#wkm angst

[shabeeboothedrawingender]

Don't think about how when Damien died in my AU, he left his corgi home alone for like 3 days but William takes her with him but she doesn't understand Damien is dead. And then when she finally kicks the bucket, William makes a grave in his backyard for her next to the ones he made for Damien and Celine-

[fictionalsownme]

How do you feel about the original idea of William accidentally killing Damien instead of us?

I think the angst would’ve broken most of us in quarters, probably TWT Seeing art of this AU makes my heart clench for my poor boys (well it already does)

AHAHAHA PAIN! THAT'S HOW IT MAKES ME FEEL. But okay I put some thought into it for these drawings so if you're interested in how I think it would go down, I put it all in the screenshot below (alt text available)!!

So yeah!! I like this AU a lot!! There are some aspects I like better than what we ended up with-- William going insane for a life long friend rather than someone he met a day ago (even though I love that we made such an impression on him ;)), it could add a lot to Damien & Will's dynamic. I also like the seance idea I came up with! It'd be nice to give us some agency! And to try and save Damien too 👀 Also I think this version of Dark I came up with is so cool (👉🏻👈🏻) even though the effect would be like,, impossible irl

But there's way more that I think works better about the canon ending-- Celine's reckless pursuit of knowledge getting Damien killed is super fitting, especially since he seems to be the only loved one she has left, it helps explain how angry she is with Actor and the House (maybe that's why Dark is so unstable? I'm getting off track lol--) she's a righteous protector of someone who's already dead yk, whose death she caused. Also! In the canon version, we get to die! pretty fkn sick imo lol

thanks for asking!! I like to blabber!!!!

___

lmk if you want to join the taglist for when the Markiplier Ego Discord I'm making goes live or for any updates! I've been a little hesitant to work on it because my zone is at risk for power shut offs because of the cali wildfires (there's no fires near me so far) and if my power goes out while I'm working on it idk what that does ^^" but I'll try to update soon!

edit: added a cut and shuffled things around ;))

[ghiertor-the-gigapeen]

cw //wounds, self harm, suicide

Back when actor didn't know about the manor's secret, when he was just a depressed guy

*not canon* the original ben has only experienced his master's death once in wkm, he got sent away during actor's sad boi era

[theknightmarket]

i saw a post a while ago of someone begging for a damien x da fanfic based on i can see you by taylor swift and i haven't been able to get it out of my head since 😭

"I'll be waiting."

In which Damien and the DA are forced to sneak around despite holding the keys to the kingdom. TW: none Pages: 25 - Words: 10,000

[Requests: OPEN]

Even though you were roommates, you and Damien didn’t really know each other at the beginning of your tenure at university. You knew of each other, you knew that someone else slept in the same room as you, but you didn’t hold conversations. The maximum number of words you had exchanged in one interaction was a question about a fire drill, and, even then, it was less an exchange and more a statement of fact and an agreement. Needless to say, it wasn’t indicative of a budding friendship meant to last a lifetime.

In the present moment, you were sitting in your lecture hall, hoping that the wooden pew wouldn’t do any more damage to your spine than it already had. The need to listen to your professor’s monologue was nestled somewhere deeper in the back of your mind, but you weren’t overly worried about missing something. Half of your class were asleep, and the other half were on the way there. A seven o’clock talk on the differences between tort law and contract law wasn’t the most riveting thing out there, after all, and you found yourself glancing around the room to avoid knocking out then and there.

Your gaze landed on just the man you had been thinking of earlier. Damien was sitting on the opposite side of the lecture hall, head in his hand and a distant look glazing his eyes. Whatever was on his mind, it wasn’t optimistic. Had you been paying more attention to him when you were in your dorm at the same time, you might have known, but you hadn’t, so you didn’t. Your best guess was the mountain of work your class had been assigned over the weekend, mostly because that was the thing plaguing your own thoughts.

That mountain only grew as the class dragged on. New packets of questions to attempt and fail at, new chapters of your textbook to muddle through late at night until your eyes inevitably give up on you, new test dates to dread because working on your current subjects sucked up all the energy that you had so that you had none left over for revising the old stuff. In summary, you had half a mind to leave the hall and never step foot back onto campus again.

Fortunately for your education, it was only half a mind, and the logic center of your brain firmly reminded you that it was a bad idea. That left you silently thinking up ways to keep yourself sane before the clock hands finally ticked to eight-thirty and everyone scattered like rats before the professor had finished his last sentence.

You were one of the last to pack up, your limbs flailing about ineffectively. It seemed that the effects of too little sleep and too much coffee were working against you at the same time. Brain foggy and body energized, the only solution you could manage to come up with was a quick walk around the grounds. Autonomous but physically tiring.

It was as you were stumbling towards the old wooden doors of the lecture hall that you saw Damien headed in the same direction. You would have thought he would rush off amongst the other fellow students – what with his tendency to spend every waking moment at the library – but there he was, slow on the draw and lagging behind.

Something must have really been bothering him.

From your place a few rows away from him, you watched as he struggled with the door. It was a difficult thing to get open, and it was awkward to be the first person there because then you’d have an audience. It was always best to be in the middle of the pack, able to walk through without having to shove the whole weight of your body against it.

You unconsciously grimaced at the thought of doing that yourself when you’d get there after Damien had already gone through. At least no one would be there to see you and the door could be as uncooperative as it wanted, though in your state that might have ended with there being no door at all. Your grimace deepened with the thought of explaining that, too.

Except the possibility was wiped from your mind when you caught sight of Damien still standing at the doorway – or, more specifically, in the doorway. One of his arms kept his satchel close to his side while the other was stretched out to keep the door open. Briefly, you made eye contact with him.

He blinked.

You blinked.

And then you realized that he was holding the door open for you, so you tossed yourself over one of the pews and dashed to meet him. Knowing how heavy that door was made your arm ache in sympathy, and you didn’t want to make him wait longer than he already had been.

“Thank you,” you managed to get out in between light huffs. A law degree was not an easy thing to schedule an exercise routine around. You could only hope it wasn’t obvious.

If Damien did notice, he didn’t say anything. The only thing that came out of his mouth was a soft, “Of course,” before he was walking down the hallway. Although his manners might have played a part in it going unmentioned, you weren’t about shoot yourself in the foot by bringing it up. 

The ensuing silence was only slightly better. The corridor wasn’t long, but it was a misfortunate feature of life that walking beside someone without talking made time pass infinitely slower. This was especially so given your complicated relationship with the man whom you had fallen into step with. Were you supposed to strike up a conversation? It could only be surface level – something about the weather or the work or the campus – so was it worth it? You only had a minute before you’d be separating, anyway, which meant there was no real reason to get stressed about it even though you already were, and you could have been using that time you were worrying to actually talk to him, but there was a slim chance of him continuing the conversation, which would only make the interaction more awkward, and could you even call it an interaction—

“After you.”

You were torn out of your thoughts by Damien once again holding the door open for you. This time, it wasn’t the stubborn mule of the lecture hall’s door, but the exit to the entire building. You held back from glancing over your shoulder to confirm that you had actually crossed the entire hallway, and, rather, you shot him a small smile and ducked out into the fresh air. In your peripheral, you saw him return it with a nod.

You waited for him to close the door behind himself, figuring that it would be rude to leave without a goodbye, even though you weren’t certain what it was that you would be leaving. That, and you were planning to walk in the opposite direction of him, no matter what. The route you were planning on taking for your little equilibrium session was a circle around campus, after all, which meant it hardly mattered which way you went.

What surprised you was the fact that Damien didn’t make to leave when the click of the door signaled it was safely closed. Instead, he stayed put to say, “I’ll be seeing you tonight, then?”

Unprepared for the assumption, your grip on the strap of your bag tightened momentarily, and you swallowed before replying, “Yeah, you will.” It felt too stale to leave it at that, and you felt the impulse to continue. “Are you heading to the library?”

He hummed in affirmation. “I’ll be back late, so leave a note on the door if you’ll be asleep so I don’t wake you.”

“Will do.”

That felt a better place to end it, so you took a step on the brick path round the campus. Damien appeared to have no objections, and there was a small part of you that swore you saw him sigh in relief. You were in the same boat, though, and you forced yourself to give him a small wave that he returned before you were walking as casually as you could past the building’s wall and out of his line of sight.

There were only two thoughts in your mind. The first was that the last five minutes had been absolute torture. The second was a spark of horror at the idea of seeing him later that evening that made you stifle a groan.

You liked Damien. He was nice. But the fault didn’t lie with him, no, it was with you.

During the class debates, the pretend court cases, the mock bar exams, you paraded the personality of a charismatic litigator who knew the loopholes of a law like the back of their hand and could argue a client out of triple homicide with sixteen eyewitnesses and their head left at the crime scene. Only, the façade was a crime in and of itself because you stole it from the people you learned from. Nothing about it was yours, and it didn’t carry over to the outside world. Being able to prepare yourself propped up your confidence, leaving you in shambles when it fell. Case in point, Damien now knew you were an awkward mess, and there was a voice in the back of your mind that told you it was best to ask for a room transfer, or, to be safe, a university transfer.

At the side of the path, you spied a bench and rushed over to it. The walk had been an objective failure so far. The only thing it had managed to do was flip the states of your body and mind around; aches were developing behind your knees and your thoughts were bouncing around your skull like a ping-pong tournament. Not even mashing the heels of your hands into your eyes did the trick in getting them to shut up.

Sighing, you pushed up your jacket’s sleeve to inspect your watch. Only fifteen minutes had passed, and you had five hours to kill until your next lecture rolled around. Your muddled brain offered to return to your dorm and attempt preparation for the next test. It was poor, given that there was a seventy-five percent chance that nothing would take, but it was the best, and only, idea you had, so you would have to make do.

You sent a wistful glance towards the scenery, and then forced yourself to your feet to make the journey back to the sleeping quarters. You wished you were able to spend more time outside, but motivation was a cruel mistress and never struck when you were comfortable. Instead, she favored the unforgiving rigidity of your desk chair and the stuffy air that came with a window that didn’t quite open all the way. 

It was only after the last time you pulled an all-nighter that you understood why.

With dread settling into your heart, you realized that was going to be your future, so you hastened yourself in order to give yourself as much a chance of getting sleep as possible. You mulled over a plan in your head as you snaked between two buildings, worked your way across the stretch of grass, and clambered up the stairs to your dorm room. Solidifying your first goal of getting an hour of pure study in, you fished your key out from a pocket of your bag and then pushed it into the lock.

A frown pulled at the corners of your mouth when you realized the key wouldn’t turn. Pulling it out and retrying didn’t work, but you found that you didn’t need it in the first place. A lightning strike of fear flashed down your spine when the realization dawned on you that the door was simply not locked.

Explanations cut off questions in the shadowy corners of your mind, but they were to be replaced by more concerns like some mental hydra. You barely managed a deep breath to steel your nerves before you brought the door handle down and pushed inwards.

“Oh!” you yelped in surprise. Undignified, yes, but warranted considering that the man before you had told you he’d be in the library, not at his desk in your shared dorm.

A nervous grin spread on Damien’s face, as though he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but you were the one to turn beet red with embarrassment.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” you hurried to say as you closed the door behind you with more force than necessary, “I- I thought- well, you told me, you know, you’d be the library, I just didn’t expect you to be—” you noticed how loud you were being and made an effort to soften your voice, “—here.”

You didn’t know whether his laughter was a good sign or bad one, but some of your fears were quelled when you risked meeting his eyes. They held no offence, only a slight bit of amusement at your expense that you could have done without.

“No, no, I’m sorry. I should have warned you.” He put his hands up in a gesture of acceptance of guilt. In his fingers, he twirled a pen that looked well-used, if the few spots of ink and bite marks were anything to go by.

You waved off his words with the hand that hadn’t slung your bag onto your desk and begun digging through it for your books. All manner of textbooks and lined pages were spread across the actual surface, but the notes that you needed were somewhere in the depths of your bag. Admittedly, you weren’t the most organized person, and you began to regret not nurturing the skill at the ten second mark of searching.

You cursed under your breath as you pulled open pockets and spread apart any files that might have contained a trace of it. This is what you got for trusting future-you to figure it out, when you knew damn well that they were just as bad as past-you at sorting.

“Are you,” you slowed down at the sound of Damien’s voice, if only to hear him better over the rustling of sheets, “are you alright?”

“Yeah, no, I’m just… looking for something.”

“I can see that.” Then came the scrape of a chair against wood, and then the light from the window was blocked out by him getting to his feet. “What do you need?”

You didn’t answer immediately, too focused on working open the little tear in the bag’s wall that tended to swallow the smaller pieces of paper, but when there was nothing in it save for random stationary, you stilled your hands. A single huff permeated the air as you offhandedly said, “My notes from the cohabitation contract lecture.”

How you managed to lose them, you had no clue; the only places where you ever took anything out of your bag were your dorm and the lecture hall, which only made it more concerning. If you had left it in one of the pews, then it was at the janitor’s mercy, but there was only a slightly better chance of finding it amongst your loose documents on your desk. That meant you either had to waste more time on a search through your textbooks for the relevant section or hope to wing it in the test, and neither appealed to you.

“Are these what you need?”

Your head snapped up at the sound of Damien’s voice breaking your concentration, and then it snapped to the side to see the open notebook that he had placed in the single empty space on your desk. You momentarily considered that he had found your notes, unknowingly knocked to the floor or some other likely scenario that made you look like an idiot, but you quickly noticed that it wasn’t your handwriting nor your book.

He looked almost bashful as he drew his hand away to straighten the lapels of his jacket, and, despite your attempts, he refused to make eye contact with you while he explained, “I copy my notes out into a separate book after the lectures.” A blush was rising on his face like the tide. “It helps me to consolidate information.” It crept from his cheeks to the bridge of his nose to his ears. “And having multiples means I’m less likely to, well, lose them.” It was though you could feel the heat emanating from where you were standing.

Considering how kind he’d been today, you decided to step in before he drove himself into a fever. “Thank you,” you said, slipping a blank sheet from your pile, “do you mind if I make my own copy?”

“Go right ahead.”

A genuine, non-nervous smile spread over your lips, and he was quick to follow suit. Good, he didn’t deserve to be so anxious, and you didn’t want to feed into it when there were much more daunting things to be worrying about.

You dropped into your seat and uncapped a pen, tossing over your shoulder, “You’ve been a lifesaver today, Damien. Really, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“It’s not a problem. I’m just glad to have been in the right place at the right time.”

That made you stop mid-sentence to ask, “Why are you here? You said you were going to the library.”

With your back to him, you weren’t able to see the blush that he had fought down struggle back up with a vengeance. He didn’t like being caught out, even when it hadn’t technically been a lie.

“Oh, I was, but I got there and found out that it will be shut for the rest of the week. A sign on the door said the lower levels were flooded due to a burst pipe, so the whole building has been closed.”

You hissed in sympathy at both the thought of those wrecked books and Damien’s tone of disappointment. You didn’t spend much time there yourself, but you knew a lot of other students and some faculty considered it like a second home, your dormmate included. Hopefully, it would be in full working order when they reopened, but, in the meantime, you didn’t want him getting upset about it. You’d seen many emotions on Damien late at night – annoyance, elation, a near constant wash of fatigue – but distress was not one that suited him.

“I guess you’ll just have to put up with me for the next week,” you tried to joke.

To your relief, you heard a chuckle.

“What a terrible punishment.” His chair squeaked as he collapsed into it. “I’ll have to request a room divider.”

“I’m not that bad. Not bad enough to warrant a physical structure built in the middle of our room, anyway. Besides, I think you should be paying more attention to the upcoming test.”

“Please don’t remind me. I’m ignoring it as long as I can.”

As mentioned before, you liked Damien, and that opinion hadn’t changed – if anything, your opinion of him had improved from having more interactions in the last hour than you had your entire year of sharing a dorm – but neither had you, and you tended to show your affection through needless teasing and relentless mischief for your own amusement. Therefore, your copy of Damien’s notes was abandoned on the table as you spun around in your chair to look at him.

“We have five days to prepare for writing three essays in two and a half hours without break.”

“No.”

“It’s on the relationship between the legal profession privilege and the legal disciplinary practice, and the obligations of attorneys for their clients as organizations and individuals.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s also taking place at eight o’clock at night because the people who make the schedules hate us specifically.”

“You are awful, and I am considering wading through the flood to get away from you.”

In an attempt to contain your chuckles at Damien’s deadpan expression, you feigned offence and gasped as dramatically as you could stomach. “You don’t mean that.”

He didn’t even blink. “Don’t test me.”

“Speaking of which…”

He tipped his head into the back of his chair and let out one final groan that launched you into a bout of laughter. Despite his theatrics, he didn’t last long before he was joining you with a surprisingly deep sound that seemed to vibrate your very bones, like the chiming of bells inside a church. You quite liked it, in fact, and you were slightly disappointed when you both trailed off into a long, albeit comfortable, silence. You also noticed that your sympathy about the state of the library had waned – if you were going to be under permanent stress, it was pleasant to hang around someone in a similar situation. Besides, what was wrong with enjoying it while it lasted? You were only going to be forced together for the next week, and it wasn’t as though it was going to have any permanent circumstances.

Right?

The sound of books clattering to the ground was one you steadfastly ignored as Damien nudged you into leaning against your desk with the weight of his body. His hands rested on either side of your waist, one absentmindedly rubbing circles that you could feel even through the layers of your uniform, while yours caressed his jawline to guide him closer. The only parts of you that weren’t touching were your mouths, but that was quickly rectified with a light tug on Damien’s tie. Immediately, your senses were doused by everything about him – the smell of his cologne, the sound of his breathing, the taste of his lips.

This wasn’t your first kiss, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. You found yourselves in this kind of situation regularly; sneaking a moment together in your dorm right before you had to rush off to class. All too often did one of Damien’s hands trail up from your side to card through your hair in a move that he had perfected, much to your chagrin given how weak it made you feel. He was aware of that, too, and you were sure it was half the reason he did it in such a risky position.

You caught a glimpse of your watch as you parted for breath, but you pushed it to the side in order to focus on diving back in. Damien accepted your silent proposition eagerly. 

The logical part of your brain tried to bring the image back to your attention because it was clear evidence that you were going to be late to class if you continued on your current endeavor. Both you and Damien had ten minutes to make a fifteen-minute journey from your dorm room to your lecture hall, so if you stopped immediately and booked it with your bags, you would get in without drawing much attention.

The emotional part of your brain wanted you to take this opportunity to bring Damien impossibly closer and melt into his embrace. A safe feeling of comfort and care enveloped you when you were with him, and willingly putting an end to it felt like a national offence. The press of his fingers and the swipe of his tongue against your lower lip teased a possibility that you wanted so badly to let happen.

However, no matter how much you cursed your law degree in that moment, you were forced to cut it short with a press to Damien’s chest. He acquiesced with only slight resistance, but he shot you a look of confusion with a furrowed brow and concern swimming in his eyes.

“We have to get to class.”

He huffed and snuck a kiss to your cheek. His mouth positioned next to your ear, you reigned in a shiver as he whispered, “Do we have to, though?”

Your breathy, “Yes,” wasn’t any more convincing than the look in your eyes, but he shifted back on his feet nevertheless, just far enough to make you immediately regret creating that space.

A puff of air battered against the nape of your neck. Ever the cuddler, Damien buried himself between your collarbone and your shoulder, slotting perfectly into the dip. There was no question about his stance on leaving, but you knew it was the responsible option to attend the lecture – you knew, but you didn’t have to like knowing.

In a bout of movement much like pulling a tooth, you twisted in Damien’s hold and slipped off the desk. If you had thought much more about it, you would have stayed on that desk until graduation, and those puppy-dog eyes gave you half a mind to jump back on.

“Come on,” you muttered, plucking your jacket from the chair, “we need to get going.”

You watched Damien right himself out of the corner of your eye. First was reknotting his tie, next was adjusting his cuffs, and, as you expected, was the flattening of his hair with a comb to get it just so. When there was little trace of recent events, he turned to you, your bag in hand. “We’ll come back, though, right?”

“Of course, it’s our dorm, after all.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about, my little monster.”

You exchanged a grin as you took the strap from his hands, and, slinging it over your shoulder, you tried to fight back the flare of red on your face. You didn’t say anything, but he must have gotten the idea from you proceeding to slightly tighten his tie closer to his collar.

You waited for Damien to get his own bag, then opened the door and locked it behind you when you were both in the corridor. One more glance at your watch meant you barely registered the click before you were off to the races – calculations ran through your head, possible shortcuts you could take to save the extra second, all manner of obstacles that would be best to avoid like the club members who stood outside the gymnasium – and, all the while, as you sprinted to the end of the hallway and down the flights of stairs, you hoped Damien was behind you. Every sharp corner you took, you fought the urge to move your head that inch further to look back at him, and the thought before choosing another direction was centered around grabbing his hand to bring him to your side.

But you couldn’t. You stayed staring forward and your hand remained empty throughout your journey across the campus grounds because they were the campus grounds; you weren’t in your dorm anymore, you weren’t alone anymore. Clumps of people meandered along the pathways that you pushed through, each with a pair of eyes that could catch you in the act.

As if fate were playing a cruel trick, the two of you dashed past a couple walking the edges of the flowerbeds. First-years, hand in hand, lovesick grins on their faces and eyes only for the other. Free. 

Regretfully but inevitably, your thoughts turned spiteful. Why wasn’t it a risk for them, why did expectations fall on your couple, a relationship forced underground, instead of them? 

Your thoughts turned guilty. Why hadn’t you interacted with Damien at the beginning of your year, why didn’t you try harder when it was easy? 

Your thoughts turned to an acceptance supposed to only come at the end of grief. This was how it was, and you were going to be late to class.

Huffing and puffing, you and Damien slid to a stop at the lecture hall door. Fixing your outfits after that moment alone was a moot point because rushing through the halls had done much worse for your state. Besides, you were going to draw attention anyway because, if the emptiness of the hallway was anything to go by, your classmates were in the room already. 

It was just you and Damien.

You exchanged a brief smile that was marred only by the reminder of the rarity of this situation.

“You go in first,” he said, nodding towards the door.

“Okay—” you settled your shoulder against the wood but didn’t apply any force so that you could whisper, “I’ll see you after class.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

And, with that dramatic goodbye that felt as though it suited one of the drama departments’ plays, you pushed through the door, grimaced at the alarm of creaking, and scurried to your seat before the professor could call you out for your lateness.

Sitting by yourself on one of the benches never used to be so disappointing. During your first few lectures, you had actually preferred the space. You used to pray under your breath when someone new entered the room, and then curse even quieter when they sat down next to you. You enjoyed being able to spread your equipment out, and elbows jammed into your side or knees edging slightly too close to you set off the fight or flight instinct in you.

That changed when your relationship with Damien began; the two of you would enter the hall as a pair, laughing over your jokes all the way to your seats, making bets on the number of times the professor would reference his divorce as you removed the materials from your bags. At the time, it was the highlight of college career – in the present, where you were shifting to get comfortable on the unyielding wooden pew, it was a memory you cherished in the silence and chill of the room.

No matter how much time you spent with Damien, no matter how much joy you got out of every interaction with him, no matter how much you loved him, you were both at risk every time you demonstrated those feelings. You saw the way your professor squinted at your bouts of laughter, and you saw the subtle shake of their head as you walked out hand in hand. You used to think you could handle it – it didn’t matter if anyone liked you as long as they stayed unbiased, and you would gladly trade a positive relationship for the better one you had with Damien. The problem didn’t lie with the staff themselves, no, the problem was with who they spoke to. Specifically, Damien’s family.

While you had officially flown the nest the moment you were accepted into the university, Damien was another story entirely; being the prodigal son of the definition of ‘upper-class’ meant that his leash was pulled tighter than a horse. He was trotted around like one, too, whenever he found himself back at home during the holidays. Every social event was used as an excuse to network, and the children of anyone who attended were little more than bartering chips.

Had your relationship started at the beginning of your studies, you might have gotten away with it, managed to slip under the radar and carried out your days in uninterrupted bliss. However, certain recent family events meant that all eyes were on Damien, and his parents circled above him like hawks, because God forbid both of the Whitacre children went astray. They would have been the laughingstock of the city if the golden boy went courting a commoner after their darling daughter ran off with that actor – and that was a fate worse than death for them.

As a result, Damien was given no leeway, and so neither was your relationship. You couldn’t afford to take the risk of public affection, you couldn’t afford to take the risk of public anything. For all your professors and Damien’s family knew, you were roommates, and that was all there was to it.

But you knew. There was never any doubt in your mind about your feelings for one another. You loved Damien, and Damien loved you. Your heart raced every time he looked your way, and those milliseconds of eye contact showed you unquestionable peace. You both understood the situation you were in, and you were there regardless. Loving the other in private was just what it took to be able to love, and you were willing to stick with him, despite the pain of walking into rooms alone.

Nevertheless, you did have to choke back a laugh when the creak of the door broke through the lecture like a shot from a gun.

“Mr. Whitacre, you are late!”

And the vicious red that spread across his face at getting caught let the laughter win as it overwhelmed you. Damien could only spare a faux-threatening glare your way and a mouthed ‘you little monster’ before he threw himself onto the closest bench, trying to keep his head and blush down. You supposed there were some benefits to turning up separately, after all.

Your rushing through the halls of the law offices sounded like a tap dance to the people milling about at the edges. It was a gait very specific to you, and anyone who had been there for more than a few days knew what it meant. The first thing was that you were very busy, but the second thing was that you were very nervous. There would be days when you had a full schedule – meetings and cases and trials and investigations – but that would produce a one-two-one-two clicking noise of your dress shoes. Sometimes you would have only a few important events, which would fill the building with a skittering pulse. Now, however, at nine forty-five in the morning, it was a frantic rhythm that initially appeared to skip beats and combine steps, but it repeated every couple of doors to create a false sense of chaos and rationale.

Nearly everyone that you passed knew that today would be a stressful time for you, but not one of them knew why, until you got further into the labyrinth of offices. The rooms of assistant district attorneys were gathered here, and they were in a similar state to you. Questions of how prepared everyone was punctured the air, calls for an estimated time of arrival split the little silence there was left over, and the only source of calm was from the district attorney himself.

You tried your best to avoid the hurricane of panic that swelled where the group stood. You skirted around the edges, trying to get to your own office without someone asking anything of you. The documents in your grip were of greater concern than the temperature of the water cooler, though nothing could top the thought that reigned supreme over your mind as you rounded the corner.

There were only three people who had a key to your office. Yourself, the district attorney, and Damien – and, considering that you had already seen your boss, Damien was supposed to still be in the city hall, and you were yourself, you had no clue who was pushing open your door and walking inside without your permission.

You quickened your pace, disregarding the rest of the prosecutors and beelining it towards your door. There were important cases in there, you couldn’t afford to let a member of the public see them withyour permission, let alone accidentally. You would be in serious trouble, and that was not something you could afford today. Really, you should have been excited, but this security issue was top priority; you could get demoted, you could lose your job entirely if someone off the streets, unknown to anyone there, completely random and without knowledge—

The mayor.

It was the mayor who was standing in your office.

Damien was standing in the middle of the room without having broken in because he had a key that you had given to him personally.

There was no need to worry.

“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” you greeted, nodding slowly.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said in response, tone as welcoming as the rest of his interactions with the public.

You placed a hand on your door’s handle. “What brings you to my office?”

“I have a meeting with the district attorney in half an hour, and I have some questions that I feel would be better answered before it begins.”

Your blinds were already down from the night before, so all you had to do was push the door closed, register the click, and turn back to Damien.

For a moment, the two of you waited, staring at each other as you ran through the checklist in your mind. Everything was as it should have been, with you inside your office and the public outside.

It took just a second longer for your façade to fracture like ice on a lake – the crack spread across your lips, bringing a grin from ear to ear, while Damien took the few feet forward to bridge the gap. He left his cane leaning against the desk, and his steps placed just him in front of you, but he threw his arms around your waist to tug you closer.

Face to face, barely enough space for you to freely breathe, you couldn’t help but laugh airily.

“What are you really doing here?” you whispered, noting how the corners of his eyes crinkled at your voice.

“I know, I know.” His tone showed that you had much the same effect on him as he did you, and you didn’t miss him glancing down at your lips. He tried to redirect his focus to speaking, but the little huffs in between his words made it obvious it wasn’t working. “I’m early. I just… had to see you – before we got into legalities.”

As much as you should have reprimanded him for showing up before his scheduled appointment, you simply didn’t have it in you. Instead, you laid your hands on his shoulders, padded by his suit for the sake of the meeting, and leaned forward to swipe your mouth against his.

It was a sweet, gentle, infinitely too short kiss. Some part of you wanted to take the day off and drag him back to your apartment to savor the time you had available, but you were at work. You both were.

That was always the problem. After graduation, you were thrust into the world of work unceremoniously. No grace period, no gap year, no moment to spend together before you were once again in the public eye, except, this time, with more of a strain. Now, it wasn’t just Damien’s parents circling above: it was also the press, your bosses, the expectations of adulthood to get settled down but with no leeway to get to know someone. It was supposed to be a business transaction, not a relationship, and that wasn’t what either of you wanted.

So, once again, your relationship went underground. You shared glances in the hallway, clipped greetings over the meeting table, nods at exits and entrances – but, when you were alone, you made every second count in the dim lighting of candles, only the moon and stars knowing your secrets.

It was times like these that you never anticipated, when both of your schedules aligned just so, and Damien was able to surprise you right when you least expected it.

You supposed he had never truly escaped the manners of his aristocratic upbringing; he looked embarrassed to have shown his cards, his grip on your waist tightening and a redness spreading to the tips of his ears. You couldn’t have that, no matter how much you once would have teased him for it.

Pressing a risky kiss to his cheek, you muttered a quick, “Thank you for coming.” You then pulled out the closest chair from the desk before rounding to your side, doing the same so that you could fall into it. With the blinds closed and door shut, you had the freedom to be laxer in every way, not only with your affection.

“The office is nervous, you know,” you commented, tugging open one of the drawers.

“The whole office?”

You hummed. “Everyone except the DA.” Fishing around in the depths of your mess, you pulled out items you had meant to sort out later – ‘later’ being two to twenty working days.

Damien watched you do it from across your desk. Even after all these years, you hadn’t perfected the art of organization, and he found himself barely containing his laughter at your gradually increasing franticness. He’d give you a chance to realize, see if you could figure it out on your own, before he dusted off his shining armor.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the district attorney in a panic.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him exhibit any emotion—” You unfolded a notepad but came back empty, “—I guess that’s what it takes to be a district attorney.”

“Now don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? There isn’t a lot of room for feelings when you’re supposed to be completely objective.”

“I think there’s plenty of room.”

In glancing up to respond, you caught sight of something that Damien held out towards you, and, with a bashful smile, you took it. However, it wasn’t only the fact that he had given you exactly what you were struggling to find – the meeting summary and checklist – but the affection he looked at you with. Nestled beneath the amusement and restraint for teasing was a certain glint that made you flush from your cheeks to your neck. It was something you often saw, but, being simultaneously faced with your future, you were granted a sense of calm that only came in the soft spots between your work, and you wondered, briefly, if he were right.

But even though you doubted your love for Damien would ever fade, that wasn’t the only problem that faced you.

A knock sounded at your office door, cracking the bubble you had created.

Instantly, you shot up from your seat, while Damien pushed back his seat to follow suit in a much more sensible manner, grasping the top of his cane in the process. You willed the color in your face to disappear as you wrapped your hand around the handle and pulled.

Behind it was one of the other prosecutors in the office, and, behind them, was the DA talking to a secretary. Everyone else had vacated the area, likely to the meeting room where you were supposed to be.

They opened their mouth to tell you just that but stopped short at the sight of Damien standing in front of your desk.

“Mr. Mayor!” came their gasp, and you watched as their spine straightened like a soldier called to attention.

“Good morning, prosecutor.” Ever the humble gentleman, Damien nodded at the newcomer and stepped forward to shake your hand. A single movement up and down was all that was allowed before he was striding out of your office and towards the meeting room.

You counted yourself lucky that the persecutor hadn’t questioned you as to why the Mayor of Los Angeles was in your office before his appointment, but you also didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, so you snatched your keys from your pocket, ushered them out the way, and locked the door behind you.

You and the persecutor walked in rhythm next to each other, as if on parade, down to your shared destination. You were a few seconds behind Damien, but at every corner he took, you saw the heel of his shoe raise in a step and then disappear behind the wall. This was the precedent set all the way to the room, until you were outside the door that he had just entered.

“Are you not coming in?” the prosecutor asked, looking at you with curiosity but no suspicion.

You shook your head. It was your turn to wait outside, so that time could give you a better divide than distance could – give you a better chance of staying secret. These precautions were less necessary now, but neither you nor Damien were willing to take that risk.

With a light shrug, they pushed open the door and went in, letting it drift closed behind them. You just barely caught sight of Damien through the steadily waning crack.

One second. Two seconds. Three. Four. You counted each breathe in and out. Thirty seemed enough. With the final burst of air caught in your throat, you stepped through the veil.

There was no punishment for showing up slightly later now. You weren’t students sneaking around behind their college’s backs anymore, liable to be yelled at if something held them up in the corridor or prevented them from arriving at nine on the dot. You were adults. But, again, there was the matter of adult responsibilities and expectations of the public for the both of you.

Over the course of the meeting – which was on some business that the Mayor’s re-election campaign had with the legal branch of Los Angeles – you sent many a glance towards Damien. Anytime that he wasn’t speaking, he was sat up in his chair, listening attentively and even jotting down a few notes for his personal use. You were situated at one of the corners, and he was at the head opposite you, meaning that you had one hell of a time trying to be subtle. Luckily, you had done this many, many, many times before. When he was speaking, it was easy because – as much as you liked to tease him – manners weren’t unheard of to you. When someone else took the lead, however, you only managed to catch glimpses before you were forced to redirect your attention. You were working. You needed to pay attention.

As soon as the meeting started to slow, matters set aside for the follow-up session next week, you scribbled down the rest of the notes, frantically trying to create shorthand in the moment so that you could finish quicker. You felt every second drip by like a broken faucet, the unhurried march of time seeming to choose to make your life harder. Your fingers tapping on the table matched its pace.

“Very good, Mr. Mayor,” the DA said, rising from his seat to shake Damien’s hand.

You punctuated the end of your written word.

“Thank you for attending this meeting.”

You capped your fountain pen.

“We look forward to working with you in the future.”

The moment that the DA’s hand disconnected from Damien’s, you shot up from your chair alongside the rest of the prosecutors. You knew you had to wait to talk to him, but being the only one sitting would have been unprofessional. Waiting there awkwardly was just the same, so you busied yourself with sorting through your paper, tearing the most important piece out, until the room had mostly been vacated after shaking Damien’s hand.

When you were the last two people remaining, everyone having filed out, you stepped in front of him. In your behavior, there was nothing unusual. The two of you were what everyone saw: a prosecutor and the mayor. While one title held more status, your being in the same room alone was nothing to gawk at.

Much like when you had left your office, you clasped Damien’s hand with all the formal respect you could muster and shook it. He played along with an almost mechanical lift, his cane planted on the ground keeping him perfectly balanced and still. A silent goodbye and an exit to follow.

But before you let go, both of you took the too brief moment you had been gifted and made eye contact. In his, you saw the waves of affection stirring beneath the surface of the color, that shade that glinted like syrup in the light of the office window and was shaded by the feeling of twilight itself. In yours, he saw a crackle of flame that threatened to consume the whites but was kept at bay by the sheen of calm spread from one corner to the other. In both, you each saw love and devotion neither would ever part with.

He took a step back, and your hand returned to your side.

“Good day, Mr. Mayor.”

With a nod and a smile, you made sure that you had everything with you and then returned to your office. Although Damien had returned the actions, he was only able to keep the latter up for however long it took for the door to close. Meetings were tiring, but you made the longer ones worth it. He only wished he were able to get more time with you during them, sit just a chair closer, joke about the comments made afterward. Like how you did back in university post-lecture, whether that was from the professor or the Dean.

That period obviously wasn’t all smooth sailing. The secrecy he could have done without, but you were together, and that was enough. Now?

He turned to look at the door and sighed. Trying to revive the past was a fool’s errand, he knew that, but it didn’t stop him instinctively moving to worry the stick of his cane between his hands.

His eyebrows furrowed and the corner of his mouth dropped as he stopped himself short. Instead, he opened his hand, the one you had shaken before your departure, and looked curiously at the little piece of paper that you had left behind.

“Oh, my little monster,” he muttered to himself, trailing off only as his attention was stolen by the note.

You had folded it up into a neat square – sometimes he marveled at how disjointed your organization skills were – but the message was short anyway. ‘My house. Seven. Dinner.’ 

If someone, a prosecutor, a secretary, the DA himself, were to notice Damien leaving the meeting room with a grin stretched from one side of his face to the other, none of them would have raised an eyebrow, nor would they have connected it to you leaving at five o’clock on the dot with a smile much similar to his seemingly inseparable from your lips.

The knock at your front door startled you from staring straight at the stove. You had been waiting for it to explode, for flames to lick at the edges of the metal door, but nothing of the sort had happened so far. No, luckily, you had managed to make it to Damien’s arrival, right as the clock ticked to seven o’clock. Knowing him, even after years of being in a relationship, he had been waiting outside for fifteen minutes. Too many decades of training to be a gentleman prevented him for breaking decorum for the smallest things, and daring to timidly announce his presence a brazen minute early was one of them.

You took your attention off the stove for long enough to rush to the front door, swing it open, and practically drag Damien inside. The leaping of his eyebrows to his hairline was entertainment enough, but you were quickly distracted by the mental image of your stove melting. It pushed you to drop him into a dining chair and jump back to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry I haven’t set the table yet,” you called back through the doorway. You weren’t going to expand on why, not because it was out of laziness, but because you really didn’t want him to know about your half-hour battle with your sink.

As you searched for your gloves, you heard him respond, “It’s not a problem.” A moment passed in which you found and slipped them on before you barely picked up him muttering, “In fact, if I remember correctly…”

It was out of the corner of your eye that you saw Damien emerge from the dining room and head straight to the cutlery drawer. He held two placemats and coasters to his side, cane grasped in his hand, and pulled the drawer open to retrieve the knives and forks.

“You don’t need to do that,” came your protests, but they fell on deaf ears. He took them regardless and marched back to the table to set it up. You, being preoccupied with the hot tray you had pulled out of the oven, were powerless to stop him or the affectionate tut that escaped you. The most you were able to do was push the food onto a rack and say, “I thought you were supposed to be the guest.”

“And I thought you just cooked a whole meal—” He ducked back into the kitchen, “—so I should be helping you prepare.”

He wouldn’t admit the real reason why he was so eager to do something; he loved you and wanted to make things easier on you in any way that he could, but there was also a part of him that was so pitifully nervous at the prospect of having dinner together that he had to keep moving. This was not a common occurrence. In fact, he was certain you had sat through more meetings than meals together, and it was a sad inevitability that your letters drifted towards more pressing matters, even in private correspondence.

His heart pounded against his chest like a trapped bird, and the audible thump was its song that he hoped only he could hear. Stopped at the table to make sure everything was in place, he tried to put out the fire growing beneath his skin by shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. There were few times he wore anything different to his suit or made alterations to it.

On your part, there were also few times that you saw these alterations, and the sight of Damien’s exposed forearms through the dining room doorway made you grip the two plates of food just ever so slightly tighter.

Still, you managed to keep your nerves intact long enough for the both of you to settle down at the table, sitting across from each other with the meal you had somehow made without burning the house down. Really, you were quite proud of yourself, but it wasn’t the thing that held most of your attention.

“Thank you for inviting me tonight,” Damien said, looking straight at you.

“Thank you for agreeing to it. I—” You took a deep breath in, “— I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” His shoulders dropped with the admittance, and your own accentuated grin dropped into a much more comfortable smile. “I can’t tell you how giddy I was when you slipped me that note.”

“How else was I supposed to ask you? I don’t trust your secretary.”

That last bit was, technically, untrue, so far as to say you didn’t trust her any less than anyone else when it came to your relationship with Damien. Regardless, it didn’t stop him from fiddling with his cuffs as he averted his eyes from yours.

Quietly, almost as though his words were the biggest secret in the room, he muttered, “We could always arrange some meetings.”

“What, so we can go over the best way to style your hair that doesn’t differentiate you from the working class?”

You followed it up with a chuckle, but Damien didn’t follow. Instead, he burned a hole into one of the paintings on the wall, a completely unassuming one that had been there for the past few years. If that hadn’t raised questions in you, the tops of his ears turning red would have done it.

“Not as such.”

You thought for a moment and then let out a faux-affronted gasp. “Mr. Mayor, you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, are you?”

The very concept of fake meetings coming from a man as honest as Damien made you want to explode with laughter. Mayor Damien Whitacre? The man who put a little tree on his desk because he didn’t leave his office even during the holidays? That Damien Whitacre was thinking of boldly betraying the integrity of his job?

“While I do try to stay humble,” he began with a roll of his eyes, “I must admit I thought I’d be given more leeway once I became the mayor.”

“But you know why you haven’t.”

He paused.

Your suspicions grew.

“Do I?”

“Yes. We both do.”

His eyes snapped back to yours. “What if we changed that?”

While you tried to prevent your frown, you weren’t able to recover from your shock before it was bending the edges of your lips. “I never took you for the ignorance is bliss kind of man.”

“It wouldn’t be ignorance, per say, just…” Damien’s eyes drifted off to the side, glancing out the window into the pitch black of the night. “What if we pretended it didn’t matter. It does, of course, God knows it does or else we would be much further along by now.”

With a quirk of an eyebrow, you silently asked what that meant, and in a tilt of his head, he silently answered dates, a proposal, marriage, a family. His gaze never wavered from yours.

“And what happens if it goes wrong? If someone makes us acknowledge that it does matter?”

“There is nothing wrong with us loving each other.”

You hated arguing like this because you didn’t know what you were actually arguing about, but you also didn’t know if clarifying would be any better. The pressure of your teeth grinding against each other only served to make you more unsure. You had so many problems acting against you, you couldn’t afford to become one of them.

“We can’t lose our jobs,” you said, “I have aspirations, and I know damn well that you love being the mayor too much to let it go.”

“I love you more.”

Slowly, painfully slowly, you brought your hands together under your chin, as if to give you time to prepare for your own words. “You can’t.”

“Alright.” A moment of silence. You hoped it wasn’t mourning. “I understand.”

Maybe if you were talking to another man, someone else who hadn’t gone through what you had together, you would have been right. He might have been getting up to gather whatever miscellaneous trinkets he had left scattered around your house throughout the years. He might have been searching for his key to your office. He might have walked straight out the door.

But Damien was not ‘another man’. He was him, and the only reason he was getting up was to round the table to kneel in front of you.

“But what if we make it so they can’t get rid of us?”

You could have made a joke – something about that being a dictatorship and how you didn’t know if that could apply to a city – but you held your tongue because there was a spark of hope in Damien’s voice, a little optimism that made your eyes widen, which you would be damned if you washed away. “What do you mean?”

“I know that we can’t do anything right now. I’m up for re-election, and you’re not the district attorney yet, we don’t have a leg to stand on. But if we were able to get such approval from our colleagues and the public that they can’t remove us from our stations, we could relax.”

You both knew what he meant by ‘relax’, the dates, the proposal, the marriage, the family, but you also both knew that it would be difficult – and even that was an understatement, it would be a nightmare to balance opinions of people while making tough choices. Your future wasn’t destinated to be easy for you – if it were, you wouldn’t be sitting in the house where you lived alone – but, then again, neither was your past. To expect it all handed to you on a silver platter would be a rejection of what made you you. The struggle, the strife, the sleepless nights stressing over every little detail your mind could supply you with.

When you were at university, you had made a promise that you would stick by Damien, and you weren’t about to give up now. Not when you had come this far, not when the man himself was looking at you as if all the joy in the world had been presented to him wrapped with a bow, not when you loved him and he loved you.

“We’ll try.”

“We’ll try?”

You nodded. 

“We’ll try.”

You didn’t have enough time to move even if you wanted to before Damien launched himself forward and collected you in his embrace. From this position, his hand on your jaw guided you down into a kiss that was laced with the excitement of a brand-new start. An agreement to try. You’d try. And you’d do it. As he leaned in closer and you brought your fingers through the hair near the nape of his neck, you thought that this might just work. He made relaxing sound easy, and, while you knew that was optimistic, the passion shared between the two of you had you thinking it wasn’t as outlandish as you once believed.

No more waiting.

[Thank you so much for this request! Since you mentioned another poster, I went and tracked them down so, @marinecanary, this is the one that I messaged about! Could I have technically just zoomed in on them as the DA and mayor? Probably. Should I have? Probably. Did I? Nope :D! Again, thanks for requesting, and I hope you've enjoyed reading this!

...also I didn't want to go into anything mature since nothing was requested specifically but uhhhhh. I do love Damien]

[icekingofhope]

So I am gonna ramble about something so earlier I just watched and finished this one video where it’s who killed markpiler but it’s a vocaloid musical

It’s actually not bad it’s actually pretty good and it honestly change my a lot of perspectives I have for WKM.

especially attorney

And basically in the end it shows like Damien/celine/dark sealing you away in the mirror and mark appeared out of nowhere saying how he is sorry for dragging them into this Cause like they didn’t know jack shit what’s going on or the drama and that they were meant to be a witness and after seeing the attorney abandoned he goes like “I know how you feel I was betrayed too I don’t want you to alone like I was and if you come with me we can go on our own silly fucking adventures together like a duo “

and it’s impiled the attorney goes with him which honestly that got me thinking the attorney knows nothing how mark set up this murder and that from THEIR perspective William (the colonel/willford) Celine and Damien are the bad guys and it paints mark in their eyes as a victim.

cause think about it from the perspective of the attorney.

They saw Wilford literally killed the detective and they heard how Celine and Wilford had a affair and Damien/celine with NO explanation betrays the attorney by sealing them away in the mirror till mark found them.

honestly it’s pretty depressing thinking about it cause thinking about how mark talks about how he was betrayed and shit it’s probably he made the attorney his sidekick in every adventure.

(anyways that’s all i got for now but tell me what you think of this thought and also check out the musical the link is right up there and honestly it’s so good)

see you later lads and lasses

[shadowproxy22]

*Shadow is sitting in the corner of their room a bottle of wine in their hand, and an empty bottle lying on the floor next to them. They’re slightly swaying back-and-forth mumbling to themselves as they take another swig when the wine bottle. A shadowy figure stands in front of them they admit a blue glow around them, they turn and unlock an open the door slowly, allowing the person on the other side to enter. Shadow looks up, black tar like tears are running down their face*

@the-best-ads-worker

@abe-the-detective-blog

@thebetterengineer

@bestengineerinspacez

@shattered-glass-promises

(everyone is welcome to RP with me! It’s gonna be a big one!)

[lostcybertronian]

Egotober - Day 3

Prompts by @tracobuttons

Prompt: Jewel

---

Celine woke before William, as she often did, and quietly got out of bed, plucking her clothing from the floor like feathers from a chicken; carelessly, tediously, a task waiting to end. She did not need the light to accomplish this, having done it many times in the last year.

When she was done she reached for her wedding ring, abandoned on the nightstand. She turned it over, examined its diamond, glittering even in the dim.

She remembered when Mark proposed to her; it seemed so long ago now. He did so in public, of course, in front of a crowd of adoring fans and cameras. She had no choice but to say yes, in hindsight, but she was so blinded by the light that was loving him that she didn’t care.

It wasn’t even a big diamond. It was a tiny thing, hardly able to call itself a jewel.

She slipped it on with something resembling a grimace, but as her gaze went to William her expression became something like love. Soon they would leave this half-life, and she would be free.

Like a ghost, Celine drifted to William’s bedside, where she leaned to press a light kiss to his forehead. He did not stir. 

It was for the best, she thought, as she left to return to her husband’s home.

[desastre-fag]

someone take over my body and trap my psyche in an ornate mirror in an abandoned mansion i need a break

[wilfywarfy]

Happy Anniversary~

"...hello?"

It all looks so… familiar. Like he's home, but he knows he's not. There's no banter coming from the commons. Or the sound of pots and pans clashing against each other. Not even the sound of walking on the upper levels.

It was quiet. Too quiet. This wasn't his home.

"Hello?" He calls out again. Where was everyone?

"William?"

Wilford turns around. Not because it was his name they'd called out, but because there was someone else.

A man in a white dress shirt and black pants comes up to him. He wasn't completely sober. He could tell by the way he stumbled. He himself had stumbled like that many times before.

"Hmm? Oh, it's not-"

"'ve been wondering where you were! Come on, we've been waiting for you!" The man holds out a hand for him.

Waiting… for him?

"Well, I suppose I can't keep the party waiting! Oh, by the way, it's Wilford. Not William." Wilford takes the man's hand, letting himself be led.

"Haha, yeah, whatever you say, Will! Now… where's that poker room… oh, right." It seemed the alcohol was getting to his guide as he took Wilford to the party.

What he's met with, well, it certainly is a party. There's 2 other people in the room, both looking equally, if not even more, intoxicated. Both seated at the poker table, with large glasses of wine.

Wait… wait a second…

"Abe?"

The man looks at Wilford, squinting to try and get his vision to realign. "William! Where'd you go? We'd been waiting forever!"

"Uhm, Wilford. I… I just got here. I don't know where I am." He says honestly. There was no point in lying.

"Haha! Aww man, you are hilarious! Maybe you should stop drinking, you're starting to go insane!"

Even Abe didn't believe him? He spent a whole 19 minute special making Abe believe him! That was NOT a small budget special either. "No, I'm being honest!"

"Hah, sure you are! Come on, go pick up your hand again! It's your turn!"

Abe gestures to an empty seat at the poker table. Set up with a rather nice looking pile of chips. A tempting glass of dark red wine. And a hand with his name written all over it. Maybe he could tolerate being called William… especially if it meant a bit of fun.

"Well, don't mind if I do~"

It takes time to get into the swing of things. After all, drunk humor is different from sober humor. But if there's one thing Wilford was good at, it was adapting! Before he knew it, he had the whole table bursting out in laughter with every quip he fired out. And it was much easier with every glass of wine he finished off.

"Haha, William, my friend! You truly are a comedian if there ever was one! Say, why don't you come work with me? You'd make a killing, you know!"

"Oh, Mark, I'm already there! I'm one of the biggest names in entertainment! At least… I think I am."

"Hah, alright, Mr. False Memory. Whatever you say!" The rest of the table laughs.

Mark… Mark… why'd that name sound so familiar?

"What the fuck!?"

Everyone's attention snaps to the door. A new player seems to have entered the party. And he didn't look too happy, considering how he held out his gun. It was a rather nice looking gun, if Wilford said so himself. A beautiful revolver. Why, he had one himself!

"William!" Damien said, breaking out into a fit of giggles. "There you are!"

"Yes, it's me… what is HE doing in MY seat?" William points the muzzle towards Wilford, who's unfazed.

"Well, that's William!" Damien says, as if it's the most casual thing in the world.

Both Wilford and William look at Damien, before looking back at each other.

"Well, let me explain-"

"You can explain once you're dead!" William unclicks the safety, and continues to point the gun towards Wilford

"Hey! Wait just a damn second! As someone who also has a rather dapper looking mustache, I don't want to get into a squabble with a fellow stache haver!"

Wilford holds his hands up, showing that he doesn't have anything. Though in doing such, shows that he has his revolver tucked away in his belt. 

"You do have a dapper mustache, I'll give you that." William slowly points the gun to the floor, though he's still defensive.

"Exactly! There's no need to fight, friend!"

"Wait a damn second…" Abe says, as if he'd just made a discovery. "William… isn't William?"

"I've been saying that, Abe. My name is Wilford."

"It's rather rude that you would confuse us, Abe. We look nothing alike." Both Wilford and William look at Abe, both placing a hand on their hip, as if to say 'We're nothing alike! Just look at us!'

Abe is still very confused. But he's also very drunk. "...okay."

"Anywho, that still doesn't explain why you're in MY seat, drinking MY drink, and mooching up to MY detective…friend." William clarifies.

"Well, look…" Wilford looks at the badges on the man's uniform. "Colonel! Look Colonel, I mean no harm by being here… I don't even know why I'm here if I'm being honest. But this party is so fun! I couldn't resist! By the way, Mark, lovely party throwing skills!"

"Thank you, William."

"Wilford. Anyway, I never meant to harm you. Or anyone here. I simply wished to play poker. So… if you'd like, you can have your seat back."

William stares at him. The amount of pink on Wilford was nauseating to all his senses.

He then looks at his hand, or rather, what Wilford had done with his hand. He had more chips than when he left.

"...haha!" William throws an arm around Wilford, pulling him into his side. Wilford is caught off guard, but adapts, and tosses an arm around the Colonel. "Boys, I think we have another player in our party!"

The boys laugh, and raise their glasses in celebration. 

"Say, Mark. How do you feel about setting up a new hand for our new friend here?" Damien asks the red robed man.

That smile was fake. Wilford could tell a fake smile from a mile away. Why, Mark, why-.

"Of course! BENJAMIN!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Get our new friend his own glass. And bring up a new keg, would you?"

"Yes, sir!"

Wilford doesn't remember laughing this much. The only time he wasn't laughing was when he was drinking, and even that was a task.

His own vision becomes blurry. Time starts to slow. And the slur of his voice grows thicker.

"Say, Wilford… how do you feel about games of chance, hmm?" A sultry voice asks. Who exactly it is, it's hard to tell.

"Well… I do love gambling!" He gestures to his large pile of poker chips. Which he'd gained by, admittedly, changing a few of his cards. What was the harm if they didn't know? "Why do you ask?"

"Well… I challenged William to a game of Russian Roulette. It's a false round, no danger. So… what do you say? Want to bet?"

"Hmm… nah, I'm alright. You two have fun though!" Wilford went back to counting his chips… or trying to, at least. It was so hard to count. He's pretty sure he hears an 'Alright… if you say so.' From over his shoulder.

It's not even a few moments later before he hears it.

BANG!

Wilfords eyes grow wide. And it's like all the alcohol is flushed from his body, leaving him cold sober. That wasn't the sound of a false round. No, that was a bullet. A real, authentic bullet. He knew the sound by heart. 

He drops all his chips and scrambles out of his chair, his feet guiding him to what had happened.

There's so much blood… so much blood… so much blood.

"Haha, Mark lost!" William says joyously, clapping as he laughs.

"What… what the hell?" Wilford says quietly, taking in the scene before him.

Fuck, there were bits of Marks head splattered on the floor. Small chunks of muscle, skull, and brain matter in places where they didn't belong. Blood was pouring from the hole in his head, like some kind of fucked up syrup.

"No…no… this, this isn't real…" Wilford says to himself.

"Heh, damn right it's not real. Come on, Mark, get up!" William kicks Marks body. There's no response.

The smell of rot starts to spread out. Open bodies smelled like death. He knew it from first hand experience.

"This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real…"

"Oh, come on, don't be such a sore loser, Mark! Get your ass up, spoil sport!" The Colonel kicks him again. No response. "Ugh, Damien, help!"

"What's wrong, Will?"

"Drama boy here won't get his ass up."

"...eh, probably just fell asleep."

No, he's not asleep. He's dead. Wilford has seen many dead bodies. Enough to know that Mark was dead. There was no false round… Mark was dead.

"Wilford… you alright?"

Wilford looks at Abe, concern written on the detective's face. Meanwhile, his own was covered with fear.

Pure fear.

"He's dead… he's dead…" Wilford keeps stepping back, til he comes in contact with the poker table. He grips onto it. Hard. His nails make indents in the fine wood.

"He's dead… he's dead…" Once his hands hurt enough, he uses them to cover his face. Blocking his view of everyone messing with the body of their friend.

He's dead. He's dead.

And then… it's quiet.

Wilford looks again… everyone is gone. Mark… Damien… Abe… they're all gone. Hell, the room is gone. Replaced with the loneliness of black. 

"Do you remember yet?"

"...what?"

"Do you remember what this place is, William?"

"...why did you bring me here?"

"For you to remember…"

A crack of lighting strikes too close for comfort, thunder not too far after. It makes Wilford jump in shock.

"For you to remember what you did to me."

In front of him, a body drops. As if waiting for him, right here, at the right time.

It's Marks body. The wound is still fresh. He wants to throw up.

"For you to remember what you did to them." 

"William!"

"William!"

"William!"

Voices surround him. Ones that feel so close, and yet, so far. Never front and center. They hadn't been front and center for a long time.

"For you to remember the mistakes you've made…"

"I… I didn't know…" he pleads with the voice.

"All of those horrible mistakes…"

"I didn't know it was loaded…"

"Everyone you've hurt… everyone you've betrayed… all the pain you've caused."

"Please, I'm sorry!" He begs.

"It's too late for sorry…"

Wilford looks at his hands. They're covered in red. Dripping red onto the supposed floor of this void. He tries to wipe them on his pants, but nothing comes off. Blood just keeps dripping off, never ending.

"Do you think sorry will fix everything you've done?"

He turns around to where he hears the voice, but is met with bodies. Piles, upon piles of bodies. A sick mountain range of his own creation. All mangled in ways that he's caused. Some so bad that he can't even recognize them. The smell of rot is unbearable. The sight is unbearable. He has to physically stop himself from spilling sick all over.

"Do you think sorry would bring them back?"

He turns again.

There's 2 gravestones… overcome with the consequences of time. Both adorned with blue and red flowers respectively.

Damien Whitacre. Celine Whitacre.

"Damien… Celine…" Tears form in his eyes just from the names alone. Oh, Celine…

"Do you think sorry would fix all the pain you've caused him?"

"Why can't I remember?"

"Get your ass down on the ground!"

"Am I crazy?"

"Abe…" oh, his detective… he never deserved all that trouble… he deserved rest. Peace.

"Do you think sorry would fix all the pain you've caused me?"

A cold hand rests on the back of Wilfords neck. All his memories hit him like a freight train. Everything. Everything he'd done.

"Mark… please…" tears spill down his cheeks. He can't look at him… he can't look at him again.

"No… that won't do… not after everything you've done…"

The cold hand vanishes. And he's alone again… in the loneliness of black.

"It's all your fault, William."

Wilford looks around. There's nothing. And yet, there's everything. It's too much. "Mark, please, it was an accident!"

"You hurt me, you hurt your friends, and you left her to die!"

"I didn't! I didn't leave her! I swear!"

"So many people… hurt. Because of you."

"I didn't mean to! I didn't know!"

Ear piercing screams are heard all around him. Victims of his crimes. Innocent people, dead. Coming back to haunt him for his actions.

"Please! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Mark! I'm sorry!"

"Sorry doesn't cut it, William! And it hasn't cut it for a long time!"

"I didn't know!"

"William!"

"William!"

"Please, William!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"You'll never be forgiven, William… no matter how much you try… you'll always be a murderer!"

"It was an accident! Please, believe me!"

"It's all your fault, William!"

"It's your fault!"

"It will always be your fault!"

"Murderer!"

"Please! Please, it was an accident! You have to believe me!" Wilford sobbed. Trying to plead to the voices of his friends. He wasn't a monster… it was an accident. A bad accident. He never meant to hurt them.

"It's all your fault!"

"Your fault!"

"Your fault!"

"It's all your fault, William!"

—

Wilford's eyes shoot open. His heart races in his chest. It's hard to breathe. The air feels like sludge, suffocating him. His face is wet from tears.

"It… it was an accident… I swear." He says to himself, in the dark of his room. The tears come again.

He's alone.

[southerndragontamer]

Egotober Day 30: Witch

Celine had been called a witch many times. She’d found her abilities early when her and Damien had been young. And she honestly liked the dark gothic aesthetic and style. She’d also been called an ice queen but witch was much more common. It was mostly in childish insults or whispers around her, there were very few that dared to shout it in her face for fear of what she’d do to them. But one of those few it turned out was her husband.

It had been another argument, for what reason she couldn’t remember clearly now as she stalked through the manor with anger bubbled in her veins. But the last part of it rang in her head like the echo of a gunshot. ‘Don’t you try to play innocent with me you conniving witch!’ Her hands shook as she threw her suitcase open. She felt the burn in her veins, the sparks of energy at her fingertips. She wanted to show him what the word really meant. What someone could do with powers like hers. But Celine still loved the proud man she’d fallen for, she didn’t want to hurt him that way at least. But she needed to leave, at least long enough to cool them both off….

Dark blinked once as the memory faded to the back of his mind from where it had been brought out. As he looked at the so called ‘hero’ in front of him. Still in that stupid red suit with that arrogant smirk on his face at what had left his lips. ‘Celine was nothing but a conniving witch!’ Dark’s face twisted in a mocking sneer as he loosened his stance and moved forward in a predatory prowl. The righteous anger of a protective brother filled his words as a hand clenched into a fist.

“A witch was she? Little more than someone who performed parlor tricks or was someone to blame when things went wrong? Well..”

Dark had a vicious pleasure summer in his veins that was shared three fold as he felt the bastard’s nose crack under his fist. As he watched him fall to the ground. He smirked as he felt the brother step back. As his body shifted and changed to match the pulse of fury that only a scorned and betrayed woman was capable of making.

She looked more elegant, the suit fell against her curves with a sensual sort of ferocity. Dark rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck as she set her heel on his throat. Magic, so much stronger, darker than it had been before leapt into her hands with barely a thought. She smirked at the furious, shocked and…..yes afraid look on Actor’s face. He hadn’t expected to deal with her and the strength of venom in her voice, if it had been possible, would have killed him from necrosis ten times over.

“Maybe I should show you how much of a witch I really am.”

[shabeeboothedrawingender]

I decided to write a short Bactor fic. Title: Doubts ----------------------

“Not all love is gentle. Sometimes it’s gritty and dirty and possessive, sometimes it’s not supposed to be careful or soft at all. Sometimes it feels like teeth.” It was written in Benjamin’s head, engraved in a precious font. What did he expect? Did he expect to be the joyful, polite, oblivious man he once was? That… monster had broken him. Mark wasn’t even the same anymore. That entity had turned them both into vile creatures for its own entertainment. How did he know if his master loved him like he promised? He knocked a vase off the table he was cleaning. He seemed to have gotten lost in his thoughts. “Shit…” he mumbled to himself. He wasn’t usually a swearer. He knelt down and began to clean up the tiny fragments of the expensive vase. He then noticed the familiar angelic voice calling out to him. “Benjamin? Are you alright in there?” called Actor from the living room. Ben chuckled to himself. “I’m alright, sir. I just knocked something, that's all…”

[coolmayordamien]

Some sweet, angsty Abestache for my beloved @willywarfy

"Don't wanna live a life that is comprehensive; cause seeing clear would be a bad idea."

Being with Wilford is an experience. Usually a good one, sometimes a frightening one, and frequently a painful one. But Abe would rather take a bullet to the heart than spend another moment without him.

He knows which one hurts more, trust him.

Again, it's usually good. Great, even. The happiest that he's ever been in his life, probably. Wilford is, in many ways, perfect for him.

Sometimes Abe will be sitting at his desk, pouring over case files with a glass of whiskey, and he'll look up to see his lover stretched out on the sofa (three guesses on who had decided that his office needed a sofa) with his hands behind his head and a shit-eating grin plastered all over his face. It always takes the detective off-guard when Wil just appears out of nowhere, even after all of this time.

"I was thinking about you," he'll explain, and Abe will realize that he is a goner. Because Wilford can (and sometimes does) spend the whole day stepping out from around corners or out of closets (and on one memorable occasion, falling out of the fridge) and right into his detective's arms, simply because he can't stop thinking about Abe.

It's a nice feeling, knowing just how often he crosses this man's mind. The detective has spent years, although he could not say precisely how many, consumed by thoughts of Wilford Warfstache, in one form or another. Obsessing over him, hunting him, desperate to force him to explain his actions. Cross-referencing alibies, keeping tabs on every single person who had managed to survive those awful events-

Getting too caught up in the details, focusing on the minutae of it all.

-devoting every moment of his life to this one man.

Things aren't so different now that they're an item, as a matter of fact. Abe still spends most of his time tracking his mustachioed maverick down, trying to get useful information out of him. And obsessing over Wil, of course. It's just a healthier, more enjoyable obsession now.

But it's not all fun and games. They're not a pair of springtime lovers, sound of mind and body, cured of their every imperfection by the miracle of love.

They're people. Flawed, damaged, traumatized people. And they share a lot of history together.

Sometimes when Wilford appears out of thin air, it doesn't just startle Abe; it terrifies him. He'll feel his heart begin to pound and will remember how it felt to drown in his own blood. He'll choke, tears streaming down his face as he fumbles for the gun, and it is not Wilford who is reaching to steady him but a wild-eyed Colonel with a 357 Magnum and his partner is right there he can't let them die not this time not again-

Sometimes Wil remembers things that he is supposed to forget, and forgets things that he is supposed to remember. Every so often he'll sort of...wake up. He'll stop whatever he's doing, his beautiful eyes losing their usual intensity as they scan the room, unfocused and afraid. Abe knows what he is looking for.

"They're not here, Wil," he'll say softly. The man with the pink mustache will startle, his face twisting up suspiciously. If Abe is lucky, Wilford will not recognize him.

"Where are they, detective?" William demands angrily on days that Abe is not lucky. "Where's Celine? Where's Damien? Where are my friends?"

"They're- they're not here," he stammers, because he promised that he would never lie to his lover, even when the truth only hurts him.

Once, Abe had lost his temper. Wil had been frightening him, had cornered him by the doorway and it was too much like what had happened before. He had snapped, grabbing him by the shoulders and shouting, "They're dead! They're gone and they are NEVER COMING BACK, no matter how many times we do this!"

Wil had shot him. Again.

That was...a very bad night indeed. Abe doesn't like thinking about it, remembering the pain of the bullet and the pain of the betrayal, knowing that he couldn't really die again but not being able to stop himself from crying out as his blood dripped onto the floor, as William became Wilford once again and screamed in horror at what he had done, crying and laughing and shaking as he pressed his bare hands against Abe's wound to staunch the bleeding that had never really begun, because it had never really stopped.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Wil rambled, his hands and sleeves turning pink with blood. "I didn't mean- I'm so sorry, I didn't know that it was loaded-"

Abe wonders who Wilford sees when he's like that. The District Attorney, maybe. It can't be Abe himself. William had absolutely meant to kill him.

Sometimes Abe looks at the man he loves and thinks, 'Murderer. You're in love with a murderer, you filthy traitor, what would everyone think? Are you crazy?'

Wilford always hears him when he wonders if he's crazy. Abe has just about given up on trying to figure out how he does it. But it's alright, because he only takes Abe in his arms, pressing a tender kiss to his forehead, his cheek, his mouth.

"Don't ever let anyone tell you that you're crazy," Wilford says strongly, a beautiful, mad grin on his face. "Not even yourself. I think that you might be in need of a little fun, sweetheart."

As they dance together on the stage, lights flashing, music blaring, Abe knows that everything is going to be alright. He's got what he needs; a man who can bring a little color into his world, a little madness into his life. A little bit of pain as well, true, but that just makes these few perfect moments all the sweeter.

"I love you," Abe says suddenly, and the joy on Wilford's motherlovin' face at those words--he would be happy if he could make Wil smile like that every day for the rest of time.

So he does.

[ghiertor-the-gigapeen]

cw // blood, wounds, needle, flesh

Actor's body started decomposing and causes the man to have mental breakdown

[theknightmarket]

"I'm glad it was you."

In which Dark and the district attorney finally unite, for good. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - AO3 TW: cursing Pages: 20 - Words: 8,000

[Requests: OPEN]

Your return to the manor was not marked with fireworks or cheering or parades. Nobody met you at the door and welcomed you in with fruit baskets and wine. The place was just as drab and cold as it always had been, but that was fine by you. You radiated your own heat now, with a living, physical body that you could walk with, talk with, control to your beating heart’s content. The grin stretched across your face was your own slice of heaven. You hadn’t been able to keep your hands still since you left Mark’s house – the bastard that you beat, so you weren’t afraid to say his name anymore. Your fingers brushed against the curve of your cheek and danced along your sides. 

Even the rotting wooden handle of the manor’s front door was welcoming. A rough texture to remind you it was there as you pushed the creaking thing open. The empty foyer failed to dissuade you while you strutted in. 

You were confident. You were excited. You were so goddamn happy to be alive. 

“Dark!” you called, hearing the sound of your very own voice echo. It echoed! You could barely believe it. All of this felt like a dream, but you refused to accept that. You deserved this after so long, you wouldn’t let a little doubt creep in to spoil your fun. 

The air flexed around you alongside the arrival of someone new in the room. He peered round the corner of the kitchen archway at first, but within seconds he was in front of you. The ribbons of red and blue danced around his figure, the same you had seen through the barrier of a screen for weeks before and was now standing in front of you. 

Dark spoke simply, “Hello.”

And you replied, “Hello.”

You tried to hold back; you really did. The records would show that you restrained yourself for a full five seconds before you lunged forward and wrapped your arms around his waist. You savored the smoothness of fabric beneath your fingertips, but you cherished the squeeze of Dark’s own arms around your shoulders more. There were no tears, not this time, because you reminded yourself that you weren’t going to lose this. Should he let you, you would gladly spend another century in this position. 

But you were sure there were other important matters to tend to. It didn’t make you pull away, but you were aware.

“You’re very cold.” Words muffled by the jacket collar against your mouth, you gladly forfeited the joke for the comforting pressure he provided. 

“Does that bother you?”

“Nope.” 

His laughter was music to your ears. Deep, genuine, dare you say, dark. You were slightly mad that you weren’t strong enough to swing him around, but you settled for a comical squeeze.

“You are warm,” he muttered, a coat of confusion on his statement, as though he expected you to be as cold as he was. Unbeknownst to you, he did.

“Does that bother you?”

“Of course not.”

You stayed like that for another ten seconds without shifting. This was good. You liked this. You pushed the idea of moving away back like it was an incessant dog. The normality of your old life was long lost to you, but it reminded you of knowing you had to get to work but wanting to stay under the blankets for that much longer. The height of winter, the sun not yet risen. 

You sighed, “My legs are getting tired.” And, while they were, the dull pressure rising from your knees, neither of you made any attempt to cut the contact. This wasn’t how it had gone when you first escaped the mirror. You were springy and enthusiastic back then, so this ache was likely psychosomatic, a possibility you relied on in order to stay right where you were. 

“Are you,” Dark started, then he stopped to swallow. Being this close didn’t make you a mind reader, but his nervousness was obvious either way. “Do you feel like you can talk about what happened, because I have many questions.” 

Did you? You supposed after effectively beating the hell out of Mark, you had calmed down enough to go through some of it. It was the best you would get from him; you weren’t about to get a written and signed apology. 

Gently, you pulled yourself away from Dark, but you thought it best to keep your hands on his shoulders when you saw a spark of guilt in his eyes. 

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I have a lot of questions, too, but I’ll answer what I can.”

Dark nodded.

A second passed.

And then another. 

Dark cleared his throat. 

“Oh, you mean now.” He nodded again. “Sorry, I forgot what we were doing.” 

The chuckle you drew from him was worth the slight embarrassment. 

“That’s perfectly alright. I expected nothing else.”

When you had left the manor, you had been in a haze of bloodlust. You were prepared to burn the house down with Mark in it. Now, with your mind clear, you noticed that the few things had changed since your disappearance. The foyer that you walked through, towards the staircase, was full of more rubble than furniture. The most obvious was the pile of wood that had presumably fallen down from the landing above, but you were well aware of the splintering support beams and steps that you took to the second floor. It was almost disappointing to see the damage the place had sustained. From your perspective in the mirror, despite only being able to see a small portion of the rooms, you never saw any real effects of time. It was as though it was frozen, just as you had been, but everything caught up to it at once, leaving you to see a ruined temple instead of a magnificent manor.

When you reached the last step, you glanced along the hallway. “Is Wilford around?”

Dark hummed. Not even he could keep track of that man. “Possibly,” he answered, similarly vague as the topic was. “You’re back, that’s something interesting to lure him in, but then again, it is Wilford that we’re talking about.”

The one consistent thing about Wilford was his inconsistency, no rhyme or reason to his appearances. You thought about asking after Benjamin for a second, but spite had gotten you this far, so both the comments about your outfit were ones you decided to carry with you.

Beside the peeling wallpaper and the shattered console tables, the door to Dark’s study looked completely untouched. You couldn’t say that you weren’t surprised. It had seemed a focal point in the recent events, sweeping in and out, pushing and pulling the handle, and yet it was as good as new. Time barely touched it. 

Dark sidled up next to you and opened the door to the room. Just as it was before. The sight of it alone, outlined by sunrays streaking through, instilled a tiredness in you, though the added relaxation made it feel like getting into a warm bed instead of forewarned fatigue. You felt comfortable before you set foot across the doorway.

There was already one chair parked by the window you were facing, so Dark moved the one from his desk into place next to it. A simple gesture towards the pair made you lightly comment, “How gentlemanly.”

“I do try.” 

You enjoyed seeing him like this. When you were in the mirror, it was rare for you to see him smiling, and even rarer for it to be in your direction. You’d seen the perk of the corner of his lips when he reached whatever paragraph of the book that he enjoyed – you were always tempted to tell him to just laugh, it was obvious he was holding back the smallest chuckles. You never found out why, but, now, he was being unabashed with his happiness. 

While you were enjoying the moment yourself, a worry gnawed at your heart. You weren’t here to stare at Dark, you were here to answer questions, and hopefully, get some answers to your own. Still, you felt guilty, knowing that the peace had to be broken, and the hammer rested between the two of you.

Dark was the first to pick it up.

“Ah, well, to business,” he spoke calmly, a guise he was proud of. In truth, he was just as disappointed as you were to move on. You were smiling, too, though he wasn’t sure if you knew it. It was all the better for him because there wasn’t a barrier between you, glass or distance or memory; he could see the way your smile bent into your cheeks as clear as day. He could reach out and cup your face if he wanted to.

To business.

“I have to ask,” he began, settling back in his chair, “how did Mark get you out of the mirror?” 

Your reaction was immediate and volatile. That smile turned into a grimace at the mere mention of that man, so Dark was quick to continue.

“I know the circumstances on your end, but I had only just found a way to take down the mirror’s barrier, let alone get you out, and that was with Celine’s help.”

You sighed. It felt good to breath, as weird as it was to say, in a confined space. You drew as much comfort from that as you could.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know specifically how he got me out, but, when he did, he just snapped his fingers—” You copied this action, and the click reverberated against the walls and molded with the small rings of light emanating from Dark, “—and I was gone.”

That was what he had feared. Mark hadn’t needed a book; he hadn’t needed anything but the experience of the void in order to bend it to his will. He could do anything, and had done something, on a whim. Having been a part of the void was not the same as practice, it seemed. That thought scared him.

“Do you know why Mark did this?”

Your simple answer was, “Bragging rights.”

Dark knew that. When Mark had appeared in his office, he told him. Flaunting, he had called it, and teased him with the fact that taking you didn’t matter to him while it meant everything to Dark. Despite all the proof, there was still something inside him that hoped it wasn’t true. He didn’t want you to just be a pawn on the chessboard, caught in the middle and then captured because it was convenient – because that meant that if he had not talked to you on that fateful night, you wouldn’t have gone through any of that.

The undertone of pleading was hidden by a groan. “Anything else?”

“Why would there be.”

You sat in silence for the rest of that moment, thoughts overcoming you in a way that got on your nerves. Against your will, they latched to the image of Mark beaten to the ground. What was he doing now? Was he planning? Was he recovering? Or was he doing what you largely suspected; getting ready for his next scene in a makeup chair to cover up the cuts and bruises, not a goddamn care in the world. Because the villains always lost and the heroes always won, and it wasn’t a mystery which role he saw himself in. He would find solace in thinking – knowing – it would turn out right for him in the end.

You felt a pressure on your hand. The one that lay on the arm of the chair was now covered by a gray one. Just yesterday, that might have seemed unnatural, but, this time, it reminded you to take a deep breath and look at Dark. He was calm, so you should have been, too. In and out.

You nodded with a small, tired smile for him to continue.

“You’re warm.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that.”

“No,” he laughed lightly, “as in you’re not cold.” His fingers curled around yours, as though having more contact would help him to figure out this confusing aspect. “Whose body is that?”

You hadn’t considered that. Getting you out of the mirror was one thing, but your old body was, well,occupied. But, after a second of thought, you were pretty sure you had an answer. You brought your legs up and your hands to your eyes, not enough force to drive the balls of your thumbs into your sockets, but enough that you could ground yourself.

“Well, it’s not mine, that’s for sure. Someone Mark deemed unimportant, which, in his eyes, could be anyone.” You felt Dark coaxing your hands away. You let him, until they were in your lap again, and he was holding them tighter than before. “But he wasn’t caught, so it can’t have been anyone socially important, either. I-I don’t know.” 

His thumb brushed yours. You put one foot on the ground and tucked the other under your knee.

“And you have needs?”

That hit you like a freight train. 

“I’m sorry?”

Dark didn’t look phased. He had the slightest tilt to his head and his hands stayed right where they were. Given his thought process, it made sense.

“You need to eat, drink, sleep?”

“Oh!” You weren’t given enough time to fluster, taken from one to one hundred and back to one, so you wasted no time in confirming, “Yeah, yeah, I do, and so does Mark.” 

This was the most perplexing part of you to Dark. The whole pseudo-dying and resurrection, he understood that, he had gone through it himself. However, you were much more human than he was. The taste of food in his mouth was lost to time for him, and yet you needed exactly what anybody on the street needed. You fit in well enough with them, while he was confined to the manor. The entity that made him who he was kept back everything else. His humanity. Earlier in his life, he would have appreciated it.

The patter of rain drew his attention to the window. A gloomy day to suit the topic of conversation and the moods you had both been moved into. It was difficult to confront it all, but you had to, and you knew that. You had to move forward with everything, but the concept was warred over in your mind.

“It’s a pity Celine doesn’t have any books on necromancy,” Dark said, “I wish I could be of more help to you.”

Whether it was the time spent in the modern world or the century since you’d used your manners, you found yourself barely stifling a laugh and eyeroll. “Are you serious?” A glance towards him told you he was. “I’m the one who was missing a batch of their memories, you can’t be the one to forget our conversation.”

He didn’t respond in the pause you gave him, so you sat forward further to look him directly in the eye.

“The self-loathing, Dark, it’s not good for you. You’re also just wrong.”

You held your clasped hands higher between you. “Without you, this wouldn’t be happening. I’d be locked behind glass or trailing after Mark like a puppy. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the one who got me out, even if you don’t believe it.”

All it took was lifting his hands slightly for you to lean down and kiss them. On your end, it was an appreciative gesture that occurred to you from somewhere unknown. On Dark’s end, he froze, meaning you were the only force to lower his hands to where they originally were. His eyes flitted around your face, like a bee searching for a flower. He never found the confusion or regret that he assumed he was going to find, only honesty, and he didn’t know how he should react. It was no secret that he wasn’t the best with social cues, and neither were you and neither were any of the others in the manor. The only thing that he felt right doing was letting slip the little smile that danced at the corners of his mouth. So, he did.

The emotion behind it changed when you asked, “But, uh, do… do you think Mark’s able to put me back?”

You were scared, and that smile softened to a comfort, as best as he could.

“After the state you left him in, I don’t think he’ll be able to put himself back.”

That image flashed in your mind again, your eyes losing focus and your jaw clenching.

Dark rushed to continue, “It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to get the chance. Now when you’re here.”

Albeit unspoken, he hoped you understood; not when you were with him.

“You’re right, it doesn’t matter. Look, this is my first real day of being out, and I think I’d rather do anything than keep talking about Mark, so could we…?”

“Whatever you want.” He hadn’t expected to get even this far with his questioning, and there wasn’t much else he thought you would know. At least, nothing worth drudging up the experience again. “Though I can’t promise a sunny stroll through the gardens.”

The raindrops were pelting the glass even faster now, a group of storm clouds swept in with it. Weather like this didn’t worry you, but you wanted to spend some time with Dark, and he wasn’t about to go dancing in the rain with you for himself. So, you sat and thought for a few seconds, and then an idea struck you.

“I know what we can do.”

Despite you keeping the plan to yourself, Dark got up when you did and followed you into the hallway again. It didn’t take long for you to wind up at the door to the library, and his hesitance catching up with him was just as quick. You had already seen the carnage he left behind in there – why you would want to get close to the room, he didn’t know, but you gladly strutted in regardless with your arms spready out wide.

Did you think things would be different? No. You knew fully well that it was going to be as bad as it was when you had searched for some memories. Dark’s frown made it obvious he wasn’t going to repair anything, and the thing about being dead was that you couldn’t touch anything, so that ruled out Benjamin. Wilford wasn’t around enough to devote any time to a project, if he was able to stay focused long enough, anyway. And who did that leave?

You spun around, back against the wall and hands settled on your hips, and announced, “Cleanup duty.”

Grabbing one of the more intact books that was within your reach, you stepped forward and threw it to Dark. He caught it without a second thought, though not yet done processing the situation.

“Can’t make a new start without fixing the old one, right?” you said as you moved towards the first bookshelf that needed de-toppling.

Your companion watched you, hands clutching the book. The leather binding was bent away from the pages, and some of those were shedding from the glue. The knicks and gouges were a feature of every book that he saw, but this one had three sizeable dents in the sides, and, when he opened it, the first paper was labelled at the twenty-seventh. 

And yet, he couldn’t help but concede, “If this is what you want to do.”

Your bright smile was all the push he needed to place that book to the side and help you to reset the room.

It was an endeavor, to say the least. The shelves and cases were heavy, but it was harder to avoid stepping on the remains of encyclopedias and journals. Paper was strewn on every inch of the floorboards, and you were not proud to say that you almost slipped over once or twice. A side-table had to be made right, and, underneath, you found the missing pages of the book you had thrown to Dark. With them all in one place, you safely moved the copy to the salvageable pile. Somewhere along the way, roughly half an hour in, you had developed a system. The utterly destroyed books were packed in one corner, ready for an unknown future. Dark felt the rush of guilt whenever he added to the steadily growing mound. 

Then, there was the stacks of the aforementioned salvageables. The only important thing was that they had most of their pages together; the covers could be remade, but the contents were what mattered. They were in the first corner you had cleared, as though a protective ring were summoned around them. And that was another positive of the inhuman inhabitants of the manor! There was no dust for you to clean up beneath the papers.

Nevertheless, it was only right that the survivors, the very few books that might have sustained a scratch or tear, were placed in the hallway on a console table. Only the ones that had been stashed far into the bookshelves were of that nature, but you still felt prideful when you fished one out.

Your merry pair of cleaners was an hour in by the time that Dark picked up a book that was very literally hanging by a thread. He shifted it carefully in his arms to avoid agitating the binding, barely moving in a centimeter, but it didn’t work. The connection snapped and the bound pages drifted to the floor in a heap, like feathers after a bird was shot. Dark kneeled next to the remains and, with a gentler hand, he picked one of them up.

“Unfortunate, really,” he spoke, noticing you begin to crouch at his side, “I rather liked that one.”

It was true. In all of his years in the manor, he had the option of doing two things; either he could follow the trail after Mark that was undoubtably going to run cold, or he could read. When things got too much, or Wilford forced him out of his office, he would end up scouring the shelves of the library. His library, technically, because Celine was the only one to ever use it. All her early occult guides were on one side, while the other held the recreational books. Non-fiction, mystery, horror… The Lady in the Lake had come from one of those shelves, and so had the one that Dark looked down at.

He was only drawn out of his regret by your shifting. You glanced at the first few lines, then to the mess of papers that joined the rest of the graveyard, and finally to the door. Dark looked at you when you got up and left, barely processing what you were doing without an idea of what you were going to do. 

Luckily, he only worried for a minute at most, before you were back in the library with a picture frame in your hands, and his worry melted to confusion. It had lay in the hallway, empty now, as it had once held a distasteful photo of Mark and Celine. Dark sat tight while you popped out the back and handed him the glass and wood.

He blinked.

You nodded.

Restraining whatever strength might have torn the page more, he placed it facing into the frame and reattached the back, slotting the clasps into place. Your hands moved it out of his own grip as you got to your feet. Dark followed suit so that he could see you setting it onto one of the upright shelves in the neater corner.

And, just like that, you went back to inspecting more books and readjusting the furniture.

Dark didn’t know what to do. That seemed to be happening a lot today, but he was getting no more use to it. Maybe it was because the last century hadn’t been action-packed, but he was being surprised and confused and simply flustered recently, all by the same source.

You were a variable in his life that he hadn’t planned to plan for. Getting you back was the goal, and, when he passed that goal, it was done. End of the story. Except it obviously wasn’t because there you were, fixing the mess he’d made of the library, surprising him with every movement you made and every emotion you made him feel, even when it wasn’t an emotion he could name. The warmth you exuded, body and soul, he had never felt it before. Normally, he would immediately distance himself from any kind of uncertainty, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Leaving you again, when you spooked away ennui like a nightlight in blackness, was impossible for him. He wasn’t going to deny that he needed you – though, it might have been harder for him to accept that he wanted you. This situation was one fate had plotted since you had first stepped across the threshold of the manor.

“I don’t suppose you know what’s happened while I’ve been gone?”

Dark snapped his head towards you.

“How do you mean?”

Your back was turned to him, eyes focused on stabilizing the wooden plank in front of you. “People aren’t wearing suits and smoking everywhere anymore. How have times changed?”

Dark huffed a slight laugh as he rearranged the paper of another book. “To be quite fair, I’m not all that up to date either,” he forewarns, separating one of his favorite pages from the rest of the brutalized chapters. “From what Wilford has told me, a lot is different. I was… unaware of the earlier years—” You didn’t need to know the explicit, dehumanizing, jarringly goopy details of his first ten years, when he was barely holding himself together as a creature instead of a person, “—but there were more wars, some hot, some cold. We got to the brink of annihilation at one point, but Wilford glossed over that fact. He was more focused on the disco in the 70s and 80s, he still is.” You shared a breathier chuckle with him. “If I may ask, what have you seen in the last month?”

This was where he had you caught. You had asked what was different solely to get a grasp on where you were. Wilford’s time travel talk was going to need to be backdropped with the current events, after all. However, in your time with Mark, you had seen some things, and being asked about them pushed your preparation to the back of your mind.

“Hollywood got big,” you stated immediately, “I saw a lot of movies, for obvious reasons, and every single one was,” you took in a breath, spending it on another giddy laugh, “they were beautiful. They had these special effects and computer-generated imagery and, Dark, they could take people’s voices and replay them over and over again, and they’d never run out. They put normal people in space or in Ancient Greece.” You abandoned your current task to bounce towards your friend. “They even put people in the 1920s, and you could see the color of their clothes! Everything was bright and expressive; I’d love to show you.”

Dark hadn’t seen many, or any, movies. You would expect that to just be during his time in the manor, but that did include all of his time as him. He had vague memories from Damien and Celine’s theatre experiences, but all of them were clouded over with time and fatigue. The way you described these new ones, though, had him joining your smile regardless, and helpfully disregarding how your proximity to him and your hands on his upper arm made his breath labor. 

“I’d love to be shown.”

And ignore that, when your smile spread further, his did, too, and his eyes darted around your face from your sparkling eyes to your grinning lips to your cheeks flushed with excitement.

Meanwhile you fully accepted the rapid beating of your heart with open arms, not only because you now had a heart to beat. Dark cared, no matter how much he tried to hide it, he cared. He did things with you that he wouldn’t do alone in a million years. He paid attention to you when nobody else did and he made up for the time that he didn’t, twice-over. He saved you because he cared. How could you not love him?

Was that the right word for it? You hadn’t felt like this in so long, you never had to put a name to the foreign feeling. But when you looked at Dark, saw him smiling back at you, face to face with nothing but the smallest gap of air between you, you couldn’t think of anything else to call it.

In total, repairing and cleaning the library had taken three hours. The shelves were straightened, the curtains were replaced, and the books were sorted. All you needed to do now was wait for the next day to get out into town, so that you could go on your hunt for supplies and a manual on how to actually fix the books.

While you stood next to Dark in front of the door, staring at your project so close to its finish, your heart ached at the thought of waiting. The hands on your hips clenched and you inwardly groaned. In your humble opinion, you had done enough waiting for multiple lifetimes. 

You spun on your heel to face Dark, who looked pretty happy with himself. Good.

“What else needs fixing up?”

He glanced at you like he hadn’t expected you to say anything. “My dear, I do think you should take a break.”

“You’re one to talk.”

As hypocritical as he may have been, even Dark could see what state you were in. Your breathing was fast, blood rushed to your face, you jumped from one task to another.

“I’m not the one who has needs.”

“Y’know, I’d love for you to not call them that.”

“You have to eat,” he stressed, not letting you deflect another time.

You took a step towards him and reassured, “And I will.” You appreciated the concern but the idea of slowing down at all make your stomach churn. “I don’t want to waste all this energy.”

“You won’t lose it, I can assure you.”

Thinking of a last resort, you huffed, opened your mouth to retort, and then stopped. Had you not just said this was why you loved him? Because he cared? And who were you to ignore him, a man whom you trusted with your very life? Being out of that mirror was bringing you back into some bad habits, it seemed.

In the end, you nodded and pulled open the library’s door.

“Fine,” you groaned with no real annoyance, “but I am coming straight back.”

“Where are you going?”

“No offence, but anything that’s been left in the kitchen is going to be well past its expiration date, if they even have them. I’ll drive down to a fast-food place, pick something up and be back by eight.” 

Your promise was exchanged for Dark’s confused expression, making you chuckle to yourself as you moved halfway out. That confusion shifting to blunt worry stopped you.

He didn’t know what two of those things you mentioned were, but he knew that it meant you were leaving the manor. An hour at most, but leaving, nonetheless, into the outside world, where he could not go.

“I don’t have to go, I could—”

“No, no, you should,” Dark cut you off, steeling his emotions for however long it would take to convince you and himself. “Go, just stay safe.”

A smile and a squeeze of his hand.

“Straight back,” you reminded softly. 

And he repeated, impossibly more so, “Straight back.”

He watched you leave into the hallway and then walk down the staircase in his line of sight. This was okay. He watched you make it to the foyer and open the door. This was fine. He watched you shoot him one last look before closing the creaking wood behind you.

He lasted all of thirty seconds until fear seeped in through the floorboards and window cracks. The pacing started at the forty-five mark, as though his legs had decided that, if he couldn’t go with you in person, he would in spirit. But you said that you would be straight back, and he had to trust you. It wouldn’t do to start this relationship off with assuming the worst. You were able to take care of yourself. The best he could do was patiently wait for you to get back, safe and sound, like you’d promised.

That thought did little in of itself to get him to calm down. Regretfully, Dark was never good at convincing himself of the bright side, and, yes, he understood the joke. What helped him was catching a glimpse of that frame again, all of the backboard now plastered with pages from the best of the collection. He trotted up to the shelf until it was within arm’s reach, but he didn’t take it off just yet. He simply looked at it.

Was this too much? Did this domesticity suit him? It felt good to slow down for once and take a breath. Mark was on the backfoot, you were safe in the manor, there wasn’t anything else to do. Dark had forced you out because you were so keen to keep working, but there he was, clenching and unclenching his jaw. It felt good, but that itself felt wrong. He wasn’t built for this. He hadn’t been brought into the world as an innocent child, he was the amalgamation of three different beings that shambled around in the rough approximation of a man in order to carry out the singular shared goal of vengeance. 

The wooden frame was smooth against his fingers.

It didn’t matter if he was destined for this peace, he was choosing to enjoy it. The slow moments, with you, were better than the volatile decades of constant hypervigilance.

If he had to guess, he would think that the affinity was coming from Damien’s side of the family, but he also liked to think that this was just himself.

The frame in hand, Dark walked from the library down to his office, the lack of surfaces giving him few options – the desk or the windowsill, really – but that was obvious enough to give him only one. He secured it next to the lamp on the left side, the light igniting the ink with a white sheen.

He left the room within the next minute, barely a glance over his shoulder. He didn’t need to; he knew it was right, and he would be seeing it every time he sat down to work. He would be reminded of when he read those books, and of who gave those books back to him, and of why he couldn’t wait to find more copies so he could share them with you.

That went further than he thought it would.

Benjamin wasn’t in the kitchen when Dark entered. He’d made himself quite scarce since you got out of the mirror, but the comments you had exchanged with each other didn’t leave you on the best of terms, so perhaps it was the wisest move. Nevertheless, the smell of baked goods helped relax him to the point that he didn’t look any different from your departure when the front door opened again.

Sitting at the island gave Dark a good view of your approach, a white, plastic bag of presumably food in one hand and twirling your keys with the other. A few questions popped into his mind – what a fast-food place actually was and whether you really had a valid driver’s license – but he brushed them aside when you waltzed through the kitchen’s archway.

“I made it through that lawless wasteland,” you joked. He thought you would go straight to grabbing a plate, but, after placing the bag on the counter, you casually ducked down and kissed Dark on the cheek. That was the first surprise, though not unappreciated, while the second was you finding two plates. “And I know you don’t eat, but I picked something up for you, just in case.” 

You were smooth, apparently. One hundred years in a mirror didn’t disadvantage you any. He was immeasurably grateful that your back was turned so that you didn’t see the warbling of the red and blue lines. They stretched and thinned like waves in the ocean, breaking upon the counter and only normalizing when he redirected his attention to the bag. You said you’d gotten him something. That was more important than the completely unexplainable and extremely unnatural effect your simple actions had on him.

You dished out what you bought, two identical meals, onto those plates before pushing one towards Dark. You sat side by side on the stools by the island, thinking less about how much of a change from the status quo of the 1920s this was and more about how hungry you were. 

“Thank you. I appreciate it,” you heard Dark reply, sounding surprisingly dazed, not that you paid attention to it when you were eating food and conscious of it for the first time in decades.

You missed this. You readily admitted that this kind of scene was something you had imagined many times while you were in the mirror. The food, the freedom… the only addition – which surfaced during the latter days – was the man who sat beside you. You were always alone in your fantasies. Call you a love-struck idiot, but you were so happy with this outcome, even if it took kidnapping and near-murder. This was good. You were good. Dark was good.

The patter of rain developed into a downpour as you made your way through your food. Dark was lagging behind, if only because he had trouble figuring out how to eat at the beginning. The first bite he swallowed entirely whole and somehow avoided choking, but he got the hang of it in time. You were finished when he was halfway through, giving you time to watch the patio doors. It was completely dark outside, illuminated by the few rays of moonlight that dodged the tree line. They hit the surface in specific places, one bouncing off the water feature, another the stone walkway, and a third breaking into the manor itself. All of them were interspersed with the pelt of rain, as if someone had flicked a paint brush onto a gray canvas.

A wistful sigh bullied its way out of your throat.

“Go on.”

Your gaze flashed to Dark, who stared right at you. Surely, he didn’t mean what you thought he meant. If not for the water damage the old house would sustain, he definitely wouldn’t want to risk getting it all over his suit.

But he saw the way you looked outside. He wasn’t about to stop you from fulfilling a whim, especially after so long. Briefly, he wondered how many times you thought about the weather. Such an unimportant thing, a problem in some cases, but he knew you relished it.

So, Dark nodded again. “I don’t control what you do.”

Like firing a bullet from a gun, you were off, shoving back from the island, almost foregoing remembering to open the door, and slipping out on the stones. Immediately, you were drenched. Your clothes stuck to your skin and made everything flash in the light of the moon. You looked like something he would find in the pagan books Celine had. A nymph or fae. Given that he had eaten your food, he supposed he was never allowed to leave. What a poor, unfortunate, regretful fate for him.

Regardless of the dramatics, he didn’t think he was against that thought, as long as you stayed with him, of course. He imagined he could do anything at your side, and he would do anything to stay at your side. He wasn’t going to fool himself. He wouldn’t be able to handle losing you again. He had only just gotten you back; your return pulled him out of the pit of misery, and, were you to leave for good, he was sure he would fall again, further than he had before, than he had thought possible.

Dark dropped his head into his hands, elbows rested on the island.

He wished he had someone to ask. He usually kept his own council, both figuratively and literally, and reaching out was a skill he’d long since abandoned. It would be so much easier to find an answer to this feeling if he had someone else, who could explain why his breath quickened, his waves flickered, his smile widen like he had received the best news he could ever hope to hear. Nothing made sense, and yet everything did. The logic was thrown out of the window and replaced by emotions that he never relied on, but it felt right, and he didn’t know why, and nobody was telling him what to do or what was going on. A being that couldn’t feel was feeling. He had never made a plan for this kind of situation, leaving him high and dry. Benjamin was less social than he was at this point, he had seen how Wilford’s situation had turned out, and obviously you weren’t an option, because you were the person Dark loved!

Oh.

Well, that certainly solved that dilemma.

There was really only one choice he could make here. 

Dark got up from his seat and made his way to the linen closet, where he pulled out the softest towel he could find. None had been used, so it didn’t take long to get back down to the kitchen with it in his hands. Slow and steady. He split his attention between walking forwards, keeping his aura in check, and the growing headache at the back of his mind. He knew exactly what that was, he was just electing to ignore it, despite that very specific third of him trying to veto his decision. Slow. And. Steady.

You, meanwhile, were trying not to trip on the wet cobblestone. The grooves and divots of the stone made perfect targets for your feet as you danced around. The rain was a great thing, wasn’t it? Droplets ricocheted off your clothes when you spun and slid down your skin when you stilled. Your impromptu performance was a mix of graceful twirls and jagged strikes of your body. Not a care in the world for the inevitable squish of the fabric when you stopped, you embraced the adrenaline and continued to go about your business until the patio door slid open in the corner of your eye.

The infectious smile you sported as you dashed to the cover where Dark now stood spread to him. You slid to a stop in front of him, dripping head to toe.

The towel he wrapped around your shoulders had you grinning even more.

“We don’t want you to catch a cold, now, do we?”

That little joke – which wasn’t really a joke – was the end of it, leaving you both to watch the rain fall. It lightened and strengthened at a gust of the wind. You leaned against a wooden support beam, face barely peaking below the edge of the cover, and Dark stood next to you with his arms behind his back.

“I don’t remember it raining before,” you muttered. In the weeks you’d spent with Mark, every day was blasted by sun.

“It has been quite a while.”

The silence enveloped you again. It was comfortable, knowing that you could move around without limit, that Dark was right next to you.

His quiet admittance broke the quiet. “I don’t think you’ve stopped smiling this entire night.”

“Why would I?” You shifted to look at him, softness breaching your eyes and his when they met. “Look,” you gestured to the gardens of the manor, “look at all of this.” You hand made contact with the wooden beam; one side was wet from the spray of rain. “And this, this, I can— look.”

Your other hand darted forward without your thinking and grabbed Dark’s before raising it between you, much like how you had done earlier. He briefly thought you might kiss it again, and you the same, but then you stopped and swallowed the words you had meant to say. Something about how it felt, surely, but then another train of thought came to mind.

“I didn’t think I was going to get the chance to do this, ever,” you whispered, “I thought that I was going to stay in the void, watching the world go on without me until somebody broke every mirror in the manor.” What a purgatory that would be. You hated that you could easily imagine it. “But I was wrong. I’ve never been happier, and you know how much I hate being wrong.”

You clasped your other hand around Dark’s remaining one. Earlier that day, when you had pledged to admit your feelings, you didn’t think it would be this difficult. You had been running on adrenaline and fumes. Now, your mind was catching up to you and made you fear the consequences if all of this went wrong.

But you could ignore it all for a moment longer. You had to, or you would never get this out.

“And if anybody was going to talk to me in those weeks,” you continued, a shake in your voice that you tried to breathe through, “I’m glad it was you. I don’t think I could take time-travelling talk or another insult to my outfit.”

Dark was still smiling, that was good. Nothing to stop you now. You had to take the plunge.

“And I meant to say this earlier, but—” no going back now, “—I love you.”

Dark froze. You felt him freeze. He stopped like you’d knocked the life out of him.

So, you rushed to speak, words flooding out of you to rival the onslaught of rain that battered the ground. 

“I understand if you don’t love me, or have any feelings for me, I just had to say it or else I’d lose my mind about it, and I did not like it when I was close before, so—” 

Your rambling stopped. Not only because you physically couldn’t speak, but because your fears were abandoned in a second. Even as Dark had stepped closer, even as his lips melded against yours, you were both smiling. His coldness and your warmth meshed together, like steam rising from dousing a fire, calming the initial thunder of your heart that made up for Dark’s lack. Despite that, you felt the waves of red and blue clash against your skin, absorbing at some points and bouncing at others. You sighed into the kiss as your hold on his hands severed, only to let you grip at his waist. It was significantly dryer than yours, half the reason why you felt the pressure of Dark’s hands at your jaw and cheek. The other half was so that he could lean further in without pushing into the rain. The touch grounded you in reality, as much as it the entire situation made you believe you were dreaming, and so you kept your position, although your lips parted.

Barely an inch from your, Dark whispered, “I reciprocate your feelings.” It took a moment for him to recognize the hoops he was jumping through, and he amended, “I love you, just the same, if not more.”

“I’ve seen this before; we’re not doing that.” The whole I-love-you-more-no-I-love-you-more was overplayed and tiresome. You were happy with your shared confession.

The inch was covered, and your lips met again, moving in tandem like waves breaking on a sandy beach. A rhythm took over as you stood at the back of the manor. Everything that had happened, stretching back to that century, seemed worth it. You were certain in that fact.

You separated again, not for the last time, for Dark to ask, “What are we doing, then?” “Well, as you keep saying, I have needs.”

The alarmed expression on Dark’s face was all the entertainment you needed, though, inwardly, he was certainly not opposed to any suggestions you might have had. He felt your breath on his lips as you reprimanded quietly, “I’m talking about sleeping, Dark.”

Your spark hadn’t been lost, that was for sure. He doubted that were possible. Your amused laughter chimed in his head, chasing out any possible worries about you, about himself, about the future you would share together.

One hand in his, you tugged him forward and captured him in another kiss, the rain returned to a comforting song in the background. 

[And there we go! The final part to what was originally a single chapter! Thank you, everyone, for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the ride. Of course, this was meant to just be a fluffy chapter, but, this is me, so I had to put some angst in it, and that final joke was a literal flip of the coin of whether I should include it. Nevertheless, again, I hope you've enjoyed reading]

[icekingofhope]

when mark found the attorney……

[thatchaoscreator]

Nightmares

(Word Count: 385)

DA x Darkiplier

TW!! Mentions of death, brief mention of rituals, Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Attack

Reader discretion advised

_________________________________________

I woke up with a start, a bead of sweat on my brow. I could only hear my heart pounding in my ears. It was another nightmare about that night.

I feel the bed shift before his arms wrap around me. I must have woken him up. I was still gulping breaths like I had just nearly drowned. I was surrounded by his cologne helping to ground me from the terror that shook my bones and sent electricity through my veins. I took a deep breath letting the smell of pine and peppermint fill my nose.

"Morning, Damien."

"Good morning. Are you alright?"

I turned to get a look at his expression. His dark raven hair draped around his face framing it like a portrait, his eyes a heterochromic red and blue, his appearance tainted from the cruel events that still torment my mind.

"...yeah, I'm okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

He pulled me closer, resting his chin in my hair.

"You're still getting those nightmares, aren't you?"

I fall silent. It seems even after all these years he can still read me like a book.

"Yeah…"

"How far did it get this time?"

"It started with the ritual…" I pause. The next part was always the hardest. I always wake up shortly before or after my death. "I woke up when I landed." My voice died in my throat as I held him close. My stomach was still recovering from dropping to my feet after having been forced to relieve my death again. You never forget the feeling of falling to your death.

He didn't speak, merely nodding as he stroked my hair comfortingly as I rode out the final tremors of anxiety and adrenaline. Once my body deemed it safe to relax again, I slumped against him releasing the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. He still didn't speak much to my surprise. Then again, there were times where his voice alone was able to throw me into a panic. I appreciate his caution and consideration.

"Damien?"

I got a hum in response.

"hmm?"

"Thank you… for staying with me…"

"Of course."

The rest of the night was spent holding each other tightly as we ward off any more lingering memories of the night that tore us apart.

At least we have each other now.