#there’s a picture in my phone of him that makes it UNCANNY

[demonnstein]

Pls stop calling senshi sexy he looks like my biological father and I don’t know how much more of this I can take actually.

[incognit0slut]

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3| PART 4

Behind Closed Doors 4

Your frustration over his broken promise melts away as soon as he calls, and you find yourself unexpectedly drawn to his voice, more than you anticipated.

Warnings: (18+, MDNI) Phone sex, mutual (and guided) masturbation, dirty talk ~4.7k words

A/n: this is just me wishing he was on quinn😔 anyway enjoy part 4, this mini series is not dead (i don’t even know how long it will be but let’s just celebrate that I’m finally updating)

All men do is lie, you thought as you flopped onto your bed.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely his fault—but you weren’t in the mood to be reasonable. You remembered that car ride vividly. He had promised you more time together, a moment to finally be alone. Instead, what did you get? A new case, then another, and amidst all the chaos and dodging bullets (literally and metaphorically), you two somehow managed to drift apart.

The past few weeks had been the busiest since you started working at the BAU, and that was saying a lot, considering there was never really a moment of peace when you worked for the government. But this time was different, it seemed even more chaotic than usual. Every time you thought of bringing up the conversation with him—or maybe sneak in a little make-out session—something urgent would come up. 

There was never the right time, or the right moment. It felt as if the universe had other plans for you, and none of them involved the two of you getting a moment alone. And before you knew it, you were caught in this maddening cycle of missed opportunities, and the worst thing was, you were sexually frustrated.

This time, you had no one else to blame but him. Ever since he came into the picture, your carefully maintained self-control had started to slip, and now, despite your best efforts, you couldn’t ignore the growing need between your legs. It was aching, throbbing, and even the thought of him was making you hot and restless.

How did he manage to do that? He wasn’t even trying. There was nothing overtly seductive in the way he moved or spoke, and yet every glance, every accidental touch, seemed to affect you. Spencer. Just his name made your breath hitch, your body betraying you. You weren’t proud to admit this, but the mere thought of his fingers brushing your skin had you feeling that first rush of arousal slipping into your panties.

You huffed, considering digging out your pink silicone toy hidden somewhere in your drawer. And while you were contemplating this, knowing it had been a while since you last used it because nothing could compare to the feeling of his touch now, your phone on the bedside table rang.

Maybe the universe was really testing you, because his name flashed across the screen and it took a lot of self-control for you not to pick up on the first ring and demand him to fuck you right there and then, which sounded too crass when you weren’t in the middle of straddling his lap like the last time. So instead, you decided to wait until the sixth ring before you answered with a curt, “Hey.”

There was a pause, then a sigh. “You’re mad at me.”

Could he tell? Of course, he could. He always had an uncanny ability to read you, even over the phone. “Mad? Why would I be mad?”

“I can almost see you rolling your eyes.”

“I never roll my eyes,” you shot back.

“You rolled your eyes last week when Luke tried to tell us that his dog could sniff out bodies better than our trained ones.”

You suppressed a smile, surprised that he even noticed you giving Luke a once-over at that particular moment. “That was because his dog chases its tail more than it chases leads.”

"And I'm not worthy of an eye roll?"

“Honestly, you deserve more than an eye roll,” you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

"So you are mad,” he stated, growing quiet for a while. “I’m sorry.”

And now you felt bad. You ran a hand through your hair, trying to clear your thoughts. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make me feel any less better.”

You felt a pang of guilt as you stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t exactly fair to blame him. Serial killers, unfortunately, didn’t come with a schedule, and now Spencer was already on his leave. You recalled the excitement in his voice when he told you about the seminars Emily had arranged for him to teach. He had spoken with an enthusiasm you hadn’t heard in a long time, his eyes practically lighting up every time he mentioned it.

How could you be upset about that?

"I'm not... mad.”

There was a slight teasing note in his voice as he replied, "Just annoyed then?"

You held back a smile. "Maybe a little."

“Anything I can do to help with that?” His voice softened through the phone. “Is there any way I can make it up to you?”

Your thoughts immediately went to the sticky situation between your legs, and you felt a flush of embarrassment. Technically, he could help with that. But could you say that? Should you? 

"I don’t know, depends on what you have in mind,” you replied, trying to steer your mind away from the direction it was heading. There was a pause, a silence that hung in the air as he carefully considered his next words.

"I could… start by telling you how much I miss you?”

Now that, you didn’t expect. Your heart fluttered wildly in your chest. Spencer had never really acknowledged his feelings with words when his actions spoke volumes, but hearing him say it out loud made the emotions between you feel undeniably real. It was as if his words shattered whatever platonic friendship the two of you had built over the past years.

Although you knew your friendship had fundamentally changed the moment he had you pinned on the desk that fine afternoon, it didn’t stop you from questioning about where you truly stood.

"You miss the idea of me," you corrected him, unable to resist yourself.

“You know that’s not true,” he replied gently.

“Do I?”

“Yes, you know me better than that,” he insisted. “You’re a great profiler, you can tell if I’m not being honest.”

A small smile tugged at the corners of your mouth, despite trying to stay mad at him. "You hate being profiled.”

"That was before I realized how useful your skills are in deciphering my feelings.”

“You know I’d rather you tell me how you feel.”

“I did, I miss you, and you chose not to believe me.”

Your cheeks actually ached from smiling too much. You couldn’t help but feel a warm, tingling sensation spread through you. “Fine,” you sighed, finally giving in. “I believe you.”

“And?”

You rolled onto your side. “And what?”

“Do you not miss my absence at work?”

“Well…”

“Well?” He prompted.

Now how could you tell him you missed more than just his presence? How could you admit that you missed the way he made you feel, the way his breath felt hot against your skin, without sounding obvious or too needy? Because you missed everything about him. His hands, his lips, his tongue—oh dear god, his tongue.

Spencer suddenly called out your name, and you forced yourself to focus, feeling your heartbeat quicken as you cleared your throat.

“Yes, I—I miss you,” you finally admitted.

There was a pause, then his voice came through, lighter, teasing. “Why do you sound like that?”

“…like what?”

“Like you’re out of breath.”

You gripped the sheets tightly, the fabric bunching under your fingers. How could you even begin to explain this to him now that he was onto you? You felt like you were on the verge of a full-blown emotional meltdown. God, if he knew how many times you’d replayed every kiss, every touch, in your mind, he’d never let you live it down.

It was almost laughable, really. Here you were, trying to keep it together, and failing miserably. “It’s just… I really, really miss you.”

“You really miss me? Are you trying to say something?”

You hesitated, your mind scrambling for the right words without revealing too much. “No…?”

“Mhm,” he replied, clearly unconvinced. “You’re not telling me everything.”

You gripped the phone tighter. “I’m just saying... It's hard without you here. You know, in every way.”

“In every way?”

You squeezed your eyes shut, feeling both embarrassed and mortified. “I just... I miss how you make me feel. Physically.”

“Physically?” he pressed. “Can you elaborate?”

“I’m... you know, I’ve been... missing certain things. Certain... activities.”

“Certain activities,” he repeated your words once again. It was then that you realized he was teasing you, clearly enjoying your discomfort a little too much. “You mean like... talking?”

“No. More like... the other stuff we do when we’re alone.”

"I don't understand."

At that point, your embarrassment was gnawing at you. You wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. “God, Spencer, don’t make me say it,” you groaned, burying your face in your pillow.

“Come on, I need a little more than that.” He sounded both amused and curious. “I’m just making sure I understand you right.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” you muttered into the pillow, your voice muffled but still clear enough for him to hear.

“Actually, I don’t think I do. You could be missing so many things, you have to help me out here.”

You turned your head to the side, exasperation coloring your tone. “Spencer…”

"Yes?" he responded innocently.

"You’re really going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

"I find precise communication to be very important.”

You let out a groan, feeling the last of your restraint crumble. “Alright! Fine!” you snapped. “I’m horny, okay? And it’s all your fault!”

His laughter rang through the phone, and you could almost see the grin spreading across his face. “My fault?"

"Yes! I feel like a deprived, horny teenager here, and I just…”

You trailed off, hardly believing you had actually said that out loud. The realization hit you like a wave, and for a moment, you wished you could take it back. There was a pause that seemed to stretch on forever and you wondered if you had gone too far.

He finally broke the silence, breathing out your name in a way that made your skin tingle. "You could've told me from the start."

You could, but you’d rather not.

"I didn't want to sound desperate."

"You can be desperate with me,” he said softly. “Just say the word and I’ll give you anything you want.”

If there was one thing Spencer was good at, it was getting under your skin. He really shouldn’t be saying those words, not now, not when it was making you crave him even more. You swallowed, feeling a tightness in your chest, a knot in your stomach. The part of you that always played it safe wanted to retract, to laugh it off as a joke. But then there was that other part, the part that craved his attention, the part that was tired of holding back.

“Tell me, what do you want now?”

You took a deep breath and laid on your back, the words catching in your throat. You felt your pulse quicken.

“I want… you.”

“Tell me how you want me.”

Your fingers trailed over the sheets, your touch light as you imagined it was him beneath your fingertips. “Spencer…”

“Come on,” he pressed. “Tell me.”

You paused, your heart pounding in your chest. You could almost imagine him right in front of you, staring at you with those beautiful brown eyes that always managed to make you melt, coaxing words from you that you barely dared to think, let alone speak.

Just say it. He's waiting. He wants to hear it.

Your hand began to move.

“I… I want your hands on me.”

“Where do you want my hands?”

“Everywhere,” you whispered, your fingers grazing your body as if they were his. You closed your eyes.

“Everywhere?”

You found yourself nodding even though he couldn’t see you.

“On my hips…”

Your hand danced across your hips.

“My stomach…”

Your palm slipped under your shirt, moving slowly up your abdomen, feeling the warmth of your own touch and wishing it was his.

“Between my thighs…”

You paused at the hem of your panties, the only barrier beneath your shirt, hesitating as a flush of warmth spread through you. The line was silent for a moment, save for the sound of his breathing—a soft, heavy rhythm that matched the pounding of your own heart.

“Where else do you want me?”

Your fingers dipped inside the fabric. “I want you lower…”

“Tell me exactly where.”

“Where I’m most sensitive,” you confessed, the words slipping out before you could stop them.  Your thighs instinctively squeezed together, hips rolling gently as your free hand began to drift south. “Spencer… please…”

“Are you touching yourself?”

“I…”

“Are you?”

“No…”

“Do you want to touch yourself?”

You licked your lips, your breath coming faster. “Maybe.”

“Then do it, no one’s stopping you.”

You hesitated, the reality of the situation sinking in. You couldn’t believe this was happening, that you were having this conversation with him. "This feels so naughty.”

"Naughty can be nice, though, right?" he assured you. "Don't think about it too much. It’s just you and me.”

There really was something about his voice, the way it effortlessly wrapped around you—smooth, coaxing, almost hypnotic. Despite the hesitation that tugged at your mind, your hand began to move lower, and your legs parting involuntarily. A soft gasp escaped your lips when your hand flew right to your pussy, fingers quickly tracing the length of your folds. You were already wet, and you began to spread your arousal towards your clit.

“Spencer…” you whined, feeling the sudden rush of sensations.

“Keep going,” he urged. “Tell me what you feel.”

You closed your eyes. “It feels… good…”

“Describe it to me.”

You took a shaky breath, trying to find the words through the haze of pleasure. “It’s warm and wet… and…”

And you wished he was the one touching you.

You let your mind drift to your fantasy. You imagined it was his fingers circling your clit. You imagined his lips against yours, the way they would move together. You imagined him whispering these words right in front of you, his eyes locked on yours as you writhed beneath him. The fantasy felt so vivid that for a moment, you could almost feel his weight pressing down on you, his presence enveloping you completely.

Your imagination urged you to move faster, but you felt limited by the fabric in the way. You called out his name. “Can I… can I take my, um, underwear off?”

You could almost hear the smile in his voice as he replied, “Of course you can.”

You put your phone down, and with trembling fingers, you slid the fabric down your legs. You discarded them quickly and turned the call to speaker before you settled back on the bed. Your hand returned to your body, fingers brushing over your sensitive skin. You parted your legs even wider, and as your fingers found their rhythm, a moan escaped you.

“Better?”

You sighed in relief as you continued to rub your clit. “So much better.”

“Keep it slow, okay? We don’t want to rush.”

His voice was low and soothing, and you couldn’t believe how just by his voice he had gotten you so worked up.

“Now press a little harder.” You complied, applying a bit more pressure on your clit. "Right there. Do you feel that?"

"Yes," you gasped, your back slightly arching off the bed.

“I wish I could see you right now," he murmured. “I'd kiss you where you're touching.”

You let your imagination take over. You pictured him with his head right between your thighs, his eyes locked on yours with those intense, pretty eyes. You imagined his mouth moving over your clit, sucking gently while his fingers explored between your folds. The thought was so vivid, so real, that you could almost feel his warm breath against your skin.

The mental image of him looking up at you was almost too much to bear. “Spencer…”

"Keep going. Are your fingers wet?" You could simply moan back a reply, not trusting your own voice. “Now slowly slide in one. Can you do that for me?”

You did as he said, sliding a finger into your wetness. You could feel how tight you were, the slick warmth of your arousal enveloping your skin. You looked down between your legs and watched as you pleased yourself. It wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar sight. You had done this countless times before, but never with the voice of a man guiding you, especially Spencer—the last person you’d imagine doing this with.

Yet look at how much effect he had on you.

"You're quiet," his voice suddenly came through. "Are you still with me?"

"Yes," you managed to whisper. "It's just... a lot."

"In a good way, I hope?"

“Very good,” you assured him.

You could practically picture the corner of his lips twitching into a proud smile. “Good,” he recited. “Now try adding another finger.”

You couldn't help a moan escaping your lips as you pushed in your middle finger, the sound louder than you intended.

"How does that feel?"

"Full," you breathed out, adjusting to the sensation.

“Yeah? I bet you’re so tight.”

You were, awfully so. Your walls clenched around your fingers, almost swallowing them as you started to move them in a steady rhythm. The pleasure built in your lower stomach, a warm, coiling tension that made you desperate for more. You needed his voice, you craved his guidance, even from afar.

“Spence…” you whined. “Keep talking, please.”

“You want me to describe how I’d touch you if I were there?”

You moaned in response, the sound escaping your lips involuntarily, urging him to continue.

“If I were there,” he began, his voice low, “I’d start by kissing you slowly.”

You could almost feel it, his lips on yours, his tongue probing inside your mouth.

“I’d move lower,” he continued. “Kiss your neck, your collarbone… while my fingers would move along your hips, your thighs, getting closer and closer to where you need me most.”

You whimpered, your fingers moving faster as you followed his vivid description, imagining his touch guiding you.

“I’d tease you, brush my fingers right at your entrance,” he whispered. “Then, I’d slip them inside you, just like you’re doing now.”

Your breaths came in short gasps.

“I’d spread your legs wide,” he continued again, and you heard a faint rustling noise in the background. “I’d move my fingers in… and… out...”

Your legs fell further apart.

“I’d curl my fingers the same way I did that day,” he went on. “Do you remember?”

How could you not? It never truly left your mind. You could picture that day clearly, the feeling of his fingers and mouth working on your sensitive spot seemed to linger in your memory.

“I’d do the same thing that you like,” he proceeded, and you focused on his voice. “I’d lean in close… licking you… sucking you.”

You moaned loudly as the image of his mouth on your clit flashed through your mind. You could almost feel the way he would sloppily lap at you, drinking in every drop of your arousal with each eager flick of his tongue.

“Go faster for me,” he urged. “I-I want to hear how wet you are.”

You followed his words, and the slick sounds of your arousal filled the quiet around you as you imagined him there, his fingers replacing yours. You could hear more noise through the line, the subtle rustle of clothes moving, the faint sound of his breathing growing heavier before he let out a low grunt.

“You make the prettiest sounds,” he breathed out. “Now add another finger.”

Your eyes narrowed into a frown, trying to slip a third finger in but the stretch was too intense for you to continue. “I-I can’t.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” he soothed. “Just take it slow. Try to relax.”

You took a deep breath, trying to follow his instructions. You slowly eased in another finger, feeling the awkward stretch but the initial discomfort quickly faded into a deeper pleasure, and you moaned softly.

“Oh, fuck.”

“There you go,” he encouraged. “Feel that? Feel how full you are?”

You hummed a reply.

“That’s how I want you to feel when I’m finally inside you.”

A whine left your lips. In your head, you saw him, his body poised above yours, his cock sliding smoothly into you. You imagined the slick, rhythmic motion, the way each thrust would fill you, stretching you, overwhelming you. You cried out a filthy moan at the thought, unabashed and desperate, as you began to pump your fingers inside your cunt.

“Push deeper for me… I know you can take it.”

You gasped, pushing your fingers as deep as they could go. “I can’t… I need… oh…”

“I know, I know,” he whispered. “You need more. You need me inside you, don’t you?”

“Spencer, please…” you begged, your voice breaking into desperate, choked sobs.

“You want that? You want to feel me stretch you?”

“Yes, yes…” you managed to moan out, your movements became more desperate.

“God, you’d be so tight around me… I’d have your legs spread wide so I… I-I could see how perfect you’d take me.”

You could almost feel his hands on your hips, his body pressing against yours, filling you completely. Your fingers moved frantically, your breaths coming in short, ragged gasps as you felt the tension building to an unbearable peak.

“You’d pull me closer, wouldn’t you? You’d ask for more, like you always do, and I’d give it to you,” he promised. “I’d give it to you so hard… s-so deep…”

And that was when you heard it—the unmistakable sound of wetness, like skin sliding over slick, damp skin. The sound was filthy, making your pulse race as you wondered what he might be doing on the other end of the line. Your voice trembled as you slowly asked him, “Spence, are you…?”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end before he let out a soft, almost sheepish laugh, as if you had caught him red-handed. “I… yeah,” he admitted, his voice breathless and strained. "Do you know how hard it is not to when listening to your voice?"

Your fingers subconsciously quickened at his confession, their movements becoming more urgent as you imagined him laying on his own bed, hand wrapped around his cock. You bit your lip to stifle your moans as you whispered, “Tell me what you’re doing.”

His breathing grew ragged, his words coming in clipped bursts. “I’m… I’m touching myself…”

You tried to focus on his voice, but the sound of his sloppy strokes began to echo louder. “Tell me more.”

“I’m… I’m rubbing… my fingers over the head,” he gasped, and you curled your fingers deeper, using your palm to grind against your clit. The way he sounded so lost in his pleasure, unable to hold back, had you imagining him stroking himself. You pictured yourself doing it for him, remembering how it felt that day when you had his cock in your hand—the weight, the warmth, the way he looked at you through intense eyes.

Your breathing grew heavier, louder, and his voice cracked with a strained moan as he whispered, “Can you lower your phone?”

You fumbled with the device, bringing it closer to where your fingers worked tirelessly between your legs. “Like this?”

“God, yes,” he groaned, the sound of his strokes growing faster and more urgent. “You sound so perfect.”

You let out a soft cry, your fingers thrusting in and out of your cunt frantically as you imagined him watching you, listening to every sound you made. The wet, slick noises filled the room, so intense and filthy. You looked down to see your juices spilling over your fingers, soaking the sheets beneath you. The sheer sound of it was enough to drive him crazy.

“I—f-faster, please,” he panted into the phone. “I need you to go faster.”

Your eyes widened for a moment as the desperate plea slipped from his lips. But you didn’t have the mental space to think about it. Your focus was solely on reaching your release as you ultimately sped up your pace. Your body began to tighten up, feeling so much pressure and pleasure building up every time your fingertips hit that deep spot inside you.

"Oh—fuck!” You exhaled sharply as the familiar sensation took over you. “I’m cumming I’m cumming I’m cumming—”

With a cry that was both a sob and a shout, your pussy fluttered around your fingers. Your orgasm ripped through you without warning, sending shockwaves of intense pleasure through your body as you gasped and shuddered. Your voice escaped in broken moans and whines, his name falling from your lips like a prayer.

“Spencer… oh, God, Spencer…”

The sound of your climax drove him to his own release. His breath hitched, his movements faltering as he let out a harsh sound from his throat. It was raw and unrestrained, downright filthy, and you listened intently, your fingers slipping out only to circle and rub your clit, drawing out the final waves of your orgasm.

Finally, when you couldn’t take it anymore, your hand fell away, and you lay there, breathing heavily, your body relaxing into the bed. Your room was quiet afterward, the only sound coming from was the sound of your own breathing. Then you heard him calling out your name, checking in. But through the post-orgasmic bliss, all you could manage in response was a giggle.

“You’re… laughing?” He mused. “Should I be concerned?”

“No, no,” you replied, still catching your breath, a satisfied smile spreading across your face. “It’s just… I can’t believe we did that.”

A gentle laugh escaped his lips, a warm, soothing sound that calmed your racing heart. "Did you like it?"

You liked it a lot. "Can’t say that I didn’t.”

"So I take it you're not mad at me anymore?"

You let out a soft, contented sigh. “I wasn’t even that mad to begin with. Just… frustrated,” you confessed. “But I think we handled that pretty well.”

“Maybe a little too well,” he agreed softly. “I can't believe I need to take a shower this late.”

You looked down between your legs at his words, and a wave of embarrassment washed over you as you noticed the patch of wetness on your bed. It wasn't small—it spread across the fabric in a noticeable, damp stain. “Uh, yeah,” you admitted with a nervous laugh. “I also need to change my sheets.”

Then you heard a low, almost pained groan from his end of the line.

“What?”

“It’s just…” He paused, and you could almost hear him struggling to find the right words. "I'm now picturing you on your bed."

"Isn't that what you've been doing?"

"Well, yes, but now it's… different."

You couldn't help the amused grin that spread across your face. "Different how?"

"Let's just say the image in my mind is a lot more detailed now and it's not helping me calm down."

A burst of laughter erupted from your chest as you gripped your phone closer to you. “Is this your way of blaming me because you still have a hard-on?” you taunted. “I mean, I’m simply stating the facts.”

“But you’re painting a picture in my head.”

“Of me drenching the sheets just by hearing your voice?”

He made a low, strained sound. “Stop.”

“I can send you a picture if you like,” you offered slyly. “Help you visualize it better.”

There was a moment of stunned silence on his end before he finally muttered, “You shouldn’t.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t.”

“But if you insist…”

You laughed softly. “Good night, Spencer.”

“Wait—You’re hanging up?”

“Yep,” you said cheerfully. “I thought you needed a shower.”

He made another frustrated sound, somewhere between a groan and a sigh, before reluctantly agreeing. “Fine, fine. Good night.”

And that was it. You ended the call with a satisfied smile. But as you stared at your phone, a rush of thoughts began to swirl through your mind. You were well aware of the potential risks of what you were about to do—how it could be traced back to you. You could almost hear Penelope lecturing you about online security and the dangers of leaving a digital footprint.

But when your mind kept circling back to Spencer—Spencer’s breathless voice, Spencer’s prominent veins on his hands, Spencer with a freaking hard-on in his bed—it was hard to think rationally. Before you could stop yourself, you propped your phone on your pillow and posed for the camera. Legs spread wide, your nipples pressing against your shirt, a flirtatious smile playing on your lips. The shot looked like it came out of a porno movie. You quickly sent it to him.

It took exactly 7 seconds before your phone rang again.

“Yes, Spencer?” you answered, trying to sound innocent.

You heard shuffling and a muffled grunt, and then, faintly, the rustling of fabric. It sounded like he was fumbling with his phone, and you couldn’t help but bite your lip at the frustration in his voice.

“How do I turn this into video call again?”

[moondirti]

kyle yearns for his captain's approval. you're the perfect medium through which he can secure it.

featuring: gaz x fem!reader x price. very consensual. fondling. inspection. fluff. praise kink. objectification. cucking? anal play. mentions of dp and breeding. 4k words of nonsense.

when price asks gaz if he's got anyone at home, gaz answers.

truthfully. he'd be hesitant to admit that he does to anyone else – soap especially, what with his track record of worming his way into people's pants – but his captain is... his captain. jonathan price. a real force of nature, cursed with an uncanny determinism and a habit of getting what he wants regardless of if those around him are willing. gaz knows that price will find out eventually; when the ring he's been planning to purchase for months finds it's way onto your finger, and he requests a change be made to the dependants section of his paperwork. perhaps before then too, if he really did some digging. but gaz also knows that, if there were anyone to trust with this precious knowledge, it'd be him.

so, he tells him about the little number he's got tucked away in a home in south oxfordshire. it's the lazy afternoon before a big mission, and he shouldn't be drinking but he is, a tumbler cradled between his palms and the burn of rye whiskey loosening his tongue. price doesn't speak, just listens, as the sergeant gradually devolves into more and more detail about your meeting, your courtship, the work you distract yourself with when he's not around. and despite his reverence, he admits it all breathlessly, a sheepishness pervading every word. how is he expected to keep his composure when the air is so heavy? unrelenting scrutiny and the potent waft of cigar-smoke draw a hot flush to his skin, the older man humming every so often as a prompt for him to continue.

he wants to, oddly enough. gaz is a reticent man, second only to ghost when it comes to keeping his life private. but something about this circumstance has him ready to lay it all bare. he wants to tell price about how you kiss his neck, the wicked fucking ways in which you use your mouth to milk him dry. he wants to pull out his phone, scroll through the hidden album full of pictures of your tits, of home-made films that paint you in a cum-covered, dazzling light. he wants price to know that he chose right, wants to hear the praise whispered in his ear as his captain lays a sturdy clap onto his back.

instead, he shrugs.

"not much more to tell, cap."

"damn shame." price taps his cigar to rid of the ashes. "sounds like a proper match, garrick. good for you."

and it's enough. a big enough lump of wood to keep the needy fire in his belly roaring. he shifts in his seat to dissuade the heat, rubbing his jaw in contemplation like he hasn't already thought of a perfect way to reap more.

"tell you what, sir. we survive this next assignment, i'll bring you over to meet 'er."

it's a hairbreadth escape, but they do manage to make it back alive, albeit a bit more scarred than they once were. gaz gets home late at night to find you awake, waiting on him despite the incredibly short notice he'd given you for his arrival. it's there – in the foyer, his nose buried in your neck as you babble on about how much you missed him, and what you'll make for breakfast to celebrate, and questions like hey, are you okay? that cut looks fresh or when was the last time you slept? – that he breaks the news. you'll be having his captain over for dinner in two week's time.

of course you're overjoyed. you've been begging to meet the people he risks his life with ever since he told you what he did for work. the planning is immediate. you're dumping recipes on him the next morning, asking for his opinion on what appetiser, main, and dessert your guest of honour would enjoy best. and what's his poison, anyway? i can get my hands on a nice bottle of scotch if you think it'd be worth it. kyle doesn't have the heart to tell you that nothing you'll do would matter much, that price has already taken a liking to you. besides, if anything, your homemaking ability makes him chub up in his pants. best not to rob himself of that delight.

the night arrives as quick as it had been put forward. gaz has to dodge your attempts to put a tie on him, stifles your complaints with a kiss and insists that it's not that kind of dinner party. you're confused (bless you) but flit around making last minute preparations in your bustier midi-dress anyway, kitten-heels clicking against the polished hardwood floors. at a certain point, he can tell that you're fussing over nothing and pulls you by the hand to stand by the doorway with him.

"there's something i didn't mention earlier." he whispers when you're finally settled, tucking his index finger under your chin. your brows knit anxiously. he pecks the canyons between them, stroking your bottom lip until the frazzled energy bleeds from you.

"why would you wait? there's not enough t–"

"not exactly something you can plan for, doll. s'just gonna happen." when you fail to push him for more context, he sighs. "price is expecting to see you."

"sure... that's the whole point, isn't it?"

"no, sweetheart." gaz's free hand wraps around your waist, lowering until it reaches the plush sweel of your ass. his touch lays breadcrumbs for you to follow, leading you down the very depraved path he's trekked a million times the past few weeks. "i mean all of you."

your lips part in realization. oh. he's scared straight for a second, heart hammering like it always does when he reveals a darker fantasy to you. but you merely smile – anxious, sure, pupils clouded with fresh concern, but a smile nonetheless – and accept his admission gracefully.

"and you want me to let him?"

gaz nods. "if you'd please."

you place a chaste kiss on his cheek, careful not to smear your makeup onto his clean-shaven skin. "okay."

he visibly slackens, an edge of playfulness cutting it's way back into his tone. "what's say we take those panties off, make things easier when the time arrives?"

"can' remember the last time i had a beef welly this good, love. family recipe?"

"yes, actually! but it took me some time to perfect for my own. the original called for sherry in the duxelle, but i always thought wine was better suited."

kyle doesn't know if he's ever been more proud of you.

you're a vision. the paradigm of charm. he half feared things to would be awkward following your conversation at the doorway, but aside from the first few minutes of price's arrival – the time it took everyone to thaw the ice of unfamiliarity – you've been anything but stilted. in fact, he worries that you missed the true implication of his request – of the direction things will take later – given the way you laugh openly. the ease in which you bridge conversation topics. your attentiveness, eyes roving over both your boyfriend and his captain to ensure everyone has everything they need. you certainly don't act like a girl who's going to be nakedly appraised tonight. all the expected clumsiness, the stumbling over your own words, replaced instead by eloquence and quick wit.

sweet girl. bloody... beautiful, darling girl.

price seems to think so too. he chuckles heartily at the stories you offer of kyle failing learning to waterski during your anniversary trip to mauritius (and offers his own insight too, something along the lines of how you'd expect the sergeant to be better balanced, given he's survived hanging off a helicopter before). offers some solid advice on how to deal with the ostentatious coworker whose been bugging you for months. and when you question him about his personal life – a line every good soldier knows not to take with their CO, which has gaz wincing internally – all your guest offers is a genuine, crinkle-eye smile. no doubt appreciative of the non-intrusive manner you ask.

he shoots gaz a look before answering, and it's one full of tacky warmth. a look he's seen several times on the field, molasses sweet and satisfying, one that invades his private thoughts too often to admit. whose effect he knows only comes off in a cold shower, a quick pump to his cock if you're not around to help relieve it. something like approval. unspoken praise.

"wish i could say i've been blessed like the two of ya. married to my work, m'afraid."

"oh." you wave your arms, standing to clear the table of dirty plates. "don't be ridiculous, john. you're a wonderful man. put yourself out there and i'm sure it'll come to you." you say it like it's breathing, and just as easily prance away to the kitchen, your voice losing to the clatter of silverware in the sink. thus, when you yell out something about dessert (price is really only able to decipher i made madeira! over the illegible chorus of cabinets closing) kyle is the one to answer you. well-trained in untangling your voice from any sort of ruckus, poor cell reception and moans and drunk gibberish and the obstructive fabric of his hoodie when you sob into his chest.

"maybe later, doll!" he voices back, scratching the back of his neck as he takes in the food still laid out in front of them. picked apart by hungry forks but still, enough to make up days worth of leftovers.

"mm. the girl stuffed me full, garrick." price stretches from his seat. "if i didnt know any better, i'd reckon you lot were fattening me up to feast on me come winter."

gaz stores the remains of your meal into nearby tupperwares then follows suit, urging his captain to follow him into the lounge. "please," he laughs, nodding when the man pulls a cigar from his pocket and twists it in a silent question. "she thinks they starve us out there. tries to make up for it by feedin' me into oblivion when i'm home."

"speak for yourself. i could do with a home-cooked meal every now 'n' then." the captain takes a puff of the maduro between his fingers, lets the smoke cloud his hindbrain. your house smells so much like you, like kyle and you – warm laundry and anise and jasmine – that he feels a quick lick of guilt at ruining the fragile balance of it. too little too late, too – the scent of leather and oily spice pervades the space.

but you don't mention it once you waltz back in, smoothing your hands across the back of your dress. "if we don't get a chance to try the cake tonight, remind me to send you home with some, john." gaz poorly conceals his laugh with a cough, sinking into the cushion when you shoot him an offended look. "what?"

"nothing," he pouts, then hides his next words behind the back of his hand, whispering to price. "i told you."

"i can hear you, you twat!" you flick his ear, brows furrowed in faux irritation as your boyfriend wraps an arm around your legs.

"i know! hey– i know, gorgeous. was only joking." his forehead nudges your tummy, restless until you comb your hand over his tight curls. "th'captain knows that too. isn't that right, sir?"

"of course."

"you laugh now, but wait until you're halfway through a month long mission. you'll wish you had me around!"

"don't i know it." kyle murmurs, the fingers at the back of your thigh slowly creeping upward. the skirt of your dress slips, climbs up your legs with the motion of his forearm, and all too suddenly he remembers your lack of undergarments.

fuck. he almost forget he pocketed your panties. and you... you've been so natural, such a good hostess despite the cold brush of air constantly on your cunt. it flips a primal switch inside him – that same trigger that'd prompted mention of this night in the first place. blood rushes to his cock so fast it hurts, desperation flooding his lungs until the only thing he can breathe out is your name.

"hmmm." you smile in return. and if price weren't here, he'd bury his nose into the canyon between your legs and take a deep inhale of your natural musk.

but he is, and so all gaz can manage is a quiet: "how about you show the captain our little surprise?"

"oh?" the man in question hums. dangerously relaxed, two legs spread and his posture curved as he watches the little display you put on for him. "what's this about a surprise, then?"

you bite your lip, raking your nails down from your boyfriend's neck to his shoulder and placing a tight, reassuring squeeze there before breaking away. nothing is said as you push an ottoman between price's knees, making sure it's steady before pushing him to rest against the back of the couch.

"do you like my dress?" you practically purr, bending over as to pronounce your tits. kyle's breath stutters, watching for the way superior's eyes take in your form. gratification swells in his belly when he just smiles, patting your hip.

"s'that really a question that needs to be asked, lovie? you know the answer."

an adorable mix between a shrug and giggle is all you give. "kyle says you want to see me."

"aye. i do."

"and i wanna make him happy."

"same for me."

and kyle thinks he could just cum in his pants if this keeps up. he feels filthy, both an observer and the main act in this spectacle. the knowledge that his captain doesn't just want you, the love of his life, but him too works away at him, hollowing him out until he's nothing but a husk of docile yearning.

"so, what'll it be?" you say.

"turn around. elbows on the ottoman, knees on either side of my thighs."

you obey instantly, lamplight catching the heated flush of your skin while you position yourself according to price's wishes. your back arcs so that your ass is prominently within his view, plump even beneath the loose material of your dress.

"kyle."

"sir." he coughs, shifting to conspicuously adjust the aching mass tucked in his waistband.

"on your knees, son. righ' here beside me. when i ask a question, you're expected to answer."

"yes, sir."

"got tha' that, lovie?" he grunts. "respond now, and then it's silence from you."

"okay!" you wiggle your hips, forgetting yourself for a moment. "sir!"

this gaz can do. following orders. grounded pragmatism, however far this is from a professional setting. he figures price has gleaned as much, has given him this task so he doesn't flounder off track throughout the evening and ruin things for everyone. the hard part is over then, all of that hesitant foreplay – of opening up, getting you to agree, of the stretch of time it took for everyone to warm up to one another – wrapped up for something simpler.

all he has to worry about is answering promptly and correctly while he watches his captain–

flip your skirt over your hips.

a low whistle. then, two hands on your backside, kneading the soft flesh there. working either globe apart like dough, the glistening seam of your most private parts spread open to prying eyes. price appraises your cunt for the first time like he would a winning showdog, or the sky on a particularly pleasant day. all utilitarian-like. if it weren't for the bulge in his trousers, your boyfriend would almost be offended.

"no panties, hm?"

"no-" you start, squeaking out an apology when you earn a firm swat to your thigh.

"i asked her to go without them tonight. thought... you'd appreciate it, sir." kyle replies, swallowing the saliva that arises upon seeing your lips flutter.

"good lad." a hot flash of arousal breaks across his chest. the captain lets go of his grip on your ass, watching how the fat jiggles back into place, then returns to squeezing it. "surprised i couldn't smell 'er, way she was dancing around us all night."

it isn't a question, so gaz stays quiet.

the groping continues. sometimes its light – brushes of calloused palms across the area, disturbing the stillness like a rock skipping over water. you ripple when he pokes, shake when he taps. other times, and increasingly once price notes your resilience to pain, it borders on rough. moulding your flesh into compact pinches, jabbing his thumb into the softness so hard it'll bruise. you take it all with grace, a low whine building in your chest that he let's go unpunished.

"she's taking this well. you rough her up often?"

"when she asks, sir." he thinks for a moment, catching your wily smile from the corner of his eye. minx. "likes it more than i do giving it to her."

"need someone to take care of the both of ya." price chuckles, then moves on, oblivious to the way the sergeant's hips buck at his implication. or, maybe he notices – probably does – and stores it away for another time. "looks like a greedy little pussy to me." his thumbs hook onto either side of your labia, pulling it apart like fresh bed to reveal the sloppy mess between. your clit is enflamed, angry for being neglected for so long. if you were allowed to speak, kyle can guarantee with almost a hundred percent certainty that you'd be whining to be touched. "look a' tha'." price's accent grows thicker. "fat little thing just jumping for attention."

he curls a finger, then flicks the swollen bud. a loud moan bursts from you, your face falling between your forearms as you hold yourself back from begging. gaz would've acquiesced by now, would've rubbing the bundle of nerves raw the second you fanned your pretty lashes up at him.

but price snaps it three more times in rapid succession, which apparently is too much for you to handle because you yell. "p-please!"

he remedies your slip up with a slap to the same area. the crack on impact echoes long enough to tell him that one hurt. "shhh. so spoiled, sergeant. how often do you make her cum?"

"a-at least three times a go, sir."

"what's the record?"

"eight."

"and the longest you've held off?"

kyle hesitates, bowing his head for the reprimand he knows is coming. "never... never tried. sir."

"tch."

a precision blow. swift but petrifying. the captain's managed to find both your loose strings in a matter of minutes, tugging to see them come undone on his lap. gaz has got the unwavering urge to rest his chin on his strong thigh, put it on the record that he isn't weak willed, just indulgent. something that can be easily remedied, with his guidance. if he'd let him.

and you...

you're gyrating your hips, begging for some pressure on your aching centre. price gives it to you, though not in the way you expect, pinching your clit and tightening his hold until you're motionless, muscles trembling but otherwise perfectly poised.

so the inspection continues. he fans out your vulva, exposing the hole that clenches around nothing. a laugh wracks his frame at the sight, the aftermath of it husky. amused. "begging to be filled, a'right. how many cocks has she had in 'ere?"

"just mine, sir. and her toys."

"how about at once?"

kyle's never been so bold with you; has always held back that godless part of him, that needy dog he sees his comrades often embrace. pure, unfettered degeneracy. you're soft, and pretty and good and a high-functioning member of society. and he's never once wanted to see you hurt, uncomfortable or bite-mark-bloodied, despite the way his mind screams at him to at least ask. see if you'd be willing to appease that side of him.

yet you visibly shiver at the thought proposed by price, gooseflesh pocking your skin, and he knows he should have thrown caution to the wind.

"one, sir."

he watches the man's finger outline the circumference of your opening, dipping in by the millimetre to test the waters. "shame. could probably stretch her out. get 'er nice and loose for whenever you wan' something to keep you warm without the commitment."

the finger plunges in.

gaz watches you swallow his superior to the last knuckle in what must be a world-record, no time to blink lest he misses it. price goes with the motion, setting his free hand onto your ass to keep you steady as he wiggles his digit to make space amidst the tight embrace of your walls. or, that's what he thinks is happening. the only indication he has of things are the lewd squelches your cunt emits and the face of pure ecstasy you pull. but he's well-versed enough in your bodily functions that he's sure of his estimate.

"scratch wha' i said. nothing beats this." his superior groans, and for the first time that night, adjusts himself in his pants. kyle wishes he would pull it out, allow himself the relief of freeing a raging hard-on from its confines. but kyle also wishes that he could be given something to do, something with his mouth perhaps, to sate the unaddressed thrill in his bones. it wouldn't take a smart man to figure out that both wishes are very much correlated. "fucking suffocating clutch. wouldn' pull out if my life depended on it. pussy like this isn' made for that, garrick."

"sir?"

"you cum inside her, lad?"

"i- yes. i-i do. she's on birth control."

"best to see to that, then." he says, like the contraceptive is an obstacle and not a consolation. you release another, long-winded moan, to which price pulls his finger out to pat your vulva. like taming a wild animal. "though what i said still stands. could always do with a loose hole."

his hand inches up.

this time, it's gaz who groans.

loudly. his eyes fluttering halfway shut, hands tugging at the tight fabric over his groin. you throw a curious look over your shoulder, concern glossing your pupils until you confirm that the source of the sound isn't pain, but pleasure. ecstasy at finally having his wants vocalised, that incessant impulse that nags and nags and nags anytime he's fucking you from behind, tight rim practically leering up at him, tempting him to thrust upwards and 'accidentally' slip in.

"you like that, sergeant? hm? ever use this asshole? it looks unbroken to me."

"y-you're... not wrong, sir. i–"

"but you want to?" he finishes for him, scooping some of the abundant slick from your cunt and slathering it onto your back entrance. it's not enough lubrication to do anything but press one thumb in, but he repeats the process to push the other in alongside it.

"yeah."

you give him a look that can't mean anything except we'll talk about this later and he can bloody kiss price if he was given permission to, if not for anything but helping him open this impossible subject with you.

"we'll see to tha' some other day, then."

his thumbs retreat. your hole winks shut again. gaz is torn between looking at you or his captain, but the latter man robs him of the indecision by bringing his dominant index and middle fingers to his lips. they're shiny with the remnants of your fluids, as if he needed any incitement to wrap his mouth around the digits. he works at them until price's fingers prune, laving his tongue around the knuckles, against the nail beds, all the way through to the fold of skin between them.

so desperate to please, to see to it that 'some other day' is everyday henceforth.

a future with price by your sides. beyond just the field. the bite in your supple existence. spice supporting anise and jasmine, some aphrodisiac blend that'll carry you through to the end of your lives, happy. sated. a mediator. commander. captain. his captain.

"that's a good boy."

he could really get used to this.

[sunboki]

— HELLION INN. a Stray Kids fiction

🌖 : Lee Minho x implied! fem. reader

TROPE. dystopian! au, enemies to lovers, monster! au, apocalypse! au, “we have to get along to survive” au, angst, high stakes

WORD COUNT. 10k ⭑ 50min read

WARNINGS. gory descriptions, cursing, descriptive violence, implied intercourse, death, a dubcon kiss, talk of vomit/vomiting, lots of mentions of death, one mention of k*lling oneself, parasites, murder, inclusion of fire, injury, usage of guns, injury, knives, reader and minho are “hunted”, mature themes

AUG'S NOTES. it’s finished! i wanted to cry (out of happiness!!) closing the last part :) i truly love this piece, and, though it certainly isn’t all too lovey dovey compared to alternative fics of mine, i was so incredibly fortunate to be able to write for themes i adore! i hope my enthusiasm was able to be conveyed in the subject of monsters/apocalyptic au’s!! please enjoy<3

PLAYLIST.

SYNOPSIS. Receiving an ominous letter in the mail, a monster invades Seoul minutes later, carrying an uncanny sense of smell despite its blindness. Countless people have been slaughtered already, and with your letter as the only meager explanation to this madness, you find your feet leading towards the one place it said was safe: Hellion Inn.

or alternatively :

Minho won’t let you die. Not if it means letting this Monster get him or hell’s dawning itself. You’re going to survive. Together.

Run, something is coming. Go to Hellion Inn, you’ll be safe there.

Something? What is something? A terrorist attack? War?

Never had such a letter arrived at your doorstep other than this Tuesday, with the morning sunlight peeking through half-opened blinds casting your pajama-clad frame in its cascades.

And again, you reread and reread, questions raging in a distorted frenzy amidst your once just-wakening mind. 

Little were you aware what would come. What already roamed Seoul’s streets, approaching closer, closer. 

One objective resides in too many possibilities. 

Find Hellion Inn. 

.

.

.

Stuffing the letter in your pocket serves as the most sensible solution while you go over your options. If you didn’t have a clue about what dishes would be cooked, you’d check the ingredients first.

And yet, upon turning on the TV, you find your meal already served. 

On a platter, dripping with blood.

“This just in, an unidentifiable entity is making its way through Seoul in a rampage. The creature is highly dangerous. It appears to lack vision, and speculation has deemed it relies upon its smell to discern other beings. The creature has not been detained at this time. Under no circumstances should citizens leave their residences, and in the case you’re on the street, please evacuate to the nearest shelter immediately. Further information will be released.”

Your blood runs frigidly cold, enough you swear you could’ve turned to ice.

All of a sudden, war or a terrorist attack doesn’t sound nearly as daunting as before.

A monster. Ruthless, bloodthirsty. 

Monster. 

Instantaneously are news sites everywhere exploding, posting footage, pictures, and accounts of the creature each second. 

More and more and more until-

It all goes dark, your home plunged into a black abyss meagerly sustained by the sun’s rays, phone in hand ultimately powering off. 

Electricity down. Fully.

This isn’t like a usual predicament of a public threat, not something you’re prepared for, nor something anyone was prepared for. There’s no drill for a monster, no tsunami shelter or high rise building to reside upon. 

Was it obliviousness? Or were you all simply sheep to a ravaging wolf?

The latter seemed most convincing.

An exhale. No, a growl is what breaks your train of thought. Like the chuff of a tiger, curdling in its throat. 

Above. 

You can’t even bring yourself to move, can’t bear to breathe in fear you’d give yourself away as a shadow covers that once hopeful sunlight.

No shadow, but a thing. A monster. 

How did it get here so fast? How.. how the hell is this happening?

The sound of tiles shifting on your roof makes your fingers twitch, eyes stuck wide. 

The worlds apex predators turned into the prey. 

Each pound of your heart lies evident in ringing ears, listening to those low, horrendous gurgles, repeating that same chuff before it shifts again.

Again and again, and you’re unmoving.

Leave. Run. Anything. 

Yet, you can’t move a muscle, glued in place.

Until you do, and your legs act before you can process a thing. Grabbing for items, whatever it may be. Mind unable to process in its frantic state.

No. No.

A plea as your hand wraps around the doorknob, beginning down the apartment complex’s stairs in rapid descent, listening to the slow growls of the creature.

Don’t look behind, just go.

A mistake you find yourself making even when a life is on the line.

Your life is on the line.

And when you spare that single glimpse, murky lifeless eyes stare blindly back at you, bulging from its skull as if they never were intended to be there. Skin a hallowed, fleshy tone — ligaments hung awry. 

Disorderly, distasteful. If you look close enough, you swear you could’ve seen a beating heart, watched the oxygen cells rush through a pumping bloodstream. 

Gaping jaws hold copious teeth, ant-like incisors residing on either side of a ceaselessly smiling mouth, the corners of what appears to be lips ascending all the way up to nonexistent ears. 

Four legs, two antennae atop its head. At least two times the size of a human.

Horrific.

Never had such a thing appeared so terrifying.

With the letter clutched in one hand and your powerless phone in another do you run, praying that nonexistent vision truly is nonexistent.

Well, until a car alarm begins to ring, and you feel your stomach climb to your throat simultaneously.

Because it twitches. Not even a glance-sort of reaction. The entirety of whatever neck that monster hones twitches to look at you with a nausea-worthy crack! of its ligaments. Those jaws parted, a flattened nose breathing in.

And then it lurches, and you don’t think you’ve ever ran as fast as you did now.

Far, far. As far as you can go. 

It’s futile listening to gargled cries for help amongst rubble, the reaching of hands for your feet you can’t even spare a moment for as those scraping claws continue their perilous dance after you, scavenging on people as they go. 

So the second an intact person comes into view—a boy, looking about your age (and freakishly calm at that) with fluffy hair and rounded cheeks retaining such youth—you’re racing ahead before you can even think, ramming through those convenience store doors in a flurry of panic and fear.

“Monster— Monster- there’s a monster we have to go-“

“Do you like grilled cheese?” He mumbles, and you wonder if he’s talking to himself or you, no less asking such a question during this downright apocalypse.

“No, no there is—“ A shriek pierces the air in the distance, the clutter of debris alerting the monster’s proximity.

You, in a frantic attempt to redirect his attention, place either hand on his shoulders.

“A monster. There’s a monster out there and if we don’t hide, it’s going to kill us.” 

The boy licks his lips, cocking a contemplative brow before looking toward the freezer section. 

“Freezer?”

At this point the creature might as well be turning the corner, and you don’t need to respond for either of you to go running as fast as your legs will carry you, stuffing yourselves into the biting cold just as the bells above the entrance door ring.

Scariest part is this customer is intelligent enough to open doors.

This customer isn’t human. 

Like slow-motion you hear it. The pounding of your heartbeat in your ears, the lack of air in such a tight space, the monster’s rumbling.

Your hidden counterpart lodged himself into a freezer opposite to you, eyes squeezed shut the nearer clicking footsteps on tile sounded.

Click.

Click.

Click.

You don’t realize your eyes are closed until you open them, met with the monster’s face, hundreds of razor-sharp teeth lining its mouth, stretched into that same, chilling smile while it stares at you through the glass.

It can’t see you. It can’t see you. It can’t see you, You internally plead like a mantra, suffocating on the scream rising in your throat.

The loud clanging of a soup can the boy throws has the creature’s disfigured face whipping around, and you wordlessly communicate through mere terrified-eye-contact what either of you are thinking:

Run.

Without conscious you go flying, ramming past discarded groceries and tormented bodies into Seoul’s open roadway, void of any vehicle whatsoever.

Except for one.  

It’s a tow truck, key still lodged into the ignition, window broken with streaks of blood lining the door where a middle-aged man’s body had been dragged out. He rests lopsided below the front tire, abdomen severed in half.

Grotesque. 

“Car- Car!” You cry out, wildly gesturing for him to follow suit while you pry the driver’s door open, the monster’s frustrated growl enough motivation for the stranger to throw himself in as well.

In the nick of time you press down on the pedal, winding the wheel in a quick motion just as the hell-sent smashes itself from the shop, evidently angered.

“I’m Han!” The man occupying the passenger seat shouts, the hole through the windshield causing enormous amounts of wind to soar through the car and synonymously blur your senses.

“What?!” 

“My name is Han! Han Jisung!”

Squinting whilst looking through your mirror at the wickedly approaching Monster, you veer past as many obstacles as possible — most being corpses — as fast as the engine will let you.

“Oh! Uh, I’m Y/N!”

Han nods, grasp clutched onto his seat the more you speed increases, recklessly maneuvering left and right as if dodging a crocodile. 

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a crocodile, but a blood-thirsty beast wanting nothing more than to behead you. How sweet.

“Do you… Do you know how to drive?” He yells, and you raise your eyebrows, narrowly shifting past a shopping cart.

“If you count Mario-Kart as driving, I’m a pro!”

Han audibly squeaks his fear in response, eyes squeezing shut as if to not stare at the monster’s face nearing the mirror.

The speedometer cries out, vehicle shuddering as you near train tracks just at the edge of the city. 

Hopeful. 

Fleeting hope when the roar of a train’s whistle soars through the air, the look Han gives you doing little to sustain your already thinned sanity.

Perhaps you’ll die getting hit by a train than this monster.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

“We’re not gonna make it we’re not gonna make it we’re not gonna make i—“

“SHUT THE FUCK UP—-“ You screech, foot slammed as far down on the gas pedal as possible, the rumbling of the train’s engine deafening. 

“HOLY SHITTTT—“ The man screams, mouth ajar as you soar over the tracks, preparing for impact only for a hair of the train’s front barely brushing over the car’s bumper. 

Currently realizing you’re still breathing and not dead, you floor the brake, either of you launching forward in your seats while the endless train keeps the monster at bay on the opposite side. 

Both panting hysterically, you place a hand on your chest, hoping to slow down the terrifyingly fast pace of your heart — close to bursting out of your chest. 

Your passenger, Han Jisung, turns to look at you, eyes wide as saucers, a gradual open-mouthed smile growing upon his flushed, sweat-stricken face.

“That was.. sick.”

The flashlight flickers here and there, found in the tow truck’s trunk along with a med kit currently carried along by Han.

By chance did you end up in what remained of the red-light district, rubble dotting roadways as evidence of the Monster’s previous siege.

Amidst the held supplies, your pocket seems to ache with the weight of the letter, sitting there in its futile warning of what was to come, now arrived.

You hadn’t brought it up to Han yet, a persistent fear of blame lingering in the back of your mind. Was it your fault you didn’t react in time? Disregarded the letter?

No. There’s no time to regret now. Whatever past existed has been annihilated. 

Night is approaching, and with that comes rising unease and a desperate need to find shelter.

Seoul’s red-light district had always been a taboo for Korea’s upper class. A hushed word, quenched beneath harsh scolding and wrinkled noses at the mere mention.

As if their own well-off sons don’t get driven there on a daily basis, ignorant to their own affiliation as if it’s a genetically determined trait.

Quite funny how none of that matters now. Not when it’s the end of the world, that is.

Every (once) building looks the same. Rubble. Litter lines the roads, cars strewn awry, wrecked into buildings, run over people. 

A pattern lies in everything. 

This pattern consists of fear. 

Struck on faces, painted carelessly along torn apart surfaces and walls, splattering the cities ruby red.

Incessantly, you can’t help but fear. A natural biological response when in the presence of actual or perceived danger, inflicting sharp wounds throughout your body, mind on an endless neurological high of adrenaline-fueled paranoia. 

How could someone not be paranoid when they were being hunted?

“In here.”

Han’s voice pulls you out of your head, turning where he points to a brick building, multicolored beach towel draped over a window torn to shreds, soil from plants staining the cracks of tiles, floor a mixture of blood and bacteria. 

“It’s abandoned,” He notes, prying the creaking door open. 

Abandoned isn’t the word for it. The inhabitants left as most people did upon hearing the news of invasion, although they didn’t get far, you’re plenty aware of that. 

What a shame. Thinking they could escape, in their wake, slaughtered ruthlessly. 

Instead of abandoned, call it evacuated, barren.  

Inside, a radio runs in a constant string of white noise, the addition of broken air conditioning the only source of apparent life. Haunting, flickering lights cast the few rooms in an eerie, ghoulish green like that of a basement.

“I’ve been here before. There should be a mart nearby.”  

Allowing his remark to sink in, you pause, a slight grin drawing upon your lips. 

“You’ve been here before, in the red-light district?” 

Phrase lingering amusedly, he stops as well, shifting on his heel to grace you with a similar smile.

“What? Not everyone can stand high and mighty in this society. Plus, there’s no need to pretend anymore when death is so close by.”

Your smile drops, and you suck on the skin of your cheek, a loud breath through your nose enough to continue the descent.

Perhaps you should change the abandoned description. 

Just then, from the corner of your eye do you see a figure emerge, the glinting edge of a kitchen knife barely brushing your shoulder blade before you dodge to your left, the attacker colliding with an ironing board.

Mere seconds later the figure rises to their feet, identified as female, adorning lanky limbs and skin as pale and zombified as the surrounding room. Her lips are cracked and purple, eyes nearly black, blanketed with equally raven hair reaching the floor in length.

The girl looks like a creature, barely alive with the lack of coordination in her loose stabs, alienated stare vividly murderous. 

Only by narrowly pummeling into the wall do you manage to immobilize her, Jisung’s efforts stalled.

Liquid obsidian blinks back up at you from where you’ve caged her to the floor, her nostrils flaring in hasty breaths, your own panting ringing in your ears.

“Look kid- I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? Now if you calm down and let me—“  

A third of the steak knife puncturing the side of your thigh veers your head back, choked scream jostling your nerves tenfold. Bubbling blood slips from the wound, trickling warmth dizzying you into a foggy spell.

It’s not until a low bang! sounds that her arm, raised for another strike, falls limp to the floor, looking behind you to find Jisung holding a pistol, silencer attached to the muzzle, aimed directly at the girl below you. 

Immediately, before you can release the unheralded screech compressing your lungs, Han hoists you up by your elbows, the jarring movement beckoning a squealed sob you bite your tongue containing.

Snatching clothing from a closet behind the door, the man rips the fabric using his teeth, returning to your slumped frame.

Reminding you to hold your breath, he aligns the makeshift bandage prior to tying it, your reaction becoming quieted as your eyes roll back.

And the world falls into a dark abyss. 

By the time your lashes flutter open again, searing light invades your vision, the urge to open your eyes aiding a roaring headache.

Although, it appears you’re still in the same room, alternatively relocated to a futon on the floor, leg propped up using folded pillowcases and books. 

“You’re up.”

Han enters the room, two metal cans of mashed spam and rice held in either hand, one of which he gives to you. 

“You were knocked out cold,” He laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners, uncharacteristic to the fact he just shot someone.

“The shirt should staunch the bleeding. Eat.”

Staring down at your meal, you glance up, stomach churning in an unsightly manner merely considering food.

But you eat anyway, gulping the bites down despite the nausea.

“And the girl?” 

Han takes a bite, scraping every last grain from the noisy tin without so much as a shiver.

“I took care of it.”

It’s your turn to laugh, confusedly surveying the teenage-boy-looking friend of yours.

“What are you? A hitman?”

He clicks his tongue, eyes thoughtfully flickering to the ceiling. 

“I’m.. somebody who really wants to survive.”

All you do is return his tight-lipped expression.

Yet, truly accounting for your introduction, there’s a whole lot you don’t know about him. His past, his goals. What his life was like before. 

He comes off as cheery and good-natured, disposition claiming he wouldn’t hurt a fly. 

You’ve come to realize that isn’t the reality whatsoever. Because Han Jisung is exactly what Han Jisung said he was.

Somebody who really wants to survive. 

You can relate to that.

“So.. Random note, random warning, no location?” 

“Pretty much.” 

Seated beside you, Han surveys the letter, reading over the contents a few times before folding it back up and handing it to you. He’s redressed your wound, utilizing the medical kit’s antiseptic and gauze to wrap the skin.

“Hellion Inn,” Han repeats softly, brows knitted. “Never heard of it.”

You shrug once more from your place on the ground, leg still propped while he squats to your left.

“If anything, it’s likely it was destroyed if it’s an actual Inn,” He mumbles, tapping a puffy bottom lip with his index, earning your half nod before you pause.

“We can still try it though? We can find a stick or somethin’, I’ll use it as a crutch.” 

This time, it’s his turn to nod — rising up with a somewhat-assuring: “I’ll be right back” before leaving the room, returning after a few moments with a table leg, nearly comical in the proud manner he lifts the wood, jagged edges evidence of his severing with a knife. 

After copious laughter do you glance at him, brow cocked. “This is really all you’ve got?”

Asking from your place beside him, you brace more weight onto the makeshift crutch, granting Han a side-long glance.

“If I had more I’d use it,” He huffs, watching you hobble slightly but remaining upright with worried brows, hands poised to stabilize your steadying adjustment.

That’s most important, you deemed, no matter how puny. A drag to the team means death; you won’t be that drag.

Tomorrow morning you’ll head out. Find somewhere else to occupy whilst searching for Hellion Inn.

The one remaining routine amidst the apocalypse is time, and as the sun cracks above a horizon once able to be admired and not envied, you’re helped to your feet, gathering bags slung over each other's backs. Additional clothes, torn tablecloths. Anything of even insufficient use.

You don’t think these streets had been this quiet since your grandparent’s time, with bustling citizens and raging business overtaking wherever you look. Now, it might as well be a ghost-town. No more cries for help, no more groans and moans in agony.

And yet, it’s almost unsettling as it is reassuring. Suffering has ceased. Cries for help drawn to a close. 

Peace within death.

Trekking for only about a mile feels tumultuous, the ache already coiling in your bones like snakes seen slithering through rubble, waiting for rats to swarm decomposing carcasses in search of easy victims.

Seoul has become a jungle, eat or be eaten. It’s only a matter of time, a split-second ignorance, that can have you eaten. Perhaps by the true Monster, perhaps by your own kind.

The sight of broken columns and french doors parted in what looks to be a hotel in front of you redirects your focus, granting Han a hum of acknowledgment. His hand reaching for the pistol in a fashioned holster, yours coming to the kitchen knife held in your bag.

Wary, but slow steps paired with your hobbled ones make for the small bout of stairs, buzzing of flies caught in flurries littering goosebumps along your arms.

Something about this place is abnormal. That much is known. And if this is the so-called “Hellion Inn” (or what remains of it), your hope for sanctuary plummets in tandem with the temperature upon stepping in. 

Cold. That dead, stale kind of cold, warmth from the heart void, no longer beating.

Matchstick providing barely enough light, you carefully pry open the squeaking doors in the second doorway, blade wielded close to your being. The putrid odor of decay perplexes your gag reflexes, allowing Han to take the lead in his observing endeavor. 

Abruptly, your foot smushes against something below, and when you look down only to be met with a lifeless hand there, bulging, horror-stricken eyes staring back up at you, you hurriedly bite your lip to conceal the bubbling scream clawing from your throat, frothing like a brewing cauldron. 

Han can only grimace. 

It was here. You’re not sure when, but these wounds — these corpses mercilessly ripped apart — aren’t the doing of humans.

A bone chilling thought surfaces in your mind.

What if the monster is still here?

Your traveling companion spins around on his heel, hands placed on his hips. Honeyed irises momentarily flit between your paled frame to the obvious terror staining your features, his eyebrows raised.

“Hey, I know it’s scary, but the monster’s likely gone by now, and if we can find someone or a sign that’ll redirect us then maybe…”

His words trail off, suddenly all too familiar with the sound of chortled breathing ragged in his ears. Exhales stenching of rotted flesh, the scraping of sharpened claws on the floor.

And how you’re not staring at him, but above him. 

Your palms slowly reach up to cover your mouth, taking the tiniest step back manageable.

“..It’s right behind me, isn’t it?”

Yet, before the Monster can swipe a clawed hand and hack off a limb, deja vu strikes in the form of another gunshot, not silenced, booming,

It soars right past your shoulder with pinpoint precision to land within the Monster’s side, collecting a shriek in return. The beast flails wildly as Han races from its clutches towards the unknown savior of his.

Fluffy hair, a torn, mud-stained jean jacket over his shoulders, white undershirt equally unkempt. The four of you survey the monster’s descent deeper into the hotel, not appearing to execute anymore attack attempts.

For now.

No less, you’re helped outside in your wobbly state, the shot-gun boy leading, another seeming to take up the rear behind you and Han. His companion, maybe. Just as you and Han are.

Sharper features oppose the shotgun-carrying boy’s downturned eyes with inquisitive, apprehensive ones. Lighter hair, jeans bagging by his shoes, white tee’s once graphic design smudged, unrecognizable. His own weapon lies in spiked boxing gloves, nails seemingly ruptured through the cushioned layers.

And when his eyes meet yours, you feel fire in your veins. Blazing, warming you from your toes to your fingertips.

“You guys alright?”

Shot-gun boy, introduced as Kim Seungmin, speaks first, spinning on his heel to regard either of you. Though, it’s hard for your mind to stay attentive, the feeling of Seungmin’s companions’ eyes incessantly boring into your back causing a wary twitch of your fingers. 

“Lee Minho.”

His voice breaks you from that apprehensive spell, that watchful gaze of his surveying both you and Han with an unimpressed exhale.

“Don’t slow us down,” He scowls, shouldering past Han, lips drawn into a tight line. He heads for their own vehicle, a worn down truck narrowly resting in better condition than your earlier tow truck by the tracks.

Real friendly.

Seungmin, a tad bit more benign, gestures with a curt nod to the vehicle, ushering your injury-wielding self to sit in the passenger seat with Minho as driver, Seungmin and Han taking the truck’s bed.

Just then does the Monster make its return, bursting from the hotel in a seemingly rejuvenated spirit from before, gaping jaws aching to be filled.

You could only hope your flesh wouldn’t be the filler.

“This is why I hate introductions,” Minho, already slamming his foot onto the pedal, grumbles, not granting a response upon tires burning rubber over dusty roads as you speed off – a replay of your ride with Han on loop each time you see the Monster in your mirror.

Approaching closer, closer again.

It seems food becoming involved is a common theme, jarred when the truck swerves in front of a supermarket. Seungmin shouts from the back as he and Han race ahead, beckoning you two to follow them, your steps lightly hobbled with feeble help of the makeshift crutch.

“The hell do I have to be on babysitting duty for?” Minho, lifting your arm over his shoulder, grovels, and you fight the urge to whack him with your crutch, making through the desolate supermarket. 

Weapons in clutch, it grows taxing trying not to grimace hearing clattering glass, the mental picture of those bulging eyes doing little for your already queasy stomach.

“It’ll hear us!” 

With your horrible luck intact, this already dislikable stranger ends up being the same soul you're lodged into a bathroom stall with.

Minho hisses, furrow of his brows causing his face to scrunch with distaste, the loud clatter of soup cans and chip bags alike resounding from outside in the thick of the Monster’s carnage.

“No, it’ll hear you. More people means more death, and lucky for you, I’ll be off your hands in no time.” Now it’s your turn to retort, the man lacking of his usual boxing gloves, strap of Seungmin’s shotgun over a shoulder instead.

Wriggling yourself from his grasp, you hesitantly slide the notch to the door, movement only stopped by Minho’s lingering hand grabbing your sleeve. 

“And what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m repaying a favor.”

Weighing your ability to walk well, you snag the shotgun from his shoulder, granting the man a wink and a: “Thanks for the shotgun”, before slipping from the stall, leaving his starstruck figure in tow.

Ignoring the biting ache in your thigh thanks to a discarded crutch, you savor cool metal beneath your fingertips, watching the blur of the other two boys racing past the Monster’s attempts of attack. 

“Hey! Ugly fucker, over here!” You shout, chilled seeing blind eyes rip your way.

Cocking the gun, your eyes narrow, focusing the sight on its head and–

Bang!

Echoing around the supermarket does a copper bullet gnash into thin skin, puncturing straight through, shell casing crinkling onto the floor below in tandem with a low groan of the creature.

Minho bursts from the bathroom moments later, still sporting a starstruck visage. Han and Seungmin go thundering right past back to the truck, the wild goose chase persisting. 

What wasn't persistent was Minho’s arms wrapping around your back, hauling you over his shoulder like a sack of rice whilst chasing right after his counterparts.

As much as you’d like to thank him, your thigh still hurts like hell.

“Yah! That- hurts- asshole!” Shrieked between his hurried footsteps, you smack his shoulder blade defiantly.

Hopefully that serves as a thank you.

However, escaping is far from reach, and feeling presumably safe is equally residing far from grasp when, after finally being able to inhale without a stutter to your lung halfway down the road, the sharp snap of a tire blows.

And the truck flips over.

It was one thing maneuvering from the flipped car, shards of glass embedded in your skin beckoning pinpricks of blood, and another continuing on foot to wherever the two acquaintances planned to lead to.

The largest of things, however, was learning the name of this apparent destination.

Hellion Inn.

With Seungmin sustaining a minor head injury, Han luckily unharmed, and an also unharmed Minho reluctant to aid in being your temporary crutch, you’re given plenty of time for interrogation along the way — wondering just who the hell was responsible for the letter. 

As far as their replies go, not a soul knows.

And at this rate, you can’t bring yourself to care about pestering for answers anymore, not with Minho’s aggravating complaining and equally as irritating, stupidly good-looking side profile.

So, the torturous walk to this supposed ‘Inn’ prevails, which, turns out not to be an Inn at all. Instead, it’s this metal, bus looking contraption, like a trailer.

Silver of the exterior tarnished, it hides within a surrounding forest entryway, vines curling around door fixtures as if with time, what remained would be swallowed by the greenery.

From the bus two more men exit, and you can’t help but wonder if this so-called Hellion Inn has just as many residents as an actual Inn.

Christopher Bahng and Seo Changbin introduce themselves hastily, quick to rush back into the bus and retrieve a medical kit. After enduring both the painful removal of glass, your reopened wound stitched, and Chris’s heart wrenching smile of assurance (followed by a pat to your kneecap after, ensuring an imminent heart attack on your part), you’re finally invited inside, introduced to the others.

Three more. 

It’s a clown car. Definitely. 

Yang Jeongin, Hwang Hyunjin, Lee Felix. Boys- no, men, with features you’d like to deem frustratingly attractive. 

Maybe photoshoot, not a clown car.

No less, the seven interact with ease, Han intermingling as if he’d been by their side for eternity. A bonfire, expertly lit behind the bus hidden amongst foliage to conceal smoke, provides warmth in the night.

Cold, just as it’s always been. Even more so with autumn’s presence.

Yet, you find your eyes falling right back to him.

Minho.

Man of fire, whose gaze on yours feels like your ribs cracking apart, as if his fingers bend your windpipe every which way, rendering no air into your lungs. He is fire, licking at your skin in the most deplorable of ways.

And you crave it.

If he were Hades, you’d eat the pomegranate seeds like a fool just to feel his eyes on you again and again.

Selfish.

When he looks at you, you feel selfish. Perhaps it’s the stakes, perhaps your heart has grown too weak, beat too fast it falls for any and all. Adrenaline-induced love.

You aren’t naive like Persephone, aren’t blindsided by curiosity.

That latter is a lie. Especially when you shift on the log, purposefully scooting closer to catch bits and pieces of his conversation with Jeongin, listen to the perfect pitch of his voice, aided by the crackling of flames before you.

You wonder if touching him would rival those white-hot flames. Scalding your fingers till you grew numb. 

You’d take that bet.

Fluffy fabric placed over your shoulders makes you flinch in place, sympathetic eyes of chocolate meeting yours.

Honeyed. Chris.

“It’s cold, stay warm,” He ushers, crouching to take a seat on your left.

Then do you register his actions. A blanket, the material a survivor of water’s toil and plenty of stains. But it’s warm, durable, and most importantly, sweet. Chris is sweet, you decide, a bit like this warm blanket.

Your nod of thanks doesn’t feel like it even slightly compensates for his kindness, though, for now, it’s enough.

Tomorrow, Chris, Changbin, Minho, and Jeongin will relocate the flipped truck. Haul it back, fix it up again. That’s what your sensible mind discerns, seemingly adopted into the group like any other as sleeping arrangements in the bus are modified for both you and Han.

Strays, huh.

A flickering gas lamp keeps your gaze glued to the ceiling where you lie, watching shadows twirl like a strange ballet along the walls. Near the front of the bus does Chris sleep, Changbin glued to his side, Felix tucked beneath his arm.

It brings a smile to your lips, watching them. Even Seungmin, with his more boundary-oriented persona, close to the others, his hand brushing against Hyunjin’s shoulder, Jeongin’s head. 

Human beings, after all. Even when it all falls apart. And maybe, maybe in monsters as well, there is human. The need to be close, to feel skin on skin. 

Counting heads, you find one missing.

“You should be sleeping.”

Minho flicks a lighter on and off, waiting to relight the gas lamp. He squats down in front of you, jeans stretched over muscular thighs.

Your brow furrows, wondering if he’d been here this whole time amidst your ignorance.

“Are you scared?”

His words dull your ability to reply, retort something smart. But, the tone keeps your mouth shut. Cool and calm, like when he spoke to Jeongin by the fire. Not taunting, nor instigating.

“No.”

The words are a lie, unveiled in the crease of a dirt-stricken face, chapped lips pulled taut.

His pinky finding yours verifies that fire theory. From the tips of your toes to the very top of your scalp you feel it. 

Scorching. Hot.

Your skin seems to melt from your bones, but only you can see it.

There are lots of questions to ask. Wondering, hope. Why?

But he beats you to it. It seems you’ll have to get used to that characteristic.

“Go to sleep. Nothing can get you here.”

A lie, you know it well. Any second that monster can stumble here. Smell you, turn the perfect corner to find the bus, sheen shimmering beneath a full moon. Ravage each and every one of you beneath claws and blood.

But the letter, no, Minho says you’ll be safe here. That Hellion Inn will be your safe haven. 

Tonight, you choose to believe that, falling asleep with his pinky twined with yours, his back to one of the side booths, focus trained on your features.

Safe.

“Hnn..” 

Insistent poking to your cheek abducts you from your dream, bleary eyes straining to open. Jeongin sits up, bracing himself with his hands, youthful smile stretched over his face watching you. Meanwhile, the hellspawn guilty, Hyunjin, can’t help but laugh cheerily.

“Wah— I wish I had a camera!” Ebony strands peek from beneath a white ball cap, his voice carries from the bus for Felix’s head to peek in, echoing Hyunjin’s laugh with his deeper baritone.

Similar to Chris are you met with Felix’s kindness, his lithe form slipping past the bus doors to gently smooth back your bed hair, utilizing a hair tie on his wrist to bind the unruly strands before patting your head.

It’s easy to ache for anyone’s touch, you discover.

In the early morning, the car was retrieved by Minho, Chris, Jeongin, and Changbin, the low chatter of voices outside evidence of their progress restoring the once flipped vehicle.

When you step out, Changbin hands you a tin of steaming soup as meager breakfast you’re quick to thank him for, bringing the spoon to your lips whilst lingering near the car, watching them flit about, handing each other tools and screws alike like busied ants.

“You just gonna stand there or help out? Last time I checked you weren’t worried about appearances.”

Instantaneously, Minho becomes his normal, annoying self with each snidely sarcastic remark, cocked brows urging you to retaliate.

Unfortunately, your barely conscious mind can’t formulate something smart back, so you resort to serving as the tool-supplier, handing different ones here and there from a stool near where the Man of Fire works on the popped wheel.

His new title, apparently.

Man of Fire.

“Wrench.”

“Did you just call me a wench?” You scoff, eyes wide with shock at the murmured comment. 

Perhaps you were blindsided after all by his nice face.

“Wrench.”

Or not.

Begrudgingly, you extend the wrench, scowl embedded in your expression he can’t help but crack a bemused grin at.

Attaching the wrench to a bolt to crank does his vein-littered forearms flex, and your throat feels unnaturally dry, forcing yourself to focus on something else in order to school an unaffected facade.

Nevertheless, by night, he’s.. different. Lacking cockiness, harshness.

Unspoken things, like when you’re stirred from sleep, dazed gaze settling on Minho across the bus, his fingers tenderly patting Changbin’s head when he stirs awake. They speak in hushed whispers alternative to Changbin’s boisterous presence. 

And sometimes, amidst the other seven, you’re the one beneath his comforting hand. Those times nightmares plague your sleep, his careful hands tracing your knuckles, slow circles over your skin urging you back into the solace of sleep.

To you he doesn’t talk, just hums a low melody, wipes unshed tears from your waterline. Seeing his face makes you want to cry more, so you can be scooped into his hug.

Though, you doubt you’d ever let go, so you never allow yourself more tears. Maybe that’s for the better.

Because while you’re so selfishly enamored as night falls and he becomes that doting figurine bathed in moonlight, Minho is endlessly selfless. Wordless, but selfless.

The guardian of the night, sustaining a semblance of care and safety that silently engulfs the bus each time a star twinkles within the sky.

Then again, risks are always present. Missions out for food, stashing of possessions in case of invasion.

Windows of the bus covered, the group convenes that evening, leant over a book on the floor, huddled with knees held close to chests. Sharing things of value, adding more.

An old journal, spine tattered and moth-eaten. Inside looks to hold the secrets of the world, hidden within yellowed pages, hurried writing of smudged ink.

All of it, from the Monster’s mannerisms, exterior, presumed weaknesses. Written, documented. How such information was gathered is beyond you. Intricate, detailed.

Study after study, page after page. 

In two days, you’re arranged to head out with Chris for a medical restock. The pharmacy isn’t too far from the Inn, and it’ll only be a few hours of collecting before returning back.

The morning of, Seungmin hands you his shotgun, and Chris takes Minho’s—the Man of Fires’—nail-wielding boxing gloves. Two backpacks, one goal.

Fortunately, the journey isn’t too grueling, filled with quiet conversation and query till barely divisible characters reading ‘PHARMACY’ come into view, slipping into the hollowed, whitened confines of a once thriving business.

Eerie, with medication strung awry, unknown blood splattered along a wall behind the register.

It’s almost funny how the money there goes untouched. What use is it now?

Captured within your peripheral does a door become of topic, shielded behind a hanging towel in the far corner of the pharmacy that you slowly pad over to inspect, fingers tentative in nudging to the side. 

Though, it’s the sudden flick of lights, electricity, that makes you gasp, flashlight of little necessity as you part double doors.

The sight makes your heart stop.

Because beneath the disguise of a pharmacy rests a drug-den, a laboratory, first and foremost.

“Uh.. Does Seungmin have this in his journal..?” 

Building long since redlined by the look of it, Chris is quick to join your side, muttering an awestruck: “Holy shit” you would’ve laughed at if it weren’t for your combined surprise. 

Though, he places an arm in front of you as your foot moves to step inside, instead advising the muzzle of your shotgun to lead you, clearing the area before feasting on this monstrosity.

Countless test tubes litter every surface in sight, but it isn’t mixtures, isn’t a combo of products.

It’s insects, piled with them.

Many deformed in gruesome ways, trapped inside the tubes. Chris, hastily pulling an old camera from his bag, snaps photos, the shutter’s sound echoing around the room.

Yet, you can’t help but notice a near uncanny resemblance.

Incisors, bulging eyes, like the Monster.

No, it wouldn’t be. A mega ant? No, that thing is far from solely ant with its hulking size.

“Don’t you think this is just.. odd? I mean, they’re already up to their noses in cash from the drugs, I’m sure, so why the.. ants?” 

Chris exhales slowly through his nose, shaking his head.

“My guess is as good as yours. And calling it a ‘guilty pleasure’ just makes me nauseous, I mean look at them, they’re.. infected.”

Fungal growth is clear as day, that’s agreed. The true question rests in reason.

Just what were they doing here?

The longer you linger, the more unsettling it becomes.

Because somehow, your gut can’t shake that resemblance to the Monster.

Your walk back to the bus is quiet, shrouded in nerves and a wanting for familiarity. Safe to say you both sigh in relief seeing that silvery, unmoving vehicle.

It’s almost comical how the uneasiness spreads, like whatever fungus altered the insects, contorting them in disfigured shapes, features. Overtaking the nine of you similarly.

Merely thinking about it gives you chills, Chris’s description, as you’re coddled into the bus with the others to explain, doing little for the vomit tempting your throat.

Effortlessly, your same silence washes over the others, paled as they acknowledge the identical resemblance you’d conjured before.

“You don’t think..” You’re feeble in attempting to disprove the suspicions, trembling of your fingers stilled only when Minho’s index traces your wrist. 

Though, it isn’t night, and the look he grants you makes you wish for his touch even more.

Assurance, worn within the grooves of his face, repetitive stroke of his fingertip over a hammering pulse.

“I do think, show me the picture again.” Seungmin beckons, hurriedly flipping through his own notebook as he narrows his eyes on the photo Chris shows. 

Seungmin, you learned, used to be an entomology major in Seoul’s most prestigious university. Studious, with a bright future nearing.

Interesting how easy those aspirations can crumble apart within a day, within seconds.

But there’s no purpose in reminiscing, is there?

Now resorting to gathered notes of the past, he finally stops at a page, finger glued to the scribbled notes. His other hand reaches to the photo, pointing to a tiny label taped to a test tube halfway outside the frame, writing messy and uneven, barely legible against the blur of the camera.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralism, or, in easier terms, zombie-ant fungus. 

Thanks to Seungmin’s insight, his knowledge dictates the occurrence as “a fungus capable of infecting the mind of its host while simultaneously altering its body.”

So, in a horror-movie-esque, freakish way, a parasite. 

Jeongin pipes up, and you swear at least four of you flinch at the sudden sound of a voice against leaden silence.

“But the Monster’s too big to be an ant, right? How could the—“ 

“What if it wasn’t an ant, but another animal? A bigger animal. Some scientific breakthrough where the host was able to be taken over, not by an ant, but by something bigger.” 

The entirety remains consumed in a stillness, taking in the revelation they’ve just come to. 

Fear is almost palpable. Nearly able to be tasted, smelt. 

Han’s leg bounces anxiously, dirty fingernails reaching to claw at his hair, tearing at his scalp with visible shuddering Chris’s warm palm hopes to ease, placed on his shoulder.

“We’re being hunted by a parasite.” He croaks hoarsely in disbelief, tone pathetically cracking in terror. 

A parasite, yes. This, however, is different. 

The monster lurking through Seoul was planned, arranged accordingly under the guise of law and human greed for motive unknown.

A lone pharmacy, meant to cater to human health, now manufacturerers of human destruction.

This parasite is man-made. 

Your spirit could’ve been staunched easily, dampened by the weight of discovery. Grown unwilling to fight anymore, unwilling to try surviving.

Who are we if not going for each other's throats? Why must someone’s greed become everyone else’s problem?

Something so selfish, so horrid it grew out of control, festering like a seed of hatred in one’s heart till spiky leaves and branches poured from their lungs and suffocated them.

For a moment do you entertain the doubts, the scornful attitude over the boiled egg in hand. An early breakfast the day after the realization, with the nine of you seated along the bus’s roof, legs swinging off the side while watching the sunrise. 

You feel like the only people in the world. 

And a bit longer seeing shades of orange and crisp blue bleed across the sky does it feel like it’s all worth living for once again.

So instead, you adapt.

Jotting down more details about the fungus, figuring out ways to combat it. Continual stocking of food, the usual.

Fixing things, keeping up with communication. Laughter and smiling, momentary glances to that Man-of-Fire making you clam up, just like before.

At least that was predictable. 

A continual gas lamp, those same quiet visits of his within the night. And, more often than not, you’d find Minho’s pinkie linking with yours while he slept, without a nightmare or sleepless night as explanation. 

In the mornings, you’d pretend like it never happened. Go back to cat and mouse, square one.

Hold my hand, but keep quiet. 

I don’t want you to leave.

Plenty of things echo through your mind as dawn arises, when your lids twitch and disoriented eyes flutter open to find him beside you, peacefully asleep.

Most days, he’s gone by dawn, somewhere across the bus sleeping, leaving your groggy mind to configure his touch as a mere dream.

No matter the awe, your body betrays such an occasion, and you fall right back to sleep again hoping he could read your mind, keep that contact beneath the blanket.

Unbeknownst to you, the moment your eyes close, his eyes open.

But you’re already asleep when a gentle index traces your cheek, his lips parting with a slow breath. 

“Pretty,” Is whispered, failing to echo around the bus in its hushed volume, a pinch of normality within the chirping of birds, the breach of an emerging day peering over sparse clouds.

“Hm?” 

He wasn’t anticipating your response, breath catching in his throat.

“Hi Minho,” You murmur gently, greeting his surprised disposition as your lips wind into a tiny smile. 

Involuntary. Lips quirking upwards the longer you hold eye-contact.

And surprisingly, Minho cracks a smile too.

It’s feeble, barely divisible apart from the twitch of his lips. Your thumb traces the crinkle, too sleepy to speak, too comfortable to act. 

“Hi there.”

His hand returns your touch, finding your cheek to rest on, savoring the feeling of your skin on his, his on yours.

Stay here, don’t go.

I don’t want to be left alone again.

His brisk glance at your lips has your nerves buzzing beneath such a gaze.

Knowing, obliging.

Obliging as his head tips, as yours complies. Capable of fitting like the perfect puzzle as—

Seungmin mumbles something unintelligible in his sleep, and it’s all a dream once more how Minho slips from your hands as if he was never there in the first place.

Three and a half months at Hellion Inn passes in a flash. Research on combatants to the zombie-ant fungus prevalent, plenty of days spent crowded in the bus, throwing around possibilities and idyll conversation. 

Monster sightings have become sparse, with the vast majority of reports informing of its scavenging of the city’s copious bodies.

A sense of relief until it runs out of flesh and craves more, which is where your apocalypse began all over.

Starting with that same, chillingly bellowed chuff at least half a mile out from Hellion Inn.

You don’t think you’d ever seen the eight of them move so quickly. Gas lamp extinguished, weapons cocked and loaded with ammunition ready to fire. Minho’s studded boxing gloves, Seungmin’s shotgun, Chris’s dual pistols. Plentiful traps arranged about the bus, ones you never anticipated having to utilize up till tonight.

How foolish you were.

However, the bus’s roof isn’t caved in by a claw, the nine of you intact for the remainder of the restless night, void of any more sound from the Monster. 

Then again, the torment is far from yielding, with those same, restless nights becoming avidly frequent, Minho’s soothing capabilities tested as a nightmare per week triples in number.

In those times, you find comfort in each other, comfort in bodies snuggled together, in shared pain and happiness. In as much comfort support allows in the thick of a never-ending hailstorm. 

As for you, you find that longing has folded itself into squares of eighteen from a once meager eight. Folded over and over that, the greater the paper grows with each parted fold, the greater that longing burns. 

Burns, like the smoke billowing from a fire outside.

Location of the slow-to-set sun leads you to believe it’s around 3pm, your figure slumped to the floor of the bus.

Though, the missing factor rests in a lack of eight others who currently occupy the fire outside for dinner.

Yesterday, you and Jeongin took on a water restock, roaming about what seemed to be innumerable miles to repeat the walk with heavy packs of water all the way back, currently the cause of your exhaustion as you sleep into the evening the day after.

If only the sleep was peaceful, refreshing.

It’s not.

Well, it was. But not for long.

A shower, according to the flickering of your consciousness as you dream. Warm water droplets pattering on the tile floor underfoot, cleansing grime from your skin. Electricity.

And somehow, a peculiar name leaves your lips upon seeing a shadow behind the shower curtain.

“Minho.”

The sound of your voice is light in this dream. Awaiting, familiar. 

Yet, the pit in your stomach grows, unnaturally.

You find the cause when pulling back the shower curtain, that same, leering smile of the Monster staring back at you as it lunges.

Not Minho.

Your vision goes black, only able to hear the ringing screech of your scream, the heat of the shower now putrid metallic. Blood, replacing the water.

It fills your senses, suffocating you slowly but surely. Overflowing from your nose, your eyes, till you cry crimson.

A sharp twitch of your hand jars you awake.

You’re not bleeding, not in a shower, no Monster in sight. Although, you’d be lying to yourself to say you can just forget it all, act like nothing’s the matter.

More so when you see Minho—recalling his name uttered so sweetly in your dream—standing at the bus’s doorway, seemingly a witness to your horrors as he closes the door behind himself.

Ah. 

No, don’t look at me right now with that doting gaze, as if I’m something to be cared for, something delicate. 

For once I wish you away, so I don’t begin to cry, so my love for you doesn’t become my ruin.

“And it was- it was right in front of me and—“

He sees through you each time, through the toughened exterior, the shake of your head when he asks if you need anything, want to talk about it. 

He came in for an extra blanket, apparently. One long forgotten by now.

Spill your guts, but when it comes to him, you find your heart spilling with it. Words caught in a hyperventilating daze, your hands flail, eyes struck permanently bulging.

At some point, everyone starts to break. No time table to give you an estimate, forewarning.

It just bubbles until bursting.

“I don’t… I don’t want to do this anymore..” Voice a desperate plea, sobs wrack your body numb.  “Why can’t…” You begin, eyes flitting to Minho.

“Why can’t we all just die together?”

Heaved between sharp inhales is your face taken between calloused hands, his brows knitted.

“Cause who’s going to take our place? Who else is alive?” He whispers, kneeled upon the floor, staring at you nonsensically.

“This once, let me be selfish. I won’t let you die. You can’t die because I want you alive. Do you understand?” 

Slow to nod, bleary vision situates upon the man, cursing the dip to your usually strong tone — cracking, weakened.

“Can… Can I just.. forget?” 

His eyes flit to your lips if only for an instant, like that time a month ago, stolen. 

And for a moment, you think he may have just read your mind.

“Minho, please… I want to-“

Ah.

And he kisses you, and then, no, more. More and more, till you’re tangled up in sprawled blankets and sleeping bags. Smoke tainting the air from outside, calves dangling from his shoulders, toes curled. 

Minho makes you forget, forget and forget, leaving you to helplessly utter his name past chapped lips — till another round turns into what feels to be a lifetime. 

Your palms pressing to his jaw like a plea, head tossing back once more with a sound purely guttural. 

It’s sloppy, it’s clumsy. Sweat-stuck kisses to sweat-stuck skin. Nails digging into already moth-eaten clothing, his lips permanently pressed to your pulse, hammering and hammering in a wordless incantation of bliss. 

And yet, no amount of greedy, mindless sex, no amount of his doting kisses, his careful assurances, praises, can deter your mind from a reality unavoidable.

There’s no euphoria, no recovery your skin can even acknowledge as he flops to your side, both out of breath.

“.. Am I selfish for a pleasure I can’t even enjoy?” 

Silence breached, your eyes flutter closed, an involuntary tear slipping down your cheek where you lay upon the bunched sleeping bag.

This had been a dream, to be burned by the Man of Fire. Allowing his kiss to brand you, his touch searing every ounce of skin raw.

Little did you know you’d already scorched it all yourself.

Cruel. Irrevocably cruel.

Not even clarity grants your senses, emotion muddled between undergarments feeling too tight and grimy and the lack of fresh air rendering sticky bodies into a cold sweat.  

From beside you, his hand extends to your cheek, thumbing away the salty droplet with a weary smile.

“There is no selfishness, just… grasping onto what’s left. You’re not selfish for taking what you can get, not when everything is being taken from you.”

Hellion Inn was not your safety, it was the one gazing at you, the seven others outside. 

This is only a house, Minho is your home.

Fifth month arising, a conclusion is met. Amongst not-so-helpful input, bickering, and plenty of runs to libraries to gather more books on Ophiocordyceps unilateralism for a very studious Seungmin, he presents a possibility, an option.

Of its known enemies, the zombie-ant fungus doesn’t have many. There was the initial hypothesis on ways ants protect from the parasite, but with the Monster already infected, those methods were out of the question.

Then came the breakthrough.

Torrubiellomyces zombiae, or T.Z. An additional, fanciful word for a more powerful parasite. A Hyperparasitic fungi, zombie-ant fungus’ predator.

Create an ultimate beast without known opponents? Simply double the size, the power.

That’s where T.Z arrived, the species a core option for the Monster’s destruction. Get the spores on the Monster’s skin, and stay alive until it takes over and stabilizes the fungus’ infection.

Much easier said than done, which left room for the organized members of the group separating steps into phases.

Phase one focuses on collection of the spores. Extra photos Chris took that first encounter in the pharmacy unveiled the likely presence of the desired spores, which Felix, Hyunjin, and Seungmin have been elected to collect as Team C.

Phase two regards locating the Monster, introducing the presence of a harpoon gun (an idea Han loved (for the sole reason of fooling around with the harpoon gun)).

The point of the harpoon will be coated in collected spores, teams of three with three members each (A, B, and C) dispersed throughout the surrounding area the monster before Team A shoots.

And of course, courtesy of Han’s mention on what phase three should be: 

Run like hell. 

Phase two enacting in exactly a week, Hellion Inn spends its days in preparation, plaguing each breathing moment with gathering necessities and ensuring utilities are present.  

Between those lines comes the lividity.

Kisses in the night, his kisses. The shared cockiness, incessant teasing when the others are around as original as it comes despite such tenderness in private.

Your souls bared, secrets spoken into the air for only your ears to hear.

While the others sleep, you love till your heart hurts, watching him fall asleep against your palm where he’d kissed each of your fingertips minutes prior.

“I love you,” He whispers one night, his nose buried into your cheek with a heavy sigh. 

There’s not a single doubt within your mind, a hesitation, a hint of surprise.

Plenty of times it’s been said without words, repeated in the peck he presses to your skin.

“I love you too.”

And you repeat the words in a kiss to his lips. Slow, careful.

Savor. As if it were your last.

Dark clouds wrinkle your vision, spitting rain nothing short of irritating as you, Han, and Minho slip through cluttered underbrush.

Gathering of the spores had been successful by Team C according to the flare gun’s signal, and Team A—consisting of Changbin, Jeongin and Chris—tracked the location of the monster. 

Itaewon hasn't changed apart from the lack of bodies, assumed to be the Monster’s doing. Debris prominent, scavenging animals littering the streets without the usual congestion of people.

When the second flare blooms into shaded sky, that’ll be the indication the last stage: shooting the monster, is underway. For now, the three of you wait, listening in as hurried footsteps of Team C come thundering towards you.

Seungmin offers the vial, Minho lifting the harpoon gun to plunge into what appears to be an oddly shaped mushroom, your arm already lifted to the sky to fire Team B’s own flare gun.

Half way. Not done yet.

Now for Phase three, but, prior to the “run like hell” notion.

Jeongin is the retriever of the harpoon gun, angling through side streets past a lingering monster in the center to deliver the catalyst.

Almost there, almost–

His foot clashing against the metal of an alleyway trash-can disrupts that peace, and synonymously do you feel all breath held.

Chris was supposed to deliver the shot. Jeongin was supposed to make it to Team A unnoticed.

The world seems to grow mute, Han’s wrenching scream from beside you fallen upon deaf ears as the Monster’s gaping jaws beeline for Jeongin, claws extended, the boy kneeling to the ground.

Then, a ping! resounds, and your eyes are slow to open in fear his mutilated body would sit there, bright eyes lifeless.

It’s almost slow motion seeing it. Centimeters from Jeongin’s face does a palm outstretch, twice the size of his head, fingers twitching as if frozen in space.

Then you see it.

In the middle of that palm, the mere edge of the harpoon—only able to get halfway from its sheath—embeds.

Cavernous jaws of the creature part, incisors poised as if disbelieving of the matter itself. Disbelieving of the parasite taking over, altering its blood stream. 

Wilt.

White, almost decaying in the manner the alternate fungi destroys the weaker one, its muscles failing, body freezing.

You half anticipated the creature to at least try fighting in the meantime, land one last swipe. 

But the more time ticking past as you lean forward disproves any chance of movement, able to physically see the blood cells permeating the creature ashen, once curved claws diminishing simultaneously like that of crumbling embers.

Just then does Hyunjin’s voice breach your focus, curdled in urgency. It’s his cry that beckons Jeongin back to his feet, racing back after the others, tip of the harpoon still wedged within the Monster’s palm.

Oddly enough, as you watch the last of it dust into the wind as if melting, it doesn't feel real.

Too simple, uncanny. As if millions hadn’t extinguished in its horrid maw—a single parasite killing off the apocalypse bringer as easy as that.

Yet, it wasn’t easy at all.

Testing every last ounce of your wish for life, wish for a reality snatched from not just you, but eight others’ fingertips.

It was taxing. Surviving, experiencing the start of new love you didn’t think could sprout among a wintery wasteland included. 

But it did sprout, and the way you’re the first person Minho’s eyes drift to speaks that loud and clear.

Twin blossoms of the most brilliant colors, growing brighter the nearer they are. 

Closer than love, truly. 

We made it.

The Monster is gone.

There isn’t a word spoken as you make back for Hellion Inn, make back for home. The crunch of footsteps along gravel rings in your eardrums, breath exhaled from parted lips, matted, grease-ridden hair the least of your concern. No joyous shouting, no celebratory behavior in the slightest.

What is there to celebrate anyway? So many lives lost, too many to mourn.

Progression of your footsteps carries each soul with it, allowing them a final sleep in their eternal resting place.

Sleep well, Seoul. 

“It’s all over.” 

Whispered amidst roaring flames, you can only stare at the pharmacy as fiery flickers—vials, chemicals, ants included–swallow whatever has been left, torching hell’s origin once and for all.

One last stop. One last goodbye to all that was, the last chapter.

Without a word, Minho’s pinky links with your own.

sunboki, may 2022 ©

FIC TAGLIST. @linocvp1d

[dira333]

Bakugo x Reader, 6 parts, Timeskip AU

Not everyone is born with a Soulmark. But even if you are, it doesn't make things easier.

Warnings: None, Angst to Fluff.

Chapters are going to be posted daily - Masterlist

Part 5

“Thanks for coming, Dad.” Katsuki closes the door behind Masaru, makes sure to double-lock it. He doesn’t want visitors right now.

“You don’t look good, boy. Are you eating enough?”

Instead of answering, he pulls his father into an embrace, fighting against the tears threatening to spill. When was the last time his father was taller than him, sturdier than him?

Masaru rubs a soothing hand over his back.

“It’s okay, son. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he manages to get out. “It’s really not.”

“Wanna tell me about it?” Masaru takes the Couch, pats the space next to him. “Come on, I’ll listen.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“At the beginning, of course.”

Slowly, still a little unsure, he settles next to him, lets his head fall back against the headrest. His Dad’s shoulder is there, on his left side, like a pillar holding him up.

“Do you remember when I told you about the Fake Soulmate?”

“The one that happened to your friend with the red-white-hair?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“I remember. What about that?”

“I never told you what came out of all of it, did I?”

Masaru hums in quiet acknowledgement, listens patiently as Katsuki unfolds the drama of it all like the world’s worst present.

“And now you’re scared.” Masaru comments when he has finished, last nights events still heavy on his tongue.

“I’m not sc-”

“Yes, you are.” Warm, sweaty hands fold around his and squeeze. “And it’s okay to be scared.”

Katsuki huffs. “I’m a Pro Hero.”

“This is different. You know that.”

He sighs, long and drawn out, before he turns to look at his father. 

“I didn’t tell you one thing,” he admits, still a little shaken by it. “The doctor couldn’t prove it, but he thinks the pain in my chest could have come from my Soulmate rejecting the bond.”

Masaru’s eyebrows furrow like angry caterpillars. Cold dread spreads over Katsuki’s shoulders.

“You’ve found them,” he guesses. “That’s why Mom blew up my phone yesterday. That’s it, isn’t it? You met them and now they know and they’re rejecting me before they’ve even met me.”

“No, Katsuki, that’s not it. I admit, your mother thinks she spotted the Mark yesterday, but how long has it been since she’s last seen it? I didn’t get a good look of it, to be honest and I asked your mother not to interfere. I did think she understood where I was coming from. And I told the girl the same thing. She didn’t want to know, actually. Put her hand on Mitsuki’s mouth to stop her from talking.”

“Wow,” Katsuki chuckles. “That takes guts. But… her name-”

“Don’t.” Masaru shakes his head. “Don’t ask me for it. That’s not who you are. If you want to meet them, find out for yourselves if there’s something there, just come visit us at work more often. I’ll make sure to shut off the A.C. so everyone’s running around with less clothes on.”

Katsuki’s half through a chuckle when it hits him. At work. His father said “at work”.

You’re working for him. You’re working with him, too, because you saw the Pictures he has on his table. Could it be?

“What if-” He hesitates. “What if the girl I’m interested in is my Soulmate? But she’s into Izuku?”

“How will you know if you don’t ask?”

“I can’t just ask her,” Katsuki glares at him. Why doesn’t he understand? “We’re having a good thing going on. If I ask her and she realizes I’m into her but she’s not my Soulmate nor shares the feeling, she’d probably move out. And you know what a hassle it is to get a roommate I don’t want to kill on their first day.”

“What if you ask her and she is your Soulmate?”

“What if she’s my Soulmate and she’s into Izuku?”

Masaru’s face softens. “Izuku has the uncanny ability to be liked by all, but that doesn’t mean everyone loves him too, does it?”

His words feel like a punch in the gut and Katsuki involuntarily sucks in a breath of air, trying to gather himself. 

“Look,” Masaru puts his hand on his shoulder, rubs the tight muscle there. “You’re brave. You’re smart. You’re confident. Even if you get stuck in the same situation as Izuku, bound to a Soulmate who’s not yet sure if she loves you, you’ll go about it differently. Because you’re Katsuki Bakugo. You’re not afraid to break something if it means building something else.”

Katsuki groans. “That’s a stupid pep talk.”

“Maybe. But it’s the truth. I’m going to leave now, because your Mother will surely wonder where I’ve gone to in the middle of the morning. You know what you have to do. You just have to be brave enough to do it.”

- x -

“Katsuki?” You pick up the Call, heart already racing. He’s never called you at work before and you’re just glad that you took Lunch a little earlier, now left alone in the spacious Open Office without anyone listening in.

“Hey.” His voice sounds rough, but not worse than it did in the morning. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“So…” He falls quiet for a second and you check if the Call’s still connected. “I have a friend.”

“Uhuh?”

“Well, this friend has had a rough childhood, so he’s not the best at emoting, but he’s found a girl he likes and that likes him back. In Highschool, too. Highschool Sweetheart, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, they graduate, move in with each other, all that jazz, until his Soulmark gets leaked on Public Television. He’s not bad looking, I assume, because soon, People all over the Country claim to be his Soulmate. The girl he’s with definitely isn’t, but they’re happy, you know.”

“Oh no.” You already know where this is going. 

“Yeah.” Another heavy pause.

“Well, one Girl is so convincing, he leaves his girlfriend for her. Because that’s his Soulmate, right? Well, turns out, three months into their relationship, that she’s not. It’s a very convincing tattoo, if anything, and she’s definitely mentally unstable. But hey, he thinks, he can still go back to his girlfriend, right? The one he still loves, who still loves him?”

“She found her own Soulmate, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “It’s a friend of the couple, actually. His Soulmate got destroyed in an accident, but there are pictures of it and it’s clear as day that they’re Soulmates. So now whe have three people who’re not sure how to deal with this. Do the actual Soulmates date even though they never thought about each other like that before? Or do the two people date that have feelings for each other until maybe, one day, they fall in love with their actual Soulmates? It’s a mess, really.”

“So, your friend-” You wonder if he’s taking about himself. He can’t, really. His Soulmark never got leaked. You don’t remember anything glaringly public about the other people from the Mario Kart Tournament either, besides Izuku, who’s Soulmark- Who’s Soulmark got destroyed. Oh. Oh.

“I just talked to him. He’s seeing someone at the moment. It’s still pretty fresh. She doesn’t have a Soulmark.” 

“What about you?” You ask, biting into the side of your thumb.

Katsuki falls quiet again.

“What about you?” He asks instead.

You swallow thickly. Do you tell him? About his parents and your mark and his brother and-

“Ah, there you are!” You flinch at the loud noise, turning. Bakugo Mitsuki’s marching through the Office, her eyes set on you.

“I’ll call you back later, okay?!” You rush out, heart racing for a whole different reason, fumbling to hang up. “Yes, Bakugo-san?”

“We’re in the middle of a Photoshoot and the Jewelry we got is wrong. Could you race over to Ace.3 and get the correct set? It’s just a few blocks down, the location on Fifth Street. They know someone’s coming.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” You’re almost shaking as you grab your things. “Do I take an Uber or the Metro? I’ve never been there before.”

“Take the Metro. Traffic is usually slammed at this time of the day.” 

She hands you a folder. “Everything you need is in there. Don’t lose the Company Credit Card. Oh…” She turns back around. “You should really rethink your opinion on this Soulmate thing.”

“Thank you.” You bite out. “But not right now.”

She huffs, clearly annoyed by the answer. “Whatever. I’ll be coming back to it.”

- x -

Katsuki’s glaring at the wall of his office, trying not to melt the phone in his hand with some well aimed explosions. Why does his mother always have the worst timing?

His phone pings with an incoming message.

“I’m on public transport now, so I don’t feel comfortable talking on the phone, but can we talk about this tonight? There’s something I want to tell you.”

His heart lurches into a sprint but he manages to calm down with the breathing technique Best Jeanist taught him all those years ago.

Tonight. He can wait until tonight.

Still. Time has never moved so slowly.

“Hey,” Kirishima appears in the open door to his office. “I’m going on patrol. Do you want to join me?”

“Yeah, why not.” He pushes himself out of his chair. At least that will give him something else to think about. “What district are we doing today?”

“Inner City. You know those fancy stores in fifth and sixth street? It’s never wrong to let the bad guys know we have an eye on it.”

Katsuki agrees quietly, slipping into his outfit. It’s been quite some time since he’s had to properly fight someone. Has it really been a month already since that knife accident?

-

He can smell all the way down to sixth street as they get out of the car.

“Fire?” He asks, adrenaline rushing through his veins.

“Probably.” Kirishima adds, moving through all the channels on his radio. The last one mentions the attack.

“Ace.3, Fifth Street, a group of three or four assailants. They are all armed as well as Quirk Users,” Kirishima rattles off as they jog down the street, waving fleeing pedestrians to the side.

It’s nothing out of the ordinary, really. Robberies, especially with a High End Jeweller like Ace.3 still offer good money if you’re in and out fast enough.

They catch the first one of the group at the door. One of the store clerks is clutching her leg, her face ashen.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Katsuki breathes into her ear, using Kirishima as a living shield while he does his best to stop the bleeding. He’s just about ready to drag her out of the store when RealSteel pounds through the door, his partner Phantom Thief right on his heels. 

“You take her,” he tells RealSteel. “Get her out of here. There are three more stories and the basement.”

“I’ll take care of it downstairs,” Phantom Thief offers, grinning. “Care to lend me a hand?” His outstretched hand is more like a taunt than a plea but Katsuki grabs it nonetheless. Monoma’s a good fighter when he wants to be, even if he’s still an asshole most of the time.

It makes more sense that the bigger fish are going to be downstairs, but something, whatever it is, is urging Katsuki to check upstairs.

“You two, downstairs,” he tells Kirishima and Monoma. “Be careful. I’ll check upstairs and follow you. RealSteel should follow you down as well.”

“Are you sure?” Kirishima asks.

“Do I look unsure?” He barks back, already taking two steps at a time.

-

It’s like stepping into a dream.

Flakes of Ash are flowing through the air like snowflakes. Upturned tables and chairs make it hard to navigate the room, but he’s on it, moving through the Chaos.

Katsuki spots a leg first, lifts the desk you must have tried to hide under.

Your face is covered in soot, your features barely recognizable. But he knows you. Even without all those dreams, he knows you. You’re his Soulmate. Always have been, always will be.

He sinks to his knees at your side. “Wake up,” he begs you, his heart hammering in his throat. “Wake up.” 

But as he moves to cradle your head, his hands go straight through it and the illusion vanishes.

He freezes, heart in his throat.

“Katsuki?” Your voice is raspy, a little breathless. “Is that you?”

“Where are you?” He turns, tries to spot you in the chaos. 

“In the corner. Be careful.”

He moves through the mess, not sure what he’s supposed to be careful about.

But there you are, pinned to the floor by a heavy desk, your face a grimace of pain.

“Hey,” he lifts it carefully, pushes it to the side as best he can. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Harharhar,” You laugh humorlessly, pain audible in your voice. “Your mom’s going to kill me.”

“For what? Surviving a robbery?”

“I already got the jewelry she asked for but I lost it.”

“You lost-” He snorts through his nose, disbelief covering every word. “Do you really think that’s important right now?”

“Isn’t it?” You cough again. “There are four of them. Did you get them all? One of them followed me up here to get my stuff as well. I don’t know if they’re still arou-” You shriek, just in time to alert him. He whirls around, one grenadecovered arm pulled up as a shield - the bullets ricochet off it and sink into the walls around. 

The attacker is a guy with yellowed fangs and papery skin. He’s breathing harshly. 

“Knew she wasn’t dead yet,” he all but purrs, a sound so strangely wrong coming from him. “Now give me the real stuff and nobody gets hurt.”

“Drop the weapon and you’ll at least get out of here alive,” Katsuki snarls back, eyes moving through the room. The guy’s got a tail, which could mean he’s got a similar Quirk to Ojiro. But the teeth could also mean something poisonous. It’s all about the movements, too, though the guy won’t move.

In the end, that’s what brings him down. Arms of steel curl around his gangly body, lifting him up from the floor. 

“You’re coming with me!” RealSteel declares, crushing the gun in one hand. “You good, Dynamight?”

“Just peachy,” he snarls back, a little pissed that he didn’t get to fight. But he’s got better things to do anyway.

“The real stuff?” He asks, carefully lifting you off the ground. 

You smile through the pain. “I might not be your mother’s best employe, but I’m pretty good at imitation.”

He tries to snort, the sound catching halfway in his throat when his hand comes back wet from your shoulder.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It looks worse than it is,” you tell him, but he shakes his head, his heart hammering like a humming bird. 

“Let me see.”

“No, it’s- it’s right above my Soulmark.”

Katsuki stills, your body in his arms, his heart in your hands.

“Listen-” His voice sounds harsher than it should, given the occasion. “I already know you’re my Soulmate. Just let me check your shoulder before you bleed out on me… Please.” He adds, because he can be polite when he wants to.

You let out something that sounds like a sob but you lean forward, allow him access to the area.

It really is just a nasty cut, slicing off one corner of the Mark. And even though he didn’t need to check after today, the sight of it still blows him away.

It’s there. Visible, touchable proof. You’re his. If you want to, that is.

-

He’s never hated Protocol more than today.

Because he needs to stay behind for Questioning and Paperwork, unable to see you off properly. Your cut has been treated by the paramedics that arrived on the scene and if there are worse injuries he’ll only find out later, when he gets to talk to you in the privacy of his, your home.

“You okay?” Kirishima walks over to where he’s standing, teeth grinding as he waits.

“Just peachy.”

“Listen, I know you hate when other teams get all the fight but-”

“She’s my Soulmate,” he blurts out, maybe a little too loud because a few people turn their heads. He glares until they turn back around.

Kirishima grins. “I knew it,” he says, sounding just a tad bit smug. “Didn’t I? I knew it.”

“Yeah, well, don’t be so happy about it,” Katsuki argues, the old fear griping for his heart. “I think she’s into Izuku.”

“Into Izu-” Kirishima laughs. “What in the world makes you think that?”

“Well there’s that one moment when they were in the kitchen-”

Kirishima’s shaking his head. “Look, I’m not a girl. You’re not a girl. We can and will misunderstand what they mean. But if Mina tells me that your roommate is head over heels in love with you, I do believe her. After all, has Mina ever been wrong?”

“She can’t always be right.”

“It’s Mina,” Kirishima grins. “She might as well.”

- x -

“Hey!” You greet him from the Couch when he steps through the door, a cup of tea in your hand. 

“Hey,” he drops his bag right at the door, kicks his shoes off and waltzes over, completely un-Katsuki-like. “How are you? Any more injuries? Did they give you a proper check-up? Tell me you went home right after!”

“Relax,” you laugh, cringing when it hurts. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” You put the tea away, sit up a little straighter.

“I’ve got a fractured rib from the Desk falling on me and should take it easy the next few weeks. I can work but your Dad asked me to go through Trauma Counselling, just in case. I did come home right after delivering the jewelry, so I hope you’re happy.”

“This isn’t about me being happy,” he snarls.

“I know, I know. But…” You look away, suddenly feeling awkward. “You said… You said you knew I was your Soulmate. How?”

All tension leaves him with one single breath. He all but falls into the cushions.

“I… I used to get really vivid dreams. Always the same scenario, me walking into that room, the ash flying around, you pinned under that desk. I never recognized your face but that moment was pretty self-explanatory.”

“Oh.” You swallow harshly. “But you… But you had a hunch, right? That’s why you were trying to talk about it earlier. On the phone, I mean?”

“Yeah, kind off.” He’s staring into the distance now. “I just… I have feelings for you. And I wanted you to know. Because maybe you don’t. Have feelings for me, I mean. Which is fine, you know, it doesn’t have to be. I told you, my friends-”

“I do have feelings for you,” you declare boldly, putting a hand on his knee. Katsuki stiffens, his face now almost as red as a fire-engine.

“But you asked Izuku about his Soulmate…”

“Yeah, because your Mom said that he’s my Soulmate. Well, she didn’t say it, but it sounded like-”

“What the hell?” Katsuki’s brows are furrowed that way again and you fear for his head. “Why would she say that? She knows my Soulmark and nosy as she is, she probably already knows that he’s found his Soulmate.”

“Yeah, but I heard her say to your Dad ‘This is about your son!’ so I figured she was talking about Izuku!”

Katsuki looks almost catatonic now.

“Why?” He asks, teeth grinding. “Would you think that… Izuku… is my Dad’s son?”

“Because he…” You’re waving your hand’s around as if that would help you. “Well, he said… he said something that sounded like… Isn’t he your half-brother?”

“No,” his voice is deathly silent now. “You thought Izuku was your Soulmate? Why not me?”

Oh. Well. 

“I didn’t want to assume,” you whisper, ashamed of your own reasoning. “Because you’re you and I didn’t want to be greedy.”

“I thought you were into him,” Katsuki whispers back, cradling your head in his hands. “Do you know how much I worried about this?”

“That panic attack!” Your heart drops at the realization. “You felt when I tried to reject the bond!”

“Why would you even do that?” Katsuki cries. 

“Because I wanted you,” you blurt out, a little less ashamed of that truth now that all the others are out in the open. “Not some Soulmate. Not Izuku. I just… I just wanted you.”

His head sinks forward, his temple pressed against yours.

“Never do that again,” he begs, his hands shaken where they’re holding you. “Promise.”

“Promise,” you whisper, leaning in to kiss him. 

-

You wake up with Katsuki’s arm slung around your shoulders, your back pressed against his chest. He runs hot and he snores a little, like a kitten.

Nonetheless your rib hurts from lying on the side and you need to pee, so you move to untangle yourself from him.

“What?!” He rasps immediately, his lips pressed against your ear.

“I need to pee.”

“Tough luck, keep it in.”

“I’m going to piss in your bed,” you threaten and he lifts his arm. 

“If you’re not back here in five minutes I’m coming to get you.”

You snort at the threat and slip out of bed, down the hallway and into the bathroom.

A part of you wants to grab your phone and text Ami. Truth be told you have quite a lot to tell her. But the rest of you just want to slip back into bed and cuddle into this human space heater that you can now call yours. After you’ve gotten a sip of water, that is.

“Five minutes are over,” Katsuki growls, leaning shirtless and heavy against the doorframe. “You’ve got five seconds.”

“Here,” you press the glass of cool water against his lips. “Don’t be grouchy.”

“‘m not grouchy,” he defends himself, pulling you in. “I just want to sleep.”

“Grouchy,” you repeat, kissing his cheek. “You’re lucky I like that.”

“You’re lucky I like you,” he responds, slipping back into bed.

“Can’t sleep on my side,” you remind him when he turns to spoon you.

“Oh,” he huffs for a moment before turning on his back. It’s hard to tell in the dark but you think he’s blushing. “You want to sleep on my chest?”

“Well, if you’re asking…” You can tell that he’s flustered the second you rest your head, the thunder of his racing heart now directly below your ear.

“I’m here,” you remind him, rubbing a hand over it. “I’m here.”

“I’m not worried,” he says and you spot the lie from a mile away.

“I know.”

[fluffymiyaa]

Waste The Night

Painting!Gojo x Painter!reader x Painting!Geto

Summary: In a haunting twist of fate, your tragic painting suddenly springs to life, its sorrowful characters and somber scenes manifesting before your eyes.

Tw: slight possessive

1 2 3

Masterlist Main Masterlist

In the midst of your peaceful slumber, you were unaware of the world around you, lost in the blissful embrace of sleep. Your hair was tousled, and a soft snore escaped your lips, accompanied by a small drool that trickled down your chin.

Suddenly, a persistent poking on your cheek disturbed your rest, prompting a furrowed brow of annoyance.

"Y/n...? Wakey wakey..." Satoru's voice called out, but you remained oblivious, turning away from him and inadvertently facing Suguru, who was sharing the bed with you both.

Unbeknownst to you, your drool had become an unwelcome intruder in Suguru's personal space. "Ugh... your drool's wetting my hair!" he complained, his voice laced with disgust.

Startled awake by his words, you blinked groggily, finally registering the presence of both Satoru and Suguru beside you. With a flush of embarrassment, you quickly wiped away the drool, realizing that you had forgotten about the previous night's arrangement to share the bed.

"Sorry about that, Suguru," you mumbled sheepishly, feeling a mix of embarrassment and amusement at the unexpected wake-up call.

In the soft glow of the early morning, the clock displayed 7 am, much earlier than your usual waking hour. You blinked away the remnants of sleep, trying to make sense of the voices that had stirred you from your sleep.

"I woke you up because I wanted to hear your voice before I'm gone" Satoru's voice broke through the quietude

"You're not dead, Satoru. We can come back tonight," Suguru's response was sharp, his irritation evident.

Satoru's smirk only grew wider at Suguru's retort.

"Oh? 'We'?" he teased, his eyes dancing with mischief.

"Of course. It's not like I want to. When you leave, the paint will pull me out too," Suguru's reply.

"Yeah, you're not even trying to stop me," Satoru remarked, his tone light but pointed.

"Like you would listen?" Suguru shot back, a defiant glint in his eyes.

"Like you ever listen?" Satoru shot back again.

As you observed the exchange, it dawned on you—the truth of their existence. Suguru and Satoru were paintings, but they had the uncanny ability to become real, if only for a while. The thought brought a mix of wonder and intrigue to your mind.

Ah... what a noisy morning

You thought to yourself, marveling at the extraordinary companionship you shared with these painted beings who had become so much more.

As the ringtone shattered the morning calm, you hurriedly scrambled out of bed to answer your phone, leaving Suguru and Satoru staring after you with an intensity that sent a shiver down your spine. With trembling fingers, you answered the call, your voice betraying your grogginess.

"H-hello?"

"Y/n? Did you just wake up? It's 7 am. You should wake up earlier. Don't forget you need to finish the painting! I don't want to know how, but you must finish it by tomorrow." your manager's voice crackled through the line, a sense of urgency palpable in his tone.

"A-ah.. yeah.. it's done," you stammered, trying to sound confident despite the unease creeping into your voice.

"Really? Send me the picture, now." his demand was firm, leaving no room for argument.

You glanced nervously at Suguru and Satoru, feeling their gaze boring into you with an unsettling intensity. The atmosphere in the room suddenly felt tense, as if something unspoken hung between you all, thick and suffocating.

"I... I will send it tonight... it's almost finished... just a little bit more," you replied hastily, eager to end the call and escape the weight of their stares.

"Tch, fine. I'll call you later, don't forget to send it if you still want this job." your manager huffed before abruptly hanging up.

As you lowered the phone, a sense of unease settled in the pit of your stomach. Something was off, and you couldn't shake the feeling that Suguru and Satoru knew more than they let on.

"Who's that?"

As Satoru reached for your phone, his sudden movement caught you off guard, causing you to startle.

"E-eh? My manager," you stammered, attempting to retrieve your phone, but Satoru's firm grasp prevented you from doing so. With a gentle but insistent motion, he placed it in the drawer nearby, his actions making your heart race.

"Why is he talking to you like that?" Satoru's voice was gentle, yet there was a subtle edge to it, as if he sensed something amiss.

You struggled to find an explanation, your mind racing to justify the situation.

"Well... he's just, you know, that's just how he is. I mean, it's my fault. I should have finished up earlier" you replied, the words tumbling out hastily in an attempt to ease the tension.

Meanwhile, Suguru remained silent, his grip on his yukata tightening as he struggled to contain his emotions. Finally, he spoke up .

"Did he know you broke the brush?"

"N-no, I'm scared he—" you began, but Suguru cut you off with a firm insistence.

"That he what?" he urged, his words sending another wave of apprehension through you.

Your body trembled slightly as uncertainty gnawed at your insides.

What was happening? Why were they acting so strangely all of a sudden?

"Are you guys alright?" you asked, a note of concern creeping into your voice as you looked between them for answers.

They didn't answer, instead, Satoru's grip on your hand tightened, their silence speaking volumes.

"Is he bothering you, Y/n?" Satoru's voice held a protective edge.

"What? No! He's my manager..." you trailed off, the unease in the room becoming palpable as you struggled to make sense of their unusual behavior.

As Suguru pushed his hair back and deftly tied it into a bun, he strode purposefully towards you, his presence commanding attention.

"Aren't you supposed to make breakfast?" he inquired, his tone matter-of-fact but tinged with a hint of urgency.

"Oh! You're right!" you exclaimed, a sudden realization dawning upon you. With a hurried nod, you dashed downstairs to the kitchen, leaving Satoru and Suguru behind in your room.

Suguru walked forward Satoru. His face right infront of him.

"Calm down, Satoru. You're a grown man," Suguru's voice cut through the tension, his words carrying a soothing undertone.

"Do you feel it too, Suguru?" Satoru's voice turned cold, the edges of his words sharp.

For a moment, Suguru remained silent, his expression unreadable. Then, with a decisive nod, he walked towards the door, his demeanor composed yet resolute.

"She's the one who created us, after all" Suguru's response hung heavy in the air, laden with implications that left Satoru unsettled.

As Suguru left the room, a sense of unease lingered, the weight of his words echoing in the silence.

What did it all mean? And what role did you play in their existence? The questions swirled in their mind.

As the three of you sat in silence, the tension in the air grew thicker, even Satoru, usually the chatterbox, remained uncharacteristically quiet. The awkwardness weighed heavily on you, making you squirm uncomfortably in your seat.

"Hey... it's almost 8, don't you guys need to go back?" you interjected, breaking the suffocating silence.

Suguru was the first to stand, shooting a meaningful glance at Satoru, silently conveying the need to depart. Satoru followed suit, his movements slow and hesitant.

"Thank you... for the meal," Satoru murmured softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

You offered him a warm smile, appreciative of the fleeting moment of connection amidst the awkwardness. "You're wel—"

"Can I hug you? Before I leave," Satoru's request caught you off guard, but you couldn't help but chuckle at his earnestness.

"You were hugging me all night, Satoru... but yes, come here," you replied with a gentle laugh, opening your arms to him.

Satoru enveloped you in a tight embrace, his tall frame towering over you as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply at your smell. The gesture was oddly intimate, yet comforting in its familiarity.

As Satoru reluctantly released you, Suguru remained silent, his gaze lingering for a moment before he turned and made his way upstairs to your studio, leaving the two of you alone in the kitchen.

Satoru gently took your hand, silently urging you to follow him back to your studio. As you entered the room, Suguru approached the painting with a sense of reverence, his fingers delicately tracing the lines of the canvas. Suddenly, a soft glow emanated from the paint, casting a mesmerizing light across the room.

You watched in awe as Suguru's entire being seemed to dissolve into the painting, disappearing into the vibrant colors and swirling textures.

Just as you marveled at Suguru's transformation, you felt Satoru's hand squeeze yours, his touch grounding you in the moment. With a silent understanding, he too stepped forward, his form merging with Suguru's within the painting.

As you watched them disappear into the vibrant world within the canvas, a sense of awe and excitement filled you.

"I'll see you guys again tonight"

Feeling adrift and unsure of what to do with your newfound freedom, you realized just how long it had been since you last ventured outside for a leisurely walk, spent time hanging out with friends, or even enjoyed a simple shopping trip.

With a sigh, you resolved to break free from the monotony of your routine. Taking a shower and getting dressed felt like a small step towards reclaiming a sense of normalcy in your life, a way to shake off the stagnation that had settled over you in Suguru and Satoru's absence.

As the warm water cascaded over you, washing away the remnants of sleep and uncertainty, you felt a renewed sense of purpose begin to stir within you. Dressing in fresh clothes, you emerged from your home with a newfound determination, ready to seize the day and rediscover the simple joys that life had to offer.

Standing at the bus stop, you contemplated your options, the possibilities stretching out before you like an open road waiting to be explored. It was time to embrace the spontaneity of the moment, to step outside your comfort zone and embrace the unknown.

With a sense of anticipation building within you, you boarded the bus, the promise of adventure and discovery beckoning you forward. As the bus rumbled along its route, you couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement bubbling up inside you, eager to see where the day would take you.

Where should i go? Mmhm..mall?

With a decisive nod, you made up your mind. The mall it was. As you boarded the bus, a sense of anticipation bubbled within you, eager to rediscover the simple joys of exploring new surroundings and immersing yourself in the hustle and bustle of city life.

Excitement bubbled up within you as you stepped into the bustling mall, the vibrant atmosphere filling you with a sense of exhilaration. With a skip in your step, you made a beeline for your favorite stores, the allure of shopping beckoning you irresistibly.

As you perused the racks and shelves, you couldn't help but feel a surge of indulgence wash over you. Maybe you were being a tad extravagant, but today was about treating yourself, about embracing the joy of spontaneity and indulging in the things that brought you happiness. After all, you reasoned, you deserved it.

With bags in hand and a satisfied smile on your face, you made your way to a cozy ramen restaurant for lunch. Sitting alone, you couldn't shake the twinge of loneliness that tugged at your heartstrings. But instead of dwelling on it, you decided to channel that longing into something positive. You ordered extra ramen to go, a gesture of kindness for Suguru and Satoru for their dinner, a way to include them in your day even in their absence.

After savoring every last slurp of your delicious meal, you resumed your leisurely stroll through the mall, your eyes lighting up as you passed a charming bakery shop. Unable to resist the temptation, you stepped inside and found yourself captivated by the array of cute and colorful cakes on display. Without hesitation, you selected a few to take home, the promise of sweet indulgence adding an extra spring to your step as you continued your shopping adventure.

As the clock struck 6 pm, signaling the end of your exhilarating day at the mall, you gathered your bags and made your way back to the bus stop, a contented smile gracing your lips. Despite the exhaustion weighing on your body and the slight soreness in your hands from carrying so many bags, you couldn't help but feel a sense of fulfillment wash over you.

Arriving home, you took a moment to bask in the quiet comfort of your surroundings before setting to work preparing dinner. The aroma of simmering broth filled the air as you lovingly plated the ramen, setting aside a portion for Suguru and Satoru, a silent invitation for them to join you in the warmth of your home.

With the ramen ready and waiting, you carefully stored the cakes in the fridge, saving them for later. As you settled onto the sofa, the soft glow of the TV casting a warm light across the room, you couldn't help but feel a sense of anticipation building within you.

As you anxiously watched the clock, the minutes ticked by agonizingly slow. When it finally read 8:25, worry crept into your mind as you wondered why Suguru and Satoru hadn't returned yet. Just as your concern began to mount, the sound of aggressive footsteps caught your attention, and you turned to see Satoru rushing towards you with an infectious energy.

"Y/n!! I missed you!" he exclaimed, enveloping you in a tight hug from behind, his presence instantly dispelling any lingering unease.

Relief flooded through you as you returned his embrace, grateful for his sudden appearance. But as you glanced towards the stairs, you noticed Suguru descending slowly, his gaze fixed on you with a quiet intensity that spoke volumes.

With a nod of acknowledgment, Suguru settled beside you on the sofa, his presence a calming presence beside you.

"How was your day..." he began, his voice trailing off as he waited for your response, his eyes searching yours for any hint of emotion.

The unexpected question from Suguru left you momentarily taken aback, your mind reeling with surprise. Was this the same Suguru who had greeted you with icy detachment, referring to you as nothing more than a monkey?

Before you could dwell on it further, Satoru's cheerful interruption broke the tension, his infectious energy drawing a giggle from your lips.

"Yes, yes! What were you doing while we were gone?" he chimed in eagerly, diverting the conversation to more lighthearted topics.

"I'll tell you guys. Now cmon i prepared you dinner." They follow you to table.

"Ramen? Mhmmm smell good. Thank u y/n!" Satoru's delighted exclamation at the aroma of the dish brought a warmth to your heart, while Suguru's quiet acknowledgment with an "Itadakimasu" spoke volumes in its simplicity.

"Now that you guys asked how I'm doing, well, I went to the mall!" you exclaimed with a grin, excitement bubbling in your voice. "I bought a ton of clothes and accessories, hehe."

"Really? I'm so glad you enjoyed your day! I can't wait to see you in the new clothes," Satoru chimed in, his eyes lighting up with genuine happiness at your revelation.

Suguru nodded in agreement, a faint hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "It sounds like you had a great time," he remarked, his tone soft but sincere.

"Oh! I got you guys something!"

You couldn't contain your excitement as you rose from your seat, a mischievous twinkle in your eyes. With a playful giggle, you retrieved the cake from the fridge, carefully balancing it in your hands as you returned to the table.

"Tadaaa!" you exclaimed, presenting the cake with a flourish, a wide grin spreading across your face.

Satoru's eyes lit up with delight, his grin mirroring yours as he leaned forward to get a closer look at the sweet treat.

"Wow, you bought us cake too? You're the best, y/n! Omg i really love cake!" he exclaimed, his enthusiasm infectious.

Satoru eagerly dug into his slice of cake, his eyes lighting up with delight as he savored each bite. "This is amazing!" he exclaimed between mouthfuls.

Suguru regarded the cake with a subtle nod of approval, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Thank you," he said quietly, his expression betraying a hint of warmth that spoke volumes.

Satoru opened his eyes, his gaze softening as he beheld your peaceful sleeping face. He resisted the urge to shower you with kisses, opting instead for a tender peck on your forehead. Glancing at Suguru, who stood by the door with a determined expression, Satoru nodded.

"You ready?" Suguru asked, his voice steady and resolute.

Satoru hesitated for a moment before responding, "You sure you're coming with me?" His tone carried a hint of concern.

Suguru grinned in response, his eyes gleaming with determination. "I like hunting monkeys," he replied with a playful smirk.

As they exchanged a knowing look, a sense of unity washed over them, their shared resolve strengthening their bond. With a nod of agreement, they stepped out into the night, ready to face whatever challenges awaited them with courage and determination.

Where do u guys think gojo and geto go?👀 next chapter would be...🤫

Hope you guys like this chapter, sorry if it's boring! Thanks for the notes, reblogs make me feel more appreaciated<3

Tags: @ceramic-raven @beastofthetrees @r0ckst4rjk @gothiccwhore666

[afternoondreaming]

No Business Like Show Business (5/?)

Finally! Back to another showing, folks! Things are slowly getting more interesting. What exactly is going on with the strange scenery? Will you figure it out? Will you ever grow used to your boss' antics? Stay tuned to find out! Also, a special thank you to @just-j3ster for the recommendations on tags!

Waving back to your apparently ‘benevolent’ boss, you straightened yourself out before going to greet him. “Hey, Mr. Puzzles!” Your tone was rather chipper despite the long drive, turning to look at the moving truck before returning your gaze to the TV head in front of you. “You sure you wanna help? I could’ve just asked my work friend.” While it was rather kind of him to offer, you wouldn’t want to impose on your newfound superior. 

“Of course!” His voice was sing-songey, screen turning to a joyful yet uncanny face. “I said I would help, and a good mastermind always helps their sidekick.”

“Really? Still on about that ‘sidekick’ thing?” Sighing was all that statement could be met with, turning to walk to the back of the truck as you dangled the keys. “Let’s get to work then, Boss.” Despite the sarcasm dripping from your voice, Mr. Puzzles didn’t seem to notice. Simply following after you, every single step for him being three for you. The bastard really was tall. With a turn of the latch you shoved the door upwards, gazing at all your earthly possessions. “Ready?”

“Surely! Ah- however…” The look on his screen went awkward, turning slightly away from you in what seemed like embarrassment. “While I have moved before, I just…Haven’t helped someone else.” He coughed to cover the last statement up, switching his picture back to normal. “I’m sure it is similar enough, right? Moving couches and getting stuck in tight stairwell corridors having to pivot and all that?”

“Are-… Are you referencing Friends?” Your arms went slack, looking up to him in disbelief. “Are you being serious and referencing Friends?”

“It… Is my main frame of reference.” With how he slouched in disappointment… He must’ve actually been serious. 

“Well, we have one singular loveseat to move, first of all. Not a whole couch.” You pat the man on the back in an awkward attempt at reassurance. “Second of all, you don’t really need a frame of reference for it. You and I are just gonna move furniture and then in the end, I’ll get some takeout to pay you back. Simple.” Without giving him enough time to protest you picked up a box from the moving van, surprising him by suddenly putting it into his arms. “Let’s get to work! We’re losing daylight.”

“Right! Yes-aha! Onwards!” He recovered from the surprise quickly, holding the box strangely in his long arms and making his way towards the stairwell entrance. 

All in all, it would take around three hours to move most of everything from the moving van into your new apartment. And, despite you once asking for the keys and him throwing your whole printer at you, it went well enough! You were on the last of the boxes as your phone began to ring, excusing yourself to answer it as you watched Mr. Puzzles work. 

“Yo yo!” Tori’s voice rang through the other side, bringing a weary smile to your face. “What’s goin’ on? You regret not taking up my offer to help you move now~?”

“Hey, Tori.” You leaned against the side of the truck, grateful for the moment to relax. “It’s been going well enough, so no, I don’t regret it.” Despite the statement your tone was obviously joking. “Besides, I did end up getting help.”

“Really? What, now that you’re a big shot you decided to hire some moving company?”

“No, I didn’t hire anybody…” You were trepidatious about your answer, but didn’t want to lie to your friend. “My boss decided to help…?”

“…Nah you’re lying.” Tori was understandably shocked. “The head of Puzzlevision just… Decided to lend you a hand?”

“Yeah- I mean, I guess?” You watched Mr. Puzzles, currently struggling to find the best way to hold an awkwardly shaped box. “He’s weird but nice enough.”

“But-like-” Your friend stumbled over her words. “He’s the head of the studio! Why does he give a fuck?!”

“Listen, listen” You replied calmly, getting her to quiet down so you could speak. “Things at Puzzlevision are… Weird. Even just here is weird…!” Turning your gaze from your boss to your surroundings, you once again acknowledged the strangeness of the scenery. “Everything is… Color corrected. Saturated. Even how he moves is over exaggerated!” Case in point, the man was over dramatically trying to keep his balance while making sure the box didn’t tumble down the stairs. “It's just really Twilight Zone around here, man. I can’t go into it right now, but…”

“You’re going to have to dish the gossip later, okay?” Tori said assertively, managing to get a chuckle out of you. 

“Okay okay, sure. We’ve still got more to move, so I can’t talk for long.” After all, you didn’t want your new boss moving your things by himself. That would be taking advantage of his kind offer! “I’ll talk to you later, you snoop.” 

With some short goodbyes you hung up, returning to the TV man’s side. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“No need!” He replied, fixing his rolled up sleeves and dusting off his gloves. “This was all quite fun! A true bonding montage between mastermind and minion!” Another one of his dramatic poses were struck, prideful look on his screen.

“Well, it's not over yet! And- yet again- Screenwriter.” You corrected him habitually as you grabbed the last box, pulling down the back door of the moving van and locking the car with a click. “Now’s the time where I pay you back with takeout. Now, ‘you more of a pizza or Chinese food person?’ He’d follow behind as you walked over to the stairwell entrance, trudging back up the stairs for the umpteenth time that day.

“I…” Mr. Puzzles began, that awkward look washing over his screen once more. “Don’t really eat, Starlet.” Oh… Right. He had a TV for a head. Of course he wouldn’t eat. You felt so stupid, finally reaching your apartment door and bumping it open with your hip.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I hadn’t even thought of that… Why didn’t you tell me earlier when I mentioned it!” You dropped the box in the inside hall, groaning as you walked to the loveseat the two of you had moved today and allowing yourself to fall into it.

“Well, I simply didn’t want to rain on a trope!” The man fretted in attempts to console his new sidekick, trying to dismiss it with the wave of his hand. “If it was a veritable tradition, then who am I to deny the audience?!” Who was he to deny the tried and true trope when it worked so well? And, partly, it was selfish. He never had the opportunity to help someone like this before, so the thought of being able to bond with the one who would hopefully turn his ratings around was an enticing thought. After all, loyalty was earned and he had to assure that you wouldn’t be swept away by SMG4 and his group of simpletons when he inevitably came to ruin it all.

“Well I can’t just eat without you, that’s plain rude!” You tossed your arm up in emphasis, letting it fall limply in your own frustrations.

“Not at all! We could do something else if you want to repay me! We could-ah…” Mr. Puzzles looked around before snapping his fingers, coming up with an idea. “We could watch a movie! Aha! Yes, that would be the perfect activity for my newly acquired Starlet Sidekick to partake in with me.”

“...I guess it's thematic.” You replied, sitting up as you looked over to your television set. “I haven’t set up my DVD player or internet, though… I could do it now, I guess.” Shrugging, you got up from your seat, starting to make your way over to the various unpacked boxes.

“Ah, no need for all that! I can play whatever you’d like!” He chirped, happy face flickering onto his monitor.

“...You can play it? Like… On your face?” You weren’t exactly sure what you expected. Logically, it would make sense that a TV could play movies, but… That was his face. “So, what, do I just stare at your face the whole time…? Can you even talk when you’re doing that or am I just basically alone?” Were these questions insensitive? Possibly, though, you couldn’t tell. Luckily, Mr. Puzzles just met your questioning with laughter.

“I suppose you’d be staring at my face, technically. And, no, you wouldn’t be alone~! I can talk through it just fine while I’m playing a feature.” He could sense you were impressed and subsequently got more smug, causing you to roll your eyes. “My precious TV head is much more useful than just displaying my magnetic features~”

“...Uh, yeah, sure, casanova.” You couldn’t possibly roll your eyes any harder at his self aggrandizing antics, but he didn’t seem to care. “Come over here, then.” You waved him over, patting the empty space on the chair and seemingly confusing him.

“Uh, pardon you?” Mr. Puzzles asked, pointing at himself.

“Well, I’m not gonna have you sitting on my coffee table.” Shrugging, you got up and walked over to the kitchen. “Sit down and face where I’ll sit. I’m gonna make some popcorn. You got any movie recommendations?”

You wouldn’t see it, but for a slight moment, a line of bright pink would flicker across the producer’s face for a moment. His plan was to just retract his body into his head and rest on the coffee table, but… You actually just wanted him to sit with you. He’d… happily oblige if it meant earning the loyalty of his new sidekick. He’d take a seat you had assigned him on the small loveseat, fixing his face lest you returned. “Of course I’d have movie recommendations!” He began, glad to focus on it. “I’ve seen everything! We could go strictly classics if you’d prefer: Casablanca, Psycho, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind…” He listed off titles as the sound of popping popcorn lightly rang out from the kitchen, only stopping when you came back with the bowl.

“Let's go with Casablanca, yeah? Been a while since I’ve seen that.” You replied, sitting down cross legged while you situated yourself to lean against the armrest and watch the TV man.

“Ah, you’ve seen it~!” Mr. Puzzles said happily, his head tuning off his face and onto the opening as his hand fiddled with the volume knob. “I knew I made the good choice of hiring someone with taste~! I hope you don’t mind Puzzlevision commentary throughout, then.” He adjusted himself a final time on the couch, resting his head in his hands as he directed it at you.

“As long as you’re correct, it's fine. Hell, I’ll pitch in too when I remember something.” Popping some popcorn in your mouth, you smiled as the familiar intro played. Mr. Puzzles was eccentric, there was no denying that. But, thanks to today, you didn’t find his eccentricities as annoying. “Thanks, again, Mr. Puzzles. For the help.” You kept your voice low so as to not disturb the movie too much, becoming rather transfixed on the screen in front of you. “You’re… Quite welcome.” He replied, similarly quiet. “Oh! Now, you see, they used this shot because…” Mr. Puzzles would ramble on for a while about fun facts, the awkwardness of staring at what was eventually his face fading away when you got engrossed with swapping facts and opinions.

[hwasdvlly]

Joy | j.wooyoung

ꨄ summary: as a child at heart, he takes his family to a magical place.

ꨄ pairing: wooyoung x fem!reader

ꨄ genres: romance, family, and fluff

ꨄ word count: 0.8k words

ꨄ warnings/tags: none. established relationship. idol!wooyoung, non-idol!reader, married couple, wooyoung is the cutest father

ꨄ a/n: yay!! i finally got the chance to write again! wooyo made me soft in this one

“Hello, Atiny!”

A bubbly voice from a handsome, cute, sweet, talented, and hot man waves at the phone. 

Wooyoung begins to talk about today’s adventure. “I am in the hotel bathroom because I just got done showering and ready to head out with my little family. I would’ve made the members come along, but they denied it because they wanted me to have a good time. Ever since we’ve been touring, I haven’t seen my family for a while. To my surprise and happiness, the love of my life and the babies came out here to see me.” 

He sighs softly because he still can’t believe his wife is doing it for him and the kids. Wooyoung continues, “I am truly blessed to have amazing people in my life. So, to make it up to them, I bought Disneyland tickets. Woohoo!” He does a tiny fist bump in the air. “And yes, Atiny. Your Wooyo is taking you there.” He nods his head earnestly with a wide smile.

The video transitions from wet-haired Wooyoung in pajamas to a much dapper Wooyoung. He is dressed in a yellow button-up, ripped denim jeans, and tennis shoes. The man goes for something casual because he wants to feel and look comfortable. He reveals himself through a full mirror in the hotel room. 

“I don’t usually wear bright colors, but I figured it was appropriate for a place with excitement,” Wooyoung stated. He gingerly brushes his long bangs that frame his face. “I am keeping this a little longer. I think it’s my favorite out of all hairstyles.” Not only he, but his wife agrees. You like how super soft his hair is. 

He then hears high yet adorable singing voices. Wooyoung turns his attention to the noise. A grin etched on his rosy lips. He sees you putting on matching outfits for the kids. 

The Jung Twins are the prince and princess of ATEEZ. 

Wooyoung moves his attention back to the phone. He still has that smile. “Y/N has Woobin and Wonhee dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse.” The father couldn’t stop looking at his angels. He predicts the uncles will die of cuteness once he takes millions of pictures. Woobin and Wonhee have their father’s gorgeous eyes and inherit his playful behavior. As much as the members find it cute, they believe it’s uncanny. 

Little Wooyoungs can cause more chaos. However, the guys love them to death. 

“Is everyone done?” Wooyoung asked his family.

“Yes, appa!” The little ones answered in unison. 

“We are ready!” You joined your kids.

He shifts his gaze from his gaze to his beautiful wife. You are matching his yellow top but with a pretty sundress. Wooyoung is oblivious about being mesmerized by you that he forgets he is still recording. Soon enough, he clears his throat and yells out. “Let’s go!” 

The munchkins trailed behind Wooyoung like ducklings in a line. You happily giggled at how they’ll forever follow their dad.

In the vehicle, Wooyoung tells the viewers they are heading to Disneyland while listening to ATEEZ. During the drive, he shows a bit of his kids singing. The twin’s favorite song is Utopia because it brings them comfort. Also, they love to sing along to Uncle Seonghwa’s high-note. 

An hour later, the family arrived at the amusement park. Wooyoung got greeted by a few Atinys when entering. Plus, they recognized you and the twins. Wooyoung heard the fans yell they wished them the best of luck as a family. 

“Thank you!” 

The idol gives his appreciation for his fans’ love. He sends them a finger heart, and they return the gesture. 

Wooyoung turns on his phone to film more videos. He has you record him walking with the kids. Woobin and Wonhee hold one of their father’s hands and swing them back n forth. Wooyoung speaks, “I feel like a little boy again. I missed coming to places like this. But I am grateful to experience it with my family."

"Right, guys?” He looks down at his children. Wonhee nods and flashes a cheery smile. “Appa! The castle is so pretty!” Woobin points his tiny finger up ahead. Wooyoung might’ve melted on the spot. 

His babies are too cute!

Overall, the four were having endless fun. Wooyoung and his family went on thrilling rides, took pictures with Disney characters, ate delicious food, and gravitated to the park’s beauty. For the final shot of his vlog, Wooyoung records the fireworks. 

A rainbow of stars in the galaxy blossoms the night. 

Wooyoung stops recording to bring you into a back hug as the kids watch in awe at the bursting colors. He rests his chin on your shoulder. You turned your neck to see him. The fireworks created enough brightness to show your husband’s smiling face. Wooyoung leans close to press his soft, elegant lips onto yours. 

“Do you regret marrying me? I haven’t been there for you, Woobin, and Wonhee.” The husband asked his wife in a solemn voice.

You let out a snicker. “Of course not! I vowed to love and care for the biggest baby in the world. Plus, raising the angels of our lives.” Despite his music career, you tell your husband you’ll always be there for him.

Wooyoung's content smile never left his face. 

[therantingsage]

Final batch of blogtember prompts! Once again, prompts provided by @jazzy-art-time / @mod-jazzy!! Thank you for giving me a buncha stuff to do this month!

Elaborations under the cut:

Day 21: I decided the funniest thing to do for this was to swap the shiny status of my Eevee twins. Cream and Cheese who did this to you! Uncanny!

Day 22: Ok genuinely one of the scenes I'm most interested in writing. These three characters are super old conceptually and near and dear to my heart. Once I get to doing stuff with them I'm going to be so!!! Excited!!!!

Day 23: I checked and it turns out I don't have like any nature photography on my phone? So I looked up cave pictures on google and picked one to put my rats in. Hello Remulus and Atticus nice to see you

Day 24: Hmm....important Apricorn. Wonder what that's about hmmmm

Day 25: This one!! Vexed me!! Because a lot of the ships in my blogs feel like plot spoilers to talk about? Or at least the ones I like the most. So I picked Anneva and Reginald! Because I've mentioned Anneva on inquiries and I've drawn them both on here in the past. They're a comfort duo.

Day 26: If Paleo and Tide have one fan its me bro!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Initially I tried to draw him awkwardly giving her flowers but I couldn't get the pose right so instead they're going on a park date! Hi again Jazzy I love your slug and so does Paleo!!!! Their dynamic is fun and cute and I like them!!!!!!

Day 28: I think I mentioned it once or twice? These four on fugamsemidei are based on slugcats in Rain World. In fact the first time I drew them at all was in a big batch of Poke-RW doodles. I just decided I liked them enough to make them characters on the blog. And they fit with the rest of the cast well enough so I don't have any shame lmao

Day 29: Anyone remember this gem??? I do. I rediscovered it recently and went "oh. Oh this is a Gravity song woaw"

Day 29 again: So uh I tried really hard to figure out something for day 27's prompt but I genuinely could not find anything within the time frame. So instead I just did day 29 twice. Neura with this song. Because a lot of people are really unhappy because of her actions. She's to blame for so much strife and grief. Deep down and also not that deep at all she's overcome with guilt but she's not gonna change anything rip.

Day 30: The first ever blog post I made was a poorly-drawn Aspen on phantumpdaily. But that's not particularly interesting to look at, and also I've drawn Aspen just floating there on many occasions so that post isn't super unique. So, instead, I drew the first post on the rebooted version of that blog: the intro to asklucyphantump. That was more directly an askblog than phantumpdaily anyway so this isn't cheese I swear skdfjashdf

[feyhunter78]

Chapter Five - You find Miguel's sister-in-law on Instagram, and Miguel asks you for help with his phone. Ch 6

You trail your fingers over the hand shaped bruises on your thighs, gently, not wanting to press into skin and further irritate the broken blood vessels, as you scroll through your phone. The bathwater around you is still warm, lavender scented bubbles covering the surface, a glass of wine on the flat edge of the tub.

You’ve been trying to find something, anything on Miguel’s family, and finally you’ve done it. An Instagram page pops up, @MinaQMorris, a stunning woman with long wavy red hair and dazzling hazel eyes. The first picture that comes up has her in an elegant, slinky black gown, her arm wrapped around the biceps of a taller man with tan skin and dark eyes, the caption reads: Another successful charity event with my love @GabrielOHara, make sure to sign up for our blood drive next month! Link in my bio!

It’s clear he’s Miguel’s brother, the resemblance is uncanny. Sure, Gabriel is a little skinner, and not as tall as Miguel, but they have the same smile, the same piercing brown eyes.

You shiver at the idea of a blood drive, you hate giving blood, the needles, the sight of it leaving your body, it’s painful and always makes you anxious.

You go to Mina’s tagged photos, finding Miguel’s Instagram quite easily. He has six photos, and it looks like either she or Gabriel forced him to post them. You laugh, it’s so like Miguel, you swear he’s technologically inept, he’s always asking you for help with his phone or his laptop. The only technology he does understand is in the morgue, and you wonder why he finds the morgue equipment so easy but his cell phone confusing.

A notification pops up at the top of your screen, and your eyes flicker up.

Miguel: Y/N, can you help me with my phone tomorrow?

Speak of the devil and he shall appear, as they say. You laugh and shoot back a quick response before continuing to stalk Miguel’s page.

Y/N: Sure, what’s wrong with it?

Miguel: Not sure, the sound stopped working.

You roll your eyes. He probably forgot to update the software again.

Y/N: I’ll look at it in the morning.

Miguel sends back a thank you, then the conversation falls silent, and you put your phone on the counter, closing your eyes and relaxing in the warm water.

The next day, you find Miguel waiting outside your office, phone in hand.

He has the latest phone, a sleek but clearly protective dark blue case on it. The lockscreen is a landscape with a gothic-looking manor in the background, and five or six people standing in the foreground with their backs to the camera. You never pegged him as a dark academia guy, but everyone has their thing.

“Okay, let me see it.” You say, taking a seat at your desk. Your office is cozy, covered with plants and brightly colored decorations, you're surrounded by death all day, you figured you might as well celebrate life in your own office.

He opens it and unlocks it before handing it to you and taking a seat in the plush rolling chair. Smiling up at you is Miguel, Gabriel, and Mina, they’re all dressed in dark colors, their outfits ostentatious and clearly expensive, glasses of crimson wine in their hands.

“Did you guys take this on Halloween?” You ask, motioning to the photo.

“Yeah, it’s Mina’s birthday, so her family throws a huge party every year.”

“That’s cool, now okay, did you check for updates?” You ask, going into the settings.

“Yes, and I made sure it was fully charged.” Miguel says, looking like a kicked puppy, as he pulls a rolling chair next to you.

You scroll through his settings, until you come to audio. It’s connected to his earbuds.

“Found the issue, it’s still in Bluetooth mode.” You tell him, swiftly disconnecting it and turning to hand the phone back to Miguel.

A woman’s voice comes through the speakers, and you all but throw Miguel’s phone at him. “Fuck, Miguel, oh baby, please, I need your big fat cock inside me—”

He scrambles to turn down the volume. “Shit, I—that was just a friend of mine, she—”

You hold up a hand, wanting to crawl out of your skin from embarrassment and strangely…jealousy? For a brief second you wanted to be that woman, be begging Miguel to fuck you, to feel him deep inside you, his chest pressed to yours, his lips against your ear whispering sinfully things that make your toes curl. “No, no, no need, what you do in your free time is none of my business.”

Miguel is stiff, curled inward, seemingly just as embarrassed as you. “No, no, y/n, I mean it, she’s nobody.”

You laugh, not at him, to break the tension, but the sound falls flat, and you wave your hand dismissively. “Miguel, seriously, it’s no big deal. Yeah, I’d be a little embarrassed if I knew my boyfriend’s coworker heard me moaning about how much I wanted him but, really, it’s fine, it was an accident.”

There’s a shift in him, his eyes darken for a fleeting moment, and he leans closer, his phone face down on your desk. He towers over you even while you’re both sitting, and your breath hitches in your throat.

“You moan like that for him?” His words are so quiet you barely hear them.

“What?” You blink at him, stunned, frozen.

Miguel’s voice is still quiet, a slight purr to it that sends goosebumps scattering across your skin. “Lo dudo. ¿Cómo podrías hacerlo cuando te deja tan necesitada? No princesa, solo me cantas así.” Trsl: I doubt it. How could you when he leaves you so needy? No princess, you only sing like that for me.

“I don’t speak Spanish.” Is all you can manage to say, a throbbing starting in your core at the way he watches you, the curl of his tongue around the accented words.

He blinks at you, slowly, like a cat, then pulls back. “You shouldn’t send him voice messages like that, it’s not safe, what happened here is a prime example of that.”

You nod, dumbfounded.

“Thanks for your help.” Miguel says suddenly, standing and leaving your office, seeming completely unfazed.

You can’t help but catch the way he pulls his lab coat closed as he leaves, and you catch a quick glimpse of budging fabric that makes you swallow hard.

How the hell does that fit into anybody? Fuck, who cares, I’ll let him make it fit, he can rearrange my fucking guts if he wants.

You hear Miguel choke, then start coughing as he walks away, his footsteps growing fainter and fainter.

I know Miguel is good with tech, he's scheming don't yell at me in the comments

TL: @obi-mom-kenobi, @poutysprouty, @oharasfilipinawife, @laysmt, @cicithemess, @unabashedcroissanttreefan, @lynxslokley, @thedevax

[louislovesdilfs]

Homesick

this is a Doctor who fanfic, it's almost like a big experiment that I'm doing with a lot, LIKE A LOT, of theories or headcanons in it, crucial to this story (not all of them but whatever). I will put every source I use in this fics and if this series continues they will be A LOT. today's source tho it's just one @/whynotjohnlock I took something from them so thank you for the informations. There are some "uncanny valley" references but I tried to explain them as best as I could, let's just say it's full of nerd stuff and it will only get worst :)

♤♤♤♤

pairing: 9th Doctor x reader (will eventually become 10th later on.)

English is not my first language so I apologise for the mistakes.

♤♡◇♧♤♡◇♧♤♡◇♧♤♡◇♧♤♡◇♧♤♡◇♧

The street Y/n is walking in makes him nauseous, he saw that street so many times...the buildings, the houses, the people...all the same all the time, it's like living a nightmare: 20 years always in the same place with the same faces and the same dreams, dreams that not even he can believe.

Y/n lights up a cigarette letting the smoke fill his lungs and brain, it's poisonous yet it feels so good, the way his brain gets dizzy everytime the smoke gets in his body it's what he needs, it's the best feeling he can get in that small town somewhere.

He looks at the too familiar place with dead eyes, not even an emotion, maybe disgust for the place, he knows he will die in the same house he grew up in, like all the people in that fucking place, he will die sad and alone like his father before him, and the father of his father; lonliness and bad behaviour run strong in his family, as much as he hates it he is his parents' son, he has the same destructive, hot tempered and maybe pessimistic side of his father but the horrible, pathetic, useless kind heart his mother had..great woman his mother, always there to help the others until one day she helped the wrong person.

The street is looking as he remembers except for a tiny little detail, there's a phone box hidden in an alley, he has seen that alley a million times before but that blue box? it appeared from no where, almost a glitch in the matrix, he thinks; he's such a nerd.

Y/n steps closer carefully looking in case the owner is around, he feels the blue wood on his fingers genlty caressing it with his right hand, it's almost like the blue box can feel it, Y/n can swear he saw it light up for a tiny second. He steps away shaking his head, the door of the box is locked, he does take a picture tho, unusual to see something like that, it brought up feelings Y/n forgot he had.

"and who are you?" A voice behind him makes him flinch for a second, he never heard that voice before, Y/n turn around trying to go back to his stern look rather than the curiosity that made his face soften making him look like a kid.

"Is that yours?" Y/n asks crossing his arms, the man is wearing a big leather jacket and he's almost bald with a really noticeable nose, but overall he looks attractive Y/n has to be honest with himself

"answering a question with a question?" The man smirked in a sort of cheeky way, not arrogant even if it seemed that way

"avoiding to answer the question?" Y/n shot back tilting his head slightly, the man was a bit taller than him, probably much older, his eyes were at least, to the point where his face didn't match them.

"that is mine" the man answered in a calm tone, he looked weird tho, he didn't fit in properly, he was an english guy with a northern accent owner of a blue box in a hidden alley. Y/n looks at him suspiciously, his mind racing trying to think about what could be in that blue box, the most stupid reason comes to his mind but it's too late to stop his own mouth.

"what do you hide there? drugs? It won't take long for someone to notice it, it's a small town people talk." Y/n says looking around the alley but apparently there was nobody except for them, the man looks at Y/n puzzled and then speaks

"will you talk?" he asks waiting for an answer, Y/n raises his eyebrows, he was so weird, yet fascinating.

"no.." Y/n answers unsure looking between the man and that blue box

"great then, see ya" he says entering the blue box, but he leaves the door open, Y/n looks around the box, he hears noises coming from inside, he takes a look not sure what to expect but anything was better than the usual.

The blue box was bigger on the inside, Y/n couldn't believe his eyes, he steps in rapidly scanning the place and taking information, he processes everything as fast as he can but he feels his mind about to explode; the man is going around the console pressing buttons untill he notices the young man and smirks

"do you always come in when you're not invited?" he asks looking at Y/n with the same smug face as before

"do you always leave the door open for strangers?" He answers back quickly, too busy wondering around with his eyes to pay attention to the man

"this is the TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimension In Space" he explains crossing his arms and leaning on the console

"I was going to say bigger on the inside but.." Y/n starts to walk around biting his lower lip to think "maybe pocket dimension, this TARDIS is probably on another plane of existence or does it expand this one?" Y/n asks but wasn't waiting for an answer he just keeps thinking stopping sometimes humming a bit and then keeps talking

"if it travels in the fourth dimension, commonly known as time then it has the ability to change its weight and size...even appearance" he kept going mostly talking to himself

"it needs an incredible amount of power...a star maybe, a black hole even if less likely..fascinating tho, this can't be human and neither can you" He turns to the man who had a surprised look rather than a smug one, even a little bit amused by the man wondering around his TARDIS

"almost like uncanny valley just less scary I guess, my brain recognised you as an human being, yet something about you seemed off even if I couldn't recall what was it," Y/n affirms tilting his head to the side, that's what he always does when he's pointing out or suspecting something or at least that's what the man in the leather jacket noticed about him.

"so, what's your name?" he finishes getting closer to the man

"The Doctor" he answer with a tiny smirk crossing his arms in front of Y/n

"Doctor who?" Y/n asks raising his eyebrows, 'The Doctor' chuckles, he heard that question a lot Y/n thinks,

"just The Doctor" He says smiling at Y/n, a wide smile impressed by the younger man knowledge

"apparently you don't need me to explain how the TARDIS works.." he says while Y/n shrugs

"I failed physics 4 times, I know it by heart now" he explains in a low tone as if someone else could hear him and call him a nerd.

"you want to see it in action?" The Doctor says pressing some buttons as Y/n tryes to play it cool and hide the excitement

"is that even a question?" he just says screaming internally, finally something different, he can't believe he is leaving that small town, this can't be real, he might have bumped his head and now he's in coma.

"where are we going?" Y/n asks still focusing on the Doctor's movement, which buttons he presses and when, he can almost feel the levers and buttons under his fingers, he wants to drive the TARDIS, just to know how it feels like.

"anywhere you li-" as The Doctor tries to finish the sentence the TARDIS shakes making both of them fall to the ground, Y/n bumps his head as he groans in pain raising his hand to reach his head.

As the TARDIS stops Y/n stands up still holding his head massaging it and then turns to The Doctor with a stern look

"who gave you the licence, a fucking monkey? no not even a monkey, they would drive it better!" Y/n complains but the other man doesn't listen to him, instead he steps outside with a courious look on his face, Y/n follows him mumbling things under his breath

"we're in London?" he says looking around, Y/n scoffs

"anywhere in time and space and you bring me in London...in 2005!" he whines following the man in the city, Y/n clearly doesn't fit in, with his earrings and general piercings he looks like the lost member of the Tokyo Hotel however he tries to let the weird looks from the people slide for now,

"I didn't bring you here, the TARDIS brought us here for some reason," The Doctor answers

From that moment on things happen, they meet Rose,she's great and Y/n likes her. they fight with mannequins and a disgusting looking thing, Mickey is there too, not as great as Rose but whatever. It's time to go, Y/n knows the Doctor wants to take Rose with him, something is going on, it's clear in their eyes. Mickey is hiding behind a pallet, pathetic, Y/n thinks but doesn't say anything about it.

"a lot of good you were" Rose says looking at the man who's leaning on the TARDIS doorway, Y/n is outside, watching the scene carefully, his bleeding due to scratches on his face he tried to clean them with a tissue but that's what he gets for starting a fight with mannequins.

"Nestene Consciousness? Easy" he says with a smug smirk, Rose and Y/n let out a scoff

"you were useless in there, you'd be dead if it wasn't for me"

at the end of it Rose runs in the TARDIS, The Doctor smiles widely running to the console, even Y/n let's out a little smile looking at Rose, letting her know he's happy she came with them.

"Right then, Rose Tyler, you tell me. Where do you want to go? Backwards or fowards in time. It's your choice. What's it going to be?" The Doctor asks turning to Rose while Y/n quickly turns to him with a annoyed face,

" hey! what about me?" he says, after all he still didn't get a trip, or well he did but in London, 2005...that could've gone a bit better honestly.

"I don't talk to people with a black eye" he says turning to Y/n who mumbles "wait until I get you a black eye"

--

After the end of the earth, Y/n feels bad, mostly because Rose was so sentimental and sad of watching the earth get burned, he insisted watched, he watched with relief, the place that hurt him many many many years ago is burning down, he's watching it burn down. Rose calls her mom, she feels homesick, she doesn't want to look at it, Y/n tho he is watching every second of it, he's silent, his hands in his pockets, his face still bruised by the first trip, in his eyes the reflection of his world burning but no sign of sadness, to be clear no sign of anything. Rose's homesick, Y/n's home makes him sick.

The Doctor notice it, he sees the difference between his two new companions, he sees the difference in how they perceive things, when they killed Cassandra, Rose knew it was the right thing and maybe was even ok with it, Y/n wasn't, he glanced at The Doctor with rage and disappointment, how could he kill someone so easily? The Doctor tries to put a hand on Y/n shoulder but doesn't, instead Rose talks while watching the asteroids

"The end of the Earth. It's gone. We were too busy saving ourselves. No one saw it go. All those years, all that history, and no one was even looking. It's just" Rose stops not able to continue, The Doctor shifts his gaze from Y/n to Rose smiling as he easily understand her better than he can understand him.

"come with me" he says heading back to the TARDIS with rose following him, Y/n tho stays still amd that's when Rose notices the white knuckles of the man getting white while his fists get tighter,

"Y/n, you're coming?" she asks touching the man's arm lightly almost afraid, his hand relaxes as he looks at her trying to fake a calm expression as his gaze softens

"sure," he nods forcing his lips to curve in a smile.

They're back in London standing in the crowd, kids crying, people yelling and all that, Y/n sighs looking around, he doesn't understand if he's as relieved as Rose at the sight of normality but for now he turns to the other two as the Doctor begins to speak

"You think it'll last forever, people and cars and concrete, but it won't. One day it's all gone. Even the sky. My planet's gone. It's dead. It burned like the Earth. It's just rocks and dust before its time." he says opening up, Y/n remembers what they said, the last of his kind, he listens closely not talking or interrupting, he just listens to the man. 

"I'm a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. They're all gone. I'm the only survivor. I'm left travelling on my own 'cos there's no one else." he continues after Rose asked a few questions

"you have me, us" she corrects herself looking at Y/n, he looks at her and The Doctor nodding even if he knows it's not how Rose thinks, it's cute how she thinks that enough but it's not, The Doctor is alone, he doesn't have anyone to share his grief with, as much as we try no one could understand his feeling, he's alone, he will always be alone no matter how many companions he has no one will ever fill that void, Y/n knows as he looks in The Doctor's eyes and The Doctor knows too as he look at Y/n almost like he read his thoughts

"You've seen how dangerous it is. Do you want to go home?" The Doctor asks the both of them but mostly looking at Rose, she hesitates for a few second but before she can answer Y/n speaks

"I want chips, who's with me?" he says as the other two laugh and nod

"chips it is then" The Doctor says and Rose takes his arm looking up at him

"Right then, before you get me back in that box, chips it is, and you can pay." she says chuckling slightly flirting with the man

"no money" he answered and Y/n let's out a light scoff almost like a chuckle

"my treat," he says looking at the two

"see that's a gentleman" Rose jokes nudging The Doctor

"yeah, he almost won me" The Doctor says and Y/n winks at him

the three laugh heading to get chips before going back in the TARDIS for another adventure.

[sunboki]

— HELLION INN. (TEASER) a Stray Kids fiction

🌖 : Lee Minho x implied! fem. reader

TROPE. dystopian! au, enemies to lovers, monster! au, apocalypse! au, “we have to get along to survive” au, angst, high stakes

WORD COUNT. estimated to be around 5k - 10k words

WARNINGS. gory descriptions, cursing, descriptive violence, implied intercourse, death, murder, usage of guns, injury, knives, reader and minho are “hunted”, mature themes

AUG'S NOTES. hi everyone! say hello to my long-rotting draft, turned fic! i tried something a little spooky for the october season, hopefully it’s to your satisfaction! i’m really looking forward to finishing this piece :)

PLAYLIST.

SYNOPSIS. Receiving an ominous letter in the mail, a monster invades Seoul minutes later, carrying an uncanny sense of smell despite its blindness. Countless people have been slaughtered already, and with your letter as the only meager explanation to this madness, you find your feet leading towards the one place it said was safe: Hellion Inn.

or alternatively :

Minho won’t let you die. Not if it means letting this Monster get him or hell’s dawning itself. You’re going to survive. Together.

Run, something is coming. Go to Hellion Inn, you’ll be safe there.

Something? What is something? A terrorist attack? War?

Never had such a letter arrived at your doorstep other than this Tuesday, with the morning sunlight peeking through half-opened blinds casting your pajama-clad frame in its cascades.

And again, you reread and reread, questions raging in a distorted frenzy amidst your once just-wakening mind. 

Little were you aware what would come. What already roamed Seoul’s streets, approaching closer, closer. 

One objective resides in too many possibilities. 

Find Hellion Inn. 

.

.

.

Stuffing the letter in your pocket serves as the most sensible solution while you go over your options. If you didn’t have a clue about what dishes would be cooked, you’d check the ingredients first.

And yet, upon turning on the TV, you find your meal already served. 

On a platter, dripping with blood.

“This just in, an unidentifiable entity is making its way through Seoul in a rampage. The creature is highly dangerous. It appears to lack vision, and speculation has deemed it relies upon its smell to discern other beings. The creature has not been detained at this time. Under no circumstances should citizens leave their residences, and in the case you’re on the street, please evacuate to the nearest shelter immediately. Further information will be released.”

Your blood runs frigidly cold, enough you swear you could’ve turned to ice.

All of a sudden, war or a terrorist attack doesn’t sound nearly as daunting as before.

A monster. Ruthless, bloodthirsty. 

Monster. 

Instantaneously are news sites everywhere exploding, posting footage, pictures, and accounts of the creature each second. 

More and more and more until-

It all goes dark, your home plunged into a black abyss meagerly sustained by the sun’s rays, phone in hand ultimately powering off. 

Electricity down. Fully.

This isn’t like a usual predicament of a public threat, not something you’re prepared for, nor something anyone was prepared for. There’s no drill for a monster, no tsunami shelter or high rise building to reside upon. 

Was it obliviousness? Or were you all simply sheep to a ravaging wolf?

The latter seemed most convincing.

An exhale. No, a growl is what breaks your train of thought. Like the chuff of a tiger, curdling in its throat. 

Above. 

You can’t even bring yourself to move, can’t bear to breathe in fear you’d give yourself away as a shadow covers that once hopeful sunlight.

No shadow, but a thing. A monster. 

How did it get here so fast? How.. how the hell is this happening?

The sound of tiles shifting on your roof makes your fingers twitch, eyes stuck wide. 

The worlds apex predators turned into the prey. 

Each pound of your heart lies evident in ringing ears, listening to those low, horrendous gurgles, repeating that same chuff before it shifts again.

Again and again, and you’re unmoving.

Leave. Run. Anything. 

Yet, you can’t move a muscle, glued in place.

Until you do, and your legs act before you can process a thing. Grabbing for items, whatever it may be. Mind unable to process in its frantic state.

No. No.

A plea as your hand wraps around the doorknob, beginning down the apartment complex’s stairs in rapid descent, listening to the slow growls of the creature.

Don’t look behind, just go.

A mistake you find yourself making even when a life is on the line.

Your life is on the line.

And when you spare that single glimpse, murky lifeless eyes stare blindly back at you, bulging from its skull as if they never were intended to be there. Skin a hallowed, fleshy tone — ligaments hung awry. 

Disorderly, distasteful. If you look close enough, you swear you could’ve seen a beating heart, watched the oxygen cells rush through a pumping bloodstream. 

Gaping jaws hold copious teeth, ant-like incisors residing on either side of a ceaselessly smiling mouth, the corners of what appears to be lips ascending all the way up to nonexistent ears. 

Four legs, two antennae atop its head. At least two times the size of a human.

Horrific.

Never had such a thing appeared so terrifying.

With the letter clutched in one hand and your powerless phone in another do you run, praying that nonexistent vision truly is nonexistent.

Well, until a car alarm begins to ring, and you feel your stomach climb to your throat simultaneously.

Because it twitches. Not even a glance-sort of reaction. The entirety of whatever neck that monster hones twitches to look at you with a nausea-worthy crack! of its ligaments. Those jaws parted, a flattened nose breathing in.

And then it lurches, and you don’t think you’ve ever ran as fast as you did now.

Far, far. As far as you can go. 

It’s futile listening to gargled cries for help amongst rubble, the reaching of hands for your feet you can’t even spare a moment for as those scraping claws continue their perilous dance after you, scavenging on people as they go. 

So the second an intact person comes into view—a boy, looking about your age (and freakishly calm at that) with fluffy hair and rounded cheeks retaining such youth—you’re racing ahead before you can even think, ramming through those convenience store doors in a flurry of panic and fear.

“Monster— Monster- there’s a monster we have to go-“

“Do you like grilled cheese?” He mumbles, and you wonder if he’s talking to himself or you, no less asking such a question during this downright apocalypse.

“No, no there is—“ A shriek pierces the air in the distance, the clutter of debris alerting the monster’s proximity.

You, in a frantic attempt to redirect his attention, place either hand on his shoulders.

“A monster. There’s a monster out there and if we don’t hide, it’s going to kill us.” 

The boy licks his lips, cocking a contemplative brow before looking toward the freezer section. 

“Freezer?”

At this point the creature might as well be turning the corner, and you don’t need to respond for either of you to go running as fast as your legs will carry you, stuffing yourselves into the biting cold just as the bells above the entrance door ring.

Scariest part is this customer is intelligent enough to open doors.

This customer isn’t human. 

Like slow-motion you hear it. The pounding of your heartbeat in your ears, the lack of air in such a tight space, the monster’s rumbling.

Your hidden counterpart lodged himself into a freezer opposite to you, eyes squeezed shut the nearer clicking footsteps on tile sounded.

Click.

Click.

Click.

You don’t realize your eyes are closed until you open them, met with the monster’s face, hundreds of razor-sharp teeth lining its mouth, stretched into that same, chilling smile while it stares at you through the glass.

It can’t see you. It can’t see you. It can’t see you, You internally plead like a mantra, suffocating on the scream rising in your throat.

The loud clanging of a soup can the boy throws has the creature’s disfigured face whipping around, and you wordlessly communicate through mere terrified-eye-contact what either of you are thinking:

Run.

Without conscious you go flying, ramming past discarded groceries and tormented bodies into Seoul’s open roadway, void of any vehicle whatsoever.

Except for one.  

It’s a tow truck, key still lodged into the ignition, window broken with streaks of blood lining the door where a middle-aged man’s body had been dragged out. He rests lopsided below the front tire, abdomen severed in half.

Grotesque. 

“Car- Car!” You cry out, wildly gesturing for him to follow suit while you pry the driver’s door open, the monster’s frustrated growl enough motivation for the stranger to throw himself in as well.

In the nick of time you press down on the pedal, winding the wheel in a quick motion just as the hell-sent smashes itself from the shop, evidently angered.

“I’m Han!” The man occupying the passenger seat shouts, the hole through the windshield causing enormous amounts of wind to soar through the car and synonymously blur your senses.

“What?!” 

“My name is Han! Han Jisung!”

Squinting whilst looking through your mirror at the wickedly approaching Monster, you veer past as many obstacles as possible — most being corpses — as fast as the engine will let you.

“Oh! Uh, I’m Y/N!”

Han nods, grasp clutched onto his seat the more you speed increases, recklessly maneuvering left and right as if dodging a crocodile. 

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a crocodile, but a blood-thirsty beast wanting nothing more than to behead you. How sweet.

“Do you… Do you know how to drive?” He yells, and you raise your eyebrows, narrowly shifting past a shopping cart.

“If you count Mario-Kart as driving, I’m a pro!”

Han audibly squeaks his fear in response, eyes squeezing shut as if to not stare at the monster’s face nearing the mirror.

The speedometer cries out, vehicle shuddering as you near train tracks just at the edge of the city. 

Hopeful. 

Fleeting hope when the roar of a train’s whistle soars through the air, the look Han gives you doing little to sustain your already thinned sanity.

Perhaps you’ll die getting hit by a train than this monster.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

“We’re not gonna make it we’re not gonna make it we’re not gonna make i—“

“SHUT THE FUCK UP—-“ You screech, foot slammed as far down on the gas pedal as possible, the rumbling of the train’s engine deafening. 

“HOLY SHITTTT—“ The man screams, mouth ajar as you soar over the tracks, preparing for impact only for a hair of the train’s front barely brushing over the car’s bumper. 

Currently realizing you’re still breathing and not dead, you floor the brake, either of you launching forward in your seats while the endless train keeps the monster at bay on the opposite side. 

Both panting hysterically, you place a hand on your chest, hoping to slow down the terrifyingly fast pace of your heart — close to bursting out of your chest. 

Your passenger, Han Jisung, turns to look at you, eyes wide as saucers, a gradual open-mouthed smile growing upon his flushed, sweat-stricken face.

“That was.. sick.”

sunboki, may 2022 ©

[ghostpajamas]

DUUUUUUUUUUDE your alcohol marker works r SO sick i saw that sequence of process pics u had and my mind was just Blown . can you elaborate more on ur process ?!?!? /nf

hello ! thank you for your kind words. i apologize for taking a while to answer this. the process of coloring the drawing i did as an example was rocky, and ive been busy with school.

i'll preface this by saying that i have a few posts with process pictures on twitter (i treat it as a wip dump when i remember to post). heres one of the few where the pics are all together, but my media tab has a fair amount scattered around.

this is going to be long, so i'm putting the 'read more' here.

step 0 : sketch. i start with blue erasable pencil, lighten it, and do my lineart with a mechanical pencil.

step 1 : base color. half frivolously chosen as a neutral color to set it off from the white of the paper, half "whats the color of the light / the lightest color being reflected by the material its cast on"

im going to stop numbering the steps. i immediately went too dark with the hair and failed to consider the strength of the light in the setting / how reflective hair is. also i colored the basic color of the eyes and the rough shadow under the jaw. dont get attached to any of this.

broke out the "ph. martin's bleed proof white paint" my mom gave me a jar of years ago. it does well enough at bringing back light, but the texture youre left with is not ideal. lightly shaded the face skin with a similar color. i also blocked in the rough color for the suit jacket and tie here. the marker doesnt have to be evenly applied because you'll be going back over in enough layers that it'll even out.

i wish i stopped here.

things start to go off the rails. painted over his eyes because "why did i give him double eyelids" tried to paint over just the eyelids. didnt go well. scorched earth. reshaded the hair, deepened shading on the face and neck, started on the shirt, and applied a cursory pass of shadow on the jacket. the light angle does not remain consistent with this.

redrew the eyes. the angle feels uncanny. i wish he was still looking at his phone but the paint is not taking ink well and i doubt another layer would make it better. at some point i applied rough shadow to the hands. dont worry about the inconsistent lighting.

darkened the eyes so they were less creepy. didnt work. i assume the ink bled (alcohol ink soaks into paper, but since this is now on top of white paint, it just sits on top and pools out), so i embellished with posca marker to cover it up.

realized that with the length of the shadow the brow ridge was casting, the hair should cast a shadow too. light source starting to be established.

im really sorry. i didnt realize there was such a drastic jump between this one and the prior photo. basically, i started defining edges and areas of deepest shadow. fine edge definition was done with the cheapest ballpoint pen i own. dark marker blends fairly well, but only put it where you WANT it to be that dark, and blend outward from there to darken surrounding areas. many, many layers of grey and light blue, brown and darker brown for the jacket. now that i had a vague idea of the light source, i just had to place the shadows and follow the folds. hitting the points of shadow with brown (base color but darker + warm tinge to suit base color) and blue (reflected light).

this also wouldve been a fine stopping point.

used posca to outline the edge of the face + sharpen edges. added more pupil-spots. messed up the mouth some more. whatever. calling it done here because the jacket looks good and the face is freaking me out.

overall, i treat alcohol marker like watercolor. a big wash of color, rough base colors. roughly block in shadows, gradually add washes of deeper shadow. define edges. etc.

its harder to blend colors directly than with watercolor but thats nothing more layering cant fix. and then white paint if layering doesnt work. and then more layering.

[fuckyeah-jessicabiel]

GQ Magazine - July 2007

The Summer of Jessica Biel

To celebrate Biel’s being in a movie actually worth seeing, we sent Adam Stein to play carnival games with her.

When I told various friends I’d be interviewing Jessica Biel, I got the responses you’d expect—jealousy, mild rage, a plea to give her a phone number because she’s the one person that a friend’s wife would give him a free pass to sleep with. The uncanny thing is, when I asked these guys what they thought of her as an actress, most of them drew a blank. They hadn’t seen a single motion picture of hers. Okay, one or two had girlfriends who’d brought them to see The Illusionist, but otherwise, nada. As my friend Taj put it: “I’m obsessed with a girl I’ve never seen move.“

Well, that’s about to change. Later this month, men across America will see Jessica being very good in a very funny movie, and the nature of their love for her will…deepen. She’ll still be inhumanly beautiful, sure, but now they’ll have to contend with genuine talent, too, and that one-two punch can be disorienting. You know what else can? The fact that despite her recent tabloid exposure, she’s actually sweet, funny, earnest, occasionally a little crude, and—if my time playing carnival games with her can be used as evidence—uniquely driven to conquer whatever stands between Jessica Biel and what she wants.

I am waiting for her at the Santa Monica Pier, sitting on a stool next to one of those games where you shoot water from a gun into a clown’s mouth. I haven’t shaved for a week, because I read somewhere that Jessica Biel likes guys with beards. I’m inspecting mine in the reflective back of my iPod when a nice-looking young woman materializes in my view. “Excuse me,“ she says. “Are you Adam?“ “Jessica?“ I ask, ridiculously. Of course it’s her, in wraparound sunglasses, an open gray sweater over a white blouse, and faded jeans. She wears checkered Vans, like Jeff Spicoli. On the pier, no one recognizes her, which I suppose makes sense: There’s little resemblance between the pinup girl and the sneaker-wearing civilian out on a Monday afternoon. She doesn’t stick out as we walk the wooden planks of the amusement park; she blends in. She is, you might say, a very chill girl.

“Can we get a photo next to a star?“ she asks, stopping in front of a booth hawking photographs with huge cardboard cutouts of celebrities. It’s an impressive, eclectic array: Bill Clinton, Mini Me, Michael Jordan, Hilary Duff, Enrique Iglesias(!), Jean-Claude Van Damme, DiCaprio in Titanic. “They’re all kind of old,“ she says. I don’t know if she means the cutouts or the celebrities themselves (because to me, Mini Me will never age). She’s only 25 years old, so it could go either way. I ask her who she’d most want to pose with. She scrutinizes the assembly and makes her call: “I’d probably pick Van Damme, ‘cause he looks the coolest.“ She takes the Muscles from Brussels over Leo—a victory of might over sensitivity. Nice.

Then she decides it’s time for the games to begin. She passes up the Riptide Ring Toss (“That one is impossible,“ she says) and focuses her attention on the Pier Plank Plunge. The PPP is basically a rope ladder suspended horizontally over an inflatable mattress. The trick is to climb, perfectly balanced, to a taunting red button placed approximately ten feet away. Press the button, win the prize—an enormous Sonic the Hedgehog. I ask her if she’s ever Pier Plank Plunged before. “Yes,“ she says, assessing the structure, looking for its weaknesses. “But I’ve never been able to achieve it.“ She begins barraging the bored-looking carny with questions. “Do you have any tips?“ (It’s all about balance.) “Have you done it before?“ (Nope.) “Has anyone ever won?“ (Yeah.) “Has anyone won today?“ (Not yet.) She turns to me, and I have to say she seems genuinely excited. “This is our chance,“ she says. “It’s our chance to win.“ I’m beginning to get the distinct impression that winning is important to Jessica Biel. “Ladies first“ being the imperative, I take the initial go-round. It’s harder than it looks. My arms shake. Everything shakes. I can feel her hopefulness—Do it, get there—but I fall off within seconds. The shame is truly surprising. I wanted to do it for Jessica and failed. She throws me a “good try“ before stepping up herself.

Jessica was a gymnast when she was younger, and the training appears to be paying off as she mounts the unstable rope ladder. (It also occurs to me that the view I currently have is one the paparazzi would kill for.) She deploys a disciplined crawl, gets tantalizingly close to the red button, reaches for it—and loses her balance, flips over, and lands flat on the cushion, laughing. “Holy shit,“ she yells. “It’s so hard. That’s so frustrating.“ The carny asks if we’d like to try again. She pauses for a moment, looking at the button, and then, with obvious reservations, demurs. “You were really, really close,“ I tell her. “I know,“ she says, still staring at it, reluctant to move, apparently, without conquering the damn thing. “That’s how it gets you.“

Next up is something called the Hi-Striker, a game in which you swing a mallet to test your strength. I take three feeble swings, each one less successful than the last. A huge Hispanic man laughs every time I bring the mallet down on the metal block, and when I exit the cage and hand it off to the female attendant, she takes one exhibition swing and makes my emasculation complete. Up goes the projectile. Ping goes the bell.

J.B. watches, rapt. “Look at her awesome stance,“ she whispers, absorbing the details, memorizing the motion. Some actors “find“ their characters via a process of internalization—investigating emotions, plumbing psychology, creating an “inner life.“ This is known as the inside-out approach. Other actors work outside-in—developing a walk, a gesture, a physicality. Look at, say, Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. Look at Jessica Biel in the Hi-Striker cage.

Mimicking the attendant’s, her first swing easily skunks my best effort. And she improves with each attempt. She’s getting into character. As she exits the cage, there’s a look of satisfaction on her face. She returns the mallet to the attendant, who looks at me and says: “She did better than you.“ As we leave, I ask her: “Is it more technique than strength?“ She shakes her head. “Brute strength,“ she says. “You just throw it up and slam it as hard as you can.“ On our way off the pier, we pass Zoltar, the animatronic fortune-teller who turned that kid into Tom Hanks in Big. Zoltar senses us and speaks: “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.“ Zoltar makes Jessica smile. She digs his philosophy.

Jessica Biel’s destiny, at least of late, has led her to a prominent place in the trashy supermarket gossip rags. First it was snapshots of social excursions with second-banana studs (Chris Evans, Ryan Reynolds). Then, upping the ante, there was a beach fling with a sports icon (Derek Jeter). And then, in February, she grabbed the tabloid brass ring for reportedly nabbing the world’s most eligible bachelor, Justin Timberlake. Unsurprisingly, it’s not something she’ll discuss.

One thing she is happy talking about, though, is the unladylike girth of her knuckles. We’re getting dinner at an unassuming Italian trattoria across the street from the pier when she flashes those meaty joints and describes her nascent production company. “It was almost called Fat Knuckle Films. Because I have fat knuckles. See?“ she asks. “They don’t really look that way until you start putting rings on them, and then it stops right there.“

I have to say, Jessica Biel’s chunky midfingers are endearing, human, attainable—a word she uses a number of times in our conversation, as if to remind the world that she’s just a regular girl from Boulder, Colorado, who happens to have been called, by Esquire magazine in 2005, the Sexiest Woman Alive.

“At first I felt really embarrassed about it,“ she says. “You know, it’s a weird thing to talk about. Like, ‘Hey, guys. Guess what?’ You don’t just go telling everybody that.“ She shifts her weight forward and goes on: “But after I got over that, I just started to embrace it. I started thinking, If I ever do have kids, and if they have kids, I can tell them: ‘You know what? Your grandma in 2000-and-whatever was the Sexiest Woman Alive. How about that, kids?’ That’s what I started to think about. I’ll always have that picture to say, ‘That’s what Granny used to look like.’ “

Before coming out here to get my ass handed to me at the Hi-Striker, I immersed myself in Jessica Biel’s Collected Works. She got her start in the mid-’90s on 7th Heaven, the WB dramedy that made a splash with the moral-values set, before leaving around 2002 for bigger (and badder) things. It’s been a grim scene ever since: Summer Catch (2001), which starred Freddie Prinze Jr. and stands at number forty-nine on Rotten Tomatoes’ 100 Worst- Reviewed Films of All Time. The Rules of Attraction (2002), notable only for Fred Savage shooting heroin between his toes and saying things like “I can feel my dick.“ (Remarkably, Biel comes across as fresh and charming, despite the astonishing pointlessness and nihilism of the flick.) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), which was Biel’s first top billing and is her biggest box-office performer to date, with a take of about $80 million. J.B. screams her head off throughout the movie and is entirely believable in distress, but you can’t help thinking as you watch her, There’s got to be better material than this. Sadly, no. There was an atrocity called Cellular, in 2004, and Blade: Trinity that same year (in which Biel kicks much undead ass as a midriff-baring vampire hunter). But the nadir has to be London, in ’06, a delusional piece of trash that starts off with a sex scene, Biel on top, saying, “Are you coming? Are you coming?“ before she proceeds to another not-quite-dignified act and then dips out of the frame to, presumably, swallow. Like I said, a grim scene.

And then, just in the nick of time, salvation arrived. A script called The Illusionist, to star Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. There was a problem, though. The filmmakers didn’t want to give Biel an audition. They weren’t convinced the vampire-hunting Hollywood creation could rearrange herself into the role of a refined fin de siècle Hungarian duchess.

But Jessica Biel has a hard time taking no for an answer. And when another actress “dropped out“ of the film, her tenacity paid off. They finally brought her in. She arrived wearing a full period costume. She made them take her seriously, she says, and three days later, an offer arrived.

The Illusionist wasn’t what you’d call a “hit,“ but it got good reviews, made decent money, and changed the industry’s perception of her. Doors that were closed began to open. They just weren’t opening fast enough for her taste.

She sets down her after-dinner tea and says, “I want choices. I want options. I want to lay out all the directions I could go and have the ability to choose. I’m slowly starting to have that now.“ It’s the “slowly“ that kills her.

One film that will almost surely expedite the process is I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which will be released this month. It stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James as two Brooklyn firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple in order to receive domestic-partner benefits. J.B. plays the female lead, their hoodwinked attorney who falls for Sandler by the end of the picture.

Chuck and Larry is Jessica’s first real shot at popular, mainstream film success. Unlike her previous big-budget endeavors, it doesn’t rely on CGI or fetishistic weaponry to make its points. It is also—apologies to Freddie Prinze Jr. —her first comedy.

“It was a little bit intimidating,“ she says. “I really admire Adam and Kevin, but then, I didn’t try to equal them or one-up them, and the character I created didn’t have to be that. She’s the straight woman, but very fun and very cool and just—attainable. That’s the kind of part that I’d like to play more. I mean, a vampire hunter? Is that really attainable? I’d just like to play something a little more quirky, interesting, outrageous. And uninhibited.“

“You’re not worried that she can do comedy,“ the movie’s director, Dennis Dugan, tells me. “You can tell she can do comedy. So we just met her and cast her. I really think she can have one of those diverse, Oscar-winning careers. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no horizon to her talent.“

The sun has gone down, and we’re standing on the sidewalk in front of the Italian joint, across from the pier. I’m holding a small stuffed Spider-Man doll that Jessica won as a prize back at the amusement park and which she’s given to me to give to my son. I ask what she’s doing tonight, and she says she’s playing chaperone to a girlfriend on a first date. “Basically, I’m her wingman tonight,“ she says. “I’ll probably slip away if it’s rolling along well.“

She graciously agrees to a photograph with me, which I would include except for two reasons: (1) I don’t want to make Justin Timberlake jealous, and (2) you never quite understand how unattractive you are until you see yourself in a picture with Jessica Biel.

I watch her as she walks toward the pier. I know it’s where her car is parked, but I have this image of her heading straight back to the Pier Plank Plunge. The carny won’t know who she is, nobody on the pier will recognize her, and she’ll just hand over her fiver and go at it. That red button, almost within her reach. Attainable.

[disillusioneddanny]

Family Week Day 1. Family || Discovery

For all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you If I could fly then I would know  What life looks like from up above and down below I'd keep you safe, I'd keep you dry  Don't be afraid, Cecilia, I'm the satellite And you're the sky

Damian Wayne sighed as he set his phone down and looked at the painting in front of him. He smield to himself, the likeness between the photo he had taken of Daniel and the painting were uncanny. It had taken him weeks now to get his boyfriend to agree to let him paint a picture of him in his ghost form but now that he had gotten the permission, well all the pleading had been worth it. 

The painting of Danny floating up into a tree surrounded by flowers and a bright smile on his face would be a vision that Damian would cherish for the rest of his existence. 

He and Danny had been dating for just a little over six months now and every day so far had been perfect if Damian was going to say so himself. The two had managed to balance one another perfectly. Danny was all fun and adventure whereas Damian was more organized and practical. He managed to keep Danny from failing all of his classes at Gotham University and in return, Danny helped him live a little. 

They had met in Damian’s art class. Danny was a current English student at Gotham University whereas Damian was an art student, so they would have never really crossed paths. Except Danny had apparently needed some extra money that semester and had taken a job as a model for Damian’s art class. It had been a semester of torture where Danny would shamelessly flirt with him as he stripped down to his birthday suit to pose in front of the class. It was as though he could tell that Damian found the idiot attractive and did everything he could to make the poor vigilante blush like a bumbling virgin. 

At the end of each class period, though, Danny would approach Damian and talk and laugh with him. They had found themselves building a friendship together. They would get lunch every Thursday between classes. Damian would walk Danny back to his dorm most nights as his art class ran from seven in the evening until nine and as a good and noble vigilante that Damian was, he used that as an excuse to walk Danny to his dorm each night. 

And after the final class of their fall semester, Danny had come up to Damian and shyly asked him to go out with him on a real date. Damian had become absolutely smitten at that point. They had gone to get dinner in Bludhaven so that Damian’s meddling siblings wouldn’t catch them. As much as he loved his family, Danny was not something he was quite yet ready to share with his family.  He wanted to hold Danny tight to his chest and keep him away from the insanity that was the Wayne family. 

It was after their third date that Danny had started behaving strange and nervous with Damian and it was during their weekly lunch date that had been moved to Mondays for their Spring semester that Danny had admitted that he needed to share a secret with Damian. 

That night Damian had been dragged to Danny’s tiny two bedroom apartment in the Bowery at the beginning of their Spring semester and had learned Danny’s secret status as a halfa. He had been half dead for six years at that point and had decided that if he and Damian were going to go any further in their relationship then he had to be honest about it. 

Damian had taken that as his chance to share his own secret with Danny. He had done the thing his family had told him to never do and told the civilian that really wasn’t a civilian if Damian thought about it, that he was Robin, the vigilante. Danny had whined relentlessly that it was just his luck that he, a former vigilante would somehow find himself dating a vigilante now that he was an adult. 

Damian had just chuckled and kissed Danny’s whines away, feeling light and at ease knowing that at least his beloved would understand what it meant to be a hero. Danny had been amazing about it, too. He had accepted that Damian would have late nights, that there would be days where he was sore and unable to do much. He would just have Damian come to his apartment and dote on him. He would create ice packs to chill Damian’s sore muscles, he would hold him tight on nights where Damian had failed to save someone and gave Damian the love and attention he needed and desired. 

He hadn’t realized just how emotionally constipated his family was until he had met Danny. Until he had learned about cuddle times and had gotten to experience the joys of dancing in the hallways to Andrew McMahon, Danny’s favorite singer when his songs would come on the radio that Danny had playing at all hours of the day. It was with Danny that he had finally learned that crying was okay, that he could cry when he was frustrated, that bottling things up could lead to his downfall. Danny had taught him what it was like to be human, something Damian would have never expected from someone who was barely human himself. 

It was with Danny that Damian had learned just what love was. That it wasn’t this fragile, delicate thing that you had to constantly protect. At least not with Danny. Danny’s love was fierce and strong. His love was what kept Damian’s nightmares at bay at night. Danny was the one who Damina found himself going to when he needed comfort, when he needed someone to just listen to his problems without trying to solve all of them for him. Danny was everything that Damian needed in a partner and he couldn’t have been more thankful to find him.

He had been what Danny needed too, from what Danny had told him. In the time that they had known one another he had learned quite a bit about Danny. How he had never gotten the stability he needed growing up. How he had never felt like he could rely on anyone in his family, not even his sister. He loved Jazz but even their relationship had grown distant with her sister constantly making Danny feel inferior or like he didn’t know as much as she did. His parents had been so obsessed with their inventions that they hadn’t even noticed their son had died for four years. According to Danny they hadn’t even noticed when he started transitioning to a man. They had to be told he was trans eventually because Jazz was losing her mind over the fact that the two just didn’t notice.

It wasn’t until Danny had packed up to move to Gotham for college that they had even learned about him being Phantom. And their relationship had just gotten even worse from there. He got Christmas cards and birthday cards, and a call every so often but that was the extent of their relationship. Jazz called to check up on him every so often but from what it sounded like they weren’t the best phone calls between the two of them. 

But it was okay, Damian was here for him. He provided Danny with the stability and comfort that he needed. He was here to be the rock when Danny needed to crumble and not be strong. He provided Danny with the things he had grown up without, just like Danny did for him.

Their relationship wasn’t perfect, no far from it! They were still just two twenty year olds in their third year of college trying to navigate the world. Danny worked a lot at his job at the Gotham University library where he was a writing tutor plus his second job at the coffee shop. Unlike Damian he didn’t have family to pay for college and had managed to secure enough scholarships to cover what his government aid wouldn’t. But he still had to pay for his apartment, something he had desperately wanted after being unable to shift to his Phantom form at his dorm room for so long. It didn’t help that Danny vehemently refused to allow Damian to pay for anything for him, citing that he had no desire to be a sugar baby.

Between classes, Danny’s two jobs, and Damian’s job as Robin, the two were unable to spend nearly as much time together as Damian wanted and it had caused issues in the past. But that was fine, they were always able to move past that. 

They loved one another and love would get them through just about anything.

Damian wiped his hands on his rag as he looked around. He was currently in Danny’s apartment, waiting for the other to get back from his job at the coffee shop so that they could leave for dinner. It had happened about a month ago when Danny gave Damian a key to his apartment, citing that he wanted to give Damian a place to escape from his family when he needed. Which was appreciated. 

Damian loved his family and he thoroughly enjoyed living at the manor where he had nothing to worry about but the older he got he needed more space. And Danny’s apartment provided him with that space, and if there were a few drawers that were emptied so that Damian could store his things there? Well no one needed to know about it aside from him and Danny. 

The doorbell rang, sounding throughout the room, causing Damian to frown as he set his paint rag down and started out of the bedroom Danny used as his study room/office and made his way to the door, grabbing one of his birdarangs just to be on the safe side. Danny hadn’t said anything to him about expecting guests. 

He hadn’t said anything about anyone coming over, no packages, nothing of the sort. Damian looked through the peephole and his frown deepened when he found his mother standing on the otherside with what looked like a baby carrier in her hands. 

He swung the door open and frowned. “Mother, what are you doing here?”

She grinned and stepped into the house, pushing past Damian as she did so. 

“Oh Habibi! It has been so long since I’ve seen your precious face,” she crooned, setting the carrier down to throw her arms out and hug Damian. The former assassin simply took a step back and gave his mother a look. 

“What are you doing here?” He asked, crossing his arms over his chest, giving her a clear view of his weapon. 

She sighed and picked up the carrier once more. “I learned you were in a relationship with another man! I have brought you a gift to celebrate!” She said, thrusting the carrier into Damian’s hands. “I know that men cannot have children with other men, so I made you a child! One that is a clone of both you and Mr. Fenton.”

“Mother! You cannot just make us a child,” he hissed just as Danny walked through the door and looked between the two. Talia turned to look at Danny and grinned. 

“And you are the young man that my son is so smitten with!” she exclaimed. Damian sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. His mother had been doing everything she could to get back into Damian’s good graces the last few years and her displays of affection were steadily growing more and more over the top but this took the cake. To make him and Danny a baby to care for?

They had only been dating for six months! Had only known one another for a year! They weren’t ready for a child, not yet anyway! 

“Babe? What’s going on? Why do you have a baby?” Danny asked slowly, looking between Talia, Damian, and the baby carrier. 

“My mother thought that as our six month anniversary we were ready to raise a child together. She assumed that as we were both men, we would be unable to procreate and too matters into her own hands.”

Danny stared at him for a moment, and Damian could tell that his mind was doing mental gymnastics. “But I’m-”

“Yes, I know Daniel. But mother did not and she decided to be meddling,” he said, glaring at his mother.

“What are you talking about?” Talia asked, looking between the two. “You are both men, how else would you be able to get a child with that in the way?”

“Do not worry about that mother, just know that it was not necessary,” Damian hissed before Danny let out a curse. 

“This is the second time a fruit loop made a clone of me!” he whined, coming over to take the baby carrier from Damian. He carried the baby out of the room, leaving both Damian and his mother to stare behind him in confusion. Daniel had never told him he had been cloned before? How did he forget to mention such an important piece of information? 

… 

Danny and Damian soon found themselves staring at a sleeping little girl. She looked to be roughly three months old by Damian’s calculations, he held his intertwined hands at his mouth as he looked over the little girl. 

“She has your nose,” Danny said softly, pushing the visor back on the carrier so that they could better look at her. 

“She has your mouth,” Damian murmured, unable to look away from the precious little girl in front of him. She had only been in Danny’s apartment for an hour and already Damian was in love with her.

“How are we going to raise a baby?” Danny asked with a sigh, running his fingers through his hair. 

“We will coparent, of course,” Damian said with a scoff. 

“No offense baby, but you still haven’t even told your family about me. What are they going to do when you come home with a whole ass baby?”

“What if,” Damian started, his heart speeding up just a bit as he prepared to ask the question he had been wanting to ask Danny for the last two months. “What if I just moved in with you and we raised her together here? You have that second bedroom, we can clear it out and turn it into a nursery. I can pay half of the utilities and rent, then you will be able to quit your job at the coffee shop. Our class schedules are already opposite from one anothers with your classes in the morning and mine in the evening,” Damian said. 

“Yeah but you do that so you can sleep in after patrol,” Danny pointed out. 

Damian shrugged his shoulders. “I have gone years with running on minimal hours of sleep. I will survive while we complete the last year and a half of our studies. We start classes in a few weeks, we have some time to get started on a routine with her and we will go from there.”

“And if there is any overlap in our schedules?”

“Other students bring their children with them to class all the time, we can do the same,” Damian said simply. “We can do this, Danny. If anyone can do this, it’s us.”

Danny nodded and looked at the baby. “I know you said your mother was part of an assassin cult, but I didn’t realize that meant she knew how to make clones. Also, how did she get my DNA?”

“She’s an assassin, I do not know,” Damian said and shrugged his shoulders. “And yes, mother has a tendency to make clones of me, usually they are sent with the mission to kill me. This is the first time she has create a clone of me that is simply meant to be my child.”

“Oh cool! I had a clone made of me by my godfather to kill me! She’s like my cousin now, she’s travelling the Infinite Realms at the moment. I haven’t seen her in years!” Danny said with a grin. 

Damian let out a soft chuckle as he leaned over and rested his head on Danny’s shoulder. “I love you, you goofball.”

Danny laughed and kissed the top of Damian’s head. “I love you too,” he said softly. “You’re going to have to tell your family that you’re moving out of the house you know.”

“I know and they are going to have far too many questions that I am not interested in answering,” he huffed out. 

His boyfriend simply snickered again and kissed the top of Damian’s head once more before resting his cheek upon it. 

“She looks like a Damiana,” he joked. Damian crinkled his nose. 

“Absolutely not. Our daughter needs a more sophisticated name. My grandmother’s name was Martha.”

“That’s na old lady’s name, we’re not naming our baby Martha,” Danny said, taking Damian’s hand and winding their fingers together. “What about Hannah?”

“No, doesn’t suit her. What about Dahlia? It is a flower and –”

“Reminds me of the black dahlia and a little too close to your mother’s name. Which, I don’t know if I should be mad at her for cloning me without my consent, or thank her because now I have an adorable baby that I have no clue how to raise. Oh my ancients, Dami, we’re going to have to buy parenting books! Both of us were raised with terrible parents! Talia is an assassin who raised her own baby to be one, Bruce is an emotional consitpated vigilante who allowed all of his children to become vigilantes before the age of fourteen! My parents weren’t that bad but they were neglectful as shit and I ended up being raised by my sister instead! Neither of us know how to be a parent.”

“We can get parenting books, not to worry,” Damian laughed. “What about Cecilia? After that song you like?”

Danny let out a hum. “I like it, Cecilia Grace, maybe?” He asked. “Cecilia Grace Fenton Wayne. What a fuckin’ mouthful.”

Damian chuckled. “I like it, Cecilia Grace,” he whispered before Danny shrugged him off of his shoulder and leaned forward. Damian watched as Danny unclasped the buckles and pulled the sleeping girl out of the seat and cradled her close to his chest. A soft purr escaped from Danny, making Damian smile at the little display of his ghost side. 

“Hi Cecilia, I’m your daddy,” Danny whispered, running a hand over the head full of black curls. “And this is your-”

“Your papa,” Damian decided, not wanting his child to grow up with the same rules he did. She would never call either of them father, she needed to call them something more comforting, more familial and less stiff and proper. 

Danny glanced over at him, a soft red painted his cheeks. “She’s perfect, Dami,” he whispered, running his hand over her hair once more. “We have so much to figure out.”

“And we will, we will figure all of this out together,” Damian said, wrapping his arm around his boyfriend’s waist and resting his chin on Danny’s shoulder so that he could look down at the little girl, at his daughter. He couldn’t believe this was happening, but here they were with a small baby between them and the very beginning stages of building their own little family. 

Now he just needed to figure out hwo he was going to announce to his family that he was abruptly moving out of the manor to move in with his boyfriend and daughter without arising suspicion from his family. This wasn’t how he was planning on doing this. 

He thought he would get to tell his family he was in a relationship, bring Danny over for dinner and let them get to meet him that way. Maybe they would date for a few more months before Damian finally got the guts to ask Danny if he could move in, and then the two would look for a new apartment when Danny’s lease was up. 

Of course, things did not always happen the way someone expected them to. They rarely did go according to plan in Damian’s life, at least. But at least this instance, it ended with a perfect little gift. 

@dpxdc-familyweek

Like what you read? Follow the links to the next parts!

Part 2

Part 3

[halsinkisser]

hi hi hi!! what kinda f/o stuff do you have!!!? is it official or unofficial stuff?

this ask hasbeen sitting in my inbox literally 4ever ........... im ngl at first i thought i wanted to get my room fixed and then i got my room fixed and i ws like. i want more stuff first /LH SO. DONE PUTTING IT OFF. heres pics of my current f/o things if ur curious !! ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ

vault boye .. he has a little space on my shelf !!!! im hoping to get the bobbleheads at some point but augh the SHIPPING. not pictured is my water bottle (which has stickers of him on it) and my mousepad (which is him!!) all my vault boy stuff is official !!

monty gator stuff !!! ud be shocked at how hard it is to find monty things. theres a lot of fanmade stuff on etsy but once again shippingisa blight on humanity. the plushie ended up costingme like 60 euros . not even funny . monty's plush is from youtooz but i got the flag off some vendor on amazon icl

mirio !!!!!!!!!!!! ignore his plushie being crushed bythe size of my shelf i promise hes ok. i have plans to get vol 17 of the manga cuz its got him on it i just havent yet ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ not pictured are my bracelets and the little keychains of him i have on my bag. all my mirio stuff is official, save for the bracelets !!

maybe one day u will get a picture of my phone case (which is halsin themed). but not today. most of what i have to show for halsin is my art unfortunately and it makes me feel like a FAKE FAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!

finally. as a little detail bc ummm its important to me and this is lowkey a room tour anyway. did y'all know i like junji ito

if ur wondering i'm missing alley and uncanny: the origins of fear. i'm ordering alley later today and origins of fear will come another time cuz the western cover isso profoundly ugly have y'all seen it lmao. i lowk dont even want it/J

IF U MADE IT THIS FAR THANK U FOR READING MY LONGASS POST. DO U WANNA HUG