judgment laced his tone.

“I think she’s tired of putting on a show as well.  We have similar goals for now, and honestly, I want her to be an ally only for the stuff she did to bring me back,” Regis admitted.  “You know how easy it is now to access my port?  Send a signal and it’s ready to be accessed.”

Kaidan nodded.  “I get it.  Trying to get her to defect?”

“You’re damn right.  She’s wasted here.”

“We’re already preparing to have a whole ship full of people defecting whenever you’re done with your mission.   You sure do like convincing people of your opinion,” Kaidan chuckled, eyeing them up and down.  “Seems like the two of you had fun.”

“We wanted to recreate that last night we shared.  Missed you and your goddamn orders,” Zaeed said, wrapping a possessive arm over Regis.  

“You know how we love following orders, Kaidan," Regis quipped playfully.

“Oh?” Kaidan replied, leaning forward, a grin slowly forming on his face.  

Zaeed joined in, his voice a low, suggestive purr. "We thought it'd be a nice little reminder of you while we're apart."

“I’ll keep that in mind on these lonely nights,” he said, stretching out in the chair, spreading his legs and moving his hand up his thigh.  “Thought I wore you out today.  Should’ve remembered you were never satisfied after one quick fuck with a long stretch without it…” he trailed off.

“Should’ve made the brass give you more time,” Regis teased.  “It was enough, love,” he emphasized.  “I would’ve been happy with just a chat and you gave me more than that.”

“I know,” he said. “Wish I was able to worship you both the way you deserve.”  He let out a yawn.  “Probably time for me to go.  Got a colony to take care of.”

Regis pressed his hand against the screen, and Kaidan mirrored the action.  Zaeed placed his hand over Regis’s, and with one last longing look, Kaidan ended the call.  

“Be seeing you, Kaid.  We won’t be goddamn strangers,” Zaeed said.  “Be safe out there.”

“Same to you.  Love you both.”

Regis shut off his omnitool with a sigh, looking up at Zaeed.  They shared another kiss, seeking out comfort from each other.

After a few minutes of soft teasing, Regis finally broke apart, resting his forehead against Zaeed’s.  “Want to get cleaned up real quick?”

Zaeed barked out a laugh.  “Gotta make it quick, or else we’ll get even dirtier than when we started.”

“Tempting.”

“Oh, really?” He asked, throwing the sheets off of him and getting up from the bed.  “Tell me more.”

“I can think of a few things.  Sucking you off in the shower, letting you fuck my throat until you come.  Or maybe we can switch roles, let you pleasure me for a while,” Regis said, following behind his lover.

“Insatiable.”

“Says you.”

“I’ll give you that.  We’re all terrible.”

“It’s why we work so well together.”

“The only reason why?” Zaeed teased, leaning in the bathroom doorway.  

Regis kissed him.  “It helps.  Now get your ass in there and get the water warm.  I’ll switch out the sheets.”

“Yes, sir,” he chuckled, heading into the bathroom.  Regis rolled his eyes and got busy, tossing the soiled sheets into a bin and replacing the ones on his bed.  Wasn’t the cleanest and nicest work he’s ever done, but it’ll do for now.  

He joined Zaeed in the shower, gently touching his shoulder before grabbing his preferred products.  They shared some heated glances and light teases, but never went any further than that, enjoying the time they had together and wanting to get some sleep after getting all cleaned up.  

After drying off, slipping on some comfortable pants, and finishing their routines–and oh how Regis loved the domesticity of getting ready for bed with him–they got back under the covers in the fresh set of bedding.  

Regis hoped that the convict recruitment would go well.  Of course, it probably won’t, but he’ll at least have a new ally by his side.  Maybe.  He still has to figure out what to do with the krogan and how he wants to evaluate Vakarian.

Zaeed settled against his chest, and Regis wrapped an arm around him, smiling as they got comfortable.  Regis was usually the little spoon, but he was happy to oblige the other position at any time.

He looked forward to working with Miranda and getting to know her more, to see if she’ll be willing to join the Alliance or leave Cerberus after this mess.  Always planning for something.

T’Soni’s consequences can wait for now.  He has a mission to complete.

[rainbowsalt0412]

Osamu Dazai And The Dark Era - Chapter 1

The Port Mafia has three rules: Follow the boss’s orders no matter what, don’t betray the organization, and always hit back twice as hard. The rules are ordered from most to least important, just like that. Which was why that morning, I nearly dropped the piece of bread I had in my mouth when I got a call telling me the boss wanted to see me. I was just putting on a pot of coffee.

The agent on the phone spoke in a monotone.

“Sakunosuke Oda, the boss wants to see you.”

Three phrases instantly popped into my head: Served his purpose. To be disposed of. Personnel cut. My fingertips turned cold and numb. After hanging up, I quickly stuffed the rest of the bread down my throat, then cut my Canadian bacon and scrambled eggs into thirds before inhaling them. I poured some freshly brewed coffee into my mug, tossed in a sugar cube with some cream, and drank it up all while slipping on my shirt arms-first. I started to wonder if I should just skip town, but the searing-hot coffee kicked my mind into gear, and the absurd notion vanished from my thoughts. I shaved, then put on some pants and hoisted my leather harness over my shoulders. It had holsters below my armpits, which I slipped my trusty 9mm handguns into. Finally, I tossed on my coat and left the house.

After getting into the car, I recklessly hightailed it to the office. I don’t really remember much about what happened along the way; I might’ve driven down the three-lane highway in the wrong direction two or three times. At any rate, once I made it to the office safely, I headed straight for the lobby. I briefly greeted my colleagues on guard duty before getting into the elevator to go to the top floor. Everything about the place was spotless, without even so much as a single fingerprint or speck of dust—from the lobby, which felt like something out of a luxury European hotel, to the time machine–like elevator itself.

This office was located in prime real estate in the middle of Yokohama.

There were four other offices of the same scale in the neighborhood. As I gazed out of the elevator’s glass walls at the city, the number of buildings higher than my line of sight gradually dwindled until it reached zero. And still the elevator kept on going.

Looking down at the cluster of buildings drenched in the morning light, I mused over why the boss had summoned me.

When I actually thought it through, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to call such a low-ranking member all the way here just to dispose of them. If he’d wanted to do that, he’d just have me meet at some waste-treatment site and get a hit man to cut me up and toss me out—low cost, low effort. The Port Mafia’s boss was much more logical than his predecessor, and above all, he preferred to keep that kind of stuff eco-friendly.

So why in the world did he summon me?

The elevator door opened, breaking my train of thought. The hallway was laid with a carpet thick enough to muffle even the most hurried footsteps, and the walls were so strong that not even a rocket-propelled grenade could take them down. The concealed light fixtures illuminated the interior with a milky-white glow.

I told the black-suited guard my name, and he pointed to the office door without saying a word. Standing in front of the French door, I gave my outfit another quick once-over, then traced my chin with my finger to make sure I hadn’t missed a spot shaving. After clearing my throat, I called out like a believer addressing God in a church.

“Boss, it’s me, Oda. I’m coming in.”

“Come on, Elise. Put on the dress, just for a little bit! Just for a quick second!”

…What I heard coming from inside the room was disturbing. I waited three seconds, pretending I didn’t hear anything. Then I took a few deep breaths.

“Boss, it’s me, Oda. I’m coming in.”

“Awww, please don’t take off your clothes and just toss them on the floor like that! That skirt was expensive, you know!”

…Yet another troubling comment. After giving it some thought, I decided to play the role of an unsuspecting subordinate who just happened to open the door at the exact wrong moment.

“Pardon my intrusion.”

With those words, I opened the door and immediately saw two people running around the spacious office: a middle-aged man in a white coat and a little girl who appeared to be around ten years old. The girl was half-naked; the man was the Mafia’s boss.

“No way! Never!”

“Please, Elise, I’m begging you. Just try it on, okay? I put a lot of thought into picking this out for you. Look at these crimson frills! They’re like flower petals! I’m sure it’ll look great on you!”

“I don’t hate the pretty clothes. I just hate how desperate you are, Rintarou.”

“You’re acting like this is new. Heh, I’ve got you now!”

“Boss.”

They simultaneously glanced in my direction at the sound of my voice— smiling. They were smiling and completely motionless.

“I came just like you told me to. What was it you needed?”

The boss continued to stare at me, that same smile still plastered to his face. His eyes were pleading, begging for help. Hopefully, he wasn’t actually expecting it from me.

“Boss, you wished to see me?”

“Uh…”

After his gaze wandered around the room—from his desk to the ceiling lights, the window, an oil painting, and a silver candlestick—the boss looked at the young girl by his side and said, “Why’d I tell him to come here again?”

“Don’t ask me.”

The girl called Elise scowled at him as if he were so much vomit on the side of the road, then left through the door to the connecting room. I waited on the boss for the next word. After peering around the office, he slipped behind his desk in the center and pressed a switch that tinted the glass windows a dull gray. As the room instantly dimmed, the boss took a seat in his black leather chair, and out of nowhere, two guardsmen suddenly and noiselessly appeared behind him. The lamp on the mahogany desk illuminated the boss’s profile—eyes squinted, brows furrowed, elbows on the desk and both hands clasped in front of his face. He spoke in a low, reverberating voice.

“Now…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oda, I called you here for one reason and one reason alone.” The boss shot me a piercing look through the darkened room.

“Yes.”

“Oda…” After pausing for a moment, he continued. “Has anyone ever told you to speak up more?”

How did he know?

“Yes, many times.”

I looked to one of the guards behind the boss for an explanation. However, the motionless, poker-faced guard averted his gaze ever so slightly.

“At any rate, you just got here. You did not see a thing. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded in agreement.

Besides, it was technically true, anyway.

“I only just arrived. Thank you for taking a break from undressing a young girl and chasing her around the room to meet with me. So what was it you needed me for?”

The boss pinched his brows together for a few moments to think before nodding as if he had made up his mind.

“Dazai once said to me, ‘Odasaku has no ulterior motives; what you see is what you get. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it’s like a balm for the soul.’ I kind of see what he means now.”

That was the first I’d ever heard of such a thing. This was Dazai, though; he was probably just talking out of his ass. A man in his twenties isn’t going to be much of a balm for anyone’s soul.

After giving a cough to clear the air a little, the boss continued, “Now, you must be wondering why I called you here.”

He picked up the silver cigar case on his desk and stared at it for a while before taking out a cigar. However, he didn’t smoke it; he merely played with it in his hand, then whispered, “I want you to find someone for me.”

“Find someone…?”

I ruminated on what he’d just said. It was fortunate that he didn’t tell me to just die, but it was still too early to relax.

“Please allow me to confirm a few points. Seeing as you’re giving me direct orders face-to-face, I’m guessing the person you wish to find is no ordinary individual. Are you sure a lowly grunt such as myself can handle it?”

“A valid question.” The boss gave a faint smirk. “Normally, a man of your rank would either be on the front line acting as a meat shield or rushing into a military police station with a bomb. But I’ve heard about the work you do, and I would like to entrust this task to you specifically.” The boss put the cigar back in the case, then swept his long bangs back. “Our intelligence officer Ango Sakaguchi has gone missing.”

If someone were to peer inside my mind at that moment, they would’ve witnessed something akin to a massive volcanic eruption. Countless question marks would have been blasting out of the crater, blanketing the sky in its entirety. And yet, the only visible reaction I had was a twitch of a finger.

“You’re able to keep calm, I see. I was going to say you wouldn’t be right for the job if you got upset, but…you passed. Allow me to continue. Ango disappeared last night. Apparently, he never made it back home. It is still unclear if he went into hiding of his own free will, or if he was kidnapped.”

So that would mean Ango went missing after we met up at the bar the night before. At the very least, there was nothing particularly different about him then. He even said he was going home before he left. Either Dazai or I would’ve noticed if he had been lying. I’m sure of it.

“As you well know, Ango is the Mafia’s informant.”

The boss heaved a dreary sigh. From his expression, he actually appeared genuinely worried about his subordinate’s safety.

“His head is chock-full of top-secret info on the Mafia: management of our secret accounts, lists of companies and government officials who pay us, contact information of clients who trade in smuggled goods. This information would make someone a fortune if sold to another syndicate, and they could cut us down and set us on fire before we knew it. Even if that isn’t the case, Ango is a talented and important subordinate to me. If something happened to him, then I want to help him. You understand how I feel, yes?”

I couldn’t say that I did. A lowly grunt would never be able to understand the thoughts of a man who manages an entire underground organization.

“Of course.”

Still, I offered a couple of words like a garnish on a dinner plate.

The boss took the quill on his desk and began spinning it around his fingers.

“I hear you specialize in troublesome matters such as this. The Mafia is full of people who are only good at shooting, punching, and making threats. Someone like you is a highly valuable asset to the organization. I’m expecting great things from you.”

The boss’s misunderstanding became clear to me: I was not a missing- persons recovery specialist, but an apprentice, an errand boy. While it was true that those were the kinds of jobs that usually came my way, for the most part it was only because I couldn’t 'Shoot, punch, or threaten' people.

Seemingly in a good mood, the boss opened his desk drawer and took out some silver leaf–inlaid Echizen paper. His quill pen glided across the paper’s surface as he wrote.

SakunosukeOda

Nihil admirari—help the man mentioned above without hesitation in the face of any and all trials.

Ougai

“This should be of some help if you need assistance from one of our own. Take it with you.”

I accepted the slip of paper from him. It’s a delegation of authority, so to speak. Within the Mafia, this document is known as a 'Silver Oracle,' and whoever possesses it is granted authority equal to that of the boss himself. Show it to anyone who ranks below the five executives and give them orders, and they cannot decline. Declining is tantamount to betraying the Mafia, which is punishable by death. Holding such a legendary document in my hands almost didn’t even feel real.

“You can even order the executives around with that.” The boss grinned. “Come to think of it, you’re close friends with the executive Dazai, yes? A friendship that surpasses the bounds of hierarchy… He’s a man of quality. Feel free to count on him if you need anything.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I answered truthfully.

“Are you sure? He isn’t the youngest executive in history for nothing. His peers may treat him like he’s a heretic, but I believe Dazai’s capabilities are astounding. I’m sure in four or five years, he’ll have killed me and taken my place.”

The boss’s lips curled devilishly.

Although I didn’t even so much as blink, I was seriously rattled. I searched the boss’s face, but that almost childlike smirk made him impossible to read. Was this his way of joking?

“I hope to hear some good news from you.”

The boss returned the quill to its stand, and I gave him one last bow before heading for the door. The whole exchange left me oddly parched.

Hidden beneath the rapid onslaught of sudden developments was a sensation, albeit faint, in the back of my head telling me something was off. But my image of whatever was causing it was strangely hazy and blurred— like an old birthmark on my back that I couldn’t see.

“Oda.” The boss called out to me from behind right as I placed a hand on the door to leave. “That pistol hanging under your shoulder—that’s a nice model.”

I looked down at my gun. Inside the holster under my jacket was an old black pistol.

“It’s just an antique I keep around because I’m used to using it. But I’m honored.”

“I only ask you this out of slight curiosity, but rumor has it you’ve never killed anyone with it.”

I nodded.

Lying wasn’t going to do me any good.

“That’s right.”

“And why is that?”

I needed a few seconds to catch my breath before replying.

“Are you ordering me as the leader of this organization?” I asked.

“No, I merely ask out of personal interest.”

“Then I prefer not to answer.”

For a brief second, the boss’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. Then he crossed his arms and smiled like a teacher fed up with a poor student.

“I see. Then you may go. I anticipate good news from you.”

***

Meanwhile, Dazai was over at the port. After walking along the seaside for some time, he found himself in the warehouse district surrounded by a planted forest. There were lines of small ships with their registration numbers scraped off, various stolen cars of international makes, and large chromatographs for manufacturing explosives. Not only did the nearby residents stay away, but even the city police avoided going there without a good reason. The area was run by underground organizations such as the Port Mafia—a death trap, to put it another way. Three bodies had washed up on the coast that morning.

“Make sure the police don’t hear about this. Also, call the cleaner. We need to get these bodies out of here.”

Men in black suits—Port Mafia grunts—silently worked at the site where the bodies were found. These city lowlifes simply gritted their teeth and did as they were ordered. There were two reasons for this: One, these were the bodies of their colleagues—fellow mafiosi. The other reason was that one of the execs was expected to arrive on-site any minute due to the gravity of the situation.

“Look into whether any of these men had families. If they do…”

The mafia member in command stopped midsentence and paused for a moment.

“…I’ll explain things.”

The man in charge was a senior Port Mafia member with white hair and a cigar. He had a gentlemanly air, sporting a well-starched black overcoat and a suit. This was Ryuurou Hirotsu—one of the oldest members of the Mafia.

Hirotsu took out a gold pocket watch and checked the time.

“One of our executives will be here any minute now. Finish learning everything you can about the victims before he arrives.”

“Morning, everyone!”

Hirotsu’s orders were almost immediately followed by a voice coming from the man-made forest. Everyone turned around, looking tense. From appearances alone, the young man who arrived before them could have easily been mistaken for a child. He tottered over to the group, his hair unkempt and his head, neck, and arms covered in bandages. The young man was one of the Port Mafia’s five executives—Osamu Dazai.

Hirotsu promptly put out his cigar before tucking it away in his pocket ashtray. All the men in black suits placed a hand on their chests and respectfully bowed.

“Gimme a second, okay? I’m about to clear this really hard level— Oh, crap! He passed me! Eat this! …Ack, he dodged it!”

Dazai walked closer, struggling with a handheld video game. He was so focused on the screen that he would have face-planted if he had stepped onto even slightly more uneven ground.

“Ugh. I can’t beat this level no matter how many times I try! This curve here is the tricky part. Every time I go around it, I—Gah! He passed me again!”

“Dazai, sir.” Hirotsu timidly spoke up on behalf of the others, since they were unable to say anything. “Thank you for coming all this way. The armory guards were shot, and as of now—”

“It’s been a while since anyone’s been crazy enough to target a Port Mafia armory! How’d they do it?” Dazai asked, still focused on the video game.

“Our men were killed instantly after being hit with around ten to twenty 9mm rounds each. Then the intruders stole various firearms from the armory: forty submachine guns, eight shotguns, fifty-five pistols, two sniper rifles, and eighty grenades. They also took a total of eighteen kilograms of detonator-type high explosives. The electronic lock was opened with the passcode. How that code was leaked is still—”

“Let me have a look, then. Here, take care of this for me.”

“Huh?”

Hirotsu’s expression turned stern as Dazai handed him the game system.

“The trick is in the timing. You use a booster item once you reach the straight path in the middle of the course. So where are the bodies?”

“Oh, uh, they’re lined up by the tetrapods— Wh-what buttons am I supposed to press?”

Dazai skipped off to the concrete blocks and ignored Hirotsu, who was holding the console upside down in a fluster. There lay three bodies, each wearing sunglasses and black suits. They were very tough men—up until yesterday. Soaking in the ocean for a few hours had caused their skin to swell, but they would have been in far worse condition if they had drowned; all three of them had bled out almost completely before being tossed into the ocean to sink to the bottom.

“Hmm.”

Dazai gazed disinterestedly at the corpses.

“Their weapons are still in their holsters. Well, that’s just sloppy. Also…most of the gunshots have exit wounds…which means they were fired at close range, from a submachine gun. You’d have to be pretty skilled to get this close without being noticed. I’m getting my hopes up. What about the warehouse’s surveillance footage?”

Dazai turned to Hirotsu, who simply gazed forlornly down at the game system in his hands and revealed a totaled car on the screen.

“I am deeply ashamed of myself…,” Hirotsu mumbled.

Dazai stared at him curiously, as if he had already completely forgotten that he’d passed the game to Hirotsu.

“Mr. Hirotsu.” Dazai’s eyes narrowed.

“I… I’m sure if you just give me one more chance, I could—,” Hirotsu pleaded as he gripped the game system once more.

“Anyone in the lower ranks who causes problems over narcotics should immediately be cut loose,” Dazai suddenly said.

“Narcotics?” Hirotsu turned pale. “No, nobody is involved in anything like that…including my subordinates. My men are top caliber—”

“The gun at your waist.”

Dazai pointed at him. Hirotsu swiftly covered the gun tucked away in his suit belt with his hand, although not on purpose; it was merely a natural reflex.

“Mr. Hirotsu, you don’t usually carry a gun with you, right? Plus, you’re the kind of person who takes very good care of their weapons. And yet, the sloppy way you’ve tucked it into your belt leads me to believe that it is neither yours nor merchandise. Judging by the condition it’s in, it belongs to one of your men. Am I right?”

Hirotsu stood in silence as Dazai continued.

“You have around twenty subordinates under your wing. Did you borrow that gun from one of them? No, you didn’t. There was no reason for you to use a gun at this time of the morning. You took it. Why? Because the grip was lightly stained with blood and some white powder. But there is neither powder nor blood on you, Mr. Hirotsu. One of your subordinates must have caused some trouble over drugs. Judging by the bags under your eyes, I’m going to say it happened last night. So you tied your subordinate up and took his gun because who knows what he’d do if you didn’t.”

“That’s—,” Hirotsu uttered in a muffled voice, but Dazai kept on speaking and cut him off.

“That subordinate is ignoring the syndicate’s policy, Mr. Hirotsu. Selling drugs makes a lot of money, but it also brings a lot of problems along with it. The Special Division for Unusual Powers, narcotics agents, the MP’s criminal-organization watchdogs… Government organizations are champing at the bit just waiting for us to make any sort of mistake that would give them a chance to strike. Simply taking your subordinate’s gun isn’t going to do anything.”

“But…”

“Mr. Hirotsu, I don’t know why, but I was given the lofty position of executive, and when you’re an executive, you get subordinates whether you want any or not. But I can’t produce results with a bunch of sloppy flunkies. That’s why I cut the bad ones loose early. You should do the same.”

“…I am deeply sorry,” Hirotsu mumbled, his voice strained.

In the Mafia, 'Cutting the bad ones loose' means killing them. Refusing executive orders is treated as betrayal and dealt with in the same fashion.

Hirotsu apologized but said no more after that. Dazai fixed him with a piercing gaze; the silence was so deafening that time nearly froze in place.

“…Ha-ha! Just kidding!” Dazai abruptly added in a cheery tone. Hirotsu stared back at him, confused. “The reason you have so many people following you is that you don’t turn your back on them. I’ll leave things in your hands. I won’t tell the boss.”

He patted Hirotsu on the shoulder and smiled. Hirotsu unconsciously rubbed his throat while he nodded. He must have been tense.

Dazai, the youngest executive in the Mafia’s history, was a living legend within the syndicate. Nothing got past him, be it from an enemy on the outside or a scandal from within the group. More importantly, nobody had even an inkling of Dazai’s desires or dislikes, or what he supported or was opposed to. Not even Hirotsu, who’d been in the Mafia for longer than most, could figure him out. No one would have been surprised if Dazai had 'Disposed' of Hirotsu just then.

“All right, let’s get back on topic. Is there any footage of the attackers?” Dazai asked with a snap of his fingers.

At Hirotsu’s signal, a man in a black suit brought over a total of five pictures from the security camera. Dazai took them from him and began to study them. The stills showed several men sneaking into the warehouse and stealing the Port Mafia’s firearms. The thieves were wearing worn-out sacks over their heads and dingy cloaks instead of overcoats. On the surface, they didn’t look any different than your average back-alley thug. However…

“Those are soldiers.” Dazai’s lips slightly curled the moment he laid eyes on the photos. “Seasoned ones, at that.”

He looked over the dim figures of the raggedy men several times, tilting the photos this way and that.

“They look like your run-of-the-mill ruffians at first glance, but they’re moving in a diamond formation to cover their blind spots. Mr. Hirotsu, you know what kind of gun this is?”

Dazai pointed at the pistol on the waist of one of the attackers.

“It is an old model, very old. It appears to be even older than me. From the gray body and narrow muzzle, I would say it’s an old-fashioned European pistol known as a grau geist.”

“I saw this gun yesterday.” Dazai’s eyes narrowed. “That means the men who robbed the armory attacked us immediately beforehand…which means that was just a diversion. Heh. Now things are getting interesting. These guys are even more fun than I imagined.”

With the pictures still in hand, Dazai spun around, turning his back to the others before starting to walk off. He placed a thumb on his lip, muttering to himself as he paced back and forth.

“So they purposely leaked intel that they were going to attack us in the middle of our next business transaction. That way, we’d focus our manpower in one location, leaving only a few guards at the armory. Then they stole the weapons—a lot of them. But why? To resell? No, it wouldn’t need to be weapons if that were the case. I see. This is…” Dazai rambled, lost deep in thought. All the others could do was wait for him in silence.

“……”

Hirotsu’s subordinates stood stock-still as they waited for the much- younger executive to gather his thoughts.

“Y’know,” Dazai commented after a good few moments of silence, “I’m thirsty.”

“I will have someone buy you a drink.” Hirotsu gave a flick of his finger, signaling the subordinate by his side to go. The black-suited mafioso then rushed off in a fluster.

“Get me a coffee with lots of milk. Make sure to cool it off!” Dazai cheerfully yelled out as the man dashed away. “Oh, but no ice, okay? If you can get me a decaf, that’d be even better. And double the sugar, please!”

Watching the Mafia grunt depart in a cold sweat, Dazai dropped his voice to a murmur.

“Mr. Hirotsu, the enemy didn’t attack just any armory. They went after one of the three major armories containing the Port Mafia’s emergency weapons supply. It’s heavily guarded, and an alarm sounds if anyone enters the area without permission. But these guys easily got past all that, and they sneaked in using the actual passcode—something only sub-executives and higher would know. So how did the enemy get their hands on such top-secret information?”

Hirotsu’s face tensed. There were only three possibilities: A Port Mafia member was tortured into talking, someone had a skill that enabled them to extract information, or there was a traitor within the organization. All three options spelled a worst-case scenario.

“This entire area is going to turn into a war zone.” Dazai gazed at the city skyscrapers and gave a small smile. “That over there is gonna end up a pillar of flames. I can already see the sky burning crimson.”

“Do you know anything about the enemy organization?” Hirotsu asked, suppressing his emotions.

“One of my men tortured the prisoner we captured yesterday, but he couldn’t get him to talk. The guy just waited for the right moment and killed himself with the poison he was hiding in between his molars. The only thing we got out of him was the enemy organization’s name.”

As if to portend the next word that would leave his mouth, Dazai shot Hirotsu a grim, piercing stare. His eyes portended an incoming storm of bloodshed and violence that would haunt the average person’s dreams for days on end.

“…Mimic.”

***

After receiving orders from the boss, I started tracing Ango’s steps. But there wasn’t even a single clue before me. Searching for a Mafia informant is on a completely different level from locating a missing pet cat (which I’ve actually done before, so I say this with confidence). If a cat runs away, then you can stake out a local feeding ground, but there was no way for me to even guess where Ango’s 'Feeding ground' might be.

With nowhere to turn, I came up with a few hypotheses. There were two possibilities for Ango’s disappearance: Either he went into hiding of his own volition, or he was abducted. If it was the former, then I was out of luck. Ango wasn’t some rebellious teenager running away from his parents. If he really wanted to, he could get himself a few million in untraceable banknotes and travel the world, bouncing from one campsite to another like a nomadic tribesman. Hence why I’d tossed out this hypothesis. The other possibility was that Ango could’ve been taken somewhere against his will. As the boss predicted, the most likely scenario was that an enemy syndicate was trying to get information out of Ango. If that was the case, then I’d want to believe he secretly left behind some sort of trail, like the bread crumbs in that one Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

I decided to start off by visiting Ango’s residence. Now that I thought about it, I knew next to nothing about his personal life. Our relationship was always like that, though. Ango and Dazai never talked about themselves. The three of us were like a band of thieves who just happened to be hiding under the eaves of the same abandoned temple to avoid the rain. We’d always just get lost in conversation, never knowing exactly who the other was.

But Ango often had to go out of town for business, and I remembered hearing him casually mention drifting from hotel to hotel during one of our chats. He must’ve stayed somewhere that had ties to the Mafia, given how many people were after his life. There were a few hotels like that within the prefecture, where privacy was of utmost importance. They each had around two dozen armed guards permanently stationed; only a select few could stay at these locations.

I began to call up some of these hotels. Once the manager realized who I worked for, his strained voice instantly softened, and he began to answer my questions courteously. If we were ever to meet face-to-face, I wouldn’t be surprised if he snuggled right into my lap.

I finally found out where Ango lived once I called the third hotel. It was an eighteen-story building with sand-colored walls, located just a little off the main drag. The surrounding neighborhood was lined with similar buildings and a park, and the entire area was steeped in a heavy stillness—or a silence, you could call it—despite the daytime hour. The silence was all too familiar for Mafia territory. It looked like just the kind of place Ango would’ve enjoyed.

After receiving the room key from the manager, I headed to Ango’s suite. According to the manager, he’d started living there around half a year ago and paid in advance. However, due to the nature of his work, he rarely returned to his room. Apparently, he would show up once every few days, then disappear once again by morning. The manager claimed that Ango never invited anyone else inside.

His room was a tidy one-bedroom suite. It’d been thoroughly cleaned— not even a speck of dust. There was hardly any furniture in the parlor, save for a small bookshelf that held a few old novels and various regional documents. In the ceiling was an air vent so cleverly hidden that it was virtually undetectable, its ventilation fan spinning almost noiselessly. A single black wooden stool sat quietly in the corner.

In the bedroom stood a short desk and a bed covered in crisp sheets. A reading light hung over the pillow upon which lay an open biography of a genius mathematician from around a century ago who had left an elegant mathematical expression.

The place practically screamed Ango—an immaculate, smart, sterile space that didn’t give a single glimpse into his life. I stood in the middle of the room and silently looked around. There was something bothering me, albeit minuscule—something I wouldn’t usually give so much as a second thought.

“Ango Sakaguchi, Mafia intelligence officer,” I said aloud. “You’re a mysterious, intellectual man. Nobody knows who you really are.”

Of course, no one was there to respond. I headed to the double-door window with its four sheets of expertly inlaid glass. Outside was a view of Yokohama. Directly below was a park that led to a line of high-rise buildings. The stars must cast a pretty reflection off the lake at night.

I turned my back to the window and made one more sweep of the room. Immediately, I realized what had been bothering me: I was a Mafia member unable to kill. That was why I mostly got stuck with the petty, troublesome jobs. But as I held my tongue while pressing on through these tasks, I started to develop a certain sense of intuition. It was like a hair-thin thread of discomfort that could snap at any moment. However, following the thread sometimes led me to unexpected truths.

The black wooden stool in the corner of the room—it looked out of place. It didn’t seem as though it belonged in this hotel, and there wasn’t even a desk around to make use of it.

I approached the stool to examine it. It was your average mass-produced article. I flipped it over in hopes that there might be an important clue underneath, but there was nothing really out of the ordinary.

I returned once more to where I had been standing, then crouched down and stared fixedly at the stool. That was when I saw it—the seat was scuffed ever so slightly, even though the stool itself didn’t appear to be particularly old or worn out. Upon further inspection, I noticed that not only was it a little scuffed, but it also had what appeared to be a white footprint left by a leather shoe. I scanned the room once more.

—The ceiling air vent.

I took the stool and pushed it under the vent. Standing atop the stool, I could just barely touch the ceiling. There was some white plastic netting covering the air vent, making it difficult to see inside. It took some maneuvering, but I managed to remove the net. Inside the air duct, the ventilation fan was still spinning quietly. I felt around the fan with my fingers for a while until they just barely caught on to something, which I then pulled toward me. It scraped noisily across the metal duct and turned out to be a small safe. After getting off the stool, I held the safe in my hands and brushed the dust off. It was white and small enough that I could easily hold it in both hands. The safe was locked, but if I could find the key or something to pick it with, I could get it open. I took the box in both hands and violently shook it in front of my chest. Something metal, but not particularly heavy, rattled inside.

That was when a vision played out in my head.

The white safe in my hands was dyed crimson in the blink of an eye, along with the wall and floor. Something gushed out, clinging to the surfaces before me.

It was blood. My blood.

Right as I looked down at my chest, another spurt of blood gushed out of it. Something entered my back and pierced through my chest. I turned around just as the window shattered and the shards fell to the floor. Something—a sniper rifle’s scope, perhaps—glittered in the sunlight from a far-off building. I reached for the gun at my side, but my arm was hit back by a high-speed bullet, spinning me around and producing a spray of blood. Feeling the warm liquid crawl up my throat, I twisted and fell to the ground. Everything before me faded to black.

The vision ended there.

I found myself standing with the safe, still wearing the exact same clothes I was a second ago.

The safe was white.

The window wasn’t broken.

I threw myself to the carpeted floor with the safe still in my hands, and almost instantly, I heard glass shatter. One, then two dark holes appeared in the wall in front of me. Crawling on the floor, I moved away from the window until I couldn’t see the high-rise building outside. Then I took the gun out of my side holster and got into position with my back against the wall. There was a mirror on the table, so I reached out with my fingers and managed to grab it. My hands were so sweaty that I almost dropped it, but I somehow got a grip around the mirror to angle it so I could see outside.

When I looked at the room in the building I’d seen in my vision, I noticed a shadowy figure moving in the reflection. I couldn’t tell what they were wearing, though; the figure promptly gathered their belongings before completely disappearing. The moment I put my gun down was the moment I noticed I hadn’t been breathing.

A sniper.

What in the world was in this room? What happened to Ango? I was sniped and killed. I couldn’t see the muzzle flash, and I didn’t even hear the bullet being fired. Plus, once the perpetrator saw that they had missed the target, they immediately escaped. This was clearly the work of a professional.

I’d died only a few moments ago—sniped in the chest and shot dead.

Or at least I would have been, if I hadn’t had my skill.

***

I practically slid down the staircase banister to get out of there. The sniper couldn’t have gotten far, and I needed to find out who they were. Shoving past innocent customers in the hotel, I made my way outside. I ran toward the building the sniper was in while pulling my cell phone out of my pocket.

A seasoned sniper can pierce their target’s heart from even a mile away, but from the looks of it, the sniping point wasn’t all that far off. I knew the building they were in. In fact, I knew everything about this city, even the uncharted back alleys, so I was naturally able to narrow down the sniper’s path of escape to a few possibilities.

As I sprinted, I punched in Dazai’s phone number.

“Dazai?”

“Wow, it’s not often I get a call from you, Odasaku. I’ve got a feeling thisis big! Hmm. Allow me to use my genius brain to guess the situation! Yousuddenly thought of a hilarious joke, and it was so funny that you had to callmeto—”

“Someone tried to snipe me.”

Dazai immediately stopped midsentence as if the air had been sucked out of his lungs.

“I was in Ango’s room. I’m going after the sniper right now. He fired from a high-rise building across from the secondhand book row. From there, he could’ve fled through Kokuyou-ji Temple or the service entrance to the wharf, or taken one of the Mifune shopping district’s back streets.”

“You want me to help block his path of escape, right?”

I hesitated for a moment. The reason I called Dazai was because he was the only one I could turn to with confidence on such short notice. However, he was one of the five executives, making him only second to the boss in terms of the Mafia hierarchy. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve had to send someone to ask permission to even meet with Dazai, then wait at least a month before getting an answer. Calling someone like him and giving orders is like asking the president to walk your dog.

“Dazai, I have a Silver Oracle with me. If you don’t mind—”

“Quit it. You don’t need that to ask me for help. You’re in a fix, right?” Dazai said brightly. “I’ll have my men blockade the roads immediately. I’m gonna head over, too.Just don’t follow the guy toof ar, Odasaku.”

I thanked him and hung up, then focused everything I had on getting my legs to move as quickly as possible.

Who was the shooter? Snipers are exceedingly cautious and patient.

Strategy is their religion. Once they decide on the optimal position for taking out the target, they wait for days without moving a muscle until the target appears within range of their scope. A sniper will satisfy their hunger with ready-made meals, and when they run out of food, they just don’t eat.

The fact that there was a sniper in the building meant he knew someone was coming.

The most obvious, logical reason would be that Ango himself was the target. The sniper was probably planning on shooting Ango once he cluelessly returned home. However, that then begged the question: Why did the sniper change his plan and try to shoot me? I’d only decided to go to Ango’s room a few hours prior, and that was just a desperate attempt to find some clues. Moreover, the sniper only pulled the trigger after I found the white safe. If he’d wanted to just kill me, he would’ve shot me the moment I walked into the room. Maybe the sniper didn’t have a firm target; maybe he would’ve shot anyone who walked in there. Or maybe he would’ve shot anyone who found the white safe.

Only one thing was clear: Ango was apparently stuck in the middle of something big. I thought about his bespectacled visage, his cool, aloof demeanor, as I ran.

No matter how deeply I inhaled, I couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen into my body. Right as my field of vision started turning spotty, I arrived at one of the routes I predicted the sniper would use to escape. It was a dark, narrow back alley littered with scraps of food left by the city crows.

I’d cut through two residential yards and leaped over three private garages to get there. It wouldn’t have been out of the question to catch sight of the enemy right then and there if they weren’t familiar with the area. The moment the thought crossed my mind, a man with a knife tried to grab me from a gap between the buildings. A blade practically the size of a meat cleaver sliced through the air, and I swerved my head to dodge the strike. The tip of the blade grazed the corner of my ear, leaving a cold, sharp pain. I found myself in a deadlock as he rammed into me, and I thrust my foot into his torso as hard as I could. I ended up getting thrown onto the trash-covered ground, but I was at least able to get him off.

I looked at the assailant.

He was a man of unknown ethnicity dressed in tattered gray clothes. At first glance, his filthy appearance made him look like a vagrant, but my finger happened to leave a mark in the dirt on his face. It was as if he’d put it there on purpose. The assailant swayed back and forth as he flipped the knife over from his right hand to his left. Next, he raised both elbows so that his right hand was guarding his face. It was a stance that allowed a person to quickly counter any close-range blows with minimal movement while protecting one’s vitals. The bloodlust radiating from this guy was like that of a seasoned fighting dog.

I could assume several things from watching him: one, that he knew I was with the Mafia, and he was not going to cower or create an opening to be attacked; two, that he was probably the sniper I saw in the mirror’s reflection; and three, that he probably planned on killing me there without even giving me the chance to wonder.

The man came at me with his left hand aloft, gripping the knife. If he were to hit me, he would split my face right open, but if I were to try to run away or fight him, that knife would tear me to shreds. I leaned my weight against the wall behind me and used the rebound to leap in the opposite direction and create some distance between us. Then, spinning around, I drew the gun from my holster and almost immediately pulled the trigger. The bullet landed just inches before his toes—right where he was about to step. The man stopped. Only a fraction of a second had gone by from the moment I drew my gun to the moment I fired. If he knew anything about how to fight, then he’d understand that I didn’t shoot randomly, but rather precisely where I wanted to.

Raising my gun, I pointed the muzzle right between his eyes, letting him know I could pull the trigger whenever I wanted. He should’ve had more than enough time to figure that much out, and yet, he took another step forward. His knife sliced through the air, and I leaped backward, dodging the slash. Then I fired another warning shot, and the sound of the blast echoed throughout the narrow alleyway. But it seemed to have affected him no differently than a cool breeze; the man had locked away all his fear into a tiny box in the corner of his mind and thrown away the key.

He reached out, but it wasn’t me he was aiming for. I swiftly pulled the white safe under my left arm away, leaving him only air to grab, but he promptly regained his footing before pulling back with his knife.

The man was after the safe.

He’d pretended to flee in order to lure me here, in which case I might have been better off taking the safe and running away as quickly as my legs could take me. I couldn’t even imagine who this guy was or the kind of value this safe had. To make matters worse, he was an expert with the knife. Gunshots didn’t even faze him. On top of that, I—

The enemy thrust forward with the knife. I shot at the wall in hope that he’d flinch, but he knew where I was aiming. He didn’t back off—he got even closer. I sensed there was someone else behind me, so I threw myself forward and dropped to the ground. Gunfire lit up the alleyway. The metallic clatter of the shots echoed as bullets—ones I didn’t fire—glided past my ear.

My body froze. Although I couldn’t look back, I immediately knew what was going on—there was another enemy behind me.

Snipers typically have people called spotters to back them up. Spotters and snipers always work in pairs, and a spotter will help the sniper readjust his aim or time the shot. Sometimes they’ll also scout the area and dispose of any nearby enemies. I should’ve seen this coming the moment the sniper went on the counterattack. There were two enemies.

The second enemy fired his gun; he didn’t use a sniper rifle, but an old- fashioned pistol. I created an off-the-cuff smoke screen by hurling the nearby garbage bags into the line of fire, then wildly shot at the wall in an attempt to use the ricochet in place of a barrage. The man with the knife closed in, giving me no time to check if my stratagem had worked. Our weapons collided, creating sparks. The base of the metal trigger guard screeched as the knife sawed into it.

I swept my opponent’s ankle, knocking him off-balance, but he managed to put his hand out to catch his fall. Almost reflexively, I tossed aside the safe and drew my other gun. I walked with my two pistols aimed in both directions and almost unconsciously placed the muzzles right before the enemies’ eyes with one quick motion. I wouldn’t miss this close up. If I pulled the trigger, they’d instantly perish before even getting the chance to think of something meaningful. They wouldn’t even have a second to feel pain. Their brains and consciousnesses would smear the alley walls, and their lives would then disappear into thin air like a magic trick.

I didn’t shoot. I simply rolled out of the way to create a bit of distance, keeping both opponents in my sight with both weapons drawn.

“Odasaku, get down!”

That was when I heard Dazai’s voice.

I already knew it was coming, which was why I threw myself to the ground face-first. Barely a moment later, an explosion followed by a flash of light illuminated the narrow alleyway. My skill was to thank for alerting me to what was going to happen; I lay on the ground, plugging my ears and shutting my eyes until the light faded. The enemies, on the other hand, were caught off guard by the flash grenade and subsequently blinded, preventing them from dodging the next attack.

A thunderous roar seemingly from the heavens itself burst through the back alley. First came a flash of light, followed by an explosive bang—then a metal-splitting screech and the sound of the ground and walls being smashed to pieces. A shower of 9mm ammo zoomed over my head. Four men in black suits rushed down the alleyway right past me, each with a submachine gun at their waist. It was the Port Mafia.

With nothing to hide behind in the narrow alley, not even the most seasoned warriors could escape the submachine guns’ hellish onslaught. I heard the two men in tattered cloaks briefly scream as the gunfire buffeted them like a violent gust of wind. When I turned around, I saw blood spewing out of their bodies, enveloping them like a deep crimson mist. Then I heard a splat as they were thrown against the walls.

“You’re a real piece of work, Odasaku. You could have easily killed them in an instant, if you wanted to.”

Dazai lightly trotted over, looking as if he were about to whistle or something. The roar of submachine guns filling an alleyway was no different from the hubbub of a shopping mall on a holiday for him.

I accepted his extended hand and stood up before surveying the alley.

“You killed them?” I asked, looking down at the two fallen assassins.

“Yep. Capturing them and trying to get them to talk would’ve just been a waste of time. I mean, these guys love the taste of their interdental poison.”

I didn’t reply. It felt as if there were a lump about the size of a boulder in my stomach.

Dazai faintly smiled, then said, “I know. That’s not what you were asking, right? But, Odasaku, these men were professional assassins. It doesn’t matter how good you are. Killing them was the only option.”

“I know.”

I nodded. Dazai was always right, and I was always doing the wrong thing.

“I can see you’re not happy… I’m sorry for compromising your principles.”

His smile weakened as he spoke. Dazai usually never apologized to anyone, which was why what he said really rang true.

“Thanks. I mean it. I would’ve died if you hadn’t come to save me.”

“Sakunosuke Oda, a peculiar mafioso who believes killing is never the answer.” Dazai shook his head in exasperation. “The Mafia treats you like an errand boy thanks to that perplexing belief of yours, Odasaku, your considerable capabilities notwithstanding—”

I shook my head in silence.

“I’ve heard that complaint so many times that I’m starting to despise myself. More importantly, about the attackers…,” I continued while indicating the fallen assailants with my gaze.

“You said they shot at you while you were in Ango’s room?”

Dazai listened attentively as I briefly explained what had happened at the hotel.

“I see. That sniper rifle was probably stolen from our armory,” he claimed once I’d finished. “Look at his waist. He’s carrying an old-fashioned pistol, right?”

When I looked down at the attackers, I noticed they both had early-model pistols hidden under their ragged clothes—gray handguns with narrow muzzles.

“These are rather old European pistols. Given their low accuracy and firing rate, they’re not ideal for narrow alleys like this.”

He took the gun off one of the bodies and stared at it with great interest.

“This pistol is probably more like an emblem to these men—something that indicates who they are.”

Dazai seemed to be much more knowledgeable about the attackers than I was.

“Just who are they?” I asked.

“Mimic.”

“‘Mimic’…?”

I’d never heard of an organization by that name before.

“I don’t know much about them yet, but they’re apparently a European criminal organization. All I can say right now is that they came to Japan for some reason and that they’re in conflict with the Port Mafia.”

Rivalries between the Port Mafia and other criminal organizations weren’t uncommon. Even in and around Yokohama, there were groups that competed with the Mafia over turf. Outside the reaches of the government’s watchful eyes, the Yokohama Settlement was inhabited by countless outlaws who fought over territory. Dirty money came to this tax haven from all over the world to be cleaned, helping corporate crime and mercenary businesses thrive. It wouldn’t be strange for a criminal organization from abroad to come over to make easy profits. But how many crime syndicates in the world had a professional sniper with a spotter?

Dazai seemed to have figured out what I was thinking from the quizzical look on my face.

“In any case, I’m in the middle of investigating the specifics,” he stated with a shrug. “But maybe we’ll find something out from the fact that they had a sniper aimed at Ango’s room.”

“They wanted to get this safe back,” I said while holding up the item in question. “I found it in Ango’s room, but I can’t open it without the key. We might be able to learn something if we could just open—”

“That’s it?” Dazai gave a disappointed smile. “Piece of cake. Here, let me see it.”

I handed him the safe, which he immediately shook, listening to the sound it made. Then he shuffled through the trash on the ground until he found a safety pin. After slightly bending the tip with his finger, he stuck it in the keyhole and wiggled it around. Not even a second went by before I heard the gear inside the safe click.

“Okay, it’s open.” This man had a gift.

“Now, let’s see what’s inside.”

Dazai opened the lid and took a peek. I could also see it from where I was standing.

...

What did this mean?

I found this safe in Ango’s room. The wooden stool, the fact that this was hidden in the air vent—I think it’s fair to say Ango knew about it. If I was being honest with myself, I’d have said the contents probably belonged to Ango.

Deep down, I’d imagined that whatever was in the safe was something valuable. I thought it was something Ango had gotten his hands on, and the attackers in gray had tried to kill me in order to steal it.

But I was wrong.

Inside the safe was an old-fashioned gray gun.

“Why…?” The word just fell off my lips. “Dazai, you said this gun was like an emblem to them, right? Something that identifies them. So what’s the meaning of this?”

Dazai didn’t immediately answer. He simply narrowed his eyes and stared quietly off into space.

“It’s still too early to come to any conclusion.” Dazai chose his words carefully. “Ango might have stolen this gun from them. Or they might have even planted it in his room to frame him. This might not even be a gun but a sign. It—”

“I get it. You’re absolutely right,” I said, cutting him off. “There’s still not enough information to go by. I’ll look into the gun. Thanks again for coming all the way out here.”

“Odasaku—”

Dazai started to say something, but I cut him off again.

“I really appreciate your help, but I should look into things a bit more. I’ll contact you if I find out anything.”

Dazai stared at me in silence, his gaze tinged with discontent. I looked away. A grim feeling came over me, as if I were submerged up to my head in a jet-black, heavy liquid that would drown me if I got too involved in this case.

“Then let me tell you something I noticed,” Dazai said, stone-faced. “Yesterday, when we were drinking at the bar, Ango said he was on his way back from a business trip, right?”

“Yeah.”

I believe he said he was coming back from business in Tokyo where he bought a smuggled antique watch.

“That was probably a lie.”

—What?

“You saw his bag, right? Starting from the top, he had cigarettes, a mini umbrella, and that antique watch he’d brought back. The umbrella was wet because he’d used it, which was why it was wrapped in cloth. And his business trip had been to Tokyo, where it had been raining.”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “It rained, so the umbrella was wet. Seems logical to me.”

“If Ango were telling the truth, then he wouldn’t have used that umbrella.” Dazai squinted as he spoke.

I couldn’t sense any sort of emotion from his expression.

“Ango supposedly drove to the site of the deal, so when did he use that umbrella? It wasn’t before the negotiation, since the umbrella was on top of the wrapped-up watch. And it wasn’t after the fact, either.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Given how wet his umbrella was, he didn’t use it for just two or three minutes. It must’ve been in the rain for a good half an hour, and yet, his shoes and the hems of his pants were dry. The negotiation was at eight o’clock, and we met him at eleven. If he’d used his umbrella after finishing the deal, his clothes wouldn’t have dried in just those three hours.”

“Maybe he brought something to change into.”

“He didn’t have any spare clothes or shoes in his bag, and it didn’t even have enough space to fit anything like that.”

Maybe he just went home, changed, and left his wet clothes there—but right as I was about to say as much, I held myself back. If Ango had done that, he would have left the expensive watch at home before coming to the bar.

“He didn’t use the umbrella before the transaction or afterward. And he didn’t use it during the negotiation, either. The watch was wrapped in paper, and it wasn’t even the least bit wet. Plus, moisture is basically poison to antique watches. They had to have done business indoors.”

I ruminated over what Dazai said. He was right. What Ango told us didn’t explain why the umbrella was that wet.

“So what’s the truth, then?”

“My guess is that he didn’t purchase the watch in Tokyo; it was his all along. The reason why it was stuffed deep inside his bag was because he put it in there before leaving for business. But instead of going to the negotiation site, he met with someone in the rain and talked for thirty minutes before killing some time and coming back.”

“Why do you think he met with someone?”

“Spies like Ango frequently choose rainy streets for their secret meetings. If you talk with your umbrella open, then no one can see your face, so you don’t have to worry about surveillance cameras or people noticing you. Even if someone was eavesdropping or wiretapping him, the sound of the rain would drown out any voices. It’s much better suited for confidential talks compared with inside a car or a room.”

I already knew what Dazai was trying to say and what his intentions were, and yet, I had no choice but to scrutinize his every word to find some sort of silver lining.

“Maybe Ango really was lying, but he’s an informant who deals with top- secret information on the Mafia. It’s only natural he’d have a secret meeting or two. You can’t blame him for that.”

“Then he could’ve just told us he couldn’t talk about it. If he did that, neither of us would have even brought up his work, don’t you think?”

“…”

He was right.

“But Ango lied about the deal. He even went out of his way to show us the antique watch so he could have an alibi. Why would he go that far to hide it from us that he’d met with someone in secret?”

—Maybe because he predicted that things would turn out like this?

That was what Dazai’s cold, distant gaze was saying.

—What time did the deal end?

I suddenly remembered Dazai’s seemingly random question when he saw the paper wrapping. Now that I thought about it, he was able to deduce all of this with one mere glance. He’d even asked Ango that question just to make sure.

—Ango. Mimic. Surprise attack.

Something mysterious was slowly coming to light.

“Be careful, Odasaku. Your cup is close to overflowing,” Dazai said. “If just one more thing gets thrown in there, all the water will come spilling out the top, and you won’t be able to handle the situation alone. Anyway, we’ll take care of things here. You deal with Ango.”

“Thanks.”

After exchanging glances, I began to walk down the alley toward the back streets. That’s when I noticed…

…one of the attackers was getting back up.

“Dazai!”

The attacker drew his gun practically the moment I cried out.

“Don’t move,” he threatened in a muffled voice.

The enemy was too close to Dazai for either me or one of Dazai’s subordinates to shoot. Furthermore, he had his weapon pointing at Dazai. His right hand gripped the gun while his left arm hung by his side as if he couldn’t move it. With apparently no strength left to stand on his own, the enemy leaned half of his weight against the wall.

Even then, Dazai was still within his range of fire. We couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

“Oh my.” Dazai stared at the pistol as if it were something unique and interesting. “You can still stand after so many bullets? Your mental fortitude is extraordinary.”

One of the attackers was completely unconscious, while the other was using his last bit of strength to stand so he could take Dazai with him to the grave.

“Dazai, keep still. I’ve got this.”

I stretched my fingers out to grab my gun. If the enemy got even a second to act, he was going to shoot. Since he was already aiming his old-fashioned pistol right at Dazai, even if I shot him right through the heart, the impact might cause him to pull the trigger. Timing was everything. I’m not a betting guy, but I didn’t have any other choice.

“Your organization’s called Mimic, right?” Dazai asked the man, but he didn’t reply.

He didn’t even blink.

“I’m not expecting an answer. To tell the truth, I admire you guys. No other organization has tried to take the Mafia head-on like this before. And nobody has ever successfully managed to point their gun at me like this with the intent to kill, either.”

Dazai faced the attacker, then began to walk toward him as if he were taking a stroll through his garden.

“Dazai, stop,” I begged in a hushed tone.

“I hope you can see the excitement in my eyes, too.” Dazai continued to address the enemy who was holding him at gunpoint. “If you just squeeze your finger ever so slightly, you can give me precisely what I crave most. The only thing I’m afraid of is that you’ll miss.”

His lips curled as he approached the man. The muzzle was now fewer than ten feet away.

“You need to aim for the heart or the head. I recommend the head. You only get one chance, though. My colleagues here won’t be kind enough to give you another.” Dazai tapped the middle of his forehead right over his eyebrows a few times. “But I know you can do it. You’re a sniper, aren’t you? I can still see the imprint from the sniper rifle on your cheek. You’re not the spotter.”

There was a slanted line traced across the attacker’s left cheek, the kind you get from peering through a scope for hours on end. Spotters just used binoculars; they wouldn’t have a mark like that.

The enemy’s fingers trembled as he pointed the gun. Just like Dazai said, he had only one shot. He couldn’t fire unless he was confident he could hit him. Dazai continued to approach the man, welcoming him to pull the trigger.

“Now shoot. Right here. You can’t miss from this close up.” Dazai grinned from ear to ear. “You’ll be killed whether or not you shoot, so just bury the enemy executive before you go.”

“Dazai!” I screamed.

I felt as though we were thousands of miles apart.

“Please take me with you. Awaken me from this oxidizing world of a dream. Come, now. Shoot.”

Still pointing at his forehead, Dazai closed in on the enemy with a smile that could’ve even been described as peaceful.

The attacker bit his lip and tightened his finger around the trigger.

—He’s at his breaking point!

The sniper and I fired almost simultaneously. Two flashes of light flooded the alley.

Shot in the arm, the man spun around.

Dazai violently bent backward after being shot point-blank.

A split second like a blue flash of lightning. A never-ending instant.

Then time began to move again.

Immediately, Dazai’s men showered the enemy with bullets as he spun from the impact of my shot. Like a rag being pummeled by a waterfall, the man was thrown backward, scattering flesh and blood until he perished.

Leaning away, Dazai took two, three steps back before stopping.

“…………How unfortunate,” he lamented, still bent over. “Looks like I didn’t manage to die this time, either.”

Dazai lifted his head up. The skin on the side of his head, slightly above his right ear, was slit open and bleeding.

The bullet had just missed.

I looked at Dazai. There was something there invisible to the human eye. You could’ve called it demons of the mind—something that could never be seen—just something compelled to destroy all.

“Sorry to shock you like that.”

Noticing my gaze, Dazai scratched the side of his head and grinned.

“Pretty realistic acting, right? I knew from the start that he would miss. The imprint from the sniper rifle was on his left cheek, meaning that was the side he used to shoot. In other words, he’s left-handed, but he was holding the pistol in his right hand. So he was going to shoot with his nondominant hand, he could barely even stand on those wobbly legs, and to make matters worse, he was using that old-fashioned gun. The only way he would have hit me was if he pressed the muzzle against my body.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at Dazai as he explained with a smile.

“All I had to do was talk to him to buy some time until his arm got tired. If I slowly walked toward him, he wouldn’t be able to shoot straight away. The rest was in your hands, Odasaku. I knew you would do something. Pretty logical, right?”

“Yeah.”

That was all I said. I didn’t have anything else to add. Had our ranks or relations been any different, I probably would’ve punched him right then. However, I am me, and there was nothing I could do to him.

After returning my gun to its holster, I turned my back to Dazai and began walking away. With every step I took, I felt as if the ground were going to collapse, creating a bottomless hole that I would fall through for an eternity.

Dazai’s expression as he placed a finger on his forehead and approached the enemy—that of a child about to burst into tears—remained burned into my eyes.

***

[unseededtoast]

Turtle Doves | Joel Miller

Part Seventeen

Chapter Directory

Series Summary: In which two broken souls connect so deeply, that if one should perish, the other would surely die of a broken heart. (slow burn, timeline changes. After TLOU1, before TLOU2, assumed knowledge of infected, uses elements from both show and game)

Series Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, death, and sexual content.

Also cross-posted on Wattpad and AO3. Link to my masterlist for everything else I’ve posted!

Dread sets in and I realize there may be no way for us to escape death this time.

"Joel. Joel come on it's time to get up." My fingertips gently rock his shoulder. After watching him for any signs of consciousness for a few seconds, I realize I'm going to have to get rougher.

"Joel. Come on." My palm presses into his shoulder and my voice is louder. This man sleeps like a rock. With a third hard push to his shoulder, he snorts slightly and his eyes fly open. For a second he looks panicked, but once he sees me next to him he calms down.

"What?" His voice is raspy and he's confused, still in that between conscious and unconscious stage of waking up.

"It's time to go." I gently tell him and move so he has space to properly wake up.

He stretches out with a groan and I do my best to keep my eyes from wandering down his torso as his shirt lifts ever so slightly with the stretch. My teeth bite down hard on the inside of my cheek and I mentally scold myself for even entertaining the thought of looking at Joel in any way other way than a travel partner. The cool metal chain around my neck sends a pang of guilt through me, and quickly sobers my thoughts.

Joel stands from the ground and shakes out his limbs and I follow suit, grabbing my bag off the ground. As Joel gets himself ready I readjust my holsters and try to fiddle with anything that will get my mind off of what I just did.

"Ready?" He asks as he slings his rifle over his shoulder.

"Yeah." I nod and we take off down the road.

Thankfully it's a lot more tolerable to walk in the coolness of the night. However, I may have underestimated how eerie it would be. Paranoia dances in the corners of my mind, convincing me that every shadow is a clicker and every noise is a murderer.

Traveling in the dark reminds me of Boston and how I found the children's bodies. The shadows hid evil doings there so why would it be any different out here?

Flashes of the boy's body behind the dumpster and the girl's rattling breaths infiltrate my mind and amplify my paranoia. The culprits could be out here, they could be anywhere. According to the map, they've covered a lot of ground so who's to say they're not slinking in these shadows right now?

The muscles in my body tighten with anxiety and I'm unable to keep my fingers from brushing the metal hilt of my curved blade. Joel's calm and collected demeanor starkly contrasts the thoughts sounding off in my head and I wonder how he's not afraid.

In the distance I see what looks to be a bigger town, and I sling my bag around to grab the map. The material crinkles in my hands and I squint in the dim light to see what town we're coming up on. It doesn't look to be too big, but it's not small either. This place was likely up-and-coming before outbreak day.

As we approach the outskirts of the town, I reach down and grab my curved blade. Anything from infected to raiders could be lurking about, and they would have the home field advantage here. The streets appear to be desolate and abandoned, I can't seem to find any sign of life. Wind gusts between the buildings and the crisp air raises goosebumps over my arms with a shiver as we continue deeper into the town.

"We should probably check out these buildings, see if there's anything we can find." Joel's voice is quiet and raspy. He's looking at all the buildings surrounding us and I nod.

"Sounds good." I say and follow him into the first building.

The floorboards are coated in dust and dirt, there are no footprints to be found. Which is a good thing, but it seems too convenient to me. Why is this town utterly abandoned? It's got the bones for a good little settlement. Joel and I crouch down and look through the aisles for supplies we can use. He heads towards the back and I stay up front, trying to push intrusive thoughts from my head. Sure, this is kind of how the last town went but unlike that town, there's nobody here.

On an empty shelf I find an old granola bar, but that's it. Everything else in here has been picked clean. Joel's rustling around is quiet, but audible, and so while I wait for him to meet me up front, I keep watch out of the dust-covered windows for anything that might move. Clickers are extremely sensitive to sound, and the last thing we want is to be surprised by one. Especially when we're running low on ammunition.

We move to the next building and fall into the same pattern; Joel goes to the back and I search the front. This store has moss covering the carpet, and I look to the ceiling to see an open hole in the roof that drips water down. Old books on the bookshelf are covered in mold, it's obvious to me that nobody has been in here for a while. I try to not breathe in the mold, but it's inevitable, it's covering almost every surface. This bookstore looks like it used to be a cute and calming place with it's naturalistic decorations, but now it's being returned to nature through mold and moss.

A spot on the floor catches my attention, the moonlight illuminates it. Peeking around one of the shelves is a rather large-looking puddle of mold, but as I step up to it I realize it's not mold, it's fungus. A very specific type of fungus. Breath catches in my throat and I hold my knife up, ready to attack if needed and peer around the shelf, to see a dead body slouched against the aging bookcase.

With the toe of my boot, I nudge the body to see if it's going to reanimate, but it doesn't. Crouching down, I get a closer look. It appears that this person was infected and someone shot them through the head after they had turned, and the cordyceps spread over the corpse. The smell of the rotting flesh burns the back of my throat and I move away quickly before I gag. My eyes intently look around for any other surprises that may be hiding in this store, but I don't see any other fungal areas.

"Look." Joel whispers as he approaches me. He has two flashlights in his hands, and I waste no time in snatching one from him.

My thumb hits the power button and I'm surprised to see a bright beam of light come from it. Joel works quick to attach his to his backpack and I try to copy him, but the straps of his bag are different from mine, and I can't figure out how to attach mine like his.

"Here, let me." Joel says after he secures his light to his bag.

Defeatedly, I hand over my flashlight and look down at the straps, curious to see if he can figure out a way to secure the light to my bag. While I still have the small one from Boston in my bag, this one will be infinitely more helpful because I can still have both of my hands free.

His fingers lift the strap from my shoulder so he can see it better and my eyes are glued to the way his fingers are picking at the material. Through the dim light, I see his eyebrows furrow as he tries to think. He hands the light back to me and walks over to a rotating shelf that's filled with bookmarks and grabs one.

His eyes meet mine briefly before he looks down to the bookmark and starts tearing pieces of it off. It looks like he found some sort of leather material bookmark, and he's tearing the tassels of it off. Each of the tassels are joined together with a single knot, and Joel lifts my backpack strap once more. His fingers brush right below my collarbone and his warm fingers feel nice against my cool skin. He wraps the tassels around the bag's strap and reaches for my flashlight once more. The flashlight is held tightly against the strap, and the bookmark tassels are used to secure it in place.

Once he's sure it's secure enough, he steps back from me, taking the warmth of his body with him. The light stays in place, and seems snugly fixed to my bag.

"Thank you." I keep my voice quiet for fear of disturbing something in the empty streets. Joel nods his head stiffly, and I remember what I was going to do before he came with the flashlights. With a motion of my hand, I beckon him to follow me and I show him the corpse. Just like I did, he crouches down to inspect it.

"Looks a few weeks old." He concludes, and I would have to agree. The rate of decay looks to be maybe a month old, especially given the humid conditions it's been left in.

"There might be more around." I speak my thoughts and he stands back to his full height next to me.

"We move quietly." He reinforces and we move on to the next store.

The two of us clear seven more stores before we reach the last one on this street. There have been no more corpses found, so maybe it was just a one-off kind of thing.

Joel pushes his shoulder against the door of the last building, but it's blocked from the other side. He huffs with frustration and I go to look through the window, needing to see why this one has been barricaded and the others haven't. I don't have to look for long before I see another corpse laying on the ground, reduced to bones and hair. There are guns surrounding the body along with miscellaneous other supplies.

"We should get in there." My fingertip presses against the glass as I look back to Joel. He comes and peeks inside the store, quickly agreeing with me.

We go around back and try the door there, but it's blocked off as well. Whoever was inside really did not want any visitor. Moonlight gleams off a broken window just out of reach, giving me an idea.

"What if I can get through that window?" My eyes dart around for something to stand on.

"There's broken glass all over the sill, you'd shred your hands." Joel shoots the idea down, but the idea of getting all those supplies is too sweet to just let go.

"Help me find something that I can lay over it." I suggest, looking around for something to stand on and something to cover the glass. Instead of arguing, Joel joins the hunt as well, and he disappears around the corner of the building.

I go around to the front of the store again, searching the main street for anything helpful. Across the street I spot a torn tarp that's trapped underneath a decaying pallet. That'll have to do. Thankfully the tarp isn't too torn and should work well enough to keep my skin from being shredded by glass shards. With the tarp underneath my arm, I rejoin Joel underneath the broken window where he's pushed a dumpster against the wall.

Without a word I lift myself onto the dumpster, where the aging metal pops underneath my feet with each step. Next, I place the tarp across the windowsill and peer inside the building, looking for any sign that something, or someone, is moving around. Thankfully I'm met with silence, and so I grip the window and pull myself up.

As I pull myself up I realize I hadn't completely thought this through. There's not enough room for me to turn around and land on my feet; I'm going to have to go through this window head first and hope for the best.

Struggling to get myself all the way through the window due to my lackluster upper body strength, I look towards the floor and see glimmering glass below me. Fantastic.

I tumble head first into the building and my hands brace my fall. Unfortunately, my palms get torn by the glass. Glancing to my hands I quickly come to the conclusion that my injuries aren't too bad, and go to move the barricade in front of the door for Joel. As I walk to the door I pick out as many glass pieces as I can, getting the biggest ones out.

A large shelving unit has been pushed in front of the door and it's too much for me to move with my hands alone. I take my bag off my shoulders and back up to the shelf, using my legs to push the shelf. Thankfully I have more lower body strength and am able to move the unit with some ease. I open the door for Joel and he joins me inside.

While he picks up supplies I use the extra light coming in from the door to find and pick out the smaller pieces of glass in my palms. The tiny cuts sting and I see where some blood is pooling in the creases of my hands. My attention is pulled from my hands to Joel as I watch him rummage through the corpse's jacket pockets. Inside of the right pocket he pulls out a small revolver and checks it over.

"Blocked himself in here with all this shit for nothin'." Joel mutters as he tucks the revolver into his waistband and moves to the left pocket.

A piece of paper beside the body catches my attention, and I go to pick it up, reading the faded words on the page.

Juliette, if you find this it means I didn't make it. I'm sorry. I got the things we needed but one of those bastards sunk their teeth into my ankle. Didn't even hear the thing. Anyways, I found some pills and I hope they do the job. Take everything and get somewhere safe. I'm sorry my love. -B

A rattling sound causes me to look up from the paper, and I see Joel with a bright orange pill canister in his hand. I hand the paper over to him, seeing a small dot of my blood soaked through the paper. My hand grabs the pill bottle from Joel and I open it up, looking to see what kind of pills they are.

Circular red pills roll around in the canister and I tip it so that one of the pills falls into my hand. Upon closer inspection I see letters on one side and numbers on the other. These aren't post-outbreak pills at all. My eyebrows raise in surprise and I put the pill back into the container and secure the lid before handing it to Joel.

"That's real oxy." I say, recognizing them from a post-surgery prescription I had years ago. Back then I was too afraid of getting addicted to finish out the script and only took a few after I got out of the hospital.

"Good as gold." Joel says and puts the pills into his bag.

The man had locked himself in here with ammunition, medicine, and food. It doesn't get any better than this. Joel puts as much as he can into his bag, and I take the rest. Once we clear this building we step back out onto the street and continue through.

There are rusting cars littering the sides of the streets, vines growing up the sides of buildings, and crumbling asphalt everywhere. My palms still sting and I try to dry the blood on my pants before it settles into my skin. I'm sure Joel will make some sort of 'I told you so' remark when he sees, but I'm going to stave off that conversation for as long as I can.

We head towards another conglomerate of retail stores to search them as well, Joel hangs back a few paces from me. By now I'm getting comfortable out here, with the lack of infected or people. If they were here, they would have shown themselves by now. Probably.

But just as soon as my paranoia begins to wind down, my foot catches on something and I trip on the uneven asphalt. A twangy sound of wire snapping echoes from my fall and a large crash sounds directly behind me.

"Oh shit." Joel breathes out as I stand myself back on my feet, disoriented from the crash. Looking behind me, I see that a shipping container now sits a few feet away from me, blocking our path from where we just came.

"What?" My voice is full of exasperation and I wipe my pebble and blood covered hands on my pant leg, thankful I didn't land on my gun. My eyes glance up to the rooftop and I see that the shipping container was rigged to a large piece of construction equipment that's positioned in front of one of the shops, and it seems that the rope hanging the container slipped.

"It was a trip wire. Whatever it was connected to is going to be here soon." He says and grabs my wrist, pulling me off of the main road and into a smaller alleyway. Familiar sounds of agonized cries and shrieks fill the air.

Unable to stop myself, I peek around the corner and see dozens of infected running out of a semi truck. It looks like the wire I tripped was also connected to the loading door of the truck. Once that wire snapped, the shipping container fell and the truck door opened, letting out the trapped infected.

"At least four clickers and six runners. Probably more." I anxiously whisper as I duck back into the alley with Joel. The infected are bound to spread out over the streets and not stay in one place, so we have to plan our move now.

"We need a vantage point." Joel strategizes as he scans the buildings around us. The screams and shrieks from the infected sound like they're getting closer.

"What about that one?" My voice wavers and I point to a building across the way. There's a window on the second story, but we'd have to run into the line of sight of the infected to reach it. Joel's eyes lock onto the window.

"That's our best shot. But we don't know if that door is unlocked." Sweat beads on his temple. Each second we waste pondering is a second that the infected use to wander toward us.

"I'll distract them while you get inside." My plan is very, very risky but I don't see another way. If the door is locked or blocked, one of us needs to stay hidden to find an alternate route.

"No." His voice is stern but the adrenaline in my veins tells me I can do this.

"Yes. I can deal with them for a little bit. We don't have another choice. Go." Our eyes meet briefly before I make my move, not allowing him to argue back.

As I step back into the street I take note of where the infected are. It appears that they're all staying relatively close to one another, but there are a few stragglers.

Joel moves behind me towards the building and I stand there silently. If he can do this without drawing their attention, that would be best. There's no reason for me to call them unless it's absolutely necessary.

With careful and attentive eyes I watch the clickers thrash and contort their bodies with every few steps. The runners are either meandering or sobbing, backs hunched over. I know that it only takes one to notice me for all hell to break loose so I don't let myself relax even for a millisecond. Even if I wanted to relax I wouldn't be able to with ten or more infected right in front of me.

Behind me I hear Joel working on the door. It must have been locked or blocked because I hear him trying to pry it open. Metal scrapes on metal and I see the closest clicker screech and begin wobbling my way. A few runners nearby get disturbed by the clicker's sudden change and they snap their heads up, noticing me immediately. My fingers find my gun strapped to my thigh and I prepare myself.

By now, all the infected have picked up on my presence. I've got twelve bullets and I have to make them count. I focus on the clickers first and use two bullets to shoot the first one. The other three are still a bit behind the runners. My mind works quickly and I realize that if I shoot the runners, that means I have to kill the clickers by hand; and that is simply not an option when there are three of them.

My gun gets switched to my left hand, and my hunting knife finds residence in my right hand. The first runner reaches me and with brute force, I thrust my knife into its skull. Blood spurts out of the wound as I yank the blade from the soft tissue. Another runner is close behind, and it swipes at me, but thankfully my feet force me back a few steps. As the runner is winding up for another grab, I use the opportunity to force my knife into its eye socket. The body drops instantly, and I have half a second before another runner is on me.

The third runner knocks me back, my hand fumbling the hunting knife. My forearm wards off the runner's teeth from finding my flesh and with a grit of my teeth, my left hand comes up to shoot the runner. As the body falls to the asphalt, my attention turns and I see a multitude of infected flooding into the street. The gunshots must have called them. There's not time to freak out about how many infected are coming at me, another runner is screaming and lunging towards me. A bullet finds its way into its brain.

With the few seconds I have, I reach down for my hunting knife and spin it in my palm so I can kill the next runner after I dodge its attack. Behind that runner is a clicker, and I use two bullets to kill it. Three clickers charge at me in almost perfect sync, and I've got no choice but to shoot them as well, leaving me with no bullets left amongst at least forty infected.

I'm able to kill three more perfectly timed runners with my knife before they all start grouping up in the street as they run. My eyes grow wide, there's no way I can take on that crowd.

"Joel!" I yell back to him, keeping my eyes on the sea in front of me.

"Almost there!" He grunts and I hear another scrape of metal. My feet involuntarily move me backwards, away from the rushing infected. We've got about thirty seconds before they're on us.

Their teeth gnash and gnarl with hunger, clickers scream into the sky with their twisted, high-pitch calls. My feet keep taking steps back until my back is flush against the building Joel is trying to break into.

"Pull this." His rushed words force my attention away from our impending doom. I grab the crowbar wedged in the middle of the door and we both pull it together, popping the door open. Joel stands to his full height and grabs the straps of my bag and forces me into the opening. He draws his gun and shoots a few infected before he also ducks into the building.

He's got ahold of the door's handles, struggling to keep it closed as the infected descend on the building. Hurriedly, I look around for something to put in the handles to keep it from opening. A glint of metal catches my eye and I grab it, a broken piece of rebar.

"Here!" I yell out and run back to the door, sliding the rebar through the handles. Joel lets go and steps back, catching his breath.

The infected bang on the doors, trying to get in and it dawns on me that we're trapped in here. It's only a matter of time before they get in, we both know it.

"This way." Joel says and starts up the stairs of the building. I follow close on his heels and we reach the room we intended to get to, window situated in the center of the wall, overlooking the main street that's now full of infected.

Joel and I look out of the window and see a crowd at least thirty deep. That rebar isn't going to last forever, and the windows are sure to give out soon. Dread sets in and I realize there may be no way for us to escape death this time.

Part Eighteen

[ira-langley]

The first thing he notices is how busy the place is. It echoes Ira's flat, without being anything like it. Ira's place is mostly neutrals and natural wood, big windows that let the light in, exposed brick. He has Hitchcock posters framed on the walls, and some shadow boxes containing original (dead) NES cartridges which he supposes is just as sad as dead butterflies.

The detective glances around the room some more, taking off his coat absentmindedly. He steps inside, looks at the cats, the art on the walls, tchotchkes scattered on shelves and any flat surface.

He instinctively puts his hand against his holster, as if to check if it's secure.

"Wow, you are covered in those, aren't you?" He had noticed the other had a few on his hands, showing by his collar. Now he wondered what percentage of the man had been punched by a needle like that.

"Hurt yourself?" He asks, approaching the sofa.

One of the cats glances up at him, as if to let him know it won't move. Ira awaits the other's response. How worried should he be ?

He's glad to have some company, and leads him towards his apartment. Up a few floors, as Asa murmurs in a soft tone about his cats - they're friendly and littermates, mother was a calico so the babies were all such different colors. Asa's all too happy to discuss his cats to those willing to listen - he fiddles with a key in the lock.

The flat is beautiful jewel tones in a turquoise color, with a wall filled with art and little items - knick-knacks collected over time, thrifted finds. A few pinned butterflies in shadow boxes. A soft sofa has a few throw-blankets on it, and there's cats sleeping in a few spots. "Hullo, loves..." He coos gently to them as he slips inside, letting Ira follow. "Let me take your coat?"

It smells like a balsam and fir candle, though there's no Christmas tree. Asa takes off his own coat, revealing more of his many tattoos, the scarring of a right hand and up a bit onto his wrist.

[s-brant]

Super 8

When the hit gets moved up to the end of the week, Harry and Y/N have little time left to sort out their issues. With the added pressure of the time constraint and the possibility of death on the horizon, their relationship becomes more serious than either of them expected. (or hitman!h part seven)

21k (18+)

Warnings: smut, oral sex (female and male receiving), penetrative sex, role-playing, daddy kink, strong language, referenced torture, referenced violence/murder/threats of murder, referenced drink-spiking, referenced past self harm, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

-

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Y/N immediately turns to the side in hopes that her wig, as well as her dripping makeup, will conceal her identity from Zayn as he interrogates Harry for his presence here. The rain beats down on them hard enough for every drop to hurt where it meets her skin, and she can feel the synthetic hair of her wig starting to stick to the sides of her face, drenched from it. Thankfully, the coat they stole from the club keeps her shielded from the full brunt of the cold that threatens to freeze her.

He's having none of it, though, he marches right up to them and holds out his hand in her direction, saying, "You think I don't recognize her? We've been working together for almost two months, Harry, I'm not stupid!" He doesn't dare put his hand on the gun they both know is stowed away in the waistband of his jeans, but he does speak to him with an ire few people ever get away with. "Don't make me ask again. What the fuck are you two doing here?"

She's already reaching to hold Harry back by his arm, both of her hands wrapping around the forearm reaching for the gun on his hip, but he shakes her off. Before her or Zayn can react, he has the gun pulled out of its holster and aimed point-blank at the center of his friend's head.

Zayn's shrieking voice overpowers the sound of the rain pummeling the pavement, "What the fuck—"

"Get in the car," Harry says. He doesn't yell or put his hand on the trigger. Everything that leaves his mouth is calm and collected, which scares Zayn more than it would if he were loud or emotional about it. He doesn't say anything else except, "I'll tell you why we're here, just get in the car."

As if she'll do anything to stop him, Zayn looks over at her in a silent plea for help, but all she does is cross her arms over her chest and tilt her head toward the car. The hand he shoved the keys into grapples with them for a second before the sound of the car unlocking indicates she found the right button on the remote.

She says, "You heard him."

With a gun pointed at his head by a man he knows has no qualms about firing it, he sees no other choice but to comply. He mutters, "Fucking unbelievable," under his breath and turns to open the passenger's side door only to be interrupted by Harry making a "tsk" sound with his mouth. The gun still being aimed at his head is gestured to the backseat.

"The lady gets shotgun, you get the backseat."

What he doesn't have to tell her is that not only does he reserve the front seat for her out of respect, but he also does it in order to keep him from being able to jump out of the backseat while they're en route to wherever it is he plans on taking them. It's hard for her to refrain from smiling at him, from walking over and planting a kiss on his cheek for being so quick-witted. If Zayn sits in the back, he can keep him there with the child lock settings on the doors.

They both wait until he's locked in to get inside the car themselves, but, when they do, they remain utterly silent. They don't give him anything to go off of without being in a place far away from the lounge Leo and Ryan are currently at.

As the car's engine turns over and Harry pulls out of the parking spot, Zayn finally caves and speaks up.

"I'm his escort there tonight. If he comes back and sees I'm not there, he'll lose his shit."

She asks, "Well, what time did he say he'd be finished?"

There's a long pause following this that she takes as a promising sign. In the rearview mirror, the couple watches him and allows him to stew in the uncomfortable silence until he can't stand it any longer.

He sighs.

"One."

It couldn't be much later than it was when she checked the digital clock in the dressing room twenty-ish minutes ago, but she checks anyway to confirm they have a large enough time window to pull off the plan he likely concocting at this very moment. That gives them two and a half hours.

Without looking away from the road, Harry sets his gun down on her lap and says, "We have plenty of time.

-

Joe's Diner is, quite possibly, Y/N's favorite restaurant in the world.

Its food isn't anything special, nor are the milkshakes, lazy wait staff, and bathrooms that appear to have not been cleaned thoroughly since the early 2000s, but what makes it her favorite place are the memories attached to it. She first came here with her family, as a young girl, when they were visiting the city for Mardi Gras. Her dad thought it was a charming little place to stop by for lunch and, seeing that she and Peter, who'd been a mere nine years old at the time, were tugging on their parents' pant legs and moaning about how starving they were, it was the closest option.

Then, after her dad's funeral, while their mom was locked in her room crying herself to sleep, Peter drove her and Alanis down here for dinner and promised them he'd take their minds off of what happened for the rest of the night. They walked all around the French Quarter together after, and they weren't happy but they were okay. For the few hours they spent here, walking in a line and swinging their interlaced hands between them to the sound of jazz musicians playing their instruments on the street, the world felt less heavy.

Once her family dwindled down to her and Alanis after everything with her mom, Peter, and having to sell the house to afford to move to the city where she could find work fixing up cars, they'd go as many times as they could afford to. It seems fitting, she thinks, that this is the place he would take them for the conversation they have to have with Zayn

Harry sits on the same side of the booth as her, one hand resting on her thigh beneath the table where no one else can see, and Zayn sits opposite to them with a strange mixture of fear and aggression shown on his face. The waitress took their food orders seconds ago and, as she walks off, he stares at them.

"So?" he asks.

She shrugs and turns her gaze to Harry expectantly.

All he does is lean back against the booth seat and reach for the coffee pot the kind lady tending to them placed on the table. He told her they'd need quite a few cups, so she took it upon herself to leave the pot behind with them. It's not like there are any other customers in here right now. Y/N may not be fond of coffee herself, but between the two men accompanying her, she has no doubt they'll do some damage to it. It spills over the lip of the cup and forms a ring around the bottom of it when he pours it, but he doesn't make any move to clean it for now.

Unlike her, it's difficult for Zayn to read him behind the front he puts on to conceal the truth. He tries to gather something, anything, from the way Harry stares as he fills his cup with the steaming liquid, but he reveals nothing. She knows that it'll remain that way until he gives them proof that they can take him at his word and trust that he won't go running off to Leo the second they part ways. That is if they part ways.

Zayn may be his coworker and a loyal companion over the past decade, but if it comes down to it, he chooses her. Every single time, in every universe, he chooses her. He's gone through too much by her side and done too many things in the name of his worship for her to stop here. That's not to say he wouldn't mourn the loss of his closest coworker, he would, but he could make himself do it if he had to. If it was what it took to protect what's his.

"Perez is an FBI agent," Harry says quietly. "Tate drugged Y/N on his orders to provoke me and allow him to send a few of his men after Leo. He knew I'd get sent after the ones that lived, and when we went on that hit, he captured us. If m'gonna tell you the rest, I need you to prove to me that y'aren't gonna take this back to him."

There is no visible reaction to the news on his face. At first, she doesn't know whether or not he heard what he said with how blank his face has gone. If someone told her that without her having any prior knowledge, her eyes would pop out of her skull in shock. Actually, she's pretty sure she did react that way that night they met Garrett. Either he already knows about it or he doesn't believe a word Harry's saying. She's willing to bet all of the money she's earned in the time since she started working for Leo that it's the latter.

Then, he laughs.

He lets out a howling laugh and buries his face in his hands, shaking his head while they watch in anticipation of what he'll have to say next. Whether it'll be "Go fuck yourself" or "Are you stupid?", Harry isn't sure, but he's hoping it's neither. He's hoping to God that it's some form of compliance so he doesn't have to hurt someone he considers a friend for the sake of protecting everything they've done to get their freedom.

Zayn lets hands fall from his face and shifts in his place, reaching back to rest one arm on the back of the seat as he looks between the two of them in assessment.

"You're fucking with me, right?"

Neither of them laughs or smiles to indicate that being the truth. They simply stare back at him with the seriousness of the situation shown on their faces, silently praying that he won't do anything stupid in reaction to what they've told him as well as what they might go on to tell him. They can't blame him for thinking it's a joke, though. She probably would've thought it a joke too if she hadn't been told while she was restrained to a chair with a group of terrifying men surrounding her and threatening them with jail should they not comply.

Harry's head hangs lower than usual as he shakes his head.

"How am I supposed to prove it to you that I won't tell anyone? How does that even work?" he asks.

This time, it's Y/N who takes the lead in the conversation.

"You tell us something worthwhile. Something equally as dangerous that Leo can't know about," she says. "Trust us and we'll trust you."

It's a risky proposition to be sure, but it's not like they have any other choice. How else would he prove his loyalty to them? Without him having to talk to her about it, she knows that Harry is almost one-hundred percent sure Zayn won't run off and tell Leo about anything they discuss here, but there is no room for "almost" here. Not anymore.

Zayn's mouth opens and closes for a second before he keeps it shut while contemplating what to offer them. A muscle in his jaw clenches as he thinks it over in his mind, staring off at the table and tapping his fingers against it in thought. The lights from passing cars on the street flash over his face in whites and reds that either illuminate or darken his expression. It makes him harder to read.

After taking in a deep breath, he says, refusing to look anywhere but into Harry's eyes, "Alanis and I are together. We have been for a few weeks."

Beneath the table, the hand Harry has resting on her thigh instantly jerks in the direction of her hand to grab on and give it a firm squeeze. An order to stand down for the time being and postpone her freak-out for another time. He can see her expression transforming into one of outrage in his periphery, and he thinks based on that look alone that it might take all of his strength to hold her back from leaping over the table at their friend.

"Y/N..." he says softly in warning, but there is no stopping her.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asks. Her lips curl up from her teeth in a snarl as she rips her hand out of Harry's grasp. "I told you to stay away. You know how important she is to me, you know how dangerous it is for Leo to know who we care about, so why would you do that? How could you?"

Seeing her eyes turning watery with tears sets off an alarm in the back of Harry's mind that urges him to do something, anything he can, to fix it. Of course, there isn't anything he can do short of joining her in berating him or beating the shit out of him, but neither are advisable courses of action. Not to mention, he isn't too keen on hurting one of his friends. Although he's the reason for her tears, he can't do anything except over her comfort.

He reaches back for her hand and, this time, doesn't squeeze it tightly to tell her to calm down. Instead, he rips his glove off without thinking and entwines their fingers to convey a different message than the first. The feeling of his scarred flesh beneath her fingertips causes her to go still, her mind blanking on all the things she imagined saying or doing to Zayn in retribution for him breaking his word.

The discomfort felt deep in his chest isn't lost on him, but none of it matters as much as providing her the comfort she needs at a time like this. Suddenly, it's tolerable when it's done for her sake. The memories of when Leo, along with five other men to hold him down, held his hand in the flames crackling in his fireplace do not take over the way they once would have.

"Oh, cut the shit," he says, and Harry shoots him a stare that seems to say, "Watch it," without having to speak it aloud, "I'm serious. Everyone else may be too stupid to see it, but I know you guys are together. What's the difference between you two and me and Alanis?"

She leans closer over their side of the table.

"The difference is that she's all I have left of my family. I already work with Leo, she doesn't, that's the difference."

"Leo already knows about her. As long as we keep it quiet, nothing changes," he says.

Deciding it's gone too far, or, rather, it will go too far should he not intervene, Harry holds a hand up to stop the two of them from ripping each other's heads off.

"Alright, enough." He gives Zayn a pointed look. "Y'did what she asked." His gaze then turns to find Y/N sitting beside him, their bare hands held together on her lap. "And we can talk about this later, but there's bigger shit to worry about right now. M'serious, Zayn, if you tell anyone..."

The weight of what they're soon to tell Zayn comes crashing down on her all at once now that Harry has started to prep him for it. Nothing he's assuming in his head could measure up to the truth. Every table around them is empty, and the wait staff are either on the phones behind the counter or on an extended cigarette break, so he doesn't waste much time. No need to torture him with the wait.

He looks over his shoulder to check if anyone is paying attention to them, then says it.

"Perez has us working for him to off Leo's brother. He's the director of the FBI. That's why Leo gets away with everything. That's why so many of the cops are paid off and do his dirty work, and, if we manage to get rid of Ryan, they can lock Leo up for the rest of his life or let me have him," he explains. "Once that's done, we can get out."

Before he can fully wrap his head around the information, Zayn asks, "When?"

She shrugs.

"It's planned for one of the days between Christmas and New Year's but depending on what Leo or Ryan know, it could be sooner. All we know is the timeframe at this point."

Before he can respond, the waitress comes back with her arms full of plates.

It's hard for her to remain seated here for the rest of their meal without bringing up Alanis or picking a fight with Zayn, but she tries. She instead focuses on the feeling of Harry holding her hand with his burnt one and allows it to distract her from the rage begging to release from inside of her. Well, that and the stack of blueberry pancakes she ordered. Not that Harry ever knew, but she grew to enjoy them after spending countless mornings eating what he made for her. The blueberry was a surprise addition, however. She shocked herself by actually enjoying it when she cut them up and ate them without the usual lake of maple syrup poured over them.

It's the most awkward forty minutes of their lives.

Harry keeps eyeing her up in his peripheral vision to make sure she won't sucker punch Zayn from across the table or start another argument, Zayn doesn't look up from his plate of waffles, and Y/N devours all of her pancakes with the thought of beating him to a bloody pulp on the mind.

Just after the waitress drops off the check, Zayn's phone rings.

The second he picks it up and reads the contact name, she knows who it is based on his face alone, yet he still dares to answer it in front of her. How she hasn't bitch slapped him yet, she isn't sure, but she's pretty damn close to snapping and allowing herself to do it.

"Hey," he says the word as though he fears it.

Through the speakers, she can faintly pick up on the familiar pattern of Alanis' voice from across the table. The hand Harry holds squeezes so tightly, he fears she may cut off the circulation to his fingers.

He stands from the booth in response to whatever she says, nodding his head and muttering that he can come over. When he drops two fifty dollar bills onto the table and tries to walk off without even sparing them a word, she lurches from the booth seat after him, wrenching her hand from Harry's grip to allow her to catch up to him. The sound of her heels clicking on the tiled floor echoes in the empty room, and she's just about to reach him when she feels a pair of hands grabbing her from behind by her shoulders.

"No."

She jerks forward against the strength of the arms restraining her to no avail.

"Let me go after him!"

But he doesn't budge. He holds on tighter and keeps her locked in his embrace until the headlights of Zayn's car shine through the windows. Since he has the keys, not her, it won't end in a chase that's designed for him to lose. By the time he lets go and allows her to rush out through the front doors to the diner, Zayn's sports car is already flying down the street in the direction of the apartment building a few blocks away.

The rain soaks her damp wig again and leaves her to shiver in the long coat wrapped around her naked frame as she watches the car disappear in the foggy night. Behind her, she can hear the door opening and closing, and she doesn't have to guess who it is before whipping around to face Harry with the promise of fury evident in her eyes.

"Why didn't you let me go?"

Her voice is a shrill yell over the sound of the rain pounding the pavement and cars speeding by, sending puddles of water washing over the sidewalk in waves. His arms are crossed over his chest, his back against the wall of the building, and he doesn't give into her demanding tone by reacting how she wants him to. Those fluffy waves are flattened to the shape of his head as he stares her down as if to ask, "Why would I?"

He sighs, taking a few steps closer to her, and murmurs, "C'mere," with his arms extended in invitation.

"Yeah, no," she says with a scoff, "Fuck this. Give me the keys."

"Not gonna happen, sweetheart."

"He's fucking my best friend! It was the one thing I asked him not to do, and he went behind my back to do it! She has no business being involved in any of this! If Leo finds out, it won't be good, you know that! You fucking know that, so give me the keys!"

She holds her hand out with her palm facing up with the expectation of him bending to her will, but she's in for a rude awakening if she thinks she can order him around. He steps into her space and tilts his head down to speak to her, forcing her to see the seriousness of his words.

"Let them be," he says with a sharp edge to his voice. "Y'can't control who she dates, and you were being stupid telling Zayn to stay away."

Her brows furrow.

"Excuse me?"

"What did y'think was gonna happen? When y'tell someone not to do something, it's the first thing they're gonna do. He was probably not even serious about asking her out until you made her off-limits. That's how guys like us are."

All of that pent-up anger felt for Zayn is now aimed at him as they face off with each other in the vacant parking lot of the diner. Neither of them backs down, as expected whenever the two of them start fighting. To his outrage, she actually has the audacity to laugh in his face. Her hands come up to wipe the soaked bangs out of her eyes, and she shakes her head.

"What does that even mean? Guys like you?" Every word is laced with enough aggression to strike him down where he stands. "What? Is that what happened with me? I was off-limits and you decided that was what made me interesting?"

He doesn't know what to go with other than the truth.

"I mean, yeah. I assumed y'had a boyfriend when I saw Peter's picture in your apartment, and Leo told me not to fuck you the day after he hired you. He didn't want me to complicate things, and I always took any chance I could to get back at him, so I did."

And, with that, she thinks her heart cracks open. He may not realize what he said, but, fuck, it makes her chest ache from the cruelty of it. She knew she didn't mean anything to him at the beginning of whatever they have together, but being reduced to nothing more than a pawn to get back at his boss hits her right where it hurts after weeks of being treated like she matters. Like she was more than just a quick fuck that he decided he didn't mind befriending for the sheer convenience of it all.

She asks, bottom lip trembling, "What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought"—Tears roll down her cheeks as she stumbles a step away from him—"I know you hate talking about how you feel, but, even then, I thought a small part of you cared. At least a little bit."

Was it all in her head? Did she make up every sweet moment and gesture, every time he let the mask slip a little, because she wanted them to be true? By the time he first saw her apartment, she thought he was starting to befriend and trust her, but, apparently, it was an act he put on to get into her pants. She wants to hate him for it. She wants to loathe him forever for starting their partnership on something as vile as using her for revenge against Leo, but the only person she loathes is herself. For wanting it. For viewing him through rose-tinted glasses and being so lonely, she led him by the hand right into her heart.

Harry follows her to where she has retreated off the curb of the walkway and says, his face flushed, "I don't know when y'started with this delusion of me being a good guy, but I'm not. I fucking kill people for a living! I treated you like shit when we first met and got off on thinking y'cheated on your boyfriend with me! I'm a bad person, Y/N, you should know who you're dating!"

Everything stops. The thoughts racing through her mind, the words that were on the tip of her tongue, her anger—everything. It takes a few seconds for him to even register why her entire face shifted from a look of fury to shock, but once he does, his face softens too.

She says softly, "Harry..."

Just like that, the wall between them comes back down, and he rushes past her in the direction of the Escalade parked in one of the front spots. His steps splash water up on his pant legs, but he doesn't pay it any mind in the face of what he thinks was a grave mistake he made. The quiet cries escaping her grow louder as she watches him walk away from her. No sign of the sweet, caring man from minutes ago who held her hand without his glove to protect him.

"Get in the car. We're going home."

-

Y/N spent the rest of the night crying herself to sleep.

Curled up in sheets and pillows that smelled of him, she sobbed hard enough to give herself a throbbing headache that she was forced to sleep off rather than risk going out into the kitchen to take a pain reliever. She hoped that once they got in the apartment, he might be willing to talk about any of what happened tonight, but he didn't. He locked himself in his office room the second he got the door open and left her with no company but her own. She wandered around the living room and kitchen, pouring herself a glass of water and half-heartedly watching the next episode of the show they were watching, before retiring to the bedroom for the night.

She hadn't bothered to shut the blinds covering the floor-to-ceiling windows when she passed out without even washing off her smeared makeup, so the sunlight is what wakes her. The wig she ripped off of her head sits where it was thrown on the bottom of the bed, and she groans at the lingering ache felt in the front of her head from last night's hysterics as she pokes her head up to see it.

Her hand slaps over her face as she mutters, "Fuck," under her breath.

Last night.

What he said hurt her, yes, but she can't deny that she'd been quick to escalate things in the wake of what she learned about Zayn and Alanis. Not to mention, it's harder to be angry about his intentions at the beginning of their relationship after what he said at the end of their conversation.

You should know who you're dating.

Is that what he sees their relationship as? This whole time, she never thought it more than a matter of convenience on his part. It made sense to her, but, now, she can't seem to wrap her head around it. If they weren't just fuck buddies who happened to be friends, what were they? How long have they been dating? It's not as if he asked her officially or took her on any dates to imply that's what they were to each other.

She tosses the sheet off of her and sits up on the side of the bed with a heavy sigh. There's no point in drawing out the torture, is there? She should simply stroll out there and act like everything is normal, not giving him the chance to continue last night's argument or act with cruelty toward her for the sake of pushing her away again. It's her apartment now too, she shouldn't have to hide in the bedroom like a scared little kid. He doesn't scare her.

Although she hadn't washed her makeup off, she did peel off the nipple stickers and change into one of his shirts for bed, only wearing a comfortable pair of leggings underneath. As she walks out into the living room, she's thankful to at least be covered by that when seeing him again for the first time since last night.

At first, she doesn't spot him in the kitchen. Her gaze goes straight to the couch to find him where he usually lounges, either watching something in the morning or scrolling through stuff on his phone, but he isn't there. It isn't until she searches around the room a second time and turns to head into the kitchen to start making herself breakfast that she sees him.

If the sight of him alone didn't concern her, she might have fought a smile at the fact that he still made her pancakes despite the small rift put between them yesterday. But, the way he's hunched over the kitchen counter with his head hung low between his shoulders prevents her from feeling anything but worry, even after what he admitted to her last night.

"Harry?"

Her voice is timid when she asks it, approaching slowly as one would when walking up to a wounded animal.

Throughout most things, he keeps his cool. He forces himself to maintain an appearance of a calm, collected man who doesn't let anything get under his skin, but the way he looks right now...It must be something bad, so bad that he can't be bothered to care about whatever trivial relationship issues they have going on.

She stops a few feet behind him and asks, "What's wrong?"

Her heart almost stops when she hears him speak next.

"The hit was moved up to Saturday."

Saturday? Today is Thursday. It's the first of December, what happened to it being planned for after Christmas? That's two days away. Only two days of time to mentally prepare herself for either the end of her life or picking up and moving to a new country, always on the run for what they've done. Thank God she already knows how to ride a motorcycle and was taught to shoot by Harry last week. If not, they'd have to cram everything into the next forty-eight hours.

She walks the rest of the way up to him and leans against the counter, tilting her head to the side to make him look at her.

"I don't understand. Why would they do that?"

He shrugs, feigning indifference despite the obvious tears in his eyes. She has never seen him this distraught over having to complete a job in the entirety of their time working together, and it stuns her to silence as she watches him.

"Ryan suspects there's a rat in his team and warned Leo. He asked him for additional protection because he doesn't feel safe, so Garrett is moving it up. Says we have to act fast if we want to make it out alive," he explains, his voice dull and monotonous.

Two days.

That's potentially all they have left together before everything changes. All of that rage she felt last night is scattered to the wind now that she realizes how temporary it all is. Any second of any day, it could all end, and she feels foolish for wasting any time being mad at Alanis, Zayn, or Harry. He wasn't right in whatever cruelty he showed her last night, but she wasn't right either. It hurts to be lied to, but she has no right to dictate who anyone does or doesn't love.

The thought of it makes her chest muscles tighten up, constricting her ability to breathe, and she can feel a lump forming in the back of her throat that she cannot manage to swallow. It sends her stepping back away from him. Her eyes flood with tears as she shakes her head in response to the chaos of her own thoughts and feels the safety of the world she created with him come crashing down around her.

"I"—she stammers—"I need to go. I need to talk to Alanis. I'm sorry."

She gives him no opportunity to stop her, rushing herself off toward the front door and swiping the keys to one of his lesser used cars off the small rack mounted to the wall before disappearing from view.

Everything is a blur.

In all honesty, she shouldn't be driving in such an emotional state but getting to Alanis is all she can think of as she speeds from street to street away from his apartment building in pursuit of hers. Cars honk their horns at her for how she weaves in and out of traffic and nearly rear-ends multiple people, but, at this point, why should she care? She and Harry might be dead within days anyway, so what's to fear about a car accident? Or getting pulled over for a speeding ticket?

No one pulls her over by the time she screeches to a halt in the parking lot of Alanis' apartment building, though. Not even passing pedestrians turn their heads to observe her as she slams the door to the Mercedes shut and sprints around the side of the building to the locked front doors, frantically digging through her purse for the key Alanis had made for her when she first moved in. Her trembling hands make turning the key in the lock nearly impossible, but once she manages to do it, she is flinging it open into the sidewalk and running as fast as she can up flight after flight of stairs.

The elevator would take too long. She needs to see her now, she needs to say everything she hasn't yet and pray it's enough should she never come back into her life again. This time, Harry isn't here to help her up whenever she trips or stumbles due to the tears blurring her vision, and it takes her longer than she wishes to reach the second to last floor of the fifteen-floor building.

She slumps against the door to her apartment and pounds on it with a closed fist, calling out her friend's name.

"Alanis!"

Her voice breaks when she speaks again.

"Please, open the door! I need you," she cries, "I'm really scared and I just need to be with you right now. Please..."

The silence that follows is louder than anything she has ever heard. Not even her neighbors move around or crack open their doors to see which crazy woman is making a scene at eight in the morning on a random Thursday. There are no footsteps behind the locked door, nor are there any voices speaking to indicate that Zayn came back after escorting Leo back home last night to sleep over. Anyone who walks by would likely take pity on her. What a sorry sight she is, sliding down to her knees in front of the door with tears wetting her face and further smudging the makeup leftover from last night.

She sits here for five whole minutes, pressing her forehead against the wall and sobbing so hard, she's shocked she hasn't woken up everyone residing on the floor nearby, before she finally hears the sound of a door opening and shutting inside the apartment. The sound of her friend's footsteps coming down the hall leading to the door might as well be a choir of angels singing to her, all crescendoing in unison until they are snuffed out like the light of a candle with the door swinging open.

"Y/N?"

Hearing her voice breathes life back into her weary body and lifts her head from its place against the wall to see Alanis standing there with concern written across her pretty face. Harry is the one who makes her feel the safest, and that will never change, but Alanis has always been the one person in the world who has never turned her away. Not even when they've fought has she denied her a place to stay if she needed it, or a chance to be heard or given a second chance should she have done anything to warrant it. The reason she came here is that she knew, no matter what, that she would never ice her out.

She sniffles and asks, "Can I come in?"

The question isn't even dignified with a verbal response. She's already crouching down to help Y/N up from her spot on the ground and guiding her past the open door by the tail end of the question.

Once the door is kicked shut, Alanis stops her and cups her face between her hands.

"What happened, babe?"

This only makes her sob louder and harder, crumbling in her arms and bearing most of her weight against the front of her body. She buries her face in the crook of her neck, unable to say it directly to her face.

"Everything is so fucked. Harry and I have to do something really, really risky in a few days that I can't even tell you about or else you might get killed, and he's been ignoring me all night because, apparently, we're dating and he doesn't know how to feel about it! I feel like"—she takes a gasping breath and clings onto her waist as if she'll disappear whenever she lets go—"I feel like I might die if I don't talk about it, and I can't even do it with him because he's probably still pissed at me after our argument last night! I just miss the way everything used to be! I miss my parents, I miss Peter, I just want my old life back!"

Alanis doesn't do anything other than wrap her up in her arms and whisper soothing words. At this point, none of this can surprise her. Dating Zayn and being exposed to this life through both him and Y/N has left her with little room to be taken aback by anything anymore. So, rather than reacting with the type of shock that most people would, she just holds her there in her arms and strokes the back of her head as she whispers to her.

After her breathing has started to slow, Alanis says softly, "I know, Zayn told me about everything last night..."

This pauses every thought whirling in Y/N's head, and she pulls back from her cherished spot in the crook of her friend's neck to look at her through narrowed eyes. That lost anger washes back over her.

"Why? We told him he can't say anything—"

"No, no, it's not like that. You can trust him to keep your secrets," she says, then sighs. "He only told me because he wants me to leave the country before it happens. He said that if it goes wrong and Leo comes after me because of either of you, he wants me to be as far away as possible."

Y/N cannot lie and say that doesn't do wonders to dissolve whatever anger just came rushing over her again. It shifts something in her mind, altering the part of her that took to heart what Harry said last night about "guys like us" and setting it straight. It hits her like a bolt of lightning.

"Oh my god...he loves you," Y/N mutters, not even aware that she's saying it out loud and not in her head.

To this, Alanis chuckles, raising one hand to wipe at the tears that have sprung to her eyes at the sight of her friend being in a state of severe distress.

"You're one to talk. Zayn said he's never seen Harry treat anyone the way he treats you." Her voice then switches to one of gentle teasing, "He's in looooove."

This gets Y/N to break her fifteen-minute streak of sobbing to laugh along with her. Once again, she's left wondering how Alanis always manages to do this. To take her worst moments and turn them into something golden, something precious. It happened countless times after her family passed too. There's an innate talent inside of her for it, and, when she thinks about this, she realizes that her brother and Zayn were lucky to have her in whatever way they could. No wonder every person who spots her falls face-first into the pavement in love with her. It's rare that anyone with her degree of outer beauty has an inner beauty that outruns it by such a landslide.

Y/N says, "For what it's worth, I agree with him, and I'm glad he cares enough about you to help you escape before shit gets bad. It's what Peter would've done, and I was coming here to ask you to do the same exact thing too." She sniffles. "Well, that and to help me figure out how the fuck I'm supposed to talk to Harry about our relationship when I go back home"

Her friend cocks a brow at her.

"Home?" she asks. "As in his home? Okay, that's it, you're staying here and telling me everything now that you've decided to stop being a liar!"

That's all it takes for Alanis to drag her off in the direction of the living room with the sound of their giggles echoing off the walls of the small hallway in their wake.

-

The next ten hours of the day at Alanis' soon-to-be abandoned apartment were a blissful reprieve from the reality of her future. They decided not to talk about what was planned to happen on Saturday, instead opting to gossip about their men and have one last movie night before they're to part ways for a little while. In her heart, Y/N knew that everything would end up alright. She and Harry would do what they were ordered to and find her in whatever far-off country Zayn told her to flee to, but the small part of her that remained uncertain needed to stay with her for as long as she could.

Just in case it was the final time.

It wasn't Y/N who decided when it was time to leave, though, it was Alanis. Having a best friend who understands you to your very core is a double-edged sword, in her opinion, because while it makes for wonderful days like the one they spent together, it also means that they can spot the true intentions of your heart from miles away.

She could tell that Y/N was lingering long after the last movie ended not because she wanted to stay the night but because she was afraid of what might happen when she went back home. Not in a way that meant she was concerned for her safety—as Harry once said, he would never—but in a way that meant she was concerned for the outcome of the conversation they were due to have.

But, according to Alanis' take on it, there wasn't much to worry about.

"Babe, if you think he isn't in love with you, you're stupid, okay? If you forgive him for what he did, then tell him that. If you don't, then say that. Men aren't that complicated. I know he seems like he is, but I bet he's just scared shitless that you won't feel the same way."

So, she drove back over to their apartment building with that on replay in her mind, hoping against hope that Alanis was somehow right and everything will be okay between her and Harry again the second she walked through the front door.

The front door sits in front of her for a long moment before she can summon the strength to unlock it. She stands there for a long time, imagining all the different ways this could go wrong and end in her never getting to have him in the way she has for the past month or so, and tries to keep herself from getting worked up over it before they even have a conversation. For all she knows, Alanis could've been right. What if, just this once, something goes her way? She has lost everything—her brother, her parents, her autonomy, her potential in life—but the one thing she couldn't survive losing is him.

If she didn't push through all of the hardship for a reason, if it wasn't for him, for something at least, then she won't know what to do with herself. When Alanis leaves New Orleans and gets shipped off to whatever country of her choosing, Harry is the one person she will have left in this world. What happens if he casts her aside because he can't handle the pressure of meaning that much to her? The question she didn't dare present to Alanis when she said he probably feared her rejection was: What if what he's afraid of is her loving him back?

In the end, she opens the door like she would rip off a bandaid. The last thing she expected to see when rushing through the front door, however, is this.

Harry spins around, on defense immediately with a pair of Christmas tree ornaments raised as make-shift weapons before he sees who it is and visibly relaxes for a second, then halts as though he remembers the sour note they left off on. In the corner of the living room, a real tree is propped up in a stand and lit up with white string lights. Dozens of ornaments, which she assumes are brand new considering the fact that she has never pegged him for an avid celebrator of Jesus's birthday, already hang from the limbs of fresh pine that extend out from the trunk and sprinkle needles onto the towels he laid out on the hardwood floor.

For a second, they can't do anything but stare at one another across the immeasurable distance that has grown between them in less than a day and, somehow, shrinks into nothing the second he realizes that she came back. Part of him couldn't help but wonder as he paced around the kitchen in the moments following her departure if she was leaving him forever. If last night was the final straw and she was going to ask him if they could fulfill the plan he offered her in her kitchen early last month. For her to flee and leave him as the sacrificial lamb to pay the price for her escape. He decided as he went out to shop for Christmas decorations that he'd do it if she asked. If that was what she wanted, he would do it for her. It would be the least he could do.

He says as means of greeting, "Um, I thought we could do Christmas tonight since we might not get the chance to spend it together after everything coming up."

His lips press together tightly, likely to keep himself from saying more and begging her to have mercy on him after yesterday, and he stares at her with hope swimming laps in his irises. Back at Alanis' apartment, she already knew she forgave him for everything, but, now, nothing could stop her from crawling back into his arms and accepting his apology with as many kisses as she can manage.

Y/N shuts the door behind her, rushing forward across the open space and throwing herself into his arms once she reaches the other side of the room. The ornaments in his hands make it difficult to hold her up, but he manages, and he doesn't have the chance to say or ask anything before she's kissing him. Without thinking, he kisses her back, but not the way he usually does. This kiss is softer, and sweeter, and they both realize around the same time that it's their first real kiss as a couple.

His hands drift up the sides of her body and squeeze her waist, using this as his leverage to tug her as close to him as he can. The second she feels this happen, she smiles into the kiss because she knows. She knows that he isn't pushing her away this time, and she doesn't have to fear losing him, not unless Saturday's plans go awry.

He pulls away earlier than he wishes for the sake of saying, "I got you a present."

This blossoms a warmth in her heart that she never would've guessed she'd feel upon coming home tonight. On the car ride home, she anticipated a disaster of stifled emotions and cruelty aimed to put her at a comfortable distance yet again, but this...This is new. This something strange and beautiful that she has never felt before, and she doesn't know whether or not telling him this would ruin the feeling before she's had the chance to truly enjoy it.

His gloved hand slips into hers to guide her away from the tree and over to the couch where a small, square-shaped box sits on the coffee table in front of it. Neither of them speaks until they're seated side by side, the curve of her hip fitting to his body perfectly as he settles into place with an arm wrapped around her back. The other arm outstretches to reach for the little black gift box she assumes is the present he spoke of seconds ago, and her cheeks ache from how hard she smiles.

"Please, don't tell me it's too much," he murmurs as his only warning before putting the box in her waiting hands. "I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now. This isn't an apology gift, I just"—he stops himself, his lips curving upwards in a shy smile—"I want you to have it. Honestly."

With that being said, she lifts the lid of the box and unwraps the tissue paper concealing the gift from view to find an old key laying at the bottom. But, it isn't just any old key, it's the same key she remembers stealing from him last month and turning in the ignition of the Cobra to drive to the race track. The realization of what he's trying to do hits her with a brutality she never saw coming.

"Harry," she starts, "This is..." Remembering what he just said, she pushes away any suspicions of this being a desperate bid to win her forgiveness and turns her head to find him staring at her, his eyes soft with affection. "Are you sure?"

He nods.

"Positive."

For what feels like the fifth time in the last twenty-four hours, she can sense her eyes welling up with tears, and when she feels his arm tighten around her waist, she falls forward with her face in his shoulder to embrace him. Her tears wet his shirt as she remains there, her arm slung around the back of his neck to force him to stay right there, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything except for the happiness and appreciation he witnessed on her face before she threw herself on him.

When she pulls back, one of his hands is caressing along the edge of her jaw to bring her chin up so their faces are level. Happy tears. He has never been so glad to see her cry in the time they've known one another. Every other time, it was a result of his callous behavior that he loathed himself for causing, but this is something he takes pride in doing to her.

"I know this isn't an apology gift, but I am sorry for what I said last night," he says softly, nudging her nose with his. "I can't lie and say some of it wasn't true, but...I don't feel like that anymore. And it scares me, baby, it really does. M'not used to this. I've never dated anyone before. I don't know how this works."

The room seems to buzz with silence in the gaps of their speech, yet it isn't a silence either of them are needing to fill. If they say anything, they want it to be meaningful, not a useless string of words only said to lessen the tension hanging in the air. But, if she's honest with herself, there isn't any tension. Not anymore. All of it dissolved the second she saw him standing there with tree ornaments in his hands and hope in his eyes.

Her fingers card through his hair to brush it back from his face, taming the unbrushed curls that tickle her forehead the closer she nears to him, and his eyes flutter shut in appreciation of the gesture.

She says softly, but not weakly, "Well, I have, so believe me when I say I'm just as fucking lost as you are. I haven't felt this way about anyone before." Their lips are nearly touching. "But, I want it. Whatever you'll let me have of you, I want it."

Just as he juts his chin out to close the distance between their waiting lips, the feeling of her hand pushing flat against his chest halts him in his tracks.

"Wait."

His brows furrow in confusion.

"What's wrong?"

A smile lights up her face as she disentangles herself from him and stands from the couch with little explanation other than her saying, "I'll be right back," before scurrying off in the direction of the bedroom. He watches her disappear through the open doorway with a swing in her step that he hasn't seen since the night they spent together on the race track and waits eagerly for her return.

When she's out of sight, he finally lets out the sigh he's been holding in since she left early this morning for Alanis. She may not know it, but he spent every second of her absence making himself sick with worry over whether or not she'd forgive him for, well, everything. Yet, now that she's back, he realizes how stupid he was to think she'd leave him, and, for once in his life, he thinks he can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Should everything go well this weekend and Garrett manages to get them to safety with Ryan out of the way, they could have any life they want together. He could work on film sets somewhere across the world while she opens a bakery of her own and spends every day doing something she loves. They could have it all.

Her soft footfalls on the floor are what wakes him from his daydream of a future with her, and when he looks up to see her walking across the room to him, he grins.

"Y'didn't have to get me anything," he says only to be shushed by her.

The couch dips with her added weight sitting back down on the cushion beside him, and he relishes the warmth of her body as it presses against his without an inch of space left for them to cross. Her gift for him is wrapped in a box at least ten times the size of the one he used to give her the keys to the Cobra, and he raises his brows at her when she sets it down on his lap. It has a heavy weight to it.

In answer to his unspoken question, she says, "I—uh—I got it for you soon after you got me the tattoos." A deep breath, then, "I used the money I stole from you in October."

He goes as silent as death, and she takes it as the time she needs to explain herself after dropping the confession on him with little to no warning.

"I didn't do it on purpose, okay? It was a complete accident, and that doesn't make it any better, I know that, but I was afraid of you back then and didn't want you to think I took it to get back at you after you hijacked my car—"

"Hold on," he says, and she complies without protest. There's a pregnant pause, then—"Are y'talking about the money I put in your sweatshirt pocket the night we met?"

She nods. And, for some reason, this amuses him rather than upsets him. Seeing her nod, admitting that she stole from him after months of lying, makes him chuckle, shaking his head at her. One of his hands cups the side of her neck to keep her from hanging her head in shame to avoid meeting eyes with him.

"You silly girl," Harry whispers, "I did that on purpose."

This time, it's her turn to be shocked.

"What?"

This only makes him laugh harder at her, making her cheeks burn with embarrassment as she thinks back on everything that happened that night and realizes that she'd had it wrong. That night, when he interrogated her about why she was dealing drugs in Leo's territory, she told him she was doing it in an act of desperation. To make enough money to pay her rent. And when he shoved her driver's license and insurance papers back into the pocket of her hoodie, he slipped in all of the cash he had on him at the time for her to pay rent with. He knew her rent probably didn't cost six-thousand dollars a month, but it isn't like he had the chance to ask her how much she needed and count it out. He didn't want her to know he did it until she got home. When he assumed they'd never see each other again.

He unties the bow she wrapped around the large box and says, "I was giving you the money for rent. Y'didnt steal anything from me."

While she's too busy reeling from the shock of this news, Harry is ripping open his Christmas gift like a little kid does when sitting under the tree in their pajamas. It's endearing to see him so excited about something she's done for him when he typically has all the emotion of a brick wall in everyday circumstances. Although, she thinks he'd be excited about anything that involves her at this point, and knowing that pleases her more than he will ever know.

Under a blanket of tissue paper, he wraps his gift inside the box to find something he never anticipated getting from her. He mentioned his aspirations to make films once or twice at most and figured she wasn't even paying that close of attention, but she was. The interior of the box is packed with Styrofoam to keep the vintage Super 8 camera she bought him safe from any bumps or falls, and he doesn't know what to say when he sees it.

It's in beautiful condition based on his first glance at it, probably manufactured sometime in the mid-70s if he had to give it a good guess. It must have taken her a day or two to find a good store and cost her a few hundred dollars to get this, as well as the film and tools he needs to operate the old device as though it's brand new.

He looks up from the box to find her there, smiling at him, and doesn't hesitate to lean in to kiss her. It's short, way too short, but he must pull away from the small peck to speak. When he withdraws from her, she follows him with her eyes still closed, thinking he was going to come back to her with a passion that'd make that first kiss seem pitiful by comparison, only to find him watching her again.

When he doesn't say anything, she asks, "What?" and he shakes his head as if to dismiss any of the worries he knows are springing to life in the back of her mind.

"This is the most thoughtful gift anyone has gotten me," he says. That wall that fell into place between them after what he said last night crumbles at this moment, and she can tell that every word he speaks is genuine. "Thank you so much, baby. You totally beat my present for you."

To this, she laughs.

"You literally gifted me my dream car, Harry, which was so thoughtful considering my dad and everything. I'm gonna have to find a hundred vintage cameras to one-up you now!"

"No, absolutely not, I'm the one who spoils you here, not the other way around. M'gonna buy you as many cars as you buy me cameras, so we're gonna need a bigger car park pretty soon."

Y/N's face aches from how hard she's been smiling since she got home as she leans over to rest her head on his shoulder again. Of course, he has no qualms with this change in position and adapts straight away to throw his arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as an additional "Thank you" for the gift.

With her tucked under his arm, he uses his free hand to lift the camera from the box by the monopod and bring the viewfinder to his right eye. He doesn't waste the film she loaded it up with on random footage of the living room, but finally having a camera in his hands touches a place deep in his heart regardless of whether or not its rolling. And it suddenly hits him as he sits here and moves the camera to observe different parts of his living room that this is what he could've had for a decade. Her, a camera, and hope for the future rather than spending every minute wishing he could fall asleep and never wake up again.

"I was thinking since we're about to pick up everything and move to a new place this weekend, you could use a good camera to capture it. I was kind of hoping for New Zealand or Japan if Garrett is really gonna let us go wherever we want. They film a lot of movies in New Zealand, I heard," she says. "What about you?"

He takes a second to think it over, then says, "I'll follow you anywhere. Japan, New Zealand—it's your choice."

The threat of death on the horizon should they fail pushes him to a place of honesty he has never inhabited in her presence yet, but it feels strangely good. Every time he imagined allowing himself to say what he feels with her, he thought it'd feel wrong or terrifying, but it feels right. She feels right, and he couldn't be any happier than he is at this moment. He tries not to think about the fact that they could fail on Saturday, though. For once in his life, he wants to stay alive to experience how it feels to exist in peace with her, and, if he dies weeks after he finally began to enjoy living, he'd have to crawl his way out of hell to take his anger out on those who put him there. And if they killed her too...not even death could prevent him from seeking vengeance.

From where her face is nuzzled in his neck, her voice is partly muffled when she speaks next, but he hears it.

"I was also thinking...maybe the first thing you film could be us."

The thing is, Harry is notorious with her for having a dirty mind, so he doesn't want to assume that the first thing he thinks of is what she meant by that, but, then again, it is Y/N he's dealing with. She is just as filthy-minded, if not more, than he is when you truly get her going, and the way she said it leads him to think his assumption is true. This is the same woman who begged him to fuck her on a motorcycle in public, the same woman who got off on him calling a guy she rejected while they were fucking—she is many things, but she is not pure-minded.

He slowly lowers the camera back into the box and shifts a little in his spot to get a good look at her, knowing that one glance at her face will either confirm or deny his suspicion. And, just as he thought, when he tilts her head up from his shoulder to make her look at him, there's a mischievous smirk on her face.

"What?" she asks. "You really thought you weren't getting any more gifts?"

Soon enough, a smirk to match her own appear on his face.

"Y'wanna make a movie with me, Y/N?"

Before he can lift a finger to touch her or speak another word to order her to strip her clothes off, she jumps up from the couch and runs—actually runs—to the bedroom as if to ask, "Does this answer your question?" And he can't even make fun of her for her eagerness, because as soon as he sees her disappear behind the door, he is getting himself off of the couch with his new camera in hand and running after her. It's been a few days since they last had sex, so it isn't surprising to him in the least that he can feel himself getting hard at the mere suggestion of it. They were so busy doing Leo and Garrett's bidding that they didn't have a spare moment, or the energy, to do anything together, and he hasn't jerked off since they started living together, so...

On the way over, it takes a few fumbling seconds to find out how to turn the camera on and begin rolling, but he figures it out by the time he reaches the bedroom. The first shot he ever films is of her, laying on the bed with her legs curled up into a ball and her top already thrown across the room to reveal the expanse of her bare torso to him. When he zooms in, she waves at the camera with a radiant smile lighting up the frame, then beckons him to her with a plea for him to come to bed.

Harry approaches the edge of the bed slowly and watches her, making sure to move the camera to capture every one of her movements, as she crawls down to meet him at the end of it. When she looks up at the lens of the camera through her lashes, her cheeks turn hot and she averts her eyes. But he doesn't let her do it for any longer than a second. The hand not holding the camera grabs her by the chin and forced her to face it again.

"What?" he asks in a condescending tone that makes her press her thighs together. "Y'getting camera shy on me now, baby? I thought I found my leading lady."

Falling right into the scene he sets with those two sentences, she shakes her head with wide, pleading eyes staring right past the camera at his face. The angle he looks down at paired with her arms crossing over her chest accentuates the swell of her breasts for the camera. A purposeful tactic on her part, he assumes.

"No. No, I wanna be a big star, Mr. Styles. Put me in one of your movies." Her hands lift to settle on the waistband of his jeans, sliding into the middle to play absentmindedly with his belt buckle. "Please?"

One of her hands drifts lower until she can palm his half-hard cock through his pants to elicit a sharp breath from him. He lets her do it for as long as it takes to get him the rest of the way there, looking up at the camera like the good girl she always is—dying to please him at any cost. The hand still working his belt takes forever, but, finally, it comes undone for her after a solid minute of effort and allows her to then move on to the button and zipper of his jeans.

She leans forward off the edge of the bed and kisses the trail of sparse hair leading down from his belly button into the familiar territory concealed by his unzipped pants and underwear beneath, moaning when her cunt presses down against the heel of her foot during the change in position. He can sense that she's about to reach up and pull his clothes down his legs, but, before she can, he remembers something she said to him at the gun range. Before any of the heavy stuff came out, she joked about him holding her at gunpoint while they fucked, and seeing that his gun is tucked right there in the holster hidden in the waistband of his jeans, he doesn't see why he can't bring her fantasy to life.

Her eyes were closed as she kissed her way down the length of his stomach, so when she feels the barrel of a pistol digging into her temple, they shoot open in surprise. It makes her entire body go still until she peeks up at him and sees the look on his face. Without speaking, it tells her that she can call it all off. That if he took it too far and mistook a joke as a request the other week, she has every right to knee him in the balls and banish him to the couch tonight.

Much to his enjoyment, it ignites a sick pleasure between her thighs that he can sense by how she looks at him alone. He's become well-versed in the complexities of her expressions and mannerisms over the time they've spent together. He knows when she's angry with him, upset, happy, or, more appropriately for their current situation, aroused. Right now, she looks like she could eat him alive.

He says, "Go on," and presses the gun into her head with added pressure.

His jeans and underwear are practically torn down his legs seconds after he finishes ordering her around.

The contact of her warm palm wrapping around his cock once it's freed from the confines of his clothes tenses his abdomen muscles. It's heavy in her hand, hot to the touch, and it twitches with the caress of her fingers rubbing the sensitive underside where the tip connects to the rest of his length. She pushes up to stand taller on her knees and allows a string of spit to dribble out of her lips—still visible for the camera, of course—onto it for lubrication as she jerks him off with her head tilted to look up at him.

Once she's sure he got the shot she envisioned in her head, she then sinks back down into her previous position and takes him into her mouth. He's given no chance to prepare himself for it, so when he feels the wet heat of her mouth suctioned around his cock, he can't help how he moans in response to it. Her hand pumps what she can't take all the way into her throat as she pushes her head down as far as she can without gagging, trying to do it exactly how he likes.

"Fuck," he groans, head tipping back to the ceiling, "That's it, baby."

The vibration of her humming with her mouth encasing his cock has him fighting the urge to jerk his hips forward to thrust deeper into her throat. His free hand reaches down and wraps itself in her hair, bringing it away from her face and using it to guide the steady pace of her head bobbing up and down.

There's something particularly thrilling to her about being allowed to do this to him. She likes the idea of being the only person on this earth allowed to touch him, allowed to render him weak from her touch and leave him at her mercy. It helps her understand why he enjoys the power he has over her. It can be intoxicating, in a way, to look at a person and know they would do anything should you request it for nothing in return.

Her other hand comes up to cup his balls, massaging them in her palm and delighting in the reaction of his hips jerking forward to press himself deeper into her mouth. She allows her jaw to go slack at this, relaxing her throat, and glances up at him with a pointed look that tells him exactly what she wants him to do.

The hand he has wrapped up in her hair remains there, gripping the back of her head for leverage as he starts to thrust in and out of her open mouth with little care for how the camera begins to jostle with his sudden movements. It feels far too good to care about whether or not he's getting it on film right now. Every time he feels her throat constrict around the head of his cock, he has to actively fight the urge to come. He typically has the stamina to keep going for a while, but the eroticism of the situation with him filming it and her letting him fuck her mouth pushes everything to a degree of intensity he can't escape from.

They've only done this once before, so the novelty of it has yet to wear off this time around. Every time he pulls away until he's almost slipping out of her mouth, the end of her tongue flicks against his tip in a teasing motion that beckons him back into the tight heat of her mouth.

"Good girl," he murmurs in praise, cut off at the end by his own breathy moan when she swallows around him.

It isn't until he presses a little too deep on the upstroke of one of the thrusts, causing her to gag and take in a sharp breath through her nose, that he uses the hand in her hair to pull her off of him. Her lips are smeared with spit, a string of it connecting from them to the leaking tip of his cock until it breaks and falls onto her breasts, and her hair is a downright mess from the grip he had on it. She gulps down air desperately as she looks up at him, her brows furrowing as if to ask why he stopped.

When he takes too long to answer while staring down at her, she asks him, "What?"

"Take the rest of your clothes off."

He takes a step back with the camera lifting to get a better shot of her and tries to ignore the throbbing of his cock that urges him to bend her over the edge of the bed in order to push him over the edge he's so dangerously close to. The leggings she wore to sleep last night aren't accompanied by any of the skimpy undergarments he's gifted her, so when she dips her fingers under the band and starts to shimmy them down her legs, he's met with the sight of her bare cunt sooner than he expected.

Being the little temptress she is, she takes it slow for the camera. She truly puts on a good show for both him in the present and the future version of him that'll no doubt rewatch it. From where he stands, he can see how wet she is. It glistens on her pussy and inner thighs in the light shining down from the ceiling, and though he wants to get a taste of her, the need to be inside of her already outweighs it greatly. Three days without fucking is far too long for him to resist it now.

He passes the camera off to her, allowing Y/N to scoot back up the bed enough to keep her feet from dangling off as she raises the viewfinder to her eye to capture him tugging his shirt off. Shamelessly, she zooms in on his chest and pans the camera down from the birds on either side of his crucifix necklace, past the butterfly, and to the ferns that decorate his hips before zooming back out to capture him in his entirety.

The bed creaks beneath his shifting weight as he kneels on the edge, crawling over her body until he's settling between her eagerly spread thighs. The gun is set down on the empty space of mattress beside her. She makes sure to point the camera lens down the small gap left between their bodies the best she can to capture everything he does, but it gets increasingly more difficult when he guides his length forward to rub between her folds and soak it with her arousal. The contact of it sitting heavy against her clit has her rocking her hips up against him in a silent urging to hurry up.

He doesn't, though.

He takes his time inflicting this torture, grinding against her and leaving the hand that holds the camera up shaky from the stimulation that is simultaneously too much and not enough. This goes on for as long as he can stand it for the sake of getting her as needy for him as possible. He shuts his eyes and thinks of the least sexy things he can conjure—you know, a cold shower, his grandparents, and so on—to keep himself from getting too excited too fast. If he blows his load the second he pushes into her, he'll probably have to hide his face into one of the pillows to shield himself from the embarrassment.

"Please," she breathes out and rolls her hips up into his to guide his tip closer to her entrance, "Wanna feel full, daddy."

"No," he says.

This halts everything. The movement of her hips, the hand she had rubbing up and down the length of his arm, and the additional pleading words that'd been on the top of her tongue. Right before she can ask him if he wants to stop, he leans down and claims her mouth with his own. It's a deep, surging fire of a kiss. It whisks away any of the thoughts floating around in that head of hers as he uses the distraction to line himself up with her dripping hole and presses the tip inside.

His voice is soft and sweet when he says into her parted lips, "Use my name"—his tongue licks into her mouth playfully—"Say my name and I'll fuck you."

And, of course, it isn't even a full second that passes by the time she's whispering, "Harry, please," into the messy kiss they share.

The stretch of him pushing into her after a few days without intimacy of any kind has her biting down hard on her lip to stifle the whimper that rises out of her from the strange blend of pleasure and pain it elicits. He isn't above average in the way that men are portrayed in porn, but she can't deny that his cock is the biggest she's ever taken. The first time they had sex in Leo's parking garage, he had been behind her, so it wasn't until he entered her and began pounding away with little care for whether or not she needed time to adjust that she realized it.

She loves it. There's nobody else that could compare, which isn't solely to do with his size but rather what he does with it. If she were to tell him the things she thinks when he first thrusts into her every time, his ego would likely inflate to a size ten times the one it typically is. And, when it comes to sex, his ego doesn't need any more stroking than it has gotten already.

The initial pace he sets is not as brutal as it was their first time.

He fucks into her in deep, slow strokes that leave him lingering inside her, aligning their bodies so he rubs against her clit every time he slides in to the hilt. If anything, it's a less hurried recreation of the time they fucked on the motorcycle at the race track. Unlike that time, they have time and privacy to do whatever they'd like for however long they'd like to do it, so he takes his time and tries to savor it with her. Though she may like getting it rough and fast most of the time, neither of them is opposed to something as loving and tender as this.

Softly, she asks, "Can I take these off?" and reaches for one of the hands he has braced on either side of her waist against the mattress. More specifically, she reaches for the gloves he still wears while every other article of clothing has been shed from his body and tossed to the floor. "I wanna feel you touching me. I'll keep them out of view of the camera. I promise."

There's a moment in which the practiced cadence of his thrusts falters in reaction to the question, and it takes a few seconds to make up his mind. She can feel him tensing up on top of her as he becomes aware of his scarred hand again after being buried beneath the blissful haze of pleasure and glances down at where it presses flat against the bed.

I trust her, he reminds himself. I trust her. I trust her. I trust her. I trust her—

He brings his scarred hand up to his face first and bites the end of the glove on his middle finger to tug it off. The camera is immediately turned to the side before it comes all the way off, facing the windows that display the skyline of the city under the dark night sky, to give him the privacy she promised as he lays himself fully bare before her. It isn't the first time, technically, but it is the first time she's asked him to do it. Every other time, he did it of his own choice and made certain to keep it from her line of sight as much as possible, but, tonight, he lets her watch as he pulls both of them off and tosses them in the direction of their other clothes.

During this, he hasn't stopped the slow undulations of his hips that press his cock deep into her, consistently rubbing a sensitive spot inside that draws a series of quiet moans from her open mouth as she pants for breath. What she does next, however, makes him stop for the short second it takes his brain to process what he sees.

She takes the burnt hand that cups her breast and brings it up to her face, setting the camera on the bed to wrap it in both of hers until it's closed into a loose fist. The sensation of her soft, unmarred skin against the ridges and scars covering every inch of his larger hand satisfies something in him that he hadn't known existed, but she isn't done. If he thought he liked the contrast of her skin touching his, the feeling of her lips pressing kisses onto the heel of his hand and curled-up fingers might as well be heaven-sent.

"I love you," she whispers with her eyes fluttering shut to avoid the rejection she assumes is displayed on his face the second she says it. She tries not to cry as she holds his hand to her face, Harry already having gone still inside of her, but there's little she can do to fight it. "You don't have to say it back, but I'm just so tired of not being able to tell you."

There is no part of her that expects him to say the words back. The first time she felt the urge to say them was the day he came back home and apologized to her for leaving by letting her shave off his beard. It was something about the way he looked at her, and she knew at that moment, as he watched her while she pretended not to pay attention, that she was a goner. Truth be told, she had been falling for him long before that. She may have even been in love with him from that first night in the parking garage and hadn't known it until she'd been sitting on his lap to shave his beard for him. Perhaps that was what made her so enraged with him—how desperately she wanted him underneath it all.

Harry mutters, "Open your eyes."

He knows the power he holds over her, so when he tells her to do this, he has no doubt that she will listen to him, especially in the delicate situation they're in currently. Sex has a way of making her more pliant than she is otherwise. Outside of it, there is no doubt that they hold the power in equal amounts between them in their relationship, but during it, she surrenders herself to him in a way she never does elsewhere.

When her eyes open to find him laying atop her body, their chest fitting to one another's with every rise and fall of their breaths, she doesn't find him scowling or withdrawing from her in discomfort. Instead, she finds him looking at her the way he had that day she shaved his beard for him. Those green eyes are softened to a degree they never do unless it's her they're focused on. He has nothing but fondness for her, even after what she just confessed.

"I feel," he says, pausing as though trying to get the words out is harder than anything he's ever done before, "so much for you...I can't—I can't say that yet, but that doesn't mean I don't feel similarly." He pulls his burnt hand out of her grasp to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear while he looks down at her. "I've always been yours."

This stuns her to silence.

Never in her life did she think she'd receive something like that from him—not refusal, rejection, or cruelty, but honesty and validation. Hell froze over, basically, and she couldn't be happier about it.

She says, "Then let me treat you like you belong to me."

Y/N guides him to roll over onto his back, careful as he pulls out of her to shift their position in order for her to straddle his lap. Her legs sit on either side of his hips, and she rises up on her knees just enough to allow him to guide his cock back inside of her. As soon as she sinks down onto him, they're both moaning out into the empty apartment with their hands clinging onto one another for support. Hers brace themselves on his pecs, fingers splayed over his swallow tattoos, and she uses this to keep herself steady as she begins to rock her hips back and forth on him. In this position, she can feel him even deeper than she did seconds ago.

He reaches for the camera that has been laying on its side on the mattress for the past two minutes and brings it back up to his face to capture his point of view. Her hair falls around her face as she drops her head down to meet his gaze, and he can't tear his eyes away from her for any longer than a second before he feels the need to find her again. With every thrust, she rides him harder. Fully in control, she sets the pace and depth she enjoys most and lets him come along for the ride with her, his hand holding onto her hip so hard that he runs the risk of bruising her.

"Harry," she whines, her eyes shining with tears, "Fuck—I love you."

The hand squeezing her hips guide her through the motions as she begins to get too immersed in the pleasure to keep it up. Her breasts bounce with the jolting motions of their bodies colliding, the wet sound of their rutting invading the room and accompanying the symphony of moans and sighs that otherwise fill the silence. It takes everything he has to keep himself from coming pathetically early from the sight and sound of her being split open on his cock. He had already noticed how close he was getting when she let him fuck her mouth, but now he's barely hanging on.

He has to close his eyes, knowing that if he keeps looking up at her while they do this, he'll finish in a matter of seconds and leave her unsatisfied. This has never happened to him before. In all the times he hooked up with random people over the years, treating sex more like a chore to release his volatile emotions than anything else, he never felt as though he was going to come less than a minute in. If anything, he took pride in the fact that he had stamina in bed, but he's beginning to realize now that it had little to do with his ability and everything to do with how he was treating the actual act of having sex with someone. They were physically attractive to him, yes, but they weren't her. And they certainly weren't crying out his name and telling him they loved him the way she is right now.

"Hey," she whispers, "what's wrong?"

The rapid pace she set begins to slow with her growing concern for him, but he doesn't let her. He uses the hand he has on her hip to keep her moving on his cock, shaking his head to dispel her worry as he tries to string together a sentence amidst the euphoria.

His eyes remain clamped shut when he mutters, "M'gonna come too fast if I look at you."

To this, she squeezes around him as tightly as she can as if to egg him on, invigorated by the thrill of knowing what she does to him and using it to bounce her hips on him like her life depends on it. She even exaggerates the sound of her soft moans for the sake of pushing him closer to the edge, and if he weren't so close to his orgasm, he'd probably laugh and call her out for being such a tease. At this point, he doesn't care about the camera capturing any of it. It ends up falling to the bed next to their bodies as he throws his head back against the mattress and tries to pull himself back from the brink of climax.

Then, he feels the hard steel of the pistol he left on the bed pressing into the side of his head.

"Go on," she says, and he can hear the smirk in her voice, "I want you to."

When he opens his eyes to take in the sight of her on top of him, there's no turning back. From the delicate curves of her hips leading up to her waist to the look in her eyes as she stares him down with his own gun pressed to his temple, this visual of her at the moment is nothing short of pornographic. Everything about it overstimulates him—watching her, hearing her breathy moans, and feeling her cunt squeezing around him as if she's trying to milk every drop of cum from his thick cock.

His brows scrunch up as he teeters on the edge, begging her, "Say it again. Please," he starts to thrust up to meet her movements, holding her still by her hip to allow him to pound into her with all of his strength, "Tell me."

Without even having to ask for clarity, she knows that what he wants to hear isn't the last thing she said. It's the confession that she's kept from spewing for weeks, and knowing that hearing her say it pushes him closer brings a tired smile to her kiss-swollen lips. She tosses the loaded gun aside and it clatters along the floor, sliding until it hits the far-off wall, then leans down to kiss him. Her lips taste of the flavored gloss she borrowed from Alanis this afternoon, and he slides his arms around her waist to tug her closer, chasing his release with little care for anything other than the woman before him.

He bites down on her lower lip in punishment when she takes too long to give him what he asked.

"Say it," Harry demands.

​​She gasps at the brutality of his thrusts and falls into his chest with no strength left to keep herself held up, whining every time he buries himself inside her hard enough that she knows she'll be sore tomorrow. The gun slips out of her hand and onto the sheets beside the forgotten camera she gifted him.

She cries out, "I love you, I love you—"

Her emphatic declarations of love are cut short by Harry kissing her, using her gasps for air as his chance to lick into her mouth with his tongue as he gives himself to the pleasure that has been begging to consume him since they began.

It's unlike anything he's experienced before. He never thought that sex could feel like this until he met her, and, more specifically, until he realizes what it felt like to do it with someone who loves you. With each spurt of his release, he feels like his life force is being drained out of him and given to her—it feels as if his soul belongs to her now. The arms wrapped around her are squeezing with enough force to limit her breathing, and he doesn't dream of letting her go. Not yet. He holds her as close to him as possible while he rides out the blissful rush of endorphins pumping through his body as his thrusts slow to a lazy grinding of his hips into hers.

She dips her head down to kiss his neck in the aftermath, giving him the space he needs to catch his breath now that he's on the comedown. His chest rises and falls at a rapid rate beneath hers, but it isn't a steady one. It jerks and stutters in a way she's only felt or seen when the person she's holding is crying, and it makes her come back up from the warm curve of his neck to check on him.

Those long lashes are wet with the tears he attempts to blink away. He is crying, but she doesn't feel alarmed by it. It's obvious to her that it isn't the type of crying bred from sorrow or regret, it's the type of crying bred from happiness. From love. They're the same kind of tears that she shed moments ago when she confessed her feelings for him.

As soon as he catches her watching him, though, he stops. Not because he isn't comfortable with her crying but, instead, because it occurs to him for the first time since coming back from the intense pleasure of his orgasm that she didn't come. And that simply won't do.

Harry pecks her once on the mouth before using the arms still encasing her waist to flip them over. With his considerable strength, it's a smooth transition that is over as soon as it begins, and she hardly has the chance to laugh before her back hits the mattress. He's already descending the length of her body by the time she lifts her head to look at him. His hands push her legs apart with little formality, exposing her sodden cunt to him.

"You don't have to—"

She can't even finish the sentence before his face is buried between her thighs, his tongue spreading her open and feasting on her unashamedly. He could tell that she was getting close by the time he came, so he didn't want to waste any time and risk her losing it.

It's hard for her to hold her head up off of the bed to look down at him, but she holds out for as long as she can because seeing him looking up at her with his tongue lapping up his own cum that drips from her is undoing in and of itself. Knowing he close she was before, once he's swallowed all of the release that was dripping from her hole, he moves his attention up to her clit. The difference is immediately noticeable in how she tenses up in his hold and starts to grind her pussy against his face in a desperate plea for more, more, more.

Although his cheeks are burning scarlet from coming prematurely, it is all forgotten in her mind and replaced by the budding pleasure building in the pit of her tummy. His lips close around her clit and suck hard, his tongue flicking against it repeatedly, and she can't help but throw her head back against the mattress in ecstasy. It has her breath turning from a steady, deep rhythm to heavy pants that are never enough. From his place down low, he watches her back arch and exaggerate the size of her breasts as they fall up and down with the dramatic breaths she takes.

He parts from her for only a second to murmur in between kisses placed on her sticky inner thighs, "Could stay here all night, baby, y'taste so fucking good."

The arms he has wrapped around her thighs rug her closer to his face, and he begins to lose himself in it now. Whenever she sneaks a glance down at him, his eyes are closed and the movements of his tongue and lips on her clit are executed with a practiced perfection. God, she cannot believe that she has him all to herself. Now that she knows he's with her for the long haul, she finds it difficult to wrap her head around the fact that she is the only one who gets to experience this with him. Plenty of women and men take lingering looks at him whenever they're out in public, but his eyes never stray from her. Hers is the only body he will kneel before to worship like a devout believer praying at an altar before the Almighty.

She babbles incoherently as he lifts her hips up from the bed and eats her like a man starved, licking and sucking at her puffy clit like he'll never get the chance to do it again. He's in a trance at this point. Even when she whines his name and reaches down to grab a handful of his hair to tug on, he doesn't react or look up at her, he just continues his relentless assault on her sensitive cunt until she starts to feel the familiar sensation of an orgasm stirring inside of her.

Having been warmed up for it by him fucking her, it doesn't take much to get her back to where she'd been before he came. She was already easy to rile when they were strangers to each other's bodies, but now that he knows her better than he's ever known a partner before, he could get the job done in less than two minutes if he wants to. And, he thinks that just might happen tonight if the way she's saying his name and clawing at his shoulders has anything to say about it.

"Harry!" she sobs, "M'gonna come—fuck—right there!"

One more flick of his tongue against her clit as his lips suck hard around it and she is sent careening over the edge into oblivion with nothing to tether her to reality except for him. She digs her nails into his shoulders as she jerks and tenses with every pulsating wave of her climax. It robs her of her breath, leaving her with nothing to do but writhe throughout it all and leave her mouth fallen open to sing her praises to him with what little breath she manages to take in. It's the type of orgasm that wipes the slate clean and empties her mind of every worry it held onto prior to this. The hit on Saturday, Alanis leaving the country, either of them being hurt on the next job—none of it can reach her.

When the final peak of it drops her back off into her body, he remains between her thighs, ever the diligent lover, to help her through the aftershocks before she becomes too sensitive to handle his touch for a bit. It isn't until she pulls on his hair, mumbling a soft, "Too much," at him while she jerks her hips away, that he pulls away. The back of his hand wipes his mouth and chin to clean it of the mixture of his cum and her slick arousal.

With the absence of their moans and the sounds of their bodies converging, the room rings with silence as he crawls back up the length of her body and collapses onto her chest with a tired sigh. She accepts him with open arms, her mind too muddled from her climax to even realize that this is the first time he's cuddled with her. His body is a furnace atop hers, and she savors every second of the warmth seeping into her body, the thin layers of sweat coating them blending at each place they connect.

It takes a long time for either of them to say anything.

Harry lays with his head cradled against her heaving chest, eyes closed, and takes it all in. Every word, every touch, every kiss—he rewinds the events of the night and relives them until he has them memorized inside and out. The burnt hand slides up the side of her waist until it finds one of the hands resting on his shoulders, removing it for the sake of entwining their fingers together.

Meanwhile, Y/N lies beneath him in utter shock.

Tonight went in the opposite of every direction she assumed it would. The aforementioned shock doesn't mean she is displeased by the turn of events, not in the slightest, but she can't say that their previous track record indicated any of this going as smoothly as it has.

"Can I tell y'something?"

His voice is the first to break the silence.

A lazy smile appears on her face as she cranes her neck to allow herself to meet his gaze. His head is tilted back, her breast a soft cushion beneath it, and his heavy-lidded eyes never stray from her face.

"Anything," she says.

There's a pause, then—

"I stole your knives."

She sits up as much as their current position will allow with her eyebrows shooting up in surprise. Her upper body is supported on her elbows when she sits up, disrupting his comfortable spot on her chest in favor of checking his face for any sign of dishonesty or playful teasing. There is only honesty found in his unflinching stare.

"What?"

He sighs, pushing himself up so that he's no longer bearing all of his weight on her body and, instead, braces most of it on his arms while he lays between her legs.

"After I brought you home from Leo's place," he clarifies, "when y'were too distracted with Alanis and Zayn to notice, I stole them."

"Why?"

In her heart, she already knows the answer to that question, but she must ask. For the sake of the heart that aches for him at the mere thought of his possible reasoning for doing such a thing, she must ask.

He says softly, "I didn't want you to hurt yourself again."

That statement alone could be replayed and analyzed in the back of her mind until the end of time. How could he claim he never cared when they fought last night if everything else he says when they talk contradicts it? First, it was him sparing her life, then giving her rent money, then saving her from being tortured and murdered at Leo's hand, and countless other actions no terrible man would bother going through with. If he's a monster, then why was he the only one to see her drowning and extend a hand to pull her from the rough current?

"You know what I think?" she asks.

He doesn't dare respond with anything other than a glance. Should this go south in the way he's assuming it will—because, let's be honest, it always goes south eventually when it comes to him—he doesn't want to say anything more to ruin it than he already has. She's probably preparing to scold him for assuming she couldn't handle her urges on her own, for assuming she needed to be looked after like a child—

"I think you're a good man, Harry."

Everything stops at that.

The thoughts racing around in his head, his heart hammering against his ribcage in his chest, and every other part of him that has been on alert to assess the next threat for the past decade—it all stops, and, for the first time since he was dragged into this abhorrent world of murder and heartache, he can breathe.

No one has ever said that to him. Growing up, it was because it was a given. He was a sweet boy, a mama's boy, and the few times he got in trouble were due to misunderstandings and typical childhood mood swings. So, no one felt the need to point it out. But, after he began "working" for Leo, everyone pointed out the opposite. Everyone called him a monster, not that he ever disagreed, and he welcomed it. The more people who feared him, who loathed him, the better. The distance would protect him. Everyone he's met in the last ten years has come to the same consensus that he is a terrible man worthy of nothing. Until her.

"You're just a good man who's been forced to become someone he's not," she whispers, "and I'm sorry it took me so long to realize that, but I do now." Her hand reaches down to brush the hair hanging in his eyes out of his face as she looks at him with a softened gaze. Tears flood her eyes once more, and she wishes she could get through it without becoming overwhelmed with emotion, but she can't. Her voice even trembles when she says, "And I love you so much."

He cannot do anything but stare at her with every word he wants to say stuck in the back of his throat, barred from coming out until he processes what she said and allows the full emotion of it to rush through him. And even though he can't say it back yet, hearing it from her over and over tonight has reached a place in his threat he thought was long since dead.

His mouth opens to speak, but he's cut off.

The sound of his phone ringing where he left it in the living room cuts through the blissful haze created by the night they've spent together, and she can instantly feel him tensing up on top of her. His eyes shut, and it's almost as if he pretends that if he stays as still as possible, nothing will have to change. But, of course, they have a harsh reality to face whenever either of their phones ring, so he has no choice but to part with her to answer it.

"Stay here, baby," he murmurs, then pushes himself off of her and stalks off toward the living room in pursuit of his phone.

Unlike the night at the race track, Harry doesn't keep a distance between them once he picks up the call. He actually comes back into the room and sits at the end of the bed as he hits the button to answer it. She doesn't invade his privacy by crawling up from behind and wrapping her arms around him as she wishes to, but she does watch him throughout for any signs of it being Leo or Garrett calling them to action.

She can't hear what the person on the other end of the line is saying, but with the way his brows raise and his eyes widen, she assumes the worst. She assumes that Garrett is calling to tell them that they have to get in the car and drive to the place where the hit will take place as soon as possible.

Harry nods his head along to whatever the person is saying, even glancing over his shoulder at her once or twice. But, much to her surprise, he doesn't hide his true feeling from her by schooling his face into the typical mask of neutrality.

“Can I bring someone with me?” he asks, then spins a little white lie in order to convince them to let him bring her along. “I know it’s supposed to be family only, but I just got married yesterday. I’d like my wife to come along.”

Her heart begins to pound at the thought of the title he just placed on her. Even if it’s not the truth.

A second later, he says, "Good. We'll be there tonight."

-

The whole car ride over, which ended up being a little over an hour, he briefed her on where they were going and why they were going there. As soon as the call dropped, he was quick to reassure her that it wasn't Leo or Garrett calling upon them for their services. She watched in confusion as he stood up from the bed and began getting dressed, digging through the dresser drawers for a clean set of casual clothes as he told her to do the same.

It wasn't until she stood from the bed and began dressing beside him, slipping on a loose pair of jeans and one of his vintage band tees, that he offered any form of an explanation for the interruption. Apparently, it was the same place or person that called him the night on the race track when he had a "family emergency", the only difference this time being that she was allowed to peek behind the curtain and know what was going on.

Harry stuffed his gun back into the holster he switched from his dirty pants to his new ones, saying to her as he searched the room for his backpack, "My mother's in a nursing home. Whenever they call, I go. M'sorry to cut our Christmas short, but they called with good news. I'll explain it all in the car. C'mon."

With that, he grabbed her arm by the wrist and pulled her along to follow him. They made it all the way out of the apartment, into the elevator, and to the top level of the garage where he always kept his cars parked before he proceeded with his promised explanation. It was all a bit jarring, honestly. To receive such pivotal information in a matter of seconds, all while her head was still reeling from the night they shared, dizzied her.

They were about ten minutes into the ride when he spoke again.

"She has Alzheimer's," he said, cutting her a sorrowful look before looking back at the road. "When I was eighteen, she needed to be put into full-time care. S'why I had to borrow so much money from Leo, I couldn't afford any of it at the time. I mean, what eighteen-year-old living in the states can?" The music playing from the phone he plugged into the aux cord filled the gaps in speech as she stared at him with watering eyes. "Anyway, they called and said she had a fall last month. Broke her hip and needed surgery, that's why I left so fast. But, this time, it's good. The nurse said she's been lucid for hours. It never usually happens for any longer than thirty minutes with her, so by the time I get there, she doesn't even know who I am."

That's what led her here, standing hand in hand with him in the lobby of the nursing home with her head spinning from the overload of information dumped on her.

That was what Leo had to keep him in it, wasn't it? It didn't make sense to her why he stayed if he was so close to killing himself as a way out at one point, but, now, everything clicks. If he killed himself, his mother would be left with no one to pay for her care, and if he left...It's the same situation she faced with Alanis. It's Leo's best tactic at getting people to obey him—find out who they love and keep them under the threat of death or torture at all times should the person working under him step out of line.

From what she knows of Alzheimer's and Dementia patients, terminal lucidity is often a sign of death waiting right around the corner, but she doesn't dare to say that to him. How could she ruin this ray of sunshine that has found its way into his life after years of perpetual night?

He squeezes her hand hard in his, tapping his foot against the tiled floor to the anxious beat of his heart, and keeps searching down the long hallway for the nurse that said she'd go and ask her if she wanted to see her visitors.

"It's been, like, seven years since she remembered me," he says with a smile growing on his face. "Do y'think she'll remember me now?"

Y/N rests her chin on his shoulder and looks up at him with a smile to match his own.

"If they're saying she's lucid, I don't see why she wouldn't."

It's difficult for her to enjoy the happiness emanating from him. All she can think of is how young he was when it all began and how terrified he must've been. He told her on the car ride over that his dad never spoke to them again once she got the diagnosis, leaving him to handle everything in his absence, and it made her heart snap in two. He was just a boy. He's never had the chance to truly live as an adult, every second has been consumed by the debt, Leo, and murdering people against his will, and it enrages her. If the promise of his imminent downfall weren't already planned out, she'd likely steal his gun and hunt their boss down herself for stealing his life away.

He saw a sweet young boy in need of help, desperate to latch onto any older man he could out of a need for a father figure to replace the one that abandoned him, and chose to destroy him rather than lend a hand. So, while Harry smiles and waits in excitement for the nurse to bring them to his mother, she's trying not to cry for what feels like the hundredth time tonight.

The sound of a woman's gentle voice breaks her from her trance.

"Mr. Styles?" she asks, then turns her gaze to her. "Mrs. Styles?"

The ring sitting on her left hand is an old one he dug out of the jewelry stand in the bathroom. It isn't what most people would view as a traditional wedding ring, but it was the only one he had that fit her ring finger, so it would have to work. If anyone questioned him, he'd happily tell them fuck right off. The nurse's unbreaking stare makes her realize she forgot to take off the sunglasses he gave her, and she reaches up to snatch them off of her face.

It was dark outside, but she put them on on the off chance that she'd cry more tonight and need to hide her puffy red eyes from any curious passerby. And, considering the fact that she was two seconds from shedding tears from merely thinking of what he's gone through, that wasn't an unrealistic worry to have.

"Yes?" Harry responds.

The badge clipped to the front of her pink scrub shirt reads, "Kaitlyn," and she smiles so widely, her eyes crinkle at the sides from behind the thick lenses of eyeglasses.

"Come with me."

It takes a decent minute or so to get from the lobby to the open door to his mother's assigned room. The nurse had to use her badge to swipe them into the patient's side of the of building, explaining away about their safety precautions to protect the inhabitants as both of them ignored her in favor of their own thoughts. Down another long hallway of rooms, to the left, and there it is. Her name is written on a dry-erase board hanging from the front of the door.

Elise.

What a lovely name, she thinks to herself.

Kaitlyn comes to a stop outside of the threshold and offers them a bright smile as a parting gift, saying, "She's waiting for you. She just took her sleeping meds, so she'll probably be out pretty soon, but you've got thirty minutes before visiting is done, so enjoy."

Harry walks in ahead of her with his gloved hand still holding on tight, arm extending behind to guide her in after him as he hurries into the room with an excitement that cannot be contained within it. The first thing she sees are walls covered from top to bottom with artwork. Paintings, drawings, sketches, and more framed forms of art that cover the beige walls and enliven them with color. It makes sense now that she sees how his mother chose to decorate her room why Harry has such an artistic, romantic soul.

And when she turns her attention over to the woman sitting up in a reclining chair, even deteriorating with age and sickness, Harry's good looks make even more sense to her. Long hair the same shade as his, following the same loose curl pattern, is streaked with grays and braided in two sides.

"Mum," he says as a way of greeting.

Their smiles are exactly the same, she soon realizes. Dimples form on either side of her lips as they pull away from her teeth in a grin, and her two front teeth are a tad bit longer than the others beside them. Just like his.

She holds out her hands in an invitation for him to come closer.

"My baby boy," Elise says softly.

Neither of them is sure how lucid she is, whether or not she knows he's not still an eighteen-year-old kid or younger even, but he got what he wished for the past seven years. His mother remembers who he is. For once in his adult life, he doesn't come to visit her only to be met with confusion and violent outbursts. The last time he came here, she was so high off of the pills they gave her in her recovery from hip surgery that when she woke up to see him sitting at her bedside in the middle of the night, she began screaming and throwing every nearest object she could reach at the "intruder"

The two of them share a lingering embrace, and Y/N doesn't do much other than take in the small room, picking at the sleeve of the shirt she stole from him to keep her hands occupied.

When they pull apart, Elise's eyes land on her and narrow. They scan up and down, almost analytically, until she seems to get a general grip on who the woman standing in front of her is. She inevitably comes to the conclusion that she is a stranger to her but not to her dear son.

"This is my girlfriend," Harry says. He stares at her with affection shining through in his eyes and reaches out his hand to beckon her closer. "Her name is Y/N. We were just exchanging our Christmas gifts"—a subtle wink direction at her while he brings her over to the same side of the recliner chair he stands on—"when Kaitlyn called me."

There's a moment of silence.

"Are those mine?"

Y/n follows the path of Elise's finger pointing to the center of her chest and finds that the sunglasses Harry gifted her last month are the subject of interest.

He squeezes her hand a few times in his before letting it go to kneel beside his mother.

"They are," he says quietly, which is news to Y/N. "You told me when I was twenty to give them to the woman I want to marry...I think she's the one, Mum. You'll love her once you two get talking for a bit."

Elise watches her for a couple more seconds before settling her attention back on her son and nodding in acceptance of his choice. It must be overwhelming—meeting your grown son and his girlfriend for the first time after years of not knowing who you are or where you live except for short moments of clarity that never last more than thirty minutes. The last time she was fully lucid in his presence, he was on the cusp of adolescence and adulthood. His hair was overgrown, shaggy and wild with the same curls growing from her head, and his eyes were brighter back then. It was before Leo had broken him.

When she looks around the room, Y/N notices framed pictures on her bedside table and ones that hang on the walls between art pieces carefully chosen from her large collection locked away in a storage unit he pays for monthly. It isn't so bad, but when she pays attention, it saddens her. The carpet is stained in places, whether it be with blood or urine, there's no way to tell, but the smell is suffocating. Clearly, she's had many accidents relating to incontinence, and the staff must not properly clean the rug enough to keep the stench from permeating through the air of the closed area.

It starts to get so bad to her over the next minute, she feels the need to hold her breath, and she can't stand it for another second before she has to excuse herself.

"Um, I'm gonna go to the ladies' room," she says with a forced smile, then shoots him a look that tells him not to worry about her. "Be right back."

Neither of them puts up a fight when she turns to walk out of the room, they're far too distracted with each other to notice the undercurrent of tension that lives within her at the moment. The sense of sickness persists the entire way down the hall until she passes through the double doors Kaitlyn had to swipe her badge to get them through. She isn't concerned with getting back to Elise's room at the moment, though. Her main concern is whether or not she can stifle the sickness rising in her throat.

Thankfully for her, the strong scent is evaporated once she reaches the bathrooms stationed at the front lobby and replaced with the overpowering disinfectant used to wipe down the mirrors, sinks, toilets, and floors. It's unpleasant but not nearly as bad as she found the scent of urine in the hall of patient rooms.

Y/N comes to a halt in front of one of the mirrors, bracing her hands against the sink, and takes deep breaths in and out of her mouth until she feels stable enough in her ability to keep her food down. The relief of knowing she won't have to throw up releases the tension that built in her shoulders and neck, allowing her to sigh a heavy breath of relief and turn away from the sink now that she knows she won't be sick.

Her head hangs low as she turns to lean against the porcelain, her fingers gripping it hard enough to turn her knuckles white, and tries to calm herself amidst all that has happened today. From beginning to end, it took her for enough twists and turns to give her whiplash.

Hopefully, she won't feel sick again when she goes back in there, but she doesn't have any other choice. It's his mother. His mother he avoided mentioning to her like the plague and didn't trust her knowing was alive until tonight. The fact that he brought her here to meet her while she's lucid is an honor she could never thank him enough for bestowing upon her. Not to mention, the sunglasses, him calling her his girlfriend, and the lie he told to the nurses about her being his new wife.

A subdued little smirk finds its way to her face as she lifts her head up and turns to make her way back to the patient rooms, but something hanging on the wall catches her eye.

It's a dispenser for feminine hygiene products.

And that is all it takes for her to be stopped in her tracks. She typically gets prone to nausea in the days before her period, but not without the presence of dull cramps that don't require any more than a dose of over-the-counter pain medication. This nausea she has can't be her period, not if she doesn't have any other symptoms or even a little spotting in her panties.

The longer she looks at the dispenser, the more it dawns on her what might be happening to her.

She didn't get her period in November, did she? It's most often toward the end of the month, so she didn't worry about it, but with everything that's been going on, she got so distracted that she—

Her hand slaps over her mouth as she hurries out of the restroom and flees for the colder night air in hopes that it'll cool her down from the anxiety causing her to perspire beneath her clothes. Going back to the memory of her last period verges on impossible considering the more important information she's had to keep track of in the time since the middle of October, but she knows it didn't come last month. And if her last period was two weeks before Halloween and she vomited her guts out after being drugged by Tate?

The wind blows cold against her stunned face, and she can't do anything but pace around in a blind panic.

She took the pill regularly every single day, and she made sure of that, but Halloween night was the only time she fucked up. The alarm for her pill is seven in the afternoon, and it wasn't much later that she was on her knees puking into a trash can. That paired with the fact that she and Harry had sex first thing in the morning—

"Fuck..."

[moon-sang]

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕚𝕣𝕝 𝔹𝕪 𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣

CHAPTER 3: BLOOD BY THE RIVER ~ PART 2

SERIES MASTERLIST

SUMMARY: The lab is more secured than Din expected. 003 is no damsel in distress. 

WARNINGS: (for the whole series) Mild horror, intense gore, Mature language, sexual references, mention of experimentation on children, wounds, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, possible smut (I’m not sure where this is heading at the moment), typical violence, descriptions of blood, fem!reader, mention of abuse, please tell me if I miss anything.

~ Heavily inspired by Stranger Things & a little bit of Marvel.

~~~~~

The lab was huge…

 Actually, that was an understatement, it was massive. 

It was heavily guarded as well, which made Din’s small mission a lot harder. 

He’d have to be stealthy

It was easier than he had expected, to say the least. To get inside. Compared to Din’s skill, the troops had nothing, it’s almost as if they had flung their lives at the Mandalorian, or maybe it was the fact they weren’t prepared for some Mando to come barging in. 

Din walked cautiously through the insides of the laboratory, blaster out of the holster, triggered, and pointed in front of him. 

The lab was quite boring, Din had to admit. Even his covert had more color, more joy and meaning. This was plain, simple, blank. He was surrounded by white, it was even dizzying seeing so much of one colour. 

White walls.

White tiles. 

White gowns. 

His eyes roamed over every room, looking for some sort of sign that you may be there, but there was nothing. Every door lead to a dead end or looped back to where he started. 

Din curses under his breath as the harsh thrum of stomping troopers became more audible. 

Where the hell could you be?!

“Hey!” A static voice calls. 

Din turns around, and quickly holsters his blaster. 

“Put your hands in the air, slowly.” The guard snarls. 

Din obliges, slowly raising his arms above his helm. 

“Doctor Miller has given me permission to escort Three.” Din states, voice unwavering. 

“To be able to see Three you need high clearance level, what’s your code number?” The trooper retorts. 

Din growls frustratedly under his breath before grabbing his blaster and shooting the guard at an impossible speed. 

The Mandalorian continues his search for a few minutes longer when finally he notices something. If he had been walking any faster he was sure he would’ve missed it.

One tile, seemed to have a larger gap between it’s edges than the others. 

Odd. 

Din crouches down, so he is level with the floor and curls his fingers under the gap provided. 

Then

It lifts up

And it reveals a whole new level of the laboratory. 

The way down was rather narrow, and he doubted he could fit for a moment. But he jumps down anyway. 

Unlike the rest of the lab, this place had color…an unknown purpose. Wood carved doors were scattered all over the place, only providing a small hall. Each door had a number carved into it.

001

002

003-

003?

Din stopped in his tracks, eyeing the rounded frame of 003’s supposed room. 

Quiet as ever he turned the knob. The door creaked open revealing an empty bed, some blocks with the basic alphabet engraved into them, and a chess board. 

The room was rather boring-empty, and of no value to him. Din sighs. She wasn’t here either, which meant she had to be with one of the doct-

“Well look at what the loth-cat dragged in.” Snarks an all too familiar voice.

 Doctor Miller.

The Mandalorian turns to face him, head on. He was wearing a suit with a white coat draped lazily over his shoulders. The doctors green eyes bored into the galaxy of black in Din’s visor. But Din wasn’t focused on his eyes, but rather the girl he held in his arms. She was unconscious, and blood trickled from her ears and nose- 

“What did you do to her?”  Din snarls. 

 “Nothing. She did this to herself.” He chuckles. 

“She’s a real rebel, and a pain in my ass.” 

Doctor Miller smiles at Din’s silence. “You have formed a bond with her.” He states. “You fear for her safety.” He continues, as if looking straight through the barricade Din had created to hide away his humanly traits. 

“You are not going to take her. She belongs here…in the lab, it’s where she was born and it is where she will die…. And so will you.”  He admits with a sinister smile. And as if on queue a horde of guards overflow the small area, guns all pointed at Din. The Mandalorian attempts to activate his whistling birds, but quickly realises he wasted them on soldiers from before. 

Thinking fast, Din ignites flames from his gauntlet striking Miller in the face. He shrieks and stumbles back, dropping 003 in the process, but Din is able to catch her and practically throws her onto the bed behind him. Mando couldn’t count all of them, but he estimated there were about 20 troops, ready to kill him. 

Din put his fists up with a fools hope to get out of there alive. With that many people to fight, even with someone as skilled as the Mandalorian, he was no match, and for the first time in a long while, Din was uncertain of how the battle was going to end. 

It had only taken a few minutes to get the usually unstoppable Mandalorian to the ground. He was wounded. Din could tell that much. He had managed to sustain a dislocated kneecap, along with a blaster shot to his left shoulder, within the span of 5 minutes into the fight. But now on the floor of some lab he had never even heard about, until about just two days ago, he felt more pathetic than he had ever felt in a while, like what was happening was inevitable, because he couldn’t defend himself. Din closed his eyes as a strike was delivered to his abdomen. He could ignore the pain, it was all going to end soon enough, anyway. 

He heard the familiar cock of a blaster, and his eyes squeezed tighter together, like he would just disappear if he tried hard enough. He felt as the blaster hole was nudged into his chin, the only skin the troopers could reach under the helmet, without taking it off.  

And then…

CRACK

It takes Din a few seconds, before he opens his eyes again, afraid of what he may see.

He reluctantly looks up, after a few more moments of utter silence. 

The blaster, which was previously pointed to his jaw, was now discarded to the floor beside him. 

The next thing he notices is the horrified looks on the troopers faces. 

And it doesn’t take long for him to realise why. 

003.

The girl jumped off of her bed, silently walking, bare-foot around Din, and towards the troopers. The Mandalorian could practically feel their fear radiating off of them, but they seemed to do well in shoving it down, because they ignite a taser, in the hopes of scaring 003, but it does little to nothing. 

She stops walking when she is standing a few feet away from the armed men. Din could almost hear the unsteady breathing of the guards, but that didn’t stop one of them from finding the courage to try and tase 003. 

He reaches out, attempting to tase 003 in her abdomen, but 003 is quick to shove her hand out, stopping the troop in mid-air. 

She had the same abilities as Grogu..

Then, from behind, a trooper tased her back. She cries out and falls onto all fours. And just as they were about to finish her her head shoots up and she catches them all in a death stare. 

Or at least Din thought.

The lights in the room flickered in tune with Din’s breaths as a thin trail of blood ran down the eyes of all the guards. 

Din watched in utter horror. 

Don’t get him wrong, the Mandalorian had seen quite a lot of gore in his years of bounty hunting…but this, this was taking it to another level. 

Just as the blood trailing down their eyes started to drip to the floor, their necks snapped. 

The crack of their necks were sickening, bone grinding against bone and they shattered In their very necks.

and every single one of them fell straight to the floor. 

003 fell with them, exhausted. 

Once Din could find the strength to stand again, he quickly checked for the girls pulse. It was there. He sighed and looked at all of the dead guards. It was a real mess. Her room was absolutely bathed in blood. 

All their eyes had rolled to the back of their heads

A thin line of hot blood trickled over the curves of their jaws, starting from their eyes

And their necks, violently snapped to the side.

Din almost felt bad for them.

Almost. 

Now, he just needed to get the killing machine of a human, back to his hut.

Should be simple…

Right?

~~~~~

TAGS: @fandom-lover-4​​ 

Taglist Open

[nev3rfound]

glass : b.b

after a messy breakup with your boyfriend, you can’t help but be a tad bit reckless during a mission leaving bucky to help pick up the pieces and learn why you’re acting the way you are. (2.5k) 

warnings: mentions of blood, violence, wounds, breakups 

masterlist / permanent taglist / etsy shop - requests open!

(everything on my blog is my own writing. if it is shared on another page or website without being credited, it has not been approved to be shared by me. all rights reserved.)

also hi, we’re almost at 5k which is amazing and i’m planning a little giveaway! sorry if i’ve been quiet this week, i have been hooked with the ‘shatter me’ series and i can’t get enough lmao. but i do have more pieces in the works :)

Sitting in the Quinjet, you could barely register what Tony was saying as the words that were practically spat at you last night circulated your thoughts.

“Y/n?” You flinch at the call of your name, breaking you from the trance-like state you were in.

Steve smiles warmly as he takes the seat beside you as prying eyes watch closely, noting the change in your mood the moment you boarded the jet.

“Sorry,” You mutter to Steve. “late night.”

Nodding in response, Steve glances over to a concerned Bucky whose brows remain knitted together. Usually, you would sit with Bucky, joke around with him and Sam about all sorts. Yet today, you boarded the jet and sat alone, closing your eyes and blocked everyone out.

“Tell me ‘bout it.” Steve playfully huffs, trying to incite some form of reaction, but you remain silent. “Listen, if you wanna talk,”

“Thanks, Steve.” You cut him off, forcing your lips upward. “I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

With that being his cue to leave you be, Steve shakes his head to Bucky as he wanders back toward Tony, organising the final details of the plan before you land.

“Okay team, descending now, arriving in less than ten.” Tony announces, ensuring he has everyone's attention- including yours. “So, Cap, you and Romanoff will head straight for the side entrance whilst Wilson and Barnes take the back. I want Y/L/N and Barton to head for the hostages.” Tony explains, watching as you all nod along.

“And what will you be doing, Tony?” Steve asks as he picks his shield up.

“I will be with Wanda,” Tony states as Wanda playfully salutes. “on standby in case something goes wrong.”

“Not that it will.” Wanda comments but quirks a brow to Sam who holds his hands up in defence.

“That was a one-time thing, witchy.” Sam retorts, causing Tony to roll his eyes once again at the team's antics.

“Anyway, get ready.” Tony finishes before retreating toward the pilot whilst everyone gathers their weapons.

Whilst grabbing your gun and placing it into your holster, you notice the small bruise forming on your wrist as your sleeve rises slightly. You quickly tug on it, thinking nothing of it as you reach for the set of knives you usually carry.

Yet Bucky noticed, it was impossible for Bucky to not notice the smallest of details about you. His heart ached at the sight. You’re known for being clumsy and would often laugh about the matter. If you got a bruise, you’d joke about it, explain how this one happened in another idiotic motion as opposed to hiding it.

“You ready for this one, Y/n?” Clint speaks up as he appears by your side, counting his arrows as you tighten your grip on your favourite knife, causing your knuckles to lighten in colour.

“As I’ll ever be.” You remark as the Quinjet door opens and you all walk out, splitting up into different directions.

*

It wasn’t supposed to happen, you weren’t prepared enough as a team for what you encountered inside the building.

You reached the hostages and quickly untied them. They thanked you senselessly whilst Clint remained on guard, keeping a close eye on the door as you helped them to their feet.

“Who are you?” One man speaks up, his voice hoarse as he grips your arms for dear life.

“We’re the Avengers.” You softly tell the man, watching as the fear in his expression lightens, and he starts to laugh maniacally in your face.

Trying to prise yourself from his grasp, his nails dig into your skin. “You made a mistake coming here.” He states, breaking his gaze from you momentarily, giving you a chance to slam your foot into his.

With the man's grip easing, you snap yourself from his embrace and hit him with the butt of your gun. He falls to the ground, and you raise your gun to everyone else in the room.

“Who else is a plant?” You ask, looking at all of the terrified faces staring back at you. “Who else?!” You repeat yourself, adrenaline rushing through you before you fire your gun into the ceiling as they all jump.

Clint whips his head around, evidently shocked having never seen you react this way before. “Y/n,” He speaks up, but you ignore him, keeping your attention fixated on the ‘hostages’ before you.

“No one, Ma’am.” A little girl announces as she releases her mother's hand, stepping toward you. She looks up at you with her bright brown eyes and holds her hand out. “Are you here to save us?” She questions.

Kneeling down in front of the girl, you smile softly, your cool exterior melting. “Yes, and you’re all going to be okay, I promise.” You tell her, breaking your gaze as you look around at everyone else.

“Y/n, now.” Clint states as you rise to your feet, holding your hand out to the little girl who gladly accepts.

“Okay, follow me, you’ll all be safe if you stay close.” You explain to the dozen hostages who huddle together, following behind you and Clint.

“Tony? We have them, there was a plant, tell the others.” Clint speaks through the comms as he walks ahead, his bow at the ready in case anyone else lingers in the corridors.

Glancing over your shoulder, you check to ensure the hostages are still with you. Whilst your head is turned, you hear Clint groan and fall to the ground with a thud.

“Clint?” You rush forward whilst the hostages remain still. Holding your gun up, you turn the corner, catching sight of a man stood with his gun aimed at Clint’s unconscious body. “Corridor seven, ground floor.” You speak up, hoping someone hears you through the comms.

The man before you smirks as his gun is now aimed at you whilst you mirror his actions, not daring to let your hands shake as his words ring through your ears.

“You really think that’s a wise move?” He asks, removing the safety from his gun.

“I’m not one to go down without a fight.” You state, hearing a collection of footsteps echo behind the man as a glint of metal flashes across your eyes.

The man's focus shifts to behind you, but his gun remains trained to you. “Ah, I see we have a friend.” He chuckles and you can feel your heart rate increasing as the little girl stands by your side.

“She has us.” The girl states, standing tall as the hostages emerge and gather behind you.

Sighing under his breath, the man clicks his tongue. “Well, this is sweet and all, but you’re not making it out of here alive.” He scoffs, lowering his gun to the little girl.

Everything plays too quickly for Bucky’s liking as he runs toward the man, his arms outstretched and fists clenched.

Upon watching the man pull back the trigger, you force the little girl back, feeling the impact of the bullet hit your stomach. Another shot rings through your ears, but you’re already down on the ground, curled up.

Bucky steps over the man's body, not caring to step in the blood that pools around his head as he rushes toward you.

“Hey, doll, stay awake for me, okay?” Bucky pleads, brushing your hair out of your face as he glances down, noticing your fingers are coated in crimson. “Sam, get Tony, now!” He yells, picking you up in his arms as both Steve and Natasha appear, taking in the sight before them.

Bucky looks over to Steve, and he doesn’t need to say anything. “Go, we’ll handle it.” Steve nods to Bucky as you hang in his arms, eyes barely open.

Rushing past the hostages who stare with wide eyes, Bucky keeps his on you. “Come on, Y/n,” Bucky mutters as the cool breeze hits his face, feeling you move in his arms and bury your face into his chest.

“I’m cold,” You mumble tiredly, barely able to keep your eyes open as they droop heavily. “just five minutes.”

“No, don’t you dare,” Bucky firmly tells you as the Quinjet comes into view, the sight of worry evident in Wanda’s expression as she meets Bucky halfway, guiding him into the jet.

“What happened?” Wanda asks as Bucky places you down on the ground, reaching for the medical supplies on board with urgency, ripping out various weapons and mechanical items until he finds some form of bandages.

“She tried to save a little girl,” Bucky sighs as Wanda cradles your head, her fingers hovering over your temples as a red glow forms whilst Bucky applies pressure to the wounds, watching as they soak instantly from your blood. “we, we have to go, now!” He yells to Wanda who barely flinches.

“Tony? Can you handle this?” Wanda questions through the comms.

“Just get Y/n back, we’ll sort this out.” Tony responds, trying to hide the fear in his tone for the younger Avenger, one he can’t help but view as a daughter in many respects.

“She wants to be strong,” Wanda whispers, hearing your thoughts as you drift further and further away from consciousness. “but she’s scared. I, I can hear his voice.” Wanda trails off as Bucky tenses up, knowing exactly who she means.

Bucky can feel his heartbreaking as the Quinjet flies through the air at an accelerated rate back to the compound.

“Oh Y/n, you’ve got so much coming for you,” Bucky takes one of your hands in his, gripping it tightly as he focuses on your face, the light disappearing from your complexion. “don’t go, not now, doll.”

*

Lying in your own bed, you remain in a deep sleep whilst Bucky hovers by your bedside. Ever since you were brought back and cleared, he insisted you’d feel more comfortable in your own room.

“Anything?” Wanda speaks up, peering in your doorway as your chest rises and falls rhythmically. Bucky shakes his head in response, aware of Wanda approaching your bed as she perches on the edge, her fingertips dancing over your head.

Wanda quickly pulls her hand away, the red wisps disappearing as she avoids Bucky’s cold gaze. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Wanda mutters, moving your hair out of your face. “but something happened before the mission, something to do with him.” Wanda sighs. “I just, I can’t tell what it was.” She explains as Bucky keeps a straight face, unable to take his eyes off the various bruises now exposed on your skin, the cuts and scars forming alongside them.

“She’s always been agile on missions, even if she’s clumsy.” Bucky breathes out, uncrossing his arms from his chest. “But she’s careful, she’s always careful.” He repeats to himself, wondering why you’d risk yourself like that when it could’ve been avoided.

“I had to,” You mumble, your eyes now beginning to open as you look up to your two friends, forcing your lips upwards. “did I miss much?”

A chuckle escapes Wanda as she looks over to Bucky, seeing the concern in his face refusing to ease. “I’m sure Bucky will fill you in.” Wanda tells you as she touches your hand before heading to the door. “It’s good to see you awake, Y/n/n.” She smiles at you whilst Bucky slowly moves closer to your bed, his legs leaning against the frame.

“So,” You sigh, still feeling your muscles burning beneath the covers on top of you. “is everyone safe?”

Trying to hold back the scoff building, Bucky simply nods.

“Good,” You nod to yourself, a sense of relief crossing your system. “I’m glad it worked out.”

“Worked out?” Bucky snaps, noting your eyes widening as you struggle to sit upright without wincing. “No, don’t try and move,” His voice softens momentarily, forcing you to remain still. “Y/n, you think almost dying is a mission ‘working out', really?” He huffs loudly.

“Look, the hostages are safe, the team holding them was taken care of so yes, Bucky, I do think it worked out.” You bark back, your tone rising.

“God, you’re an idiot sometimes.” Bucky remarks, turning away from you as you look down at your lap.

“Max said that too,” You mumble.

Turning on his heels, Bucky focuses on you closely. “He said what?”

It was no secret Bucky wasn’t the fondest of your now ex-boyfriend, Max. He tolerated him for your sake, not wanting to lose your best friend in the midst of a relationship. But Max was never the most understanding, and this is just another reason Bucky mentally adds to his list of why Max was a lousy boyfriend.

“Forget it,” You brush it off, refusing to meet Bucky’s cold blue eyes. “it was nothing, I went to get the last of my things the other night and, and we had an argument.”

“What did he say to you, Y/n?” Bucky persists as he now sits down on your bed, his hands remaining in his own lap as you play with yours, fidgeting.

“He said I’m too fragile for my own good,” You admit, hearing his bitter words ringing through your head. “that I’m weak, and I shouldn’t even be an Avenger.”

Bucky can feel his blood boiling, the list in his mind becoming mere shreds of paper as he imagines what he’ll do to Max if he sees him again.

“And maybe I am, he said I’m broken goods,” You add, lifting the sheets from your body to reveal the stitching in your skin where the bullet was. “what difference does one more scar make?”

“You don’t believe him, do you doll?” Bucky asks sadly, afraid he already knows the answer.

Your prolonged silence only causes Bucky’s heart to sink further into his chest.

“Y/n,” Bucky speaks up, taking your hand in his. “you’re not broken goods, you’re not made of glass that shatters easily.” He explains, unable to meet your teary gaze. “You’re one of the strongest, most selfless people I’ve ever met, you’re not fragile, doll.” He rubs his thumb over the top of your hand, avoiding the fresh scuffs lacing your knuckles.

“You think so?” You whisper as tears fall down your cheeks before you can stop them.

Now catching your eyes, Bucky smiles softly. “I do, Y/n.” He admits, watching you struggle to shuffle in your bed as you force back a whimper.

Patting the spot beside you, Bucky raises a brow. “Will you stay, Bucky, please?” You whisper, too afraid of your own voice.

“As long as you know you’re worth so much more than him, Y/n, okay?” Bucky asks as he lifts his arm up, wrapping it around you as you curl up into his chest. “You deserve the world, doll.” He mutters, feeling your grip around his waist loosen as your breathing softens. “And I promise to show you someday.”

Bucky brushes his lips across your forehead as light snores leave your lips, unaware of the promise Bucky has made to you and intends to keep it.  

t a g l i s t (thank you for the support!) link in my bio and at the top of this piece to add yourself☺️(if your user isn’t tagged, it’s because nothing comes up sorry!)

@biss-stuff @psychicforest  @lourightm @mywinterwolf   @justsomedreaming @stanlux17 @smokeandnailz @supermoonchildbroski @xrosegoldwolfx @courtneychicken @marvelsangels @supraveng @tommy-lee-81 @smilexcaptainx @fandom-princess-forevermore @sarge-barnes-sir @pleasantlysecretdream @decaffeinated–fangirl @howdyherron @kirby-boo @florencxs @eldahae @handmesomecoffee @hi-my-name-is-riley @dev1lbella @thanossexual @alissaginger @sambucky8 @notbrooklynsblog @nikkixostan @cosmiccaptian @adoreyou976 @sarcasticallywitty15 @multi-fandom-princess07 @16boyfriends-and-me @courtneychicken @mackevanstan80 @torchwoodoctor @pleasantlysecretdream  @yougottalovefandoms @magicalxdaydream @soccer-100000 @tenaciousperfectionunkown @talksoprettyjjx @btsonthedaily @jessyballet @katiaw2 @buckyswildflower  @lucrea @weenersoldierr @katiaw2 @lucrea @amelia-song-pond @bluelakeee @dottirose @emilytheukuleleplayer 

[throwaway-yandere]

🐠 anon here

,,, do you have any references for capo!reader outfit? Or for the shinji meme can I draw them how I imagine them?

(Also I want to draw Alhaitham as Inuyasha and Capo!Reader as Kagome, only because of the fact that if everything goes alright, reader will buy Alhaitham a collar)

Up to interpretation! Honestly, I'm rather garbage at character design (most OCs I personally make are just lil gremlin comfort characters who wear hoodies and pants and they make up that lack of appearance for strange personality quirks lmao–) so I can't say much about references (⁠´⁠；⁠ω⁠；⁠｀⁠)

You don't have to draw this the way I see them!!! In fact I'm already happy that you're interested in drawing them– don't feel obligated to make this fanart ❤️

Notable things about Capo!Reader's appearance includes:

Wearing mostly prussian blue, includes their coat. Their collar seems to have at least 1 or 2 unbuttoned (unless they're in church in which case they're Prim And Proper ™️). Their color scheme is in contrast to La Signora's, so mostly prussian blue and black. Khaenri'ahns and their blue color schemes lmao–

Their favorite coat is blue on the outside, and probably grey/black when inverted on the inside. Reverse Dainsleif cape i guess.

Always has a holster by their hips.

Oftentimes wear a black top hat that Tartaglia bullies them for but they're apparently "a fashion trend in Khaenri'ah" no one in Teyvat knows about lol

Rosalyne gave them black laced opera gloves similar to hers when she recruited them, although after they became a Capo they no longer wear it (kinda awkward to do wear your victim's gift right?)

People's fashion in the 1920s are pretty neat, so you can imagine they have a necktie similar to the one Nanami Kento has if ur feeling wild lol

Can't really give you a perfect picture reference but when in doubt, just look at Dazai hAHAHHA–

Extra details in case final design looks boring:

Wears a fatui insignia badge in their coat, preferably the blue skirmisher one

Add patterns similar to this if it looks too plain hAHAHAHAH–

Their chest coat pocket has a red handkerchief in it, so when they cough blood it isn't very noticeable.

Primogem/star motif. Go nuts. Place those things wherever. (Their eyes are def primo gem shaped)

If you ever decide to have them have a fatui mask, they'd probably refuse to wear a full mask (it'd be disgusting to keep wiping their own blood off of it–). It'd probably be a half mask similar to Joker's from P5, and it'll usually just dangle on their hips cause man, they're trying hard to look friendly, a mask ain't helping them achieve that–

Alhaitham is easy to imagine: just think about black garbage bags and you'll be fine–

Prof Tighnari honestly fits whatever dark academia look you find lmao. Most of the colors he wears here are probably earth colors like brown. Also, can't remove his necktie.

Much like how I can't imagine Prof Tighnari without neckties, I can't imagine Cyno without his straps lololol. @a-dose-of-phitre has drawings of these two, just base it of that lololol the Cyno one is perfect as it is–

Extra: I kinda imagine Cyno wore something similar to this when he used to be a priest lol, though of course with added purple accents

[chefdoeuvre]

Instinct

Jay Halstead

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Fem!Reader

Description: No matter how hard you try to hide it Jay can read you like an open book.

Words: 1,479

Requested: yes by anonymous; So I thought it would be cute if Jay and reader have just started seeing each other secretly and she's acting off and quiet at work and he notices before everyone else please?? Thank you x

Warnings: angst (if you can even call it that), mentions of cancer, fluff as usual.

A/N: I just want my own Jay Halstead. I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors.

—

After leaving Jay's place early that morning you made your way back home. You hadn't initially planned on staying the night, but there was something about being in his arms that made you not want to get up. You pulled up to your building and ran up to your apartment. Hurriedly heading inside you made a beeline for the bathroom and took a quick shower. Once you finished up your shower you pulled on your normal work clothes, which consisted of a plain shirt and jeans. Grabbing your holster and your badge you clipped them onto your jeans. You headed to the kitchen and scrounged for some form of quick breakfast before you would head off to your usual coffee shop.

Just as you began quickly munching on a granola bar your phone began ringing from the couch where you had tossed it when you walked in. The caller ID was your mom, so with furrowed brows, you answered the phone.

"Mom?" You asked.

A sniffle was heard on the other end before she spoke, "hi, sweetie."

"Mom, what's wrong?" At this point, you had started pacing and racked your brain for what possibly could have gone wrong.

"It's your father..." Your mother began, but she trailed off.

"Is he?" You couldn't even say the words out loud.

"No! It's not that, he went to the doctor the other day." She took a deep breath before continuing. "They said he has lung cancer." Your mom quickly explained after realizing where your mind had gone.

"What else?" You questioned in a whisper, holding your tears back to be strong for your mother.

"They caught it early, he's starting chemotherapy soon. Hopefully, he'll beat it since it's in the early stage still." Your mom continued.

"Can I talk to him?" You asked as you chewed on your lip, a bad habit you did whenever you became nervous.

The shuffling from the other end was heard and then your father spoke, "hi, honey." Even with his recent diagnosis, you could hear the smile in his voice, that's how he always was, happy no matter what.

"Hi, daddy." You whispered with a small smile from hearing your father's voice.

"I heard you finally got into Intelligence, I hope Hank is treating my best daughter well." He laughed, even if you had been in the unit for quite a while every time you talked he would tease Voight about treating you well, they had been best friends since they were young.

"Dad, I'm your only daughter and I've already told you, it's going great." You laughed, shaking your head.

"That's good to hear. Now, I don't know what your mother told you but don't worry about me, I'll be back to the same old me soon enough." Your father reassured you, "and shouldn't you be heading to work now?" Your father asked in a teasing tone.

"Alright, dad. And yeah I should, but it's fine one late won't kill my career. I'll just bribe Voight with his favorite coffee order." You joked.

"Bye, sweetheart." Your parents both said before ending the call.

Wiping the stray tears off your face you decided to skip out on going to the coffee shop and would just drink the burnt one they had at work. Taking a deep breath you set off to work, pulling on a coat and pocketing your phone.

Walking into the district you greeted Trudy with a small smile and headed up the stairs to Intelligence. Making your way to your desk Jay looked over to you and sent you a wide smile. In response, you gave him a tight-lipped one back. He furrowed his brows at your behavior, but decided he wouldn't push it and chalked it up to the early morning you had after leaving his apartment to make it on time to work.

The day got off to a quick start with you guys getting a case within an hour of arriving to work. Throughout the entire time, you had been silent and only spoke up to provide important points that the others missed. After uncovering more information Voight began setting up a sting. You were paired up with your usual partner, which just so happened to be Jay. This also was the reason why you had kept your relationship a secret, so much so that not one soul knew besides the two of you.

You were off in a corner pulling on your vest when Jay came up behind you to help.

"Hey, you alright?" Jay whispered, sweeping your hair to one side.

"Yeah, I'm good." You answered shortly, Jay caught on to this because whenever he would ask you a question of some sort you'd always babble on about the little things that made you happy that day.

This was the second thing today that set him off which made him furrow his brows in confusion. You were all smiles when you left this morning and he was racking his brain for anything he might have said to upset you, but came up with nothing.

After strapping on your thigh holster and checking your gun you hopped into Jay's truck and waiting for him. You looked down at your jeans and picked at the hole by your knee from when you tackled a perp. The sound of a door opening made you lift your head and you were met with concerned blue eyes. You did your best to give the man a small reassuring smile before directing your attention back to your lap.

Tilting his head like a confused puppy Jay eyed your movements carefully. Whatever was wrong had bothered you so much that it made you find your shoes the most interesting things in the world at the moment. Giving you one last glance Jay turned the key and started the car.

You guys quickly headed in and were out within minutes. Apparently, the offenders were in way over their heads and dropped everything after Intelligence busted into the warehouse. Dragging the last person out you handed him off to an officer and beelined to Jay's truck. Hopping in you let out a deep breath and pulled your hair out of the tight ponytail it was in. You leaned your head back before shutting your eyes. You didn't hear Jay get in and he examined your expression before announcing his presence.

"Y/N?" Jay spoke up.

Your eyes shot open and you spun around in your seat to face your boyfriend. Your eyes were wide at the sudden sound, you hadn't even realized he entered the car.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Jay asked, placing a gentle hand on your arm.

You closed your eyes and leaned forward, letting your head fall onto Jay's shoulder. Instinctively his hand went to your hair and raked through it. In this moment you were thankful for the tinted windows that hid the two of you from plain sight and the fact Jay had parked farther away.

"No, I'm not." You murmured quietly that Jay barely heard it.

"You wanna talk about it?" Jay asked pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

"I'll tell you about it later." You shook your head.

Later had come and now you sat on Jay's couch bundled up in a blanket while a Blackhawks game played on the television. Jay was in his room pulling out your favorite hoodie of his. Walking out he handed you the article of clothing.

"What's this?" You asked sitting up.

"Your favorite hoodie of mine." Jay shrugged nonchalantly as he took a seat beside you.

You thanked him with a small smile and he gave you a soft one in return. Once you had pulled on his hoodie, which was big and baggy on you, he wrapped his arm around your shoulders. He pulled you into his side and rubbed up and down your arms.

"My ears are open for whenever you're ready." Jay reassured you.

He had his fair share of communication problems when it came to sharing his feelings so he understood if you didn't want to talk about it just yet.

"It's my dad." You began with a whisper. Jay only nodded for you to continue.

"He got diagnosed with cancer, they called me this morning." Jay squeezed your shoulders as he hugged you tightly.

"Thanks." You said after a few moments of silence.

"For what?" Jay questioned.

"I don't know, for noticing?" You said, but it was phrased more like a question.

"I know you better than you think." Jay mused placing a kiss on the top of your head.

You let out a small laugh and wrapped your arms around Jay's waist tightly. The two of you stayed in that position the majority of the night until he had to practically carry to bed once you dozed off after the game ended.

[biskael]

LITTLE CHARACTER THINGS

just a fun little character game. fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by. repost & tag away !

tagged by: @za-baransu thank you !

tagging : anyone who wishes to do this .

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS:

001. arrogance .

002. seriousness .

003. self-confidence .

004. pride.

005. dedication .

VOICE / GREETINGS / SPEECH PATTERNS :

001. possesses a noticeable german accent . so , his Ws become Vs , his Vs become Fs , etc . a region-specific dialect is to be determined , personally .

002. his specific patterns are particular . his vocabulary seems to be quite formal . but , i do personally believe his delivery can be interpreted as casual .

003. has a very loud and commanding voice . also , occasionally rolls his Rs , a trait both in english and japanese ! thank you !

COLORS:

001. crimson / scarlet . namely in the form of his glasses . lends an almost uncanny look to his appearance, or an intimidating one , in the right light .

002. white . as in his uniform .

003. silver . with strong blue undertones . the silver cage . the color of manipulated reishi .

004. green . representative of forests dark and looming . a place he had spent much time in , when outside of his military duties .

005. black . the supposed color of his aura . interpreted as the conqueror . intense . harsh . the absence of light .

SCENTS:

001. leather , being deeply polished and cared for . the tanned hide of a kill .

002. blood , but not his own . blood of man , blood of monsters .

003. sweat , something he washes away daily . of course , his duties are physical , and exercise is a hobby . it's bound to happen .

004. metal , gunpowder , and the iron scent that comes off of rust . hot smoke . cold steel . there is something menacing about it .

005. pine , as forests deep and dark . a man's cologne . from the woods of the hunt . something natural .

CLOTHING:

001. his wandenreich uniform is a slightly altered variation on the standard . garnered with a thick , dark belt , leather heeled boots & a white mantle . it's the little details that mark him as an important , commanding figure . stupid little hat included .

002. favors leather & fur , all sourced from his hunts or purchased and eventually tanned himself . has more than one fur coat . owns a fur-lined red and white cloak for more formal wandenreich ceremonies . it is worn on top of his regular uniform ( minus the mantle ) , and paired with two decorative , red-handled sabers . all of his black-colored accessories he wears are leather .

003. outside of his uniform , quilge's fashion varies . usually , though , he wears fancier , dandy-types of clothing . being from a noble family historically , quilge's family could afford such . even in adulthood , he thusly dresses rather elegantly . colors and styles vary , of course , but he could also be described as having a more eccentric taste , as well .

004. whatever THIS is . absolutely post-war looks .

005. giant platform boots with a big , ol' heel . or , even just boots with heel , in general . click click click click . that's all .

OBJECTS:

001. his military saber & personal sword , der freischütz .

002. the sternritter medallion , which houses the captured spirit of zangetsu . timeline dependent , as per my plot with eli's ichigo . :)

003. his belt is modified to holster and reinforced various tools / objects . namely smaller in nature , such as his hunter's horn , a number of knives , rope , etc .

004. a small , pocket-sized journal . has larger ones he keeps inside of his personal chambers at silbern . but , quilge enjoys what can be kept on his person , as he travels and hunts often . he journals when he hunts , as it helps him sort his thoughts when he's alone . during his deployment to hueco mundo , he wrote about it . he keeps notes about his fellow sternritter . he keeps notes about his hunts , his prey , even thinks of publishing hunting guides based on this information . he will draw the anatomy and bodies of monsters he's hunted . quilge is a rather talented artist in a technical sense .

005. owns a vast number of weapons from numerous eras and cultures . a personal collection . some of it is brought to silbern . most of it is at his ancestral home , a jagdschloss in the german forests . quilge personally favors bladed weapons , but knows how to use a variety of guns , as well as other types of weapons .

VICES / BAD HABITS: 

001. sadism . of any kind . quilge is a man made by his cruelty . it is flesh and bone real inside of him . in a particular reply , he had said that it is also his "food and drink." that might be an exaggeration , in that context , but someone like quilge , it feels like he was made to make others suffer .

002. zealotry . quilge , very obviously , has a deep faith in yhwach , his beliefs and his goals . one core belief he holds is that yhwach will succeed in the merging of realms , and that everyone quilge knows will thusly be reborn in this new world . and he screams about it every time he gets the chance to . of course .

003. the culling of the weak . sure . let's consider his low tolerance for weakness and fear a bit of a vice . it ends in killing , and that's always a vice for him . he will make plenty of excuses to be absolutely barbaric to even his own men .

004. a competitive attitude . quilge always never really liked his siblings . he easily deemed himself better than them . an absolute cain instinct . while not always manifesting in bloodshed, however, his competitiveness still drives in numerous ways . with his comrades , it can be more lighthearted . with his enemies , it will be deadly . he can AND WILL sit atop a pile of corpses when he's finished .

005. possessiveness , and an ultimate desire for control . the conqueror . the jailer . the butcher . the hunter .

BODY LANGUAGE:

001. a very straight posture when standing . extremely practiced and perfected . it's almost intimidating .

002. conversely , there's times when quilge is sitting down , and his posture can be more of a wicked slouch . he does this purposely . almost always crosses his legs with sitting , as well . hand on his chin or a carved cheek .

003. the slight gesturing with his hands . pointing , holding an open hand , waving his finger back and forth teasingly . sometimes , however , quilge's gestures are far more theatric and dramatic , taking up a lot of his space around him . it depends on his mood .

004. quilge has deep , widened smiles . normally , they are quite dark and indulgent . he smiles easily , and it's usually associated with his cruelty .

005. this is a special aspect for my ship partner @guadanya , but quilge and nnoitra share specific whistles and motions with each other . it is practiced between them , and only something they share . should they be separated or apart , visuals and auditory cues between them could be vital . this was , obviously , quilge's idea .

AESTHETICS:

001. the hunt . aside from torture , the hunt is his favorite . his sacred gathering . his holy work .

002. torture devices . divine instruments for the angel of torture .

003. chains , hooks , rope , riding crops . a double meaning for a man like him . ties directly into his work & his play .

004. german folklore / german fairytales . stories that were passed on from his parents to him , and take some presence in post-war . upon returning to germany , quilge shares some of these stories with his husband . his reishi sword is also named for a german folklore story , as well .

005. angels . views himself as one of god's angels . he deems what he does "holy work," and will often claim that he is "tormenting the wicked" by what he does . of course , given his vollständig's appearance & his zealous mind , it's not too surprising that he thinks so highly of himself .

SONGS:

001. ich tu dir weh // rammstein .

002. leather terror // carpenter brut .

003. prelude to das rheingold // wagner .

004. human trophy collectors // filmmaker .

005. bait and switch // KMFDM .

[clericofshadows]

wip wednesday!

I'm nearly done with my next fic, so here's the beginning of it, which I quite enjoyed exploring.

if you see this and want to share something, tag me ;)

Regis ran his hand down his coat, feeling for the hidden pocket where his N7 Eagle laid inside.  “Ready to get some answers?” He said, shouldering his bag.

Zaeed nodded, pulling out his Talon from his bag, connecting it to an empty holster on his belt.  “Sure, but are you ready for whatever you’re going to hear?”

Regis pulled a face.  “I have to be.  I need to be.”

“You know this already, but don’t let it show.”

He appreciated the concern, despite already knowing how to handle Aria.  Regis wasn’t sure what he thought about her.  Did he like her?  No.  He nearly blasted her head off when she suggested that she could find him a nice man to help him loosen up.

She’s a valuable resource and nothing more to him.  He wouldn’t shed any tears if something happened to her, but better the enemy you know than the one you don’t.  

Chances are she feels the same way about him.  He’s perfectly okay with that.   “I do, but thanks.” Regis nodded, throwing his sling bag over his body.  

With one last look at the apartment, they left and locked the door, ready for when whoever else in their family needs a safe and accessible place to recharge and regroup.

Afterlife wasn’t far from the apartment, and soon they both walked past the growing line, heading inside without a second glance at the bouncer.  The pounding music filled the air, normally a backdrop Regis loved.

Now it’s merely the soundtrack to a conversation that could easily go south.

They approached her couch, the guards parting at the sight of Regis and Zaeed.

She crossed her legs, leaning into the couch with barely a glance.  “Meeting up with an Alliance soldier.  You’ve been productive.”

“Nothing misses your gaze?” Regis asked, staying standing.

“You didn’t deny it.”

“Why would we?” Zaeed interjected.  “You know what happened.  No need to challenge it.”

“Which means I might have an idea why you are here.” She dismissed the guards around her with a wave.  “Ask.”

“Liara T’Soni met up with you regarding my body, correct?” Regis asked point blank, keeping his tone neutral.

Aria’s face slowly broke out into a smirk.  “She did.  Did Vik tell you about what little they knew?  Shame they didn’t take up my offer.  Omega misses them.”

If they weren’t surrounded by guards and loyalists, Regis would take her head off for the comment about Vik alone. 

But to have that direct confirmation that T’Soni was the one who brought him back, who had the means to let him rest and give his family closure, to possibly get his goddamn ring back…  

Regis found himself nearly consumed with anger.

“They don’t miss you,” Regis said, not missing a beat. She didn’t react.  “So, it’s true then that she was working with Cerberus in order to get my body?  Why was it even on Omega in the first place?”

Her expression darkened. “Blue Suns were going to exchange it with the Shadow Broker to give it to the Collectors.”

The Collectors wanted his body?  Why?  Nothing about this made any sense.  Were they interested in his visions?  So much about the Collectors were unknowns, and yet here they were kidnapping human colonies for some purpose.

“It sounds like you weren’t too happy about that,” Regis observed.  “Not too happy about Collectors involved on your station?”

“No one’s happy about Collectors,” she replied.  “But yes, you could say that.  Did a major favor for me clearing out most of the trash when dealing with Archangel.”

“In other words, the idiots dumb enough to sign up for that mess of an operation,” Zaeed said.  “Wasn’t sad to see it happen.  Org has gone to shit since I left.”

“Vido is still at large,” she commented, turning to face Zaeed, who looked none too pleased at the mention of his name.  “Perhaps one day I’ll see new leadership.  Anything else?  I think you’ve learned everything you wanted to know.”

He did, not that he was particularly happy about any of it, knowing how he has all the cards to approach Lawson with what he knows.

An unpleasant conversation was waiting for both of them.

“I think we’ve covered everything,” Regis said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” she said, stopping both of them in their tracks.  “I’m going to ask you something in return: What was your relationship with T’Soni?”

Despite his growing anger, Regis had to hold back a snort.  “Why do you care?”

“I don’t, but I am curious as to why she went to all these lengths to bring you back when you obviously find it offensive that she did it.”

“I rescued her last, refused any sort of meld to gain information, and tried to get her off my ship as I saw her as a liability.  I believe she took what was mine, and I’m going to get it back,” Regis replied, staring her down with his glowing eyes.

“She’s in Illium,” she offered.  “If you’re so hell-bent on confronting her.”

Regis nodded, already aware of her location but thankful she told him.  “Are we done here?”

“We are,” she replied, sitting back down.  “Get rid of the Collectors.  They are a stain on this galaxy.”  The guards returned.  She made herself comfortable back on the couch, her stance loose and relaxed even under Regis’s scrutiny.  “I’ll be happy when we stop crossing paths, Shepard.”

“I share the same sentiment,” he replied, turning his back on her.  Zaeed followed a step behind him.  “You likely won’t see me again once I’m back with the Alliance.”

“And I look forward to it.”

Regis walked down the stairs and quickly made his way out of the bar, the tails of his trenchcoat flowing behind him.  He stopped once they were at the entrance to their dock, leaning against the wall by the doorway.

“What now?” Zaeed asked, giving him a concerned look. 

“Going to confront Lawson because I want more answers from her.  She lied to me about not knowing who had my body, who probably has my fucking dogtags,” Regis muttered, shaking his head and taking a deep breath, trying to regain his composure.  “I’m not sure who I hate more. “

“What are you more angry about?  Being brought to Cerberus by her or being revived by them?” Zaeed asked, his voice soft despite his usual gravel.

Regis frowned, his thoughts swirling with anger, betrayal, and a sense of loss.  “She had the means to inform the most important people in my life that my body was found at the bare fucking minimum.  If I didn’t have you, I may not have ever answered any call or reached out to anyone I cared about.  And who knows what would’ve happened between Kaidan and I, or the Alliance and I…” 

He wasn’t sure if Kaidan would have forgiven him for working with Cerberus, if he found out in the midst of his posting…

“But you do have me, and I’m here however you need me,” Zaeed replied, leaning in close.  Regis closed the distance between them, more free and open with his affection now that he met up with Kaidan, that they were able to clear the air and open the possibility for more.  That their triad can and will continue one day.

Zaeed pushed him up against the wall, the same spot where Regis first saw him on Omega, threatening a target. The feeling of the cold, hard panel sent a shiver down Regis's spine, heightening the intensity of the moment. Regis let out a pleased sound, letting Zaeed take over despite where they were, submitting to his advances.

Someone cleared their throat a short distance from them.  “I wouldn’t say this is the best time and place, Commander.”   

“And why is it that you care, Lawson?” Regis asked with a hard glare, his earlier desire replaced by irritation at the intrusion.  She stood with an arched eyebrow, a hint of curiosity in her expression. She folded her arms across her chest, seemingly unfazed by the situation, her confidence unshaken.

Changed out of her normal Cerberus dress “whites,” she wore a long coat belted around her body with a pair of black pants and boots, a clean and pristine look that suited her well.  

Out of all the fucking people to interrupt… but perhaps this was a good opportunity to go ahead and get that damn conversation out of the way. 

Zaeed slowly pulled away, tilting his head to the side as if to ask if Regis was going to go ahead and deal with what he learned from Aria.  Regis nodded, answering the silent question.

“I assumed you wouldn’t want the crew to gossip about your love life,” she replied, keeping her expression neutral.  “Or perhaps even beyond that.  Word travels fast about you.”

Regis wouldn’t have called it concern, the barb at the end seeming to signify she was talking about the Alliance being aware of him… and all his connections there. As if she was baiting him, dangling the knowledge that she knew about his relationship with Kaidan.  And what that could mean if he were to learn of this "affair."

“You’re right.  Word does travel fast about me.  Shame that it took me a while to learn who exactly handled my body here on this fucking station,” Regis said, watching her eyes widen in recognition.  The truth hung in the air between them.

She stepped back.  The gravity well stirred.   “I knew your word was full of shit, but I never expected this,” he continued, staying against the wall.  “We are going to have a long talk.”