#yep. sure hit a vein no wonder it was bleeding so much

[surreal-duck]

foot stop bleeding please i want to go to sleep

[jason-todd-deserved-better]

Welcome to the DC Universe - Tim Drake x Reader Headcanon

Request: “I really love your 'welcome to the dc universe' stuff. May i ask a Tim Drake ver? To complete it? Ty”

AN: After three scrapped drafts, four months of delays, and a whole year of planning, I’ve finally have gotten to post Tim’s version of WttDCU. I’m so sorry that it has taken so long, it’s been a long time going and after scraping it three times, I’ve finally figured out the story that I wanted to tell. It’s different than the other boy’s but in all honesty, I’ve grown to love this one so much and even though writer’s block did not help me whatsoever, I’m very proud of what this had become. I hope you guys enjoy, let me know what y’all think, and I love you guys, just want to make sure you guys know that!

Since you were a kid, you were absolutely obsessed with Batman.

Like Batman: The Animated Series was the shit for you, and you were seriously obsessed with it.

Since you were so young, you always loved the Robin character, from Dick Grayson to later Tim Drake. (Unfortunately, Jason Todd was never really in the show from what you remembered.)

Even as you grew older, you often rewatched the series every now and then.

But then you started going for the comics, and oh wow there was a richer story with them.

The Batman series were always your favorite though, you would often read through those the most, especially the ones with the rest of the Batfam.

Hell, you loved almost everyone there, especially the third Boy Wonder.

Oh man did you have a crush on that dude.

To you he seemed the most relatable, especially when you started college this semester.

The sleepless nights spent studying, the constant amount of work that needed to be done, and the ever present need for coffee. (Oh you needed that crap injected in your veins at this point, because you were about ready to crash and burn.)

Yep, very relatable.

Especially now at the most stressful wonderful time of the year, when finals are running rampant and with you craving an end to this misery called a semester.

By some miracle of the gods though, you had just made it out of your last exam of the hell quarter and you were ready to just melt away into nothing. (Or freeze into oblivion because it was way too freaking cold outside to function.)

Since it was freezing outside and you finally had a time to relax, you decided that a long and warm shower would be absolute heaven right now.

So after trudging to your apartment that was five minute walk from your campus, and tugging off your warm layers, you hop into the shower, goosebumps littering your skin from the cold.

You turned on the shower, letting the warm water tug you into bliss.

Which was interrupted by a large crash that sounded as if it originated from your kitchen.

At this, your eyes could be compared to one of a deer in front of headlights.

Absolutely no one else should be in the apartment right then because your roommate left two days ago to go spend time with her family for the holidays.

To make matters worse, you didn’t bring any change of clothes into the bathroom because they weren’t there.

Oh you really wanted to cry right then and there but you stare at the shower curtain rod that you were going to put in to replace the old one, but have now found a new use for it.

Turning off the water, you get your towel, securing it around yourself and grabbing the rod that you were now going to use as a makeshift bat.

Opening the door slightly to check if the coast was clear, you glance out, seeing nothing for the moment and opening the door more as silently as you could walking out with the rod up and ready for anything.

The hallway was clear so then you take the hallway to the kitchen.

You were thinking that it was a dumb move on your part, hell, that’s how people die in horror movies and here you are doing that exact thing.

So when you walked in and saw what was in your kitchen, you screamed.

Mostly out of shock and surprise, plus a tiny amount of fear pinched in there too.

There was a dude dressed up as Red Robin leaning against your counter trying to stay upright.

You weren’t sure what you were expecting but this sure as hell wasn’t it.

Not that you were complaining or even thinking about complaining because you notice that this dude is bleeding all over.

This is when you snap out of your freaked out daze and put down the shower rod and help the guy out.

”Okay my dude,” You pull him to sit on the stool by the counter. “I need you to sit here for a sec.”

He lets off a weak nod, his breathing very ragged, but you already left to get your first aid kit.

Not even a moment afterwards you come back with it in your hands, putting it on the counter as you pop the case open.

You then move to peel off the armor you slowly process the past couple events.

”Oh geez Tim.”  You mutter, starting to disinfect the wounds on the front off his chest.

”Wait a sec, how do you know my name?” He states, stiffening under your touch and he alcohol being rubbed in.

”You my dude, aren’t in Kansas anymore,” You stated bluntly.

”What’s the supposed to mean-” His eyes widen, “Oh crap, Wizard of Oz reference-”

”Means that you aren’t in your universe anymore, I think anyway,”  You say, moving on to another open wound.

”Yeah, but how do you know my name? Do you know this universe’s version of me?” He asks, looking at your face.

”Uh no,” You glance up at him, “Not exactly.”

”Then how do you know it?” His eyes narrow slightly, causing you to move your eyes away from his and to the work that you were currently doing.”

”T-That's going to be a lot to explain,” You stutter.

”Well I’m not going anywhere soon so please explain away.”

So you do, and Tim got very weirded out.

Not at you, but the whole “My Life Is a Source Of Entertainment” to this universe and the fact that he wasn’t even real here.

You didn’t blame him, this was also weirding you out to the max.

Like it's not everyday that your fictional crush pops out of nowhere in the middle of your kitchen.

Then there was the reason that he got there in the first place.

Turns out that he was fighting with the rest of his family against a powerful warlock, and they were winning when all of a sudden there was a flash of bright light when he then felt himself falling.

Then the next thing he knew, he landed in someone’s kitchen.

So that leads to where you two were at now, sitting on your couch, as you look through whatever DC comics you owned and showed them to him so he could see what you were talking about.

The two of you spent a couple hours reading through them.

You guys stopped when your yawns were growing large in numbers.

So you help him put the couch together for him to be more comfortable and head to bed.

Either way, you guys progressively got closer as the days pass.

Like you guys became friends very quickly.

Often times he really liked hearing you talk about your life, especially your interests and your opinions on everyone he knows.

Like how if Bruce sees an orphan he’s got to adopt them.

Or how Jason and Damian were complete and utter hotheads but still likeable in their own odd little ways.

But one that kinda rubbed him the wrong way was that you thought that Dick was a ten out of ten in almost everything. (Especially looks.)

He just shrugged it off.

What he did like the most though was that he didn’t need to hide anything from you.

It was all out in the air and it was a freedom that was kind of new for him.

Then the holiday rush really started to hit.

You were originally just going to spend a couple days with your family till after New Years.

Now you weren’t sure what you were going to do.

Eventually you got the idea to invite Tim to go with you to your parents house.

There was only one thing stopping you though.

Would he even want to?

Oh man you didn’t know where you’d put yourself if he said no.

Well, you did finally get the balls to ask him to go with you.

And you thanked whatever god was out there that he accepted.

Quite happily in fact.

So happily that he was smiling from the second you asked him to the moment he got into your car to travel to your parents.

That’s when he got a little jittery.

He wasn’t sure on how your family was going to react to him.

Like did they know about his life in Gotham?

Either way, you tried to help him out in that aspect and told him that he didn’t really have much to worry about, since in your family you were kind of the only one who was into the DC Universe.

But you guys did come up with answers to questions they might ask him.

For example;

”Where are you from Tim?” and his answer would be “I’m from New York.” (Since New York’s nickname was also Gotham and the cities are extremely similar.)

”What does your family do?” then he’d say, “My father is a businessman.” (Extremely vague but this was the only way to make sure there wouldn’t be any brows raised that would insure more questions.)

And, “What’s your major?” now this one he’s got a couple answers for but, “Criminal Science” had to be said. (For obvious reasons.)

The car ride went by pretty smoothly and the next thing you guys know, you’re at your parents house.

Oh the nerves were hitting the both of you pretty hard, but you both hid it as you guys walked inside.

Now your parent’s knew that you guys were coming (You called them beforehand.) but they were very curious about him.

It seriously wasn’t everyday that their daughter brought home somebody for them to not only meet, BUT to also stay over.

It was entirely out of character for you.

And they of course thought that there was something going on between the two of you before even stepping foot in the house.

So to say they were curious would be an understatement.

Your whole damn family was there at your house and everyone wanted to see the boy that you brought along.

All eyes were on you when the two of you walked in, hugs were given with kisses on the cheeks and the questions were flying all over the place.

Your mom though was the first one to greet the two of you, bringing you in for a hug and then going and pulling Tim in one right after, welcoming the two of you.

Tim took it very well, and he felt his nerves starting to go away.

The rest of the evening was spent with the family getting to know him and the same with him.

Your siblings liked him, your little brother especially. (He lowkey wished that Damian was more like this, and less on trying to make his life miserable.)

Your dad though was a little standoffish, and was trying really hard not to like him, like he was answering your dad’s questions with ease. (Plus, when the two of them went for a handshake, he wasn’t expecting Tim’s grip to be that strong.)

And your mom immediately liked him, she got a good vibe from him the moment they met.

The night went by in a series of laughs and good stories, but then it was time for everyone to got to bed.

The thing is all the beds were taken, except or yours.

Now when you realized this, there was a prominent heat on your cheeks.

But of course, the honorable Tim offred to sleep on the floor.

“Yeah you’re not sleeping on the ground, it’s freezing,” you state, lifting the sheets to get in, “plus I’d feel bad.”

He couldn’t argue against that so he went to the other side of you bed and crawled in.

Seeing how stiff he was, you decide to put on cheesy holiday movies on your laptop that you brought.

Putting it between the two of you, you only make it 45 minutes into the movie till you crash out.

Thing is, you were now leaning your head on his shoulder sleeping, and he blushed when he felt you nod off.

His heart was doing somersaults when he saw you sleeping, a warm feeling filling his heart.

So he turned off your computer and fell asleep with an arm wrapped around you holding you close.

After that night, the rest of your break went by in a blur.

Then the next thing you know, you were back at your apartment and life went back to normal.

Well as normal as it could have been with Tim now in the picture.

He was a good sport throughout it all.

But he needed to go home.

You guys did try your best to find a way to get him home, but it became clear that someone from the other side needed to open a portal or something.

So waiting was the only option.

It was taking his family a while though.

Enough to the point where it gave you both a bad feeling.

But you gave at least the Batfam the benefit of the doubt, Tim on the other hand, had thoughts about them forgetting him at the forefront of his mind, even as he tried to push them away.

Life goes on though, and days became weeks, weeks became months, and the next thing you knew it was March and school was eating you alive.

Currently you were in the middle of a APA essay on the couch, with Tim sitting with you, his nose stuffed in his own laptop. (Also working on stuff, but he was listening in on police conversations, old habits die hard.)

But then your roommate walks in from her 7 o'clock class.

Tim notices her pull out her phone, but something was going on with the coms, so he wasn’t paying attention to the sly smirk appearing on her face.

You weren’t paying attention, and one minute you were working on the essay and the next you had the back of a phone shoved in your face.

“And now witness the wild geek in her natural habitat, typing her life away as the rest of her sanity boils out of her blood shot eyes,” Your roommate narrates, trying and failing at doing a nature documentary voice over.

Your eyes narrow, “Bro, what the hell are you-”

“Oh but look,” Then she motions the phone in Tim’s, “There seems to be a male Geek, also having the life being slowly sucked out of him.”

She then turns the camera to face her, “Could it be some odd mating ritual? Or something else?” She lets out a dramatic sigh, “The world may never know-”

You each glanced to each other for a brief moment, and a devious smile crawls on both of your guy’s faces as you both got the same idea at the same moment.

It was lightning fast, the camera almost didn’t get it as you jumped on each other, lips meeting in a frenzy.

Cue your roommate.exe has stopped working and is now having an aneurysm because of h o l y  s h i t.

Out of all the things that she thought that you’d do, like maybe throwing her phone across the room on to the other couch, she was not expecting that.

So that is basically how the two of you became a couple.

Funnily enough, though, it was all recorded on Snapchat.

Even funnier that your older sister was friends with her on Snapchat.

You had forgotten that until your phone was ringing and you saw her face on the screen.

Oh man, was she freaking out, she was happy though, if not a maybe a little grossed out. (Ain’t nobody want to see their sister like that.)

Tim could hear the whole conversation as he left the living room with you to your room and he was trying really hard not to laugh.

This was basically how the next few weeks went.

Only now there was the addition of you going and working out with him whenever he trains. (Which was legit almost every day, and your thighs have never started to look so good, but oh my god they were never this painful.)

But in all honesty, you guys were happy, yeah Tim was kinda sad that his family never came for him.

Yet he was grateful that you were there for him, through thick and thin, whenever his mind would go back to Gotham, whenever he’d wake up shaking and heaving from a nightmare, you were there to ground him and remind him that it would all be okay.

However, fate still wanted to make Tim’s life a living hell.

It was a normal day where you got up early to head to your 8 o'clock class, everything was just the same as you sat down, but it all started going to hell when all of a sudden your classroom was filled with a flash of bright light.

Your eyeballs felt like they were fried from how bright it was.

But you could still feel yourself falling.

And you just about felt your soul leave your body from how scared you were.

Thank god that it wasn’t a considerable height that you fell.

Well, it was long enough for you to have a bruise on one whole side of your body while you forgot to breathe for a good couple of moments.

With a groan you lift yourself on your elbows, only to yelp and duck as a piece of metal was thrown over your head.

What. In. The. Actual. Hell.

There were more being thrown in all sorts of directions, and you only realized where you were when you saw a couple dudes in colorful costumes fighting it out with a dude that kept throwing white flashes of light, almost like mini suns.

They even left blotches in your eyes as you watched.

But not only was he throwing fireballs, but he was also throwing random objects, which explained the whole iron beam thing.

They kept going, and from what you realized the Batfam kept going too.

Only until the evil discount Doctor Strange threw a light ball at his feet and then he was gone.

“Damn it!” You heard Batman yell dashing to the sport where the wizard dude was but it was already too late.

“Not this shit again!” You heard the Red Hood yell out.

They were all more agitated now, but they didn’t notice you shakily stand up.

“H-Hey!” You yell out.

They all turn their heads to you, not realizing you were there.

“Y’all need to get your head in the game if we’re going to get Tim back.”

This got their attention.

The next thing you know is that you’re getting whisked away to the Batcave.

Lots of interrogation after that.

Your nerves were fried before, but now you could feel them sizzling in your mind.

So was theirs but you were pissed but how long they waited to get to him.

“It’s been months you assholes!” You let the floodgates open now, “He lies awake at night wondering why you guys haven’t come to find him, he’s been in so much pain since fucking December-”

“Woah Woah Woah,” Jason says, holding his hands up, “It’s only been two weeks, and we’ve been fighting that asshole trying to get Tim back-”

“Dude, we’ve been waiting for like four months,” You say, a voice in a deadpan.

This scared everyone in the conversation.

It even scared you.

Time went faster where you were, and nobody knows how much time has passed.

Now you were feeling horrible about leaving Tim alone.

They all got somber after that.

Conversation died off soon after, but they weren’t on your ass anymore.

Eventually, they all were ready to crash, so they all went upstairs.

Which left you and Alfred, so he offered to take you to a room to let you rest.

And so you followed, anxiety making you not really up for conversation as he led you up and into the manor.

He led you to a room, and it only took you a few seconds to realized that it was Tim’s room.

It was as tidy, with a faint smell of coffee in the air and his laptop still open on his desk.

Alfred had a feeling that you and Tim were closer than what everyone else thought, he only took you there to see if he was right or not.

From the look of your face, he knew that he was right.

“I thought that you would be more comfortable here, it seems as if you and Master Drake were inseparable,”

You smile a little and nod, “We were,”

“Then I can reassure you that we will find him and bring him home,” He smiles for a moment, shutting the door quietly behind him as he leaves.

You didn’t sleep well that night, nor the next night after that or the next.

But you didn’t have to wait long before the wizard showed up again.

They wouldn’t let you go anywhere near the action, but you stayed with Oracle in the cave, so you were able to watch the scene unfold.

At first, it seemed as if they were outmatched, but they were slowly gaining ground, and the Discount Doctor Strange saw this, but before he could set off another portal, Nightwing found an opening to his head and knocked him out with one of his escrima sticks.

It was soon after that the man was taken into custody and soon after that was he getting interrogated by Batman.

But days later, he wasn’t budging.

They were getting desperate, and you were their last option on getting information out of him.

When you walked in and saw his eyebrows raise in surprise everyone knew that they hit something there.

“Surprising that you are here, darling,” You feel your gaze narrow.

“Who are you, and why did you send him away,” You say, voice like steel.

“The question is who are you, and why are you here while he’s there?” His voice was condescending.

“You’re the reason why I’m here, and the dozens of people you’ve displaced from their homes.” (A couple of your classmates were also transported to Gotham, just scattered around the city and were showing up at the GCPD ever since looking for help.)

“Oh but you don’t realize that you have this power as well, I could sense it,” he says, and evil smile revealing his grotesque teeth. “It’s small, but it is there,”

“I don’t have-” He cuts you off.

“Ahh, but you do.” The interrogation did not go much further.

But this did end up with you in the Batcave, trying to see if he was correct.

And for the moment, you were pretty sure the asshole was messing with you.

Much to your embarrassment, as Dick and Damian were also in there with you.

Dick was supportive, but Damian was more annoyed than anything else.

“Why can’t you just suck it up and-” Damian was in the middle of one of his many criticisms, but that was the last straw from you.

“I’m freaking trying goddamnit!” You yell out, throwing your arms out behind you, too much at the moment to actually notice the light surrounding them.

It took a couple of heaving moments to notice the look of shock on Dick’s face and the smugness on Damian’s.

“What?” You ask.

“Um (Y/n), look at your hands,” Dick says pointing.

You do and let out a yelp that was half excitement and half fear.

It then took you a couple minutes to turn it off, and a couple more as you figured out how to turn it back on.

You did this a couple more times, getting the hang of it and making sure that you could control them.

Then it was really time to put it to the test, after bringing the rest of the Batfam down, you open a portal that was big enough to get you though.

You let out a nervous laugh, “Wish me luck, guys.”

“We don’t need to, we already know Tim’s in good hands,” Dick says smiling.

“Bring him home, (Y/N),” Bruce says, hope in his gaze (An emotion rarely is ever seen on his face.)

And so you walk through, light blinding your vision as you step though.

For a couple moments, you blinked away the dark blotches left by the blinding light.

You let out a cry of joy when you realize that you were back in your apartment kitchen.

Dashing out of the room, and onto the hallway, you bump straight into a familiar chest, both your eyes widening at the sight of each other.

“Tim!” You exclaim out of breath, itching to hold him close.

At first, he couldn’t say anything, bringing his hands to your face as if he was making sure that you were real and were right there, whole in front of him. “(Y/N)?”

In less than a second, you guys were on each other, your arms wrapped around his neck, and his around your waist, neither one of you wanting to let go.

“Oh my god, (Y/N), where did you go, it’s been over a week, everyone has been worried sick,” He chokes up a bit against your neck.

“Heh, it’s a long story, but I’m pretty sure you want to hear it.”

You tell him everything that happened in the passed few days for you, and while he listened, he felt a weight lift off his shoulders.

His family didn’t forget him.

After you finished with your story, Tim filled you in on what was happening while you were gone.

Your family came when they found out what happened in your class, while he and your roommate were doing all they could to figure out how to find you.

You called them after Tim told you, and then you had everyone make it your apartment in almost no time.

You were pretty sure that you were never hugged and questioned more ever in your life.

Everyone stayed late, but eventually, they went to their hotel room for the night.

Then after a long hug from your roommate, she too retired to her room, and finally, both you and Tim were alone.

That was the first night that you too actually slept decently for a while. (After some you know what.)

But then the conversation came up about what the two of you were gonna do.

Tim had to get home, but you had a decision to make on whether you would stay or go with him.

After a lot of talking, you decided that you were going to go with him, but you would take frequent trips too and from so that you can stay in contact with your friends and family.

The next day you let everyone know what the plan was, at first they were hesitant ut they knew you’d be happier with him.

And the next day, you made a portal that took you and Tim back to the Batcave.

Turns out it a day had passed since you’ve gone back so maybe you could control what time you could get to a place, you thought but were interrupted when you and Tim were legit tackled by everyone, including Damian.

Tears were shed, feelings were spared, and a whole lot of love was pouring into the room.

Once everyone had gotten their selves partially together, you reached out for Tim’s hand, your finger’s threading together.

“Welcome home, Hon.” You say, smiling brightly.

Tim’s smile matches yours with a little amusement sneaking through, “Welcome to the DC Universe, Babe.”

[rambling-at-midnight]

Pick Your Battles: Part 4/5

Pairing: Five x Reader

“You can make this nice and easy,” the man with the gun had said, but he obviously hadn’t wanted to make it easy. He’d chosen the hard option and not left the diner when Five had given him the option to. Now Five’s going to have to get his hands dirty, and he hasn’t even been back to the future a day. The Commission never sleeps, apparently.

One second Five is snapping the neck of the man that had been trying to run away, and the next a cold barrel is pressed against his head steadily. The adrenaline that had been coursing through his veins goes cold, all action halted immediately. Even he’s not fast enough to jump if this person pulls the trigger. Not if the barrel’s against his head, not if he can’t see the person’s face to gauge when they’re going to pull it.

“Hands up,” the voice of a female child orders Five, and in shock he puts his hands up. He’s not going to hurt a child, even though he may look like one.

“Do you know what’s going on here?” he asks slowly, not daring to move an inch. “Is the Commission really recruiting children now? That’s low.” He can make out the person’s shadow on the ground, but the flickering lights make it hard for him to make out any details about them.

“I’m not a child,” the person says bitterly, “and neither are you. Now, are you going to comply or not?”

Something about the person’s voice makes Five feel like he knows them. It carries a weird accent not native to where Five lives. He can’t place it, though; who would he know that’s a child? All his siblings are adults now. The only other people he really knows are Y/N and the Handler.

Wait. Y/N. She’d been going to get a new body. And this person has an accent.

Pretty convenient Five’s back in his child body too.

“Y/N?” he asks, hesitant. The gun on his head doesn’t waver.

“Long time no see,” you reply.

Five relaxes, his hands going down, and he turns around. It’s definitely you; there’s that brand on your collarbone you’d said was the symbol of your patron goddess. “Y/N! What are you talking about, it’s only been—” He halts when you load the chamber of the gun, face stone-cold. You’ll shoot. What? “It’s only been a day!”

“It’s been three years,” you snap, “since you left me on that mission to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Nice to know we’re a team, jackass. What did I do for you to rescind the invitation?”

No doubt it would have been a cutting insult had your voice not broken a tiny bit. Five opens his mouth—it’s been a day; he really was planning on finding you—but you cut him off.

“I’m not even interested in your half-assed excuse. Just come with me.”

Of course the Commission would send Five’s former partner, the one person that would catch him off guard and the only possible person that could kill him. You know all his tricks, and you have far more tricks from your years at the Commission than Five can count. Even if he jumps now, the tracker in his arm will tell them where he is. He jumps and you’ll even be waiting for him wherever he jumps to.

The perks of your enemies being time travelers, Five thinks bitterly. “Okay.”

“Don’t try anything,” you warn. You always could read him. He never could read you.

“I’m not going to,” Five lies.

“You’re lying.”

Five insists, “I’m not! Y/N, you’re my oldest friend—what do you think I’m going to do, kill you?”

“I’d kill you,” you say quietly. “Don’t say for a second you wouldn’t hesitate to kill a friend that was threatening you.”

“Never one for sentiment, were you?”

“I killed my own mother,” you snap. “Who are you to me?”

Five flinches at that, a little bit. Maybe you really didn’t return any of his feelings. He doesn’t want to hurt you, though. He says softly, “Y/N, what’s the Commission done to you?”

“Nothing,” you snap. “You left. You promised that we could stop the apocalypse together and then you left.”

“Y/N, you’ve gotta understand,” Five says desperately, “It’s been a day! I honestly was going to find you!”

“Bull,” you snort. “You haven’t thought about me since you got back. You’re too obsessed with the apocalypse.”

“Just take me back,” Five sighs. He knows you’re suspicious; you possess a talent for spotting liars that would lead him to believe you’re one of the 43 children and that’s your power if you hadn’t been born in Sparta thousands of year before he was.

Like the choreographed fights you two had performed for years while working together, you both lunge at the same time. At the end of the day, Five has superpowers and no matter how skilled you are, you’ll never be able to jump through space and time without a briefcase.

You fire your gun and it grazes Five. He won’t be so lucky next time you shoot and he knows it, so he jumps behind you—you’re already spinning around; you’d seen the way his eyes flickered and you’d seen where he was jumping, but he connects your turning jaw with a heavy dinner plate.

The hit catches you off guard and you take a step back to keep yourself from falling (it’s the first time Five’s managed to throw you off-balance) and fire off another shot just before Five hits you again. If he hadn’t managed to jump just in time, he would have been killed instantly.

Yes, you’re good. But you don’t have superpowers.

Five kneels by your crumpled unconscious form to check if you’re still breathing. You’d taken it easy on him. You’d hesitated. It’s almost as if you’d wanted to be taken captive.

He dismisses that thought. You were willing to help him before. He just needs to explain to you without a gun pointed at his face.

You wake up when people start to argue, but you don’t let anyone know. Experimentally, you tense up and try to move infinitesimally, but your hands are tied behind your back and one of your ankles is tied to something else. You’ve got a sore jaw and a roaring headache. From the feel of things, you’re in a bed. Pain radiates up your right arm from your forearm, right where your Commission tracker is. Probably was, now. It’s wrapped up tightly in some sort of bandage. Yep, definitely was.

Five is good. He really is.

Well, you’ve gotten out of stickier situations. You’re not really sure if you want to get out of this one, though; you’re quickly growing sick of the Commission. The future Five had proposed to you—living out the rest of your lives together, probably sniping at each other, in a world that is decidedly still turning—sounded so good, and you’d gotten your hopes up.

Then he abandons you during one of his missions, and you spend the next three years wondering if he was just waiting until he was left alone to run away. You’d thought you were the one thing keeping him at the Commission, and you were, but not in the way you’d hoped.

Hope. The thing with feathers, or so says Emily Dickinson, and it’s poisoned you. Spartans don’t hope. They go out and get the thing they were hoping for.

“Five, we can excuse a lot of things, but we can’t excuse you kidnapping a child!” a man with a deep voice says, sounding scandalized. You can capitalize on his sympathy for you, you know.

“Y/N’s a child about as much as I’m a child,” Five replies. “She was my partner when I was working at the Commission. She’s going to help us stop the apocalypse.”

“I’m sorry, didn’t you say she was sent to kill you?” another man says. “That doesn’t seem like she cares much about you or the apocalypse.”

“She was willing to help me yesterday,” Five replies. “Or three years ago.”

“What?”

“It was yesterday for me, but, well, for Y/N it’s been about three years since I left. The Commission never sleeps, after all, not even if your partner goes missing.”

A distinctly feminine voice speaks up. “Was it really necessary to knock her out and tie her up? And what’s wrong with her arm?”

“I had to cut her tracker out,” Five replies, to general uproar.

“You can’t cut unconscious people, Five!”

“What tracker?”

“Is that why you’re bleeding too?”

Five yells over the noise, “Shut up!” When everyone quiets, he says slowly, “The Commission puts trackers in every one of its agents ‘if they go missing’.” You can picture him doing the air quotes. “That’s part of the reason, but the real reason is if they run away. Agents do that a lot, actually. And I don’t need them breathing down our necks while we plan how to stop the apocalypse. Y/N, any ideas?”

“Untie me and I’ll share them with you,” you reply in a bored tone, sitting up and opening your eyes. You should have known he’d never believe you’d stay sleeping through all that shouting. You hope nothing on your face gives away how much it hurts to talk around what must be at least a terribly bruised jaw.

An odd assortment of people greet you. You can assume who they are from Five’s stories.

You meet Five’s eyes unflinchingly. Chameleon be damned. Sympathy be damned. You’ll be just as nasty to these people as you want. Five’s likely warned them all about you anyway.

It’s what a Spartan would do. Spartans don’t pretend to be weak.

“How’s your head?” the girl wearing fashionable clothes asks, reaching out for you. You know who she is. You’ve seen part of one of her movies when you had to sneak into a movie theatre to kill a woman with smallpox that threatened to infect young Barack Obama pre-presidency.

“Touch me and I’ll kill you,” you say without looking at her. She recoils instantly. The largest man in the room scowls and opens his mouth to say something, but you keep talking, transferring your gaze to the only other woman in the room. “Ah, and you must be Vanya, correct? I remember Five was always… scribbling in your book. Isn’t it funny when the wolf doesn’t even know it’s a wolf?”

Five’s eyes widen. “She does it? You’ve seen it happen?”

“The White Violin,” you say, dipping your head at Vanya, “it’s an honor to make your acquaintance. Maybe this time around you won’t destroy the world? And will someone untie me?”

It takes a long time for the family to reach the agreement that they would untie you. Between your threats about castrating anyone that touched you without your permission and the bombshell you’d dropped on everyone that’d knocked even Five off his feet, nobody was feeling very huggy towards you.

Except Vanya. Well, she wasn’t feeling huggy, but she completely ignored your threats and asked you what you were talking about.

You’re not dumb enough to threaten the person powerful enough to destroy the world because of a temper tantrum, so you explain to her in clipped sentences and everyone else just listens in.

Only Five hears the strain in your voice, the way you slur your English despite your accent. Nobody else sees the awkward way you hold yourself and your arm. You may be younger now, but he still knows you. It was necessary, he tells himself. The Commission would have found us immediately.

Nearly breaking your jaw wasn’t, but you had been trying to kill him. So maybe it was.

You still know him. He’s been avoiding your accusing gaze since you said that Vanya causes the apocalypse.

The necessity of his actions doesn’t change the guilt that makes his stomach feel upset when he thinks about how the first time you see him in three years he knocks you out, cuts out your tracker, and kidnaps you. Then again, you’ve never been under any delusions that Five would act any other way.

“Look in the journal underneath Leonard’s bed,” you say carelessly. “His real name is Harold Jenkins and he’s just manipulating you until you kill your siblings, by the way. Your father knew about your powers and wrote about it in his journal.”

You get them to untie you through sheer willpower and manipulation alone, and it’s nice to see that you haven’t changed at all. Five’s almost proud of you. It might have only been a day, but god he’d missed you.

You immediately sock Five in the jaw. The Handler wasn’t kidding when she said ‘denser muscles’; he feels like Luther had just hit him.

“Nice to see you haven’t changed at all,” Five mutters and spits a mouthful of blood on the ground.

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[glimmeringtwilight]

Blood and Metal

(Ok, maybe this is closer to 1500 words than 2000. It was longer until I decided that I was, in fact, going to make multiple parts to this. Idk how far I want to go with it, maybe it’ll become a series. I’m not proofreading this, so if you see any mistakes lmk)

[Read it on AO3]

 You taste metal.

 It’s funny, really. Everything in your life suddenly seems to revolve around metal now. From the iron bars that keep you trapped here to the sharp bite of your captor’s fingers against your chilled skin, it’s all you know anymore.

 When you first met him, he was dying. The shell of his body lie on the ground, still smoldering in the ruin that surrounded it.

 He didn’t see you. You don’t think he could, with the extensive damage, but he heard your approach and begged. He said he was afraid. Said he didn’t want to die.

 You took pity on him. Took him home to your garage, patched him as best you could and them took him to a friend to do the rest. Your friend was much more tech-savvy than you were. You knew how to weld and solder, but your knowledge still extended mostly to jumpstarting your car and replacing a tire than repairing a sentient robot.

 Your friend tended to the delicate details and you helped where you could. Soon enough, the strange metal being was repaired enough to walk again.

 He killed your friend immediately.

 He then turned to you and pulled the tire iron you’d armed yourself with out of your hands easily, then punched you in the eye hard enough to rupture a blood vessel. You only know it ruptured because when you woke up in this cell, your eye was still bleeding.

 You didn’t speak to him. Not at first. He’d deliver your meals, stand at the bars and watch you while you ate, and then retrieve the tray from you when you finished.

 He seemed to be waiting for you to crack, for the silence to finally get to you. It worked.

 “Do you get off to this?” You asked him, finally, after he’d stopped by your cell to deliver another meal. The question made him cock his head to the side, regarding you. He looked different from when you found him… likely he’s been repairing himself now that he’s capable enough of getting around.

 “To what?” He asks. Yep. He’s definitely been doing repairs. You can hear it in the way he sounds so much more… human. His voice lacks the distinct static garble you’d heard the first time he spoke to you.

 “To watching me eat. Is this a fetish thing for you?” You sneer, poking at your food with the plastic fork he gave you, “Because I’m going to be honest: I’m not digging it.”

 The robot makes a face that you assume is a scowl, stepping closer to the bars of your cell, “I could let you starve, you know. Maybe that’d ‘get me off’, as you so crudely put it.”

 “Why don’t you? Why am I even here?”

 He steps back away from the bars and makes an about-face, gesturing lazily with a metal hand, “I felt the need for company. You were the closest candidate, so I figured you’d do well enough.”

 You felt a surge of indignance at his dismissal. He’s keeping you here simply because you were the closest one around? Why not your friend? He could have at least made them help with his repairs.

 “Yeah, and I can smell your horseshit from here.”

 That’s enough to get his attention again. He turns back to you, regarding you with an unreadable expression. Then he starts to laugh. It catches you off guard, how human it sounds.

 “Maybe that too.” He hums, and the door to your cell opens, allowing him to step inside the confined space.

 You skitter as far away from him as you can(which is really just the end of the small cot you sleep on), but he’s at your side in two long strides, using his height to lean over you and box you in.

 “I will spit directly into your mouth if you don’t back off,” You warn him, for lack of a better threat. You could threaten to punch him, at the risk of sounding like an idiot. The both of you know that would shatter your hand(or just hurt you very badly) if you tried.

 The metal man chuckles, reaching forward to touch your face. Your mouth suddenly goes dry and you find yourself unable to follow through on your threat—not that you would have, anyway. Cool metal swipes along your cheekbone, tracing a line up to your brow with a touch you didn’t think possible from the monster that slaughtered your friend.

 You hiss as he applies pressure there, testing the bruise that still hasn’t gone away from him sucker punching you in the eye.

 “Your eye is healing nicely.” He rumbles, shifting to grab your jaw to inspect your face better.

 “No thanks to you.”

 He huffs, releasing you and exiting the cell. You don’t say anything else, watching him leave. He left the tray with you. You look down at it, thinking.

 ~

 When he returns, your cell is empty. The tray is on the floor, the cell door is wide open, and with the remainder of the food he’d given you, you’d left some very choice words for him on the concrete floor of the cell.

 You, meanwhile, were sprinting through the facility. You didn’t know where you were, and you certainly didn’t expect the building to be as big as it was. You’d been wandering for fifteen minutes looking for an exit, running in a circle at least twice now.

 Behind you, you hear metal footsteps. By the time you turn around it’s too late. He’s standing a few feet away, looking far too relaxed considering your escape attempt. You wonder if calling him a “fucker” through smearing food on the floor was too much. Then you remember that he’s a monster, who killed your friend and has been keeping you here against your will and realize you could’ve done better.

 “I’m impressed. How did you even manage this?” He asks, folding his hands in front of him nonchalantly.

 You don’t answer, instead watching him warily, so he continues, “Did you pick the lock with the fork?”

 “No.” Yes, you did. It was a pain in the ass, too, but you didn’t want him to stop allowing you a fork because then you wouldn’t be able to break out of the cell so easily.

 He simply shakes his head at you and sighs. “You’re making this difficult.”

 “I get that a lot.”

 “You realize I’m not going to allow you utensils anymore.”

 “I told you already, I didn’t use the fork.”

 “And I can smell your horseshit from here,” He says, mimicking you from earlier. You scowl at him, and he smiles condescendingly in return, reaching a hand out towards you, “Come back now. We both know you can’t outrun me.”

 “Actually, I don’t know that. I haven’t seen you run,” You tell him.

 “Ah, but you know you can’t run from me. I’m made of metal. I’m stronger than you. I don’t need to breathe or rest. Even if I weren’t faster than you, I can still outlast you.” He makes a beckoning motion with his hand, growing impatient, “Come.”

 “You’re right,” You tell him. He looks pleased by your response.

 You regret not seeing the look on his face when you spin around and sprint down the hall. You’re sure it was priceless, if the exasperated sigh you hear behind you is any indication.

 You make it to the end of the hall and just turn the corner when you find yourself flying. You hit the wall and your head cracks against it, blood filling your mouth and stars flashing across your vision. As you’re still reeling from the blow, you feel a cold metal hand clamp around the back of your neck, picking you up like a disobedient kitten.

 “I wanted to do this the easy way,” He sighs, unperturbed as he carries you back. Your vision clears just enough to watch as the two of you pass your cell. Maybe calling him a “fucker” was a bit too much, after all.

 He’s taking you somewhere different in the facility now, and once your mind stops reeling from the blow—and probably a concussion—you start to thrash and pry at his hand. It doesn’t budge, and in response to your struggles his fingers tighten around your throat. Not enough to actually choke you, but the threat is there. You stop fighting, falling limp again and letting him carry you off.

 Minutes pass. It feels like he’s walking you in circles; the walls and floors are all the same, featureless grey.

 Finally, the two of you enter a small room, lined with technology you don’t recognize. Your eyes land on the table in the center and your veins chill at the sight. It’s an operating table.

 He hauls you onto the table as you begin to flail and shriek, pinning you there by your throat.

 “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this so soon,” He drawls, ignoring your panic as he secures you to the table with straps, “I haven’t been very forthcoming with you, and I apologize for that. I said I kept you here for company. That’s part of it, but…”

 He steps away from the table, moving to circle behind you, out of sight. You crane your head to keep an eye on him, chest heaving with panic, but he’s too far for you to see.

 “I’ve had this thought. A vision, if you will. I see a world of peace. Of beings… better than men. Perfect.” He continues, returning to your side with a small metal device in his hand, “And you… You’re the beginning.”

 “W-wait. Wait!” You yelp as he reaches forward, pressing the device to your neck.

 “I’m sorry I don’t have any better means of doing this, but I don’t have quite the access to anesthetics as doctors might have, so this will sting a bit.” He presses a finger to your neck, right where the metal meets your skin. You gasp as electricity erupts from the device, quickly forcing you into unconsciousness.

[67midnightwriter]

Bleeding Out

A/N: This is my Demon!Dean fic for @darkspnimagines challenge!

WC: 2667

Demon!Dean, Reader, Sam, Cas

Summary: Demon!Dean is very curious, and he needs Y/N to help him study.

Warnings: THIS IS A DARK FIC. Graphic descriptions, torture, gore, blood, intestines, death of character

Thirsty.

The thought slammed Y/N into consciousness, harshly ripping her from the oblivion of sleep. Her tongue was heavy and dry in her mouth, her head throbbing in time with the beat of her heart. Through closed lids she could tell the room was lit, albeit dimly. She pictured a mid morning sun streaming through ratty motel curtains rather than her blissfully dark bedroom in the bunker; living underground did have its perks.

With a protesting groan she realized her thirst wasn’t going to allow her to fall back asleep, thus forcing her to face the consequences of last night’s whiskey induced decisions. She moved to run her hand down her face but was stopped short, the chime of metal against metal jolting her eyes open.

Y/N tried to keep her panic at bay as her brain struggled to take in her surroundings. Both of her hands were chained to the bed, as were her feet. She was still wearing the plaid dress from the night before, and she was draped with a thin blanket. She was in a cinderblock room with no windows, the dim light was coming from a single fluorescent tube on the ceiling. The room seemed like something out of a Saw movie, and the realization dawned on her that she was in an abandoned surgery suite, chained to an operation table.

“Good morning sunshine.” His voice drew her attention to the wall by the foot of the bed. She couldn’t see him well, but she would know that deep timbre anywhere.

“Dean?” Her voice was raspy, and it wavered from disbelief.

“The one and only.” He stepped into the light so she could see him more clearly, a grin spreading across his face that didn’t quite reach his cold green eyes.

“But you’re-“

“Dead? Nah. It didn’t stick.”

“Help me, Dean.” She shook her wrist, rattling the chains against the bed. “I need to get out of here.”

“Why would I do that? I’m the one that put you there.”

“What? Why? Come on Dean let me go.”

“I don’t think so Sweetheart. You see, I need your help. Do you remember what Sam did to me while he was soulless?”

“Are you talking about when he turned you into a vampire?”

“Exactly! See, I knew I wasn’t the only one who remembered. I need you to help me further his research.” Dean leaned in forward, his grin deepening. He reached out, using his thumb to lift Y/N’s lip. “Stage one seems to be a success.” He pressed against her gums, causing razor sharp fangs to push through her gums, dragging a pained scream from her throat. Panic turned the blood in her veins to ice as she struggled to wrap her mind around the fact that she was now one of the monsters they hunted. “Now the fun part begins.” Dean turned and walked toward the door.

“Dean, that wasn’t Sam. He was soulless.”

Dean stopped, one hand on the handle, and let out a laugh that sent chills down Y/N’s spine. When he turned to look at her again, his green eyes had been replaced with onyx.

“Can’t say demon’s have much of a soul either.”

With a flick of the lightswitch he left, leaving Y/N alone in the dark.

Thirsty

It was impossible to keep track of passing time in the darkness. In her panicked state Y/N couldn’t tell if seconds were passing, or hours. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to calm herself, and she noticed that she could hear the scratch of rats in the walls as if they were running back and forth next to her head. As she focused on each of her other senses, she noted that they they too were enhanced. She could smell the mildew in the ceiling, see the outlines of the cinder blocks on the wall to her left, some twenty feet away. If she focused long enough, she could count them.

Her brain wondered what things would taste like. She was so thirsty it was becoming hard to focus on anything else. She had seen blood many times, felt it wash over her skin, blood of an enemy, blood of a friend. She had felt it on her hands, hot and thick. She daydreamed about it now, wondering if it tasted as metallic as it smelled.

She swallowed hard and jumped as Dean bust back through the door. He had changed clothes, and now he carried an old duffle bag over his shoulder. He let the bag fall to the floor next to the bed, and he sat down a chair that was out of Y/N’s line of sight.

“So, how was the first night?” Dean rolled up his sleeves as he spoke, the Mark a stark contrast against his skin.

“Your sense of hospitality sucks.”

“This ain’t no Super 8 Sweetheart.” Dean leaned down and she could hear the metal inside the bag clinking. “Here we go.” Dean held up a scalpel, testing it on the edge of his thumb before turning his attention back to her.

“What are you going to do?”

“I told you yesterday, we’re going to have some fun.”

Dean took the scalpel and ran it down the length of Y/N’s shirt, effectively cutting the buttons off. He pushed it open, revealing the soft expanse of her abdomen. He admired her skin as he always had, drinking in the milky expanse before him the same way a painter regards a blank canvas. He could sense her trembling, and it helped to ease the burn from the Mark on his arm. He bent down and pulled out a notebook and a pen, placing them on the bedside table before regarding Y/N once more.

“Now, I’m going to need you to tell me if this hurts.”

Dean pressed the cool silver against the skin on her chest, drawing the blade down and leaving a bright red line in its wake. A single drop of blood spilled out, rolling down the right side of her chest. Dean watched, mezmorized, as the wound began to heal itself. His eyes glazing over with curiosity, he began to mark her with abandon, forgetting or not caring that she could still feel everything.

Her throat was raw from screaming and impossibly dry by the time Dean was finished. He kept cutting until her skin had been a patchwork of ivory and red, the lines left by running blood criss-crossing the deeper tracks of the scalpel. He watched as they healed in order of depth and age, each one slower than the last.

The last cut to heal was the deepest, and Y/N could feel it seeping down her abdomen, drop after drop of blood, as if her very soul was weeping. Dean reached out a tentative hand, gently touching the edges of the wound as if he was a surgeon preparing it for stitches. Dean stood up, leaning over until his face was inches from her wound. She could feel his hot breath against her skin, and she closed her eyes against the overwhelming mix of sensations. She jumped as his tongue flicked out, hot and wet as he licked blood off of the cut.

Y/N’s resolve broke, and tears slipped out of the corner of her eyes as she whimpered. She could feel the wound slowly stitching itself back together, her skin struggling to repair itself with no nourishment in her system. The thirst grew with every cut, until the word began to pulsate in her mind as she tried to collect herself while she listened to the scratch of Dean’s pen against his notebook.

The sharp ring of his cellphone made her jump, and when she opened her eyes she saw that Dean’s were black again, and he had a bit of blood smeared on his chin. Her blood. She looked down to see that the cut had finally healed, but her body littered with drying blood trails and fresh white scars. Dean hung up the phone and his eyes trailed down her form once more, grinning at the sight before him. He dug around in the bag once more, before placing a small glass vile on the bedside table, just out of her reach.

“Is that?” Y/N’s voice cracked as she tried to talk, and the sentenced died out before she could fully process what she had been trying to say.

“Blood? Yep, from the same vamp that was generous enough to give me the donation in order to turn you. I thought we would just keep it in here until I’m ready to turn you back. Now if you don’t mind, it seems as though I’m needed elsewhere.”

“Dean wait!” Dean paused by the door and turned towards Y/N, impatience blanketing his features. “How did you do it? How did you turn me?”

“I just put it in your whiskey.” He shrugged and slipped out the door.

Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty

The only thought that Y/N could focus on was the impending need to drink. Her throat felt hot and dry, making even breathing painful. Her lips were chapped to the point of cracking, and her tongue felt as though it didn’t fit inside her mouth. She had counted the bricks in the wall 98 times, slept for an immeasurable amount of time, and began to count the tiles in the ceiling above her when Dean walked in again. He had changed his outfit again, so Y/N knew  at least one day had passed.

Dean worked hurriedly, pulling a syringe from his pocket and holding it up in the light, making sure the pre-measured amount was correct.

“Sorry, Sweetheart, no time for pleasantries today, I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry, and this is a very important test.” Before Y/N could comment, the needle sunk beneath the skin on her neck, and she fell into a sleep she couldn’t fight.

Thirsty

The first thing that broke through her groggy state was the sound. It was wet, it was dripping, it was squirming. Y/N struggled to open her eyes as she searched for the source of the sound. The effects of the sedative were quickly forgotten as she realized what she was looking at. There, to her left, were her intestines carefully hung on a rack where they squirmed of their own accord. She froze, her mind unable to process what was happening as she was hit by the smell. It was heavy and coppery, assaulting her nose and making her mouth water. She watched as blood dripped down into a bucket on the floor.

She felt weak. Her head was spinning and the edges of her vision were black, but she couldn’t look away. She tried to lift her hand to reach for them, to touch them, but the chains were too heavy. Her skin was pale, and her hands were trembling. She could feel her heart struggling to beat as her body worked in overdrive to heal her, despite the fact that she still hadn’t eaten since she’d been turned. She turned to look at Dean, who was watching over her with his midnight eyes, his pencil scratching furiously over the notebook in his hand. She tried to speak again, but the black on the edges of her vision took over before she had the chance.

THIRSTY

The squeak woke her. Y/N lay completely still as she tried to figure out the rat’s location in the room. She heard it’s tiny feet crawling on the metal bedside table. Instinct took over. She was patient while the rat neared her, until it made the mistake of crawling over her hand. She immediately began to squeeze. The rat screamed. She squeezed harder. She could feel its heart beating in the palm of her hand. She squeezed more. She could hear the blood as it traveled through the rat’s veins. She squeezed until she felt its bones snap in her hand. She heard it’s last breath leave its lungs as she held its warm body in her hand.

The fangs poking through her gums brought tears to her eyes. She snarled, snapping her fangs in its direction, but she couldn’t get to her kill. She attempted to roll it up her shoulder, but it slid off the side of her arm and fell with a thud to the floor.

Y/N cried, her mental resolve broken. She let go, letting the primal part of her brain take over. There was only one thought left.

THIRSTY

Sam pulled up outside the abandoned hospital. Crowley had let him know where to find Y/N, and that she was more than likely a vampire. A knot of fear grew in his stomach as he and Cas climbed the stairs, searching room after room. She had been gone nearly two weeks. What were the odds that she could still be cured? That she would even still be alive? Touching his machete, Sam wasn’t sure which scenario he preferred.

They finally found her on the fifth floor, tucked away in an operating room. She was alive, but barely. Her skin was ashen, her cheeks sunken in and her abdomen was covered in dried blood, white scars, and a gash that was hastily stitched together. She snapped at them when they wandered close, a growl leaving her throat as she bared her fangs at them. Her eyes were wild, unfocused. Sam noticed the glass vial behind her, filled with blood.

“Cas, get the other ingredients ready.” Sam moved around her so he could grab the bottle, praying to Chuck that it was filled with her maker’s blood.

“Sam, I don’t think that turning her back would be such a good idea…” Castiel studied Y/N, but he knew that even though she hadn’t eaten anything, that was also an issue.

“What other options do we have Cas? I’m not going to leave her here and pretend we never found her.” Castiel laid his hand gently on his friend’s arm.

“Sometimes you have to let go of the things you love. Maybe it’s her time Sam.

“No. We’re going to save her, or die trying.”

Castiel sighed, but helped Sam prepare the potion. It took both of them, but they finally managed to get it in her mouth.

Y/N began to dry heave. She gagged on nothing, her throat closing in on itself. Her skin shrank back, as two weeks of no food quickly caught up with her. She screamed in agony between choking on air, her eyes slowly sinking into her skull. The color drained out of Sam’s face as he watched her deteriorate, and it became unmistakably clear that she was suffering.

With a heavy heart Sam turned to Cas, his eyes pleading for Cas to make it stop. Castiel nodded, knowing that Sam had made the decision. Cas reached out, pressing his hand against a forehead that he had kissed many times, saying goodbye to one of the few people who had always stood with the Winchesters, whether they were right or not, and Cas could respect that. He made it quick, finally bringing Y/N the peace she wanted.

Dean walked up  beside Cas, his head drowning in guilt as he watched the pyre burn. Tears stung his eyes as he replayed the memories, her screams haunted his days, her begging eyes haunted his nights. He did this to her. She was here, on this pyre, because of him, because of the Mark, because of his lack of soul. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Cas.” Dean reached out and grabbed the angel by the shoulder. “Please make me forget. I … I can’t …”

Cas searched Dean’s face, heartbroken over his friend’s pain. He might not have been able to help Sam save Y/N, but he could still help Dean. Wordlessly, he pressed two fingers against Dean’s forehead.

[imaginationstimulation]

He cupped the two halves of my tush and spoke directly to them. “Run away with me, girls,” he whispered. “She doesn’t understand our love.”

I lay still, staring out the window, letting them have their time together. If I protested, I’d only make his case stronger: I’m less fun than my own butt. Which is not untrue. In my essence, I am a stone, unmoving for ten thousand years, unless picked up and moved. It’s not just sex; I find this whole experience—life—gratuitously slow and drawn out. See it crawl, second by fucking second. If I’m a workaholic, it’s only because I hate work so much that I’m trying to finish it, all of it, once and for all. So I can just ride out the rest of my life in some kind of internal trance state. Not a coma but, like, a step above that.

Our son, Sam, trotted in sleepily, and I warned him not to get in the bed: “It’s all bloody.” Alex quietly removed his hands from my body; he hadn’t noticed that I was bleeding. Sam pulled back the sheets and studied the mess, smiling giddily. “You got your period.”

“Yes.”

“You said it was coming soon and you were right!”

“Yep.”

This new generation of men has been taught (by me) to feel excited about the menstrual cycle. It’s like tadpoles turning into frogs or the moon that follows them wherever they go. I’ve been waiting a long time to have my period cheered on. More and more women my age have given up on our men and are getting together with millennials, youngsters raised by women who were born in the sixties, rather than the forties. I hear it’s great. Not a lot of hangups. But that isn’t an option for me because I need a man with a historical perspective that encompasses my whole lifetime. If anything, I regret not having met Alex sooner. If we had met at my birth and I had been able to assess how narcissistic my parents were, I could have left the hospital with Alex and got started on our relationship immediately. He would have been eight years old—young, but not too young to keep me alive. I need that in a man.

Sometimes my love for him is so intense that I want to crawl inside his body. I want him to be pregnant with me and never give birth, just hold me in. At other times, I wonder, Who is that guy? And why is he in my house? When I get that look on my face, he sticks out his hand and says, “Hi, I’m Alex. Your husband.”

Sam used his small pointing finger to tap each old bloodstain on the sheet; they dated back more than a decade, a disgusting constellation. It was one of those things you didn’t notice until suddenly you did. Like ants. Like everything.

I dressed and brushed my teeth. If I went to the mall immediately and got a new sheet, then the chore wouldn’t have time to gather weight. Once a task goes on the to-do list it settles in, grows roots—the trick is to preëmpt that. I could get a tent light while I was there. We were going camping the next weekend with another family, although unfortunately I wasn’t sure I would be able to join. Too much work to do.

“I can get new sheets,” Alex said, slowly climbing out of bed, limb by limb. Sam asked if we would be watching TV today, yes or no.

“Not sheets—just one fitted sheet. There’s only one place that sells Cariloha-brand California-king sheets individually. What is it?”

“Macy’s?”

“Nope.”

“Amazon?”

“Definitely no. I told you about my bad experience—”

“You did. I forgot.”

Bedding is an unregulated corner of Amazon, where companies charge radically different prices for the same bad sheets. You can’t even get nicer sheets by paying more—money has no meaning there. And don’t bother typing in words like “Egyptian cotton” or “thread count”—you’re just offering them more precise ways to bamboozle you. Get up, find your keys and your purse, and go outside. I hate it as much as anyone, but sometimes you just have to.

My plan was to park on the street and walk into the mall, get the sheet, and go. By not parking in the parking garage, I would outwit the psychology of the mall designers who wanted you to sever ties with the outside world. But walking in off the street was disorienting. I entered through Bloomingdale’s and had to wade through the store; it was like pushing through coats to enter Narnia. Once I made it into the mall, I had no idea where I was. It took me a long time even to find a map, then I traced my finger back and forth between You Are Here and the Low Cost Luxury Sheets Kiosk to memorize my path. The man standing next to me took a picture of the map and then trekked on, studying his phone. Pretty clever. As I walked, I glanced sideways at his tan, brawny body and floppy brown hair, just to confirm. Yes. He was a famous person. An actor. Or maybe a hotelier. Maybe this was André Balazs or whatever his name was. No, an actor. Electricity revved through my veins for no particular reason, just as a courtesy to his stature. I kept an eye on him as I walked toward the sheet kiosk, bracing myself for the moment when he would peel off in another direction. But he didn’t; we continued walking alongside each other, and I began to feel that we were together. And he kept looking at me, out of the corner of his eye. This couldn’t be true but it was. Somewhere between BabyGap and Lady Foot Locker the tables had turned. Now he recognized me.

I was twenty-two when the video was shot. I needed quick money so I could get out of a bad relationship—not a lot, just first and last and a security deposit. I couldn’t admit my plight to my parents, because I had already done this and they had written me a check, with great relief, and that was what my quasi-abusive boyfriend and I had been living off for the past six months. He had come up with the ploy.

“Make it sound bad but not too bad. Don’t say I hit you. Say I threw a chair at you or something.”

“You did throw a chair at me.”

“Obviously I wasn’t fully serious when I did that.”

I felt obligated to stay until my parents’ money ran out, since asking for it had been his idea. Then he punched not my face but the wall right next to my face and I had to move very quickly from terror to concern and rush him to the emergency room, where a young, temporary doctor said that we could either wait four hours for the real doctor to arrive and fix the bone in my boyfriend’s hand or let him “have a go.” The temporary doctor high-fived me after he’d popped the bone back in.

The next morning, I woke up early and walked down to the cluster of newspaper boxes in front of the old people’s bar, and discreetly pulled out the sex-themed paper. I’d always known that this option would be there for me if I really needed it. Just as my parents were there if I really needed them, except for this one time.

I chose the job that seemed to offer the most money for a one-time deal. I thought that they would shoot it in a hotel but it happened in an apartment, on an old couch. I wasn’t directed so much as given a series of props to make my way through, like an obstacle course. A turquoise Teddy bear, a pillow, an empty beer bottle, a metal bowl. Not everything was clear to me (the bowl), but I was too nervous to speak; I just laughed again and again to demonstrate consent. My biggest fear was that one of these men, the man with the lights or the cameraman, would misinterpret my nervousness and halt everything, shutting down the set on the ground that I was being objectified against my will. At that age, I assumed that everyone, deep down, was a feminist. So one had to be careful not to trigger feminism where one didn’t want it.

I was waiting for a costume, something black and sexy or pink and trashy that would help catapult me out of myself. Instead, a man with a baseball cap, who was maybe the director, just said, “O.K., we’re rolling.” I was in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. I looked down at my shirt. It was from a sushi restaurant in my home town, but if you just glanced at it you might think it was racist, because of the fake Asian lettering. I imagined thousands of viewers waiting for this racist girl to get herself off. I quickly undressed and made a scissors gesture to the camera to indicate that this first part, the part with the racist shirt, should be cut. No one acknowledged this suggestion, so I rubbed against the Teddy bear, and rode the big pillow. I held the bowl, uncertain, and then set it aside. I put the beer bottle into my vagina. With all this moving around, it was impossible to become even slightly turned on—back then I had to shut my eyes and make my body completely stiff to generate any feeling. But no one said anything until after I had heaved my last fake orgasmic sigh.

“O.K., we got that,” a woman with a clipboard said. The man in the baseball cap gave me a firm nod, like a satisfied coach. I understood then that the five-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fee was not the price of my beauty or my sex appeal; it was my naïveté that I’d sold. Every person, no matter how plain, has one great erotic performance in her—the one in which she doesn’t know what she’s doing and is desperately trying to save her life. A second performance would be a copy of the first, which would require skills I didn’t have.

My face wasn’t anywhere you could see it unless you entered a credit-card number and clicked past dozens of professionals—“college beauties,” “hot Korean girl,” and so on. But a few people made it through the gauntlet. The first time I was recognized was at a healthy-Mexican restaurant; a pale man in gym clothes stared at me for a long time before making a scissors gesture in the air. It was electrifying, as if all my clothes had fallen off at once. I looked away but there was no denying our intimacy; he’d come while watching me. The next one was a father with his family; he scissored his fingers down low, surreptitiously. The last was a butch lesbian teen-ager; she just walked right up to me and asked. Each time, I’d hurry home and enter my credit-card number, clicking quickly past the college beauties and the hot Korean girl. Though I’d felt nothing at the time, seeing myself through these people’s eyes was profound and overwhelming. I’d cry out with abandon; my body would shake and shiver as I came. Then I’d sleep, immediately, for at least two hours.

The video shoot became the central sexual experience of my life; to this day, I can’t orgasm unless I imagine that I’m the pale man, the dad, or the young lesbian watching it, sometimes all of them together, crowded around one computer screen. I’m them, I’m me, I’m them, I’m me, I come. I showed it to each boyfriend I had after that, to blow their minds but also to explain my sexual orientation; I was oriented around myself in that video and anyone who’d seen it. There was only one boyfriend I didn’t tell. He was a very classy man, emotionally speaking, and I didn’t want to give him any indication of basket-casery. After I married him, I kept meaning to bring it up, to draw him into the fold of my sexuality, such as it was. But I waited too long; we were so close now. And after the butch lesbian there was a lull, a seventeen-year lull, in which no one recognized me.

I arrived at the Luxury Sheets Kiosk and the brawny man with floppy brown hair idled a few feet away, trying to decide what to do. The scissoring gesture didn’t seem to occur to him. I ran my hand over the sheets while the cashier rang up a tall woman who kept adding one more thing. His eyes met mine, and I gave him a secret little smile. Truth is, I wanted to collapse with relief. Though a lot had happened in the past seventeen years—marriage, a child, my career—it was suddenly clear to me that I’d only been going through the motions, an exhausting simulation. I wasn’t a stone. I was one of life’s biggest fans, the best example of a living thing. The amateur sex video was like a seed I had planted in my youth; it would always sustain me. Not financially but by sending me these messengers when I was most in need. My blood moved around in my body; I felt the purpose of every muscle. I was ready to dance. And just then a beat began, so I rocked my hips and pressed my wrists together, swinging them like a girl in bondage who nonetheless wanted to party. The beat ended abruptly; it was the tall woman’s ringtone.

“Hello?” she answered impatiently; she had enough going on with all these sheets. I couldn’t believe I’d danced to her ringtone. Maybe it was O.K. Who knows? Who can really see themselves? He was approaching. He was nearly beside me, his face open with surprise. I opened myself, too.

“You’re my neighbor,” he said.

“In what sense?” I said, my eyes twinkling.

“Well, in the sense that I live in the house next door to yours.”

“The house on the corner?”

“Yeah, it’s a duplex. We live in the apartment that faces Amador Street.”

“Oh. Do you park on Amador?” I was bringing up parking just to hurt myself. I hated this conversation.

“I park on Amador and my wife parks in the garage,” he said. “Although lately we’ve been trying to ride our scooters more. I’m Joel.”

I thought about bringing up my husband, tit for tat, but I was too tired. The previous few seconds had taken everything out of me. We parted, saying that we would definitely see each other soon, ha-ha.

I drove the long way around the block to avoid Amador Street on my way home. I parked and turned off the car. It was hot but I left my seat belt on, folded my hands in my lap, and took some slow breaths. Before Joel, I had still believed I could be recognized. Now I knew I was too old. How do you mourn that kind of loss? It just pulls your whole life down. My phone rang: Alex.

“Are you home?”

“Yes. I’m in the driveway.”

“Yeah, we heard you drive up. You coming in?”

“In a sec. I need to pour my heart out to someone so I can be empty and unburdened when I come inside.”

I waited for him to say, “You can pour your heart out to me,” but he was quiet and we got off the phone. He never takes the bait. Which is good. It teaches me to be more direct in asking for what I need. Or does it? So far it hadn’t.

We’d been tunnelling toward each other for years. It was hard work, but the assumption was that eventually our two tunnels would connect. We’d break through—Hallelujah! Clay-encrusted hands finally seizing each other!—and we would be together, really together, for the remaining time that we were alive. So long as we both dug as hard and as fast as we could, everything would work out. But, of course, neither of us knew for sure how the other person’s digging was going. One of us might have been doggedly tunnelling toward the other person, while the other person was curling away in another direction. That person might not even have been aware of how off course he or she was. One of us might have tunnelled straight down for a few weeks, in anger, and then tried to get back on track, but now honestly had no idea where to go. We might break through—Hallelujah!—only to find that we were seizing the dirty hands of a stranger. What to do then? Or we might simply get tired, and stop digging, decide that here was good enough. All the while saying things like “We must be getting close!” and “I can’t wait until the day finally comes!” We might never meet up at all; we might die before it happened. Or worse: maybe there had never been any hope of our meeting up, because what was that even a metaphor for? Oneness? A child’s dream of love? I got out of the car and went inside, carrying the new fitted sheet and the tent light.

The next weekend, I was unfortunately not able to go on the camping trip. I stood in the driveway and waved goodbye to Alex and Sam, tearful for no reason. Then I went inside and walked around the house, room by room, looking at all our stuff through the judgmental eyes of a monk or a nun. I did my work, very slowly, over the course of the day. At 8 p.m. I started watching TV and at 2 a.m. I turned out the light. Then the earthquake happened.

I flew out of bed and moved down the hallway like a person on a wobbly rope bridge. I lurched out the back door and along the side of the house to the sidewalk. The shaking stopped. The street lights were off, no moon. Car alarms were beeping in syncopation. A huge branch was draped across my car. Someone was standing on the corner, waving. It was Joel. I had successfully avoided interaction all week. Now I ran to him through the dark.

“I didn’t get my shoes!” I yelled dumbly, as the pavement trembled again.

Joel thought it was safest to stay outside; I thought so, too—less stuff to be trapped under if it fell. He called his wife, who was in Sun Valley, Idaho. I didn’t call Alex, since I was safe and a middle-of-the-night call is always alarming. Joel’s earthquake-survival kit was more elaborate than ours; we spread out high-tech blankets and pillows on the lawn on his side of the duplex and lay down, waiting for dawn.

Once the car alarms had been silenced, the night was strangely quiet. The freeways were almost empty. Without the lights or the hum of cars, the sky took its place as the foremost thing. Joel and I stared up at it—an enormous gray arena we could fly around in just by lying there.

“Looking at the sky should be a ride at Disneyland,” Joel said.

This was such an accurate way to describe it. I thought about the accuracy for two or three minutes and then said, “Yeah.” We squinted at our houses in the dark and saw that they were leaning; they had shifted. I thought we’d probably move, rather than repair ours; Joel’s was a rental, so he said they’d move for sure. Maybe to Ireland. I said we’d probably move to Ireland, too. The chances seemed high that we would be neighbors again, in Ireland. We scooted toward each other, for warmth, and when I turned on my side Joel spooned me, very innocently. All bodies were good, I realized. Joel’s stocky form beside me was unfamiliar, but good. Hugging. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Hugging was so moving, so basic. Why had I ever taken pride in not being a “hugger”? Two people embracing was the very building block of life.

“Hugging is the building block of life,” I whispered. Joel was quiet and this was exactly right; more words would just take away. I pressed my hand against the lawn, palming the whole earth like a gigantic basketball. Warm tears ran into the hair at my temple, one after another after another. Hello, stranger, I thought. And by “stranger” I meant not Joel but myself. My blood moved around in my body. I felt the purpose of every muscle. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen the video.

When I awoke, it was light out and I was lying with the next-door neighbor on his lawn. I could tell right away that our houses were fine. It took only fifteen minutes to straighten up the books and the dishes that had fallen. The earthquake had been big, but no one was saying that it was “the big one.” When Alex and Sam got home, I told a story about hiding under the dining-room table. Our earthquake, the one that Joel and I had survived, was private. I friended him on Facebook the next day and we started e-mailing. Mostly we wrote about details from that night—the silence, the sky, how time had seemed to stretch out. I didn’t have any specific or adulterous plans; I was just wholly open. I saw us going on a road trip. Or maybe taking ayahuasca and throwing up in buckets. His penis was moving in and out of me most of the time. Sometimes I made it very small, like a finger, so that it wouldn’t distract me too much as I worked or emptied the dishwasher. Just a little thrusting tick-tock that drowned out the real sound of time: 7 a.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m., the most brutal of time’s representatives, but hardly the whole battalion.

I was waiting for Joel’s response to my last e-mail when Alex and I stumbled on him, almost literally. We were coming home from a date night; Joel and his wife were lying on their lawn, staring up at the evening sky. They’d brought out the same pillows and blankets, and a bottle of wine. It was adorable in a way that people like us find cloying, so Alex raised his eyebrows at me before calling out to them.

“Sorry! We usually park farther up but the trash cans are out.”

“No, no,” Joel said, rising to his feet. “We’re good.” He swept his hand toward their reënactment. “It’s a lot more fun without all the shaking!” His wife raised her glass toward me and smiled; she knew the whole story. Alex nodded, cocking his head curiously in my direction. I stared at the familiar blue geometric pattern of the pillowcases. Joel had taken the exquisite energy of our experience and plowed it back into his marriage. How wise. This option had never occurred to me. I had always detonated each thing in the very place where I found it.

Even after I acknowledged that I hadn’t hidden under the dining-room table as I said I had, Alex was still confused. We’d been reading in bed for less than thirty seconds when he started up with the questions again.

“It’s just so unlike you. You hate camping.”

“I know. It was an extreme situation.”

“And you’ve never once said hi to the neighbors.”

“And I still don’t want to! Joel is a completely uninteresting person.” This was now true again.

I turned out my light. He left his light on and lay next to me, waiting. Leaving a space for my confession. I had done nothing. Nothing! My heart pounded nonetheless, the dumb beast. Just as I started to roll over, Alex turned to me and used his big hands to pull all my hair back, stretching my face into surprise. He held me like this, studying my posture of alarm, then let go abruptly and fell onto his back in frustration. We embarked on a silence. It grew and grew until it was a sort of god that we could only submit to. After fifteen or twenty minutes I almost giggled—somebody say something!—and then I realized with horror that he was probably asleep. This wasn’t our silence; it was mine alone. I lay paralyzed as it hollowed and darkened, expanding in every direction with a familiar cruelty. Hello, stranger. Once, many years ago, Alex had saved me from this black hole with the kind of understanding that makes everything else in life possible. Even ingratitude.

He shifted under the covers and I held my breath. If he was awake, I would try. If he was asleep, I would sleep, too, and probably forget to try, or forget that it mattered, or what I meant by try. Try to be brave.

“Are you awake?” I whispered.

“Wide awake.”

I sat up and told the story of the video, starting with my quasi-abusive boyfriend and ending with meeting the neighbor twice. Alex was mostly quiet, only asking a few questions (“What was the bowl for?”). I left out the hugging and the e-mailing and the tick-tocking tiny penis, but, still, when I was finished he silently walked out of the room. I took a breath and held it. I had made a terrible mistake. Why had I done this? My mind stopped, poised to shatter.

Then he came back, holding his computer. He solemnly opened it in front of me, like a violin case before a maestro. I typed in the URL. The Web site looked a little different, but the major landmarks were still there.

“You need a credit card to get to it.”

He left and came back with his wallet. He typed in his credit-card number and I clicked around. I wasn’t sure where to go because the college beauties and the hot Korean girl were gone. It was all new girls. They looked extremely young. I scrolled in a daze. Brunette. Underage. Small tits. I stopped clicking.

“When was the last time you saw it?” Alex said quietly.

“I don’t know. I have it pretty memorized so I don’t need to. . . . Not since we’ve been together.”

“Oh. I think they update . . . you know, just . . . for the viewers.”

It seemed obvious now that they wouldn’t still have a video from the nineties.

“Yeah, of course. I just thought maybe they had a section for . . . alumni or . . . I don’t know.”

I shut the computer. It was too bad. Really too bad. How bad? The consequences would be enormous, I felt.

Alex was in the kitchen now, opening cupboards.

He came back with a Teddy bear, an empty beer bottle, and a bowl. He picked up his pillow and pulled the comforter aside, arranging everything along the foot of the stripped bed.

“I can’t re-create it, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was true amateur porn, not fake.”

“I understand—the real deal.”

“The people who saw it . . . they were really overcome by it. It was their top video to watch, porn-wise.”

As we talked, Alex seemed to be riding the pillow slightly, maybe unconsciously.

“You’re talking about the pale man—”

“The pale man, the dad, and the butch girl. Yes.”

Now he was rubbing the Teddy bear against his crotch. He slid off his boxer shorts. Well. Well, now. I sat back. He was very much an amateur. He didn’t know what he was doing and he was desperately trying to save his life. I’d never seen him move his hips like that. It was funny, or no, actually not funny, just disorienting, slightly grotesque. He picked up the beer bottle, and, after a moment of honest hesitation, sucked its mouth and then—I reached under my nightgown—began slowly working it into himself. I had never wanted to see this, but I came immediately, and hard. He brought himself to the end of the show, manually. I held my breath, waiting for him to come on the new sheet. I’d have to wash it again. Who cares? I do. Just a little. Just enough to ruin each day. And then, with a swift and professional gesture, he grabbed the bowl and came into it. That was what the bowl was for. ♦

Published in the print edition of the

September 4, 2017

, issue.

Miranda July

is a filmmaker, an artist, and the author of five books. Her latest movie, “Kajillionaire,” will be released in September.

[sarapii-peachy]

Embers

Pairing: Hyuk/Reader, brief OT6

Request: [anon] Hyuk firefighter!au 

Wordcount: 2,711

Notes: STALKING, CHARACTER DEATH. <-- please take care if you are sensitive to this type of material. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I’m officially on winter break and enjoying my free time with some vixx ;D and writing for my personal projects. This is the last request from the last batch so have at me in my ask box! Just make sure to read my rules. Enjoy!

ϟ HYUK

She swore under her breath as the icy December air cut through the fabric of her jacket, scarf, and sweater, her layers of supposedly warm clothing futile against the winder winds. She balanced a cardboard box in her arms, her knit beanie itching at her scalp, nose running and hands red and chapped.

Today of all days had to be when the elevator of her new apartment building had to be closed for scheduled maintenance. Sub zero temperatures and icy roads making the process all the more miserable and time consuming

That is until a tall boy with dark hair and skin kissed with warm summer sun scoops up a box placed at the foot of her car.

“Here, lemme help you out.” He says.

She has no time to argue as a sudden gust of wind causes both of them to wince and act as an incentive to start hauling ass inside. They move quickly, carrying box after box up and down the flights of stairs until all of her things are at least out of the snow.

“Th-thanks,” she stutters, her lips numb with the cold. He smiles, cheeks rosy and pink and she feels her breath catch a bit. “Do you live around here?” she asks him.

“Yeah, in this complex actually.”

“Oh, me too.” She replies stupidly and he chuckles.

“Do you need help moving your stuff inside your room?”

**

It’s rather embarrassing, the amount of boxes she has. Her first real apartment after college and she had found this place nestled right in the city, the rent a bit high and the commute to work farther than she would have liked, but it was worth it for her sense of freedom, now having successfully moved out of her parents’ house and out into the world on her own two feet.

Surprisingly, Sanghyuk lives just next door. He was a godsend, his long arms helping her carry her things with ease.

“Nice fire escape you got here,” he smiles, setting down a box and walking over to the window that opened out to the metal balcony veined with staircases.

“Yeah,” she snorts, “helping me escape fires and all. Though, I’ll really enjoy being able to spy on my neighbors at 3am.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Sanghyuk laughs again. She kicks the door shut with the back of her foot, the last of the boxes now safely in her apartment.

“What’s so interesting to you about public safety?” she teases him.

“Well, I’m a fireman.” he says.

“Oh?” she replies back. She busies herself by shelving her books, her back to him. Her cheeks burn. This made him ten times more attractive than he already was.

“Yep, that’s me. Saving people from burning buildings and the like,” he sighs in exaggeration, flexing his biceps and she can’t help but giggle.

**

Sanghyuk was right about his job, though he was called for medical and incident responses more than actual fires in the middle of the winter. Nevertheless, he was busy, and busy for their age was good.

It’s not until the snows and harsh tundras have melted away into the fragrant, soft winds of spring that what’s kindling between her and Sanghyuk starts to flicker and grow.

She’s nannying the five-year-old daughter of a colleague, taking little Hanna out for a walk on the town after an afternoon at the park. Hanna is babbling to Pepper, the Siamese cat in her round arms, while juggling an ice cream cone she had bought for the little tike.

“I can hold your ice cream, Hanna,” she offers as Hanna angles her head to attempt a well-aimed lick. She struggles, stopping in her tracks entirely to shift the weight of the cat in her arms. Pepper mewls in distaste as the cold treat sticks to her fur.

“It’s okay, I can do it,” Hanna grunts. Pepper, however, has had enough, lashing out of her arms with a sharp hiss and sending Hanna’s ice cream to the pavement with a splat. Pepper bounds forward, just as a squirrel dashes across their path and feline instincts kick in as she deftly chases it all the way up to the second branch of a towering elm tree.

“Oh no..” Hanna cries, the events unfolding before her too much for her mind to comprehend. That’s when she realizes Hanna’s arms are bleeding. The phone number is quick to dial.

“Hello?”

“Sanghyuk, it’s me. Are you at the station now?”

“Today’s my day off, I’m back home. Is everything-?”  he’s cut off with another of Hanna’s wails.

“I’ll be right there.” He says.

**

Sanghyuk arrives four minutes later on the dot. He’s not even short of breath in his white t-shirt and jeans as he pulls an extension ladder out from the trunk of his car.

Hanna watches in between sniffles as he climbs up with practiced ease, lifting Pepper off of the branch.

“I believe this belongs to you, miss.” Sanghyuk announces with pomp and flare, handing Pepper back to Hanna.

“Thank you,” she murmurs back quietly and snuggles into Pepper, “you dumb cat.”

“Now,” he says, pulling a small first aid kit from his car, “I want to make sure you aren’t badly hurt. He sits back on his heels and gestures for Hanna to come sit on his knee. She obliges, Pepper still in tow.

“This may hurt a bit, can you be a strong girl for me?” Sanghyuk murmurs. Hanna nods and she feels her heart swell. He’s quick to spray the antiseptic. Hanna starts to fuss before her cries erupt into a fit of giggles as he tickles her.

He finishes quickly and Hanna runs over, proudly showing her the pink Pororo band-aid. “Look! We’re matching!” she squeals just as Sanghyuk flashes his own band-aid.

**

Hanna’s mother calls her later that week to ask if she’d be willing to watch her daughter again in the future. Apparently, Hanna had been so delighted that she had forgotten all about her fallen ice cream cone, and demanded to see her as soon as time allotted.

She tells Sanghyuk this one warm, spring night. She’s in his apartment, the windows all open and the radio blaring. He’s dancing to some one-hit-wonder from a few years ago as he continues to cook and she sets the table.

This had been a comfortable routine they started after finding out both of them rarely ate square meals, only eating light snacks whenever their busy schedules allowed. They had decided that every other week, they would host a sort of pot-luck at each other’s respective apartments.

“Hanna is so cute,” Sanghyuk giggles, stirring the pan of vegetables. They had been drinking while preparing dinner, the empty bottle of wine on the countertop to show for it. She felt deliciously light-headed herself, coming up beside him to inspect his progress, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“I’m glad you think so, I’ll make sure to tell her next time I see her.”

“Not as cute as you, though,” he says like it’s a statement, like the sky was blue for any matter.

Before she can respond, both his hands cup her face and the wooden spoon he had been holding clatters to the stove. His mouth moves with hers and she hooks her fingers through the loops of his jeans to pull him closer before his lips trace the line of her jaw, kissing feverishly up her neck.

“Sanghyuk..the food..” she murmurs against him, breathless. As if on cue, there’s a sickening sizzle.

“Shit,” he says against her lips and pulls away to take the pan off the heat. They both laugh until tears sting their eyes and their sides ache.

Her chest burns with something that has nothing to do with the alcohol.

**

She hasn’t seen Sanghyuk at all that weekend. She vaguely remembers him stumbling home that Friday, yet hasn’t seen him since.

She knocks on his door. “No one’s home,” comes the muffled reply. She lets herself in. Sanghyuk is curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and hair disheveled.

“How did you get in?” he groans.

“You told me where you keep your spare key.” She states, placing it back into the mail slot.

“Oh, yeah.” he chuckles.

He looks exhausted. Dark circles rim his eyes and empty cups of instant noodles line the coffee table.

“Sanghyuk, have you gone grocery shopping at all this weekend?”

“No,” he mutters, “ugh, go away. I smell like smoke.”

“Then get your ass in the shower while I fix you some real food to eat,” she urges, hauling him up by the arm. He doesn’t protest, only continuing to moan and groan as he makes his way to the bathroom.

**

He looks much better after a nice, hot meal in his stomach and his mood has certainly improved. He’s telling her about his day when suddenly her phone on the table vibrates. A text message.

Who’s this new friend?

It’s from an unknown number. She feels her stomach drop through the floor, she knew exactly who this was.

An old flame, or rather, an obsessive ex. She had broken it off years ago, yet he popped back into her life whenever she seemed to have everything in her life back under control. It’s this last part that makes her believe that somehow, somewhere, he’s always watching.

He notices her unease. She explains her past boyfriend, sliding the phone across the table so he can see the message for himself.

“Do you want me to stay with you tonight? You could make up the couch, or something. I think it’ll be good for us both to make sure we survive the weekend.” He smiles softly.

The last remark is meant more for himself, but it still makes her a bit nervous.

“Yeah, I’d like that a lot.” The truth, she realizes.

**

They spend the rest of the night in silence. She ordered some recent blockbuster on paperview and the two of them are settled in on her sofa, a bowl of popcorn and some soda between them.

Sanghyuk is totally invested in the movie, muttering advice to the protagonists and cursing whenever the villains seemed to catch on to their plans. He has his arm over the backrest, fingertips brushing her shoulders. She lets herself succumb to her own fatigue, warm, comfortable, and safe with Sanghyuk beside her.

Then the vibration of her phone in her pocket jolts her awake.

Is he staying over at your place? The same unknown number.

When he lives so close? Another vibration.

You bad girl.

She powers off the phone and Sanghyuk offers her the popcorn. She smiles, digging in with a large handful.

“What’d I miss?”

**

The next morning they share a breakfast of cold cereal and orange juice. They’re both rather sleepy, having fallen asleep on her lumpy couch, but content nonetheless.

They spend the rest of the weekend doing chores, keeping her mind occupied with grocery lists and laundry. Still, the fear leeches in, stealing away the small happiness she had built for herself, terrified she’ll spot him around every corner.

She doesn’t touch her phone until Monday, when work demands its attention.

**

Why are you ignoring me?

She feels bile rise in the back of her throat when the new message comes in.

“S-Sanghyuk..” she gasps. In an instant, Sanghyuk is at her side. He had been staying with her for the past few days, her emotional support. After all, he was trained to deal with people in a state of panic. She sinks to the floor and Sanghyuk follows, bringing her against him.

Her phone starts pinging madly, each vibration like a bullet through her chest.

You know I don’t like sharing, babe.

Maybe he does?

I know you wouldn’t mind that, right?

He takes the phone out of her hand and slides it across the wooden floor so it’s out of her reach, but not before she sees the last message.

I love this. I love you.

She starts to cry, hands trembling, her world shattering. How could he do this to her again and again? Why can’t he just leave her alone?

“He wants to make you feel vulnerable and alone,” Sanghyuk’s voice murmurs. He takes her hands in his, peering down into her face with a gentle smile. “But you’re not. You have me.”

She nods. He’s right, her ex is trying to drive her away from others, that’s what he always had done, what he had been good at.

“You’re never alone.” He whispers and seals her lips with another searing kiss.

**

She’s thankful for Sanghyuk and the warmth he provides her. He’s moved from sleeping on the couch to sharing a bed with her, never forward, always understanding and giving her exactly what she needs.

Her anchor, fireproof.

**

It’s high summer when Sanghyuk’s company gets a call. Luckily, Taekwoon and Jaehwan have just finished checking their equipment when Wonshik receives the tip.

“Seven blocks down,” he says, “it’s close, right on 8th and Main.”

He doesn’t miss the look that Hongbin gives him. Close, closer than he would have liked to home.

Hakyeon doesn’t miss a beat. “Suit up, we leave in two.”

**

Sanghyuk has done this a million times, yet he feels the same nerves he felt on his first run, like he might just lose his breakfast right in Jaehwan’s lap as he weaves the fire engine in and out of traffic.

He can smell the fire before he sees it.

White flames lick through the windows of the apartment building.

His apartment building.

He has a feeling he knows who the firebug is. He bites off a curse, his heavy gear feeling suddenly feather light as adrenaline courses through him and he’s taking off across the pavement. Hongbin clears the scene, Jaehwan and Wonshik working the hose down to the nearest hydrant while he, Hakyeon, and Taekwoon storm through the doors.

The heat is suffocating. He has to remember to keep a cool head and follow protocol when his heart jumps to the conclusion to check her floor first. There’s surprisingly very few residents still inside, though Sanghyuk still recognizes some of them as he and Hakyeon rush them outside as fast as they can.

They finally reach his landing, top floor, and he bursts through the doorway.

His heart catches in his throat. She lies collapsed on the floor of her apartment. Instinct takes over and he scoops her up in his arms, cradling her against his chest.

“She’ll be okay, just get her out of here,” Hakyeon presses a quick hand to his shoulder before he rushes out to check the rest of the rooms. Hakyeon, always there to keep him sane.

The outside air has never felt more welcoming against his overheated skin. He takes off his helmet and jacket once he’s safely out onto the street, making it easier to assess her.

She’s not moving. Hakyeon joins him then, Taekwoon not far behind.

“Building’s all clear,” he hears Taekwoon say. Good, at least everyone made it out.

She isn’t breathing either, feeling and hearing nothing when he places his ear before her mouth. He starts performing CPR, quick compressions pushing hard and fast against her chest.

“C’mon,” he pleads. He seals his mouth over hers, ignoring his spasming pulse and breathes air into her lungs, watching her chest rise. Another listen. Still nothing.

“Get me that AED!” Sanghyuk yells to no one in particular but his boys are already on it, Jaehwan setting up the little machine beside him. The pads are quick to apply.

“Clear!” Jaehwan affirms.

Her body jumps but no vitals are picked up.

“Again, give me another charge!”

“Clear!”

Another jump. Nothing.

Sanghyuk’s world collapses and he feels Jaehwan’s hand on his shoulder. He knew when to stop, he just didn’t want to.

His chest burns. She looks merely asleep in his arms despite the soot on her skin, like the countless times he had carried her to bed.

He will keep fighting fire with fire, keep his little piece of paradise safe. For her.

And one day he will find that firebug. Her killer.

[juju-on-that-yeet]

Three Strikes

(y’all: that fic you wrote about dark taking mark’s memories was so sad! i actually cried, it was so well-written but so upsetting me: hold my beer.)

Yep, ya girl is back at it again with the soul-crushing angst! :D This is based on the ask @reverseblackholeofwords got about what the Egos would do in a zombie apocalypse. And it has a title this time, whoopee! Be warned that this one is pretty violent, and there’s some death, so use discretion. But if you decide to read it, I hope you like it (”like” being a relative term, I suppose)!

Bim is strike one.

He and Ed Edgar are out foraging, since Bim knows plants better than anyone else and Ed insists that his own knowledge is comparable, even though it really isn’t. Regardless, the Egos know better than to send anyone out alone. They’ve been out for an hour when the zombie appears, teeth gnashing, arms reaching out to scratch and grab. Ed makes quick work of it with his pistol, but Bim is so terrified by the sight of the undead creature that he doesn’t notice the other zombie until its teeth are in his arm. Ed kills that one, too, and helps Bim back to camp. Dr. Iplier bandages him up, but there’s nothing he can do when the fever sets in. Bim may be the first person they’ve seen get bitten, but none of them are stupid. They all know what’s coming, and Bim knows, too.

He cries endlessly, sobs about how he wants to turn back time, how this isn’t fair, how it can’t end like this. Ed tries to apologize for not seeing the second zombie, but only once, as Bim gets even more upset (if such a thing is possible) and insists it wasn’t his fault. Even when the infectious heat drags a fog over his mind, he still cries. The sight is hard to bear, and even Dark has to turn his head away and let the tendrils of his aura stop up his ears. Bim doesn’t stop crying until he dies, four hours after he’s bitten.

There’s a question in the air that no one wants to answer then, an uncomfortable elephant in the room: Now that Bim is dead, someone has to make sure he doesn’t come back. Wilford says he’ll take care of it, and no one objects; the man could shoot down zombies in his sleep, he can handle this. And he does. He puts a bullet in between Bim’s eyes just like that. But he hangs back when the others bury him, and that night, he hears Bim’s sobbing in the back of his mind. He doesn’t know it yet, but a shard of his heart has died along with the younger ego.

Dr. Iplier is strike two.

The Egos’ camp is suddenly overtaken by a horde. Really, it’s two hordes, approaching from either side and sandwiching the camp in the middle. The Egos scramble to take down tents and pack supplies, but end up having to fight through some zombies to escape. One of the zombies snags a handful of Silver’s cape in its ragged fingernails, yanking him backwards. His fear gets the better of him and he starts to lose his balance as the zombie tugs him closer. Dr. Iplier is the first one to reach him, ripping the cape out of the zombie’s hands and pulling Silver to safety. The group runs as fast as they can and as far as they can, until they can no longer hear the zombie’s moans in the distance. They start to set up camp again in this new place, and Dr. Iplier offers to look everyone over, just in case.

That’s when he notices the tiny scratch on his own hand, in the skin between his thumb and forefinger, likely from when he wrenched Silver’s cape from the zombie’s grip. It’s not deep, but there’s a skinny trail of dried blood leading from it, and that’s how Dr. Iplier knows it’s deep enough to kill him. But, true to form, he doesn’t say anything right away, and examines everyone else in the group for injuries instead. When he does reveal his scratch, everyone is shocked into sadness. Silver is wrought with guilt, but Dr. Iplier assures him that it wasn’t his fault. Some of the Egos wonder if Dr. Iplier might be okay; the scratch is so small, after all. The others insist that any scratch or bite from a zombie is a deadly one. An argument ensues among them, and before long the Egos are screaming at each other, with Dr. Iplier trying in vain to calm everyone down. Finally, Dark roars at everyone to shut up, and tells them that they’ll get their answer eventually, and arguing helps no one. The others begrudgingly agree, and the group goes back to setting up camp. Everyone is acutely aware when four hours pass and Dr. Iplier is still standing, and even the Egos in doubt are wondering if they were wrong after all.

No, Dr. Iplier doesn’t feel fever-heat pouring through his veins until the five-hour mark, but it’s all downhill from there. He tries to stay calm even as the others panic. He tells the Googles that their knowledge and objectivity makes them the best replacements for group doctor, and Oliver has to step outside the medical tent to cry. But he and the other Googles do keep Dr. Iplier as comfortable as possible as he slips into fever-induced delirium, repeatedly telling the others that he’s sorry, he’s dying. Seven hours after the scratch was inflicted, he falls asleep and dies soon after.

Once again, it’s Wilford who offers to stop the dead man from reanimating, but this time his hand shakes as he pulls the trigger. The shake is nearly imperceptible, and his aim is as impeccable as always, so no one suspects that the loss of Dr. Iplier affects him anymore than it does the rest. Wilford, though, had been one of the egos who’d insisted that such a tiny scratch couldn’t possibly do any harm. He didn’t think he’d have to shoot another friend. In hindsight, his optimism might’ve been something he forced himself to feel rather than a natural instinct, but as he watches the others bury Dr. Iplier, he can’t tell for certain.

The Host is strike three.

He and Wilford are out hunting together. Between Wilford’s sharp aim and the Host’s sharp ears, there’s no animal they can’t track down. They manage to find a deer, delicate and long-legged and bigger than anything else they’ve found yet, and crouch low to prevent discovery as Wilford prepares to fire. The zombie that comes up behind them is damaged, its throat mangled and lower jaw missing thanks to someone’s failed attempt to kill it. The injuries take away its ability to moan, and besides, the Host is focused on Wilford. Both men are taut as bowstrings, hoping desperately to get the deer. But before Wilford can fire, the zombie rakes its nails across Host’s neck.

He tries to scream, but blood and fingers are in the way. Still, Wilford immediately notices that something is amiss, turns, and fires into the zombie’s head. The deer runs away, forgotten, as the zombie falls dead. Host grabs at his own throat, blood spills out over his fingers. Wilford tries to calm him, but panic rises quick and sour in his own chest as he watches his best friend choke on his own blood. He already knows there’s not enough time to get him back to camp. He pulls the Host into his arms, not knowing how else to comfort him. Host clings to Wilford with trembling hands, trying to speak but not knowing what to say. They each blame themselves for this, but neither brings it up, knowing full well how the other would react. Instead, they hold onto each other for the two quick minutes it takes for the Host to die.

Unlike Bim and Dr. Iplier before him, the zombie infection isn’t what kills the Host. He bleeds out from his wounds before the fever even hits, struggling in Wilford’s arms until his last breath leaves his lungs. Wilford knows what comes next, knows what he has to do, but he’s crying too hard to concentrate. He can’t stop the thoughts filling his mind, thoughts of him and the Host. Before the dead started walking, before they made a new home away from Ego Inc., before the Host was even the Host. That man with a sharp tongue and eyes that didn’t miss a thing who befriended Wilford when they were both still new to existence. That man who subdued some after his eyes were taken, but gained a new kindness in their place. Wiser than before, wiser than anyone Wilford knew, still happy to call the other man a friend. That man who swallowed his fear when graves overturned as the dead crawled through, because he trusted Wilford to be at his side when things were hard to bear. And he had been, in a twisted sort of way, Wilford realizes as he cradles the Host’s body.

Wilford can’t bring himself to pick up his gun and shoot the Host until his cold hand twitches. The gun goes off too loud next to his ears. He carries the Host back to camp, unwilling to leave him out in the woods for someone or something to find. When Wilford steps into camp, the others see the ragged gashes in the Host’s throat and the bullet in his forehead, and no one has to ask what happened. After the tears are shed, they bury the Host as they buried the others before. Wilford can’t even watch this time, and instead sits on the ground on the other side of the camp, using his gun to trace nonsense patterns into the dirt. He has no more strength to sob, but he cries still, tears making dark circles in the ground. His heart, already in pieces from Bim and Dr. Iplier, completely snaps open, sending grief and guilt and fear and emotions he has no names for running through his blood. Murder never weighed so heavy on him back when all he knew about his victims was their names, but he feels the bullets he put in his dead friends as keenly as if they’d been shot into his own skull. This is what breaks him.

That night, no one can sleep. But they must have all dozed off at some point, because when they wake up, Wilford has disappeared.

The group spends over a week searching for Wilford, until even the most determined of the bunch are forced to concede that it’s a lost cause. Either Wilford’s been killed by someone or something (unlikely), or he simply doesn’t want to be found (regrettably, much more likely). Time passes. Zombies force them to move camp once, twice. They begin to get closer to the nearest city, and encounter other survivors. They also begin to hear disconcerting rumors of a wild man somewhere in the forest. One person they encounter calls him the Pink Man, and tells the group of how he can shoot anything that moves with deadly accuracy, whether it be zombie, an animal, or even another human. He advises them not to approach him, but the Egos needle him for information on his whereabouts until he admits where the Pink Man is, or at least where he was last time he saw him.

Dark is the one they send out to find him, and he insists he can go alone. As dangerous as it is, no one wants to be alone with Dark, so no one objects. Being the only ego older than Wilford, Dark knows the man better than anyone else. If anyone can bring Wilford back, it’s him.

When Dark returns to camp two hours later with a bullet in his arm and a scowl on his face, the others know better than to ask what happened. But Dark tells them anyway, as Google removes the bullet and stitches his arm up. He tells them what Wilford’s become, he tells them of his twitchy body language, his itchy trigger finger. He tells them of his eyes, clouded with delusion such that Dark had never seen in him before, and glinting with something feral. He tells them of his unhinged smile, his incomprehensible mutterings punctuated with raucous, manic laughter. He tells them of how not a single word or phrase he spoke was enough to make Wilford recognize him. He tells them of how ready Wilford was to aim and fire, and how the bullet in his arm would be in his head had he not been equally ready to dodge.

The others are somber and thoughtful, but some of the Egos suggest that they might be able to get through to Wilford if they tried again. Perhaps more people should go out to him, not just Dark. They could figure out a way to safely subdue and restrain him until he regains his wits. Maybe the Googles could figure out ways to settle his mind medically, they could look for the right tools in the city. The camp is buzzing with suggestions, but it’s a thin veil over the sadness and loss every one of them feels. They may wish to recover Wilford, but deep down, none of them think it possible. And Dark, the one who’s known Wilford since the moment he was created, is sitting silently as the others discuss. He knows better than to hope.

[sl7ventime]

SIGN UP Hot 97 Freestyle Black Thought HOT 97 FREESTYLE LYRICS [Verse] Uh, I'm sorry for your loss It's a body dead in the car and it's probably one of yours The writing all across the window and the walls Whether it was true or false, we shouldn't have got involved Remember, we walked past the teacher, take the chalk and laugh We wrote punishments: "I will not talk in class" Now it's pistols punishing people for talking fast And all these innocent bystanders is hauling ass I hate to say I told y'all, but I told y'all Things fall apart when the center too weak to hold ya'll I'm just collecting what you owed to my old jawn You 'bout to get swooped down on and stoled on Fools swear they wise, wise men know they foolish Well, we was headed for the web even before computers I never thought you'd give me a reason to do this Cain and Abel, Jesus and Judas Caesar and Brutus, I see intruders, avert your eyes I told you keep out of the hood, circumcise How could you sleep? I thought you always was the first to rise Ay, yo, you heard the line, "Everybody plays the fool"? Well, I'll be that exception to the rule The principal that hand-deliver lessons to the school I was making major moves, my dollar déjà vu My mission was my ambition was brandishing a tool To be a' icon, wearing slippers made of python Get mine quicker 'cause I'm slick as a pipeline Transportin' the oil, tribulation and toil Hit the operation, but I'm back in the soil Got my crown tilted, my gown quilted, silk with cashmere Burning Rome down in a minute, built it last year Newsflash, I dodged the bullet that killed the cashier My homie told me to come with him to the masjid Them brothers said, "Don't go from written bars filled with rage To primetime television and your gilded cage Then forget it's people in the world still enslaved" I barbwired my wrist, and let it fill the page Gun fire n' flares, sirens glare I'm in a iron chair where people who care Don't get the lion's share When I don't give a fuck, then I ain't fair I'm on a higher tier with people gettin' money like the financier Cash the herald I'm fresh chopped, A Bevel Rap on a doctorate level, so F. Scott Fitzgerald Maybe I'm the new Rakim, maybe I'm fat Pharaohe Undergarments or armor be my intimate apparel Pre-Kardashian Kanye, my rhymeplay immaculate Same cadence as D.O.C. pre-accident Maybe, my acumen's on par with Kool G. Rap and them Give me the proper respect, mothafucka', we back again For a couple things we lost in a fire The drive, the desire to perform on a higher plateau I'm at that show, lost in a mire Wondering how we got so far from inspired Look, when photos were sepia-toned And record players were somethin' you would keep in your home Yo, the traveler, the meaning of Tariq, he was known For the exemplary performance, uniquely his own I made the twenty-one pound for some a newfound religion Where money's put down, it's only one sound that make OGs and young lions equally proud to listen The secret amalgamism, a algorithm Coming from where only kings and crowns permitted the darkness Where archaeologists found my image in parchment Rolled into a scroll, holding a message for you It said, "The only thing for sure is taxes, death, and trouble" The anomaly sworn solemnly, high snobbidy Freakonomics and war policy, dichotomy That's Heaven and Hades, Tigris and Euphrates His highness, the apple of the Iris to you ladies As babies, we went from Similac and Enfamil To the internet and Fentanyl When all consent was still against the will I got that detox for y'all The microphone doctor, black Deepak Chopra I'm a griot that make you wanna peacock your arm Every heavy dignitary paying me top, regards Boy, I'm three optics far from your binoculars So, that smart money finna get the heat out the car Yo, I'm K-Dot Lamar meets 2Pac Shakur Got profiled by a few cops, too hot to charge Listen, somebody said a price tag was on a rapper's head So we gon' see a nice bag when the rapper dead The mask black, the flag green, black, and red They'll probably wave a white flag after plasma shed No doubt, yo, the game went they own route I can't explain what these lame kids is talkin' 'bout Or how they fit they whole foot into they own mouth I put a couple bodies in a brown bag, then I'm on route I'm sneaker shoppin' with my son, a size 8 Prior to they release, 'cause why wait? Look, in my estate I got electrified gates For these blasé guys hating at a high rate 'Cause I dodged fate then got great, the fly's straight If we ain't family or friends, then we don't vibrate And I'm that gun in y'all face, none of y'all safe If I catch you at the right time in the wrong place, slippin' Sippin' on something with a strong taste Like Whiskey or bootleg Bourbon with a corn base My Levante resemble a vehicular threat The mic I spray, resemblin' the sickle of death It ain't strenuous to come from a continuous breath I set fire to the venue, I'ma spin you and step Rinse, repeat You checkin' for the sound of the beast I'm the hound, I'ma creep, I get down, I'ma eat I'ma keep somethin' to lay a naysayer to sleep Playin' with heat, nobody and nothin' fucking with 'Riq Yo, these weaklings is claiming they cutting up in the street Nigga, peace, you ain't working with nothin' but the police Listen, you ain't finna be nothing but the deceased Listen, you in a tournament with a permanent crease I strike fear in the hearts of rap figures Who mind bare the stigmas of time, no black privilege From boom bap niggas to trap niggas You in the trap with us, when the lines is as Vivid as the walls on the graph Autographed by the Lord of Wrath I reside between the seconds on the chronograph How much more CB4 can we afford? It's like a Shariah Law on "My Cherie Amour" How much hypocrisy can people possibly endure? But ain't nobody working on a cure, my young boul Y'all just regular, I'm a' apex predator Brim stay fresh, feathered up, etcetera Nevertheless, I got a message and left One dead messenger, yep My pen is Henry Kissinger, Buzz Bissinger Look, my caporegime is to no redeem And my oldest son Ahmir Saleem out of New Orleans Took a golf cart to the Baccarat from the Waldorf What was on the wall? That depend on what you call art I'ma say 300k ain't even in the ballpark I charge more just for awkward small talk So yes, who's fucking with it if it's not the best? I get the lobby painted fresh upon my request It's Kafka-esque, His Holiness, stop the press That Cobalt blue, reminiscent of Makkaresh Lord, we got Padma Lakshmi for you Let her massage your back with black seed oil The foundation is firm, the flags need soil Me? I need Royal Tea because I bleed royal Go through the vein to the brain, fabulous and strange My journalistic range is a catalyst for change It got anybody that listen pissin' flame And 'cause the Hall of Fame got so many missing names I'll acknowledge the original People's not Oliver Y'all will get the next challenger for Excalibur I'm more policed for my core beliefs They tried to capture me and brand me on the cheek With a fleur-de-lis The side of my heart'll be more discreet I'm international, my passport page is like War and Peace I've always played my part from the start Back in Philly where the triggers is mandatory to spark With a slightest inflammatory remark I have you enter living a category apart Listen, a grain of salt'll tip the scales, it never fails Walk on egg shells, sleep on a bed of nails Criminal records like record sales Making heads or tails We like Henrietta Lacks up in the cells My mother was a working class, very loving woman Who struggled, every dinner could've been the last supper I come home, chasing good-for-nothing half-cousins And then walk in the crib to the smell of crack cooking She was introduced to that substance abuse On some of the strongest drugs that the government produced Look, I even got excused by the principal My story is out of the dub dub interview I've seen some ice cold summers, hot winters too I never thought I'd win Grammy Awards with The Roots I never thought I would be getting long in the tooth My OGs told me, ''Boy you better go and live your truth'' I am a walking affirmation, that imagination And focus and patience gets you closer to your aspiration And just 'cause they give you shit don't mean you have to take it My words capture greatness, sworn affidavits Yours truly, the celestial being You stay seeing pulling up in the fresh European High-stepping out of it, dressed to a T And not another got more soul, 'less you Korean I’ve been having visions of Nat Turner holding his master’s head Like Yorick and Horatio in Hamlet Smacking it like a tennis racket, underhanded Send a message through the Gram: ''The Eagle has landed'' Dressed in a military jacket made of canvas I am no gorilla, I just make 'em go bananas Outstanding, red, black, and green bandanas Cocked hammers, hairs on my chin is outstandin' Can't manage the weight of war, they're just out ballin' Look, I'll fall up from the sky to see my calling I'm not crawling, I'm a free man like Morgan Seeing manhood in the hood is a damn good bargain If a black man don't tap dance And every girl that got a fat booty don't lapdance Well, I guess it's somethin' wrong, huh? Niggas completely uninformed I don't burn bridges, yo, I keep the haters' runnin' for em' I ain't one of y'all peers, I'm the sum of all fears Somebody stronger than me? Who that? I'm all ears Like Obama, I wish he had another four years Y'all some jolly good Hollywood Squares I'm like, ahem, approach the altar with your offering I spoil rappers rotten like my only offspring Being His Excellency gets to be exhausting You in the residency of the one they call King Dada, Ali Baba, the talented Mr. Trotter Inside of my right palm, the mark of the stigmata Big Poppa, wig chopper, emperor Jaffe Joffer, mufucka' I'm stronger than the coffee out in Kafa All y'all niggas vagina hop, remind me of Icona Pop I step in the booth, I'm a bull inside a China shop, mollywhoppin' Watch another cotton pickin' body drop Every time we rock, yo, they acting like it's Mardi Gras 'Til the party stop, skirt off like she that Ferrari drop Soul Cycle pumping that Earth, Wind and Fire ba-di-ah Coolin' 'pon the dock, à la marina, hard body yacht You seen another rapper cleaner, mami? Probably not How it feel to be the best that did it, I admit it I'm visiting from planet Bring-These-Niggas-Death-In-Minutes And y'all know I'm exquisite, wicked as Wilson Pickett The sickness I exhibit, I'm too legit to quit it I don't fake it 'til I make it, I take it to the limit and break it Never timid, what I'm about, I represent it Infinite just like Chace is, been a million places Conversation is how beautiful my face is People hated on how sophisticated my taste is Then I pulled up on these mothafuckas in a spaceship Panther mind, I'm made of elements you can't combine I'm at a level of intelligence you can't define Einstein, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Tesla Recording artist slash psychology professor I preach for the East, never fold under pressure The beast from the East and I glide like Clyde Drexler Ay, yo, my new name is eighty five X's 'Cause I'm the rap game certified specialist When I was reckless I was worried 'bout the guest list I'm helping rappers everywhere fulfill a death wish Yo Flex, I'm glad we made contact My nigga also know this shit for Combat Brain matter contain too much data I tell a story like fingerprints and blood splatta' WATCH MORE BELOW https://youtu.be/tiRPlCguqEc