#wool bed jacket

[mrsjohnwilson]

Clothing list for me to make to meet my dress discipline rules and to be available for use as a punishment for misbehaviour

I am a submissive wife and have recently had the rules for my behaviour, activities and dress revised following repeated misbehaviour.

I must make all of my clothes myself by dressmaking, crocheting and knitting or by purchase of second hand clothing from charity/thrift shops/jumble sale. All clothing items I make require approval or be specified by my mother-in-law and/or my sister-in-laws before I commence any sewing or knitting and my mother-in-law or one of my sisters-in-law must be present before I purchase any second hand item from a charity/thrift shop/jumble sale.  As a further discipline for me I must maintain a list of the items I have been given permission to make as well as ensuring they are produced in a timely manner. I must make this list available to anyone who requests to see it and I am posting it below following such a request.

The current list of items I have been granted permission to make and add to my wardrobe are shown below.

1 knitted woollen headscarf brown

1 knitted woollen headscarf grey

1 pair of woollen bottle green mittens

1 pair of woollen navy mittens

1 pair of woollen maroon mittens 

1 grey woollen pom-pom hat

1 brown woollen pom-pom hat 

1 grey balaclava

1 grey balaclava covering my mouth 

1 long pink woollen bed jacket with a large crocheted collar 1 ankle length grey pleated knitted wool skirt with buttons from waist to hem

1 worsted grey ankle length dress/nightgown with collar and buttons from collar to hem

As a submissive wife it is my privilege to dress in a plain and conservative manner. I hate wearing woollen garments particularly cardigans so having to make such items for my own use is a very effective discipline for me.

If you have suggestions for other items I could make or even better sewing and/or knitting patterns I will pass these on to my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. This will be a further lesson for me as to the consequences of my previous misbehaviour and both help ensure my own future discipline and make me an example to other young women tempted to misbehave as I did.

[fashionsfromhistory]

Bed Jacket

1888

United States

The MET (Accession Number: 1975.227.25)

[pillars-of-salt]

layering up like i'm a member of a doomed arctic expedition before setting out on a journey across the vast frozen wasteland of my house to find the thermostat (i don't know where it is)

[northlt03]

Amortentia (Jegulus)

Regulus didn’t smell. It drove James insane sometimes. 

He didn’t smell after quidditch practice, or even after just waking up. It was another one of those things about him that made him seem “perfect”. James hated it. 

Regulus was so much more than the image he presented himself to be, but he’d gotten too lost in playing the part, maybe that’s all he’d become. 

Every single “imperfection” had been driven away by his mother. Not just for Regulus, but for Sirius as well. The Black family had an image to maintain, high society they had to live in. They couldn’t accept body odor, crooked teeth, or any blemishes on their skin. 

James didn’t know how they did it. But none of the Blacks had any negative body odor. No matter how much they sweat. 

It’s not to say they don’t have a particular smell. According to Slughorn, everyone had a distinct smell, something unique about them. 

Sirius smelled like wet dog fur, James knew this because he slept in the bed next to him and every night Sirius turned to padfoot in his sleep. 

Narcissa smelled like spring, like her namesake— narcissus. Strangely intense, yet cool and floral. James had only placed the smell last year when they had grown the flower in herbology. 

Walburga black smelled like roses, James imagined that’s what the queen of hearts from Alice in Wonderland smelled like. It was suffocating if you had the displeasure to be near her, like a thousand thorny plants squeezing your windpipe. 

James wasn’t padfoot, he didn’t memorize smells. But it’s hard not to notice how his closest friends smell. It made him feel warm, to be surrounded by so many people he loves, all with a distinct smell. 

Remus smelled like chocolate, like wet fur, wooly sweaters, a warm fire and old books. James could tell that’s what Sirius was smelling in his cauldron right then. That’s the reason he was thinking so much about smells in the first place. 

Sixth year brought with it responsibilities, but also more advanced potion making. James always wondered why he didn’t drop potions when he had the chance. 

Sirius was blushing so hard, his skin tone matched the pink potion. James had to stifle his own laughter as Remus tried to go over the recipe once again to make sure they had made it correct. They were all paired up for this particular class. Sirius and Remus at one cauldron and James and Peter next to them. It used to be Sirius and James together, but after one too many pranks in the classroom, Professor Slughorn had separated them. 

“Clockwise!” Remus corrected Sirius just before he could have ruined their potion. They were the second ones to finish their potion so Slughorn was already making his way towards the boys. “Bloody hell, Sirius. Stop overmixing it”

James exchanged a look with Peter. Why had he let Sirius pick Remus while pairing up again? Oh that’s right— Wingman duties

James was nowhere near as great as Lily or Remus or even Snivellus in potion making, but he managed. Mostly he used Remus’ notes and applied common sense. It drove Remus insane sometimes, how much work he’d have to put in to memorize something, only for James to make an educated guess about it. James couldn’t really explain how he knew stuff, he just did. Call it pattern awareness, or whatever. 

“So from the way Moony was yelling at Padfoot, I’m guessing we have to stir it clockwise?” James raised an eyebrow.

Peter only snickered as he watched their other two friends bickering like an old married couple. “What’d you think Moony smells, James?”

“Wet dog” James replied easily, “And that awful old leather jacket Padfoot refuses to throw away,”

“I bet Sirius smells chocolate and wool” 

James had known Peter for years, they'd had baths together when they were babies, learned how to ride a bicycle from James’ father, spent ten christmases trying to make gingerbread houses and so many more memories. 

That’s all to say, James knew what Peter smelled like. He had a distinct cologne he swore worked wonders on the ladies, and as stereotypical as it was for the rat to love cheese, he really did. 

So if James was in love with his best mate, that’s what he would have smelled. 

But instead when he dared to take a whiff of the potion (after coughing violently because it was pretty strong), all he smelled was broom wax, old books and paint. 

“Mmmhmm” Peter grinned, “Camembert, and candy. Smells so great I’m hungry now. And you?”

“Old books” He frowned, “And paint”

“Careful, Pads might think you’re in love with Moony too”

James wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He was glad he didn’t smell lilies, relating to his old embarrassing crush. It had been months since he had obsessed over Lily Evans and even thinking about that time made him cringe. 

James had quickly realized he had no idea what love was supposed to be. He grew up watching his parents so immensely in love he’d been in love with the idea of love and the idea of Lily Evans. And ideas are dangerous things to be in love with. 

For his sake and Lily’s, he was glad he stopped liking her. 

But after Lily… well, there had been someone James had grown a liking too. And he couldn’t help the disappointment when he didn’t smell Regulus in the potion. He took a few more whiffs, just to be sure. But to no avail. The potion still smelled the same. 

James wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much. Maybe he was just incapable of loving. Because he couldn’t smell Regulus, that had to mean he wasn’t in love with the boy as he had previously thought. This was clearly a Lily situation again. And that bothered James. Mainly because he wanted to be in love. Not just because of his fantasy of being so in love with someone, but also because Regulus was so lovely. 

He was witty and sharp, beautiful and sarcastic, knowledgeable and petty, headstrong and stubborn but also sweet and funny. He seemed to positively glow under James’ praise. James loved it when he flushed pink, James loved it when he shot back a retort, when he smiled a secret smile for only James, when he dragged his long fingers over James’ skin— touch for the sake of touch. James loved every single thing about Regulus, the way his eyes crinkled when he tried to stop himself from laughing at one of James’ bad jokes, the way he sneezed, the way his lips parted, the way he tasted so sweet when they kissed, but most of all, James thought he was in love with Regulus.

He wasn’t sure what smell he was searching for. He knew Regulus didn’t smell. He didn’t have a signature smell like Peter’s cologne. But James was still disappointed. 

He wanted to make Regulus feel loved, he wanted to be in love. He had said it once and Regulus had said it before. 

Three simple words. 

And what if they were a lie?

A knock on the door made Slughorn change directions. He had been heading toward James and Peter’s potion to check it, but he walked toward the open door. 

James would have recognised those curls anywhere. 

Even before Regulus was fully visible, stepping into the doorway, eyes searching the class, James was grinning. Who cared what the stupid potion said? The potion could be wrong. Maybe James and Peter brewed it wrong. 

All that mattered was that Regulus lit up James’ world, it genuinely felt that way. Just passing him in the hallways, getting to stare at him as he stared at the stars, just listening to him talk about astronomy or his favorite paintings felt like a reward to James.

So yeah, fuck the potion. 

James Potter was in love with Regulus Black.

That’s when he spotted the paint splattered on the edges of his otherwise neat robe. He was handing a book he must have borrowed back to Slughorn. His eyes landed on James and though he tried to keep his composure in thanking the professor, James grew ecstatic at the acknowledgement.

The effect Regulus had on him really had to be studied. 

Just before he left, he sniffed the room, his eyebrows furrowing in that Regulus Black way as he mock glared at James. He had the face of an aristocrat but the mind of an artist. Maybe he was both.

James was thankful his table was the closest to the door and the others were too busy either bickering, fawning over their potion or still completing it. 

“You smell, Potter” Regulus scrunched his nose in disgust, turning to walk away, “Didn’t you shower after quidditch? It’s disgusting, it’s a wonder the whole room isn’t gagging with how strong it is, even your sandalwood perfume can’t mask it.”

James could barely say anything before Regulus had walked away. 

Paint splatter, the old books in the room of requirement and Regulus’ personal collection, the broom wax from when James had watched him polish his broom before a match against Hufflepuff. 

Slowly the pieces floated together and James thought he had started floating too. He felt light, like a floating lantern, a ball of warmth in his chest. 

And what had Regulus been talking about? James twisted his ankle his last game. Madam Pomfrey hadn’t cleared him to fly the whole week, he had been moping about not being able to play. 

When he looked at Peter, his friend was looking back with an amused look. 

“Fucking hell, Prongs”

“Don’t tell Padfoot”

[flseur]

꒰ 𐙚 warmth — satoru gojo ꒱

⟡ synopsis : with each new year spent together, satoru just can't help but fall in love with the warmth you give him.

⟡ content warning : nsfw ( 18+ ), fem!reader, fluff to smut, cursing, doggy, little bit of rough sex, praising, little bit of overstimulation, gojo cums inside !

౨ৎ note : an intimate new year’s eve with spent with satoru, isn’t he just so dreamy ? love my king

if there was one thing satoru gojo could always truthfully say, it was irrevocably in love with you. he adores everything about you, down to the simplest of mannerisms that you have.

the way you do your hair, smooth out your clothes, make your morning tea, just every little thing that you do he adores.

satoru wouldn’t utter any of this outloud to suguru and shoko out of fear of embarrassment, but the two are able to see through his facade.

the way that he talks about you, brags about you and even the way he completely ignores any attention that he draws in from people when he goes out in public.

you’d think that due to his past of being a player, he’d enjoy the attention he gets but no. he’s absolutely smitten for you, and you only.

though he does make cheeky jokes about how lucky you are to have him, but he knows it’s the opposite. he’s lucky to have you.

and here you both are now, out on an evening walk during the winter. you’re bundled up because satoru insisted, mumbling about how he didn’t want to take care of you if you caught a cold while he wrapped you up in a knit scarf.

you’re fiddling with the black wool of the scarf with your left hand while your right is preoccupied with holding satoru’s hand.

“i still don’t understand why you forced me to wear this,” you mumbled before glancing over at him. “it’s not that cold out tonight. i would’ve been fine with just my jacket.”

satoru rolled his eyes and let out a little sigh, “i did tell you why, y/n. you just chose not to listen to me.”

“well, what was your reasoning?” you said.

“i said it was because if you caught a cold, then it would be up to me to take care of you.”

you let out a huff of annoyance, the warmth of your breath making a little foggy cloud in the cold weather. “you wouldn’t have to take care of me, satoru. i’m a grown adult. i can take care of myself, y’know?”

“i know that i don’t have to, but i would want do it,” he squeezes your hand. “because i know that you’d do the same for me.”

satoru thinks back to all the times when you’d take care of him, both before and during your relationship.

having to deal with him during late nights when he would show up to your apartment drunk or the one time he came down with the flu. 

you stayed with him until he was completely better, refusing to leave every time he said it was okay for you to go back home and that he’d be fine by himself.

but you knew he wouldn’t.

you knew that he’d still be shriveled up in a ball on his bed, wrapped in blankets and not get up to eat a real meal. 

you knew that he would live off of instant ramen and energy drinks and you didn’t want that to happen, so you stayed.

and now, satoru wants to be that person for you.

he wants to be able to stay by your side when you’re sick (though he’d very much rather you not get sick, so he goes through all measures to prevent that) and he wants to be there for you.

he wants to take care of you just like how you took care of him all those times before.

you let out a laugh, one that satoru was addicted to hearing.

“you’re so cute, ‘toru. i like it when you talk about caring for me.” you give him a warm smile.

he gives you a light bump on the shoulder with his own, before trying to hide his own smile in his jacket.

“uh, hello? aren’t i supposed to care about you? you can’t even let me be the world’s best boyfriend in peace, can you?” he jokes in an attempt to hide that he’s flustered. 

his cheeks flush a brighter pink and you know it’s not from the cold weather.

you laugh more at your boyfriend’s embarrassment. “you should be glad that geto and shoko aren’t here to listen to you! they'd get to see your soft side!”

gojo dramatically sighs, before lifting your right hand and presses a soft kiss to it.

“you’re unbearable…” he mutters against your skin, then letting your hands reassume back to they originally were. “let’s head back to the apartment, it's way too cold out…”

"''kay, are you gonna warm me up, 'toru?" you tease, entirely not expecting him to take the joke seriously.

"you'll see, princess."

and it's private moments like these that you enjoy with him the most. whether it be taking a walk while it snows or having your limbs be tangled in the sheets with his own.

"o-oh, shit, satoru..." you moan out, burying your face deeper into the mattress.

he had you on all fours with your ass up in the air while his thick cock was pistoning into you at an unrelenting pace.

his had one hand gripping at the fat of your hip, the blunt tip of his nails digging almost painfully into the skin, while the lithe fingers of his other danced up the beautiful arch of your back.

"feels good, baby?" he groans, biting his lips.

"yesss, feels s'good!" your words slur, your mind is invaded by the thoughts of satoru.

the feeling of your tight pussy constricting his cock is driving crazy. each snap of his hips delivers overwhelming amounts of pleasure and elicits your cries.

the scent of sex, the sound of skin against skin, and the conjoined moans shared between the two of you permeate your bedroom. every thrust of satoru's is accentuated, calculated, and deep, so deep that you swore you felt him in your stomach.

"so deep, oh m'god..." you mewl, fucking your hips back onto him. you were desperate for more, you needed that one thing to push you over the edge, to finally feel bliss.

reading your body language, as well as hearing your whimpers, satoru pulls completely out of your sopping heat, the tip of his cock resting right outside of your pussy.

you were about to ask him what he was doing before you yelp in surprise, feeling him abruptly shove his entire length back inside of you.

"fuck! love you so much, sweetheart. love this pussy so much..." he babbles, continuing to fuck into you so quickly that his balls slap up against your clit.

"i-i'm g'nna cum... just like that satoru..." you wail, cunt squeezing his length impossibly tighter.

"yeah? cum all over my cock, princess. make a fucking mess." gojo growls, reaching around your waist to pull you up, your back pressed against his chest.

he presses open mouth kisses to your neck, moaning against the skin, while one hand pinches at your nipple and the other one slithers down to your pussy and plays with your puffy clit.

satoru, satoru, satoru is all you could think about as you orgasmed. your arousal coated his cock and your inner thighs as your vision blurred white and ears rang.

and though he didn't want to push you too far, satoru couldn't help but indulge himself in your heat for a bit longer.

"'m almost there, baby... did so good for me." he moans, kissing your temple as you moan out. crystalline tears line your eyes due to overstimulation, he felt so fucking good, too good almost.

you could feel his cock twitch inside of you and his hips stutter against your ass. "cum inside... please 'toru, need you inside..." you whine.

"oh, fuck!" satoru cried out, placing his forehead against your forehead and his hips finally stilling as he stuffed your pussy full of his cum.

"love you s'much..." you whisper, your hands coming up to brush his white strands of hair.

"i love you too..." he mumbles, pressing a kiss to your shoulder blade.

flseur © all rights reserved, do not repost, take inspo from my layouts or themes, translate, or claim as your own.

[stuckinthesun]

The Jacket // R.G. x Fem!Reader

Summary

Rick catches you pleasuring yourself while wearing a familiar article of clothing

Warnings

nsfw, dark themes, kinda murder couple vibes, fem masterbation, voyerism, Dom!Rick, mean Rick, teasing, pet names, fingering, p in v, overstim, pussy slapping

Word Count

2.8k

You don’t even remember what you came into his room for. The moment your eyes landed on the familiar brown jacket, your mind became fuzzy and all other thoughts were forgotten.

That jacket.

The one you’ve seen Rick brutally kill dozens of people in, you could even still see blood permanently stained in the wool collar of it. And when you walked into the man’s room to find it just lying on his bed, heat instantly pooled between your legs.

You’ve been in love with the leader of your group since the moment you met him, and that love only grew the more he protected your group from the dangers of the world.

The two of you weren’t together though. There was tension, to long looks and lingering touches, but never anything more. Life in the apocalypse was so brutal and fast paced that it never left time for anything like that, so you were left to pine.

But now here you stood, in his room, staring at his jacket, the jacket you’ve fantasized about him fucking you in countless of times.

You walked further into Ricks room, like you were in a trance, until you were standing at the foot of his bed, and running your fingers along the rough material of the brown jacket.

It wasn’t just the fact that Rick looked damn good in it, that was just a bonus. No it was the fact that, the moment he got this jacket, something shifted.

You remember being reunited with him after the prison fell, under the dirt and blood he was wearing this coat and you remember thinking, he’s different.

You picked up the jacket, it being heavier than you expected, and buried your nose into the wool collar. It was surprisingly soft against your skin as you inhaled, smelling the old detergent everyone used, soap and something that was distinctly Rick.

It was musky and heady and filling you with warmth, making a small whimper leave your lips. Your fingers gripped the material harder, bunching it in your fists and almost hugging the jacket like a pillow.

You should feel embarrassed, you should stop and walk away before someone undoubtably catches you, but you can’t stop. It feels too good when you squeeze your thighs together, thinking about the way Rick looked killing Gareth, wearing this exact jacket.

“Fuck-“ You moan, finally sparring a glance at the bedroom door. Empty, not a soul in sight.

Am I really gonna do this?

“Besides… I already made you a promise.”

Fuck.

In a split second decision, you rush over and close the door, before going back toward his bed. The jacket feels almost heavenly as you slip it on, the smell of Rick enveloping you and making goosebumps appear on your skin.

You’re on your back instantly, fingers undoing the button and zipper of your jeans. You quickly slip your hand under the waistband of your underwear and pants, fingers sliding between your folds and feeling just how wet you already are.

Moaning you turn your head to the side and bury your nose into the wool collar of Ricks jacket again. His heady scent making your eyes roll back and your hips buck against your hand.

Your heart was beating loudly in your ears, the rush of adrenaline only turning you on more and you had to bite the material to stifle your moans. Your fingers rubbed small, quick circles on your clit, your movement’s limited due to your jeans blocking you.

It wasn’t enough, you needed more, you needed him.

A frustrated whine left your lips.

“Maybe it would feel better if you took your pants off.” A deep, familiar voice said, startling you.

You paled with embarrassment when you sat up to see Rick leaning in the doorway. His arms were crossed, and he wore a smirk as he looked at you with amusement.

“R-rick I–“

“Don’t mind me, keep going sweetheart.” Rick cut you off, stepping away from the doorframe and closing the bedroom door.

He turned around and resumed his position, this time against the wooden surface. His piercing blue eyes burned holes into you, making you squirm, “What?”

“Keep. Going.” Rick said, tone dropping and his face changing from amused to something darker.

The heat in your abdomen returns in full force and you involuntarily squeeze your thighs together. You watch the smirk return to Ricks lips as he watches, and with an embarrassed flush you lay back down.

You resume the position you were in before, on your back with your hand shoved down your pants rubbing your clit. This time though, when you turned your head to bury your nose into the jacket, you turned to face Rick.

Soon your embarrassment was forgotten as you let out a moan, your fingers circling your clit just right. You stared directly at the man of your desires, watching for a reaction.

Wanting to see how Rick would react to you touching yourself on his bed, while wearing his jacket.

All you got was Rick pulling his lips back against his teeth, making a ‘tsk’ sound, as he got off the door and began walking over toward you, “You’re so desperate for it you can’t even properly undress yourself?”

His boots rang like thunder against the hardwood floor, and if you were of clear mind you would’ve found it strange you didn’t hear it earlier. Instead the sound just made your hips buck, and you watched as he stopped in front of you.

You whined as Ricks hands touched your knees and slid down your thighs to rest at your hips. He began pulling your jeans and underwear off, and you stopped rubbing your clit, eagerly lifting your hips up to help him.

Suddenly Rick stopped though, and when you looked at his face confused, you saw he was glaring at you, “Did I say you could stop?”

Your eyes widened and you shook your head. This only made his glare deepen and he tilted his head as he said, “Use your words.”

“N-no, you didn’t.” You choked out, feeling yourself clench around nothing.

“Then keep. Going.” Rick hissed, and you nodded frantically as you began rubbing yourself again.

Seeming satisfied, Rick started removing your pants and underwear again, exposing your aching core and your fingers playing with your clit.

Rick stared at you like he was in a trance, and it made your embarrassment come back while adding to your arousal. You flushed at his stare and moaned as his hands ran up and down the inside of your bare thighs, pushing your legs further apart.

You could feel your release getting closer and you rolled your hips as you whined, “Rick please.”

“Please what?” He asked, his voice sounding hoarse and his eyes never leaving your movements.

“Touch me.”

“I am touching you,” He answered plainly, hands squeezing your thighs as if to prove his point.

His grip only pushed you closer to the edge and you let out a frustrated groan, “But I’m gonna c-cum if I keep-“

“Then cum.” Rick said, finally looking into your eyes, “Isn’t that what you wanted? To make yourself cum while wearing my coat, laying on my bed?”

You moaned, arching your back and clenching around nothing, and his eyes flicked back to your center, “Now I just get to watch.”

That was it, that was all it took. You came with a loud shout, hips bucking against your hand and head turning into the wool collar.

Ricks hands were still rubbing along your thighs as he talked you through it, “That’s it, good girl. Let me see just how good you feel.”

You had barely finished riding out the high of your orgasm before you felt two fingers push inside of you, making you gasp, “You’re drenched from just rubbing your clit?”

“Rick wait!” You cried out, trying to move away from him. His fingers inside of you were too much, the pleasure turning painful. His free hand moved to your abdomen, holding you in place as his fingers curled inside of you.

“A minute ago you were begging me to touch you and now you want me to wait?” Rick teased you, that mean smirk back on his face.

A sob escaped your lips and you closed your eyes as tears filled them, “T-too much!”

“You can take it, sweetheart.” Rick leaned down to whisper in your ear, “Tell you what, doll. I’ll stop teasing you and just fuck you, if you tell me what it is you like about that jacket so much, Mhmm? Sound good?”

As if to seal the deal, Rick began thrusting his fingers in and out of you at a brutal pace. You cried out, arching into him unintentionally. Your hands came up to weakly push at him, trying to get him to stop, but it was useless.

“Come on baby, it has to be something.” Rick cooed, pulling away from your ear to watch your face closely, “I mean, you came in here and put it on to touch yourself. Obviously you like it a lot.”

“I-it’s y-yours!” You managed to get out, hands no longer pushing him away but holding on for dear life.

You opened your eyes saw Ricks pupils dilate but he just shook his head, “No. That might be part of it, but that’s not the whole thing. Come on, why do you like it so much? I mean, it still has blood stains.”

The loud moan that escaped your lips startled both of you. Ricks fingers stopped and your eyes widened in panic.

Shit! He’s going to think I’m insane and kick me out and-

The smirk Rick had before was replaced with something almost manic, “So that’s it.”

His fingers were moving inside of you again, curling instantly to find your sweet spot and making you see stars. The hand on your pelvis began sliding up, pushing your shirt along with it, revealing more of your skin as he stared at you in wonder.

“That’s what it is, you like that I’ve killed so many people and walkers while wearing it, huh darling?” Rick asked, and leaned closer to you. His words, his fingers and his closeness were all pulling you back to the edge. The pain from overstimulation completely gone, and now you were rocking against his hand between your legs.

“So what is it exactly that gets you this wet, huh baby? Is it that I’ve killed people? That I’m capable of killing people? Or that I’m willing to protect the people I care about at any cost?”

You looked at him with teary eyes and choked out, “T-that you’d be willing to k-kill for m-me!”

Ricks face softens just the slightest bit, “Oh sweetheart, I’ve already killed for you.”

Your orgasm ripped through you suddenly, making your hips come off the bed and your juices spray everywhere. You didn’t even realize you were squirting, your senses were zeroed in on how Rick felt finger fucking you as you came down from your high.

Soon it became too much again and you started pushing at him, and this time Rick actually took pity on you. He slipped his fingers from your sopping cunt and put them in his mouth. You heard him moan around the digits as he licked them clean and you blushed when you finally realized what a mess you made.

The front of Ricks shirt was soaked, along with the bed and the jacket underneath you. You blushed deeper at the thought and covered your face with your hands as you huffed out tiredly, “I’m sorry for- Ah!”

You were cut off by a rough slap to your pussy, sending a shockwave through your body and making you flinch violently. You uncovered your face and looked at him, completely taken aback.

Rick just glared at you as he began unbuttoning his shirt, “Finish that sentence and I won’t fuck you.”

Your eyes widen and you instantly clamp your mouth shut. He smirks, shrugging his shirt off, “Good girl, now undress for me.”

Sitting up, you only hesitated a little before letting the jacket slip from your shoulders and pool around your waist. As you pull your shirt over your head, you hear the buckle of Ricks holster. Throwing your shirt to the floor you watch as he sets the gun on the bed next to you.

The idea of fucking with it on the bed makes you squirm in excitement.

The sound of a belt buckle draws you back to the man standing above you, and you look up to see him smirking at you, “You’re one kinky little slut aren’t you?”

You blush a look away from him, instead focusing on unhooking your bra. When you finally got the damn thing unclasped and you let it fall from your chest, you heard Rick make a noise.

Looking up you saw that he was staring at you again. This time at your now exposed chest, and he reached one hand out to squeeze one of your breasts, while the other pulled his belt from the loops of his pants.

You sighed at the feeling of his palm pressing against your nipple, “Please hurry Rick, need you.”

“So impatient for someone who’s cum twice,” Rick teased, letting go of you to pull himself out of his now unzipped jeans.

Then he did something that both shocked and delighted you.

Rick reached down and slid his jacket from around your waist, before bringing it up and slipping his arms into the sleeves.

You shivered at the sight of him, in that jacket, and you can’t help the little whimper that escapes you. Then you realize the positions you’re in, him fully clothed except for his cock and balls, and you completely naked and already soaked in your own juices.

“Fuck,” You moan, and you just can’t help yourself anymore. Reaching up, you grab the collar of the jacket you love so much, and pull him in for a kiss.

Rick instantly kisses you back, one of his hands coming up to hold the back of your head as he pushes his tongue into your mouth. You hum into him, and allow him to push you on your back.

You feel the drag of his cock between your folds, gathering your slick up, and you moan breaking the kiss. Ricks teeth sink into your bottom lip as you feel the head of his cock push against your entrance.

Letting your lip go he groans, “You’re gonna take my cock like a good girl, right?”

“Yes! Yes please let me take your cock please!” You cry out, desperately trying not to roll your hips to try and push him inside of you.

“Good,” Is all the warning you get before Rick pushes fully inside of you in one thrust. You cry out and instantly wrap your arms and legs around him to ground yourself.

You didn’t really register how big he was a moment ago, but now that he’s inside of you, you can feel every inch of him splitting you open.

“R-Rick!” You sob, shaking in his arms, and you feel his beard tickle your skin as he kisses along your neck.

“Take it sweetheart, I know you can.” He growls against your skin, biting down in the crevice between your neck and jaw.

You barely got a moment to adjust before Rick started moving. His thrusts were quick and hard, making your eyes squeeze shut and your toes curls. One of his hands gripped your thigh so tight you were sure you would have finger shaped bruises, while the other stayed planted next to your head.

“Fuck,” It was Rick who moaned, and the sound made your eyes roll to the back of your head, “Feel so good wrapped around my cock.”

“O-oh god,” You whine, lacing your fingers through his hair and tugging.

“Shit baby,” Rick groans, hips stuttering slightly. “This what you wanted, Huh? Me fucking you while wearing this jacket you like so much?”

“Yes! Yes fuck!” You yell, rocking your hips to meet his, “I’m so close Rick please!”

“Come on baby,” Rick grunts, squeezing a hand between the two of you to rub at your sensitive clit, “Cum for me, cum on my cock.”

It only takes a few more thrusts before you do exactly that. You cum so hard it almost hurts, nails digging into Ricks skin so hard you’re probably drawing blood.

The feeling of you squeezing around him like a vice pulls Rick right over the edge with you. He spills inside of you with a grunt, filling you with his hot seed.

You lay there limp when you come down from your high, limbs slipping from around Rick as he carelessly pulls out of you and fall to lay down at your side.

You’re both breathing heavily, you’re throat feels raw from how much you screamed and the cum cooling between your legs feels gross.

You’ve never felt better.

With a happy sigh you turn your head to the side to see Rick already looking at you. There’s a smile on his face and his eyes hold that same amusement from earlier.

“So… my jacket, huh?”

You playfully push his face away.

…idek

[buckets-and-trees]

I’d like to point out this man’s insane hotness🥵

Also… imagine needing a place to sit and Bucky tells you to sit on his lap😍

I've been sitting on this one for ages, Shannon, I'm sorry! But I was waiting for a storyline that truly swept me away because this look and the potential for this moment couldn't be squandered if I was going to take a stab at it...

Poison Blood from the Wound of the Pricked Hand

Characters/Pairings: Post TFATWS!Bucky x curvy!Millennial Female!Reader Word Count: 3k Summary: You've made a life-altering decision, and even though it feels like the only choice you could have made, you hope it's the right one, and you hope the man you're being forced to rely on tonight will help you accomplish what you need to, or else your life could be at stake - not to mention the safety of so many others.

Content/Warnings: intense physical intimicy, but no actual smut (I know, shocker)

Author Notes: Possibly the last piece for the Deliciously Debauched Labor Day Weekend! And, yes late, but the final piece to complete out my collection for @buckybarnesevents Hot Bucky Summer - week twelve "what should I wear?"

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“How are things going in there?” Bucky called loudly to you.

“Um…” There was a long pause, before you called back, “Fine.”

You glanced at the clock.

You knew at this rate you were going to make the two of you late. But that only ate at you more. You weren’t trying to cause problems.

Or, rather, you weren’t trying to cause more problems. You already felt like a walking liability.

All you had tried to do was get out of the danger of your brother’s organization.

You had finally gone to the authorities, looking to make some kind of deal for safety, maybe witness protection, you didn’t know exactly how these things worked, only that you had to leave.

But evidently things had been even worse and more complicated than you knew, and the price for safety had come with strings.

They needed more information, and they saw you as a means to be able to get it.

And so they’d dangled a deal that required you to play your part as a trusted member of the family one more time.

You had only been gone for just over twenty-four hours, so it wasn’t likely that your brother would suspect your defection yet. But it was so recent that you still felt unsettled over whether you’d made the right decision - especially now that it wasn’t a clean break and you were being used be the people you expected to be the good guys.

“Are you sure?” Bucky’s voice broke through your thoughts again.

You shook your head. Since he was in the other room, there was no danger in him seeing your doubt and uncertainty.

Of all the moving parts in this scheme, Bucky was possibly the only piece you thought you might be able to trust. His reputation preceded him as someone more than capable of handling any dangerous situation, but he also seemed to harbor a question in his mind over working this operation and trusting the government agencies who had a hand in this.

You sighed, then bit your lip. The clock ticked relentlessly, each second a reminder of your indecision. Your eyes darted between two outfits laid out on the bed, both chosen with care but now seeming woefully inadequate for the task ahead.

You sighed, your eyes darting between the two outfits laid out on the bed. One was a sleek black dress, form-fitting and elegant, with a high neckline and long sleeves that would conceal the nervous goosebumps prickling your skin. The other, a tailored pantsuit in deep navy, exuded an air of professionalism and confidence you wished you felt.

Both outfits were carefully chosen to blend in at the high-stakes charity gala where you'd be making your reappearance in your brother's world. But which one would better sell the lie? Which one would make you look like you hadn't just betrayed everything you'd ever known?

You ran your fingers over the cool silk of the dress, then the crisp wool of the suit jacket. The clock's incessant ticking seemed to grow louder with each passing moment, mocking your indecision.

You needed to look like your old self, the trusted sister, and you’d worn clothes just like these a hundred times before. But now?

And with the added caveat of needing to have a brand new man on your arm and sell that he was a valid new part of your life, too?

You grabbed both hangers and went out into the living room of your apartment where Bucky had been patiently waiting for you.

Bucky's eyes widened slightly as you emerged from the bedroom, clothes in hand. He was sitting on the couch, hands in his lap, already dressed in a sharp looking suit with leather lapels - edgy but impressive. For a moment, you were struck by how different he looked from the dangerous operative turned superhero you knew him to be. He looked like he could effortlessly blend into the opulent setting you expected tonight.

"I can't decide," you admitted, your voice hesitant. "Which one do you think would be more… convincing?"

Bucky's gaze flickered between the two outfits, then back to your face. His expression softened, and you saw a glimmer of understanding in his eyes.

"The dress," he said after a moment. "It's more in line with what you'd typically wear to these events, right? We don't want to raise any suspicions by changing your style too drastically."

You nodded, grateful for his insight. "You're right. Thank you."

As you turned to go back to the bedroom, Bucky's voice stopped you. "Hey," he said softly, his blue eyes searching your face. "We don't have to do this if you're not ready."

For a moment, you were tempted to take the out he was offering. To tell him you couldn't go through with it, that you'd made a mistake. But then you thought of your brother, of all the people he'd hurt, and you steeled yourself.

"No, I can do this. Besides,” you thought of all the things you’d learned in different meetings and conversations and reports today, “this is our best chance to get the information we need to bring him and the rest of the organization down.”

“But it doesn’t have to be you,” he insisted.

You tilted your head and smiled sadly. “But it should be.” They had been planning to try and infiltrate tonight’s gala before you had presented yourself, but with you, you were practically a golden ticket into the event and into so many more of the areas once inside.

Bucky nodded, a mix of admiration and concern in his eyes. "Alright. But remember, I'll be right there with you the whole time. If anything feels off, just give me the signal and we're out of there."

You nodded, grateful for his reassurance. As you headed back to the bedroom to change, you couldn't help but wonder how convincing you and Bucky would be as a couple. You'd only known each other for a day, and while he seemed kind and protective, there was still so much mystery surrounding him.

As you undressed, you tried to calm your racing thoughts. You'd been to countless events like this before, schmoozing with the elite and corrupt. But never as a double agent, never with the weight of so many lives hanging in the balance, and certainly not since discovering the secret that had shattered your world and opened up your eyes to the fact that everything your brother was involved in was corrupt and dangerous.

As you slipped into the black dress, you couldn't help but feel like you were putting on armor for battle. The silk clung to your skin, cool and familiar, yet somehow foreign now. You zipped it up, fingered the neckline, then pressed your hand to your heart and took a deep breath.

In the mirror, you saw the woman you used to be—poised, elegant, the perfect sister to a powerful man. But your eyes betrayed you, filled with a storm of emotions you'd have to learn to hide in the next few minutes.

You applied your makeup with practiced precision, each stroke of mascara and swipe of lipstick another layer of protection, of disguise. Once satisfied with your appearance, you squared your shoulders, and put the lipstick in your clutch.

You emerged from the bedroom, smoothing down the fabric of your dress. “I’m ready.”

Bucky’s eyes roamed over you appreciatively, and you felt something pool in your stomach - the attraction to this man you’d been trying to ignore since you’d been introduced to him early this morning. You could not have a crush on this man who was supposed to infiltrate your brother’s organization with you, steal information, and try and get both of you out safely.

It would be too much of a distraction.

Bucky's lips quirked into a small smile.

“What?” you asked, suspicious.

“You forgot your shoes,” he said simply.

You looked down and sighed.

“Nervous?” he asked, his tone kind, soft.

"Bucky," you said, looking back at him, "how are we supposed to explain your presence? Won't my brother be suspicious of a new man in my life?"

"We've got a cover story. I'm a potential new investor in your brother's 'business ventures.' You met me at a networking event last week and thought I'd be a good fit for tonight's gala."

You raised an eyebrow. "And you just happened to sweep me off my feet?”

"Something like that," Bucky replied with a roguish smile. "We'll keep it vague - a whirlwind romance, sparks flying. Your brother will be more focused on the potential investment than on our relationship."

You nodded, trying to quell the butterflies in your stomach. It wasn't just nerves about the mission now; the idea of pretending to be swept off your feet by Bucky wasn't entirely unpleasant.

"Right," you said, forcing yourself to focus. "I'll just go grab those shoes."

You hurried back to the bedroom, slipping on a pair of elegant black heels. As you turned to leave, your eyes fell on a framed photo on the nightstand - you and your brother at last year's gala, both smiling widely. Your stomach churned. How had you been so blind?

Taking a deep breath, you pushed the guilt down and away. You needed to do this. There was no other path in your mind now that you knew the truth. Your eyes flicked from the frame to the luggage packed next to your door. When you’d left yesterday, you hadn’t taken anything with you, not wanting to draw suspicion. With this return to your place and the cover of being swept into something with Bucky, it gave you the cover to pack some of your things - luggage that was being picked up and taken care of for you by one of this “rich investor’s” staff to go with you on a two-week vacation to a private island in the Phillippines. It was a perfect cover, provided you could sell it.

He was so handsome, with his dark hair styled perfectly and his strong jawline. Still sitting on the couch, he radiated confidence and charm, making it easy to see why he was chosen for this mission. You couldn't help but feel slightly nervous under his intense gaze.

Bucky's eyes flicked over your ensemble. "You look beautiful," he said, his voice low and husky.

Your heart skipped a beat at the compliment, feeling self-conscious under his scrutiny. "Thank you," you replied shyly.

You’d been so worried about all the other logistics of tonight, you hadn’t thought about the believability of you and Bucky until now.

“Come here,” he said, holding a hand out to you. You crossed the room and took it, gasping as he pulled you down to sit across his lap.

“Bucky,” you protested, insecure about sitting all of your plus-sized body in his lap. You had never been comfortable with your few previous partners in this situation, but he pressed one cool vibranium finger to your lips, while his other hand moved softly up and down your back.

“Don’t be nervous,” he whispered. “You’ll need to look comfortable around me when I touch you, and if your brother is going to believe you’ve agreed to go away with me tonight, I can’t touch you for the first time while we’re there.”

You nodded. He pressed a kiss to your shoulder, and you shivered.

You felt a flush creep up your neck as Bucky's lips brushed your cheek. His touch was gentle, almost reverent, but you could feel the strength in his arms as he held you. You took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself further. He seemed unconcerned, even happy to hold all of you, and the contrast between his warm flesh hand and the cool metal of his other arm sent tingles down your spine.

"Is this okay?" he murmured against your skin, his breath hot on your neck.

You nodded, not trusting your voice. Your heart was racing, and you weren't sure if it was from nerves about the mission or the proximity of this dangerously attractive man.

Bucky's hand traced lazy circles on your back, and you found yourself relaxing into his touch despite your better judgment. "We need to look natural together," he explained softly. "Like we can't keep our hands off each other. It'll sell the whirlwind romance angle."

You swallowed hard, trying keep it together.

Bucky's hand continued its soothing motion up and down your back, and you found yourself leaning into his touch despite your better judgment.

"Tell me more about your brother," Bucky said softly. "What should I expect?"

You tensed slightly at the mention of your brother, but Bucky's steady presence kept you grounded. "He's… charming," you began, choosing your words carefully. "Charismatic. He can make anyone feel like the most important person in the room. But there's always an agenda behind it."

Bucky nodded, his fingers still tracing patterns on your back. "And how does he usually react to you bringing someone new around?"

You sighed, leaning your head against Bucky's shoulder. "He's protective. Suspicious. I haven’t brought many men around. He'll probably try to get you alone, size you up."

"I can handle that," Bucky assured you, his voice low and confident.

You lifted your head to look at him, suddenly struck by how close your faces were. His blue eyes were intense, searching yours. "Bucky," you whispered, "what if I can't pull this off?"

His hand came up to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing softly across your skin. "We will," he said firmly. It didn’t escape your notice that he’d said we, not allowing you to feel alone. "You're stronger than you think, and I've got your back.”

You took a deep breath, steeling yourself. "Underneath that charm, he's calculating. Always looking for an angle, a way to use people. And he's dangerous when he feels threatened."

Before, you hadn’t questioned his cold side, thought it to usually be warranted, protective of you and the family and his organization. But now you knew better, illusion shattered.

Bucky nodded, his expression grave. "I'll be on high alert," he assured you. "We'll have to make sure he sees me as an asset, not a threat. But remember, we're not there to confront him tonight. Just to gather information."

"Right," you said, trying to calm your racing heart. "Just information."

Bucky's hand resumed landed on your thigh, and he squeezed reassuringly. You put your hand over his.

"Good," he murmured, eyes dropping down to your coupled hands. "That's the kind of reaction we need."

You nodded, trying to focus on the mission, on the act you needed to sell. But it was becoming increasingly difficult with Bucky's strong arm around you, his warm breath on your neck.

"We should practice," you said, your voice barely above a whisper. "What if... what if we need to kiss?"

Bucky's eyes met yours, a mix of surprise and something darker, more intense. "Are you sure?"

You nodded, your heart racing. "We need to be convincing, right?"

Without another word, Bucky's hand slid to the nape of your neck, pulling you closer. His lips met yours, soft at first, then with growing intensity. You melted into the kiss, your hands instinctively moving to his chest. The stubble on his jaw scratched lightly against your skin, sending shivers down your spine.

For a moment, you forgot about the mission, about your brother, about everything except the feel of Bucky's lips on yours. It felt electric, a spark of something real amidst all the deception you were about to undertake. His metal arm tightened around your waist, and you gasped softly into his mouth.

When you finally broke apart, both slightly breathless, Bucky's eyes were dark with desire. "That was..." he started, then cleared his throat. "That should be convincing enough.”

You nodded, unable to form words. The kiss had felt all too real, and you were struggling to remind yourself that this was just part of the act. You couldn't afford to develop real feelings for Bucky, not with everything at stake.

"We should go," you managed to say, glancing at the clock. "We don't want to be late."

Bucky nodded, but neither of you moved.

Then you leaned in and kissed him again. He returned your kiss, metal arm pulling you even closer. Your hands tangled into his hair, and you shifted in his lap so you could press your chest flush against his.

"We really should go," you murmured against Bucky's lips when you had to break off for another breath, but made no move to pull away.

He hummed in agreement, his fingers tangling in your hair as he deepened the kiss. You melted into him, all thoughts of the mission momentarily forgotten. There was only the warmth of his body, the softness of his lips, the gentle scrape of his stubble against your skin.

Your hands roamed over his broad shoulders, feeling the strength coiled beneath his suit jacket. Bucky's flesh hand slid from your hair down your neck, leaving a trail of goosebumps. You gasped softly at the contact, and he took the opportunity to trace your lower lip with his tongue. Heat pooled in your stomach as you parted your lips, allowing him to deepen the kiss further.

His vibrainum hand continued its exploration down your body, while his warm, flesh hand stayed at the small of your back, anchoring you. You lost yourself in the sensation, forgetting for a moment about the dangerous mission ahead. Bucky's kisses were intoxicating, making you dizzy with desire. His metal hand traced the curve of your hip, sending shivers through your body.

Suddenly, the sharp ring of a phone cut through the haze of passion. You jerked away from Bucky, reality crashing back. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a sleek black device.

"It's time," he said, his voice husky. "The car's waiting downstairs."

You nodded, trying to catch your breath and calm your racing heart. As you stood up from his lap, you smoothed down your dress, acutely aware of how close you'd come to losing control.

Bucky rose as well, adjusting his tie and running a hand through his slightly mussed hair. His eyes met yours, filled with…

Filled with what, you weren’t sure.

If you made it out tonight, maybe you might have a chance to find out.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

Read more stories from the Deliciously Debauched Labor Day Weekend!

👀

What do we think? Do we want to see more of them?

I think this could be a post-TFATWS and pre-Thunderbolts kind of thing maybe. idk.

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: How To Master An "Effortlessly Elegant" & Put-Together Look

Table of Contents:

Treat your skin like royalty

Take ample care of your natural hair

Dress in crisp neutral outfits that cater to your body shape

Choose your accessories wisely

Embrace feature-enhancing makeup

Keep your nails clean, filed, and simple

Regarding your signature scent(s)

Follow your dental & bodily hygiene routines religiously

Treat your skin like royalty:

Use high-quality skincare twice a day

Wear sunscreen every day

Remove your makeup every night before bed no matter what

Use makeup that doesn't clog your pores/irritate your skin

Change your pillowcases weekly

Eat plenty of produce & drink lots of water

Prioritize sleep

Limit or eliminate alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, and processed foods/sugary drinks

Keep your skin exfoliated/derma-planed

Take ample care of your natural hair:

Use high-quality shampoo/conditioner combos that suit your hair type & don't cause build-up

Hydrate with a scalp mask 1-4 times a month

Use cold or lukewarm water to wash your hair

Apply shampoo to the roots/hair covering your scalp and conditioner only on the "ponytail" section of your hair

Use a specialty hair towel after getting out of the shower

Always comb wet hair and brush 1-3 times a day when dry

Limit heat on your hair when possible & always use a heat protectant every time you do

Use non-elastic or silk hair ties

Get regular trims at least 3-4 times per year (get your hair layered if it's very thick)

Try to limit how much you dye or, especially bleach, your hair and do elaborate styles with tons of heat & harsh products

Dress in crisp neutral outfits that cater to your body shape:

Embrace minimalist basics (tees, tanks, blouses, sweaters, jeans, trousers, blazers, leather jackets, coats, etc.) in high-quality fabrics (Pima cotton, Merino wool, Tencel, mulberry silk, etc.)

Choose options in black, white, grey, charcoal beige, navy, burgundy, or cream depending on your skin tone and preferences

Invest in a collection of sleek footwear options (black boots, loafers, black pumps, white sneakers, etc.) in minimalist, timeless styles that suit the color palette, hemlines & proportions of your go-to outfits

Ensure your shoes and accessories feel proportional to the weight/silhouette of your outfit, color-coordinate with the rest of your look, and have streamlined hardware from head-to-toe (all silver, all gold, or one piece that mixes silver/gold and another gold & silver piece each to balance out the color palette)

Keep all of your clothes steam and lint-rolled, so they look crisp & fresh all-day

Befriend your tailor to take in or let out clothes as needed when purchased off the rack

Choose clothes/styles that flatter your body shape and proportions

Utilize belts and bra tape to adjust the waist, keep shirts tucked in, and keep straps from falling down or create an impromptu cuff/hem on your pants

When in doubt, select a neutral head-to-toe monochrome outfit

If on a budget, consider choosing black, grey, camel beige items to hide fabric imperfections that could cheapen your look

Choose your accessories wisely:

Select sleek, simple neutral (& almost exclusively) monochrome shoes made with smooth (recycled/vegan) leather with

Pair almost any outfit with a shoe featuring a slight platform, block heel, kitten heel, and/or a sharply pointed toe to elongate your silhouette

Complement your outfit with structured, pared-back handbags with no logos (Focus on quality and construction, not the brand name) in a neutral shade and timeless silhouette

For jewelry, choose at most one statement piece and all others should be focused on different areas of the body (e.g. don't mix statement earrings with layered/bold necklaces or stacked rings * bracelets). When in doubt, choose simple diamond chains or earrings, sleek bangles or chainlink necklaces & bracelets, simple pendant necklaces, and minimalist rings in hardware that all go together

Embrace feature-enhancing makeup:

Cover up any dark circles, blemishes, or hyperpigmentation with a color-matched concealer

Lightly contour with a bronzer that complements your skin tone

Fill in your brows for a naturally full look (or get them professionally tinted)

Apply a light wash of rose, coral, or mauve blush

Use black mascara with a little bit of eyeliner and/or a subtle wash of brown eyeshadow on the lids

Apply a "your lips but better" nude shade or "just kissed' berry lipstick or pigmented lip balm for a subtle wash of color

Keep your nails clean, filed, and simple:

Maintain cut, cleaned, and filed short nails

Opt for a square or almond nail shape

Choose a timeless nail shade (pink, nude, red, beige, dark cherry, navy, dark purple, black) with no nail art

Hydrate your hands and scrub under your nails daily

Regarding your signature scent(s):

Ensure your body wash/lotion and perfume scents don't clash

Test perfumes for a trial day to ensure they smell divine with your unique pheromones

Choose a fragrance appropriate for the seasonal/occasion

Apply a dab on each wrist and on your neck/behind the ears. If the scent doesn't project well on you, try applying these small dabs on the cuffs and shoulders of your jacket/walk into it to get it on your hair (if it would stain your clothes)

Don't layer more than one heady perfume at a time or scents that don't have complementary and/or shared notes

Follow your dental & bodily hygiene routines religiously:

Floss every day (after each meal if possible)

Brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush twice a day

Have mints on hand if you're a garlic, spice, or coffee lover

Keep your lips & hands well-moisturized and protected with SPF

Shower your body daily and be extra diligent in scrubbing your privates, everything behind, and under your arms

Don't use very hot water in the shower (it burns/dries out your skin)

Exfoliate 2-3 times a week with a sugar scrub

Moisturize daily or anytime you get out of the shower

Apply SPF on any exposed sun (especially in the summer or when the UV index is high in your area)

[uhohdad]

THE GIRL WHO CONQUERED THE MOUNTAIN

KONIG X READER [HUNGER GAMES AU]

You & Konig have been chosen to participate in a twenty-four tribute fight to the death.

18+, NSFW, 144k WORD COUNT, AO3, Virgin!Konig, Outcast!Konig, 18yo!Konig, GentleGiant!Konig, Fem!Reader, Mentor!Price, Blood & Injury, Graphic Violence, Death, PTSD, Alcohol Use, Slow Burn, Sexual Content, First Time, Smut, Fluff, Angst

· THE TRIBUTES I · THE TRIBUTES II · THE GAMES · THE VICTOR I · THE VICTOR II · THE AFTERMATH I · THE AFTERMATH II ·

➤ THE GAMES

When you wake, your cheek is still pressed to Konig’s chest. Your lips have settled in a dot of your own drool that stains a spot on his shirt a shade darker. Your head raises to face the knock on the door, and Konig’s head follows in suit. You’re not sure if he was already awake or not, but your eyes meet, both of you already dawning that unsure stare.

You know what this knock means.

This is your call to death.

You take a dry swallow, body already shaking with fear.

You and Konig give each other one last squeeze before you pull away to roll out of bed to answer the door.

It’s Price, wearing a matching solemn expression, his brow creased in sympathy at your face drained of color and jaw that trembles.

He nods at you, and wordlessly embraces you, your face buried in his chest as his arms wrap around your shoulders.

“You’ll be alright, Pluck,” He whispers, giving you a squeeze before he pulls away. He looks over your shoulder and sees Konig, slouching off the edge of your bed, staring at the floor.

Price refrains from giving you that knowing, smug grin. He nods again, licks his lips, and the three of you still, staring off into nothing. Mourning in your last few moments.

At breakfast, Ruby has the sense to ease on the chatter, the four of you eating in a grave silence.

Neither you or Konig have much of an appetite. In fact, every bite you force down threatens to make a reappearance, but you have to. You have to eat and drink as much as you can hold because if you can survive the day, you will soon be starving.

No words are exchanged.

Wordlessly you and Konig are chaperoned down to the ground floor, led by Capitol guards to the hovercraft launch pad.

You are strapped into your seat, where you are given a tracker, implanted deep into your inner forearm with a thick, hollow needle. You don’t hold back your wince as it’s driven into your flesh.

There’s a lump in your throat that won’t go away. As you gnaw at your painted nails, your hand jitters in front of your face. You wonder if forcing down breakfast was a bad idea, because it’s swirling around your insides, stomach churning as you sit with nothing to distract yourself. In a futile attempt to soothe yourself, your thumb rubs over the smooth, golden front of Konig’s token.

When the hovercraft’s windows go black, you can’t help the sharp inhale you draw in.

You can’t bear to look at Konig as you’re separated in the catacombs deep beneath the arena.

Mauve’s waiting for you at your launch room. She looks a little pale today, her usually uninterested demeanor wavering.

Pressed to the far wall and immediately catching your attention is an open, crystal tube circling a metal platform that will soon deliver you to the arena. The sight of it widens your eyes, as if you were staring down an opponent in the arena. Your breakfast sloshes around in your gut, fists clenching at your sides.

Mauve sighs and hands you a pair of black pants with a matching tactical belt. The pants are wind resistant, a swishy material on the outside and a thin layer of wool on the inside.

You nod slow, jaw slack and shaking, breaths audible. Dizzy and unsteady, you almost trip as you step into your pants, catching yourself with a hop.

Mauve helps you into the most supportive sports bra you’ve ever had the pleasure of wearing, and a black shirt, reminiscent of the one you wore for training. Your arms fumble to make it through the holes of the fabric. Once on she takes a black jacket off a hanger and opens it for you. You make a half turn on unsteady feet, slipping one arm after another through the sleeves. She pulls it up onto your shoulders, brushing your hair from the back of your neck as she smooths the hood along your shoulders.

Your rattling fingers fumble for the zipper and fail to connect either side of the jacket. Mauve gently takes it for you, zipping up to your middle. You try to whisper her a thank you but it just comes out a breathy squeak.

The jacket was made for you, you can tell. The almost silken, water resistant material perfectly confirming to the curves of body, comfortably hugging you. Similar to the pants, another layer of wool lines the inside. At the absence of pockets, you slip Konig’s token into your bra for safe keeping.

“Look,” Mauve says, annoyed as ever, “I try not to get attached. But you,” She sighs, lowering her voice, “You make it hard.”

Your face loosens for just a moment.

Maybe you had pegged Mauve wrong. You hadn’t considered that she may be avoidant and uninterested to just her tribute. You assumed that’s all she ever was. But maybe outside of here, away from the kid she has to watch die every year, maybe she is nicer. Open and loving and supportive. It makes you think that if someone had tried to judge your entire personality based on how you’ve acted since the reaping, maybe they’d peg you wrong too.

“Thank you, Mauve,” Your words are nothing but a shaky whisper.

“Mhm,” She hums, “Now win.”

You scan her face, your entire body trembling in fear.

An even, robotic voice comes over the speaker and announces that the launch will begin in thirty seconds.

You choke on the lump in your throat, a hiccup leaving at your futile attempt to swallow.

Your feet are made of lead as they approach the launch pad, careful, shuffled steps up to the tube.

“Hey,” Mauve says.

When she looks at you, she gives you a single, slow nod.

“You’ve got it.”

With full blown eyes, you return her gesture, and the glass encloses you with a zip.

Immediately your palms are pressed to the glass, your instincts clawing to free yourself from this cage.

Mauve gives you one final nod.

Your entire body jumps when the platform begins to raise, and you watch Mauve until she disappears, ascending into darkness.

-

The first thing you notice as your tube breaks into open is the freezing air. Almost immediately your trembling intensifies, each shallow breath turning to steam that billows in front of your face. You are blinded, nothing but bright white as you jerk your head around. For ten seconds your vision struggles to readjust, twitching as you force yourself to orient to a shine powerful enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Once your eyes adjust to the sun, your focus is pulled to the cornucopia, centered equal distance from each of the tributes’s platforms. All twenty-four of you, in a circle, a minute away from a bloody slaughter.

Sixty Seconds.

The pure white snow that surrounds your feet reflects a brutal full sun.

You follow one of the tributes gaze, the boy from District Three, you think. He’s staring off into the distance, into the sandy landscape just to the left of you.

Desert.

Sand that stretches for what looks like miles, massive dunes that billow along the lifeless sea of orange. A mirage of heat radiating off the piles of sand, dotted with the occasional dead brush.

To your right, behind the story-tall cornucopia, the desert landscape seems to come to a grinding halt. As if a line had been drawn vertically down the horizon. The yellow, hazy sky that hangs over the desert abruptly turns to a blanket of crystal blue sky filled with fluffy, brilliant white clouds. Just next to the split, contrasting against the brilliant blue sky, is the border of a hedge maze. Thick, massive walls of foliage reaching well over the size of a redwood tree, pink flowers that look almost like cherry blossoms intertwined with the deep green walls running along the perimeter of its quadrant. From here you can see at least a dozen openings in its massive walls, leading into it’s chambers.

Forty-Five Seconds.

The arena is divided in four, with the mouth of the cornucopia in the exact spot where each of the landscapes meet,  six tribute platforms in each quandrant.  Surrounding yours, and the closest five other tribute’s platforms, is snow. Blinding white, the desert’s sun reflecting off its pure coat that comes to a perfect right angle pointed at the cornucopia. When you look behind you, you see the snow stretches along the entire quadrant, eventually obscured by a forest of pine trees. The sky above the pines is a solid, weak grey, flurries dotting the air.

When you look over your left shoulder, you find the snow and pine forest comes to a dead halt, another split in the sky and landscape. It’s picked up by a forest of red maple and ginkgo trees - vibrant crimson and yellow leaves that camouflages just a few feet beyond the treeline. The leaves’ colors immediately remind you of fall, and then it clicks.

Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall.

Cute, Capitol.

Thirty Seconds.

The desert was a death sentence. No water, no food, and heat that would collapse the strongest tributes in a matter of hours.

Snow was out of the question, too. With Price’s instructions to avoid the cornucopia, there’s no way you’d have the proper supplies to survive such a climate. Even just standing in the corner, with the desert quadrant being just a few yards away, you and the five tributes surrounded by snow are shivering from more than just fear, noses and cheeks turning red from the chill air. Staying close to snow would be important, through, as it’s the only source of water you’ve got eyes on from your platform.

The sight of the hedge maze is enough to make your stomach churn. A feeling in your gut that was hard to ignore, even with the rationalization of ideal temperature and concealment. It was too risky. An enclosed space like that, no way to tell what dangers and traps the gamemakers have hidden inside. Too easily cornered into hand-to-hand combat.

The fall forest - that’s your best bet. Dense trees to hide in. Survivable temperature and bordering the snow quadrant.

Fifteen Seconds.

With your arms crossed over your chest in a desperate attempt to keep warm, you do one last quick scan of the four jarring landscapes, just to ensure you’re making the right choice. You find the mouth of the cornucopia again, a pile of goodies spilling out in the exact spot all four quadrants meet. You see weapons made of the finest quality metal, shelter materials, full armor and gear designed with the extreme temperatures in mind. It’s no use eyeing them up, you’d never survive in a dash to the cornucopia. Your eyes flick down to the items scattered around your feet, the lesser value supplies sprinkled further away from the cornucopia. They stick out well in the snow, nestled into the top layer of ice. Just from your spot you can see an empty water bottle, a carabiner, a flashlight. A multitool the size of your index finger, a set of rubber soles - you think to attach to your shoes - and a pair of black, coarse gloves.

You follow the items that trickle into the hedge maze quadrant, and there you find Konig, about seven tributes to your right.

He’s hard to miss among the other tributes, and he’s looking right at you. Catching his stare, you share one last look of hesitance.

You realize you haven’t taken a breath in an uncomfortable amount of time, gulping one deep breath of sharp icy wind while you look to Konig with parted blue lips and eyes pooled with terror.

One last reassuring glance between two tributes that are both just as lost and just as unsure and just as deathly afraid.

When the gong goes off, your brain goes blank. The plan you’d so carefully crafted over the longest minute of your life untangles the moment twenty-three tributes race off their platforms. Half in a full sprint to the mouth of the cornucopia, the others scattering in a full dash to the quadrants.

No one dares rush into the desert, many going out of their way and stumbling through sand to escape the heat that coated them in layer of sweat. The tributes assigned to that quadrant had already removed their jackets and secured them to their waists to escape the dry heat of the sun. A handful of tributes rush for the hedge maze, less offput by its unknown in the interest of full concealment. Two male tributes, one who had snatched the shoe attachments, flashlight, and gloves, dare to brace the snow, running side-by-side and whizzing right past you as they disappear into pine trees. The rest of the tributes make a dash to the fall quandrant, quickly disappearing behind the coverage of yellow and red leaves.

You were still glued to your platform, giving everyone else a massive head start. Frozen in your place, sucked right back into that blackhole of dread and fear you experienced on reaping day.

There’s one thought that tears through the fog, and it’s Price’s voice.

What the hell are you doing, kid?! Get out of there!

It’s his voice that gives you the courage to step off your platform, daring a few feet forward to risk grabbing the canteen and carabiner with one hand, the multitool in the other. The metal wet with melted snow freezes your palms with a harsh bite.

When you look up to make sure no one’s targeting you, the color drains from your face at the sight of the boy from District One thrusting a sword into a boy’s neck. His blood sprays nearly a foot in front of him, coating his killer in a cup of deep red blood. The boy from district one smiles, his grin coated in the blood of his kill.

About ten yards from you, in the fall quadrant, the girl from District Four wrestles the scrawny girl from District Ten to the ground for a 3-inch long knife that was stabbed into the dirt. She managed to overpower her, pinning her down with a straddle before driving the knife into her stomach. She removes the blade several times, plunging it back into Ten - repeatedly slashing her guts and sending blood flying. Ten keeps her grip on the knife that punctures her, face frozen in shock.

The girl from District One, now back to back with her bloody companion, is successfully using a spear to skewer anyone in her reach.

Your head snaps to a figure rushing towards you. The boy from eleven, you think, has his eyes locked on you, running full speed in your direction. At his side is a scythe, its metal gleaming as it catches the bright desert sun with each of his strides. You stand straight from your half-ducked position, having been stuck in your squat after grabbing your meager supplies. The snow crunches under your boots as you make a few shaky steps backwards, palms rising instinctively to brace yourself. You’re still locked in fear, lower lip stammering and unable to get out even a plea for mercy.

Suddenly he’s stopped in his tracks, his legs and upper half folded forward by strong arms and hands clasped tightly around his ribs. You watch with a gaped mouth and blown eyes as he rises a foot-and-a-half off the ground. His limbs flail as he tries to swing the scythe behind him to defend against his assailant. It’s quick, Eleven’s tilted to the side and he’s thrown brutally into the ground. For a moment his body is a blur, and then his head catches on a raised platform. His skull hits the metal with a heavy thunk, followed by the distinct and unmistakable sound of his neck breaking.

When you’re finished eyeing the boy from eleven, dead the moment he hit the platform, your eyes dart to the culprit.

Konig.

He’s peels the scythe from the dead tribute’s hand, looking over his shoulder for any approaching tributes.

As soon as he meets your scared eyes, he starts in a full sprint to you, weapon at his side.

A breathy squeak turns to steam in the frozen air as you stumble backwards. Your heel catches on your own platform, seat hitting the snow and legs sprawled out on the chilled metal.

It’s the betrayal that shocks you back to your body.

Konig is trying to kill you.

Your feet kick desperately at the smooth platform as you turn over in the snow. Stiff, frozen limbs quickly scramble to get yourself up and into a sprint. You keep your few supplies pinned tightly to your chest as you fight against the snow swallowing your boots with each step. You break into full speed when you’re in the fall quadrant, the freezing air turning to a much more bearable temperature the moment your foot harshly hit the dirt littered with yellow petals.

Finally! You hear Price in your head. You can even picture him, leaned towards the screen, hand coming off his knee with an annoyed wave.

Each time your foot slams against the dirt it sends a shock up your legs, still defrosting from the harsh bite of the winter quadrant. The adrenaline pumps through you with each pulse that pounds against your temple, breath as sharp as crystals with each inhale.

Branches grab hold of you as soon as you break through the trees, peeling up the first few layers of exposed skin. With each snap and break of the branches, the searing, white hot image of the boy from eleven flashes in front of your eyes. His eyes that had gone lifeless the moment he crashed into that platform, a small bounce of his head off the metal pillow before he landed limply in his final resting place.

You stay right on the border of the winter quadrant, just to the right of the snow-capped pine trees.

When your hearing comes back to you, previously deafened by an unrelenting replay of a broken neck, the first thing you hear is your heavy breaths, followed by the screams of tributes behind you. They’re quieter now that you’ve made distance from the bloodbath, but there’s no mistaking the raw desperation in their cries of pain and pleas for mercy. You can’t help but flinch at the particularly cutting shrieks.

You run until your legs hurt, until your face and hands are covered in scratches, until your lungs beg for respite, and then you run some more.

You’re thinking about all the tributes that ran into the fall quadrant. Most of the ones that didn’t make a dash to the cornucopia ran into the quadrant you occupy. Your focus had been elsewhere, but you think around six or seven tributes made a run for it as soon as the gong sounded. More may even follow after they’ve grabbed supplies from the cornucopia.

This doesn’t sit right with you, all of these tributes in such a condensed area, almost all of them bigger and stronger than you. They’ll surely stay close to the border of the snow district as well, drawn in to the water supply. It’s frustrating that these tributes had the same plan as you, but you don’t have much of a choice without proper supplies to survive the extreme climates.

Maybe the hedge maze was the right move after all. To your knowledge, only a handful of tributes were daring enough to head to the spring quadrant, and at the very least the hedge maze should provide decent cover. There may even be supplies hidden deep within it chambers.

This in mind, you don’t break your strides, heading deeper into the fall quadrant.

You don’t stop until your stomach threatens to retch, dropping to your knees in exhaustion. If a tribute were to run into you now, they’d surely have no trouble ending your life.

When you finally catch your breath, successfully spitting away the nausea and rubbing away the cramp in your arm from the deadly grip on your items, you’re surprised you’re still alive. That another tribute hasn’t found you and turned your throat inside out.

You’re eager to get away from the snow border, knowing that the tributes will be lingering close by. You’re thankful you risked the water bottle, even if it meant the vivid memories of so many brutal slaughters. You’re sure it will give you an advantage, able to move deeper into the fall quadrant without having to stay close to scoop up handfuls of snow.

When your legs permit you, you stand with a wobble, inching yourself toward the pine trees. You kneel down in the dirt littered with brilliant yellow ginkgo petals, and scoop handfuls of snow up to your mouth, letting it melt into a very refreshing swallow of ice cold water. You don’t even try to mute your noises of satisfaction and relief. Once you’ve quenched the unbearable thirst brought up from running, you uncap your bottle and begin to stuff snow into its small opening.

You can’t get the image, the sound, of the boy’s broken neck out of your mind. It’s stopped playing on a loop, but it now intrusively rips through your thoughts without warning, folding your whole body forward into a cringe.

You’d known Konig was strong. You’d watched him in training, lifting weights you could hardly roll.

It was nothing in comparison to watching him pick up that boy from eleven with ease. He lifted that boy, who was by no means small nor weak, spun him around, and threw him like he was a ragdoll.

You really thought that Konig would have the decency not to try and kill you immediately. Just yesterday you were friendly, sharing both a bed and your intimate thoughts. Moments before the  gong you were benefiting from each other’s reassurance. Shouldn’t there have been a cool-down period? You didn’t realize that not agreeing to be his ally meant you were agreeing to be enemies.

It was naive of you to assume you’d be on neutral ground in the arena, you realize.

‘I would kill if I need to.’

You hear Konig’s words intertwined with the repeated sound of Eleven’s neck cracking.

Just a lie, something to keep your guard down.

He killed that boy not out of self-defense or necessity, but because he could. He was running right towards you, ready to pick you off too, just because he could.

He didn’t even have the decency to let someone else pick you off before he broke your assailant’s neck.

Konig specifically wanted to be the one to kill you.

You’re running over every moment you’ve ever shared with him, now tainted with the cruel truth. He had been tricking you all along, luring you into ease and comfort with his presence just so that he could draw you in to kill you.

You’d been right all along.

When your canteen is full, you wipe off the outside of the bottle with your jacket and use the carabiner to clip the bottle and multi-tool onto its rung. You fasten it into your belt loop, but your plan immediately falls apart when the multi-tool starts to bang against the metal of the water bottle with each movement, making far too much noise for your liking. You remove the multi-tool with the faintest annoyed grunt, and take the opportunity to shuffle through its insides. Your fingers are stiff from the cold snow, but nails manage to pry out the sheathed pieces of metal.

Inside you find a blade, about an inch long. The blade is sharp but thin, and would offer little use for self-defense, but will surely be helpful in terms of survival. There’s a second blade, one with a serrated edge, its jagged teeth varying sizes. The multi-tool also shields a corkscrew, a small pair of pliers, a file, and the tiniest pair of scissors you’ve ever seen.

Instead of putting it back on its rung, you stuff the multi-tool into your sports bra, raising goosebumps on your flesh as your body works to warm up the metal.

You begin at a walk further into the fall quadrant, away from the snow and slightly diagonal as you rub your freezing hands together to warm them up.

There’s not much sign of other tributes, but you be sure to head the opposite direction at the slightest rustling of leaves.

You walk at a steady pace now, one you think you can maintain as you dredge deeper into the forest.

You need to figure out a source for food. You weren’t lucky enough to get your hands on any rope or wire, so snares were out of the question. There’s no other vegetation besides ginkgo trees and red maples as far as you can see, but you can’t see very far past the low hanging branches and petals.

You don’t know much about ginkgo trees, so you have no clue if they bear edibility.

There are the last of the maple seeds that occasionally flutter to the ground with their mesmerizing dance.

You can work with maple seeds.

Something for your stomach to at least chew on, even if it meant malnourishment. The bark is also edible, you remember.

And sap! If you can figure out how to harvest it, you’ll get a sweet treat in reward.

There’s something about the trees that seem artificial, though. The colors are a little too bright, the branches a little too flourished with leaves. Not even the petals littered on the ground have a hint of rotted brown on them.

Even with the unease the trees invoke, you risk gathering maple seeds from the forest floor.

You’re not sure how far you’ve traveled, It feels like miles.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

The bloodbath must be over, and they are now firing the cannon that signifies a tribute’s death.

You pause your walking to count on your fingers as the booms fire one after another.

Nine fires. Nine tributes dead.

For a moment, you are enraged. Nine children dead as punishment for crimes that took place well before their creation.

And then you hear Price again, reminding you to use that rage as fuel to survive.

Don’t think about it.

You let out a deep breath, starting up at a steady pace.

Another thought makes you stop.

Nine of you dead.

Is Konig still alive?

To your dismay, there is a pang in your chest that vibrates through your whole body, bleeding a strong emotion you can’t quite pinpoint throughout your entire being.

You… don’t want him to be dead.

He just tried to kill you, and even so the thought of him not making it through the bloodbath is twisting your guts in knots.

‘You don’t think that boy is going to have a giant target on his back?’

Shut up, Price! Shut up! Shut up!

Your feet kick up a few fallen leaves as you force yourself to keep moving.

He can’t be dead, you decide. Even if he had been hanging around the bloodbath with a pack of careers itching to use their weapons on him.

He’s not dead.

You need to tell yourself this, because you can’t afford to feel emotional, even if the emotion you feel is knotted up and begging to be unraveled.

He’s not dead.

Your legs are burning, feeling heavy and unsteady at the same time. Your bends to scoop up maple seeds slow, relishing in the breaks from walking a little too long.

As you walk you peel some of the maple seeds, hoping they can give you some energy to keep going. You’re doubtful, though.

You wince at the break of bitter seeds against your tongue. They’d taste sweeter cooked, but you’re working with what you have.

When you’re really at your limit, you plop down in front of a particularly large maple, thick trunk and camouflaged in a cluster of low-hanging ginkgo branches.

You eat a few more maple seeds, replacing them with the ones in your reach. You take a swig of your water, now melted and cool to wash down their taste.

You wonder how often you’ve been shown on screen, and when? At any moment you could be broadcasted live to every person in Panem.

Surely you wouldn’t get too much coverage, usually after the bloodbath they’ll be busy dissecting all the deaths that occurred all at once, but they will occasionally cut to you to show you’re still alive.

You freeze when you hear the rustling. This is no blow of the wind. This disturbance is animal, this is human, and both of those options mean danger.

You don’t so much as breathe, deathly still at once. From outside the coverage of the ginkgos, you see the flash of a large boot as it walks briskly through the foliage.

They walk like they’re not even afraid of danger, not stealthy in the least bit. Crunching leaves, snapping branches.

Long after they’re out of earshot, you let out a drawn out exhale. If you had killer instincts and a weapon, the tribute would have died by your hand. All you’d have to do is slink out silently behind them and do it before they even knew what hit them.

They’re lucky you’re docile.

Surely you were being featured then. Two tributes in such close proximity, they were probably gearing up for a fight.

So sorry to disappoint.

When the cannon goes off, you flinch again.

Okay, maybe you weren’t being televised.

It’s annoying how your first thought is of Konig. With each tribute that falls the odds of his survival dwindles.

You tell yourself you only care about his survival because it would be best for your district, best for your loved ones. Extra food parcels for every citizen in reward for giving the Capitol a victor.

You really hope he’s still alive.

Fourteen left. Thirteen not including you.

You rest against your maple until dusk, and decide this is a good enough place to set camp as any other.

You already know you’re not going to sleep tonight, but you hope you can at least get some rest.

With the fading light of day you slide out of your ginkgo hide out, and while making as much noise as you dare you begin to saw off some ginkgo branches, supporting them on their undersides to minimize the shake of the twigs and leaves. Only the sound of scratching wood and vibration of branch could draw any nearby tributes closer. You stop every few push and pull of the blade to check for signs of danger. It’s slow going for such an inadequate sawing tool.

By time the sun goes down, when the generously bright moon rises, you’ve successfully cut four decent sized branches dense with leaves. You arrange them around the trunk of your maple tree to conceal your resting body from the rest of the woods.

The cluster of trees does a good job concealing you, but the extra branches should ensure your black clothes don’t stick out against the ginkgo leaves and fill any gaps in the bottom of the branches. For good measure, you scoop up a decent pile of leaves, making sure to kick over nearby leaves to conceal the disruption, and sprinkle the bright yellow petals over your lower half in hopes of blending in with the dirt. You keep yourself propped up against the trunk of your tree, settling your legs in breaks of the tree roots.

You keep your supplies secured tightly to you, just in case you have to make a dash.

You disturb some of your ginkgo petals when the blare of the anthem starts. Over the defeaning music you poke your head into a clearing in the trees. Partially obscured through full branches you can see the Capitol emblem projected into the sky. They’re about to display the faces of the fallen shortly, and you will be able to figure out by elimination which tributes remain.

They appear in order of district, so when the girl from three projects in the sky, you know the careers from one and two are alive. No surprise there.

Her headshot is followed by her companion from three, both from District Five, the girl from District Six.

The girl from District Seven, the one you saw laughing on her chariot with the boy from her district. He’s still alive, though.

You hold your breath once her headshot disappears, bracing yourself to soon see Konig’s face in the sky.

The next face is the girl from ten.

For the first time in the arena, a smile creeps on your face, breathy and toothless. The wave of relief that washes over you is immediate and flooding.

Konig’s alive.

The warm feeling is cut short when you see the face of the boy from eleven hanging over you in the sky, and when you look at his picture, all you can see is his lifeless eyes. His limp bounce off the platform, the crack of his neck.

Konig’s alive.

And killing.

You wonder how many more lives he’s taken today.

Both the girl & boy from District Twelve flash in the sky, the anthem ends on a flare, and the forest seems unbearably quiet in its absence.

As you settle back into your nook, you try to figure out who’s left.

Both from District One & Two.

Both from District Four.

The boy from six, the boy from seven, and both from eight.

You remember Price’s warning about the boy from eight. About how something ‘ain’t right with that boy.’

You & Konig.

The boy from ten.

The girl from eleven.

That’s it, you think.

The air of a crisp fall day has turned to a harsh chill. Your breath turns to steam in the cool air, and a steady shiver twitches your body. You zip your jacket all the way up and tie your hood tightly around your face. In a desperate bid you even draw the branches closer to you, hoping for insulation.

You pull your arms out of their sleeves, tucking them close to your chest and rubbing them together for warmth. When this offers little respite, you pull your knees into your jacket as well, smushing your hands between thighs and chest. Your lower jaw chatters involuntarily, and you can’t help but wish you’d risked the bloodbath for a blanket, probable death be damned.

You close your eyes and long for the Capitol showers, hot and steamy and enveloping your whole body in a steamy warmth.

You think about the warmth you felt last night, how cozy it was to be pressed up to Konig’s body and leeching the heat that radiated from his skin.

Yesterday feels like a lifetime ago. How did Konig manage to cuddle up to you one night, and the very next day be hellbent on slaughtering you?   

He must have hated you from the beginning. Hedging his bets, pretending this whole time. You can’t believe you’ve let yourself fall for the gentle giant routine he was peddling.

You got no rest. You experienced every bone-chilling moment of the night, shaking against the unforgiving bark of the maple tree. The closest thing you got to respite was a haze in between sleep and wake, a near dreamlike state where you felt slightly disconnected from the world around you.

It never lasted long though, snapping your head at every rustle of leaves or break of branch. Occasionally the sound of Eleven’s neck cracking will tear through you, and you’re having trouble distinguishing if it’s a hallucination or not.

You wonder how the boys who ran off into the snow quadrant are doing. It may have been their strategy to run from the cornucopia through the snow knowing it’s likely no tribute would follow them. They probably slipped into one of the other quadrants by now. You can’t imagine it’s survivable in the night of winter.

You wonder how all of the other tributes are doing, actually. Did they rest through the night, or did they use this time to be productive?

The career pack will be hunting, no doubt.

You wonder if the boy from seven is mourning his companion. You weren’t actually sure they were friends, but that moment of connection on the chariot seemed so genuine, you couldn’t help but think of them as friends.

Maybe you just look into things too much.

Maybe you just read too far into smiles and stares and never doubt well-intentions.

Maybe you need to grow up and stop being such an emotional, sensitive, needy parasite and find some self-preservation!

The tributes from District Seven probably hated each other, really.

Both of them pretending to let the other’s guard down.

He was probably the one who killed her.

Lured her in security with a genuine smile and a charming laugh just so he could get an easy target to impress the sponsors.

You take a deep inhale to wipe your thoughts clean. You don’t need to be think about the tributes from District Seven. You didn’t even know their names.

But maybe he does miss her.

Maybe her death did mean something to him.

The sun hasn’t risen yet, but you are eager to give your mind actual problems to chew on. Channeling the anger, and all that. You rise slowly, using the trunk of the tree to help sore, numb legs to a stand.

You take a moment to stretch and rub out your achy muscles while you plan for your day.

Your water bottle is about half-full. You tried to ration as much as you could but you covered a lot of ground yesterday and wore yourself to exhaustion.

Okay, snow day. No worries. No running today unless necessary.

Maybe you’ll even get a look deeper into the pine forest and find some berries you recognize.

The thought of a fresh winterberry bursting in your mouth makes your stomach grumble. You begrudgingly finish off the rest of your maple seeds. You’ll replace them on your walk today, but you’re hoping you won’t need to.

Water and food, that’s all you need to worry about today.

And also not dying.

After popping stiff joints, you get moving in a leisurely walk. Instead of your diagonal route towards the desert, you do the same to the snow quadrant. Simultaneously getting where you need to be while tucking yourself further away from the cornucopia. Unlike yesterday, you’re taking care to move stealthily through the trees, avoiding disturbing foliage or heavy treads. The ginkgo petals and packed chill dirt don’t leave behind much footprint, but that’s also true for any tribute taking refuge in this quadrant.

It happens so fast, you don’t even have time to silence the scream that leaves you.   Yanked off the ground in an instant, kicking and flailing and instinctively crying out.

The pain in your ankles is shooting and immediate. With every thrash and struggle a restraint tightens around the tops of your boots.

For a moment, you thought you were dead. That another tribute had attacked from behind and you were about to succumb to your snapped neck, a slit throat, or a skewered abdomen.

After a painful three seconds pass you reorient yourself, and find that you are in fact, alone.

When you look up, you can see the ground is a five foot drop away.

Your legs had been jerked from underneath you, your body forced upside down, and yanked in the air by your ankles.

You’d walked right into someone’s trap, and you’re as good as dead.

Blood is rushing to your head and exacerbating your panic, thrashing desperately in the air to break free from the brutal hold of the rope.

Panic quickly turns to fury as you realize that someone has gotten the best of you. That someone had outsmarted you, had humiliated you, had strung you up dangling and helpless for every eye in Panem to see.

Mostly you’re upset at yourself, because the instinctual cry for help that left your lips was twisted into the letters of Konig’s name.

How pathetic. Calling for another tribute you were not allied with, a tribute who tried to kill you just yesterday.

‘Get your head in the fucking game.’

Face sweating and pulse pumping ruthlessly against your temple, you pinch your eyes shut and force yourself to stop fighting the hold of the rope, and find some fucking sense.

You take two deep breaths through flared nostrils before you thoughtfully survey your surroundings.

You’re strung with thick rope by your ankles along an especially study branch of maple. Five feet off the ground is a fall that would not fair well for you.

You need to get upside-right.

You look up to the knot wrapped tightly around your screaming and tender ankles. Your core was no where near strong enough to bring yourself up to the knot, but it doesn’t keep you from trashing anyway.

Think, think, think!

The world is spinning, the leaves and trunks of the trees swaying and blurring as you dangle in midair. Your view is curtained by your jacket, folded over itself and around the back of your head. You can’t hear a thing over the rushing blood in your ears.

You’re running out of time. You’re going to pass out soon, and that’s only if the tribute who set this trap isn’t running full speed in the direction of your initial scream.

Your fingers fumble for your belt, sliding it off with a whiz.

You force deep breaths, holding an end of the belt in each hand. You curl your core slightly and make a loose loop with the nylon.

You need to get it snagged to the soles of your shoes so you can hoist yourself high enough to undo the snare, or at least get the blood to drain from your face. With one choked breath you try to force yourself high enough to loop the bottoms of your boots, but you miss and end up falling back down and thrashing against the ropes.

Your breaths are heavy and your head is tight and pounding.

With grit teeth and a raw grunt, you fling yourself up, sliding the belt further up your legs.

You just barely graze the tips of your soles before the belt slips off and sends you back down fully horizontal, now with a swing.

The pain is unbearable, your entire body being supported by a tight rashy rope on your ankles. You’re getting dizzy and light-headed, surely close to an embarrassing end.

‘C’mon, Plucky.’

You begin to use your body weight to swing with the rope instead of against it, waiting until you’re at the peak of its swing before you flail your upper half up. Veins bulge from your forehead as you catch the width of the belt on your shoes.

Your biceps immediately strain to support your upper half, clenching your teeth as you pull yourself up by your own shoes.

You can’t help the grunts leaving as you struggle to get your head above your neck.

You take a break to catch a few breaths, the ends of the belt looped around either palm that support your upper half.

“Okay, c’mon,” you grunt under your breath. You grab both ends of the belt with one hand, jerking yourself upwards to get your other palm just above it.

Slowly, painfully, you climb.

One hand over the other, pulling yourself further up the rope.

Your arms are shaking, ankles begging for mercy, but you are just able to grasp your hand around the rope just around the end of the knot, so any weight on your upper half is now supported by the rope attatched to the branch, and not your ankles.

With your last bit of strength you hold the rope with one hand, and yank at the snare with the other, searching for the release loop with fumbling hands.

For a moment the world is a blur. Your back takes the brunt of the impact, vision blinded by a pure white light.

Every last wisp of air has been knocked from your lungs. A ripple of shooting, crackling, crunchy pain spreads from your chest and in every direction.

The groan that leaves you is entirely involuntary, breathless and guttural.

When you dare to take a breath, it goes in wheezing and spiked.

You find your ankles or ribs aren’t broken, merely rattled and swollen. One, shaking, weak arm shoots up in the air and gives a shaky thumbs up, before it collapses back onto the cool dirt.

Atta’ girl.

You’re not sure how long you lay, flat on your back, unable to find strength to move.

It’s not enough time for you to regain the ability to run when you hear the rusting of nearby branches.

You close your eyes and mutter obscenities just under your shallow breath. You did all of that work for absolutely nothing.

You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, alerting half the forest of your location, and someone’s come to answer.

You can barely lift your head to see the assailant bursting through the trees.

The boy from eight.

The tribute Price warned you about during the replay of the reaping. The one with the look so unsettling it made your stomach twist.

If you had any breath left in you, you’d laugh, but all you can manage is a faint huff through your nose. You couldn’t put up a good fight at your best, and now that you’re injured, you don’t stand a chance.

Those sinister eyes lock onto you and at once your stomach twists in knots. You wish you could ask him to make it quick.

“Where is she?!” His voice is booming just as it is demanding, he does not seem to care about attracting anyone else’s attention.

Your eyes widen at his voice, just as angry as he looks.

Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out of your shaking body.

He stomps closer to you, putting either of his boots on either side of your ribs in the dirt. He towers over you like this, staring down at you like the pitiful prey you are. He bends at the core and grabs you by the front of your shirt with both hands, pulling you off the ground and inches from his face. He gives you a harsh shake, rolling your head on your neck.

“Where is she?!” He’s not stealthy in the slightest, his words booming throughout the forest as he spits in your face.

You try to form a word but it just comes out a hitched breath with a lace of a word in it.

“Wh-“

“Willow! The girl from my district!”

He gives you another shake, rattling your sore muscles and jerking your head around on your neck.

When he stills you, you shake your head as quickly as you can manage.

“You lying?!” His face is inches from yours, you can feel the heat of his breath.

“No,” Your voice is a wisp, each strain followed by a crunchy, labored breath.

He studies your face, nothing but fear and pain in your features. The boy from eight scoffs before he throws you against the ground by no means gently. He disappears into the forest with a jog, leaving you dumbfounded on the forest floor to catch what little breath he stole.

When he’s out of sight, your head lays back into the dirt. You force yourself up sooner than you would have liked in case he comes back and changes his mind, or someone else comes looking for the commotion.

You use your multitool to cut off lengths of rope from the snare, a reward for your triumph, and loop it in big circles you drape across a shoulder and your waist like a sash.

After replacing your belt, and even giving it a thankful kiss for saving you from an embarrassing ending, you begin to limp through the forest. You no longer travel diagonally, heading straight for the snow, eager to get your injuries on ice. It’s strenuous, each step a reminder of your swollen, sore ankles. Every stride shoots a sharp pain through them, you can feel your heartbeat throbbing around the swollen flesh.

You take a generous amount of breaks to rest.

During one break, your back flush with the dirt and your legs elevated and propped against a maple, you think of the boy from eight, who had spared your life moments before.

He didn’t seem the type to not kill unless it’s self defense. He volunteered, he had the look of a career, eager for bloodshed. Almost worse than a career. The careers are arrogant, cheerful in attitude. Like they’re happy to be here. The boy from eight did not seem anything other but rage-filled. Disturbed, but not in the way that gets you sponsors. Disturbed like a boy who’s truly lost his mind and yearns for bloodshed.

He’s looking for the girl from his district, though. Maybe you and Price had pegged him wrong. Clearly he wasn’t eager to kill you, he had you on a silver platter, and he chose to grant you mercy.

You’re trying to reframe what little you know about the boy from eight. You wonder if he had actually volunteered to protect the girl from his district. Maybe the seething, gut-twisting anger he radiated was directed at the Capitol for taking a friend away from him. Maybe he’s just determined to protect a girl he loves from a country that does not hesitate to take everything from you.

Adversary or not, you hope he reunites with her. You wish they can spend some time together before the inevitable happens.

The trip to the snow quadrant takes twice as long as it did yesterday, due to your small, limping strides and generous breaks for rest.

Once to the border, where the red maples and ginkgos bleed into pine trees, you take off your boots and socks, and let your sore, swollen ankles rest in the snow. You finish what’s left in your water bottle before stuffing snow to its brim. You scoop a few into your mouth until you’re quenched.

Your whole body flinches at the boom, shaking away what remained of your freezing handful as you look around for trouble.

Another tribute down. Thirteen tributes left.

You should probably get moving. You’re a sitting duck hanging out next to the only source of water near the fall quadrant, but the ice numbs the inflamed pain in your ankles.

Whatever , you think. You’re not going to win anyway. Might as well be comfortable.

You nestle back into the dirt, resting your ankles across the border and in the snow.

The lack of sleep, the exhaustion from traveling, the injury, the lack of food in your belly, it’s all catching up to you.

Your eyes have dark bags underneath them, stomach growling and cramping from hunger. Your body yearns for rest, and your mind aches for a break from fear.

Closing your eyes in a dangerous game, but you can’t help yourself. A sigh of relief leaves your mouth and you nestle into the even ground.

When you wake up, you’re already laughing.

It’s uncontrollable, a painful spasm of your muscles, stomach pushing out laughs that are beyond too loud. They’re raw, real, from deep inside your abdomen, tensing your core in a painful contortion.

You can’t stop it, it won’t stop. You put a hand over your mouth, but your hands and arms are spasming just as much as your gut.

The inhales for breath are few and far between, each one a gasp for air that doesn’t stay in your lungs for long. They’re forced only after the billowing laugher has stolen every exhausted breath of air.

It hurts. Every inch of muscle is screaming, twitching uncontrollably as boisterous, hysterical cackles leave you.

You jam a fist into your mouth, but your knuckles slam into your teeth and hinders your ability to wheeze for air.

The fog is dense. It’s clear, this is the gamemakers doing. A cruel trap designed to draw tributes together and keep the games interesting.

You can’t see more than a few feet in front of your face, your stinging, burning eyes bouncing around and blurring your vision with their jittering.

Your knees knock together as you attempt a run, tripping over both tree roots and legs that fail you. Branches grab hold of you as you stumble through the forest, smashing into tree trunks and knocking yourself to the ground.

You can’t get up.

You’ve lost complete control of your limbs, your voice, your breathing.

The laughs still flow, core begging for respite as they burn from overexertion.

The hallucinations hit like a ton of bricks, intense and sudden.

The sky turns to a starless, inky black void.

The bright cheery leaves of the trees melt like hot wax, transforming into a black, tar-like ooze that drips to the ground and coats the petal-covered dirt. The ooze transitions quickly from a drizzle to a heavy pour, swallowing your whole body, your twitching limbs, and lapping up your sides until it pools over your front. It sloshes up your neck, sealing your mouth, choking you but not at all stifling the howling laughter. It fills your nostrils and yanks on your hair with its sticky, heavy weight. It stops once you’re entirely covered, leaving you paralyzed with just your eyes peeking out from the heavy ooze. The tar sloshes and threatens to spill into your eyes with every involuntary twitch.

The tar is so heavy, your body has to work twice as hard to breathe and expel the laughter.

The ooze floods your eye sockets, and when it all dissipates with a whoosh, you’re still laughing, but you’re you’ve been transported back to the bloodbath.

The sword feels natural in your hands, as if it was just an extension of your arm. The boy racing for supplies only has less than a second to act, and he fumbles it, his eyes only having the opportunity to widen before you thrust the sword square in the center of his throat. Its blade is so sharp, it slices through him like butter, not a lick of recoil. The stream of blood launches at you immediately. You’re choking on it, gurgling a mouthful of warm metal as you stare down District One, who gives a proud, toothy grin as your hands instinctively reach for the blade, slicing your palms open on its sharp edges. Your neck slides from the sword before you collapse to your knees. When your face hits the ground, your arms are wrapped around the bent waist of the girl from District Ten. You don’t hesitate to shove her on the ground, hands shooting out for the knife in her grip. With her hands still clasped around its handle, you thrust the blade into her gut, swinging your arm and mechanically driving the blade into her stomach over and over and over again.

The intrusive piercing plunges through your core stuns you, pinned to the ground and unable to swat away the hands cupped over yours. She’s crushing your knuckles as your limp arms are controlled like a marionette, forcing you to drive a blade into your soft stomach as the knife rhythmically punctures you with little resistance.

You deliver the final blow, your hands wrapped tightly to your spear, the plunge of it sending reverb through the staff and straight up your arms. Each skewer through flesh and fat and muscle shreds your insides until your intestines are completely minced.

And then you see yourself.

Crouched over and grasping your few supplies, eyes blown with fear and frozen in your place, lower lip trembling and body shivering in the ice cold wind.

Your feet slam against the ground with each stride, locked on to your own cowering figure, wielding a scythe at your side.

Your breath is stolen from your crushed lungs when you fold around your sternum, stopped by a strong grip. Your limbs flail, legs kicking and arms swinging as you fight back. When you are launched at the ground with tremendous force, the sound of your bones deafening you with a snap is the last thing you hear before you’re staring down the corpse of Eleven, a heap in front of heavy boots, your large hands reaching to pry the scythe from stiff fingers.

There you are.

You start in a dash, watching yourself trip over your platform before your seat hits the snow.

The snow swallows and frosts your hands as your scramble to your feet and fumble for a run.

You don’t lose him this time. As you tear through the trees, you can hear him tailing you, snapping branches of his own as heavy boots move easily through the woods. You can’t hear any over the pump of blood in your ears and the harsh snap of a neck breaking.

A rough shove knocks you to the ground, your chin slamming on dirt and splitting open. Blood immediately pours from the wound, dripping down your neck and splattering on yellow petals in brilliant red drops of blood.

Konig climbs on your back, sitting on your legs as his hand threads through your hair, yanking the back of your scalp to pull you to your knees in one jerk.

His hiss is devoid of comfort, nothing but loathing in that horrifying voice.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

You can’t beg for mercy, cackling through each brutal kill, chest trembling on each wheezing laugh underneath Konig’s power.

His arm snakes around your body and pulls the scythe to your throat. With one swipe his blade slices your neck, leaving behind a clean, deep gash. The blood gurgles in your throat, flooding your mouth with the hot taste of metal. As you lie bleeding out on the ground, you have no choice but to stare into the eyes of the boy from Eleven, resting limply next to you.

For hours, days maybe, you are paralyzed in this position, front pressed to the chill dirt as your cheek rests in a pool of your own blood. For each grueling moment your stare is fixated right into Eleven’s lifeless eyes, his neck bent in impossible angles. Eventually his head begins to rotate, making full circles on a still body, catching your gaze on each rotation.

You can’t blink, you can’t look away, laughing in his lifeless, spinning face.

You’re sure that you’ve died, and you will forever be trapped in this never-ending hell, in this graveyard of Konig’s victims.

You wake with a start, shouting Konig’s name on your first coarse breath before you can stop yourself.

“I hear her! I hear her!” Someone shouts, and footsteps confidently break into a run through the forest.

You scramble to a sit as you survey your surroundings. Your head pounds and muscles moan at each movement.

“Ni-iiine! Where you at Nine?!”

Another wheezing, coughing breath leaves you as you stand, wobbling on your feet as you make an unsteady jog away from the taunting voice.

“Ni-iiiine!” Titan, you think, calls in a sing-song.

Your muscles are useless, made of jelly and folding with every step.

You can’t keep it up, so you do the best you can. Hiding in a dense patch of ginkgos behind the base of a tree trunk thick enough to conceal your body.

You try and hold your noisy breaths, hoping the careers can’t hear your heartbeat rattling against its ribcage.

“Where’s your boy toy District Nine?!”

There’s close, so close. Surely they can hear and smell your fear.

“We just want to talk!”

Your hollow stomach twists, pressing yourself further into the coarse bark.

“Yeah, we won’t hurt you,” The voices are closer now, faux kindness dripping from their words.

The hairs on the back of your neck are on end, arms coated in goose flesh as your fingernails dig into the gaps of the bark.

No one should be this cheerful in the arena.

It’s not human.

“Where’d she go?”

“Really, we won’t hurt you!” Someone calls in an unnaturally high-pitched tone.

“Yeah, no hard feeling about before, honest!”

You force your heaving breaths through your nostrils, pinching your eyes closed as you focus to keep still and silent.

“If you don’t want to come out and play it’s fine! We just have a few questions.”

“Yeah - we just want to know where your little friend’s at, that’s all!”

“You hungry Nine? We’ve got food if you’re good!”

Your stomach actually growls at the mention of food, loud enough you’re sure they can hear it. You bite down on your knuckles to keep quiet.

They want to know where Konig is - that’s clear enough. Whether it’s to ally with him or to eliminate the ultimate threat, you don’t know.

You’re not sure how many cannons, if any, have fired since you’ve been drugged by the gas, but if the careers are this confident he must still be alive.

It’s spreads a singular burst of warm, cozy relief through your chest at the thought that he’s still alive.

You can hear them split up, branches scraping as they fan out in the vicinity of your voice.

By some miracle, you go undetected.

They’re convinced you ran further into the woods, and they regroup to head deeper into the forest.

You wait an unbearable amount of time until they’re out of earshot before daring to leave your hiding spot, moving as quickly as your body will allow in the opposite direction.

You’re not at all graceful, an infant fawn learning to use its legs, slamming into trees trunks and ripping through branches as you crash through the woods. A shooting pain fires up your legs with each cry of your ankles.

When the trees suddenly come to a jarring stop, you take a few steps backwards and crouch down, keeping yourself camouflaged in the tree line.

You’ve stumbled upon a large, open, perfectly rectangular plowed dirt field. What’s sitting in the ruts of the dirt rows makes you salivate.

A plot of corn stalks, cobs of corn fanned out in their ripe husks. Flawless pumpkins and squash looking too clean and vibrant to be resting in a dirt patch.

The sight of these beautiful fall vegetables has your stomach lurching at the idea of something to chew on. You haven’t had anything of real substance since being in the arena, and who knows how long you’ve gone without food while drugged.

Your heart does not trust these vegetables. Like the trees that look almost artificial, they are too perfect.

On the other hand, the maple seeds are not cutting it.

You do one last scan of the perimeter, peering deep into the trees to see if you can make out any figures, and before you can stop yourself - weak, clumsy legs attempt a dash straight for the stalks of corn. You quickly shed as many husks as you can from the hold of their stalks and hold them close to your chest with a tight forearm. With the other hand you wrap around the stem of a squash and haul your goodies back to the safety of the tree line. You don’t stop until your knees give out, dropping to the ground in a defeated heap.

You catch your breath before running your fingers over the grain of the husks and the waxy sheen on the outside of your squash.

They could be poisonous. A trap, laid out for the gamemakers that lures in anyone hungry or lacking willpower.

Your stomach is growling, cramping in a beg for food. You feel almost nauseous as your stomach chokes on itself, threatening to retch what little it holds.

They look delicious.

If you had to die - which is no doubt certain - you think you’d rather have it be at the hand of a vegetable than a bloodthirsty tribute.

You unwrap your corn, revealing uniform, mustard-yellow rows of kernels.

Fuck.

Your thumb glides along the glossy, bumped ridges of the kernels as you make one last attempt talk yourself out of it.

You can’t do it.

You bury your face dead center in the cob of corn, sweet juice bursting from the kernels and dripping down your chin. You roll your eyes at the taste of the ripe corn, not bothering to thoroughly chew before you swallow.

The relief is immediate - euphoric even. Your stomach almost instantly relaxes, the nausea and cramps dissipating at once. The moans that leave you are downright erotic.

You inhale the entire cob against better judgement, tossing the remains at the root of a maple, and wait.

You don’t feel ill, and you don’t feel poisoned. In fact, you feel better than you’ve felt in days.

After brief consideration, you shed another corn from its husk and inhale the whole thing.

When the cannon fires - your first thought is that it’s you. That the poison has killed you, and your brain is making its last fires before it catches up to a heart that stopped beating.

Moments pass, you even check your pulse for good measure, and it’s clear it’s not you.

Unfortunately, your next thought is of Konig.

No.

You cannot think of him.

It’s only a matter of time now.

After rest, you use knots you learned to tie in training to sloppily secure the corn with your rope and return the looped sash around your waist.

The gourd is tricky, but by using extra rope length and a generous amount of time you manage to weave a rope hanger to secure the squash at your waist.

The extra weight is noticeable, so you don’t plan on traveling far. Pushing yourself just far enough to make comfortable distance away from the field. You’ll eat some squash tomorrow before traveling to lighten the load.

At one point the anthem plays, and you keep your exhausted eyes open long enough to see the boy from District One.

This comes as a shock. A girl from District Nine should not outlive a career from District One.

One’s face is followed by the boy from District Ten, and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

Konig’s still alive as far as you know. The career’s taunts seemed to confirm this.

The face of the girl from eleven flashes and then the sky goes dark.

At maximum there are eleven tributes left. Maybe less if you missed deaths while you were paralyzed.

The arms of sleep are not difficult to fall into. Your body and mind is completely worn out, and you’re still feeling a sluggishness from the fog.

You have one last thought as you succumb to the sore exhaustion.

Eleventh place isn’t so bad.

Sleep is nothing short of horrific. The nightmares are worse than the bone chilling fall air.

The nightmares - reliving the bloodbath. Cycling through every haunting memory, taking on the tribute’s perspectives one after another.

Staring into Eleven’s eyes.

But it always seems to come back to Konig.

You fight him all night - a choreographed dance of playing out every death resurfaced by the hallucination, taking turns between being slaughtered and doing the slaughtering.

Those signature hooded eyes switch between ravenous and blood thirsty to pleading and petrified without transition.

Sometimes he’s the one lying limp on that metal platform, neck twisted and bouncing off his final resting place, sometimes it’s you. Often when you look up, it is not Konig standing over his own corpse, but you.

You must wake up twenty times throughout the night, stifling your apologetic cries and begging pleads all leaving you in shouts of Konig’s name.

How humiliating.

How you call out for him time, and time, and time again. The audience watching you cry for his aid at every sticky situation you get yourself into. How he has proven himself to be not worthy of your comfort, but you’re stupid enough to let him worm his way into your heart anyway. To care about him enough that the very thought of him turning on you, the thought of you turning on him, is frightening enough to startle you from a nightmare.

The sound of a cannon wakes you with finality, and you shoot up in the chill early dawn air.

When the anonymous threat you anticipate doesn’t come, you make slow movements as you get ready for the day.

You break into the squash, slicing into the rind with your multitool and biting into sloppily cut chunks of the bitter gourd. You wash it all down with half a bottle of water, and survey your bruised ankles.

They’re still swollen, and the lack of hydration and surplus of poisonous fog hasn’t helped. Red, inflamed veins streak pink bruises that fade into a dark purple.

Maybe you’ll just sit under this tree and wait for death. You have corn, this bitter gourd, and a half a bottle of water - surely that’s enough to hold you over until somebody finds you, right?

But they don’t come.

The number of tributes must be dwinding, more than you thought.

For the first time, you’re thinking Price had a point. Maybe you could hunker down and wait it out until the end.

Not that you’d stand a chance in the finale.

You’d have to face the career pack, and if your suspicions are correct and Konig is alive, the possibility you’ll have to face him grows with every fallen tribute.

You wonder if anyone’s betting on you.

You curiously comb over the possible tributes that remain.

The girl from one.

Both from two.

Both from four.

Boy from six. Boy from seven.

Both from eight.

You.

And Konig.

Probably not. Certainly you have the longest odds of anyone left.

You wonder if Price is proud of you for making it this far, struggling your way forward with each step.

Surely this is the best he could have hoped for, both his tributes alive in the second half.

You wonder what Konig thinks of you still being alive.

Is he impressed? Surely he didn’t think a weakling such as yourself would make it this far.

Is he relieved that you’re still alive, and confused about why, just as yourself?

Maybe he’s dreading the possibility of having to be the one to kill you.

Maybe he’s happy you’re alive.

Maybe he’s eager to be the one who watches the life drain from your eyes.

It’s confusing - why you think about him so much. Why you hope he’s okay. Why you want him to want you to still be alive. Why you dream of him. Why you call out his name instinctually before you’ve even regained consciousness.

All after he tried to kill you.

You find a scrap of motivation in the late afternoon, spending the entire morning with your head lulling against the trunk of a large ginkgo, finishing off two more cobs of corn, and hoping whoever finds you makes it quick.

Back to the snow today.

You need something to do to keep your mind off him.

You tie up the remaining half of the gourd, sling your rope of corn over your shoulder, and head for the snow quadrant. You don’t think you’re far off, the fog having paralyzed you and prevented you from going far. It didn’t take you long to find the field after ditching the careers, but you’ve been disoriented and you’re not confident you know the way.

You head in what you think is the right direction.

You take your time, taking lights steps through the forest, more careful than you have been not to leave tracks. Extra cautious to listen for danger.

You have the sense that your death is approaching. An ominous feeling of finality deep in your gut that grows with each step. Surely the next tribute you encounter will be your death.

You know you’re walking slow, but it’s taking much longer than it should to get to the snow quadrant. You’re less sure you’re going the right way.

You walk until dusk, your steps slow as the day stretches on, ankles throbbing with each step. The tree roots give the terrain an unevenness that contort your feet awkwardly with each step, and the weight of your vegetables aren’t helping.

You’re daydreaming about Capitol dishes. What you wouldn’t give to sink your teeth into the crust of a warm loaf of bread, inhale an entire cut of the finest steak, swallow a heading scoop of potatoes, finish off two servings - No! Three servings of hot stew!

And why not admit it?

A glass of whiskey doesn’t sound too bad right now.

You realize you’re in trouble when you see the unmistakable landscape of orange sand.

You’re swallow the harsh reality that you’ve completely gone in the wrong direction just as you hear it.

It’s faint, far in the distance, the sounds of a dying animal.

Against better judgement, and with a tented brow, you near closer, and are surprised to find the snow quadrant, both the desert and the vast snow visible through the gaps in the trees.

You have unintentionally trekked the entire way back to the cornucopia.

When you reach the tree line, you peer with squint eyes through the gaps in the trees, focusing in the direction of the low, guttural moans of a maimed creature.

It’s the boy from District Eight. He’s posted at the cornucopia, wielding a thick, slightly curved blade. Out of thick logs of wood and rope, he has constructed a pulley. Strung up by its arms is an animal, slightly swaying on the end of its restraint. The animal has been skinned head to toe, but is still alive, the red muscle stitched with small white pockets of fat, rising and falling with each muted moan.

No.

That is no animal.

That is a person.

You can tell it’s a girl, but there’s no way to identify the tribute, entirely unrecognizable and coated in blood.

The sight has you stumbling backwards, your heel catching on a tree root and landing harshly on the dirt. A squeak leaves your lips without thought, your hand shooting up to cover your mouth. The boy heard it, because his head swivels in your direction. He can’t see you, but you catch him scanning in your section of the forest. You roll over in the dirt and make an ungraceful dash into the trees, your vegetables banging against your torso with each stride.

After making sufficient distance, you duck behind a tree, pressing your back against the trunk as you stop to catch your breath. Your hands find your knees, doubling over and gagging as you process the horrific sight. Each of your gasps for air are skewered with guttural croaks, your face drained of color.

Killing each other, that is the name of the game. You cannot blame the tributes for that. But what you just saw was uncalled for, barbaric, cruel. Dragging out her excruciating pain and suffering, and for what? A show?

When you realize what you have to do, your heart twists and a curse leaves your lips.

You look up to the sky, and speak, much louder than you should, “Give me something,” You say, voice raw, scratchy, and desperate, “Give me something to put her out of her misery.”

“Please,” Whispered like a desperate prayer.

Your head ducks between your knees again, dry heaving towards the dirt.

Just when you think your plea has been ignored, you see it. The parachute takes its time as it descends from the sky, landing gracefully in the dirt at your feet.

You open the large metal canister attached to the parachute as if it’s an explosive. Careful fingers reveal a long hollow tube and two darts, tied in a neat bundle with a patterned, textile ribbon.

You blink, face blank as you undo the knot with shallow breath and roll the darts between your fingers.

Engraved onto the bulbous tip that secures the sharp needles is the number ‘8’ in beautiful, elegant writing.

One for her, one for him.

She must be the girl from eight, the girl who stood as far apart as she could from the boy on the chariot. The girl who prompted the boy to lunge forward and volunteer, the girl the boy had his tunnel-vision set on seeking out.

You grasp your hands tightly around the darts, take a deep breath, and head toward the tree line.

This is risky, so risky, but you know you cannot let this girl suffer. Every moment she is alive, moaning miserably and dangling in the air, your insides will be knotted with guilt. This girl, that you don’t even know, will haunt you for the rest of your short life if you do not free her from her pain. You have nothing to lose. Even if you end up just like her, you’ll know you tried.

You will have to kill the boy who spared your life. How is that going to play with the audience? A cruel, heartless girl with no mercy, who refuses to treat others how she has been treated.

Through a particularly thick cluster of trees, you crouch down and observe the scene.

The boy from eight has moved on from searching for the source of the disruption you made, now casually peeling an orange as if there’s not a skinned-alive human dangling and groaning in pain a few feet away. Each of her low, maimed cries twists your insides a little tighter.

You’re not sure how you’re going to pull this off.

You could wait for him to leave, but each moment you don’t act that girl will suffer.

You could go right for him. From here, you don’t see him armed with a long range weapon, only his medium-sized blade, while you can get him from a distance.

If you don’t miss.

You could lure him into the trees, hide yourself in the thick foliage. You might be able to get away with missing if you can camouflage yourself.

This seems like your best bet.

You tuck yourself further into the trees, load the dart gun, and take a deep breath. Hopping from one foot to the other as you work up the courage, you let out a whoop, as loud as you dare.

You wait, eyes pinched in a brace and body shaking against the tree bark. When the trees don’t rustle, you let out another yell, louder than before.

Your eyes pinch shut for a moment, mumbling unintelligibly under your breath.

It’s the third whoop that draws him into the trees. You can hear him, he must be only twenty feet away.

You get a glimpse of him through the trees, the flash of a blade pushing branches out of the way or the black of his clothes moving slowly into the forest.

When he passes you, you slink through the trees, tailing him with silent feet, side stepping branches and exposed tree roots. Your heartbeat is pounding in your ears, your skin pulsing with each pump of your heart.

You get as close to him as you dare before you place the tube to your lips.

Your face tightens, you take a deep inhale-

But you can’t do it.

You can’t kill this boy.

He deserves it, more than deserves it. But you can’t do it.

Your eyes flit behind you.

Without little thought, your feet break into a run towards the cornucopia, sore ankles making a beeline for the girl. With one hand you hold the dart gun, the other on your rope sash to keep the vegetables from banging against you.

From this close, each wheezing breath and raspy moan that leaves her clenches your teeth a little tighter. It’s like she’s using her breaths to scoop out your heart bit by bit.

You can see the wrinkle of her exposed muscles, the bones of her fingers, her eyes coated in her own blood.

“I’m sorry,” You whisper to her, maybe you yelled it, you’re not sure. Tears well in your eyeline and blur your vision.

You do not hesitant to take the spare dart in your hand and thrust it right into her side.

“I’m sorry!” You hiccup, the tears flowing relentlessly down your cheeks, “I’m sorry!”

She lets out three final rattling breaths before she succumbs to the poison, her chest stilling.

You let out a sob, turning away from her lifeless body.

You flinch when her cannon fires, another choked sob leaving you. She’s gone but you can still hear her moans of pain in your ears.

The tree branches are disturbed, your head whipping in the direction of the fall forest.

Your weak ankles break into a run, wobbling as you get up to speed. You look over your shoulder, vision blurred with tears, but see no one.

Excited voices, more than one, are approaching.

You’re coming to the conclusion just as the careers break through the pine trees and confirm your suspicion.

Out of the fucking frying pan.

Your strides double in speed, feet running along the border of the spring and desert quadrants.

“There she is!” They call, just as they did when they heard you yelling out for Konig in the forest.

The careers seem to glide over the snow, not the slightest bit hindered by the terrain as they chase you.

The boy from eight breaks through the trees, you know because he’s yelling in the same voice that screamed at you while searching for the girl he wanted to skin. Booming and frothed in rage.

You can’t make out what he’s saying, deafened by your own crystallized breaths and the blood pumping in your ears.

When you dare look over your shoulder, both the careers and the boy from eight are merging at the cornucopia, the boy from eight raising his blade and running straight for the pack of careers with fervor.

For a moment, the three remaining careers and Eight redirected their attention to the new threat. You hear the sound of metal clashing, indecipherable screaming.

It’s the girl from one, you think, who orders one of them to follow you as you run along the border of the hedge maze.

You do not want to duck into the hedge maze, but you are injured, lacking concealment, and being chased by a trained killer.

Maybe this would be a good time to die.

Let it be done by someone who knows how to land a fatal blow in one strike, a quick death.

A cannon fires, but you don’t slow, feet slamming ruthlessly against the ground. Your ankles beg for respite, and your body isn’t in the best condition, every muscle croaking out their ache with each jostle.

If it’s the cannon for the boy from eight, the careers will have no problem catching up to you.

Each breath is painful, and between your own wheezes you can hear the footsteps drawing closer.

You really did give it your best shot.

You hope Price knows that. You hope he’s proud of you, proud of you for not giving up.

You did better than you thought you would. Surprised yourself, surprised the nation, by making it this far.

It’s quick, so quick, the arms snagging you by the waist and forcing you to exhale the rest of a broken breath. At once you’re slammed into the sand, stunned at the sharp pain that explodes in your ribs, losing grip of your final dart.

The arid environment, the scalding sand, it doubles the beads of sweat that pull from your pores.

There’s little to do about Titan, the monstrous boy from District Two, pinning you to the ground with minimal effort.

It’s laughably weak, but you still swing at him, your shoulders digging further into the boiling sand with each swing. Frustrated but exhausted grunts leave you with each swipe at him. He doesn’t bother to restrain your hands, he swallows each swing without so much as a flinch.

He puts his knife to your throat - not yet pressing against your flesh, but enough to threaten you into keeping your upper half pinned to the gritty sand. The heel of his palm digs into your collarbones hard enough it’ll surely bruise.

Your nails scratch at his massive arms as you bury your head further into the stand, squirming away from him as instinctual squeaks of prey leave your throat.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Titan coos, trying to place a finger to your lips but pulling away when you snap your teeth at him, “We’re not gon’na kill you.”

He gives you a smile, exposing his menacing canines.

“Yet.”

He laughs at his own stupid joke, throwing his head back, the cool steel of the blade brushing against the crook of your neck as he laughs.

He finishes on a deep inhale, giving you a wicked smile.

“I think you know what we want, yeah? So tell us where he is, and we’ll let you go! It’s that simple!”

“Just kill me!”

He snorts before throwing his head back in another laugh.

“Adorable,” He says with a sigh, “You’ve really got the stuff, don’t you Nine?”

Titan swivels his head, “He can’t be far, right? I know you don’t like to stray.”

He gives another laugh.

“Or are you having a fight?” He laughs again, and you grunt in annoyance, “Trouble in paradise, hm?”

Just get it over with.

“Why don’t you yell for him?” He asks.

“Fuck you!” You grunt.

Titan’s smile falls. This Titan - a cold faced Titan - is much more nervewracking than an irreverent one.

Titan’s eyes have gone absent, his lips bored. His knuckles scrape down your chest as his hold tightens around the handle of the blade.

Your face is plastered with regret, lips parting to rectify but it’s too late.

His other hand springs to wrap around your throat, cutting off your breath without hesitance.

Your legs kick underneath him, but your strength is no match for the powerful boy planted firmly on your front.

His eyes have unfocused, he’s not even staring at you - he’s staring through you.

Before, at least he was human, even if he was insane. Now his features are entirely devoid of emotion, of empathy.

His hand relaxes, but his grasp remains firmly around your throat. Immediately you’re choking in breaths, coughing on the air you gasp desperately for.

Titan’s stare is still icy, but his teeth grit, and his light requests turn to threatening demands, “Call for him.”

You’re still trying to catch your breath, eyes blown in fear and lips parted around fearful huffs.

“Call for him!” He yells, emphasizing his sentence by squeezing your windpipe for just a moment, to remind you he can, and jostles you by the neck.

You won’t.

You won’t succumb to this lunatic’s demands. You will not give him the satisfaction.

He may kill you.

Your life, he can have. That is the name of the game.

Your dignity, he may not.

That is something that only you are entitled to tarnish.

He presses the knife further into your skin, slicing through just hard enough for blood to bead on your flesh, “Call for him or I’ll make you!”

When he yells, his shout tears from the back of his throat, the words ripped from low in his gut. His whole body jerks with his words, his spit flying from his lips and splattering on your face.

It’s his spit - momentarily stunning you as you wince away from the spray - that activates something in you. It forces your thoughts back into the body that was reacting solely on fear, and at the same time gives you an idea.

You do not hesitate.

With a deep pinch of your eyes and an animalistic grunt muffled by tightly pursed lips, you fling two fist fulls of sand in the direction of his face.

Immediately he flings himself back, his hands retracting from you as forearms move to wipe the gritty sand further into his eyes. He scrambles to his feet and fumbles backwards away from the pain that follows him.

Titan’s spitting in between his cries as he tries to rid his mouth of the sand.

You keep your face pinched tightly even after the sand stops raining back down onto your face, blindly kicking away from him, rolling over on the scalding ground and rising to your feet.

You shake your head, stumbling blindly through the desert as you clear off your hands to brush clean your face.

The rough grains feel like sandpaper against your skin as you rub away both sand and his spit with your shirt.

You open your eyes, blinking rapidly to test your vision and find it unscathed before making a rush back for the spring quadrant, shoes swallowed and kicking up puffs of sand with every step.

Titan’s folded in a heap on his knees, grunting in pain and trying to rub out his eyes. He curses you with every breath.

You scoop up your final dart and its tube, and for a moment, you consider driving it right into Titan’s flesh, but your feet are already scrambling away from his foaming threats and grit wails of pain with no desire to look back. You’re still powered on adrenaline, snap decisions made with little room for consideration.

It feels like you’ve been running for miles, but it couldn’t have been far. When your ankles give out, you’re sent stumbling onto the plush grass of the spring quadrant.

You have no strength to attempt getting to your feet, so you lay face first in the grass in the position you collapsed in.

You go over all of it in your mind as you catch your breath and try to pry the ghost of Titan’s fingers from your throat.

You already knew the careers had wanted to know where Konig was, but Titan demanded you to use your voice to lure him to your aid. In fact, Titan refrained from killing you so he could use you to draw Konig in. He had you on a silver platter, blade to your throat, and he let you slip through his fingers because he wanted to use you to get to Konig.

You assumed your brush with the careers in the forest was their shot in the dark, the best lead they had to find their white whale. But this run-in with Titan has given more than enough credit to their taunts in the forest.

The careers think that you and Konig are allies.

Why else would they think your voice would lure Konig in?

The only other possibility is that Titan thinks that Konig hates you enough to come running at the opportunity to be the one to end your life.

But that doesn’t make sense, because Titan suggested the reason you weren’t together in that moment was because you were having an argument.

‘Trouble in paradise’ as Titan said, which implied there was an established partnership between you and Konig in the first place.

Price, you think.

It was Price.

Price saved you back there, not you.

He didn’t assign Konig as your chaperone in training because he actually thought you were trouble, he did it for the same reason he put you in matching outfits for the interview, the same reason he ensured Konig was caught off guard by being asked about you in front of the entire country.

Price wanted the tributes to think that you and Konig cared for each other. That you were something more than just two tributes from the same district.

Because Price knew that if he could make everyone believe you and the strongest tribute were friendly, the other tributes would keep you alive as leverage against the ultimate threat in the arena.

Konig didn’t have a weakness, so Price made you his weakness.

Titan could have easily ended you, then and there. But he didn’t, because he thought that with you at his fingertips, he held the key to taking down his toughest opponent.

But of course, that’s a mislead, tipping the advantage back to Price’s golden boy.

And you unknowingly laid the groundwork for it - didn’t you?

Holding Konig’s hand at the opening ceremony, him accepting yours without hesitance.

Is that when Price got the idea?

It’s genius.

It directs the heat off of his star tribute’s back and onto yours, and simultaneously gives the other tributes a reason to keep you, the bait, alive. It gave you the opportunity to make an escape from Titan, which of course, Price knew you would.

Because you fight dirty, you fight smarter, and the careers only know how to fight right . They are trained to kill, not keep alive. And everyone knows, especially Price, that as long as it is not a fight to the death - it will be a fight that you win.

Why didn’t you think of it?

Price has manipulated the others into keeping both of his tributes alive, all without your knowledge.

Of course Price couldn’t tell you that was the plan, you would have never accepted it. Konig needed to be blindsided on that stage, and you would have fought Price tooth and nail at the implications. At the very suggestion that you are ‘bait.’ That you and Konig cared for each other enough to come running into trouble to save each other.

The plan only works if both tributes stay alive, which is something you would have never agreed to. Tethering your life to Konig like that, so blatantly relying on him when the entire time you’ve been trying so hard not to do so. Surely even Konig would have put up even a bit of a fight at being assigned a weakness.

Konig is not only overshadowing you, but Price has stitched your fingers to his coattails.

It’s an impossible arrangement.

If Konig dies, you have no worth to the other tributes. If you die, the size of the target on his back doubles.

And if you both manage to pull it off until the end - well, what happens then?

The plan both ensures your survival and destines you to die at the same time. No matter how you work it through in your head, Konig always comes out on top.

You almost don’t even notice the parachute that lands by your head. You barely have the energy to lift your head from the dirt, cheek still nestled into the grass as you pry open the container.

It’s a single, modest dinner roll wrapped in ribbon. You roll onto your back and hold the gift in front of your face, using the bread to block out the sun. The ribbon is beautiful, a neatly trimmed scrap of patterned textile that matches the one that tied the blow darts to their tube. It’s knotted into a perfect, perky bow on the roll’s apex.

You carefully undo the ribbon and rest it on your core as you inspect the loaf. Underneath the bow lies the number ‘8’, branded with slightly darkened crust.

It is a gift, but not from Price. The ribbon, the bread’s branding - this is a gift from the people of District Eight. If the ribbon is anything to go by, then the darts were a gift from them as well.

The bread is a thank you for putting that girl out of her misery. For risking your life to put her pain first. For eradicating the boy from eight, one way or another.

You hold the loaf just under your nose, taking a deep inhale. It’s still warm, you can feel the heat radiating on your lips.

“Thank you,” You whisper to the wind, to District Eight, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

You eat half of it right there in the dirt, in the wide open air, not even muting your groans of pleasure as you take bites into something hearty for the first time in the arena.

The bread isn’t the rich Capitol bread, it’s district bread. Inferior in every way, but it is the most delicious loaf of bread you’ve ever tasted in your life.

You wash it down with what’s left of your canteen, which isn’t much.

You’re going to have to get back to the snow soon, and unless you want to go the long way around, you’ll have to cut across the cornucopia again.

Your head drops back into the grass in defeat.

You’re debating whether or not you should give up, whether or not to just lay out here in the open and wait for someone to come along and kill you.

Because you know what the alternative is.

It’s nightfall when you finally move from the dirt, moved by your own thirst.

When you stand, the ribbon you’d placed on your chest flutters to the ground. You stare at it with deep breath before bending over to pluck it from the grass. You’re not sure why you want to keep this reminder of the girl from eight, but you can’t stand to discard it. You loop the ribbon around your wrist and sloppily tie it into a bracelet.

You shake all the sand you can off yourself, fix your poor, knotted hair, and make your way back to the cornucopia. You need to get back to the fall quadrant, back to the precious snow and camouflage.

You don’t have much of a plan other than haul ass as you approach the edge of the hedge maze and break into the open air of the cornucopia.

You’re not sure if it’s the darkness, the dwindling number of tributes, or a mixture of both, but you manage to go undetected as you make the clearance.

Good. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.

You dig yourself far into the forest just in case, getting lost in thick branches on every side before you stop to fill your canteen.

You find a place to settle in for the night, already aching for warmth of the spring quadrant. You briefly consider risking sleeping in the open air just so you don’t have to freeze on the chilled dirt of a cool fall night, but you barely manage to fight the urge.

You find a thick patch of trees to hide in, doing your best to camouflage yourself as you settle in for rest.

The anthem plays, but you don’t bother getting up to watch the faces in the sky. You don’t want to see the girl from eight, you don’t want to put a face to the girl turned to butcher meat.

You’ve lost track of how many tributes are left, but you know the pool is shrinking.

And for the first time, you’re thinking maybe you could actually win. It’s a thought that you immediately reject, but it creeps its way back in through the image of the careers and Konig simultaneously receiving life-threatening injuries, and maybe a lucky shot with a blow dart for whoever remains. Maybe the gamemakers will somewhat tilt the scales in your favor, some rigged trap that wipes out the heavy hitters.

Rest does not come easy, but you manage to sneak in a few hours of sleep over the course of the night, in between nightmares and the shutter of your own teeth.

The morning is quiet. You have no plan, sitting at the trunk of a tree and resting. You finish off a good chunk of your vegetables, only a few husks of corn remaining.

You haven’t heard a cannon since the boy from District Eight. Things have quieted on the field, which is bad news for you. If the audience gets bored, the gamemakers will make it interesting. Soon, when the tributes get sparse, they will begin to force you together, manipulating you into confrontations.

The exhaustion has fully caught up to you. You spend the entire day resting by your tree, occasionally getting up to stretch your sore limbs. You elevate your ankles, nurse your water. For a moment, you even forget you’re in the arena. It’s like you’re having a solitary picnic in the forest on a day off in District Nine.

It is hard to ignore how lonely you are.

You are aching for human touch, or even just a conversation that doesn’t revolve around fearing for your life.

And there he is again, worming his way into your brain like an infestation of parasites, memories of his comfort multiplying on an infested mattress of loneliness.

For the first time since you’ve been in the arena, you reach into your sports bra and retrieve the golden locket that’s made its home against the flesh of your chest.

You smooth your fingers over the front, staring down at the shimmer of the gold. It’s warm from the heat of your skin. You flip it in your fingers, fidgeting with it. Nails pry the locket open just to close it again with a satisfying snap.

You should probably get rid of it. Why would you want to carry around a trinket from someone who tried to kill you?

You should throw it into the forest, just get rid of it.

Konig did borrow it from Ruby, though. It needs to get back to her.

You tuck it away.

There’s really no other way to describe how you spend the rest of the day other than fooling around. You make a crown out of some leaves, undo the thread of your rope and braid it - you even grab an extra handful of snow on your water run so you can make tiny snow-people in your hideout.

It’s as you’re working the multitool into some bark of a maple tree, trying to figure out how to get sap, when you hear it.

It sounds like a wave, or wind, or both? You can’t see or feel anything, blinded by leaves, but just the sound alone is enough to prep yourself to run if needed. It’s coming from the desert quadrant, you’re sure.

There’s a vibration that shoots through your boots, the sound of scraping and grinding. The ground is shaking beneath you, the world now turning to a vibrating blur. Its rumbles intensify until you lose your balance, knocked onto your front to support yourself as your body is roughly tossed around.

You hear the sound of trees uprooting, snapping, the sound of danger approaching. With the instincts of a scared animal, you sprint away from the roar of the trees crashing to the ground.

Running seems impossible on the dirt that jostles you around and makes the tree branches harder to navigate.

With each break of the branches and crack of the trees uprooting, the image of the boy from eleven sears in front of your eyes and robs you of precious breath.

After a small tumble you get back to your feet, tripping over tree roots and scraping yourself on branches.

The rumbling grind of shifting ground draws closer, and you risk a jerk of your head to see chunks of earth and entire trees being swallowed into a glowing pit of lava below a fifty foot drop.

A squeak leaves you as you force yourself forward, flinging yourself through the forest. When you clear the trees, your eyes lock onto the cornucopia, desperate for safe ground.

Your attention is shifted to the left, where the desert quadrant is nothing but a raging dust storm. It’s the sound you heard earlier, gusting winds pulling up an orange fog of sand you can’t see a foot beyond.

When your feet find the soft grass of the spring quadrant, you risk looking over your shoulder to survey the chaos.

The fall quadrant has completely deteriorated, leaving nothing but a gaping hole filled with hot lava. The tops of trees are swallowed up by the mesmorizing orange pool, once colorful petals now erupted in glorious flame.

The thunderous disruption of ground does not just come behind you, because the sound of a forest being destroyed does not stop when the last piece of the dirt littered with ginkgo petals slips away into inferno.

The pine trees are being wrung out, the sound of bark snapping and pine trees uprooting. You can see the snow being shaken off the their snow-capped peaks as they are jerked around under extreme force.

When you hear the shrieks your attention is immediately stolen by the boys who had run into the snow district during the bloodbath clearing the tree line. Your body immediately tenses at the sight of them, but you can’t take your eyes off the ten-foot wave of snow at the boys heels. In an instant they are swallowed by a wall of snow that does not even brake at the two boys who have disappeared in its stomach.

As the avalanche draws closer, you make a run for the hedge maze until you hear an unearthly impact that reverberates like glass being struck. You look over your shoulder and slow when you see that the avalanche has been stopped at the quadrant’s border, not daring to spill into spring’s grass or the abyss of molten rock.

It piles up against the quadrant border, a perfect right angle wedge of a snow. It doesn’t stop until the pine trees are completed swallowed and the snow easily covers three stories above your head.

Those two boys are dead for sure, you think, but there’s no way you would have been able to hear the cannons over the snow.

From your left, you catch a figure emerging from the raging dust storm.

You turn on your heels to run, hesitating when you realize your only choice is the hedge maze. This, this is where the gamemakers wants the final tributes to go.

This is the finale.

You swivel your head to the figure behind you, heading right for you. He’s covered head to toe and obscured by a haze of sand, but there’s no mistaking a figure that large. It’s Konig, and the sight of him rushing towards you makes you push through the gut-turning fear of the looming hedges.

You’re in a full sprint into an entrance, legs already begging for you to give it a rest, lungs fighting against each stride, but you don’t slow.

You clip your shoulder on the entrance and hiss with pain, hand immediately springing up to rub out your shoulder. As you run, you pull your hand away to find your palm coated in bright red blood.

Your arm stays firmly pressed to your upper arm, futilely trying to staunch the flow as you push forward, careful not to brush against the hedge’s walls.

The ground starts to rumble again, vibrating under your feet but with much less intensity than the fall quadrant. It’s still enough to throw you off balance, a hand springing out to find support but only slicing open your palm on the hedge’s defenses. Your hand, now dripping with blood, pulls to your chest as you fall to your knees from the shaking earth.

This is it.

You are surely going to die in this awful hedge maze. The maze that offput you so before will be your final resting place.

It takes you a moment to realize the walls are sinking into the ground. Its leaves and pink blossoms being swallowed up by the dirt. You squint up to see the tops of the mazes revealing more and more sky as they descend.

You bring yourself to shaky feet, surveilling the descent of the walls.

Your heart pounds at the possibilities that will soon be revealed to you. Surely what lies behind these walls will be your death.

When the walls have descended to your height, you shakily get to your feet, peering over to find only more hedge.

The walls disappear, the tops coated with a layer of grass that melds perfectly to the ground and leaves no evidence of their existence, and the earth stops shaking beneath you.

Only four walls remain in an equal square with no exits, trapping you alone in a large grass field. You take a moment to survey your wounds, peeling your hand off your shoulder. Your shoulder was flayed, inflamed four-inch slashes burning along your upper bicep. Oozing, thick red blood drains freely from the raised flesh, staining your jacket and coating your hands in its warmth. The slices on your palms were serated, whatever having sliced it carving out extra flesh as the ground jolted you around.

With your good hand you reapply pressure to your shoulder in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood as you inspect one of the remaining hedge walls.

They were barbed. What seemed like inviting leaves and cherry blossoms are actually spikes and petals of razor sharp blades.

Once you’ve made the discovery you make distance from the walls, looking around for the horror they clearly wanted you to face.

For a moment your eyes are searching the hedges, waiting for impossible beasts to slink from the wall’s blades. Capitol mutts bred designed with psychological and physical damage in mind.

You get the opportunity to catch your breath, checking on your wounds in between scans for threat.

A flinch tears through you when the ground rumbles again.

Through the disorientation of the trembling dirt, you make out that only one wall is descending, and it was not one that leads to open air, but one that lead to another chamber within the maze.

At the massive hedges sink lower, you can see the area leading to it has also shed its complex chambers, revealing a similar square pen of hedges.

Whatever awaits for you on the other side, you’re about to be ensnared with it in a rectangular prison with no chance to escape except to bury yourself through the hedge’s razor sharp blossoms.

You reach to prime your blow dart, but your hands come up empty. Frantic hands pull the rope from your torso and scramble through the loop of rope, but it’s gone.

It’s gone.

Surely lost to the lava, knocked free from your shoddy knots during the earthquake.

The dread is instantaneous, flooding you from head to toe with a nauseating heat. Your only shot, you just let your only shot drain through your fingers.

Fuck.

When the wall is three feet from the ground, you can see a singular tribute on the other side, bent over in a similar position to support themselves on the ground that thrusts you about.

As soon as the tops of the maze sinks into the ground and disappears, the tribute is already tearing through the grass and in a beeline straight towards you.

It’s the girl from District One.

“Nine!” She yells in a war cry so daunting it makes your gut instinctively twist.

In her hand she wields her spear, coated in layers of blood. From the old, crusted brown of week-old kills to the deep red at its silver tip, freshly drained from minute-old wounds.

Your breath catches, eyes wide.

You were surely going to die, another blood stain to decorate her spear.

You’d never seen so much rage coming from one person. Not even the boy from eleven or Konig, both moments from killing you, didn’t wear an expression with this degree of loathing.

A sickening, animalistic wail rips from the back of her throat as she raised her spear, not breaking her lengthy strides.

“He killed him!’ Her froths carry when she’s close enough, “He killed him!”

You’re not sure who ‘He’ or ‘Him’ is, but you know you’re about the take the blunt of her vengeance.

‘Just don’t let anyone in there use it against you, okay?’

Your brows pinch, you take one breath to steady yourself, and you brace.

When she’s only a few yards away, she launches her spear at you, another pained cry shrilling throughout her grunt. When you make a dive out of the way, you can hear the spear whiz right by your ear and disturb tufts of your hair. You’re sure it nicked you, but when your hand comes up to your ear to confirm you’re not sure if the blood on your hands is from the wound inflicted from the hedges or her.

You rush for the spear that lodges in the dirt three feet from you. You’re quick but she beats you to it, and you have no choice but to cling onto the blood-stained handle with your injured hands and hope that she can’t make enough distance to pierce you with it.

“He killed him!” She repeats, words so savage she’s spitting in your face.

The spear lays horizontally between your chests, erratically jerking in the space between you as you grapple for it.

She’s all muscle, arms toned and her face doesn’t look any more hollowed than it did when she stepped into the arena. It’s easy to see she’s overpowering you, flinging you around as she yanks on the spear in your firm grip.

“He killed him! He killed him!” These words punctuate each torque of the blood-stained handle, a vicious replay spewing from her mouth on repeat until it turns into a brutal harmonization. With each pull you wince as the tainted wood forces against your sliced hands.

It’s the neck snapping of the boy from eleven, and with each yank that pulls you forward you see Konig snapping the boy’s neck.

“He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap!

From here you can see the tears streaming down her face.

It must be the look of bewilderment, or maybe pity, that flashes across your face, because as soon as you notice her tears her face relaxes for just a moment, like she’s waking up from a dream. She cuts off her repeated cries with another vicious grunt, tightening her grip onto the spear’s staff, and runs full force at you.

The weight of her pulling the spear closer suddenly disappears, knocking you off balance. The handle catches on your collarbones and sends you both crashing to the ground.

You don’t let go of the spear as she moves to straddle you, sliding down your thighs and planting herself firmly on your stomach. White knuckles contrast the blood you’re adding to her collections of stains, mutilated palms fighting for the spear.

With one hand she forces the staff of the spear into your sternum hard, and with the other she swings at you, connecting her fist to the side of your jaw with enough force to make you see a blinding white.

When you return, hands still clasped firmly around the spear, she’s digging into her waistband for something that will surely end your life.

You trash violently under her before you find some fucking sense and use your good hand to reach through the hem of your collar, into your sports bra, and retrieve your multi-tool.

Pluck and a multi-tool, that’s all you have.

You were most certainly going to die.

You manage to flip out the first tool your blood-covered fingernail found as she reveals a six-inch long silver blade.

“He killed mine, I kill his!” Her scream is guttural, her words through hysterical tears barely registering when she swings using both hands to thrust the blade down into your skull.

With a swing of your arm you block the knife, slicing a deep, lengthy gash into your forearm as your other hand jams the inch-long corkscrew straight into her eye.

The shriek of pain is unlike any other you’ve ever heard. It completely swallows your cry from the deep gash on your arm elicited. The feeling, the sound, of her eyeball squelching as the corkscrew pierced is still shooting up your arms, making your body cringe more than the nasty gash she left behind. Immediately her tensed body folds in on itself, her fingers shooting up to thread through the multi-tool and coating her hands with the steady stream of blood.

With all you have, a grunt escaping from deep in your diaphragm, you work yourself free from her restraint while she’s distracted by her wounds.

You retrieve her spear, now stained heavily with the same blood that spews from the gashes along your shoulder, arm, and hand, coating you in dark red sleeves of dripping blood. The girl swings at you, but not yet used to her loss of depth perception and debilitating pain, misjudges how far away you are.

You take a moment to let yourself wallow in your pain, to shake the feeling of skewering the girl’s eye that still shed tears as you back away from her haunting wails.

She’s foaming obscenities at you, trying to come to her feet but dropping to her knees as the jostling of the multi-tools shoots pain through her with another haunting wail of agony.

When she reaches up to yank the multitool from her eye, you prime yourself with the spear, pointing it in the direction of a howl so piercing it deafens you. Her blood covered eye is still threaded onto the corkscrew when she pops it free, ripping out a chunk of her shredded optic nerve with it.

You have to close your eyes, your heart sinking as you wince in sympathy at her pain.

You can’t bring yourself to end her like this. Now would be the time, it would be the smart thing to do. You’re perfectly justified, you know that. She attacked you, she tried to end your life, and you are completely in the clear morally and legally.

Through her sharp sobs you can hear Price’s voice. He’s screaming at you through the screen, he’s giving you permission, he is telling you to use that pluck to give her spear one last poetic stain.

But you can’t do it.

Her maimed wails are drawing nothing but pity, knowing you are the one who is responsible for her pain, even if she had just tried to wedge a knife through your skull.

“Nine!” She shrieks a yell of vengeance and pain from her mouth coated in the blood that pours from her eye socket.

“Nine!”

She shakily gets to her feet, her hands already swiping for you, blindly swinging the multi-tool still stabbed through her own eye even though you’ve trailed your blood at least twenty yards away.

“Stay away!” You yell as your slices palm screams under a tightened grip on her spear.

“Nine!” She cries, her feet picking up into an unsteady jog toward the sound of your voice.

You back away, keeping the spear firmly pointed in her direction.

The girl from one, blinded by her injuries, tears, and rage, does not slow when she runs full force into her own spear, the entire silver tip disappearing into the flesh just under her rib cage.

The wooden, round end of the spear thrusts into your gut with a breathtaking amount of force. Your eyes were already closed when she coughs a warm, sticky spray of blood onto your face.

She’s choking on her own blood, the last haunting sounds of life gurgling from the back of her throat.

You don’t let go of your grip on the staff until the girl from one goes limp, her body dropping to the ground and pulling her spear from your blood-covered hands. Even when the cannon’s boom fires to signify her death, you can’t open your eyes, can’t bear to see the girl from District One’s lifeless body. Your tears begin to streak the fresh blood on your face.

“I’m sorry!” You scream in the direction of her body, “I’m sorry!”

Your pleading cries become hysterical, your words repeating as foaming as the girl from one’s as she charged at you with the same spear that killed her. The feeling of her squishing eye still shoots up the bones of your arms and down your spine.

Your eyes finally snap open at the encore of the ground shaking.

You try and move away from the girl from one, her body bouncing up and down like a rag doll - and suddenly you’re staring at the Eleven’s lifeless body bouncing off the metal platform.

You’re knocked to your limbs, blood draining freely down your arms and painting the grass with generous red streaks as the earth quakes.

The large hedge wall is descending, and as it is swallowed into the ground you can see what remains of the hedge maze, entirely stripped of its inner walls and chambers. Over the top of the descending wall you can see another large, rectangular pen of equal size that will soon form a square of the hedge’s outer most borders with no exits in sight.

When the wall has fully descended, you rise to shaky feet and find two tributes rising from the ground that finally settles. Two more tributes lie dead in heaps on the grass at the far end of the maze.

The tribute on the right is The Mountain, no mistaking that size, but he’s covered from head to toe in gear. Thick gloves. A pair of green cargo pants. Black guards on his joints and forearms. A holster sits at his upper thigh, carrying some sort of blade. He wears a thick black vest on his front that spills over with supplies.

The most haunting is the mask, a nearly uniform black fabric that drapes over his neck and bunches around his vest, pinned in place underneath a tactical helmet. It reminds you of an executioner.

He doesn’t even look human . Any comfort you had found from him before the games, any scraps that remained after he snapped that boys neck and raced to kill you, has completely disintegrated.

The mask has two circular cutouts above two faint streaks of color and reveal the only part of him exposed to light, those eyes that have shared so many reassuring glances with you - and they’re staring in your direction.

You hear him shout something at you, your name, you think, that harsh voice carrying all the way from across the hedge maze. His hands find his head before he starts in a jog to you, slowing when he sees the body of the girl from one, imbedded on a spear and lying limp in the grass.

He looks back to you, and then his head whips in the direction of the other tribute to find a knife flying in his direction. He throws himself to the ground in a dodge, and the boy from two takes his opportunity to advance on Konig in a full sprint, already reaching into his jacket pocket for a replacement weapon.

Konig rolls forward before getting to his feet, making a run for you.

You’re frozen again, eyes flicking between both of the imminent threats before you, trying to figure out who you should focus on first.

You start in a run towards the girl from one’s body, not slowing, but wincing as you pull the spear from her abdomen without looking down. You run a few more yards before whipping around, slightly crouched as you extend the spear in the direction of Konig and the boy from District Two. Titan, the boy with canines that come to perfect, razor sharp points.

Konig fumbles when he meets your eyes, the fear and the determination in them as you point your weapon at him. He slows, his eyes momentarily finding the tip of the spear, and then the body of the girl from one before he turns to look for Titan. He retrieves a large knife, it’s not the scythe you saw him wielding at the bloodbath, but it’s similar. A long, silver blade that almost constitutes a sword raised in warning at Titan.

Titan slows, and sidesteps to survey you both. The body of the girl from District One lays limp in the center of a three-way standoff, with two boys who very much dominate you in size and strength on either side.

Titan gives a cruel laugh, showing off his razor sharp canines. The knife he had retrieved from his jacket falls to his side, as if he’s not even worried about either of you atttacking.

“Where you been District Nine?!” He yells almost teasingly from his spot, clearly directed at you. You tighten your grip on your spear with your blood-soaked palms, brows furrowing.

“I’ve been looking for you!” Titan follows up in an almost sing-song tune.

He laughs at your confused face, the way your eyes uneasily flick from Konig to Titan.

Titan takes two slow yet confident steps in your direction, and both you and Konig prime your weapons with a flinch.

Titan laughs again, bending his core - as if you treating him like a rabid lion was just so hilarious it steals the breath from him.

“You two, wow. What a pair!”

You and Konig share an unsure glance before returning your careful eyes to Titan.

He points at Konig with his knife, “You I expected. It was always you, right?” He sloppily points the blade in your direction.

“You I didn’t expect!”

He laughs again, taking a few more slow steps toward you, “We knew what you were, though!” He shakes his head, “We knew you were important. Just didn’t think you’d make it this far.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” A cruel smile unwinds across his face, canines fully exposed, “I hate admitting this, but I don’t think I’d be able to do it without you.”

He finishes by taking a few more steps towards you, and Konig follows his lead this time, both of them closing in on you.

You have to stop taking steps away when the end of your spear brushes against razor sharp leaves.

“Back up!” You spit, thrusting the tip of the spear in the air in Titan’s direction as a warning. He holds his hands up, the knife held with just a few of fingers as he displays his palms.

“Easy now, Plucky,” He says with a condescending smirk, “I wouldn’t want to end up like your friend here.”

Titan doesn’t drop his smile in the slightest when his boot steps on the corpse of the girl from one, a symphony of ribs snapping under his boot.

You suck in a breath at the noise, the boy from eleven blinding you with his lifeless eyes. Your whole body cringes, eyes pinching closed and stomach threatening the retch.

Snap, bounce, dead.

The boy from two’s boots break into a sprint towards you, followed shortly by the sound of Konig’s footsteps, and all you can see is Eleven’s lifeless eyes as you swing your spear blindly through the guts of the girl from District One.

You hear Konig’s harsh voice shout.

The spear’s handle scrapes painfully against your flayed palm as it’s ripped from your grasp, a pair of brute arms trapping around you as you flail your limbs, scratching and clawing at faceless muscle.

You’re quickly jerked so that the assailant is behind you, pressing your back to his chest. A sturdy forearm wraps across your collarbones, the other digging firmly into your lower stomach.

When you’re firmly pinned, you can see Konig, frozen in place and staring right at you through his hood as you thrash in Titan’s arms.

You can feel the vibrations of his words on your back you when he speaks, his lips tickling your ear as he coos into it, “Oh, it’s okay, Funny Girl. You don’t need to fight it.”

Your head trashes violently against his sternum, spitting grunts leaving your raw throat as your bloody, injured hands scratch at his forearms.

“I said don’t fight it!”

You flinch at the volume of Titan’s voice, no longer playful and teasing, booming his direct order in your ear as he shakes you in his grip.

His arm slides up from your chest to wrap around your neck, nestling you between a bulging forearm and bicep. He gives you a warning squeeze, cutting off your air just to show you he can.

“Behave!” He hisses in your ear.

Your hand comes up to grab onto Titan’s crushing arms, futilely pawing at him in an effort to give yourself more breathing room.

All you can do is stare wide-eyed at a faceless Konig, his blade primed as you wriggle in Titan’s grip.

Titan lifts your feet off the ground by your neck, drawing half of an inhuman squeak from you before your windpipe is fully constricted.

“Now drop it!” Titan yells.

Your legs kick in the air as you search for ground, fingernails scratching at Titan’s arm and leaving streaks of your own blood behind. Eyes wide with terror and mouth gaping for air that can’t be inhaled.

“Drop it or I kill her!”

Konig lets his weapon fall to the ground, slowly raising his arms to show his empty palms to Titan.

Titan laughs, letting you dangle and struggle for air a little while longer until he sets your feet back on the ground. He takes his arm off your neck and puts his palm to your forehead, pinning your head against his chest.

Immediately you’re pulling in breaths, choking on the air you’d been fighting for with everything you have.

Titan’s just giddy with excitement, even doing a shuffle with his feet to release some of his energy.

“Do you see this, Funny Girl?” Titan whispers, his lips pressed against the grooves of your ear as you cough for air, “See how you reduce a mountain to a molehill?”

You jerk your head away from him, squirming in his grasp, but he applies more pressure to your forehead.

“This is just perfect! This is rich,” Titan laughs before he continues, “You know only one of you can leave, right?” He throws his head back in a laugh, forcing your body to turn slightly to the right.

His voice drops, each word coming to a point that digs at Konig, “And yet you’d still sacrifice yourself to save a girl that never had a chance.”

Konig must have some sort of plan you don’t fully understand, because none of his actions are rational.

“Don’t be shy, Konig. Come on down!” He says with an over-the-top voice.

Titan laughs again as Konig takes careful steps closer, palms still displayed in surrender.

Titan presses his lips back to your ear and speaks excitedly through clenched teeth.

“I am so glad you made it this far.”

He gives your body a shake before he leans down to plant a sloppy kiss on your cheek from behind.

You wince in disgust, giving a few more earnest thrashes against his arms.

It fills you with fury, actually.

This brute can have you restrained, manhandle you and steal your breath - that’s part of the game, you can’t blame him for that.

But to tease you like a cat does his prey?

To kiss you?

You’re over Titan, you decide.

“Oh, what’s the matter, Funny Girl?” He says in mock sympathy, removing the hand from your neck to cup your jaw, fingers creating indents on your face as he smears your own blood with his fingertips. He tilts both your body and your chin to force you to look at him.

“Don’t be upset,” He coos, ignoring your grit teeth and glaring eyes, “Some people were just born to serve me, to die for me.” His voice falls to a dangerous growl, his fingernails digging painfully into your cheeks, “Get over it.”

His eyes flick to Konig, who’s approaching too fast for his liking, “Woah, woah, woah there, lover boy.”

Titan’s arms switch positions, the one across your stomach rising to skim his knife across your front, the other letting go of your face to secure your waist to him. He presses the blade up to your throat, grazing the metal against the crook of your neck in a clear threat.

You tilt your chin up to get away from the blade, looking down your nose at Konig, who freezes.

“Did you not like that?” He asks Konig, applying more pressure on the blade to your neck, not yet breaking skin, but pulling a fearful squeak from you as the cool steel creases your flesh.

He lowers his voice to a purr, “Do you not like it when I touch your things?”

Titan takes his hand off your waist, knowing the knife on your throat will keep you firmly in place. He brings his other hand back up to your jaw, pinching your cheeks and shaking your head teasingly at Konig.

You and Konig have no choice but to lock eyes, his gear offering little comfort as you pull down on Titan’s arm. You can’t read much behind that half-lidded cold stare and black hood.

“Just do it!” You yell at Konig, “What are you waiting for?! Just kill us both!”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Titan presses his fingers tighter into your face in the assumption you were addressing him.

He shakes your head again and lowers his voice, pressing his lips back into your ear.

“But I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” He says, “I’m going to take my time.”

“Do it Konig! Kill us both!” You yell, furrowing your brows and thrashing against Titan.

“Do it Konig!” Titan mocks. He puts his mouth back to your ear again, “Let’s see if he can do it.”

He pulls away to shout to Konig, keeping your face firmly in his hold, “Do it! Kill us both!”

Konig stays still in his spot, not reaching for his weapon, just flitting his eyes between you and Titan.

“What are you doing?!” You scream, “Do it!”

“Stupid girl,” Titan grits in your ear, “Don’t you know he can’t?”

You elbow him hard, and he makes a low guttural noise, briefly letting go of your face. You go to push free from his knife but his hand quickly snatches a head full of your hair.

You let out a yelp as he jerks your head backwards, his knife briefly jutting out in the direction of Konig, who used your distraction as a chance to near closer. He’s close now, but when Titan notices this he takes a few steps backwards, dragging you back by your hair with him.

Titan laughs at Konig, giving you a harsh yank on your scalp. “Trying to save her?”

The hand with the knife pulls back and snakes around your neck again, threatening to squeeze the life from you.

“Kill us! Don’t let him win!” You get out.

“I am so sick-” Titan cuts off his statement the same moment he cuts off your air, lifting you off the ground.

“Tell her!” He booms, “Tell her why you can’t do it!”

Konig’s hands lower, eyes widening as he watches you claw at his arms, blood still gushing from your wounds.

“Tell her or she dies! Tell her!” He jerks you around by your neck, body swaying like a rag doll.

Your nails dig into Titan hard enough to draw blood, your legs kick his with the soles of your boots, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Tell her!” He shouts, his spit dotting your cheek. He makes a show of tightening his grip on you.

You’re vision is getting spotty, the swings of your fists slowing against unmatched strength.

“Last chance!” He says.

Konig sees the life fading from you, and breaks into a sprint, full force in your direction.

If you could speak, you’d tell him ‘finally.’

You close your eyes and brace for death, listening to the sound of Konig’s boots rapidly approaching and the blood pumping in your ears.

You take the brunt of his impact, your face and already injured arms on the receiving end of the supplies tucked in his chunky vest.

The three of you lose balance, toppling backwards until Titan regains his footing, and then you’re smushed in between two monstrous boys, waiting for one of them to take the win.

It happens so fast, and for most of it you had your eyes closed, but as soon as Titan releases his grip on your neck you’re roughly flung to the side where you drop to your hands and knees, coughing and wheezing as you try to catch your breath.

There’s the sound of impact after impact, and when you have the strength to lift your head, your heart stops.

Titan never regained his footing.

Konig had shoved you both backwards where the razor sharp hedge walls had imbedded themselves so far into Titan they’re supporting his weight. His knife lays unreachable at his feet, blood pouring generously and coating the leaves under his back in thick, dark red trickles.

Konig isn’t letting him slide off, one hand pressing firmly into his chest so the blades in the hedge walls work their way further into him.

Titan’s eyes are wide with shock, his head being forced to the side with each blow Konig lands to his face.

You jolt at the sight and fumble back into the grass as you crawl backwards from the altercation, eyes locked onto the scene you can’t bring yourself to look away from.

Konig lands a hit to Titan’s jaw, and blood sprays from his mouth. You hear a crack, Titan’s cheekbone shattering you think, and you finally pinch your eyes shut as the Eleven’s neck breaks behind your eyelids.

He’s delivering blow after blow, almost mechanically. One after another in beats so rhythmic you can anticipate and wince for the next strike before it even lands.

At least with the boy from eleven he made it quick and painless. Dead before he even knew what hit him.

This is overkill.

It’s twisting your gut, nausea boiling under your skin and bile creeping up the back of your throat.

You’re not sure why he doesn’t just grab the knife and finish him off.

You can’t think of a worse end. Beaten to death, feeling your skull steadily cave in, each punch pushing you closer and closer to death while jostled against a thousand blades.

When Konig is finally done with him, Titan is unrecognizable. Face mashed in, skull caved, beaten to a bloody pulp. His teeth chipped and broken, probably having swallowed his defining canines after Konig knocked them down his throat.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

When Konig turns around and takes a couple steps back, he doesn’t look at you right away. He stares off into the distance at a far hedge wall. You can see the gear in his vest rising and falling with his heavy breaths. Filtering out whatever emotion must come with killing a man with your own fists, surely.

Titan’s body begins to slide forward, what’s left of his head pressed limply to his chest. He reaches a tipping point and his upper half drops, the rest of the blades on his lower back brutally ripping through his flesh as he collapses in a lifeless pile on the grass.

When Konig’s cold, deadly eyes find yours, you can’t help but start, letting out the squeak of a prey. You can’t move, lips parted, eyes blown in disbelief.

“Wait, please!” Your bloody palms shoot out defensively.

“You can have it!” You shout through a raw throat, voice desperate. You try to swallow the lump in your throat, but to no avail. Your voice lowers, “You can have the win, but please.”

Your words spill out one after another in a jumbled mess, “I just don’t want to die fighting, and afraid, and - “ You cut yourself off, your voice dropping to nothing but shallow breath, “Please.”

He’s silent, the half-lidded eyes through his black hood revealing nothing to you, still except for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“Let’s just talk, before you do it, please. I - I don’t have any weapons,” You keep your arms up, your whole body shaking.

You pinch your eyes shut when it elicits no reaction, your voice shooting back up to raw and desperate, “Konig, please! Just let me prepare myself!”

“Please,” Your final beg finishes with a whimper, sight still cut off with a tight pinch.

And then you hear his boots take off in a full sprint, and you know that this is it.

He wants you to die scared and fighting.

· THE TRIBUTES I · THE TRIBUTES II · THE GAMES · THE VICTOR I · VICTOR II · THE AFTERMATH I · THE AFTERMATH II ·

[withleeknow]

hiya! I noticed you have your requests open and if you don't mind, could I please suggest: "for once... I was right" with "don't you dare walk away from me" for Lee Know - maybe angsty but I don't mind you just going with the flow.

thank you!

blue hour.

pairing: minho x reader genre/warnings: exes au, exes to ...? 🫢, angst; minho's pov mostly, open ending kinda, some light cursing, unedited don't look at me word count: 2.2k (i got carried away a little bit) listen to 🎧: breathe again - sara bareilles

as always, i’d appreciate any thoughts or comments you may have, and please drop a like and/or reblog if you enjoy reading ♡

navigation › masterlist › ko-fi

“this should be the last of your things.”

“thanks,” you say, rummaging through the box that minho hands over to you. everything that you left at his place throughout the entire time you were together; every sweatshirt of yours in his closet, every piece of jewelry on his nightstand, every bottle of nail polish that you kept in his bathroom reserved for nights where you two would pamper each other. they're all here, except for... “did you see my red scarf though? i can’t find it anywhere.”

“no, i checked,” he says. “this is everything.”

“hmm, okay.”

you hold the box between your arms, and minho can’t help but feel something twist painfully in his chest. it’s like you're holding your relationship, or what’s left of it anyway, ready to make your swift exit from his life. two years of love, all dumped into one stupid cardboard box.

you both stand there in silence for what feels like forever, just staring at each other, then at your surroundings, neither of you saying anything. minho knows why he hasn’t bid you a farewell goodnight yet; it’s because he doesn’t want this to end. even though it’s a sad occasion, the finale to your story, he still wants to the seconds to stretch on, for the minutes to last longer. after all, isn’t this the last time he'll ever see you?

why you haven’t left him to his devices and gone upstairs, he isn’t sure.

another moment passes. life goes on but it seems like you two are in your own bubble where nothing moves forward. everything stays rooted to the spot.

“do you want to go for a walk?” you ask after a while. the question surprises minho enough that he lets it show, and it makes you quickly tack on an excuse. “the weather is nice and i... i don’t want to be on my own.”

yes, he does want to go for a walk with you. anything to be with you even if it’s only for a moment longer.

“sure,” he says. “let’s go for a walk.”

“okay. i’ll leave this upstairs and get my jacket.”

he watches as you disappear inside your building, only to reemerge momentarily afterward, a wool jacket draped over your frame. he wishes you’d worn something lighter, just so he could have an excuse to wrap his arm around your shoulders if it gets colder.

you walk side by side around your neighborhood, a distance between your bodies that never used to be there before. it’s strange, of course it is. but minho supposes this is yours and his new reality now.

“how are the cats?” you ask.

“they’re okay. dori had a cold a couple weeks ago, but everything’s fine now,” he tells you. “they... they miss you.”

i miss you too - that's a thought that he doesn’t say out loud, only keeps it to himself because it feels too humiliating to utter those words to you.

“they’re cats. how can you tell?”

“i can always tell.” he shrugs. “they wait by the door when i’m already home. they sleep on your-... they sleep on the other side of the bed.”

if you notice his slip up, you don’t say anything. you purse your lips and nod somberly, stuffing your hands in your pockets. “they’ll forget about me soon enough,” you say.

minho glances at you. he wants to rebuke that statement, to argue with you over something as silly as whether or not his freaking cats will retain their memories of you in the future. but he just bites his tongue and swallows down the lump in his throat, humming to let you know that he’s heard what you said. not a hum of agreement, just one of acknowledgement.

“how’s work?” he asks. god, it’s just so fucking weird to be asking you these things. you know each other inside and out and yet, you’re here making small talk.

torn apart when all you two should be is together.

“it’s alright. still the same, kinda boring. you know there’s not a lot that can happen in that place in one month.”

yes, because it’s been a little over a month since you parted ways, since you moved back into your old apartment and left his home perpetually cold and empty. he can’t blame you for leaving when he was the one who agreed to break up. he can’t blame you for his heartache when he was the one who broke your heart first.

he didn’t mean to, but isn’t that what they all say?

“do you still want to leave?”

“sure,” you reply. “if i can find something better, i’d leave that place in a heartbeat. but for now, it’ll have to do. it used to be a bit more bearable though.”

“i hope you find something that makes you happier.”

“thanks.” you give him a smile but it doesn't reach your eyes. “how about you? how’s life?”

minho almost says the first thing that comes into mind. life is terrible without you. i think about you every single minute of every day but you're not here and it’s my own damn fault.

he could lie and come up with something much more palatable, because he doesn’t reckon his truth is something you’d like to hear right now.

but he doesn’t want to lie to you. in the time that you were together, minho never lied to you, not even once, not even over something stupid and insignificant. beside, he’s got a feeling that you would see through his bullshit anyway.

his answer ends up being a sad shrug, then, “it’s life. i’m hanging in there.”

your footsteps slow until you stop completely. this makes him stop too, turning around to look at you with his head tilted to one side, confused.

“it’s not like you to sound so defeated,” you comment.

“what?” he asks with a sigh. “it’s the truth.”

“it’s not the whole truth.”

“what do you want me to say?”

“i want you to be honest with me,” you tell him, your shoulders slumping just slightly. “i still care about you. i want to know you’re okay.”

minho takes a step closer until he’s right in front of you, the closest that you two have been all night. his body feels the warmth radiating from yours but he has to ball his hands into fists to keep from reaching out and touching you.

“if you really want to know, i haven’t been myself since you left.”

guilt flashes in your eyes. it wasn’t his intention at all.

you bite your bottom lip, inhale a shaky breath, before you speak, “i’m sorry for leaving.”

“don’t apologize. i’m sorry for driving you away.”

then he watches the tears well up as you look at him. he’s been wondering this the whole night, how you seem so cavalier about it all, how you’re able to speak to him so casually as if you’re just old friends with some shared history, and not as though the wound is still fresh. he’s still bleeding and you’re acting like you’ve already healed.

but he sees it now. you’re just as sad as he is, just as miserable. the only difference is you’re better at hiding it, or maybe you’ve just had more time to get used to the way it hurts.

is this how you felt in the weeks, the months, leading up to your departure? every time he neglected you, prioritized something else over you, missed every date and overlooked every text message? every single instance where he was too busy for you?

he never wanted to break your heart, but alas, here you are.

he didn’t want you to go, and yet, when you felt like you couldn’t handle the loneliness anymore, he hadn’t stopped you from walking out the door. he gave up, and he gave up so easily.

nothing along the lines of ‘don’t you dare walk away from me’, no tearful argument, no explosive and definitive end to your relationship. minho just let your love slip away.

how must that have made you feel on top of everything that he did - or didn’t do - to you?

minho has been called every variation of ‘cold’ before. to everyone else, he’s callous, rough, intimidating and unapproachable. but to you, he’s kind, soft, gentle and loving. it never mattered what anyone thought of him, as long as you always knew that he loved you, that you saw him for who he was.

but toward the end, what if you saw him how the others did? what if you had deemed him cold too?

the mere thought makes him sick to his stomach.

you sniffle, wiping at your eyes. “you don’t have to say that. it’s in the past now.”

fracture upon fracture upon fracture. minho doesn’t know how much more of this his heart can take.

his fingers twitch, and before he can stop himself, he’s reaching for your hands. to his surprise, you let him.

your hands, so delicate in his, so warm.

“i should’ve fought harder for you,” he says, his voice so small that you barely catch the words at all.

but his eyes… he hopes you can see it in his eyes - the regret, the longing, the pain of losing you dimming the light of the stars he holds there.

giving his hands a light squeeze, you say, “and maybe i should’ve held on tighter instead of letting go.”

“i made you feel like you weren’t enough. it’s the worst thing i ever did to you. i understand why you left.”

you try to calm your breathing, because you really don’t feel like breaking down in front of him right now. you don’t say anything in response; what are you even supposed to say? you told him everything that you wanted to the night that you two broke up. everything that you tried to bottle up for months was laid on the table that night. you watched as he listened to you, watched as his heart broke alongside yours. that was it.

“i… i’m sorry,” minho stutters, and for the first time since you’ve known him, he looks scared. “i’m sorry. can’t we try again? i swear i won’t let you down again. i swear to you.”

“min…” the nickname slips out of habit and for a second there, minho thinks you would say yes. but then… “i know you’re sorry. i know we didn’t break things off because we fell out of love. but i don’t think you’re at a point in your life where i can be the most important thing right now. you may not mean to, but there’ll be things that you prioritize over me… and i’m not at a place in my life where i can settle for being on someone’s back burner either. the timing’s just off. it’s not your fault, life just got in the way.”

minho stares at you, the stars dying out one by one. the hurt is beyond what any word can describe but in a way, he understands. it fucking sucks, but he gets it. he has to accept it now.

he nods solemnly, tracing odd patterns on your palms. then he asks, quietly, “can i hold you? just for a while.”

please indulge me, he thinks. this is the last thing i’ll ever ask from you.

you don’t reply with words. instead, you wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him into you. you two stay there in each other’s embrace for god knows how long. it could’ve been minutes or it could’ve been hours. you always lose track of time when you’re wrapped up together.

you hold him like he - tough and intimidating minho - is made of glass, and he holds you like he doesn’t ever want to let you go.

but he has to eventually.

you untangle yourself from him to find that he’s been crying. the tears on his cheeks catch the light from the street lamps, reflecting like crystals in the night. when you wipe them away, you tell him, “for once, i was right.”

“about what?” he sniffles.

“you really are a hopeless romantic,” you smile, trying to lighten the mood. as much as you can anyway. “i knew you’d prove me right one day.”

minho wants to scoff but his eyes are burning from the tears and his throat feels like it's closing up, so he lets you have this one. the last one, right?

maybe he is a romantic, and maybe it’s only for you. maybe it makes him a little hopeless.

the walk back to yours ends too quickly. but truth be told, even if you had walked together until the sun came up, it still wouldn’t have been long enough for him.

you both stand there, two heavy hearts looking at each other, looking for one another.

there’s no goodbye, only goodnight.

and you’re the one who says it first.

minho returns your sentiment with a choked up voice, a brush of his fingers against yours, and when you finally turn to walk up the steps, his gaze lingers on your retreating figure.

then he calls your name softly. “hey, uhm... i’ll let you know if the scarf turns up, okay?”

you turn back with a knowing smile. it’s still sad, but there’s some faith hidden there.

“i hope it will.”

permanent taglist: @onlyycb97wife @starsandrqindrops @borahae-reads @abbiestearsricochet @cutiespaghetti @anthropologykpopmultistan @moonlinos @mjnhoz @caitlyn98s @piercidh34rts  @stayceebs97 @linocz @yaorzu-blog @biribarabiribbaem @kayleefriedchicken

all rights reserved © withleeknow. reposting, translating and/or modifying is not permitted by any means. [posted 16.01.2024]

[kaiserthread]

shopping spree

clothes/accessories the bllk boys buy you! characters: sae, kaiser, reo content: pro players, established relationship, f!reader, fluff lowkey my first time writing anything romantic so this might be ooc, was giggling soooooo hard while writing this part 2 here!

ITOSHI SAE - wool coat

took one look at you shivering and thought NO

buys you a nice wool coat for the winter months

he’s always giving you his when you guys are out together, might as well have your own for when he’s away 

he sprays a bit of his cologne on it when he knows he’s going to be away from you for a while

sae worries about you, he hates when you're upset, hates when you get hurt, and most of all he hates seeing you in the cold and shivering because you refuse to wear a jacket that isn’t his. this brings him to his current predicament, he’ll have to leave you to go to training camp in the winter. “just don’t go, sae. who’s jacket am i going to wear?” you whine dramatically, draping yourself over the pile of clothes he's currently placing into his travel bag. “get off, I need those.” sae scolds. “and you have your own jackets.” “but they’re so much better when they're yours.” you pout at him. he sighs, knowing he’s already lost this battle. the morning he leaves is gloomy. he leaves early, waking you to kiss you goodbye and shushing you back to sleep. as you’re leaving you find a note on the hall closet, sae’s handwriting reminding you to grab a jacket. you open the closet to find a brand new wool coat, almost identical to his. you pull it on and catch the familiar scent of his cologne. reaching into the pocket you find a handwritten note that reads: for whenever you miss me, i love you darling

MICHAEL KAISER - jewelry

the possessive type honestly, takes note of your preferred metal and buys you a thin chain with a delicate ‘M’ on it 

a charm bracelet with a blue rose charm

a dainty sapphire anklet to show off during the warm summer months

takes every excuse to buy you some new bling

michael comes home after practice with a familiar looking gift bag. he sets it down on the coffee table and kisses your cheek in greeting, wrapping his arms around your waist as he sits down next to you on the couch. “is that for me?” you gesture to the bag in front of you, “what’s the occasion?” you ask as michael leans against you, “practice wasn’t as long as usual so I got to come home to you earlier.” he reaches for the bag and takes out a slim box. you open it and find a sleek new bracelet, perfectly complimenting the others stacked on your wrist. “thank you mihya, it’s beautiful!” you exclaim, turning to press a kiss to his cheek. “but seriously, did i forget something? you can tell me.” he pushes himself up to kiss you, his breath warm on your lips as he whispers, “no my love, let me spoil you, it’s the least you deserve.”

MIKAGE REO - louboutin red bottoms

okayyyyy go rich boy!

but seriously he wants to give you the best of everything including something as simple as a pair of heels

so he buys you a pair of 100mm pumps in both the beige and black colorway

watched you struggle walking in them for .5 seconds before putting in an order for a pair with a lower heel

“are you sure you’re comfortable in those? let me order a pair with a lower heel.” reo is seriously worried that you’re going to trip and break your face trying on the gift he bought you. “babe seriously, it’s fine. i’ll break them in, put your phone down, are you seriously ordering another pair?!” you exclaim, moving over towards him to try to grab the phone out of his hand. reo is having none of it, taking advantage of the fact that your new heels are throwing you off balance to run off into the ensuite bathroom to place the order. he walks back into the room to find you sitting on the edge of your shared bed, arms crossed and pouting. he moves in front of you to kiss the pout off your lips, “angel don’t worry about it, that money is nothing to me. i want you to be comfortable.”

[nothorses]

So I'm thinking of going on low dose T, and ofc I'll get more feedback from doctors when I see them, but I know one of the changes is that you run warmer and have lower heat tolerance, and I'm already kind of heat sensitive (sweating is a sensory ick). Do you or your followers have any kind of coping strategies that have helped with that?

I ran warm before, too, and I'm definitely warmer now! I also have Raynaud's which kind of makes the whole experience a clusterfuck, but that's besides the point. lmao.

I live in a pretty cool/temperate area, so it isn't normally an issue except in the (increasingly horrible) summers, but I've found that the hardest time to stay cool has been at night. I share a bed with my partner who runs even warmer, and it's been 2.5 years of struggling to figure out how to be a comfortable temperature together.

The best advice I can give you is to just stay as far away from synthetic fibers as you can; "sweat wicking" and "cooling" and "athletic" stuff included. It's a lie. They're all plastic, and while they might feel cool to the touch at first, plastic doesn't breathe. It'll trap heat and moisture against your skin after enough time, especially in the form of blankets. (Fuck the Rest Evercool. Worst recommendation I've ever gotten.)

Look for 100% linen, or 100% cotton. I've heard wool also works well, but I haven't had luck with that personally. Woven fabrics are going to be cooler and more breathable than sateen, and waffle weave is like, the single most breathable weave afaik (it's more common in blankets, but some clothes are waffle).

Some of these things can be pretty scratchy at first, and I recommend a couple of washes on a high heat & some fabric softener before you start using them. We were able to break in our waffle blanket super quickly this way! (I know some folks recommend against softener for breathability reasons, but it's the only thing that actually worked for us, and it hasn't impacted breathability). After you break them in, though, cotton and linen fabrics are SUPER soft!

I also recommend staying away from leather. It's natural, but trust me: it's not breathable. It's coveted in outdoor rec spaces BECAUSE it's somewhat waterproof.

Outside of that, I'd really encourage you to lean towards multiple light layers that you can change/remove throughout the day to suit your needs (ex: light tee + fleece + wind/rain layer, maybe throw in a flannel somewhere), instead of one or two heavy ones (ex: shirt + big puffy cold weather jacket). It's a strategy common in the PNW that works great for regulating your temperature when you're dealing with humidity and somewhat unpredictable weather, and imo, it also really translates if you're just generally sensitive to heat and sweat.

Outside of that... depending on where you live, I really recommend having an AC/dehumidifier. Don't bother with trying to rig up a swamp cooler if you're sensitive to sweat- the increased humidity will make things worse. The general advice I heard when researching a good AC was that window units will always be more efficient than portable units (and a mini split is better than either), but if you have to go with a portable unit, go with a dual-hose. They'll be more efficient just because they don't create a vacuum that pulls in warm air from outside. This is the model we settled on- it was really highly recommended and cost effective for what it is, and it's been absolutely fantastic this summer.

Idk how you are about pits, but I wash mine with a benzoyl body wash and then use a deodorant with antiperspirant every day, and I virtually never smell or sweat. 🤷‍♂️ ymmv though

I'm sure folks will have things to add, so check the notes on this post- and good luck!

[octuscle]

New Job

It had been a long day. It was already almost dark when Markus made his way from the insurance company he served as a management consultant to the hotel on this warm July evening. The Frankfurt train station district, which he had to cross to get there, began to glow in predominantly red neon light. Drug addicts, prostitutes, night owls and pimps mingled in the streets. At the corner in front of the entrance to a brothel, the doorman approached Markus. "Hello stud, you look like you could use a distraction. We have the wettest and horniest pussies in town!" Markus declined with a smile. Not at all, because it was a hard day and he just wanted to go to bed. He had the best argument of all to be left alone here. With that, he could keep pimps and hookers alike off his back. "Sorry, not interested. I'm gay." The bouncer looked Markus deep in the eyes and grabbed his crotch. "That's even better. I'm about to have a break. Feel like some sex with a real man, tie boy?" Markus looked at the fellow. Damn, this guy was sexy as hell. Short-shaven hair, the tight-fitting undershirt accentuated his well-toned figure and showed off the tattoos excellently. And grabbing the crotch of the perfectly fitting 501 made the bulge even bigger. The same thing happened with the bulge in Mark's navy blue virgin wool suit. "How much is this going to cost me?" he asked. The bouncer shook Markus' hand. "Ivan, pleasantly. Now you are my friend. I don't take money from friends." At that moment a guy who could be Ivan's brother came out the door, gave Ivan a fistbump and lit a cigarette. He eyed Markus and said if the stud would like to ride some of the horniest mares in town. Ivan laughed and said that the tie boy was his friend. He grabbed Markus by the tie and pulled him into the entrance of the brothel.

The way past the hookers, who showed breasts and pussies in the aisles, was the purest gauntlet for Markus. Ivan pulled him behind him up a narrow stairwell and then into a small room on the second floor. Two beds, a clothes rail, a TV on the wall. Nothing more. But Markus had no eyes for that anymore. The idea that he, as an excellently educated, highly paid management consultant, would have sex with a chav in this shabby brothel made him infinitely horny. And Ivan didn't seem to need to get going either. The two of them tore off their clothes, their tongues deep in the other man's throat. With Ivan this was easier than with Markus, but Ivan was strong and so jacket, shirt and undershirt soon lay in shreds on the floor. Ivan drove his tongue down Markus' neck, sucked Markus' nipples while he loosened the belt and opened the suit pants, freed Markus' boner from his boxer briefs and sucked greedily on the boner. Markus began to moan in ecstasy and thrust his cock into Ivan's face again and again. And Ivan was a professional. When Markus already thought he was going to cum at any moment, Ivan pulled his head back (not without running the tip of his tongue down the entire length of Markus' cock), turned Markus' body, threw him on the bed and fucked him as hard as Markus had never been fucked before. Damn, who was he kidding. Markus was fucked so hard every day. Unless he was fucking other fellows. His 120 euro haircut became a cheap buzz cut. His body became slimmer, wirier and more muscular. Tattoos adorned his chest, arms and six-pack. And with every thrust of Ivan's cock into his ass, he forgot more about his white-collar life. And more memories of a life in the red light district formed in his mind.

Fuuuuuuuck! Ivan shot his load in Markus' ass. Markus didn't need much more to cum himself. Ivan pulled his cock out of Markus' ass, turned Markus on his back and at that moment Markus shot his load into his own face and on his own chest. Ivan fell exhausted onto the bed and the two sweaty and cum-smeared bodies lay tightly entwined on the crusty sheets.

It was a warm summer night and the streets of Frankfurt's red light district were crowded. Full of sensationalist tourists, but also full of johns. Ivan and Marek were standing in front of the brothel smoking a cigarette. Ivan was addressing potential customers for the hookers. Marek had a different strategy. He made eye contact with other men. When they held eye contact, Marek wordlessly grabbed his crotch. Big words were not his thing. But his language was clear. If the man followed his example and also grabbed his crotch, Marek would just say "I'll fuck you for 100." He did not negotiate on the street. When his victim nodded, Marek just turned around and walked past his colleagues into Ivan's and his room. The rest usually followed on its own.

Pic of the recruitement found @platon65

[autophage]

I have been taking up weaving.

Making cloth is a very human thing.

A few facts surprise me:

How long it takes to warp the loom,

How many ways there are to fix mistakes,

How quickly knots can generate themselves.

Which facts become important as I weave,

And which, in final cloth, are meaningless.

The loom is on my bed.

A dozen dozen strings flow over foot and head

Soon rolled and taut and fit to pull and spread

As half or third are lifted in a shed.

I have been taking up weaving.

I have become insufferable at the mall:

Do you have anything that is all wool? All cotton?

I see a design, and am fascinated

Until I get close enough to see that it's a print.

I find myself wanting to touch:

The jackets, plackets, shirts and skirts and pants

Umbrella, sailcloth, carpet, rug and hat.

The satin, plain, and twill

Or even knit.

I have been taking up weaving.

By hand.

Each passage of the shuttle back and forth

Each roller ratchet clicking forth the cloth

Each beat and shed, each push and pull and turn

With selvedge straight or pulled-in

I will earn

The title "weaver".

This I hope.

[inky-duchess]

Etiquette of the Edwardian Era and La Belle Époque: How to Dress

This is a new set of posts focusing on the period of time stretching from the late 19th century to the early 20th Century right up to the start of WWI.

I'll be going through different aspects of life. This series can be linked to my Great House series as well as my Season post and Debutant post.

Today will be focusing on the rules of clothes with this time period.

A Cut for Every Occasion

As you may know, the wealthy elite and their servants lived extremely regimented lives and every aspect was governed by careful rules. They would be expected to wear the right outfit at the right time, every minute of the day. Any misstep would be noticed at once and be subject to scruntiny.

In the circles of the elite, one would be expected to change for every occasion. One simply wouldn't wear the same outfit they've been lying around the house in to attend tea at somebody's house. Fashion in this era was dictated by the clock and by the event diary of the wearer.

Ladies

Women of the upperclass would be expected to change at least six times a day. When she would rise for a morning of repose around the house, she would simply wear a house gown or a simple blouse and skirt. If planning a morning stroll, she would change into a walking suit which is a combination of blouse, skirt and jacket along with her hat usually of tweed. If running errands or paying a visit to friends, she would wear another walking suit. If riding, she would wear a riding habit and a hat. If hosting tea or taking tea in her own home, she would change into a tea gown with is a lighter more airier gown more comfortable for chilling in. If attending a garden party, one wears a pastel or white formal day gown accompanied by a straw hat and gloves. For dinner, she would change into an evening gown which would be more elaborate and show off a little more skin than her day wear. After dinner and ready for bed, she would change into her nightgown.

Female servants had an easier time of it. A housekeeper and lady's maid would simply wear a solid black gown for the entire day. A cook and kitchen maids would wear a simple day dress for working with an apron. Housemaids would usually wear a print dress with an apron and cap, changing into the more formal black and white attire you would associate with a maid.

Gentlemen

The gentlemen had an easier time but they too were subject to changes throughout the day. Men were expected to wear a suit. The most popular day time suit was a sack suit. These were comprised of plain and loose fitting jackets, worn over a starched shirt with a high collar, waistcoat and straight trousers with ironed creases. These suits were exclusively wool with cheaper ones made of a wool and cotton blend. Grey, green, brown, navy were usual but sine younger men preferred louder colours such as purple which was a trend for a time in the 1910s. These suits were worn about the house or in the city accompanied by a coat. Men would change into tweed if shooting or walking. For garden parties, a gentleman would wear a light coloured suit, usually white and a straw hat. For dinner, a man had two choices: his tails or his dinner jacket. A dinner jacket was for less formal suppers say if dining at home. This was a collection of a jacket, trousers, waistcoat, a bow tie, a detachable wing-collar shirt and black shoes. Lapels of these jackets were edged with silk or satin. Tails were worn at a formal dinner party, at White Tie events. This was made up of a tailcoat, white piqué waistcoat, a starched dress shirt with a pique bib and standing wing collar with a white bow tie. Trousers were lined with trim to hide the seams.

Male servants were soared changing. Footmen would wear their livery around the clock which would resemble white tie to a certain extent or mimic court dress of palace servants. Butler's would wear a variation of a gentleman's evening suit throughout the day. When a male servant is dressed, he usually stays that way. However, a valet or a footman may be taken to pick up during shooting parties where they would wear tweed walking suits.

Jewellery

Jewellery was an important sign of status in society. Upperclass women of this time has access to untold caches of sparklers but there were rules concerning their use and meaning. Earrings were usually clip ons as women of high status would not pierce their ears. Simple, understated earrings were worn during the day with more ostentatious sets were worn in the evening time. Broaches were popular at this time, usually worn at the throat of a gown or blouse or walking suit or affixed on hats. Large stoned rings were worn over gloves while slender bands were worn under. Jewellery was intricate and understated amongst old money whole the nouveau riche went for chunkier stones and larger settings. Tiaras were only worn at White Tie events, held after six pm and almost never by unmarried girls. One would not wear a larger tiara than that most senior lady present. Men would wear tie pins, cufflinks and pocket watches to match any occasion be it for a jaunt on the town or at a formal evening party.

Hats

Hats were a staple in this period. Anybody respectable from any class wouldn't venture out of the door without a hat.

Men would wear hats when heading out but always remove them when entering a building, and never wear one without removing it for the presence of a lady. The bowler was seen as more a servant's headwear while a top hat was reserved for gentlemen. Flat caps would be only seen on gentlemen at shooting gatherings or in the country, they were popular among the common class for any informal occasion.

Women had more stricter rules concern hats. Hats for women were more a day accessory worn while out and about. A woman would not wear a hat in her own home even when entertaining and nor would any of the other female occupants if joining the gathering. A woman would not remove her hat when attending a luncheon or tea or any activity. Hats were held in place by a ribbon or sash tied under the chin or by a hat pin, which is essentially a large needle thrust through the hair. This was the period where women's hats became more ornate and rather large, leading to some critisism. Among servants, housekeepers and lady's maids would not wear a hat while indoors and working but a housemaid or cook or kitchen maid would cover their hair with a cap with housemaids changing into a more elaborate one come evening time. Male servants would not wear hats unless travelling or outdoors.

Gloves

Gloves are a staple in this period and worn only at the opportune time. Among servants, only footmen would wear gloves and usually only when serving. Butlers would never wear gloves. Female servants did not wear gloves.

Men did wear gloves, usually woollen or leather while outside or riding gloves when out on horseback.

Women wore gloves whenever outside. Day gloves were usually wrist length, with evening gloves stretching to the elbow. During dinner, evening gloves would be removed at the first course and laid across the lap, replaced at the last course when the ladies leave for tea and coffee after where the gloves are then removed again. Gloves are always worn when dancing and at the theatre or opera. If one is sitting in ones box and sampling some chocolate, one can remove their gloves for that.

Hair and Makeup

Make up was a no-no amongst the upper crust and for their servants in England and America, as it was seen as licentious but in France, the use of rouge was accepted. Perfume and cologne were acceptable but excessive use was frowned upon.

Hair was dressed by one's lady's maid. Bouffant updos were popular in this time period for married women. During the last years of this period, women began adopting the 'bob' but this was seen as radical and sometimes scandalous. Unmarried girls could wear their hair down, often with accessories like a bow to adorn their tresses. Servants would always tie up their hair and never be seen with it down or uncovered (though this depended on their job).

Men would comb their hair, slicking it back for dinner. Most men were clean shaven but if they wore beards, they were usually well groomed. Hair was kept short for grown men and teenagers but young boys may wear their hair longer whilst in the nursery.

[reve-writes]

—good luck; leon kennedy.

ʚ leon kennedy x reader. | resident evil | 0,8k words. ʚ leon visits you at the hospital & you kiss for the first time. ʚ friends-to-lovers. kissing. profanity. pre-re4. ʚ a/n idk why i keep writing awkward first kisses fluff fics someone help i rewrote this twice and still don't quite love it, but here it is.

It has been almost a week.

You've been spending your days within these sickeningly white and bright room, accompanied by the constant hum of air conditioner. You had a visit from your supervisor, asking for mission reports. Outside of your work, you don't have a lot of friends anyway—and the ones you have are either busy in some part of the world somewhere combating bio-terrorism or knee-deep buried in training and paperwork.

Your eyes dart to the door when you hear knocking. Your voice is hoarse when you call out, “Come in.”

It's Leon. He throws a small smile at you when he walks in.

“One of these days—” He sighs, letting the door click shut gently behind him and makes his way towards your bed, plopping onto the chair by your bedside. “—you'll come home in a body bag.”

“Wanna bet on it?”

He stares at you pointedly, taking off his wool-lined leather jacket and hanging it over the back of the chair. “Don't even.”

Your eyes fall fall onto the lines of his body. That body-tight navy shirt really accentuates the muscles that he's built up, short-sleeves putting his arms on display. You're shameless in your staring. You have to remind yourself that he's just a friend—one that you've shared most of the bad with: the blood-smeared bodies, tear-streaked faces, grief-stricken memories, and nightmare-riddled sleeps.

“I heard that you're leaving for Spain.” You distract yourself by bringing up a topic of conversation. “When is that?”

He checks his black watch briefly. “In six hours or so.”

“And you decided to spend those six hours with me? I'm honoured, Kennedy.”

“Of course.” He shrugs. “Gotta make sure you have one last good look of me before I go.”

“I appreciate it.”

“How are you feeling?”

You feel his eyes on you, assessing your injury. Leon has always had an aptitude for observation. He sees the angry purple-and-blue bruises on your neck, noticed the way you wince slightly whenever you speak a little louder. Plus, the sling for your arm is one of the first things he notices when he sees you.

“Like shit.”

“I bet you do.”

“Getting slapped around by a goddamn B.O.W does that.”

“Tell me about it.” He adds a small chuckle. “I had a talk with your mission partner before coming here.”

“Oh, no. What did you do to poor, poor Jonas?” Your eyes narrow, looking at him in an accusatory manner. “You know that this isn't his fault.”

“He left you. Just fucking ran off. What do you mean it isn't his fault?” He argues.

You sigh. “He's new, Leon. Besides, I was the one who told him to run.”

“Don't pull that self-sacrificing shit.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on the edge of your hospital bed. “I can't have you dying on me.”

“You're the one running off to god-knows-where,” you retort. “I can't have you dying on me.”

“I won't.” He gives a small lop-sided grin. “Just because you asked.”

You chuckle—or at least try to—before you wince from a sharp throb in your chest. Leon immediately stands up, his chair sliding back with a screech. He hovers over you, one hand on your shoulder and the other feeling the wall for the emergency call button.

“You okay? What's wrong?”

You nod, taking his gloved hand in yours and away from the call button. “I'm fine, you worrywart.”

When you look up to meet his eyes, suddenly the proximity between the two of you is put into perspective. His eyes—brilliant blue, gem-like—are unblinking as they are fixated on yours. You can almost feel his breath.

“We shouldn't —” you say, but your eyelashes flutter. Your heart's pounding in your chest, loud and adamant, repeatedly calling his name—the way it always does for the longest time.

His eyelids droop as he leans forward slightly. “We really shouldn't.”

“Yeah. This is a bad idea.”

“You don't think we should kiss?”

You can feel your lips brushing against his when he speaks. Featherlight grazes call for goosebumps to raise on your skin. “Well, bad ideas can lead to good outcomes someti—”

Your words are muffled, swallowed by him as his lips close over yours. You've daydreamed about this more times than you care to admit, but to actually experience it? Are you hallucinating from the meds?

“Stop thinking.” Leon huffs, biting your lower lip gently. “Just—”

Whatever he's planning to say next is lost as you once again press your lips onto his. It's a gentle kiss—he treats you as if you're made of glass, and at this point, you feel like you may actually break from your heart swelling.

Your hand reaches out to touch his hair, and you feel a sharp tug from your IV. The IV stand nearly topples over, but Leon pulls back. His reflexes are quick enough to keep the stupid metal pole from falling over.

You stare at each other—

and burst out into laughter.

“A hell of a good luck kiss,” he says, settling back down to the chair.

You bite back your smile. “There's a lot more where that came from.”

“Get better soon and we'll find out.”

[ ]