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barnacles34 · 4 months ago

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Bells and Whistles (Professional Hazard pt. 1.1)

Karina x Male Reader

18+

It's three days after that beautiful night. Still in Rome.

The voicemail plays in the quiet of her bedroom. First: silence. Then a sharp intake of breath that makes your pulse jump.

Your thumb hovers over the phone as her voice breaks into those familiar wet sounds that have been haunting you all afternoon.

'If you play that one more time—'

'Shh. This is art.'

She's burrowed in her fortress of quilts, only eyes visible over the edge. A paperback lies abandoned by her hip.

'Delete it.' But her voice has gone soft around the edges.

'Not a chance.' You take your time with your shoes. Let her watch the deliberate movements. 'This is better than your debut song—and you know how much I love that song.’'

'You're awful.' The quilt slips as she shifts. 'I was desperate.'

'Were you?' You tap the phone, find that specific moment where her voice catches. 'Tell me about desperate.'

Her sock-covered foot sneaks out, hooks behind your knee. Tugs. 'Twenty minutes for milk. Who takes twenty minutes for milk?'

'Someone wearing very expensive, very tight jeans.'

'Someone being cruel.'

You catch her ankle mid-retreat. The quilt falls away, reveals cotton shorts still damp from earlier. Your thumb finds the arch of her foot, presses. She makes that sound again—the one from the voicemail.

'Cruel?' Your fingers trace higher. 'I'm not the one sending pornographic voicemails in the middle of the day.'

'I didn't—' She breaks off as your hand slides up her calf.

'No?' You hit play again. Her recorded gasp fills the room. 'What would you call this then?'

She bites her knuckle. You replace it with your thumb, let her teeth graze the pad.

'That noise you made,' you murmur. 'Right at the end. Makes me feel invincible.'

'Yeah?' Her tongue darts out, tastes salt.

'Like I could do anything. Find Atlantis. Solve world peace.' You brush her temple with your lips. 'Handle two of you.'

She snorts, shoves at your chest. 'You can barely handle one.'

'Want to test that theory?'

The laughter dies in her throat as your palm finds her inner thigh. Heat blooms under cotton.

'Stay.' Her fingers twist in your shirt like anchors. 'I'll send more. A dozen. Two dozen.'

'Greedy girl.'

Her eyes crinkle at the corners. 'Your fault.'

When you kiss her, she melts like she's been waiting all day.

Her tongue maps the ridges of your teeth, memorizing territory she already knows by heart.

‘Cheater,’ she gasps when you pinch the clasp of her bra.

‘Architect.’

Her shorts fall. The quilt tangles around her hips. She arches when your mouth finds her neck. Whimpers when your teeth follow.

‘Still deleting it.’ She breathes.

‘Try.’

You hit playback again. Her moan swells—raw, unfiltered—as your fingers slide into her.

‘Fuck.’ Her head thrashes. ‘That’s—’

‘—Proof.’ You curl your fingers. ‘You’re my religion.’

She chokes on a laugh. A sob. Her hips stutter. You drink the sounds from her lips. Let her nails carve half-moons into your shoulders.

Later, when she’s boneless and blinking up at you, she traces your collarbone.

‘Twelve voicemails,’ she yawns.

‘Thirteen.’

‘Why thirteen?’

You press her palm to your chest. Let her feel the gallop. ‘One for every time I died at this very second.’

She stills.

Her teeth flash. Dangerous. Devoted. ‘Gladly.’

Your fingers move lazy. Slow. Dragging out every twitch, every choked gasp. She arches into your hand, sweat gluing her bangs to her temples.

‘Still… deleting it.’ She pants, hips circling.

‘Try harder.’ You crook your fingers. Watch her back bow.

Her moan syncs with the recording still playing softly nearby—a stereo echo of need. You drink the sound. Memorize the way her throat flutters.

It’s pulsing, it’s so wet and hot. Sucking in your fingers like quicksand.

‘You’re mean.’ She whines.

‘Mean?’ Your thumb swipes. ‘You begged for this. Remember?’

The voicemail crackles: “—can’t sleep, can’t think, just… please—”

You smirk. Kiss her inner thigh. Salt and jasmine. Her hips jerk.

‘No—wait—’ Her hand fists your hair. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t pull. Trembles.

You nuzzle the damp cotton. ‘Scared?’

‘Never.’

Her shorts peel away. You linger—inhale her, lips hovering. She whimpers.

You chuckle. ‘Even your pussy smells like jasmine.’

‘Please.’

The first lick is a tease. A glancing blow. She curses. The second? A vow.

You map her with your tongue—slow, reverent. Learn the rhythm that makes her thighs clamp your ears. The angle that steals her words. She’s wildfire in your mouth.

‘There—oh god, there—’

You double down. Fingers curl inside her. Thumb presses just so.

Her scream is raw. Beautiful. The quilt soaks. You don’t let up—suck gently as she shakes, drag your tongue through every pulse until she’s clawing the sheets.

Her juices quicken, a pungent musk of sex that’s just pure fucking sin—and you’re sucking it up like a thirsty dog.

Your tongue drags a slow circle around her clit—not touching it. Just tracing the swollen bud through her folds. She whines, thighs tensing.

‘Tease.’

‘Worshipper.’ you correct.

Her hips lift. You press her back down with a palm to her stomach. Feel the muscles flutter, feel the soft cream-like softness of her beautiful midriff.

First contact: a glancing lick. Just the tip of your tongue skating over her clit. She gasps. You catalog the sound—high, sharp, yours.

‘Again.’ She breathes.

You oblige. Slower this time. Let your tongue flatten, drag wet heat across her, bury your nose into her pelvis. Her fingers knot in the sheets.

‘Good?’

‘More.’

You hum. Vibration ripples through her. She jerks.

‘Easy,’ you murmur against her. ‘Let me learn you.’

Your thumbs part her folds. Expose her fully—glistening, flushed, pulse visible in the throb of her clit. You blow gently. Watch her clench, flesh constricting.

‘Cruel—’ A high moan escapes her.

‘Thorough.’

The first proper lick steals her voice. You start slow. Broad strokes from entrance to clit, savoring her tang. Her thighs quiver.

‘There,’ she hisses when your tongue flicks her clit. ‘God, there—’

You zero in. Flick. Flick. Steady rhythm. Her breath hitches.

‘Don’t stop—don’t—’

You switch tactics—suck gently. Her back arches.

‘Yes—like—ah—’

Her clit hardens under your tongue. You trace circles around it, avoiding direct contact. She sobs.

‘Please—’

You reward her: firm pressure, rapid flicks. Her hips stutter. You pin her down, red blooming around the hold you have over her stomach—relentless.

‘Close—I’m close—’

You slide two fingers inside. Curl. Her walls clamp.

‘Fuck—fuck—’

Her clit pulses under your tongue. You suck harder.

She shatters.

A broken scream. Hips grinding against your face. You ride her through it—tongue gentling, fingers stilling.

‘Too much—’

You kiss her inner thigh. Two more kisses along the outer lips. Taste salt. ‘Beautiful.’

She trembles. ‘Again.’

Her thighs tremble as she nudges you onto your back. The mattress dips under her weight. You reach to touch her face—always reaching—but she catches your wrist. Presses it to the pillow.

Her grip isn’t firm. A request, not a demand.

‘Let me,’ she murmurs.

You nod.

Her lips start at your collarbone—a closed-mouth kiss that lingers. She exhales warm breath against the hollow of your throat. You swallow. She smiles against your skin.

Another kiss. Lower. The swell of your pectoral. The scar from that cat. Her tongue traces the jagged edge. You hiss.

The way her thick hair travels along your chest tickles. The soothing aroma of her shampoo almost paralyzing you.

Her teeth graze your nipple. Bite down just enough to make your hips jerk. The denim of your jeans rasps against her bare thighs.

‘Off,’ she says.

‘What’s the magic word?’

Her eyes flick up. Dark. Glossy with submission. ‘Please.’

You sit up to shuck your jeans. She pushes you back down. ‘Let me.’

Her fingers fumble with your belt. The leather slips. She growls—a sound you’ve only heard when she lost at Mario Kart the day before. You bite your cheek. Laughter threatens release.

‘Shut up.’

‘Didn’t say anything.’

The belt clatters to the floor. Your boxers follow. Cool air hits your cock. Her breath follows—warm, uneven.

‘Look at me,’ you say.

She does. Pupils blown. Lips parted. A string of saliva connects her tongue to her lower lip.

‘Beautiful,’ you murmur.

She flushes. Looks away.

Your thumb hooks her chin. ‘Eyes here, sweetheart.’

A whimper escapes her. She obeys.

The first lick is tentative. A kitten testing cream. Her tongue swipes the underside of your cock. Your abs clench in response.

‘Jimin—’

‘Shh.’

Her lips wrap the head. Suck gently. Your groan claws its way out. She moans in response—vibration traveling straight to your spine.

Fuck.

Her hand wraps your shaft. Strokes in time with her mouth. Too dry. Too rough. Perfection.

‘Condom?’ she mumbles around you, the slightest gap allowed for conversation.

‘Later.’

She hums. The sound liquefies your bones.

And she continues. Swollen lips wrapped around your length, tongue slightly pushing on the underside.

Her free hand drifts between her legs. You catch it.

‘Focus.’

‘Meanie.’

You guide her head back down. ‘Earn it.’

She takes you deeper. Smoldering eye contact as she inches closer to the hilt, whereupon her nose almost makes contact with your pelvic bone. Gags. Pulls off. Coughs.

Strings of thick spit follow her mouth as she wipes.

‘Okay?’

‘Perfect.’

She tries again. Slower. Breathing through her nose. Her throat opens. Takes you to the root this time. Tears spill.

You bite down on your lip.

Her nails dig into your thighs. Sting. Ground.

She finds a rhythm—suck, release, swirl. Strings of spit travel down your length. Where her thumb massages your balls with the spit. Your vision blurs.

Amidst it all, she’s staring into you—daring you to force her down on your cock. Begging, even.

‘Close,’ you warn.

She pulls off. Strokes you fast. ‘Come.’

You arch. ‘Where?’

Her tongue darts out. Catches the first pearl of cum. ‘Everywhere.’

The orgasm rips through you. Strips you raw. You spill across her lips, her chin, the swell of her breasts. She licks her lips. Grins.

‘Good?’

‘Amazing.’

She crawls up your body. Fully swallowing the load, then pressing a light kiss on your cheek.

Her mouth lingers on your cheekbone—wet, warm. The kiss sticks when she pulls back. Milky streaks still glisten between her breasts. You thumb one. She shivers.

‘Messy,’ you murmur.

‘Yours.’

Her nipples graze your chest as she straddles you. Heat blooms where skin meets skin. You palm her ribs. Feel the rabbit-quick thrum beneath.

Her hips lift. Your cock nudges her entrance. Slick. Swollen. You hold still. Make her work for it.

‘Please.’ She breathes, sinking down.

Heat swallows you. Tight. Quivering. You bite your tongue. Blood blooms.

She moves like water—slow swirls, thighs trembling. Her breasts sway. You catch one. Lick the salt from its curve.

‘Look at me.’

She doesn’t. Eyes screwed shut. Hair plastered to her neck. Hot and heavy with arousal.

You pinch her nipple. Gentle. Cruel. ‘Look.’

She whimpers. Lashes lift. Pupils black as oil spills.

‘Good girl.’

She whimpers. Clenches. Your fingers dig into her hips.

‘Faster.’

‘Make me.’

You buck up. She gasps. Nails score your chest.

‘Cheat—’

Her rhythm fractures. Hips stuttering. You let her chase it—the sweet friction, the burn. Her moans pitch higher.

‘Close—I’m close—,’ she whimpers.

You still her hips. ‘Wait.’

She sobs. ‘Please—’

‘Say it.’

Your thumb finds her clit. Circles.

She breaks. ‘Yours. Always yours.’

You release her. Let her slam down. Take what she needs.

Her orgasm rips through both of you—convulsions, bitten-off cries. Her rhythmic roll of hips turns frenzied. You let her ride it. Milk every pulse.

After all, you’re obsessed—crazy about her.

When she collapses, you roll her over. Press into the sweat-slick hollow of her back.

‘Again.’

She shakes her head. Weak.

You bite her shoulder. ‘Again.’

Her body opens. Always opens. You grip your cock along her swollen slit, the sticky wetness almost drives you mad. Regardless, you fuck her slow this time.

Deep. Dragging each thrust. Feeling how her pussy drags on your cock, slick wet sounds singing into your ears.

‘Feel it?’

She nods. Pillow muffling her whines.

Your hand slides under. Cups her breast. Squeezes.

You curl over her. Chest to heaving back. Lips to her ear.

Her lips linger at your ear—sticky with confession. You taste salt when she pulls away. The room smells of sex and the spilt vanilla candle she lit hours ago, wax pooling like liquid amber.

She softly guides your hand to her throat. Your thumb finds the pulse. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. A trapped bird.

"Harder," she whispers.

You tighten. Feel her swallow.

Her breasts press against your chest as she arches, nipples pebbling against your scars. The heat between her legs slicks your thigh.

"Inside.’

You flip her. Sheets snag her knees. She whines. You bite the sound from her lips.

Her hands fist the headboard. You press into her slow. Molten velvet. Her moan fractures.

‘Eyes.’

She obeys. Always obeys.

You move. Deliberate. Each thrust a psalm. Her breasts sway—heavy, flushed. You palm one. Squeeze. Milk-white skin blooms red.

‘More—’

‘Quiet.’

She bites her wrist. You replace it with your fingers.

‘Sing for me.’

Her cry splinters the air. You swallow it. Fuck her deeper.

The headboard knocks the wall. Syncopated. Her ankles lock at your waist. Pull. Beg.

‘Who?’ you demand.

‘Yours.’

‘Louder.’

‘Yours~!’

The word still ringing when you slam into her. No finesse. Piston hips. Her breasts slap your chest—heat and sweat and jasmine.

She chokes. Nails rake your back. ‘Too—’

‘Take it.’

Her legs lock. Ankles digging into your behind. You fuck her like proving a point. Jackhammer rhythm. Headboard cracks plaster.

Dust rains down as you drag her hips back, slam into her harder. No rhythm now—just ruin.

She chokes on a scream, face mashed into the quilt, ass raised like an offering.

Your grip bruises her waist, fingers denting flesh as you split her open again. Again. Again and again.

You can feel your balls hit the wetness of her pussy, smacking wet sounds onto her slit.

‘Take it.’ You grind deeper, pelvis punishing her clit with each thrust. Her thighs quiver, slick with sweat and your earlier release. ‘Wanted me rough? Here.’

She sobs into the mattress, voice shredded. ‘T-too—’

‘You don’t get to.’ You fist her hair, yank her head back. Her spine bows, throat exposed. ‘You begged for this. Remember?’

A nod. A whimper.

You snarl, slamming home. The wet slap of skin-on-skin drowns her cries. Her nails claw the sheets, nearly ripping threads. You lean over her, teeth scoring her shoulder.

Her scream cracks as you pin her wrists, pound into her like you’re exorcising ghosts.

The bed groans. Her breasts sway, nipples raw from your mouth. She’s so tight, clenching around your cock like she’s trying to keep you trapped inside.

‘Gonna break you,’ you rasp, thumb digging into her asshole.

She shrieks, back arching. ‘P-please—’

‘Please what?’

‘Ruin me—’

You do. Hips pistoning, sweat stinging the bite marks on her neck. You don’t stop—can’t stop—driving into her convulsions until your vision whites out.

She sobs. High. Broken. ‘There there there~!’

Your thumb finds her clit. Grind. Her scream lodges in your teeth.

‘Come.’

‘Can’t—can’t—’

You bite her shoulder. ‘Come.’

She shatters. Walls milking. Clenching. Begging without words.

You drill deeper. Tip hitting that spongy ache. Her eyes roll back.

‘Gonna fill you,’ you snarl.

‘Please please—’

One last thrust. Hilt-deep.

You rupture.

Whiteout. Earthquake hips. Flood her until your knees buckle.

She collapses into the fault line you’ve carved. Whimpers when you pull out. Spend drips down her thigh.

Her finger swipes it—all that cumulative spend coupled along her swollen cunt. Lets the slurry couple along her tongue.

‘I love how you taste.’

‘God. You’re too fucking perfect.’ You drop down onto her. Cuddling.

Moonlight spills through the curtains. She's tucked against you, all soft edges now.

'You okay?' Your fingers ghost over her shoulder.

'Mm.' A pause. 'Was it too much?'

'Never.'

'But I was...' She shifts slightly. 'I got carried away.'

'Hey.' You tilt her chin up. 'That's what I love about you.'

'What? Being a mess?'

'Being real.'

She burrows closer. 'Still. Sorry if I—'

'Don't you dare apologize.'

'But—'

'Want some water?'

'If you move, I'll write a very detailed exposé about you.'

'About what? My green tea addiction?'

'Chapter One: The Man Who Chose Hydration Over Cuddles.'

'Riveting.'

'Mm. I'll even include citations.'

Your fingers trace idle patterns on her arm. 'What's Chapter Two?'

'Our future kids being haunted by your tea collection.'

'Kids, huh?'

'Tiny humans who'll only drink iced americanos.'

'In winter? That's grounds for custody battle.'

She pinches your side. 'They'll be perfect.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. Little artists with their mom's smile and their dad's terrible sense of humor.'

'My humor is exquisite.'

'You'll teach them to be insufferable.'

'And you'll teach them to be beautiful.'

She props herself up. Hair mussed, eyes soft. 'Where should we live?'

'Somewhere quiet. With big windows.'

'And a garden?'

'For your flowers and my tea herbs.'

'Domestic.' She wrinkles her nose. 'I like it.'

You pull her closer. 'We'll need a library.'

'For bedtime stories?'

'And quiet mornings.'

'With a reading nook?'

'Big enough for three.'

'Four,' she corrects. 'Maybe five.'

'Ambitious.'

She kisses your jaw. 'Thought you could handle anything.'

'Try me.'

'Five kids. All girls. All with my stubbornness.'

'Terrifying.'

'But worth it.'

You thread fingers through her hair. 'Worth everything.'

'Even giving up your tea collection?'

'Now you're pushing it.'

She laughs, soft and real. 'I'll let you keep the fancy cups.'

'Generous.'

'I know.' She yawns. 'I'm a catch.'

'The biggest.'

Her fingers trail your chest. 'Hey.'

'Mm?'

'Think our kids will be tall?'

'With your genes? Doubtful.'

She bites your shoulder. 'I'm average height.'

'For a garden gnome.'

'For a normal person.’ She groans.

‘—Who has been crushed ever so slightly by a hydraulic press.’

‘Ugh.’ She falls back into the bed.

‘We need a shower.’

She huffs. ‘No, I need a shower.’

‘Hm?’

‘I know what you’re gonna do: act like it’s a shower then nail me for the next half-hour in there.’

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t oh me. My legs are still sore from the cumulative effects of the past 3 days’

'Fine.' You pull her closer. 'Five more minutes.'

'Five turns into fifty with you.'

'Can you blame me?'

She traces patterns on your chest. 'I have to be at the airport by six.'

'Skip it.'

'Right. I'll just tell my company I found something better to do.'

'Like?'

'Like getting ravished by a journalist with no self-control.'

'Sounds reasonable to me.'

Her laugh is soft. Sad. 'I can’t let go of this.'

'This?'

'You.' She props herself up. 'Your stupid jokes. Your hands. The way you look at me like I'm...'

Your fingers find her hair. 'How long?'

'A week. Maybe two.'

'I'll die.'

'Drama queen.'

'No, actually die. Waste away. They'll write articles: Local Writer Perishes From Karina Deficiency.'

She smacks your chest. 'Stop.'

'My last words will be "if only she'd stayed one more day."'

'I hate you.'

'You love me.'

'Yeah.' She kisses your jaw. 'That's the problem.'

She sits up suddenly. 'Wait. What if—'

'What if?'

'My apartment in Seoul has a separate entrance. Service elevator.' The words tumble out. 'Nobody uses it except staff. And I have this office, connected to my room—'

'Jimin.'

'—could set up a desk there. Get you one of those fancy writing chairs. And there's this cafe nearby, really private, the owner's super discrete—'

You prop yourself up. Watch her plan your smuggling with bright eyes.

'The security team changes rotation at 2AM.' She's drawing invisible blueprints on your chest. 'That's when we could—'

'Breathe, baby.'

'I'm serious.' Her fingers curl against your skin. 'I've thought about this. A lot. Like, embarrassingly a lot.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.' She ducks her head. 'Have the whole thing mapped out in my head. When to sneak you in. Which staff to trust. Where to hide your toothbrush.'

'My toothbrush gets its own strategic planning?'

'Everything gets strategic planning.' She looks up. 'I'd make it work. I'd make it perfect.'

'Jimin.'

'I know it's crazy.' Her voice cracks. 'But I can't—the thought of not—'

You pull her down. Kiss her forehead, her temple, the corner of her mouth. 'Tell me more about this secret entrance.'

She breathes against your neck. 'Really?'

'Really. Though I should warn you—'

'What?'

'My toothbrush is high-maintenance. Needs its own security detail.'

She laughs, wet and relieved. 'I'm being pathetic.'

'You're being perfect.' Your thumb catches a tear. 'And I'm taking notes.'

'Yeah?'

'Mm yeah. Finally found my title: "How to Smuggle a Writer: A Professional Hazard."'

Jimin nuzzles into you further. Purring at this moment of peace.

2 Weeks Later

Dawn creeps through her expensive curtains. She's wrapped around you like a koala, skin on skin, taking up more space than her tiny frame should allow.

You try to slip away. Her arms tighten.

'No,' she mumbles against your chest.

'Tea.'

'Lies.'

'Green tea.'

'Worse lies.'

But she lets you go, rolling into the warm spot you leave behind. You pause at the door—she's barely covered by the sheet, hair a mess across your pillow. Perfect.

The kitchen gleams in morning light. That copper kettle she insisted on buying catches the sun—"Because proper tea needs proper tools," she'd declared, like your entire existence before her was barbaric.

She pads in almost-naked just as the water's heating, with your discarded shirt from yesterday.

'Cold?'

'Miss you already.'

'I'm right here.'

'Too far.' She hooks her chin over your shoulder, arms sliding around your waist. 'What blend?'

'The one you say you hate.'

'Mm. The grassy one?'

'Getting better at this.'

She hums against your skin. Already reaching for her cup—the blue ceramic one that somehow migrated from the hotel to her apartment.

First sip. Her eyes close.

'Well?'

'It’s okay.' She takes another sip. 'Bland. I guess.'

She grins wide as you turn around. Getting closer to you, inhaling the smell of your fresh t-shirt.

'Noted.' You kiss her temple. 'Want the rest of mine too?'

'Yes.' A sleepy smile. 'But only because I love you.'

'Of course.' Your greatest triumph: her, here, stealing your tea and your heart. 'Only because of that.'

'Want breakfast?' She's already moving to the fridge.

'You're cooking?'

'Don't sound so scared.' She pulls out eggs, something that looks suspiciously gourmet. 'I've been practicing. Besides, I’m tired of eating the coal you call food, and the bacteria colony I call food.'

'Since when?'

'Since I decided to be domestic.' She hip-checks you away from the counter. 'Go sit. Let me work.'

You watch her move around the kitchen. Something's different. A nervousness in her hands, a flutter in her movements.

'Stop staring.'

She’s revelling in it, how she gets you dumb-struck every time you get a glance of her.

Too cute.

'Can't help it.'

She sets a plate in front of you. Simple breakfast. Eggs. Toast. But arranged with careful precision. Something white peeking out from under the toast.

'Fancy.' You reach for your fork.

'Wait.' Her fingers twist in your shirt. 'Look under.'

'Under the toast?'

She nods. Not breathing.

You lift the bread. There's a small note. Written as small as her hands would allow.

‘Pregnant.’

The world stops.

'Jimin.'

'I know it's fast.' The words rush out. 'I know we just—but I've been feeling strange and the test was just sitting there in my bathroom for days and I finally—this morning while you were sleeping—'

You pull her into your lap.

'Say something.'

'When?'

'2 weeks, maybe? Remember that night after the bar?'

You remember. Of course you remember. A beautiful night.

'Are you...' Her voice small. 'Are you happy?'

You kiss her. Taste salt. Someone's crying. Maybe both of you.

'Ecstatic.' Your hand finds her stomach. Still flat. But now. But soon. 'Terrified.'

'Yeah?' She laughs through tears.

'Yeah.' You kiss her again. 'Best breakfast ever.'

'Even better than your tea?'

Instead of answering, you kiss her again.

What's tea anyway?

Fin

A/N: Goodness! They make a great couple. Hope you enjoyed!

#karina smut #karina #aespa smut #kpop smut #smut #fanfic #male reader #kpop #aespa #karina x reader #aespa karina

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pretty-little-mind33 · 7 months ago

Text

Logan Howlett x fem!reader

summary: Logan has fun punishing you ;)

warnings: hard kink (don't like, don't read!), kinda dub-con (maybe?), unprotected sex, humiliation, rough sex, degradation, mean!logan, dacryphilia, crying, slight dumbification, spanking, creampie

~ last kinktober!! happy halloween! ~

KINKTOBER MASTERLIST

You're a sobbing mess, face pressed against the couch cushions, your arm flailing around, clutching onto anything you can hold onto. Logan's back is pressed against yours, warm and hard, as he thrusts into you. He's feral like an animal and you can feel his cock stretch you painfully wide.

"Lo–lo," you whimper, voice small, "Can't do this anymore," you sob, tasting the saltiness of your tears as your poor pussy is abused. Logan's hands fist your hair, pushing down as he grunts.

"Can't take it, hm? Yes, you can. You're a slut remember. This is what you wanted, isn't it? This is what you fucking begged for when you were on your knees. Huh, you remember? Licking up my cock, staring up at me with those doe-eyes of yours," he pauses, growling, "What was it you said? You can handle it? Well, handle it then, honey."

You catch your breath, barely able to breathe as he fucks you hard. You're sobbing, unable to focus. Logan grins wolfishly, pulling you up by your hair as he leans in. His lips hit your ear and he whispers hoarsely, "We're gonna play a game now, can you do that for me?"

When you don't answer him he thrusts particularly hard.

"Yes, Logan, yes—" you whine, eyes blurry from your tears. You're staring at the wall now, trying your hardest to be good for him. His laugh in your ear makes you shiver.

"I want you to count every thrust into your soaked pussy." You can hear his grin, "And if you miss one, I'll go even harder, do you understand me?"

You choke on a cry, not understanding why he's punishing you. You hadn't been that bratty. Logan just seems like he likes this; mocking you and making you squirm for him. He thrusts hard, hitting your cervix and you gasp.

Apparently, the game had started because he slaps your ass. "One!" you cry, moaning loudly. You're slightly afraid your neighbors might hear you but Logan doesn't seem to care. He continues fucking into you, whispering dirty things in your ear and you struggle to count all his thrusts. He's so fast. His stamina is intense.

"Four–ah–five, six, s-seven—"

"Louder. I want everyone to know how much of a slut you are."

You cry, your body feels weak and you're happy he's holding you up because you couldn't do it yourself. Your mind goes hazy as you try and count. "thirteen, fourteen, ah—fifteen, s-sixteen—Logan—I- I can't," you sob, completely losing track and his thrusts become harder to the point that it's burning. You accept the pain, moaning louder.

Logan's hand wraps around your jaw, groaning in your ear. "Filthy girl. Can't even listen. What am I gonna do with you? I have to teach you a lesson, huh? One your stupid little brain will understand."

Your skin burns with embarrassment as tears prickle your eyes. His other hand roughly cups your breast and tortures your nipples. This is humiliating, being so powerless against him. You just cry softly, coming around him, body convulsing. You couldn't hold it anymore.

It just happened.

Logan smirks. He doesn't care that you didn't ask for permission. After all, it gives him more ammunition.

"Couldn't control yourself, honey?"

You shake your head, tears streaming down onto his hand. He wipes his hand around your face, smearing your tears around and messing up your mascara. He chuckles.

"Please—t-too much."

Hearing your words, Logan grunts, spilling himself into your womb. He lets go, watching you fall forward again, and digs his nails into your hips. His thrusts slow, catching his breath and looking down at you. You're a complete mess; tears and snot coating your face as you lay there, completely used. Logan smirks to himself, pulling out and then plugging his cum inside you with his fingers. You whimper, too weak to squirm.

"Keep it all in. Lose a drop and I'll make this worse for you," Logan says. The threat is empty considering he can see you're done. He's pushed you to your limit and you took it so well. Soothingly, he runs his other hand over your back. Once he's satisfied that you're keeping his cum inside, he walks over and caresses your cheek, truly wiping your tears away this time.

"Shh," he says, kneeling next to you. You blink, eyes still hazy. He's still naked and he chuckles when you see your eyes wander downwards.

"Want more?" he teases.

You shake your head, whining. Logan laughs and kisses your head. "I know, honey. You're okay. You did so well for me," he says and strokes your hair. You sigh, relaxing in his arms as he praises you. You hum, needing more praise. Logan knows you do and he will happily oblige.

"Good girl," he whispers, kissing right next to your lips, smiling into your skin.

You're always his good girl.

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paperbackribs · 16 days ago

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"Hey, it's 'they/them,' dickheads," Steve interrupts exasperatedly.

Modern non-binary Eddie who is out but the kids just don't really let it sink in. Don't think about how Eddie increasingly flinches every meet-up as they exclaim during the campaign, calling out that 'he' has said this and that about the current monster in their tracks.

Steve though. Steve, feeling a little stupid the first time Eddie had haltingly told him about why it was so important to them. That the euphoria of 'woman' or 'man' was actually reserved for the fizzing feeling of rightness when gender was mixed and erased for them.

Steve, who felt the cogs in his head rubbing slowly together but had fixed the idea firmly in his heart--for the person in his heart--interrupts as the kids draw up their last play.

"They," Steve cuts in, firm and with a gimlet stare at the boys who frown up at him in confusion.

"They what?" Mike asks in exasperation, clearly expecting Steve to stutter and back away despite Steve never having backed away from a fight in the entire time the two guys have known each other.

"Who what?" Dustin mutters absently as he adjusts his gold count. "We're nearly done." He licks the tip of his pencil before returning to his count of the loot.

Lucas eyes the hardening stare on Steve's face, flicking over to Eddie's suddenly wide gaze and pokes Dustin to look up, "I don't think it's that."

Mike sighs at Steve's hands falling to his hips, recognising the chastening posture even as he doesn't understand why. Eddie though. Their expression falls from wide surprise to understanding and something with a touch of awe that Steve doesn't quite understand from his friend.

"They, you dickheads," Steve repeats, lips pursed. "Eddie is not a 'he.' They're not 'her.' They are 'they.' They are 'them.' It's not hard. I literally used it like a million times already today."

Steve sniffs into the air and Mike scowls, "It just happens; Christ, Steve."

The light dims in Eddie's eyes, but he nods gamely, voice even and-- Steve can tell--deliberately light, "It's no big deal, easy to do. Don't worry about it, Stevie."

"But it hurts you," Steve insists.

Mike's eyes widen in surprise and Lucas winces.

Eddie hurriedly shakes their head with a forced laugh, "It's not like I've not gone by 'he' for nearly my entire life." They wink at Dustin, who had raised his head suddenly.

"You did a thing," Dustin says slowly, putting down his pencil next to a dragonborne figurine and miming an exaggerated wince and flinch. "Two hours and--" he checks his Casio watch, "thirteen minutes ago when the orcs invaded. I said our dungeon master was a right man of a bastard."

Eddie softens, genuine amusement lighting their face, "I'm used to you lot cussing me out, Henderson."

"But it wasn't the swearing," Lucas says, remorse filling his voice even as he pinches Mike. The other kid yelps but quietens when Lucas leans in, heatedly whispering and Mike goes red then white in the face.

"Oh shit, I forgot."

Teeth gritted, Eddie repeats, "It's not a big deal. Now--"

"Okay," Steve interrupts again, pulling a seat over to sit next to Eddie, thighs almost touching, "then it's no skin off our nose if we start practising for you, right?"

He turns to the boys, expression pleasant for the first time, "Eddie said it's no big deal, are they right?"

Mike blinks three times before pointing to his character sheet, "Eddie should have given me experience points for the giant spider but they stiffed me."

In an uncanny echo, Eddie blinks at Mike for his word choice.

"They were right," Dustin argues. He points at Lucas, "He figured out the clue and stabbed it--" he turns his finger to Eddie, "--and so they made the right call."

Eddie blinks again with eyes that look a little moist while Lucas continues with the cues given to him by his friends. He makes a loud boinking sound, "Sucks to be you. Hey, Eddie, can I have the spear these two bozos found?"

And with that, the sound of squabbling fills the room.

Steve looks on contentedly as Eddie leans back in their throne, eyeing the boys as they confidently back the adventurers into a corner while teasing the idea of a new battle simultaneously.

Steve leans back into his small frame of a chair too, a smile playing at the sides of his mouth as he listens to his favourite people love each other in their own special ways.

#steddie #nonbinary #nonbinary eddie munson #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #paperbackribs writing

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cherry-hulu · 8 months ago

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— Shows on 3.. 2.. 1..

Synopsis : Thirteen dicks in front of you, all standing tall with varying girth and size. Not a matter of when and where, but rather a matter of how.

Warnings : Svt x Idol!fem reader, unprotected sex, double penetration, triple penetration, lots of cum, anal, buttplug, breastplay, implied free use reader, creampie, cum eating, oral (fem receiving), pwp

#Part One — #Part Two — #Part Three

Seokmin gets up on his feet first before anyone and immediately stands in front of you. He touches your cheek with the back of his hand before using his fingers to open your mouth, pressing his thumb at the top of your tongue soaking it in the left over cum of his peers.

Joshua follows him almost immediately after, situating himself behind you, caressing your ass sigh his hands. "Not a single handprint in sight.. we might have to change that." He mutters before giving your cheeks a slap causing you to slightly jolt forward.

"Sit up princess, it'll feel better like this," Soonyoung says rather softly as he slowly lifts your body up on a sitting position, as you lean your body backwards on Joshua. You looked like a total wreck. Make-up running all over your face, body glistening with sweat and cum, dress all wrinkled and messy. A big difference from what you had looked like earlier on stage, all prim and proper, clean and dainty, everything set in place.

You feel Joshua slip his hands underneath your top, grabbing a handful of your left boob before taking it out and letting it hang off from your top. Doing the same go the other while Hoshi licks all over your left tit, sucking and biting your areola. Seokmin, on the other hand, had a different vision as he takes his hard dick in hand, rubbing the tip all over your right tit spreading his pre-cum.

Sighing with satisfaction, he leans down and takes your right boob in his mouth, licking it clean off your pre-cum. The blonde beside him groans as he pulls away, doing the same to your left before diving back in, moaning in delight. Soonyoung slides his hands down across your stomach before drawing circles on your pussy.

You moan as you threw your head back resting it on the eldest shoulders, chest heaving heavy, hips rocking back and forth on Soonyoungs hands.

You can feel Joshua's dick press hard against you, teasing the the rim of your ass, hole plugged with a silver buttplug embossed with a big ruby heart— a gift brought to you by yours truly. He slapped your cheeks again, much more harder this time making you really feel the toy up in your ass causing you to whimper.

"Please.." You whisper, finally talking after an hour of being silent. "Please what baby?" The man behind you whispered back, pushing the plug deeper than it already is. "Please Daddy.. I need you.." You spoke softly, half an octave louder this time.

"Do you think she deserves it?" Soonyoung, finally de-attatching himself from your tit, now rubbing the tips of it. "I don't know.. has she been good?" Jeonghan said rather brazen, asking the spent up members scattered among the couch legs in a manspread, some dicks were soft, while some were still half hard, looking for another release.

They all hum in agreement, and with that, Joshua slowly took off your plug revealing more cum to drip out of you. Blotches of semen combining the sperm of 95z when they had their "pre-game" before going on stage came running down your ass, down to your cunt.

Not wasting a second longer, Joshua slowly started to push into you making you gasp and moan at the intrusion. Seokmin finally pulls away giving Soonyoung space to situate himself in front of you lifting your thighs to sit both on his and Joshua's leg. He waited before the elder and you were comfortable with each other before grabbing his own length in his hands and gliding it across your pussy.

Toying with you for a while, preparing you for what's about to come, before slowly pushing in your pussy. Joshua holds your hand behind your back keeping you in place as you make loud noises while Seokmin makes his way in you. It wasn't your first time taking both of them at the same time, but somehow, it never gets easier.

"Good job baby.. taking it like a good girl. Our pretty little cock sleeve," Seokmin coos as he cups your face in one of his hands. "Ready for one more?" He follows, a smirk well displayed on his face. Your eyes widen at this as he positions himself behind you, beside Joshua.

"She's more than ready, had the plug on for the whole duration of her performance, 'm sure she'll be fine." The elder says caressing your waist sliding down to the curve of your ass. The youngest scoffs at this before holding his dick and slowly starting to push in you.

You moan loudly, throwing your head back again, grinding back and forth– which only made you moan louder as Soonyoungs dick just goes deeper inside of you hitting your sweet spot. You hold on to the man in front of you as Seokmin makes his way behind you.

A few grunts, pushes, and pulls later, you had 2 dicks up your ass, and one sitting politely in your cunt. Barely giving you time to adjust, the two slowly starts to move back and forth, earlier cum now used as lube as they take advantage of it with their thrusts.

Soonyoung then follows in front of you, thrusting his hips upwards. At this very moment, you serve only one purpose for them. You were only a hot hole to be fucked and dumped cum into. Providing pleasure to their penis.

Their thrusts become harder and harder, in sync with your barely made out moans. There was never a moment where you felt empty, a rhythm forming between the three, where one goes outwards, the other two goes in. They were all hitting your right spots putting you near the edge.

Nearly forgetting about the rule, you clench your stomach to stop yourself from cumming. Resulting in an abrupt orgasm from Soonyoung, spurts of cum running directly inside you, mixing in with his his dongsaengs. But he still didn't stopped, still thrusting inside of you, riding out his high.

The set behind you seemed to be in a world of their own having their own rhythm as the dancer in front loses itself inside of you having erratic movements. Joshua's hands were all over your ass, constantly slapping it now loving the way it jiggled wigh two cocks inside of it splitting your hole up open.

"I.. I'm close.. fuck.." Seokmin whispers throwing his head back as his arms wrap around your throat leaning your head backwards. Using this as his leverage to keep himself grounded as he pounds faster into you.

Joshua, on the other hand, had his mouth open taking heaving heavy breaths as he too was getting affected by the others movements due to his cock being stroked sideways. Resorting to your body, he grips on your waist, thrusts slowly starting to speed up as he too chases for his high.

With both dicks grinding on each other and pounding into you, both boys soon came inside adding go the pile cum already pumped inside of you.

Seokmin rests his head on your shoulded as he starts to slow his movements, while Joshua leaves light feather kisses on your neck. Soonyoung slowly pulls away from you, making sure to plug his fingers inside of you ensuring not that much cum seeps out before lifting your legs to his shoulders as he kneels before you.

Leaning your body backwards more to the boys behind you, he positions himself in front of your cum covered pussy, before taking his fingers out and diving right in. You cry out a string of moans as he eats you out helplessly, trashing in the arms of the two boys behind you.

You were trying so hard to keep yourself from cumming, but the boys were making it hard on you, continuously pushing you to the edge. You were extremely overstimulated now– having two cocks still up your ass while your cum filled cunt was being eaten out.

"I.. I'm c.. close.. Please! No... No more!" You beg pushing Soonyoungs face away. Tears ran profusely from your eyes. You really did felt like you were close this time. You were extremely on the edge until you felt Soonyoung pull away from you.

The dancer now had his head leaned beack, hair gripped by the general leader. "That's enough." Seungcheol says sharply, pulling him away from you. You felt movement behind you, two cocks slipped out of your ass, leaving you empty once again.

You close your eyes as you whimper and lay back. You felt a kiss on your forehead, and hands running all over your body. "Last round baby.. then you can rest. M'kay?"

⭑ tags .ᐟ

@hanniebanggi @ane102 @black-swan-blog27 @xxxcyx @strawberry31

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castielthinkr · 2 months ago

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THINK I NEED SOMEONE OLDER

older!dean x fem!reader cw age gap, nsfw below cut (mdni), size kink (+ implied choking kink?), bunker era (think s9-10, so dean is 34-36 ish and reader is early to mid 20s), a little angsty in one or two places

notes my final assignment of first year is due in 12 hours. i wrote this instead. also i don’t usually write smut so if it’s shit dhmu

older!dean was hesitant to do anything with you at first. there’s thirteen years between you, and he’d always said it was too much, that he was too old for you. eventually, after months of teasing and flirting and god knows how many repetitions of “i know what i want, dean,” he’d grabbed your face and kissed you hard.

older!dean treats you like glass that he could break at any second. he’s gentle — gentler than he ever was with any other girl. he kisses your forehead, always has a gentle hand on you, and generally takes care of you. he cooks for you, wraps blankets around you when you fall asleep researching, and acts like the definition of a gentleman (to sam’s utter delight — the new material he’s gained to tease his brother with is endless).

older!dean shares his music with you. you call him old for it, and he makes a suggestive comment about you benefitting from his experience. he makes you a tape of songs he loves and catches you playing it in your room on more than one occasion. the two of you bond massively over music, with him showing you the rock he grew up with and you showing him newer stuff, like paramore. he’ll never admit that he thinks hayley williams is awesome, but you know.

older!dean hates taking you out on hunts. you met through hunting, and you’re a damn good hunter yourself (his words), but that will never stop him worrying. he’s protective, almost overwhelmingly so, on hunts, and you’ve had more than one biting argument about how he needs to let up. he promises he will some day, but you still see his eyes on you constantly. he needs to make sure you’re there, to make sure you’re safe.

older!dean loves to tease you with pet names to see how flustered he can make you. there are some he uses that are nice, and make you feel nice and warm inside, like angel and sweetheart. (darlin’ with his texan twang, always gets you blushing.) he tries to call you baby, but you veto it, stating the age difference as a reason. he tries to tease you, occasionally calling you kid and kiddo until you stop calling him honey and start only referring to him as old man.

older!dean absolutely loses it when you get hurt. you go on a hunt with sam, despite your boyfriend’s protests at getting left behind, and when sam calls as a heads up that you’re injured, he’s an anxious mess until you reach the bunker. you walk through the door bruised and a little bloodied, and he’s all over you. he doesn’t leave you alone, even after you’ve been cleaned up and ordered to rest by sam. he’s constantly touching you, either holding your hand or rubbing comforting circles on your hip. even when you heal he’s hesitant to let you out of his sight again, stating in the middle of a dark night while he holds you close that he can’t lose you.

things with older!dean start out soft and pretty vanilla, as he doesn’t want to push you or hurt you. he’s so caring and gentle with you, making sure you enjoy yourself and holding you close and making sure you finish first.

when older!dean finds out you’re just as freaky as he is, it’s over for you. he’s relentless, testing new things with you almost every night. youre sure you’ve tried every position by now, but dean’s favourite is a tossup between missionary, where he can watch your face as he all but pounds into you, and cowgirl, where he can watch as you tire yourself out on top of him (being able to see your tits bounce is also a bonus).

older!dean loves it when you suck him off but let’s be honest: he’s a huge munch. he’s eaten you out in more places than you can count, including (probably) every surface in the bunker, the backseat and driver’s seat of the impala, countless motel rooms and even a few diner restrooms.

older!dean has trouble letting you take control sometimes. he feels a little strange, given the age gap between you, but when you do get chance? he loves it. being completely under your control, letting you do whatever you want? it’s like a dream come true for him. but, despite how many times you start on top, it always ends with him snapping his hips up into you or flipping you over and finishing what you started.

older!dean loves it when he gets to see just how much bigger he is than you. when he can hold your waist and his hand seems to just dwarf you, or when he has you in his lap and his hands cover your hips completely. he especially loves watching as he takes you, and when his large hand wraps around your throat with just enough pressure for you to feel it.

regardless of how vanilla or how insane the sex is, older!dean never misses a second of aftercare. he’s always right there, with either a warm bath or a damp cloth depending on how tired you are. he’ll massage your thighs after they’re spent from riding him or comb out the tangles he made in your hair, whispering sweet nothings to you and holding you like you’re fragile because, to him, you are. even when he’s let you take the reins, he holds you close as you drift off to sleep, pressing gentle kisses on your face and tracing his hand down your back.

#vee’s fics ⚝#dean winchester x reader #dean winchester #dean x reader #dean winchester smut #dean winchester fluff #supernatural #supernatural x reader #supernatural smut #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester #castielthinkr 💭#nkplanet 🪐#nkplanet’s fics 🪐#dean winchester comfort #supernatural comfort #sam winchester comfort

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awritesthings1 · 1 year ago

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All The Things We Don't Say

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Female Reader

Summary: An anthology of your life with Tommy, from friends to strangers to lovers, and all the little moments in between.

Warnings: 18+, implied DV, substance abuse, childhood trauma, ptsd, overprotective tommy, swearing, brief smut, longfic oneshot, feminist themes (motherhood & being a wife in the 1920s).

ao3 link

Smash!

“Pick it up!”

Your daddy was a drunk. You remembered the fact since you could walk. He stayed home while the working men left for the factories, then disappeared in the late hours of the morning until his eventual return when the slam of the front door woke the household up. Mother used to hold you at night as she curled up in your bed. She was sick a lot. Always sniffing into the back of your neck when you were asleep. Sometimes the sleeve of your nightgown would get soaked while she muffled her hiccups.

She looked sad, too. In the morning, she kept the curtains drawn and stayed away from the outside world. She told you it was to keep nosey Mrs. Gretel away from her family affairs. But Mrs. Gretel had left Birmingham two months prior.

By seven years old, you were the 'man' of the house. You had gone to sleep one night, and when you awoke, your mother had vaporized into the air like a rabbit in a hat.

“She left because of you,” your father slurred at you.

You hated him.

She left behind her long-sleeve dresses, scarves, and wicker hats that covered nearly every inch of her skin. They were far too big for you then, but when your father came home at the end of the week with a stack of cash, you ran to your mother’s closet, which had remained untouched until then, to find only cobwebs. Gone. Every single one of her dresses. You looked out at the moon in those early hours of the morning and swore to it that when you were bigger, you would get him back so much worse.

And so you were left to clean up his smashed glass bottles and scrub the alcohol out of the gritty carpet. Your little hands struggled to pluck the glass from the floorboards. In a year’s time, they were covered in little scars.

On your tenth birthday, you decided you were grown enough to take matters into your own hands. When he was passed out on the floor from whatever he managed to fill his pipe with, you grabbed the small bottles he hid under a loose floorboard and poured them into the gutter at the back of your house.

You turned to run back to the door when the contents of the bottle were empty, but a ball almost tripped you over. You gripped your tattered skirt before you could lose your footing and snapped your head around with a fierce pout.

“That’s my ball,” pointed a young Thomas Shelby.

You put your small hands on your smaller hips. “You kicked it my way on purpose!”

You weren’t entirely sure, but you suspected it.

“Maybe I thought you were pretty,” he grinned.

You noticed his two front teeth were missing.

“Ewwww! I would never go out with you!” You squawked.

At ten years old, you knew better than that.

Seemingly unaffected by your distaste, he continued. “Do you live there?” He nodded to the house whose roof was falling apart.

“What’s it to you?” You frowned stubbornly, not wanting to admit that, yes, that was your house.

“The curtains are always drawn,” he answered, walking over to pick up his ball from your feet. He was the same height as you were at the time. “My brother Arthur said it’s haunted. He saw a ghost in the window once. He said it was a woman and that she starved to death.”

Your nose scrunched up. "Well, he’s a phony!”

You ran inside said house and slammed the door shut.

He kissed you down by the docks that winter. It was your first kiss, and a clumsy one at that, so you didn’t remember much of it.

By thirteen, you had given in and sold the rest of your mother’s belongings to support yourself. You hated yourself for it, and that nagging voice inside your head told you that you were no better than your father. Oh, and your father? Your father lost vision in his left eye from a bar fight. Too bad it wasn’t both.

Sometime later, a boy two years older than you saw your wandering hand in someone’s bag at the fair and threatened to teach you some manners ‘the hard way’. You bit anxiously on your nails and pleaded with him because he was bigger than most boys his age, when Tommy’s brother Arthur (who you’d seen hanging around the Garrison) came passing by and threatened to ‘toss him about’. The other boy, not all believing in Arthur’s temper, rushed forward, and the two ended up rolling in the dirt, but by then you were gone with a stolen pocket watch in your fist. Nearly two legs and an arm deep in poverty, some quick cash, or a hero complex? You’d take the penny.

At fourteen, a lady knocked on your door. It was a lady of the night who had come to inform your father that he had fathered a son with her. You were glad it was a boy. A girl wouldn’t have stood a chance in the slums of Birmingham. Life was hard, but Birmingham was harder. Your father had refused to listen to the young woman and shooed her off. You never saw her teary-eyed face again.

At fifteen, your father attempted to wash his hands of you by marrying you off to the highest bidder. There was no real auction, but just about anyone who suggested a handsome sum of money did the trick.

“His name is William,” you exhaled, kicking your legs over the edge of the dock.

Tommy laughed. “You won’t marry him.”

“What choice do I have, Tom?”

Your finances were getting tight, and the gloomy pressure to take up working at night like many young ladies was beginning to loom closer and closer. You hated being a woman. Boys would never have to worry about selling themselves to survive.

“I’ll put a gypsy curse on him,” he decided, squinting his eyes from the bright reflection dancing across the water.

You hit his shoulder.

“No, you won't, because then you’ll be cursing me.”

The severity of your situation began to dawn on Tommy. No amount of pestering Polly for change to spare would relieve you of your burden any longer.

“That’s it, then?” He gulped, shifting his glassy eyes to the harbor.

You sighed and followed his gaze.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’ll never have to see dad again, and William promised to take care of me.”

Tommy scoffed.

You frowned at him. “What?”

He shook his head.

“What! Tom—”

“Don’t marry him.”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, here we go, why?”

“You know why.”

You were engaged to William on the eve of your seventeenth birthday. He was a very proper man and never dared to go any further than hooking an arm around yours on formal occasions. You were never attracted to his thin mustache nor the thick lenses he wore. In fact, he was incredibly awkward at social occasions, always checking his pocket watch and avoiding eye contact with whichever circle he stood in.

Tommy began to fade out of your life around that time. Margaret—a lady who had taken you on to help with the sewing of her family’s tailoring business—told you that Tommy was spotted arm in arm with another girl that week. You expected to feel jealous, but you felt nothing. You knew love would never be your right. Love was for the more fortunate.

You spent that year learning how to be a wife. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too different from what you did as a child—cooking and cleaning up like you did when your father came home, that is. It was comforting to have a routine in place. It meant finality—no one walking in and out of your life as they pleased, and certainly no more growling stomachs. Perhaps being a wife was a skill your mother never learned. You were grateful for William’s mother, who seemed to be more than enthusiastic to show you the reigns.

After a year-long engagement, you caught your fiancé, William, locked in a compromising position with another man.

“Oh,” was all you got out before leaving his house.

You lacked the special ingredient that marriages needed: love.

You sat down at the fountain across the street. William and his lover’s silhouette were visible behind the blinds he had drawn on the second floor, which peered over the sidewalk. You watched their shadows fluster their feathers around the room like headless geese, and for a moment your head surfaced above water and laughter frothed out between your sealed lips. Perhaps Birmingham made you a little mad.

You didn’t go through with the marriage. You suspected William was relieved.

That week, your father left. You never knew whether he left on his own accord or just never made it home one night. Either way, you never really cared to find out.

With nothing left to lose, you knocked on the Shelby family’s door at Watery Lane. Finn appeared around the other side of the door a moment later.

“Is Tommy home?”

Finn nodded, spinning on his heel to alert his brother. When Tommy did appear, his shoulders were tensed. Disheveled hair never looked so stylish on him. When you saw his suspenders (which were hastily thrown on), you wanted to ask who he expected to be at the door that he planned to answer dressed in such fashion but then thought better of it. He peered down at you, then checked over his shoulder before ushering you inside and up to his bedroom.

“It’s… smaller than I thought,” you landed on, taking in his room.

After all these years, you had never stepped foot into the Shelby home. You weren’t the type of person to come door-knocking.

You turned around to face Tommy after hearing him click the lock on his door.

“Are you hurt?" were the first words he had spoken to you in a year.

“No.” You pressed your lips together, eyeing everything from the bed to the view out the window.

Silence followed closely after.

“Then why are you here?” Tommy sighed.

Your vision began to blur then. “I don’t know,” you said honestly, trying to stop your bottom lip from trembling.

Desperately, you pushed your hair back and straightened up, attempting to hold yourself together. You must have looked like a puppet being held together by a string, given how poor you looked.

Tommy’s boots pad across the wooden floor. “You love me?”

Did that word truly exist? How could you answer if you never knew what it meant to love?

You don’t meet his eyes. He licked his lips, pushing your head up to meet his with his thumb. His eyebrows rose expectantly.

“I don’t know what to do, Tom,” you breathed, avoiding his question. “I’m all alone now. No William, no father…”

His lips parted, and you watched with fascination as the cogs turned in his head. “Yes… that is a problem." His breath fanned over your face.

You gagged, a reaction you yourself had not expected, before rushing to his door, only to remember that, yes, he had locked it, before turning to the nearest silver bucket in the corner to empty your guts.

The first thing you heard when you caught your breath was, “are you pregnant?”

No, but when you stand so close to me and I can smell the cigarettes you smoke and your freshly washed skin, I can imagine a future where we are married, and I see your face growing more disappointed as we age together because you married a woman who never knew how to be a mother to your children nor a wife who knew to tend to you with affection by your bedside when you’re ill.

“No,” you choked, spitting out the vile taste in your mouth. “We never did anything.”

You wanted him to know that. You wanted him to think that you never let William touch you because you never loved him, not because William wasn’t interested in girls.

A moment later, Tommy sat beside you on the floor and quietly combed your hair away from your wobbling lips.

“So, if you’re not pregnant and you don’t love me, why are you here?”

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. How were you supposed to answer that? After letting your guts loose in his room, you thought he would surely have booted you out the door.

A knock came on the door: “Tommy?”

“A minute, Finn!” Tommy growled at the door, refusing to back away from your trembling frame.

You were so hungry. Margaret had to cut back your hours ever since her husband fell ill. She spent more time by his bedside than keeping the store open, which meant you were making less than usual. The imminent closing of the store hung over your head like a taunting crow, gouging your insides like you were Prometheus. Birmingham your chains, a woman your fate, and the bird your punishment for thinking you deserved more.

“I should go.” You shivered at the draft inching towards your skin from the open window.

Tommy’s intense gaze stuttered, falling to your lap, where you picked at the dead skin around your nails. He cleared his throat, fishing out the key from his pocket. Although it was dull and muted from the years, it gleaned brightly in your eyes as if it were the reward you came for. Flushed, you grabbed it out of his hands without sparing a glance. Electricity sparked in those precious seconds, igniting a deadly fire in your belly.

“You’re cold." Tommy flinched at your touch.

You retreated as soon as the key slid into the hole and unlocked with a click. In your haste, you left the most valuable thing you owned there in his room.

Your heart.

The months went by, and summer arrived. The stories your mother told you left you expecting a bright gleam of air that would wash over the streets and paint each tree and every patch of grass a frighteningly bright green that would even encourage grumpy Mrs. Gretel to come out to preen her stubborn roses that would just not grow. Birmingham left less to be desired. The summer days never came, and that persisting bitter bog thickened, albeit with slightly less rain. There were gray clouds, smoke from the factories, and a shivering north westerly, which pushed said clouds at breakneck speed as if they had somewhere to be. You looked to the sky one day and said a prayer for blue breezes and sweltering sun, but the sky was empty.

Sometime later, men marched the streets armed with guns in their ‘dashing’ uniforms. A war, they said, a great one. Queues lined the street for the post offices and grocers. Rain rivaled the bustle of the city. What did it feel like to love someone so much as to stand in the pouring rain next to the gutter? You wanted that kind of love. Not the love you could only give yourself because even you didn’t want your own love.

One of the soldiers decorated in medals stood on a crate at the port, yelling something supposedly inspiring that captured the attention of many young men. The words honorable and patriotic were tossed in there like a delectable salad, enticing them in the way farmers held a carrot to a pig’s snout.

You pitied their mothers. Their daughters were married off, and then their sons were swooning over the idea of dying. Birmingham was filthy, rotting, and disgusting. You needed to leave.

You kissed Margaret goodbye on the cheek one Tuesday morning. Ever since your pockets turned out empty, you had been working as a bedside nurse for her ill-stricken husband. They were good to you, and they were probably the only people you could consider family.

She patted your cheek and said, "you're doing good to serve this country.”

You hadn’t had the heart to tell her you were leaving because the city was marring your flesh, so you slipped her the sugarcoated lie of wanting to join the war effort so that you might help others who were bedridden, just like her husband.

At the train station, you stood with your suitcases held tightly in both arms. You had to set one down to hold onto your hat as a train full of men waving their caps out the window pulled into the station. Some children weaved between the crowd, wagging a newspaper above their heads, hoping to make a quick penny. To your side, women wept for their brothers, husbands, and lovers.

“Who are you wishing off?” asked an elderly woman who was clutching her cane.

“Oh, I’m not. I’m boarding the next train.”

She laughed, and you wondered how old your mother would be now. Would she have grown wrinkles and settled into a deeper laugh like this woman?

“My dear, you have a bright imagination if you think they will let a woman on any of these trains.”

A sudden anger filled your blood. “Why not?”

“These men are heading straight for London, where they will be shipped away to France to fight,” the woman explained as if it were any other day.

“I’ll catch the next train then.”

She shook her head, and her frail hand curled tighter around her cane. “They’ve stopped the trains so they can transport soldiers to London.”

You frowned. “Then how will I leave Birmingham?”

You’ll never forget her dismissive laughter.

“My dear, you won’t.”

Men boarded the train, clapping each other on the back with a wink and a laugh. When a line of men on the platform thinned, the train whistled, and you looked over just in time to see Polly, Ada, and little Finn standing with their hands crossed over their hearts as they waved to the train.

No. It wasn’t possible.

But it was because you caught the gleam of the razors sewn into their peaky caps. Tommy, Arthur, and John all stood aboard the train, sticking their heads out and waving to Polly and Ada with a grin that wrung your stomach like a wet cloth.

Those countless daydreams you spun, the intricate webs you wove, began breaking down to thin fibers. In one pathway, you stayed there in his room and told him the truth you always denied yourself. You loved him. In another, you stood next to Polly, close to tears, as you begged him to come home safely. There was a resounding click in that moment as your breath stuttered. You had been the person who wiped away those futures, thinking it was nothing but an annoying spiderweb. Oh, how wrong you were!

“Tommy!” You left your suitcases behind and stepped around the old woman as you ducked under hugs and tearful goodbyes.

“Tommy!” You cried again with the gusto of someone who certainly shouldn’t be as concerned as they were considering you left him in his room that day.

Thankfully, his eyes eventually found yours as you pushed through the last line of people. You stood there and stomached all your regrets head-on. It was funny how, up until that moment, you managed to squash every seed of doubt. Why was it that you only realized what you had when it was slipping out of reach?

He never called your name back. He just stared at you blankly as the train pulled away, unlike you, who clung to the image of his frame even as the train disappeared from sight and the crowd began to disperse. You stood there unblinking, hoping to soak up the last of him before you forgot the intensity of his eyes or the humming rumble of his voice. Because the idea of something you held dearly becoming a memory meant that it could as easily be forgotten, and that terrified you. Your eyes were watering now, against your best wishes.

You overheard Polly ushering Finn and Ada off. Finn rushed home without protest, but Ada stopped in her tracks when she saw you hunched over your knees in tears. She smiled weakly before chasing Finn home. It was then that Polly’s shadow approached your huddled frame. She didn’t say anything, and for a moment, you weren’t sure if she expected you to stand and apologize for being such a mess. That’s when a penny clattered to the ground beside you. She squeezed your shoulder once before disappearing.

You kissed that penny as if Tommy would feel the power of it across the country, then ran back to Margaret’s, having forgotten your suitcases.

“Oh…” She exclaimed, slapping her tea towel on the counter when you walked into the kitchen. “You missed your train?”

Dread made your stomach tender and your breath short.

“I’m enrolling in the Red Cross.”

Throughout the war, you thought of Tommy every day until your stomach lurched. Would it have worked if you had stayed? Would you both have grown old together instead of subjecting yourself to the spray of dirt when a bomb went off nearby?

A day ago, your supply rations never came. It wasn’t like hunger was anything new, but when your mind was too focused on surviving the perilous weather, it was hard to save other lives. You made work with what little supplies you had left. The morphine went stint within hours of its arrival, and the cries of pained soldiers filled the medical tent all night. You did what you could, wiped sweat from their foreheads, and wrote letters to their mothers and lovers with what supplies you could scavenge. Some were written on cardboard from shell packaging, others on torn pages from the bibles they kept over their hearts. Pens were useless—the ink ran in the rain—so you scribbled everything down in pencil.

Before you left for France, you were warned of the bullets. No one ever warned you about the shrapnel, nor the bombs or grenades. They shattered soldiers’ bones beyond repair and left bodies unrecognizable. There wasn’t much you could do when most of their flesh was missing.

Keeping faith became an impossible task. Supplies were depleted, and nurses were dejected. Sally, who had been writing home for news of her brother, recently had her letters returned with the black stamp. Death—return to sender. She spent only an hour sitting on a trunk, letting her tears fall, before she got back to work. Grief privileged those with time, something no one could afford in these conditions.

Then it came—the day Arthur Shelby was carried in on a stretcher. You were making your rounds around the beds when a truckload of yelling men pooled through the entrance of the tent.

“Nurse!” They all yelled, some limping, others setting down stretchers of men on the dirt between the filled beds.

You and two other nurses dropped everything and ran over to attend to the wounded. They were all covered head to toe in dirt, groaning and clutching limbs that were twisted the wrong way. One in particular coughed and huffed while he fought against hands, which were fruitlessly pushing him back down on the stretcher.

“Let me go!” He yelled, wrestling against an older nurse.

“It’s alright, Mary. I’ll handle this one,” you patted her shoulder as you swapped places.

You dunked a washcloth into a bucket of water to wipe away the dirt in his eyes. “Calm down; you're safe here,” you said, starting your usual script of reassurances.

When the striking blue eyes squinted up at you, your blood ran cold. You froze before taking his head in both your hands, despite his protests. “Arthur? Arthur, it’s me!”

He loosened his grip on your wrist. “Huh?”

“It’s me! Where’s Tommy and John?”

He spat blood and gritted his teeth. “Fucking hell, where’s the whiskey?”

You laughed despite the smell of blood encompassing the tent. You quickly fetched the alcohol you had been using to clean wounds and pressed it to his lips. You weren’t sure if it was whiskey or not, but you reasoned he was in too much pain to be able to tell. He drank it with a groan of pleasure. You didn’t try to snatch the bottle away as he emptied it down his palette; you just sat and grinned at the way he suckled it like a newborn baby while you cleaned away his cuts.

“I’ve never been happier to see you, Arthur.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, his lips still wrapped around the bottle.

You tried to stay by his side for as long as you could before the second wave of patients came tumbling through the flaps of the tent. One of them lost their grip on the stretcher, and the patient went sliding into the dirt headfirst.

“Fuck!” They all swore, abandoning the stretcher to drag the limp man further into the makeshift hospital.

You rushed to help when a hand gripped the back of your neck. You yelped in pain as your hair got caught in a fingernail when they turned you to face them.

And there he was: Tommy Shelby, covered in a thick layer of dirt, heaving for air.

“Nurse! Nurse!” Voices cried for you, but between the ringing in your ears and the wrath in Tommy’s blue eyes, you were frozen in place.

“The fuck are you doing here, eh?” He yelled over the anguished men.

You suddenly felt stupid standing there in your Red Cross uniform.

“I was looking for you, I—”

His dirty hands cupped your cheeks—something you were painfully aware of from the uncomfortable itch from the mud on your flushed skin—and pulled your forehead to his.

“You think this is some fantasy?” He squinted. “You think there’s any fucking moonlight to kiss under here, eh?” He spat.

His eyes held that haunted look you had seen on many soldiers that passed through the medical tent. Your eyes watered. Perhaps it was from the humidity and dirt being kicked up as nurses and patients scuffled around, not because you could hardly recognize the man in front of you. The blood smeared above his eyebrow worried you, so you reasoned that he was mad because it had been leaking into his eyes. Dutifully, you reached to wipe it with the back of your hand. He grabbed your wrist harshly, bringing it down to your side. He was in shock; you scolded yourself.

“Where’s John and Arthur?” Tommy swallowed, flexing his hands.

You led him to Arthur, who had been left in his corner while the nurses attended to more serious cases. It hurt watching the brothers reunite after their ordeal, so you left them alone no matter how much you feared them being discharged before your return. After all, everything you ever wanted sat in that corner, but it would be selfish to coddle Tommy all to yourself. Still, you couldn’t help sparing a glance when you walked up and down the tent, attending to patients.

Later that night, he came to you under the candlelight of your tent. He cleared his throat upon entry. You were lying face-up on your cot when he cleared his throat and peeled back the entrance to enter. The candlelight painted the mountain peaks of his face in a dull amber and the valleys in a frightening shadow. You sat up, pulling the thick cover over your shift.

Tommy kneeled next to you, resting on the heels of his boots. He licked his chapped lips and itched his nose. “You don’t belong here.”

Your grip on the cover loosened. “Huh?”

Nothing prepared you for when he swung his brooding stare towards you. He exhaled loudly before running a hand over his face.

“You should have stayed in Birmingham.” He said it like a warning.

“And done what?”

Vulnerability never looked good on Tommy. His head hung and his fingers itched at the back of his head—a tick you used to love; now you weren’t so sure. Because your Tommy was never afraid, but this man in front of you was alarmingly tense despite the clear efforts to mask it.

What have they done to you, Tom?

Under the dim light of your tent, you barely recognized him. A stranger’s eyes were blown wide in a frightening state of shock, something most soldiers mirrored. War washed out the sweet blue pair you knew, refitting them for a steely weapon. You hated seeing him like this, so still, so unsteady, cocooned into the corner as if afraid to take up space.

You feared you looked no better. Having worked till the point of exhaustion, you usually found yourself awakening against a wooden crate or trunk to the cries of patients who demanded your attention despite your body not having the strength to stand. Today you had been lucky and found yourself crawling distance to your private tent when your knees started wobbling and your head lulling.

The wooden reinforcing of your private tent fought in vain to shelter your bodies from the elements; it still flapped and whipped about, sometimes rocking your cot. Yet Tommy remained still like those life-size stone statues you’d find outside an important building, brooding at the dirt and locked in an internal battle. You shifted to the edge of your makeshift bed and leaned close enough that you saw how the top buttons of his dirtied uniform were missing and most of his clothes were torn.

His arm, which was breaking out in goosebumps, lay heavily across his knee so that he could rest his forehead there limply. He looked in a bad enough condition that you feared the possibility of him succumbing to the wasteland threatening him outside your tent. You wrapped your arms around the scruff of his hair and pulled his face into your stomach, where he could hide from the terrible world. On instinct, his arms wound around your waist, and you felt his warm exhale against your skin through the thin fabric of your slip.

His tin water bottle clanged against the satchel he wore, which made you wonder if he had any time to rest at all if he still had all his equipment tied to his uniform.

“I didn’t…” His voice was muffled by your slip. He cleared his throat again, shaking his head.

When he dropped the thought, you spoke up. “Have you eaten?”

He slapped your thigh haphazardly. “No, do you have a cigarette?”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, instead gently pushing him away so you could kneel beneath your bed and fish a cigarette from your satchel. You pinched one from its tin case, then thought better of it and tossed it on Tommy’s lap. Gratefully, he collected one from the case and lit it with a nearby candle. You watched his chest rise and fall as he took an especially deep drag. His eyes shut as the nicotine rushed to his head.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he muttered under his breath.

“How are you here, Tommy? One of the night nurses should’ve been on watch.”

“Oh,” smoke puffed out of his mouth, and he raised his eyebrows, “there is.”

“Then how—”

“I had to see you.”

The butterflies in your stomach dove. The blue in his eyes appeared translucent as they hazed over like a ghost. His shoulders were slumped dejectedly, and he had a hand pushing through his greasy, unwashed hair to relieve his neck from the weight of his thoughts.

He pointed to you then, with the cigarette nursed between his fingers. “I need to know why you changed your mind.”

“About what, Thomas?”

His voice slurred and slipped into a deeper register from the lack of sleep. "Why you came back. Why you came to France.” Tommy shook his head lazily. “You expect me to believe you had a sudden change of heart? What? You a patriot now?” An amused exhale curled out while he took another drag. “Well I don’t believe it.”

You began shivering despite the way your body flushed.

“How’s Arthur?” You tried to avert the conversation.

“Bloody drunk off his ass.”

“And you?”

Tommy held your stare and swallowed dryly. “Trying.”

“You can go join him if you wish.”

He looked at the entrance of your tent as if he were weighing his options, then shook his head and took another drag before clearing his throat. “It’s different now.”

Naïvely, you sank to the ground beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be.”

He sighed.

“I wish that were true.”

The next time you saw Tommy, you were working a shift at the hospital. After the war, you received a medal for your efforts, which easily got you a job in Birmingham. You pleaded with them to send you to any other hospital—London, Manchester, Liverpool—you didn’t care. Anywhere but Birmingham.

“You should be honored to work for me!” Exclaimed the head nurse at Birmingham Hospital, who didn’t seem too pleased with your distaste for the city.

You thought the job would be the final nail in the coffin, but you surprisingly got along well with the head nurse once you had put your animosity aside. So much so, she offered to lease you a room upstairs from hers.

Then came that dreaded night where you were finishing the filing of some documents when a patient was being rushed in. Your ears perked up, and you looked through the blinds of the office to see a man being rushed by. Something small and round had fallen off the stretcher while the nurses paid no attention, pushing him around the corner and down towards the operating theater. Curious, you exited the office.

And there on the ground was one of those peaky caps Tommy and his brothers used to wear. You knew this because you picked it up and nearly cut yourself on the blade that was sewn into the seam. You spent the next hour gnawing on your nails. Your imagination sparked ideas about the beaten man who was lying in an operating room two doors down in surgery. Was it Tommy? Arthur? John? The shadows under your eyes darkened at the thought. No, it was probably some other Peaky Blinder. The Shelby brothers were too careful. Still, you knocked over your coffee in a mad dash to the bathroom, where you heaved up your dinner.

You volunteered to stay until the morning, but the head nurse on duty for the night refused and sent you home. You didn’t sleep at all that night.

The next morning, you arrived early and made a beeline for the emergency ward. You grabbed the admission form and scanned the patient list. There were only two emergency patients who were listed under the final hour of your shift, a woman and a man, which made it easier to narrow it down to the man who was admitted at quarter to midnight in ward four, room seven.

When you peaked through the crack in the door, you knew you had been worried for a reason. Tommy lay under the covers, battered and bruised, with a swollen eye and a nasty scar where he had reportedly received surgery for trauma to the head.

You slipped inside quietly and closed the door. Tommy’s eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open, stealing miniscule amounts of air into his lungs. He looked as good as a ghost.

“Tommy…” You clutched his peaky cap (which you meant to return) between your fingers.

He didn’t move an inch, so you set the cap down by his bedside table, carefully watching the rise and fall of his chest.

What have they done to you, Tom?

On the second week, he woke up while you were cleaning the windowsill. He coughed, and you whipped around in shock.

“Nurse?” He asked hoarsely, blinking away the blinding light.

You rushed to his side, tears bursting like the fountain you passed on your way to work.

“Don’t move,” you urged when he tried to sit up.

“I have to get to London,” he slurred, only half awake.

You weren’t upset that he didn’t recognize you. You weren’t upset that he didn’t recognize you.

“Tommy… it’s me.”

He shrugged your hand off his shoulder with a hiss. “Fucking hell.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

“Please don’t move; I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” You couldn’t hide the way your voice broke.

He looked up at you, then, through bloodshot blue eyes. You wished you knew what was going through his head. Happy or sad?

“Am I dead?”

“No,” you smiled weakly as a tear fell.

“Can I have a smoke then?”

“I don’t know how to love, Tommy!”

“Yeah? Yeah? That’s bullshit! Why do you keep coming back then?” He pinched your chin, glaring furiously into your eyes. “Eh?”

He stood so close that he blocked the light from the chandelier, which mournfully hung from the ceiling. You shivered in his shadow.

“I shouldn’t have come tonight.”

“But you did!” He accused, pointing in your face.

“It was a mista—”

“You fucking did!”

“Tommy!”

“I’ve had it! If you want to leave, then fucking leave; otherwise, don’t stand there all righteous waving empty threats over my head because I know you won’t leave.” He shook his head with a wild look in his eye. “No… You won’t leave. You won’t leave because you love me. You keep coming back,” he pointed matter-of-factly.

Tommy’s eyebrows danced between being terribly furrowed and alarmingly raised during his passionate monologue. It was rare for him to emit so much emotion these days. The war changed men, and Tommy was no exception. A chilling stillness framed his presence, which even you weren’t excused from. No more laughter, no more dreams of working with horses, because he was above all that now, wasn’t he? It was ambition that ground his teeth together and hollowed his eyes. Still, you couldn’t forget that the anger came from vulnerability, because it took a lot for someone to get under Thomas Shelby’s skin.

You moved to grab your purse, to make good on his word, but he halted your movement by grabbing your shoulders, roughly at first, before loosening his grip. You softened at his frantic demeanor. He was scared—oh, so afraid of you walking out that door again. But how could you ever explain it to him? You were never born for love. You would never know how to love him properly the way wives were supposed to because what you felt for Tommy was sickeningly deep. So much so that the mere impression of him sealed off your ribcage and ruined any chance of your heart beating for any other soul, so much so that you carried the weight of him in your bones because you could never shake him off.

When you looked back at life, all you saw was the absence of love. You used to imagine yourself growing up and falling in love with a handsome stranger, then getting married in a proper white dress to go live in your proper house. But when you looked in the mirror, you saw a ghost. The pathway of your life was laid out before your eyes once, and what you saw didn’t match the reflection. The man you were supposed to marry couldn’t even look at you, even if you cleaned and cleaned and cleaned until your fingerprints turned white and pasty.

Because what it all came down to was simple. You never got to become the person you envisioned. Instead, you were cursed to live as a blank slate and be consistently reminded of what you were supposed to be and of who you were: no one.

Tommy exhaled in a quick huff, pressing his forehead to yours so that he saw you clearer, without all the tension and bullshit in the way.

“Here it comes, Tommy.” You took a shaky breath. “I love you, but I could never be the perfect wife to you, and I would be a terrible mother.”

There, in all its ugly colors and shades, you hung yourself with the truth.

He shook his head as if he too couldn’t believe your words.

“Fuck’s sake! Forget about all that." His eyes watered out of frustration, but he was still puffing in anger. “I need you. You. Not some whore.”

You bit your lip to muffle the god-forsaken cry ready to erupt from the volcanoes you suddenly found roaring in your stomach. An earthquake overtook your hands the more you fought the inevitable eruption. You grabbed both his hands to stop yours from shaking.

“I have to be cursed; there’s no other way!”

“No!”

“My life slips through my fingers like grains of sand—”

“You’re not cursed!”

“And I can’t stop it, Tommy!”

“You’re not fucking cursed, and I’ll tell you why." Tommy cut you off. He leaned in, licking his lips, which had turned dry from all the shouting, and squeezed your hands. “Because my ancestors charmed dogs with their magic, they didn’t scare little girls with curses,” he paused. “But you… You waved a hand over my head, and now I’m no better than a dog.”

He closed the space between you, pressing his forehead against yours, and stroked both your cheeks, wiping at your tears. You held him there in a meek attempt at reciprocation.

You wished the world were ending so then you could grab Tommy’s hand and say, ‘I’m ready, Tom. The world is ending, so let’s kiss and love each other under the flames without any fear because the world is ending.’

But you were never good at expressing yourself with words, so you sealed it with a kiss, hoping he could taste the unspoken words on your lips the same way you tasted the tears. He responded in earnest, gripping you roughly by the scruff of your neck to seal the promise laden between your lips; no more running.

It was just your luck that you would bump into your ex-fiancé, William, while visiting a bar in London with Ada. You were buzzing from the warmth of three sweet liquors and whatever else Ada insisted you try, and everything was starting to seem a little funny by the time he approached you.

He engaged in pleasantries, swishing his wine around the glass and sniffing it occasionally, like many pompous older men tended to do. There was only so much smiling you could afford before you caught your reflection in the freshly wiped bar and realized how poorly your acting skills were. Ada was no help, muttering something about finding a phonebooth and then slipping into the belated and boozed crowd. It was then that the supposed nectar in your glass began to taste like the cleaning products—that nose-scrunching stench. Thankfully, William was too involved in some tangent to notice you muffle a gag into your palm.

The dazzling hum in your ears muffled out all his words. In your drunken state, William appeared to be more confident than what you remembered, but you were unable to decipher whether it was from a change of heart or if he was trying to fall back in your good graces. Otherwise, you were blinded by the roaring bustle of the bar and the delicious swell of music that seemed to reverberate across your being.

Growing a little bored with William’s story, your attention wandered over his shoulder, still being sure to nod every now and then as if you were deeply pondering his words. Not far away from his side, a man seemed to linger—a man who was careful not to reach your eye. You must have laughed a little harder than usual because William turned sharply to the man at his side, gave him a quick once-over, then returned his attention to you, but by then it was too late, and you knew exactly what William’s relationship was with this man and where William’s confidence had come from.

“You’ll make a fine wife and a finer mother someday,” William quickly added.

You cursed the witch inside you, who laughed from her stomach and used his shoulder to steady herself. Once upon a time, that was all you longed to hear, but now, with a half-spilt martini in hand, you couldn’t care less. Both of you had found happiness despite your unconventional circumstances, and there was no more to it. You could close that chapter without any loose threads.

A little drunk, you thanked him, disappeared, and never thought of him again.

“I can’t do it, Ada,” you stressed, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the baby in your arms.

Motherhood came rumbling into your life like a rusty engine spitting out oil. ‘Instinctual’, the mothers down the lane from Arrow House had said, ‘it’s like your body has been preparing for it your whole life.’ How awful, you thought, and by the time one of them finished speaking about their experience with their first, your nose was so scrunched in disgust that you would need an iron to flatten out the wrinkles. It wasn’t until now that you longed to be in their shoes, because nothing came naturally to you.

“He’ll latch eventually; he’s just a little fussy,” Ada reassured.

“Is it supposed to hurt?”

“It’s perfectly normal.”

Then, after an hour of rubbing your sons back on the verge of tears, he finally began feeding from you. Ada soothed your back the whole time and cooed softly to calm both you and your unruly boy. Sometimes she brought Karl. He would obediently sit on her lap, playing with his wooden horse, while your little Charles fussed.

One time in the early morning, when you were up attempting to feed Charles, Tommy rushed in alert with disheveled hair and sunken eyes.

“Sorry,” you mouthed, deflated your hardworking husband had been disturbed from his sleep.

He ran his hands over his face and sighed. You mistook his action for frustration and desperately tried to hush your baby. Tommy moved over to the rocking chair where you sat, trying to feed little Charles in your arms.

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered into the crook of your neck. “How is he?”

You flushed under the moonlight, suddenly embarrassed that your husband had caught you in this vulnerable position with the top of your slip peeled down. Your exposed skin hissed when he pressed a kiss against your pulse.

“I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Tommy inhaled sharply against your neck before resting his chin on your shoulder to peer down at Charles. Charles had settled since Tommy walked into the room, acutely aware of his father as his little hands made a grabbing motion for him. Diligently, Tommy relieved your arms of Charles and cradled him close to his chest. Within minutes, the little baby was gurgling happily and blinking in a way that suggested sleep was on the horizon after all.

Your husband didn’t dare make any sudden noise as he gently set Charles in his cradle. Once he was surely asleep, Tommy guided you up from the rocking chair and into your shared bedroom.

“See?” you hissed, still maintaining a soft voice, “he only wants you.”

Tommy wouldn’t hear any of it, pulling you into his arms as he sat on the edge of the mattress. Your slip was still pooled around your hips, so he took the opportunity to plant a kiss above your breasts, where your heart was.

“He loves you,” he drawled in that husky voice of his. “I know he does because I do.”

Your head ached, but you couldn’t help the way your body reacted to his words and touch. Tommy’s wandering hands teased the silk fabric that clung to your hips as you felt his nose trail down to your breast, where he kissed one of your aching nipples delicately. Suddenly hot, you hummed in delight, the back of his shorn scalp pleasant beneath your nails. A grunt, bathed in that musk of his devours your senses. Inhaling sharply, he took the bud between his full lips, sucking, licking, and nibbling gently while his hands explored further down. Your head lulled back from the pleasure, gasping and withering under his skilled tongue.

The next thing you knew, Tommy was tugging the rest of your silk slip off and reminding you of just how much he loved you.

“Charles! Come here!” Tommy called.

Your little boy loved to play in the backyard of Arrow House. Much like his father, Charles adored horses. Big ones, small ones, black ones, white ones—but most of all, he favored his Shetland pony. Tommy had brought it for Charles before he could even walk. He said something about it being important for his son to be raised around horses from a young age. And while you didn’t necessarily disagree, it still stressed you out to hold your baby so close to such a large, muscular animal. You knew the Arabian breeds spooked easily, so you steered clear of them and were able to keep Tommy and Charles happy.

But now he had grown up so fast and was able to run around on his own two legs, climb trees, and bruise his knees on the way down. The sun beat lovingly on the apples of his cheeks as he dirtied his trousers, kneeling by the fence to feed his Shetland (affectionately named Biscuit) hand-picked grass through the gaps.

“Charles! We’re leaving!” You called when he ignored his father.

Stubbornly, Charles spun around to pout his lip and cross his arms. He glared at you as threateningly as a five-year-old could. You bit your lip to hide your smile because he really did look like a little Tommy with those big blue eyes. It would only be a matter of time before he perfected his father’s stare. With a sigh, you shifted your daughter into Tommy’s arms before approaching Charles, who was picking angrily at the grass.

You reached a hand out toward him, "let's go.”

“No!”

“All right,” you said decisively, spinning around, “Ruby will have all the fun then.”

“No!” cried your little boy.

You stuck a hand up in surrender and started walking back to Tommy. “No, it’s all right.”

“No, no no no!” Came his protest, chasing behind you as the gravel crunched beneath his boots.

You paid no attention to him, keeping your eyes trained ahead, silently relieved that your ploy worked. Tommy watched on in amusement while Ruby suckled on her thumb, curiously watching her brother storm closer.

“You hear that, Ruby? We’re going to spoil you,” a short smile played on Tommy’s face as he adjusted her so that she sat comfortably on his hip.

“And me!” Charles added and gave his best pout.

“No, Charles, you said you didn’t want to go,” you reminded him, raising your eyebrows.

“I do! I do!”

“Hmm,” you thought aloud, and held a finger to your chin while looking to the sky in exaggerated contemplation. “Very well, but only if you get in daddy’s car right this instant.”

He climbed into the backseat of the Bentley without further fuss.

When all the bags were neatly packed in the back for the day’s festivities, Tommy came around your side to sit Ruby on your lap. Quickly, he leaned in to kiss you and pinch your cheek, which swelled into a glowing grin.

He smiled back and whispered low enough for only you to hear, “got him wrapped around your finger, eh?”

You laughed. “Him and a few other Shelby’s I know of.”

The thundering sound of music could be heard from outside the theater on the corner of Old Pauls. Inside, patrons mused between champagne, dancing, and making a display of their wealth by bidding on little trinkets. It was one of the many charity galas Tommy had to attend because of his new move into politics. Usually, you enjoyed dressing for those sorts of things, but tonight you simply weren’t feeling up to it. Maybe it was the drape of your dress not sitting right or the new leather shoes that still needed breaking in.

Your shimmering smile faded into the crowd as you snuck through the back door in your satin bordeaux dress. Old Pauls sat perched above the cemetery it was named after. Conveniently across the street from the buzz of the theater, it was airily quiet and stuck out from the rest of industrial Birmingham. Your heels clacked across the pavement as you wandered up and down the garden, glimpsing at stone angels and silver plaques. All you had to light your path were the streetlights and the moon.

Your diamond wedding ring twinkled under the stars as you stopped to trace a name. It was the same as your mother's, but with a different last name. Still, you always wondered what happened to her. Had she gotten married to another man and taken his name? You expected to shiver at the idea, but you found that thinking of her no longer unnerved you. She packed up the title of mother when she left you all alone in that cramped house.

Light spilled out onto the pavement across the street when the entrance to the theater swung open. A few men flew down the steps and split off in different directions. Thinking it odd, you remained crouched until they disappeared around their respective corners. That’s when you saw Tommy exit through the same doors, throwing a cigarette and wiping at his brow while he looked up and down the street. Quickly, you stood and waved your arm to get his attention. When he noticed, he stormed down the steps and stalked across the street and through the gates of Old Pauls over to you.

“I needed some air,” you spoke up before he could get a word in.

His eyes wildly flickered back and forth from yours in a frenzy. Under the moonlight, they looked almost translucent, and, save for a ghost of blue, his pupils were wide.

“Why the bloody hell are you out here, eh?” He demanded, gently shaking your head between his hands for emphasis while his eyebrows rose expectantly.

“It’s quieter.”

When he tilted his head to the sky and exhaled, your stomach dropped at the sight of blood. Your ears, which had been tuning out the music, flinched when a shrill cry from a woman rang out the theater doors. The music was gone, now replaced with screams as all the patrons rushed out, tripping over each other like it were a race. You turned back to Tommy, now as worried as the others.

“What the hell happened? Are you hurt?” You urged, gripping his white collar, now red, to inspect where the blood was coming from.

“Not mine,” he cleared his throat, grabbing the hand on his collar to tug you down the street.

The frame of your world stretched a little wider, like light pouring in through open shutters. Car doors slammed, and drivers honked at the agitated crowd who ran this way and that across the road.

“Where’s the fucking ambulance?” Shouted a man who took no care to avoid bumping into you.

You stumbled back, your hand slipping from Tommy’s on impact. Rage flickered across his features briefly, having noticed the man push through you, but he reconnected your hands and continued walking fast. When he reached the Bentley, he urged you inside, holding your hand the whole way until you were seated in the passenger seat.

“What the hell happened, Tommy?” You repeated as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Someone got shot.”

Your eyes widened. “Are Polly and—”

“They’re fine.”

You sank back into your seat as the engine roared to life. Peaky Blinder’s followed the frenzied crowd, moving together like a pack of wolves onto the streets. They only parted to let Tommy’s Bentley through. Out the window, people were fighting and throwing fists as they all tried to escape the mayhem.

“Why aren’t they letting people through?” You asked after witnessing a Peaky Blinder block the road and refuse to let a car pass.

“Doesn’t matter.”

He never told you anything when it came to business. And although you suspected this was much more than the doing of the Shelby brothers, Tommy’s face never betrayed him. Simply put, if he didn’t want you to know, you wouldn’t.

“Would anyone want to follow us?”

“No.” He exhaled deeply, cleared his throat, and then reached to give your thigh a squeeze.

You knew it was a lie when his eyebrows rose. He only did that when he was worried. Your tongue remained pressed to the back of your teeth the entire ride home.

The howl of the wind whistled down into the valley of the gypsy camp Tommy had brought you and the children to.

“Pack your things,” he had said one night after storming through the front door of Arrow House, “we’re going on a trip.”

Charles and Ruby cheered, but you suspected something sinister beneath his intentions.

So, there you were, picking at the grass by your feet while you perched on the bottom step of the gypsy wagon Tommy parked beneath a tree for shade. He kept quiet for most of the ride, absorbed in leading the horse around loose gravel and stones, or rather, he led you to believe he was lost in concentration. Because, when it came down to it, you knew Tommy better than to assume nothing was wrong.

The past week, he had been acting different, jumpy even. He ran into the nursery during the early hours of the morning on edge, as if expecting something to be amiss. You tried interrogating him, but he brushed it off, insisting things were fine. Fine—you began detesting that word. Fine this, fine that, but if things were really fine, then why was he on edge?

Then came the bloodshot eyes and the slamming of his desk drawer when you entered the office. Only this time he couldn’t deny the unmistakable jingle of a bullet, which rattled in the wooden compartment like some sort of airy death chime.

A black hand. One for each Shelby. And since you were now one too, that meant neither you nor the children were subjected to any special treatment. A week, he said, a week for his family to clear up the business while he stayed here watching over you like a shepherd to his flock.

And watched he did, standing next to where you sat, he found peace observing Charles and Ruby as they chased each other around the overgrown field. There he remained for an hour or so, frighteningly still, the only motion being his sharp jaw chewing on a mint leaf, somewhat reminiscent of the soldier in your tent all those years ago. Next to him, tied to the tree, the black steed filled the silence with snorts and grazed favorably on the loose roots and grass patches.

“Ruby was crying this morning. She’s scared, Tom." You sighed.

Tommy hadn’t been there when you woke up that morning in the caravan. He returned shortly after, ominous as ever, just as Ruby had begun to settle.

He tossed the stalk of his mint leaf into the grass and offered you his hand. You looked up at him in question for a moment, slightly suspicious of his intentions. Nevertheless, you slid your hand into his, and he stood you up, sat down on the higher step, and pulled you between his legs to sit on the lower step. He hugged you from behind as he slouched to rest his head on your shoulder, then exhaled deeply.

“We will be home soon,” he whispered in your ear, brushing your knuckles tenderly.

“For how long? Until we get another bullet in the post?”

Tommy’s throbbing forehead found solace in the warmth of your neck.

“You’ve never been one to run,” you continued, “what’s bothering you? We took a vow that we would share everything.”

He nuzzled his nose deeper into your pulse.

Frustrated, you tried to get up, but he held you firmly against his chest.

“Italians.”

“Italians?”

“Italians sent the black hands.”

You waited in silence for more information, but more did not come.

“Speak to me, Thomas.”

“I don’t want you any more involved than you are.”

“They’ve sent death knocking on our door; how more involved could I be?”

Tommy moved methodically, licking his lips and clearing his throat. He squinted his eyes up at the glaring sun.

“It’s nothing you should be concerned about. I’ll keep us safe.”

“Nothing I should be concerned over, Thomas? Just how many people are we at war with?”

He didn’t answer, so you turned your head away from him. Charles and Ruby had since settled by a patch of flowers. Charles was crouched over, helping his sister gather all the yellow flowers for her yellow dress.

The tension broke the surface then.

“Why are you still fighting, Tom? Is this,” you nod to your children and breathe in the fresh air, “not enough?”

You pictured Arrow House and its lavish garden, one to compete with all the wealthy families down the lane. You thought of Arthur, John, Polly, Ada, and all his family that lived to see his success. Everything, from the thoroughbreds in the stable to the fancy cars. The money itself was a testimony to his drive. What more could the gangster of Birmingham want when he already had everything?

You had gone and worked yourself up now because the world seemed blurrier than before.

Tommy, still on his guard, guided your chin to your shoulder so he could kiss the tears away. “It is enough.”

“Then make it enough. You’re respectable now, so stop the fighting.” Your voice broke at the end.

He hung his forehead on your shoulder. Like a flower sheltered away from the sun, Tommy wilted when he was away from his business. Usually, you were a strong enough light to keep him going, but whatever business he had gotten himself into was poisoning him, and ever the addicted flower, he kept running out to the fields, continuing to drink in the sunlight until it was too much and turned his leaves brow. Because business was what occupied his mind day and night, he was unable to turn the cogs of the engine off and let the air out of the tires.

A hand brushes your hair away to kiss the spot beneath your ear, airing out the destructive thoughts.

God, you loved him anyway. An overpowering feeling that ruled over calculating minds like Tommy’s and faint hearts like yours. You were no better than him—both addicted to a little sunlight.

The framed photographs on the wall shook as your third-eldest slammed the door to her room closed.

“I hate you!” She cried from the other side.

Your husband, Tommy, sighed to the ceiling, then stalked past you to his study, no longer interested in anything your daughter had to say. They had been at it for the last ten minutes arguing over some boy she was seeing, and your ears were just about ringing having witnessed it from the sidelines. You were left there in the hallway, an unwilling participant in the unspoken feud between father and daughter, and you understood that whoever you went to console would take it that you were siding with them, even though you just wanted to keep your family together.

Going to your daughter was the instinctive answer, but you knew she needed time to cool off. Tommy was the only reasonable choice.

You knocked on the door to his office before letting yourself in.

“Come to lick my wounds, eh?” He mused while smoking a cigarette.

Your lips wormed into a thin line. “This needs to stop, Tom.”

“Yeah,” he said, tapping the ash into his tray, “it will fucking stop.” He points with his cigarette, “I’ll make it fucking stop.”

You sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

The chair screeched as he stood. “I’m her father, and if I say she can’t see that boy, she can’t. It’s only a childish fling; she’ll get over it.”

He poured a whiskey and downed it by the time you walked around his desk so that you were face-to-face with him.

“They’re in love, Tommy.”

“Yeah?” He scoffed. “Well, that can be undone.”

You held his glare, a challenge lighting in your own. “So easily, you think?”

He paused mid-drag, catching onto the underlying meaning in your words. “No,” he said, setting the cigarette down in the ash tray and grabbing your shoulders. “Don’t act like that.”

“Act like what?”

“Like you’re threatening our love over some fucking boy that’s charmed our daughter. They’re too young.”

“He’s sweet.”

“Oh, sweet and nice, I’m sure. But he’ll have no place in this house.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I fucking said so!” He spat.

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Or what? You’ll leave me?” He huffed in amusement. “You won't; you love me too much.”

“You’re so certain?”

He paused for a moment and stared at you as if he couldn’t believe what you had said.

“Yeah, because we still fuck like two people who love each other, eh? And you’ve not told me no before, so if the day comes and your body no longer wants mine, then I’ll be worried. But until then, don’t test me with empty threats." His face hardened.

He knew you like the back of his hand. All bark, no bite. You loved him inexplicably, even after all these years, gray hairs and all. His face, body, and soul nourished you until you were satiated and full. And even if his eyebrows furrowed at times, you were willing to bet that it was for aesthetic, a shapely shadow gathered over the years from being the stoic leader the Peaky Blinders and Shelby family needed. How could you fault him for it?

Because, at the end of the day, you were a team. Even if he played the role of an overprotective father a bit too convincingly, he only ever wanted what was good for your daughter. Everything he worked for, ultimately, was for his family. A family man. And that came with its virtues and vices because, despite what Tommy thought, he wasn’t perfect; no one was.

Shrinking under his hands, you breathed a sigh and appeased him. “End this feud, Tom. Find peace with her. I don’t care what you do, but by the end of it, I expect to be able to sit down at the dinner table without having to beg my husband and daughter to look up from their plates.” You stroked his hands, which held your shoulders, and finally blinked up at him.

A haze of softness swept across his glare and melted the glaciers to a thin sheen of blue. The seams of exhaustion frayed one by one through his muscles. He nodded, licked his lips, and leaned down for a kiss of absolution. Not entirely prepared to surrender, you tilted your head so that he found the corner of your mouth instead.

“It will be done, love.” He brushed the apples of your cheeks tenderly. “And by tonight,” his voice lowered, “I promise you’ll forget all about it.”

Only then did you accept his kiss, eager to put the grievance to rest. Tommy, on the other hand, had other plans and stepped forward so that you were pinned between his desk and hips. He quickly began to gather your skirts above your waist, but you pulled away just as fast at the hiss of air against your exposed skin. An unsolicited gasp escaped his mouth when your knee brushed him there, and you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth, looking deep into his eyes.

“Promise me you won’t break her heart. She might not be old enough now, but I don’t want you to put her off love forever,” you caressed his jaw.

“No,” he agreed, breathier than usual, flexing the hands that were still caught up in the fabric of your skirt.

“And our Daisy may never say it, but I know she loves you dearly. So please, Tom, be gentle with her. I don’t want her to grow up despising you. Tell her you love her, kiss her forehead, hug her.”

He deflated, and you watched him swallow his pride. Cogs turned against the sweltering lust, threatening to deplete the clever thoughts in that powerful head of his in favor of your careful touch. Please, please, please, you begged without uttering a word; agree with me on this, Tom.

Tommy leaned back down to rest his forehead on yours; his face gave nothing away. You were sure he had found something to say, which would make you feel like a fool for asking. However, when you embraced those faint subtleties of emotion flickering across his face like candlelight, so miniscule you might blink and miss it, you found nothing of the sort to suggest any hostile nature. Because Tommy loved you.

“I will.”

A/N: Tried doing a long one shot, what does everyone think? Yay or nay? Comment to be added to the tag list!

Taglist: @maliceofwonderland , @fairytale07 , @goblinjnr , @ilovepeoplesdads , @multidimensionalslut

3K notes · View notes

witherby · 3 months ago

Note

LW first crush??? Or first time being crushed on???

👉👈

I love it when the hive mind comes together 🤝

Listen, I took the general concept of what you guys are asking for and made this. It's 4100+ words. Don't look at me 🙈

Littlest Wayne: Piety

Masterlist is Here!

"True piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free, and attractive." - Francois Fenelon

Growing up in a family of rich people moonlighting as vigilantes, you're more than used to chaos. Secret-keeping, combat training, socializing with the Gotham Elite, and helping your grandfather patch up one of your brothers or parents after patrol are some of the routine shenanigans you have to deal with on a regular basis, and you aren't even a vigilante yourself.

School is supposed to be your little slice of normalcy, where you can decompress as a civilian amongst other civilians. Just go to class, talk to your friends, and maybe participate in an extracurricular if you want! That's it! Nice and simple! You love it when things are nice and simple!

So the fact that a gang of arsonists are currently holding your class hostage during a field trip to Metropolis Conservatory and threatening to burn down everything and everyone inside, is really fucking annoying you!!

"Hi, dad," you mumble into your backup cellphone. The arsonists took everyone's phones when they raided the conservatory, but Bruce made you keep two on hand for this exact scenario. "Don't freak out. There's a —"

"I know." He sounds freaked out. You barely suppress a sigh. "It's on the news. Clark is off-world with Hal or you'd be safe by now. ETA is twenty minutes for me, and 17 for Jason. Are you hurt?"

"No," you whisper, "they haven't done anything yet. I'm in the Butterfly Garden with my —"

You quiet down when one of the men turns and makes eye contact with you. You hunch over and press your hands against your head as though frightened, but you're trying to keep your cellphone concealed.

Bruce calls your name, audibly stressed. You can hear his car picking up speed on the highway. You click your tongue to reassure him you're fine. When the man looks away again, you relax a bit.

"There's at least five of them," you whisper as softly as possible. "Probably more. The lighting isn't bright or dim enough to cast shadows in here."

Overcast days are your biggest pet peeve. The level of darkness required to manipulate shadows is lax, but for some reason, the very rare occasions in which a space is simultaneously too light and too dark make it impossible to use your ability. You can see shadows being cast on the floor. You can feel them, even. But they aren't solid enough to control. It's like trying to stop water from slipping through your fingers; it works for a minute until you inevitably watch it seep through the spaces in between.

"No talking!" One of the men barks. You exhale slowly and keep still.

"You're gonna be fine. Stay calm and do everything they ask of you," Bruce says. "I'm entering the city now, and Jason is thirteen minutes out. We'll be there as soon as possible."

You click your tongue again, then hang up and slip the phone up your jacket sleeve. You hug your waist and draw your knees up, scowling at the dirt underneath you like it's personally responsible for what's going on right now.

A dark hand reaches over to clutch your arm. You glance to your right to spot Chiffon, your best friend, frowning worriedly at you.

"You okay?" She mouths. You nod and place your hand over hers, giving it a quick squeeze.

"Are you?" You mouth back. She nods as well. She doesn't seem frightened so much as irritated. Chiffon told you on the bus ride over that she was wearing all new clothes for the field trip, and now the two of you are sitting on the ground with your other classmates so it's likely dirtying them up.

"Are ya done yet!? How long does it take to swap out a fucking flag..." One of the arsonists complains into a radio on his hip. "I'm gettin' itchy, man. I don't even care about the message anymore; I need to feel the heat. I need to see somethin' burn before some dumbass Meta shows up and ruins the fun. I'm about to just strike my matchbook!"

Oh, shit. That was good news and bad news. Good, because fire casts shadows you can manipulate. Bad, because the arsonists also have guns, and you might not be able to subdue them all before one gets a lucky shot off. You have a soft, squishy body and no kevlar to protect it right now, which your family routinely complains about every time you leave the house. The vindication on their faces after this is gonna suck hard.

"The flag's up!" The radio crackles. You and your classmates tense up. "Light this joint!"

The three arsonists in the butterfly room with you pick up the cans at their feet and start pouring the contents out. The sharp smell of gasoline hits your nose and your classmates start complaining and shouting at them to stop.

"You're not actually doing this, right!?"

"Oh my god...oh my god!"

"Hey! Burn down whatever building you want, but let us out first you psychos!!"

"I was gonna skip school today. I wish I had!"

"I don't wanna die!!"

One of the men takes out a gun and fires a round into the ceiling. Colors whip around you as the butterflies all take off in a flurry. There's some brief shrieking and screaming, which makes you cover your ears, but when he starts aiming at your classmates, everybody gets quiet real fast, nothing but quick breathing and wingbeats disturbing the peace.

"Good," he sneers. "Listen here, you little squealers: it's your very unlucky day today. We staked out this spot until we knew Superman wouldn't be here t'save the day, and that just so happened to coincide with your stupid field trip. We're sendin' a message to that alien freak to stop meddling in human affairs, and you all get the honor of contributing to that message."

"Who's ready to be martyrs!!" The second one shouts, splashing gasoline in yours and your classmates' direction.

You gasp and scramble to your feet when your arm and shoulder gets splashed. You tug Chiffon up and usher her behind you, scowling. Your temper flares, made worse by your current inability to stop any of this from happening, and despite your father's warnings you begin lashing out.

"That doesn't make any sense, dumbass!" You snap.

"The fuck'd you say?" The man growls. Your pulse jackknifes, heart hammering wildly in your chest, but you don't falter. "I asked you a question!!"

"Martyrs are killed for supporting a cause, not objecting to it. None of us want to be part of this! We're just here for a stupid field trip!"

Chiffon grips your wrist painfully tight, hissing at you to be quiet. You know you should listen to her, but if help doesn't come fast enough and you die, you're at least gonna die having fought back. You're gonna die having tried.

"Did I ask what you wanted, kid?" The man says, stepping so close that you feel like the gas fumes coming from his jerrican are getting you high. "Hmm? Did any of us say "oh, raise your hands if you don't wanna be hostages?" No, we didn't."

"Did any of you take a second to think "oh, maybe I don't wanna be child murderers today?" No, you didn't."

The arsonist snorts.

"I dunno. Sounds to me like you wanna be the kindling."

He reaches out and grabs your arm with more force than you anticipate, yanking you away from your group. You yelp in pain, instinctively lifting your fist to strike him in the neck. He chokes and coughs as you brutalize his Adams apple, but doesn't let go of your arm. Instead, he uses the hand holding the gas can to strike you back. It connects with your head, and when you blink, you're suddenly lying on the floor and your temple is throbbing.

Aw fuck, you think, vision blurred. It's so hard to tell up from down right now. You feel your clothes getting splashed with more gasoline. You hear your schoolmates screaming and shouting in terror for the inevitable. You see an indecipherable ocean of colors dancing around you, butterflies trying in vain to escape the fate you're all about to share. You hear someone strike a match.

Oh, please don't make my parents identify the remains. Please don't do that to them.

You close your eyes and try to steady the trembling in your limbs, hoping the pain doesn't last long.

The screaming reaches a crescendo, causing a sharp ringing in your ears. You flinch and press your hands to your head, just barely stifling a sob. There's a loud, crashing sound, and gunfire all around you. The ground reverberates when people start running, bolting in all directions, and you're unable to make yourself look at what's going on.

Heat licks at your side. The fire is spreading and the crackling drives a spike through your heart. You are deathly afraid. You want your parents. You want your brothers. You want your grandpa.

Something hits the ground beside you, right as you feel your sleeve catch fire, and you yelp when a pair of hands start to pat it out before it can spread.

"Hey, hey! It's okay! It's fine, look at me, you're okay!"

Relief makes your stiff limbs slacken, and you crack an eye open to find a stranger staring down at you. It's not your father, it's not Jason, and it's not one of your classmates.

It's...a boy wearing a Superman suit, but with a black, leather jacket thrown on top of it. He's looking at you with the widest, brightest blue eyes you've ever seen. They seem to become impossibly wider when he locks onto your own.

He's very handsome, your brain musters in between all the panic. Shiny black hair that was buzzed underneath and long at the top, clear, tanned skin, and near-effeminate facial features are the most eye-catching bits you pick up on.

He doesn't seem to be phased by the fire crackling around you, but you cannot say the same. When you try to breathe in, the hot smoke fills your lungs and you start coughing painfully, grimacing.

The boy frowns — you realize belatedly he'd been grinning before — and shrugs his jacket off. He drapes it gently on top of your head to block out the flames and smoke, then gets an arm under your back and behind your knees to lift you up.

"Hold on a second!" He says, and then you're suddenly outside and being laid down on the grass. The jacket is removed and your breathing gets much easier now that you're in the open air. He kneels next to you again, checking on your arm. "You okay?"

You give him a jerky nod and a thumbs up. You don't recognize this Meta. Did uncle Clark have a kid and forget to tell anybody? It wouldn't be the first time, like when he got engaged to Lois a couple years back and realized he'd neglected to send out any wedding invitations.

This boy looks your age, though. How would Clark have avoided bringing him up for so many years, even in passing?

"Who are you?" You mumble, voice still slightly hoarse from the smoke inhalation. The conservatory is quickly being consumed by flames, if the steadily brightening orange and red in your periphery is anything to go by. You hear sirens quickly approaching in the distance, and wonder where the arsonists went. You wonder where your classmates are, too. Did everyone make it out?

The boy smiles at you again, wide and proud, and gestures to the symbol on his chest.

"I'm Superman. You and your school buddies are safe now, I promise."

"Oh," you say, and wonder if the hit to your head is affecting you worse than you thought, because you are definitely not looking at Superman.

When Conner opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Lex Luthor. He recognizes him immediately, instinctively, despite never having met before now.

"Can you hear me?" Lex asks. Conner nods his head. The motion is new. It feels practiced. The dichotomy is throwing him for a loop as he steps out of the capsule he'd spent weeks growing in. His eyes dart around the space, taking in the other staff members present in the lab. Some of their names and faces click together like scattered puzzle pieces in his mind, while others are strangers he holds no information about.

He knows these people. They've just been introduced this very second. He feels helpless. He feels his immense powers buzzing under his skin.

Lex is talking, and Conner listens. Conner is an experiment. Conner is the result of years of work and programming. Conner is a success in a long line of failures.

He would have had siblings if they'd survived. He wouldn't be alone in these warring sensations and feelings. He would've had someone to relate to.

Conner is a success, but he woke up early. Didn't age enough. Conner is less than an hour old, but he's physically a teenager. He is supposed to be older. He is supposed to be bigger. He needs to be better than Superman. He's a success, but there is more work to be done.

His brain is packed full of theoretical knowledge with no practice. He knows what he can do but not how to do it. How to fly. How to control his super strength. How to shoot lasers from his eyes. How to summon ice breath. How to block out the overwhelming inputs to his brand new senses.

Lex is talking, and Conner listens. He gets coached through handling himself and reigning in his power. It's clinical and professional. He practices in another part of the lab for days. He does not learn how to speak for a week. No one had noticed beforehand.

Superman got years to do this. Superman got to grow into his body, not have it be grown for him and his consciousness injected into it. Superman got to take his time to become great. Conner does not have that time. He's told he doesn't need it.

Conner succeeds, because he is the better Superman as he was made to be. He is praised for his quick adaptiveness and brilliant control. He wishes he knew what a hug felt like.

He's given a suit and has to learn how to put it on. He's got knowledge of what he is and what he can do and who he is supposed to be, but they did not think to implant in him the knowledge of dressing or hygiene or socialization. He's got all the skills of a person with none of the experience. He's an egg shell walking on egg shells.

Lex is talking, and Conner listens. He's told that he is ready for action. Superman is not around to stop a crisis from occurring right now, so he must take charge and show Metropolis that a new hero has emerged. One that is reliable and mighty and belongs to this planet.

Conner is a hero. He is reliable and mighty and belongs to this planet.

"Make me proud, son," Lex Luthor tells him, flashing his teeth in a wide smile as he pats Conner's shoulder.

Conner grins back. He will not disappoint. He was made to do this. He is Superman. A better Superman. He is Metropolis' hero.

He knows the way to the Metropolis Conservatory, despite never having been there before. The layout of the city is implanted in his mind. He knows it like the back of his hand.

Nevermind that he's only known the back of his hand for all of three weeks.

He does not fly as quickly to the Conservatory as he's capable. The sensation of wind against his face is so new it stuns him in the air for a minute. The warmth of the sun against his body is so comforting that he learns how to cry in that same, stunned minute. The speed at which he flies dries any tears he might shed, and the excitement of getting to help save his city prevents an overload.

He sees the defaced American flag as he approaches, turned upside down and half-burnt, and the anti-alien flag hanging proudly right above it. He uses x-ray vision to spot the ten arsonists scattered amongst the Conservatory. He sees the class of students corralled into the butterfly garden, with one brave and impulsive soul daring to take a stand.

He knows he's impervious to flames, which gives him the confidence to swoop in and rescue everyone trapped inside the building. Only the three arsonists holding the students hostage need any medical attention ("Grip strength, Conner, we've been over this. You need to work on your grip strength!") due to how roughly he'd pulled them out of there. The rest, he's able to collect and deposit in a little pile of bodies, taking the rope off of the flag pole to tie them all up together.

Then he goes back for the civilians. The building is quickly evacuated and everybody moved to the large lawn behind the conservatory. He leaves the building to burn — he can hear firetruck sirens going off in the distance, piercing his ears and making his breathing quicken. He could use more practice tuning out the overwhelming sounds of everyday life. He will ask Lex to help him hone the skill.

There is one more civilian to rescue. He can see minor injuries on their body he doesn't want to exacerbate. When he kneels next to them to pat out the fire, he is as gentle as he can physically be. They're trembling and shaking from fear, and he musters up the words to console them.

This will be the very first person he's spoken to outside of the lab. He cannot afford to feel shy, despite the novelty of the emotion.

"Hey, hey! It's okay! It's fine, look at me, you're okay!"

And they do. You do. You open your eyes and ensnare him with your gaze.

Something deep, very deep inside him, clicks together, and the world becomes quiet.

There is nothing else.

There is no one else.

The only thing he can see is you. The only thing he can hear is you. The only thing he can feel is you.

Conner's world shifts so fundamentally to accommodate you, it's like he's never known anything else.

He is not Metropolis' hero. He is your hero. He is your anything. He is your everything. All you need to do is ask it, and he'll make it happen. Conner cannot live the rest of his pitifully short life without you. He simply won't survive.

Your mouth opens to reply to him. He leans forward, beaming, eager to hear the sound of your voice like a dog to his master's key turning in the door.

You start coughing. The rest of his senses kick back online, and he remembers that you are in a burning building that nearly burned you with it. He can hear your lungs straining against the smokey air, and that won't do at all.

"Hold on a second!" He says, removing his jacket to cover your face and mouth from the worst of the fire. When Conner gets his arms around you to take you to safety, his whole body seems to zing where you make contact. You fit against him perfectly. He memorizes your weight and warmth as he flies out of the conservatory.

Out in the daylight, under the bright sky, you are somehow even more stunning. The sight of your eyes shining under the light when he uncovers your face sears itself into his memory. It's a fight against his every instinct to stop cradling you and just sit in the grass (and isn't it something, that he's never felt how soft grass is and doesn't care in comparison to your presence) and admire you.

"You okay?" He asks, instead of "Do you feel this, too? Do I create the same, soft weight in your chest like you have in mine? Do you feel like we belong to one another?"

You nod and give him a thumbs up. It's better than any praise Lex and the other lab assistants have ever given him. He memorizes the shape of your thumbprint at just a glance and wonders if Lex will give him a pen and paper later so he can draw it.

"Who are you?"

You're talking to him. You're talking to him. You asked him a question and you're talking to him. Every word crashes into his ears like waves against the shore, and he almost drowns in it.

There's a brief war in his mind. He wants to hear you say his name. He wants to know what the word sounds like on your lips. He also knows that this is his debut as the next superhero. He needs to leave a good impression. He needs you to like him. He grins and points to the sign of Hope on his chest, because he was made to be —

"I'm Superman. You and your school buddies are safe now, I promise."

He clocks your obvious confusion, but it doesn't hurt his feelings. He is, after all, claiming someone else's title. The Superman you know is not the best one for you. Lex taught him that. Conner just needs to prove that he deserves to take that name, that he is worthy of the same accolades and respect that the alien predecessor is getting.

After all, the alien isn't the one that saved the day today. Conner is.

"Let's get you to a medic, okay?" He says, offering his arms to you, palms up. You glance around, then nod, and he's got you cradled in his chest again.

The knowledge of what uniforms a first responder would wear is already embedded in his mind. It helps him locate the proper people to hand you off to when the cacophony of colorful clothing and swarming bodies threaten to overwhelm him. He can pick out police, who are busy untying and detaining the arsonists. He can pick out firemen, who are hooking up hoses to extinguish the roaring flames. He can pick out journalists, who seem eager to talk to him after what he's just done.

More people to talk to. More socializing to be done. He spares you one last glance, memorizing the exact shade of your eye color with a fond smile, then focuses up to finish the job. He's got to make Lex proud. He's got to let the city know that a new player's stepped onto the board. He hopes you'll watch his interview segment.

In the aftermath, when all is said and done and he returns to LexCorp to report to Luthor, he realizes he doesn't know your name.

Late in the evening, after going over everything he did right and wrong, after more training, after honing his body even further to become the better Superman, he lies in his cot and tunes into the world, instead of tuning it out.

He listens, and listens, and listens.

He catches it. Your voice, not in Metropolis but its sister-city beyond the water. Gotham, if his implanted memory serves.

You're talking to your family, who sound like they're dressed to leave somewhere while you remain behind. He listens to them exit your home, one by one. He listens to you walking around different textured rooms. Hardwood. Carpet. Linoleum. He listens to you climb into bed and open a book, turning the page approximately every minute and thirty-two seconds. He listens to the rhythm of your breathing and matches his own to follow. He listens to your heartbeat, strong and steady in your chest, because he saved your life today.

Conner inhales when you inhale. He exhales when you exhale. He repeats this action until you eventually bookmark your place and settle down to sleep, then matches his breathing to your new, sleeping pace. This continues for hours, that deep, instinctual part of him just barely sated by listening to you from so far away.

He needs to meet you again. Properly, as Conner and...

Conner frowns.

He has to learn your name.

The next morning, he asks Lex if Gotham needs a Superman, too.

#el speaks #conner kent #littlest wayne au #kon el #kon x reader #batfam x reader #mossy-party-rocker #🌃#🔮#🕯️#long post #gn reader

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veritas-scribblings · 3 months ago

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Euphemia Potter - @into-the-jeggyverse - words: 660

He tries to make himself small so he doesn’t take up space. So he can’t be seen, perceived, heard. She’s sure that he would fit himself into the nooks and crannies of the two-storey house if he could. Vanish himself entirely into the aether if they let him.

He minds his pleases and thank-yous more than her own child does.

Calls them “sir” and “ma’am”.

Keeps his elbows off the tables.

Ensures he’s freshly washed for meals.

Waits patiently to be excused.

Euphemia had heard bits and pieces from James over the years. At twelve-years-old, James had written home about the boy who had arrived at the school and was, disappointingly, “nothing like Sirius at all”. At thirteen-years-old, he’d written home to inform them that “Baby Black” had become the Slytherin Seeker and had described in incredibly lengthy detail how he appears out of “literally nowhere like some sort of apparition on a broom”.

At fourteen-years-old, James had written home to inform her that “Baby Black and his two Slytherin thug friends” were, quite ominously, “causing problems” for them. And had left it at that, no other form of explanation given.

At fifteen-years-old, Euphemia had been informed quite stiffly by both James and Sirius that “that traitorous wretch who shall not be named” was strictly out of conversational bounds. Now, Euphemia tries not to pry. She likes to think of herself as reasonable. Understanding. A hip, cool kind of mum. Yet, although she’d had her hands full with one Black son, she’d found that she couldn’t help but worry. Nor could she suppress the overwhelming urge to storm Grimmauld Place so she might keep both sons of the House of Black in her sanctuary. “The Potter Home for Wayward Runaway Boys”, Fleamont likes to call it.

At sixteen-years-old, James had been shook when this quiet, scowl-y boy had turned up on their doorstep with a trunk trailing after him and such presumptuous audacity that he couldn’t be anyone other than Sirius Black’s little brother. He’d deposited himself in their lounge, eaten their food, slept in their spare bed, and quite literally moved himself into their lives. And it was when she’d caught her son peering curiously around corners to watch the scowl-y boy read, pestering the boy with thinly-veiled invasive questions, that Euphemia had quickly figured out exactly what was happening.

Now that he is seventeen-years-old, Euphemia Potter is watching her son fall in love for the first time. James doesn’t know this yet. He hasn’t yet figured it out. And thank goodness for all of them that neither has Sirius, who is certain that James is trying to be hospitable.

James is building (mending, even) bridges, according to Sirius.

It’s surprising, honestly, because James is really quite ridiculously obvious about it. He follows Regulus into the living room to sit with him while he reads (“I’m just doing my summer homework, Mum!” he'll claim, though James has never done summer homework in his life). He’ll read the same books as Regulus so they can talk about it afterwards (“He’s just so quiet, Mum, but if you get him talking about books, he could go on all day!”). He’ll invite Regulus to help him cook, offer to make his famous Chai for Regulus, invite Regulus to take a peek around Flea’s potions lab, offer to give Regulus a tour of Flea’s garden of potions ingredients, though he’s never shown much of any interest in his father’s work before.

And sometimes, when James doesn’t think anyone is watching, she’ll catch James staring, looking so desperately besotted that he might very well float off into the aether at any moment.

James doesn’t realise it yet, but Regulus, bless his soul, is worryingly perceptive. And though he might not yet quite realise the extent of James’s affections, he’s well aware of the attention.

And Euphemia thinks, Regulus is Slytherin enough that he might very well have something up his sleeve.

#work is a shit show I cope by writing #harry potter #fanfiction #myfanfiction #microfics #myjegulusmicrofics #james potter #regulus black #jegulus #james x regulus #regulus x james #sunseeker #starchaser #euphemia potter

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starmocha · 3 months ago

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*crying screaming squealing kicking my feet* BRAT TAMER ZAYNE!!!! dude i need to calm down fr. mc caught red-handed, his little smirk---13 slaps later he's back to soothing her, he's impossibly hard and when he sees how wet she got from the whole ordeal he knows he's not coming back to the hospital that day. his wife will be the end of him but she's so pretty and asking for a baby, he can't deny her anything ❤️ but seriously, your fic was amazing 😍😍

🫵 Y’all need to stop scratching that part of my brain, I have wips I have not looked at for many moons now 😭 /lh …continuation of the previous ask because IDK. WHY AM I DOING THIS. WHY IS THIS OVER 1K. I miss Zaynie. 😔

Lesson Learned (?)

“Thir…thirteen!” she gasps, nearly sobbing, after the final slap landed on her reddened bottom. She whines into the couch cushion, feeling a mixture of emotions from pain to pure arousal, the ache between her legs had worsened with every slap as Zayne reprimanded her, that soft but firm voice of his was able to lure her into a state of lust with just a few choice words.

Zayne hums softly as he leans over, his mouth close to her ear again as he apologizes while his hand rubs soothing circles on her bottom. “Was I too rough just now?”

Before she could even register his words to answer him, Zayne chuckles softly and kisses her neck. “You’re not supposed to enjoy your punishment,” he scolds her, his fingers slipping into her slick folds experimentally to see just how aroused he had gotten her with his punishment, but this action alone is enough to have her bucking against him crying out for more. He immediately pulls out, his fingers coated in her essence, and she whines in frustration at the loss of him. He tsks at her, chiding her again as he pulls her panties back up.

“N-no, Zaynie, please…”

He peers down at her flushed face with a raised brow. The same haughty smile remains on his handsome face as he teases his frustrated wife. “Please what? Use your words, my love.”

She couldn’t even bring herself to glare at him for his taunt, needing him so badly now, she is willing to do whatever he asks of her. “Please…fuck me,” she says quietly with tears in her eyes. “Please…I need your…your cock…inside…inside me.”

He laughs softly, amazed by her brazen plea. He settles down on the couch, laying on his side behind her. He pulls her flushed to him, her back pressing to his toned chest. She squirms in his embrace, but Zayne’s arm around her middle keeps her trapped to him.

“Such lewd words,” he murmurs, his tone more amused than disappointed, “Now when did my lovely wife learn to say such obscene things?”

She grinds back against him, feeling his bulge against her ass and hearing his instant hiss before his hand grabs her hip, holding her in place again. Before she could even whine at him to satisfy her needs, she hears the sound of his pants zipper and then his fingers were dragging her panties to the side and she moans long and slow as he fills her instantly, his cock stretching her just deliciously so as she clenches around him.

“F-fuck,” he gasps, those rare curses he would say somehow the most erotic thing she has ever heard. He grips her leg, raising enough so he could have an easier access before he starts rocking into her with a steady pace, his pants and her moans intermingling in tandem to the lewd sounds of his thrusts. “So fucking wet…it’s like you’re swallowing me…”

Every stroke she feels has her moaning and whining, her nails dragging into the fabric of the couch. Zayne slips his arm under her head to rest and she instantly grabs at his hand, his thumb in her mouth. The young doctor is groaning as he watches his pretty wife sucks on his thumb as he fucks into her at an increasingly brutal pacing.

Her moans and whines were the sweetest noises he has ever heard, each sound spilled from her lips is making him want to drive into her harder just so he could lure out more of her heavenly voice. He roughly pulls his thumb out of her mouth, smirking when she protests but her words die just as quickly when that same hand reaches around for her breast, grabbing and squeezing tightly while he leaves rough love bites along her shoulder, his hips still moving, still not relenting until he makes sure she cums around him.

The overstimulation is too much, her mind unable to focus, her entire body has submitted to be used by him, trusting him to bring her over the edge.

“…Za-Zayne! …Gonna…gonna cum…oh god…I’m gonna cum…!”

“Good girl,” he praises, kissing her neck soundly as he groans softly, “I’m close, too…”

“In-inside me! Please, Zayne, please…!”

“Bu—”

“I want you to knock me up, Zayne!”

His breath hitches. His hand lets go of her breast, reaching lower to rest on her flat belly. They have been fucking recklessly so much lately, he wouldn’t be surprised if she is already pregnant right now, already carrying his baby in her body. Still, he is already imagining a small swell forming, his baby resting in her womb, growing day by day bigger.

She would show off her cute belly in all of the pretty dresses he would buy for her. People would congratulate the doctor and his wife for their growing family, not knowing that he has been actively breeding her every chance he could, but most importantly, when he knows for certain she is ovulating, her body just begging for him to impregnate her with his child.

“Zay-Zayne, you’re so rough! I’m cumming, I’m cumming!”

The perverted thoughts in his head coupled with watching his wife climaxing has Zayne spilling obscenely into her, his thought focused entirely on making sure every last drop fill her, needing his seed to take, wanting her to get bred like the good little wife he knows she is for him.

“You’re going to be even more pretty,” he groans into her ear before he nips her earlobe as he continues to empty into her. He husks, his breath hot against her skin, “So fucking pretty knocked up with my baby…”

She is moaning helplessly, her hand reaching down to grasp at his arm around her middle. He is saying all of the right things with that sweet voice of his, she wants nothing more than to get drunk on his words. “Zayne…Zayne…”

When the euphoric haze passes, Zayne finally pulls out, laying flat on the couch on his back, his wife resting on top of him, her head resting on his chest as his hand rubs her up and down soothingly. They both enjoy each other’s company, basking in the sweet afterglow of this afternoon delight while their breathing evens out.

“Are you still sore?” he asks after a moment, the haughtiness he has displayed earlier gone, replaced by genuine concern for her.

She lifts her head, smiling mischievously again. “What would happen if I say ‘no’?”

He blinks in confusion before he gasps, feeling her grinding against him. His hands rest on her ass to still her and he lightly glares at her, unsurprised by her audaciousness.

“I left the hospital earlier because you needed a lesson for your teasing.”

“I’m sorry, Zaynie,” she says with not a trace of remorse in her voice. She leans up to kiss his lips, pulling away to brush her nose against his playfully. “I’m a bit of a slow learner…can we have another lesson?”

Zayne chokes back his moans when she rubs against him again. He watches with flushed cheeks as she slips off her soaked panties and unbuttons his shirt she is wearing completely, her breasts on full display for him to see. He is panting heavily as she teases his cock, her impish smile brightening as he hardens again.

His eyes roll to the back of his head as this time she seems to want to be the one to overstimulate him. “Nngh—I’m going to lose my mind because of you…”

#x — 💌#anonymous #love and deepspace #love and deepspace zayne #love and deepspace x reader #zayne x reader #zayne x mc #zayne smut #lads scenarios #love and deepspace fanfiction #lnds fanfics #🥺👉👈#it.....wasn't supposed to be this long orz orz orz orz orz

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happysparklingshadows · 3 months ago

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A Certain Hunger (6/?)

Chapter 5 ✿ Chapter 7

Summary: Passion and fear go hand in hand. You find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place; you might as well enjoy yourself while you're here. Playing games and playing with fingers distract you from the looming dread that everyone and everything is falling apart. Your adult self is slipping back into old habits and fears, rediscovering how she used to listen through the trees.

Pairing: Surviving!Poly! Yellowjackets x reader (slow burn)

Warnings: Smut (18+), Angst, loss of virginity, the reader has sex against a tree after her weird trippy episode in the last chapter, Natalie finally puts the moves on the reader, Lowkey period sex but its chill, Natalie is a messy toxic 90s bisexual who is still figuring it out, Mentions of menstrual cycle, Mentions of stalking, the 90s setting with the views of the time, internalized homophobia, Mentions of body and body weight, the occult, and possession.

Word count: 18k (the longest so far and I am sorry if that is a turn off!)

Notes: Happy Season 3 premiere!! The title of the French chapter, "Friends on the Other Side," is for anyone who is wondering! All French will have translations at the bottom of the chapter. Happy to use my one year of college French for good use! I also have put this series on wattpad and Ao3, and made a playlist for this story if you wanted to check it out.

❀ A03 ❀ wattpad ❀ spotify playlist ❀

‘96

🎵 This is how we do it 🎵

“One, two, one, two, three, four!” Mari yells out with her fingers matching her words over the music. Everyone around you starts to jump and dance to the music, appreciating the little music you have heard in the last few months.

🎵 This is how we do it 🎵

“Running Man, Running Man!” You all say as you wave your hands above your head to dance to the song from the MTV video.

“Bart Simpson, Bart Simpson!” You stepped back as some of the girls stepped forward, smiles and giggles dancing around the air as you joyfully sang to Montell Jordan. You barely even notice the pinch in your neck as you giggle. Your eyes met with Misty, who meekly stood in the doorway and swayed to the music, too scared to join in but watched on. You all step back to the wall, bump into Laura Lee, and giggle, grabbing her hand that was reaching for yours with a shared laugh.

“And Javi! Javi!” Mari giggles as she pulls the thirteen-year-old into the center to dance for everyone. You whistled to him with the others, encouraging him to dance. Seeing the shy kid come out of his shell a bit was sweet. This is the most you have seen him interact with the group, and it made your smile grow on your cheeks.

“Designated driver, take the keys to my truck.” All of you sing and whip your hands outstretched in front of yourselves, like you were driving a car. “Hit the shore ‘cause I’m faded.” you all continued as you ran a hand over your eyes to cover them, turning to someone side yourselves. “Honey’s in the street say, “Monty, yo, we made it.”

You gave up singing along as everyone took to their own rhythm and moved their bodies freely, your arms flailing above your head as you swayed your hips around. “It feels so good in my hood tonight. The summertime skirts and the guys in kani, All the gang bangers forgot about the drive-by-”

The music weakly tries to continue but dies pathetically in the middle of the song. Everyone stilled in disappointment as Van walked to the walkman with a grumbled damn it.

The room filled with panting of the girls, yours being one of them, as you felt your chest heave, breathe in like a suffocating person, “What happened?” Jackie asked Van from beside you.

“I don’t know,” Van grumbles again, frustrated about the death of her beloved Walkman as she slaps the box. “Oh, no. Has hitting something ever fixed it?”

“M-Maybe try blowing on it?” Mari says, coming closer to the girls and circling the box.

Creak. Creaaakk.

“The fuck is that?” Mari asks the group.

“Hey, you heard it too?” Lottie asks the group quietly as she looks around the room,

“It was probably just a branch.” Taissa reasoned, unimpressed, with her hands on her hips, stoic as ever.

“Inside, on the floor?” Mari asked her with wide eyes. She was floored by any explanation other than a ghost. “What if it’s... him?”

“What, the dead guy?” Shauna asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Um, yeah,” Mari grumbled.

“You know what it probably was? The dead guy’s missing fingers trying to crawl their way home.” Natalie smirked as she spoke, trying to scare everyone mischievously. Akilah slaps Natalie’s chest at the joke. Everyone jeers on at Natalie and some tell her to shut up for even joking. You laughed at her joke even though you shouldn’t, you couldn’t help it.

“You really have to encourage them?” Taissa sighs.

“You got to admit, it didn’t sound like it was on the roof.” Akilah says to Taissa with a worried wrinkle on her brow.

Jackie reasoned, “Fine, then it was a rat, or a raccoon, or something. I don’t know, it-.”

“Shh!” Lottie interrupted, looking up to the ceiling, trying to listen in on whatever was up in the attic.

“Oh my god.” Taissa completely deflates her arms and turns to her makeshift bed shoved into the corner

“Shh. Listen, " Lottie says, focusing on what she hears.

You all wait for something to happen, but nothing does.

“Well, I don’t hear it now.” Mari broke the silence.

“See?’ Taissa jeered with a smirk, she laid her blanket on the ground.

“Alright. Alright. You know what I think it was? I think the ghost decided it was time to get some sleep. And we should probably do the same, yeah?” Coach Ben reasons.

Everyone whined and booed at Coach Ben, but everyone started to lay out their beds on the floor. Some were whispering in the corner of the room like Misty and Krystal about the ghost upstairs, but the cabin's ground floor came to a lull and was peacefu when everyone fell asleep.

You lay down, sandwiched between Jackie and Shauna, staring up at the ceiling.

Your period was heavy this month for some reason. Your cycle has been all messed up since the crash, and it was beginning to become normal again. Your first month in the woods, you were so anxious for when your period would start, only for it never to come as the others all started around you. You and Shauna both snickered at the blessing of not having your periods before getting rescued. The next one was surprisingly light and quick, only lasting three days, it was a dark pink and watery red spotting, but as you lay in your makeshift bed, you were on the fifth day of heavy, deep red. It was your first real period in the woods, and your body made sure you paid the price for having some peace in your womb by giving you extremely painful cramps and nausea that would sneak up on you in the hot August sun. You used 6 of the makeshift pads yesterday and felt embarrassed, especially because you had to make a new one almost every time you needed a new one. The makeshift pads were made from shirts and stuffing from one of Travis’s orange puffer jackets, which he packed and offered up instead of Laura Lee’s bear. When everyone was having a discussion, and the girls talked about how they were going to make the pads, everyone looked over to the brown bear lying on Laura’s blanket. Travis offered his coat, saying his mom made him pack the stupid coat that he never wore and might be best used for stuffing our pads. It shocked you. You didn’t realize he had the ability to have empath after all his assholey comments, but it was making you see the guy in a better light slowly. But after he offered it, he demanded never to be informed about our periods again and stormed out of the cabin while Ben chuckled and Javi was mortified. Thankfully, it seemed to mellow out within the last day, and you were hoping your period would completely calm down before tomorrow.

The cabin's ceiling had dust stains and caked-on cobwebs that had been built upon themselves for years stare back down at your tiredness. Your legs twitched under your blanket, you felt your heart pounding in your chest somehow. Your mind was numb and thoughtless as you felt the fuzzy fabric of your mother's handmade blanket caress your legs. The hours went by with no sleep in sight for you. You sat up quietly and looked around at the others to see if anyone was still awake. You couldn’t find anyone as you tried to stand up without a sound, you crept to the door and to the pile of shoes everyone had left. You slipped on your shoes and hugged your blanket around your shoulders.

You open the door a little to sliver so it won’t groan, and so you won’t wake the others. After you slip through the crack, you close it behind you. The cold summer air hits you first as you start walking aimlessly.

It was dangerous. It was dark, and you got confused last time.

At least, that's what you like to believe and what others think as well. They believed you were dehydrated and got confused, and they decided it was no longer okay for you to go out on your own because they believed that your weight loss could be the main reason. You wanted to fight back against them, but you were two sizes smaller than before the crash almost four months ago, and it concerned Jackie and Shauna the most. But, something within you couldn’t fully believe it was just because of you. You are the smartest student at your school, scored the highest on the ACT, and were supposed to go to NYU in September. And somehow, the others look to you for guidance in the wilderness like a leader. You knew you were of sound mind, and you wouldn’t have imagined a tree creature watching you, or not noticing a significant amount of hours passing. It was something else.

You didn’t want to think about the tree woman again, you didn’t want to think that day even happened. You made sure to skip that day in your journal. As you have for most days after that scary one, except to log your period and take notes of the food everyone got in the day. You felt depressed as your period came with an almost bored feeling lording over your head all day.

You continue to walk on, you decide to turn left at the fork in the path towards the poop bucket cliff, and you hear the tree whistle beside you. It was calming you down. You didn’t feel the fear of the forest anymore because you hadn’t seen the creature yet, and you hadn’t felt the energy that you had that day either since.

It became your escape once again. Away from the others momentarily and to feel your feelings away from your friends' prying eyes. You loved your friends, the first- and second-year students, and their coach over the time you have been out here, but they can be overwhelming with their questions and concerns. You knew they couldn’t help that they didn’t have wilderness survival drilled into their heads since they were kids, and they couldn’t help being nervous about the things they didn’t understand. But you wanted to sometimes scream at their immaturity and recklessness.

The chill in the air woke you up as you came closer to the bluff cliff of the mountain, and looked up to the sky. You look down at your feet anxiously, thinking you might fall over even though you stood 6 feet away from the drop-off, and you sit down on a smooth rock you had become fond of when you had poop duty. The rock was at the base of a tree and was big enough to be a seat.

You look up at the clear night sky, littered with stars and a full moon lighting up the night. You take a deep breath of the clean, crisp air, a breeze from the top of the mountain. You can hear the whole forest where you sit, and it makes you feel so peaceful and safe. The water from the lake, the feet of small animals crawling up the trees, the berries and leaves dancing in the bushes, and the branches breathing beside you.

You couldn’t help but grasp the fuzzy blanket closer as the thought of your mom came to mind. Your lip pursed, but no tears came to your eyes. “I hope Mom is looking at this moon. She would love how bright it is, " you thought as you relaxed more on the cold rock. “Dad would love the view… Dad would be proud of me, I think. I have gone good so far.”

A smile came to your lips as you knew what you thought was right. You have done well as a group so far, and it was all thanks to your father. You knew that you would be thanking him so much if you were saved.

If you were saved.

It grossed you out to even think about the possibility you all wouldn’t be found in time. The cold breezes of the summer make you think of the colder and harsher months ahead when food will become rare. What if you all starve to death, get the flu and die from lack of vitamins, or fall asleep without a fire in the fireplace on accident? You had to push those thoughts to the back of your mind for later days, as for now, you try to relax on your rock. Hoping that maybe tonight was the night a plane or helicopter would fly by.

You look up to the clear sky at the stars that shine for what seems like only for you. The moon was almost half the sky from your angle on the mountain. It was like looking at the proof of a god because nothing could just be that beautiful and serene.

Snap!

You turn your head to the side and see Taissa standing there with a blank expression, which startles you.

“Oh! Taiss-”

“Find her,” Taissa rasped, her eyes staring past yours. Her voice didn’t seem like her own as she stepped closer. Under the moonlight, her eyes almost looked red.

“What?” You asked as you stood up from the rock, a little scared at how quickly she approached you.

“Find her,” she repeated as a smile started to curl on the corners of her lips

“Taissa? What are you saying? Why are you here?” You sternly said as you stepped back out of confusion, why was she here? How did she know you were here?

“Uh—” Taissa blinks, and slowly, her face becomes hers again. She rubs her eyes. “I don’t—sorry, I am half asleep. I saw you weren’t in the cabin and got worried.”

“Oh—” you say as you look over her in concern. It doesn’t make sense why she would know you were here. “Oh, okay! It’s okay! I couldn’t sleep.”

“Sorry, I don’t know. I fell asleep while I was looking for you! That was crazy!” Taissa chuckled, pulling her hand out to lead you back to the cabin. “Let’s go back to bed. It’s cold out here,” she added. There was dirt caked underneath her fingernails and her cuticles, it made you pause before you took her hand. But you took it so as not to cause a scene, just wanting to leave the situation and get back to your bed.

“Okay, let’s go to bed. I’m exhausted,” you sigh as you look at Taissa. You can’t help but ask, “How did you know I was here?”

“I hear you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I don’t know. I heard you breathing,” Taissa said as she looked down at her shoes, not even knowing her answer and how she knew you were there.

You didn’t notice the symbol carved on the back of the tree, on the opposite side of where you were leaning your back, dripped sap onto the ground as you walked past it.

You woke up later than normal today as the sunlight shined right into your eyes. The others must have given you a break. You give yourself a moment of peace as you stare at the ceiling. Your body felt achy and unwell, your inner thighs sticky and wet with sweat, and you softly became aware of the dull pain coming from deep in your stomach. When you finally pulled yourself from the ground and stood up, you noticed the only other person still lying down was Jackie. People would have tried to wake her up, but she had lied back down. “Lazy Jackie,” you think to yourself as you loom over Jackie’s lying body on the ground. You couldn’t help but chuckle, softly lift your leg, and shake her shoulder with your foot.

“Jackie.” You say to her like a lure, only to have Jackie groan in response and not move. “Come on, wake up.”

Jackie cuddles her blanket to her shoulders and groans, “I’m so cold.”

You look down at her with an unimpressed purse of your lips, and she rolls onto her back with a grimace of pain, “I have cramps.”

“No, duh, Jackie. We’re all cramping; we’re all synced up, and Mari has Endo, so you don’t have any excuses, princess.” You say as you kick her shoulder again, and she groans loudly again. But she reluctantly sits up as you watch her. She yawns. You pat her shoulder and smile, “Shouldn’t be too much work today, just keeping up.”

You and Jackie get dressed for the day, and she comments on how the two of you should match, to which you agree wholeheartedly. Jackie and you were as close as you used to be in the wilderness. Jackie would always find her way back to you in the forest fishing to sit and talk.

Despite the circumstances, you were so relieved to know Jackie still sees you as her sandbox friend as you did, and even more so now than ever have the two of you relied on each other with Shauna.

Your overpacking for the trip was such a blessing in disguise, and your body insecurity, making you have many changes of clothes, benefited you by having almost a new pair of clothes every day. But it always bit you in the ass when it was your time to do laundry, and you had to carry all your weight clothes on an incline—multiple times.

“Hey, do you want to wear your blue shirt? Match with me?” Jackie says as she starts to button up her blue and white-striped button-up. She looks at the blue shirt you wore yesterday, lying on top of your luggage or, lately, your dresser, and then over to you as you pull your pajamas over your head.

“I can’t. It’s dirty. I only have my butterfly shirt and my cardigan clean, " you replied, shaking your head softly. Then, you pulled your shorts off your legs.

“Why are you wearing a cardigan? It’s like 100 degrees outside.” Jackie snickered as she struggled with a button, looking at you humorously.

You felt a small wave of insecurity come over you. You had a habit of wearing long sleeves to hide your arms. You didn’t like the idea that someone could see your chubby arm jiggle when you simply grabbed something, but you were sweating like a pig because it was 100 degrees outside. “I don’t like my arms, " you answered your best friend as you looked at your feet for a second out of embarrassment. You continue to pull up your jean shorts from your ankles as you wrap the belt around your waist.

Jackie didn’t say anything for a moment as she looked you over softly with her buggy brown eyes, and she always hated when you put yourself down for being fat but she wasn’t going to disagree when it was about your feelings about your body. She was always mindful about that.

“I don’t see why you have to overheat; you have limps on the side of your body like everyone else. But the sweater is cute, so I will let off easy this one time for not matching with me this one time, okay.”

You just shake your head jokingly and narrow your eyes, “Other people have arms too?”

She rolls her eyes at you as she finally finishes her shirt. “Oh, haha. You know what I was trying to say.”

“Yeah, whatever.” You giggle as you nudge Jackie’s shoulder, and she returns the giggle with you as you both leave the cabin.

You were stopped by Alilah making a makeshift pad. She sits infront of the fire with the hunting knife in her hands, two of your big pots hang from their hooks on the fireplace crane.

“Hey!” Alilah says with a smile sent both of your ways, pointing the knife to the two pots, one an orangeish brown and the other a deep red, “Bloody Soldiers on the left and breakfast on the right, okay! Don’t mess them up, like Travis did.” Aliliah finished by turning her head to the boy behind her eating his breakfast.

“Okay, you guys are disgusting. I’m-” Travis cringed, getting up from his tree trunk.

“Shut up,” Aliliah replied softly with a chuckling shake of her head.

“Yeah, shut up, dork. You’re the one who wanted to eat the red one, " you say to Travis with a soft eye roll. You were growing to not hate the guy, but he somehow still got on your nerves.

“Whatever.” Travis says as he storms off to the cabin, passing by you. You felt the wind swirl from his movements away from your standing body.

You smile at Alilah and the other girls; Mari stops Jackie beside you, thrusting a bucket in her hands. “How about getting some more water? Breakfast isn’t going anywhere.”

Jackie stood stunned by Mari and looked on with an open mouth. She looked over to you for an answer. You felt satisfied that Jackie had finally been called out for not helping out, but you didn’t like the feeling of her sad brown eyes looking at you.

“Okay, a little bitchy Mari, but yeah, Jackie, go get some water and your morning walk in.” You say it with a smile, sending Mari a sharp look but a smile to Jackie. “You can help Laura Lee with laundry today and get your feet in the water.” You offered Jackie with a soft voice to lure her into trying it out.

“Okay,” Jackie grumbled, a pout on her lips as she walked away towards the lake.

You felt yourself pause at the fact that Jackie wasn’t pulling her own weight, as she hasn’t your whole friendship, and that she is becoming increasingly lazy as the days drag on. You didn’t want to act like you were doing favoritism and make the others jealous, but you couldn’t bring yourself to scold Jackie, at least on your own. You look down to see Shauna staring off where Jackie walked away from, and her eyes slowly traveling to yours. Your eyes communicated the same thing; something needed to be said before it became a bigger problem.

“Here,” Shauna mumbled as she handed you her mug of water. You took a big gulp of it without question. The summer heat was getting to you already this early in the day, and you panted softly as you took the mug from your lips.

“Thank you, Shauna.” You cheer down to her with a smile, then turn to the others around the cabin doing odd jobs like cutting the firewood, eating, or hanging clothes on the clothing line.

“Hey Guys! Good Morning!” You say out to everyone with a big wave of your hand. You look over to everyone, giving you their complete attention. Misty is already raising her hand to ask a question. “Cleaners and Cooks, you are off the hook today! Um, if you have any time, try to find some mud or clay to patch up the crack in the window! And cooks, keep smoking out the jerky; it needs to be completely dry before we can eat it!”

“(Y/n)?” Misty asks politely as she lightly lowers her hand as your eyes meet hers.

“Yes, Misty?”

“I was hoping I could go out and forage today to find some more medicine for our periods, and Ben-”

There was loud snickering in the corner of Mari, Alilah, and Marlissa, and you looked at them with a sharp eye for a moment.

“Have something to add, Mari?”

Mari looks at you with wide eyes for a moment in shock. You would call her out for the second time this morning: “No, but Misty is trying to make a love potion or something!”

“I am not!” Misty flushes with a deep red on her cheeks, her voice laced with shame and embarrassment. It wasn’t the first time Misty was shut down for her requests or mocked for simply standing around, you have grown tired of the bullying Misty has been put through out here.

“Okay, so, you're going to make fun of her for trying to find some pain relief while we are all on our periods, Mari?”

“Well-”

“You’re going to be real happy when Misty finds something that can smooth out your endometriosis, but you just fine making fun of her in the meantime?” You lecture as you talk with your hands and slap them to your sides as you add, “It’s pointless, why say that?”

“(Y/n), I wasn’t trying to say anything like that-”

“Mari. We are all in the same boat. Misty is here with us, and I am happy she is here because all she does is try to help out, as much as anyone else, and she cares. She is the reason some of us are even still alive.” You say to Mari with almost a stoic brow that you felt you had authority over the girls and needed to use it for the team's betterment. Infighting will only cause more unneeded tension. You turn your face from the almost crying Mari, ashamed underclassmen around her, then to Misty.

Misty looks on at you in awe, a creeping smile on her face, awkward, and pushes her glasses closer to her face. The flush on her cheeks didn’t go away with time.

“Misty, do whatever you think is necessary. " You turn your head back to the group, now looking to the ground. “You all will go with her for safety and to build empathy. It seems to be the wilderness skill you all lack.”

“But-” Mari stammered with a soft pout of disgust on her lips.

“What?” You ask her softly, you're eyebrow-raising without your control. You could hear a snickering behind you; you knew Van and Shauna were watching you control the underclassmen with amusement. They always remembered you as someone who was too nice, and seeing you talk sternly yet sweetly to the younger girls made them want to laugh. You didn’t stop the snickering from behind you as a smirk softly tried to come to your lips. It was Mari’s own karma.

“Nothing. Fine.” Mari says as she looks to the ground.

“Okay, great, happy to get that sorted.” You say with a sigh, your hands on your hips, and you look behind yourself to Shauna and Van, trying not to laugh when your eyes meet their amused ones. “Alright, Natalie and I will go mapping until noon. Then, Natalie will go hunting with Travis. Javi, I want you to go wood cutting with Taissa, and Taissa, I want you to look out for any tracks.”

Taissa nods her head at you with a smile when your eyes meet. She sits across from Van now as she eats her breakfast gruel.

Laura Lee raises her hand softly, “May I speak?”

“Of course.”

“Is anyone going to look at the plane? You know, see if it could work. Or use the radio to communicate with someone to rescue us.”

You pale slightly at the thought of returning to the old passenger plane. You said, “I don’t know if it’s safe, but if you felt like you needed to check, go for it. Please don’t try to start it or go inside of it too much. Read the book if you want.”

Laura Lee smiled and nodded her head, “Already on it.”

You smile back, “Okay, just don’t hurt yourself.”

“God willing.” Laura Lee agreed with an earnestness that made you smile more.

“Okay. Alright, is there anything else? Except mending clothes and cleaning our rags?” You ask the group as Jackie struggles behind you with the bucket full of water. No one had anything else to add so the morning announcement ending unceremoniously.

“Fuck.” Jackie gasped from behind you as she leaned over the bucket. Van and Taissa share sharp looks of annoyance at Jackie’s panting, just proving their thoughts about Jackie being lazy. It made you feel bad as you didn’t know what to do. You sent her to do her chores, and she could barely do them. Everyone looked to you to correct her, but you didn’t even know how to confront those thoughts.

Shauna stands up, notices the looks, and comes to Jackie’s on a mission: “Hey, do you need a hand?”

“No, it’s okay.” Jackie sighed. “I got it.”

Jackie flexed her aching wrist as you approached the conversation with your best friends, “Why are you so chipper? Don’t you have a blood sacrifice between your legs like the rest of us?” Jackie asked Shauna with a soft concern in her eyes as she rubbed her wrist. You turn your head to Shauna with your head tilted a little, and the memory of her not having a period with you the first month comes to mind.

“Um, I’m late this month,” Shauna replied quickly. “Uh, we were in a plane crash. It’s probably just stress.”

You nod your head beside Jackie as you accept her response. “I didn’t even have a period our first month, but it came back, it’s kicking my ass now.”

“Yeah, lucky you’re a virgin or we’d really have to worry.’ Jackie chuckles as she smiles at Shauna and yourself, leaning down to get the bucket. “Anyways, enjoy it while it lasts, I guess. This rag situation is a fucking horror show.”

“I know! I had to make myself 6 two days ago because I couldn’t stop bleeding. I wanted to die!” You joke to Jackie as she walks to the cabin to put up the water, Jackie laughs with a snort as she struggles away. You turn your head to Shauna to see if she thought it was funny too only to see her staring blankly at Jackie’s back.

“Hey, you okay, Shauna?” You ask her with your hand coming to her shoulder.

She tried to smile as pushed your hand away, “Yeah. I just have to get some water.”

She walks away as Van approaches you. You don’t even get to move an inch as Van comes over to you and says, “Hey, can I help you go fishing today? I wanted to give it a try on the pole.”

You laugh softly, “What? But, yeah okay! You can come whenever you want you don’t have to ask, Van!”

“Well, I just wanted to make sure you wanted to hang out with me for a while.”

“Of course, Van, you're my friend.” You smile and touch her arm softly, and you can see Taissa looking at the two of you talking. “I can tell you all my secrets now.”

“Oh, (Y/n), has secrets? I didn’t think you could keep a secret.”

“What do you even mean by that?” You question with a smile on your lips and a chuckle in your voice.

“I don’t know, how about when we were smoking in the back of the cabin, and you told everyone you have little stories about Vampires.”

You blush in embarrassment, “Oh my god, Shut up, please!”

Van laughs as Taissa walks by you two with five cut logs for firewood. As she passes, she says, “Hey, I just beat your record.”

“What?”

“I carried more than four logs of wood!” Taissa stuck her tongue out to you as she snickered. She’s mentioning the logs you were carrying when you found them kissing.

“Oh, what the fuck ever!” You laugh at everyone and turn your back to walk away to go to the bathroom.

‘21

You: Callie is home now. But yeah, she slept over my house because she was having some friend drama. Shauna: Did she tell you what it was about? You: Not really, and to be honest its very petty stuff. You: Some girl is talking about how Callie is being fake for being nice to her even though she is friends with her boyfriends ex Shauna: Okay, that makes me feel better but I wished you had called me You: Callie came into the house screaming and upset, and we talked for hours and by time I could call you I knocked out You: I’m old now Shauna: We’re the same age! You: We’r so old Shauna: *We’re You: fuck you Shauna: whatever loser You: Callie picked out my outfit for the romance convention You: and the reunion You: She found my New York clothes Shauna: Oh she found the good stuff Shauna: You’re going to the reunion? You: Are you? You: I don’t know if I can go if you don’t. I don’t want to be the only one there, you know. Shauna: Are you going to brunch?

You pause as you read your text. God, it’s almost Jackie’s 43rd birthday.

You put your phone down on your lap as you sit in the driver's seat of your car. You wanted to text Shauna when you dropped off Callie. You were getting ready to leave after making Callie lunch when you got a call from Misty. You couldn’t help but sigh a little when you saw her call you again, making it about 10 times since you left the car with her—after impulsivity, eating her out in her driver’s seat. You knew she meant well, and she was lonely. She couldn’t help how creepy she came off as.

She told you to meet up with her at Natalie's hotel, which you told her you couldn’t go to because of how tense it was between you two last time.

Misty asked again, promising it was only to figure out what had happened to Travis. The guilt in your stomach didn’t let you disagree that you owed Travis this, even if you knew there was no killer deep down. It was himself. He couldn’t take it anymore. You couldn’t blame him. You remember how much you hated him at first, and how he grew to be a friend out there in the woods. You remember a lot about him you wish to forget, but some you hold dear. He was gentle when it counted.

So, You turn towards Natalies, and with your luck, you got there before Misty. You knew you needed to face Natalie again and be honest about how you were far too brutal with her the last time you spoke.

You kiss your teeth, reapply lip gloss, and slap your mirror shut. You hated it when you were in drama with them.

You knock on her door politely as you have your emotions under control.

Natalie opens the door with narrow eyes and sharply asks, “What are you doing here?”

“Misty told me we needed to meet for something related to Travis.” You pause and try to smile at her. Then you ask, “How are you holding up?”

“Why are you here?”

You tilt your head and feel confused yourself, “I guess because I want to get answers to what you were right about. And also, because I didn’t like how we last spoke.”

Natalie leaned on her door and looked deeply at you. She knew you were being honest, "Like it always does.”

You shrug as her words bring back many memories—before the crash, in the woods, and after—good moments and bad. “Well, I will always love you even if I can’t be there for you. I am here now. I want to support you and Travis, " you say to her and smile again. This one came from something deeper in you than just this moment.

She gives you a smile back. Maybe the cycle you shared with her wasn’t healthy, but none of your relationships were. She opens the door to let you in, and you take a seat on her bed without question.

She just stands there and looks at you with pursed lips like Natalie is trying to find words for you. “I hope you know I get why you did go with Misty. I just didn’t know how to respond to it all.”

“It’s okay, I was just really testy that day for some reason. I saw my dad and it just- yeah, I’m sorry for being so hurtful but someone was lurking to get you to spill.”

“You know I can handle myself.”

“I know. But, I didn’t know if she would be asking about Travis, not the wilderness.” You say to her as you look at your lap and play with your fingers to soothe the small shake. “I didn’t know if you could talk about him with someone looking for answers. I wanted to protect you.”

“Protect my feelings?” Natalie asked, raising her eyebrow mockingly. “You know where that led you before, (y/n). Be careful.”

You chuckle darkly with a shake of your head. Fucking bitch.

“Okay, will do, my queen.” You smirked with your mock back to her. You didn’t need Natalie of all people, to tell you about your habit of overweighing others over yourself.

There was a knock at the door. It was in Morse code.

“ I told you we didn’t need a code.” Natalie spat as she opened the hotel door for Misty.

“I’ve got good news and bad news.” Misty cheers as she hands Natalie a pink present with green tissue on the top. Walking inside of the room.

“Which one is this?”

“No, open it,” Misty says. She turns in the motel room, smiles as she sees you sitting on the bed, and waves to you. You think she is excited to be inside Natalie’s room finally. You smile back and wave, telling her you and Natalie are alright now. “It’s an Aroma Diffuser. Ylang-ylang with a hint of gardenia, subtropical florals are very, very uplifting.”

Natalie opens the box as Misty speaks. She looks over the owl diffuser and then at you as you watch the women walk around the room. Misty is indifferent to Natalie opening the present and looks around the room curiously. She opens a little file to see what is inside. “Good to know. What’s the bad news?”

“Well, uh, my contact can access the files, but he’s a bit of a D-bag.”

“Who is this person, exactly?” Natalie asked as she looked over Misty’s body.

“We only know each other by our Citizen Detective chat handles. He’s mad at me because I didn’t tell him it was a police file,” She paused to push up her glasses, “so now he wants to meet in public to ‘discuss’ the terms of the exchange.”

Natalie looks at you quickly, the two of you share a look for a millisecond as you both process the information. “Oh, we’ll meet all right.” Natalie chuckles.

“Is that going to work, Nat?” You ask as you loom over Natalie’s crouching figure; she is siphoning gas from a car outside the chinese restaurant. Misty anxiously standing beside you as the both of you try to hide Natalie’s body from onlookers.

“I mean, most restaurants won’t let you bring in drinks or food or anything." Misty adds as she hands Natalie the mobile coffee cup. As she inserts the tube to fill it, Natalie spits the little that got into her mouth.

“I don’t know, you tell me, guys.” Natalie says to both of you as she fulls up the cup. “I’ve still got that rifle in the truck.”

“Well, I don’t know how we’d get that into the restaurant,” Misty asks, disappointed that she hasn't figured out why the gun should be used instead. You pale at the thought of the gun. Natalie sighs.

The three of you walk into the restaurant with a swayer you haven’t felt in years, maybe since you were a young woman clubbing in New York. The restaurant was lit in red and held tiny lanterns on the ceiling of the place, divers between every table. You find a single man sitting alone at a table.

You smile as you approach the table and sit beside the man with the cup in your hands. You say in your best sexy voice to the man with a ponytail, “Stallion99?”

“African Gray?” He asks you back as he looks at the two other women across the table.

“Yeah, that's her.” You point to him carelessly to Misty as you smile wider, his eyes lock into yours and back to Misty, then back to yours and a glance down to your breasts.

“I’m African gray, " Misty said as she looked at the two of you. You let your hand snake on his shoulder with a soft squeeze.

“I…” He looked flustered at you, then glanced back at Misty and said, “I didn’t authorize anyone else to come to this meeting.” He whispered to Misty, leaning over the table slightly so she could hear him. Your hand ran to the back of his neck, and you saw the touch-starved goosebumps on his skin prickle.

“Well, cool out. I can vouch for them.” Misty whispered hissed back to him as she tried to look cool in front of Natalie and yourself.

“Oh my god. Just tell us what you want.” Natalie sighs as she stares the man down.

“I want in.”

You laugh out loud, out of control, looking at him with raised eyebrows and a mocking smirk. It unsettled the man, and the other people in the restaurant, but the two other women looked just as amused. Who, in their right mind, would want to be with the yellowjackets?

“On what?”

“You operation. The stiff in this file, I looked him up, and he doesn’t exist.”

“No shit, ‘cause he’s dead. And he’s none of your goddamn business. So you should just give us the file to look after it.” Natalie slowly spoke. You knew her threat was deep as you looked over at the man. He’s not taking it seriously. Your finger playfully unscrews the cap of the coffee mug.

“What’s it worth to you?”

“You have no idea.” You giggle a little when you slowly pour out the gas onto his crouch, wetting his pants. He reacts quickly, trying to stop the pouring with a grunt, “What the hell?”

“If the question is, “Is me lighting your dick on fire and going to jail worth me getting my hands on that file’” Natalie says as she pulls out her lighter and lights it without hesitation. She stares him down from across the table with her sharp blue eyes.

“You guys are fucking crazy! Here!” he pulls a flash drive out of his breast pocket and gives it to Natalie, you pull away from him in the booth. Natalie and Misty quickly get up and start to leave. You do the say and send the man a quick, “Sorry, it’s really important!” as you rush behind the girls—a small giggle in your throat.

“You should ask that guy out. You two have so much in common,” Natalie chuckles jokingly to Misty. Her eyes find you quickly as you laugh a little with the two women. Misty scoffs beside you two with a shake of her head, and you can’t help but giggle a little at her face.

‘96

You walk peacefully beside Natalie through the greenery, looking up at the leaves above you. Natalie looks down at her shoes as she adjusts the rifle strap. She looks around for tracks, but she is still learning them.

“Natalie?” you ask as you look at the blonde bottle. You have felt nervous whenever you have been around her lately. You felt your heart beat hard against your chest, and you could feel a little lump form in your throat.

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever gone camping before all this?”

Natalie chuckled and shook her head, amused. “With my big happy family, we always go camping at national parks every summer.” She darkly jokes with a rasp you only heard when she was trying to be tough. You felt like she was mocking you a little bit as you felt your eyebrow furrow and realized she was technically talking about you and your family before you could speak. “Shit, sorry, I wasn’t making fun of you, I was trying to joke about my own fucked up family.”

“I didn’t think you meant it.” You reassure her as you look at her with round eyes, trying not to have her hurt feelings. You felt so better and not offended after seeing Natalie try to fix her fuck up.

“You don’t have to lie for my sake.” Natalie stops walking and looks at you with hurt eyes. Her blue eyes, looking into yours, melting your heart.

“I’m not, I just give you the benefit of the doubt, I know you wouldn’t hurt my feelings on purpose. You were just being sarcastic.” You smile again and touch her arm to reassure her that her comment didn’t hurt your feelings deeply.

Natalie looked over your face slowly, as if she couldn’t trust your response. “Why are you so nice? I know I didn’t mean it, but it sounded like I was talking shit about you. You know you can be a bitch to me, right?”

You chuckle, and a smile grows as you shrug, “Natalie, why would I do that?”

“I don’t know! Just don’t let me walk all over you, it pisses me off.” She says with a raised eyebrow, she just looks over at you in a judgemental way.

You raise your eyebrow at the energy of her getting cagey with you being kind to her, you let your lips purse as you say to her, “I’m not letting you walk all over me. I am just being a good friend. I know you, Natalie, so you weren’t trying to put me down. Just drop it if you are going to be weird.”

“You know what? Let's be honest since we’re stuck out here and have all the time in the world. What's the game?” Natalie asked you with narrowed eyes, resting her hand on her hip. She was studying you, and she didn’t trust what she saw.

“What game?” you ask, offended. “Why are you giving me the fifth degree for asking if you ever went camping?”

“I’m not. I just don’t know how you can be so nice when there isn’t any reason for it. I don’t trust it.”

“What the fuck, Natalie?!” You yelled as your eyes widened in shock. You take a step back from her and look her over. What happened to the girl you would flirt with? “I can’t be myself without you acting like I am pretending! I don’t understand-”

“It’s not normal for people to be this kind without getting something it. For, like, the first year of our friendship, I thought you were being fake.”

You felt your heart sink into your stomach and your throat dry up. You wanted to cry but you were so overwhelmed with how Natalie was talking to you, “I don’t-”

“I’m not trying to be mean, I’m being honest. You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met, and I don’t know if it’s real or if I’m the messed up one for not knowing people could be so nice.” Natalie says, her voice softer as she continues to speak. Her eyes were looking straight into yours, and you wanted to explode with all the emotions going through your body. “I never went camping, by the way. I have slept outside before because my parents locked the doors. I slept outside in my trailer’s shed.”

You paused as you looked at her in sadness. “I didn’t mean to bring up something sad for you.”

“Almost everything about me is sad compared to you,” Natalie replied, looking at your face softly. You couldn’t describe the air around you two at this moment.

“I don’t think so.” You mumble out as you take a step back, and your back hits a tree. You keep your eyes locked onto Natalie’s for a moment as you try to think. “I think you’re one of the coolest person here.”

Natalie smirked softly as she took a step forward. “Oh yeah? Well, I think you’re the prettiest. And the sweetest.”

You blush at those words and shy away as if trying to understand why she would say that.

Before you can react, Natalie’s hand cups your cheek to face her again, and she leans down to kiss you against the tree. Her other hand planted against the tree's bark and caged you into the kiss.

You couldn’t help but let your body answer for you as your hand came to the back of her bottle blonde hair, pushing her closer to your body.

Your body arches against the tree, and when Natalie lays a hand on your cheek and onto your left breast, a soft moan comes out of your throat out of excitement. Your body delights in her caresses as you let her tongue enter your mouth.

Her hands softly rub against the fabric of your shirt and bra, and your nipple hardens under her touch. Her fingers knowingly pinch the tent made under her touch as she raspily chuckles, “You like me touching you like this?”

“Y-yeah.” You stutter as you pull her into another kiss. The hot summer sun made your skin sticky as you touched each other but it didn’t stop your lust from taking over your mind. “I’ve thought about this a million times.” You say in between kisses as you feel Natalie slide her hand down from your breast over your plush stomach, to your pants button.

Your mind went blind in confusion and passion. You didn’t understand why you two were dry-humping against a tree; nothing you had discussed before made the events happen. Nothing this morning hinted at this possibility.

You moan loudly as Natalie pushes her hand down your pants and pushes your underwear under her fingers, her fingers gently rubbing in circles on your clit. You groan as you instinctually roll your hips against her touch.

Natalie shushes you quietly in your ear, her hand gently goes down until her two fingers enter your greedy cunt. She thrust her fingers into you recklessly and viciously. “That’s right, good girl, take it from me.” She whispers darkly into your ear as you try to bite your lip to hold in your screams.

Ah. Ah. Ah~

You couldn’t help yourself as you let your sexual frustrations completely melt away with each delicious thrust, you felt your shirt pulled up to your neck and Natalie’s needy hands recklessly grabbing your bra away from your breast. Her lips attached themselves hungrily to your hardened nipple as she owned it as she harshly sucked onto the tender flesh.

You let out a muffled scream into your hands as you trembled under her touch, as an orgasm rips through you. Your eyes close tight as your thighs shake violently when Natalie doesn’t relent her thrusting fingers, Natalie chuckles softly as she looks up at your pleasureful face, “Good, good girl, cum on me, that’s right.” She whispers as she rubs her free hand on your thigh, touching the bare flesh in reverence.

You pant as you slowly look down at her, and you pull her into another kiss. This one felt romantic and blissful, like you had always imagined with Natalie.

You let your hand caress down her shoulder to her chest, until you got to her pants button. You wanted to do to her what she did to you. But as your finger starts to pull her shirt from under her jean shorts, however, her hand softly pushes yours away.

As you pull away with a smile on your lips, you notice the slight drop in Natalies.

It made your heart drop.

“What’s wrong?” You ask as you caress Natalie’s cheek. You leaned against the tree for a moment to support your almost jelly-like legs.

“I, uh,” Natalie stumbles as she took a step back. She wipes her hand of you, a clear slick with a pink tint to it, on her shorts and looks at the unbuttoned fly of your pants. There was an almost panic in her eyes, “I like Travis.” she blurted out to you. Your high instantly sobering up.

The air got sucked out of the forest. You felt like you were stabbed in the heart. You wanted to cry.

You smile, hiding your disappointment and heartbreak as best you can in the moment, you blink slowly as you think, “I-I, uh, I know. I saw you give Travis heart eyes last time you got a deer. Don’t-” You say as you quickly try to button yourself up. “Don’t worry about it! We just got wild, it’s okay. I’m sure guys like Travis like this type of thing!”

You wanted to vomit. This was wrong. She was supposed to like you. She just fucked you. She took your virginity, and you couldn’t help yourself from getting upset inside. You try to keep your eyes off of her so she doesn’t see how hurt you are. How much this meant to you.

It broke your heart knowing this was just a hook-up for Natalie. A moment in the woods to forget about: she was just playing with you this whole time.

“(y/n), I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Natalie tries to say as she comes closer to you but hesitates.

“I’m okay! It’s all good-” you try to say without your voice breaking, but it fails as you get to the end. You wanted to sob. “I get it! You are straight and like Travis, and I am your gay friend. I’m okay with that.”

“(y/n), I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just have gotten feelings for Travis since we started hunting and-”

You couldn’t hear another word without wanting to sob. You put on your mask as best you could.

You straighten out your shirt and tell her with a smile, “It’s okay. I get it. Go to Travis.” You say with as much kindness as you could find. “It was just a little moment between me and you, and he doesn’t have to know. Just go hunting. It’s past noon.” You say as you try to find a way to run away from all of this. You blink a lot, and no tears appear in your dry eyes.

You knew this was going to happen.

You knew no one really wanted you.

“Okay…” Natalie said as she started to take a step back. She looked hurt and confused, a mix of emotions that she had caused. “I’ll be back later. See you then.”

“See you then.” You quickly say as you immediately turn around to walk away. You felt your face twist and your body shake softly as you tried to hold back your cries. You refuse to cry anymore out here.

It doesn’t take long for your legs to take you back to the cabin, and you feel like something is sitting on your shoulder again. Now, another is attached to your chest.

You look over at the fire and the two pots. Akilah is cleaning the cooking pot of all the morning's soup, and you see that the period pad pot is unchanged from this morning. As you walk to the camp, a metallic, musky, Ammonia-like odor comes from the pot.

You wanted to act like nothing had changed, like you were still the same as you were a few hours ago, “Hey, Akilah, we need to clean this pot. It’s fucking gross.” You say as you poke a stick into the pot to pick out the washing pads. You scrunched up your nose. You try to act as nonchalant as possible.

“Sorry, it was so much more heavier than this one,” Akilah says quickly as she comes over to you without a question. The underclassmen were always willing to do what you asked them to do, and you thought it had to be with how you treated them sweetly and comforted them when they cried. You felt like their older sister.

“It’s okay; take the other end, " you say as you point to the handle on the other end. You lift the hot pot from the fireplace, panting a little as you walk towards a berry bush by the cabin.

You both placed the pot over the bush and poured the red water onto the leaves. The dirt below it was wet, drinking up every drop you poured.

“Why do we even pour this on the bushes? It just seems like extra work.” Akilah whined and panted as the two of you let the pot down for a moment.

“It helps the berries. The iron helps it-” You pant as you start to pick it back up again, “There will be more berries because of the iron in the blood.”

As you walk back up to the cabin, holding onto the big pot with Akiliah and looking down at your shoes in almost numbness from everything that happened, you hear Mari screaming from within the cabin. Jackie and Shauna sit at the fireplace, and Laura hangs laundry. They all turn to see the commotion. You and Akilah put the pot off to the side of the fireplace.

“Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off!” Mari panics as she runs out the front door. She shakes her shirt so that something can fall out of it.

You rush over to her with all the other girls circling her. “Hey! Hang on! Hey! What's wrong!” you say to her as you help her pull up her shirt. A memory of lifting Natalie’s shirt comes to mind as you try to push it aside, ashamed, pulling out Mari’s tucked-in shirt.

“I don’t know!” Mari groans as she still twitches and writhes in spot. Akilah comes to the both of you, as does Shauna, as everyone starts to fuss over Mari. “I-I was standing under the trapdoor. But something crawled down my shirt!”

“I don’t see anything!” You say to Mari as everyone except the hunters starts to circle in on the situation.

“It’s fine. There’s nothing there, Mari!” Shauna tried to reassure her, with a hand on Mari’s shoulder.

“There’s nothing there,” Akilah added to it.

Mari slowly calms down as she stares at Shauna in disbelief, “But-”

“Must have been the ghost.” Taissa dryly stated on the porch, arms crossed and a smirk growing on her lips.

Mari turns her head sharply at Taissa with fear on her face. You try to rub her shoulder to soothe the fear, but you look over at Taissa with sharp eyes. “Don’t say that!” Mari demanded softly, she was afraid. You know that Mari comes from a superstitious family and believes full-heartedly that the house has a spirit.

“Wh- You guys!” Jackie comes in with a smile, an eureka face plastered on Jackie’s. She gasps as she jumps into the inner circle, “Okay, you guys, I just had a brainstorm. We should have a Seance.”

You felt your head unconsciously shake, you didn’t want a seance. You didn’t want to feed the fears of the others and make things harder for you all, someone was already having mental health episodes daily, and you didn’t want them to get worse. But you looked up quickly to see how proud Jackie was of her idea and having a job she could do for everyone, you stopped it before anyone could see. Fuck. You thought. I’ll just do whatever Jackie wants.

Taissa and Van laugh at first, then look at Jackie in disbelief. “That’s a terrible idea. Also, we’re not in middle school.”

“But remember how fun this shit used to be?” Jackie offered, raising her eyebrows, because she really wanted to do the seance. “Besides, maybe if we can laugh about this, then it would help,” Jackie added.

“The occult is no laughing matter.” Laura Lee bluntly stated, disapproving of the entire idea.

“It’s not the occult, Laura Lee. It’s a game. Come on, Shauna, (y/n), tell them. It’ll be fun.” Jackie replies, now insisting that everyone goes along. She looks at both of you as backup, and you both crumble to the pressure of her eyes.

“Um…” Shauna looks over at everyone and says, “Well, I mean, it’s not like we have anything better to do. And maybe this dead guy can give us some life advice.” She says as she looks over to Van and Tai. Both laugh and nod their head, “Okay.” Van relented.

“So, it’s settled. Tonight, the attic.” She says as she points to everyone, now amused by the situation. “We make contact.”

Everyone giggles softly except Laura Lee who looks down angrily. You rub her shoulder and say, “Can you pray for us downstairs while we do it? To protect us if that's what you believe.”

“I will be praying for everyone’s soul,” Laura Lee says seriously as she walks away in a huff, her hands in surrender. You chuckle softly at her, and the others giggle a little harder at the seriousness of the situation.

‘21

Shauna: You’re never going to believe this Shauna: it’s so messed up. Shauna: I’m a bad mom. You: Omg what happened? Shauna: I went to the club with Adam. You: Why are you still talking to him? Shauna: I DON’T KNOW Shauna: I went out with him because Jeff was gone again and we ran into Callie You: NO You: NO YOU DIDNT Shauna: yep Shauna: She was wearing Jackie’s uniform as a costume. You: WHAT THE FUCK!! SHAUNA!! You: I AM GOING TO GIVE HER HELL NEXT TIME I SEE HER Shauna: She was on Molly, too. Shauna: I don’t know what to do anymore. She’s out of control, but so am I. I am just so messed up from her wearing that uniform and brunch tomorrow. You: I can Imagine.

You sit on the toilet in Natalie’s hotel room, and you quickly throw away your tampon into the trash can before you flush the toilet. You wash your hands and quickly rejoin the others as they look over the folders worth of papers you had to print at Misty’s house.

You didn’t have much of a stomach to look at the autopsy photos. You wanted to cry when you read that Rosa Martinez picked up his ashes as soon as she could. His mother survived him, and there was no one to survive her. You could only think of her pain of losing everyone in her family, surviving only by memories 25 years ago. You wondered if she ever moved on; if she lived a new life after you all came back.

“Hey guys, I am ordering Chinese food. Do you want some?” you ask as you leave the bathroom, pulling up the number on your phone.

“Really? Right now?” Natalie asked you with a look of disbelief, she was looking at his autopsy photos.

“Yeah, I’m starving. Misty?”

“Steak fried rice and wonton soup, please.” Misty asked with a smile as she read over the coroner's report. His death was ruled a suicide by asphyxiation with construction equipment. The police of his country didn’t have to look too hard to see that he had changed his name, he was once a part of the yellowjacket plane crash and said that was the reason for his suicide. It was cut and dry. It was honest in your opinion.

“Okay, Natalie, you're getting the same. Are you okay with that?” You ask as you start to diel the chinese place down the road.

“Yeah, sure.” Natalie dismissively says.

“Well, You can save it for late when you're hungry then.”

“Okay, mom.” Natalie sassed as she continued to look at the photos.

You rolled your eyes as you cheerfully answered the phone. Then, you ordered everyone their food and yourself, adding egg rolls to everyone’s order.

You smile and sit back on the bed, looking over the papers. You see, there were still more photos and reports on him in the folder. He went to a rehab clinic about 3 years ago, and he went to the hospital the past year for acute bronchitis. You decided to look at the crime scene photos instead, the ones without his body in them.

You noticed something that raised your eyebrow. A little black smudge was on every single photo. You couldn’t turn your face away from it. It was in all of them.

“Guys?” You say out loud as you lay out one of the photos for the two other women to see. “What’s that thing? It’s in all of them.”

You put another photo out that was connected to the other one.

“What, that smudge?”

“And here,” Misty whispers beside you, looming over your body a little to look over, her finger pointing to another. “Does that look like wax?” Misty asked.

Then, Misty pulls the photos from your hands and starts to look over the landscape of the photos. She started to line them up perfectly and continued placing the images down one by one. She pulls out a sharpie and starts to connect the smudges.

Natalie and you stand behind her just watching as Misty work her magic, and she intensely focuses as she lines the marks together.

First, there is the circle, then a triangle, with two arms off to the side, one short on the left and the other all the way through the triangle, and then the hook at the bottom.

You wanted to vomit.

“This is bad.” Natalie says anxiously beside you, swaying, arms crossed. “This is so wrong. Travis didn’t believe in any of this shit.”

You raised an eyebrow at that. You didn’t want to correct Natalie.

“Then why is it in the place where he died?” Misty asked back blankly.

“I don’t know, but I promise you, he did not put it there.”

You wanted to laugh, and you knew he did. You knew Travis very well—not in your later years, but out there. You remembered his prayers and devotion, which made you want to vomit more.

Knock! Knock!

You felt a cold wave come over you as the knocks startled your overwhelmed body. You quickly grabbed the money in your pocket and opened the door, trying desperately not to cry, you didn’t want to see that symbol. “Thank you, keep the change.” You say as evenly as you can, but it failed, you close the door before you feel your eyes damn over.

You turned back to Misty and said, “Sorry, I am still not ready to see that thing sometimes—uah—you know.” Your breathe gaves out as you led your hand over your racing heart.

Your heart felt excited and terrified.

Misty comes over to you with wide eyes, taking the food out of your hands, “Are you alright? You’re crying?”

You didn’t realize your eyes were just rivering tears without you blinking. You haven’t felt this kind of dread since the wilderness. Unconsciously crying, your face stayed the same. Embarrassment comes over you as a rush of darkness curls in your stomach. “I-I-I don’t un-understand-” You studdered out as your breath panicked and tightened at your throat. Natalie then approaches you with a hand on your shoulder, concerned. The two of them have seen you like this before.

A cold sweat comes over you, and your breathing is shortens more as you heave your chest; an unpleasant tingling engulfs your entire body as you tremble in the corner of the room. Your eyes were blurry from your tears as you were coughing out apologies for crying and acting crazy.

Misty goes to her purse as you slide down the wall. You hold your chest, and Natalie stays beside you, holding your shoulder and breathing deeply into your face. Your eyes lock together as she tells you through the mental fog, “Breathe. It’s okay.”

You breathe slowly as you look deeply into her eyes. Misty comes back with a paper lunch bag, and you are so grateful Misty was there. You start breathing in the bag and watching the bag expand with your air, calming you down slowly.

Scrrrrappppeee! Scrrrapppeee!!

You screamed as the trees outside of Natalie's hotel room scratched the window. You push the two women away and shout. You feel hot tears burning your crazed eyes, “Stop! Stop! I don’t want to hear it!”

Laisse l'obscurité te libérer.

You wail as you hear the voice through the leaves. You have forgotten how to hear the voices in the leaves since you have been back, you knew they were in your head.

“(Y/n)-” Natalie cupped your cheeks, trying to calm you down as you sob violently, weakening and pushing her off of you.

“It’s talking to me! Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!” You sob helplessly into Natalie’s hands as you fall to the floor, pressing your forehead to the ground. “I had a brain tumor- I had enough! There is nothing outside! There is nothing outside! There is nothing outside! It is not here. (y/n) stop, please-” You whisper to yourself as you pathetically cry to the ground, trying to stop the panic attack.

Laisse l'obscurité te libérer.

The two women standing over you, both have tears from their eyes as they see you age regress. They've seen you panic like this before. They see you wail as you are now. It wasn’t pleasant to see you now as a stable, the most stable in their eyes, adult crying like a child.

The leaves outside whistle in the wind as the tree knocks on the window. You fearfully sob in your hands on the ground. “I-I’m sorry! I don’t mean to-”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Natalie says behind you as she kneels down and rubs your back. She knows how much the wilderness took from you and how much all of this would weigh on you, but she doesn’t see past it. She knows you will keep pushing on even after this, but she cannot help but pity you now. She pulls you up and hugs you, and Misty quickly jumps in as well. You sob into Natalie’s neck.

“The leaves won’t stop talking-”

“They are just leaves. They're not saying anything.” Natalie stated that she was trying to kill the idea before it came closer to her adult life. “We’re home, and we are safe. It is going to storm, and the trees aren’t talking to you.” She sincerely says, knowing that what you experienced in the woods felt real to you. You couldn’t help but believe what you saw and heard from the others, your brain was vulnerable. It still was.

You tremble as you hug her close, and Misty pets your hair. Misty says, “You’re safe and healthy, the trees are just moving in the wind. I promise, you're safe.”

You wanted to vomit as you saw the tree in the window sway to the heavy wind like it was waving at you and smiling.

‘96

Jackie, Shauna, and you all worked on decorating the unused attic to prepare for the seance. Although you didn’t want to help, you knew this meant a lot to Jackie, so you stayed by her side and helped, as you always have in your life.

“No, no, no. Not like that.” Jackie waved her hand over to Shauna as she was placing down candles. “Put them on the marks that are already here. This symbol thing is totally seance-y.” She says as she places a candle on the mark with a little thud for dramatic effect.

You chuckle as you shake your head, you pull up a blanket over the mirror in the back of the room. You giggle a little as you pull out some crystals your mom put in your carry-o for good luck. Your mom was really into nature and natural gems, decorating your house with them and putting them in your bags and her own. Your dad had a tigers’ eye necklace just because your mom told him to. Funny enough, you didn’t have a crystal for safe travel, but you did have one for protection so that was fair enough. You placed it in the middle of the circle.

“Laura Lee will have a seizure if she sees this.” You joke as you look around the room, and Shauna starts to place the candles on the carved marks.

“Isn’t this kind of, like, a waste of candles?” Shauna says to Jackie, ignoring you. You roll your eyes at the familiar feeling crawling up your back.

“Not if we’re getting rid of a ghost.” Jackie scoffs, as she shrugs her shoulders.

You jokingly roll your eyes, “Yeah. Shauna.” You mock as you put up little homemade charms the others made tonight to hang from the ceiling.

Shauna softly laughs, looking down. “Yeah, whatever.” She does as Jackie says, circling the candles in the places where the craved symbol is on the floor.

As the two finish up, you pause momentarily and ask Jackie, “Isn’t it a little creepy that we will be in the middle where the mummy was?”

“Yeah, but it just adds to the ambiance. Come on, you guys can’t seriously believe there is a ghost in here?” Jackie asked as she stood up, dusting off her hands. “If there was a ghost in here, he’s long gone. He died in here a long time ago, he would have gotten bored of the cabin.”

You chuckle and shake your head, “I am scared. I don’t like messing with this stuff you know.”

“What? Because one time, the Ouija board spelled out your mom’s name.”

“Yeah, and 4 months later she got cancer!” you defended and you pointed to Jackie. You then look up jokingly to add, “Well, she had cancer a long time before that so it doesn’t matter! The board is creepy!”

Jackie rolled her eyes and said to you sarcastically, “Can you just call people up here to do the damn thing.”

You chuckle and nod, heading to the door. You call down the attic steps that it is about to begin if anyone wants to talk to the dead guy. Laura Lee bitterly states that she will be reading her Bible downstairs, and if anyone wants to read with her, it only makes more people come up the stairs, except Taissa and Javi.

Almost everyone comes upstairs, smiling at you as you greet them at the door. Even Natalie eventually comes up. When she comes up the steps, you smile at her with a blush coming to your cheeks.

When your smile meets her eyes, she looks away sharply. Then, she moves away from the stairs, you, as quickly as possible.

You felt a dagger stabbed you in the heart again.

You shouldn’t have told her your feelings.

You shouldn’t have let her hand down your pants.

“You didn’t have anything better to do. And it felt good.“ you thought as you sat down next to Lottie and behind the standing Shauna. You saw Natalie from across the way next to Travis and bitterly thought, “If I’m nothing to you, you’re nothing to me either, asshole.”

Lottie looks at you with a serious face and softly touches your arm. “It’s going to be okay. We might be able to ask him to leave.”

“What?” You snap your head back at Lottie. Then, everyone starts to sit down in a circle.

“You look nervous? Your scared about the ghosts?” Lottie questions as she rubs her hand on your thigh comfortingly.

A memory of Natalie caressing your thigh comes to you as you put your hand on hers to stop it. You hold Lottie's hand for a moment and joke, “If I jump, catch me okay.”

“Okay.” Lottie chuckles as she looks at your hand, holding hers for a moment before letting go of each other. Jackie starts the seance.

“O keeper of this wild and hidden place…” Jackie chants as she swirls her finger in the reddish brown paste and puts her finger on Shauna's forehead. Shauna stood still with a blindfold over her eyes and the butcher knife tied to a long shoelace to act as a pendulum. “We anoint ourselves with blood and earth,” Jackie added, putting a small cross on Shauna's forehead.

She walked away to hand the small bowl to Travis, “Here.”

He doesn’t take it for a second as he stares at her nonchalantly, you roll your eyes deeply at his presence. You were in competition with him?

“It’s just dirt and deer blood. Classic witch recipe. Relax.”

She smiled as he took it, sitting next to him with a big smile. She raised her arms to the ceiling and said, “O spirit, we offer our sister as your instrument. Come to us and speak your peace.”

“It is I,” Shauna states, in a mocking deeper voice, “Jacques.”

Everyone fell into a stifled giggle at her voice. Shauna clears her voice and repeats, “Jacque.” Everyone laughs harder this time to Jackie dropping her arms defected, “Ask your questions. The pendulum will answer them.”

“Okay,” Van says and she hands you the bowl. You look down at the tiny bowl with a small grimace as you dip your finger in it and put a cross on your forehead, passing it to Lottie. Van clears her throat and says, “Dear dead hunter guy… did O.J. do it?”

You laugh as everyone around you giggles as well, Jackie sighs across the circle and says, “Come on, guys, real questions.”

“The veil is thin between our two planes. Ask what is in your heart.”

“I’ll go.” Mari smiles across the way, she holds her hands on her knees as she leans forward, “Is Principal Berzonsky screwing Ms. Dewine?”

You giggle again, feeling in good spirits again and forgetting about the whole Natalie situation, you look forward to the pendulum, and you see it lean towards yes, with Van letting out a little oh.

“It is certain.” Shauna snickers, holding on to the deep voice. Everyone giggles loudly as we hear the amazing gossip.

“Okay! Hunter guy, if we hadn’t crashed, would we have won nationals?” Alilah asks, excited with a smile on her lips, your eyes look back to the pendulum with a smile. It leans towards no, and everyone's boos and giggles come from your throat.

“I don’t believe that!” you bravely stated as you asked, “Now, is our math teacher Mr. Mattz really a pervert for marrying his young wife?”

The pendulum moves quickly and sharply towards yes to your question, it made you shake back with a laugh everyone did as you continued, “So is it true she was once his student!”

It moves back to the center and back to yes sharply again. Everyone erupted in laughter, and you felt yourself fall back onto Lottie a little bit, with tears coming to your eyes. “Of course he is!” You cackle, and everyone continues with the laughs.

“Is Frenchie Deveto’s boobs fake?” Marlissa asks with a big blushing giggling grin.

Natalie chuckled and shook her head. You felt a lull in your happiness while she spoke. “They’re obviously fake. Do you really need a ghost to tell you that?” Natalie asked Marlissa as Javi came up the steps.

You looked away from Natalie to smile at him, which he bashfully shared. Javi sat down next to Natalie and Travis. He was a sweet kid who didn’t talk much, and you always tried to be sweet to him.

“You think?” Mari agreed from across the way. “But who would’ve paid for them? Her parents?”

“I think they got divorced recently. It could have been guilt money.”

“Well, that’s just creepy.” Mari looked at Van in disbelief, and you and Lottie shared a look of humor.

“Your mom and I are splitting up, but don’t worry,” Van mocks a man's voice as she cups her breasts for effect, “‘cause your tits are gonna look amazing!”

Everyone giggles as Van jokes. The pendulum does not move, and it hasn’t since everyone has been joking. Taissa comes up to the attic as Jackie waves her hands around to say, “Guys, guys, okay, focus. Next question.”

Misty raises her hand, and Jackie smiles at her. You smile softly, and Misty politely and shyly wants to participate. “Misty?” Jackie asks.

Misty nervously chuckles and pushes her glasses up. " Um...” She takes a deep breath to calm down. “Dear spirit, I need to know the truth.” Her brown eyes look at you once before nervously shooting back to the ground. “Does the person I like like me back?”

There was a silence caused by pursed lips and trying not to laugh at her, and you couldn’t help but feel pity for Misty. Coach Ben will never like her, and it is clear that she lusts over his every move. It was sad. Jakie rests her chin on her fist and says, “Awh.”

You wanted to laugh loudly at her little comment but bit your lip. You see Taissa sitting in the chair in the corner, the mummy’s chair, and you take a little longer look at her. Her eyes seem lost for a moment as she clunches the arms of the chair tightly.

The pendulum moves towards yes, and Van looks down at it unimpressed, “Okay.”

Travis whistles for Misty, and Natalie slaps his chest in response with a smile on her lips. You wanted to scream. Everyone giggles softly as Misty excitedly takes in the news. “Yes, Misty!” Mari cheers for Misty with a smile, and everyone seems to be actually happy for her a little bit.

“Okay, next question.” Jackie says softly with a smile.

Javi raises his hand with a sad look, and you feel something coming. Jackie’s nods and says, “yeah?”

“Are we all going to die out here?” He asks gloomly. He was dead serious.

The lightness in the room was sucked with that question. You look over at him with concerned eyes, “Why ask that, Javi? We’re doing okay, that is too dark.” You say quickly as you see the pendulum move a little bit. You felt like a mom hiding the grim reality from their kids. You didn’t want the answer to that. You ask loudly before anyone else can speak, “The better question is, Is anyone looking for us?”

The pendulum sharply points towards yes. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, but as we started to look at Javi again for asking such a depressing question, it started to move towards no, then back to yes, as if in a trance, quickly going back and forth. It was shape like an 8.

You feel pressure at the back of your head, and you look behind you quickly towards the window. Nothing was there. You were getting paranoid.

“Okay, an eight? What’s that supposed to mean?” Van asks grumbly, as she hugs her knees towards her chest. She was also getting scared.

“It’s not an eight; it’s an infinity.” Lottie corrected as she looked down at the knife. She looked behind herself too as she also felt the pressure like you just felt, you turn your head, too, on instinct.

“Yeah, okay, Aristotle.” Van snipped back to her best friend, frustration building from fear.

There was nothing but the trees outside. You were about to turn your head back as Lottie let out a bloodcurdling scream.

BOOM!

The window flings open from the outside, slamming against the wall of the attic, blowing out every single candle at once. You scream in response as Shauna drops to the floor in fear, she pulls her blindfold off, as you step back into her, “What the hell!” You scream as everyone in the room yelps and screams in terror.

“Who has the matches?” Jackie panickingly asked the group as she crawled forward. Lottie continues to scream at the top of her lungs. Everyone started to yelp in fear.

Taissa had run cover to close the window behind the two of you.

You come over to Lottie and say shakingly, “It’s okay, there was nothing out there!”

Lottie hyperventilates in your arms as she stares down at the ground in an intense trance. Spit is dripping from her open, panting mouth as her palms press against the wooden floor.

“It’s okay!” You try again and rub Lottie back. Van comes over to you two as she also rubs Lottie’s back, “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Guys, something’s really wrong with her.”

Lottie sobs violently as she grabs the side of her head, she doesn’t blink as she cries, her mouth curling with primal groans.

“I-I don’t think she-” Akilah comes over to look at Lottie and tries to calm her down.

“It wants… It wants…” Lottie sobs as she starts to curl her lip like an animal.

“Misty, what do we do?” Van sternly asks the blonde in the corner, wanting answers on how to fix this.

You stare at Lottie blankly as you don’t know what to do. You just listen to her, “What does it want?”

“IT WANTS!” Lottie yells back as her body starts to tremble under your touch, a layer of sweat lining her face.

“Lottie, I swear to god, if you are fucking with us!” Mari cries as she slowly crawls away. She is horrified. Marlissa and Gen stare beside her in fear. You wanted to rush over to the underclassmen and hug them, make them stop crying. Lottie’s thrashing and screaming made you look back to her.

Her once brown eyes stare into your in a reddish crazed haze. Something like a giggle and sob comes out of her throat as she stares at your face. A pained smile spreading on her pink lips.

“I think she’s, like, possessed,” Akilah says as she tries to hold Lottie's face to see if she is biting her tongue.

“Listen, Lottie, Lottie, Sweetie-” Shauna tries to lure Lottie back to reality, kneeling in front of the girl. “What’s going on? What is ‘it’?” Shauna asks her with her face right next to Lotties.

Lottie groans in pain as her tears rush down. She shakes more as Shauna presses, “More like, what does 'it' want?”

“Hungry.” Lottie sobbed as she stared down to the ground. You followed her eyes, and she was staring at a symbol. “Hungry,” she whispers. She seems to tire for a moment, but she starts to giggle. You freeze at this moment, locked in your own fear. You knew it. This wasn’t fake. Lottie’s eyes looked a little red in the moonlight, like Taissa’s the night before. Lottie shushes the air, as she grabs ahold of your arm. She slowly looks up at your body until her brown eyes into yours, “it’s in you already.” She says as her neck cranes back to Shauna, like she was answering Shauna and not you.

You shake in fear as you look into her eyes.

Something is in her.

Something wasn’t right here.

“Lottie, Knock it off. This isn’t a game.” Taissa hissed, not believing in what was happening.

Lotties eyes look back up to Taissa’s as she whispers, “Il voulait du sang. Il veut toujours du sang, Il veut plus de sang.”

“Is that French?” Marlissa asks the group, pale.

Lottie would have failed French without your notes. You don’t understand. You had the best grade in class, yet you couldn’t speak French like she could in this moment.

This wasn’t right.

“Il voulait du sang. Il veut toujours du sang, Il veut plus de sang.”

“Since when has Lottie ever spoke French?” Natalie asks the group as she stays away from the situation.

“Jackie-(y/n), W-wasn’t she in your class?” Shauna asks both of you, her head snapping from you back to Jackie.

Jackie panics, her arms out in surrender, “Yeah, but she sucks at French.”

“Well, what is she saying?!” Mari asks with a hiss to Jackie.

“It wants blood, always wants blood. It wants more blood.” You try to translate as you try to single out all the other voices besides Lottie chanting one. You just let Lottie’s hand squeeze your one so hard your bones were touching more than they should.

“Il veut plus de sang. Il voulait plus de sang. Le sang coule ici. Ici, ici, il faut…"

“Always wants blood. Something flows. It must… here? Here?” You say with your eyebrows furrowing together tightly in confusion.

“Il voulait plus de sang. Le sang coule ici. Ici, ici, il faut… ”

“Blood flows free here? Here, here, it must—" You tried to understand what she was saying as she abruptly stood up, circling her spot until she saw the window.

She approached the window with a mission: “Ici, ici, il faut… ” Lottie whispered as she gently touched the cold glass.

“There’s blood where Lottie?” Van asks, she follows Lottie closely behind.

“You really have to be encouraging her, Van?” Taissa asks from across the way, deadpan.

Van points a finger at Taissa to shut her up, snapping her head back to Lottie, “Blood here, or out there?”

“le sang féminin nourrit les baies et les nourrit.offrez-lui ce qu'il veut et il se nourrira. tous se nourriront. Ici, ici, il faut!” She whispers as she presses her sweaty palm on the glass.

You can’t bring yourself to say it to the others. You don’t believe what Lottie was saying. The idea you all have been giving offering to some spirit for weeks without knowing disturbed you. “Here. In here.” You say and pause in disgust—your periods.

Lottie turns her head slowly towards you, making eye contact, her eyes wild and complete detached from Lottie, “Laissez les ténèbres vous libérer. Laissez le sang couler et il ne vous décevra jamais. Il a seulement faim comme nous, laissez-le vous consumer. Oui, Oui!” She whispers softly as her eyes twist in contern, she shushes the air as she comes back to the window. “Écouter… Écouter…” she lets the tips of her fingers touch the window.

You ask her, your lip trembling and your eyes filling with tears, everyone watching on with terror, “I am listening. What darkness are you talking about? You don’t make sense! What’s hungry!? The woods?”

Her breath rasps as she looks into the glass, focusing on the wild outside, she whimpers, “You must spill blood. Or else…”

“Or else what, Lottie?” Jackie asks still frozen to the ground. Lottie only pants louder as she doesn’t move from her spot, looking out the window. “Lottie, what are you-”

“Laisse l'obscurité te libérer.” Lottie whispers as she suddenly slams her head into the thin glass with a disgusting crack. Van, Akilah, and yourself coming up behind her quickly. Blood trickles down Lottie's forehead as she wails out to the girls, almost like a child to its mother. Lottie touches her bleed forehead in confusion as she falls to the floor taking the other girls with her.

A roaring thumping up the stairs could be heard as Laura Lee stormed inside the attic. Her face was stoic and serious, and she held her Bible. She was over whatever the hell happened tonight.

“The power of Christ compels you! Begone, Satan!” Laura Lee desperately yells as she holds up her bible to the groaning Lottie. “The power of Christ compels you!”

Lottie countries to wail and groan on the ground demonically as Laura Lee’s eyes panic, “Lottie! Lottie, stop!” She demands that she throw the heavy leather-bound bible onto Lottie’s lap.

Lottie yelps as her eyes widen in shock. Her face regains color within seconds, and she takes a few breaths. “Ow!” She whines as she looks up at Laura Lee in shock and confusion, blood dripping down her cheek dramatically. “What the hell, Laura Lee?”

Everyone stared at the girl in the center. The only sound was people panting, and a relief was washing over everyone.

“Seriously?” Mari demanded Lottie, angry and starting to believe it was all made up. “What the motherfuck just happened?”

Laura Lee doesn’t move as she watches Lottie, completely amazed by her abilities and believing god worked his magic through her as a vessel. Lottie’s face twists in confusion as she lifts her finger to feel the dripping sensation from her nose, she panics a little at the sight of blood.

You wanted to vomit.

“Lottie, do you even remember what just happened? Are you okay?” You ask as you come over to the girl with soft eyes.

You completely believe her just from her eyes. She really thought something had come over her. There was no way she could speak French like that. There was no way Lottie would shove her face into the glass.

“No- I- Why am I bleeding?” Lottie asked, confused as she continued to touch her nose. You look over to the others to silently say to them something you couldn’t figure out. Lottie has gone too far into her delusions.

You hug her shoulder and say as you rub her arms, “Come on, let's get you cleaned up, you hurt yourself. Let's get you to bed.”

You anxiously lay down in your makeshift bed sandwiched between Shauna and Jackie. You felt your eyes stare at the ceiling unnerved to even close your eyes, you held your blanket up to your chin as she listened in on the conversation in the corner. You knew everyone was too scared to go to sleep.

“Do we think it’s still up there?” Akilah nervously asks the group, and she plays with her fingers as she looks down.

Taissa, who was lying just off your left, sprang up and hissed, annoyed, “You all need to stop. There is nothing up there. Lottie has been acting weird for weeks.”

Everyone was silent as you looked around. Then, you saw Van nervously watching over Lottie, her best friend, and Akilah nervously sitting up doing the same. Lottie was deep asleep on her pillow, curled up, with a small wrap around her head from her head wound. Everyone nervously lay down in her bed and tried to act like they weren’t listening.

“Fine!” Taissa says, standing to her feet and taking her pillow and blanket with her. She grabbed her backpack and slung it behind her shoulder, “I’ll prove it.”

“You’re going to sleep up there?” Akilah asks Taissa in disbelief.

“That’s right. Who’s with me?” Taissa states that she turns back to see that no one is following suit with her. Everyone was still scared from earlier.

Laura Lee started whispering a prayer louder in her bed. She was praying for all our souls and for protection from darkness in these woods. Van shakes her head quietly and looks down as she continues to watch over Lottie.

“Fine. More room for me, then.” Taissa sassed as she walked through the floor littered with bodies in their bed. She walked to the cabinet with the ladder to the attic.

No one moved for a moment as she left the room. No one had the courage to come with her; no one was as fearless as Taissa. You felt a pang of guilt come over you as you felt you were partly to blame for everyone's freakout.

Shauna sat up and looked towards the ladder. She whispered to the two of you, “We should go up there with her.”

“In the attic? No frickin’ way!” Jackie says with no hesitation. She shakes her head as she lies on her pillows.

“Well, she shouldn’t be up there alone. I mean if it weren’t for us-”

“Shauna, whatever happened tonight was not because of our dumb seance.”

“But everyone is so freaked out because we wanted to do it.” You added as you played with your cuticles and started to pick them. Your stomach growls.

“Okay but-”

“If you want to sleep up there, fine, be my guest. I’m staying down here.” Jackie stated that she had finished the conversation with the three of you and that you all would stay with her. You felt so much guilt for staying, and now you didn’t want to upset Jackie.

Jackie then huffily turns to her side away from both you and Shauna. You stay still for a moment as Shauna lays back down.

You both just lay down in the shared bed for another 10 minutes before you turn your head to look at Shauna. She was already looking at you and when your eyes met, you decided you would leave at that moment.

You stand up and say to Jackie, “I can’t leave her up there, I don’t want to make anyone worry. I promise I will come back down here tomorrow, but I can’t leave Taissa up there.” You say as you grab your pillow, Shauna is already leaving the maze of beds to the attic. You follow behind as best you can until you climb up the ladder. You see Taissa curled up in her pillow with her blanket up to her chin in fear. She sits up when she sees the two of you.

“We were just going to keep you company,” Shauana says to the two of you as you both stand in the doorway. “If that's okay?”

“We couldn’t let you sleep alone up here.” You add as you walk closer to the laying girl.

Taissa stays quiet for a moment as he puts your thick foam, taken from a plane seat next to hers. You smile at her softly as you lay down a blanket and pillow. You start to lie down with your fuzzy blanket dragged over your legs. Shauna follows suit and puts hers next to yours.

Everyone sits down momentarily and takes a breath, taking in the situation in the dark attic. You are only lying 5 feet away from the man who took his life. It wasn’t a good feeling up these stairs, but you didn’t care.

“How far along are you?” Taissa whispers into the air, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. You felt your eyebrow raise as you turned your head to look at the two other girls, you knew she wasn’t talking to you but what was she even saying? Shauna’s eyes widen just a little as she slowly turns her head to Taissa, and your heart drops to your stomach.

Oh, no.

The two look at each other for a moment as you watch on. You realize quickly that Shauna and Taissa’s conversation, but you have no context, was happening because they trusted you with this information as much as each other. You were the moderator. You keep quiet as you nervously look over Shauna's body. “You are pregnant, right?” Taissa asks again gently, looking over Shauna.

Shauna blinks slowly as if she is finally accepting the fact, she whispers, “You guys won’t tell anyone… Will you?”

Taissa shakes her head immediately with a quick, “No. I won’t.”

You reach your hand over Taissa's body to touch Shauna’s shoulder, “Nothing for us to tell. That’s only if you're okay with it.” You reassure her in a whisper. You rub her shoulder as you feel your eyes sprinkle with tears. A mix of emotions was coming over you for your childhood best friend. You were excited to see her baby and to be an aunt as you always dreamed of becoming for her kids and her to your own one day, but you felt dread at the thought of a baby growing inside of her. You were hungry tonight, and you were sure Shauna was too.

Taissa whispers as she looks at you, and your eyes meet quickly to exchange worry and stress about the situation. “But if we’re stuck out here long enough, I have a feeling it’ll come out one way or another.”

You felt yourself nod a little at her words, agreeing all the way. But you couldn’t shake the want to comfort Shauna at this moment with her eyes fearful and nervous at Taissa’s words, “That’s not for tonight.” You say softly to Taissa as you rub your hand on Shauna’s shoulder, “She’s not showing now, and a lot can change in time. People are looking for us, and I am sure Shauna will get to a hospital before anything happens.” You try to reassure her.

You look at Shauna fully now. Tears well in her eyes, and she is worried, and you feel like you are a mirror to her. But at this moment, you want to give her some peace.

“You’re having a baby?!” You excitedly whisper to Shauna with a smile, a tear rolls down your cheek, and a chuckle comes to your throat. You didn’t even know Shauna wasn’t a virgin anymore, you didn’t know who the father was, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care about that. At this moment, you assume that this was something you missed while taking care of your mom, and you will get more details on who the father was later. For now, all you could care about was Shauna and their baby.

Shauna’s worry falls away for a moment at someone reacting positively to the pregnancy, the only one to have it, and she tries to smile back. A chuckle comes out of her mouth as she wipes a fat tear from her eye. “Yeah. I think I am.”

“That’s amazing!” You say with a wide grin, tears falling. You giggle again, uncontrolled. Taissa, below you, chuckles, too, feeling the excitement that you are holding. “That is great news, maybe not out here, but Jesus Shipmen, we’re having a baby!” You whisper as you run your arm down Shauna’s arm to her hand, holding her hand tightly.

Shauna starts to cry as you congratulate her fully. You know she wasn’t happy, and this wasn’t what she wanted, but she needed support. You hold her hand, and Taissa puts a hand on Shauna’s head. “We’ll be here for you no matter what. We’ll keep it a secret. We’ll do whatever we can for you and the baby, Shauna!" you add to the attic's darkness.

The three of you hug on the attic floor as Shauna softly cries into both of your chests, you and Taissa try to calm her down until the three of you fall asleep, exhausted from the day you had.

‘21

You try to forget about the night you had last night as you read over more editors' notes for the 10th chapter of your novel. It was slow work to comb through every paragraph, every sentence, every word to make sure it all made sense. It had foreshadowing but was not too oblivious. It had depth without being melodramatic. It was tiring, but you kept going. There were another 22 chapters in your novel to go through, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to care that it was grueling.

You needed to have this sent and done for printing by the end of August for it to be realized by October, and you needed to look normal and mentally prepare for a press conference. You needed to promote the book before it came out for presales. They need you to talk about the smut and the angst that will excite the long-time readers.

You’ve done this circus before. Nothing was new. You knew what questions were going to be sent your way. You used a pen name as your name, and you have aged 25 years since the crash, so most people don’t talk about that anymore. Most don’t even know you were a part of the yellowjackets. They just thought you were a hermit romance author who doesn’t do a lot of interviews. But, you remember at your first convention where someone asked if you had eaten people and if you used your experience to write your vampire series. They were taken out by security, you saved face every well by tearing up, and the questions were sent away from you. It’s been years since then and now you mostly get lonely people asking questions about your characters like they were real people. You happily indulge because it's the reason you became a writer.

Your phone vibrates, and it is Natalie. Your heart skipped a beat.

You answer, “Hey, what's up? Before you say anything, I just want to say sorry-”

“You’re sorry about last night?” Natalie interrupted you with a chuckle. No, don’t be. Please come over. We have something important going on, and I trust you the most.”

Your eyes widen, “You do? Thank you, okay, what's wrong?”

“You have to come over, I called Shauna over too. It’s an emergency.”

You pale a little bit at the thought of your friends contacting each other without using you as the messenger. “Okay, coming as soon as I can.”

“Can’t wait.” Natalie snarky replies as she hangs up the phone.

You click save on your document and get out of your chair. You had no more meetings today or any reports to look over for your story, you just have to edit. You grab your purse and fling it over your shoulder as you anxiously leave your house.

When you got to Natalie’s hotel, you noticed that Misty's white minivan wasn’t there but another expensive white Tesla beside Natalie’s black Porsche. It made your eyebrow raise as you didn’t know anyone who would have such an expensive car, but you were happy to get there before Shauna did to ask if Natalie could downplay how much you have been in contact. You know Shauan will be wrathful upon knowing you were hanging out with other people, especially Natalie and Misty, behind her back.

You knock softly on the door and hear Natalie talking to someone. You smile when she opens the door. Natalie lets you into the room and acts like the night before never happened. You feel grateful until you turn to look at Taissa standing in the kitchenette.

You stood still as you looked at her. You haven’t seen her since 2006. Your phone, which you had been using to call the other girls, was in your purse because of her. You didn’t know what to think.

“Hey.”

“Hi, (y/n). You look nice.” Taissa smiled, then looked at you nervously. She knew she wasn’t who you wanted to see. Your history with her was a little too personal after the rescue, and it didn’t end pretty. You bit your tongue as you looked at her expensive outfit.

“Thank you, you too. You look like you’re already a senator.” You say back, with a smile of your own back at her. Trying to keep it short and sweet with her. Your eyes look down gently to the table where the photos from last night were tapped together to keep the written symbol in one piece. “Oh, god, why is it still here?”

“You know about this?” Taissa asked as she looked down at the table. “Did you get a text from the blackmailer?”

You snap your head in shock towards Taissa with wide eyes, “Blackmailer? What are you talking about?”

Taissa showed you her phone and the top text was “Gather 50k cash and await further instructions. Do NOT discuss this with your teammates - I WILL KNOW.” and an emoji version of the symbol.

You felt pale as you stared at the screen.

How could someone know anything and blackmail you?

The only people to know what happened out there were you guys or dead.

“Did you get the same text?” Natalie asked as she came from behind.

“No.” You confess as you hand Taissa her phone again, your hands go to open your purse, “Did you call Misty?”

“That conniving, poodle-haired, little fucking freak doesn’t need to know anything. Keep Misty out of it, okay.” Natalie said as she pointed a finger at you. You pulled out your cigarette bag and pulled out a cigarette. “She told Shauna Travis died! She didn’t even tell Taissa or tell us she told Shauna.”

You roll your eyes as you place a cigarette in your mouth, You look over to the women and say, “Okay, fine, do you guys want a cigarette? I need a fucking cigarette.”

Taissa comes to you with her hand out. You hand her one stick, light your end off, look at Tai, and then light hers.

“Hope you know, you’re getting a cleaning bill after your stay here Natalie.” You say as you blow the smoke out the window beside the table. You knew this was a no-smoking hotel, but you couldn’t bring yourself to leave the room.

“I don’t fucking care. Where the fuck is Shauna?” Natalie stressed as she peeks out the window beside you.

Translation for Amis de l'autre côté

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