#guess I’ll just have to write it for myself and live in delusion

[beneath-the-mask]

I wonder how different the ending of the dlc would be if Miquella hadn’t abandoned his love, if he hadn’t abandoned Trina. Would we still be able to reason with him? Appeal to his better nature? Just imagining being able to bring Trina in with us as a way to defuse the situation, being able to not fight and just talk, makes me feel insane.

What if we could show Miquella just how much of a monster he had become, that all this isn’t right, by bringing Trina back to him. How can you bring an age of compassion without your love, Miquella?

God I am mourning the story we could’ve had for this dlc.

[krewekreep]

Introduction of Sorts + Interests

This page will really be for me to get back into writing, develop my writing and indulge myself. I’m open to requests though but ask people to definitely contextualize your Bias (person you’re requesting for—yes I’m gonna use K-pop lingo oh well) and/or the scenario cause otherwise I’d simply write for myself. Which is why I also am making this page because I’ve been on tumblr for 10 years (my main account turned ten this year) and I’m worn out of the smut fest no prose or story fics. Definitely has its place in the community but the older I get the more I need actual full blown delusion. I need scene, setting, set up, climax, denouement…and so I’ll fulfill the order myself. 🫡

My interests:

(Im a 2010s coded Tumblr user so uh, I mean I suppose Dr Who and Supernatural aren’t 😂😂😂😂lmao ew anyway (I was into supernatural I’m ewwing at you and myself) .

Too I usually am not following everything that’s mainstream (I know im so cool) so also if something isn’t listed I most likely know of it—but went no further. I also like older anime and media so if you have something super specific that feels out of place no worries. Im gonna end up writing Greek smut about Dionysus so…🤷🏾‍♀️

Anime: (I’ve seen actually too much anime to name so here’s the ones I have a bias or have an affinity for the characters)

JJK,

Chainsaw Man

Bleach

Naruto

Demon Slayer

Attack on Titan

Fate Series

Etc

Manga:

JJK

Chainsaw Man

Bleach

Attack on Titan

Spy x Family

DanDanDan

Berserk

Etc

Fave genres are horror/seinen, shoujo, and slice of life.

KPOP: (1st-mid 3rd Gen main but still aware of 4th gen pretty deeply)

I dont really want to do requests for idols but I don’t mind overall, explained further below

My fave boy groups (somewhat in order): Big Bang, Shinee, BAP, BTS (ex-army, long story**, don’t come to my page with that bullshit 💕) B1A4, IKON, EXO, 2PM, GOT7…I could go on. (I’m not gonna list them in an order but my heart can’t not include MBLAQ, Teen Top, U-Kiss, etc ugh those were the days😭)

Girl Groups (in definitive order): 2NE1, Brown Eyed Girls, F(x), Girls Generation, TWICE, 4Minute/Hyuna, Wonder Girls, Secret, After School, Global Icon (short lived), Tiny G ( VERY short lived), EXID, Ladies Code, etc.

Now 4th Gen…is cute…they got CUTE people that’s for sure. This list will be co-ed simply because I’m not feral for boy groups like I was younger. Really the boy groups don’t do it for me (4th gen overall criticism tbh) cause it’s really looks and kinda arrogant personalities I find obnoxious given y’all can’t even publicly date or be seen smoking…tone down the elitist vibe lol. But shade aside I do jam some things and have a playlist for my fave 4th gen songs so for sure no hate just a BOMBASTIC side eye sometimes. Anyway…

Stray Kids

Aespa

Lessaraffim (I’m gonna leave it like my mind spells it, enjoy)

NCT 127 (specifically them ((in reference to the units)) cause I enjoy R&B coded K-pop, they do too much Niggaboo shit (looking at Mark and Taeyong DIRECTLY in the eyes 👁️👄👁️)((BUT it’s a Soo Man thing cause him, YG, and JYP competing over who wish they were a born a Black man the most…Soo Man and JYP ✨fist fighting✨over the top spot IYKYK)

New jeans (they’re minors and if they all aren’t their def much younger than me so no requests for minors please this is for taste assessment only)

BIBI and other female soloists (Hyuna, Sunmi, Ga-in, Lee Hyori, etc)

IVE (they really got some bops tbh, this is another TWICE case of let these young women talk and sing how they naturally would…music and live performances will thank them for it)

Nobody really else I guess honorable mentions are Ateez, Fifty-fifty,

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*im gonna add that for Anime/Manga the double dipping means some combination of me knowing the material in both forms of media. Like Jujutsu Kaizen is an amazing example currently as of course the anime is ongoing but the manga is far ahead by a large portion of plot. So if your anime only, manga only, or something be sure to let me know so I’m not spoiling by accident. Don’t want the smut to spoil a character death or something….right? 😅

**the long story short and overall caveat of why I’ve fallen out of love for groups and K-pop are the fact that yeah as a Black person I genuinely started getting pissed off with colorism, n-word usage, appropriation, and mockery. The shit gets old and as a poor old super fan I’m happy I didn’t spend the money people do for folks who would literally refuse my hand…🫤 be fr. Likewise, the deaths of idols who were literally my biases really (of course) bothered me and took a toll on my enjoyment of the genre too. The more you love it the more you learn and that’s usually where the fun ends and now it’s numbers charts and placements. Lame 😭. I let the time I was fan be that but otherwise ? Eh I’m good I’ll bop from time to time and catch the tea but my bread in my pocket (besides my B1A4 What’s Happening and Twice Scientist albums😂)((and the other old albums I’ll get before they disappear forever or get destroyed🫠))

But yeah that’s that on that. I’ll be posting whatever ends up decent enough to be read by others. Otherwise wherever this ends up hope you drop a message🥸!

[tokidokifish]

for the WIP meme, could we hear about witcher, take a sip, and frostbitten?

the witcher fic... sssss? kinda?? i had like three different ideas that all kind of live in that fic but the one that seems to have legs is a beauty and the beast/hanahaki fushion because i am if nothing if not novel in my predictability. i have no idea if i'll ever finish it bc i've been poking at it for YEARS and obviously i'm not, like, even that big into the witcher, but i also can't seem to entirely abandon it. WHO KNOWS.

take a sip is, well. look. i haven't gotten far into it. i don't know if it'll ever go anywhere. but my tav trivial goes off their birth control once it's confirmed astarion can't impregnate them and has a period and given the title YOU CAN PROBABLY GUESS WHERE IT GOES FROM THERE.

“You’ve never had one before. Well, since we met.” “I hadn’t,” Trivial agrees. “It was part of the potion I took to ensure I can’t get pregnant. But after we had that conversation with Halsin, I thought I could probably stop bothering with it.” Oh yes, that conversation. It had happened at the party they’d had just before what remained of their comportment was finally leaving Baldur’s Gate: Shadowheart to a homestead with her family, Gale back to Waterdeep, and apparently Halsin had plans to turn the now formerly Shadow-Cursed Lands into a haven for the city’s unwanted youth. “Hateful things,” Astarion had noted, with amusement. “I’m glad I’ll never have one.” And then: a horrifying thought occurred to him, and he snapped his head around to look at Halsin. “I won’t ever have one, will I?” “Hmm? Oh!” Halsin chuckled. “I can hardly see your future, my friend; I’ve no idea if you might someday feel inclined toward adoption. But if you’re asking if you can—pardon the term—sire any biological offspring yourself, the answer is no. Dhampire exist, of course, but they can only be fathered by higher vampires.” “Oh, thank the gods,” Astarion gasped, somewhat lightheaded with relief.

now you may be saying: fish, why are you even writing this if you're that embarrassed about even talking about it? well, i'm a bit shy about it bc it's not something i'm usually into. EVEN WHEN I'M USUALLY INTO VAMPIRES. but i still got the urge to write it because i suppose that's just the power of astarion.

frostbitten is another fic i GENUINELY have no idea if i'll ever finish because it's, of all things, an urban fantasy garashir au which i feel literally no one, ever, has asked for. but i'm actually a big ol' slut for urban fantasy so much like hanahaki, soulmates, and daemons it was probably only a matter of time before it happened. it's very much like my garashir hanahaki fic, maybe a little bit like an urban fantasy version of the wire, in that garak has something wrong with him and of course holes up to deal with it alone before julian Makes It His Business.

Garak gets three days of peace. Or—well, he gets three days of solitude, which he spends more miserable than he’s been in his entire life, mostly wrapped up in blankets on his couch. He eats infrequently and sleeps even less, whenever his exhaustion is able to outpace his general distress; by the time he hears the knock on his door, he’s not altogether sure it’s not a hallucination. “Garak! I know you’re in there—open up, or I’ll invite myself!” That it’s Julian’s voice on the other side doesn’t immediately dissuade Garak from the notion he’s hallucinating.But then again, if it was some form of delusion, the doctor probably would have appeared in the room already, all soft hands and warm eyes and understanding. Which means that this is probably real, and Julian is indeed going to come in one way or another, so Garak makes an effort to look like he had merely decided to wrap himself up out of deference to the early December weather, and extends a tendril of energy towards flicking the bolt on his door. It’s shamefully exhausting, but he’s fairly sure he wouldn’t even have made those few steps had he tried to walk the distance instead.

[wallsshouldtalk]

STRANGER THINGS 4 VOL. 2 SPOILERS

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OKAY so i’ll start off by saying i cry at literally nothing ever and i dehydrated myself from crying harder than i’ve cried in 10 years at eddie’s death scene. i’m a tough cookie but not when it comes to silly, goofy, lovable, rock-star nerd eddie munson. am i going through genuine grief? yes! so is my denial misplaced? most likely!! but i have a theory anyway

SO!!!! we know the duffers are not above a fake death/ misleading death (see hopper), so maybe they’re trying that again with eddie. as far as we know, dustin didn’t bring back his body- meaning we don’t have proof that eddie fully died/ remained dead. now yes, he was pretty torn up and overall doing not his best, but was it so much damage that survival would be completely impossible? i feel like maybe not. pain and shock can do some pretty weird shit to the body and passing out is not a crazy reaction to have after being mauled by monster demon bats.

aside from the “medical” reasoning, eddie’s role (although new) is not really as a side character, and to get rid of someone with as much potential as our metal DM would have to have some stronger reasoning than a “redemption” arc with a pointless sacrifice. barb, bob, and alexei were insanely lovable characters and played their parts wonderfully, but mostly their roles were about how they affected other people. barb was there to lead nancy into this upside down business, bob was there to give advice and comfort to will and be that sacrifice of “bob newby the superhero”, and alexei needed to be there to help our adult crew. eddie’s story line was more independent and had a leg to stand on even if the rest of our hawkins crew wasn’t there. he wasn’t tagging along, he became a part of the main crew (minus jonathan, will, el, and mike). eddie dying serves no purpose, except to make dustin sad, and doesn’t really fit in with the previous thing of introducing a character only to kill them at the end. so, maybe, eddie wakes up in season 5, gravely injured and alone, and is trying to find a way out and back to the gang. maybe that serves the purpose of giving us eyes on the inside or maybe it’ll give eddie the chance he deserved to clear his name (SINCE NO ONE ELSE SEEMS TO BE WILLING TO STEP UP AND SAY ANYTHING FOR THE PERSON WHO LITERALLY THREW HIMSELF INTO A HOARD OF DEMOBATS YO SAVE A BUNCH OF PEOPLE THAT HATE HIM) or maybe it’s so he can walk the stage and get the diploma he rightfully deserves. at this point i don’t care what the reason is i’ll be honest. also the writing has been quite strategic in the past, so i feel like maybe they wouldn’t have eddie’s last lines be “this is my year” when it clearly is not. i guess we’ll see.

joseph quinn did also make that comment about wanting to do scenes with charlie in s5. now, granted, that may have been just to fuck with all of us, but i’ll take hope where i can get it.

my theory has no real evidence or proof of any kind to support it, but denial is the first stage of grief and this is how i’m choosing to view it until someone explicitly tells me no. even then, i’ll probably ignore them and keep living in blissful ignorance until 2024 when s5 comes out and throws my heart into a wood-chipper. the duffers aren’t perfect writers by any stretch, but i am choosing to have a little faith that their choices are more calculated than this. thanks for listening to my delusions

edit: joseph quinn just did an interview where he talked about how he would’ve liked to come back for another season, but that he was satisfied with the end of eddie’s character arc. sounds like this death was a real one folks (unless this is all some super extra silly prank)!!! i’m gonna leave this theory up here though in case some crazy, wacky miracle occurs and we are all allowed to have hope again.

link to article:

edit/ update pt.2: NEW interview (yes somehow already) reveals that joe really may not know how the future of eddie will play out. he says that he’s been talking with joe keery about ways eddie could make an appearance! so hope is not lost! hopefully the duffer brothers realize that they just made the literal largest mistake ever getting rid of quinn as an actor and eddie as a character and they’ll just do an uno reverse moment <3 essentially: FUCK THIS SHOW FOR PLAYING HOT POTATO WITH MY FEELINGS

link to pt2 article:

[hoshibait]

blupani for the ship bingo if youre still doing that one!

im so autistic and insane over these two you have no idea.

they’re both mentally ill and in my hc have an odd history with their relationship. timpani is a very reserved neurodivergent mentally ill girl who often wondered off out of her village and eventually that led to her finding a hurt blumiere one day, and you know how the rest goes.

she was kind of an outcast due to her odd behavior, her family, while not terribly neglectful, didn’t seem to be that present in her close life due to being busy with jobs and such. she holds some resentment towards them and moved to live independently at the young age of 19. she’s a very knowledgeable girl, often spending her time studying the world and exploring. she always found it fascinating and beautiful and stuck with the ideology that all things have a heart, and cherishes many things. she’s pretty snappy and blunt partly because of her possible autism. she understands social cues better than most, but it’s clear she struggles a little

(tw for abuse, transphobia, and a sui attempt mentions moving forward)

as for blumiere, he came from a very pressuring and almost abusive (okay well, it was) family. he was a prince, yes, but often treated like a disappointment and his father held up very unrealistic and high expectations from him. most common forms of this mistreatment was emotional degradation and overall neglect. it didn’t help that he was born as a princess who ofc transitioned to be a masc leaning transgender person. his father let him be openly out, but he always voiced his distaste for it in private, often expressing that blumiere was a disappointment to the family.

blumiere was also just a very lonely person. he didn’t have many friends due to being mentally unstable and often having rocky relationships due to it. his bpd didn’t help him with his already troubling life. he had obsession issues, delusions, and very intense mood swings and horrible episodes of erratic moods, as well as being impulsive. eventually he felt as though he wouldn’t amount to anything due to everything happening, and well, you see where i’m going with the cliff thing.

(triggering stuff over)

i plan to write a whole thing on blumiere and timpani’s relationship on its own post, so i’ll keep it short. basically the two had an intense relationship. timpani eventually grew to be blumiere’s favorite person and that led to a shit ton of issues. this also explains blumiere’s intense reaction to her “death.”

oh yeah, i guess i should explain the romantic thing?

im arospec, which means i experience little to no romantic attraction. i basically see myself as blumiere, which means he’s arospec too because fuck you. /lh i always sought comfort in the idea of blumiere and timpani being in a queerplatonic relationship. also i just think the idea of queerplatonic love saving the multiverse from destruction to be badass as hell??? like fuck your romantic norms the most powerful lovers are on a qpr now.

also i’m sorry you guys already know how much i love enemy/exes blupani. i just think they’re silly.

blumiere is overall very sappy and loving with his wife, horrible case of i love my wife syndrome if you will. he’s also a jealous and clingy fuck because he’s sick in the head /lh he grew playfully jealous of mario after the events of spm, often being pouty over petty things and “well i can do that better than mario,,,” as much as he flirts with timpani and is very corny whenever that love is returned he becomes a flustered mess.

timpani knows this, she finds her husband charming and adorable, she loves dedicating so much time to affection sessions of her just smothering him with kisses and loving phrases. she also becomes good at reassuring blumiere whenever he gets insecure and jealous. with due time blumiere gets better and better to the point of not needing as much reassurance as he used to, making timpani proud.

sorry this ramble is very messy i just love these two so much. again i’ll make a proper post for these two sometime, but yeah!!!

[reputationmunson]

Right Where You Left Me

Summary: During a rough patch in their relationship, reader gives Spencer one last chance to make things right

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Category: Angst w/ a (somewhat) hopeful ending

Content Warning(s): Breakup, swearing, mention of food, mention of alcohol, allusion to depression (Please let me know if I missed anything)

Word Count: 1.3k

A/N: Hi, everyone! This is my first fic and I hope you enjoy it! I wrote this in about an hour after listening to “Right Where You Left Me” by Taylor Swift, so it’s not the best and a bit rushed but I’m excited about it! 

I sit in the dimly lit restaurant, patiently waiting for him to show up and prove me wrong. Prove to me he still wanted me as much as he did when we first met. Ten minutes turned into twenty minutes and before I knew it, an hour had passed. I was still alone looking at the empty seat across from me, imagining he was sitting there looking at me with that doe-eyed look and a smile upon his face. I found myself slightly smiling at the fantasy before I was interrupted by the waitress.

 “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but if you don’t order something we’re going to have to ask you to leave. Are you still waiting on someone?” I gave a small chuckle before replying “Uh- no, I’m sorry. I’ll take the check to pay for the wine.” “Don’t worry, it’s taken care of.” She gives me a pity smile. 

He left me. He actually left me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though, things had been different for almost a year. We were less intimate, he was sleeping on the couch or at the office, and whenever he looked at me he no longer had that sparkle in his eye that always reassured that he would love me forever.I never would have guessed our forever would be this short lived. I shamefully walk out of the restaurant and I’m so embarrassed that all these people witnessed me getting stood up by a man I never thought could make me feel this way. 

How am I supposed to go back to our shared home? Would he be there? Maybe he got off work too late and is waiting to surprise me with flowers? My anticipation was too much to handle and I press the gas pedal with a bit more pressure, hanging on to the last string of hope I had. Unfortunately, my instincts were a bit off as I walk into what was once our happy home that was always filled with love and laughter that I never thought would end and now there was just an empty feeling. 

It’s colder than usual and without him, it already no longer felt like home. Spencer is, was, my home. I need to be in his arms. He was the only one that could put me together and he’s the one that is fucking breaking me. I don’t remember who I was before him besides a girl who had never been loved the way he loved me. The love you read about wasn’t something I believed in until I met him and now I’m right back to square one. 

I walk back to our bedroom to change into something more comfortable, but I stop when I see a piece of paper folded on the bed. I feel the tears forming before I even open it up. This was the last thing he touched and the last piece I have of him. It feels so delicate in my hand like it’s made of glass. I dread reading this. Our story is ending with a single piece of paper that lies in my hand. I take a deep breath and work up the courage to read the inevitable. 

Y/N, I’m a coward. I couldn’t even face you tonight to give you the proper closure you deserve. You deserve someone who is able to give you that, and so much more. While I was packing, I noticed your red dress was off the hanger and I’m assuming that’s what you wore tonight. That was always my favorite dress on you. I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry. I need you to know that I never have stopped, and probably never will stop, loving you. Sadly, love isn’t enough sometimes and I wish it really fucking was. Don’t think for a single second any of this is your fault. I could go on and on about how you deserve more than me, but I know you and you would fight me on that statement until you were blue in the face. I could write forever, but I should get going. I left you that cardigan of mine you like so much, the one I wrapped around you our first date. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but please never forget me. -Yours, Spencer. 

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I still think about it everyday. I think about him everyday. Five years later it still hasn’t escaped my mind. But, on the bright side, I only think about it for about half of the day instead of letting it consume my entirety. I felt pathetic. Everyone in my life was married, having kids, or getting promoted and here I was still holding onto this false dream that he would come back to me. I pretended that I moved on. I even lied about going on dates. What was the point? I already had the greatest love I could ask for. I would rather be alone right now than try to recreate what I had with Spencer with some stranger. 

I distract myself with the music on the radio, considering thinking of Spencer while driving was about as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. Moments later, I’m pulling into the grocery store. Maybe I’ll meet someone new here. The love of my life could be right under my nose, but I wouldn’t even know because I’m stuck in a delusion. 

I stroll the the cereal isle and laugh quietly at myself, realizing that the most exciting thing this week was trying a new flavor of cheerios. “This works” I whisper to myself as I throw the box in my cart and make my way down the isle. 

“Y/N?” I stop in my tracks. I know that voice. It’s the voice that never leaves my thoughts. I can’t turn around. Is he actually here? He can’t be. What are the odds of this happening? I bet he would actually know the statistics on that. I put on a fake smile and turn around. “Spencer! It’s been what? Five years? How are you?” I think I might be overdoing the friendliness. “Yeah five years, two months, and eight days.” He nervously laughs. “Still have that big brain, I see. And who’s this?” I was so distracted by his presence I didn’t even notice the literal child sitting in the shopping cart. 

“This is my son, Oliver, like the Charlemagne Knight from the twelfth century poem, Chanson de Roland. He’s turning two next month.” He smiles at his son in awe. “It’s my weekend with him. My ex and I are trying the whole shared parenting thing. It’s hard to be away from him” He continues. “I’m sorry to hear about your separation. I hope the note you left her was different from mine” I cringe as the words leave my mouth. “Sorry. Bad joke.” I add, causing us to laugh through the tension. “Ouch. I -uh- guess I deserve that” He looks down and shakes his head. “I should get going. It was nice to see you, Spence. I’m glad you’ve found happiness.” 

“Maybe we could grab coffee and truly catch up.I still have your number, unless you’ve changed it.” I shake my head in response to his last statement. “Um, yeah, that would be nice. Just don’t ask for your cardigan back” I joke and immediately regret letting him know I’ve held onto it all these years. “Of course not. You always looked better in my clothes than I did.” “Goodbye, Spencer.” It’s the last thing I say. I turn around and try my hardest to keep my composure. 

“Y/N, wait.” I turn back and meet his eyes once again. I can’t tell if I’m imagining it or if the sparkle in his eyes is back. “What about you? Are you happy?” There is a sincerity in his voice. “Yeah. I am.” I lie, hoping it was convincing enough for him to not question it and we went our separate ways after sharing a final smile.

My mind is having a thousand thoughts a minute. Spencer had a baby. Not only did Spencer have baby, he had another relationship. I didn’t expect him to wait around like I was, but I really didn’t expect to get hit with all this at once. All the things I wanted, needed, with him had already happened with someone else. He had moved on with his life and I was still right where he left me. 

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

24, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 39 and 40 for the writing ask!

Writing Asks

24. Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.

I enjoy them a lot! I have a preference for stream of consciousness so a character thinking back to their past organically makes sense to me. I feel like flash forwards require more particular circumstances to work though, I think they don’t function as well if they’re not like entire separate scenes? The quick foreboding aside of what’s to come can be effective but it can also be cheesy.

27. Do you agree that one shouldn’t start a story with a piece of dialogue?

Nah, I think that piece of advice works under the assumption that dialogue shouldn’t be used because there isn’t any context for the speaker. But like that’s true of any first line, you simply don’t have context! And if it’s interesting enough you will hopefully want to read on to acquire said context.

That being said I think there is some wisdom to avoiding like a long chunk of dialogue without taking the time to lay out any groundwork for why the reader should care. But if we’re talking about like a single line or something, I think that operates under pretty much the same rules as an ordinary opening.

28. Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

This is so hard because there’s so much! I think biggest one is to write with purpose. I think just because writing can be tedious there’s the urge to just get words down, any words? And that isn’t always that useful? Especially at a scene level, l think it’s so important to be mindful of the function of… whatever it is being written lol. Like the scene can exist for the purpose of character development, furthering a relationship, a particular plot revelation, whatever! But once you have that in mind it’s easier to come up with an interesting way to present it. And in a similar vein sometimes you realize that it’s not necessary to show something onscreen just because it happened if it’s not particularly important to the story you’re trying to tell. Segues can be so helpful!

30. Describe a fic that almost happened, but then it didn’t.

I live under the delusion that I’ll get to all of my fic ideas one day. Even if I’m like completely out of the relevant fandoms. But I guess when reading Bear and the Nightingale I was very tempted to write like character study stuff for the evil priest antagonist in that. But the books don’t have much of a fandom presence and I only write for validation 😂

33. Give your writing a compliment.

I think I have a strong sense of character and character voice!

35. Thoughts on writing challenges/contests.

They’re really useful and the main way to get myself motivated to do anything quickly. I need deadlines in order to get anything done ever. Also

39. Wildest AU scenario you have written?

Uhhh like I said I’m really boring about AUs. I guess something is that if I’m even vaguely into anything then I will mentally make a Would You Rather AU of it. I’m not particularly brainrotting Hellsing atm but Hellsing Would You Rather would be sooo funny and it lives in my mind rent free.

40. Write a 9-word fic.

Despite the years, every sunrise, Genya thinks of Alina.

[camrynsthoughts]

should I send this to u? I don’t think so.

using writing as an escape and to let out my thoughts has always been one of my simple pleasures in life so here I am logging back into my depressing Tumblr  account. I am sitting here on a Monday night at 11 pm, with a sore throat, listening to my “it’s the past for a reason” Spotify playlist. and of course, my brain can’t simply shut up and be quiet, it has to constantly be running and thinking. and guess who it decided to think about tonight? you.

it’s been almost two months since I heard from you last and I finally told you how I felt. and let me tell you, that shit was humbling. why did I think it was going to go any different than it did? I don’t know but it’s no surprise that I'm a tad bit delusional. so that was that and I guess I'll never hear from you again. I've done my best to ignore the fact that conversation had happened and that it was, like, really the end. but when will I learn that ignoring my emotions and pretending I'm in la la land isn’t a cure to my problems. then came last night, driving home from Bloomington and listening to music when my brain finally decided it couldn’t ignore the fact that you exist but not in my life. 

it’s such a fucking roller coaster of emotions because I know I did the right thing by saying how I truly felt about you still. and I know you did the right thing by saying you’ll stop randomly messaging me. but it’s so hard to realize that was actually the end.. or was it because I mean, we’ve said that a million times before. not the point though (this is the delusion talking). driving home from Bloomington last night, all I wanted to do was text you and ask if we could talk in your car. I just had this feeling in my gut that I needed to talk to you and nobody else. this conversation was only meant for you. you’d always tell me I could rant to you and get everything off my chest and I never had anything to get off my chest. but last night I finally did and you weren’t there. and that’s when it really fucking hit me hard that I have to get the fuck over it.

I've been so angry lately. I feel like you from before when we weren’t as mature. you were always angry and I never understood how someone could have so much anger in them, but holy fuck, I honestly get it. I'm such an angry human being and it’s so ugly. but I'm sick of being nice and happy and optimistic, holy fuck I just want to be a ball of anger. when I think of you, I get this mix of love and nostalgia but then it turns into this ugly anger. I know you’re living life and happier than before and that makes me happy for you but holy fuck I'm sick of being brainwashed for years into thinking I didn’t deserve happiness and love because I fucking do. and it enrages me knowing that everyone I know has it and I still don’t til this day. it’s not your fault but god damn I just feel so drained. and at this point I don’t have the capability to be sad. I don't remember the last time I felt sad. its just anger now. and I feel like such a bitter, jealous bitch but I don't care. I think I am allowed to be angry that everyone in my life that has thrown me off to the side is the happiest they’ve ever been while I still suffer silently with absolutely no one. 

I had such a strong urge Sunday night to talk to you, see you, anything. I knew that wasn’t tangible but I was just playing out in my head me somehow getting ahold of you. and then you’d say you’re in town and that I could drive over. I'd jump in your car and just go off. not even on you, but just in general. I want to scream and I want to release all my anger because holy shit I just want to cry. I can't get myself to cry. I have so many emotions I need to release and no one would get it but you. I'm just so fucking confused because I'm not mad at you whatsoever, but why did I get the shit end of the stick? I know I'm a good person and I deserve so fucking much in life and I don't get good things that come my way. I get stepped all over and treated like garbage and I'm so fucking sick of it. why do you get to be happy now and I don't get to be as well? its selfish but I just wish I understood the way that the universe works. 

im kind of going off on this tangent of being angry but since I can’t talk to you I guess I can just write this mess. its funny how I want to be a writer and this is the shit I write in my free time. very embarrassing because writing a diary entry isn't art Camryn. whatever that's not the point. you know, I've always wanted to send you my writing. but that would be kind of creepy because majority of it is about loving you. and also you’d then see how shit of a writer I am. but it’s also the purest part of me and I wish you could've gotten to see that. god I'm getting so off topic. but it’s my writing so I can do and say whatever really.

you know sometimes I think I’ll never get over this hurt that I was never enough for you. and I know it seems silly to say that but it’s how I feel and I'm allowed to feel how I feel. you always put me off to the side and you cheated on girls with me and I was always like this side piece and I knew it but I let myself believe I wasn't. you'd tell me I was the girl you wanted to end up being with and that now just “wasn’t the time”. so you’d talk and date other girls but then still talk to me on the side and feed me all this delusion that it’d be my time one day and that one day never came and it fucks with my head still to this day. I gave you three plus years of my life and I don't regret it at all but holy shit I wish I knew how it felt to be someone’s first choice. because lets be for real, I was never your first choice or you would've been with me and not hurting me. I remember I was so delusional thinking I actually had a chance at being your real girlfriend one day. it’s so hard when someone has hurt you so much yet has also given you the most love you’ve ever been given in your life. that’s why this shit tears me apart so much because I shouldn't love you still but god damn I still do because I don't think you're a bad person at all. I just wish I was given that chance but I never really got that, and if I did, I blew it by being psycho because I didn’t want to let you go again. I believe I ruined it for myself but I also believe I never really had a fair chance honestly because I don’t know if I'd ever be enough for you. or maybe I was too much for you. I could never tell which one was true.

I'll be honest, it pisses me off that you’re with the girl that caused me to officially leave you back in 2020. it pisses me off thinking about the possibility if I didn't give up on you that she could’ve been me. but also I don’t know what makes me think that could’ve even happened because you would’ve still chosen her over me and I know you would’ve. and that's why I left. and it seems like I was right because it seems like you guys are still going strong. but then that pisses me off even more because you aren’t even 100% loyal to her since me and you had our moments over the last year. and then it makes me realize that you haven’t changed. and I don’t know why you cheat on your girlfriends with me and I don't know why I believe if I ever did get that fair chance of dating you that you wouldn’t cheat on me. it pisses me off because I'm still In love with a cheater and I’m the one who can’t seem to be happy or find love. is this all making it make sense why I am such an angry person lately?

I know that kind of just dragged you and honestly, id say I apologize but if anything you kind of deserve it. but I'll make it even by filling you in on a secret. I never ever cheated on you, and I know I never would if I ever got the chance of being your only girl. but I cheated on my most recent ex. and no one knows because it’s fucked up and I'm embarrassed about it. so I can sit here and make it seem like you’re an asshole, and I mean you have had your asshole moments. but so have i. so I can’t hate you as much as sometimes I wish I could. sometimes I think this is also why I have so much anger in me. because I know I can be a hypocrite because god damn it camryn, why are you shitting on your first love for being a cheater when you went ahead and became a cheater as well? it was only a kiss. but then I also tried reaching out to you a few times when I was in my last relationship so that shows I didn’t love the dude like that. I still wanted you and it hurt. I'm honestly just so sick of feeling hurt and not enough. 

my recent ex was a fucking loser, bitch made, liar. but it gives me peace knowing I'll go so much further than he will in life. I was the brains in our relationship and I wore the pants and it was cool but I couldn’t date a guy like that. I like being recognized as being smart and a bad ass bitch but I need my man to be equal to that as well, not a sore loser. and that’s why I fucking love you so much because you’re the complete opposite of him when it came to everything I hated about him. he was so... dumb sometimes. but you, you are intelligent and I could sit down and talk to you for forever. I could never with him.  and don’t get me started on his music taste and fashion .... you’d roast me. 

where have I gotten with this writing? honestly no where but I can’t talk to anyone about this shit so this is all I got. i wish I could be sitting in front of you right now and just get every single little thing off of my chest without any judgement. I'm a mess and its not fun and I'm angry and sick of feeling like total shit. I'm sick of not feeling like I can be loved fully and loyally. but why would I even deserve that when I've cheated and I've helped people cheat? am I a good person? or am I just as shitty as everyone that I shit on? it makes you think. whether I'm a shitty person or not, I'm sick of feeling like shit. and I'm sick of seeing people who are as shitty as me be happy. like Im happy you're happy... but I wish I could be too at the end of the day. I wish I could be happy with you or without you but unfortunately, it’s been years and I'm still struggling. 

[eyesfangsandwings]

Thoughts on cringe

Well, it wasn’t what I planned on writing, but I sat down and blacked out while free associating and here’s what popped out. Putting part of this under a cut because it got long. If the opening paragraphs tantalize you, just read on I guess? :,>

I wish I’d been cringe.

I wish I hadn’t spent years trying to hide and ignore a key part of myself, perhaps one of the most key parts of myself, because I thought I was just engaging in wish fulfilment. If I ignored it, improved myself, then my self-esteem wouldn’t be so low and I wouldn’t need to pretend I was a divine being to feel better about myself. I went to therapy and hoped it would go away. I quit otherkin and furry groups because they were “a bad influence” and hoped it would go away. I took medication and hoped it would go away. I started transitioning and I hoped it would go away.

Ten years. It never went away. Ten years to realize that by telling myself I was lying to myself, I’d lied to myself.

Ten years I could have spent learning about me. Ten years I could have spent learning about my faith. Ten years I could have spent growing. Ten years I could have lived more openly and been happy.

I see young otherkin, going to meets and talking openly about their kintypes. I see them bark, growl, hiss, and so on in public. I see them play. I see them do what their kintypes do. I’m jealous. I know I shouldn’t be. I just wish that was ten-years-ago me, being the angel he knows he is.

I grew up in the shadow of an expanding Internet and an expanding world. I saw what happened to people who were too openly weird, too openly nonhuman. You heard horror stories of furries who lost jobs when their hobbies came out. You had to deal with freak-of-the-week shows tearing away the curtains of secrecy in what often amounted to a safe space for people who were different in any way.

I had to constantly explain to furcon onlookers that the CSI episode was not indicative of the realities of a furry convention up until 2012, nine years after it aired. Almost as long as the ten years I spent choking back my awakening as it tried to crawl out of the human skin I was desperately trying to hold together. They approached me because I was the “normal” one. I didn’t wear ears or a tail, and certainly not a fursuit. You wouldn’t have caught me dead at a midnight howl. Furry was the only nonhuman indulgence I allowed myself for a time, before it started forcing me to realize I wasn’t pretending to be nonhuman on the weekends, I was pretending to be human on the weekdays. I could barely even do furry things, because I had to be respectable.

That was an annoyance compared to the people who’d stalk you across everything you did, of course. At least the onlookers had a sort of innocent ignorance. They didn’t know they were talking to someone who, while he didn’t think he was an animal, knew deep down he wasn’t human. The people who’d figure out all the names you used were the ones to be afraid of. It exposed the vulnerable side of you that you could only show with a name true to yourself, more real than the one you were given by someone else when you fell into the world screaming, then stitched the two together in an ugly patchwork for all to see.

I wouldn’t call myself a private person. I wouldn’t be writing this if I was. It’s more there’s just parts of me I couldn’t face. I put too much stock in being the logos-oriented person that society places so much value on. Humans are humans. There are no past lives. Only children pretend to be animals. Only someone with delusions of grandeur would pretend to be some sort of powerful mythical being.

Angels aren’t real. I can’t be one. I can’t. I can’t. It’ll go away and I can move on with my life. I can’t howl at the moon. I can’t talk about the dysphoria. I can’t run around in the woods barefoot. I can’t wear gear, no matter how much better it makes me feel. I can’t groom and preen in public. I can’t be an embarrassment to myself. I can’t be one of those people.

A fun fact! I still feel a deep sense of shame when I catch myself doing species-typical behavior in public despite not trying to actively repress it anymore.

Melodramatic, maybe, but I feel like I’ve damaged some part of myself and now I have to try and repair it. So I’ll wear gear. I’ll have my chew toys (they’re stim toys for human bodies, don’t worry, I’m responsible.) I’ll dump florals and honey into everything that it pairs with taste-wise and call it kinfood (and delicious, because it is.) I’ll make a nest to sleep in, and I’ll wear my kigu when I do, because it has wings and horns, and that’s me. I’ll wear a shawl and when the wind blows through it, I’ll close my eyes, and it’ll be the wind through my wings.

I can’t change what ten-years-ago-me did. I can affect what now-me does. So I’ll be cringe.

[kamuisthoughts]

The Actual Rant:

I’m going to begin by saying that I think the ABO dynamic is interesting.

That being said I’ve noticed some recurring and very disturbing themes that are attached to this type of AU, regardless of what fandom you’re reading in. It makes sense to me that a universe where people have secondary genders and are more susceptible to animalistic instincts would have different types of societal issues. This being the disturbing themes I mentioned. The disregard of rape, the gender oppression, the objectification of certain genders, and various forms of dysphoria.

Obviously these themes are extremely dark and unsettling, but what’s worse is how the people that take it upon themselves to write about these things romanticize these horrific issues. Using them as a tool to build a parallel world that would cause the reader to think or reflect on our own society is one thing. That’s what I would like to read. But instead I come across these ABO AUs and find authors downplaying these abominable problems, making it seem as if it’s okay to have these sorts of things happening.

If you tell me beforehand what you intend to do okay, I can just avoid that.

But anyway there’s a difference between building a world with dark elements like these and presenting it as something that is truly disgraceful, but many people in the world do not care or fear fighting against it, and creating a world where it’s obvious that the writer is fetishizing these elements. You can completely change the tone of something depending on how issues are presented, how the characters react to their circumstances.

I hate to see rape happen in a story. I honestly feel it’s the most unforgivable, egregious thing you could do to a person beside murdering them. It’s a form of torture, and I honestly believe this, so it turns my stomach to see people writing stories where characters go through this awful thing, sometimes repeatedly and it’s not accurately addressed. There’s rarely lasting trauma if any. They just kind of take it, they don’t fight, they might even accept it just because the character doing it to them is objectively attractive and that is nauseating to me.

I also hate to see kidnappings and forced marriages in this type of AU, where the author tells you the main character is a “BAMF” or “Strong” individual but this is never actually displayed. Not mentally which I often respect to see in characters and not even hinted at physically either. They’ll maybe have a sassy mouth but still won’t really do anything when their abuser is hurting them. And this is usually moot since the main character oftentimes just simpers for their alpha abuser in the end. They’ll either be too scared to continue to mouth off or be too enamored by the alpha’s physical appearance and scent.

I also noticed Stockholm Syndrome is really common in these stories as well, (should the author actually deign to touch upon the immense trauma rape would cause a person), despite how rare this condition is in reality. This I find maddening. Now, I understand sometimes reality is so painful that someone needs to escape it through delusion so that they can function somewhat coherently. But the fact that there are so many stories where a character is kidnapped, ripped from their life, forced to mate with someone who doesn’t respect them as a fellow human being, raped, forcefully impregnated, and then somehow still falls in love with their abuser is utterly repulsive.

And the thing that really upsets me is the fact that I deliberately exclude tags in my search that denote rape/non-con, underaged, and major character death yet still I come across stories where these things are mentioned. Are happening. They’ll be in the story but not in a story’s tags and just glossed over. I’m not sure if this is deliberate or if some of the writers just don’t understand the magnitude of the themes they’re pushing but regardless I find this unacceptable.

If someone says no and you stick your penis inside of them anyway, that is rape. If you lull them into a false sense of security due to pheromones after they’ve said no and have sex with them, that is rape. If they give up fighting because they know it’s hopeless it’s still rape. I don’t care how physically desirable you are, or how good you smell, or if you feel it’s your “right” to take the other person because you managed to pin them down and you’re stronger. They said no, and even if they didn’t say “no” they didn't say yes .

If someone didn’t say they accepted your advances, that is not dubious consent. That. Is. Rape . And women can be rapists too. Let’s stop pretending that’s not a thing and that it’s not just as bad no matter what gender the attacker is. Can we not try to sugarcoat the horrible things people are writing about and call it “dubious” so people can feel better about romanticizing sexual abuse and getting off on it? Because even if you don’t call a spade a spade it’s still a damn spade.

Now let’s talk about fetishes. I hate when male characters are forcefully feminized when they don’t want to be. Like seriously, a male omega in this type of ABO story could literally say, “I’m a man, don’t call me a wife or a mother” and the other characters will just brush it off, they won’t even address it. They’ll continue to label him incorrectly, continue to treat him in ways that make him uncomfortable, and eventually he’ll just stop getting upset or annoyed and go along with it. This is NOT okay. This happens when a writer likes writing about feminine men.

There’s nothing wrong with a feminine man, that’s not what I’m saying. What’s wrong is when a man is overly sexualized because of his physical appearance and incorrectly labeled by others despite him stating what he identifies as. If you want to write about a gender fluid male omega, do that! Do not write about a male omega who identifies as male and call him a wife just because he can give birth. He is still a husband. He is a man and the other characters should be respecting that.

Then we have the fetishizing of birth or breeding in these AUs. This element of this AU has always been so creepy to me. (And I’m talking about FORCED breeding. Edit added because I didn’t specify this at first).

Omegas in these AUs are seen as the lowest of the low because they have heats, are softhearted, physically weaker, and motherly. Yet despite being chained to the bottom of the societal hierarchy they are objectified by other secondary genders. They are desired just enough for alphas and betas to want to breed with but they aren’t worth equal rights such as choosing their own “mate”, their job, or even walking down the street without fear of being forcefully mounted.

Seldom do I see this issue actually portrayed as an issue. The omegas in the story bat their eyelashes at alphas, and even manipulate them because they know that they are objectified. They aim to get claimed by “strong” and “virile” alphas and to have “beautiful pups”. Like, what?

But okay, I can see that.

You live a certain way you can get used to almost anything, but the fact that it’s rarely more than the main character who wants for more is astounding to me. I guess this is a writer’s way of hammering home how different and “before their time” they want their main character to be but it just comes off as forced, and the main character becomes a novelty. Alphas just want the main even more because they want to break them so they can force them into the role of a “good little omega”.

It angers me to see this type of world building with no consequences. There’s no simmering rage at the lack of justice and equality, there’s no conflict. It’s just, “omegas are cute and sexy and they smell nice”. This just makes all of the characters seem like morally bankrupt sex addicts who’re all some form of insane and I can’t stand it. But I’ll digress.

The true reason I decided to write this rant?

A story.

Yes, I came across a story and for some reason despite the harmless looking tags and my knowledge of how misleading this AU can be I clicked on it. I just wanted to see if I was being too harsh on the ABO AU, if someone could write a story in this type of universe that I could actually bear to read that wasn’t extremely hard to find. (Most of the fics in this AU I come across are the really dark ones).

So, I tried to read an ABO AU for MHA, and I'll tell you now I couldn’t even get beyond the fourth chapter. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Izuku was of course a rare male omega, born in a fantasy world where All Might bestowed upon him the powerful magic of One For All and then dipped. Of course despite having this power Izuku was still a weakling, even though the author tried to say he was strong willed and “unlike most omegas”.

Izuku had to hide his secondary gender. He lived as a quirkless beta with his mother. One day he stumbled across Katsuki, who declared Izuku his “true mate”. Despite Izuku saying he didn’t want to mate with him, Izuku was abducted and forced to be with him simply because it was what Katsuki wanted.

Izuku repeatedly said he didn’t want to be there, that he didn't want to be with this literal stranger, and that he didn’t have any desire to be a baby factory for him but was of course ignored. Long story short Katsuki got his way and Izuku eventually was down with it. Because Katsuki was handsome, well built, and smelled nice Izuku didn’t even bother to stay angry at the injustice of his own situation.

This is one of the many stories in this type of AU I personally find problematic. I don’t care if people write these fics, I just wish they were more responsible about it.

I’ve seen stories where alphas threaten to kill an omega’s family or the omega themselves to force them to mate with them, and are forced to comply. Instead of acknowledging how horrible this is the other characters just sort of treat it like the omega is misbehaving and that they’re cute for being “annoyed”. Like, what? Literally what the fuck. And this is sometimes never brought up again.

Alphas could burn down a whole village, slaughter everyone and take the omegas as sex slaves and still in certain stories this could be romanticized. I can’t get with that. Especially not when the victims aren’t even upset for more than a few days. What the heck!? That was your family!

But what really makes me uncomfortable? When an author makes sure the reader is aware of the fact that an abuser is extremely physically attractive so that people will be less inclined to be disgusted by their atrocious behavior and mentality.

I get it.

Sometimes the inevitable fall is due to true mates and all that. But at the same time, that is absolute bullshit. I wouldn’t give a damn if you were Jesus Christ himself, if you threaten to kill my family, or me, DO these things, disregard my feelings because of what you want and what you have to gain I am not giving you the time of day. Or at the very least if I have no choice I’m gonna utterly despise the person harming me. Come on!

True mates/Soulmates could be so freaking cute. It HAS been. I’ve seen it. There’s good fics out there, I just wish there was more of a selection where certain tropes are implemented in a way that isn’t toxic.

I don’t care how objectively attractive someone appears. I don’t care what “fate” says or what “instincts” denote. What reason do some of these characters have to love their abusers? Let alone be attracted to them? Especially if they never get a heartfelt apology and the alpha doesn’t bother to change significantly to be a tolerable human being. But okay, ABO instincts. Lack of control. I know, okay? But come on, can we switch it up a bit?

Out of morbid curiosity, sometimes when I come across stories I just can’t read because the Non-con is there but it’s not portrayed as traumatic and the author doesn’t even TELL you it’s in there... out of some masochistic need to punish myself I scroll down to read some of the comments and no one, I mean no one addresses how skewed and warped the themes in these stories are. The readers eat it up. And it’s honestly sickening.

But you know what? That’s kind of a lie. Some people do complain but they’re usually just straight up hateful flames and I don’t support those. I wish people could be more constructive when commenting on people’s work.

But anyway, since it was the MHA ABO AU fic that set me off I’ll just continue to use Izuku and Katsuki as examples for my griping. With Izuku as the omega and Katsuki as the alpha.

Many fanfic writers set up their worlds as a means to impregnate Izuku. That’s what I believe. Not ALL fanfic writers that write about this AU do this. SOME of them do! And I’m not saying this is always problematic, but it is when they put certain elements together because they want to write about BakuDeku in a sexual form and don’t bother to note how dark the story elements they’re implementing actually are.

I’m not sure if this is because some of them don’t understand how serious and damaging these things are and can be (rape/sexual coercion/forced pregnancy) or if they just don’t care and find them cute and sexy.

Either way, the things some authors have alpha Katsuki pulling on Izuku are wrong and downright perverted.

Now, I’m not opposed to smut. Sometimes I read stories with smut, that doesn’t bother me. Sex is a natural thing and people do it to show how much they like someone, or even just because it feels good. Whatever, that’s fine. But putting two characters together and saying “this is how it is because fate and forget gradually becoming attracted because I want that sexual tension now!” is something I find greatly unsettling.

If I could see this idea displayed differently maybe I could be equally disturbed, but could grow to accept Izuku and Katsuki (or whoever are the focus of the story) as a pair. Why? Because if the things the alpha is doing are horrible they should be acknowledged as horrible.

A lot of stories could be more interesting to me if the author wrote the things I mentioned above as they actually are, despicable. Instead things a lot of the times are sugar coated, treated as a joke, or downright wrongfully sexualized. Sometimes all three at once! A lot of these fics could have been something I could stomach if treated soundly. Say, Katsuki for example decided Izuku belonged to him and he forcefully mated with him, not allowing Izuku to be with anyone else without serious backlash. If he began to realize that his outlook on life was entitled and morally bankrupt I could totally get with that!

The author in this fake scenario could take the steps to better Katsuki as a person. Izuku of course should rightfully hate this man but could grudgingly begin to see and acknowledge Katsuki trying to change for the better. Then when Izuku manages to let go of his anger for his own sake, (not Katsuki’s) I could probably accept him beginning to notice Katsuki romantically. NOT sexually.

Now if Izuku just has to notice Katsuki’s physical body from the beginning and finds him irresistible because you know, ABO AU instincts and all that jazz—but hated this about himself, the juxtaposition of physical desire but mental and emotional disdain could be fascinating, engaging. It would make Izuku seem more like a person in these stories and less like the idea of a mentally strong omega. (Again, not saying all ABO fics lack good storytelling or compelling characters or any of that).

I could accept this eventual forgiveness and romance scenario because it could be amazing storytelling wise. Allowing the reader to experience a range of emotions due to world building, characterization, character growth, and plot line.

But anyway, I’m not trying to bash the specific story I used as an example above. I realize a lot of people love it and a lot of my language was crude and even rude but I just felt the need to express exactly what I was feeling, and above is what I felt. (I had to cut some things because it was way too obvious which fanfiction set me off and that’s not what I wanted. Didn’t want to throw shade, just wanted to prove a point).

If people want to read those types of stories that’s fine, at least they’re not going out into the world and doing what they’re reading about. Or at least I hope that’s the case.

But anyway, if people are going to read these types of things I think the reality of the content should be aptly acknowledged. No rose colored glasses, because that just makes it so wrong. And no, I’m not talking about being partial to any kind of kinks. I’m talking about a type of ABO fic that is problematic for me. I wrote a whole damn rant, if you can’t glean what I’m saying here I freaking give up.

But more presently, I guess it really comes down to what you prefer. Other people like things that come off as more sensual and carefree.

Personally I make it a point not to read those types of fanfictions because it’s just not my preference. I prefer to read things with dark world building with what I perceive as realistic consequences and real justice. Or maybe just downright cold blooded revenge sometimes. That’s nice too. Everyone is different, and I think I’ve just become frustrated because I’m not finding many stories like that in this AU.

That being said I’ve decided to write a story that I could read. A few, actually. You know what they say, “if you don’t do it, nobody else will”.

[jokertrap-ran]

(光与夜之恋 Light and Night) Main Story Chapter 3-14: 海水与火焰 Seawater & Flames Translation

“The more capable you are, the more troublesome the things you have to take care of.“

*Light and Night Master-list *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Join the Light & Night Discord (＾▽＾)~ ♪ *Main story tag will be #For Light and Night

❖ Location: Abandoned Building

The old store heralded the arrival of another wave of visitors.

A black sedan car stopped under the shade of trees. A tall and built figure exited from the passenger's side of the car, standing in front of the door that had been left unlocked.

Evan scrutinized the ground before the door.

 He turned to shoot Zhou Yan a look before he strode through the entrance.

❖☆———————————★❖

Osborn took away the small piece of orange-coloured paper on my fingertips. 

I snapped back to reality. My tears had already slid down my cheek to the edges of my mouth. Osborn brought his thin, calloused, fingers up to my face, gently wiping the tears away.

Osborn: What's wrong?

MC: ……

I stared blankly at my palm, feeling a stifling feeling in my chest.

Here it was again. This feeling didn't belong to me. Once, twice, thrice… It had occurred with such frequency in my life that I was dying to know just what it was.

MC: Just now…

Osborn: What?

MC: You might not believe me, but when I touched that piece of paper earlier, I felt something very strong from it.

Osborn: You felt something very strong?

MC: I felt warmth and hatred that didn't belong to me, and with acute clarity.

MC: As if another soul was living within me.

Osborn slightly furrowed his brow in thought.

Osborn: Is this the first time something like this has happened?

MC: No. This has already happened thrice recently.

And it got fiercer and much stronger each time it happened. It was something I couldn't control.

Osborn lowered his eyes, his expression gradually turning serious.

Osborn: That's probably your "Ability".

MC: …."Ability"?

Osborn: It's an inherent special ability that you were born with. If my guess is right, it should fall in the spiritual category...

Osborn: You're an Empath.

MC: An Empath? And what's that?

Osborn: You can see things that others cannot. Or perhaps you can feel lingering emotions that have been left behind on items. They all fall under Empathy.

MC: I can feel… emotions that have been left behind on things? And I can see things that others can't?

MC: Are you sure you’re not talking about something that can only happen in fantasy movies?

I looked up at him incredulously, unable to help the scoff that escaped me. I thought he was joking with me. But when he maintained his serious look, I started to inwardly panic.

Since he said that I could feel things…

I quickly reached out towards the skull necklace that he wore.

A surge of anger exploded in my heart, followed by the cold emptiness of having no place to belong to. It felt as if the whole world had turned onto a single, innocent, soul.

MC: This necklace… I feel a strong thrum of anger coming from it. Have you been wronged in the past?

Osborn dropped his gaze, removing his necklace from my grasp.

Osborn: That happened a long time ago. Do you believe in your own ability now?

I quickly sorted out and digested the huge amount of information packed in his words, and even bigger questions made themselves known.

MC: But, why would I have an Ability like this? I’ve been living a normal life for the past 23 years...

Osborn: Looks like it's time for you to get to know yourself again.

Osborn: Actually, I started suspecting that you might be one when you mentioned my blue flames. Ordinary people can't see my flames.

MC: ...So the blue flames I saw in the afternoon were real? Is that your ability?

The words had only barely left my mouth before deep-blue flames erupted, appearing within his palm once more, lighting up the dark space.

I never thought that there’d be a day where I’d be put in relation to these seemingly preposterous terms. I repeatedly questioned myself inwardly: Is this really happening?

But, with the flame currently burning within Osborn’s palm, the sudden wave of emotion I felt in my head, and the strange man who was suspected of draining his victims...

All these things that shouldn’t make any realistic sense at all were now happening before my eyes. What else is there to doubt?

Looking into Osborn’s eyes that reflected the dancing flames, I felt like I’d touched upon the reticulated network of blood vessels that were behind the world.

And I had a faint inkling that these invincible blood vessels had long since interwoven themselves into my past and future, just that they’d never come to my notice.

When I snapped back to my senses, I turned to look at Osborn, only to find that I still had a huge pile of questions for him...

★Night Choice: When did you realize that you had an Ability?

MC: When did you figure that you had an Ability, Osborn?

Osborn: When I was a kid. I happened to find out by chance when I got into a fight with someone.

MC: ...So you won the fight with your Ability?

Osborn: Yes and no. We didn't actually throw hands or anything. They all got spooked from the heat in the air and scrammed before that.

MC: Did you find that many things changed after finding out that you had an Ability?

He shot me a look, raising his hand and flexing his fingers in the same manner as one would when playing with something soft and squishy, manipulating the shape of his flames.

Osborn: There's nothing particularly different. This word's still the same.

Osborn: But the more capable you are, the more troublesome the things you have to take care of.

MC: Oh… You're right. I mean, you've always been protecting me.

Osborn: So quick to write yourself off as trouble?

MC: But since I have an Ability now, I can protect you in the future too.

Osborn smiled as he retracted his flames. He patted my head.

Osborn: Your Ability naturally has strong points where it excels in, but you can't go forcefully barging in headfirst when things get dangerous.

MC: Got it!

☆Light Choice: How has your Ability affected you?

MC: You must have found out about your own Ability a long time ago. Did it affect you?

MC: Did you feel different from others around you, for example? Do you feel… segregated from people?

He paused for a while, as if I’d hit the bullseye, but his usual carefree smile quickly returned.

Osborn: Nothing that serious.

Osborn: 'Sides, don't I still have you?

Osborn smiled as he retracted his flames. He patted my head.

The icy feeling of emptiness, of having no place to belong, that had its grip on my heart all these while suddenly subsided.

Yes; it doesn’t matter whether I accept this Ability or not, for it is a fact that this Ability exists within me whether I like it or not. The trouble that may come with it may be inevitable, but fate is still something that can be affected by choice.

MC: Suddenly, I feel like it’s not all that bad being one of the odd ones out. I mean, you’re with me after all!

As soon as the words left my mouth, Osborn suddenly looked at me with a deep and inexplicable look, almost as if he’d just unexpectedly fallen into a vortex of memories.

It was obvious enough that he was thinking about something. Shock, joy, doubt, among a myriad of many other emotions that I couldn’t quite put a finger on buried bright in his eyes, like embers of a smouldering flame.

Seeing him like this made my heart thump loud and violent in my chest. I had a fleeting delusion in his trance-like moment: perhaps those memories he was reminiscing had something to do with me...

MC: ...What's wrong?

After a moment’s silence, he broke eye contact, lowering his eyes with a somewhat self-deprecating laugh and shaking his head.

Osborn: Nothing. It’s just that someone once told me the exact same thing you did back in the past.

Osborn: Unfortunately, I only ever saw her once.

So that's what it was…

MC: You never know, you might meet them again one day. Aren’t all encounters a long-awaited reunion after all?

Osborn merely smiled. When he looked back up this time, his usual playful expression had eased back in almost naturally.

Osborn: My bad; I digressed from the topic. What was I talking about again…? Oh, Abilities.

Osborn: Okay. Don't overthink things.

Osborn: You need to understand that you can use your Ability, but you must also lead a normal life. You're not all that different from the average Joe.

Osborn: Also, your Ability doesn't seem to have stabilized yet. In any case, don't tell anyone else about it; got it?

MC: Okay.

Osborn: Good. Now we have something much more important to do.

MC: Yeah.

I nodded, holding up the small shred of orange paper between my fingers.

MC: If I’m not wrong, I think the one who left this piece of paper behind was the same guy who attacked me before.

Osborn shot me an approving look.

Osborn: Looks like you CAN find him.

MC: I'll try.

I focused hard, concentrating as I carefully touched each door.

These doors didn’t invoke any special feelings within me. I was starting to think that my so-called Ability was actually just a fluke… Until a stabbing pain erupted in my head!

Grief, fear, despair… It felt almost as if all the deep dark emotions to ever exist in the world were assaulting me at once.

I could already feel the strong emotions seeping out from the door before me despite not having touched it.

Osborn: This one?

MC: ...Yeah.

Osborn signalled for me to step back and was just about to bring the door down when a small noise came from behind it.

MC: !?

I grabbed him by the sleeve and he instantly nodded in understanding.

I watched as he knelt down, taking out a small delicate tool from his pocket and used it to fiddle with the door’s lock.

As the minutes went by, the sound coming from within became increasingly active. It made me a little uneasy.

Then, a click sounded in the otherwise silent surroundings.

The door was open.

❖☆————— ⊹ For Light & Night⊹ —————★❖

Previous Part: (Chapter 3-11) | Next Part: (Chapter 3-16)

[unfreakable]

Pillow Talk/// Sirius Black x Reader

SUMMARY: Sleeping with each other turns into pillow talk which turns into something more.

WORD COUNT: 2.5k

WARNING(S): implied smut but that’s it

A/N: this is something I've wanted to write for a min so here it is.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

   Sirius flopped down next to you on the bed. His breath fanned over your shoulder as he sighed pleasantly. You looked over at him out of the corner of your eye, not daring to fully take him in.

   His full eyelashes rested on his cheeks that were still slightly flushed from your...previous activities. He had a vague, sort of far away smile playing at his lips. His hair was all over the place and a few strands were pressed against his forehead. You had half a mind to brush them away, then you’d have access to kiss his forehead.

   For a moment you let yourself play with the fantasy of running your hands through his hair. You’d touched his hair before, of course. You’d pushed it away when it was getting in your way and you’d pulled it. But maybe it would feel different if you slowly let the waves slip between your fingers, running your hands through his hair slowly until he drifted to sleep. Maybe...

   You cleared your throat to bring you out of your delusions. What you and Sirius had wasn’t about the sweet, romantic moment. It was about the lonely nights and moments where he needed you and just so happened to have his dorm room all to himself. That’s all. 

   You threw your legs over the side of his bed and his arm slipped from around your waist. He stirred slightly making an attempt to say something but it came out as more of a grunt.

    You got up, searching the floor for your skirt. When you finally spotted it and started pulling it up your legs, Sirius sat up and asked, “Woah, woah, where are you going?” 

   You turned to look at him. He was sat up and his sheets were pooled around his waist, exposing his bare torso, in all it’s effortlessly muscular glory. You pretended to search for your shirt just to keep yourself from staring. 

   “Uh...NEWTs are coming up, I was gonna hit the library.” You saw your shirt sleeve poking out from under his bed and reached for it. He reached out to grab your arm and you looked up at him. 

   “You can do that later. C’mon lay here with me for a minute.” You stood up, raising an eyebrow at him. “What?” 

   “Nothing, I just didn’t take you for the cuddling type of guy,” you teased. 

   “Well, that’s because you never asked. I’ve been told I’m a great cuddler.” He opened his arms and beckoned you towards him. “C’mon.” 

   Merlin, how nice that would be. Wrapped up in Sirius’s arms under a quilt that you could only guess was made by Mrs. Potter and that you knew for a fact was incredibly warm. 

   You crossed your arms. “I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to be at the Quidditch game?” 

   Sirius waved his hand as if batting that thought away. “Nah, I’ve been to a thousand Quidditch games. I can miss one.” 

   “What about your dormmates? Surely, they’ll be back soon.” Sirius sighed. 

   “No. James is playing Quidditch and he’ll probably be celebrating with Lilly after that. Remus is finishing up some Transfiguration homework. And Peter is following James around or something, who cares. Are you out of excuses now?” You could read the frustration on his face. 

   A small smile tugged at the side of your mouth. You put your hand on the bed and leaned down closer to him. “I don’t know. Give me a second to come up with one.” 

   He shook his head. “Alright.” He rolled away from you in the bed. “You take your time, I’ll be here waiting.” You smiled at him. 

   “Fine,” you mumbled. He took a peek at you, over his shoulder.

   “What was that,” he asked. He was smirking. You knew he’d heard you, he just wanted to hear you say it again. 

   You brough your leg up, resting your knee on the bed, and reaching over to shove him. “Move over.” 

   He made room for you in the bed as you crawled under the covers. As soon as you were in the bed, he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you into him. He was warm and he smelled like smoke and something sweet, that you couldn’t quite place. Your hand came up to absentmindedly run along his stomach and chest and he made a barely audible sound deep in his throat. 

   You let out a breath and practically melted into him. You could allow yourself this, maybe just for a moment. You could pretend that there was something real between you and Sirius. You could hope that maybe tomorrow when he saw you in the halls there would be more than just a passing glance or small talk. You closed yours eyes and nuzzled into his chest. 

   “So, what do you wanna do after Hogwarts?” 

   You opened your eyes and looked up at him. “Hmm?” 

   “Got any plans for when you’re out of this place?” Well, how’s that for more than small talk.

   “What the hell is this, Black? Now we’re doing pillow talk?” You poked him in the stomach and he laughed before swatting your hand away. 

   “I’m sorry for trying to get to know you.” 

   “I think you know me pretty well.” 

   “Oh come on, just because I’ve seen you naked doesn’t mean I know you. I mean, what are your hopes and dreams? Where do you see yourself in 20 years?” He was starting to sound more like a job interview. You chuckled at that thought. “What?” 

   “Nothing. Okay, lover boy, I guess I could see myself working in the Ministry or maybe teaching here. You?” 

   “I dunno. Auror work sounds nice. But...” He looked down at you, suddenly serious. “Don’t laugh.” 

   You met his gaze. “I won’t.”

   “Seriously?” You’d never seen Sirius shy before. He’d never been afraid to say or do anything, but now he looked down at you with this vulnerable look in his eye and you realized you really didn’t know him at all.

   You reached for his hand under the covers and when you found it, you wrapped your pinkie around his. “Seriously.” 

   He took your hand into his and intertwined his fingers with yours. “Okay. Well, all I’ve really ever wanted to do was travel. I’ve always felt trapped. I wanna see the world, meet new people, really live. Maybe I’ll leave magic behind for a while and find something else.” 

   There was a light behind his eyes as he talked about it. The room was silent for a moment as you just stared into his eyes. You could get lost in them. Brilliantly grey and deep. 

   “What?” You blinked, drawing your attention back to him.

   “Sirius, why would I laugh at that?” He smiled easily. 

   “My mom used to say it was stupid.” Your hand came up, resting on his jaw. You closed the gap between the two of you, kissing him softly. He leaned into you, taking you all in. 

   You pulled away, just enough that your lips were barely ghosting against his. His hand brushed against yours on his jaw. “What was that for?”

   “I’m sorry about your mom. I think that’s brilliant.” Your thumb ran along his cheek slowly.

   “Don’t worry about it. My mom’s a hag.” You laughed and he joined you. “I got out of there in time, I just hope it’s not too late fo Reg.” He brought your hand to his lips and absentmindedly kissed your knuckles. 

   “What about you, love? Got any family trauma you wanna let me in on?” You tensed slightly at his petname. This all felt a little too good to be true. It felt almost like a dream. 

   His face looked sweet and his eyes. Those damn eyes. You rolled over in bed so that your back was to him. He wasted no time wrapped his arms around your waist and putting his head behind you on the pillow. “You don’t have to talk about it if you want.” His hand came up to rub up and down your arm. 

   “No, that’s not it. It’s just...is it love now?” You heard him laugh behind you.

   “Would you prefer baby or sweetheart or honey pie?” He kissed your shoulder  and laughed again. You could feel his laughter vibrate in his chest as his chest pressed further into your back. 

   “I would prefer (Y/N),” you replied flatly. 

   “Alright, I get it. Not into pet names. That’s alright, I like saying your name. (Y/N)...it’s beautiful.” You sighed. “What?” 

   “Nothing, just...nothing.” His arms tightened around your waist. 

   “So...back to our pillow talk. Are you seeing anyone?” You almost laughed. 

   “Excuse me,” you murmured.

   “I mean, we didn’t exactly say we were exclusive...” You couldn’t quite read his tone and you didn’t want to look over your shoulder at him. You didn’t know where he was going with this, but you didn’t like it. 

   “Hmm.” You scooted your hips back, wiggling against his crotch. “The only person I’m currently in bed with is you.” He groaned slightly but then he abruntly grabbed your hips to stop you from moving.

   “As much as I would love to do...that. And trust me, I really love it,” he chuckled. “But I’m being serious. What are we?” You sat up, looking at him.

   “Sirius, what the hell are you talking about?” 

   “I’m talking about us.” He paused, looking at you. “We’ve never really talked about it.” 

   “I don’t know, Sirius. It’s kinda hard to tell what the hell we are when you only act like I exist when you have a hard-on.” 

   “Woah! That’s so not true!” Your eyes widened. 

   “Oh really? So that’s why you only want me around when no one else is around? Why we have to sneak around and barely ever talk to each other when we’re not in your bed?” You raised your eyebrows, waiting for him to respond. 

   “I...I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that big of a deal.” You huffed, throwing the covers back, and getting out of bed.

   “Well, it is.” You reached for your shirt and then spun back around to him. “I’m tired of being your damn secret, okay?” You buttoned your shirt as quickly as you could but your fingers couldn’t seem to move as fast as your mind. “Merlin!”

   You didn’t even realize Sirius was out of bed until he was standing in front of you. “(Y/N), calm down.” He grabbed your hands. You stared down at your hands in his. His were so much bigger than yours but somehow, they seemed to fit together perfectly. “Calm down.”

   You tore your hands away from his. “Don’t tell me to calm down! You think you can just string me along until you decide we can get serious? What so you can just move on to the next girl?” His mouth fell open in shock. 

   “Listen, Sirius, I’m done. Done being your little fuck buddy or whatever the hell this is.” You went back to your shirt.

   “No, I totally understand what you’re saying. I get it. But for the record, you were never my secret.” You gave him a look of disbelief. “Really, I never shut up about you. Sunrise to sunset it’s just (Y/N). (Y/N). (Y/N). You can ask anyone. You are literally all that’s ever on my mind.”

   “You’re so full of shit.” You tucked your shirt into your skirt. You walked around him, avoiding his eye by pretending to search the floor for your tie. 

   “I’m telling the truth! I tried to play it cool, for you because I didn’t know if you were ready.” You scoffed, throwing Sirius’s pants over your shoulder in hopes of finding your tie. 

   “Yeah, didn’t know it was that much of an honor to be seen in public with you.” Sirius followed you around the bed.

   “That’s not what I’m saying at all. You weren’t exactly making any attempts to make us ‘official’. Every time I would try to come up to you after class or in the halls you would turn and walk the other way or tense up or you wouldn’t even spare me two words. It seemed like the only time I could ever get you to even look at me was in bed.” 

   You stood up and turned to face him. “Because that’s the only time you wanted me!” 

   “I want you all the time! I want you! I want to be with you! Okay?! I don’t know how else to get it through to you, I love you!” You stopped in your tracks, all thoughts of finding your tie abandoned. Slowly you stood up and turned around to look at him.

   “Love me,” you repeated, just above a whisper. Sirius sighed and rolled his eyes.

   “Merlin, you’re dim. Do I need to spell it out for you?” You didn’t respond. All you wanted to do in that moment was take him in. 

Sirius Black, notorious heartthrob was looking at you with the sweetest eyes you’d ever seen. He looked so perfect, so fragile he might break if you said the wrong thing. Sirius Black, leather jacket-clad bad boy, who apparently had a thing for cuddling and pillow talk. And you. Sirius Black, who loved you. 

   You couldn’t help but giggle. His eyebrow immediately shot up. “I just confessed my love to you and you’re laughing. What’s so funny?”

   “It’s just,” you managed to get out between laughs, “you aren’t anything like I thought you were.” He crossed his arms defensively. “For the record, I think I love you too.” Or at least you were starting to. 

   Sirius looked shocked, that’s the only way you could’ve described it. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open for just a moment, then a smile spread across his face. “I...okay.” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect you to say that. Um, okay.” He giggled slightly like he couldn’t help himself, then he cleared his throat in an attempt to keep some handle on his composure. 

   “So, I totally hear what you’re saying about not sneaking around and being more than...well, whatever it is that we are. So what do you say I take you out?” He rocked back and forth on his heels and stared at you expectantly. “I mean, we don’t have to if you’re not-” 

   Before he could say anything, you practically leaped in his arms. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. His hands scrambled to find your waist and he pulled you closer to him.

   By the time, you came up for air you were both breathless and a little more than elated. “Geez, (Y/L/N), at least buy me dinner first.” 

   “Very funny,” you mumbled before pecking him on the lips again. “Pick me up in an hour?” 

   “Yeah totally.” You pulled away from his embrace, straightening your clothes. You spotted your tie out of the corner of your eyes and quickly grabbed it before heading for the door. 

   Before you left, you took one more chance to look at Sirius, only to find him staring right back at you. “I’ll miss you,” he practically whispered.

   “Yeah, I’m sure you will. Bye honey pie.”

[alpacaparkaseok]

Where you should be

7. Habromania

Genre: Hobi x oc

Warnings: this series contains stalking, blackmail, and similar stressful/fear inducing situations. Also unrequited love, which is perhaps the most terrifying of all.

Word Count: 3.2k

a/n: A song you might want to be familiar with for this chapter is ‘Puma’ by TXT. First off, because it’s a freaking bop. Secondly because Sunny has a bit to do with it and it sets some of the tone for the second part of this chapter. Thanks guys! And, as always, feedback/questions is always welcomed and encouraged!

Habromania (n.) delusions of happiness

“We can be sneaky, can’t we?”

I snort at Hobi’s question. “I can, not you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” He feigns offense, stealing his hand away from mine as he clutches his chest. It doesn’t take long before its back, though, running his fingers over my knuckles. The other hand remains on the steering wheel.

“You’re horrible at being sneaky. Imagine having to be sneaky around your boss.”

Hoseok sighs. “You’re probably right.”

“...but?”

He glances over at me before turning his attention back to the road. “But, I think I can do it. It’s important. Sure, it’ll be hard. But worth it, don’t you think?”

Giving his hand a tight squeeze, I smile out the window. “Yeah.”

As soon as we left the small restaurant, the both of us received a text from Bang PD instructing us to be extra careful and keep our distance from each other. The last thing we need are more photos.

Which left us with one question: what now?

“I feel kind of cool,” Hobi says, his heart-shaped smile making me grin. “Like we’re secret agents or something.”

I chuckle. His idea was to essentially have a secret relationship. I agreed to it, not seeing any other options, but only after Hoseok told me again and again that he had a plan and that this secrecy would be temporary.

“I give you less than two weeks.”

“Really?” The car begins to slow as we reach my apartment building. It’s barely 1 in the afternoon, but Hoseok did tell Bang PD that he was going to take me home. It’d look a little strange if we strolled back inside the Bighit building.

I give him a long look, delighting in the way his lips form a little pout. I force myself to look away before I can lean over and kiss him. Knowing him, he’d probably crash the car.

“Maybe three weeks.”

Hobi laughs as he turns into the parking lot. “How generous. And what? You think that you can do better?”

Winking at him as he parks the car, I slowly take my seatbelt off. “Oh, without a doubt.”

It’s quiet in the car as I contemplate getting out. Even though I know that I’ll see Hobi at work, I don’t know when I’ll get to be with him again like this. He seems to be thinking the same thing, killing the engine as he sits back with a sigh.

“What are you going to do with the rest of your day?” He keeps his eyes on the building, but I know what he’s thinking.

“Come inside.”

He blinks at me. “Wow, so forward!”

Groaning, I hit his shoulder. “You know that’s not how I meant it!” Hobi’s laugh only makes me more embarrassed as my cheeks heat up at the insinuation in my words. “Yah! Not funny!”

Taking both of my hands in his and placing a delicate kiss atop them, his laughter finally subsides. “I can dream, can’t I?”

I’m pretty sure my eyes are popping out of my head as I throw the door open, internally screaming and making a beeline for the entrance. Hobi gets out of the car as well, trailing after me and chuckling darkly.

By the time we make it up to my apartment, I feel like I may melt through the floor at any given moment from the way Hoseok’s eyes are practically undressing me. His fingers dance along my shoulders, getting lost in my hair as he peppers kisses along my jawline.

Fumbling with my key, I silently curse myself for feeling as giddy as a teenager with something so simple as Hoseok’s eyes. I don’t miss the way he smiles against my skin, making me huff in annoyance.

Since when did he become so bold?

I practically slam the door shut as we enter my apartment, Hoseok breaking away from me to look around the room in awe. I can’t help but laugh at his reaction.

“What, have you never been inside a girl’s apartment before?”

He rolls his eyes. “This is...this is your apartment.”

“So?”

He shrugs, wandering back over to me. “It’s nice. I like it.”

I frown, looking around the apartment. It’s a decent place to live; I’ve tried my best to make it look like a home. But in comparison to the immaculate place that Hobi calls home, I hardly see anything to marvel over.

“Why?”

Standing in front of me and looking over every square inch of my face, he gives me a smile so soft that I find myself sighing in contentment.

“It feels like you.”

♟

April 2020

Work falls into a familiar pattern. Granted, I have to avoid Hoseok like the plague, but Bang PD keeps everyone busy enough that it isn’t too difficult.

That, and the meetings we hold every day in Bang PD’s office, trying our best to sort out the entire situation.

“You’re telling me he wants either 1 billion won or a position here?” Bang Si-hyuk sputters out, looking absolutely appalled. “This...this is blackmail!”

Hobi chuckles beside me, Namjoon sitting on his other side and looking none too happy to be a part of this meeting. However, he is the leader of the group.

“Yes, well, I think he did actually state that this was blackmail,” Hobi remarks. “Are you really that surprised?”

Fixing him with a glare, Mr. Bang’s veins look like they’re about to burst. “You’re one of the people that got us into this mess, Hoseok. I’d save the snide comments for later, if I were you.”

These meetings have been going on for a couple of weeks now, and everybody's reaching the end of their patience. Any time we attempt to negotiate with Jihun, he spirals out of control and comes back with a higher demand.

It’s becoming rather tedious.

“Why can’t we just give him what he wants?” Namjoon asks gingerly. “At the end of the day, as long as he leaves us alone, it’s fine, isn’t it?”

Mr. Bang shakes his head. “No. There is no way I’m giving him that much money, and we all know that I would never let him be employed here. He’s a pimp. We don’t do business with his type.”

I stare down at my hands as I wince at his words. While I’m grateful that he isn’t considering giving him a job here, I can’t help but pity him. If what Jihun told me was true; I’m part of the reason his marriage failed.

“He has a daughter,” I mumble under my breath.

“What was that?”

I blink up at Mr. Bang. “He has a daughter.” When he just continues to stare at me with a confused expression, I do my best to articulate my thoughts. “He’s a human being. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he freaks me out. I don’t support any of this, but he’s desperate for something to help him and his family survive. We shouldn’t be making him into some sort of monster-”

“As the two of you made clear to me, this is my company that’s in trouble, so I will treat this threat as I would any other.” Bang PD sits back in his chair, squinting at his computer screen. “Or have you forgotten that your job is also at stake here?”

Clenching my jaw, I see Namjoon laying a hand on Hobi’s shoulder. “Then fix this.” Rising from my chair, the strict tone of Mr. Bang’s voice stops me.

“What?”

Turning to face him fully, I struggle to keep my voice level. “Fix this. Quit talking about it so much and do something. I have work to do.”

Striding out the door, I barely catch Bang PD’s incredulous words. “It’s a good thing she’s talented-”

Namjoon cuts him off. “So what’s our plan of action? Sunny’s right, this has to end.”

♟

I’m staring at the monitor in front of me, only half-listening to what Yeonjun is saying to me as my blood boils.

Or have you forgotten that your job is also at stake here?

I have to fold my arms in order to hide the fact that my hands are currently clenched into fists. Yeonjun and Soobin are talking to both Pdogg and I, going over a track that we’ve been preparing.

“I really like the feel of this all so far, but I feel like we need something a bit more...edgy?” Soobin frowns, looking down at his phone where he compiled his notes. “We really want to have a sharp album, you know?”

I nod, finally returning to reality. “Has anybody come up with any ideas? Lyrics, melody?”

Yeonjun shakes his head. “Actually, I was going to ask if either of you wanted to help us come up with something. I know that we’re dropping the album in May, but-”

“I can do it.”

Pdogg and Yeonjun raise their eyebrows. “That was quick.”

Pdogg shakes his head. “I think Yeonjun is talking about creating a track from scratch, Sunny. That means that after you finish the music, you’ll need to write the lyrics, too. Right?” He looks to Yeonjun for confirmation.

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Honestly, if you want to do it, I won’t stand in your way. I’m just happy that you want to with such short notice.”

“You think you can crunch it? This is your first time through the entire process, it’s ok if you want to try the next time around and have more time.” Pdogg reassures, still looking confused at my sudden change in attitude.

I shake my head. “No, I can do it. I need to.” The thinly veiled threat on my job pushes me forward, desperate to show Bang PD that I’m not the kind of person that runs away under pressure.

“Alright,” Soobin says, looking at Yeonjun with a shrug. “I guess...do you need us for anything? When can we expect to come in and take a look at the song?”

Ignoring Pdogg’s stare, I glance at my calendar. “Soon. Give me the rest of the week?”

♟

My desk is a flurry of notes, post-its, and discarded ideas. After a brainstorming session, I consulted Pdogg in the next step of the song process. He helped me solidify my idea, offering a couple of tips and pointers.

He’s in the middle of saying goodbye when there’s a light knock on the door.

“I’ll grab it,” he says. I turn back to my monitor, trying to make sure I get everything put together before I forget it.

Muffled voices at the door don’t bother me as my fingers fly across the keyboard. Line after line appears, forming the first verse of the song.

“Hey.” Hobi grabs the chair that Pdogg just vacated. “What’cha working on?”

I glance at the clock, realizing with a start that it’s already 8 o’clock. “New song for TXT.”

“Hm.”

We sit in silence as I continue working, Hobi knowing better than anyone not to interrupt my creative process. He knows how hard it can be to get back into the zone.

It isn’t until nearly nearly thirty minutes later that he finally breaks the silence, but not by speaking. Bringing a gentle hand to rest atop my own that has stilled over the keyboard, he intertwines our hands together.

I lean back against my chair, sighing. Hobi chuckles lightly beside me, completely understanding the feeling.

“It looks like you got a lot done,” he mumbles, using his other hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

“I think I did,” I whisper, still unable to tear my eyes away from the screen. I’ve been completely sucked in, my mind loud with the sound of the beat and the lyrics I’ve written down.

“Should I take you home?”

I shake my head. “No. I’ll take the bus.”

Silence. He raises my hand to his mouth, dusting light kisses over my knuckles. “We’re paying him off.”

Startled, I finally shift my gaze to Hobi. My breath falls short as I see his hair swept back, styled to make him look like some sort of CEO. He must have had a shoot today that I forgot about.

“Really?” I breathe out. He gives me a soft smile, pressing one more delicate kiss atop my knuckle before lowering my hand and enveloping it in both of his.

“Really. Bang PD will just have to swallow his pride.”

I chuckle lightly, shaking my head. “How’d you convince him?”

He shrugs. “I can be persuasive when I want to. We won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

While his words are intended to give me comfort, I find myself doubting them. Something tells me that this mess is far from over, but I smile at him nonetheless. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

Hobi gets up from his seat, embarrassed as he starts heading toward the door. “C’mon, I’ll take you home.”

I look back at my screen. “No, I think I’ll stay here for a little longer.”

“Oh, well then I’ll st-”

“Go home, Hobi,” I turn my chair around to face him. “Don’t worry about me, I just want to finish some of this up. I won’t be long.”

“Good. That way I won’t have to wait long.” Stubborn as ever, he sits back down. “Should I order some food?”

Giving him a long look, I fight the guilt gnawing at me for making him stay even longer. But I really just want to get as far as possible with this project…

“Let me split the cost?”

Laughing darkly as he holds his phone up to his ear, he winks. “In your dreams.”

♟

“I really, really like it, Rin-ah.”

Fidgeting with my hands, I chew on my lip. “Really? Is it too much? I don’t what to overwhelm-”

Cutting me off with an incredulous look, Hoseok shakes his head before pulling my chair away from the computer. “Yes. Positive. They’ll love it. I mean, it’s such a cool idea. You said it was based off a true story?”

I nod, reaching in vain for the desk, I groan as Hobi keeps pulling my chair away. He laughs at my expression.

“Do you have a title idea?”

I shrug, finally giving in and allowing myself to be pulled away. “I’ll probably just keep it simple. Like, ‘Puma’ or something.”

Hobi throws away all of our food containers, nodding to himself. Tossing me my coat and making sure everything is saved and shut off, he opens up the door. “They’ll think it’s amazing.”

Shutting off the lights, Hobi makes a show of double checking that the hallway is clear before grabbing my hand and making his way toward the elevator. It’s only when we’re in the confines of the elevator that he asks me a question.

“What made you want to do it? This usually isn’t your style.”

I let out a long breath, instantly remembering my outburst with Bang PD earlier in the day. “I want to be good at everything. I…” I lean back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. “I know that sounds stupid, but after Bang PD said that about my job, I felt like I had to do something more. Prove myself to him.”

“Mm.”

“It was time for me to expand. Try something new. And I was already pissed off, so when the boys asked for a more edgy track, I felt like I could do it.”

“Well, you’ve done very well with it.”

I see that Hobi also has his head angled upward toward the ceiling. From this angle, I wonder how I can see him so often and still feel like it’s the first time I’m looking at him.

He looks golden in the dim elevator, the lights picking out the paler shades in his hair and setting them alight. With his hands clinging to the railing at his back and his eyes falling closed, I wonder for a moment if this is right.

“How did I get so lucky?”

I ask the question more to myself than to him, but he hears me nonetheless. Ears perking up and tilting his head to look at me almost with the same mannerism as that of a golden retriever, Hoseok shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t call this luck,” he murmurs. “We’ve fought for this, haven’t we?”

At his words, I feel the exhaustion of the past few weeks sinking in. Sneaking around and hiding our relationship from everyone hasn’t been easy. Trying to navigate a brand new relationship without being able to actually spend much time together is tricky, especially when we are still healing from the hurt we’ve caused each other over the past few months.

Closing my eyes against the reality of our situation, I tuck the image of golden Hoseok in the elevator into the corners of my mind. “Do you think that we’ll ever get to rest?”

It’s quiet for a long moment as Hobi ponders my question. We both know what I’m really asking: will we ever stop hiding?

“Someday.” His voice is solid as he answers me. “For now, I think the seconds between floors 8 and 1 are enough to keep me pushing forward.”

For now, standing side by side and quietly speaking on the elevator, basked in golden light and listening to the whir of the machine are all we need.

However, will there ever come a time when this is no longer thrilling? When Hoseok decides to just leave early rather than hanging around with me?

What if I’m not enough?

Indeed, peeking over at Hoseok who currently resembles some sort of fallen deity who’s basking in the golden light, I can’t help but wonder what it is that keeps him coming back.

Now that I’m finally giving in to his pursuit, will it be over?

The ding of the elevator reaching the ground floor does little to pull me out of my daze, and it isn’t until Hoseok is looking back at me from the other side of the doors that I push off the wall and follow him out into the night.

That night as he drops me off outside my apartment building and pulls me in for whispered ‘I love yous’ and stolen kisses, I can’t find it in myself to bring it up. How do I begin telling him that I’m not sure I’m worth the trouble when he’s sure to write it off as some sort of crazy idea?

As I go to open the door, he grabs my hand, looking at me with a concerned expression.

“You sure everything’s alright? You seem...off.”

I lean across the console, watching with delight as his eyes widen. Swooping around, I kiss his cheek before retreating, laughing a little at his deflated expression.

“I love you.”

He gives a contented sigh. “I love you, too.”

Walking into my apartment building, I hope that he doesn’t realize that I completely avoided his question. I kick my shoes off with a sigh as soon as I enter my apartment, turning around to flick on the lights and lock the door. Making my way toward my bedroom, I don’t see the dark figure resting on my couch until their dark chuckle reaches my ears.

“You were out late tonight.”

Whirling around and stumbling backward until my back hits the wall, I stare in horror as Jihun turns on the lamp beside the couch. He holds up a wine glass, giving me a saccharine smile.

“Come sit down.” Filling the glass to the brim with red wine, he extends it to me. “We’ve got a lot to celebrate.”

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[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 11: You Don’t Come Around No More]

A/N: I apologize profusely for the long wait. Thank you all so, so, so much for your support. Every single reblog, message, comment, emotional rant, and/or screech of despair makes my day, and I couldn’t do this without you. 💜 Only THREE more chapters left!!!

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “More To Life Than Baseball” by Petey. 

Chapter Warnings: Language, angsttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

Word Count: 7.5k. 

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

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The Rain

I wish I felt empty.

I’m supposed to feel empty, right? I’m supposed to feel steeped in grey, oceanic misery; I’m supposed to dip in and out of depressive naps all day and sob delicately over creased photos and fading, wistful memories. I always envisioned heartbreak as a soft and inherently feminine sort of affliction: the hems of nightgowns and bathrobes sweeping along hardwood floors, Kleenex boxes and concave couch cushions, weepy phone calls to friends and aunts and mothers, Queen Victoria wearing black for the rest of her life after Prince Albert’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln sinking into dark and hushed obscurity. Women, hollowed out by despair, cross the history of the earth like lines of latitude.

I don’t feel empty at all. I don’t even feel sad. I feel razored by sharp, red, ceaseless anxiety. I am consumed by thoughts of what I did wrong, what I said that started the wheels of doubt spinning in his mind, if he had known how it would end from the start. I dream of white, clawed hands dragging me down through cold waves. I hear words scream to me as I toss at night in my suddenly too-spacious bed, words that now hit me like knuckles to the gut: Shhh, hey, it’s just me, don’t get up, as Joe slipped beneath the Arizonan blankets, wrapped an arm around my waist, kissed my collarbone as I tumbled back into sleep; I love you to death, as his Subaru idled in Charlie’s driveway; Baby Swan, listen to me, nothing is supposed to hurt, okay, so if anything hurts, ever, at all, you tell me and we stop, deal? as we stood in the doorway of our hotel room at the Four Seasons in Chicago. And now...and now...

And now everything fucking hurts.

It doesn’t make any sense; and yet it does. Look at him. Look at me.

The Polaroid photo from Homecoming was still taped to the top of my full-length mirror. I peeled it free like a layer of translucent, friable reptilian skin, tore it straight down the center, burned both halves over a brand new three-wicked, lemon-scented Bath And Body Works candle—a gift from Renee and Paul—and closed my eyes like a child casting a wish over her birthday cake like a spell. I wished for my memories to vanish with the photograph. I wished to get hit by a truck and wake up in the hospital with no recollection of the past two and a half months. I wanted the Lees to dissolve into distant, enigmatic mystery; I wanted to join the rest of Forks in believing that they were nothing more than bewildering and yet harmless freaks, barely worth noticing, one of those glitches of the matrix that were better off ignored like liminal seconds of déjà vu. I wished to carve out every part of myself that they had ever touched.

And Joe’s voice came rushing back from where we stood by that star-lit fountain outside the Church of Saint Lawrence, accompanied by falling raindrops and a crooked grin: I can make wishes come true.

The three tiny flames flickered in the breeze that sighed through my open window. The bright, citrusy scent of the candle reminded me of Lucy. I couldn’t fucking win. What else is new?

I turned back to the mirror. I flinched when my gaze snagged on my reflection: bloodshot-eyed, swollen-faced, utterly unbeautiful, restless like a caged animal. Look at him. Look at me.

I ripped the last memento off the mirror—Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!!—and watched the yellow square of paper catch fire, curl up around the edges, become unrecognizable, turn to ash. And I wished over and over again, like a poem, like a prayer: Let me forget, oh god please let me forget.

Charlie keeps asking if I’m okay. The answer, of course, is no; but I can’t tell him that. So I wear a serene smile like clip-on fangs, a cheap polyester cloak, crimson smudges of lipstick like trails of spilled blood down the side of my neck. Every day is Halloween for me now. I dress up as someone who isn’t haunted, who hasn’t become a ghost.

And when Charlie turns up the World Series or I’d Do Anything For Love on his geriatric, staticky kitchen radio—the same radio he’s had since my mother was the one joining him for daybreak coffee and Pop-Tarts—I choke back tears like dragonfire.

Missing In Action (Revisited)

Joe wasn’t here. Neither was Ben.

Lucy, Rami, and Scarlett were sipping cups of tea at the Lees’ usual table, their eyes downcast, their voices low and murmuring, their pristine lunches neglected. Lucy and Rami were dressed in matching charcoal grey turtleneck sweaters; Scarlett had come from Fencing Club and was wearing royal purple yoga pants and a black tank top, her duffle bag of gear on the floor by her sneakered feet. Her hair was in a long fishtail braid. Archer hadn’t mentioned her since Joe broke up with me. That either meant that it was going blissfully and he didn’t want to injure me further, or that Scarlett had ended things as well.

Since Joe broke up with me. That sounds so fucking pedestrian.

I stared at the three present Lees, almost leered, commanding them to see me, to acknowledge me, to admit that I had once meant something to them, that this hadn’t all been some transitory delusion to fill the cavernous void of losing my home, my life as I knew it in Arizona. They took no notice whatsoever.

Jess kicked me beneath the lunch table. My attention snapped back to her.

“Sorry, what?”

“You want to go shopping with me and Angela tonight?” Jessica’s hands were folded just beneath her chin, her voice gentle, her eyes large and sympathetic and watery. This was her version of being supportive. I appreciated it...in a perpetually tormented and preoccupied sort of way.

“No thanks.” I forked my cold, sauceless spaghetti listlessly. I’d forgotten to pack a lunch. I didn’t have an appetite anyway. I had deleted the GrubHub app from my iPhone and had no intention of using it ever again in my comparatively short and calamitous human life.

“You could come to temple this weekend,” Jessica pressed.

“Uh.” Mingling with a churchful of sociable, wholesome, marriage-obsessed adolescent Mormons sounded like the absolute last thing I’d want to spend my evening doing. “That’s a really generous offer, but I’ll pass.”

“Well you have to do something,” Angela said. “You can’t just sit in your bedroom alone all weekend and stare at the wall and wallow in self-pity.”

We’ll see about that. I turned to Jess. “How’s Vodka Boy from your Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class? Did he ever reappear? What’s his name again, Elmo? Ellington? El Chapo?”

“Ellsworth.” She frowned as she slurped her patron-drink-of-Mormons Sprite. “And no, he definitely failed out or overdosed or something, because he never came back.”

“Tragic,” I noted.

“But I’m pretty sure Mike’s coming over this weekend, so we’ll see if I can get some Netflix and chill action going.”

“Jess,” Angela chastised, widening her eyes and nodding to me subtly (but not quite subtly enough). No talking about getting lucky in front of the heartbroken single loser, that look said.

“I think I can be emotionally supportive without taking a goddamn vow of chastity, Angela!” Jessica hurled back.

“I gotta go.” I stood, threw on my backpack, discarded my nearly untouched lunch.

“You’ve barely eaten anything!” Angela protested. “You’ve barely eaten for a week!”

“I’ll live.” I picked my umbrella up off the slippery tile floor—peppered with muddy shoeprints and pearlescent drops of water fallen from coats and limp, sopping locks of hair—and headed out into the pouring rain. I hated the rain. I hated it. Maybe I had forgotten that for a while, but it all came hurtling back now like a hurricane, like a hand cracking across my face. I ached for the desert, for blatant and unapologetic heat, for palm trees and cacti and naked stars in the night sky. I had been researching marine biology graduate programs in the Southwest. There were good ones at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, Texas A&M, the University of Southern California, UCLA. I would miss Charlie and Archer—and maybe Jessica and Angela on occasion—and absolutely nothing else about Forks. At least, that’s what I promised myself.

This is a no-giving-a-fuck-about-Lee-boys zone, I thought morosely.

Ben was brooding at our table in Professor Belvin’s classroom. It was the first time he’d shown up to Chemistry since that day Joe met me on the beach at La Push, since the place I’d once occupied in his universe had closed like a wound. I took my seat beside Ben. The window was shut today, the downpour outside torrential. Ben recoiled, just enough for me to notice; he was wearing his oversized black hoodie and practicing his Welsh, his handwriting messy and unbalanced.

“You could have warned me,” I said.

Ben didn’t glance up from his notebook. “Would that have made it any easier?”

“No,” I realized in defeat. I guess it wouldn’t have. I pulled my own notebook, my favorite pen, and a can of Diet Coke out of my backpack.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said. “You really need to know that. It had nothing to do with you. And none of us are happy with the current situation. None of us.”

None of them. That included Joe. “Interestingly, that didn’t stop him from creating it.”

Ben was thoughtful, debating his next words. “We’re probably going to be moving soon.”

“What?” I startled; my turquoise blue pen dropped out of my grasp and rolled across the table. Ben snatched it up and returned it to me. “Really?”    

“Yeah.”

“And what, just redo this whole college thing?”

Ben shrugged. “We’ll probably start our junior years over again. Gwil will say there was some horrible family tragedy and we needed a few semesters off. I could use the extra time to figure out Calc anyway. Parametric equations make me want to kill myself.”

I just stared at him. It didn’t make any sense. “But...why would the whole family leave Forks? Because of me? One pathetic, aggrieved human? Do you all pack up and relocate every time Joe fucks and dumps someone? That must be exhausting.”

“It’s better for everyone if we get some distance. Put more space between our world and yours.”

“But...” I tried to imagine never seeing any of them again: no Mercy humming merrily as she tossed handfuls of homegrown carrots to the alpacas, no Dr. Lee dabbing away my blood with an ageless sort of patience, no Scarlett or Lucy or Rami, no brief glimpses of Joe as he avoided me in the campus library. It’s exactly what I wanted; and yet it wasn’t. It so, so, so, so wasn’t. It keeps getting worse. How is that possible? My voice was flimsy and quivering, absolutely pitiful. Disgustingly pitiful. “Who will be my lab partner?”

Ben peered over at me with wide, confused green eyes. And then—gingerly, awkwardly, like holding an acquaintance’s baby for the first time—he laid his hand over mine. “I’ll miss you too.”

Professor Belvin lectured about coordinate covalent bonds. I didn’t absorb a word. I conjugated Italian verbs with my turquoise blue pen, sketched disordered whirlpools of ink, tried not to think about whether this was my last-ever Chemistry class with Ben, whether it was my last-ever weekend sharing Forks with the Lees. Those rageful, frantic thoughts were back. What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why did he have to leave?

My nomadic gaze caught on a flier on the wall next to our misted window. I had assumed it was a leaflet for some club or protest or seasonal dance that I would definitely not attend, but it wasn’t. It was a missing poster.

Have you seen this student? the flier asked in bold, businesslike black font. It was urgent, but not quite despairing; not yet, anyway. I could hear a Dean of Student Affairs cajoling some affluent, strings-of-pearls-adorned mother over the phone: Yes ma’am, you have my full attention and I can assure you that we’re very concerned, but I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding...he’s probably gone backpacking or sailing with some friends and forgotten to call home. You know how college students can be. Beneath a large photo of a grinning blond kid—pink polo, flushed cheeks, clever crop job to nix a can of Natty Light clutched in one fist—was a name: Ellsworth Jonathan Griffin.

Ellsworth, I thought, my stomach plummeting. The guy from Jessica’s Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class. He hadn’t failed out. He was missing. Missing like a 20/20 episode or a true crime podcast, missing like the pregnant stillness before a murder is confessed in some glaringly florescent-lit interrogation room, before a distended and bloodless corpse washes up on shore.

I turned to Ben. He noticed me eventually, crinkled his brow, shrugged in that way that seemed so petulant if you didn’t know him well enough to not be offended.

I pointed to the flier and raised my eyebrows. Ben twisted around in his chair to look. Then he sighed, scribbled a sentence in the corner of a piece of notebook paper, tore it free, and slid it across the table.

Ben’s note read, in atrocious penmanship: Are you seriously asking me if I ate that guy?

Maybe, I wrote back after a moment’s hesitation. Maybe that wasn’t exactly what I was asking; maybe I just wondered if he knew anything about it.

In either case, Ben’s reply was swift and resounding, and underlined three times: No.

Sorry, I wrote, abruptly remorseful. I am a jerk. And I added a frowny face for good measure. Ben chuckled when he saw it, shook his head, gave me a drawn little smirk. His words tiptoed around in my skull, leaving searing imprints like footprints in the sand. I’ll miss you too.

I have to forget about them. I drummed my turquoise blue pen against my notebook as Professor Belvin drew families of molecules on the whiteboard with squealing dry erase markers. I have to find a way to make myself forget.

Jessica was waiting for me in the hallway after class. It was part of her convince-Baby-Swan-not-to-jump-off-a-cliff initiative. “Hey.”

“Okay,” I told her with steely resolve. “I’m ready for you to set me up with one of those guys from your church or temple or whatever. I’m ready to be a nice wholesome wife, pop out like six kids, learn how to scrapbook, give up caffeine and horror movies, do the whole white picket fence thing. Sign me up.”

Jessica blinked at me. There were flecks of fallen mascara on her cheekbones like ashes. “What?”

“You’re a Mormon, right?”

“Girl, I’m not a Mormon,” Jessica said, puzzled. “I’m a witch.”

Lucille

I found Joe where he usually was these days: sprawled on the sofa, engulfed in the same blue Snuggie he’d been wearing for thirty-six uninterrupted hours, gazing catatonically at the big-screen tv. A 90 Day Fiancé marathon was on. Some rodentish guy named Colt was apologizing to his gorgeous, aspiring-green-card-holding Brazilian love interest for calling the cops on her during their last screaming match. He was also apologizing for the fact that they lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother. I didn’t need clairvoyance to see where their future was headed.

“Hey,” Ben said when he spotted me. He was sitting next to Joe and occasionally tried to shove pieces of popcorn into his mouth, which Joe accepted passively like coins plinked into a gumball machine. Ben had been his shadow for the past week; he was perhaps the best equipped of us to understand this degree of melancholy, of hopelessness.  

“Ciao.” And then, to Joe: “How are you?”

“Terrible,” he replied, not tearing his eyes from the tv.

“I figured.” I squeezed between them on the couch, curled up next to Joe, rested my chin on his shoulder. He ignored me completely. I could hear Mercy tapping at her laptop keyboard out in the dining room; she was browsing through Zillow listings in Portland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Dear god, please don’t let us end up in fucking Cleveland. “Guess what.”

Joe stared at the tv for a long time before he answered. “What.”

“I had a vision of you. Just now, as I was doing laundry. Crystal clear and very scenic too, I might add.”

“Fascinating,” Joe said flatly.

“What happened in this vision?” Ben asked, far more invested, which I was thankful for.

“It was pretty far away, maybe a year from now. I saw you in the desert at night, under a full moon. There were cacti everywhere. The shadow of the Milky Way was threaded through the sky, and the stars were very bright. I could make out the constellations Pegasus and Cassiopeia. You were filling up a tiny glass bottle with dirt.”

“That’s remarkably helpful,” Joe said.

“It is, a little bit,” I insisted. “It means you get through this. That you have a future. I get nervous when I go too long without a vision of someone in the family. But now I know you’re going to be okay.”

The reflections of the feuding 90 Day Fiancé couples danced in his glassy eyes. “Being alive doesn’t mean you’re okay.”

“That’s dark,” Ben said. “Even I think that’s too dark.” He pushed a handful of popcorn into Joe’s mouth. “Are you gonna hunt at some point or what?”

“No.”

“You’re just gonna sit on this couch and waste away?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to bring you anything? Grizzly bear? Brown bear? Fuck it, I’ll get you a polar bear if that’s what you want. There’s probably some on the black market. Rami would know.”

“He what?” Mercy called from the kitchen. Her typing had stopped.

“Nothing, Mom!” I shot back.

“I don’t want anything,” Joe said. That was a lie, of course. We all knew what he wanted. Rami couldn’t stand to be around him; the thoughts were relentless, smothering.

I linked my arms around Joe’s neck, laid my head against his chest, sighed deeply and mournfully. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know that doesn’t fix anything. But I’m so, so sorry. And I’ll help however I can. We all will.”

And I had accepted that Joe wasn’t going to respond at all when he finally whispered: “I just wish I could forget.”

Cato

My rolling suitcase snagged on the cobblestone driveway. The tiny spinning wheels bashed against concrete as I scaled the front steps. As the taxi pulled away, I dug around in my suit pocket for my keys, found them, unlocked the enormous front door, stepped inside the palace as my suitcase trolled along the marble floor.

“Cato’s back!” Charity announced as she breezed down the nearest staircase, beaming and embracing me. She was a lovely, innately warm woman from Pointe-Noire, Congo; she still wore the silver cross necklace her mother had once given her around her neck. “Did you have a nice flight? Wait, let me check.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to my cheek. I felt the memories rush up like blood to a flushed face: the bite of sipped champagne against my tongue, the thin semi-transparent newspaper pages gliding between my fingers, the husky voice of the bearded, bearish naval officer who sat in the seat beside me, the misted silhouette of Vladivostok as it rose up out of the Pacific Ocean. “Uneventful, but pleasant enough. You flew commercial?”

“The jets were otherwise occupied, apparently.” Charity could see things with the predictability and precision that Lucy so often lacked, but only the past. I pushed her hand away. “Was that really necessary?”

“You’re not mad,” Charity declared, confident, impish, helping me shed my suit jacket and draping it over her arm. “You’re never mad.”

She was very nearly correct. “Where are the rest of the kids?”

“In the kitchen. Go say hello, they’ve missed you dreadfully.”

“I know the feeling.” I kicked off my Berlutis, ran a palm over the wiry fur of the Irish Wolfhounds that appeared to greet me before they resumed padding watchfully around the palace, and went to the kitchen, my black socks slipping a bit on the marble floors.

I could hear their voices before I reached the door: laughter, teasing, complaints, requests. The scents of pancakes and cold butter and maple syrup were thick in the air. Charity was one of our four newest recruits, and they all still had that energetic lightness of being human, a youthful enthusiasm, a relative normalness. I spent quite a lot of time with them. It was my job—to help with the transition, to keep them happy, to facilitate the welding of their individual parts into the beastly machine that was the Draghi—but oftentimes it felt more like a reprieve. Some would stay close to me as they matured, others would grow in different directions, like ambitious vines climbing the skeleton of a garden trellis. I usually missed them when they ‘grew up,’ so to speak...although there were exceptions. I had never liked Liesl. I had always liked Ben. I opened the door.

“Ah, you are home!” Ksenia cried from where she stood over the stove, a spatula in her right hand, bouncing excitedly in place on her small bare feet.

“Hey!” Max and Austin called together. They were both sitting with their shoes propped up on the unglamorous kitchen table. There was a massive formal dining room that could accommodate up to twenty-five guests, but we rarely used it.

“Good morning,” I said, aware that I was smiling for the first time in days.

Max groaned as he scrolled through his Google search results on a burner phone. “What the fuck. My name is one of the top five dog names again. I think I’m gonna have to change it.”

I ruffled his long blond hair, stealing a piece of bacon from his plate. Max had grown up a trust fund kid in Perth, Australia. His mother was old money; his father was a professional surfer. “Your name is fine.”

“Really, Kato Kaelin? Is it really? How am I supposed to intimidate people when I have a fucking dog name?”

“So make them call you Maximilian,” offered Ksenia in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She’d only been with us for eight months, but her English was coming along swimmingly. She flipped a massive A-shaped pancake on the sizzling griddle. That one was for Austin.

“Seriously?” Max said. “That is just way too many syllables. They’ll be halfway down the block by the time I’m done introducing myself. ‘Hey, come back mate, I haven’t killed ya yet.’”

“At least you aren’t stuck with a basic-white-boy-circa-1992 name for all of eternity,” said Austin Tyler McInerny, originally of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was chomping on a multicolored Fruit Roll-Up, which swung from his mouth like a lizard’s tongue. He’d been working at an ailing skatepark when Larkin found him. He still enjoyed showing off his kickflips, and kept insisting that he was going to teach me how to ollie. I didn’t have the faintest idea what an ollie was.

“Do you want a pancake, Cato?” Ksenia asked, passing Austin his plate and wiping her hands on her pink apron. Her black hair was tied in a high ponytail with a matching rose-colored ribbon. She looked so young. She was so young, actually. Nineteen. And she would be forever.

“No, thank you dear. I’m alright.”

“I like Alaric,” Max decided. “First king of the Visigoths. Alaric is a name fit for a vampire. Creepy, yet dignified. Or maybe Silas. Or Draco.”

Austin shook his head as he swirled a river of viscous maple syrup over his A-shaped pancake. “Definitely not Draco.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the Harry Potter connection is unfortunate. People will hear Draco and think of that obnoxious white-haired kid from the evil snake-people house or whatever.”

“Oh, right,” Max sighed. “Like I said. Alaric would work.”

“So many A-shaped pancakes!” Ksenia poured a K on the griddle for herself.

“It’s good for you,” Austin replied, pointing at her with his fork. “We’re practicing English.”

“Alaric Luther,” Max mused, scrolling through his phone. I didn’t think he’d find that on any list of trendy dog names. “Alaric Lothaire...Alaric Lucian...”

“I like your name, Max,” Larkin said from the doorway. None of us had heard him arrive. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a deep maroon suit and a ring on every finger, grinning hugely. He was exactly as I remembered him: stunning, captivating, terrifying. The kitchen fell quiet. I could smell Ksenia’s pancake beginning to burn.

At last Max chuckled nervously, pushing soggy pancake hunks around on his plate with his fork, averting his gaze. “Guess I’ll keep it then.”

“I thought I heard you come in,” Larkin told me.

“It’s always a pleasure to be home.”

He nodded out towards the hallway. “Come. Regale me with the stories of your travels.” Then his eyes flicked down to my socks, and he grimaced—slightly, briefly—before turning away. “And find your shoes.”

I followed him through the hallway, the living room, the grand front foyer with the crystal chandelier, into the elevator. Larkin did not speak, but he hummed as we ascended: House Of The Rising Sun.

It hadn’t always been like this. It was difficult for me to pick out the details of what had changed—the tone of his voice, the proportion of wonder and gratitude I associated with him versus fear, the way this palace (or the one in Reykjavik, or Juneau, or Ivalo, or Murmansk, or any of the others) felt when I stepped inside it—but I knew something had. It had begun before Ben left. It was much worse now. Older vampires, in my fairly learned opinion, are something like the stars. They mellow as they age, temper their character flaws, grow wise and patient like Nikolai or Honora or Gwilym Lee; or they rage until they burn away every last atom of humanity, until they destroy themselves and take entire solar systems down with them. Increasingly, I harbored fears that Larkin was a vampire of the latter variety. And we were all his planets.

In his study, Larkin dropped into the chair behind his desk, brought a hand to his forehead, surveyed a disarrayed flurry of papers: letters, notices, deeds and titles, meticulously managed accounts of finances and disciplinary actions. Larkin had a laptop and burner phone, of course, as we all did; but he liked to work in paper as much as possible. That’s how he’d done things for centuries, since long before the name of the inventor of the internet (or harnessed electricity, for that matter) was a whisper on his parents’ lips. The sky outside was clouded and seeping soft rain.

“Things have been busy?” I ventured.

He frowned, gesturing to the cluttered desk. “I’m in purgatory.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Can I help?”

“The Lancaster coven says they’ll need an extension for their dues. That’s the second year in a row, now it’s not just an exception, it’s a precedent. If you let one coven bend the rules, others will follow. So something will have to be done. Then there’s Stockholm. Anders’ coven has eaten a few too many locals—including the mayor’s favorite niece—and now the city is launching an investigation. Fucking idiots. They’ll probably all have to relocate. There’s some new territory dispute in Lima between Alejandro’s coven and a group of strangers that just came out of the Andes. We’ll have to make their acquaintance, of course. And as if all that weren’t enough, Rigel accidentally fed on a heroin addict and he’s currently detoxing in a cell in the basement. Would you check on him for me? I’m sure your presence will be a...” He waved his hand distractedly, almost dismissively, searching for the words. “A comfort to him.”

“Of course.”

“How are the Lees?”

“Fine. Typical. Gwil’s putting in a lot of hours at the hospital. Rami’s planning to get another law degree. Ben is, uh, adjusting. Slowly, very slowly. He’s not particularly content. But he hasn’t murdered anyone that I’m aware of.”

“How nice.” Now his eyes darted up to catch mine: focused, luminous, unreadable. “Nothing new at all?”

And instantly, I wanted to tell him everything. I forgot why I had ever planned to blunt the girl’s existence, to conceal her talent entirely; I felt her name rising in my throat. And then I remembered again. I’m doing this for Gwil, for Ben.

I pretended to ponder Larkin’s question, as if it was so difficult to remember, as if there was nothing left to sift through but a trunkful of mundane details from the trip like a grandfather’s tattered correspondence and tarnished war relics. That was something an average family might have squirreled away in their attic, I assumed; I’d never met my own grandfather, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had anything to leave me if I had. “Joe’s got some new girlfriend, but I don’t think it’s serious. I doubt she’ll be around long. You know how Joe is. Scarlett’s seeing someone too, actually. A Quileute kid.”

“Poor boy.” And Larkin grinned like a shark beneath burning eyes. “He’s in for a lifetime of disappointment. Who will ever be able to hold a candle to those memories?”

Larkin had a moderate preoccupation with Scarlett’s beauty, her...tenacity. Her lack of talent was a great disappointment to him, a somehow more egregious fault than Joe or Gwil or Mercy’s. What a shame, Larkin often said. And I believed I knew what came after in his mind, although never aloud: What a partner she could have been.

He was still grinning at me. His expression was hollow, vacuous. A shiver clawed down my spine. He was waiting for something. No, he was searching. I stared back, and I willed for that intangible, contagious harmony I carried around like a wedding ring to hit him like carbon monoxide or bromine: undetected and yet inexorable, knocking him off his path of inquisition.

What does he suspect? What does he already know?

“Anyway,” Larkin continued abruptly, turning his attention back to his paperwork. “I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about in Forks. Liesl will be back in the next few days, Rigel will be ready to work again, I’ll come up with a plan to handle all this and my mood will improve tremendously.”

And where has Liesl been? I almost asked; and then I didn’t. It was a good sign that she was coming home. I had looked for her once while I was in Forks. When I made up my mind to find someone—when that switch flipped in my skull or in the tangle of nerves of my solar plexus or wherever it lived—it wasn’t like poking around on Google Earth: zooming in here, scrolling over there. A goldish trail lit up on the floor, a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ Honora and I sometimes joked, and I followed it. And I had no way of knowing how far that trail might lead. A route heading dead east from the palace might stop in the next town over or continue across the Pacific Ocean; my search might last one day or a hundred. In Forks—as I perched in a soaring western hemlock tree in the forest outside the Lee residence on a cool October evening—Liesl’s trail had led north. North to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Dawson, to Alaska? Who the fuck knew. I was just relieved it hadn’t led to the tree next to mine.

“Well, as always, I’m happy to assist however I can,” I told Larkin. “Just let me know and I’ll be on the next flight out of Vladivostok.”

“I appreciate that, Cato.” He smiled, paternally this time. And then he spun his chair around to peer out the window into the episodic flares of lightning that illuminated great dark clouds like neurons in a celestial brain. I hate thunderstorms. They remind me of South Carolina. “But I think you’ve earned a rest.”

After checking in on Rigel—irritable, frenetic, pacing, and yet predictably pacified somewhat by my visit—I trotted up the main staircase to the second floor of the palace. I found her in our bedroom: sitting at her easel, a paintbrush held in one graceful hand, an image like a photograph on the canvas. I promptly pried off my Berlutis for the second time today and tossed them into the closet.

“Ciao, amore,” I said.

“Ciao!” Honora replied, beaming. Her curly brunette hair was pinned up and away from her face; wayward tendrils spiraled down to brush her bare shoulder blades, the back of her neck. “Just give me five minutes...I have to finish the shadow of this tree...”

There weren’t many in the Draghi who survived the transition from Nikolai’s leadership to Larkin’s, but Honora had. She was gentle to a fault, a hopeless warrior, turned into an immortal on her forty-fourth birthday when Rome was still an empire; and she was without any talents whatsoever, except for one which was useless in combat. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures adorned every palace the Draghi owned. Each year, Larkin would ask her to paint all of us together, incorporating any new faces, erasing the memories of those who had proven themselves unworthy. One such portrait, I knew, hung in Gwilym Lee’s home office.

I went to the woman I called my wife, laid my palms on her shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Take your time, love.”

“Everything’s alright?” Honora asked, looking hopefully up at me with large, wide-set jade eyes. No, not just hopefully. Trustingly.

“Everything’s alright,” I agreed, not knowing if I believed it.

Shadows And Spells

“He just...just...disappeared?!” Jessica sputtered, scandalized, gaping at me as she held a Styrofoam cup of spiked apple cider in her clasped hands.

We were on a quilt near the outskirts of the sea of beach towels and blankets that circled the bonfire. Women—wearing flowing dresses or robes or tunics or not very much at all—flounced around the flames banging tambourines and reciting chants that I didn’t know the words to. Some carried torches, beacons of heat and light in the darkness. Jessica was wearing a short black shirt, fishnet tights, and a black crop-top turtleneck sweater; I had opted for a bohemian blue dress patterned with stars, an old thrift shop find and the closest thing I owned to Wiccan festivities apparel. I had a cup of hot apple cider as well, enhanced with a generous splash of Captain Morgan, but hadn’t quite conjured up the rebelliousness to drink it yet.

I suddenly recalled Mercy bringing me an endless supply of virgin autumnal sangrias as Joe and I swam in the hot tub on the Lees’ back porch. As soon as you turn twenty-one, you can have the real thing. I frowned, shuddered, took a bitter and burning sip.

“Yeah,” I replied. “He told his roommate he was going to a frat party or something and never showed up and never made it back home either. The parents are blaming the university, the university is insisting he must be off with a girlfriend or on some hipster soul-searching nature adventure or whatever, it’s a mess.”

“Jesus,” she murmured. “What does your dad say?”

“He’s been helping the state police with the investigation. There’s really no evidence of anything. No witnesses, no footprints, no surveillance footage, no handy anonymous tips...”

“No body,” Jessica finished.

“That’s morbid.” I downed the rest of my cider. Was the world already beginning to list like a ship on choppy waves, or was that just my imagination? I guess it would be possible. I’d barely eaten all day.

“You were thinking it.”

“Well, one’s mind does tend to wander towards homicide under such circumstances.”

“It is the season of the dead.” She grinned wickedly, then took my empty cup. “He’s probably fine. I bet he wants to drop out to become a weed farmer and hasn’t worked up the guts to tell his parents yet. You want another?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. I’ll be right back.” Jess rose to balance on black boots with five-inch heels and staggered off to the foldable table piled high with cans and bottles and snacks. I was getting the impression that her Wiccanism was more of a novelty than a spiritual commitment.

The season of the dead. Now that’s VERY morbid.

There were some guys laughing, smoking home-rolled cigarettes, and toasting glasses of red wine on a nearby mandala blanket, bespectacled intellectual types who were probably getting PhDs in Anthropology or Medieval Studies at the University of Washington. One of them—curly-haired, pale-eyed, wearing a sweater vest and a cautious smile—raised his wine glass in my direction. I waved back without much enthusiasm.

“He’s cute, right?” Jessica asked, plopping back down onto our quilt and shoving a full cup of spiked cider into my grasp. She motioned for me to drink. I did. “That’s Sebastian, but he likes to be called Bash. He’s twenty-three and speaks fluent German.”

“Charming.”

“He’s very...uh...gifted. I’m not saying I know from personal experience, but I’ve heard it from a very reliable source. And his parents own a beach house in Monterey. You could go skinny-dipping.”  

“In the ocean?” The world was definitely wobbling now. I was warm all over, numbed, fuzzy; it was becoming difficult to picture Joe’s face, to hear his voice. This was good. I kept drinking. “No thanks. Too many sharks. They have great whites down there.”

Jess tossed her long, loose hair and sighed impatiently. “I’m just saying that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. So you should pursue that.”

“I’ll totally consider it.” I lied. I would not consider it.

She smiled, sympathetically, fondly. “I can’t believe you thought I was a Mormon.”

“I can’t believe I’m out in the Washington wilderness commemorating the Gaelic festival of Samhain, but here we all are.”

Jess glanced over my shoulder. “Oh my god. He’s coming over here.”

“Ugh.” I craned my neck to see. Sebastian—whoops, my mistake, Bash—was approaching. “Please distract him. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Also I’m pretty sure I’m getting drunk and I don’t want to do anything humiliating, like sob uncontrollably about how much I miss my ex-boyfriend.”

“Don’t worry. I gotchu, Baby Swan.”

“Hey Jess,” Bash said, but he was looking at me. He pitched his cigarette off into the trees. What the fuck, who does that?

“Only you can prevent forest fires,” I told him in a woozy, mock-Smokey Bear voice.

“What?” he asked, baffled.

“Ignore her, she’s drunk,” Jess said quickly. “So what’s up? Come on, sit with me. Keep me toasty. Teach me some German...”

As they chatted and giggled and snuggled closer together—I’m starting to think that Jessica might have been her own reliable source—I studied the forest, watching to make sure the cigarette didn’t begin to smolder in the damp brush. The voices and crackling of the bonfire and sharp ringing of the tambourines faded into one muted, uniform drone. The trees reeled in the haze of the spiked cider; the cool wind moaned through them. And then, for only a second: a glimpse of something impossibly quick, something silvery and reedy and sunless.

What was that?

I blinked. It was gone. I blinked again, staring penetratingly. The swarming heat from the cider evaporated from my skin, my blood. There were goosebumps rising all over me.

What the hell was that?

I remembered how Calawah University students sometimes reacted to Ben: flinching, withdrawing, autonomically fearing him on some primal, evolutionary level. They knew he was a predator. They knew they were prey. It was chillingly similar to what I was feeling now.

I have to get out of here. I have to go home.

I shot to my feet. Oh, wrong move, that was too quick. I swayed, and Jessica reached up to steady me. “Are you—?!”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I gotta go home now.”

“What?! We just got here! Look, chill out, let me get you some vegan samosas or something—”

“No, seriously, I have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” Jessica conceded. “I’ll finish my drink and we’ll call an Uber, alright?”

“Really?” Bash asked, crestfallen.

“I’ll call an Uber,” I told Jess. “You stay, I’ll go.” Maybe she shouldn’t stay, I thought foggily, irrationally. Maybe it’s not safe.

“I can’t let you go alone. I got you drunk and now you’re a mess and if you end up murdered it would be my fault. There are unsolved mysteries going around, you know.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Girl, there’s no way I’m gonna—”

“I’ll call you as soon as I get in the Uber and I’ll stay on until I’m physically inside my house, okay?”

Jessica considered this. Bash leaned in to nibble her ear. I could smell the red wine and nicotine and animalistic lust sweating out of his pores. And unexpectedly, agonizingly: a biting flare, a muscle memory, Joe’s fingertips skimming down the small of my back and his scent like winter nights saturating the capillary beds of my lungs. Stop, stop, stop. “Okay,” Jess agreed at last.

“Awesome.” I was already opening the Uber app on my iPhone.

My driver was a Pacific Northwestern version of Santa Claus: wild grey beard, red flannel, L.L.Bean boots, rambling about his upcoming trip to hunt caribou in British Columbia. I honored my promise to Jessica and kept her on speakerphone for the duration of the twenty-minute drive. I rested my whirling head against the seat, let my eyes dip closed, watched the intermittent streetlights appear and disappear through my eyelids. I let myself into Charlie’s house when I arrived, wished Jessica goodnight (and reminded her not to get pregnant), and meandered clumsily into the kitchen for a glass of water and a cookie dough Pop-Tart to ward off a possible hangover. Charlie was snoring quietly on the living room couch. I watched him for a while, smiling and achingly grateful, before heading upstairs to my bedroom.

My window was wide open; that’s the first thing I noticed. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was always neglecting to lock the window, sure—I kept forgetting that there was no one to leave it unlocked for anymore—but I hadn’t left it open when I went to meet Jessica this evening. Icy night air flooded in. The stars were bright and furious in an uncommonly clear sky.

“You trying to give me pneumonia, old man?” I muttered, thinking of Charlie. I tossed my iPhone down onto my bed and crossed the room to close the window. And as it creaked and collided with the sill, I heard my closet door open behind me.

Someone’s here. Someone’s in this room with me.

I turned, very slowly; it felt like it took a lifetime. She was standing in the doorway of my closet, sinuous and white-haired, wearing black leather pants and stiletto heels and a long-sleeved lace blouse the color of blood, the color of her eyes. And she was harrowingly beautiful; not like Lucy or Mercy, not like Scarlett. She was beautiful like a prehistoric jawbone, like a serrated crescent moon, like a blade.

The owl. The goddamn albino owl.

I recognized her immediately. I heard Joe’s words as he introduced each vampire in the immense painting hanging in Dr. Lee’s upstairs office to me, though I desperately didn’t want to: She’s literally Satan, only blonder.

Her name tumbled from my trembling lips. “Liesl.”

“Wonderful, we can skip the introductions.” Her voice was like windchimes, cutting and brisk, with a hint of an Austrian accent like a shadow. Now she was at my bedside and picking up my phone, scrolling through it with lightning-quick and dexterous thumbs. “Hm. No texts from any of the Lees in the past week. So we don’t have to worry about them dropping by, I suppose. Joe got bored with you already, huh?”

“Evidently.” My own voice was brittle, anemic, weak; just like my ineffectual human body.

“That’s quick, even for him. How sad.” She sighed, tucking my iPhone into her red Chanel purse. “There’s a private jet waiting at the Forks Airport. Pack a bag. You have five minutes.”

“Please don’t hurt my dad,” I whispered, scalding tears brimming in my eyes.

“Of course not,” Liesl replied with a savage, saccharine smile. “Not yet, anyway.”

[thorne93]

The Stars Made Us (Part 26)

Prompt: In this world, you’re one of the “lucky” ones who got a soulmate, but what if the universe gives you more than you bargained for?

(Prompt challenge – You live in a world where your soulmate can write on their skin and you will get the writing on your own and vice versa. Where they can wash away the ink on their own skin, however, the writing is forever scarred onto your skin until you meet face to face)

Word Count: 2237

Warnings: angst and language throughout, medical complications, blood, fighting, surgery

Notes: This was supposed to be for @sorryimacrapwriter​​​​​  and their challenge like a year ago, I think? I still loved the prompt though and have been working on this story for quite some time. This aesthetic was made by @quailliamyfears, thank you so much! Beta’d by @like-a-bag-of-potatoes​​​​​, couldn’t have done it without you, as well as @carryonmyswansong​​​​​ and @arrow-guy​​​​​ and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​​​​

Also, I’ve never really liked the whole soulmate AU thing idea, but this felt so right and it was amazing to write. I hope y’all love it too!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Shit!" Christine cried out. 

"Y/N? Y/N?" Stephen tried, but you were out cold. "Help her."

"But your chest. It's wide open--"

"Help her!" he demanded.

"Jeez, alright! Alright!" She went out into the hall and pulled in another bed. She called out for a doctor and a few nurses to help you onto the bed before telling them to leave and get her two suture kits. 

By the time they returned, the other doctor had cut your pant leg off and was working to clean the wound and assess it.

"Some kind of foreign blade sliced all the way through her leg." 

"Yeah, he was stabbed in the chest," she informed before starting to work on him. 

Stephen apologized to Christine for the way he treated her and she asked what was going on and he explained his situation to her before finishing the sutures. 

"Is she almost done?" Stephen asked the other doctor as he started to get up.

"What? Where are you going?" Christine asked.

"Late for a cult meeting. Just help me up and help me get dressed." 

As she helped him with his robes, the doctor answered Stephen's question. "She'll be alright, but she's lost a hell of a lot of blood. Her pants are beyond soaked in blood. I think she has a concussion," he said, recalling when he looked at your pupils. "She needs to stay overnight. How the hell is she alive?"

Christine looked from you to Stephen. The answer was clear - you had stayed alive for him. 

“She needs to stay here, Stephen,” Christine insisted. “I’ll take care of her.”

You suddenly gasped awake. 

Stephen was at your side instantly. “Hey there,” he greeted, his face painted with love and compassion. “Hey, you lost a lot of blood so they want to keep you overnight, but I’ve got to go back to the sanctum. I’ll come visit you as soon as--”

“What? No. Fuck no. I’m coming with you,” you insisted.

“You can’t. You need to stay here.” 

“Why?”

“Well, first of all I’m not done stitching you up,” the doctor that was working on you said. 

“Well, I see three doctors in this room. Maybe someone can stitch the back while the other stitches the front, but I am coming with you Stephen, like it or not. I still have the sling ring and you’ll have to tear it off my body to get it.” You glared at him and he held up his hands in surrender. 

Christine gave a look to the other doctor before she jumped in and you turned on your side, letting the doctors work on you from either side. 

The second you were entirely stitched up, you and Stephen made for the portal. He said his goodbyes to Christine as you stood off to the side, letting it happen. He showed her the portal before saying he really had to go. You stepped inside, and offered your hand. Once inside, you closed the portal and passed the ring to him.

He encountered the man that had attacked you and checked his pulse - he was dead. Stephen gave you a look of dread before reaching up to grab the cloak. It attached itself to him and the two of you continued walking down the hall.

"Strange! Y/N! You're okay. 

"A relative term, but yeah, I’m okay."

"The Cloak of Levitation. It came to you."

The Ancient One suddenly said, "No minor feat. It’s a fickle thing."

"He’s escaped," Stephen informed. 

The Ancient One asked, "Kaecilius?" 

"Yeah. He can fold space and matter at will."

"He folds matter outside the mirror dimension? In the real world?"

"Yeah."

"How many more?" The Ancient One asked. 

"Two. I stranded one in the desert."

"And the other?"

"His body was in the hall. Master Drumm was in the foyer."

Mordo replied, "He’s been taken back to Kamar-Taj."

The Ancient One informed, "The London Sanctum has fallen. Only New York and Hong Kong remain now to shield us from the Dark Dimension. You defended the New York Sanctum from attack. With its Master gone, it needs another, Master Strange."

Your eyes went to Stephen, analyzing his face, his response. 

"No," he said defiantly as he turned towards her. "It is Dr. Strange. Not Master Strange, not Mr. Strange, Doctor Strange. When I became a doctor, I swore an oath to do no harm. And I have just killed a man! I’m not doing that again. I became a doctor to save lives, not take them."

Sympathy hit your heart quickly as you saw him be torn apart by the actions he just had to take. Stephen might've been a bit cold, a bit uncaring in his bedside manner, but the fact remained that he did save lives and he did it well. And it was clear now that he didn't ever want to fail in saving a life, let alone be the reason for taking one. 

"You become a doctor to save one life above all others -- your own," The Ancient One Quipped. 

"Still seeing through me, are you?" Stephen asked as he got closer to her. 

"I see what I’ve always seen -- your over-inflated ego. You want to go back to the delusion that you can control anything, even death, which no one can control. Not even the great Doctor Stephen Strange."

"Not even Dormammu? He offers immortality."

"It’s our fear of death that gives Dormammu life. He feeds off it."

"Like you feed on him? You talk to me about controlling death. Well, I know how you do it. I’ve seen the missing rituals from The Book of Cagliostro."

"Measure your next words very carefully, doctor," The Ancient One warned.

"Because you might not like them?" he challenged.

"Because you may not know of what you speak," she clarified.

"What is he talking about?" Mordo asked, and your eyes were simply going from each talking person. He hadn't divulged this with you but now that he had, it was starting to make a bit of sense and you felt... betrayed. 

"I’m talking about her long life, the source of her immortality. She draws power from the Dark Dimension to stay alive."

"That’s not true," Mordo defended.

"I’ve seen the rituals and worked them out. I know how you do it," Stephen informed.

She didn't seem to respond to this, all she said was, "Once they regroup, the zealots will be back. You’ll need reinforcements."

"She is not who you think she is," Stephen said as he started to walk away.

"You don’t have the right to say that. You have no idea of the responsibility that rests upon her shoulders."

"No, and I don’t want to know."

"You’re a coward," Mordo said and this made you straighten up, ready to fight him. 

"Because I’m not a killer?" Stephen questioned, turning around, pressing him for an answer.

"These zealots will snuff us all out, and you can muster the strength to snuff them out first?"

"What do you think I just did?" Stephen asked, his voice getting volumes louder.

"You saved your own life! And then whined about it like a wounded dog."

"When you would have done it so easily?" he challenged.

"You have no idea the things I’ve done…And the answer is yes. Without hesitation."

"Even if there’s another way?"

"There is no other way," Mordo vowed.

"You lack imagination," he accused.

"No, Stephen. You lack a spine."

"Hey, we just had to fight for our lives here and we had no way to prepare ourselves. No one told us what we were up against here. You left Stephen defenseless," you accused. 

"We gave Stephen all the necessary tools to arm himself, but he couldn't because he was too busy arming his ego, as always," Mordo replied.

You were about to lay into him when Stephen turned to you.

"He's actually right. He was right all along. They did give me the tools, but I couldn't see them because of you." He turned to you, a sort of realization in his voice. 

"What?" you asked. 

"I was distracted by you. They warned me about that, but because of you, I couldn't focus on my work. I had to entertain you. I'm not a baby sitter. You knew we were coming here to fix my hands, but you had to make it about being soulmates again. Well guess where that got us, Y/N? In the hospital. I couldn't even focus on fighting for my life because I was too busy concerning myself with you. That won't happen again. All you've done since I met you was distract me from my one goal - getting my hands fixed and getting my job back."

You stood there, shocked to your core. 

How could he be saying this? This couldn't be true. None of this could be true. He loved you, he said he did. That couldn't have changed. He wouldn't have lied about that.

A tear rolled down your cheek as you avoided his haunting gaze. "You don't mean that."

"I don't say things I don't mean. When have you ever known me to hide exactly how I am feeling?" he challenged, knowing full well all of you in the room knew the truth. 

"Never," you whispered. 

"Right. This time is no different. You've held me back, and I won't let it happen any longer."

"Stephen--"

"Now, please. I don't like having to fight with you to get you to leave me alone. I've done it too many times, it's exhausting. So please, do me a favor, and get the hell away from me, and get out of my life." 

If he'd slapped you in the face, it would've hurt less.

He opened a portal and you saw your bedroom at Kamar-Taj. "Feel free to grab your things. You barged into my life, I suspect you can walk out of it just fine?" He raised his eyebrows at you and it took everything in you to keep from sobbing on the spot. 

For fear of talking, you just nodded and stepped through the portal. You turned to look at him, but as soon as your eyes made contact, he looked as if he hated you and he closed the portal, making you collapse on the bed in tears. 

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

After you gathered your senses, you packed all your things. You approached Wong in the library. You told him that if Stephen did anything dangerous, or reckless, or even if he went back home to contact you. He could tell you'd been crying, he looked down at your phone number curiously, but  ultimately decided to say nothing. He just agreed to call you. 

Wong helped you get a taxi to the airport and you got the first flight that would get you home. 

All you could think of was the way this felt like when Charles disappeared. That heartbreak. That crushing feeling on your chest. The way you couldn't breathe. The feeling of not knowing what you'd done wrong. 

How had everything fallen apart so quickly? Just yesterday you two were happy, blissful. You had both he and Charles. 

Now, you were returning home with one soulmate rejecting you. 

How? How coudld he do this to you? He seemed so in love. The way he held you. The way he woke up beside you. The way he stared at you as you worked. The way he did anything you asked of him, even if sometimes it took a bit of coaxing or fighting. The way he worshipped you physically. The way he finally seemed to believe in soulmates. 

How could he go from making a romantic date on the beaches of Bora Bora, and surprising you with dances in your bedroom, and teasing you at dinner time about how you ate your food to... to this. To casting you out as if you were trash after trying to save his life. You risked your life for his and it came so easy for him to tell you to get away.

He finally showed his true colors. He didn't want you. He just wanted his hands fixed. You were blind enough -- stupid enough -- to believe he wanted anything else. He just wanted someone to fill whatever stupid role he needed in his life and you were pathetic enough to do it. 

He used you and you couldn't see it. 

He had told you from the beginning he didn't want this. He wanted the control to choose a mate. Even the Ancient One had seen it. Stephen wanted to control life and death, of course he wanted to control who he loved. Maybe he lied about Christine too, about not loving her any more. 

He was wearing her watch into Nepal. You were just the buddy that tagged along.

That's all you were to him, a dead weight he wanted to rid himself of. 

Finally, you were at the front door of the mansion. You pulled out your key but before you could get it in the hole, the door opened.

Charles stood there, looking pressed and smart as always. 

"Y/N?" he greeted, highly confused as to why you were here without warning. He was thrilled to see you, but you hadn't given word you were coming home.  

You simply fell into his arms and he caught you. The sobs finally hit you, hard, and he held onto you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[grahammasurian]

Dumping Your Responsibility.

The dumpster outside my apartment building was completely overflowed. The truck missed a couple weeks for some reason and people just kept piling their shit on top regardless.

“My sin will be forgiven, the next sinner will go to hell!”

This came into my head whenever I thought of the garbage situation. I considered myself 99% innocent since I didn’t use the dumpster during these couple weeks. Unfortunately when disaster happens it doesn’t care how much you were involved, all it sees is your darkness.

What I could have done was call up our landlord. Maybe I didn’t add directly to the trash pile but I still could have brought attention to it. Unfortunately my mind gave me a great reason for not calling him, a wonderful why even bother type of belief. These curses will kill you but they provide immense relief.

He lives someplace nicer and keeps his back turned on this building, so if I don’t tell him anything he’ll keep believing whatever fantasy he’s living. Whenever I bring up something for him to look at he puts it off or conveniently forgets about it, can’t say I blame him. I'd love to do the same sometimes and then feel guilty about it for the rest of my life. It’s hard to convince myself that a life of eternal guilt is worse than a life of hard work. Maybe the simple solution is to just disregard the guilt and make everyone despise me, though I can’t say that seems like a good long term strategy.

I guess everyone likes to avoid responsibility too, don’t get me wrong I get it, because man it sure feels good to not take anything seriously, just sit back and relax through life, I’ll lay down in my bed and fold into a quarter circle. Pull my knees up to my chest and gently hold myself, like swinging in the breeze floating along to somewhere better.

Eventually some birds had a war over the trash that was at this point spilling everywhere, old food, old clothes, plastic shit, maybe real shit. It was a disaster but seemed to be an appropriate punishment for us. I watched a seagull pull apart a bag for 30 minutes, something about the completely boring and ordinary scene held a power over me. I imagined this feeling of our civilizations being consumed again by nature, it’s easy to forget that nature is constantly trying to integrate us more effectively. Integration with an ocean with a mysterious intention.

We could have salvaged things there, rescued some of our dignity and just accepted responsibility for what we did by not doing. I sat some nights debating whether or not I should just go out there and clean up everything alone. I didn’t mind the day, but at night I just loved how things seemed to come to life inside me. There was a power that I didn’t have access to during the day.

I decided it wasn’t worth cleaning up, after all I don’t really care what these people think of me, unless they express it to me. Plus I felt like I fit in better with my environment as a lazy drifter. When I run into the people that live here occasionally there is enough willpower on all our parts to say “Hi” and then move on our way. The two people that live under me, man and wife, maybe around late 50’s early 60’s always give me a glimpse into a possible future. The guy looks like his soul has been sucked out and not in a good way. It scares me for a moment and I tell myself I’ll keep it in mind but my actions don’t change.

The next week after the missed pickup and our experiment with apathy, something happened.

It was 12:33 AM, I was laying down in my bed with the window open, listening to the wind and feeling the slight breeze on my skin. Sometimes I’d lay there for hours listening to music or in silence, using drugs of course. The sounds of the night combined with distant sounds of the city created the backdrop for the worlds I explored in my mind. I break away from the atmosphere and write some ideas down in some form then go back to my mind.

I heard a familiar sound, the mother of this girl screaming in that resentful kind of way. Whenever someone talks that way to me my stomach gets sick, I see this person is using me to escape from something. You know instantly that this isn’t about you anymore, it's about them.

I hated the way this mother yelled at her daughter, I didn’t have kids of my own but I didn’t mind them, I generally see children as innocent beings until they gain awareness. When they become aware they turn into wood, hopefully they make it through and become real but many don’t. Some play as the twisted craftsmen, shaping the world with design. Night after night I’d hear this poor girl being molded into something that will make her unhappy for the rest of her life.

Even though it’s hard to feel connected with darkness, you still elicit feelings for things of the night. You react more on principle and not bigger picture at night, this mother was injecting venom deep into the mind of her daughter. Like a jackass I sat there each night it happened and listened to it like music.

 Being man enough to walk down there one day and call her out on her shitty behavior was always in the back of my mind, but then I would think some more and figure what difference would it make? Sometimes I snap out of my delusions and wake up, I see who I am from up here.

Just look for the right words.

It didn’t happen every time but sometimes this warped girl would dash outside, slamming doors and shouting behind her. Most times I’d hear her small steps pace around or walk down out of earshot then eventually I’d hear her again coming from the other side of the building, maybe doing two or three laps like that before cooling off and gaining enough strength to go back. She feels like she just wants to give up but chooses to continue to face that fate which shows just how much courage she had.

This night the young girl made her usual escape, something about the scene caught my attention. Normally I just ignored it for the most part, but tonight I felt worried for her and listened to see if she was okay.

The shriek of her screaming scared me sober. That kind of pitch that you can only get when you feel real terror.

Confusion at night amplifies fear to a level that can go beyond anything you’ve ever felt. Sometimes hearing a loud noise randomly in the middle of the night only to realize it was something conspicuous is an interesting moment of tension and release of tension. When you listen to death it creates tension that doesn’t go away unless you force it to release.

I couldn’t see much but the sounds made up for the rest, I looked on in horror as this poor unfortunate girl came running towards the front door to come back inside. She must have forgotten to prop it open a little this time like she usually did. The door was shut, she couldn’t escape through there and it was the only chance she had time to try.

This whole thing happened so fast it was as if my mind refused to think about what I was seeing, this bear that must have smelled some food nearby came across her instead.

Hearing someone produce screams that come from a dangerous place, sends a painful shock through you. It would have been nice if I was one of those people that got off on that kind of thing but unfortunately I had to deal with the feelings of misery, dread, sadness, fear, anger, all at once.  

A little bit slower than what should have been immediate there was incredible energy from all around, people coming out and making noise, not too many but enough for me to be impressed.

The general sentiment at the time was:

“Oh My God!” A big fat lady wearing a shaggy blue sweater screeched out. There were many other intense shouts, deflated yelps, sobbing murmurs, all mixing together slowly creating the atmosphere for a tremendously horrific scene.

All these half awake people, semi-disconnected souls felt something deep down within them for once. For the first time in decades some of these hopeless people felt alive, they acted without thought calling back to our primate ancestors. They witnessed a driving force, without realizing the lesson unfortunately.

Some of the people approached the girl to try and attempt some kind of help and others stayed away, accepting the situation or too afraid to know how bad it really was.

Some sobs were heard throughout the night as people came and went, voices that sounded defeated, voices that sounded ready to give up and heavy with guilt.

“Emily! No!” The mother cried. Obviously still drunk. Obviously deluded into thinking her daughter is anywhere close to alive.

“Please baby I’m so sorry! Please wake up baby!”

I had great disdain for this mother, but at that moment I felt bad for her. This woman made mistakes and in the end all it causes is suffering.

They came for her daughter, whisked her away into the abyss forever. Black cloaks riding into the stars on their skeletal horses. I wasn’t sure whether or not the constant beating I was hearing was a drum or my heart. We summoned these demons with our ritual, the choices we made were acts of incantation that brought forth monsters with the power to possess mortals, the possession was the final step in ensuring resurrection lest one of us snap out of the hypnosis and rescue the rest from the gaze of Medusa.

Then some downcast EMT workers took away her body, from the low looks and words after immediately coming upon the scene it was clear that hope didn’t exist anymore. I never saw the aftermath personally, where the actual attack happened was obscured to me by the awning over the door. Sometimes imagination makes things worse.

The mother followed her daughter into the darkness 3 weeks later.