#(which he did not ofc but nobody communicates here)

[sebasluv]

sebastian sallow headcannons + reader (crush)

a/n: doing this for the community 🫡 jkjk | spoilers (ofc)

whether you met him first in the common room or the defense against the dark arts class, you are sure something more than a spell sparked that day; a friendship, perhaps

"not bad, not bad for a new student," he dusted himself off the floor. glancing at your stretched hand, he took it gladly; as you pulled him off the ground.

"thank you...i was nervous about what i did back there, hope you are alright"

"i've had it much worst, believe me," he smiled.

occasional meetings at dada (lol) became frequent meetings throughout multiple classes. whatever fate wanted, you were glad to be greeted with those eyes you know so well

"class, welcome the newest rose to our garden," professor garlick smiled warmly at you. being ever politely you are, you returned the gesture, only to be distracted with the burning hole in your head.

'shit, he is staring at me,' you thought. staring back, he doesn't seem fazed by your gaze, 'is he zoning out?'

of course, professor garlick had to put you next to him. *wink wink*

can't also help that professor weasley tends to call him to help you with everything.

"excuse me, mr. sallow, please come to my office after this class," she pierced through her eyeglasses, and sebastian can't help feeling a sweat drop off his face.

'shit, what did i do'

...

"please, accompany ms. l/n to hogsmeade for her to buy her supplies," she assigned him without even looking up from her parchment.

"professor, but, why me?"

"don't you worry, i saw you with her in the class, you don't have to hide your feel-"

"no!- erm- i mean- no, she was just- stuned me during our duel"

"then, good, she will need a lot more practice to get comfortable," she replied. "now, run along."

...

"thanks for getting me out of detention," he chuckled as he walked side-by-side with you to hogsmeade.

"you're welcome?" 'fuck, he is staring again'

he got those chocolate hair and eyes...which it seems that you can not get enough of them

loves accompanying you around the vast castle of hogwarts

walking together after class is one of your favorite activities to do together

picking and packing up your books after charms class, you’ve noticed a green robe coming up to you.

“forgot this?” he passed your notebook.

“thanks, seb”

“what about…if i say…would you fancy a butterbeer this evening?” he questioned while staring at your hurried gestures.

“i- erm…i don’t know, i got a potions essay to work on…you know…they are quite the pain in the arse”

“hey, c’mon, butterbeer’s on me? it’s friday night,” sallow chuckled. “please?”

“hm…fine, meet me up at 6, quidditch gate,” you hurled your book bag up your shoulder as you reach for your wand.

“alright…see ya”

of course, being the ever gentleman he is, he will walk you to your dormitory. from the very highest ravenclaw towers, to the lowest hufflepuff dungeon, or even the golden house of gryffindor. (ofc if you are in slytherin, he will not miss a chance to send you to your room)

“alright…thanks for tonight, it’s my cue here,” you halted before your destination.

“you’re welcome, butterbeers are still on me next time, good night,” he smiled.

“night, seb”

sebastian was not quiet, no, he wasn't very close to being the quietest in the class. you will always find yourself, or perhaps, your ears, catching a glimpse of his voice in the busying class.

he can be the biggest teaser and a sarcastic commentator, which you act like you hated it. (no, you love it)

"i hope you don't mind me tying your shoe laces for you, cause i don't want you falling for nobody else," he chuckled.

"oh, please"

but one thing you have noticed is that, he will always find a good use of his chocolate eyes; they always find themselves searching through the sea of people to catch you.

he can be quiet if he wants, zoning out isn't the furthest of his forte

throwing out a joke or a comment were not something you are not used to as well.

of course, he finds a good blush in your cheeks everytime.

as cheeky and cunning he is, you couldn't ignore the feeling in your gut every time sebastian mentions his sister.

his demeanor shrinks and all you can hope is to comfort him in your arms.

he is loyal as a hufflepuff, quite interesting to find a slytherin boy as well-mannered as him.

'please, no, please, no-'

"who did you brought here with tonight, mr. sallow?" the librarian questioned.

...

"no one, ma'am"

"such a shame, mr. sallow, i will call the headmaster on this. just imagine what your uncle would-"

with one last glance, you mouthed him a 'thank you' and a smile on your face. your heart was beating so fast that it might nearly jumps out and pump itself on the floor.

you can lie to me, but i will never believe that sebastian does not love hugs.

he loves a good ol' hug. side hug, back hug, front hug, bear hug, a soul crushing hug, anything hug. plus one if it is a surprise hug.

mans love to joke around sometimes but, in the end, he is super protective. just a glimpse of how he would protect his sister. a gentleman, yet a bold friend.

standing up for you and always believing in you. hell yeah, he can even take a punch in the face for you *wink wink* and he can definitely place a punch for you; perhaps, a curse

the great hall is such a buzzing place, filled with students and delicious food to the brim. but undeniably, one of the best places to throw glances across the room for sebastian and y/n.

whether you are sitting across the room or just across the table, his eyes will always search for yours.

"i got my eyes on you, remember that"

[whoisthispersonwow]

Hello people of tumblr! :)

I am not used to using this app but I thought i would give it a shot as the fandom works featured here are straight up the best things i've found on the internet, and the community seems just AMAZING on all regards!!! So I thought, yk, that I would share my ideas for this AU fic that perhaps maybe I would write sometimes...... idk....

Actor Bucky x Model Buck

Set in the 90s, this AU follows this rough outline : despite the 90s being a time of counterculture for the youth, (grunge, alternative movies being pushed forward and towards larger audiences) and being out of the 80s and all it entails (glam rock and so on) there was this paradoxally reinforced idea of masculinity (leather jackets, men having to be "strong", etc.) and lattent ideas of homosexuality being a "bad, filthy thing" in some places, interlinked with the misinformations concerning the HIV epidemic (if you're gay, you'll get AIDS, you'll die in a few months, all this stuff), which causes the Bucks have to hide their relationship from the public in fear of retaliation and backlash.

Buck is a male model, in a decade in which supermodels are emerging, and put on a pedestal : it's a decent job for him, despite not being a Claudia Schiffer or a Kate Moss (as female models, especially in that decade, were getting paid way more than male models, and overall just represented couture houses more than men did.). People know his face, he's had a few campaigns, but it's not enough to make him one of the A-list celebrities, not that he minds. He's slimmer than what is the norm for male models, but compensates it with his face : it is his strength as much as his weakness concerning bookings. He is known by his peers as this wise and generally kind man, not overly flairy as people can sometimes be in their industry, and overall very discreet about his personal life. He is extremely professional, a master of his craft that knows exactly what is expected of him at any time.

Bucky, on the other hand, is an actor. Freshly discovered among the rest of a new generation of actors, he climbs steadily and surely his way to the top, and has people from all over the USA watching his career with interest. He acts in movies which in our timeline would feel like "The Matrix" ; "Trainspotting" ; "Fight Club", and all of those sorts of very "mainstream yet still posessing their bit a flair" movies. He's extending his choices and taking more risks, ones that could perhaps lead him to great rewards (not that he is especially looking for it : Bucky would be content to act in a short movie by a middle schooler if it was done with love and passion.) Charming, bubbly, he is loved by many of teenage girls (and others, ofc :p). Everyone has a story about Bucky, be it good or bad. "Oh yeah, he bought me a car when mine broke down" says a make-up artist on a set. "He got so drunk he forgot I was here and punched me square in the face when i got up to pee" says his friend Curt Biddick.

(i made an ugly ass moodboard for the vibes)

-> now i'm gonna dump random infos for no particular reasons

TW : mentions of drugs, alcohol, homophobic cliches.

-They met at a party/gala of some sort for a brand, for which Buck modeled and Bucky was ambassador : it didn't click right away, but closely enough for it to feel like fate played a part in it.

-Buck is kind of excluded during parties as he's fully sober, whether it's from drugs or alcohol : a rarity, in the modeling world, and often not a welcome one.

-Bucky on the other hand, is a bit too much of a party monster : he drinks a lot, perhaps snorts a little cocaine in the bathroom, takes a little speed... Which GREATLY concerns Buck.

-Bucky is as cocky in his confidence and his career as he fears (and represses A LOT) the possibility of everything tumbling down and just going back to being nobody (THIS MAN NEEDS TO BE LOVED BY EVERYONE)

-He's terrified that fame will change him, that he will become a parody version of himself, that people will only know and like the version of himself he presents them and nothing else, not seeing his worth as a person, as an individual of flesh and feelings.

-Between the two of them, he's the one who desperately wants to tell the general audience about their relationship, not caring about the consequences, because in his eyes, love is love, and there sure as hell ain't nothing wrong with loving Gale Cleven, and people should know that he loves him, that they love each other, that they're a pair, that life only ever feels complete when they stand side by side, hanging in each other's orbits. They sometimes argue over this.

-Buck, on the other hand, wishes for their relationship to stay a secret, as he fears if it was to be known, it would taint Bucky's image, this very manly, confident and suave man, mingle it with dumb cliches (in a gay couple one is a "Folle" and the other has to be effeminate, because they're like GIRLS yk) and that it would basically ruin his career, tarnish his talent and hard work, get him blacklisted from most studios/directors and only perhaps offered type-casted roles in homophobic movies written by straight men. Buck could not stand seeing the love of his life being disgraced in the public's eyes, just because of some dumbass cliches, because of his love for him.

-Marjorie (Marge) covers for Buck. She's his front : They are seen dining together and huddling on benches by paparazzis, giggling and talking as they walk in the street, and that's enough. Their story makes people dream, these two young people who grew up together and fell in love, still a couple until this day, still loving each other as much as they did on the first day... They are a lavender couple (when both member of a relationship are queer, and use their couple to cover any suspicions) which helps making Buck and Bucky seem like just buddies. Marjorie is most likely not famous, or if so, she'd be more of a writer than anything else.

-Bucky is EXTREMELY jealous and FUMES whenever he cannot kiss Buck in public, touch him, do his little Bucky things, make Buck feel his. Despite that, he's sort of reckless and allows himself gestures that would not fly were the two men not viewed as pinacle of masculinity and a great example of brotherly love. Buck can't even bring himself to ressent him for it, and does not hold it against him : he too wishes they could hold hands on red carpets.

-Bucky is basically a disaster waiting to happen at some point, a pressure cooker dangerously whistling : he bottles everything he feels, just grits his teeth and says he's fine when dark times arise, drowns himself in alcohol and wishes to forget about his worries, thinks about simpler times when he had none at all. Gale stays by his side, no matter what, no matter his terrifying relationship with alcohol and the memories of his father.

-They live together, despite the risks : Buck couldn't bear having to say no to Bucky when he bought their appartment with a huge check from the royalties he earned over his first blockbuster. It is approprietly cozy : most of the decorum is Buck's doing, but Bucky's things still find their ways in there ; baseball posters, pictures, awards and silly little drawings on stick-it notes... It feels like home, to both of them.

-They probably have bought some sort of ranch or farm, somewhere, to run away from the city when things get crazy : they bask reverently in the fact that there, nothing they do or say matters, watching the sunsets on their patios, enjoying the melody of nature without any civilization.

That's pretty much it for now, I'll most likely add things later! :D I'm begging you to excuse any mistake I made, i'm just a poor French person trying her best. Don't hesitate to tell me how you feel and stuff, I am so nervous to make this post you can't imagine lmaoo

To end things, I guess I'll just post an extract of a wip, a written transcription of a fake interview Bucky probably had on some talk show!!! :]

[thatdeadaquarius]

*casually slides into asks*

The Creator having to be taught the language of Teyvat, except they don't realise that each country has their own seperate language and so they are just mixing and matching phrases from each of the languages and no one has any idea what they are saying

*slides back out of asks*

Hello hello my regular customer 💃

Before u slide out, have a cookie for the road! 🤲🍪

Ok but this would actually happen to me

Im partial to the headcanon that theres a trade language in Teyvat, but each country has their own native language, w/sub-dialects too (i think thats the word?)

Just like what u said basically, bc like what if they dont have the trade one 💀 it rlly is just diff languages and im just over here like 😃🗨👋

(Gif is u in the center trying to talk to other people on the sides lol)

Srry if uncreative or kinda a flop i am not a fountain of ideas as much as i wish to be😔🙏

This may be only funny to me...

But i did my bestest for you beloved regular <3

Also u didnt ask for this but u got it anyway LMAO <3

(sorry if i accidentally start callin u xiao pfp i couldnt find a name to call u by)

Ok but like?? Was anybody gonna tell you???

Or like r u so incomprehensible now bc youve mashed all their lingos together that they dont even recognize any of their languages anymore 😭😭???

Yall ever heard that meme sound that has like music playing in the background and its just a loop of a guy saying "..HuH?..HuH?...HuH?"

^^^Everyone else trying to understand you

..

...

.....?

WAIT A MINUTE ?!%

OH GOD OH NO PLEASEEDA@!?

I HAD THE WORST THOUGHTTT!!!!

DO U JUST SOUND LIKE A SIM TO THEM??!!!

😰😰😰😰🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲💀💀💀

CRYINGSOBBING

I CANNOT ESCAPE THIS INTRUSIVE THOUGHT PLEASE NOOOOO JDIOOALLFJSLAFQ

IM ACTUALLY LAUGHING ANDBCRINGING PLEASE -> GOD WALKS AROUND SOUNDING LIKE A SIM TO THE REST OF TEYVAT STOP

♧

Ok but so many people r trying so hard to teach u their language more fully so u can commit to one at least

(Off the top of head, Thoma, Tighnari but if u keep mixing them more and more even on accident he gets too frustrated and accepts it lmao, Amber, Ningguang she wants ur first teyvat lang. to be Liyuean so bad, Kazuha just wants to genuinely understand u and you understand them aw what a sweetheart, Ei once again a person who wants u to learn Inazuman first lol, Zhongli, Jean, Ganyu, Alhaitham but he'd be a terrible teacher i can see it now, Ayato, Ayaka, Gorou, Yae Miko just so u can actually read her novels abt you + have bragging right lol)

..

...Its not really working

Which makes sense tbh, at least to me, bc i sure as fuck couldnt initially hear a big difference between Portugese v. Spanish, Korean v. Japanese etc.

Until i like, kept hearing it over and over and finally got it

(it was easier to differentiate between them on paper than auditorily?? auditorally?!? aUDITORIALLY??!! GODAMMIT IS THAT EVEN A WORD)

.

But I could totally see their languages just all sounding really similar to you, or like, theres some bits and pieces from each lang. that mimic others (pantalones Spanish = pants English for example, and its like all u catch are the "pant" sound so ur like?? Ok so same language right? Hence the mix and match)

♤

So this happens on the daily these days,

U r still going and seeing people,

But nobody has managed to communicate to you that its all different languages lol 🤭

Like this below, happens all the time ⬇️

.

Ur having dinner w/ Kamisato clan bc ofc they wanna welcome u!! :D

And Thoma's there, and yall r at the Teahouse, Thoma just got out the hotpot (oh god🤢 ...wait is that you now, r u just like Venti saying oh Barbatos...?)

And they just started dinner but its already a problem w/ur ass LMAO

.

Thoma: "What do you want to drink Our God?"

You: "Ahfs kal aldsplease give me ahdhai?"

Thomas face just like "...😶🙁 oh no" HAHA

Ayaka trying to help him,

"Please repeat that Your Grace?" 😅

You, again lol: "I would dhkaied that aifjwe please :)"

U sound like a SIMMM TO THEMM 😭😭

.

Utter fail poor Ayaka is at a loss for once,

they're trying so hard to be polite and you havent even gotten a drink yet let alone the meal lmao,

Poor Thoma is struggling, hes just like,

"Um, uh, this one??" All worried bc now hes gotta point to the pitchers one by one until u either point or nod

AND THE REST OF THE DINNER IS JUST THAT SITUATION OVER AND OVER

U give up and just start nodding or pointing for food or napkins or drinks all like, "Oh wow my accent must be heavy today 😀🤷‍♂️"

Absolutely clueless, and they cant even figure out how to tell u lol

...

Oh god i dont wanna think about the chaos if ur also only understanding the basics of every language so not only do they not get all ur words, u dont get theirs 💀

Reminder :D = I have a ✨️poll for 100 follower celebration!✨️Yall get to choose what u wanna see me write about,✨️ Check it out!! :) ♡✨️

Cheers,

🌒🌧🌊Aquarius♒️🌌🌘

♡the beloveds:

@karmawonders

(Feel free to tell me if u ever dont wanna be tagged anymore i wont be mad/offended :] !! )

[canaryatlaw]

okay I'm tired, who would've guessed. I felt pretty shitty for most of the day, but tonight was good at least. Woke up at 7 and went into the office, low key day since we only had a few staff members around. I wasn't on clinic, so I was mainly running around doing different things, and running around for my hearing that was (supposed to be) this afternoon. I logged on for 11 am court only to be told it was supposed to be up at 9 and since we weren't there the case had been dismissed, so I pulled out the fastest emergency motion to reinstate in history and had the case back in place 45 minutes later (not bad, if I do say so myself). things were kinda messy with the hearing prep, but I wasn't too concerned because we had a super strong case. I ended up having to meet my client and her son outside the courthouse and wait in the outer hallway with them outside security because the sheriffs were being dicks (and apparently it's my fucking job to do everything around here, even when I've been explicitly told in the past that it's not my responsibility. okay great, whatever. we had to wait until like 2:20 for the "judge to be on the bench" until we could go in which was dumb AF but whatever, we finally get up there only to discover nobody ordered an interpreter for the hearing (which is 100% not at all my job), so we couldn't go forward with the hearing, because both parties spoke pretty much entirely Swahili (I was only able to explain to my client what was happening since her son was there with her). So we ended up having to reschedule, and of course the next date available wasn't until the end of September. It's not a huge deal on our end of things because her OP will be extended until then, but it's still super frustrating to have something so stupid like that happen just out of sheer incompetence and having the case delayed as a result. I then had the "fun" experience of using our client's caseworker to translate for me to explain to the Respondent what was happening, which was deeply uncomfortable on many levels, many of which being that I have video evidence of this man being very violent. there was one point when we were waiting in the hallway where he was heading towards the hall towards up and I was 100% ready to jump up and get between him and my client if needed, like I wouldn't even think twice about it, I don't care if I get punched in the process, you are NOT hurting my client on my watch. luckily (for him, mostly) he turned and sat down at a further bench and didn't start anything, so that was good at least, because I was so ready to take him down. sigh. so the whole thing ended up being a huge trainwreck, and I basically just returned to the office after that, and that was that. sigh. I did at least get one more video for evidence I can use out of it, so that was good. the rest of the day wasn't particularly exciting, not much I could actually work on. Left a bit after 5, and headed to the starbucks to chill for a bit. we were doing a small group social night at the condo complex of one of our members that had a pool and shit, so I ended up taking a bus to the nearest train station to her house (I was originally going to take the train there ofc but I realized the bus was a lot more direct and easier so I just did that) and met up with guy who's been giving me rides there. we made a short trip into the 7-11 that was right there to see if they had some drinks to bring (like sparkling water in a 6 pack) but they didn't, so we ended up making a quick grocery store run before heading over. the community was REALLY nice, it was still considered downtown area but in a more residential area than the business district, so that was good. we sat and ate in a little courtyard area for a bit, and then headed up to the pool which was on the 5th floor of the building. the pool had the most gorgeous overlook of the city, just buildings everywhere, and god seeing it just made me feel so happy honestly lol like damn, I really want to live here (though that's obviously not feasible at the moment for several reasons).

a few of us ended up fully in the pool, but most of us just kinda put our feet and legs in. it was a nice temperature, not too hot or cold. so we did that for a while, which was really nice. we headed out around 10, since that was when the pool closed. guy drove me home, I pretty much immediately just showered and started getting ready for bed since it was late, and now I'm here. Of course it's 1 am at this point and I have to get up and go to the office again in the morning, so I'll definitely be signing off now. Goodnight friends. Hope you had a nice return to work Tuesday.

[bougiebutchbitch]

any chance you can share those sweeter obikaka kink headcanons you mentioned? No pressure ofc

you betcha, sweet nonnie! sorry this took so long to answer, I’m busy with camp jgfjhf

n/s/f/w under cut, minors dni x

Okay so!!! I love Obikaka because they could have such a fun flippy dynamic.

Like, obviously bottom!Kakashi is my bread and butter, but I do genuinely see them as having such dom/sub Switch potential!

So I imagine they keep it fresh and are always up for trying new things. They're both total freaks and not afraid to experiment, so things stay exciting!

Kakashi has a whole-ass sex dungeon in the basement of the official hokage residence and literally nobody is surprised. Shikamaru drew the line at him putting a sex swing in his office instead of his chair though lmao

#

Sometimes Kakashi puts on his Cold Commander act, and Obito acts like the bratty subordinate! It's a similar dynamic to when they were kids, but without nearly as much blood and death, and with a lot more 'fun' punishments lmao.

I imagine Kakashi would probably enjoy distance-domming in that sort of scenario? Like, taking control of this super-strong, giant Juubi-guy with just his words, not touching him at all except when Obito's 'good'... Sitting at his desk in full uniform, doing his hokage paperwork while telling a naked grumbling Obito how to touch himself on the floor of his office... >:3c

Obito puts on this big show of grumbling and acting like he's angry at not having Kakashi's full attention, but they both know he'd just walk away if he wasn't into it...

#

In contrast, Kakashi has a big ol' masochist streak. When he's in Sub Mode, he really wants to get hurt and trash-talked... but after, uh, everything, Obito's kinda reluctant to fulfil that domming role.

At the same time, he really gets off on being trusted like that. He loves that fun power imbalance - loves knowing he could tear Kakashi apart, but Kakashi is still letting him play with him like this, letting Obito fuck him and break him down and hurt him and loving every moment...

Anyway, they both dance around the subject for aaaaaaages, because they suck at communication. Whenever Kakashi tries to encourage Obito to be a bit rougher and meaner, Obito freaks out - but graaaaadually, over time, they both start easing into harder play.

Kakashi's big obvious NOPE button is any trash-talking that involves actually calling him trash or scum, and any mention of their past - which is fine by Obito, because he really doesn't want to go there in this context either!

But he loves sneering at Kakashi and talking down to him and calling him filthy and pathetic. Loves messing up his Hokage uniform, flipping up his robes and fucking him rough over his desk right before a Kage summit, then sending him in to talk to his peers with shaky legs and Obito's cum snaking down his thighs... AHEM.

#

MORE RANDOM FUN!!!

Like, 40% of the time, Obito cries after domming Kakashi and needs to be held and have his hair stroked while Kakashi tells him he did a very good job :3c

Sometimes while Kakashi's still tied to a spreader bar and bleeding lmao :3ccc

(Obito just strikes me as the King of topdrop, and I love the idea of Kakashi preferring to sub during scenes, but also loving to provide aftercare... give me all the unconventional dynamics!)

#

Kakashi absolutely tries to push things too far and get Obito to really hurt him, at least once.

But after Obito shuts that shit down and tells him firmly that he is not here to be Kakashi's way of punishing himself (and is clearly pretty fucking distraught about being put in that position) Kakashi learns to control his need for self-punishment.

Now, on bad days where he wants to Suffer, he goes to Obito and explains, and they go train hard together or something and then Obito cuddles him.

And vice versa too! I get the sense that Obito doesn't go quite as self-destructive with his guilt - he gets ANGRY and BROODY and GRUMPY. On those days, Kakashi knows to give him space to work through his own shit, but when he crawls into bed beside him at night Obito always starts really far away from him, on the far side of the mattress - but graaaaaaaaaaaadually migrates until Kakashi can snuggle up to him and rest his head on them Beefy Tits and just gently hold him.

And sometimes they have really soft sweet sex on those nights, no words passing between them, just moving against each other in the darkness, letting each other know they're still here...

GAH I love them

[ballorawan740]

SCP Scenarios: SCP 173 (The Sculpture) x Reader | NEW CHARACTER

SCP Scenarios Masterlist | My Works Masterlist | Main Masterlist | Rules | My Original Post | Request | Socials

(Don't ask about that GIF)

I did change 173 slightly in a way that he can move his limbs and communicate verbally, so Peanut here would be a tiny bit OC

First Encounter

You both met in 173's cell

For some reason, when you blinked, 173 just stood in front of you

Like, this peanut didn't kill you or anything

It was more as if he was interested in you

He somehow found the ability to talk

Even patted your head to your surprise

This also supposed the whole of the facility since they've only observed 173 spanning everyone's neck and teleporting

And they've never seen him move his arms since he's a literal peanut statue that secretes poop (and blood I guess)

Your feelings for him

You began to realise you fell for him after someone had mentioned how often you visited the statue

Definitely would try to hide it, to begin with (Cuz it's odd that y'all be falling for a peanut statue)

But later on, you decide to drop hints about it to your crush, Peanut

He looked as if he was clueless

But he definitely has gotten the hint way before you even realised your feelings for him

Because you make him feel butterflies

If anyone tries to flirt with the statue, you would become furious (Cuz you paid for this statue)

Most likely would tease you at times

His Confession

Probably would plan it out

Which didn't work at all

So 173 would just do it out of the blue

To which you agreed of course (Cuz y'all need some Jesus! At least you weren't like Clef when he- nvm)

Definitely surprised the foundation as well since nobody has ever fallen for this statue before (Aside from Clef)

Some would give you both odd looks while others were more curious about your relationship

Probably would conduct tests between the both of you

Only because they want to see if 173's behaviour would change

Like if someone blinked while standing behind you

Date

Since the foundation doesn't let 173 out of his cell, most of your dates would be in there

173 would be similar to 035 since he's pretty chill and laidback

You both would be laying on the floor and looking up at the ceiling

Probably talking about a lot of BS

Probably would tell you his favourite method of killing (which totally isn't snapping necks)

You both would tell each other about your day and peanut would joke around a lot

Is rather sassy as well so if anyone judges, you can always count on 173 to save you

Most likely by snapping their necks

Or sassing them out to the point of no return

When he gets jealous

It's rare to see 173 jealous since he's quite laid back and doesn't really mind who you're with

If 173 does get jealous he would most likely snap their neck

Or just teleport behind you and just stare at whoever is hitting on you

Or he would bend down to their height (if they're short ofc) which does are them off quite a bit

Would definitely drag you back into his cell to which surprised the researchers

Because they found out that the cameras were working and they heard screaming coming near/from his cell

Peanut can be slightly possessive of you

Especially when he knows somebody is hitting on you on purpose regardless of whether they knew you were taken or not

Most likely would ask you who you are hanging out with and for how long

When there's a containment breach

There's a 50% chance that he caused the breach

Whether he did it or not he would look for you

As he's looking for you he would snap some necks

Even gave 682 a heart attack

More than once actually but we don't talk about that here (cuz that hurts 682's heart)

Could care less about every other SCPs/workers

If you were hurt peanut would hunt down whoever did it to you

Probably would stroll down the facility instead of teleporting

To which you giggled

The look on the researchers' faces when they saw 173 frolic across the hallway and back into his cell was priceless

You were even there to witness it and everyone looked at you like they've just seen a ghost

Yandere!173

Would lock you up in his cell

Probably would tie you up as well

Definitely would torment you by teleporting in front and away from you

Sometimes would blindfold you

Not even the researchers could get you out

They've even asked 131 for some help and it didn't work as effectively as they thought for whatever reason

If you somehow managed to escape your freedom wouldn't last long

173 would manipulate you to the point that you felt that there weren't any way out for you

So in the end, you just stayed in his cell (probably regretting life choices while you're at it)

At least he's nice enough to let you eat proper food served in the foundation (had to make that clear in case y'all didn't get the hint and thought he gave you smth else to eat)

His younger sister

You're both alike and very close indeed

The foundation was shocked at how alike you both were

And you both were inseparable

So every time there's a breach and they see either of you, they know the other is just around the corner

You both would be sassy, sarcastic and funny

The foundation would be entertained by your remarks

Although you may or may not snap necks like peanut, you do display some form of curiosity towards the foundation staff and the SCPs

Like that one time when there was a containment breach and you leaned in rather close to this rookie and he just screamed as he laid on the floor

He did get quite a lecture afterwards but you decided to just tease him whenever you both meet

When his kid says their name for the first time

Would be joyful af

Nobody would hear the end of it

Like imagine the last words you hear is 173 telling you how his kid spoke their name

Like it took them so long to just get the pronunciation right

Tries to get them to swear late on though

Much to your dismay

173 is a cool and laid back type of dad so you wouldn't have to worry too much when you're away

Unless it's about being a good influence then you should (Not that it matters anyway...)

Probably would teleport to whoever/whatever just tp tell them about it

Even bothered 682 to the point that the lizard begged the foundation researchers to remove either of them

When his S/O is angry

Would run/teleport 10000000000000000000 miles away

Especially if you're mad at him

Probably because he broke your favourite cup and didn't tell you about it because he know that your best friend gave it to you as a gift (Don't say y'all don't have friends)

Would try to calm you down after a while though

Which didn't work too well because you still wanted to rip his head off

If it was somebody else who made you mad he would probably be entertained

Unless it affects himself of course

Probably would try to hold you back and get you to calm down

In which you wanted to rip off his head as well which ended so well for peanut

If 173 cant run anywhere he would just hide in the corner and cry

Probably would as the researchers for some help as well

They don't because they don't want to die either

When someone tries to steal you away

When peanut finds out he would hunt down whoever tried to steal you without hesitation

Would snap his neck and everyone else who were involved or knows about it

Takes you back to his cell

Checks if you were hurt even though you were looking at the kidnapper's @ss

Would try to stay by your side at all times even though he knows he can't

Stares at the researchers every time they talk to you

If it was a D-class they would die in an instant

Has a burning hatred for certain kinds of people

When his Pregnant!S/O gets hurt by accident

Cries without a doubt

Would bandage you up without a doubt

Would cheer you up by doing weird dances and impressions

Most likely would tell you off as well but your puppy eyes get to him

So he would just take that back and just baby you

Would kneel down to talk to the unborn child about your bad behaviour

You swore you felt it kick

173 would get all excited and more protective than usual

Wouldn't let anyone near you unless you were going into labourr

Meeting a Fem!Dragon!Hybrid!Reader

Would be quite curious about you

Finds you rather cute because you're so pure, kind and small

Wants to adopt you without a doubt

The researchers would have mixed feelings about you being in the same cell as 173

Peanut was lowkey terrified when you breathed fire

Was somewhat ok with you crying lava and levitating objects for a bit

Somehow managed to get 343 and/or Scarlet King to help you improve your telekinesis

Definitely would play hide and seek with you and some others

They don't get a say otherwise peanut would snap their necks

When he accidentally kills you

It was when some guy unintentionally pushed you which angered 173

Like he teleported to him and his friends

You tried to explain but 173 didn't listen so he proceeds to snap everyone's necks

Trying your best to defend the poor guy, you stepped in front of them which lead to 173 snapping your neck as well

The guy was shocked but managed to run before anything happened

Word got around that 173 had snapped your neck and was now permanently depressed

Like, he stopped snapping everyone's neck for quite sometime

Felt so guilty that he went to 049 to see if he can fix you

But he wasn't able to so he went to SK and God

They were transported to another facility so they weren't able to do much for this statue

Yandere!173 x Evil!Reader

Not as dense as some of the other SCPs but 173 wouldn't have guessed that you worked for another GOI other than the foundation

Since you used your knowledge of 173 to your advantage, 173 would find out rather late

173 found out who you were working with since the late arrival of the Black Queen came by to collect you

173 would try and kidnap you back into his cell at the Foundation but failed miserably

Would try and warn the foundation but they couldn't get you back either

Since you were with the Black Queen, 173 was plotting to get you back without any distraction

The foundation realised how dangerous 173 has become and isolated him far from the other SCPs

At times, the foundation would use your name in order to get 173 to work with them which worked 50% of the times

Trying McDonald's Sprite

Would be confused about this 'Sprite' from McDonald's since he doesn't eat or drink anyways

173 would be rather curious about this beverage and does give it a try

Finds it tasty and you soon realise he has officially become a sweet tooth

Was probably a mistake but if you ever needed to bribe 173, get him some Sprite that's specifically from McDonald's

Like that one time you bought him Sprite from Tesco's, he said it tasted more disgusting and refused to finish the drink

You should probably give him some apple pies, pancakes and some other sweet stuff from McDonald's

Sometimes the foundation would even give him some Sprite whenever the cleaners are cleaning his cell

Would find it amusing that the only way to get him to stop snapping necks are Sprite

When his kids swear

Would 100% be ok with it

173 probably is the one who taught his child to swear

Probably would let them drink alcohol at a young age as well

Maybe around their teenage years, but would let them try a sip if they're under 10

Wouldn't even be mad if his kid swears accidentally

Peanut would most likely encourage it

Doesn't mind if his kid swears at others, but the others would probably complain

When Child!Reader scares him

Wouldn't be hard to scare 173 tbh because you're so small

You'd be running around and giggling while doing whatever

Until there's some silence

173 would probably brush it off at first until he didn't hear a sound for 20 minutes

Does check around his cell to make sure you're still there

Panics because he can't see you

Until he turns around and had a full-on heart attack because you jumped on him

The researchers definitely hear a screech coming from his cell

They all started laughing once they found out

When the reader pole dances/aerial silk dances

Very similar to 035

Would be in awe of you dancing for him

If you were pole dancing he would probably watch you with those eyes~

Most likely end up in you both performing in another activity

If you were aerial silk dancing, 173 would probably be amazed

Would try and dance with you but fails terribly

Because he keeps dropping like dead flies

Most likely broke his back

Sometimes the researchers wonder how it's even possible for 173 to break his "bones"

Having a Pregnant!S/O

Would crack a lot of dad jokes here and there

Follows wherever you go

Rubs your belly whenever he can

Definitely would make a full conversation with the unborn child

Sometimes would read stories that do make you feel sleepy

Does whatever you tell him to do

Cracks some necks if he can't give you what you need

Would cry whenever you have your mood swings

During labour, you grabbed his arm so hard that it almost broke him

When you try to commit suicide

Would teleport to your side at an instant

Wouldn't let you out of his sight ever again

173 would try to cheer you up which may or may not work

Definitely would kill whoever made you feel this way if any

Make you stay in his cell for a while

Maybe even permanently

Wouldnt let anyone touch you

If you had any scars 173 would cry

Peanut would try his best to stop you from feeling that way

Having a Hopelessly Romantic/Easily flustered GN!Reader

Would definitely tease you

173 would find it adorable that you fluster easily and is hopelessly romantic

I'd say he's pretty hopelessly romantic to a certain degree

Will kill if anyone teases you

Because your adorable flushed look is only reserved for him

Although he would tell all the other SCPs about you

049 and 035 get it the hardest but 035 is completely fine with it

049 would rather just stay in his cell than to hear 173 talk about you for 200 hours

Probably knows more about you than peanut himself

173 would boop your snoot whenever you have that cute look

When you're about to be executed - Yandere!173 x D-Class!Reader

173 would snap everyone's neck and kidnap you back to his cell

If anyone ever mentions your name, 173 would instantly snap their necks

And if they ever tried to find you, he would know and would hide you somewhere else

If you ever tried to flee, 173 would teleport to your side and bribe you to stay 'home'

By bribe, I mean he would force you to return by teleporting the both of you

If anyone sees the both of you, 173 would stalk them to no end

Would torture them if they were to tell the foundation about this

Not even the other SCPs could help

When you curl up in their lap

Would find you the cutest thing on Earth

Aside from 999 of course

If he's exhausted from doing nothing, he would probably just rub your head/back

Definitely would tickle you whenever he can

Finds it comforting when you do curl up in his lap

Thinks that you're so cute to the point that he would kill for you

When you kiss his neck

10000000000000% loves it

Would definitely be vocal because he has no shame

Most likely would ask you to do it again

Even if you were in the middle of talking to someone and they hear him

If you were in the mood, you could tease him with neck kisses for hours on end

Probably would ask you to move on to the next activity but you know he loves being teased

Then after that go back to cuddling

173 would scream but the last time that happened the whole foundation went deaf and you gave him the cold shoulder for a while

Definitely cried about that so he tries to restrain himself

But you feel bad so you just carried on

[stray-inu-writes]

so here i am! 😌 can i ask for headcanons on jujutsu kaisen again, please? like ... Inumaki (ofc) and Megumi reacting to their sad s / o? 👉👈 thank u! <3

My favorite jjk boys ! Also, as I was feeling kinda down these last days, it’s a bit self-indulgent, but eh, who wouldn’t want to be comforted by Inumaki and Megumi ?

Inumaki

He’s very perceptive so he would immediately know that something’s wrong even if you try to hide it. I can easily picture him sitting beside you and putting his arm around your neck with a concerned look on his face. He knows he can’t say much but still wants to make you feel better, no matter what happened.

“Leaf mustard ?” (“are you okay ?”)

Takes your hand while you tell him the reason of your sadness, and patiently listens to what you have to say. It might be something silly, or something much worse, but either way he’s a good listener. Inumaki obviously isn’t the type to interrupt you while you vent. He just nods, but inside his head the gears are turning. It all depends on why you’re sad, really. If someone hurt you, that person is probably going to get a rather unpleasant visit in the next few days. Not that Inumaki would hurt them, but he can turn scary enough without resorting to any kind of violence.

If you’re crying, he will try to get you out of the public eye. He doesn’t want the others to see you like this, he knows you don’t like to be exposed when you’re at your weakest so he takes you to a quiet place where nobody can disturb you. Gently, he wipes your tears and takes you in his arms.

His eyes tell everything he can’t say. He tries to communicate everything he thinks about you with a tender gaze where you can read all his love for you. It’s simple, but often it’s enough to cheer you up a little bit. Even though you could lose yourself in these amethyst eyes everyday, how they shine with compassion and affection, how you feel you’re one of the most important persons in Inumaki’s life, is intensified when he does it on purpose.

Also, would 100% bring you your comfort food.

 Barely holding back tears, you were shaking without even noticing it. Anybody who could see you at this moment could guess you were struggling to keep your composure, but no one dared to ask what was wrong. Apart from, of course, him. Silently, Inumaki sat by your side, his mouth covered as usual by his uniform, but you could guess by his eyes he was trying to determine what was wrong. Without thinking, you buried your face in his shoulder and quickly felt his hand gripping yours.

“Leaf mustard ?” he asked softly.

You didn’t answer anything. If you opened your mouth, you might burst into tears and well… You’d rather not, not in public anyway. Hah. That was funny… You were both almost reduced to silence, now. As if he was encouraging you to fight this feeling of emptiness that had taken over you a few minutes ago and that you couldn’t drive away, he squeezed your hand again. Head against his chest and eyes closed, you did your best to match his regular breathing.

Slowly, very slowly, your own breathing became less erratic thanks to Inumaki’s presence. He always had this talent of making you relax in his arms… When you finally looked up, you caught his tender gaze on you and your heart instantly warmed up. For a few seconds the both of you just stayed like this, looking at each other.

“Tuna tuna.”

As he lightly kissed your forehead, you smiled. Yeah. Everything was going to be alright.

Megumi Fushiguro

Pretty clueless at first, he might not even notice or confuse your sadness with fatigue. Plus, if you were really in a bad place, you would tell him, right ? So everything must be alright. But then he starts to realize you really aren’t acting like yourself anymore, and that he should ask what’s going on.

When he does notice, he doesn’t know what to do. This boy isn’t good at human relationships, so his first reflex would be to refer to the books he read, which probably isn’t a good idea. When he takes you aside to check on you, he’s pretty awkward, while still very worried. He asks you what he can do, but has trouble taking any initiatives.

Megumi isn’t much of a hugger (at least that’s what he tells himself) but he doesn’t hesitate if you ask for one. He would softly pat your head if you’re shorter than him, and if you’re taller, your back. He would try to comfort you by explaining why he loves you in detail. That would be one of the rare occasions on which he could also talk about himself, for you to find an echo in him.

Very protective of you, though. If someone is rude to you when you’re sad, he can and will shut them up with more or less reverence.

[drabbles-of-writing]

Beastars AU

Luz going feral hcs?

Or just beastar AU hcs in general?

Luz wouldn't really go feral per say. Yes she's a omnivore technically speaking but mostly eats fruit and plants and only rarely has a bug or a fish to be healthy, she doesn't enjoy the taste all that much. so she wouldn't really go feral, doesn't get very agitated at the smell of meat but isn't revolted by it like most other herbivores, pretty much just neutral to it.

as for headcanons;

Hunter and Amity are both quite protective of Luz and it took them a little bit before they realized they were technically on the same side. Amity goes out of her way to try and be as non-threatening as possible and break away from how her parents raised her and the twins and just. be a non-threatening carnivore bc she still worries about freaking out Luz or her new friends and only going feral when a predator messes with them. Hunter? Hunter don't give a shit. he was never once taught in a way to look meeker or sweeter to herbivores and thus just. acts like a dude who was pretty messed up and also doesn't quite realize or care that hes generally very threatening. he has no problem growling and baring teeth at minor annoyances because thats just how a wolf is, they use body language to communicate and theres a big difference between his "god your so annoying please shut up" growl and his "okay time to rip someones THROAT OUT" growl. Luz is desensitized to it at this point and has zero fear at Hunter's barking, growling, howling, and otherwise flashing claws and teeth. so. Hunter and Amity don't exactly get along too well with Amity seeing Hunter as a carelessly dangerous delinquent who could seriously accidentally hurt someone and Hunter seeing Amity as an overly cautious pushover who believes Luz couldn't handle herself in any rocky situation. this is cat on dog violence over here.

pretty much every carnivore Luz has met has tried to eat her at least once. it doesn't bother her too much anymore because Thats Just Life I Guess and I use "almost eat" in a wide spectrum which ranges from 'eda went feral and literally almost ate her whole and it was kinda traumatic' to 'boscha contemplated eating her for a few minutes while they were talking but amity was hovering ominously in the background so nothing happened.' Hunter had a moment when he was half-starved and dealing with his care for Luz, mixed with his protectiveness, and fierce nature, all combining after he was having a Very Not Good Time and while clinging to her protectively was This Close to eating her and he has no idea if Luz knew or not and it very much haunts him, could go on a lot about that. Amity also almost did it for a few seconds when she and Luz were chilling and Luz was being very careless and thought the trick of sticking ones head in a lions mouth was cool as hell and just Did That (with permission) and Amity had an thought in that moment of "i could just close my mouth right now" which didnt help with the fact its a Thing in beastars that some carnivores literally cannot tell the difference between wanting to kill or love a herbivore. Amity ended the thought in like 7 seconds but she still feels very weird that she even Thought about it and every time a similar intrusive thought appears she wallows in misery for like an hour

it took Eda a good few moments before she remembered why Luz having a crush on a giant predator would be a problem since shes, you know, mainly a prey species and could be crushed like a grape. Luz at first thought this was just because Eda was careless and forgot normal things sometimes but then, of course, she met Raine. the fruit bat who had known Eda since they were kids and neither of them saw a problem that Eda is a near complete carnivore hybrid and Raine being pure herbivore. nobody ever really gave them side-eyes about it since most of them were always focused on Eda being a hybrid, and bats are most often associated with bug-eaters or blood suckers. so ofc Eda knows how dangerous she can be to herbivores but hearing little ol' Luz having a crush on a predator? eh, same situation, different perspectives to her, really.

speaking of Raine! love them, got some stuff to say. since they're a bat, they would definitely have a good ear for things like music and the like, so it wouldn't be too uncommon to see a bat in a music career, though very unlikely something loud like drums or trumpets since that would usually be too much for their sensitive ears. but heres the fun part: nearly all fruit bats don't use echolocation! they have no need for it and physically cannot produce the sounds needed for it. except for the egyptian fruit bat. those guys actually use echolocation to communicate with others rather than catch prey. so surprise! Raine is an egyptian fruit bat, which can be kind of lonely when only your own specific sub species understands what you're saying in your own specialized language, some regions of egyptian fruit bats even have their own dialects! Raine, of course, taught all of what they knew to Eda. Eda can't exactly replicate it all that well, but it still gave the two their own 'secret' language when they were kids, and you bet neither of them ever really forgot it.

[haikyuuublog]

Thank you @float-me-now -me-now for the tag! It made my day

1. Why did you choose your url?

I wasn’t really sure what to name my blog, so I just decided to do something pretty self-explanatory!

2. any side blogs?

Nope, this is my only one.

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

I have seen textposts and such before, but I have only been an active user and poster for about a month and a half

4. do you have a queue tag?

No

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

I had a lot of content I had made around Haikyuu which I wanted to share, but nobody I am close to is into the show. I wanted to be able to share my jokes and memes with other people who would get the references, and I also wanted to make people smile and laugh. I also was looking for an online community to be part of, especially with the isolation that came with the pandemic. I really love my blog and my mutuals and I am so happy I started it.

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

Bokuto is my 2nd favorite character and that picture of him gives me so much serotonin.

7. why did you choose your header?

Oikawa is my favorite character, and I also love Iwaizumi. Oikawa is an incredibly relatable character to me (and my top kin) and that moment of him and Iwa always makes me emotional. Regardless of whether it is a romantic or platonic bond between the two of them, their relationship is one of my favorite aspects of the show.

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

My post with the most notes is my one about Bokuto confessing to Akaashi and him saying “neat.” And then talking to Kenma about how embarrassed he is about his response, and Kenma saying he responded to Kuroo’s confession by thanking him. It’s two of my favorite ships and four of my favorite characters :)

9. how many mutuals do you have?

I have no idea. I’m not sure how to see that.

10. how many followers do you have?

Currently 571

11. how many people do you follow?

720 blogs

12. have you ever made a shit post?

No, I don’t think saying things that are purposefully offensive or controversial just to attention grab is funny or cool.

13. how often do you use tumblr a day?

3 to 4 times a day I believe. I try to post several times a day.

14. did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog?

Nope. I try to avoid content that would make me angry or upset.

15. how do you feel about the ‘you need to reblog’ posts?

I actually haven’t seen those before, so am not sure.

16. do you like tag games?

Yes :)

17. do you like ask games?

Yes as well :)

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

Idk I don’t really check others’ accounts to see who is famous.

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

No, I do not. I do have some mutuals I talk to or who are super supportive of my posts which makes me really happy. Ofc I can’t shout out everybody but here are some tags for all you amazing guys:

@nananananananananananan

@just-that-bi-girl

@moe-cowfrog

@aliens-took-my-iwa-chan

@silently-weebs-in-corner

@yanikita-chann

@togasbitchsposts

@soulswavelength

@taeyamayang

@bennyhawk02

@my-rosesakura

@eva-tired621

@thatguysaho

@fansxdom

@schizophrenicstoryteller

@valleyofdeaddandelions7

@kirinjaegeste

@sun-setter

@baku-go-off

@heavyrain709

@buthowaminotdeadyet

@justfortalkingtofriends

@thelastfunctioningbraincell

@sharkboy-lavagurl-lovechild

@soulreaper22345

@roseyariana

Also I could literally tag basically all my moots here because you guys are so wonderful. If you were not tagged, just wanna say, it’s because if I continued writing this, this post would be way too long. I have a ton more of you guys who I could tag. Tysm to all of you <3

[deepdonutkid]

Can I ask for multiple character break downs?👀

Well if I can, then would you please do one for Ada and one for Tommy and one for John

But if only one has to be done, then you can choose any one of these.

Thanks! <3

Thanks for the ask! 💞

Ada Thorne nee Shelby

How I feel about this character

Just love for her! She is adorable, strong, fierce, absolutely amazing! Ada and Polly are the best developed female character on the show. Mainly, because Tommy can’t fuck them, so they can’t be reduced to his love interest, which is such a good thing, because I love strong women. Makes me weak in my knees.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Freddie Thorne, Ben Younger, Jessie Eden, because Ada is bi, she just gives off that vibe, u know.

Somehow I prefer to read stuff with a female reader for her, more than a male reader for her. Because it’s either Freddie x Ada for me or Ada x female reader.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Lizzie, Polly, Ada and Linda are an amazing combination! She and Tommy have an interesting dynamic as well! I would have loved to see more John and Ada interactions, because they have not such a big age gap inbetween, so I think they are close. Especially after Ada got her child and John got married with Esme. Oh, Ada and Esme would have sooo much fun together. Esme would be like the sister Ada never had.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I think her character changed a lot between season 1 and 2, because of Freddie’s death and also after she joined the business again. Sometimes when I make memes or the alignment charts, I have two icons for her, one from first season and one from third season, because I think she is one of the characters who changed the most through the series. First season Ada would do a lot of things different and more naive than third season Ada. Mainly, because she still believed in communism in season 1 and she somehow lost her faith after losing Freddie. Which is super understandable tho.

She acutally becomes wiser with age... unlike her brothers, who just do the same shit over and over again.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wished Ben hadn’t died, because they kill her lovers even fast than Tommys. WTF, right?

On the other hand I wished Ada talked some sense into Jessie, to NOT SLEEP WITH TOMMY THE WHORE SHELBY! Because Ada knows her brother very well and I think she genuinely liked Jessie, or she liked her enough to save her from the pain of being Tommy’s toy or pleasure doll.

And I’m still bitter about the way they killed of Freddie... but more about that later...

Tommy Shelby

How I feel about this character

Relationship status: It’s complicated!

Yes, well, I ramble about Tommy’s shit a lot. I know! He is still an intersting character and it’s so tempting to think about his actions in certain situations, but if I would meet him as a person- I would hate him from the bottom of my heart! <3

He is such an asshole all the time and when I first watched the show, I forgave him a lot he did to his siblings, because I was caught up with his good looks and the presentation of him being the good guy who does bad things to survive. But I spend some time to think about his actions and I noticed, he is an awful human being... to Polly, to his siblings, to his lover and actually to everyone. He might think he does all those mean things to archive a bigger goal, but he is just a gambling addict who can’t stop taking risks he isn’t even prepared for.

Shitty things Tommy has done over time:

Forcing his brother to marry somebody, John didn’t even know at that time, to end a feud, Tommy had started himself and only when it was in his favour to end it, he used John as pawn, so he could archive his plan. HOW FUCKED UP WAS THAT? Nobody seems to talk about this. It was fucking awful! And the way he did it was horrible to! Tommy said nothing to John until the very last moment, when they were already surrounded by enemies, so John couldn’t said no. It also shows, that Tommy thinks he is above his siblings. Tommy thought John wasn’t capable of chosing a wife for himself, so Tommy did that for him too. Even when John didn’t ask for this at all!

Destroying Ada’s relationship with Freddie and chasing his best friend out of town, just because... TOMMY WAS AGAINGST HIS SISTER HAVING A RELATIONSHIP. and yet he proclaimes to listen to woman and to give them a fair change. Maybe just not for our dear Ada!

Destroying Arthur’s marriage, because he kept dragging Arthur into shit, he wasn’t mentally stable enough for. Putting thoughts of rejecting Linda into Arthur’s head, by talking bad about Linda and making jokes about her any given time.

Sleeping with Lizzie over and over again, even when he knew she loved him and when she tried to get over him by dating someone new, he made the order to burn down the pub of Angel, humilated his family, and have him killed later.

Sleeping with Jessie, so he could use her

Humiliate Polly, when she was at her lowest, after Rueben had left her

Drag Michael into the illegal business after Polly begged him not to

Dragging Finn into all this shit after John died, because John wasn’t avaiable anymore

Calling Grace a whore, when they first met

Paying Lizzie in his head, even after she stopped being a sex worker

Helping a fascist

I could go on for a while, but you see my point here!

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Nobody! I want to see him miserable and alone! Honestly I’m never going to read all these soft!Tommy fics or whatever, because they really don’t interest me. I don’t want to see him happy.

But go have fun people and write and read whatever you want!

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Tommy and Lizzie, because they have a sexual relationship, which is not based on romance and I love this sad and depressing dynamic between them. It’s so interesting to write and read about.

Tommy and Ada are great in the show. I love their talks and Ada actually points out when Tommy is acting like a douche again.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I have a lot... where should I start?

I get so annoyed, when I see Tommy shown as a twink, because the actor is just 1,70m... which is not small to me. I know a lot of men around that height and I think they are average and not small. Also a lot of men feel bad for not being tall enough, because everywhere in our society it’s normal to have a tall man and a small woman. And the way tall man or small man are sexualized in this alpha/omega thing or in a top/bottom dynamic is so... meh. It’s really uncomfortable to see how people try to push the patriarchal man-woman dynamic into same-sex relationships.

Tommy is a class traitor and a horrible husband.

Man, I could rant for hours, but I stop right here. Just remember, please don’t feel attacked, I don’t mean to attack you. Even if you write or draw... whatever with Tommy, I would never say something bad about this. Enjoy creating Tommy content, I will love to ignore it!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I was so disappointed when they killed Freddie, because those two could have had an interesting and compelling relationship. Freddie could have been a great frenemie. I put this here and on on Ada, because their marriage wouldn’t changed the plot as much as Freddies and Tommys friendship. Tommy would have been a way better person, if Freddie was around.

John Shelby

How I feel about this character

MY HUSBAND! I love him and he has never done anything wrong in his life.

Nah, John has many faults, but I still adore him as a character, because his faults are actually making the plot more interesting. I also read, that he and Tommy fight a lot, because John is more moral and has way more integrity than his older brother. It was just hinted in the show, but I love this side fact and I will base my whole characterisation this.

I love to write, draw and read stuff with him. He is my favorite character from Peaky blinders and my love will never die, even though he did.

Funny tho, when I first watched PB, I adored Tommy and was annoyed by John, but as I rewatched it I changed my mind about those two.

He had so much potential and I would spend all my money, which is not much, but the devotions counts, to see a spin-off with just John and his army of children.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Esme, because they are sooo cute together!

My OFC, because I love writing them.

Any reader, because I’m a sucker for John.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

All kinds of interactions with other characters and John are great! My favorite is John and Ada to be honest. But here are other dynamics I adore as well:

John & Polly, (she would help him a lot with the kids)

John & Arthur (they come to the garrison to drink and play cards, they talk a lot about their problems, deep bond here)

John & Tommy (in my head they are always fighting)

John & Lizzie, because they have a great friendship, and they helped each other a lot. She spend time with the kids and he gave her financial support, so she would quit her job, which she didn’t do, because she feared being all alone again, and she has trust issues) (I’m actually writing a fic about these two)

John & his kids (I’m soft for dad!John)

John & Michael (especially in season three, because John seems to be jealous of Michael)

My unpopular opinion about this character

John is not completely stupid. Well, he is certainly not smart, but he works in the betting shop, and Arthur does not, or not really, because Arthur is bad at math... John at least knows his numbers. And also Tommy chose him to be the legal bookie over the others, so John must do a good job there. He just never got a degree or something similar like Michael. Which is also a reason, why John seems to be bitter about Michael joining the business. Michael was put in a higher position than he did.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

This one is obvious... John should have survived.

[theonetheycallhannah]

The Shape of Her

My first ever one shot for all my lovely Cavillry babes! (I’ve recently edited it to make the actual title the title of the post. It’s the same fic formerly under “New One Shot for the Cavillry.”)

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC that is totally not me, the author (except that it is, and I just took out my name so nobody felt weird about it!)

Word count: 2053

Warnings: Rimming and oral (f receiving), slightly rough sex, but not like, violent, language, almost orgasm denial but like, not really, very thirsty OFC and a very hungry Henry, mentions of unemployment, panties are heavily featured…I clearly have no idea what might trigger some people, but if you have concerns, ask me. It’s really just smutty smut for the sake of smut.

A/N: This was unsolicited, but I felt that curvy girls were lacking some representation in the fic community in general, so here is Henry worshipping a thicc queen. (Also, the undies in the fic are from Torrid and amazingly comfy, and the fact that I felt super sexy in them also helped inspire this one shot. I hope y’all enjoy.) Also, it’s not Beta’d. I just did my own triple check for glaring errors. Here’s hoping it’s not untenable gibberish. Lol!

Tags (no one requested tags, but I’m tagging the Cavillry babes I can think of, and if you want me to tag you in future work, just let me know. I don’t want to spam anyone): @littlefreya because she convinced me this was necessary, lol! Also @fishcustardandclintbarton @geralt-of-baevia @princess-of-riviaa @geekycanuck @lareinedususpense @radaofrivia @nothingdear @lunedelorient @sunflowersstan @captainbigdy @laketaj24 

She liked to air dry on the bed in just her panties. Scroll her phone, see what was new. When she had time, of course. And lately, she’s had no shortage of time. Henry felt for her. Being between jobs could be scary. But he knew great things were out there for his woman. But the air drying. She did this after every leisurely shower. She made a little nest of pillows and draped herself gracefully over it.

With one hand, she diffused her hair, still damp from the shower. He didn’t know what she was looking at on her phone, nor did he care. His eyes had fallen heavy and hard on her backside. He thought this part of her such a wonder. It was strong, round, and large, and it tapered down to her thick thighs. This morning, she had chosen to wear a fairly unassuming pair of briefs. Unassuming, he thought, only if one had never touched them, or seen them up close. Like he had. He’d even helped her pick them out in the shop. He knew that the silky fabric would look stunning on her.

He was right. The slate grey sheen of the fabric covering her ass caught the pure morning light filtering in through the window. With his eyes he followed the narrow lace bands around her thighs right under her ass. He started then at the wider lace band around her waist --yes, waist, not hips-- and was stopped in his tracks in the center of her back. He’d missed entirely, or perhaps he’d forgotten, that little v-shaped corset cutout just below the waist band.

This could no longer be a mission of observation it must become a more exploratory, manual endeavor. He tiptoed toward her, not wanting to startle her before it was time, or for her to turn over before he’d had his fun.

“Mornin’ Hank.” She said sweetly over her shoulder with a smile. She didn’t flip to her front. Good.

“Good morning, love! Sleep well? Nice shower?” He queried as he maneuvered himself between her legs. Just sitting, but with one leg thrown over the back of one of her thighs. He started working her calves which were always tight. He loved her shapely legs, though. He loved every curve of her.

“What are you doing?” She demanded with a slight start.

“I have to get the tension out while the muscle is still warm. You should know that, teach!” He loved teasing her like this for being clever. He loved calling her the teacher in the bedroom, even if he was the more experienced lover.

He increased the pressure as he went, but wanted to go further.

“Have any lotion handy?” He asked. She did, and she handed it right to him. He put a bit of the amber and vanilla-scented cream on his hands, worked it up until it was warm, and then started again. She was moaning now. That was always his goal. Then he switched legs, applying more warmed lotion and going as deep as he dared.

“Henry, I’m not gonna be able to walk when you’re done.”

“Well, I was gonna make that threat, but you’ve saved me the trouble.” He said as he turned around and playfully snapped her waistband making her jump and arch her gorgeous ass up into it.

“Mmmm, you bad man! How did I know from the moment I met you that you only wanted me for my body?” She teased.

“Because of the way I unwrapped and devoured you whole with my lecherous gaze, no doubt. You’re actually the first girl I’ve ever taken into a side room and fooled around with at an event.” He reminisced as he kissed her back, across her shoulders and down her spine until he got to that cutout.

“Fine then,” she said, mock surrender in her voice. “Take what you will. Have your spoils.”she hitched her hips up and put a pillow under them so he could explore every inch of her ass.

He relished the sensory experience of simply running his hands over the silky fabric covering her firm rump. He ran his nails over it, causing her to shiver. He ran his lips over it too, unable to resist that curiosity.

“Henry, I’m dying here!” She moaned.

“And you’re killing me with these knickers, we all have our problems.”

He ran a hand down between her legs to tease her sex. She ground her hips into it, needing the friction. He’d give her friction.

He slid the panties aside, and started circling her clit at first, then he penetrated her one finger at a time. She was so wet already. Drenched for him. This got him so hard. He didn’t want to wait to fuck her. A part of him really and truly wanted to skip her gratification and just plow directly into her getting his own rocks off. Spill himself messily all over her pussy, ass, and those gorgeous panties.

But he restrained himself. He wanted to make her come. Wanted to delay his gratification to hear and see her come apart under his touch. He kept working her, listening and feeling for her reactions. She was moaning into her pillow. And he could feel the tension building inside her. He thought one more element would send her over. He hadn’t used his tongue yet. And he had the perfect place for it. He kissed along her more exposed ass cheek until he got to her opening. He’d wanted to do this for so long. And now he finally was. He ran his tongue all around her tight hole. Experimenting with strokes, textures, and pressures. He got the tip in just a bit once, considering it progress. And she was breathing infinitely heavier, about to reach her pinnacle.

When she did, she lost all control of her limbs and her body. She said nonsense. He adored it. But he’d have time to adore her later. Right now he was about to burst and the sight of her cunt trembling and dripping was too much for his cock to resist. He thrust into her slowly at first so he could feel every spasm of her waning orgasm around him. She always squeezed him in all the right places, but he couldn’t recall entering her so quickly after making her come. Why hadn’t he done this before?

His thrusts were hard and they got faster as he chased his pleasure. He appreciated anew the fabric covering her ass. It made her feel almost as delicious on the outside as she did on the inside. He growled as he got closer.

“Where you want me to finish, baby girl?” He asked, as he tended to do.

“Don’t you fucking think about pulling out, Cavill. I want your hot come inside me.” Her filth sent him to new levels of lust and he went harder and faster. This was one of the many things he loved about her body. He knew it was sturdy enough for the unbridled pounding he could give without bruising or pain. She could take him at his most violent without harm or even complaint.

“I’m gonna come again. Henry. Oh fuck!” And when her body began to contract and contort again, it was all Henry needed to tip him into his own oblivion. His release was hot, fast, and glorious inside his goddess. He fell over the top of her still moving his hips, relishing the feel of her panties against his sensitive hips and pelvis. It was heavenly.

Their breathing was rapid, but slowing in tandem with one another.

“Fuck me!” She exclaimed.

“Isn’t that what I just did?” He teased bitting her ear and inciting a giggle.

“Oh you certainly did, sir. Most thoroughly.” She turned as much as she could with him pinning most of her body to the bed, reaching enough of him to pull on his hair. “Kiss me, you villain.”

He obliged, roughly, as she liked. A full mouthed kiss with plenty of tongue. He loved these hungry, wild kisses, too. He broke apart from her just long enough to flip her onto her back and prop her up with some pillows. He wanted her to be comfortable for what came next. Now that both of their thirsts were sated for a while, he could take his time in pleasuring her and not be bothered by his own need…at least not immediately.

“God, if I had my way, you’d never be fully clothed, do you know that?” She blushed furiously whenever he mentioned how sexy she was to him. He knew she’d never felt so and had rarely been told so. And certainly few had ever shown their appreciation for her voluptuous beauty. He’d show her at every turn. Her body begged to be touched. It was so soft and succulent.

He descended her body slowly and thoroughly, not missing the best bits of real estate, like her neck, clavicle, and her nipples, and further down where he found her hips. She loved to be teased here. And he did so. Over her panties that were rapidly becoming his new favorite article of her clothing. He worked his mouth over the layer of fabric for a few moments. Teased her mound with nips and hot breath.

“Henryyyyy!” She squirmed under him and grabbed a handful of his hair. He looked up to find her breathless and staring at the ceiling instead of him. That wouldn’t do.

He slid her panties all the way off, a bittersweet moment. He loved that they were soaked with her arousal and his seed. It got him half hard again, but he had other things to do.

He spread her legs wide and parted her lips. She was still drenched with arousal and his come. Good. He placed one feather light kiss right over her clit and she bucked. Her body was so responsive to his touch.

“Oh, I like that honey. What does this do for you?” And he latched his mouth to her flesh to lay mercilessly soft flicks over her bead. She couldn’t seem to form words, just sounds. But they were pleased sounds, so Henry continued. He descended, sliding the back of his tongue down to her entrance where he thrust into her gently and began undulating and moaning. Their combined flavors made him yearn. He couldn’t figure out why. But he loved tasting himself on her body. Especially here where her own flavor was most potent.

He added his saliva to the mixture there, and then brought his hand in. He slid two fingers into her, stirring her up and pressing firmly against her g-spot. As he worked his hand in her, he worked his mouth over her again, and he felt her losing control and heard her pleading for him not to stop. But she was still looking away from him.

He paused. And she cried out!

“No!” She looked at him, on the verge of tears.

“I won’t do it. Unless you look at me. Watch me, kitten. Look into my eyes while I make you come.”

“Argh, do it! Do it! I’ll never take my eyes off you again as long as you just don’t stop!”

He continued. Fingering her. Devouring her. Watching her. Watching her watch him. He moaned into her body. Growled. Like the hungry beast that he was.

She bucked and writhed and seized as he finished her. He loved being able to give her this. This unfiltered raw pleasure. He crawled up next to her, wanting only to lie next to her as she came down in the afterglow. But she took his face in her hand and brought him to her for a slow, languid, breathtaking kiss. He loved that she didn’t care about the state of his face. Apparently, the wetness there comprised of his semen, sweat, and saliva, paired with her sex was collectively her favorite flavor.

“How is it that after all this time together, you still shock me, Mr. Cavill?” She said in breathless wonder. She flattered him.

“Darling, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the pleasure I can give you.”

And with that promise, he buried her in the pillows behind her as she squealed and giggled with delight.

[my-emotional-self]

Sinful Love - Chapter 1

Moodboard by the beautiful @princess-evans-addict​

Pairings: Prisoner!Steve Rogers x OFC

Warnings: Swearing, Prison, Steve has lots of naughty thoughts, talk of murder, blood

Summary:  Gemma, a quiet and meek crime writer from a small town in Massachusetts, interviews murderer Steve Rogers in prison for a memoir.  Will things go terribly wrong, or beautifully right?

Authors Note: Credit for this fanfic goes 100% to punk-in-docs as this is is based off her Prisoner!Kylo Ren “Sinnerman”.  You can find her on Tumblr at punk-in-docs or on A03 - Punk_in_Docs .  I HIGHLY suggest taking a look at her stories as she is a beautiful writer!!!

P.S.  I am currently NOT doing a tag list at the moment so I am sorry about that. 

 She was cold; that much was for sure.  Gemma bounced her leg up and down as she was sat in the cold metal chair, waiting for her name to be called.  Her emerald green eyes scanned her surroundings as she pulled her ratty old cardigan closer to her body.  

Her eyes landed on the sign in front of her: Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center. Yes, she was sitting in the waiting room of a prison.  

This was her job, as a crime writer with her publishing firm.  She didn’t mind it.  She loved hearing how inmates have turned their lives around for the better and she still even wrote to some of the inmates she had interviewed in the past.

Gemma Peterson was someone that people didn’t really give a second glance to; and she liked it that way. Ever since she was as young as she could remember, she was always told by her mother and grandmother what a dreamer she was; how her creativity would get her somewhere one day.  And yet here she was, sitting in a prison and waiting to interview a murderer.  

She really couldn’t complain however as she loved her job.  She knew she wanted to be a writer her whole life; that’s what she got for growing up in the smaller community a half hour away from Boston, Massachusetts. It was well known for its literary history.  

As she continued to wait, her right hand came up to grip the locket around her neck; closing her eyes and thinking of her grandmother and mother.  She had never known her father as he was never a part of her life. “Wish me luck today,” she spoke under her breath, knowing her grandma and mom were always with her.  Her mother unfortunately passed away before her 17th birthday: a horrible car accident took her away from you.  

Gemma’s mother was her world and was always there for her.  After her untimely death, her grandmother picked up the pieces and helped her get through everything.  

“Peterson!  You’re up!” Her thoughts were pulled from her when she heard her name being called.  Looking up, she saw a short and round man with sweat stains under his armpits waiting for her near a door.  She knew it was the resident Psychiatrist, Dr. Kauffman,  with whom she talked to on the phone earlier in the week.  

Quickly standing up, she gathered her satchel which held her notebook, along with the prison inmate file on Steve Rogers, and briskly walked over to the man.  

He looked her up and down then shook his head.  “They are going to eat you alive kid,” he spoke with a shake of his head before turning away from her and walking down the long and narrow hall.  

Gemma scrunched her brows and looked down at her outfit.  She made sure to dress accordingly with what the psychiatrist said. She was wearing a knee length black dress and a green cardigan to cover her exposed arms; her hair was neatly tucked back into a ponytail and she wasn’t wearing any makeup.  A pair of black converse on her feet.  But her eyes widened when she realized she put perfume on that morning.  Silently, she scolded herself as the man in front of her walked through another set of doors and took a sharp turn to the left.  

Taking deep breaths, Gemma kept up pace with the doctor in front of her as they now reached the official area where the inmates were locked up.  

“Hey sexy bitch!” A man growled from her right.  “Get your sexy ass over her and let me take a good look at you!”  

Glancing to her right, she saw a tall man, at least six foot five with his hands clenched around the steel bars; his smile wide, showing off his yellow teeth.  

There was a guard walking behind you and he took his baton, smacking it against the steel bars, effectively shutting the inmate up.

After a few more twists and turns, Dr. Kauffman leads Gemma into what looks like the visitor room. There are rows of metal tables and chairs; the tables having locks in the middle of them so the prisoners can be chained down with their handcuffs.  

“Take a seat,” Dr. Kauffman states as he points to one of the tables.  The room was large, but there was nobody else there.  It was cold, cooler than the previous room she was waiting in and it smelt musty.  

Dr. Kauffman took a seat at the opposite side of the table as her, clasping his hands together.  “Look, I know you’re here to interview Rogers, but don’t be surprised if you don’t get any information out of him,” he stated. Gemma furrowed her brows in curiosity to what he said.  “There have been dozens of interviewers here over the years and Rogers doesn’t particularly care to give any kind of information to them.”  He got up from his seat, placing his hands on the table and leaning towards her. “And just so you know, this is the first time he has seen a woman in three years.”

Gemma gulped, but her throat was so dry, it didn’t do anything.  Why was she so nervous all of a sudden?  This was her job; she’s interviewed hundreds of people over the last handful of years, but she had never been quite this nervous before.  

“Are you wearing perfume?” Dr. Kauffman asked as he stood away, folding his arms over his chest.

Gemma blushed, nodding her head.  “Sorry. It’s a habit.  I’ll remember for next time.  Promise.”

Dr. Kauffman walked towards the steel beamed doors where there were two prisons guards waiting.  

As Gemma waited for him to grab Steve Rogers, she placed her notebook and inmate file in front of her on the table.  Opening the file, she still couldn’t believe that there was no picture of the inmate. When she had asked her boss about it, he merely shrugged.  She had the file for almost a week and had memorized everything inside of it.  

She read over the questions she had written in front of her as she waiting; her hands palms starting to sweat as her heart began to beat rapidly inside of her chest; anxiety and fear creeping over her.  

“You need to behave yourself and be nice Rogers,” one of the guards spoke.  

Another voice broke through Gemma’s thoughts; one of the sexiest voices she had ever heard. Looking up from her papers in front of her, she saw a tall, well built man, clad in an orange jumpsuit, wrists and ankles locked together with cuffs, entering the expansive room.  

He scoffed at the guard, a sly smile on his face.  “I don’t play well with others and you know that.”

Her heart nearly dropped to her stomach at the sight of him.  He had to be close to six feet tall.  His hair was a dark blonde, almost brunette and was longer at the top of his head while the sides were shorter.  His hair was combed backwards and he had a thick yet trimmed beard resting on his face.

The guard brought him closer to Gemma, stopping just in front of her.  He pulled the chair out for Steve to sit in and cuffed him to the table.  

“We’ll be just outside the door, so no funny business Rogers,” the guard spoke, pulling at his cuffs to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere.  

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve bit back sarcastically.  

It took a moment for Steve to look over at Gemma and when she did, she wanted to simultaneously shrink down in her seat from her glare, yet get lost in his eyes forever.  They were the bluest eyes she had ever seen in her life and she was mesmerized by them.  

Steve cleared his throat, making Gemma startle in her seat.   She tore her gaze from his eyes and noticed he had tattoos peeking out of the neck of his jumpsuit.  As she trailed her view from his neck, she also realized he had more black ink sticking out of sleeves of his orange garb and to his hands; wondering if his entire body was covered in the ink.  

Steve couldn’t help but take notice of the smaller woman sitting in front of him.  She was a mousy little thing, yet he could tell she was curvy underneath that drab old cardigan she was wearing.  Fuck, Steve hadn’t seen a woman in over three years and he wasn’t disappointed in this little Kitten sitting here.  He couldn’t help but notice when he startled her earlier, scaring her; it made his dick throb.

She wet her lips, grasping her notebook in her hands and looking over her questions yet again.  

Steve began to feel his temper rise under his skin, waiting for this little Kitten to speak.  Hell, at this point, he was beginning to think she was a damn mute.  

Gemma took a sip of water from her water bottle that was stashed away in her satchel; getting comfortable in her chair.  “Umm, I just wanted to say thank you for agreeing to meet and speak with me Mr. Rogers,” she spoke, her voice awfully quiet.  

His eyes narrowed at her as he leaned back in his chair, arms folding across his chest.  “Yeah yeah.  Let’s just get this over with.  I’m missing my yard time today for some journalist here.”

Gemma shuffles anxiously in her chair.  “Well, I’m not a journalist Mr. Rogers.  My name is Gemma Peterson and I’m a writer actually.  I work for a small publishing firm and they are interested in your story as a lifer in this prison.  They are actually doing a series on inmates and their personal memoirs and it will be published into a book of….”

Steve scoffed, cutting you off.  “Writer or journalist, you’re all the same. There’s no difference,” he mutters under his breath.  His eyes glance down to the manila folder that held his inmate information.  “From the looks of it, you’ve already read everything about me so you should know how I feel about journalists hounding me for questions about my life before prison and now.”  His voice was warning, yet a deep purr.  He leaned against the table, closer to Gemma, eyes pinning under his dark gaze.  

There was something about the fear that was ignited in Gemma, which also turned her on.  His eyes were piercing deep into her soul, mesmerized, yet terrified at the same time.  

Steve fought the urge to moan at the way she bit her lower lip, as if to stop herself from trembling; his cock jumping for attention under his orange jumpsuit.  She was modest, submissive even and he had to stop thinking dark thoughts about his hand around her throat as he fucked her raw.  When he was told about this interview, he assumed it would have been a balding fat man, not a shapely appetizing young woman.  

He was leaned over the table, as close as he could possible lean and inhaled deeply.  His nostrils were met with the most wondrous smell; some sort of flower he couldn’t quite figure out, but he wanted more of it.  He thanked whatever higher power out there for her perfume, her scent; it was a good distraction for his shitty fucking life in prison.  

Gemma took a shuddering breath as Steve leaned closer to her over the table; her eyes on his large hands clasped together.  

“Well go on then.  Ask your damn questions,” Steve urged, a hint of playfulness in his warning tone, making Gemma’s mind swirl with confusion.

“Umm, what..what more can you tell me about your conviction and what was it like?” She slowly glances back up at Steve, immediately regretting it.  His jaw was tight, tense.  

“Lengthy and tedious,” came Steve’s stiff answer.  

“And what about the trial?” she asks softly.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he glances down at his file and back up to her.  “Read the damn file.  It’s all in there.”

Usually she is poised during interviews, but Steve is throwing her off track with his demeanor. “Alright then,” she speaks, shifting in her chair.  “How has it been adjusting to life here in prison?”

“Agonizing,” he replies; his face deadpanned.  

“Umm,” she stumbled as she fumbled through her notes.  She could feel her cheeks begin to redden with mortification at her loss of thought. This was definitely not going the way she imagined.  Sure, she had never interviewed a prisoner before, but she had seen numerous crime shows and interviews online with prisoners and they acted anything but like Steve.  Her throat was beginning to dry up and reached for her bottle of water, taking a quick swig.  Not only was his behavior throwing her off, but he stature in general was terrifying. Here she was, sitting not only in front of a murderer, but a big man in and of itself.  His biceps were trying to break free from his jumpsuit and she could tell he was ripped and muscular underneath.  

Her eyes trailed up to his face; the veins in his neck starting to pop out.  “What do you want me to say huh?” he growled through his teeth. “You want me to sit here and talk about and describe in detail what killing and hurting those men felt like huh? How good it felt when I plunged the knife into their stomachs and slashed their throats?  Or how I watched one of them die a slow and painful death after cutting his femoral artery?  People don’t realize just how much blood the human body can hold, but I sure do Kitten and it’s quite a fucking lot of blood,” he explained.  

Gemma wanted to flinch at the pet name he gave her, but she kept her cool as best she could. Instead, she looked at him with her big emerald green innocent and scared eyes.  

Steve nearly came in his jumpsuit at the terrified way she was looking at him.  Fuck he would give anything to snap these chains off him, bend her over the table and slam his dick into her pussy.  He knew, just by looking at her, what a tight little cunt she had; and he wanted it.  

“Is that what you want to hear Kitten?  I think deep down you want to hear that I enjoyed killing those men.  Fuck, I’m glad I did it.  And no, I wouldn’t take it back if I had the chance to.  Sure, I’m fucking pissed to be locked in this miserable God forsaken place like a caged animal.  Having to be told when I can eat, sleep and taking a goddamn piss. But it is what it is,” he stated, shrugging  as if it was nothing.  

Gemma could do nothing but stare back at him.  Steve studied her, knowing he was wrong.  No, she was too sweet, too pure.  She wasn’t hard hearted like him.  He watches as she nervously chews on her lower lip.  

“What do you miss most from outside of this place?”

The question made him cock his head to the side in curiosity.  This petite, shapely five foot four librarian looking woman just astonished the five foot eleven murderer.  

“What?” Steve asked.  

“What do you miss about-“

“I heard the fucking question Kitten,” he growled.  

This time when he called her Kitten, she didn’t want to flinch.  Instead, she felt an oddly exciting tingle go down her spine; her cheeks turning a beautiful shade of pink.  Steve knew exactly what his pet name did to her as he slyly smirked.  

Steve stayed silent, not knowing how to answer that question.  Nobody ever asked him that question before in interviews.  

She remained quiet as well, her eyes fidgeting with her pen.  She had been told time and time again to not give any personal information about herself, but she couldn’t help just speaking up.  “I’d miss baking.”  Her voice was the softest she had ever spoken; Steve barely heard her.  

Her eyes flick back up to Steve as he sits back in his chair, getting comfortable.  His slicked back hair was now in the light of one of the few windows in the room and even though he used only prison shampoo, it looked so soft; she wanted to run her fingers through it.  

Since Steve wasn’t saying anything, she figured she would continue speaking.  “My grandma left me her house in her will when she passed. It’s quite small.  Just a two bedroom two bathroom house.  But it has a porch with a porch swing in the front and is full of hand me downs and small knick-knacks.  It’s warm and cozy and clean, and all mine,” she speaks.  “It’s all I have.  I don’t have any family left.  My entire life exists in that small house.   I grew up there my entire life.  I remember planting some lilac bushes when I was younger.  I love it every spring when they bloom, even if it’s not for very long.  My grandma and I planted a garden in the front of the house.  I try to keep up with the garden, but that was my grandma’s thing.  Plants and flowers.  Luckily the garden we planted when I was younger, doesn’t take much to upkeep. But baking is my passion. Cookies, brownies, pies and cakes. I make a lot of cakes for special events in my town.”

She couldn’t help but glance up at Steve and she couldn’t tell if her mind was playing tricks on her or not, but it looked like he was smirking.  

“Coffee,” was all he said, making Gemma nod her head.  But then he continued.  “Italian coffee to be exact.  Nothing added to it, dark as the ink on my skin.  The shit coffee they serve in here tastes like dirt.”  Gemma couldn’t help but let out a small giggle, the sound going straight to Steve’s dick, making him inwardly groan.  

The two of them sat there quietly, staring at one another.  

“Time’s up,” came the voice of one of the guards.  Gemma turned and saw two guards entering the room.  They stopped in front of Steve and unshackled him from the table.  Roughly, they jerked his hands away from the table and she wondered if his wrists were sore or hurt as she noticed how his skin was raised and red near the cuffs.  

“Come and see me again Kitten,” Steve spoke with a slight upturned grin to his lips.  

Gemma watched as the guards took him from the room.  She had never felt this way before she did today; terrified and fearful, yet oddly excited to see him again.  She had not planned on coming back here again, but when he called her that pet name yet again, she had made up her mind to visit him next week.  

[lideria]

Wayfaring. | Winter.

➥ characters: genderneutral!reader, mark, johnny, jaehyun, yuta, taeyong, haechan; to be added

➥ genre: apocalyptic!au (apocalypse based on the game “the last of us”), very much angsty, kind of action-y, sad, sometimes fluff 

➥ warnings: violent themes, blood&gore (detailed depictions), gun use, mentions of killing/m*rder, mentions of s*icide, depictions of corpses, swearing, zombies ofc, i would like to guess that that’s it but please contact me if there is anything i need to add, and as always English is not my first language so if there are any errors, please excuse me!

➥ word count: 19.3k

➥ summary: every little thing you had, had been built and preserved in the pool of nothingness. and now, you lost it all.

➥ author’s note: !!PLEASE READ!! hoping after all this time that i’ve not posted this doesn’t get taken off the tags. after much thinking i decided to make this big story a series, because i’m pretty positive the overall product will be over 60k words. this is the 1st part and there will be 3 parts. to make it a bit more meaningful, i’ll be releasing the winter part now (in winter for where i live), spring part in mid-spring (possibly around april), and summer in again, around mid-summer. the playlist will also be revealed then. i am hungry for feedback, any and all is much appreciated! also, i’m not over tlou still haha fu- there’s also going to be a taglist since the updates will be so slow, so please drop by my asks if you like it and i’ll gladly add you to the taglist!

➥ taglist: @nct-writers

i hope everyone enjoys this, have a great morning/day/evening/night!

The night was freezing cold.

You walk through the streets of a mix of stone and wooden buildings, lights mostly dim because of the scarce population. Most of the people were at the city square. They were laughing and dancing the night away as groups of people sang for them with the old, occupied instruments that belonged to who-knows-who all those years ago when all of this first started. ‘This’ as in survival of the fittest, as some would say. And from what science could explain, a fungal infection that took over the brain and body that eats away at your tissues until it has completely taken over your motor functions and skin, and can spread its spores to others freely. An infection that could basically ‘zombify’ and fungi-ify people.

That is what everybody who has experienced the outbreak day would tell you, at least.

Being born into it is apparently easier, that is what the older adults tell. Because people have it figured out, there are communities like the one you are in; nobody has to roam around alone and lose so many people in the process. You did not agree to that. Nothing was easier, except for maybe gathering the knowledge of handy survival skills.

Perhaps living in a community was easier, as well. You loved it. You specifically loved your community. The stone and wooden houses, the olden cafés and restaurants, actual electricity that was not a thing outside of the gates, fairy lights hanging across porches and roofs, kids and bicycles around, horses, elderly people. Schools. A whole cinema and market places. People who were hunters, people who were guards, people who were wanderers, people who were recruiters; people who had the luxury of just being parents or students or more. And people, perhaps after seeing the world fire up and fall apart, were filled with love towards each other. Compassion, respect; a lot of things that the outsiders did not have. For the most part, of course. Evil was still a thing even within the community.

You smile at the children hurrying towards the square with a few apples in their hands, laughing and skipping around with joy— one of them waving at you as they pass you by. You wave at them as well, chuckling at one of the boys’ claims on how he will make a run for the sugar in the cafeteria so they can caramelize them.

This is why you love it. Even though it is hard.

Just as snow starts to fall from the sky that was clear with visible stars just moments ago, you take your last turn and make your way to your destination. The light shines from their porch and emphasizes their house as you pick your pace up with your boots that are crunching the asphalt that is too old for its own good, cracked and overgrown with the unkempt vegetation.

And surely enough, he is there. You cannot see him clearly since his silhouette’s too dark with the light hitting from behind, but there is only one person who can be as tall in that household even when they are doubled over.

Not making eye-contact even once as you approach the house, you take big strides through their garden and get on the porch. He does not turn to you and opts to stay silent, still doubled over with his elbows placed on the somewhat high fence. You do the same and let out a huff; a laugh too airy and low to be considered one. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

Johnny smiles, still not meeting your eyes. “I freaked out.”

“Over a kiss?” One more huff. “Sounds nothing like the Johnny I know.”

“Yeah,” He nibbles on his lip a little, and smiles at their neighbor whose kitchen window is just across their porch that is grabbing a glass of water in greetings. “I just don’t like the idea of kissing someone and having it not mean anything anymore. Feel like I’ve passed that stage.”

Your eyes lock on a star in particular when he turns his head to look at you. “Reasonable,” You let out nodding your head. A witty smile creeps up onto your face at that second, and you turn to look at him also. “I guess it comes with growing old.”

That makes him giggle and playfully punch you on the side of your shoulder, prompting you to let out an ow, motherfucker, because he is too strong for his own damn good and he seems to never realize that. “I’m not old.”

“Yeah, yeah,” You brush him off, massaging the side of your shoulder, the smile still on your face. “Tell me though, was the kiss good? It looked good.”

His brows furrow in unfiltered concern. “You watched me kiss?”

“Well if you just adhere onto someone’s lips like they glued you to each other in front of the bar I’m trying to get a drink from, Johnny, I’m kind of obligated to see it for like a second at the least.” He laughs at your ramble and breaks the furrow of his brows. As if he is defeated, he nods at the end a little. “It was amazing.”

“Oh so it’s like that,” You lean into him, hardly containing your giggle. “What does that mean?” He asks back with his own smile still on his face, clearly amused. Your eyebrows furrow this time albeit not seriously. “You damn well know what that means.”

Johnny sighs. Long and deep. Then, he speaks. “I love you, you know. You’re the best annoyer I never would’ve asked for.”

At that you chuckle, letting your shoulders shake with the force of it. “Good thing they didn’t ask you then.”

He does not say anything after that for a while. The two of you stand in silence, you looking at the stars and him looking at the street— or maybe the overgrown plants, you do not know. He fiddles with his calloused hands slightly, and it is only then that you realize that the house is much quieter than how it usually is. His parents must still be at the square, even though you have not seen them at all that day.

That night, to be more honest. During the day it was not really like you could see a lot of the folk.

Johnny must have somehow read your mind, because he speaks up again with only a heavy huff. “I heard about this morning,” His gaze is directed at you again. You break your smile and lean further, letting your head drop lower to the fence as you sigh yourself. One of your hands instinctively go to your face and to the spot where everything aches right on your cheekbone, tracing over the few burn scratches you got when you fell onto the ground. “It was nothing.”

“That wouldn’t have been believable even if I hadn’t known you.” He stands upright then. You see his hands come into your vision before they pick your arms off the fence and force you to straighten up as well. He inspects your face for a bit, tracing your red spots and scratches with his fingertips, and frowns. “Sometimes I think you’re a bit too careless.” Johnny mumbles just above a whisper, making you smile. Not particularly with happiness or being flattered, but something rooted more from embarrassment. “You say that a lot.”

“Yeah, because I want you to come home in one piece.” He takes his hands off of your face. “So you can finally get it on with Jaehyun.”

He immediately receives a shove to his chest and full on laughs at that, watching your pissed off face that is rather scary for anybody else. After years of knowing you ever since you first walked into this place only with another survivor, coming from a smaller settlement that went to absolute chaos, Johnny could not ever fear you. Fear you in a respectful sense, yes, absolutely. Because he has seen what you are capable of doing outside to survive. And in actuality, it is not the capability that made him fear you in that respectful sense; it is that he has seen you melt into the nature of it all, sometimes losing yourself in the things that surround you and the things you are feeling. Johnny has always differentiated himself from everything, so seeing that was what made him fear you.

The very same things made people fear you, as well. A lot of people stayed away from you, which always made him feel bad. He found it extremely admirable that as a teenager you were able to look for a settlement without any guardians and with only a companion, even though your earlier settlement was not too far from the city. At the same time, he could not fear you knowing how you can get with people when you care about them. He had learnt about it all first-hand when he was the first to approach you at the grey and distressing identification center after you arrived, after his parents encouraged him to ask you over for dinner, after visiting you many times at the lonely dorms and helping you fall asleep by tiring you out with his jokes and conversations, after helping you move into your own place when you were old enough, after going on patrols with you and much, much more.

“You’re disgusting, does anybody ever tell you that?” Your annoyed voice almost echoes to his ears after the many shouted singings and overall shouts he had heard that night. “The word you’re looking for would be ‘teasing’ and I just know it’s on the way. That relationship is long overdue.”

“Hey!” A familiar voice interrupts your bickering, and when you turn to the direction it is coming from, you see Yuta just behind the fence. He climbs up a bit and hangs off the railing, not fully climbing onto the porch. “Hey, man. Why don’t you just come to the porch?”

Yuta holds a hand up and waves it around, and both you and Johnny fear that he will fall down with only one hand on the fence helping him sling over, so you both take a step towards him in a hurry. But he does not fall and places his hand back. “I’ll just go home. I’m very cold and kinda drunk.”

Johnny mumbles a we can see that under his breath, but he cannot say it louder because Yuta points a finger at you, prompting you to take another step. “You are patrolling with me tomorrow.”

You finally get a hold of his arm and Johnny takes care of the other one, so now his feet are planted to the ledge of the porch and you two are basically holding a whole grown man up on his feet. That does not hold you back from complaining, though. “What, why? I was out just today.”

The drunken man shrugs. “Don’t know why you, but I think I saw Jaehyun sign your name up with us.”

A closed-mouthed snicker comes from Johnny at Yuta’s words and you snap your head at him, looking into his eyes, warning him not to do the very thing he is doing right now and to shut up about it afterwards. “Fine, I’ll come with you tomorrow.”

“You didn’t exactly have a choice.”

The knock on your door wakes you up the next morning.

Groggy a little from drinking the night before, and from the soreness of your face, you are not the happiest when you open the door up to greet Yuta and Jaehyun. They are standing on the thick snow that has covered the ground overnight, all equipped up and ready to go. The two of them look noticeably more content as well whereas you are just there basically ready to beg them to let you sleep some more. Actually, ready to beg them to leave you alone altogether.

You could really use a day off after falling face-first to the concrete yesterday. It has been long since you have had a day off anyway. Lately it was either you were going out on a patrol or sweep, or you were training the new recruits and the volunteers. You kind of did not remember the concept of sleeping in at this point.

“I would say good morning, but your morning looks far from any of that.” Yuta says in an annoyingly bright tone, and then he points at your face. “Your face didn’t swell up. I don’t know if you can tell, but that’s magical.”

Your fingers reach up to your sore cheekbone once again. Yuta is all true, there is no swelling up although it hurts so bad still as if you had not cleaned it up, when you did. Multiple times. “Just come in. I’ll wash up and grab my coat.”

They walk in when you hold the door open for them and scoot to the side, and make their way to your couch, plopping down on it without any care. You make your way to the bathroom in silence and quickly wash your mouth and face, only bothering to change your clothes because you see a change hanging over the shower cabin. After doing so you hurry over to your wardrobe in your room and grab your coat along with your gear, and make your way to the pair of boots you had been wearing for quite long. You ask your question while you are struggling with putting them on. “Why are we going out anyway? I thought every spot was clear.”

“Someone said that the crops are dead already outside the walls,” Jaehyun answers. “Means the winter’s coming faster and harder. And that means herds may come in faster. Taeyong just wants to make sure nothing’s out of control.” Which does make sense that him and the council would decide on something like that, especially after the chaos that was a couple of years ago. Uncontrollable increase in infected meant uncontrollable increase in herds moving around, and that meant uncontrollable fullness of areas, which meant hunting for supplies were almost halted, which meant there was a serious shortage in supplies. “Plus, we’re running low on medicine. So if we find any on the way,”

“Yeah, okay.” You nod as you let your foot fall after tying the last knot. “Is it only us three?”

“No,” Yuta jumps at the question, almost. “Donghyuck’s coming as well. Said he needs to let off some steam.”

“Why?” You chuckle. He looked dandy fine last night at the square, warming himself up by the fire and chatting and laughing with people. “I heard they fought with Mark.” Jaehyun, once again, answers.

“Again?” Grunting as you wear your coat, you zip it up before opening the door and holding it out once more. The boys stand up and walk towards the door. “Why can’t they keep their stuff to themselves?” You laugh, dearly hoping this fight is not another one feisty enough to keep them from talking to each other for months.

“Wouldn’t know.” Jaehyun mumbles, and waits for you to close your door before starting to walk with you. You smile at the close proximity he keeps with you as you two walk behind Yuta, following him to the stables near the big metal gates through the lively streets.

Donghyuck is already waiting for you when you arrive. He complains about his horse being taken by someone else first thing when he spots your group, prompting the stable staff to laugh behind him, presumably at the fact that he is not complaining that he will be going out for a patrol in the freezing cold, no, but that he is complaining about ‘his’ horse that is technically not his being taken away. He does not really bother to greet you as well. It is a common theme with him, so you do not take offense.

Once you are handed your horses over to you, you make your way to the gates, holding them from their reins— just in case if they ever get freaked out from the sounds the gates decide to make.

You spot a familiar face at the gate. Walking over to him is basically an instinct. “Hey,”

“Hi.” Mark smiles at you, and pets your horse on the nose a little.

Mark is important to you.

He is the person that has accompanied you on your way here after your last settlement got raided by a large group of people that belonged to a community called Nox— the largest community ever established after everything went wrong with the world, and the most developed, as well. Their recruiting process was very disciplined, they had spread all over the country in years and mostly aimed specifically for the big cities, which allowed them to have plenty of resources and people with ‘greater’ professions (like doctors, scientists, military officials, agents, anything that was deemed to be handy in an apocalypse) in their communities.

That had been what happened. It was supposed to be a recruitment, but once people denied to be a part of them and stood up for themselves, they did not like that. At least the branch that they had sent out did not like that.

Your settlement was up in flames by the time you and Mark made it out of there. The night had brightened up as if it was the morning.

Then, it was a month full of almost-dying. The two of you had been out of your settlement before, but not for long periods where you also had to look for some place that would take you. Infected wanted to get you, and if they did not, it was the people. Sometimes they would take you in for a short while, letting you use their resources before changing their paths and letting you go with a bit of a help; maybe weaponry, maybe food, maybe medicine.

Mark and you would have to find hiding spots and places to sleep, and a lot of the times you would just make do with sleeping under a vehicle in the cold in unpopulated areas. Although hard to believe, those spots were one of the least visible and most secure.

The two of you had saved each other perhaps countless times from dying. You were not friends before you ran away from your settlement. You did not exactly know a lot about each other beforehand, only acquainted as a familiar face you would see on the street. Yet when you ended up together, you cared about each other so unexpectedly much.

After you came to the city, though, it had changed a lot. They put you on schedules and dorms and houses that mostly did not go with each other, so the communication had broken— except for slight communication through Johnny who was your middle ground with his role of being a mutual friend. The sheer care you had for each other had stayed the same, though. It would have been difficult to let go of that.

“What happened to your face?” Mark asks and instinctively reaches out for it, making you hiss when his fingers come into contact with the sore red spot. He immediately retracts. “I fell.”

His brows furrow as if he is not believing it, so you laugh to calm him down. “No, I really fell. Planted face first onto the concrete.” That makes him chuckle, but his brows are still furrowed. “Of course you’d do that.”

Mark takes a deep breath. “You have everything you need?”

Someone shouts from behind, one of the watches. “Herd patrol, open the gates!”

“Yeah, I do.” You answer him, and he smiles a bit more reassuringly. “Be safe out there. Let me see you from the gate when you come back.”

There is the screeching sound that the gates do whenever they open that would surely attract some infected if there were any of them around, so you could only hope there were not. Your hold on the rein gets tighter when your horse gets a bit agitated from it. “I’m coming back and you know it, Mark.” Smirking, you step on the foot hold and mount onto the saddle.

He says only one thing before he lets you go. “I do.”

Outside the gates could have been just as pretty as it always was if it was not for the thick snow that coated everywhere and made it hard to travel.

Underneath the thick cover of snow would be overgrown grass and wild plants and flowers that definitely were made to not be natives of the land before any of this had happened, but were now claiming their home to themselves and growing freely without any control. You did not know what most of the plants or flowers even were, even though they had taught you back in school— but you knew you would never be a farmer or a wanderer. You knew you would never have to rely on that knowledge so giving up on it was pretty much an instant thing.

Above the snow, though, were pines and willows thriving in the humid cold. Corkscrew willows, narrow leaf willows and glaucous willows were painting the very much white and grey scenery some lighter shades of green and pink, glistening with the snow sitting on them when the silver but blinding sunlight hit their surface.

You were pretty much on watch the whole time as the possibility of a herd passing through occupied your mind. There were the occasional wildlife passing through the valley, mostly rabbits, dogs and squirrels, and the occasional deer. They run around, sometimes passing under the horses or too close to them and scaring them a bit off. It was nothing that you could not take care of though.

Through a mutual agreement, you go to the town first since it is a good distance away from the city still and is one of the places that is sure to have any signs of a herd if they are coming in. That was because there were not a lot of traces of the infection since there is no people that still live in that town, and the infected would just roam through to potentially find a host.

Some of them would just die on their own from the cold and spew out spores in hopes of reaching something. They usually did not.

When you are in the Western-looking, red and brown brick-borne town, you divide the sections and go your separate ways. You probably would not have done that had the entrance of the town been crowded, but it had not been anything close to that. Yuta insists on his advice for all of you to do everything as quietly as you can just in case, and you all seem to agree on that, considering this is only a patrol and not a sweep and you do not have that much ammo.

The South of the town was mostly empty to your delight. Definitely more crowded than how it usually was this time of the year, but nothing you could not take care of. You did not even have to waste too much of your ammo taking out the infected that were already there— ones mostly freshly infected. Runners, who could still see you and who could still run and who still looked like humans except for their blood covered mouth and hands. They looked alive. They grunted, they made humanly noises, they twitched in their place. It almost looked like whoever they used to be was still inside them and was trying to fight that damn thing off.

It made your blood go cold at the thought every single time.

Once you are done with the infected you could see so far by the help of your trusted stealth skills and dagger and only some of your ammo, you check on a couple of buildings that were on your list that had not been explored yet. But after being open for anybody to come and loot year after year, there was not much that you could find. Some rubbing alcohol hiding away in a stash of unusable supplies, some canned food that were very suspiciously still not out of date, and a few more things. Nothing too useful.

Within a bit over a couple of hours at the least, you make it back to your meeting point at the main street of the entrance, the supplies stacked behind your horse and on the board she was equipped with that would help her in being able to drag everything comfortably. To your relief, everyone is already there, and there are no infected in sight. “Anything useful?” Jaehyun asks, and you shake your head.

“I could get some rubbing alcohol and some gas for the generators, but that’s about it.” Yuta nods at your words. “Same here— except I found this stash of ammo and some meds, but I didn’t take any of it.”

Donghyuck glares at him with an obviously visible amount of anger in his eyes, which makes Yuta further explain himself. “I don’t want to mess with them if they’re a trespasser. I’ll give it a week, and if it’s still there then, I’m just gonna dive in because the prick had some good stuff in there.” He sighs. “I also left a note, saying you’re kind of fucked, friend, because the herd’s coming. Told them to head down to the river following the valley and that the place with working lights and big metal gates would welcome them if they’re smart about it.”

Sometimes Yuta could be extremely innocent, wanting to believe everyone is good, but he had something about him where most of these people he left notes for would actually turn out to be decent people that would join your community. So you could only hope whoever this was would be the same. “That is so sweet of you, but I think some of the herd is already here.” Donghyuck says, and all of you turn your heads to him. “You know the hotel half of it’s said farewell? It was flooded with infected. Of all kinds.”

“Sounds like a fucking dream.” Jaehyun murmurs, kicking around the snow a bit with his boots, looking down. You lay a supportive hand on his forearm. “Sweepers will be lucky though. Some of them are loaded with stuff— backpacks on and everything.”

But his words still hold a heavy weight to them, because these poor souls just did not survive for as long as they planned for. And it makes you wonder, wonder if they were alone or in a group, moving or not moving, had a family or not, had friends or not; what was their original plan? Did they even have a plan, or did everything just happen when they were hidden away in somewhere?

“I found a safe, like a whole dark room,” Jaehyun says. “Inside an apartment. I guess they were a pharmacist or a doctor or something— there are a lot of bottles and boxes of medicine and compounds. And I hardly think they belong to anyone at this point because the door lock was literally rotting away.”

“You think it’s okay to take?” Donghyuck asks Yuta, who nods promptly. “Let’s not take all of it just yet, though. Leave it for the next patrol or the sweepers, they can get the remainder later.”

And then he clears his throat. “Why don’t you two go ahead?”

You two. Jaehyun and you.

Before you know it, you are already sent that way and are trotting your way down to the apartment with your horses. The apartment is definitely not close to the meeting point, especially had you been on foot, but with trotting your way down it was much easier to access. You see the infected Jaehyun has taken down, and again, most of them were Runners; the only explanation you could come up with was that the actual herd had had a feast in another settlement or an area ridden with survivor groups, and since they are Runners they can move faster which is why they are already here with the cold. Basically that they are the herd before the herd.

You dismount when you arrive at the brick and brown, dirty looking building and follow Jaehyun up the stairs that by some miracle do not just collapse, watching him easily open up the doors after having broken into them.

Like he said, the room is there, mostly dark but only lit when its door is open and light spills in through the shutters, and it really is packed with medical supplies.

“I randomly inspected some of them, most of it’s not out of date yet.” You nod at him when he looks at you. “Okay.”

But something genuinely pisses you off. It has been pissing you off for some time, so the only thing you can do is confront him when you are alone. “Jaehyun,”

“Yeah?” He kneels onto the floor and starts inspecting things again, placing some of them into the bag he had grabbed from the side of the saddle before you made your way in. You kneel in front of him and sigh, looking down at his hands and spotting the slightly scarred knuckles. Probably from subconsciously pushing on doors while breaking in. “I know it was weird a few nights ago because everyone was around, but it’s weirder right now because you have a thing where you go awkward and quiet when you feel that way,” His eyes bore into yours. “And I really can’t stand that,” You let out an airy chuckle, and he kind of smiles as well. “So either kiss me like you mean it next time or never do and let us stay as friends.”

It was supposed to be a basic thing.

Jaehyun had kissed you a few nights ago at a movie screening. He had asked you to watch the old sci-fi movie with him, and had waited for you in front of the cinema, stuck between the crowds of people of all ages. Throughout the movie you had just whisper-chatted back and forth, almost none of your attention on any of the scenes even when they got louder. The topics of your chats had been lighthearted and fun as well, gossiping a bit about your friends and telling each other about funny encounters you recently had with people around the city or outside. Sometimes the chats were about the movie, with questions of what would you do if you were living in that universe instead of this one, which one would you prefer and more, debating on the questionable answers; throwing your dried and seasoned corn at each other if either of you thought the other had absolutely ran out of any sanity.

After the screening he had just asked you if he could kiss you as if it was the most normal thing he could ask, saying he could not wait any more, and you had let him because the mutual attraction had been there for too long and you wanted him to kiss you just as much as you had been wanting to kiss him.

But he had gotten shy about it— crowds were never Jaehyun’s thing, and that was fine. The thing that was not fine was how he acted around you for days after that, quiet and somewhat cold and awkward, when you were okay with it all and had expected him to make a move last night at the square.

He breathes out a laugh through his nose and looks down, playing with his hangnails and the traces of the rein that is left on his fingers, not deep but definitely visible still and a bit pink around the outlines. He smiles under his nose, you can see it because the lines of light that hits his face illuminate the side of his lips that is curled up, and when he picks his head up and the lines hit his brown eyes, you are smiling too.

Because Jaehyun places his hand at the back of your neck and kisses you.

Firmly, with care, and like nobody else is there— there is nobody there, but this time it feels like even if there were people he would have been fine with it. He lets you place your hands on the spots between his chest and shoulders, and lets you pull him further down with ease, spreading his other hand that is holding you on your back to give you better support. He opens his mouth first for you, maybe to show he is meaning this and he means so much more, and you give into it. That goes on for a while with hands roaming wherever they can. You only come back to your senses when his teeth scratch your bottom lip.

He stops when your hands push against him lightly. “Any longer and Yuta will never let this die down.”

Nibbling on his lip with his teeth, Jaehyun huffs a smile and nods. “He really won’t.” And he leans in again, only pecking you this time.

Johnny and his predictions that gave you the bravery and encouragement to do these kinds of things could go fall face first onto the concrete.

The rest of the patrol and getting back to the city go almost seamless, except for the fact that you had to pass by a couple of groups of infected— some Runners who had spotted you and alerted the Clickers (one of the older stages of infected where the infection has taken over most of their skin and has made its way out, taking over their eyes and using echolocation with the clicking sounds that comes from their throats) with the sound they made. They caused a bit of a hassle, but nothing you could not take care of; not with Jaehyun’s quick bow skills as you galloped through the occupied areas of the valley and all of your leftover ammo. “You’re losing a lot of arrows, don’t you think?” Donghyuck asks Jaehyun, shouting a bit out of breath since the galloping motion is taking a toll on him.

Jaehyun pulls the reins to himself harshly. “Yeah,” His horse halts without any discomfort, and you see him from the corner of your eye before he is left behind. “I’ll meet you at the gate!”

And he starts galloping to the opposite way.

If it was anybody else, any and most probably all of you would have started screaming some sense into him. But it was Jaehyun. Whose way of doing things outside, although stealthy, was very impulsive. So you do not take your gaze away from the road ahead of you, locking your eyes on the city just now visible as you make your way down.

It is already dusk by the time you are at the gates and the watches see you, asking where the hell Jaehyun is and offering to open the gates when Yuta tells them he is collecting his arrows back from a small area, so he should be back any minute. All of you agree that you do not want the gates to open before he comes so the noise does not attract anything more than it needs to.

Just as you expect, the missing person of your quad comes sooner than later. A proud smile is on his face as he goes on about being able to get back five of the seven arrows he had used, waiting for all of you to make your ways in before walking in himself.

“We have some gas and some meds,” You tell the watch who is there the second you walk in, to unleash the supplies behind your horse. “With plenty of infected on the side.” Donghyuck adds, too upbeat for the news he is delivering. One of the gatekeepers is quite mortified to hear that which is why he feels inclined to add more to his words. “Not a dooming amount, but we definitely need a few sweeps. It’d be worse if the herd caught up to them.”

“Why don’t you just go tell that to Taeyong?” Mark cuts in, and you can immediately tell how irritated Donghyuck gets. His face gets red, his eyes drop and squint, and he completely forgets about getting off his horse which all of you do at that point. “Oh would you look at that,”

Mark tries to hold a snicker in, you can tell, because his lips curl inwards. “It’s almost as if that’s not exactly what I was about to do. Fucking asshole.”

Mark finally gives in then, letting his shoulders shake when he greets you, giggling. He tries to check if you have any bites since it is a procedure he needs to do, but he cannot do it effectively with how much he is giggling— which was fine, because he could very clearly see you did not have any bites. None of your clothes were torn, and your face, hands and neck that was not covered up was just very visibly in quite okay condition.

“I’m having dinner at Johnny’s tonight,” You tell Mark as he lets go of your hands, making him pick his head up. “Just saying.”

“I’ll see if I can pay a visit.”

You smile at him and make your way over to Jaehyun, letting him put an arm around your shoulders and walk away with you, planting a kiss on the side of your head.

He does pay a visit.

The night is pierced through with Mark’s laughter when Johnny’s mouth drops open. He stops mindlessly strumming his guitar when it takes over him. “Dude, I’m telling you,” He says between his laughs. “They didn’t even look at each other when they were leaving, and somehow they were all lovey-dovey by the time they got back.”

“Fuck you,” Johnny nudges you rather hard in your side, and this time you are snickering along with Mark just at the sight of his face. “You called me creepy when I knew all along.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Johnny. I apologize for not crediting you enough on your talent of predicting relationships.” Your smile dies down a little after that, and your voice goes a bit quieter with the confusion. “Well I don’t know if it’s a relationship yet. It just happened, sort of.”

Johnny shrugs at that and puts his arm around your shoulders, pulling you closer to him on the couch with one of your legs dangling over and one of them propped up. “That’s fine. You guys can let it brew for a bit more. Just test the waters.” A breath of a chuckle makes its way out of your nose at his words and how the high you had felt a few hours ago had crashed down into this weird oblivion, but Mark nods in agreement.

You do not see it, but Johnny smiles down at you while you fix your eyes on the photographs on his wall. Some of his, some of his parents’, some of his newborn days— the final days just before the infection started taking all over the country and the world. There are a few with you and Mark, too, a couple of them looking downright awkward with Mark and you too numb to the friendship he was offering you after coming to the brink of death maybe tens or maybe hundreds of times, and another couple of them where the photos are just blurry with how much you were laughing and it made steadying his parents’ old camera harder.

He turns his head to the opposite side, facing Mark. “You got any sick raps, Mark?”

“What is that question?” Mark howls out, laughing his chest off like he always does. “When you say it like that I don’t wanna rap ever again.”

But he does, because Mark is like that.

Johnny and you do your best in hyping him up, shouting and howling and springing in your place to the beat of his lyrics. You two let him rap until he really does not feel like it anymore, and you listen to him when he goes back to strumming his guitar, softly singing some things every now and then. So quietly that you almost do not even hear it.

The night goes on like that. You just lounge around, Johnny between you and Mark, cozy and warm.

If there was anything about them two, it was that they made you feel normal somehow. Which is maybe why you cherished them so much, and what the three of you have.

Unfortunately, you wake up early once again in your own room in the morning even though you do not have any reason to.

There are some upsides to that when you have the day off, as much as you hate it. You get to take a shower with all cold, yet much appreciated water, and properly change your clothes into new ones after a long while, to make a breakfast with what you have stored away in your cupboards, and maybe even do laundry if you had any leftover homemade soap.

Sometimes you paid a visit to the dorms, checking up on lonely recruits if there were any that you had grown some kind of attachment to.

That morning you do all of that, too. You get your hair and body feeling and looking all clean, eat somewhat of a nutritious breakfast that is much better when compared with just going with an all empty stomach, change into some of your newest clothes that Johnny and Jaehyun had gifted you once after an outing for hoarding. Except while you are making your way to the dorms just to check on the newest recruits, you stumble upon a group of people lining in front of the entrance to the stables.

Your interest peaks when you spot Johnny, who is writing his name down on the board at the gates that open to the place. You hurry over to him as best you can in your still sleepy state. “Morning,”

He hears you but does not bother to turn his head to look at you, knowing you would come to stand next to him. “Hey.”

As expected, you halt when you are there. You look at his name on the board and his signature along with the date, and you know for a fact he is going out. “Sweep?”

“Yeah,” He lends the pen to the person next to him, and moves out of the line, prompting you to move away with him. “Signing up last minute. Taeyong and Yuta can’t make it out today, so.”

“Why?” You furrow your brows, and he shrugs a little. “Yuta’s needed at the training grounds today, and who knows what Taeyong has to take care of.”

He watches you as you sigh, truly tired of it, but the inner conflict is louder than any type of exhaustion you could possibly have. “Well I’m coming with you.”

When you try to walk into the line he steps in front of you, and puts a stop to whatever madness you are planning. His hands physically stop you as well as he places them on your shoulders. “No you aren’t,” Johnny’s voice is firm, and his brows are furrowed just slightly. “You need a day off. Your whole face looks purple with the cold, the lack of sleep, and the scar— and you look awful.”

He smiles then as if he had not just dragged the way you look all over the floor. “Just go and relax. Maybe spend some time with Jae, hm?”

You bite down on the insides of your lips and nibble on them, and furrow your eyebrows at the squeeze of your heart. “Just do me a favor and be careful. There are a lot of Runners around,” One of your hands come up half-bothered to point at the people in the line. “Tell that to the group as well.”

There is a silence that lasts a couple of seconds, but then Johnny pulls you in for a hug. “You know,” He mumbles. “If you actually talked to more people they’d like you better.” He knew what you would say, that you do not like the stares that people throw at you anywhere and everywhere, and that it stops you from approaching them. So, he stops that from happening before it can. “I’ll take your horse if that will make you feel any better.”

Stepping away from him, you smile and shove him a little. “Take my horse if it will make you feel any more secure, and send her back if your ass can’t make it.”

“Will do.”

Dusk comes, and the sun sets.

Some people do not return that evening, and Johnny is one of them.

Supposedly, his whole group is missing— which is a good thing, because it is not completely uncommon that people camp in some sort of a hide-out if the infected in the area are too much for them to handle with the amount of people they have and they think it is better to wait it out.

Which is why, although bitter, there is hope inside of you.

His parents are distressed when Taeyong comes to tell them the news, and they remain just as distressed afterwards if not more. Whenever you see them, you cannot help but notice how their faces are overborne with concern. Their brows are always furrowed, their mouths are always pointed downwards in a frown, their eyes always glazed over with what looked like thousands of thoughts racing all around, and the wrinkles on their faces are deepened in some areas with the weight and tension.

You grow distressed and restless as well, as hours— days pass. The concept of night and day loses its significance because you are too distracted during the day when you are supposed to be training the recruits, and too uncomfortable during the night rolling all over the bed without a drop of sleep in your eyes.

And it must be not only you that is feeling that way, because Taeyong knocks on your door in the dead of the night a few days after Johnny’s disappearance. When you open the door his arms are crossed over his chest, and he looks a lot paler than he usually is, his eyes red all around.

He gets straight to the point. “You, Yuta, Jaehyun and Mark. I want you to search for them while another group goes for a sweep.” His voice breaks at some point because of how tired he must be feeling and how scared. You nod slightly, the tension pulling and burdening your face. “Okay.”

After your mumbled, quick and short answer Taeyong turns right back on his heel and walks down the stairs of the porch. You cannot bring yourself to close the door just yet when you see him, a friend of a friend but a figure as protective and wise, walk away with his guards clearly down. “You should try and get some sleep,” You advise after him, even though you yourself are suffering from the same problem he is. “What you do matters.”

Taeyong does not slow down, and is out of your sight within seconds after he leaves your backyard.

Next morning, it is as if you had done a mutual agreement between the four of you, because you are all by the stables with the slightest hue of sunlight.

No one is smiling or looking content in any way or shape, but no one is agitated, either. The most healthy thing at that moment is to force yourselves to go numb altogether and you all know it.

With so much as some collective huffs you write your names down on the board and sign in the hand-drawn boxes next to them, being able to see all of the missing people’s names that were out just before you— it was never a pretty situation. The stables are kind of empty from all the horses that are missing as well and it feels weird to not be able to go out with the horse, your horse that you had considered a companion for years on end.

But Anubis, the black horse assigned to you that day, was a good compensation. He was surprisingly comfortable with you from the get-go.

The stable you were in got too empty after all of the search and sweep groups took their horses with only a couple of them left behind, and before you knew it, you were on them and stationed in front of the gate. Handwritten documents were in Yuta’s hands mapping out yesterday’s group’s sweeping locations.

And as he said just before you all mounted on your horses, no one would be parting ways that day.

When the gates open, you immediately start galloping behind the sweepers— they collectively had more ammo than your group, and they were going in the same direction for a while, so they could be some sort of a shield for you if the groups had somehow started moving much faster all of a sudden. Your group would be heading to the settlement just a bit further away from the town you had gone through yesterday; most probably what used to be its business district if any of your predictions were true. The sweepers would be going to the town, figuring the groups that were saturated behind the town must be at its downtown now.

The way up the valley is rather empty, which is almost more unsettling when you think of how many people are missing.

Six, to be exact, counting Johnny.

You try to focus on different things, like how your backside hurts as you gallop upwards and Anubis pants under you. On the fact that he is a rather strong horse and you had never noticed that when anybody else was riding him. How he is maybe the most elevated horse you have ever had, and how his back is very uncomfortable to ride on even with a saddle. How he is very enduring considering he does not slow down in the slightest even after the valley starts getting a little rough, not falling behind any horses and even passing some of them if it was not for you that took him back under control.

It helps you, focusing on him, because you do not want to focus on things that might get your guard down.

The sweepers part their way with you at the point they need to, making a turn for the northeast once you enter the town, letting you pass straight through. Without any goodbyes because you have officially entered the danger zone.

And you truly have, because there are Runners around with not as many Clickers roaming through in the visible distance where the sweepers are headed. You can only internally wish them good luck.

It takes less than an hour to get to the probable business district that is filled with concrete and glass covered buildings unlike the town, overtaken by vegetation (and snow) that has washed over its blues and greys and beiges and the financial personality it once had— again unlike its brown and red brick counterpart.

All of you make your horses come to a halt once you enter the environment, again, just to make sure there is as little noise as possible. Dismounting from them and taking the reins in your hands is an instinct. “Where do we go first?”

Yuta looks down at the papers with Mark’s question. His fingers trace over the words until they find what they are looking for. “Well,” He huffs, placing a hand on his nape with a wince. “They were going to the law firm, the bank in southwest, the city hall and they would meet at the conference hall. They must be around these areas if we’re lucky.”

“And if they’re lucky.” Jaehyun says under his breath, but you hear him loud and clear. And you have a feeling that everybody does.

Yuta drops his hand that is holding the papers and sighs. “The bank’s the farthest one, let’s go.”

They are not at the bank.

Not in the bank, not around the bank, not in the subway station under the bank where there is a hide-out in one of the conductor rooms, not inside the surrounding business buildings all of which have of their doors opened whether it is one of the back/staff doors or the front entrances as if it is an all-you-can-get open buffet of places to roam around for the infected. When in actuality, your people’s strategy is to close the doors and lightly barricade them after coming into any contact, trying to keep as many infected on the roads so it is somewhat easier to wipe them out by narrowing their moving space. It also helped indicating whether there had been any recent trespassers at all, because most people not acquainted with your settlement would not bother with closing the doors behind them as they lost themselves in all the possible places to hoard.

And it all just means that there must have been trespassers recently, making the infected harder to find since they were free to go into the buildings, which must have messed up with the sweeping.

It does not feel right at all.

The law firm which is a rather small building is of no help as well. No alive, normal human is inside, not in any of the five floors that you have to clear out a little or around, and once again the doors are open. All you can find are supplies lying around the fifth floor that are definitely from the city’s storage so you know that they must have stayed for some time there at some point. You take them back. But there is nothing more.

To be truthful about things, none of you had your hopes up about the city hall. It was an extremely open space and was most definitely not the safest in this situation, nor the most resourceful place to hide or camp in anytime— or to hoard things with nothing but once-fancy tiles all over the interior and no leftover supplies from passing groups. However, they would have gone there to check if there was anybody hiding away, because people (especially in groups) who passed through did that since it is a quite distinctive and low building in between all of the higher buildings for those unfamiliar with the area. They would have brought them back to the city if any of them were there. So it does not surprise you when you find the city hall empty as well, except for the sea of infected that swarm the grand entrance to the hall that make your eyes widen and immediately shut the door close when you first open it up. Plus holding onto dear life pushing against the doors with Jaehyun when some of them are attracted to the noise and make a run for it.

Sweep season was the worst season.

Through a mutual agreement, you barricade the doors a little (a lot) tighter with fire truck hoses that have long been detached from the abandoned truck between the hall and one of the high-rise buildings that most probably was sitting there since the outbreak day, where fire trucks were not only used for the countless fires that started especially in the traffic, but also to rescue people stuck in upper floors of buildings that were taken over by the Runners.

There is no way the infected trapped in the hall can open the doors through layers upon layers of a thick hose wrapped and tied around the handles of the entrance, at least you all would like to believe that.

When your heart rate picks up is when you spot a building with its visible doors closed on the way to the conference hall. “Wait.”

Everyone stops, prompting their horses to do the same as them. The guys look at the direction of your gaze, and they all seem to come to a realization. “Do you think-?”

“I think there’s no reason we shouldn’t.” But Yuta does not look too keen on it, so you have to agree further. “There’s something obvious here, and I think it’s an objective point when I say that.”

He nods at that and clears his throat, looking up at the building for a split second. “Is it okay if you search with Mark? Jaehyun and I’ll be here, I kind of need a second thought as I plan out the mapping for if they aren’t here or at the conference hall.”

“That’s fine.” You assure him, and nod your head at Mark. “Let’s go.”

Inside the building is eerily quiet, but brightly lit with the afternoon sun shining through all the glass. You have never been in this building before, at least you do not think so, because the lobby does not ring the slightest bell to you.

There are bodies of infected that are taken out lying all around. They paint the light creme flooring red with their blood, but it is comforting. Because it is for certain that they have been here, at least.

A fire exit door is all that you are looking for, or a staff room that could possibly lead to the stairway, but it takes a bit of an embarrassingly long time for you two to spot anything in the seemingly open-spaced, bright lobby. You come to learn a bit after starting to walk around that the entry to the stairway beside the elevators just outside of the oval lobby is also blocked with something on the other side.

“There’s a crack in the elevator doors,” Mark suggests, and although ladders are the one thing you hate the most, you agree to take them to the upper floors.

It is so dark and humid inside with years upon years of unventilated air, the smell of rust and rot is absolutely disgusting, and you fear that the years-old ladders will break any second with both you and Mark’s weight on them. Not to mention how tiring climbing up a ladder can be for your arms and legs when you hold onto the thin and flimsy metal waiting for the other to separate one of the elevator doors, most of which are rightfully blocked.

On one of the far upper floors, though, there is no blockage, and you can swing yourselves onto the hallway. Which is scary to be honest, especially when you are all this way up and if you miss anything your way down will be met with an old, hard, rusting top of an elevator on your back.

But god bless the planners (maybe their souls) of this place, because the ladder is close to the opening enough that you can swing onto the floor without too much hassle. Neither of you slip after jumping down onto it.

“Do you think,” Mark dusts himself off as if it would help with anything, takes a deep breath in his tired lungs, and rephrases his words. “Do you think they came all the way up here through that?”

“Maybe they blocked the stairway and the doors,” You suggest instead, and it sounds a lot more like the option the two of you would like to believe in. “Right half yours left half mine?”

“Sure.” He answers, and the two of you go your separate ways on the big office floor.

A few doors open to the empty, messy office rooms and you check through the drawers for anything worthy to take back with you even though there is not much of it. One of them provides you with some scissors and lighter liquid, which end up being the most usable things you get out of them. Some doors do not even budge with whatever is blocking your way.

But there is a room at the visible end of the hall where the door will budge, but will not open.

You resort to using your shoulders to break into the room rather quickly. There is not any particularly loud sound coming from behind the thick, polished wooden door, and something about it being left secure but still accessible made you think there must be something behind that door that is useful. Maybe a stash of actually usable supplies or much preferably, anything that leads you to your missing people.

The door opens with your fifth push, and you hear the sound of a broken lock clink on the ground.

You also hear the shriek of a Runner who jumps you immediately after being attracted to the sound.

With the force of your push you have basically thrown yourself into the arms of the Runner which is never a good thing or in any way close to an ideal situation, and you have to duck away by kneeling lower and throwing yourself to the sharp opposite side of where the infected is facing to make sure it does not grab your arms. You take a few steps away but it is just as fast as you are, so you have to use your quick wit and draw out your gun in the blink of your eyes, shooting it in the head— impractically unable to care whether there were any infected on Mark’s side or not because it was either you or whoever they were with the shock and the pace of things.

The mess of a creature falls down with a slump, your heart absolutely racing but also dropping— because as you look down at it you can see that you know who she used to be. You were not friends or even really acquaintances, but you know for a fact that she lives in the city. So you turn back around to the open-planned office with your fast approaching panic and adrenaline.

Which is when you see it.

Johnny, slumped onto the floor, sitting with his legs spread out. Johnny, whose ankle looks broken. Johnny, who has his gun in his hand.

Johnny, who has a bite mark on his exposed right arm where orange-salmon colored fungi is growing out, extending upwards to his shoulders and neck.

Johnny, who has a hole on the left side of his chest, red spatter over the wall behind him, slumped on the floor with fungi growing out of his arm ready to grow all over his glowing skin until he grows into the wall and starts letting out spores.

Johnny, dead.

You do not know if any air makes its way into your lungs. It surely does not feel like it. Your ears ring and your eyes go dark with purple spots all over your vision and you get dizzy and nauseous, but somehow, you stand.

“Mark!” You shout out, surprising yourself, calling and alerting him when you can already hear his fast approaching steps thumping on the floor at the sound of the gun fire. Before barely a few seconds can pass he barges into the room with his gun in his hand but stops when he sees you frozen in place. Then, he follows your gaze.

Even from the side of your eye, it is obvious he flinches. “What the hell happened here?” His voice is not above a whisper.

You look at the less familiar face lying on the ground, and its shoulder. “The bite marks look similar.” There is no sense of stillness in your voice as you speak. “I guess they just locked themselves away,” Teeth grinding tightly, you let out a silent and choked sob, because you cannot believe any of this bullshit your eyes are seeing.

Mark takes a few steps towards Johnny and picks something up from the ground— a paper— making his way to you. But he stands on his own while he reads with his slightly shaky hands, and crumples the paper once he is done skimming over it. He sits next to you on the hard, carpeted but otherwise concrete floor. “They got bit while they were clearing out the basement,” His lips wobble a bit, but he quickly covers it up by placing his fist over his mouth until it goes away. “Locked themselves in here so they wouldn’t harm anybody.”

“If the trespassers didn’t go through the district leaving every goddamn door open, none of this would’ve fucking happened.” Maybe you were trying to blame it on someone, or maybe you really were mad at them for their ignorance as they went through the city. You did not know for certain, although it felt a whole lot like it was the latter. Because they would not have had to camp here anyway. There would not have been infected in the buildings in the first place.

You sit down where you are standing, looking at Johnny.

All you know is that this was unfair. If anyone deserved surviving long in this world it was Johnny. He was physically strong, and he had a good mental attitude, and he was so purely good that the last thing he deserved was to die the way everybody did, alone and scared and not wanting to turn into one of those things. He deserved to die of old age if anything after living a happy and healthy life, continuing to help lonely recruits like you and Mark— doing what he likes to do until his very last days. Training, falling in love, teasing and pestering his friends whenever and wherever, giving advice, making people’s stomachs hurt with his smooth and not-so-smooth jokes, doing photography as long as that camera of his would survive, spending time with his family and not moving out of their house even though there are available houses until the time comes when he absolutely has to.

But he cannot do any of those things anymore.

He also cannot be there for you or Mark anymore.

Your trembling hand comes up to spread over your eyes and your fingers rest on your temples, and you hitch a breath in. “What are we going to do?” You ask Mark with your just as trembling voice as if he would know. The question is not necessarily about this particular moment in time, but about the far future as well. He lets it linger in the air as his eyes switch between the two bodies.

“Well,” He clears his throat when his voice shakes violently and looks at you, his hands playing with the carpet, picking and tearing away. He chooses to ignore the far future, at least for now. “We’ll have to tell his parents first.”

The hand on your face falls down. You look at Mark, and he notices how wide your eyes are. He knows you cannot comprehend it by the way your eyes look, looking right through him with your shell shocked, hundred-yard stare. “No,” You whisper. “Mark, I can’t.”

“That’s fine,” He looks into your eyes with his own that are glazed over, and nods reassuringly. “I can.”

But it does not feel better. Instead, it makes you feel worse immediately, because you feel like you at least owe Johnny and his parents this. It makes you feel ashamed that you will not do even one thing about it, because you do not think you would ever be able to look into his parents’ eyes again; knowing you joked about it before he left and you were too unbothered to go out after him before you were ordered to do so. There is nothing in your heart, mind, or body, that tells you that you can do it without completely losing yourself in the process.

The two of you collect yourselves and come back to your senses as quickly as you can, because you knew Yuta and Jaehyun would be on you if you were any more late.

Mark helps you in carrying the bodies down the stairs which is an extremely tiring task considering you go down several floors, and the mental toll it has on you. The two of you unblock the fire exit door and push the metal drawers and organizers aside, opening the door and carrying them to the lobby.

Then, you head outside. Yuta and Jaehyun do not spot Mark and you until you get closer, but when they do, their brows immediately furrow. “We need two bags.” You mutter, feeling your chest stutter with the words. Their faces fall at that very second. The grip Yuta has on his map that he is holding tightens and his knuckles go white, and he sighs with utter disappointment. Knowing Yuta, it is at himself.

“One of them’s Johnny.”

The muscles on their faces relax only for their eyes to widen.

It takes a few hours for all of you to get back to the city once you put them in bags and start riding, not galloping nor trotting; deciding not to look for the others knowing it would take a longer time to get back and not wanting to stress out anyone in the city further. A night group could easily replace yours.

When you are at the gates the sun has long set. Questions arise once the gates open and the bags dragged by the horses are seen. You and Mark answer them since you are the ones who found them in that state, where you found them, which building, which floor, was there anything written around them, any symbols, any human spotted around the area— anything useful.

You give them the answers still in a daze, and let them take Anubis from your hand. Without waiting for anybody you start walking, on the way to your house.

Except, you do not end up in your house for a while. You wait in the dark, just around the corner leading to Johnny’s house and you watch Mark deliver the news to them. Although you cannot hear what he says to them, you can see it clearly with the light on their porch. How Mark delivers the news with his hands linked in the front, fiddling with his fingers a little as he looks at their expectant faces. How Johnny’s mother hugs into his father once she hears the situation, both of them shaking with sobs. How Mark’s shoulders drop and how he tries to console them, but stopping when Johnny’s mother does not take a step away from her husband and he waves at Mark presumably wanting some space and time alone to themselves.

You watch as Mark nods and leaves, and you head to your house. Hurrying into your backyard, you swing open the door and kick off your boots. Not bothering to put them in their place, you take your bag off your shoulders and the only reason that you do not let it fall onto the floor is because of the guns packed inside. Then, you make a move to take your coat off.

And the damn zipper gets stuck.

With a sigh, you force it down. But it does not budge. So you try again, but it will not move. You wait, nibble on your lips, give it time to change its mind: maybe it was frozen and it needed to thaw.

But when you try again, it just does not want to move down.

Pissed off, you try to strip out of the coat. But that proves to be almost harder. Everybody wears thin but warm, lightweight coats to make their movability better, especially outside. But moving your whole arm to yourself and then down while holding the two layers of clothes, one thick sweater and the thin coat on top of it was undoable— because then they were fully limiting your movement.

And you had to take it off. You need to take it off.

Your hands then start picking and grabbing at the coat trying to rip it off, and that is when your door opens without any alert beforehand and Jaehyun walks in.

“What are you doing?” He whispers and walks over to you near your couch. You only stop struggling when he stands in front of you. “I can’t get it off, it’s stuck.”

He notices how you will not look into his eyes in the dark, and he notices the tears streaming down your face that you probably are not realizing. “Okay.”

Jaehyun walks over to your bathroom and takes a bar of soap you have. He walks right back to you in complete silence and dabs at your zipper with the sleeves of his hoodie up and down to take off the excess moisture, and starts slathering on the soap along the zipper until its sharp corner has visibly softened and the zipper looks white with the coat of it. He then fumbles with the zipper for a few seconds before it slides right down.

It makes you feel a mixture of embarrassment and anger, and you sniffle, only then realizing that you are crying after feeling the wetness in your inhale. Your lips waver as you try not to let a sob out. “There you go.” He mumbles as he helps you out of the coat and places it on the arm of your couch. He picks your boots up and places them next to the door.

“Let’s wash your hands.” He suggests, and you look down at your hands, seeing the blood from that Runner.

Jaehyun is almost late to hold you once your face violently scrunches up and you start fully letting it out, shaking with choked sobs.

Because your crying does not subside for several minutes, he ends up going to the bathroom again and comes back with a couple of wet rags, soaping one up and cleaning your hands delicately before wiping them off. He leads you to your bed then and lets you lie down, pulls the cover up, and kneels down in front of your face. “Try to sleep, okay? Force yourself to if you need it.”

You nod at him, and let him leave after he smiles at you.

His eyes had looked empty, which was always the worst for Jaehyun.

The next morning you hear your door lightly opening in your sleep, and being carefully shut. A few steps make their way over to you slowly and the empty side of your bed sinks with a somewhat loud huff.

Whoever it is waits for a bit, lets you sleep a little more even though you are not deep in it. That goes on for a few minutes before your bed sinks closer to your back, and it sinks a bit less than before— an elbow.

Fingers start running through and playing with your hair. It must be Jaehyun. And you are right. “Taeyong let me and Donghyuck take over you and Mark’s work for a couple of days, so you don’t have to go in today.” He softly whispers, and you nod slightly. “How’d you know I wasn’t sleeping?” You ask in hopes of distracting yourself from the thoughts and views that race over your eyelids, and open your eyes when it does not exactly work out.

He answers with a slight smile. “Your lashes fluttered when I walked in.” You feel him place his chin on your shoulder. “You slept any?”

Gulping, you shake your head. “Just got some shut-eye.”

“That’s okay.” Jaehyun whispers. “Better than keeping your eyes open. I’m happy you got some sort of rest.”

He sighs and takes his hand off your hair then. “Yuta wants to see you and Mark eating so he’s preparing breakfast. I have to leave, but head out soon and try to eat for me. A few bites is all I’m asking for.”

“Okay.”

Porridge and bergamot tea.

The breakfast Yuta has prepared for you and Mark, with some dried plums and apples inside that he fried on the pan a little. It smells nice, looks less so.

There is no one to greet and welcome you initially when you are in front of his house that is on the same street as Johnny’s. But it does not matter because you barge in to avoid being seen by his parents, taking big strides from the start of the street. You hear the stir of the wooden spoon inside the metal pot, and the fruit that spills in while you make your way to the kitchen.

Mark is sitting at the island counter of Yuta’s kitchen with his elbow on the surface, his head leant against his hand.

Yuta turns away from the cream colored counters and his electric stove once he hears the footsteps. “Morning.”

You see Mark’s head only tilt a little, but not fully to the extent that he can look back at you. “Hey.” Your voice does not really come out, so you clear your throat. Yuta’s face falls a little at that. “Is there tension in your throat?”

“Yeah.” You sit down next to Mark. With your hands placed on the surface, you turn your head to look at him but his face is covered by his hand and arm. “There’s some powdered ginger you can take in the pantry. But you should try and relax your muscles first.”

With that he pours the porridge into the bowls he has taken out for you, and serves them with a slight smile on his face. Then he pours the hot tea inside two small jars and hands them out as well. “Dig up.”

It does not feel right. The atmosphere is too heavy, but you know you will not get out of it unless you really eat something, so you pick up the spoon and take a spoonful of the meal, gathering a piece of everything. Letting it steam for a few seconds as you watch it, you contemplate putting it in your mouth because ever since yesterday you feel this sickness in your stomach. It is more fragile than it ever could be on any given normal day.

Even so, you take a bite. At first it feels like you will throw up at the sheer hue of sweetness in it.

But you chew, and continue chewing, and you do not throw up.

“I heard you’re going out again today.” Mark mumbles, which makes you perk up, looking at Yuta. His eyes widen in the slightest. “I am,” He says, his eyes looking boringly only at Mark.

You chuckle drily. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Taeyong wants me there. He’s going out too.” His explanation does not calm your heart, which feels like it is being squeezed, at all. You turn back to your bowl and continue picking some porridge. Just to avoid his gaze.

Yuta does not say that he would come back or that he would be okay. Because he knows that those words do not hold any meaning to them whatsoever, especially now. “I have to go soon, so you should better be finished with these before I do. I’ll let you drink the tea by yourselves.”

Mark and you start eating in complete silence. Mostly because Yuta is watching you eat and it is extremely uncomfortable, and it would be awkward to just talk as if he was not there.

It makes you both rush your meals as well. The bowls empty out in a matter of minutes and your stomach feels heavy, though in all honesty, it was a pretty good breakfast Yuta had prepared for you. It was a fact that you would not have bothered to cook or even to prepare something that did not need to be cooked.

When the two of you are done with your meals, Yuta smiles and takes the bowls away to wash them quickly. Mark tries to intervene and says that Yuta could go out and he would take care of the dishes, but Yuta shuts him right up saying he needs the distraction anyway.

You can see Yuta’s hands shaking slightly.

It is always difficult to know for sure what he is feeling. But if you had to give it a shot, you would say he is feeling either anxious or shocked, or both. He is the type to live his emotions very secretively, and you could never recall an instance where Yuta’s grief was noticeable. Maybe only when he had lost one of his recruited, young survivors on the way back home. That had changed him as a whole; losing someone (especially much younger than him) under his responsibility.

He leaves once the bowls are washed, not looking at your way or telling you goodbye. You are simultaneously thankful and angry at him for doing that.

The bergamot tea is still steamy. It somewhat burns your hands when you put them around the jar to warm yourself up and start looking into the dark substance, looking so deep into it that you start feeling as if you are part of the dark liquid.

Mark clears his throat. “You’re wearing the same things as yesterday.”

That is true: even though there is nothing that you want more than to take them off and trash them to never see them again. But at the same time, there is something inside of you that does not want to let go of them. Even if it is just taking them off.

You look at the side of his face, and see him taking a sip from the jar. “Could you sleep?”

He shakes his head with a gulp. “No, no. You?”

The two of you make eye contact when he finally properly looks at you, and you shake your head as well. “I kept seeing it like a picture— like something projected at the backs of my eyelids.”

Mark nods, and that is it for a while. No one speaks for some time and you sip your beverages together as if it is a chore that you have to do, as if Yuta would see you two if you spill the tea into the drain of the sink and would come after you, trying to get done as quickly as possible so both of you could leave to be by yourselves. And it goes on until Mark decides to speak in a low voice. “They buried him early in the morning. His parents didn’t want anybody to see.”

Your eyes burn and the lump forms back in your throat because you can understand why they would not want anyone to see, but at the same time, you cannot. “Some of his older recruits left him flowers and letters, seeing that made me feel a bit better.”

You nod. “He deserves that.” And so much more. Despite yourself you smile slightly, and Mark joins in understandably grim, nodding. “He does.”

The day goes by extremely slow, yet so fast once you are back at your house.

You let yourself take refuge on the bed and do not move much throughout the day, trying to sleep. Expectedly, you are not too good at doing that. You toss and turn and huff and look up at the ceiling meaninglessly until you can no longer hear kids playing outside and the adults going about with their daily duties; until daylight loses all of its significance. Until you realize you have melted into this state of mind and have completely forgotten about your needs, using the toilet, eating, or drinking water.

Yesterday’s clothes are still on you. And you cannot bring yourself to change out of them, again, even though there is nothing in this world you want more than to never see them again.

The night would have not had any significance whatsoever as well if it was not for the sounds of hurried shuffles through the snow that were coming out of your room’s window at whoever knows o’clock. Before you could even show any type of physical response to it- whether it be surprise or suspicion- there were loud and hard knocks on your door.

It takes probably all of the strength you have in you to get up and walk to the door. You laze your way over to it and swing it open, rubbing your eyes.

You would have expected it to be Jaehyun, since he must have gotten done with his duties. But it was not him. It was Mark.

Mark, whose eyes and face were lit up with adrenaline. There is not a single emotion you can make out from the way his face looks. The world could actually be ending for all you know, or the community might have been getting raided.

You cannot make anything out from the way his voice sounds, either, when you hear him speak the millisecond after the door knob turns. “They found the trespassers.”

The look in his eyes- whatever it was, shifts into concern for a split second before he carries on with his words. “One of them’s the one Yuta left a note for, they were making their way over here when Yuta found them.”

Those words spark a light in your chest because of course. Of course they were the ones that caused this whole thing in the first place and it sounds stupid to you now that you had not even thought about them when you noticed the doors were open.

Which is because the doors at the nearer town were, in fact, closed while you were there.

Now it does not make sense. “Wh- how- that doesn’t make any sense. The doors were closed when we were out earlier.”

Mark shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess they got the theme by the time they were there. Yuta told me about the whole interrogation,” He chuckles humorlessly, shaking his head. “They claimed everything before they could even ask the questions.”

“Do they know they fucking killed people?” You ask, and Mark flinches at the harshness of the words. However, he nods promptly. “Yuta told them. They said they were sorry-”

It makes you laugh at the sheer comedy of it. “They were sorry? That doesn’t bring them back or make up for anything.”

“Nobody ever said it does-” Mark defends, but you are too angry at them to stop. “You know how fucking miraculous it is to survive twenty five years- the whole ordeal, especially when you go outside frequently. His parents pushed through thick and thicker with a newborn baby just to get to where they are now, to give him a damn chance at life and this is how Johnny goes? Because of someone else’s stupidity and inconsideration?” Shaking from anger, you wipe at your eyes that have gotten a little wet while your blow-up was going on. You gulp and shake your head, feeling the tension in your jaws. “They should save their apologies because not even a billion of them,” Faster than lightning, you hold a finger up in the air in between you and Mark. “Would make up for a single hair of Johnny’s that got hurt nor for a single tear of his parents.”

Mark, your poor friend and companion, only nods a little. He knows how you get when you are angry, and he knows how fed up you must be feeling, and he can see how tired and out-of-it you look, so he does not talk. He knows that if he were to say anything you would spill words from your mouth you would either regret saying or would only upset you more, and he did not want that to happen.

Though, Mark did have to say one thing. A part of the truth that would concern the two of you. “They’re from the Nox.”

He watches your eyes slowly widen. In a matter of seconds, you look awake and aware as if you did get all the sleep you had lost the past two days within those few moments. You lean your shoulder against the door for support or from the shock, he cannot be sure. “What?” You whisper.

Mark shifts from his place, the tips of his shoes touching your socks as he leans in much closer- most probably to drown his voice out. The neighbors should not hear more than what they might have already heard so far, even though you had been conversing in low tones. “From the headquarters,” He whispers, looking into your eyes. “They came to recruit people from this area. The others are with them.”

Your brows furrow with the oncoming nerves. “So there were more of them and they just joined?”

After a second’s hesitation, Mark nods. “Seems so.”

“Why would they?” Upon the question, Mark takes a deep breath and pushes his shoulders back much like a school kid being questioned on a topic they have not studied, and looks at the side. The yellow lights from other people’s windows hit his face as he nibbles on his bottom lip indecisively. When he turns back to face you, the lights still illuminating the right side of his face, he shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Mark does not get surprised when you chuckle humorlessly. “Well I think it’s pathetic to run with people who’ve killed your own.”

It is quiet for a few seconds as he nibbles on his lip some more, but in the end something- that looked much like defeat- washes over him before he just nods a little. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Maybe five seconds of quiet before he speaks, looking down at his hands where his fingers are picking at scabs formed over his knuckles that seemed to be there every living day. “Um,” He swallows the words that would come after that at first, but he thinks, and thinks some more. It takes a couple of seconds, but he does decide to speak up. “You know what, nevermind. Maybe later.”

You get a bit taken aback but he cannot tell, because your brows are still furrowed a bit angrily and there is no other emotion over your face. “Do you know where Jaehyun is? He said he’d come straight after his duties.”

Mark’s mouth opens but no word leaves it. “He uh,” It closes and opens once again, his eyes widening a little. “He’s- he volunteered,” He clears his throat and looks down. “He volunteered for filiation.”

“Of what?” Your heartbeats have gotten significantly faster, stronger and heavier, but you cannot say if it is worry or the oncoming anger. “The trespassers’ base. Taeyong was looking for someone he could trust and he-,”

“Amazing,” You chuckle and shuffle on your feet, crossing your arms over your chest. “That’s amazing.” Mark sees you lower your head and your tongue swipe over your bottom lip as you smile bitterly, and when you raise your head back up, he can see the unshed liquid shine with the moonlight. “Why does nobody act responsible?” You whisper, and he sees the falter in your furrowed brows- the stutter.

But Mark knows you better.

He knows this is not how you truly think. He knows you out of all people want to move at the front, he knows you want that the most, and Mark knows you blame yourself for the things you are (in his opinion, rightfully) unable to do. He knows it is because you are scared. He knows you are terrified. Because it has been long, so long since either of you two have even gotten close to properly surviving outside and in all honesty: through these years of routinely going out for shorter periods of time and not having to dwell on things out of the gates, you two have grown accustomed to the feeling of homely safety. It really had felt like nothing and nobody would be able to reach you or anyone around you, even if it felt like it just inside the walls. The bubble of routine reality hidden in the much chaotic and unforgiving reality that was this community had slowly but surely implanted the expectation of seeing your loved ones get back home as if it was just a shift of a pre-apocalypse job- what they called 9-to-5.

And Mark knows this is almost like a reset, and that the sense of security and whatever this place has brought you feels like it is gone. He feels like it too.

Mark hates to see you this way. He hates to feel this way. He hates that Johnny was the one who had to go out of everyone, because he was the best of you.

But he knows he should take care of who he has left. In whatever way he can.

When he looks at you, the concerned look in his eyes from a few moments ago is back. “Have you slept any?”

You shake your head. “No.”

He nods as if he expected the murmured answer. “We’re going back to duties tomorrow, you need to sleep some.” Mark sees you chuckle just once and hears you mutter an ‘Easy to say.’ while tilting your gaze down, but he interrupts you by pointing inside, albeit a bit reluctantly. “Do you want me to help?”

“Would you?” He nods, the genuinity somehow visible from the way he does, and steps in gladly when you get away from the door and open it wide enough for him to walk in.

It had been long since the last time he had helped you sleep. It was a few years ago when you were on your own, having just separated from a group of survivors the two of you had become somewhat attached to. Their goals with life were much different than Mark’s and yours- two mere teenagers whose only wish was to not be much farther from home in hopes of reuniting with the people you had grown with.

Who could ever know that a little over three weeks of traveling on foot would already be too far from home, and too impossible to ever cross paths with? A miracle, really, ‘for kids your age’ (as people who were around the age of your parents would say).

Some nights the hopelessness and the feeling of never belonging to any group would take over you. Mark was the only person you could depend on, and you were the only person he could depend on. With how young you both were it was only natural that both of you had times where the cycle of hunger, loneliness, the paranoia of surviving and being infected, almost-dying but being saved, seeing the only person you depend on almost die but saving them, either being showered with love from other survivors or being hated for whatever reason, and getting left behind either way would get too much to deal with.

The two of you were camping overnight inside a completely empty water tower, warm and dark in the winter night- the last gift of the survivor group you had tagged along with had been an old map marked all over with safe and hopefully clear places to settle in. Plus the groups you should never encounter.

So he had done what he was doing right now. He made you lay down like right now, that time on the hard concrete and now on your kind of soft mattress that was slowly rotting away, knelt in front of you unlike in the past when he laid down beside you, started playing (more like softly scratching) with your hair and scalp because he knew it worked well to make you sleep, and sang in a low tone because he knew you loved it, and found comfort in it.

His voice sounds rougher than ever when he starts.

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,” This song is much too familiar, and it is Mark’s favorite verse of it. It means so much to him, having been brought up with faith in a world he once stated he felt was ‘too far from it’.

“And I will dwell on this earth forevermore,” His voice is soothing and soft, even though you knew he preferred his rapping much better over his singing. “Said, I walk beside the still waters and they restore my soul,”

He stops a little to take a breath, an unnecessary one, yet heavy. “But I can’t walk on the path of the right because I’m wrong.”

Mark’s voice is working its charm- or maybe it is knowing you are not alone, you do not know. But your head was getting clouded and dazed with the sleep creeping up to take you over already. He, however, continues. “Well, I came upon a man at the top of a hill,”

His voice cracks a little. “Called himself the savior of the human race,”

Through the cloud of sleep, you try to reach him. Only mentally, but you try to reach him. You wanted to hear him until the end. “Said he come to save the world from destruction and pain, but I said ‘How can you save the world from itself?’”

You barely make it to the end of the line, only hearing a glimpse of his sporadic whistling.

When you open your eyes you see Johnny sitting down next to your hand laid in front of your face, hugging the pillow. He smiles down at you, ruffling your hair for a bit. The room is dim- only the wall lights are on. The environment is mostly dark, even Johnny’s face that is much closer to you than anything. You can still see him pretty well, though, in the dim, warm yellow lighting.

His clothes are relatively clean. A few stains and tears here and there, but nothing unusual. Him and his parents’ ways of doing laundry were always superior to many others. You wanted to learn how but Johnny said you would have to come and do it with them once to properly learn once you are out of the dorms. Sometimes he would offer to do your laundry for you when the queues and waiting periods of the laundry got too long in the dorms- it was easier to have problems with water at a rather small place where a lot of people lived, and when they got their clothes really dirty almost every single day while getting educated on survival skills and agriculture.

His face is bright. His eyes are puffy just the right amount; he looks energetic. His smile is of genuine fondness towards you, and it makes you smile as well.

“Sleeping too deep?” He asks quietly. The dorm room is unoccupied excluding the two of you; your roommate had gotten a bad cold and was kept in the small hospital ward. You shake your head at his question but the yawn you let out contradicts with the motion. “I was just taking a nap.”

Johnny nods and looks down for a second, sighing a little before looking back at you and slightly raising his hand which held a tea cloth, showing off the little pouch. “Eomma sent some cornbread. I brought some dried figs as well.”

Excitement washes over you, and you take the cloth out of his hand gratefully when he holds it out for you. Unable to hold yourself back, you break a small piece off of a slice of cornbread and happily put it inside your mouth- giggling in delight when you notice the fresh corn taste and the fluffy texture. Johnny chuckles at your reaction and coos only a little.

His smile dies down pretty fast despite its brightness just a moment ago. Which is unusual for him, who likes to stretch his smiles out for as long as he possibly could.

“Can I lie down?” He asks and points at the pillow reluctantly. You nod and scoot closer to the wall, arching your back a little and tilting your head back to secure the tea cloth of snacks inside the small, empty vase placed on the windowsill. It operated as a whatever-holder: sometimes it was actual flowers, sometimes it was small jewellery or gifts you had gotten on your birthdays, sometimes the very occasional letter from Mark even though he was just two buildings down, but usually it was snacks from Johnny.

He lies down next to you and does not bother to get under the blanket, placing his hands on his stomach as he looks at the ceiling. You watch his chest rise and fall three, maybe four times before he can start speaking. “Did you ever observe one?”

“An infected?” He hums at your question. You look at the ceiling and try to remember a time you might have but nothing resurfaces. “Not really. Was too busy trying to save my ass. Or Mark’s.”

“You never went outside before the raid?” Johnny asks, quite curious. You shake your head again even though you are not sure if he would see it. “Not never, but we were in school mostly. It was high up in an apartment so it was the safest place. I did not have to worry much about them until we were older.”

An exhausted sigh makes its way past your lips and it is not only because you are physically exhausted. “And then we ran.” Turning your head to the side to look at his face, you smile. “And now I’m in a different kind of school.” Calling the dormitories a school was simultaneously a far reach and not. It was mostly to train people to not be shenanigans until they became adults, and to be responsible with their duties and communal living once they were one.

A hand laid on his stomach reaches out for one of yours and he holds it, squeezing in a way that could not be described as tightly but rather, strongly. In a way that reassured you and calmed you down, in the way that made all your past worth the present. “You’ll get to be a Wanderer soon enough. Just a few months more.”

“I just like the idea of having my own place,” You chuckle as you shrug, acting like being a Wanderer was the least of your interests. “A bathroom all to myself, a less shitty bed and having the freedom to walk around whenever…”

“Just make sure you don’t forget about us when you get your luxury.” He smiles and looks at you, and you smile back at him devilishly. “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” At that, Johnny’s mouth drops open in surprise and happiness, but you cut him off before he can even start, playing your game further. “You see, unfortunately most people I consider friends in here aren’t peaceful, calm farmers or healers or-”

“Yeah, we all have a fucked-up liking of the outside,” He nods as he talks to himself, eyes slightly squinted. But he comes to his own rescue with a protest. “It’s not like anybody can blame us. Being lost in the old world is quite dreamy when there aren’t screeching mushrooms running around.”

It makes you laugh the way he addresses once-people back from the dead, even snort a little. It had been long since you had seen one. Young recruits, or recruits that basically were not at the age of maturity, were not allowed to go on patrols, research scouts, or sweeps unless it was absolutely necessary. From what Taeyong had told you the first time you ever stepped foot into the dorms and were told about the way things went around the city, it was to give people, especially teens, a chance.

A chance to live at least until the day they were considered adults.

“Speaking of,” Johnny’s smile dies down once more. He takes a big breath, and his chest rises with it, and he holds it there for a few seconds. When it is let out, it sounds sad more than anything. Maybe even a bit depressed. “When we were out on a patrol today with Taeyong, there was this small group of Runners at one of the checkpoints,”

He looks at you, but you do not say anything, so he continues. “So we were clearing the place out as we do, and I went upstairs while Taeyong stayed behind just to be safe. I went into the studio to write down the report,”

With that he turns his gaze back to the ceiling, scrunching his eyebrows slightly. “And there was this.. Runner, it- he didn’t hear or see me so I hid behind a table. But he wasn’t moving around, you know? Just standing at the same spot. It was very early stage, he had just turned. Maybe a couple of days ago, I don’t know,”

He starts fiddling with his fingers. “He looked around the same age as me, or maybe a bit younger. Wasn’t flimsy, didn’t look like he’d been starving- he just looked healthy otherwise. But as I looked at him and the way he flinched, the way his hands moved and his shoulders cramped; the way he grunted.. it sounded too human.”

There is silence for a second or so, but he picks his words right back up. “And his eyes- his eyes,” Johnny breathes, and the sound that comes from his nose sounds a bit too stuffed and wet to be normal. “They didn’t look completely empty. Not even meaningless.”

He looks down at his hands that are still fiddling, his lips hanging out a bit the way they did whenever he was sleepy or sad. Then, he nods a little, confirms whatever is going through his mind. “I think he was there,” His voice cracks and stutters. “Inside. Trapped and waiting until it consumed his brain whole. Trying to fight back as if it would be any help.”

“And I couldn’t help but think, as I shot him down,” He shrugs and shakes his head. “That I’d never want to be trapped in my own body and have to wait until I have no control over it, if it ever happened to me.” And he looks at you.

Johnny looks at you.

With his sad, brown, dark eyes. His empathy for the Runner and for his own self. He looks at you so deep, almost like he is frozen.

Because he is.

You reach out your hand to touch his arm, and find it to be extremely cold, and stiff.

He is gone.

You wake up breathless and almost shoot yourself out of your bed with the force you are sitting up. Mark is gone, and nobody else is there. You are completely alone. The sky is just turning a bit grey, signalling the coming of the morning.

Sighing, you try to relieve some of the pain in your jaws and chest; trying to forget the memory of Johnny that was now your nightmare. You had clenched up too much, it felt stiff everywhere. Now, your head was hurting too.

There is not a single drop of sleep left in you- even if there was, you hardly think you would be able to go back.

So you get up.

Walking to your closet in a hurry, you pick out some clothes in the dark. In all honesty you do not even know what you are picking, but it does not matter. There would be very few people outside at the dead of the night if at all, and you could not care less about how they thought your outfit was.

This felt like the only time you could actually visit him. You just wanted to be alone with him, and the silence.

Once you wear your coat you are already half outside. You shut your door as quietly as you possibly could in your hurry, which was undeniably a little loud even if it had been a reasonable time to leave your house, but it was not like people would care. Unless someone or something was screaming, nobody really cared.

From your house to the cemetery took around ten minutes of walking, which was a reasonable distance given how spread out this city was. How it came to be this big you did not exactly know. Johnny had told you sometime that the bigger series of stone buildings belonged to a winery- the wines would be fermented in the summer and then shipped out here in the fall to age before being sold, which was what his parents told to him. It made sense, because the stone buildings all had underground basements that were all connected, some of which were used as a hospital ward and some of which were used as a communal living space for people who did not really have families nor a role in the community like a Farmer, Wanderer or Sweeper. Basically for people who were deemed unqualified to have their own houses.

It kind of sucked, but then again, some people actually preferred being there. The director of the basements and dorms, this lovely woman called Sarwendah, had told you once that even though it was not the majority, some people found comfort in living with other people openly since it made them forget the reality of everything as long as they were in that bubble.

The wooden buildings were either built after the gates were built- which, the gates were built after the army claimed the zone to themselves at the start of the outbreak, whose control over the area for something around 11 years, Johnny remembered those times in his childhood- or they were the ones already built for the winery’s workers and their families.

Johnny. That bit of knowledge came from Johnny too, as well as many others.

And when you are in the cemetery walking through the graves, looking for his name and spotting it without much time passing, you see a silhouette standing right at the foot of the grave.

Who, upon walking closer, turns out to be Mark.

Who, also upon walking closer, seems to be fully equipped with bags and his gun.

“Why so equipped?” You ask, and it startles him, but he does turn around and watch you as you walk over to him. “You’re going outside to join Jaehyun?”

He clears his throat. “No, he got back,” There is a split second of silence that feels a bit too long in your confusion for how long it actually is. Mark rolls his shoulders back and takes a deep breath, lets it out, creating a rather long-lasting vapor. “But yeah, I’m going outside.”

“Where?” You ask further, and he visibly winces. He avoids the question to play with the stones around Johnny’s grave with his foot, nibbling on the inside of his mouth before mumbling. “I should’ve told you before but I couldn’t.”

Your brows furrow as a string is pulled at your heart with the suspicion and the piecing of things together. “What were you going to say?”

One more exhale, but this time sharp and clear-cut. Controlled. He looks at you, looks in your eyes, and tells you the words you would have never imagined he would. “They’re releasing the trespassers and I’m leaving with them.”

Everything kind of slows down at that moment if that is even possible with the lack of action-filled things around you. Shock, was it? Or utter betrayal? “I’m sorry?”

Mark takes a step closer to you and fully turns his body to face you, towering above you not so much with his height but more so with his body language. “They’re working on a vaccine. They trust what they’ve got in their hands and they’re traveling around recruiting people to guard the headquarters. They’re afraid someone might-”

It was all too much.

“Mark, what the fuck are you talking about?” You snarl, and it shuts him up effectively. Yet, after that, you do not say anything. You wait for him to explain himself and after a couple of overwhelmed inhales, he takes the opportunity. “I’m going there to work as a guard. They’re afraid of the possibility of someone stealing the samples, or worse, attacking the lab. They need every volunteer they can get right now.”

Anger.

Pure anger is what you are feeling, and it is indescribable. It covers you from head to toe, right to left, inside and out; it feels hot and yet, icy cold. “Johnny’s blood hasn’t even dried yet, and you’re leaving with the very people who caused his death?”

Mark looks taken aback. “Be sensible. They couldn’t have known about the doors, they’re the first group from the headquarters to come here in years. It’s life or death out there, and they probably didn’t have the time for details.”

You take a step closer to him as if it is possible, and hit his shoulder lightly. “How about you be a little sensible? How can you trust them so easily? What if they’re saying these just to recruit all those people- and to travel all the way through there-”

“They have a car. Takes three days.” Mark cuts in, which makes you chuckle humorlessly. “Okay, great. What if they just recruit you to use you as a scapegoat for when they encounter bandits? Or, like I said, they just recruit you to have more guards? The vaccine has been a word since forever, Mark, and we know it. It’s a stupid hopeless rumor.”

“I’m telling you, they have scientists and they have evidence-” Mark starts, but you cut him off. “Yes! But their people also raid towns, and these people themselves are inconsiderate enough to screw up our whole system and kill our friends along the way-” You are basically trying to make sense to him with your whole body, pointing at the grave and getting closer to him and looking at his eyes to make him regain some of his sense. Just enough to keep him here, where he should be. “How can you trust them with your own life when they’ve been so inconsiderate of the others’ time and time again? You walk out of here with them and the next thing you know, you’re dead, Mark.” You point to your left, which is the direction of the big gates where the trespassers must be leaving, as they need to leave under the Leaders’ watch.

He is silent upon that. It takes him a few moments to come up with the words he is going to say, and his eyes flicker around under the confused sunlight signalling the coming of the early morning.

But he comes up with them nonetheless. “I owe it to people and to him,” He points at the grave. “To do whatever part I can to end this someday. And if I need to go to great extents and forgive them, so be it.”

And with a determined gaze in his eyes you had never seen from Mark before, he says what he really thinks. “I’d rather die running after something I believe in than live with the shame every day.”

You understand.

Not him, but that he is going.

That maybe, he is already gone.

“You leave,” You look at the grave and bite the inside of your cheek before looking back at Mark. “And I’ll come looking after you.” You whisper.

He looks away and bites down on his lip, placing his hands on either side of his hips. And then, he shrugs, not even trying to think it through. “That’d be up to you.”

And he starts walking towards the left, leaving you at the cemetery.

For the first time, you are alone.

[windhowell]

hi! not sure if you were around for this but here we go

i'm a kind of new dnp fan (last year) so i wasn't around for BIG/COTY, so i'm taking a poll of the people who were around for it (this is purely morbid curiosity btw). what was your reaction/the phandoms reaction on your end when the videos first dropped? thank you 💕

oh wow okay that is a QUESTION

(for some context i’ve watched dan since 2012, and then i started watching phil and “joined phannie social media etc” at the end of 2014 when they started the gaming channel) i took a break from all the social media side of this fandom in 2018 (but i always watched every dan and phil video) so when dan uploaded BiG i wasn’t expecting anything to drop? so i saw it and was like 👁👄👁

my reaction to BiG is hard to put into words, honestly i never thought dan would come out publicly, i never thought he would feel safe enough to (or WANT to tbh) so my initial feeling was like oh my god i’m so fucking proud ?? also i had thought for years that a possible reason for dan not wanting to talk about sexuality was that he was bullied at school, but i didn’t expect it to be THAT BAD so i was definitely in shock at the school and bullying section for a while, and felt very angry at what he has had to deal with for so long (especially as he basically hinted at that apart from phil, nobody knew he was gay most of his LIFE)

one thing i will say is that my reaction to the phil section has dramatically changed over the almost two years since i first watched BiG. at first i (and many MANY other dnp followers) definitely fell into the trap of being very overexcited about that statement and making a bigger deal out of it than we should (ofc dan was expecting this and you know its OKAY, but like, it kinda bugs me still that people talk about it very light heartedly) watching that now makes me so angry thinking about what they had to fucking go through, how gross people acted, but also how sad it is that so many of the people who said stuff that upset dan and phil in the 2011-2014 era were closeted teenagers so like its not as if i actually think they hold any blame ? idk its very confusing but yeah

but the FANDOM’S reaction to BiG ??? complete and utter chaos like everyone was just in a sort of collective wave of shock the day it dropped but also there was so so so much love like the youtube comment section on that video the first day was so so lovely and it was so surreal to see it trending number one on twitter like i think most people couldn’t quite process that it had happened ??

my reaction to COTY was literally 😳😳😳 phil’s complete confidence and self assurance in being a 32 year old homosexual man shocked me to my fucking core, he really came on main and said “i am a gay man and i have never liked a woman in my life, get over it, i love myself and you should love me too, bye!” and i LOVE IT honestly i aspire to feel like that in regards to my own queerness one day.

i think the fandom’s reaction was a mix of “i mean like we already know you’re gay because of dan” and “LET PHIL SPEAK FOR HIMSELF OMG I MUST PROTECT PHIL” (hint: both of these were 😐😐) but i do think we collectively made phil feel very loved and supported and he communicated that with us and that was very nice to be a part of.

overall it was a very positive, overwhelming and intense time to be a dedicated phannie, especially when dan posted his video, but also like it really did feel like a new era was coming which was so lovely. everyone was very very proud of dan and it felt like a great community to be in.

also maybe its a bit strange but i just felt such like contentment because OF COURSE the two men who had made me feel at home and happy and safe were massive fucking queers just like me. like obviously they’ve both talked about boys for years but theres just something about them being out, and me being like yeah these boys that i have loved and supported AND MET are just as queer as me and i cant begin to explain how amazing that felt

[hedgefairy]

Okay, I know, I know, it's already old news, everybody and their uncle in the costuming community has already talked it over, but anyhoo, I made notes when I crawled my way through effing Bridgerton and I will be damned if I don't vomit them onto this site. I have 32 pages of this shit, I'm not gonna throw that away.

I'm also typing this on my phone because I'm stuck on a trainride that's just doubled in length because this is the 2021 Northern German snow storm. What, there's snowflakes on the rails? We cannot possibly keep up our schedule, say goodbye to 90% of the connections.

Okay, on to Bridgerton, Episode 1

We're in Britain (oh, London, okay), allegedly 1813. I see people who are clearly meant to be asympatico, but is this size incusivity I spot there? Daring! Gasp! Me li...

Oh wait, no. The character is promptly shamed for her figure (which is mostly caused by the horrible cut of her dress. Every size can look great in Regency garb, but never mind, we need to make the "fat one" look bad!).

Also, no shifts under the stays. Why. There was obviously enough budget, don't tell me you couldn't afford a few strappy tops - it's not like the rest is historically accurate, so it would have sufficed to send some poor underpaid intern to H&M and get some. Nvm, that wouldn't be sexay.

Wait, is the garishly dressed (always a sign of a character of bad character in a costume drama) woman Delphine from Selfridge? Does she always have to play bitches? That's not nice, and just because she has a recognisable face, which by modern (read: americanised) standards is not favourable enough. Ugh. But I like the actress, so I'll let it slide (for now).

Lol, buttocks.

Not sure about the girls' dresses. Also, the Queen is a WOC, cool!

Oh no, one of the Featherington sisters faints! But that's okay because the Featheringtons are just comic relief and foil anyway.

I get weird incest vibes from the Bridgertons.

So the court is clearly 18th century and the show is set in the 1810s. I've by now seen several explanations for this decision, I still think it robs the Queen of reproductions of her actual historical gowns which were heavily inspired by the 18th century but so. Magnificently. Weird. It would have been so neat, and more of a "hey, I'm kinda out of touch with things" vibe, but hey, I'm not the one getting paid for making those taffeta gowns here (her hair is glorious, tho).

I'm very into the intro.

That Regency gossip girl is a real b, not unlike the Dowager Countess of Downton (unpopular opinion, I think she's pretty overrated, yes, I like Maggie Smith).

Again, no shifts.

Where do I know the "pragmatic" Bridgerton sister from? Ah, it's The Paradise. And Jonathan Strange. (Wait, she's my age. And she's supposed to be a teenager. Man, do I love a good Dawson casting. I like the actress, though, she has a face ™!).

Aaaah. We get it. She's the spirited one. She also doesn't care about dresses because she's not like other girls™. I really like her voice (but she still doesn't sound like a teenager).

The heck is up with Lady F's dress and that of her friend? Oh, yeah. Antagonist fashion.

Of course the Featheringtons are Horrid Hags™ aside from Penny who's nice, but the pudgy one (at least we don't get a case of "she's not conventionally attractive so she's bad").

Oooh, the cousin! Supposed to suck, but ofc she's a stunner, and only Penny (who's the nice one, remember!) is delighted to have her around. She's also a POC, which is nice but apparently that means she does not follow fashion, hair-wise. I would have loved to see some Regency hair on her, it would have been so pretty *cries in Greek updo*

Ugh, we're still in Ep. 1, typing this on my phone was a bad idea.

Lady Danbury and the Duke guy are delightful with each other (more POC! So neat!).

The girl the oldest Bridgerbro screws is apparently a singer, which isn't up to status for his doucheship, and she doesn't wear a shift.

The music at the ball sounds like something from the Top 40s, but I'm woefully ignorant of contemporary music charts so I can't tell what it is. I like it when they do that in historical-ish works, making well-known pop or rock stuff work for the ambience (ugh, that dance scene to Golden Years in Knight's Tale. My heart. In a good way.)

I dig the Ducktail hair of Penny's crush. Oh, wait, that's a Bridgerbro. I don't quite get why the hair trends of the time don't apply to the POC characters or extras, but seeing how most white characters also show a shameful disregard for the weirdnes and gloriosity (that's not a word) that is early 1800s hair (the 1830s take the cake, tho) despite those hairdos being basically designed for white people hair, I don't think I care much (well, I do, but about all of them). Overall the hair is horrid and not very 1810s. Let's just leave it at that.

Like a good old romance novel (I've since been told that Bridgerton is supposed to be a pastiche of such novels, but I really couldn't tell from the series, not at all, and I'm not inclined to read the books) we have

a pretty, kind, superpure daughter of the main family

the mean matriarch (could have been an aunt, too, but here she's the mum) of the rivalling or antagonist family

a spirited daughter of the main family (in most romance novels this would be our heroine but so far she refreshingly lacks a love interest and pretty daughter seems to get the most screen time)

a Horrid Suitor™

a Hot Suitor™ who doesn't want attention

a really good and doting good parent

Lol, misheard Greece for Grease with Ducktail Bridgerbro, whose name is Colin, apparently. This is funny because of his Danny Zuko memorial hair.

Overall a bit too much bling for my taste, and too few pearls. It looks like an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen with a Regency theme.

Of course the romance is going to be the Pretty One aka. Daphne and the Duke and he's even bros with her eldest bro. Wait, are they exes? I can haz bi? No? Aww, shucks. Maybe in another episode (spoiler: no).

Okay, WHAT is it with Lady F's dresses and hair. Like, she reminds me of Mars Attacks. Which, as you might remember, was not set in the Regency period.

Lord B (Bridgerbro the Eldest) sucks, he's screwing Opera Girl without any intention of marrying her but he's bitchy about his sister being ogled by his Eton (or wherever) bestie?

Oh, I'm in Hamburg now. And my train back home got canceled, so back to Berlin it is because there's not a single option to get to Hanover tonight, at least that's what the lady from the train station is saying, "oh well, you'll have to go back and try again tomorrow", so that's awesome...

Honestly, if it weren't so late and I didn't have things to do at home I'd find this terribly exciting.

Back to Bridgerton!

Where were we? Ah.

I can't even read my own annotation. Something about George III. I think I was upset about how they totally ignored that it's called Regency because George IV acted as the regent king, and he doesn't even feature in the series, I guess because they wanted to play up the Queen? Not a fan, because thanks to Horrible Histories I'm quite fond of that guy.

Again, no shifts.

Oh, look, it's Horrid Suitor™, destined for leftovers.

The Featherington cousin gets all the attention but no fleshed-out character.

Penny Featherington's dog is named Lord Byron, which ❤️

I like the Duke! He's there, drinking in his club (even though they're a patriarchal remnant of the past I have a weird appreciation for stuffy Gentlemen's Clubs, I blame Bertie Wooster and the Drones), calling Lord B out for his general fuckery.

Oh no, Ducktail Colin is more into the Cousin than Penny, who obviously pines for him!

Thank you, Lord B, for enabling Horrid Suitor™. Nobody asked you to be such a fucktwit.

The Queen is, of course, a bit of a bitch, but patronage from cool Lady *scrolls up for name* Danbury ensues for Protagonist Girl™ Daphne.

"I wish they had found a better trend language", what the heck did I even mean by that? That's what you get for just scribbling down notes while watching and simultaneously sewing. 18th century pants, in case you wanted to know.

Cousin is angry, probably because Lady F behaves like Cinderella's evil stepmother, because Cousin is prettier than her daughters and gets, like, all the suitors because Lord B bitched away everyone who wanted to get into Daphne's dowry ifyouknowwhatImeanwinkwinknudgenudge, right across the street into Cousins parlour.

The Bridgertons are annoyingly perfect. Ugh.

Oh look, it's "banter" between Daphne and Dukey! It's so Pride & Prejudice! It's almost a tiny bit Shakespeare! I put banter in parentheses because wow, nope, I'm not getting any chemistry here.

Uh, Lady B calls out Lord B (aka. her son aka. Bridgerbro the Eldest) for his screwery with Opera Girl and his outpimpery of his sister to Horrid Suitor™, buuuurrrrrnnn. He promptly calls of his affair with Opera Girl.

No shifts!

Penny gets to dance with Ducktail Colin at the thing! Good for her, but it's a country dance with jumping and fun, because she's a) the pudgy character and b) a Featherington, so it can't be something romantic and pretty (I personally like country dances, but they aren't protagonist dances).

Oooh, Cousin had her period, oh no, oh snap, oh she didn't, because she's PREGNANT! Shit, that's problematic, and not because she's an unmarried woman in the 1810s, but because she gets close to no lines at all so far, and suddenly she's pregnant and telling Lady F that she sucks for being privileged, violence ensues, this is ugly. Man, I get what some critics mean by "the POC actors*actresses get all the problems" and that not exactly being great.

Horrid Suitor™ makes property claims about Daphne, eeewwwww, thanks to Lord B's general suckiness, ewww, r@pe attempt ensues, was that really necessary? It doesn't really fit in with the rest of the series and generally nope, yay, broken nose! (which was indeed totally necessary). Nice one, and probably the only scene so far (spoiler: overall) in which I actually like Daphne. Dukey thinks a mean left hook is attractive, and, generally speaking, he's not wrong.

Daphne and Dukey come up with a pseudo-shakespearean plot to pretend to be totally into each other so she can attract suitors by being not available and he gets not to have fangirls by being not available, and as someone who has read a few too many historical-ish bodice rippers I know exactly where this is going. I mean, come on.

I can't see enough of the following choreography to complain about it. Man, I miss historical dance classes.

And that concludes Ep. 1! Finally! Thank you for getting this far, sorry for all of it (especially typos, it's the bane of unwanted autocorrect), I guess?

Update on the train situation: I've been told by the ticket control person that I shouldn't get my hopes up until noon tomorrow.

To be continued,

because I didn't take these 32 pages of notes for nothing.

[notebook-13]

Shigaraki • Development

Backstory

(Note: Tenko was Shigaraki’s childhood name.)

First things first: Shigaraki’s backstory is probably meant as an allegory. The house his father built is a microcosm of society, his father Kotaro represents people with power, Tenko represents people without it, and the other family members are bystanders. The power imbalance and communal emphasis on harmony enables Kotaro to take out his baggage on Tenko while Tenko is required to repress his. Resistance, even if it’s minor, causes Tenko to be shunned and beggared, as Kotaro locks Tenko out of the house in the backyard, in the dark, unfed, without even a roof over his head.

Edit: @codenamesazanka​ has an excellent reading of this allegory!

Theirs is a household that prioritizes unity and a façade of happy domesticity over Tenko’s wellbeing. His mom and grandparents treat him gently, reject him kindly, and refuse to admit to him just how terribly Kotaro treats him. Though the three adults understand that Kotaro is the problem (they criticize him in private or cry out futile protests during an incident), they are unwilling to disrespect Kotaro to Tenko’s face. Doing so would mean facing their victim and owning up to their own culpability, too.

So, throughout Shigaraki’s backstory, Horikoshi intersperses black panels with increasing grains of white. This references Shigaraki’s “wound in his heart.”

The first black panel appears when Tenko is crying to his mom, Nao, about his dad; the second appears when he is similarly comforted by his grandparents.

After an episode with Kotaro, Nao hesitantly asks Tenko if he still wants to be a hero.

Nao: “Tenko…do you…still want to be a hero?” Tenko: “Yup. Because like, nobody wanted to play with Mikkun and Tomo. So I said, ‘Let’s play together!’ And we played heroes, and it was super fun. And then Mikkun said, ‘You should be All Might, Ten.’ And I was nice and played with them even though they don’t have any friends.”

It’s hard to follow Tenko’s five-year-old’s logic here, but the gist seems like Tenko wants to be a good person who makes people less lonely, and he thinks heroes do that. The implication, then, could be that Tenko is lonely, and his admiration for heroes compensates for what’s missing in his family (a hero).

What’s also significant is that Tenko noticed Mikkun and Tomo were suffering, and instead of ignoring it or playing along like everyone else, he did something about it. What he emphasizes isn’t, “we played heroes and fought bad guys, it was really cool”; he emphasizes that he was kind, that he helped kids who were lonely. This isn’t a kid who wants to be a hero because heroes are strong.

Also worth noting that in bnha, p much every kid wants to be a hero. By forbidding Tenko from even playing, Kotaro draws a line between Tenko and his classmates: Tenko is not one of them. He’s not allowed to dream he’ll be a hero like everyone else. In a society overflowing with heroes (and with adulation of heroes), Tenko can’t be one of them nor admire them.

^^ the first “wound” panel is the black middle one

When Nao tells Tenko that “it’s hard to be a hero,” especially right after hesitantly asking him if he still wanted to be one, Tenko understands that she’s discouraging him—similar to how Inko apologized to little Deku when he asked her if he could become a hero without a quirk.

When Nao tells Tenko it’s difficult, she’s essentially repeating what Kotaro says (“being a hero will cause him nothing but trouble”). By siding with Kotaro, she tells Tenko that he can’t become who he wants to be. He must conform to authority and let Kotaro determine his life. What he wants and feels don’t matter. Kotaro is right.

The wound begins to open.

Similarly, his grandparents offer him empty comfort because they, too, believe in presenting a unified front. The kids aren’t allowed to be aware that there’s conflict between the grown-ups: rules are rules, instructions from your seniors are absolute, social harmony (and by extension, social hierarchy) has to be maintained. Tenko himself is the troublesome one—he’s the one who needs to be comforted, who keeps breaking rules, who can’t pretend everything is okay the same way everyone else can.

The wound opens further.

The initial wound and its exacerbation are both brought on by his mom and grandparents, not by Kotaro directly. Why? Because it’s the permissiveness of the adults that socializes Tenko in how to react to Kotaro. Kotaro’s abuse is too much for a five-year-old to process, so he trusts the other grown-ups in his life to understand it and tell him how to feel about it/what to do about it.

What they tell Tenko, implicitly, is that his pain doesn’t matter enough to do anything about, and it’s his fault it exists. Underneath, he recognizes this and resents them for it. They might not actively participate in Kotaro’s abuse, but they actively support him by trying to wipe away the consequences without any accountability for the problems. They shift blame to other people (Kotaro, Tenko) without owning up to their own role in the proceedings, so that they can pretend life is good and think of themselves as good people who don’t make trouble.

Tenko has a related “wound” associated directly with Kotaro.

((When Kotaro approaches Tenko to begin smacking him…))

The “itch.”

Tenko is five years old, and kids that young aren’t known for their emotional intelligence. This is his little-kid way of trying to describe his negative emotions: agitation, anguish, panic, frustration, aggression, resentment, desperation, (thwarted) hope, and so on.

Tenko scratches himself frantically because he doesn’t know how else to react to the things he’s feeling, and he doesn’t know how else to react because nobody is trying to help him sort through them. He’s only been told to suppress them. Plus, in adulthood, Shigaraki scratches himself when he’s stressed about something, so it makes sense for this ~allergy~ to be the origin.

I dunno why Tenko fixates on his face—his eyes, specifically…maybe out of shame? maybe because his face and eyes are what express his uncomfortable feelings, and/or because his eyes are what he uses to fruitlessly beg for help? or maybe the eyes out of a desire for blindness, to not see what’s in front of him the way everybody else pretends not to see?

(The irony, ofc, is that Kotaro is accusing Tenko of wanting to hurt their family, when in fact Kotaro is the one hurting their family.

Judging by how Nao and her parents approach Kotaro after the fact and tell him that they will leave if he hits the children again, I don’t think it was common for Kotaro to smack Tenko like this.

Also, this is the first time Tenko is shown scratching his neck: when his thoughts are crying out, help me!)

Tenko isn’t begging mercy from Kotaro, which says leagues about their relationship. Instead, he’s begging for interference from the rest of the family, for someone to stand up for him, to challenge the public humiliation Tenko regularly endures as Kotaro’s scapegoat. Nobody does, of course, like always.

It takes a few hours, locked out of the house, for the trauma to set in.

The wound gets worse…but this time it’s different.

For one, it’s accompanied by dialogue, not narration, and “everyone” is centered right in the core of his rage. The second (iffier) difference is that this time the wound and the itch coincide. In the previous situations, he’s either scratching himself or the wound is deepening. This is the first time Horikoshi depicts the two occurring simultaneously, and it’s this moment that his quirk fully awakens.

Tenko kills his dog and begins to have a panic attack. His emotions are choking him; the only way he can ask for help is to reach out to his sister, finally, in the way he didn’t dare to reach out while Kotaro was smacking him.

I’ve seen people suggest his voice fails as a side-effect of his quirk, but I think it’s trauma-related, not physical. For one, he still describes it as an “itch,” and for two, once he processes his trauma and decides that killing his family wasn’t a tragedy, Shigaraki’s characteristic squiggly speech bubbles are replaced by average speech bubbles.

This is consistent, so, his vocal problem was solved emotionally. So maybe his quirk was reacting to his emotions and placing pressure on his vocal chords? But idk, seems to me it was a psychosomatic problem.

Either way, he kills his sister as she runs away, and her scream attracts his mom and grandparents.

Then comes the fourth panel.

(For context, the narration refers to how his negative feelings towards his mom and grandparents accumulated.)

The whiteness is gushing forth, and it surges when Tenko sees his mom staring at him with terror, unable to summon a reassuring smile or any words of comfort for him.

The noises catch Kotaro’s attention. He pokes his head into the hall and walks through the empty house until he spots the open door to the backyard.

(Tenko has now transitioned to mainly scratching his neck instead of his face.)

Tenko reaches out to someone for the final time, and his (deadly) hand is rejected—smashed away, really.

Kotaro’s life is in danger, he’s shocked by the deaths of his family, he panics, and he reacts cruelly.

The tipping point is what happens afterwards.

Kotaro is surprised and horrified by what he’s done. But, like always, he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge to Tenko his wrongdoing. Instead, he reacts by doubling down and asserting his authority.

“Mommy, why does Father say no all the time? Does he hate me?!”

I’m not sure quite what Kotaro is doing here. At first I thought he was smacking Tenko, the way he did earlier that day, but that blob in the lower right panel is part of the background, not his hand in motion. So instead, it looks like Kotaro is holding out his hand in a “stop, stand back, stay away from me” gesture, or maybe to literally push Tenko away. (Have to wait on the anime, I guess.)

Regardless, Kotaro tells Tenko “no” for the last time. The immediate blame, the dearth of kindness or sympathy, the reaching out to him—someone’s trying to save him!—only to deny him…it evokes their history. Tenko is already in the midst of a meltdown, and now he snaps.

I hate bringing up real-world examples when thinking about stuff like bnha, so I hope this will be the only time I ever do it, but I’m powerfully reminded of a gun violence incident in Mississippi where a nine-year-old kid and his thirteen-year-old sister got into an argument over a video game controller, and the boy retrieved their parents’ gun from another room and shot her.

It’s ludicrous to think he had any meaningful concept of what he was doing, and, regardless of how Shigaraki interprets his past, the same holds for Tenko. Just because Tenko had a good “reason” to want Kotaro dead doesn’t imply he had a meaningful grasp of what he was doing. He killed Kotaro because he was a kid with access to a deadly weapon, and there’s a reason kids aren’t trusted with those.

But it is meaningful that Shigaraki struggles to make the distinction between aggression and murderous intent. AfO deliberately trains Shigaraki to adopt this warped mindset by telling him that his bad feelings, his “itch,” are equivalent to bloodlust. Realistically, there’re plenty of ways to relieve negative emotion, but Shigaraki has been taught exactly one outlet: destruction. So, he doesn’t realize that his murderousness is a product of nurture, not nature. (Also, lol, “murderousness” is a real word!)

Anyways, for the first time, Tenko experiences catharsis for the negative emotions that have built up his whole life. A fluke of fate enabled him to subvert the established power dynamic, and the destruction of the house encapsulates the collapse of their family’s hierarchy. He still doesn’t understand what he’s done.

By the next morning, it’s begun to sink in. He ran away from the house and then wanders the streets, too consumed by guilt to speak, and he’s ignored by everyone. When someone finally pays attention and seems willing to help him…

He smiles, happy that someone is finally going to help him. But his dirty, creepy smile scares the old lady off.

(reminds me of his early design.)

To him, it’s like people can see what he’s done, and that’s why nobody will help him or even acknowledge him. Notice the lower left corner: the blackness and white grains, spilling over from his wound.

The itch returns, and the scratching and the wound overlap again. It’s hard to say whether the wound is reacting to the old lady in general, or if it’s tied to the narration line “being punished.”

It occurs when Tenko simultaneously wants to be saved but also thinks he doesn’t deserve it, that everyone can see how bad he is and knows he doesn’t deserve help.

What did Shigaraki learn from this?

Social harmony is forged by repressing conflict, not by resolving it. This happens at his expense, purposefully.

“This is the house my father built.” Creation, construction, building, making walls, making rules, making—these are bad, and they’re performed by the people with authority and power. These things happen for other people, not for his sake.

He’s not important enough to be helped / not worthy of it, and he resents that.

Origin of his self-loathing.

Other notes:

The “itch” is something he can find temporary catharsis for (through violence), and Shigaraki thinks the itch might have gone away if someone had just helped him. The “wound” is not something that ever alleviates or that he suggests could have gone away.

The wound’s origin is from the complicity of his family to Kotaro, not from Kotaro himself.

It’s interesting that his dream to destroy society is a reenactment of his destruction of his family/house, even though killing “everyone” the first time devastated him.

He switched from mostly scratching his face to mostly scratching his throat.

Both these are sites where emotion is expressed.

Hands are another site of expression, and he later develops his fascination with his family’s hands and uses his own hands for destruction.

Activating decay seems to have hugely worsened the scarring around his eyes. He says that he thought the “itch” had gone away, so it’s unlikely he was scratching himself overnight…so I think his quirk had the side-effect of exacerbating his scars? If decay made the skin around his eyes hurt, that could relate to why he switched to mostly scratching his throat.

Even as a kid, Tenko had a certain amount of pride/dignity, enough to blame others for mistreating him instead of blaming purely himself.

Tenko admired heroes partly because his family lacked one, but when he discovers Nana…? Now someone inside the family (inside the house) was a hero, so the rules were different than what he thought?

Upbringing by AfO

When Tenko killed “everyone,” that included himself. All that’s left of him afterwards is an empty shell. He doesn’t even seem to remember what he’s done.

But AfO is willing to extend a hand and touch Tenko.

He’s willing to acknowledge Tenko’s pain, something nobody else was or is, at the moment in his life when Tenko feels he least deserves sympathy.

Now, obviously it’s hella suspicious that AfO already knows Tenko’s name, knows what he’s done, and procures his family’s hands, but Shigaraki doesn’t seem to question it. Tenko’s arms dangle there, limp, as AfO embraces him and tears stream down his face. And, ofc, AfO echoes All Might’s motto.

AfO takes Tenko in and tells him he’ll be his master from now on. Then…

Tenko viscerally remembers what he’s done, and his immediate reaction is to scratch himself, puke, and then seize the severed hands, gathering them up and cradling them close to him. It’s probably then that Tenko discovers the feeling that Shigaraki describes—of feeling violently ill but somehow at peace, too. (“When a person’s life starts spiraling, what’s the one thing they want? Comfort.”) There’s way too much to unpack here, so, moving on.

The “purpose” that AfO alludes to is the destruction of society/the status quo.

While Tenko is huddled on the ground, cradling the hands, AfO continues.

AfO’s the first person willing to talk to him about his itch as emotional instead of as an allergy. He tells Tenko point-blank that he cannot control his impulses and that his release must take the form of destruction.

This moment baffles me. AfO openly admits that Tenko’s feelings will fade…if left be. As far as we see, he doesn’t explain to Tenko why it’s important that those feelings never fade, why emptying himself of his pain is a bad thing. But even after being told time would heal him, Tenko keeps the hands close to him—and I don’t think he was just doing what AfO wanted.

This panel is also interesting because it definitely makes it look like Tenko’s wound is glowing, like it’s a light in the dark. Also, AfO’s dialogue nearly obscures the early panel of the wound…hm.

Regardless, AfO implies that those feelings are the most important thing Tenko has, and he should keep them close. It’s not specified if AfO told him to wear his family.

Later, Tenko’s wandering on the streets (his hands aren’t with him) when he encounters a duo of thugs, who beat and mock him. At first, Tenko lurches to fight back, but…

I think these are more “wound” panels: the blackness with white grains. He backs down, even though his rage doesn’t dissipate.

When he returns home, AfO encourages him to embrace his feelings instead of holding them back. Tenko literally writhes on the floor from the force of his “itch,” going all out as he wallows in his overwhelming feelings.

AfO tells Tenko that ethics were invented in order to suppress people and that Tenko’s emotions are more important than anything else. Tenko responds by reiterating what AfO told him: he wants to destroy those thugs, and he can’t control this urge to destroy. He goes as far as to disintegrate one of Kotaro’s hands, even though not too long ago he clung onto it.

But, later, he wears his family’s hands for the first time.

Wearing them clearly affects Tenko adversely—he’s struggling to breathe properly, and he’s entirely slumped over. But these hands, and these feelings, are the only things he has left, the only things he knows, and he won’t leave them behind.

He encounters the same duo of thugs and kills them.

His wound again. Formless, but with a sense of shifting and movement. Undiminished, even if the itch is alleviated. Or, maybe this panel is supposed to indicate a deterioration, like the wound gets even worse after the murders?

Observing the event, Ujiko remarks that he’d thought Tenko had lost his memories. I think he’s commenting on how Tenko is wearing the hands despite not remembering who they’re from? 

AfO comments…

Tenko restrains quirk subconsciously, limiting its disintegration to just what he’s directly touching, which makes it seem like he’s afraid of his quirk and feels guilt/self-loathing for it. He’s aware that his quirk is connected to the things he feels, maybe even blames his quirk in some way for making him feel this way.

It’s ironic that Tenko feels free while he’s being throttled and restrained by the hands of his relatives.

lol AfO gives away the game a bit, here. He tells Tenko to do whatever he wants and not hold back, and then praises Tenko for “holding back” his tears. He just wants Tenko to have no way to vent his feelings except violence. Also, the fact that Tenko is “holding back” his quirk…hmm.

Again, too much here to unpack rn, so, moving on.

AfO gives Tenko the hands of the thugs he killed, plus one hand of unknown origin to replace the hand of Kotaro’s that Tenko destroyed. Shigaraki describes the gift as soothing to his battered body, and he felt reborn. AfO gives him the name Shigaraki Tomura ad implicitly positions himself as Shigaraki’s dad by telling Shigaraki that “Shigaraki” is his surname.

What did Shigaraki learn from this?

Morals are illusionary, merely a tool used to suppress people without power in order to make things easier for people who do have power.

His “itch” means bloodlust, and he can’t control it.

He should just do what he wants (except crying, apparently), or else he’ll just suffer indefinitely.

Rejection of a society he had no hand in making and no place to belong in.

Other notes:

Even without remembering his aggression towards Kotaro, it’s Kotaro’s hand he shows the biggest fixation on.

Shigaraki has three “ailments”: the itch (the agitation he feels from bad things), the wound (the “rage” and “frustration” he feels from bystander apathy), and the nausea he feels when he wears the hands (self-loathing?).

Or maybe the nausea is part of the wound?

More on the wound?

I wonder when Horikoshi decided on how to visualize Shigaraki’s pain, and if he uses it as a pattern in bnha.

I’ve noticed a few panels that remind me of Shigaraki’s wound, especially that amorphous panel after he kills those thugs, but it’s hard to tell if the backgrounds are just atmospheric or if there is actually an attempt to connect these moments thematically.

Here are a few that I noticed.

I’m going to keep an eye out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: here’s another one. This is the most definite example so far: it occurs in ch250, post-Shigaraki’s flashbacks, and the distinct circle doesn’t produce an atmosphere the way the previous ^^ panels do. 

^^ it’s worth mentioning that this appears during Fuyumi’s narration, detailing how Natsuo is the only one in the family who can’t move forward, ie, he’s experiencing social pressure to conform and validate Endeavor similar to how Tenko felt pressure to conform to Kotaro’s authority.

And then this next one, I’m pretty unsure about, but I’ll include it in case: