#and die of hunger and thirst next to the brain. next to *him*

[bedazzled-skull]

loving that man so much i wanna punch him in the face, pull my hair out, drop to my knees, tear my skin off with my own hands, get picked up like baby and cry in his chest

[faerunsbest]

LOST

A little fic inspired by @tealfling

Syveris found that momentum tended to very often simply carry him, as he rarely had want or need to redirect that energy. Though sometimes that momentum was simply more than he could stop, right now he found himself  somewhere he was sure no one belonged. One fight could become two and the world turned under him and before he could take in the turn his face his cold stone. Syveris groaned as he pushed himself up, looking around the miniscule stone room, he found the only thing separating him from others was metal bars. 

The men around him reeked of bile and ilk and weeks without washing. His stomach lurched and threatened to ladder back up his gullet, only with focus could he keep it down. Staying calm was hard when breathing came with such a penalty. Breathe to focus but the air smelled of rotting death and for the first time in years, he felt panic. He had to focus on something else, push it  back.

The massive man moved to sit up on the broken concrete floor. He crossed his legs and placed his hands on his knees and placed his focus on sound. He let the sound of his own beating heart steady him, his mind placed precedence on the sound over every smell. Around him the caged men began to speak, some more vulgar than others and despite tasting the air he focused on himself and the center of his being. His long pointed ear twitched when the sound of grating metal filled the room. Syveris opened his eyes  to find the bars locking him in, open and guards waiting.

“So then, where are we off to?”

The tall tiefling asked as he stood up, following the guards curiously. He didn't quite want to be here but he also didn’t see an immediate exit, it seemed the easiest thing at the moment was to follow along and see if he found freedom as he was walked to an open door, where brilliant sunlight nearly blinded him. One of the guards pointed to the open door and spoke in low gravelly tone

“We stop here, you go out there and you die. And if you don't we’ll take you to a bigger room”

Syveris raised an eyebrow at the guard, he wanted to ask a few more things but that might be an easier exit. Maybe.

The tiefling found himself walking out into red sand, looking around  at broken weapons half jammed into the dirt.  Massive stone wall, too tall for even him to leap over. Behind was stadium seating as the cacophony of voices rang out he realized he was as close to hell as the living got.

The towering tribute to Nessus, a massive coliseum dedicated to recreating the nine hells for gladiators. His stomach dropped as he realized that behind these walls death was inevitable. It would happen, although it didn't have to be at his hands. 

That night he sat in his only moderately larger cell and looked down at a bowl of watery grits, he worked his jaw. Something is better than nothing and he didn't know how long he would be down here.

He wouldn’t take the swing, no matter how many times they put him in the ring, he simply redirected every attack until his opponent collapsed and every time he was whisked away before he could help them. One match, two and a week has passed and it seems he will be pushed forward into the next battle. Each one, more exhausting than the last,water grits and no meat, no real food. No sunshine but what shone into the ring and now he didn't notice the smell of death and Syveris looked down at his hands watching color drain from his skin he wondered how much longer he would have to endure. There had to be a way out, his mind raced with hunger clawing at the back of his skull. Thirst pinched at his brain and he felt like he was losing himself. No sooner had the thought occurred to him than the feeling of something gripping his horn and pulling.

He twisted in place, their grip loose enough to allow him to look at them but not run. A woman on the other side of the bars in the cell behind his. For a moment he froze at the image of her, filth mottled her skin but he didn't see that. He saw inky black eyes with pin pricks of liquid fire staring down at him.

“You no hurt them?”

Her mouth moved like language was a distasteful foreign thing. She spoke as if it grated her, broken phonics forcibly pieced together to get a message across. He just shook his head no, she let go of his horn and gripped the bars that separated them. For a moment he looked at her hands, pale blue against the blackened steel and all he saw where the littering of scars wove across her knuckles.

“You play and die, but play.”

He furrowed his brow, trying to see past the shadows that masked the bottom of her face. A cage framed her mouth… another look at her hands and he realized there were thick metal cuffs on her small wrists. Why was she bound?

“When you play die, you lay with dead ones. Throw out, you wait til dark and sneak- you can be out”

Syveris listened carefully, tilting his head.

“If it is so easy, why are you still here?”

She only looked at him offering a slow blink as she tilted her head.

“If i go, no one else will”

With that she disappeared into the dark behind him and he knew, she wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with. Now as alone as he could be in these cold perforated cells he sat and could do little more than think.

If i go no one else will 

He realized after several hours what she meant, if she left then there would be no one left to tell people how to get out. Play dead and you’ll be free.

The strange woman was right.

Three days later Syveris dug his way up through a pile of corpses,  gasping for air and almost screaming. His lungs were on fire and he swore he could feel his veins struggling under his skin he felt on fire and cold. Tumbling out from the mountain of what would be mulch, Syveris grunted and groaned trying to stifle himself as he tumbled down. Hunger ,nausea, exhaustion and so much more clung to his bones when finally he rolled to a stop and crawled through soft dirt. He didn't know when he collapsed, only knowing when it happened as he woke and realized the was moving and ground was rumbling under him.

When Syvaris woke again he found himself confused by the ceiling. A mosaic he’d never seen colored the place and he realized he was alive. He lay there, still weakened and exhausted and all he could think of was those eyes. He closed his eyes and he could hear her jagged broken speech and his heart panged, guilt pooled in his chest clung to his ribs. In the distance something clanged, probably dropped. And the metal noise reminded him of the cage on her mouth.

One day and he could get out of bed.

Two days and Syveris was informed he’d been locked up starving for months. Months? He pressed his face in his hands as he realized he honestly had no sense of time while he was in there, he ought to have lost his mind. That was reasonable. But…he thought back and recalled the strength of those eyes on him, the gentle feeling of her letting go of his horn.

One week of healing and recuperating passed and Syveris found himself sitting out in the grass looking at a scarred bit of wood and all he could think of was the way her knuckles looked. Warped and riddled with injury.

How did that strange woman live there and still have enough strength to find people their freedom at the cost of her own.  The guilt that washed over him was cold and seemed insurmountable. But it was alright. He knew exactly what he had to do.

Another two weeks later and Syveris was walking out of the place that had so kindly healed him and helped him get back to himself. His messenger pack rattled with healing and rejuvenation potions, as he listened to the glass tinkle a thought occurred to him. She was in there all this time running on so little … What would one of these potions do for her? He supposed he would find out…

[minhosimthings]

Enhypen as Quotes I Found on Pinterest

Warnings: Just a lot of fluff. Mention of abuse and PTSD in Jay's story.

A/N: I was bored and this thought randomly came into my brain as I sat on my sofa with my cat! Pinterest has been making me lovesick nowadays so BAM here it is. I'm sorry Heeseung's is really short tho.

Heeseung - My heart is so full of you that I can hardly call it my own.

Doing the dishes was your job around the household. Usually Heeseung would do the laundry and you'd handle the dishes. This was the only time when both of you wouldn't be hugging or touching each other because Heeseung is such a cuddle bug. But today for some reason, Heeseung was extra cuddly and in need of human touch. He acted as if he had been touch starved his entire life as he tried to pull you into the sofa from the sink. You brushed him off gently and continued to do the dishes. You lifted you arms from your body once to reach the shelf above you and two big arms immediately circled around your waist. Heeseung had trapped you and now he wouldn't let go. "My heart is so full of you, that I can hardly call it my own Y/N. Please cuddle with me?" You couldn't resist his Bambi eyes so , eventually you abandoned the rest of the dishes and curled up under the blankets while Heeseung cuddled with you like he hadn't done so in a century.

Jay - Your eyes hold everything my soul hungers for.

Jay and you were basically a married couple,barring the ring on your finger. At random moments of the day, Jay would blurt out 'I wanna marry you' and everytime you always say 'I'll say yes,don't worry.' He had gotten you a promise ring which was more precious than any of the expensive jewelry he had given you. The thing with you was that, as a victim of emotional and physical abuse, ever since childhood, you had never really known any actual love or any emotion other than anger. Meeting Jay was like meeting an angel. He was everything that you always needed but never knew you wanted. Like Taylor Swift once said, you would have easily married him with paper rings even though he got you ones of sapphires and rubies. One fine day, your brain decided to bring back all the trauma. One of your friends had made a 'joke' regarding PTSD and you let it reach to your heart. So there you were at home just crying your heart out to Jay when you asked him "Jay why do you love me?" Jay looked at you with soft eyes before answering "I have an entire presentation ready as to why I love you sweetheart. Everything about you is perfect. Your eyes hold everything my soul thirsts for." You wiped away your tears and giggled at the sudden poetry, when you noticed Jay on the ground. On. One. Knee. With a ring box in his hands. Before he could even start his speech, you shouted 'YES' and leapt at him to hug him and never let go.

Jake - when death takes my hand, I will hold you with the other and promise to find you in every lifetime.

A happy little Aussie boy was someone in your life, whom you would kill and die for. Jake was perfect. Both of you had met two years ago at your pet cafe where you served for both pets and their parents. And sometimes the parents were attractive, to say the least. Bouncing in with a cream border collie called Layla, Jake had fluffy brown hair and the sweetest smile you had ever seen. He bought a lot of things for Layla and when Layla refused to move from your cafe, Jake joked that Layla had found her mom. You kinda wished you were her mom. He came back the next day and asked if he could leave Layla here for a couple of minutes cause he had an errand at a place that didn't allow dogs. You happily obliged to do it for free, even though he had offered to pay money, and sat there serving the customers with Layla snoozing at your feet. Jake came in a few hours later and as he took Layla and apologized a million times for leaving Layla out late he asked you out. And of course you said yes and one thing led to another and now you were together for two years. One night, on movie night, Jake had a game he wanted to play. He had tiny chits of paper with things written on them and he explained the very peculiar rules of the game. "So me and the boys have written down seven cringey things which we think can steal a girl's heart and we want you to rate them. I won't tell you which one I wrote I want you to guess!" You happily agreed to that and sat down as Jake read out very cringey pick up lines and very poetic lines which were probably written by Sunghoon and Jay, respectively. At the end he picked up a yellow coloured chit and read out "When death takes my hand, I will hold you by the other and promise to find you in every lifetime." He looked up to see your shocked eyes and puckering lips. You were so moved by that line that your expression was one of disgust (like the one you do when you find a really good song). Jake, the poor soul was so worried because that was the line he had written. He knew you really liked the idea of lifetimes so he had written it for you and he muttered a slow 'Thats the one I wrote.' to you. You couldn't take it anymore and you pounced on him giving him a very long and very deep kiss. When you broke away from the kiss, Jake grinned at you and said, "So do I have rizz now?" "Not at all. But you do have my heart, Jakey." The rest of the night moved in slow slithers as both of you melted into each other's touch, grinning at the fact that Layla brought you together.

Sunghoon - It's very comforting. To finally have something worth living for.

Sunghoon was the biggest crime lord in all of the world. You, his high school sweetheart were tracked down and bought to him. His parents wanted him to marry someone and he had no one else in mind except for you. You eventually ties the knot in a ceremony which you did not want. Yes, you loved Sunghoon but you had a life of your own. How could you be just some trophy wife? In the beginning you had thought about how cold Sunghoon had grown. He was nothing like the awkwardly cute sixteen year old boy you had given your heart to in high school. He was a stone cold killer now. On occasions when you would go out, you would always have bodyguards with you. You didn't think much of it, but deep inside you had a tiny though which you repressed that maybe Sunghoon does care about you. On one such occasion, you were at the perfume store with your best friend and you didn't take note of the fact that your bodyguard was acting shifty. He wasn't attentive today and he kept touching his back pockets. Suspicious, you hid at the back of the store until your suspicions were confirmed. Your bodyguard had betrayed Sunghoon and was about to kill you. Scared, you called Sunghoon and in a shaky voice explained your situation. And that marked the first time you had ever heard Sunghoon's voice falter and stutter. He arrived with bodyguards just a minute later and took you home as you cried to him all night. He cupped your face gently in his hands as you questioned him "Do you even love me? Or is this just another one of your shenanigans? Please Sunghoon answer me." You had fallen completely in love with him today and your heart gently lifted when he said, in a soft voice "Y/N, listen to me. I had loved you ever since the day we got married. I know you didn't like this but I had to do it. Every other woman I met was a spy for other overlords. My parents were pressuring me and I couldn't think straight. But I love you. I love you more than I love myself." You sniffled at his words and hugged him tight as he whispered into your ear, "It's very comforting. To finally have something worth living for."

Sunoo - you drew memories in my mind, I could never erase. You painted colours in my heart I could never replace.

Sunoo was the most infuriating person on Earth. He joined your school only last year and he had already beaten you in almost every subject. It shouldn't have been that annoying to you, since you're parents really did not care about grades much and told you to focus on your extracurriculars instead. Science and painting were your favourite subjects and you were thankful that Sunoo didn't get a proper hold of them yet. But it still didn't stop you from getting mad whenever he gave you that sarcastic smile with his beautiful fox like eyes. The professor who took the painting job always got frustrated with Sunoo and often asked you to tutor him in painting. Usually people wouldn't pay attention to the subject but you were in a school which was the elitest of the elite. Tutoring Sunoo was torture. He would end up staring at you and not listening to a word you say and choosing, instead, to judge the decor in your room. But when he left your house, there was an odd feeling of loneliness in you. You missed him. That's when you realised that you liked him. There was just something about that weird smile and that cute little laugh and the way he was so gentle with people that made your heart go boom. But then again, he would ruin it every weekend by coming over to the cafe you worked at and ordering the most difficult thing to make in the menu. When you had accidentally made the drink without him asking, because you knew he would come in that day, he went weirdly quite, mumbled a thank you and raced out the door, instead of going to his usual place. One August morning, there was a painting event in your school. Judges from all over the county were coming and you had made a beautiful portrait to win the prize which was a scholarship to your dream university. The portrait was a blend of reds and purples and it was of one of your favourite actresses. You felt very proud of your painting as portraits weren't your strongest power but you didn't want to just paint another boring landscape. The event went on till the afternoon and you kept your eyes peeled for Sunoo in order to show off your painting to him and look at whatever horrible thing he had put on his canvas. The end of the event came with the announcement of the winners. Your ears almost couldn't believe it when you win the first prize. You went up on stage and took your big trophy and your scholarship. Even though your parents were rich, you had always wanted to make it to college on your own without spending much of their money. As you were daydreaming on stage, the booming voice of your English teacher spoke into a microphone. "It is with great delight that I announce that the judges have also decided a person to win the second position! So please put your hands together for Kim Sunoo! Who has won for his portrait of our winner Yang Y/N!" You almost got whiplash from whipping your head around to see Sunoo in his blue cardigan going to receive a silver medal along with a portrait of you in colours of lilac and gold. After the event was over, you dragged Sunoo over to the gym area and asked him aggressively "Why did you paint me? And since when have you gotten so good at painting, Sunoo?' Sunoo looked at you with rather sad eyes and said "I was always good at painting. I just wanted to catch your attention Y/N. And I couldn't think of anyone else who's features I had memorised as well as yours, so I painted you." You were taken aback as you gawked at him and shouted, "But you hate me! You torture me every day. What the absolute hell do you even mean by that sentence?" "I AM IN LOVE WITH YOU Y/N." Sunoo shouted with indignation. "Ever since I joined I have had a crush on you. How can I not? When you've drawn memories in my mind I cannot erase and you've painted colours in my heart I cannot replace!" That was all it took. For you to throw yourself on Sunoo and kiss him, taking in all the love you had for each other. It was safe to say your classmates were very confused when they saw two rivals holding hands and walking out of the gym, smiling brighter than the sun.

[tobiasdrake]

Since I can't do Fubuki's third Hangout until an ambiguous time in the future (probably after we see her Forte), that brings us to Vivia's third hangout!

It continues to break my heart, every time I see this man upright. I hope when we solve a crime with him (process of elimination says next chapter), he gets to lay in a wheelbarrow and we can truck him around. He was not made for manual locomotion.

Also, if any of us is a homunculus, it's probably him. He was, earlier, complaining about how it would be nice to die some day. That takes on a whole new meaning if he's an immortal humanoid. I had him pegged for vampire but homunculus makes sense too.

Going out on a limb here and saying that means "I'm hungry" in Vivia-speak.

My dude, I get it. Come with me. We can go get Chinese ramen burgers pizza MEAT BUNS and hang out under a bridge or something.

Holy shit, we actually have a person who isn't under the spell of Kanai Ward's signature meat buns. Seriously, there is an alarming amount of attention being paid in random NPC convos to the way that everyone obsessively devours meat buns, to the exclusion of other fast food places. I'm beginning to suspect foul play.

Yuma, he's trying to tell you that he's neurodivergent and signals like hunger or thirst get classified in his brain as an optional, non-priority thing.

He can't help it because people don't consciously think about biological needs. A lot of it is reflexive, and when your brain is wired in certain ways, those reflexes don't trigger properly.

This happens to me a lot with thirst. If my water container is empty and I'm in the middle of something, my brain will reflexively go

-> I'm thirsty. -> Water's empty. -> Oh well, no water.

I have to consciously stop and tell my brain that no, that's insane, we have to go refill the water. We can't just not drink water because the water's empty. Drinking water is non-optional.

...speaking of which, my water is empty. How long has it been empty? One sec, need to go refill it.

Meanwhile, my friend who suffers from a variety of mental illnesses and is neurodivergent on top of it has a thing where their body doesn't transmit hunger signals at all. They literally can't get hungry. They have to rely on external information to tell them to eat; Mainly, they eat when other people around them eat.

Oh, listen to Mr. Neurotypical over here. Fuck you, Yuma. Not everybody has the luxury of having their wires plugged in right. We all have our own struggles.

[sseanettles]

nothing grows in corpses (in the earth of me)

dream x hob gadling | mature | Finally cross-posting my take on the fandom classic of the show progresses as the comics do, even to The Wake. Until Death resurrects Morpheus and forces the choice of "redemption" upon him instead of suicide. It goes...horribly. No good. Very bad. Instead of learning the lesson, Morpheus (in his infinite wisdom) opts instead for a highly effective existence strike until one day Hob Gadling stumbles upon his ghastly handiwork and immediately decides that this just won't do. Man Who Refuses To Die vs. Man Who Refuses To Live: fight.

Dead Dove, Do Not Eat for the following: graphic depictions of starvation, illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, blood and gore, loss of autonomy, etc. etc. This is some classic old world whump, folks! But I promise it's also supremely healing in the end.

CH. 5: the rockrose and the thistle pt. 1 | 3.5 k | AO3 link | prev part | next part

(or: the one where Hob finds his Stranger; he perhaps wishes he hadn't.)

A blur of familiar shapes and colors loomed above Morpheus in the vague shape of a man, horror and dismay twisting his normally warm, friendly voice into something unrecognizable. It was like a fun house mirror, a wavering heat mirage, and Morpheus placed the blame for this especially cruel haunting on the one undoubtedly responsible. His scabbed lips barely moved, fighting to shape his protestation on the wheezing exhale that eked from his tortured throat.

Leave me, Delirium.

She was trying to relieve the pain of the rats, he knew—just as she would send him insects to distract from the retching and ghostly fingers along his back to take him away from the pain of a stomach consuming itself. She was at least nearer to something normal this time, but somehow, he found this reassurance cut deeper than Despair’s hook. The numbness, that drifting static—he wanted it back. He tried to put himself back out on that purgatorial water, to push off into it and never find shore again.

It was nice there, that dark. Not peaceful. Not restful. But the pain could not reach him as easily there, and neither could cold nor hunger nor thirst. Nightmares could try to ensnare him, but it was a far more trancelike state than it was sleep, and so they could not take hold.

Glass and iron could not rob him of air and life, could not starve and suffocate him for so much longer than a hundred years. He would not endure abuse and humiliation at the Burgess Family’s hands that did not end at verbal beratement and mind games; he would not bring self-wrought ends upon himself that were not as neat as taking his sister’s hand. He would not see Nada smashed upon mountainsides with her bones all cracked and broken and her skin bending the wrong ways to keep all the pieces of her inside.

Orpheus. His hand would not bury inside his boy’s skull, the feeling of his brain matter hot and wet between his fingers, his blood warming him where he had long gone cold…. He would not again endure the murdering of the Dreaming, each loss felt like a limb of his own, like an organ, as the cackle of the Kindly Ones echoed in his ears like an ice pick to the inside of his skull.

He would not find himself sprawled in his current state upon the floor of his throne room of old, staring up at his own uncaring visage as the King of Dreams and Nightmares, the Shaper of Forms, Lord of the Dreaming, watched him perish with glittering black eyes as remorseless as the regalia that dripped off him like the night sky itself. Like tar. As he watched himself die with nothing but utter disdain and derision.

What you have let yourself become, Morpheus could hear Dream sneer in the cruel curve of his lips.

Numbness. Let him submerge once more into numbness, into oblivion. Let his sisters’ handiwork fade….

The last of Hob’s coffee hit the ground, and his knees followed soon after as his Stranger’s bloodshot, rubbery gaze began to drift.

“H-hey,” Hob called. It was a whimper of a syllable, unintentionally teary, and he tried again. “Hey!”

His sharp bark halted those closing eyes for a heartbeat, and the sagging head jerked a touch, like a puppet’s string. Empty; his Stranger was so empty, and Hob’s heart lodged in his throat, bile trying to rise around it as he reached for his friend’s ragged face on instinct, hoping to lift his cold-blistered skin from the snowy ground.

He struggled to speak from his already crowded throat, and the tone of Hob’s next words emerged somewhere between his two hey’s.

“My friend…?”

Hands cradled Morpheus’ face, undeterred by the beard or the blood or the blisters, and they were so warm, so real after so long on the edge of oblivion that something already fraying in Morpheus’ brain snapped altogether. Calluses, firm grip, large span, smelling of coffee and paper and ink and wool, so hot compared to the world that they scorched him—he wanted, no, needed them to let go. Let go. Let go, let go, leT GO—

Never leave.

He wanted those hands to never touch him again. He wanted the feeling of them all over his body, bringing him in from the cold in a cocoon-like embrace, from the hardness and the pain and the emptiness. A mortifying, strangled moan cracked from his tundra throat and split lips and gaunt cheeks, and it turned into a spine-chilling, gasping inhale as his blood-stained hands clutched and clawed at his ravaged gut.

He wanted them gone.

“God’s wounds…” the voice above him rasped, heart-broken and horrified still.

Real. The hands were real.

Then the body, the voice that they were attached to had to be real, too. And that meant….

It’s him.

Morpheus’ body locked into its fetal position, so rigid he began to shake and seize with it. All cognizant thought whited from his mind in the wake of the pain and desire that swept over him amid the paralyzing panic.

“Fuck,” Hob hissed and fumbled to cast his bag to the side and shrug his way out of his long woolen coat. Morpheus’ head was on fire, and a quick check showed his chest and gut were in a similar state, his lungs rattling like a babe’s toy on every breath. But the rest of him…. “God’s wounds” didn’t do it any measure of justice, but it was the only useless phrase that would come to his stupid mind. His friend, who should have been VERY dead, mind you, was otherwise a block of ice with nothing but skin and bone on him, and this was too fucking much to process at the end of a work week, final exams were on Wednesday, he still had to correct the last set, grades were due end of month, and FUCKING CHRIST. “Fuck, Stranger, I—”

Another strangled bay of pain wracked his friend’s chest as Hob swaddled him in his coat, and he doubled the dirtied quilt around the outside until the snow no longer touched him, wincing all the while as his friend continued to weakly moan in agonized protest.

“Shhh,” he hushed. His hands and his voice shook as badly as his friend. He ripped the black scarf from around his neck and wrapped it about his friend’s skeletonized head, tucking it around his throat. “Shhh, you-you’re gonna be fine, mate. C’mon….” Those horrible eyes stared wildly at him, that bleeding mouth opening and closing with gasping, guttural breaths that were all so viscerally wrong. Hob gritted his teeth against his tears and rested one hand as gently as he could atop his friend’s head; the other touched ever so delicately to his chest. “Shhh…shhh, please, friend. Just…just breathe….”

His Stranger’s hair, once so lovely and glistening dark, like rain on fresh pavement, crunched beneath his touch. That foreign, patchy beard disintegrated further as his jaw continued to work, hungry for air that could not seem to reach his lungs, and grime and rusted blood flaked from his hollow cheeks to the scarf that bundled him. Hob waited there beside him, knelt like that with coffee-melted snow seeping through his trousers, and prayed to anything listening that his friend’s shaking would cease.

Several fruitless minutes later, Hob sank his teeth into the edge of his tongue. The wracking shivers hadn’t let up, and now Hob was faced with a decision. And if anything of the Stranger that he had known remained, he knew he was going to catch hell for his choice when Morpheus was well enough to talk.

He shifted his hold until he could guide his exhausted friend’s eyes in his general direction, going numb himself far more quickly than he liked in the cold. Hob shivered violently enough to jolt his friend’s head where they touched, and he struggled to ignore the biting freeze in just his button-down and blazer.

“I’m going to get you up, now, ‘kay?” Morpheus’ quaking worsened, though his line of sight hovered somewhere near Hob’s chin without recognition. “Real gentle-like.” Slowly, so slowly he felt his already sore back begin to cramp in protest, Hob began to slide his arm beneath his friend. “Just so. Just-just try to keep breathing….”

They were doing okay, or at least no worse than they had been, until Hob got Morpheus upright, paused to sling his bag back across his body, and tipped Morpheus forward into the plane of his chest to pick him up. The figure in Hob’s arms turned to steel, a terrified breath sucking into his lungs before catching there. Frigid adrenaline hit dried-up veins like a flash flood, and those cloudy blue eyes bulged.

Destruction. Destruction was on him, crushing him in his arms, pinning him in place, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. It was so cold, Burgess’ basement, iron and glass on naked skin, the crushing and tearing oblivion of a black hole—

The arms around him pulled him close anyway, turning him this way and that even as he fought to thrash and breathe, and as he finally managed to suck in a ragged gasp, a head pressed to his. It was warm with shoulder-length, dark brown hair, and Morpheus realized he was no longer suffocated against the other man. He was laid against him, back to chest, with his head tipped back against his shoulder and his face bared to the snowy, overcast sky. The arms that had been crushing his lungs settled lower, applying pressure to his gut where Despair had wounded him but staying clear of his ribs and throat. A low rumble passed into him, and through the riptide of panic that washed over him like the waters in the cave, Morpheus heard the endless litany of reassuring hushes and sweetness uttered against his ear…

…like a father to his frightened son…

…or a husband to his agony-stricken spouse.

An anchor.

“That’s it,” Hob murmured. He adjusted his hold and breathed through his quaking shivers. “That’s it, love, shhh…you’re doing so well. That’s it. It’ll pass…it’ll all pass…and it’ll all feel better. Promise.”

Gadling.

“I promise…I promise it goes away, and it’s all lovely again…. I’m right here, love….”

Morpheus felt himself hit a different sort of wall, a buzzing dissociation that took him beyond his body and yet grounded him in every point of contact between himself and Gadling behind him. And as Morpheus relaxed, bit by painful bit, Hob continued to shush and soothe with eyes shut tight against ancient tears and lips that moved on muscle memory. He spoke as he had spoken to his dearest Robyn after his nightmares, as he had spoken to Jim as he clutched his corpse in the rubble of their home in the Blitz…. as he had spoken to Eleanor after he had forced his way past the physician and nuns into their blood-soaked bedchambers and she perished in his arms, their unborn babe trapped within the cradle of her pelvis and dying with her.

He spoke as Gwen had spoken to him when he had woken, inconsolable, from a funeral in his dreams almost a year ago now. As he had woken from a funeral for the entity he now gathered like a senseless child in his arms, so bundled within the coat, quilt, and scarf that only a shadowed glimpse of his strangely bearded face remained.

He remembered his Stranger had been tall in life. And though he still possessed that height, the rest of him had withered away, and Hob’s stomach flipped so spectacularly that the resulting splash seared the back of his throat as he stood and found his Stranger weighed nothing at all. He had always seemed so dense, his friend. Ethereal, yes. Light in the way a full-mooned eclipse was light; all sharp angles carved of obsidian, starry eyes and a velvety tongue barbed with the wicked spryness of a wit born of the lands that lurked beyond fairy rings. But Hob had always known his friend to be a mirage upon a mirror upon a one-way window he would never peer beyond. A deceit. He had always been more compressed down into a shape that he knew Hob’s hungering, human soul would chase to eternity.

He had been lording and beautiful and fair with all the delicacy of a soft-handed King. But if Hob had ever dared to strike that porcelain skin, he knew his blade would have shattered instantly upon the diamond-plated osmium revealed beneath it.

What he held in his arms now, the weight he shifted easily into the cradle of a single, decently strong—but by no means brawny—arm while his freed hand fished his phone from his trouser pocket, was not the friend he had known.

He fumbled through his contacts with numbing fingers and nearly dropped the phone altogether in his rush to both pin it between his shoulder and ear and simultaneously redouble his hold on Morpheus. The line began to ring.

His friend stopped shivering; he grew limper, heavier.

Hob walked faster.

“Come on,” he huffed and slipped in the trampled sludge along the sidewalk’s edge as he tried to wind his way between the other folks trying to get home before the storm fully hit. His arms clamped down tight as he stumbled, the image of Morpheus tumbling from his arms to the frozen concrete filling his veins with ice faster than the breaking blizzard.

Something cracked beneath the quilt and coat, and his heart jolted.

Shit. Shit, fuck, shit.

The line continued to ring.

“Come on, Gwen,” he begged. His lecture bag thumped against his leg with every jogging step, the edge of his laptop and textbooks beating a steady bruise into his thigh. “Come on, c’mon—”

Click.

“Robbie! God, finally, I’ve been trying to call you—”

“Gwen!” Her name burst from his lips like a shipwrecked man’s cry of land. “I know I’m late, but please, listen to me—” He tried and failed to tip Morpheus closer to him, to shift his weight in his arms so his exposed face tipped against his own rapidly cooling body. “I need you to get the first aid kit out of the cabinet beneath the sink, run a hot bath, get some soup started or-or cocoa or tea just-just anything easy to eat and warm—”

“Robbie,” Gwen repeated. She sounded very calm and very serious, far from the beleaguered girlfriend she had been five seconds ago. “What’s happened?”

“Please, just—”

“Robbie,” she repeated. He anchored himself in the cut of her voice, in the grounding blow her steadfast calm dealt to his spiraling anxiety. “I have you. But what am I preparing for?”

Yes. Sitrep. Right.

“It’s my friend,” he panted, “the one who died or wh-who I thought had died. I—”

He had scarcely spoken the words before their full import struck him like a train. And with the shattering impact, the shadows around them grew darker, sharper. The alleys turned to passing mouths in which predators lurked, and the deepening snowstorm mounted into the perfect cover for an ambush. Every face, every body, every feature he passed that he could identify beyond the bundling layers of coats and scarves and hats, he did his best to memorize. He looked for the duplicitous, for the liar, for the threat, and tried to move faster. The weight of his words sank down to his bones, really settled in his mind.

Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, the Dream-King, whichever one of his many names he wanted to call himself, wasn’t dead. There had to be at least one person or thing in this terribly wondrous world that would have been very pleased to learn such news, and Hob was in no state now to defend them should it come knocking. He swallowed past the heart that was still lodged in his throat and tried not to cough on each knife-like inhale of freezing air.

“I found him,” he continued in as low of a voice as he could manage. “He-he’s in a bad way, I don’t—”

“Jesus, Rob!” Gwen hissed, and he heard her bustling about their flat with matching urgency. “Doesn’t he need a hospital?”

Hob’s heart skipped and dislodged from his throat to land in his feet.

“NO!” he half-shouted, clutching Morpheus closer, and instantly winced as the suspicion around him deepened. More eyes tracked him as he passed, and he felt their intense scrutiny on his back as he fled down the street. “I-I mean, yeah, probably,” he admitted at a more reasonable, if no less frantic volume. “But I can’t take him there. I…”

He eyed the dead man in his arms who somehow breathed still. Took in the starved face, the kind of deteriorated visage he had seen only in prison camps and famines.

“I think he’s like me now,” he whispered and could not wrench his eyes away from his Stranger. “He was m-more before, but now, I…” His breathing felt funny. Everything seemed a bit farther away now, even the man-not-man in his arms. “I think he’s like me.”

“Okay,” Gwen said after a long time. “Okay, Rob.” Ever resolute, ever sure, ever calm and in control. The truest Guinevere, if ever there had been one. “We’ll be ready.”

Hob let out a wet laugh that wilted and ultimately broke beneath the strain of relief and love that crushed down upon him atop the dread.

“Fuck,” he groaned. He looked as far as he could to the snowy sky without losing his phone, blinking swiftly, and cleared his throat against the tears gumming him to silence. “Fuck, I don’t deserve you.”

He could feel her smirk, warm and taunting and tense.

“Damn right, you don’t,” she teased, but it was more hollow than usual, tempered by the gravity of what was rushing home to her. “Just get yourselves inside.”

“We’re ‘bout ten minutes out. I’ll do my best to make it less,” he promised and shuffled Morpheus’ dead weight until he could fetch his phone and ended the call. “Hoo…” he exhaled, sniffling again, and hugged Morpheus tightly to him, trying to rub some warmth into his back and arms as he did. “ ‘S alright, friend…” That ice-laced, fever-hot face tipped into Hob’s neck, and he started at the press of the sharp, freezing nose against his most sensitive skin before leaning unsteadily into it. He pressed his head as far as he could against Morpheus, tried to draw him into his own waning body heat despite the coldness of his skin and the stench of his hair. “ ‘S alright.”

His heart stuttered as he felt his Stranger’s mangled mouth move against his throat in a twisted echo of his deepest, most private fantasies, a perversion so grotesque that it sent shivers down his back.

It was the barest whisper, a single, half-formed word. But even still, Hob understood the shape those three little letters made.

He swallowed. His tears threatened to spill over.

“Yeah,” he croaked and shifted one hand to the back of his friend’s head, cradling him closer. “Yeah, mate, it’s me. I’ve got you. ‘S okay.”

The horrible dry tears returned as Morpheus listened to Hob ramble, his voice spilling down and around him like the warmest of blankets, the safety of a hearth. It was a calming deluge of reassuring words and soothing sounds and shaking endearments that he could not bear to hear. The shattered glass buried deep within his heart drove and twisted deeper.

Stop, he begged, the silent word barely mouthed against the warmth of Hob’s vibrating throat, lost amid the comfort the man outpoured in every deep syllable. Morpheus’ shoulders shook with sobs, and his already gasping breaths stuttered dangerously toward suffocation. Stop…put…back….

All the while, the babble of what Hob hoped was still calming nonsense continued to pour from his mouth. His bluing lips stumbled more and more frequently on his rushed, quiet words, but one foot in front of the other, as quickly as he could manage? That was easy enough to keep in his head.

Just one foot in front of the other. Don’t draw too much attention. Don’t trip. For Heaven’s sake, if not your own, don’t drop him.

Do not process the multiple layers of deception that had to have been in play to bring this situation about. Do not even begin to contemplate the rage you feel at it, the betrayal and hurt and anguish and confusion at seeing your very dead Stranger again, let alone in this state. Allow only the panic. Only the survival mode. Strike the match upon only the protective streak within you that fueled the Father and the Husband, that drove the Companion who dared chase after a being of cosmic something with counsel and comfort, both ultimately unheeded.

Just keep talking and try not to think too hard about it at all.

He was running out of sensible things to ramble to the man-not-man clutched in his numbing arms and had begun to resort to a hodgepodge of soothing sounds and endearing pet names that would’ve gotten his immortality instantly revoked under any normal circumstance when he rounded one last corner. His boot struck the snowy step of a warmly lit stoop, a black door with a golden handle ahead of him, and his mad flight finally, finally landed upon safety.

[carpe-astra]

Ain't No Grave

"Do you actually want her dead at the end of this?"

"He has killed for less. And she deserves to die.”

Valentino planted the spade into the freshly turned dirt next to him, leaning on the handle as he stared into the yawning darkness below. Scuttling grey clouds covered the moon, bathing the entire area in shadows. During life, it might have made him uneasy to be surrounded by the black with no way of knowing when an enemy might appear and put a bullet in his brain.

Shadows had become a refuge since his death, however. A melding between the physical and the spiritual that settled the Beast in his bones in a way nothing else could. Except for blood. Thirst burned in the back of his throat as if he’d swallowed battery acid, and he wondered not for the first - and not for the last - time where his wife was. Bitter anger gnawed at him, but he forced those thoughts aside before he did something drastic, and focused on the matter at hand.

Exhaling a rough bundle of smoke, he stubbed his cigarette out in the dirt, then leaned to jump down into the open grave and straddle the back end of the coffin. It was blue, like her favorite color, like her magick, like the lights of Embraced. Hesitating, he rested his hand on the edge where it was sealed shut. It wasn’t the first time he had been privy to the decay of a body, but the sight - and stench - was something one couldn’t quite prepare for no matter how many times they’d experienced it.

****

“Dad! Wake up! It’s time to wake up!” 

Childish shouting rang tinnily through his ears while the molasses of Torpor began to ease away from his limbs and minds in sluggish drips. He couldn’t move just yet, couldn’t speak, but he could feel a tiny hand shaking his shoulder. 

“Hurry! I wanna show you what Miss Britta bought me!” Another shake of a small hand punctuated the words.

He felt the prick of his fangs against his lips, a deep hunger rooted in his chest that accompanied the sensual murmur of his Beast. The little creature disturbing him would make for a good snack - 

The dull shadows of the ceiling greeted his gaze as he opened his eyes, turning them down to catch sight of the small blonde girl bouncing at the edge of his bedside. Warm and alive with suntanned skin, gleaming gold hair braided back and still the chubby cheeks of youth. She clutched a pair of thin books littered with foliage and butterflies on the cover, thrusting them at him. 

“My apologies, Mr. Bellerose. I looked away to ensure the door was locked, and she scampered off,” Britta’s voice sounded from the doorway. Looking contrite, she gestured at the little girl to come back. “Come along Alicia. Let him wake up first…” 

“No, it’s alright,” he answered, pulling himself up to sit against the headboard. 

Alicia bounced on her toes, then scrambled onto the bed to spread her books out across his legs. “Miss Britta took me to the butterflies at the zoo today, and they had these there. There’s lots of pictures, but there are facts too!” 

Valentino picked one up, examining the glossy cover full of monarchs. It still held the scent of cotton candy from Alicia’s sticky fingers, and the aroma of ink on paper. 

“Mr. Bellerose, he will be arriving shortly.” Britta reminded him.

Valentino felt Alicia stiffen where she had tucked herself beneath his arm, quieting immediately. 

He sighed. “Have Isaac entertain him for a few moments if I’m not out by then.” 

Alicia lit up beside him as Britta nodded, and departed. 

He cracked open the first book to examine the first few pages absently.

Half listening to her chatter about her day, it took him an extra second to realize she had asked him a question. 

“Will you read these to me? For my bedtime story?” Alicia asked again, looking up with hopeful blue eyes.

“You don’t want Isaac to read to you tonight like usual?” Valentino moved at a mortal’s pace, easing out of bed.

“No! I want these ones!” Already pouting, Alicia huffed at him.

He silently assented, hauling the little girl up to balance on his arm, collecting the books with his other hand. He could read to Alicia for a little while, until she fell asleep. Then he could ready himself for Jean-Pierre’s arrival, with Alicia safely out of view and awareness of the elder LaSombra.

“Just one, Alicia.” 

****

Inhaling, he pried open the coffin. Despite not breathing, he could still feel the wave of foul rot and decay brush his skin with a putrid humidity as the air rushed out. Blinking away a sting, he stared down at the coffin’s contents. The flesh had turned a sickly brown and black, like old bruising before it turned a nasty yellow. Reasonably he knew it was because the veins were deteriorating, and it would be only a few short years before the grave wax would fill the coffin.

“You poor bastard. Wonder where she picked you up.” Whoever was in the coffin, he didn’t recognize them. It could have been someone Alicia had plucked right off the sidewalk one day. His grip on the coffin door tightened. 

The day he and Isaac had buried Alicia had been a bleak one. Her broken body made to look beautiful and untouched again, tucked away in the white satin of the coffin Britta had chosen because he hadn’t been able to.

Fighting the urge to rip the corpse out that was spoiling the final resting place of Alicia, he relaxed his grip on the coffin’s lid. He was surprised to find numerous splinters buried in his fingers and palm. It brought him back to reality.

There was a body in the coffin, but it wasn’t Alicia’s. Despite having buried her in that coffin, and in that grave. 

“Looks like you’re missing something though,” he remarked as he pulled out a small amulet from the pocket of his coat. 

It didn’t look like much. A simple river pebble, with markings etched onto it. It looked like something Alicia had been using to practice her glyphs on, like she’d used to do as a child. Yet, he’d found it on the corpse masquerading as Alicia the night they had finally killed Nathaniel, even though the last time he’d seen it, it had been in the pocket of Alicia’s body when he had buried it.

“Always the clever one. Stealing corpses to make them look like you so you could be everywhere at once,” he spoke, stowing the stone away. He would have Yelena look at it later on, when she had time to spare from the other tasks he’d set her to. “Too clever.”

She was playing the game with a masterful stroke, pressing her advantages and cutting her losses when needed. Exactly as she had been taught. Maybe if she had been allowed to be more of a child, rather than being forced to grow up so quickly, things would have been different. Or if he had managed to stop the fire that took her parents. Or, had simply been better. 

His world, the world of the Kindred, was no place for a mortal, let alone a little girl he’d taken in because she’d looked so much like his own dead daughter.

“Everyone has a weakness, Val.” Old words from his Sire echoed in his head.

He had too many, and the girl he’d raised was one of them. He’d killed for a lot less, but he couldn’t kill this one.

[insomniac-dot-ink]

The Siren’s Mercy

CW: themes of death and dying

-----------------

Her throat was dry. Every swallow hurt like fire. Her thoughts drummed along to a steady beat of: water, water, water. It was almost foolish because water surrounded her in every direction. But that water was dark as suffering and cared nothing for her ills, it would not save her.

Mal curled up in place on her cramped dingy and rested for a moment. She ached all over and her lips were cracked and bleeding again. She wondered how badly it would hurt-- to die like this. She wished for water so badly there was no space left in her for anything else.

She closed her eyes tightly and time slipped by her with no rhyme or reason. There was something about helplessness that erased things like that. It was only belatedly that she felt a tremor go through her body as the little boat hit something. She blinked her gummy eyes open and sat up.

Her eyebrows rose as her boat had run into a small sandbar with an outcropping of sharp rocks just beyond that. She considered getting out and walking her boat somewhere else, but what was the point? She swallowed and it almost broke her.

Mal was about to cover her head and return to her moping when her eyes caught on something on the rocks. She paused and her mouth fell open without permission.

A creature was positioned on the rocks with her head tilted backwards and lips pressed shut. Her hair fell in lovely red sheets and she wore a headband around it that looked like it was made of kelp and seagull feathers. She had a sheer blue shawl wrapped around her and scaly legs dipped into the water. She was nude and holding something like a small harp on her lap.

Mal continued to gape. It made no sense that a lovely young woman would be sitting placidly out there in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, Mal knew what she was the second the woman cocked her head to the side.

She had heard stories about this ocean. She had heard the songs and the lore and how the men of these parts watched the waters. They could appear in many shapes: mermaids with razor sharp teeth, women with bird-bodies and human heads, or lithe breathtaking almost-maidens that could slip through the water like glass.

Her eyes were too wide though. Her gaze too vacant. Her nails ended in curled claws and her proportions were just slightly uncomfortably off.

The true strangeness though was that she wasn’t singing.

Why wasn’t she singing?

Mal put her head in her hands. She took a deep breath that rattled in her chest and then looked up again. It took what was left of her strength to summon the words.

“Go on then.” She narrowed her eyes. “Get on with it.” It came out as a rasping croak and not the least bit commanding.

The siren blinked her otherworldly eyes at Mal and placed the harp down next to her. She cocked her head to the other side this time and Mal found herself close to rolling her eyes.

“You got a brain in there? A head on you? You’ve killed enough men for it.” She sighed. “And you show ‘em, right? You show them their greatest desires.”

It didn’t sound like a bad way to die. She could see her dear Agatha again. She could sit by the fire on dry land and hum her favorite drinking songs. She could be clean and well-fed-- no more knots in her hair or hunger gnawing holes in her belly.

Or else she was just going to listen to a truly terrible song about water.

The siren made her first sound, it was a little chirping noise like a songbird. It was slightly unnerving as well.

“I know you can sing!” Mal found some relief from yelling, just a bit of release after everything. “Am I not worth your time?” She stood up and rocked the boat back and forth. She shook her fist. “Am I not good enough for the songs of the great and powerful sirens? Come on you scaly bastard, I’m as good as any of the other men of these seas.”

It’d be quicker this way. It’d be almost fitting.

The siren unwound the shawl from around herself and made Mal blush for just a moment before she slipped under the water like light entering church windows. It shouldn’t have been possible. She slid through the water in the same dream-like way and then popped up right next to the boat.

She chirped.

Mal groaned and sat down. “You want something?” Of course she wasn’t just going to be eaten by a siren, she wasn’t so lucky. Like any good lady she was going to have to entertain first.

She reached into her bag and took out the few belongings they tossed after her when she was banished overboard. “Here.” She pushed a silver comb over to the creature. “Pick your teeth with it.”

The siren delicately reached out her taloned hands and took the thing. She turned it over and over as if to find some new side of it after each twist. She cooed at the light glinting off of it and her own warped reflection.

“Yes, yes,” Mal said grumpily. “Pretty object for a pretty murderess. Are you going to give me what I want now?”

She couldn’t believe she had to prove herself to the devil before she got to be taken down to meet him like a proper sailor. She supposed she could just jump overboard but the thought of letting the ocean claim her after all this time turned her stomach. Better to perish on a boat then give the damn sea the satisfaction of going willingly.

The siren perched her chin on the side of the boat and reached her hand out. “We doing this again?”

Mal couldn’t find it in herself to care. She lifted up her mother’s pearl-inlaid mirror and handed it over. It was an heirloom, as she was always reminded, but the best kind of revenge was served with a side of irony.

Let a creature with no sense of lady-ship be the lady of it.

The creature stood then and gripped the mirror firmly. She stared at herself with a type of perplexed aw as she turned her head back and forth. She watched herself very closely for close to a minute. Finally, she let a small musical note that made Mal ache in ways she wasn’t sure was possible.

The siren glanced at her one last time and then dove headfirst into the water without so much as a spare death-melody. Mal lay back in the boat and let the sun wither her to pieces. ------------------- She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she finally managed to pry her eyes open again. She had hoped the thirst would become a dull distant pain-- the hunger certainly had, but if anything it was worse.

Water, water, water the drumbeat went.

She stared up at an endless splattering of stars. The coolness kissed her cheeks and at least it was night time.

The boat rocked gently and chirps like birds sounded just outside her line of vision. She forced herself to stand up with pins and needles drilling through every muscle. There were three of them then.

The red-head, a blonde, and brunette. They all had long shiny hair, perfectly smooth unblemished skin, and bodies like portraits. It was fake of course, the stuff of dreams, but these things peddled in dreams so she heard.

They gave her one long look as they stood on the sandbar only feet from her. They blinked in time. They each put out one hand.

“You’re not even going to sing for me?” She heard herself complaining like a young girl. “Not even gonna try to tempt me overboard? You just expect me to go?”

She sniffed indignantly. She stood. She placed her bare feet in the cold, silent waters and started to walk. She dragged herself over to them and only then did they begin to sing. It wasn’t like anything she ever heard before and some part of her knew this wasn’t their usual tune.

She closed her eyes as the unearthly melody overcame her. It was the voice of crashing waves and pattering rain. It was blustery arctic winds over ice and piercing sunlight through clouds. It was gasping and choking and prayers before darkness.

It began as a slow hunger, a craving, a tugging from her very core. She had wanted to die, to be released, but the sirens never gave what you wanted. They showed it to you and then took it away.

Mal felt hands dragging themselves down her body, running themselves down her arms and legs and disrobing what was left of her ragged clothes. She was being pulled underwater and submerged in over her head. She wasn’t going to be like them though, she couldn’t be, but what were wishes without someone to grant them?

Her bones twisted. Her skin thickened. Her thoughts filled with grime and storms and purpose. She didn’t scream. The sirens claimed her in the family of things and when she opened her eyes she was shiny as the dawn and pulsing the power of gods and monsters.

She knew then she would never get that place by the fire. Never get to see Agatha one last time. Never see herself dry or clean or fed.

She grinned. She burned. A new sea witch was born in the only way they ever do: out of misplaced wishes and a song for everyone who is lost and given no way home again.

[zhowongli]

neon lights (in a world gray)

notes: tried some msby interactions but i’m bad at writing a lot of characters so they may be a little flat. some underage drinking, fwb, & drunk texting. i’m v bad at humor but i tried. song accompaniment recommendation: million days by sabai x hoang & let’s not fall in love by big bang! also posted on ao3. 

summary: sunday mornings and midnight lights turn into songs that you watch me write. AU where you share extreme feelings with your soulmate. - atsumu/oc

wc: 10.7k (v sorry)

Your body is first to know your soulmate. The way your heart beats faster in exhilaration, your muscles burn in soreness, your body demands for food and sleep even though you are not doing anything in particular, hits you on more days than others. There’s always this constant feeling before a particular day, where you feel all these things plus a sense of hunger for something, anger and frustration, and accomplishment. Sometimes, these sudden days end in a panging ache in your heart, but usually, there’s always a sense of elation after these moments.

You are often left to wonder what kind of person your soulmate is. It makes your days a little more fun from the way he feels this sense of euphoria from doing such physical activities, from the soreness of your calves and the dull ache of your hand and wrists, from the sense of successfulness after, because he always feels so passionate about it. You wonder if sharing his passion for doing whatever he’s doing, for life, feeds into your thirst for adventure.

Your life is pretty boring and at an impasse, and while you don’t particularly mind it all that much since it has served you well thus far, you always want something more. You suppose this is why you’ve always liked chasing the thrill. You like feeling the adrenaline in your blood and the accelerated thumping of your heart because it makes you feel so alive. Doing things that you aren’t supposed to be doing is a sort of fun that you like to have because there’s something just so riveting, and it keeps calling you back. 

You have a bucket list of things you’d like to try before you die because you want to involve yourself in things that bring you happiness, to do something that fills the hole in your heart, however temporary that may be. There are already some small things on there that are already checked off: skipping class, getting a belly button piercing behind your parents’ backs, trying a sip of alcohol. As you keep fulfilling the little things, you end up always adding more back onto the list. You like to turn these little gratifications into memories by weaving your emotions into words, words, words on paper, and before long, you have an accumulation of untold stories written in secret.

But there’s always one thing you have at the bottom of the list that you’re not sure if you could ever check off, ever write about: falling in love and being loved in return.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

You first feel a gnawing pain in your heart at the end of your third year of high school. At first, you think it is you who is experiencing this pain, but then a sense of fury settles in. Your soulmate is angry, you think as you put a hand over your heart, and you begin taking deep breaths as you lay down on the rooftop just to feel breezy spring winds in your hair and on your skin. You know your emotions are interconnected, so you suppose you are trying to help calm his tremulant heart in your own way. 

Breathing in the chilling air as it blows the ends of your hair and flutters the ruffles of your skirt, you find yourself feeling more at peace before, anger diminishing. You’re not sure if it helps, but at least it makes you feel like you’re being helpful. Then, a sense of sharp betrayal and waves of sadness hits you. Your soulmate feels betrayed and hurt, and it makes you feel a sense of unsettlement in your heart. Your initial thought is that you want to help to ease his pain, but you think if he feels so intensely about it, it isn’t your place to try to override his emotions. So, you close your eyes as you lay on the rooftop, hands clasped together as if you’re holding his hand, and hope he feels your presence alongside him as a sort of moral support as he goes through whatever is happening.

Before long, his emotions leave you, and you’re glad at least he isn’t feeling as sad and betrayed when his emotions first flare in your soul. You smile, and you decide to skip class for the rest of the day, mind never too far from wandering what your soulmate is like. 

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

You haven’t felt much from your soulmate since then. There are days when the exhaustion in your body hits you harder than normal, but at this point, that has become a part of your daily routine. Sometimes, you feel the occasional intense, lasting embarrassment, and you end up feeling embarrassed and heat rushes to your cheeks. You think your soulmate may be an idiot at times like these, to be honest. But you become less focused on him and more focused on you and your bucket list as time goes by because his emotions just become a part of you.

You are about to start university when you first meet your roommate at a party some upperclassman invites you to. She is a mess, you think, as she stumbles in the bathroom, tears stain on her face and alcohol in her breath. You’re probably not in much better shape. Your head is a little dazed, and you feel a little extra empty on the inside right now because you feel like you have nothing. She wails loudly when she sees you, and you open your arms to hold her. 

“I hate him!” she sobs and whimpers into your shoulder. “Why do I love him? Why doesn’t he love me?”

You can only rub small circles on her back and press soft kisses in her hair. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t have how it feels because I don’t know how to love.”

You think you don’t want to love after seeing this poor girl. 

“But what’s the point of love if it doesn’t consume you?” she breathes out in between sobs, the scent of alcohol hitting your nose with each breath. 

You hmm in agreement because you think you’d like to lose yourself in something so passionate, so intense that it fills your soul, but you don’t say anything more.

Somehow, in between drunken conversations, you two end up becoming roommates. The two of you are more similar than you initially thought: both of you are empty on the inside, for different reasons of course, but that makes you two get along so well. 

Her words still echo sometimes in your head as you two go on in your daily lives: you with your volunteering at the animal shelter to distract yourself from reality and her with her morning runs to run away from her problems. 

What is the point of love if it doesn’t consume you?

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

Your roommate has a bad habit of going out and home with someone whenever she feels extra hung up on her soulmate. You know this because although the two of you don’t say it outright, your habits rub off on each other. Of course, this means you two have fakes and often end up hitting up parties and clubs dressing a little extra provocative to fill up the hole inside your hearts. She just wants someone to want her, to hold her like she’s not broken, like that’s her soulmate holding her; you just want someone to bring some fun and thrill in your life. 

You’re not sure how you ended up here. You remember the dim lights and the loud music; you remember dancing with your roommate and wanting someone to go home with after she leaves with some blond guy. You suppose your brain is a little buzzed from the alcohol, but you still vaguely remember feeling someone grinding against your body as you continue to dance. You turn to the stranger who moves so in tune with your stumbling beat, and you find yourself looking at blond hair and black undercut, darkened hooded eyes, and a small drunken smirk on his face. 

You vaguely remember staring at his lips and slurring some flirtatious words, and before you know it, you two are out of the club, hands on each other, and lips barely apart. The soft, loving voice of your mother briefly echoes in your head - “Don’t be with someone who doesn’t love you.” But her voice drowns out the moment your desirous eyes and eager lips meet his, and you don’t think you’ll ever regret this. You love the feeling of his lips roughly on yours, like he’s hungry for something, for more. His roaming hands leave a trail of fire with each touch, and you cannot tell if your heart is beating in exhilaration because of you or your soulmate. Whatever, you think to yourself, you don’t care right now because all you can think about is how good it feels to be held by him. 

Your back is pushed against the cold wall of the alleyway beside the club, and this coldness strikingly contrasts with the heated kisses and fiery touches of his hands and momentarily clears your mind.

“My apartment is close by,” you mutter in between kisses.

He nods, and you only remember the way back in glimpses between frantic kisses with your hands in his hair and his hands slipping under your short dress, hot breaths between your lips as you continuously find your way back to his, as if you need him, as if he is air.

You don’t even make it to your room before he hoists you up and your legs reactively wrap around his waist. Your hands are back in his hair before you begin raking your nails softly against his back. His hands are slightly colder from being outside but each touch sends a lingering, blazing shiver down your spine. Before you know it, your clothes are thrown off along the hallway to your room. 

With half-lidded eyes, you see the blinking starlight through your window blinds, almost as if it’s twinkling in disappointment. But you don’t have the heart to care when he’s leaving trails of fire along your body and your nails are digging lines of raw pink all over his back.

You hope your soulmate somewhere out there also feels the thrills, the excitement, the passion you are feeling right now.

You feel so alive.

When you wake up the next morning, he is gone. If it isn’t for your scattered clothes along the hallway and marks all over your body, it would have been like he was never here in the first place. You are not surprised, but you are not sure if the disappointment you feel in your heart is from you or your soulmate.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

Funnily enough, you see him again at the next club party you go to. You are just dancing the night away, a little drunk on alcohol and high on emotions, when your body meets his again. 

“Wanta get outta here?” he asks over the loud music as his hands are on your waist and yours are around his neck.

“Okay,” you nod and pull him out of the club, stumbling upon the same steps to your apartment, and remembering it happening in the exact same way as last time.

And exactly like last time, he is long gone by the time you wake up, leaving you to feel the same disappointment in your heart.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

It’s always a good time with him. He is fun, passionate, and it is a little thrilling that he is just some random stranger. But you’re not sure if you can still call him a stranger when this happens for the third time.

“If you just wanted to see me, you could have just called,” you laugh in his ear, hands playing with the hem of his shirt as his ghosts over your thighs. 

He looks a little dumbfounded before he joins your laughter and gives you a roguish smirk. “Sorry, my phone’s broken. It didn’t have your number in it.”

You could only stare at him blankly. His sly smile falls off under your unmoving eyes, and he begins to chuckle nervously in embarrassment. You’re not sure if you’re embarrassed because that is lowkey cringe or if your soulmate out there is in another bout of doing something embarrassing, but you laugh softly.

“That was bad,” you admit in between laughs and holds your hand out for his phone, “But here. Let me fix that.”

You see the relief on his face, and the embarrassment you feel in your heart feels subside. He’s interesting, you think, because he wears his heart on his sleeve. 

Whatever mood there was before is gone, but you still end up leaving with him after a quick kiss becomes two, three, numberless because it feels like you can’t ever get enough of him. The two of you make your way back to your apartment once again, much like your previous encounters.

However, when you wake up in the morning, you are surprised to find him still next to you. His eyes are closed, but you can tell he’s awake through his twitching eyelids and uneven breathing. He probably missed his chance to leave, you think, and you debated on whether you should spare him the awkwardness and pretend to continue sleeping or to wake up and continue from last night because you’re not quite ready to go back to feeling empty again. You’re a little selfish because you decide that your escape from reality is a little more important to you than his awkwardness.

“Hey,” you sit up slowly to not irritate your pounding head, blanket pooling around your legs, “Wanna join me in the shower?”

You don’t even have to look back as you hear the ruffles of the blanket and feel his arms around your waist. 

You are drying your hair with a towel when your eyes trail to his form. His blond hair is still a little flat from being damp and there are still droplets of water on his body when he begins putting on his discarded clothes, and you have to remind yourself to breathe because he knocks the air out of your lungs. He is attractive, and you’re not easily impressed, but there’s just something about him that makes your heart flutter and squeeze excitingly. 

But it’s also a little unsettling when you see him in your room in the daylight. Your room is a collection of books, papers and ink, and coffee mugs, and seeing him here with his blond hair, broad shoulders, and smile that’s brighter than the sun is startling because he contrasts so much from your monochrome room. This is the first time you’ve seen him when you’re both completely sober, without the haze of alcohol and the darkness of the night. It’s almost like you’re exposing a part of your life that’s previously only set to nights only. It suddenly hits you that you still don’t even know his name even though you know his body as well as your own by now.

Almost as if he feels your unsettling heart, he turns to question you, “Ya good?”

You nod only because you’re not about to open up to the guy you’ve slept with three times but still don’t know the name of. “I’m fine.”

He looks at you pointedly, but he ruffles his blond hair and doesn’t push it. “Okay, I’ll see ya later?”

You hmm in agreement and laugh, “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

Contrary to your statement, you don’t see him soon. He’s not at any of the parties you subsequently go to. He never texted you after you put your number in his phone, so you figured he was just here for a good time, not a long time. Knowing this doesn’t help the tightness in your chest when you think about him.

Somehow, you think you finally understand why your roommate only has eyes for guys with long, bleached blond hair because you find that you are naturally attracted to guys who resemble him. You almost end up going home once with a different blond guy when you don’t see him, but you don’t feel the same excitement from his touch so you just left. 

You begin to wonder since when did your eyes always look for signs for a tall blond with a lazy smile and addictive kisses. You wonder since when did your body only react so intensely when it comes to his touch. You wonder since when did your soul only feel so vibrant when you are with him.

You wonder if your soulmate out there feels the same too because you’re not getting such vivid liveliness from him these days. You still feel the adrenaline in your blood, the dull aches of your arms and hands, and the usual exhilaration after certain days. However, there’s a sense of lingering mundaneness too. It’s a little funny if you think about it because it’s almost like your soulmate is here with you, feeling the exact same feelings as you. 

He’s the one who approaches you first when you see him again months later. It’s the same old story: you’re at the club with your roommate, though she’s coming with you less and less, and you’re just having fun on the dance floor when he appears. When his hand touches you again for the first time, you feel that same electricity, the same intensity that only he draws out. 

“Hey,” he smirks, “Ya look good, as always.”

“Hey yourself,” you smile flirtatiously back at him, “You look alright too, I guess.” 

His mouth drops and his eyebrows furrowed together like he’s offended at your comment, but you don’t feel that bad since his expression is rather hilarious. 

“I missed ya,” he continues, ignoring your previous comment like it doesn’t hurt his ego.

“And I missed you too,” you smile a little more genuinely now. 

It doesn’t take long before the two of you are touching, kissing, and leaving together again. It’s always more fun when he’s around, you think to yourself before you lose yourself in him. 

For the first time, you two are talking in your bed, still naked, instead of sleeping after being too spent for another round. He’s a little closed off, you think, regarding his personal life, and he’s somewhat reserved and awkward at first. When the topic of careers comes up, his eyes light up under the dim lights and he tells you he’s a volleyball player in Osaka and he’s only in Tokyo for random occasions. 

Ah, this explains the long absence. 

You listen to him as he passionately talks about the sport, his Kansai accent slipping out more and more as he talks. You can just hear how much he loves it and the silent message of how little room he has in his life for anything else. 

You tell him you don’t have anything you’re passionate about. He is confused by your statement like he’s surprised that there’s someone with no passions in life, like he’s almost offended that you have no passion in life. You only shrug and continue to tell him you volunteer at the animal shelter, and you write occasionally sometimes because it is your major. 

“Really? Ya seem to be someone with a lot of passion for life just from the way ya kiss,” he comments offhandedly as he rolls to his side towards you and props his body up on his elbows, eyes looking into yours. 

It takes you by surprise because no one has ever told you anything like that. “You think so?” you ask as your eyes meet his. You tug softly on his arm to pull him towards you, and when he lays back down and wraps an arm around you, you absentmindedly play with the ends of his hair. 

He hums in agreement as he relaxes into your touch. There’s a sense of domesticity in this situation that makes you feel both scared and comfortable. You haven’t experienced this sort of intimacy with anyone else, where you are just talking about life still naked after fucking, and it’s scary because it’s so unknown. But there’s just something about being with him that feels so at home, like he’s supposed to be relaxing in your touch as you play with his hair, like he’s supposed to believe in you and inspire you to chase your passions, like he’s supposed to be here with you. Your heart flutters as the conversations continue through the night. You try not to think about it because maybe your soulmate has suspiciously crazy good timing and is the one with the pulsing heart.

The two of you fall asleep only when dawn comes and the first rays of the sunlight hit peek through the blinds. Unlike the stars that seemingly twinkle in disappointment, the soft lights look gentle, hopeful, positive, in a way you haven’t thought of in years. When you see his sleeping face, his mouth is slightly gaped open and his limbs are taking up all the bed space, you find that it’s a little endearing. 

Your heart flutters again, and this time, you don’t fight the fact that you know it’s you and your dumb heart, not your soulmate’s, that’s animatedly beating like this. 

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

“I said sign me the fuck up, not assign me the fuck up,” you groan into your hands. The forming headache from earlier exacerbates into throbbing pains of a migraine. 

Your roommate just pitifully pats your head before she just says, “Unlucky. How’s he even a fuck up? Isn’t he like, on his way to becoming a professional volleyball player?”

“Well, okay, he’s not  really  like a fuck up. But yeah, basically, he only cares about, like, one thing and one thing only: volleyball,” you continue to whine as you bury your face in your arms. “God, I knew blond guys with poor dye jobs were a bad idea.”

“No,” your roommate rebuttals, probably because her now not-boyfriend-but-basically-boyfriend’s black roots are showing and he definitely needs a retouch on that blond soon, “Being friends with benefits was. You’ll always end up catching feels, babe.” 

Your roommate’s words from forever ago echo in your head - “What’s the point of love if it doesn’t consume you?”

“Ughhhhh,” you groan again, purposely dragging out the sound to express your exasperation. You hate that she’s right. You hate that you kind of had an idea this was going to happen. You hate that your stupid fuck buddy is so stupidly hot, and he makes you feel so  alive . 

“So what are you going to do now?” your roommate questions as she pulls your head out of your hands and into her lap, fingers softly playing with your hair and soothing the tension from your headache.

You pause for a moment as you move your arm to shield your eyes from the light before you answer truthfully, “I don’t know. It’s kinda… scary.”

She hmms in agreement. “It is. But isn’t it better to just fall? He doesn’t seem like the type to let you fall.” 

“I don’t know,” you mutter weakly again, “I never know with him. He’s driven by things he’s passionate about, and he’s always either giving his 0% or 120% into whatever he loves, like volleyball. I’m just a booty call. I’m scared to be 0%.” 

“Babe, I don’t think you’re 0% if he’s still hitting you up every single time he’s in Tokyo.”

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

He texts you first. It comes at an unexpected moment for you because your soulmate is going through a series of accelerated palpitations and a sense of hesitance that makes even your palms sweat, and when it arrives, this nervous energy doesn’t leave you. You feel a little anxious, but you’re not sure if that’s because your soulmate is so jittery right now or if you are scared to open his text. 

When you finally open it, you forget how to breathe for a moment. If you were confused about whose beating heart and jitteriness it was before, you were definitely unsure now. Your racing heart adds onto this tension right now, and you make sure to read it twice, thrice, before you exhale softly. 

In hindsight, it’s not even a special message, but when you think about how this could complicate things, how this will change from being just whatever you guys are right now to being something more, your heart flutters a little more. 

“wanna come to my volleyball game?”

You force yourself to take a deep breath, repeating the words inhale and exhale in your mind like a mantra before you respond with a simple “sure.” 

The instant relief you feel in your heart comes quicker than a ray of light. Once again, you are unsure whether that relief is coming from your soulmate or you, but either way, you are just glad you can breathe again. 

You try to not think about the giddiness in your heart and the matching smile on your face.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

 “Bro, what the fuck do I wear to a volleyball game?” you cry out in frustration as all you look through all the clothes you dug out from your closet.

Your roommate walks through your door, “Dude, what the fuck?” She makes a disgusted face as she walks into your room, picking up pieces of clothing along the way, “You’re just going to a volleyball game, just wear something comfy and cute.” 

You let out a strange noise before you plant your face into the small mountain of clothing you accumulated. Your roommate sighs before you hear some ruffling and feel a light tap on your head. 

“Here, wear this,” she offers. “You’re thinking too hard about it. Just have fun!” 

You take the clothes out of her hand and let out another noise. Your roommate only laughs at you before she pats your head, “Okay, go on. Don’t want you to be late for your date!”

A feral noise comes out of your mouth as you try to hide your embarrassment. “It’s not a date!” 

She laughs again and before you can yell at her, your phone lights up. Your eyes naturally trail to the blue light of your phone, and you see a text message from him. You quickly open the text, and your face heats up a bit when you see a picture of him in his black jersey, flashing a peace sign with a lazy smirk. He is almost handsome enough to distract you from the cringe caption that comes along the picture. 

“hope ur ready to see me smack that ball like i smack ur ass ;)” 

You snicker because oh my god he’s so  embarrassing . Your fingers automatically type a quick response. 

“yikes. hope you smack it harder than you smack my ass bc it ain’t going over the net otherwise :p”

In milliseconds, you receive a short “what!!!! :(“ in return, and you burst out laughing. 

All the worries of what to wear and the tension in your body dissipates as the sound of your laughter rings in the room. From the corner of your eye, you see the small journal you kept in high school with the list of things you’d like to accomplish in life. Remembering the last item of the list to check off, to fall in love and be loved in return, you scoff softly to yourself. There’s a sense of acceptance and sereneness as you admit that you can check off the first part now because you are undeniably falling in love with this idiot.

However, minutes later, your face heats up because you feel so embarrassed. It almost feels like your soul is leaving your body because you just wanted to be swallowed up by the earth. You could only hope your soulmate is okay.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

To be honest, you’ve never gone to a volleyball game before, but the rush of emotions and energy in the area fills you up. It brings you a sense of passion, intensity, and you take in this moment and capture it in your mind. You mentally make a note to incorporate this feeling into the new piece you’re writing.

The actual game goes by in a blur, partially because you don’t know what’s going on but also because the heat, the rush just draws you into the moment and you are hyper-aware of all the movements in the court. As Atsumu goes up to serve, you see his brown eyes scan the crowd, and when he spots you, he smirks and points a finger at you as if he’s saying this serve is for you. 

The crowd goes wild by his gesture, and the teenage girls sitting in front of you, the middle-aged man sitting behind you, and the grandma next to you all squeal and argue half-heartedly who he is pointing to. You only laugh, hoping he is too far away to spot your heated cheeks, before you flash him a quick thumbs-up, hoping he’ll catch it before he focuses on the game again. 

He puts too much power into his spike and misses his serve, and his face is comically dejected so you laugh quietly under your breath because he just missed the serve he dedicated for you. You see his teammates go up to him, the one with the black and white hair slapping his back with a hearty laugh and the one with orange hair bouncing to him to make a joke. Only then, you feel a pang of embarrassment in your heart, and you wonder if this is what Atsumu feels at the moment. You are beginning to craft up a ludicrous theory that he’s your soulmate because somehow, your soulmate always has impeccable timing attune to your emotions and what’s happening around you.

The rest of the game goes by in a swoosh. There is a combination of bam, whoosh, and wham, and there is a boing here and there. It becomes more BAM and sploosh after the player with the black and white hair keeps scoring points, and this seems to fire up the orange-colored hair player and Atsumu even more. The colored hair trio continues to score points, almost as if they are feeding off each other’s energy and trying to one-up one another. Though the latter is more like Atsumu trying not to be outshined by his teammates, you laugh to yourself. 

They end up playing three sets and win the game. You are honestly amazed because you can barely keep up watching. Now, you have a newfound admiration for Atsumu. The cheers in the stadium are loud, deafening, but all that drowns out when you see Atsumu’s genuine smile. He looks so excited, happy, and your heart beats in exhilaration. Your eyes meet, and you flash him a bright smile because you cannot contain the energy in this arena, his happiness, and the exhilaration in your heart within you. For a moment, his smile drops and he only gawks at you before his two teammates from earlier slap his back again, causing him to bend over from the force. His eyes only leave yours then, but it seems like his two teammates are curious about what he is looking at. Following his gaze, you now find yourself looking at 2 additional pairs of eyes, and suddenly you feel a little shy. You give a small wave, and they wave back boisterously before they begin to exclaim something to Atsumu before you feel a new sense of embarrassment in your heart again.  

The crowd thins out as Atsumu and his teammates make their way towards you. You suspect that this is more so because you’re next to the exit than anything, but they all stop to greet you with knowing smiles on their faces. You try to take it at face value and not think too much into the meaning behind their smiles. The two that introduce themselves as Tomas Adriah and Barnes Oriver leave after a wave. Shortly after a pleasant conversation, the ones named Meian Shuugo and Inunaki Shion follow suit. This leaves you with the colored hair trio, who is currently arguing and strangely reminds you of the three stooges, and a player with wavy black hair and two moles on the right side of his forehead. He’s beautiful even with his mask on if you’re honest, and his calmness feels like a breath of fresh air here. 

You hold out a hand to introduce yourself, but before you can say anything, you see him squeeze some hand sanitizer into your palms. You blink twice before you mutter a soft thank you and rub your hands together. A little peculiar, but you appreciate the value of cleanliness. After your hands are clean, you try the introductions again. This time, he introduces himself as Sakusa Kiyoomi.

Your hands are still connected when Atsumu swings an arm around Sakusa, breaking off your handshake. You see the disgruntled look on Sakusa’s face as you catch Atsumu’s eyes fleetingly before he turns to talk to Sakusa loudly about something. Just then, you see orange hair bouncing to you, and within seconds, you find sparkling brown eyes staring at you. 

“Hi!! I’m Hinata!!” He greets you eagerly.

Before you could reply, the taller player with black and white hair pushes Hinata down, his sparkling golden eyes that match Hinata’s in excitement, and he loudly introduces himself. “Hey hey hey!! I’m Bokuto!!”

You could only introduce yourself briefly before they start talking again.

“You must be the girl Tsumtsum talks about!! Did you know he tripped before the game started today, and he was soooo embarrassed??” Bokuto starts playfully as he leans closer. He is so tall and muscular, and you feel so small in comparison.

“Yeah!! You must be the reason why he tried so hard to look cool serving today!” Hinata merrily adds as he leans in closer too, laughing at the expense of Atsumu.

Atsumu’s “Hey!! Shut up!!” could be heard softly in the background as they continue. Your mouth only drops a little bit. You try to chalk your shock up to the fact that they still have so much energy despite just playing three sets of a difficult game, and not because they are telling you things you’re not sure if you’re supposed to know. After all, this gives you a sense of hope that you may not be 0%.

“Well, too bad he still missed those serves…” you inject teasingly. 

At that, Hinata and Bokuto burst out laughing, and you join in their contagious laughter before Atsumu leaves Sakusa and whacks his teammates softly before the three of them begin bickering lightheartedly.

“You guys are both terrible and embarrassing. Goodbye,” Sakusa sighs as he makes his way out of the stadium. 

You meet Sakusa’s eyes as he leaves, and you nod in agreement. He gives you a nod in return, and you think you discover a newfound sense of comradery with Sakusa. 

The trio waves goodbye to Sakusa before going back to bickering. You can hardly keep up with the energy, but it’s so fun. You catch Hinata saying something about how Atsumu is failing at all his attempts to be cool and how Atsumu is furiously denying it because he’s naturally born cool. When you guys finally part ways, you pretend not to see Bokuto and Hinata’s attempt at wiggling their eyebrows and flashing conspicuous smiles at Atsumu. 

“Ignore them” is the first thing he says after he flips them off and turns to you. You only hum in acknowledgment, laughter bubbling up. 

“They’re fun,” you offer with a small laugh.

“They’re scrubs, but I guess they’re kind of okay sometimes,” he huffs. 

“You guys are cute,” you coo teasingly, “Are you what they call… a tsundere?”

“Shut up,” he grumbles with flushed cheeks.

You pat his arm softly as you laugh. “You did great today, by the way. It was all bam and whoosh and wham!! I can see why you like volleyball so much now.”

His face scrunches up at your description of the match, but his brown eyes light up nevertheless. He begins to zealously talk about the game. While you are listening to him, all you can think about is how he outshines the twinkling stars and how beautiful he looks in his messy hair and sweaty jersey. 

“Are you listening to me?” he pouts when he finds you not very responsive.

“I am,” you reply half-heartedly, still a little too taken with him.

“Then, what did I just say?” he questions dubiously, one eyebrow raised. 

“How you missed your first serve and definitely did not smack that ball as hard as you smack my ass,” you poke fun at him.

His face falls almost comically, but you can’t help yourself from laughing because he’s just so fun to tease. 

“I’ll show you how hard I can smack that ass alright,” he grins with a smug look on his face as he pretends that your last comment didn’t hurt.

You tug on the collar of his jacket before you pull him into a kiss. “I suppose I can indulge my winner tonight,” you mutter with a sly smile.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

Pillow talk becomes something that’s happening more and more often between the two of you, and you’re not sure what to make of it. He is the type of person who is independent, and you kind of get the idea that he is a little awkward around his feelings despite his front. It’s nice, you think, because he is opening up more and more to you. He is still relatively drawn back, but he is slowly letting you in, and it makes your heart flutter in hope.

Much like the nth times before, you two are talking about such mundane things that shouldn’t make your heart wild, but it does. He tells you about his twin brother and how they used to play volleyball together, how betrayed and hurt he felt at the end of high school when his twin decided to pursue a different career than volleyball. Your mind briefly wanders back to laying on the rooftop, feeling the wind in your hair, and holding your hand like you’re trying to hold your soulmate’s as he falls apart. He tells you about his previous teammates and how they still keep in touch and try to schedule yearly hangouts. He tells you about his dreams and how he will play for the Japanese national team one day.

His speech is always so animated and passionate, and you look at him with admiration in your eyes. You share bits and pieces about your life because it’s only fair he gets to know you when you know so much about him. There’s not much to say about yourself because you feel so boring, so you opt to talk about the stories inside your head.

You scrunch your eyebrows together, trying to condense the storyline to not spoil him, as you tell him about the historical fantasy piece you’re writing. You tell him about the characters, their backstories, and the worlds you’ve crafted for them, explaining each one and their feelings with wild gestures of your hands. You tell him about the short and arguably bad poems you write sometimes for a change of pace and will never show anyone because it’s so embarrassing. You tell him quietly about the unfinished story of a girl who checks things off a to-do list because she feels like she has nothing and is on a journey to find something, anything. 

“How does that one end?” he asks eagerly. 

When you look at him after you describe your life, your heart thumps loudly and wildly and you almost forget how to breathe because out of all the stories he takes interest in, he picks the one about you. He’s looking at you with so much curiosity and affection in his eyes. There’s something more there, but you’re scared to think it is what you think it is.

You wonder if that’s how you look at him.

“I don’t know,” you finally breathe out, “I’ll let you know one day when I know.”

He hmph softly, like a child who doesn’t get the answer he wants. “Will ya read it to me then?”

You pause because this implies that he’ll be around, he’ll be here to find out how your story unfolds. You want that so, so badly, but you settle for a quiet, “Maybe.”

He seems to be pleased enough with your answer. His hand is playing with yours, and you find that he is gradually becoming more and more touchy as time goes on. There’s a crease in his brows that makes you wonder what he’s thinking so hard about. There is an unspoken tension between the two of you, and you’re not sure if you want to break it. What you guys have right now is fragile, and you’re scared that if you say anything it will shatter. You don’t think he wants to address this either because he just doesn’t seem to have the time or will to commit to anything with you. You are okay with this, you think, because it is what you expected, but it still sends a pang to your heart. 

Surprisingly, he does address this though. He always wears his emotions on his sleeve and his every reaction is always on his face, and it makes you appreciate him because he is always surprisingly honest, albeit blunt sometimes. 

“I like ya, but let’s not fall in love.” 

The statement comes out straightforward, and it almost catches you by surprise. 

“What do you mean?” you ask softly, head tilted to the side and hand tugging slightly at his because sometimes his intentions don’t come across well with his blunt words.

He looks at you with that same something in his eyes that you’re scared to identify. His eyebrows scrunch together as if he’s trying to formulate the words to express his feelings. “The word love feels too constricting,” he eventually mutters. 

“Should we stop this then?” you ask quietly, retracting your hand hesitantly.

He stares at you like he’s confused, and you find it a little difficult to look him back in the eye. Well, honesty is always the best policy, so if he’s honest with you, you might as well be honest with him.

“Because I like you,” you admit softly. 

His mouth drops into a small ‘o’, and you think this is an awful moment for your soulmate to have such a rapidly beating heart because you almost think it’s your own, almost hope that it’s Atsumu and it’s his heart that’s beating like this. 

“What we have now is fun, but I don’t think it’s fair if I’m the only one falling,” you add on quietly. 

“I like ya,” he repeats as he grabs your hand, a glint of desperation in his eyes, “But I just can’t promise a tomorrow.” 

You hum in acknowledgment before you meet his eyes again, and there are flashes of too many emotions. You pull back your hand slowly, “I understand.” 

You really do because there’s something so scary about falling, about the unknown, about not knowing the ending. You know he can’t promise tomorrow because he lives for now, but when you are living in now, you can’t help but think about tomorrow. You can’t help but want him to be there for tomorrow, for the days after, for as long as you can foresee. Maybe you are also holding back to prevent yourself from falling deeper too, you think, so you just settle for leaving this in more than friends with benefits and less than lovers as it is now. Just as those words leave your mouth, his brown eyes dull in defeat and he gets up to leave. 

“It was fun,” he tells you on his way out.

“It was,” you agree.

He looks back, but you’re too afraid to meet his eyes, so you settle for an awkward smile as you pull the blanket around you, desperately trying to cling onto the warmth he’s leaving behind. 

You’re unsure if your heartache and tears are from your soulmate or you, but all you can do is muffle the sound of your sobs into your blanket as you breathe in the last of him. 

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

You end up taking up more hours at the animal shelter, and you begin writing out the thoughts inside your head. It’s kind of therapeutic because you can weave together a world, a reality that’s not yours. Sometimes, you are just staring at a blank page on the screen because you don’t have it in you to write, but you just end up trying to type out your incoherent thoughts anyways because it feels like it’s a way to get it off your chest, because it feels like you can live somewhere else as someone whose heart isn’t constantly in pain. 

And, if your mind and fingers are preoccupied with creating, typing out a story then there are fewer chances that you end up thinking about brown eyes and dyed blond hair and smile brighter than the sun, fewer chances you end up texting him the thoughts inside your head and the feelings inside your heart. 

It doesn’t work though because you find that all your stories have some parts of him in there. The protagonist that you unconsciously modeled after him, the love interest with his passion for life, the best friend with his embarrassing tendencies, the villain with his hunger for more, everything comes back to him. 

You try not to think about the constant dull heartache and mild confusion that resides in your heart. You try to not mind the fact that there’s a constant hope somewhere in the back of your mind that whenever your phone lights up, it’s a message from him, and the tightness of your heart when it isn’t.

You wonder if he feels the same way.

It’s a Saturday night, and usually, you’d ask if your roommate wants to hit the club with you. Then you realize Atsumu just had a game in Tokyo, and you always somehow end up bumping into him at clubs. You only wrap yourself in your blanket once again as you curl up in a ball. You feel a little woozy like you’ve had too much alcohol, and your head is throbbing. Your soulmate has been drinking a lot in the past month, you think, and it’s a little crazy because this past month without Atsumu has been a little bit of a new low for you too. You almost hope that your theory about Atsumu being your soulmate is wrong because you’re a little concerned if he’s drinking so much recently. 

When your phone lights up and vibrates, signaling a text message, you mindlessly grab it because you are expecting a text from your roommate.

But it is from Atsumu, and all the air in your lungs leaves you when you read his message.

“i miss u” 

You’re hesitant in responding. You want it to mean something, mean he actually misses you and cares about you, but you’re scared to get your hopes up. What if it isn’t even meant for you?

You only respond with a short, “are you drunk?” 

“maybr but i miss u all the samne” 

You don’t know how to respond, but he continues to send you texts before you can think of a response.

“i miss sseein u in my ned and dryin u hair aftet hsowers”

“i hera ur laugh wjen i makr a joke anf ur all i think fo when i ssemll books and inkk”

“i c u efvrywhere i go”

“i thik im in luv w u”

Your heart is drumming instantaneously to an irregular rhythm, and you exhale forcibly when you read his last message. The message becomes blurry on your screen as your tears drop. Your mind is feeling a million things and your heart cannot keep up with his confessions. He’s drunk right now, you think to yourself, so don’t take this to heart. Don’t think too much into it. Don’t.

“you’re drunk tsumu” 

You are about to type more when you see him send another message.

“can i cone c u”

“pls”

You see the three dots at the bottom of your screen before it stops. Shortly after, you see the three dots again and you wait in anticipation, subconsciously holding your breath as you bite your lip.

“Hello, this is Meian. Sorry about Atsumu. He’s drunk, but he is true in his feelings. I think he (and the rest of the team) would appreciate it if you could spare some time to talk to him. You don’t have to if you don’t want to or feel uncomfortable though.”

You don’t know what to think, but you are reluctant to see him. “What is the point of love if it doesn’t consume you?” echoes in your mind. You remember wanting to be absorbed in love, to find passion that makes you feel alive, and you find that in Atsumu. You realize you can’t keep holding back like this if you want to live, and you’ve always wanted an adventure and he is your greatest one. He is someone you are willing to fall for, even if you aren’t his 120%, because he makes you feel like you are 120%. You take a deep breath and begin typing.

“okay. where are you guys?”

Meian drops you a pin, and you realize it’s the park you two always pass by on the way back from the club. You fight the slight dizziness in your head as you get up to put on your black coat with gold trims that oddly reminds you of his jersey and head out. Your heart is running at a million miles per hour, but the burn in your lungs as you breathe in the cold air oddly gives you a sense of calmness and clears your head. 

You are not sure what you want from this - you do, but you don’t want to say it aloud because  what if you jinxed it. You are trying to calm your raging heart as you near his location. Your head is getting clearer and clearer, and you wonder if your soulmate is finally sobering up. 

You arrive at a park shortly after. You see Atsumu slump on a bench, arm over his eyes as if he’s contemplating his life. You see some of his teammates around him, Meian and Bokuto sitting on either side of him, Hinata crouching in front of him, and Sakusa standing close by but not in their proximity, saying something you cannot make out. When Bokuto spots you, his golden eyes light up under the lamplight and wave you over vigorously. The rest of the team follows, but all you can focus on is Atsumu raising his arm slightly to peek at you. 

Sakusa is the first to approach you, and he nods as a greeting. You nod back, and his voice is even, albeit frustrated, you think, as he says, “Please talk some sense into this idiot.” 

Your throat dries, but you nod again nevertheless. “I’m not sure if anyone can talk anything into him,” you offer with a dry chuckle. 

He sighs in agreement before he looks at you with something akin to sympathy in his eyes. “Good luck.” 

Bokuto comes up as Sakusa leaves. His good-natured eyes and energetic smile energizes you, and it momentarily brings a small smile to your face.

“Hey!! Thank goodness you’re here! Tsumtsum’s been in a slump ever since you stopped hanging around. He’s a good guy!” 

“Yeah!” Hinata’s voice chirps in, eyes bright and smile even brighter, “He’s a little troublesome, but he’s a good guy.” 

The two of them look like they are about to continue saying more when Meian comes and places a hand on both of their heads and ruffles their hair a little to stop their tracks. It’s kind of sweet, and it warms your heart a little bit because it looks like a dad calming down his children. 

“Good to see you here. As they said, Atsumu is a good kid, but I’m sure you already know that,” Meian says with a small knowing smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

“I do,” you admit softly and return his smile. 

“Alright, well we were just here to make sure he got here okay. Here are our numbers if you don’t want to deal with him anymore,” Meian laughs softly.

You whisper a soft thank you before your eyes flicker to where Atsumu is sitting. He is still slumped over, though you can see the red in his cheeks and the tip of his ears. It’s kind of adorable, and it makes you smile, but your feet feel glued to the ground when you want to step forward. You know you told yourself it’s okay to embrace these feelings, to fall, but it doesn’t make you any less afraid. Your brain is prepared but your heart is still scared. 

As if the trio senses your uncertainty, Hinata starts, “Tsumtsum’s an honest guy, so he wouldn’t say anything he doesn’t mean!” 

Bokuto nods his head vigorously and cheers you on. “Yeah!! Go for it!!” 

Meian just pats your shoulder and ushers the two with him as he walks forward. “Go.”

You inhale a deep breath and nod, feeling like they just gave you wings to move forward. “Thank you.” 

They laugh it off before they walk off, and you can still make out some of their conversations - something about making Atsumu treat them some A1 wagyu steaks and “oooh, what about all you can eat BBQ!” next time. 

With newfound confidence, you walk towards the bench where Atsumu is sitting. He peeks at you from under his arm again but doesn’t say anything otherwise. You take a seat next to him, leaving some space in between despite the cold weather enveloping you. The two of you sit in silence for a minute, and it’s so quiet that you feel like you can hear your pulsing heart. You stare at the evening sky and take in the stars that no longer seem like they twinkling in disappointment. 

He tugs the end of your sleeve, and this pulls you out of your reverie. “I wasn’t lyin’,” he says softly. You can smell the alcohol in his breath and hear the slight slur in his voice, but he sounds genuine and exposed. 

“I don’t know what you want from me,” you silently admit. 

His fingers on the ends of your sleeve make their way into your cold hand, instantly starting a fire on your hands and burning into your heart. “I just want ya.” 

Your head snaps to look at him, and for the first time in a month, you’re really looking at him. You see his honest and hopeful brown eyes, face red from the winds or the alcohol or from being so raw, and form tense, almost as if he’s scared to hear the answer. You miss seeing him, being next to him, being with him. 

“I thought you didn’t want to fall in love,” you respond faintly, almost inaudibly because he is holding your hand and it sets your soul ablaze in a way that you only feel when you’re with him. You’ve wanted to hear those words for so long because you’re absolutely in love with him and you’re scared to get your hopes up only to have them crushed again. 

“I didn’t,” he admits honestly, “But it was too late. I see traces of ya everywhere even when ya aren’t there - in the crowds, at coffee shops and bookstores, at home when I’m back after a long day. Even when I close my eyes, I can see yer dumb smile and hear yer cute laugh, and it drives me insane.” 

You smile as you whack him lightly with your other hand. “My smile isn’t dumb!”

“It makes me dumb, so it’s dumb,” he argues with a pout, but his pout fades into a smile that matches your own. 

“That makes no sense, dummy,” you whack him softly again. You are almost afraid to process the latter of his statements because your heart is pounding so hard you can’t focus. You don’t miss the softness in his eyes or the affectionate smile when he’s looking at you, the gentleness and warmth of his hands as he’s holding yours. 

“I think I was already in love with ya,” he confesses softly and squeezes your hand. 

You can only stare at him. You feel a sudden rush of heat and excitement, of longing finally answered, of magic and love that sparkles and fills your heart and down to the depths of your soul. The words you never thought you would hear from him, the feelings you never thought would be returned, is right here. He is right here. Your heart is on fire, and you’re so hot it feels like you’re melting despite the cold weather. You feel like you’re on top of the world.

“I love you,” you whisper hesitantly as you search his eyes, not wanting to scare him off. You know he is a free spirit, and he doesn’t want and shouldn’t be tied to anything he doesn’t want to. When you only find the same look he gave you in his eyes, you can now finally put a name to the emotion: love. It gives you more confidence to squeeze his hand back and continue. “I love you with all my soul, with everything I have in me, from the beginning until the end of everything.”

Your heart beats madly and irrevocably, and for a moment you’re not sure if that’s your soulmate’s heartbeat or your own. You can only disorientedly stare at him, and he takes this moment to take your shaking hand and place it on his heart. You feel the rapid pace of his heart, and your accelerated heartbeats sync together in beats. His thumb gently brushes against your knuckles, and you find that this is a reality you don’t want to escape.

“It’s the same,” he affirms, easily and unquestionably. 

“It’s the same,” you repeat slowly, words breathe out airily, and you are still a little in disbelief. “Looks like I stole your heart, huh?” you laugh softly. 

“It was yer’s for the taking,” he replies honestly with a grin. 

The distance between the two of you is gone, and you bask in his warmth. Your heart feels absolutely at peace and in love, and you’re wondering if your soulmate is feeling the same thing. 

“You know,” you start, voicing out a theory you’ve had for a while, “Sometimes I think you’re my soulmate.” 

He stares at you dumbly. “Huh, ya know, I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while too. I just wanta sleep sometimes after a long day, but then I suddenly feel excited and caffeinated and then want to cry in the middle of the night. There’s no one else I know who’s like this except for ya because I know ya do this when ya write the stories inside yer head.” 

You stare at him. You don’t realize that he notices these small things about you, that he watches the way your face contours into a smile or falls into tears when you invest yourself in your stories. You can only smile wholeheartedly. “No one else has so many embarrassing moments that it makes  me  embarrassed and want to hide in a hole.” 

“What!” he exclaims and adamantly insists, “I’m always cool and suave!” 

“Uh, yeah, that ain’t it chief,” you retort with a grin. “You’re kinda embarrassing.” 

He puffs his cheeks and pouts. You smile as you poke his cheek. He’s so cute. When his eyes meet yours again, your world stills. He is handsome, you think, as he leans closer to you. There’s something magical about this moment, and when he finally kisses you this time, delicately and hesitantly almost like he’s afraid and uncertain to, it feels different from the lustful, passionate kisses at night. It feels softer, indulgent, and it sparks a fire in your soul, like neon lights in a world gray, like summer in December, like you’ve been consumed wholly by love. When you finally separate for air, all you can do is mutter an airy, “Again.”

He swiftly kisses you again, and you kiss once, twice, until all you can think about in this moment is him.

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

You are writing your graduation project when you hear loud footsteps behind you. The scent of spices and soft cinnamon hits your nose before strong arms wrap around your torso. Blond hair tickles the side of your face as Atsumu rests his chin on your shoulders. 

“Good morning,” you greet softly. It’s still early in the morning, and you’re a little surprised he is awake before his first alarm for his morning run.

“Mornin’, love. Whatcha doing?” he asks as he stifles a yawn, voice still groggy. 

“Finishing a long-overdue story,” you hum out in response, your eyes never leaving your computer and fingers still on the keyboard. 

You continue to work as Atsumu holds you, and for a moment, you think he must have fallen back asleep because he’s so quiet. That idea quickly disappears as he kisses your cheek, his stubble tickling your skin. When you laugh lightly and swat him away, he groans out in frustration from the lack of attention and buries his head in the crook of your neck. 

You only laugh again, “I’m almost done, Tsumu.”

He whines in response before he lifts his head and settles his chin on your shoulder again. He quiets, and you can feel his eyes following the movement of your fingers as you type. 

“Whatcha writing about?” he asks curiously, eyes now glancing at the words on the screen.

“The girl who felt like she had nothing,” you hum softly, a little distracted. “Then a dumb idiot came and made her realize she had everything all along.”

“Does it have a happy ending?” he asks, curiously, playfully, and almost shyly. He remembers you telling him about this story, about you from days long ago.

You stop typing momentarily and turn to meet his brown eyes and a soft smile. In moments like these, you wonder how you are so lucky. Your heartbeats sync together, and in his eyes, you find the passion you’ve always dreamed of, the 120% you’ve never thought you could be, and the love you’ve always wanted that consumes your heart and soul.

“I love you,” you breathe out. 

His enthusiastic smile and loving eyes already answer you silently before he says it, but when he whispers “I love ya too”, it feels exciting yet peaceful, full of contradictions, but it feels so soft, whole, complete, and you want to live in this moment forever.

“A love like ours doesn’t have an ending, dummy.” The corners of your eyes crinkle in joy as you lean your forehead against his.

“Good,” he responds, hand tucking the loose strands of your hair from your bun behind your ear, “That means I get to keep ya forever.”

You hum in agreement. The thought of your bucket list from high school that you started to find fun briefly flashes in your mind, and you are glad to know that you don’t need things to check off to find fulfillment because you already have all that you want right here. But, you admit, you are glad you can finally cross out the final item of falling in love and being loved in return because you find that in Atsumu. He pushes you to find your passions, to fulfill your dreams, and he is your home regardless of whether you succeed or not. Whatever it is, whenever it is, you know he loves you all the same because he always looks at you like  this , like he can see the stars in your eyes, like you hang the moon up every night, like you’re brighter than the sun.

“Yeah, forever sounds good.”

.✫彡.✫彡.✫彡.

stole your heart, and I got lucky. stole your heart, and it was mine in a million ways, for a million days.

end notes: pls don’t ask me how this soulmate au works. i don’t know either. 

[tarithenurse]

Spark - 9

Fandom: Enn Enn no Shouboutai / Fire Force. Pairing: Shinmon Benimaru x fem!reader. Content: Feelings are still on edge despite some stray thoughts. A/N: Feel free to ASK or reblog for tag – in fact: always reblog <3 Thanks to those who have already <3

9. Ashes

…   Reader  ...

Sticking to your designated room (the same as last time), you do little to engage anyone for as long as you can that day, but when your stomach starts rumbling, you decide it's time to show a bit of goodwill and help out in the kitchen.

You find Konro there and quickly get put to work, washing the vegetables before cutting them according to his wishes. The two of you work quietly, Konro radiates a calm that soothes your frazzled nerves and he doesn't ask any questions.

Come to think of it: Benimaru had also been strange non-inquisitive but maybe both know that it's because you don't have a lot of answers to give other than where you've been – the incident with the infernal, or demon as the captain called it, has been too weird for your brain to wrap around. Maybe, I just imagined it? A pure coincidence where the fiery creature followed its own whims. Yeah, nah. But you’re not ready to accept he alternative.

Heavy footsteps are nearly drowned out by the chatter of a pair of twins who are trying their best to secure a chance of being swung through the air by whoever they are accompanying. Benimaru. You don’t bother looking when the trio enters except to shoot a smile at the girls who fall silent, staring at you with wide eyes.

The men mumble a quiet greeting to each other which doesn’t prevent a certain captain’s stare to burn into your back and it stays there as you rinse and chop the green onions. It stays while your knife makes short work of the renkon, working the root into thin slices.

“Some of the neighbouring women decided you needed to extend the wardrobe available to you,” Benimaru sneers as you reach for sweet potatoes, “maybe there’s something you can use.”

Finally turning to face him, you find him leaning against the table with a stack of clothes next to him. Some of it looks awfully gaudy, but clothes are clothes.

“That’s kind of them,” you concede (and mean it), “I’m sure there’s something useful. As long as it fits I’m not picky...as you know.” He bristles at the thinly veiled insult to his own style which you’ve unwillingly had to adopt for a while.

“Hmhrm!” Konro tries to de-escalate the situation. “Maybe you’d like to wash up and change before dinner, [Y/N]? Go ahead, there’s time.”

Thanking him, you grab the bundle and leave the kitchen.

...  Benimaru  ...

Sometimes, he really would like to punch the older man who is now telling Benimaru wordlessly to go after the girl. It’s not that Konro’s wrong: they need answers and the sooner the better. With a sigh, the captain pushes off and stalks down the hallway.

“Hey, [Y/N]!”

At least she stops and waits, though it looks for a second in the dim light that she rolls her eyes. “Yeah?”

The colourful bundle in her arms separates them like a shield. Splashes of pink and yellow, and he can’t help but wonder what she’ll look like when wearing something else than his clothes. If he’d like it at all. Stop it.

“What were you doing there?”

Benimaru doesn’t have to explain what he means, she knows. “Oh, I decided to have a picnic, y’know?”

He didn’t mean to do it but she’s so infuriating. One moment he’s trying to start a conversation and the next he’s got the woman shoved against the wall, pinning her shoulder against the wood as a low growl (a growl, damnit?) rolls from him. Any person with a sense for survival would be cowed, scared of the sudden anger. Not her. She just look at him with a cocked eyebrow and a smirk that makes no sense.

“This isn’t a game!” Again the growling. “You disappear for weeks only to turn up in the middle of a combustion scene. You order a freaking demon around!”

Finally, her face contorts into a mix of fear and anger. “It’s not like I chose to be there. And for the record, I didn’t ord-”

“I. Saw. It.” The words are nearly spit at [Y/N]. “I don’t care where you’ve been, but you got a target painted on you and I need to know what I’m dealing with here if I’m supposed to protect you -”

“I never -”

“- ooor protect my people.”

He must somehow have broken through the stubbornness because she hesitates, eyes flicking across his face as if searching for something before she finally slumps in his grip. “I was trying to get away, I really was and yes...I could have run along...ignored what was happening...”

“But you couldn’t leave the woman there to die?” She shrugs despite the hold and Benimaru lets go, suddenly ashamed of his outburst. “You knew...?”

“No! And I still don’t believe it,” the girl protests. “They’re supposed to be more...uhmm...”

“Aware. Intelligent.”

They both nod in the silence.

“I just...I thought if I could distract it...” [Y/N] sighs again. “Hunger. Souls. That’s all the infernals ever scream about but this asshole...well, you heard it, I guess.” The bundle of clothes is tugged a bit closer to her chest as if for comfort. “I never considered they could get full enough to slow down, to want to take their time to...to...”

Half of what the girl is saying doesn’t make sense until Benimaru begins to entertain the idea that she understands the wailing of the burning terrors. She doesn’t realize. Apart from a few disciplined infernals (very, very rare) none of their screams ever meant anything to him, Konro, or anyone else. Even demons rarely speak, according to the few recollections of witnesses. What are the odds it would listen? Close to none, making this a freak occurrence – curiosity trumping primal blood thirst...he hopes.

“You can’t get involved in combustions while staying here.” Thankfully, she doesn’t object and Benimaru tries to smother a sense of guilt. “Lie low. Don’t attract attention. People here’ll have your back, but gossip can’t be avoided. Anyways...dinner’s almost ready.”

[respect-the-fae]

Things that remind me of: Ares

Sorry it's been a few days, life has been kind of a bitch, but I'm back with a post for my patron, Ares! I love him so much! This is gonna be a long one, I'll warn you now.

Weaponry. All weaponry. Whether it be a sword, a bo staff, escrima sticks or even sharp words falling off a tongue and destroying what they are aimed at. All weapons of every nature are this and remind me of him.

Boxing. I box alot, it reminds me of him and helps me feel close to him. How warm I feel, the ache in my arms, the bruises that form across my hands, the sweat dripping down my forehead. It all feels like he's there guiding me, reminding me to keep my guard up, and to keep my thumb out of my fist so I don't shatter it.

Red candles.

Bloodied hands and bruises. The type you get when your sibling gets beat up by the bigger kids and you go to sort them out because as annoying as your little sibling is, no one (NO ONE) messes with them.

Pink gin. Trust me, pink gin might seem like a weird one, but I have seen my mate single handedly knock out 2 guys who were threatening a trans girl while on pink gin. Pink gin is the Elixir Of Protective Rage and no one can tell me otherwise. (Dw, the girl is safe and we walked her home. We got takeout on the way and i cried bc she gave me a chicken nugget. We're friends now.)

Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner. All about destroying their awful governing systems and rising up. Very Ares.

Using dumbass as a term of affection. With the same amount of love that people usually use when calling someone sweetheart or darling.

BIG HERO 6.

The concept of egging someone's house.

Snakes.

Having long baths/showers to avoid dealing with your emotional issues. Idk, just screams him.

Loving your crush/lover/spouse so fucking much, genuinely wouldn't hesitate to kill for them if someone hurt them.

Courage, all types of courage. Speaking out about racism in a protest, leading a protest, telling your boss about the coworker that scares you and harassed you. Telling a teacher about your parents if they're abusive. Standing in front of a crowd and giving a speech. Attending rallies, going to Pride, telling your bigoted family to suck a dick when they're being rude about trans/coloured/gay people, posting that post you were debating to do or not, sending your script/novel/anthology/biography to your agent, selling your art. Loads more that my brain refuses to give me right now. They are all brave, courageous acts that Ares loves and is so proud of you for. He watches you swallow down the fear and he rewards you with that glow of good adrenaline afterwards. That's his way of sort of kissing you on the forehead and telling you he's proud.

Rescuing animals from shelters. Ares is definitely very passionate about Adopt Don't Shop.

The Enemies to Lovers trope in fanfic.

Comfort items. Items that make you feel put together and braver. Mine is my Angel (from Lilo and Stitch, the pink experiment, teddy bear I got to match the Stitch one my friend has), I barely ever let it go if I'm in the house.

Poppies.

Baseball bats. The game too, but mainly the bats.

Petty 'wars' with siblings or coworkers. Snatching lunches and snacks, leaving passive aggressive post it notes.

War. Conflict. Rage. Obviously. But also bravery. Courage. A thirst for justice.

Protection. Of all kinds.

Weighted blankets.

Podcasts. True crime, and fictional horror ones. The Magnus Archives reminds me of him, idk why. (FOR REAL THO, ITS SO FUCKING GOOD, GO LISTEN TO IT. I WOULD DIE FOR JON, ITS ON SPOTIFY.) (And YouTube too.)

Learning about your friend's special interests because they mentioned they don't feel able to talk about it for fear of annoying people. And damn if you're gonna let that happen, so you're up till 5am reading The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory so you can talk to them about it, and give them a safe space to info dump and share their thoughts and feelings.

Geese. Yes they are bastards. But they are feathery, beautiful bastards.

Saying "because fuck you, that's why."

The "WHAT THE FUCK IS UP KYLE" vine.

"Thanks for checking in, I'm still a piece of g a r b a g e."

Self esteem issues. Bad mental health. PTSD, anxiety, depression, BPD, eating disorders. They're all battles, and he is with you through all of them. By your side, holding your hand, rubbing your back. He feels your pain and he is helping you move past it. He is there to remind you that spite is a perfectly fucking good reason to get better, because people suck and you will show all the people who hurt you that you will not break. That you will get up, every single fucking time. And he is with you for every single step. If you believe nothing else, believe that Ares loves you.

Getting back up. Never backing down.

Teenage rebellion. Wild hair. Hair dye. Breaking into parks at night, exploring abandoned buildings.

Bumps in people's noses where it's been broken and not set properly.

Donald Duck. That duck is ready to fight all the time and I love him.

The movie 'Red'. Its so amazing. (Also watch that, it's on Netflix, at least on the UK one).

WWE.

That's it, my Ares one. I think I rambled a bit but I am very tired so forgive me. Lemme know what you think!!

I love Ares so much, I probably wouldn't have made it to this point if I didn't have him. He is my patron and he protected me when I felt alone.

Next I'm doing Aphrodite!

[saltyladynightmare]

Jiliu AU Part 5.4

Beginning, Previous, Next, Masterlist

A/N

The fourth part of part five

Warnings:

bad self care, Anakin’s low self esteem, face medical practices, feeding tubes, IVs, bad grammar and spelling, and I have lost the ability to type an em-dash (I’ll look it up later)

~~~~~~

The third time Anakin resurfaced in the land of the physical, his mouth was dry, his throat worse. He was more than a little thirsty.

Hunger gnawed on his ribs, too, but Anakin was a child of the Desert; he knew the value of water, the danger of thirst.

He asked for water when one of the draftees on shift, a heavy gunner named Nax, came into his cove to check his IVs.

Getting the feeding tube removed from his nose was just as horrible as he remembered, but it was more uncomfortable than painful, and Anakin had survived worse. The ice cubes he got for his trouble were more than worth it. The cup of actual water given to him a short eternity later, held by Nax with the end of a straw stuck in Anakin's mouth, was even more so.

Anakin only had enough brains to remember to thank Nax for the water before the Force pulled hum under again.

The next time he woke up, he was given more water almost before he could ask. When he managed to keep it down, he was given a large cup filled with some kind of grayish slurry, and told to drink it. Since one does not argue with a medic about such things when one cannot escape, Anakin drank it.

The moment it touched his tongue, he knew it was some kind of nutrient shake. It was a chore and a half to get it to go down, but Anakin has eaten worse for far fewer reasons, and he was hungry. It is gone before he could say he was satisfied.

He was dragged back to the land of the dreamless shortly after. Someone caught the cup before it could slip from his fingers.

After that nap, and Anakin knew it hadn't lasted long because the aching emptiness of hunger hadn't regained its edge after the slurry, he was bribed into holding still for yet another check up with more water and some of the gelatin cubes from the mess. It still wasn't enough, but it was easier to tuck the discomfort away that to ask something he might not get anyway.

Time passed.

Anakin was awake again, and staring at the durasteel ceiling of the medbay. There were hushed murmurs on the other side of his curtains, but none of them were loud enough for him to make out.

He was stiff, and sore, and painfully aware of the ache that pulsed in his forehead with each beat of his heart. Mostly, though, Anakin was very, very bored.

He had already been fed a few minutes ago, recently enough he could still feel it in his belly, so he didn't even have that to look forward to. Anakin rubbed at the plasters on his fingertips absently. Every last one except his thumb had one of the small bandages wrapped around it from the many, many blood samples he'd been giving. It was fine, but it was getting to point where he was really regretting only having five flesh fingers.

Irritation blared through the Force from somewhere beyond Anakin's curtains, slicing over his shields. He identified the source as Kix, even as he cringed away. It didn't do him any good, so he slammed his eyes shut and rode out the wave of pain whiting out his senses.

It had just begun to die down when the curtain is yanked open, revealing a cooly professional Kix. Anakin blinked the last of the spots away to get a better look at what he was seeing.

Kix's chosen mask, he decided after a moment, was almost flawless. Anakin might have actually bought it if Kix hadn't been moving like a man tittering on the edge between frustration and genuine anger. If Anakin couldn't feel him in the Force, he might have been able to over look Kix's body language, but Anakin had never had the luxury of ignoring red flags. Anakin saw anger in every line of Kix's body, and braced himself.

Medic Kix stepped into the confines of the walls made of curtains, and dragged the one behind him shut with a flick of his wrist and a twist in the Force. Anakin watched him with carefully curios eyes as he rounded the foot of Anakin's medical cot before stopping at a respectful distance on his left side--currently the only side with a hand. Beautifully calculated to put Anakin more at ease, he conceded. To bad it didn't work.

"General Skywalker," Kix began in the most politely professional tone Anakin had ever heard from him, "are you hungry?"

What?

Anakin shrugged as well as he could laying down. Did it matter?

Kix looked down at him for a very long moment. The frustration bleed from his shoulders, and the dangerous edge faded from his face. Anakin fought the urge to start tapping out an apology Kix wouldn't understand anyway.

Eventually, Kix sighed, and rolled his neck. "Do you remember your first check up with me?"

The one you forced me into even though I had literally had one four hours before in the Healing Halls?

Anakin nodded.

"Do you remember what we agreed on?" Kix worded his question carefully.

Anakin did remember. He remembered it well.

Kix had promised he wouldn't give painkillers or anesthesia to Anakin without his permission with exactly one exception. An exception Anakin planned to avoid at most costs.

In exchange, he had asked Anakin to promise he would be honest with Kix so he could do his job. Anakin had agreed.

It hadn't seemed like a big deal then.

So, he was hungry. Why did that matter? He can wait a few hours to eat. He'd gone longer on less.

Anakin did not say any of that. "I remember," he said instead. No one ever took it well, when they heard that kind of thing.

"Do you still agree to our terms?"

Anakin paused. No one...had ever asked him that before.

Maybe it was a Vod'e An thing?

Better respect it, he decided, and gave the question serious consideration. It didn't take long.

"Yes."

Kix's eyes bored into Anakin's. "Are you hungry, sir?"

"...Yes," Anakin admitted reluctantly.

"Are you thirsty?"

At that, Anakin cracked a smile. "I will never say no to water, Kix."

Kix huffed, and the building tension broke. A pulse of amusement thumped into Anakin's new shields. His teeth tore through his tongue, and he tasted blood. But he did not flinch.

So Kix continued on, unknowing his burst of friendly projection had sank into Anakin's mind like a knife. "I'll order you a meal for you to eat before I get off shift."

Anakin swallowed the blood in his mouth, and rubbed his tongue on the inside of his cheek. It tingled, then went numb. Talking would be a task, but he wouldn't be bleeding. Good.

"Risk is on graveyard shift, if you get hungry again, you ask him for another meal," Kix admonished.

Anakin smiled. "Does that mean I can used the fresher now?" He spoke slowly so he didn't slur his words horribly on his numbed tongue, but pitched his tone to be teasing and hopeful. It wasn't even that far from the whole truth. Using a fresher would be very nice, if only because it meant he wasn't on a catheter and bedpan.

Kix rolled his wyes, but he smiled, so Anakin counted it as a win. "Let's see how you handle a real meal first, sir." Anakin smiled brighter.

Kix left to order Anakin food, probably, and Anakin settled back down.

He ran his tongue over his teeth sloppily, testing. The injury would be gone by morning.

~~~~~~

General Skywalker's appetite had increased exponentially. Clone cadet in the middle of the second to last growth spurt, if the cadet burned through calories like a Jedi, increased.

He asked for food every four hours like clock work. They gave him a full meal every single time, partly because that is how ration packs were packaged, and partly because it was the only way to keep his blood work readings at an acceptable level.

Risk had found that out the hard way during the graveyard shift. There had been several hours where Kix had been a hairs berth away from getting dragged out of his berth, and only the General's previously unknown skill in fast-talk saved him. Kix, of course, did not learn of this until the shift hand off debriefing in the morning.

General Skywalker was still not eating enough.

Kix had made the decision to give him three nutrient shakes at fifteen minute intervals every other meal. Still, his General was not eating enough, and he couldn't eat more without getting sick.

The fourth hour of his shift found Kix aggressively reorganizing the stores. He had already rewrapped the bandages, packed and repacked his medpack for all the nonperishables he could. He had even found space in side for a case of antihistamine cartridges with a great deal of careful thought. Together, these things had taken very little of his time. The only reason why he wasn't on the range right then, practicing his aim, was because he was on shift, and would continue to be for several more hours. There were only so many games of cards a Vod could play before he went feral, no matter what Nausea said.

Kix had nothing to do, except think, and it was doing awful things for his stress levels.

Reorganizing the Inventory didn't require much thought. Kix had done it a hundred thousand times, and he would do it again. It was almost muscle memory. It was something to keep his hands busy.

The General was not eating enough; he also couldn't eat more. The solution was to wait until they reached the Jedi Temple, where they doubtlessly had the resources to do something about it.

The Resolute was less than a day cycle away from Coruscant. General Skywalker could easily survive that long with less than optimal fuel consumption.

There was nothing more Kix could do. Acceptance would always be the hardest part of being a medic.

Kix thumped his forehead against the shelf in front of him, fingers hooking into the netting holding his newly rolled and stacked bandages in place. There was no one else around. Even if there was, his reputation could handle it.

Kix couldn't do anything more for his general.

His eyes slid closed. He just needed to let it all sink in. He pulled his mental shields tighter around himself, and--he gave in. Just for a single moment.

When Kix woke up that morning, the weight had been gone. Vanished. Like it had never been there. The only thing that had kept him from trying a fruitless search for it had been the knowledge that the weight was probably the...mind of General Skywalker, who was now well and truly inhabiting his body once more, and that even if the weight was still around, Kix would have to run his hands over every inch of the Resolute and hope he ran into it. Even then, it probably wouldn't have worked, given its relationship with the physical plane. Kix didn't care for exercises of futility.

So Kix hadn't gone looking. He had gotten ready for the day, eaten breakfast just as fast as he would normally, then arrived exactly on time for his shift.

He had not been disappointed that the weight didn't drop down onto his shoulders when he walked into the medbay. Its absence meant his general was doing well. What did it matter that Kix felt cold now?

He did not have the energy to spare for desires that, ultimately, made his job harder. Doing reports with an unknown amount of weight on his shoulders was not good for his back.

Kix breathed in deep through his nose. Out through his mouth. Slow, steady.

He tucked the wish for more in a corner of his mind that he knew would eventually degrade it until it was nothing.

Then he lifted his head off the shelf, and went back to organizing.

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

And They were Coffin-Mates

Title: And They were Coffin-Mates

Summary: “I’m a vampire.”

Out of all the things to come out of his best friend’s mouth, he hadn’t expected that. Was Virgil sure he wasn’t dreaming? Maybe this was some set-up to one of Patton’s corny puns. Something like “I’m a vampire. I like my coffee de-coffin-ated.”

Virgil pretended to hate them. He groaned or grimaced at how awful they were. But really, it was all to cover up the smile they produced.

“A vampire? Pffft,” He quirked an eyebrow, “You’re going to have to try for a better joke than that, Pat.”

Word-Count: 3.5k

Pairings: platonic moxiety (they’re best friends)

Warnings: Vampires, blood mention, memory loss, involuntary turning, hurt/comfort, puns, so many puns, crying, non-graphic violence, headache, sensory overload, panic

This is based off a prompt ask I got sent a long, long awhile ago and just finally finished!

-

Virgil trudged up to his apartment, sweat rolling down his back. Really, it was his fault for wearing a black plaid hoodie and ripped black jeans. Wearing black in the sweltering heat of the summer sun’s gaze was like inviting death upon you. But he looked good in black and was willing to suffer. Besides, Virgil was quite sure his soul was dead already.

Eventually he made it to his apartment, blessed air conditioning hitting his face at last.

“How was your day, kiddo?” His roommate and best friend Patton asked. He was in the kitchen, mixing something in a bowl.

Virgil groaned loudly, collapsing into the couch cushions.

Patton whistled, “That bad, huh?”

“I’m going to fight the sun. Either that or move to Seattle, whatever’s easiest.” 

He groaned again, shoving his head into a couch pillow. His head hurt and he was so damn thirsty. Thirsty for water, please get your mind out of the gutter. He was terrible at remembering to drink enough water, something his coworker Logan constantly berated him about. Did he work with Lo today? God, he couldn’t remember. The entire day felt like a blur.

“Aw, I’m sorry you had a rough day. Maybe I can brighten it up with some pat-cakes?”

“Pat-cakes?” 

“Like it’s like pancakes, except with my name--pat-cakes!”

Virgil groaned, this time attempting to keep himself from laughing.

“Stop trying to cheer me up, it’s illegal.”

“Oh? I guess I’m a warmhearted crook then!”

“Warmhearted?”

“Yeah, because instead of a coldhearted crook, I got a lotta love and I’m not afraid to give it.”

Virgil snorted, gazing up from his pillow. Patton stood there, grinning in his grey cat-onesie. The sight was enough to warm his cold, barely beating heart, dammit.

“Well consider yourself under arrest.”

“What for?”

“Stealing my heart.”

“Oh my goodness, you made a pun!” Patton’s blinding white grin was worth it for allowing such a cliche, cheesy pun escape his lips.

“Yeah, well, don’t count on it being a regular thing,” Virgil said, turning away in a poor attempt to hide his burning, surely reddening cheeks, “that was my allotted pun for the year.”

“Auugust I’ll have to try to get another pun out of you before the year’s over.”

“August?”

“Y’know Auuu-guust, like ‘I guess?’”

“Pat, I love you but that one was terrible.”

“Oh, tearable! Like paper?! Or tearable like tears?”

“Patton, no, that wasn’t a pun.”

The banter continued as Patton finally started to pour pancake batter onto the grill. In typical Patton fashion, he created animal shapes  and stick figures out of the pancakes, rather than keeping with normal, round ones.

It helped distract Virgil from both his headache and his rather unmemorable day. Everyone deserved a Patton in their life. Someone who brightened your day with their mere presence. Virgil set the table for their pancakes-for-dinner feast as he pondered this.

He then found their largest water container (a blender) and filled it up to the brim with water. Was he going to regret this sometime in the middle of the night? Yes. Did he care? Not really, no.

He didn’t even know why his throat felt so parched. The last couple weeks of work had been ridiculously slow. It wasn’t like he had to deal conversing with a horde of customers, thank God. He took a gulp, then another and another.

“Wow, I sea you were thirsty!” 

He lifted the blender away from his mouth to respond, before pausing. He blinked, staring at the now-empty blender. Huh.

“Um yeah. Really thirsty.” He chuckled, setting the blender beside the sink.

“Good thing you quenched it then.” Patton said, looking at Virgil weirdly.

He didn’t blame him. Virgil would too look at someone weird if they chugged a 40 ounce blender like it was nothing. He licked his lips, his mouth still feeling as dry as ever. 

A part of him wanted to grab the blender, refill and down it, desperate to douse the itching, stinging feeling that clenched his throat. But he refrained, sitting down at the kitchen table instead. It was probably possible to die from drinking too much water, right?

“Here you go!” Patton said, shaking him of his thoughts. He placed a plate of pancakes in front of Virgil. There were several blobby pancakes with two triangles pointing out at the top, what Virgil presumed to be either a cat or dog.

“Thanks Pat,” He said, “So, uh, how was your day?”

“Oh, it was Pet-tastic!” Patton perked up, “I got to pet a dog today!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! I was on the subway when a person came in with the cutest--”

Virgil tried to focus on the words coming out of Patton’s mouth. He really did even as his head throbbed, headache worsening. Patton’s voice, the humming of the refrigerator, the dishwater noises, everything was suddenly too loud. He fidgeted, the fluorescent light beating down on him. He took a bite, hoping it would help. He hadn’t eaten since morning, of course he felt like shit. He just needed substance. Once he ate something, things would be okay.

Except he spat it out, coughing. Something was wrong. It couldn’t be Patton’s pancakes. He always made them to a fluffy, sweet perfection. Yet Virgil’s stomach threatened to heave up its contents at the mere taste.

“Virgil?”

He jerked his head towards Patton, wincing from the whiplash. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m never okay.” is the retort Virgil wanted to throw back. Deflecting and self-deprecation was Virgil’s main attributes. Patton would’ve gasped at him, telling him he’d physically fight him for talking bad about himself. Except those words didn’t make it out of Virgil’s throat.

“I’m--I’m sorry, I just--think I need to go--bedroom.” 

He hated it. He ruined a perfectly good dinner all because his brain decided to freak out over things that didn’t bother normal people. 

“Hey, Virge. It’s okay, I’m not upset,” Patton said softly, “we can hang out more tomorrow. Movie night, remember?”

“Y-yeah.” Virgil said, rising from his chair. Vertigo crashed into him, almost sending him to the ground if not for a pair of arms catching him.

“I’ve got you.” Patton said, adjusting his hold so that Virgil stood, heavily leaning against him.

“T-thanks.”

“Let me help you to your room, okay? Wouldn’t want you falling for me again.”

Virgil let a small, breathless snort. He wanted to protest, but his legs felt too much like jello that he didn’t trust them. Patton guided him down the hallway, to Virgil’s dark cave of a bedroom. He let out a hiss when Patton flipped the light switch.

“Opps, sorry kiddo.” Patton apologized, shutting it off. They stumbled into the room, until they reached Virgil’s bed. Patton hoisted him onto the bed, fussing with his covers until Virgil was nice and tucked in. 

“I’ll save you some pancakes.” Patton said as he closed the door. Virgil didn’t respond. He closed his eyes, the quiet darkness quelling his swelling anxiety. Fatigue finally claimed his bones and he fell unwillingly into slumber.

It wasn’t a peaceful sleep. It was one of those dreams you woke up more exhausted than rested. The thirst followed him into the dream. It gnawed at him, nearly indistinguishable from hunger. He had to satisfy it, relinquish the control it held over him. He went out to search for something to make the burning ache go away. 

He went--well, he wasn’t sure he went. Everything turned hazy, as dreams often tended to be. The next thing he knew, he was standing over someone. No, not a person, they were just a pulse of red to him. They had it, the thing he needed and they weren’t giving it willingly. Something tackled him to the ground, pinning him to the ground as he flailed, desperate to escape its’ grip--

He shot up, gasping. Panic pumped through his veins. This wasn’t his bedroom, where was he? He frantically scanned the dark murky surroundings, relaxing slightly when he recognized it as his apartment living room. Still, what was he doing here and not his bedroom?

“You’re awake.”

Virgil jumped, vaguely making out Patton in the armchair beside the couch. He wasn’t in his cat onesie anymore. Oddly enough, he seemed dressed not in pajamas but in a polo shirt and blue jeans.

“Y-yeah, finally. I had a really weird nightmare.” Virgil said, surprised to find the action of speaking no longer painful. In fact, his throat felt fine even. Maybe the blender water’s effect was delayed.

Patton sighed, moving to sit on the couch next to Virgil. He didn’t say anything at first. Instead, he clasped his hands together, fingers twisting in a fretful manner. It alarmed Virgil. Patton was always babbling about something, jumping from one topic to the next seamlessly. Virgil didn’t know how he never ran out of things to say.

“Virgil, there’s something you should know,” He hesitated, “I was planning on telling you eventually. I just didn’t think…”

“What is it?” Virgil asked, his curiosity getting the best of him.

“I’m a vampire.”

Virgil gaped at him. Out of all the things to come out of Patton’s mouth, he hadn’t expected that.  Was Virgil sure he wasn’t dreaming? Maybe this was some set-up to one of Patton’s corny puns. A way to placate Virgil. Something like “I’m a vampire. I like my coffee de-coffin-ated.” Virgil pretended to hate them. He groaned or grimaced at how awful they were. But really, it was all to cover up the smile they produced. 

Virgil laughed, except it came out wrong. All high-pitched and strained.

“A vampire? Pffft,” He quirked an eyebrow, “You’re going to have to try for a better joke than that, Pat.”

“I’m not joking. Promise.” Patton insisted, grasping Virgil’s hands with his own.

Virgil swallowed, staring down at Patton’s pale hands. Come to think of it, Patton always shied away from doing outdoor activities, especially in the blazing hot summer heat.

“I’m Irish! I burn easily.” Patton once said, laughing.

Patton wasn’t laughing now. He looked abnormally serious, his lips pressed together in a neutral line. It was starting to freak Virgil out even more, to be honest.

“Vampires aren’t real, they’re just fictional,” Virgil said, as if he didn’t spend his time watching conspiracy theory videos at 4AM and wholeheartedly believing them on a daily basis.

Besides, Patton was too sweet, too kind and bubbly to be a vampire. They were gruesome creatures of the night, they feed on blood and had little room for morals. Unless, Virgil’s breathed hitched, unless Patton had been faking everything, what if their entire friendship was just a whole facade in order for him to get close enough to suck his blood?!

“Virgil, breathe,” Patton said, squeezing his hands.

He squeezed back, inhaling a deep shuddering breath.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You have nothing to apologize for, remember?” Patton said, referring to a past conversation they had regarding Virgil’s anxiety.

“Patton, I just…” Virgil bit his lips, instantly regretting it. He must’ve bit down harder than usual because it hurt, “having a hard time not thinking this is a dream.”

“I can show you,” Patton said, “Is it okay if I turn on the lamp light?”

Virgil nodded and with his consent, Patton reached over to the end table and turned the lamp on. A soft glow flooded the room. Virgil closed his eyes regardless, black dots overwhelming his vision. 

“You okay?”

“Just gimme a moment.” Virgil gritted his teeth, wincing again when the action hurt him. What the hell was wrong with him?

“I’ll only keep it on for as long as necessary,” Patton reassured.

“Alright,” He nodded, fighting to keep his eyes open. It burned like someone had been chopping garlic, but that was ridiculous, right?

Patton drew a breath in, opening his mouth wide. Virgil watched in horror as two sharp incisors intruded from his gumline. Even if Patton wasn’t one for cruel, practical pranks, there was no way it was a pair of cheap plastic fangs. They looked too real, too grotesque to be fake.

“What the fuck!” Virgil fell off the couch, tripping in his haste to flee. He plunged to the floor, his head banging against the corner of the coffee-table.

A dull pain blossomed around the crown of his head but he stood up anyways. He had to get away, flee from this twisted nightmare he found himself in. This couldn’t be real. Perhaps he thought he woke up only to be thrust into an even worst nightmare than before.

“Virgil, Virgil, please calm down!” Patton appeared at his side within a blink, placing his hands on Virgil’s shoulders. 

He tried jerking out of Patton’s grip, glancing wildly for some sort of escape. Belatedly he realized though the lamp light had been turned off, he could still perfectly see his surroundings. What the hell? He looked back at Patton, taking in the worried wrinkles and his normal set of teeth. No fangs. Where were they? He knew he saw them, he couldn’t have imagined them--

“P-please dont hurt me,” He whimpered, digging his head into Patton’s chest. He didn’t know why he did that. He should kept thrashing, escaping the grip of a supposed vampire. But Patton was also his friend, who cheered him up with stupid cheesy puns. The one and only person Virgil trusted and sought comfort from.

Patton drew his arms around Virgil, pulling him closer. He froze, waiting for sharp fangs to pierce his neck. Instead a hand carded through his hair, soft and gentle.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Patton said, his voice tight with emotion, “I’m going to hurt those that did however.”

Virgil craned his neck to look up at him, “W-what do you mean?”

Patton didn’t say anything at first, continuing to caress Virgil’s hair.

“Virgil, how was your day?”

“What?”

“Your day, before you--” Patton hesitated, “before you fell asleep, what happened?”

“I overslept my alarm,” Virgil recalled, “I was in a rush to get to work, and I....”

He bit his lips, a soft curse slipping out from both the pain it produced and the fact he couldn’t remember. He must’ve went to work, right? Work has been so slow and tedious that he just forgot what happened. He must’ve said some of that out loud because Patton slowly shook his head.

“Virgil, I contacted your workplace. You never showed up to work.”

“Wha-but I wouldn’t--I mean--” Virgil jolted, making direct eye contact with Patton, “I’m a vampire now, aren’t I?”

 He couldn’t believe he said that out loud just now. It was absurd, it didn’t make any sense! But...it did make sense in a maddening, down-the-rabbit-hole way. His unquenchable thirst, his unusually sensitive eyes, food tasting weird, that absurd, horrific nightmare that was starting to feel more and more like it wasn’t a nightmare. Had he really almost killed a person to drink their blood? He felt lightheaded, his world spinning wildly out of control as he clung to Patton for balance.

“I got you kiddo,” Patton whispered, leading him to sit on the couch, “do you need a glass of water?”

He was deflecting, maybe in a poor attempt to spare Virgil from the cold, harsh reality.

“Patton,” Virgil hissed, “I need to know.”

Patton averted his gaze, his hands curled into fists by his side.

“Yes.”

Virgil’s heart stopped beating. Wait a minute, didn’t vampires’ hearts already didn’t beat because they were undead? Did that mean Virgil was technically dead?!

He frantically checked his own pulse, relieved yet spooked hear it. Albeit, much more slow and lethargic than before.

“Our heart beats at a slower rate than humans,” Patton laughs weakly, “A lot of the myths around vampires don’t have any truth to them.”

“Pat,” Virgil’s voice trembled, “This is crazy, I mean--you’re a vampire and I’m one?! Did you--”

“No!” Patton insisted, his eyes flashing a brief red, “Virgil I promise you, I’d never do that. It can be really, really painful--the whole turning process. It can be so traumatic that well, I--I don’t even fully remember my own. Many don’t survive let alone live pass it. I’ve never wanted you to know what it’s like to--”

Patton cut himself off, jerking his head away. Virgil took hold of his hand, squeezing it gently.

“Know what?” He pressed. Patton’s lips quivered, tears glistening in his eyes, as he cupped Virgil’s cheek with his free hand. Virgil leaned down, gently touching his forehead with Patton’s.

“Pat, please.”

“You deserved a normal human life,” Patton said at last, a strangled noise escaping him, “Where you got to live and grow old and die. You didn’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve to be a monster like me.”

Patton broke away, clasping a hand to his mouth as the tears finally fell down his face. Virgil watched, his head throbbing as conflicting emotions raged war inside. Denial, rage, sadness--he pushed them all aside. Patton. He needed to focus on Patton. 

Despite everything, he still knew one thing; Patton Patterson was the furthest thing from a monster. Virgil refused to believe anything otherwise. He needed that one thing to remain true or else he’d fall apart completely.

“Patton you’re not a monster, you’re--you’re,” Virgil took a breath, steadying himself, “you’re my best friend.”

Patton let out a bark of laughter, “If--if you knew the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

“Yes, I--I would,” Virgil swallowed, kneeling down beside him, “Pat, you are the kindest person I've ever met. You cry at cheesy Hallmark movies that end in happy endings. You volunteer at the local animal shelter and soup kitchen. You believe the best in people, even if they’re a shitty anxious nobody who doesn’t deserve it--”

“Virgil--” Patton choked.

“And--and unless that was all one elaborate ruse to fool the world, to fool me,” Virgil pressed on, “vampire or not, your presence makes my day bat-ter.”

“Bat-ter? L-like bat?”

“Yeah, well, congratulations you managed to get a pun outta me before the year’s end.”

Patton stared at him, mouth hanging open. He then laughed again, this time surging forward to tackle Virgil in a hug. Virgil yelped, falling to the floor hard enough to see black dots. Still, he clung to Patton as if afraid of never getting the opportunity again. Virgil let out a high-pitched keen, no longer being able to contain his anguish. Patton responded with a despairing wail of his own. 

Tears poured down both of their faces as their sobbing duet continued. For a long, long while it was the only noise produced from either of them. Until it tapered off into weak whimpers and then it was just the sound of two slow, steady sets of heartbeats close together.

“Pat?” Virgil croaked, utterly exhausted from the ordeal. He wanted nothing more than to fall asleep, safe and secure in Patton’s arms. A small part of him yearned to wake up in his bed and learn that all of this was a nightmare and nothing more. Yet the pain from unconsciously biting his lip with his newly sharpened incisors said otherwise.

“Yes?” Patton answered, his hand brushing through Virgil’s hair once more. He was so soft and gentle that it was hard for Virgil to ever imagine him the same species as Count Dracula.

“If--if you didn’t, um, turn me, then wh-who-how--why don’t I remember--why would--” Virgil let out a frustrated huff.

“Virgil, I...I don’t know who did it or why. There’s lots of reasons why another vampire would do it,” Patton said, dropping to a low growl, “and none of them are good ones.”

“Oh,” Virgil swallowed, “and that person? I went after a person, didn’t I? That was real, right? Did--did I hurt them? I swear I didn’t mean to, I--I--”

“Virge, deep breathes,” Patton said, “They’re okay, you didn’t hurt them. They were fanged out but okay. And then I brought you back here and gave you some of my blood supply.”

“I--I don’t remember that.” Virgil said, “I remember attacking them and something...stopped me? That was you right? But I don’t--I don’t remember--”

Virgil’s voice trailed off, the words once more getting tangled up in his throat. He was afraid. Virgil was always afraid but this was new. Vampires were real and he was one of them. He was an immortal, bloodsucking creature of the night. As much as it sounded cool on paper, it was utterly terrifying. Especially to know he had no memory of becoming one. 

As if sensing his distressed thoughts, Patton brushed his bangs aside to kiss his forehead.

“Shh, it’s common for young vampires to black out from blood rage. It’s--well, it’s not okay what happened to you, Virgil. I’m so sorry, I should’ve been there to stop it from happening. But I swear to you it’s going to be okay and that I’m here now to help.”

“Promise?” Virgil asked, yawning.

“Of course. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a stake in my heart.”

And while Patton’s words didn’t immediately quell his fears, he fell asleep knowing Patton would be there for him, like he always was.

[werezmastarbucks]

neighboring

enzo x reader

request! looks like we’re having a mini series on our hands.

word count: 2291

warnings: mentions of torture (probably not in this chapter, but then on will def do)

You were thrown into the cell, concrete floor meeting you with its hard substance. It didn’t hurt. What bothered you was the vervain in you which made you dizzy and slow. You thought you recovered pretty quick, jumping back up on all fours, but the walls swayed, and you only saw bleak, dirty golden of the weak lamp in the corridor ceiling.

Ever since you became a vampire, you’ve felt invincible. A fatal mistake, perhaps, but the feeling is so justified. As a human, you were considered feeble. All the more satisfaction was drawn when it turned out you didn’t need to sweat anymore to punch someone back.

Because you liked getting into fights.

Now, all your senses were deceived. The sound of the closing cage door was probably the most horrifying sound you’ve ever heard in your life. Clang. And you couldn’t even see properly, but every inch of your now agile and perceptive body knew what it meant. And it paralyzed you with fear.

For about twenty minutes.

You could feel someone in the next cage, feet from you, lying on the floor and prepped against the wall. But they were in the dark and did not speak. You could feel their eyes on you, like vampires always do, opaque black and unblinking. You didn’t pay attention at first. Slowly recovering from the burning sensation in your veins, you first sat up, keeping a mantra in your head. Do not lay down and die. You’re an invincible vampire, and iron bars are nothing for a creature like you.

After, you tried to stand up, your hand on the wall, skin irrtated by old harsh stone. Cold.

You went towards the bars and tried them, pulled and pushed, and as soon as your voice returned to you, you started yelling, calling names, kicking and shaking the cage, although it didn’t seem to notice you.

You refused to just allow that. That, the reality of where you were. You were a free person, and then you were an even freer vampire, and nobody had a right to just catch you like a rat and put you under the ground.

“Stop. Stop”, the voice said. He had to shout a little to outyell you. You twitched, remembering your quiet neighbor; his voice seemed weak, hungry. You’d never heard a voice of a starving vampire before, and now you felt little shivers crawling down your spine. You stepped to the side of your cage, swaying, still intoxicated. The darkness went bursting with green spots, and you sat yourself on the foor, holding on the bars.

“If you keep screaming, they’ll come to quiet you down, and from what I saw about you, you won’t like it even worse”, he said, with a thick English accent, so exquisite he sounded like a person from another time. You shifted, trying to see him better, but even with your vampire eyes, still vervained, all you saw were outlines of his body, spread on the floor, at the far wall.

“How long have you been here?” you asked, scared to death to hear what he says.

He took a minute to gather energy.

“Long enough to know how this place works”.

“No, tell me how long”, you pressed, your heart pumping in your temples. One thing you carried with you into the undeath was your high level of anxiety. Which, obviously, hightened so greatly sometimes you could feel your heart in your throat, literally.

“What year is it?” he asked, finally.

“Two thousand and nine”.

“Oh, doll”, he muttered, and then there was silence.

“Hey?”

It looked like he blacked out.

___________________________________________________________

He was out all night. You couldn’t see the skies, but your inner clock ticked well. Pretty soon, you became sleepy yourself, but hunger wouldn’t let you sleep.

You fidgeted and crawled about, then, when you were able to walk, you started walking around the cage like a jaguar.

First signs of captivity coping started showing themselves.

This is all a mistake. Yes, they have captured me and put me here because they have confused me with somebody else. Pretty soon they’ll realize that they made a mistake and let me go.

But your mind was sharper now. If you really believed that you would’ve called them. The sleeping silhouette at the far wall unnerved you. Being in enclosed space, in the matter of hours, has set a new dimension to your seeing of the world. You hated that guy. Smug, although he was almost dead. Thinking he knows what you are. Gathering information about you, almost smirking and refusing to answer questions. Grumpy old man.

You finally dozed off closer to the morning, when the natural gravitation of the sunlight demanded you to. Windows or no windows, you served the changes of day and night and the instincts were strong.

That’s when they came for you for the first time. Without a single word, they vervained you again, causing pain in all your body. Your mouth gaped open as you tried to keep your eyes open, feeling their hands dragging you on the floor.

“Mistake, mistake, mistake”, you heard yourself whisper.

“Be quiet”, the neighbor said. Or maybe you imagined that.

___________________________________________________________

“Hey, loud one”.

You were laying face down, trying to block everything out, pain swarming in your body in miriads of black worms. Your brain could not comprehend what’s just happened and how long it took. Just like that, the order of day was broken, and, being paralyzed with pain and indignation, you couldn’t tell what time it was anymore. You couldn’t understand how a bunch of mortals managed to stripe you down and mutilate you, and get you back together, in such a short time.

The darkness was pricky, full of thorns, as your body went aching, and your mind, it was bursting with blood.

“Hey”, it felt like he threw a pebble at you, or something small.

You growled, not getting your head up.

“You alive”, he noted. His voice sounded way better. Suddenly, there was a faint trace of blood, maybe carried by a draft from the corridor, or with his breathing, and your whole body convulsed, longing for nourishment. You twitched, painfully, and found yourself laying on your back now. You were in hell.

“Did they feed you?” he asked. You couldn’t move your mouth, fangs aching with hunger, tongue heavy and blue-ish.

“You’re a new vampire”, he said. It wasn’t a question this time. He was just making observations. You tried to move your head to take a look at him but all you saw was your own ceiling.

“The first couple of times are the worst, but you’ll get used to it. Learning to fight thirst is the more serious problem”.

He kept talking to you, saying something you couldn’t even grasp exactly. He said, when they inject you with poison, it’s useful to hold your breath, because that way it hurts just a wee bit less; he was talking like an old, old English gentleman, using all the old-fashined words, and for a moment there you thought, even if you stood up to look at him, you wouldn’t see a man, because he was merely a ghost.

His chatting put you to feverish, heavy sleep that lasted for many hours until you woke up again.

_____________________________________________________________

You did not realize you were crying in your sleep.

A bag of blood was thrown into your cell, and your weak limbs clutched it, last vigorous spring of exhausting young vampire, and started drinking.

Once you were done with the bag, you fought off the desire to lick the plastic to clean off all blood. Your eyes were seeing better now, you all of you felt almost okay. Having slept, with a healthy dose of warm blood in your veins, sending your mind in overdrive. You felt anxious, energetic, and before a new wave of horror kicked in, you crawled carefully to the bars separating your cage from your neighbor’s.

You could finally see him. He was not what you expected. A young man, not more than twenty-five, was looking back at you with pitch-black careful eyes. Not dusty, not faded with mist of years spent inside this prison, smelling like a vampire should smell; apparently, he’s just eaten, too. His slim arms were laying on his sides as he prepped himself against the far wall, sitting. There was something Italian about him, but that just might have been the dark hair and the way he cocked his head. Maybe not Italian, just... different. You haven’t seen faces like this except in the book illustrations. He had a strong forehead and a hidden plan inside of his gaze. And he was looking directly at you.

“Feeling better?” he asked in his eerie accent.

Your throat was still contracting, the taste of blood arousing all your senses in vain, because you weren’t going anywhere.

“What is this place?”

“They call it Augustine”, he said slowly, “it’s a place where vampires come to lose hope”.

“What century are you from?” you winced. It seemingly entertained him but he abstained from commenting on your face. You had no idea what you looked like and whether you had blood on your skin.

“Last one”.

“Beginning of it?”

He leaned on the wall, looking up, and yet another shock of despair stung your insides. He had the look. The look that people get, who are held captive for a long time. Sometimes you’re put away for such a long time you learn to live again, you learn to get used to the conditions and the place, and eventually you deal with the idea of staying forever.

It’s much worse for vampires than for humans because humans eventually grow old and die. But you can keep a vampire for eternity.

He was looking on the ceiling and imagining the sky. You could see it right through his dark eyes.

“Hey!”

He slowly lowered his face.

“How long have you been alone?” you asked quietly.

“For about sixty years”.

Breath got stuck in your throat. His snake-like smirk creeped onto his face, making him look like a textbook vampyr.

“And yes”.

“Yes to what?”

“To what you’re thinking. You’ll stay here, too”.

All kind of expression escaped him. He turned, facing the corridor and started looking at a fly circling the lamp in the ceiling. You could hear its ringing buzz and the sound it made when it hit the warm glass. You could feel and hear everything. The smell of dust in the lines on the floor. Water dripping somewhere above your heads, on the first floor. The vampire breathing very queitly, and his heart, beating with such fatigue as if he was a plant growing out of this concrete. You could smell people who left sweet traces of their bodies after they passed down the corridor. The inviting scent from your bag. You took it and threw outside, into the corridor, and your neighbor whistled musingly.

“You could use some time to get used to here”.

You couldn’t believe it was happening.

____________________________________________________________

The next time you saw him, looked at him, he was taking your place. The people - the mortals - one tall woman with dark-red hair and very sweaty armpits, and a short man with a face like a piece of wood - came and took him away. You still didn’t know his name. You were calling him Neighbor in your own thoughts, but he still didn’t ask you for yours, although it’s been... two days? Three days and a night? No idea.

He left with them on his own, walking between them, and they didn’t have to vervain him. You sat on the floor, asking yourself, why he let them do that to him. You couldn’t even think about what you had to go through in that laboratory; an obvious thought was scratching your mind, but you pushed it away. Leaning on the wall, you closed your eyes, trying not to listen to what was going on on the first floor. You were trying to think objectively. If Neighbor went to the lab on his own, shoulder to shoulder with those monsters, he has completely come to terms with it. You were dreading a state in which a being is completely at peace with being tortured. But he spent so many years here... his face looked like he was from another world. Pairing yourself with someone was the last thing you’d think about here, but you could see the features of his face, although worn out and blank, could be considered handsome. Interesting how little things were still as clear as big things.

The fly was still alive, circling the lamp for warmth pointlessly, almost blindly.

You still didn’t know Neighbor’s name.

Hunger came in waves and the blood they gave you was generally fresh and female, and you wondered who it came from.

You did not want companionship. You did not want to converse with him. Or listen to him share his wisdom of living here. All those things would mean you’re assimilating, and you had no intention to do so. You’d resist. You’d fight...

After they brought him back, exhausted and pale, you asked yourself if this vampire was telling himself those same things about not staying here, about the longevity of human spirit. You were young enough of a vampire to remember what a human spirit is. You looked at their faces, the tall woman with big brown eyes, and the scared, cautious coward. They were just like you, at the end of the day. You all came from the same species, and yet...

As if humans ever stop waging brutality on each other.

[just-a-caffeine-addict]

Quotes Accrued in a Decade

“…as you well know, the source of the Nile remained invisible to those who lived next to it for a thousand years. Identifying it required a stranger. (A fresh pair of eyes may see what others miss)” –Sherlock Holmes (From The Perils of Sherlock Holmes: Short Stories)

“A couple of years before he died, I kissed my father goodbye. He said, ‘Son, you haven’t kissed me since you were a little boy.’ It went straight to my heart, and I kissed him whenever I saw him after that, and my sons and I always kiss whenever we meet.” –Terry Wogan

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.” –Chinese Proverb

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.” –George Bernard Shaw

“An army of donkeys led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a donkey.” –Genghis Khan

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." –Mahatma Gandhi

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” –Cesar A. Cruz

“As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” –Marianna Williamson

“Ask not what your country can do for you –ask what you can do for your country.” –John Kennedy

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply give you courage.” –Lao Tzu

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.” –English Proverb

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” –George Bernard Shaw

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” –Confucius

“Can you really have a bad experiment? I don’t know. But can you have a bad result? Yes.” — EvanAndKatelyn (From Can Resin Preserve a Pumpkin Carving?)

“canon is but the sandbox in which i strike lightning to form glass. trouble me no more with your quibblings and quorums, lest i grind you to dust beneath my heel and build stories from the remnants of your bones. Avast, foul fiend” —taako waititi (From Tumblr)

“Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?” —Victor Hugo

“Cucullus non facit monachum (A cowl does not make a monk).” – Fool/Feste (From Twelfth Night)

“Demons run when a good man goes to war…” –River Song (From Doctor Who)

“Due to high cost of ammo, there will be NO WARNING SHOTS FIRED.” –Warning sign

“Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.” –Nicholas Sparks (From Safe Haven)

“Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.” –Michel de Montaigne (From Of Cannibals)

“Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.” –Brad Henry

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Fools take a knife and stab people in the back. The wise take a knife, cut the cord, and set themselves free from the fools.” –Unknown

“Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.” –Chinese Proverb

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” –Thomas Edison

“Herr, wirf Hern vom Himmel -oder Steine, Hauptsache er trifft (Lord, throw some brains from the heavens -or stones, as long as he hits the mark)!” –German Proverb

“History is for human self-knowledge...the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.” —R.G. Collingwood

“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.” –James Thurber

“I can pretend I’m a fish, but I shouldn’t try to breathe underwater.” –Unknown

“I have the patience of a saint. Saint Cunty McFuckOff.” –Words on a cup

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 1,000 ways that won’t work.” –Thomas Edison

“I made some good deals and I made some bad ones. I really went in the hole with this one.” –Quote on a grave

“I occasionally think, how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask is not an alien force ALREADY among us?” –Ronald Reagan

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” –Isaac Newton

“If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might nearly be free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.” –Victor Frankenstein (From Frankenstein)

“If the world tells me I’m mad, whereas I know I’m not, which of us is right? Thus, being mad is what? Inventing a life one hasn’t lived or loving a woman met in another lifetime? Is it clinging to unsatisfied desires?..” Doriel (From A Mad Desire to Dance)

“If you’re afraid - don’t do it, - if you’re doing it - don’t be afraid!” –Genghis Khan

“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.” —Louis L’Amour

"If you're not asking the questions in a thoughtful way, you're not going to get any results that are useful or interesting." –Tony Wagner

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” –John Quincy Adams

“I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” –Jimi Hendrix (From Axis: Bold as Love)

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge." –Jimmy Wales (Founder of Wikipedia)

"In caucus terrae, luscus rex est (In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king)." –Latin Adage

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” –Abraham Lincoln

“In time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” –André Gide (From Autumn Leaves)

"It's not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer." –Albert Einstein

“It’s true. I forget important things sometimes… Sometimes I do think I should give up-- just let the crown win and the world freeze, with me in it. Some days I can’t remember a single reason to keep fighting. Some… Some days I-- I can’t remember her. But giving up’s EASY. You know what’s hard? To BELIEVE in your own worth, to KNOW you’ve got something special in you even if nobody else can see it. Even when YOU can’t.” –Ice King |Simon Petrikov from Adventure Time

“Learn yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” –Albert Einstein

“Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.” –Isaac Watts

“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” –Sholom Aleichem

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” –Ann Landers

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” –James Baldwin

“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” —“The Wonder Years”

“My family is my strength and my weakness.” –Aishwarya rai Bachchan

“Names are the sweetest and the most important sounds in any language.” –Dale Carnegie

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” –Mary Wollstonecraft

"No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips." –Sigmund Freud

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” –Lin Yutang

“NO TRESPASSING. Violators will be shot; Survivors will be shot again.” –Warning Sign

“Nobody knows you as well as our spouse. And that means no one will be quicker to recognize a change when you deliberately start sacrificing your wants and wishes to make sure his or her needs are met.” –Stephen Kendrick from The Love Dare

“Notice: Anyone found here at night will be found here in the morning.” –Warning Sign

“"One thing nature is very good at is creating incredibly complex microscopic structures. That's because nature's machines are the size of molecules, while our crude versions are the size of rooms." –Theodore Gray (from Molecules: The Elements and Architecture of Everything)

“Only the sufferers know how their bellies ache.“ –Burmese

“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.” –Otto von Bismarck

“People think intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘You’re safe with me’ - that’s intimacy.” –Taylor Jenkins Reid (From The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)

“Play taps for my ass, cause it’s dead as hell.” –Unknown Quote

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other. (It doesn't matter which one we choose; Equally involved, equally responsible)”

“Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.” –Markus Zusak (From I Am the Messenger)

“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” –Theodore Roosevelt

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can” –Arthur Ashe

“Take nothing but pictures; Leave nothing but footprints; Kill nothing but time.” –Caver’s Creed

“Take with a pinch of salt (Don’t completely believe what’s told).”

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” –Richard Bach

“The end of one thing is only the beginning of another.” –Unknown

“The family is a haven in a heartless world.” –Attributed to Christopher Lasch

“The helper seeks to help others because he knows what it is to be helpless.” –’ Zen’ Wander (From Wander Over Yonder)

"The million-dollar question: Why aren't we kinder? The second million-dollar question: How might we become more loving, more open, less selfish, more present, less

delusional?" –George Sanders

“The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference ...grows more necessary so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find common ground and, as we say, speak a common language...it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and good will. One is not addressing an alien, blank as a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself.” —Jacques Barzun

“The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them.” –Marilyn Monroe

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” –Roosevelt

“The only time you should look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure you have enough.” –Louie CK

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” –Albert Camus

“The sacrifice which causes sorrow to the doer of the sacrifice is no sacrifice. Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him.” –Mahatma Gandhi

“The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.” —Tryon Edwards

“The secret to humor is surprise.” –Aristotle

“The surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of many, because administered for the common good.” –Andrew Carnegie

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” –G.K. Chesterson

"The word 'why' not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good." –Anne Frank

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” –Ernest Hemingway From A Farewell To Arms

“There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution had come upon him.” –Jefferson Hope From Sherlock’s Adventures

“There will be something you hate in every job. The trick is finding a job where you love the good parts enough to make up for the crappy parts.” –post

“There’s a name for you ladies, but it isn’t used in high society… outside of a kennel.” –Crystal (From The Women of 1939)

“Though we tremble before uncertain futures… may we dance in the face of our fears.” –Gloria Anzaldua

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” –Elie Wiesel (From Night)

“Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire (A fool always finds a fool to admire him).” – Sherlock Holmes (French translation)

“We’re taught Lord Acton’s axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely[...] I believed that when we started these books, but I don’t believe it’s always true anymore. [...] What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.” –Robert A. Caro

“We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.” –Joseph Roux

“What we have done to ourselves alone, dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” –Brother Albert Pike

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” –Henry Ford

“When you wish upon a star, you’re a few million light years late. That star is dead. Just like your dreams.” –Unknown

“When you’re a brat, running fast is enough to make you popular. When you’re a middle-schooler, the guys who can fight will be popular, and after that it’s the guys with brains who can get the girls.” –Master of Protagonist (From The Fruit of Grisaia)

“Where we love is home –home where our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” –Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” –Plato

“You are the company you keep.” –Unknown

“You must be imaginative, strong-hearted. You must try things that may not work, and you must not let anyone define your limits because of where you come from. Your only limit is your soul" –Chef Gusteau (From Ratatouille)

“You walk around a drunk, you get a tired drunk. Splash ‘em with water, you get a wet drunk. Give ‘em a coffee, you’ve got a wide-awake drunk…” –Unknown

[secret-engima]

Worlds Unseen verse Drabble: Stand By You (Even in Dreams)

(here I am, writing something I have no idea what to do with. Enjoy the angst? This ends really abruptly but I didn’t know how to wrap it up. gfhgfd it was interesting to write at least. Also, potential spoilers for Horizon Zero Dawn).

...

     He showed up about two days in. A silent companion walking steadily at her side even though that —he— was impossible. She was determined to ignore him at first. She didn’t know if he was born of her increasing hunger and thirst, her loneliness, or if the air was turning toxic the more damage the swarm did to the world, but he wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. So she ignored him.

     Still, he walked beside her. Not speaking, not ranting or babbling or screaming, just-. Walking. Watching. He watched the world around them with sad eyes, very emotive eyes. Sometimes he almost seem to stumble over the rubble of the road. If it hadn’t been for the impossibility of it, of him, she might have believed he was real. Her imagination was too strong apparently.

     But he was impossible. Dressed like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, furs and leathers mixed with machine piping and wires, his painted face exposed to the ruined world without dying even though she knew that people needed vacuum-sealed suits now just to survive. He was impossible.

     She would never admit that it felt good not to be alone. Even if her company was just a figment of her imagination.

     She made it through three days of silence before she broke, “You ever gonna talk, or are you a silent hallucination?”

     Blue-grey eyes, more like storm clouds than skies, shifted away from the landscape to look at her, “You didn’t seem in the mood for conversation,” he spoke, and she noted what almost sounded like a Japanese accent —odd choice brain, why not a southern accent like Travis or something?—, “so I left you alone.”

     She sighed, “Well, not much else to do out here but indulge my insanity.”

     “You think you’re dreaming me up.”

     “Aren’t I?”

     The hallucination shrugged, “I don’t know. I think that I’m dreaming you up, personally, and you believe you’ve dreamed me up. Maybe we’re both dreaming up each other. Or maybe we’re both just dreams. Does it matter?”

     She mulled over that for probably longer than it deserved, “I guess not.”

...

...

...

     “Where are we going?”

     She looked up tiredly at the words, jolted out of the daze that had been settling into her bones by the soft voice of the impossibility following her around, “I’m trying to get home. You can leave whenever you want.”

     A loose shrug, as if her words were merely a polite suggestion and not a jab at her insanity, “Are you sure you want to see it this way? It’s not going to be pretty.”

     They both paused to look around at the ruined landscape. Skyscrapers smoking in the distance, roads cracked and torn apart, the entire world either burned or eaten by unstoppable metal monsters, the sky turned unnatural colors as the atmosphere was ruined ever further. No, she mentally agreed. She probably did not want to see her home this way. But still … “I have nowhere else to go. I’m a dead woman anyway. I want to die at home.”

     He shrugged again, as if to say without words that it was her choice, and they kept walking.

     She wondered distantly when his footsteps had started to make sound, just like real ones did.

...

...

...

     “You got a name? It’s getting boring just calling you the Hallucination in my head.”

     An amused glance her way, “I thought you weren’t supposed to indulge hallucinations because it would only make them worse.”

     She scoffed, the sound laced with static through the speakers of her suit, “Worst case is that I die before I get home, talking to thin air. Best case is that I die at the ranch, still talking to thin air. Might as well risk it. So, do you have a name?”

     He tilted his head and considered her. There was something eerie in his gaze, something too keen and too alive. Something too old. It fit the strange military uniform he was wearing today, “Bast,” he finally said, “Bast Lucis Caelum.”

     “Pretentious,” she huffed, and his lips twitched like he agreed and found her opinion amusing. It was stupid to introduce herself to a hallucination of her own mind, because surely he knew everything about her already. But even so, boredom and manners made her tap her chest plate and say, “Elisabet. Elisabet Sobeck.” He stopped and stared at her with wide, startled eyes, the most open emotion she had yet seen from him. His mouth opened, then shut, then he shook his head and muttered something that sounded distinctly like “should have known” and she was intrigued despite herself, “You didn’t know who I was. Shouldn’t you know everything about me?”

     He scoffed, a dry, tired noise, “No. I didn’t. I knew your voice was familiar, but I can’t- I can’t see you under that suit. I wasn’t sure. And I don’t know much about you. Not really.” A pause, a thoughtful look at the ruined horizon and the swirling dust beneath their feet, “Tell me?”

     Elisabet didn’t feel much like talking about herself to, essentially, herself, but she was used to answering vague, childish questions after so long working with Gaia, and somehow she found herself talking as she hiked through the empty landscape. About herself, about her past, about her dreams. Bast listened without judgement, just occasionally made a questioning noise that let her know he was listening.

     It was a relief to not feel alone in this place. Even if she knew logically she was more alone than she had ever been before in her life.

...

...

...

     “If you had a daughter,” Elisabet jerked awake from her daze at the sound, blinked and tried to shake off the effects of dehydration —the suit had run out of water stims to inject into her bloodstream yesterday and she was already feeling the effects—, “what would you say to her?”

     “I don’t have any children,” she retorted and tried not to sound bitter about it, “for the best, really, considering … this.” She waved a hand at the fallen buildings and smoking spires. Ruins without bodies, everything already picked clean of organic material by the swarm as it had passed by. That was probably the only reason she was still alive. This area had already been deemed empty by the swarm and it had moved on before she had … left.

     “Humor me.”

     She looked at her imaginary companion. He was dressed in post-apocalypse leathers and cables again, his blond hair half shaved, the other half left to flop to the side like some kind of sad not-mohawk. His weapons hadn’t changed. They were just as anime as ever. A katana at one hip, a bow on his back and a quiver of arrows on his other hip, knives peaking out from seemingly every pocket. He was watching her with something very focused and serious in his gaze. Like he could see through her suit and into her eyes. She licked dry lips beneath her visor, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have anyone.”

     He stopped walking, she stopped instinctively so as to not leave him behind. He reached out as if to grab her shoulder, paused before he could touch her and lowered his hand. Grey eyes looked dark with intent, with desperation, “If you had a daughter,” he started to repeat.

     “Well I don’t!” She snapped, temper breaking free of its leash, “I’m childless! I have no daughter, I have no future! I’m talking to a hallucination! You’re a figment of my mind, why won’t you just change the subject?”

     “Because this is important!” He snarled back with more ferocity than she expected. He stormed forward until they were almost touching, his nose inches from her faceplate, “This is important, Elisabet. I don’t know what’s going on, if I’m dead or dreaming or what, but I have a chance to ask this and I’m taking it!”

     A fractured pause between them, tense and disbelieving on both sides. Then Bast ran a hand through his hair and stepped back, “Now please. If you had a daughter, what would you tell her?”

     A pointless question. A pointless question that was painful to even think about, especially here. Especially now. She turned away and resumed walking, listened to the crunch of footsteps that couldn’t really be there as they followed her and thought about changing the subject.

     And yet…

     “If I had a daughter … I would tell her that I loved her. So much. I would tell her … to be brave. And curious. And kind. That- that the world has enough people out there hurting it, and that it takes a special kind of person to heal it instead. If only a little bit. I would tell her that I support her, no matter what she decided to do with her life, and that wherever she went … whatever she did, I would believe in her. Anything she wanted to be, or achieve, she could do it. I know she could.” Elisabet looked up at the sky, taking in the starscape just beginning to be visible, “I would tell her to reach for the stars, because if she wanted to, she could touch them. And no matter what happened next … I would be … so proud. I would love her, and I would… I …”

     “I would tell her that I would always be proud of my baby girl.”

     Bast let her fall silent after that. Politely looked away as her shoulders shook and her breath hitched inside the suit. Then, after minutes upon minutes of aching silence, he whispered, “I’ll remember that.”

     And Elisabet wondered why it felt like such a relief to hear those words. Even though logically she knew that she had no child, and even if she had, they would never hear what Elisabet had to say.

...

...

...

     It was getting hard to see straight. Hard to think. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the suit ran out of nutrient stims. Just that it had, and she had kept walking. She had avoided the swarm, somehow, and now … now she was so tired. So very tired.

     “Keep walking,” Bast said, and she wondered when she had stopped caring that he was a figment of her mind and instead clung to the comfort of his presence. To the steadiness of his voice even in a world eaten alive. “That’s it, isn’t it? Up ahead.”

     She looked up. Cried when she saw the weathered letters of the Sobeck Ranch looking back, “Yeah. That’s it. That’s home.” She had made it. She had made it home. Crazy and dying and alone at the end of the world but … she was home. She staggered past the wrecked gate, tried not to look at the devastation. The swarm had been through here, she could tell. All the trees were gone, all the grass ripped out of the ground by the roots. The walls caved in to get to the ivy that had been growing on them. Her home was in as much ruins as the rest of the world.

     But it was still here.

     She sank shakily onto the old stone bench that faced the house and sighed.

     This would be a good place to die.

     Bast settled next to her, crouching on his haunches near the bench rather than risk touching her —he never touched her, and she wasn’t sure if that was out of respect for her boundaries or because they both knew it would break the illusion that he was ever there—. He was quiet. He had been getting a lot quieter, the longer the journey went on. The more Elisabet faded. He only spoke now to wake her up, to tell her to keep moving. But she was home now, so there was no more reason to stay awake, or to walk. This was it. This was where she was going to stay until the end.

     She wondered, a little dazedly, if it would be scary for Bast. If he would fade with her consciousness, acting alive until the end, or if her brain would just get too tired to keep him around and he would wink into nothing between one heartbeat and the next. That thought scared her more than it should.

     “Hey, Bast?”

     “Yeah?”

     She licked dry lips and shifted to be marginally more comfortable on the bench. Tilted her head back to the sky and idly rolled her little globe charm in her fingers as she whispered, “If I had a daughter … what would her name be? What … would she be like?”

     The silence that followed was deep and long. So long she closed her eyes with a shaking sigh, sure that her brain had finally gotten bored with making him and left her well and truly alone. Then.

     “Aloy. Her name would be Aloy. She would … look just like you. Red hair, bright green eyes that try to pick apart everything in the world around her. She would be ��� curious. Brave. Unstoppable. The smartest person in the room wherever she went but not … arrogant about it. Always looking for knowledge, always looking to learn. She would be … afraid of a lot of things, but she would never let it stop her. She would be very kind. Always willing to help other people in need, even when it’s risky, or when she would rather do something else. She would … look at a boy about her age that … no one wanted anything to do with because he was weird and she would hold out a hand in friendship. She would learn a foreign language just so she could talk to her new friend better, and ask questions no else thinks to ask. She would do … so many amazing things.”

     Elisabet tried to picture it. Indulged in the fantasy of it, just for a little while, “What things?”

     “Well,” Bast mused slowly, a note of gentle, nostalgic fondness in his voice, “there was this one time when we were eleven, and Aloy decided she wanted to surprise Rost, our … caretaker, so…”

     Elisabet listened. Eyes closed, breath slowing, basking in stories of the impossible. Of children and curiosity, of teenagers and bravery. Of a daughter who was unstoppable, and curious, and kind enough to fix the world, just a little bit. She listened to Bast’s voice rise and fall in stories of hope and heartbreak and danger and kindness. Her hand slowly relaxed around her little globe charm. It would be alright to doze off just for a little while, right? To dream of these fanciful stories her own mind was telling her.

     Just for a little while. Maybe … maybe she would get to see them? In her dreams if nothing else.

     Just for a little bit.

     Thank you, she tried to tell Bast past lips too tired to move. Thank you for staying with me, even if you aren’t really here.

     Thank you for not letting me die alone.

...

...

...

     Bast finished his story, one of many he had been telling, through the day and night and into the dawn again. He looked up from the pebbles he had been fiddling with, only half feeling them, as if he was touching them in a dream.

     He couldn’t hear Elisabet breathing anymore.

     He closed his eyes. Opened them and looked around the ruined world one more time. He could feel it, the tug in his soul that had been trying to make him wake up for a while now. He could have left days ago, followed the tug and gone back to the world of the living. But even if this was all just a dream —which it might be, or it might not, could he really judge after all the things he’d seen?—, he hadn’t wanted to leave yet. He hadn’t wanted to disappear and leave her alone.

     It was the least he could do, for Aloy’s mother.

     He stood up, letting the tugging sensation unravel through his soul as he stared at the unmoving figure slumped over on the stone bench, “I’ll come find you,” he whispered, “when I wake up. When this is all over. I’ll take Aloy here to meet you. Just wait for me until then, okay?”

     There was no answer. He didn’t expect any.

     The tugging feeling grew stronger and yanked him away, and Bast had just enough time to whisper goodbye before he opened his eyes in the real world, aching all over and with a relieved Aloy crying at his head.

     “-you thinking? You almost died!”

     “Sor’y, Aloy.”

     “I’ll show you sorry, all those lectures on being reckless and there you go and do something stupid like that-!”

     “Your Mom says hi.”

     “I’m going to- what?”

     Bast shook his head with a sigh. She didn’t know yet. She still had hope.

     He would tell her later. When he took her to meet Elisabet, “Neverm’nd. Tell you later.” He reached up and tugged one of her braids gently, “Missed you.”

     He squinted past the tears dripping onto his face as she pulled him into her lap, “I missed you too you big idiot. Don’t scare me like that again.”

     “Okay.”

[queenie2297]

Bloodied Lust: A Hellsing Smut

I just finished watching the anime Hellsing and it honestly was one of the best I have watched in awhile. Watching it was stemmed from a suggestion made by the actual English voice actor of Alucard to me personally when I met him about a month ago.

Warnings: gore, lots of smut, dirty talk, attempted sexual assault.

Rating: NC-17

(Alucard x reader)

......................................

You enjoyed the times that you visited your family on the English countryside. After moving to the city of London at age 25, you loved to escape to your old stomping grounds of the quaint village that you will always love. However, you had no idea of the darkness that surrounded the village as of recent. Vampires roamed the night, taking to the shadows to stalk their prey. In the past four months, six people have gone missing for unknown reasons and the police have not found the bodies as of yet. Your mother had warned you ahead of time about the disappearances and encouraged you to travel in groups when out at night. You should have listened to her the night you were walking home from a friend’s house, but you did not. This was the night you died but also the night that you were reborn.

You walked quickly down an ivy-covered, cobblestone alley, a shortcut you remember often taking when walking home from school. It was so late at night, that the streetlamps had turned off and the only thing lighting the path was the moonlight. You were a little tipsy from having several glasses of wine with a friend from childhood. Suddenly, a figure appeared at the end of the alley and spoke to you,

“Hey cutie, where you headed so late at night?”

You continued walking toward the figure, ready to push past it and ignore the advances. You had dealt with catcallers many times in the city, so it did not bother you as much as it used to. As you walked closer, you could see it was a middle aged man with a scruffy beard. He had an Irish accent, which was not common in this part of England. He started to get angry that you were ignoring him.

“Hey! I asked you a question!”

Just as you were putting your hand out to push past him, he grabbed it and slammed you against the alley’s brick walls, knocking the breath out of you.

“Listen bitch, you need to learn some manners. I’ll teach ya to mind a man.”

When the man spoke, you noticed his remarkably sharp canines and bright red eyes. Shit. Is he a vampire?

“A-are you a vampire? Vampires aren’t real!” You stammered, now frightened.

The man grinned wickedly, leaned in closer to your neck and inhaled deeply.

“Man, you smell so sweet. I haven’t had virgin blood in a while. This will be a treat.”

He can tell I’m a virgin just by smelling me? You thought. You started to panic.

In one swift motion, the man turned you around so that your face was smashed against the brick wall. The man swiftly pushed your pants to your knees.

“If you move or scream, I will suck you dry. I don’t want to do that right away. That would be no fun.” The man chuckled darkly and removed himself from you momentarily to remove his belt buckle and unzip his pants. Just as his rough touch returned to your body, you hear a new voice from behind you.

“Well, Well. Another scummy vampire to be rid of.” This man’s voice was deep and smooth as satin. It seemed that your attacker knew who the other man was as well.

“Ah, the famous Alucard from Hellsing. Did you finally come here to kill me? It took you long enough to come rescue this town from the disappearances.”

You heard the cock of a gun and you were pulled away from the wall by your attacker, bringing you in front of him as a human shield. Finally, you got a good look at the other man who interjected on this attack. He was tall and lanky with black hair that fell over his face. What made him really stand out was that he wore a bright red coat and the same colored hat. So this is Alucard.

“Gonna have to get her if you wanna get me, Alucard. Are ya gonna shoot this pretty girl? Ya know, before she dies, you’ll have to taste her. She’s got that sweet, virgin blood.”

Just past the glasses that he wore, you could see that Alucard bore the red eyes of a vampire. Tears sprung up in your eyes. Were two vampires about to fight over who was going to suck you dry?

“Please... just let me go home. Please.” You beg.

Alucard stepped closer and locked eyes with you.

“Tell me, girl, do you want to live?”

You nod furiously.

“Well, in order to do that, I am going to have to do something reckless. You’re going to have to trust me. I want you to say that you trust me.”

You hesitated. To trust or not, that is the question. All you wanted was to go home. Maybe Alucard would really help you out of this situation. Finally, with a sigh you say,

“I trust you.”

“Good girl.”

With that, Alucard raised his gun and shot you in the center of your chest without much warning. Your breath left you as you crumpled to the ground. Your chest burned and your breathing was shallow. You were struggling to hang on to life as Alucard knelt next to you.

“The vampire that attacked you is dead. Now, answer me this. Do you want to live forever? Remember, I am giving you the choice. You can die here or you can come with me.”

Through your pain, you nodded.

“Just make the pain go away.” You said through teary eyes.

Alucard seemed to handle you as gently as he could as he cradled you in his arms. You were quickly spiraling into unconsciousness and right before everything went black, there was a burning sensation on your neck where the vampire sank his teeth into your flesh. The burning equaled the amount of pain of getting a tattoo. At least it drew your attention away from the pain in your chest. The burning sensation quickly melted away to ecstasy and you let out a small, pathetic whimper; like a newborn kitten meowing for the first time. You no longer felt any pain, not in your neck nor your gunshot wound. All you felt was bliss. Alucard released your neck and licked the wound clean, making you gasp and bringing you back to reality.

“You are going to feel tired soon. Don’t fight it. You need to rest.”

Alucard stood up swiftly, showing no sign of struggle in bearing your weight.

**

You don’t remember arriving at Hellsing headquarters, nor do you remember changing clothes. However, you lay in a giant bed made of red satin sheets and wore one of Alucard’s white button downs that fit you like a dress. The room was dark, but you could see everything in it, from the picture frames on the wall, to the wooden table and chairs in the middle of the room. The only light in the room was a single flickering candle, for there were no windows in the room.

The man who had saved you was nowhere to be found until you heard his voice.

“Good. You’re awake. Are you rested, girl?”

“W-where am I? Where are you? Also, my names not ‘girl’. It’s (Y/N).”

Alucard chuckled.

“Apologies (Y/N). You’re in my room at Hellsing headquarters. I am not here physically with you, but since I turned you into a vampire, we are connected. I am your master.”

“So, I’m a vampire now?”

“Yes. Do you see the bucket on the table in front of you?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to drink what is inside that bucket. If you do, you will feel much better. I’m sure you are very hungry.”

“M-Master?”

“Yes?”

“Is it blood?”

“It is. Drink it.”

“Master, I can’t.”

“And why not? Don’t make me come feed you forcefully.”

“It’s human blood. I can smell it.”

“It’s blood that was donated willingly. Do not worry, that human that you are drinking from is still alive and well somewhere in the kingdom.”

Despite Alucard’s reassurance, you still could not find yourself to take your first sip of blood as a new vampire. You stood at the table staring at the bag of the sweet scarlet for who knows how long, struggling with your hunger and the human morality that you still had left when Alucard burst into the door. The two of you locked eyes.

“You still have not eaten, but I can see that you desperately want to. Why don’t you just do it?”

‘I’m sorry, Master. Even with your reassurance, I cannot bring myself to do it.”

“Well, I stand by my word. I will have to feed it to you myself then.”

Your breath caught in your throat as he strode over to where you were and grabbed the blood bag from the bucket. His eyes never left yours as he snatched the blood bag from the bucket and bit into it briefly before pulling away. Small amounts of crimson gathered at the side of his mouth, making you salivate. He sat himself down on one of the wooden chairs.

“Come here, little one.” Alucard gestured toward his lap and you obeyed, somehow your body moving faster than your brain did. You straddled his tall, lanky body. He held your chin as his lips collided with yours and the first drops of crimson invading your mouth made you groan. It tasted very good.

“So good.” you moaned before deeply kissing your Master to clean every last drop of blood from his mouth. Your body was experiencing feelings of euphoria, a feeling you have never experienced in such a strong way before. It was almost too much. Lust, happiness, but most importantly, your thirst for blood was finally somewhat quenched. You wanted more.

“There, now was that so hard?” Alucard said as the two of you pulled away momentarily.

You shake your head and smiled as you licked the remaining blood off the side of your mouth.

“Good. Now do I need to help you more?” a smirk spread across Alucard’s face.

“Yes, Master.” you giggled.

“If you must insist. Get up.”

You obeyed and waited for your master’s orders.

He took off his red, wide-brimmed hat and his glasses, the first time you have gotten a full look at his eyes. They were red, just like yours, but you swore that they were a deeper red somehow; and they stared right into your soul. He looked you up and down for a short while, making you tremble with his hard stare.

“Take your clothes off, little one.”

You bit your lip and started to peel each article of clothing off one by one, again you body reacting faster than your thoughts could. Alucard never took his eyes off of you. You moaned as the cool air in the chamber hit the most sensitive parts of your body.

“Are you still hungry, (Y/N)?”

“Yes, Master.”

Alucard stood up and removed the top half of his clothing. His tall, lanky, pale skin was more toned than you had originally thought. Alucard took the blood bag in his hands once more and let the crimson drip down his chest and it brought warmth in between your legs.

You could smell your own arousal and it not only surprised you, but it was also embarrassing. You were mortified when Alucard sniffed the air and another smirk spread across his face.

“Ah, I see what I’m doing to you now. Come. I want you to clean this up.”

His hand laced around the back of your neck and into your hair as you took no time to obey your master’s orders. You nipped softly as you cleaned streams of blood off of his chest to get a reaction from him, but he stood his ground with a great poker face. By the time you cleaned up all of the blood, you were kneeling in front of him, looking up at him with lust filled eyes.

“The smell of your arousal is strong, little one. Is there more you want from your master?”

You hesitated briefly, but then reached to unbuckle Alucard’s pants. He chuckled, but did not move or swat your hands away. You moaned as you reached in and pulled out his rock hard member. You held it in your hands and stroked it briefly before looking up at him.

“Master, may I?”

“Yes, you may.”

Your mouth closed around his shaft and you quickly went to work, surprising yourself with your dick-sucking skills, despite being a virgin. You finally heard a small groan from Alucard and you reward him by taking as much of his cock into your mouth as you could. He grabbed you by the hair and pulled you up.

“Are you sure you have never slept with someone else before? Your skills have surprised me.”

“It must have been the porn I have watched over the years.” You blushed.

“You sure are something. I think you will handle me just fine. Now, get back to work.”

Alucard slammed you back down onto your knees and you immediately took him back into your mouth.

“How would you like it if I released myself in all of your holes, little one? That way everyone will know that you are mine.”

You moaned around his shaft in response.

“I want a ‘yes, master’.”

Yes, Master. Please.”

Alucard moaned in satisfaction and began thrusting himself deeper into your mouth, making you gag and choke.

“Such a good girl.”

Spit and precum dribbled off of your chin and onto your chest as you took as much of Alucard’s length into your mouth as you could.

Your master didn't even warn you when he came into your mouth, leaving you surprised and writhing as his hot seed slid down your throat.

“You better swallow every last bit of that cum, my precious.”

You stood up, your legs numb from being in the kneeling position for a long period of time. You smiled up at your master and used your thumb to slide the remains of escaped seed back onto your tongue.

Without a word, Alucard scooped up your naked body and dropped you onto the silk sheets of his bed, ass in the air and your face in the sheets.

With the smell of your arousal still running rampant, Alucard knew you were ready for him. With a swift movement, his pants were removed and his hard member was ready for action.

“Now, which hole should I ravage first?” He slid his member up and down your wet slit making you mewl softly.

Without much warning, he slammed into your tight heat, making you cry out.

“I’m going to break you, girl.” Alucard said as he grabbed a fistful of your hair and pulled up, bringing your back against his chest.

As Alucard slammed relentlessly into you, a great pain wreaked havoc on your insides. It felt as if you were being torn open. You tensed up out of instinct but relaxed when Alucard whispered in your ear.

“I opened you, little one. Now the sensations will be a little more bearable.”

He slowed down for a moment to allow you to adjust to his length and when your screams of pain turned into moans of pleasure he continued to destroy your pussy. With each thrust from Alucard you felt him collide with your cervix. His length was just right for you and it hit all of the right places.

“That’s my girl.” Alucard whispered as he nipped at your neck with his sharp canines.

“Oh F-fuck! Master!”

Alucard chuckled darkly.

“Yes?”

“S-So G-good!”

Alucard wrapped a hand around your throat, squeezing just hard enough to make you wheeze a little.

“Does my little vampire slave want me to come inside her?”

“Yes. Please!”

“Say my name.”

You hesitated, thinking for a moment. Alucard had never formally told you his name. You had heard his name from the vampire that attacked you and nothing more.

“Alucard!”

“Louder.”

A pressure built up quickly in your core, something that you had never experienced before. It made you feel really warm inside and It made you moan even louder than before. You felt like you were going to explode.

“ALUCARD. MASTER. I- I THINK I’M..”

“Yes! Yes, cum for me, girl.”

You felt your walls tighten around Alucard’s member, causing him to groan softly before latching his fangs deep into your shoulder, making you moan once again.

“Fuck!”

Alucard’s pace did not stutter as he filled you up. The feeling of his warm seed filling you up made you tremble and you found that your womanhood was sensitive.

Alucard remained inside you as he licked the wound on your neck clean and with one last thrust, he pulled out, leaving you empty inside. You let your body fall back onto the sheets and moaned.

“Don’t worry, I’m not quite done with you yet.”

There was a brief moment where Alucard disappeared from behind you but soon returned, hoisting your ass straight into the air.

“I want you to spread those pretty little ass cheeks for me.”

“Master?”

“Remember when I told you I would cum in all of your holes? This is me keeping my promise.”

A few drops of cold liquid dropped right onto your asshole, making you flinch.

“Stay still, girl.”

Two fingers were immediately inserted into your asshole.

“Unlike the last time, I need to prepare you for this round.”

“Fuck! Master!”

“You are stretching well for me, (Y/N).”

A third finger was added and was aggressively mutilating your tightest hole. You were so overcome with lust that you became hysterical.

“Master, I want your dick inside my asshole. Fuck my ass just like you did my pussy!”

Alucard chuckled darkly once more.

“I see that my slave is eager. Well, master doesn’t want to disappoint now does he?”

Alucard teased your entrance before slowly entering into your asshole.

“Oh fuck! You’re stretching me so wide open!” You mewled.

“If you keep talking like that, you’re going to break me and I’ll cum in your pretty little asshole right now.”

You took this as an attack of opportunity.

“You see how big your dick is stretching me, master? How does it feel to have my tight walls constrict around you?”

Small moans escaped Alucard’s mouth with every sentence you spoke. His pace started to stutter.

“(Y/N), you’re ruining me.”

“Master, I want to look into your eyes as you cum inside me.”

“Very well.”

His cock never left your hole has he spun you around onto your back. Finally, you could see his face. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and his eyes were dark with lust. His hands gripped your thighs and pinned them to the bed, allowing for you to be spread open for him. The sight of him all distraught like this allowed for your climax to climb quickly, making you cum once more with him not too far behind. With one last thrust, Alucard released himself for the last time inside of you with a small moan. He showered your neck with small kisses and then another love bite deep into your shoulder.

“Mine.” He growled.

Your body was numb to the sharp pain of his love bite due to the temporary feeling of it being weak. Your chest heaved to catch your breath as Alucard pulled himself out of you and buckled his pants back up. Your eyes were heavy as you made your way to the head of the bed to curl up and lay your head upon the pillows.

“You’re mine now, (Y/N).” Alucard’s husky voice said.

“Yes, master.” You mumbled. You were trembling from the cold in the room now as your body came down from its euphoria. You felt something being draped over you and when you looked, it was Alucard’s bright red coat. It smelled surprisingly of sandalwood, totally unexpected for what he does for a living. This was the smell of your master. You smiled softly and closed your eyes.

“Sleep, little one. I will be here with you.”

Your masters husky voice lulled you to sleep.

**

You awoke to the steady up-and-down motion of Alucard’s chest. Sometime during the night, he joined you and you had managed to lay your head on his bare chest. Strangely, he had no heartbeat, at least one you could hear. Was yours the same way? Both of your bodies were cold, but it didn’t matter to you. You sat up in bed and watched Alucard for a moment. Even for a vampire who slays his own kind, who's constantly on high alert, looked so peaceful when he slept.

You got up to stretch and return clothes to your body until you noticed the half used blood bag from the night before. You took it in your hands carefully, pondering for a moment until you finally sank your teeth into it, drinking eagerly. You heard Alucard chuckle from behind you as you felt his arms snake around your waist.

“I knew I could convince you. Is it good?”

You nod furiously.

As you were drinking, you felt the power of a new vampire coarse through your veins. A growl emitted from deep within your throat.

“That’s it. Good girl. You can let it out.”

Red fog started to gather around your feet as bits of vampiric power were bursting out of you. He never let go of you, not even once.

“I’m sorry, (Y/N). I did fail to mention what powers you obtain by being my creation. It’s a little hard to manage it for the first time.”

You started shaking from the pure strength of it all but you continued to drink. You felt 10x stronger than before.

Finally, you had finished every possible last drop from the bag and you allowed it to slip from your grasp. The extreme power you felt faded away.

“Oh fuck.” You mumbled.

Alucard spun you around to face him.

“The power you just felt was a part of mine. When I said we were connected, I meant we were truly connected. With time, you will learn how to control it all.” He paused and looked over the spots where he bit you. “The places where I bit you last night were bruised to hell. They’re healed now that you drank. This is why you must drink.”

“Yes, Master.” You smiled softly.

You used to think vampires were myths, simply creatures that existed in movies and books. After what you have gone through, you knew that you had been proven wrong. When that vampire attacked you you in the alleyway, You thought you were a goner But whoever or whatever runs the heavens above had a different plan for you that night. They had put you with Alucard. Maybe being a creature of the night wouldn’t be so bad after all.