#BUT HE HOLDS MY HANDS AND WASHES THE BLOOD OFF MY KNUCKLES IN AN OLD MUSTY BATHROOM. AND LATER IN THE HOTEL CLEANS N BANDAGES MY HANDS.

[bamboozledbird]

Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow // Stiles Stilinski Imagine Characters: Stiles Stilinski, You Pairing: Stiles x Reader, Stiles x You (no use of y/n) Word Count: 1k Tags: blatant use of han solo's iconic 'i know' moment, overuse of the em dash as always Warnings: Angst. Angst. Angst. Descriptions of a panic attack.

A/N: A little baby revamp of an old work to get me inspired for these beautiful requests in my inbox.

The jeep is quiet. It was the first thing you noticed when you climbed into the passenger seat, legs shaking, knees wobbling—shoving Stiles’s hands away when he tried to help you. Now, you’re gripping the faded upholstery as the blood slowly drains from your knuckles. It’s a funny thing to notice, silence, but it’s hard not to when the quiet is so heavy you can feel it weighing down your chest, pushing the anger and hurt from your lungs to the pit of your stomach.  

Stiles is wearing his blue sweatshirt you love so much. The one that’s gone through the wash so many times you can rub your cheek against it and feel like you’re curled up in bed under cottony sheets, safe and warm. He knows that. You hate that he knows that.  

Stiles’s lithe fingers wrap around the steering wheel, despite the jeep being safely parked against the curb of some random road halfway between your house and his. He squeezes the wheel until the veins in his wrist bulge and his knuckles turn white. “I’m not sorry,” he says in a low voice, like he can feel the silence too, like he’s scared of snapping the cord holding a hundred-ton weight over your heads. 

The weight falls, and a wet, choked-off gasp is ripped from your raw throat. It hurts, from all the crying while he was gone, from the look on his face when he came back. “I fucking hate you,” you whisper. Your voice is raspy, barely there between your shallow exhales. After he locked you in that godforsaken closet, you'd screamed at him through the door, spewing every hateful, awful thing you could think of, until there was nothing left. Every part of you still aches—knuckles bruised from trying to beat the door down, fingernails bloodied from biting them down to the quick. You'd torn yourself apart while you sat against the wall, alone in the dark, waiting for him to come back. If he came back. 

“No you don’t,” Stiles says, but he winces anyway.

You shake your head violently and clench your jaw to stifle the angry sobs budding in your chest. You’re done with the crying; you already cried all night waiting for him to come back alive. “You had no right.” Your voice quivers, thick with mucus, and it fractures right through the marrow, “You had no fucking right to leave me there like that.”

Stiles tugs his hand through his hair. It’s already a mess, sticking up in random tufts from previous passes. Under normal circumstances, you’d try to fix it and then immediately get distracted by the softness and his soft content whines—but nothing feels normal now. You’ve never felt this frantic, this desperate, this much. It’s too much. You want to shed your skin and set something on fire—maybe yourself, at least until the ringing in your ears stops. 

He licks his lips, swollen from ripping them apart with his teeth, and stares out the window, “You could’ve died. I don’t care if you hate me or if you stay pissed at me forever—you’re alive. That’s all I care about.”

Your voice cracks when you try to scream again, “It wasn’t your choice to make!”

His teeth grind together for a moment. He won’t look at you. Maybe he can’t. “I would do it again,” he finally says in a quiet voice, like a confession, like he’s seeking atonement from god—or, more importantly, from you. Neither of you speak, the sound of your shallow breathing fills the jeep until his arm surges forward. You flinch when he slams his hand against the steering wheel; the horn is shrill and almost as loud as the tension left in its wake. “God, don’t you get it?” The muscles in his neck strain with the clench of his jaw, “None of it matters if you’re gone. I don’t give a fuck, okay? I just don't. I don't fucking care about stopping the villain of the month, or saving the entire goddamn town again, or keeping the world from imploding if you’re not in it, so don’t fuckin’ yell at me.”

You shake your head again because everything else feels like it’s shaking too, partly from the fury burning brightly in your eyes, but mostly because you love this stupid, arrogant boy so much it hurts. “I had to sit there, alone, and—and just hope that you came back—that you’d all come back. Ally died, Stiles. Boyd, Erica, Aidan—they’re all dead. It’s just a matter of time before someone else—before it happens again.” Your voice hitches, and you can't breathe, “You’re not allowed to do that to me, okay? You’re not allowed to—to fucking—to leave me behind like that. I can’t do it again—I can’t fucking—”

Even though he’s angry too, Stiles takes your hand and taps his heartbeat onto the inside of your wrist with his forefinger until your chest rises and falls in an even rhythm. Stiles looks down at your hands, layered on top of each other and trembling, before he speaks again. His voice is strained, his face stricken, “I can’t lose you.”

You stare at him, cheeks red and splotchy, mascara flaking underneath your eyes. Wrecked. And then you realize that he’s crying. His rounded eyes are wet and glossy, his chin trembles, and then that’s it. You can’t fight it anymore. You hiccup in-between your sobs and wipe your snot off on your sleeve, “And I can’t lose you.”

The car is silent again, and you can feel your heartbeat in your ears. “Don’t leave me again,” you whisper.

The words linger in the air, and Stiles cups your face, thumbs the tears and smeared makeup off of the apple of your cheeks—he's especially gentle with the fragile skin just under your eyes. He pulls you as close as he can manage with the gearshift in the way, moving your hair off of your forehead and pressing a tender kiss to each of your temples. He trails his lips to the corners of your fluttering eyelids, to the tip of your nose, one cheek and then the other. His final destination is your mouth. His tongue darts out, briefly tasting the salt of your tears, and then he kisses you. Three chaste brushes of his lips before he settles in for a real one, a reassurance that you’re both here. Breathing. Alive. The fact that he doesn’t respond to your demand isn’t lost on either of you.

“I love you,” he breathes against your lips. It’s not an answer, but it’s enough for tonight. 

You sigh into his mouth and hold onto his wrist, fingers resting against his pulse, “I know.”

[howlingday]

What would happen if Jaune got the Berserker armor?

"What are you wearing?"

"It's this new armor I found in my room." Jaune rapped his knuckles against the heavy metal guarding his body. "I think it's an upgrade to my old armor set."

"It is?" Ruby asked while circling him, poking and prodding into every ornate detail and crevice on his new, black armor. "It doesn't look like it. It looks like it's a new armor set entirely."

"I like the cape, though." Nora chimed. "Makes you look like a fairy tail hero!"

"It doesn't look clean, though." Ren commented. "In fact, it looks like it hasn't ever been washed."

"Well, I like it." Jaune gave his chest a pat and a rub. "It covers and protects me more than my old armor did, and even though it felt heavy picking it up, it doesn't weigh down on me at all!"

"It's still weird. We arrive at this new place and the first thing that you find in your room was a new suit of armor, and your old set can't be found?"

"It's weird, but it's not like we can't find the old set later. That is, if this armor doesn't work out!"

"Ready to go test it out?" Nora giggled, a wide grin on her face.

"You bet!" He beamed just as wide.

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

"JAUNE!" Nora screamed as she watched her leader get slammed into the brick wall. The mission had gone from bad to worse, but she couldn't leave him! Even as she was being dragged away by more senior huntsmen, she couldn't stand by and watch as the blood smeared on the wall grew bigger. "LET ME GO! LET ME GO!"

"Will you shut the hell up?!" One man cried out. "He's as good as dead, but at least let his corpse buy you enough time to get away!" She swung at him, but the only thing that got thrown off was her balance and she was pulled in. "We've got her! Go! Go! Go!"

Nora agonizingly wept as the doors shut, and her horrible screams were replaced with the roar of cowardly bullhead engines. Jaune's team escaped, and that was not good enough for him. Dying at the claws of this bastard Hound was almost enough to make him smile, if he had any human strength left to move. It dug its filthy talon into his chest, trying to sever his armor from his body.

"Bad." Growled the monstrous Hound. "Must. Get. Bad."

A baneful Nevermore perched atop a shitty building's corner, watching as it's evil ash-skinned master's pet tried to pry him open.

Jaune felt a sorrow as the traitorous bullhead carried his team away, and finally the tears began to flow. Hot tears began to pour from his eyes, mixing with the blood spilling from his stupid dying body. How dare this beast make him bleed? How dare this filthy, disgusting, putrid monster single him out and force him to be so weak?! Jaune's breathing began to increase as something inside him snapped.

And snap, it did. The armor that he wore into battle snapped around his broken arm, forcing his hand to grab hold of the Hounds' arm. Then another snap came, making it scream in agony and forcing it to drop Jaune to the ground. But before he touched the dirt, the greaves of his armor snapped his legs to keep him standing. Blood began to spill from the armor.

"Kill..." Jaune groaned as blood filled his mouth.

"Kill!" The Hound barked at him. More Grimm began to gather from the distance.

"KILL... YOU..." The helmet snapped shut over his face and a new monster, one worse than any Grimm ever seen before, was born into Remnant. "KILL... YOU... ALL!"

[estrellami-1]

If I Should Stay

Part 1 | . . . | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32

He catches Eddie’s eye. Eddie shakes his head slowly, and Steve understands his meaning: don’t make it obvious.

Steve gives him a short nod, then his attention is arrested by Tommy, who’s storming up to him. “Harrington.”

“Hagan.”

Tommy’s eyes narrow. “He turn you fag or something?”

Steve laughs, loud and bold, and claps Tommy on the shoulder. “You’re funny,” he says, then quieter, “especially for how many times I’ve caught you staring at me.” He steps back and grins at Tommy, who’s white and rapidly turning red. “I never-”

“Oh, that’s right,” Steve says amiably. “It was Nathan, wasn’t it? Who you couldn’t keep your eyes off of. Does Carol know?”

Tommy comes at him swinging, and Steve barely dodges in time. “Yeesh, touchy. Guess it must be true, then. Y’know, you could talk to her about it. She might be down.”

Tommy swings again, and this time his knuckles catch Steve’s bottom lip. “Dammit,” he sighs, wincing when he tastes blood. “I was doing so good, too.” He moves to the side just as Tommy rushes him again, nudging him just the slightest bit to let his momentum carry him forward and onto his knees. He mentally thanks Nancy and physics homework, which isn’t really a sentence he ever thought he’d say.

“Okay, okay, break it up,” the gym teacher says, pulling Tommy up and glaring at both of them. “Do I want to know what’s going on?”

Their gym teacher, Mr. Craigs, is a forty-something-year-old veteran with the look in his eye to prove it. Anyone with a brain was at least a little bit scared of him.

“No, sir,” Steve says politely. “Sorry for causing a disturbance.”

He can feel Tommy seething with anger beside him. Mr. Craigs turns his gaze on Tommy, and Steve’s a little surprised he doesn’t start vibrating. “No. Sorry, sir,” Tommy grits out.

“Lets keep it that way,” Mr. Craigs orders, and both boys nod. “And Harrington, go wash that blood off.”

Steve wipes his lip. “Sorry, sir,” he says, and turns to do just that.

Somehow Eddie’s made it back to the locker rooms already, because he had time to find a rag and wet it before Steve walks in. He hands it over and stares as Steve dabs at his lip. “You’re kind of an idiot,” he says finally.

Steve snorts. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Eddie sighs. “You’re also really brave. I don’t know that I’d have the guts to drop my friends like that.”

“The difference between us is your friends are good people,” Steve says, moving the rag and staring at himself in the mirror, replacing it when more blood seeps out. “My friends are dicks.”

Eddie just smiles at him. “Not anymore.”

Steve grins back, even though it stings. “Not anymore.”

“Still bleeding?” Eddie asks, inclining his head towards Steve’s lip. “You feeling dizzy at all? Maybe I should escort you to the nurse.”

Steve grins as Eddie does. “I think you might be right,” he says. “How many fingers’re you holding up, six?”

“Doesn’t sound right,” Eddie says seriously. “Might need to get you checked out.”

“Probably so,” Steve agrees. “Might need you to walk me back to class after.”

Eddie put a hand to his chest. “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything differently!”

They collapse in giggles, Steve quickly sobering with a hiss when it re-opens the wound. “Dammit,” he mutters.

Eddie looks around then quietly asks, “Need me to kiss it better?”

Steve inhales sharply, studying Eddie for a second. “I think so,” he whispers. “Might be the only thing that helps it now.”

Eddie smiles nervously and steps forward. “We’ll have to be quick,” he says apologetically. “No one should come in, but…”

“We never know,” Steve agrees. “I know.”

“Okay then,” Eddie says, and steps forward, placing a few soft fingers on Steve’s cheek, tilting his head down just a bit until their lips brush, once, twice, three times until Steve’s had enough and puts a gentle hand on the back of Eddie’s neck, exerting just enough pressure to pull him in the rest of the way.

Immediately his eyes slide shut and he tilts his head to slot their lips together perfectly.

And it really is perfect, he thinks, as he tilts his head the other way, smiling when Eddie moves to follow him.

He pulls back with a gasp and grins when Eddie’s eyes flutter open. “You’re dangerous,” he murmurs, loving the smirk that curves Eddie’s lips up.

“Me?” Eddie asks. “I think you’re describing yourself.”

Steve suddenly giggles. “We’re doing a terrible job of waiting.”

Instead of laughing along, Eddie’s expression shutters. “Sorry,” he murmurs, tilting his head down and taking a step back. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Hey, no,” Steve says, reaching out and brushing Eddie’s arm with his fingers. “I wanted that, okay? I could’ve said no and you would’ve respected it. I’m not upset about it at all. I, uh, actually wish we weren’t somewhere as public as we are.” He blushes at the admission and Eddie’s raised brow in response.

“Yeah? You gonna take me home? Show me the full Harrington experience?”

“Shit, man,” Steve laughs, “what experience, I’ve never been with a guy before.”

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[joannasteez]

tanks of blood (6) - the trouble was always here - part two

pairing: biker!roman reigns , biker!cody rhodes (mentioned) warning: mentions of violence and explicit descriptions of blood. dialogue and descriptions pertaining to guns. roman talk to someone without being a jerk challenge. slight non-con moment but turns consensual quickly (its a kiss)! authors note: if ya'll ever watch sons of anarchy... you’ll know, im stealing little pieces of plot lmaooooooooo. imma give yall a spicy little flashback after this, i promise. will also attempt to not make the following chapters as long. just so that they remain relatively digestible. i'm working on being more precise with words. all the medical stuff in this chapter is half done research and my own brain. this chapter picks up where i left off in chapter 5. ALSO… if you want or dont want tags on this fic let me know! word count: 3k tagging: @333creolelady @harmshake @theninthwonder @thesamoanqueen @kill-the-artiste @empressdede @sortudademais @gg-trini @southerngirl41 @2-muchsauce

-wednesday night. the first week in june-

that marriage of ignorance and bliss did not last long. having to suffer as a lone soldier amidst silent dinner table battles. displeasured dispositions and their eyes performing like the greatly sharpened edge of well smithed daggers. and then came compromise, toiling through the thick of it to wave it's white flag. a surrender of a promise. your mother and fathers union holding as much sanctity as a soon to die vehicle's tank, holding its last dregs of oil but whose fuel gauge reads empty. running still, a quick speed into the darkness, wheels tired and the road too coarse to bare. an abrupt end of the engine as it slips against the asphalt at full speed. a collision terribly par for the course. their rings fettered to their fingers, pretty diamond but a prison, making forever impressions upon the skin. that marriage of ignorance and bliss did not last long. dying with the useless wear of wedding rings, and redeclaring itself with the overwear of leather kuttes. 

because there was more to the life than just that simple enthusiasm for motorcycles. your father transforming before the eyes. leather slipping over his shoulders, not so dissimilar to the tough metal, shrilly chime of chainmail. custom rings taking their homes over the marred skin of his knuckles. fingers worn and always just barely healed. scarred from one brutal splitting open after another. his eyes working to harden. the keys to his bike clutched in hand. 

"should i be worried?", your mother asking right on time. examining his pace. the work in and change over of his demeanor. 

and he never answered. never dignifying her question enough to speak to it. because then the trouble would be true, so much so that it would live, breathing well to make room in their home. no. KG, your father, only ever lingered by the door, a slip in of hesitation before he turned to kiss your mother gracefully. the small appearance of a forever ago passion. an i love you without the weight of words. and then he went, heavy steps leading out the door. 

so its almost second nature. those faithful coming together of words. cody slipping on his leather near the door. shoulders squaring as the material adjusts to his body. demeanor unsoftened. the ease of the words as they leave you filling your stomach with a burdening weight. memory working tedious and so terribly true. 

"cody, should i be worried?" 

he sighs. cold blue eyes hesitating enough to take the time to commit your face to memory. his palm warm as it cradles your cheek. kissing you firmly before he leaves. 

-early friday morning. first week in june-

there was, is, and will never be a time too early or too late for violence. for blood and that faithful nerve warp of adrenaline. and maybe that's why the hospital is so easy. old, early moments in your youth, piercing your fathers skin with a needle, sewing together split skin as he washed his tongue with the burn of his favorite liquor. a warmth in his belly till the pain from the prick of your fixing turned numb. a simple pressure in the skin there at his arm, turning inevitably, to pressure in his leg, a slit at his thigh from a brawl with which he gave no further information. bruises and gashes and deep cuts to him, more by the day, by the year. near quiet grunts and the emptiness of the house loud enough to swallow you both whole. cleaning his marred skin and bandaging the area's as best you could. the slow to ease push and pull of his breaths. his hands smelling like iron as he cradled your face, mouth kissing your forehead. "thank you", but a whisper, before falling into sleep. 

maybe that's why the hospital is so easy. the color of blood and caked earth, the silver of knuckle rings and the black of over worn leather more familiar than summer green trees. 

text message | cody r: in an emergency. need your help. 

it shouldn't come as a surprise, but the sudden rush takes you all the same. a deep plunge of the heart in your chest, something odd creeping beneath the skin and fevered steps. making to call cody quickly. a ring, and then a second, before he's answering. breaths labored some as he goes. "can't say much about it but it's medical. how soon can you get to the clubhouse?" 

you assess the long hallway. the trauma unit, quiet. a squeak in your sneakers that makes you cringe as you move to collect things. only minutes from the end of your shift. "uhm, in like twenty minutes". a series of grunts and yells that indicate the messiness of a situation he's all to willing to abruptly rope you into. "cody what's going on?"

he sighs. his patience a thinning thread. "what did i say before about becoming an accessory?" 

"you gotta give me something", you stress. continuing an awfully secretive journey to where you could gather some other helpful supplies. "i can't just show up not knowing what for". 

"think the worst". 

"that doesn't help-"

the call dropping on his end. the angst sticking to your skin making room for an easy to settle in frustration. like you were an early twenty something again. attempting too diligently to remedy that divorce of ignorance and bliss. a tedious washing away and stitching together, performing so well now that the pungent smell of iron threatens to stain your skin again. and here does the soldier pay the price for wielding a double edged sword. for pensacola was home, is home, and forever will be home, the desire to return running too wild beneath the skin not to act on it. but there are things here. vicious rumblings above sunburned asphalt and the bitter steeping of blood between the cracks. the dross and the dregs that stick so loyally to the air and the skin just after a brutish performance of chaos too commonplace to live without it.

trouble taking up permanent residence, riding in over the clouds and rolling in with the heat. 

and the clubhouse looks haunted amidst the beginnings of the friday summer sunrise. the dark colored build of it dreary against the beauty of the sky. the heat yet to reach its full potential but your scrubs and the exhaustion of a twelve hour shift do all too well of making you live with that thin sheen of sweat breaking over your cheeks. your car parked not too far from the clubs neat line of stationed bikes. true in how they've always done well to remind you of the clubs presence. after so long, living here and far away, that grimy power behind the roar of an engine, ever inescapable. 

the clubhouse doors swing open as you make to leave your car. a small bag of supplies in hand as you rush up. cody's hand slipping at the low end of your back to guide you in. a small "thank you", leaving him breathy as you make way to pass through the double doors of the "church". a room that never seems to lose its luster from the looks of it. the sanctity of their meetings as important as the shine of a new chrome fender finish. men and their worried eyes flitting over your entrance as you approach the church table. seth laid out face down, with his pants at his ankles. his skin wet with sweat and an awful paleness. bloody cloths surrounding him and randy's finger lodged in where all the blood could possibly be spewing from. a small metal tin cup resting in the corner, holding the whole of a bullet. 

dean taps seth's cheek. waking him up a little less than tenderly. "look alive sweetheart, the doctor is here to see you". 

"nurse", you correct, to which dean just winks. 

cody and a host of club members file out through the double doors much to your pleasure. 

initial shock of your current state of affairs rolling off your shoulders as you settle into the routine of caring for the wound. gloves slipping on before you're tossing the box to dean. his take up of them swift and unquestioning. because it was never unusual to spend a night—especially in their youth—caring for cuts and bruises and wounds, before turning to do the same for another. a task as regular as breathing air. 

seth groans. the drawl of it stressing the pain in his leg. "i don't know if you've noticed but i went to some extreme lengths to see you", he jokes. his little laugh coarse and overworked by the weariness of getting shot. 

you laugh. an attempt to break the over work of tension in the air. "what an interesting way of saying you love me seth". sliding up to stand next to randy. his demeanor as quiet now as it was during richie's funeral. 

you look to dean. "once randy removes his finger, you're gonna help me pack the wound, and then i want you to keep pressure on it till i'm ready to wrap it". 

"you know what you're doing?", randy asks. the dark color of his eyes disrupted with little slivers of worry. 

"no randy, i just wear the scrubs for fun". peering up at the hard set of his face. older now but his visage still holding that silent menace to it.  

"can we banter when seth isn't bleeding out by the pint?", dean asks. so obviously done with the whole situation. 

"on my three", you start. the both of them coming to a shared focus. "one...two...three". 

thick blood springs upward, randy's finger dislodging quick. dean rushes in with your guidance, packing the wound as instructed. your hand taking the reins of the procedure as you allow dean a moment of reprieve. the little levee of seth's composure rupturing as his body goes taut, his mouth loose and lax as he curses his fill into the shined up wood of the church table. groaning wearily as dean holds the pressure against his legs, randy lifting it casually, allowing you to wrap the middle of his leg with a fresh dressing. a dead silent relief settling the room then after, before you're moving again. running on the extra dose of adrenaline. 

you discard your gloves, peeling them off your fingers. picking through your bag to give dean a bottle of pills. "vancomycin, it's an antibiotic", you start. "give him two now and another two later tonight. keep going with that dosage for no less than a week". 

"our lovely little savior". dean's boots heavy as he closes the distance to kiss your forehead. "thank you. go get cleaned up". 

randy gives a quieter acknowledgement. a simple nod of appreciation that does you just fine. the double doors of the church room creaky as they swing with your exit. all the worried faces you'd met upon your arrival, taking up every inch of the clubhouse. their bodies drowsy and torn through by the chaos of an oh so terrible possibility.

your feet mindless as they walk down the infamous hallway gallery of framed photos. your last walk through of the area filled with a particularly horrible play of strife. twisting the knob of one of many of the little dormitory rooms to access it's bathroom. a deep breath releasing as you make to wash your hands, a slow thorough trail up over your arms to rid your skin of seth's soon to dry blood. your scrubs somewhat ruined and your shoes showcasing nasty little streaks of red. 

but it is only exhaustion that takes you so brazenly. a sleepy sinking feeling in the body and nothing else. hands used to providing all the remedy's it can. 

well maybe not nothing else. a fast to slip in weariness amidst the quiet. because he couldn't be too far away, lurking to siphon what he could again of the air about you in a means of suffocation. that faithful ability once upon a time, a favorite of yours for how sweetly it sought to consume you, now possessing a quality that unfurls something disdainful in your belly. a prick of a man seemingly beyond reproach, what with his positioning among all the others. surely it was never your simple exit making him this mountain of hubris, that streak of his character impossible to climb and overcome for the sake of reasoning with him. or even for the lesser sake of some cordiality. it was so obviously everything else—the grime and the chaos—giving the once duller edge of his pride a sharper corner. enough to will him into an endless keep of a grudge. 

heavy thudding steps strip you clean of wandering anymore into thought. it seems even thinking of the devil causes him to appear. his disposition reminiscent of some weeks ago. shoulders squared and seeming too tall for you now to bare without feeling small. and he says nothing, attempting to take his kutte off without the inconvenience of pain but he grunts regardless. grimacing as he rids himself of his shirt as well. 

a gash running against his naked arm, almost like it's purposefully found a heap of muscle to tear into. wanting to humble the strength of him. blood caked and running down tawny skin. 

"i got grazed". 

voice tired but oddly delicate. like the weariness of it is making him just that more fragile. 

you point to the bathroom, eyes never really having the courage to part from him. "sit over there". 

and your feet rush. tunnel visioned as they make to gather whats left of your little collection of supplies. fingers feeling less sure, and your body teeming with something akin to an unworkable angst. a realization long ago understood, and buried for the sake of a then wanted peace, unearthing itself to bring about a renewed sense of understanding. for he has always been the manifestation of this double edged sword. of home and of violence. wielding itself always but never one without the other. the slip of his skin over familiar in its warmth. doing your resolve the greatest amounts of violence as you clean his wound tenderly. the double edge of him piercing so well that you feel the damning effects. his eyes sharp, cutting over your face in a silent means to examine. like the appraisal of a curious stranger attempting to settle within themselves the validity of your existence. 

the soft tender pads of your fingers remember him well. gloves and all. slight throbs that liven the nerves. 

"you came straight from work", more like a statement than a question. 

"i did". 

he flinches. his arm flexing as he bares the pain. "thank you for being here", he gives. “for seth", like a thankfulness that includes him would hurt his pride too much to be made known. 

"i'm sure that took a lot to say", you joke. feeling light in your head. drained of the will to keep up a proper guard. "you’re welcome though". 

a hum of an acknowledgment is the only thing he gives you. and in an effort to savor the easy going nature of the moment you keep yourself occupied with dressing the wound splitting his skin open. your work of caring for it doing well enough that the bleeding has stopped. memory faithful as it nags, the wound of a forever ago accident pulsing to life about your hand. the scars there still, though faded, serving as a reminder of the former things. the heat of him, then, different as it sought to consume. brazen in how it dared to bring about affection. not like now, this flame threatening to flare, to show the lengths and widths of its destruction. 

you finish. gloves in the waste basket. making tedious work of washing your hands. to rid the skin of such an indicative sensation. 

his body does well in blocking the bathroom door. the whole of him bigger than the last time you saw him. scrutiny set some in his gaze. trailing over the ink that lays permanent at your neck. 

"you still have it"

"it's a tattoo". feigning nonchalance as you dry your hands. "you never really plan to get rid of them". 

he smiles mirthless. "well y'know, i figured a cover up, for you, would be worth the pain". 

as in, forgetting him would be worth the pain. which couldn't be more further from the truth. 

"and here i am doing a nice thing", laughing tired. "still gettin hit with the bitterness", a slow easy step that leads you closer to him. the own brazen make of your actions suffering you to fall into the scent of him. the note of it strong even as it lives amidst the pungency of blood. "you got some audacity too though, considering i could've half assed that clean up enough for a little infection to settle in". 

"but you didn't".

"and why do you think so?" 

creaks against the floor. the weird pitch of it roughing up against your bones. his body closer, forcing your back against the wall. his thumb reaching to graze against the ink tattoo at your neck. pulse thrumming harshly at the play of his touch. 

body outdone by history. 

and the way he holds you here, cradling your neck just at your nape. keeping you where he wants you to be. his eyes falling over slowly—at your nose and your cheeks and your lips—lingering as if he's gone down the path of a deep remembering. 

"for the same reason you still got the ink". 

unable to ever let yourself part with it, with the history staining your skin. the prick of a needle and the pain of it made simple for a full and the most earnest performance of devotion. your breaths shallow, overwhelmed by the thought and the domineer of him. 

his thumb running to sweep at your skin. hot with an intention you can't place. 

you make to warn him. “roman-”

but his tongue is quick, works with a faraway familiar passion as it curls between the soft seam of your lips. exhaustion and adrenaline, an effortful pair as they go about the task of stripping away your resolve. a return of this sudden fever of a feeling as your tongue makes to snake against his. lapping lazily, a mindless seduction as you fall into old ways. his throat groaning, surely taken by his own bout of reminiscence. nails racking dull over his naked skin, over the taut muscle at his belly. his palms cradling your face to deepen his kiss in spite of the pain. leaving you little room to breathe, his body fastening you harshly to the bathroom wall. making to suffocate you with the flick of his tongue and the fire of his touch. 

his teeth prick you mean, biting into the supple flesh of your lip. suckling the pain with the tender pull of his mouth. 

the harshness of it causing a whimper to break. instinct taking hold. subdued in an instant. 

and it is only when he breaks for breath that you remember where you are. pushing at his tired body enough for a full separation. 

you leave saying nothing. out of the bedroom, down the hallway and through the clubhouse doors. letting the silence of it speak for you. 

lol we might need a roman pov after this huh… smh

[morally-grey-variant]

love is a dagger [loki x oc] [part three]

loki x oc

part three

[master post]

Setting: Agent Grey Forrest can’t quite reconcile her alliance with Loki. After six months of regular hand-to-hand combat and close-weapons training, they’re not quite friends but can’t exactly stay away from each other. Everything changes the day Loki accidentally stabs Grey during a training exercise.

Summary(3): Loki bares his teeth. Grey bears the weight of his guilt. Wolves are not born cruel; they lash out when danger is thrust upon them. All monsters deserve love – even if all they have known is fear. (wc 3.1k)

Warnings: Later episodes feature dark & explicit themes -- Minors DNI. Freshly stitched-up wounds, pain, implied self-harm themes (no descriptions or direct references), general angst, swearing, inferences of past trauma, non-explicit nudity (if I've missed something please let me know!)

Showering is a kind of bliss and torture in and of itself. The stitches pull as I lift my hands above my head to release my ponytail. Scrubbing shampoo into my long, dark hair means I'm forced to curl into myself and tuck my elbows into my sides. This won’t heal quickly, and I'm going to have to learn to work around it. Might as well start now.

Soap slides down my torso and over the puckered seam; I tip my head back in a silent scream, the sharp sting paralyzing my entire body. 

Some tough agent I am. 

But the scalding hot water on my scalp, scrubbing dried blood off my face and hands and everywhere, is enough to make it worth it. When I finally step out of the bathroom, a trail of lilac-scented steam in my wake, Loki is still there. Waiting for me. 

I wish I'd picked cuter pajamas. Comfort eclipsed cuteness, though, and my old gray t-shirt and loose flannel pajama pants are as much as I could manage after the painful effort of shimmying into a loose green bralette. My hair clings to the back of my tee, leaving a big wet patch.

Leaning back in my desk chair, Loki stares deeply into the middle distance. He's somewhere far away, deep in thought as he clenches the arms of the chair so tightly that his knuckles are white.

“That's my only chair,” I say. “If you break it, I don't think they'll give me another.” 

He eases his grip. His gaze loosens, and those green eyes drift to me, considering each piece of my pajamas. “Did you re-dress your … wound?”

I shake my head. “And I don't suppose you'd know how to wrap hair in a towel.” I sigh, sinking onto the edge of my mattress. Leaning forward, I dab my white bath towel against my dark, wavy locks in dismay. 

Towel bunched up in my lap, I close my eyes and let my head fall into my lap with a small groan. The pain is absolutely killing me now. I shouldn't have gotten the stitches wet in the shower, soap drips notwithstanding, but there's no way I could've gotten into bed without washing up first. Wiping myself down with a wet washcloth wouldn't have worked, either – too much reaching and straining. 

I focus on taking deep, calming breaths, the counselor’s words echoing in my head. Square breathing, just like music class in grade school – breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold. 

Deep breaths stretch out my ribcage. Another involuntary groan slips out. Fuck.

“Grey.”

Loki sounds closer, and I’d like to think I’d forgotten his presence in my self-indulgent suffering, but there’s no way I could ignore the way his presence fills up my tiny bedroom. I hum a noncommittal response. I want to lift my head to look at him, but my head might as well weigh a hundred pounds.

There's a tug against the towel, and Loki pulls it out of my lap. Gingerly, he drapes it over the back of my neck, letting it fall forward over my hair. He gathers it up in front, and with a subtle twist, wraps the towel around my hair and tucks it back behind my head. 

“Woah,” I laugh softly, finally letting my head lift. “How–”

One side of Loki's mouth turns up in a thin-lipped grin of acquiescence. “Thor,” he explains simply, his smirk deepening as some memory floats to the surface. “If you tell anyone, he'll have my head for it.”

I can't help but laugh. Loki is warm and familiar when he wants to be, like a reluctant housecat. I'm overcome with an urge to wrap my arms around him and drink in all that dark warmth. 

The laugh rubs my shirt against the wound, and I flinch. 

Loki's face drops. It cracks me open from the inside. 

“I'm fine, Loki,” I say, forcing myself not to curl an arm around my torso. “Really. It'll probably scar, but it's not that bad. I'm fine.”

He shoves the chair back with a flick of his wrists, suddenly towering over me. “It’s not fine.” Loki's eyes darken, his brow creasing. The chair rattles backwards on an unsteady wheel and bangs against the side of the desk. A chill sweeps over me. “Stop saying you're fine, Grey. I think you've forgotten that I stabbed you today. You're not fucking fine.”

“Don't break my fucking chair if you're having a tantrum,” I frown, though I don't bother standing. I won’t fight with him. “You didn't stab me, idiot. It was a training exercise. I didn't get out of the way fast enough. If you'd stabbed me, I'd be in a drawer underneath the hospital by now.”

His eyes flash knowingly before he whips around, practically stomping away from me. He can't go far in the tiny room, and his march to the window would almost be comical if it didn't fucking kill me to see him this upset. I wouldn't treat the god with kid gloves, though. He could handle my anger.

One arm braces above his head as he leans against the full-length window, staring out at the darkening landscape below. The half-moon reflects onto his pale, brooding face. His hood bunches up around his shoulders, pushing his dark curls forward from where he's tucked them behind his ears. He's trying to calm down, too.

“You're exactly right, you know.”

Something in his tone sends a shard of ice through my chest. He doesn't break his stare, watching the world spread below us, though I know he's not really seeing anything. 

“I'm ending your training.” He continues coldly, his voice flat and businesslike. As if he's ordering coffee. “This has gone far enough.”

“Loki–” I protest, pinching the skin on the back of my arm. “That's not fair. I have a say in this, too. I'm not going off to war. We're sparring in a padded room. No one else will train with me–”

He whips around, face contorted in horrifyingly inhuman fury. His hands ball up into fists at his sides. “Do you know the last agent I fucking stabbed, Grey?” He seethes through clenched teeth. A muscle in his jaw flexes, twitching up through his temple. “I killed Phil Coulson. Stabbed him in the fucking back.” 

His eyes glaze over, the whites now run through with pinkish-red. He spits his admission through his teeth like a snake spitting venom. The things that haunt him in the middle of the night, that he wishes he could bury deep and let them rot in his heart forever. But they forever lurk just beneath the surface. When he looks at me, he sees Coulson.

“I know, Loki. I’m not afraid of you.” 

SHIELD agents learn about Loki the moment they ask to work directly with the Avengers. We learn about all the Avengers, sure – Cap's brave sacrifice, Tony's arrogant but self-sacrificing genius, Thor's god-like might – but they’re obsessed with Loki. The training videos have something of a “keep your enemies closer” vibe that would make you think he's some bloodthirsty supervillain. Loki murdered Agent Coulson in cold blood. Loki tried to conquer Earth to spite his brother. Loki lies and cheats and stabs people in the back.

Well, he only stabbed me in the front.

“I'm not afraid of you.” My voice is even and calm. “Sit down, Loki.”

He doesn't move a muscle. If I didn't know better, I'd think he wanted to slap me. 

“Coulson's alive,” I continue, shrugging with all the nonchalance I can muster. “And you can't end our training. You don't just get to decide things for me.”

“Coulson is alive by chance,” Loki counters quickly. He's lost some of his fire, though. His muscles relax slightly, even if he's still obviously on edge. “And I do get to decide for you when you're putting yourself in danger.”

Now it's my turn to get angry. His words stoke the little ember that ceaselessly burns in my chest. I get to decide for you. 

“Why do you care if I put myself in danger?” I shout, ignoring the way my ragged heart chafes in my chest. 

“Because I care about you, you fumbling imbecile!” Loki shouts back, palms spread wide, face contorted in wretched agony. “I had to sit here and listen to your agony while you did something as simple as shower, knowing I am the cause of that pain. For weeks – likely for months – I will be forced to watch you suffer from afar because of my mistake.” The words pour out of him, uncontrolled and unfiltered. “Day after day, I'm subjected to loathsome glares and rightfully placed suspicion. I know quite well who I am, Grey. The God of Mischief; the Prince of Lies. An arbiter of human misery.

“I found the only soul whose face doesn't contort with hatred when they see me, and I sank a dagger into her chest.”

Loki's chest falls. His entire body slumps forward under the weight of his admission. He tugs his hands through his curls again, twisting away from me. “I must go,” he finishes, his words clipped. He hastens past me.

I snag the loose fabric of his sweatshirt as he tries to walk past me towards the door. “Don't you dare.”

He freezes mid-step. He obeys, though his head is still turned away from mine. My hand curls into the fabric with a tight fist; the weight of such a grip that might bring him to his knees. 

“Don't you dare, Loki,” I repeat, still looking up at him though he won't meet my gaze. “Running away won't fix this.”

His chest shudders with a ragged breath.

“You want to drown in self-pity just because you made a mistake? Learn the difference between accidents and purposeful attacks, you fumbling imbecile.” I can't help but grin a little as I echo his frustrated insult. “If you leave now, not only am I going to have to deal with this on my own, but it's going to fucking hurt when I re-wrap this stupid thing. I earned this, so I get to deal with it on my own terms.”

I earned this. I deserve this.

He finally looks down at me. Red-rimmed green eyes leak small tracks of tears down his cheeks. That shatters the cracked thing inside my chest. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and help take care of me,” I continue, clinging to his shirt and forcing my voice not to crack.

I chose to ally myself with the villain. The man – the god – no one else will even go near.

“Stark will be furious if you forgive me.” Loki smirks down at me through his tears. 

I earned this, because this is exactly what I deserve. Loki doesn’t get to decide who suffers and who grieves. He isn’t the only kicked dog here.

“Good. Maybe some disobedience will humble him.”

Loki rolls his eyes as he finally shifts, taking a step back and lowering himself to sit beside me on the edge of the mattress. “Humility is not a concept he recognizes, I'm afraid.” 

The fallout from this will cause an avalanche. I wince as a mountain of potential consequences piles up in my mind. Faces flash through my mind as I picture just a few people who will need more than a little convincing that this accident was, indeed, an accident. Natasha. Nick Fury. Tony Stark. Thor. Natasha. Agent Coulson. Cap. Natasha. But for now, there are no consequences. As long as I can keep him safe in here with me, tucked away like a secret deep in my heart, we’re a universe of two.

“Are you in a lot of pain?” Loki’s voice is gentler now. He's not crying – I doubt more than a few tears actually fell to begin with – but his demeanor softens considerably, even though he still seems on edge. Loki is more than a mere secret. He’s an earth-shattering whisper passed beneath hastened breaths. Deceptively silent. Taking up far less room than he deserves.

I care about you. 

The words echo again. What exactly does that mean, though? A lingering hand on my thigh during training; his head cupping my face while the doctor stitched me up.

Loki isn't a villain.

“I’m imagining everyone I'm going to have to explain this to when I can't report for duty tomorrow,” I concede, shrugging. The small movement draws out another involuntary hiss of pain.

I deserve this.

“You didn't bandage it after your shower?” 

I shake my head. “Too much… stretching. Getting dressed was hard enough.” I deserve this.

Loki pushes himself off the mattress, reaching to grab the bandages sent home from the medical wing. “Let me help you.” 

My face goes bright red. Fuck. In my proud insistence that Loki stay to atone for his mistake, I forgot that helping me might mean… this again. I tug up the bottom hem of my t-shirt, exposing the wound to the air. Loki furrows his brow, glancing between my face and the stitched-up gash. “You should've let me do this right away.” 

Oh, god. It's redder than ever, the skin puckered and inflamed around the black stitches. The shower and friction against my shirt have irritated it like crazy. I can feel my pulse in the bright red, raw edges.

I deserve this.

Loki gingerly lays gauze over the redness. The tips of his fingers brush against the skin just beneath it. My whole body shivers. He glances up, his face only inches from mine, before returning his diligent attention to his work. “Your hand is freezing,” I say quietly, hiding my embarrassment poorly. His hands are cold, but when his fingers brushed my bare skin...

“Sorry,” he mutters. A dark curl falls over his face as he holds one end of the long bandage roll over the gauze. The hem of my shirt slips from my fingertips, falling over the wound. “Hold still, darling.”

I barely fight the shiver that word sends through me. “Sorry,” I echo, barely breathing.

“Grey, are you… will you be… decent?” He stumbles around “are your tits out” as I nod hurriedly, though I instinctively pull my arms around my chest again. “I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to remove your shirt again.” I swear to God that he's smirking just slightly as he says it, avoiding eye contact with me the whole time.

“Of course,” I answer, painting my pinched voice with as much sarcasm as I can muster. Because this is a joke, right? It has to be a joke. “I managed to get a bra on after the shower… just in case, I guess.”

Loki frowns again. “That explains much of your miserable whimpering.” 

Oh. I didn't realize I'd been that loud.

“Just hold still,” he continues, brushing a hand against my waist. “Hold your arms up like earlier – yes, that's it,” he murmurs, tugging my shirt up and over my head. I'm sure every inch of my body has to be flushed pink by now. Not because I want him taking my clothes off. Absolutely not. No way. 

The little monster in the back of my head grins wickedly. Because you absolutely fucking do.

I tip my head back, unable to keep watching. That only makes it worse. Now I can feel him with alarming clarity, every nerve in my body focused on his tender touches. I'm blindingly aware of my thin, forest-green bralette – some soft cotton thing that I picked because of the color name, and not because I've come to love the color green – as it clings to my skin, delicately cupping my small breasts.

“I'm sorry if I'm hurting you,” Loki continues in a low, clenched voice. “I'll be done in a moment.”

“It doesn't hurt,” I breathe, trying to stay as still as possible. The bandage – and his arm – loop around me, wrapping completely around my torso until he can grip the other side.

He encircles me with his arms. I can’t breathe. 

Two long fingers press into my side, holding the cloth in place; I tip my head back, overwhelmed by the intimacy. His hands brush against my skin with every circle his hands make around my torso. 

Surely he can hear my heart thundering against the inside of my ribs. It threatens to rip through my stitches and burst out through that fresh opening. Loki’s fumbled slice weakened the dam; if I’m not careful, I’ll pour out through the torn seams. A lifetime of painstaking restraint wells up behind a crumbling levee. 

“All right.”

I tilt my head down. He's checking his handiwork, eyes downcast. Dark curls tumble forward as his head leans down, falling loose from their usual careful slicked-back style. I imagine myself brushing those curls back from his forehead, lifting his face to look at me, demanding he tell me exactly what he’s thinking. But nothing about my allyship with Loki has ever been so straightforward.

His impossibly broad left hand lightly rests against my right side, his long fingers stretched wide across my torso.

He lifts his eyes. The slight red remnants of his earlier outburst are fading, and the soulful eyes piercing my heart are so dark and ancient that I’m frozen in place. Some hint of a thought lingers on his slightly parted lips.

His dark eyebrows arch upward slightly; curiously. 

My jaw softens, my comment or quip long forgotten. He notices, and his gaze drops to my jaw. No; to my lips. Oh.

Loki tips his head forward, brushing his lips against mine. He’s soft and hesitant, achingly restrained. Cautious.

I catch his lower lip between my own, pushing into him. He hums contentedly. The sound rumbles deep in his chest. Oh.

He slides his hand down to brace against my back, pulling me forward ever so slightly. Cupping my jaw, his long fingers sliding into my hair and beneath my ear and I’m lighting up at every touch. I relax into him, his cool fingers perfect against my flushed skin. I wrap my arms around his neck and wind my fingers into his curls. They're exactly as soft as I imagined they would be.

I've wanted this for longer than I would admit to myself. I've wanted Loki for months, wondered how his hands would feel and his lips would taste and his hair would twist between my fingers. Every aching hour spent sparring with steel and fists and sharp words and barbed grins, my wolf among the woods, the predator sharpening his prey. 

My broken boy who burns the world just to spite the ashes. 

If Loki is a monster, then let us be monsters together.

[timelessstardust99]

𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐆𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝

Note: I don't see much fanfics about the RE girls, so I think I might make this into a series for the girls. You can request anything RE related, considering that is my hyperfixation right now. Pairing: Jill Valentine x Female! Redfield! Reader Warning: Mentions of brain washing Summary: Y/N was always someone who loved partying and just having a good time, so when she notices her anti-social girlfriend went into one of her moods, she got the idea to take Jill to a small get together with some of her old college friends.

Jill didn't understand why she had agreed to come here. It was noisy and she could smell the testosterone coming off of some of the men in the room. Her specially trained eyes kept a close target onto Y/N, the person who had dragged her all the way here. She watched Y/N dance, a smile gracing her face as the music loudly played around them. Now she knew why she agreed to come, it was to watch her beautiful girlfriend just have fun and hang out with the friends she never gets to see much anymore. It was fun, relaxing almost, to see how happy she gets whenever she goes to a party.

Then a frown graced her lips, Jill's mind going back to a few years ago, when Wesker had gotten to her, brain washing her into doing her dirty work. Y/N was there, along with Chris and Sheva, all three of them trying to get her back. She could still hear the cries from Chris and Y/N, her foot making contact with Y/N's face, momentarily stunning her before she was back up again, determination in her eyes that she'd get her girlfriend back again.

Her negative memories were interrupted when she heard shouts of surprise and pain, looking over to her girlfriend, she saw Y/N with her fist out, blood on her knuckles from the impact they made with who she assumed was the person in front of her on the ground. Jill got up and made her way towards them, worry lacing her eyes. As she got closer, she started to hear Y/N's strong voice.

"Say it again asshole, I dare you, otherwise shut your goddamn pie-hole!" Y/N exclaimed in anger. Jill made it to her side, grabbing her arm, putting her bloodied fist down. The brunette looked down to see a man holding his nose, glaring up at the two.

"You broke my nose!" He shouted.

"Yeah, and I'll break more bones if you say another word about my girlfriend!" Y/N hissed. More people were now watching them, making Jill a bit uncomfortable from all the eyes on them. She watched as the man's friends grabbed hold on his arms and picking him up into a standing position.

"You'll pay for this girl, I hope you know," He said, a glare still pointed their way. Jill returned his glare.

"Don't threaten her," Jill said. The man scoffed, looking at the taller woman.

"Stay out of this Valentine, this is between me and little miss know-it-all." The man said. Jill didn't like that.

"If it has something to do with her, it has something to do with me. Now leave us alone you asshole," Jill sneered. The man stared at her for a moment longer, before grumbling and leaving with his buddies. That was when Y/N finally knew her outburst had caused others to look their way. She didn't mean for that to happen, but what he had said about Jill really got onto her nerves. She felt her hands go to her arm, looking over she saw Jill staring at her with those cool blue eyes. "Come one, let's go home, okay." Jill spoke softly, tugging on the women's arm. Y/N followed her, both trying to ignore the eyes on them.

As the two got home, Y/N broke out into a fit of giggles, looking over to her girlfriend who merely smiled and shook her head, "god, did you see his stupid face? Priceless!" She exclaimed, tugging Jill's hand inside of the doorway, a happy grin on her face.

"You need to stop doing this Y/N, it's really not good for your record," Jill said, closing the door behind them.

"So. He had no right to say anything about you." Y/N said, pulling the slightly taller woman into her, wrapping her arms around Jill's neck.

"Yeah, and if Chris finds out that you had yet again got into a fight, we're gonna have to hear another one of his lectures again," Jill said. Y/N rolled her eyes.

"Let's just forget about that right now," She said, pecking her girlfriend on the lips before letting go, and making her way to their room. Jill watched her leave, a smile on her lips as her eyes shone with adoration. How did she get so lucky to have a girl as wonderful as Y/N?

Note: The ending sounds a bit rushed I know, but it was hard to think of how to finish it and it's currently 1:30 in the morning lmao. I hope this is a good start for my Resident Evil girl one shots.

[subject-v]

First Time

tw: cutting, blood, restraint, manipulation, mind control, cult

2300 words

“Stop, please! Please don’t hurt me!”

“Ah shoot, sorry.” The boy drops his scalpel like it’s gone red hot. It clinks awkwardly onto the linoleum floor next to my leg, catching the light from a nearby rune.

Confused, I blink up at him. I don’t have many other options, in terms of body language, at this point, with my hands chained above me, close enough I can brush my pinkies against one another, and my legs splayed on either side of the new kid, the pants damp with the humidity and my own blood. Nice cell, as far as they go, but the tile floor’s a real germ trap and even after a quick wash the night before, most of my blood is still congealed on my body.

“I-I’m sorry.” He picks up the scalpel with trembling fingers. “I didn’t mean to drop that. Let me try this again.”

He places the tip of the blade against my skin, then holds it there without enough pressure to draw blood while he consults a piece of paper, creased all over from a million folds and written in cramped handwriting. Did he… did he write down what he plans to do to me? What kind of serial sadist is this? “I’m just going to give you a few cuts,” he murmurs, at last leaning onto the blade and carving a line down my arm.

I don’t mind the hot flash of pain—much—but he was so funny the first time so I make my eyes roll back in my head and crack my voice. “P-please!” The sound echoes in the lofty space. 

“I could concentrate better if you didn’t speak.” Another line joins the first. He’s close enough I can lean forward and see the piece of paper that’s so enthralled him, including the shape he’s drawn there: a name, I think, maybe two. That’s hardly unusual. I’ve have names carved into me in writing systems that don’t even exist anymore.

I change tact. “What are you going to do to me?” 

Serial killers, they like that question. Puts you completely in their power, strokes their egos, the whole nine yards. The boy, though, and I can’t imagine he’s over twenty years old, not with hair that floppy and poorly styled, doesn’t react with pleasure or even annoyance that I’ve spoken. Instead, doubt flickers across his face, and then he blushes, a little red to his cheeks that I would’ve missed if the dungeon lights were but a shade dimmer. “I’m going to hurt you a little bit,” he says, tongue between his teeth as he finishes carving his shape into my arm. He’s not practiced at this and the wounds are all different levels of deep.

“Why? I never hurt you.”

“Because I want to.” 

He looks like he’d rather be locked in a room somewhere putting together a two thousand piece jigsaw puzzle but hey, sometimes you’re chained to the dungeon wall, sometimes you’re doing the chaining, it’s all about rolling with the punches. 

He stands, tugging at the chains above me so I’m forced to my feet, leaning heavily when one foot goes completely to sleep. You’d think that would be less painful than the still-bleeding wound on my inner arm, but you’d be wrong. Knives have a beauty to them, a finesse that simple circulation lacks. “Okay.” He says it like he’s psyching himself up. “I’m going to… I’m going to hit you, I think.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” It just slips out. Look, the first couple sadists leave an impression and after that, I stop grading on a curve. He wants me intimidated, he should be more intimidating.

It irks him, though. He tugs down the bottom of his shirt and straightens. “Yes. I’ll… I’ll beat the backtalk right out of you.” Given it takes him thirty seconds to figure out how to put the brass knuckles on, I don’t exactly have high hopes. Plus, his posture’s all off. After he punches me once and nearly throws himself into the wall, he switches to a cane and sort of whacks at my ankles.

In a better mood, I might try to dodge, but he’s so weak, he’s not going to break anything. “I’m your first, aren’t I?”

“Shut up.” He gets the cane caught between my legs—I swear I wasn’t even trying to get in the way—and drops it. 

“Here I thought I’d be the one kneeling at your feet.” He glares daggers up at me, costing him precious time padding about for his cane. “While you’re down there, you could give the ol’ boots a good lick, eh?” I’m barefoot and wiggle my toes a bit to prove it, but he shoots up like someone fired him out of a canon.

“I will never bow to you.”

I pout. “Whatever you say, big dog.”

The anger makes his beating, if anything, more sporadic. I think the wall’s in more pain than me when, panting, he takes a step back to surveil me. “That felt better, I think. They’re right, it can feel good.”

“Who’s right?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“If you tell me, I will show you how to use a cane to properly cause someone pain.”

“Like you’d know,” he sneers, mopping sweat off his brow. The cane’s about to fall from his hands unless he takes a rest, I figure, and he concurs, slumping to the floor well out of reach and going for a water bottle. Proper hydration: very important for the enterprising serial sadist. 

Though now that I’m here, I’m beginning to doubt the serial part of that title. So much for ridding the city of its serial killer on the first try, huh? If Archer beats me to a win by going the legal route, I’m going to throw myself into the ocean. 

After a bit of R&R, he’s ready for another go, but it’s cautious interest I see in his eyes. “Well?” he demands, tapping a foot. The arms crossed could be a good look, but he should’ve put the cane down first. “Tell me, then.”

“First tell me who they is.”

His eyes narrow but he’s never taken a negotiation course—such courses generally indicate that the party who is chained to the wall has less bargaining power—because he folds right away. “The other Mu-9s.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“You said you’d teach me.”

“All right, then. You see that table?” I have to nod towards it, my hands being where they are. “It’s for strapping people to.”

“It’s too short.”

“Au contraire. It’s not for waterboarding, it’s for foot torture. Move it over here. Yep, until it’s touching the wall, good. Okay, let’s see if I still have the abs for this.” I clench my fingers around the manacles and haul myself up and sideways, half over the table. He sees what I’m trying to do and helps me the rest of the way, still holding the cane even after it bops him in the forehead. “Now you’d traditionally strap my ankles to the corners.” What a relief, not to have to stand anymore. When I get a choice, I’ll sit through a torture anytime, even if the table feels kind of rickety. As an added bonus, I’ve earned a little slack in the arm chains, so I could feasibly start unlocking them, were I inclined. “The feet have as many nerves as the hands do and unlike other parts of the body, they don’t acclimate to repeated beatings, so the hundredth lash hurts as much as the first. You want to strike closer to the arch than the heels or toes, and at an angle. Yes, hold the cane like that. And then twist all the way around and think about activating your stomach muscles as you-ah! Yeah, like that.”

At my cry, his grip loosens and he almost drops the cane again. This kid, I swear. 

“You need to be careful with foot torture. I can walk on anything that isn’t broken but regular folks, any more than fifty or so and they won’t be able to walk on them. You also always want to-ah, yes. Thank you for that. You want to make sure-ow, see, that was my toe. Do you want to break bones or do you want to cane me? Make up your mind, kid.”

His shoulders are heaving. For a second, I think he’s going to stab me with the blunt end of his cane but he takes a step back and composes himself. “I should know this,” he whispers. “I should understand this.”

I take a stab in the dark. “Is that what they told you?” 

“They said evil people like me, we would like it. They told me… this was what I was made for.”

“You know what that sounds like?”

“No.” He looks up, all curious-like. Maybe twenty was an overly optimistic estimate for age.

“Sounds like someone is trying to mind control you.”

“What?”

“Just in general, if someone is telling you you’re evil, that’s a sign they’re manipulating you.”

“I am evil. I’m a Mu-9.”

“Ri-ight.”

“I-I’m hurting you! I cut my name into your arm!”

I glance at the wound. “Is that what it says? Niklo? Is that your name?”

“It doesn’t matter. Your opinion doesn’t matter.”

“I showed you the foot caning, didn’t I? Tell me about these people.” Since we’re settling down, now, I use the slack in my chains to unscrew the pin holding the manacles around my left wrist in place. Careful practice means I snag it before it can fall open. “They’re not Mu-9s, right?”

He whacks me again, on the knee, which is not how I showed him and doesn’t particularly hurt. 

I make a few educated guesses, based on the size of the dungeon and how often he references a group of people. “You’re not the only or first one they’ve sent here to torture someone, right?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Mu-9s are, what? Some sort of torture school? And they’re letting you practice on the sorts of people no one will miss?” Torture schools are all the same—the grey sisters used to snag orphans and widows to practice on, if the dungeons ever got too empty. 

“We’re evil.”

“Says who?”

His chin is wobbling as he collapses against the wall, fingers loose enough that the cane rolls away and clatters across the floor. “It’s a gene, right? The Mu-9 gene? It makes people sadists, psychopaths.”

We’re about to have a chat, so I stop holding the manacles shut and place my hands in my lap. “Do you know what a gene is?”

“It’s in your DNA.” If he’s noticed I’m no longer tied up quite so well, he doesn’t let on.

“A gene tells your proteins how to-tell you what. You ever folded paper to make an animal?”

Everyone in this city has; the cranes decorate every other street corner.

“A gene is like the instructions to make a paper animal. A single gene can’t make you a psychopath, nor can they create a world with embedded moral laws and a black and white system of ethics.”

“What?”

“‘Evil,’” I scoff. “What’s that mean? Who decides?”

“I guess I don’t know.”

“Exactly. Tell me more about these folks who are mind controlling you.”

“They tested us at school.” His gaze goes up and over my left shoulder. “They took all the Mu-9s away, said since we were evil anyway, we might as well put it to good use. I didn’t kidnap you. I didn’t even want a, you know.”

“I do not.”

“A woman,” he mouths. “I wouldn’t normally hurt a girl.”

I snort. How kind.

“They told me where to find you, gave me this.” He gestures at his bag of pain-inducing equipment. “Said I’d know what to do.”

“So you found a woman tied up in a dungeon and decided to carve your name into her arm?”

“They had us plan it first. The therapists, they ask us again and again. What would you do, if someone was in your power? And whenever I said I’d never hurt them, she says of course I would, I’m evil, what would I do? She wouldn’t stop asking so I made it up, I said I-I’d carve my name into their arm and then I’d beat them and she asked me again and again everyday until I had it memorized, and then she made me write it down…” Futily, he waves the paper in my direction. “Maybe I’ve done this before. I don’t even know.”

“I’m going to hazard a guess that this is, in fact, your first time.”

He starts to cry. You know what’s worse than a proper good caning? When people cry in front of you, and this culture says women are supposed to be all motherly and caring too, so I know he expects me to help him out. 

Sighing, I say, “You’re most likely not evil. You are being mind controlled, though, so I’d recommend doing something about that.”

“I can’t leave. I can’t. They said… they said if I left, the regs would kill me. They can see what I am.”

Fuck me, it’s a cult situation, isn’t it? A torture murder death cult. Just my luck. “Uh huh.” 

“This is the only thing I’m good at,” he whispers, standing again and going for the cane. “If I can’t show them I’m good at this, they’ll make me leave and the regs will burn me alive. I need to be good at this.”

“If—”

“And you,” he snarls, “need to shut up.”

I mime zipping my lips. He realizes, for the first time, that my hands are free. I’d like to say the beating I got in punishment was nice, but it was average at best, and I could’ve done without the angry tirade. He leaves me an hour later, bruised and bleeding, still sitting on that wobbly table, but I see a logo on the wall outside before he shuts the door: SomatiCorp.

Cult victim convinced he needs to become a sadist to survive, windowless dungeon with gross tile floor, and a company name in camel case. 

I can work with that.

[voidfxndoms]

can i request a stiles stilinski oneshot with angst prompt 15: "I don't want your help." (around when he k.lled donovan in self-defense) thank you in advance! ‹𝟹

Omg, I love this idea so much! Thanks so much, anon <3 I'm so terribly sorry for only posting this now, but I've had the filthiest migraine for the past two days, ugh

Can you keep a secret? // Stiles Stilinski

After an unfortunate event at the high school library, Stiles turns to a friend as a burden weighs heavier and heavier on his shoulders.

Warnings: none? except spoilers, if you haven't seen S5 of TW

W/C: 2,426

A/N: Since your request is quite specific about the timeframe, I've decided to follow the actual events of the show, only mentioning the characters that are part of that season :) I hope you like it!

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:✧･ﾟ:

The library was empty. Spotless. If Stiles hadn't known better, he'd think the entire thing had happened in his head. But a simple glimpse at his hands was enough to see the blood — Donovan's blood. His hands were covered in it. But how was the library cleared up so quickly? And not just Donovan's body being removed, but all of the blood, the bars… Everything. It was all gone. In disbelief, he made his way to where, just minutes ago, the lifeless body of the Wendigo was standing, impaled. As thorough as the clean-up had been, Stiles spotted a smear of something atop the scaffolding he had climbed upon in his frantic escape from Donovan's hold. The room was too dark for Stiles to make out exactly what smeared the steel beam, so he wiped some with his finger. The crimson blood on his fingertip glistened in the dim light of the moon. The same blood the rest of Stiles's hand was covered in.

The buzz of his phone brought him back to reality, startling him, though only slightly. It was a text from his father, asking him when he'd be home. To say that it was late was an understatement, and Stiles should have probably replied to the text. But the emotions were still too fresh, too strong, too raw for him to think straight. So, instead of answering his father, Stiles slowly backed out of the library, got in his car, and started driving. Not knowing where to go, he drove aimlessly. Or so he thought.

"Stiles? What the hell are you doing here, it's two in the morning!" Lydia shouted through the rolled-up window.

Stiles's head slowly turned towards her. His face was trembling, and the deep lines on it indicated he had been crying for a while. Lydia's face shifted from annoyed to confused and then, finally, to highly worried. He looked at her for a few seconds, his hands still gripping the steering wheel, the car still running.

Then his head turned to face the front again, his face scrunching up in confusion. Why was he at Lydia's house? Why was he in her driveway? How long had he been there?

A sudden, yet tender touch stopped his train of thought.

"Your knuckles are ghostly white, under all that blood." Lydia remarked, softly. Her hand was on top of his on the steering wheel.

A trembling "Hm?" was all Stiles's brain managed to produce at that moment.

"Loosen your grip, Stiles. It's okay, I've got you."

Soon after the amber-eyed hands were loosely hanging on the steering wheel, color quickly making its way back to them.

And then there was silence. Why was there silence?

"Did you turn off my car?" Stiles asked turning to Lydia, his voice still weak.

She nodded in response, dangling the keys of the Jeep in front of his eyes.

"I told you, I've got you. Now, why don't you get out of this old thing and come inside? Let's get you cleaned up." she smiled.

Taking him by his hand, Lydia walked him inside her house, where they made their way to the bathroom.

She opened a drawer under the wash basin and took out a small towel. She waited until the water was warm, then called Stiles over. First, she cleaned his face from all the dirt and the tears. Then she let him wash his hands as thoroughly and for as long as he wanted to. Finally, she sat him across from her, cleaned the wound on his shoulder and made sure to clean up all the remains of dirt and blood that had collected around and under his nails.

"Why are you doing this?" Stiles asked when she was done.

"Because I know that, whatever happened, there's a reason why it did." she answered.

"I killed Donovan." he blurted out.

Lydia didn't seem fazed, or shocked. But she didn't say anything. She finished tidying up the wash basin, washing away the mixture of blood and water that had collected on its walls. Then, after putting the towel in the laundry chest, she returned to where she was sitting, took Stiles's hands in hers, sighed, and said "Go on".

And he did. He told her everything, in the comfort of the small guest bathroom. When he was done his face was stained with tears all over again, he was sitting on the floor, shaking and gasping for air. But Lydia was right there with him, on the ground, cradling him and rocking them both back and forth.

They stayed like this until he calmed down. Despite her efforts to get him to stay the night, just so she could keep an eye on him, Stiles told Lydia he was okay to go home. She walked him out of the house and back to his Jeep.

"Text me when you get home." She said as he put his seatbelt on. He nodded in response.

There was a moment of silence.

"You're gonna have to tell Scott, you know?" she asked. Her voice was soft, even softer than when she had found him in the car.

This time she didn't get a nod, but a deep sigh as a response.

She reached out and placed her hand on his arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. Stiles turned around, giving Lydia a weak smile, which she returned. Then he started the car, backed out of her driveway, and made his way home, where his murder board was waiting for him.

***

"Have you told him?" Lydia whispered, as Dr. Fenris buzzed the gate to the supernatural section of Eichen House open.

"Not yet." Stiles answered through gritted teeth.

"He's gonna get suspicious. Sooner or later he's also going to notice that you keep wincing whenever you move your shoulderblade." She shook her head.

"Yeah, well, he doesn't seem too forgiving of self-defense. Did you not hear what he said about five seconds ago, when I asked him if there's ever a time where killing in self-defense is alright?"

Lydia sighed, "What I'm trying to say is- don't wait too long."

"Yeah... I know." Stiles answered weakily.

He tried to calm down, but it was too late. Lydia set off the trigger to his paranoia, and Scott's words echoed in his head in an aggressive way. Shoving his hands in his pockets to avoid picking at the skin of his nails, Stiles came in contact, once again, with the pin of the scaffolding. A painful reminder of what had happened and, more importantly, what was at stake.

Glancing at the prisoners in the cell, he noticed one of them looked surprisingly familiar. As he and the prisoner locked eyes, a wave of pure panic hit Stiles. It was Donovan. In the flesh. Standing there, staring at him with those void, wendigo eyes. At first, Stiles averted his gaze but then took a step back to double-check that it was really him.

And it wasn't. Of course it wasn't, it couldn't have been. After all, Donovan was dead. And he had killed him.

***

The Beacon Hills Preserve, a place Stiles knew very well, had never seemed as unfamiliar as it did in that moment. Him and Lydia had been looking for the Nemeton for the majority of the morning, but it seemed they were going around in circles. They were trying to prove a point about Parrish, but without the Nemeton, the point seemed very unlikely to be proven.

Puzzled, Stiles sighed. "It's almost like this thing doesn't want to be found."

"Maybe it knows we're late for class. Because we've been here twice." Lydia observed, annoyance oozing off of her.

"Crap." Stiles stated, looking at the two big Xs on a tree Lydia marked with white chalk as they were passing by.

Emphasizing her annoyance with a loud sigh, Lydia asked if they could talk to Parrish. Stiles tried to convince her to keep looking by explaining that since the Nemeton was full of bodies Lydia, as a banshee, should be able to find it. Her reply was a dry and sarcastic remark about having an off day, and she proposed, once again, that they speak to Parrish instead.

"We can't." Stiles answered, slumping as his gaze fell.

"Why not?" Lydia asked, too irritated to think about the reason behind Stiles's hostility about talking to Parrish.

"You know why."

"Okay yeah but, come on Stiles, it was self-defense. Plus, I'll be there to back you up. And I'm sure so will Scott and your dad, who is the sheriff, by the way."

When Stiles didn't answer, Lydia's mouth fell open and she scoffed in disbelief.

"Jesus Stiles, you still haven't told him?"

"Them. Told them." Stiles whispered in response.

"Them? You're telling me neither Scott nor your father, the two people who would never leave your side, know about you defending yourself from a blood-thirsty chimera?!"

"Okay, can you keep it down a notch? It's-"

"We're in the middle of a forest, Stiles!" Lydia shouted, irritated.

"It's not that simple!" Stiles shouted back, before clearing his throat and composing himself. "It's not that simple. My dad is the sheriff, which is a double-edged sword. And Scott... I'm scared he won't look at me the same. I mean you heard what he said."

Seeing him fidgeting, Lydia made her way to him and took his hands in hers, a habit she only had around him.

"Look at me," she told him. His gaze met hers, his eyes glassy due to the tears that had welled up. "Noah is your dad first, and only after that is he the sheriff. I don't know him too well, but he doesn't seem the heartless kind. And Scott, well, you said it yourself. Scott is your brother. Brothers fight, that's what they do, but in the end, they always find their way back to each other."

Stiles shook his head, "I can't tell him."

"Why not? He's gonna find out, sooner or later."

Stiles's face went white with fear.

"Oh God Stiles, no. I didn't mean it like that. I'm not gonna tell on you."

"You won't..." he mumbled.

"What do you mean 'you won't'. Who else would? We are the only ones who know, right?"

Stiles's face was pale, but it lacked any trace of an expression.

"Stiles... you can't say anything."

"Right?" Lydia repeated her question, worry slowly creeping up on her.

"Please, don't say anything."

"Stiles?" Lydia grabbed him by the shoulders. His eyes were empty, his body stiff. He was looking at a random spot on the ground, but it didn't seem like he was actually looking at it. He seemed to be in a completely different world.

"Why not?"

"Because I never said anything about Donovan."

"He never said anything about Donovan." Stiles mumbled, a stray tear tumbling down his cheek.

Lydia froze, and Stiles finally looked up at her.

"He?" Lydia stuttered.

Stiles shoved her arms off him and made his way to the path that led out of the preserve.

"What do you mean he?" Lydia shouted after him. When she got no answer, she started running after him.

"Stiles," she breathed out when she caught up to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He quickly removed it, turning around to face her.

"Leave it, Lydia, it's nothing." he said through gritted teeth.

Ignoring his remark, she asked, "Who is he?"

"I said, leave it." Stiles repeated, stressing every word.

But Lydia was determined to get a reply out of him; "Who else knows?"

And that's when anger got the best of him.

"Jesus, Lydia, will you just let it go? For once in your life, will you just stay out of it?" He shouted. Then, calmly, he added "I told you it's nothing. Now let me be."

He started to walk again, taking big steps to get as far as possible before Lydia could speak again. Because where he preferred avoiding confrontation, he knew that it was number one on Lydia's priority list.

And sure enough, she called after him, reprimand in her voice — "I'm just trying to help you."

Stiles stopped dead in his tracks.

"I don't want your help." he mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"What'd you say? I couldn't hear you from back here."

He'd had enough of her sarcasm for the day.

"I said," he started, turning back and making a beeline for her petite figure at the other end of the path. "I don't want your help. Did you hear me now, hm? Or should I say it louder? I. Don't. Want. Your. Help. As a matter of fact, I don't even need your help."

He was now standing in front of Lydia, his tall figure somehow still towering over hers, despite her heels. His gaze was firm, his eyebrows furrowed. The hand that was already holding the keys to his car was so tight around them, that his knuckles had turned the exact shade of white as the night he had pulled into her driveway. Only this time, it wasn't fear that he was feeling. It was pure, uncut anger.

"I don't need your reassurance. I don't need you to babysit me. I don't need you to guide me. This is not about you, it's about me, it's about Scott. You're irrelevant in this whole situation. So when I say let it go, you let it go. Because I don't want anything from you now, but to leave me alone."

His words cut like a dagger, but it was reassuring to know that he didn't mean any of it, that it was all coming from a place of immense fear. Or at least that's what Lydia wanted to believe.

By the time everything had sunk in, Stiles was already well ahead of her. Her understanding of the situation, however, wasn't a justification for the way he had spoken to her. So, in an attempt to trigger his rational side, she shouted one last question.

"If I'm so irrelevant, why did you come to me the night you killed Donovan?"

For just a moment, Stiles stopped walking, and Lydia thought he'd turn around, maybe to argue some more, maybe to apologize.

But he didn't. She saw his shoulders rise and fall, probably due to a deep sigh, and then he walked off, grip still tight around his car keys.

And in the silence of the preserve, they both knew that Lydia was right. And that Stiles hated himself for how he had treated her.

[guttersniper]

LIST 5 SONGS THAT INSPIRE YOU TO WRITE YOUR MUSE.

trouble's braids, tom waits

nature boy, nat king cole

running kind, merle haggard & the strangers

old man, neil young

the city of new orleans, arlo guthrie

bonus songs: the partisan, leonard cohen; hot and dirty in the city by labi siffre; you should've seen the other guy, nathaniel rateliff; hobo's lullaby, pete seeger + playlist

LIST 10 QUOTES THAT INSPIRE YOU TO WRITE YOUR MUSE.

try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this -- swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood on the first four knuckles. -- richard siken

those years gaze up at me like a hound. the centuries watch as we walk off the sheer cliff of them. my eyes adjust to the dark, but my heart never. -- hua xi

one of the things i try to do: memorize the smallest, most mundane and ordinary, unprepossessing, and virtually invisible of physical moments: the look and feel of a certain wall at a certain time on a certain day. those walls, those little shacks, those cats in the sun: all that is lacking in self-consciousness i seek to hold in vision, memory. (simple composition, color tints, a wash of light, crumbled brick, cold shadow, stillness, rose-color dirt, a twitching whisker.) -- michelle anderson-binczak

people talk of "social outcasts." the words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but i feel as though i have been a "social outcast" from the moment i was born. if ever i meet someone society has designated as an outcast, i invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness. -- osamu dazai

he knew french and german. he knew the periodic table. he knew--as much as he didn't care to--large parts of the bible almost by memory. he knew how to help birth a calf and rewire a lamp and unclog a drain and the most efficient way to harvest a walnut tree and which mushrooms were poisonous and which were not and how to bale hay and how to test a watermelon, an apple, a squash, a muskmelon for freshness by thunking it in the right spot. (and then he knew things he wished he didn't, things he hoped never to have to use again, things that, when he thought of them or dreamed of them at night, made him curl into himself with hatred and shame.) -- hanya yanagihara

the girl fits her body into the space between the bed and the wall. she is a stalk, exhausted. she will do something with this. she will surround these bones with flesh. she will cultivate night vision. she will train her tongue to lie still in her mouth and listen. the girl slips into sleep. her dream is red and raging. she will remember to build something human with it. -- lucille clifton

what voice is this cut in the air as though a wound itself had speech / give her small hands / give her dark hair / give her a wound no word can reach -- christian wiman

what does it feel like to be lonely? it feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. it feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. it hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. it advances, is what i'm trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing. -- olivia liang

maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. i don’t know. maybe then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away--you know?--from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. but then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters and all that blood. -- james baldwin

out there where small things scratched and sometimes touched. where words could be spoken that would close your ears shut. where, if you were alone, feeling could overtake you and stick to you like a shadow. out there where there were places in which things so bad had happened that when you went near them it would happen again. -- toni morrison

bonus quotes: there is nothing in this story that’s not a dagger. (hieu minh nguyen); this may be unpleasant to consider, may even be a bad place to begin, but if there were a nicer way to tell this story it wouldn’t be this story. (catherine lacey); most of it happened without music, the clink of a spoon from the kitchen. / someone talking. silence. / someone sleeping. someone watching somebody sleep. (marie howe); look now: my heart is a fist of barbed wire. (analicia sotelo); now you wear your skin like iron and your breath as hard as kerosene. (townes van zandt); i seize on little things / you can tell a lot about people / by the way they comb their hair / or the way they don't look you in the eye. (nikki giovanni)

[yurodiivy]

My Old Man is a Bad Man

(Joel Miller x FemReader)

Summary: 18+ PWP It's predominantly fucking sorry Chief.

Content Warnings: rough sex/choking/slapping/references to violence/kinda mean joel/unprotected PiV/dirty talk/use of slut whore etc/reader calls joel sir

Notes: long time listener first time poster, first fanfic ever be nice to me or I'll cry ty. I'm old n unsure how formatting works so if I do it wrong feel free to yell at me.

Your old man is a bad man. You see the sideways glances from other people, hear their whispers and the sneer in his voice when he speaks to them. You wash the blood out of his clothes without asking questions and lick the taste of metal off his knuckles. But he’s oh so sweet to you, doting, tender. Leaning down to coo into your ear in public, keeping you tucked into his side staking a claim that begs to be challenged. A cheque he’s already cashed more times than you can count in chipped teeth and broken ribs. You didn’t think it was possible to feel kept given the whole apocalypse thing but it’ll take more than cordyceps and biblical ruin to stop Joel Miller being a gentleman. You can’t remember the last time you opened a door or carried anything heavier than a cup of coffee. 

In bed he touches you like you’re made of glass, telling you how pretty you are, how gorgeous, how sexy, how his. Happy to spend hours between your legs lapping gently at your pussy. Leaving an endless trail of kisses on your neck,  your shoulders, on the pink skin his scruff leaves on the inside of your thighs. Cradling your face in his big hands tracing his thumb over your lips, forehead pressed against yours and those big brown baby cow eyes staring into your soul while he fills you. 

But you know this side of him is just for you and you don’t know what it says about you that you want to see the side of him he gives to everyone else. It’s all you can think about, when he’s asleep, tracing your fingers over the line between his eyebrows permanently creased from the frown that settles there from the moment he crosses the threshold to your house until he comes home to you. How big his hands feel and how rough his palms are against your soft skin when he touches you oh so gently.

How strong he is in that way that only comes from a lifetime of work, and when he holds you at night the cage of his arms stirs something within you, distinctly masculine and so very capable- if only he’d show you what they’re capable of. 

You’ve lost track of how long he’s been knelt between your legs, his tongue never leaving your clit as he works two fingers into you preparing you as diligently as always. His other hand strokes slow, patient circles into your thigh, looking up at you with what you want to call contentment but know closer borders reverence. 

That’s when it happens, he forgets himself; just for a second but it’s enough. As the knot tightens in your stomach your thighs snap shut around his head. It’s instinctual, his hand big and unforgiving as it forces your thigh back down against the bed but the combination of it and the noise of displeasure low in the back of his throat is enough to make you keen. A whimper that sounds more animal than human tearing from your throat as you cum around his fingers. 

“Are you okay sweet girl did I hurt you?” Melted chocolate eyes all caramel and concern when they find yours. 

“Do it again” you whisper, “please Joel, want you to use me. Want you to take it” 

He opens his mouth to protest, to ask what you mean; but something in your voice makes him pause, makes him say instead “do you know what you’re asking for?” with a tilt of his head and a lilt to his voice that makes heat pool in your belly. He’s not blind, he’s seen the way your thighs clench together when he raises his voice, felt how you tighten around his cock when he gets impatient and takes you against the wall of your house. 

“Yes, I trust you” 

He doesn’t say anything just looks you over greedy and appraising in a way that makes you feel more like meat than the altar you were two minutes ago. It wasn’t a lie when you said you trust him, but there’s a part of you that knows how easily he could tear you apart. You know who he is, you know what he’s done, but there’s a worse part of you that likes it, that preens under him. The sacrificial lamb displaying its sweetest cuts for the wolf. 

He doesn’t take his shirt or his jeans off just unbuckles his belt and shoves his jeans down enough to free his cock. It’s heavy and impossibly thick in his hand, stroking it as he lazily swipes the flushed pink tip through your wetness. 

“Please, I need it please just put it inside” the words are tumbling out of your mouth before you can stop them. Until he stops them, and you’re reminded once again of his size as his hand covers your mouth and half your face, squeezing until you cry out.

“Here’s how this is going to work, you’re going to shut up and take it until I ask you to talk. You do as you’re told or you get nothing, understood?” You nod under his hand and he lays a quick slap across your face before his hand slides down around your throat, not enough to hurt but enough to make you shiver under him. 

“Repeat it” he snaps.

“I’m going to shut up and take it until you ask me to talk” you breathe.

He pushes your jaw to the side and leans in to press a soft kiss at your hairline below your ear, so gentle compared to his hand around your throat it makes your heart swell. “Safeword is chamomile or you tap twice on my arm, understood?” 

“Yes Sir” you whisper and feel more than him growl against your cheek. 

He spreads your thighs wide apart, dragging two calloused fingers through your wetness making you twitch; already oversensitive from his earlier attention. 

“Too sensitive already? Too bad” he mutters cruelly, pressing the blunt head of his cock against your entrance giving you half without a second to adjust. You let out a strangled cry at the intrusion before he forces those two slick fingers past your lips. “Thought I told you to be quiet huh?” He sneers, laying another quick slap across your cheek. When he slides in to the hilt, hips flush your jaw throbs with the effort not to bite down around his fingers. He laughs darkly when your legs snap shut vice tight around his waist, forcing them back down against the bed with an ease that makes your thighs tremble. “Thought this was what you wanted sweet girl? Wanted me to use you, take what’s mine?” He’s right, and that self-sabotaging part of your brain perks up, bites back against that look that shows he thinks he’s broken you this easily. It’s that part that makes you hold his gaze, reaching up to wrap a hand around his wrist and force his fingers deeper into your throat- refusing to blink as tears pool at the corners of your eyes. Moaning low and deep around his fingers at how impossibly full you are. It snaps something within him, and you coyly add the last shred of his self-control to the list of everything else he’s given you. 

The pace is brutal, every harsh thrust bruising against your cervix tightening the coil in your stomach tighter and tighter. His hands are everywhere. In your mouth, in your hair, using his grip on your throat to pull your body down to meet his thrusts. You feel his cock throb inside you at your hoarse gasps every time he loosens his hold on your throat. It makes heat bloom in your stomach, how you can tell there’s a touch of guilt in how much he likes it, likes feeling you breathe and feeling how easy it is for him to stop it. His mouth never leaves your skin; alternating between licking, sucking and biting down harshly, rolling your skin between his teeth. Only stopping to assess his work, groaning appreciatively at the bruises littering your chest and neck. 

You’re so close you can feel it, feel how one brush of your fingers against your clit would send you over the edge, whining in protest when his hand grabs yours before you reach it. His thrusts don’t let up as he grasps your jaw, making you look at him, “Careful little slut, I don’t need to remind you what happens when people touch my property without permission.” the thought makes your head spin.

“Please I need to cum, please Sir I’m so close” your words melt together cut off as he pulls out flipping you over like you weigh nothing, dragging your hips up to slide back into your wet heat your mewls of protest at the sudden emptiness muffled by his hand shoving your face into the sheets. Both of your wrists trapped in his hand behind your back the second one tries to slip between your legs. “Greedy whore, what did I say? You do as you’re told or you get nothing. You wanna cum you’re going to do it just like this” he sneers, the honey drawl of his voice gravelly. “Please I can’t I need you to touch me” you whine into the sheets, damp with drool and tears desperation making your voice crack around the words, every slam of his hips pushing you closer but never quite there. 

He hauls you up so your back is flush against his chest, skin hot and damp with exertion. One of your hands clings to his forearm as he resumes his hold on your throat and he takes your other in his leading it to rest on your stomach pushing it down so you can feel the bulge of his cock through your skin. “Feel how deep I am baby, you’re so fucking close I can feel it, can feel that pretty cunt choking my cock. Making a mess all over my jeans. Giving you what you wanted aren’t I? Look at you, so fucking ruined, look so beautiful crying for me” And he’s right he’s so fucking deep you feel consumed, caged in his big arms feeling how easy it is for him to hold you up against him while he takes you, his lips pressed against your ear, that deep voice reverberating through you drowning out your ragged moans. “Come on sweetheart let me have it, let me feel you gush around my cock” it’s enough to push you over the edge and he almost drops you with how hard you spasm in his arms, vision burning white at the edges. Cunt molten hot squeezing around his cock, still riding your high as he buries a groan in your hair as he cums. 

He doesn’t pull out yet, just collapses pulling you with him, arranging your limbs into a marginally more comfortable position as he presses tender kisses over the marks on your shoulders. “You okay darlin? Need anything, water, you hungry?” You giggle at how quickly he switches back to fussing over you. “Can we do that again?” you ask innocently, playing with his fingers where they lay wrapped around your waist. “Give me a month to catch my breath first, got me fucking like a twenty year old.” You bring his hand to your lips pressing a kiss to his knuckles, “nah, a twenty year old couldn’t make me cum like you do” you whisper. He hums appreciatively against your skin, nuzzling his face into your neck murmuring how much he loves you as you fall asleep.

[madmarchhare]

Company Chapter 9

Here is chapter 9 of the sci-fi story Company. It has been a while hasn't it? Hope you like!!

Table of Contents

The pair regarded the now battered room idly, Wick turning to the young barkeeper, sat unscathed behind his mostly intact bar, shoving the unconscious body of a tough, dark-skinned woman in a boiler suit from the counter before pouring himself a drink, along with two spare glasses.

“Sorry for the mess,” Wick said flatly to the young man swallowing the bite of apple in his mouth, wearing his usual tired expression with a toothy frown.

“…This is actually better than normal after a fight so thanks,” he remarked, filling the glasses with what smelled like port.

“Do I need to pay you for this or?” Wick asked in a disinterested tone of voice as he took another bite out of his apple.

“Just take the cash of the five that started the whole thing and that’ll be it,” he stated flatly, pressing the other two full glasses forward as Cass walked over to the bar now holding a large was of cash she had pilfered already, Wick regarding her with an unsurprised expression. She handed over the money, setting up a chair for herself as she took the glass of port in her clutch, Wick coming over to join her and the bartender.

“Thanks,” Cass thanked, taking a swig of port to wash out the taste of blood and dust, coughingly slightly as it squeezed its way down her bruised chest. “I don’t think I got your name by the way?”

“Cheongmyeong,” he answered in a flat, but slightly irate voice.

“What like the protagonist of ‘The Return of the Blossoming Blade?” Wick asked curiously.

“Yeah, my dad had an unfortunate love of the manhwa, so he decided to name his son after it, the prick,” he grumbled.

“Suits you though,” Cass commented as she took another swig of port. He didn’t grant her a response.

“Just call me Syl or Sylvester, its less annoying,” he grumbled, polishing off the last of his drink. Cass watched him go as she drink further into her glass, wincing minutely as it tapped her bruised nose.

“Hey Syl, have you got any plasters we could use?” she asked, wiping her snout with a finger to see it was still bleeding. He glanced at her surprised for a moment then reached down behind the bar.

“Yeah, but they’re all either pink or some kind of balloon unicorn ones, to try and discourage people from getting wounded in fights,” he explained, laying out a set of three boxes of sticking plasters, along with a silver dish with cotton buds and medical spirits.

“Ah that’s fine, its more to prevent infection than to look cool,” she continued, taking one of the plasters, a light blue one with balloon-unicorns on the front and trying to put it on a gash on Wick’s nose, slightly above the old scar that cut across it, the man pulling away from it with a far from pleased look on his face.

“The fuck are you doing?!” he snapped as she tried to put it on a mocking smile unthinkingly revealing itself on her face.

“We don’t want you to get an infection Wick! Who knows what’s on this planet, especially out in those wetlands,” she finished in a sing-song voice, mischief clear on her face.

“If you want to fuck with me just say it,”

“I wanna fuck with you, cause they clash with your image a lot, it’s funny,” she reiterated with a Cheshire cat smile on her face. He grimaced at her honesty while Sylvester watched perplexed, Cass taking the moment to slap the plaster onto his nose. “There we go! That looks much better!” she snickered to herself as Wick glowered at her, “alright, alright, I’ll stop,” she finished, tending to her own wounds.

Wick turned to Sylvester with an exasperated look, “do you have any normal bandages as well, I want to do my knuckles,” he stated flatly, flexing the back of his hand at the young man.

“Yeah, but you dress yourself. I don’t want to be liable for it,” he stated, grabbing a roll of bandage from behind a bottle of absinth. Wick nodded and set to it, cleaning and bandaging his knuckles, and applying two more, hot-pink, plasters to cuts on his face. The pair finished tending to their own wounds, Syl watching them with blank curiosity. “About a place to hide, what are you looking f-” he began to ask, half-hiding his curiosity in a cloak of disinterest, when the doors were flung open again this time by a pair of UN soldiers, one holding the white SMG they had seen with others, the other a blocky white shotgun, a bandolier of shells attached to his equipment webbing.  

“Hands where I can see them!” the first one ordered, a medium height woman armed with the SMG with the Montenegrin flag on her shoulder. She aimed the SMG at the three of them, Wick and Cass slowly and unenthusiastically stepped off from the bar.

“Come forward,” the second soldier, lankier than his partner and distinctly worse kempt, acne and shrapnel scars pockmarked his cheek along with half-shaved five o’clock shadow. He spoke with a light Cornish accent, the UK flag on his shoulder confirming it. “We got reports of a fight down here again,” he began in an authoritative voice, glancing about at the various punched-out bodies on the floor, “well, its obvious there was one but it seems its smoked itself out. Since you’re the last ones standing we’ll ask you,” he continued in a rather flippant voice, unloading his shotgun before resting it over his shoulder.

“I can assert that they didn’t start it,” Syl called out from behind the bar, the woman glancing at him while she still wielded her weapon.

“Are you the owner?” she asked in a harsh, crisp voice.

“Yeah,” he answered then leant on the bar, gesturing between Wick and Cass, “these two were just sat at the bar when Simon came in and punched Wick in the face for no reason,” he explained flatly, the man gesturing for his partner to take down his statement.

“So it was self defence?”

“Yeah,” Wick and Cass answered together.

“What about the rest?” he asked, glancing around the room.

“No clue, they just joined in,” Cass answered, shrugging, Syl nodding when the Montenegrin turned to him. The second soldier looked at the sceptically as he scanned the room, then noticing a man wearing a light grey suit. He cocked his jaw at the sight, seeming to think something over in his head before metaphorically tossing the idea aside, turning back to the trio.

“Well, the matter seems to have resolved itself. You can stay if you need any medical attention, but bar from that, your free to go - Just don’t cause any trouble,” he brusquely ordered, standing aside as his partner lowered her weapon, slinging it over her back.

The pair didn’t respond to him, walking past him to leave, until Wick turned back to look at Syl, “Thanks for the bandages Sylvester, keep yourself safe,” he called in a flat but sincere tone. They left before he could give a proper response, leaving the young man to smile lightly to himself before setting to tidying up while the two soldiers prepared to take the various brawlers to one of the first aid stations, laying them across the floor, making sure there was no broken glass or the like.

Wick and Cass strolled down the street, evening slowly creeping upon them. “One of those grey suited merc’s was there,” Cass suddenly ejaculated as they were walking, keeping her voice low as they rounded a narrow corner, a few dozen people lingering if the finally dulled heat though relief was absent from their faces.

“Yeah,” Wick bluntly agreed, neither stopping as they walked. “The soldiers seemed to notice him, but didn’t say anything. Considering what we know about CLR… They are likely given a free pass as much as that goes, but I can’t be sure about much else,” Wick muttered.

“Do you think they’re in their pocket?” Cass asked nonchalantly, glancing over her shoulder.

“Nah, they’d have just taken us at the gate if they were working with them, save the disruption of a barfight,” Wick answered, feeling rain tap his shoulder as he walked, the dark sky being slowly broken by heavy rain that soon flooded the senses. There was a split between those who dove away from the rain under whatever shelter availed them, or those who danced or languished in the black curtain of rain-expressions of rare joy or passable content occupying their faces.

“Where to go then?” Cass asked, rain water rapping itself on her scales and gliding down, further soaking the collar of her shirt. Wick didn’t answer, mulling something over in his head as they stood under a slight overhang that shielded their backs and not much else. After a moment he leaned forward and set off, Cass regarding him curiously for a moment while she picked at her teeth, still missing a fang after the last fight. She watched him walk then grinned to herself and followed him.

“Where are we going?” she asked in a calm, but anticipating voice.

“Somewhere were we probably shouldn’t go,” Wick answered in a tired but almost pleasant tone.

“My favourite,” Cass grinned back, leaning forward as she smiled evilly to herself, Wick sighing in amusement, a smile momentarily occupying his face. They walked, shadowed by the rain, to the westernmost edge of the city. They saw fewer soldier patrolling through the rain, though they now saw what seemed more like policemen, hired from the refugees and wearing rain poncho’s over their uniforms, done in a similar blue to the soldiers, though wearing kepi style hats with neck flaps rather than helmets. They walked around with dreary but purposeful faces, ardent in their job, as it was likely all they had left.

Eventually, they reached the edge of the sprawling settlement. There were few shacks around, a few still half built on fresh foundations, but it was mostly bare, new yet already worn, dirty and damaged. Hung of the edge of the street, surrounded by chain-link fencing, was a UN building comprising of a small service building adjoined to a mooring for a trio of river patrol boats and what seemed to be a single amphibious infantry-fighting-vehicle. The building itself was only just larger than a shipping container, small glass windows placed evenly along the long face that butted onto the street, the entrance door at the far end, closest to the terminal of the streets’ path. It was painted a deep blue, made of rough plastic that caught scum on its lower skirting, the galvanised steel frame of it poking through at the joints. The fencing sat on the street, blocking off access to the open space near to the building, or the stairs leading down to the moorings, the fence shieling the sides for a short distance until they stopped, part way into the water.

Wick glanced around the site, staying away from the windows, walking near to the corner of the fence, standing on the edge of the pathway before stepping off the side, falling down until he grabbed the edge with his hand. Cass silently leered over the edge with a look of wild amusement on her face before she hopped down to join him. They both shimmied along, clambering across the chain-link fence until they came to its end, just parallel with the start of the decking that made up the slap-dash docks. Wick jumped across the empty bay that sat between the fence and a gangway, the floating path, bobbing with the landing, miraculously silent on the still water. He stepped forward down the gangway, crouched low as he walked past the riverboat next to him, all steel with a gun turret in the bow, two at the rear port and starboard sides, shielded with steel plates and a central cabin, semi-embedded in the hull, not poking out much higher than the crest of the bow.

There were two windows at the rear of the building, now looming silently over them, the dim light of an adjacent room glowing through the thin glass of the leftmost window, near a rear door that lead onto a narrow staircase. The stair ended on a thin cantilever platform that came off from the square concrete stilts that the higher foundation stood on. The pair crept up the stair, light-footed, low, as they came to the door. Wick turned let Cass go forward to begin picking the lock, turning to keep watch around them, making sure the guard didn’t move, the dull buzz of a radio audible through the thin walls.

The tumblers of the lock snapped softly behind him as Cass finished, softly opening the door before going inside with Wick. It was a large room, taking up two thirds of the building, three of the four walls occupied with desks and large filing cabinets along with corkboards covered with broadcast channels, maps, logistics and inventory reports and marker scrawled insults and orders. The final wall, to the right of them as they entered, was split between two doors, one allowing dim orange-yellow light bleed into the large room, half-heartedly illuminating a fraction of the space. There was some stirring from the lit room when they entered, Wick and Cass pulling back from the door slightly as they waited through the sound, but nothing came of it and the door remained shut. As they silently re-entered Cass whispered to Wick.

“Are we taking one of the river boats then?” a slightly giddy tone in her hushed voice as she crept toward on of the walls, seeing a small red cabinet with a Plexi-glass face filled with what it declared were ‘Spare’ keys.

“No,” Wick answered as began to go through one of the desks on the opposite side of the room, knowing a somewhat disappointed look crossed Cass’s face as he said it. “It would draw too much attention, they’d likely send a hunting party after us. Plus, considering that we are the only new people in a while, they’ll suspect it was us and impound my ship… I’d rather not have to deal with that,” Wick explained.

“Fair enough,” Cass sighed as looked away from the keys, “but what are we actually here for then?”

“Maps. We want to find wherever that CLR ship took off from out there, so it’s a good idea to get a map,” Wick answered rifling through draws as loose penicils, staples and miscellaneous files rattled about inside at the movement.

“That’ll help us get around, but how will it help us find the thing, the co-ordinates weren’t exactly pin point,” she finished with a slight hint of regret.

“Simple,” Wick answered, pulling out a few files and maps from a filing cabinet and inspecting them as Cass found a large one showing various Un sites and patrol routes, “we look for where they stay away,” he finished, laying out the maps on a wide desk as the thin end of the room.

The one he had got out was a semi-topographical map, showing the main waterways of the region and their depths along with the varied clusters of solid ground, jungles and others. It was expansive, correlated with Cass’s patrol map it showed a large amount of where UN troops would travel, along with far of sites and outposts. The pair searched over the maps, pulling out a few more as they inspected them, laying them over-top the others until Cass spotted what looked like a blank space for UN inspection. It was deep in the thick, tangled knots of the jungle, miles away from any navigable river, rather oddly considering the previous trends of the water-flow around it, almost as if they were deliberately filled in. It was in a wide area set in the damp crest of a mountain massif a few dozen miles away from it.

“That’s got to be it,” Cass asserted, pressing her claw into the map, the linnened-paper creasing from the pressure. Wick inspected the point silently, not making any motion of agreement before turning her.

“Look for the close maps of this region again, along with local ground patrols, don’t want to get caught out there,” he stated flatly, wordlessly agreeing with Cass’s bet, to the woman’s pride. She set to grab the maps, grabbing a UN map-bag as she did to hold them in.

“You sure we should take these? You were worried about getting caught,” she asked, more for conversation than worry.

“They won’t miss a few maps,” he replied dismissively handing her a few maps as well as a bottle of orange soft drink he had found in a small mini-fridge. They heard a stir from the guard room behind them and snapped around to look before ducking out of the building, creeping low against the right side of the building’s rear as they heard the soldier fling open the door to the main room. He tromped through, smacking the light switch as he walked, Cass and Wick now at the side wall of the building. Wick hopped up and grabbed the side of the building, pulling himself up onto the roof before helping Cass as they then jumped off the roof silently onto the pavement of the main street while the guard called out for what likely were some of his comrades who he suspected had raided the place.  

They strode out of view of the building, back down the near empty street, Cass twisting open the bottle in her hands while Wick left his until they found covered alley to duck into. “That was fun,” Cass remarked between drafts of her drink. Wick didn’t respond, simply cocking his head to the side as he drank down half of the bottle in his hand.

“If we leave from the northmost end of this place,” he began, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his pistol, pressing a magazine of .32 ACP into it, “we’ll be able to get onto the jungle without needing a boat, we can just wade through the shallows that the promontory is built on,” he finished, racking the odd slide of the Dreyse before putting his arm ahead of her, his pistol clutched in his hand and firing twice at a large creature, illuminated in two vicious snapshots of muzzle flash, the two bullets felling the bloated, water-rat like creature which slumped dead with a quiet, burbling wheeze.     

“Sound good?” Wick asked, not quite fazed by the action.

“…Yeah,” Cass replied, taking a moment to be surprised before it soon lost her attention. Wick unloaded his pistol, making sure to clear the chamber and replace the bullet back into its magazine while Cass glanced back at the unsettling creature. “What even is this?” she asked, nudging its body with the toe of her boot, the wet otter like fur a dull red-brown in colour, akin to the lower roots of an aquatic tree.

“No clue, must be a native predator,” Wick supposed, finishing off the rest of the orange drink as he did.

“Why a predator?” Cass asked, though not disagreeing.

“Who would let themselves be prey with teeth like that?” Wick commented bluntly, referring to the set of eight knife-needle canines decorated the creatures mouth, dirty from algae and rotting flesh.

They set off for the northern extremity of the settlement, the trip requiring another hour and a half through the now night-time camp, the pair weaving through narrow streets rarely lit by irregular and feeble lights as people roamed about in the back night, braving the raining pitch as the sound of hard rain against wood, concrete and the water below drowned out all axillary noise. The northern side soon became sparse like the western, but to a smaller scale, the semi-solid ground being far more built up even at the edge, a number of UN soldiers lingering at watch-points accompanied by pairs of police officers, watching over the semi-emaciated faces of the camp’s residents. The pair continued, aware of the slowly drifting searchlights that whirred overhead, watching the jungle’s edge, gliding menacingly like a white spectre over the opaque waters. The pair lingered by a corner of a wooden shack near the sudden terminal of the wooden promenade, keeping their faces hidden, pretending to be hiding from the burgeoning monsoon as a pair of waterlogged policemen patrolled the street, one walking with a noticeable limp as a wet leg brace glistened from the rain on his left.

When they were out of sight, and the searchlight now moving slowly away from their intended path, the pair moved. The hopped down from the raised street down onto the swamp-land below, their boots sinking into the soft peat below, muddy water pooling around the foot prints. They advanced forward, crouched low while they hurried forward, lukewarm rain falling in a heavy curtain over everything in sight, slowly swelling the waters that surrounded the settlement. The ground shifted under each fleet-footed step the pair made, the facsimile of solid ground made by the layers of twisted plant growth and enraptured soil soft below them. They half-way the swamp-land fell away into shallow water, about knee height, swelled by the rain and moving far apace of its usual. They waded through the water, already soaked through by the rain, keeping low against its surface. There was a path to the shallows, marked on either side by the suddenly calmed waters were it was clear the shelf of soil that the pair walked on suddenly fell away. As they traced the path, now far slower than before to not risk stepping off the path into deeper water or the path collapsing without warning.

But, as they continued, crouched low in the river while they held their pistol high above them, the searchlight suddenly swung round. The pair saw it race towards them, the white-hot eye flashing over the uneven surface of the water and broken jungle’s edge as it came close to them. Cass dropped low, dragging Wick down into the water with her until it covered everything below the nape’s of their necks, Cass gripping her pistol between her teeth while Wick held his just above the water, his face stiff and inexpressive.

The searchlight ran closer and closer, the heavy thrush of the rain and wind almost twisting into the sound of the dead sphere of light as it came for them, drowning out their own noise as the river rushed around the near-submerged heads of the pirate and the free-booter. Then, it swung left, rushing instead to the jungle’s edge followed swiftly by a small patrol boat that had crept unseen behind the light, stopping with it.

Slowly sound returned to accompany the wind and rain rather than the soulless predator of the searchlight as Cass began to hear her own heartbeat. She let out a low breath, glancing to Wick beside her, seeing him inspecting the illuminated scene before signalling for Cass to follow him forward. They stayed low in the water, the disturbed, black-green tumult thrashing against them, threatening hoarsely to drag them under as the pair felt the riverbed underfoot shift with the currents. Eventually they made it to the other side, both glancing over the illuminated jungle someway away from them, lit up a sickly white glow as if the foliage itself was bleached a pale yellow of death. They sped forward into the woodland, not wanting to be out in the open while UN troops were lingering so close by.

They marched through the night as the monsoon thrashed overhead, dashing through the thick canopy overhead and flooding the already water-logged ground of the swamp. When it pressed past midnight the pair stopped, feeling they were far enough away from the troops of the camp, and decided to wait until morning to continue through the thick jungle a task hard enough even without the thick, drowned darkness of night. They clamoured up into a pair of trees that resembled mangroves with their thick meshed roots that stood like stilts over the marshy ground below, halfway on land and shallow water. Cass simply laid down on the branch and fell asleep, leaving Wick to take the first watch, sat in a high branch looming over the ground below like a colossal owl.

The rain and wind ended with daylight, the sun suddenly looming large over the wide space and turning the chill morning air humid, the jungle seeming to come alive with alien yet familiar sounds as fauna hiding from the storm re-emerged out int daylight. Yet, at the same time, there seemed to far, far too little sound for such a habitat. Cass stared out at the space curiously as Wick got up behind her, both having slept in their soaked clothes, the now damp fabric having creased horribly as they dried on them.

“Not dead yet then?” Wick asked flatly, stretching his arms as he asked, looking to Cass with his usual toothy-expression.

“No not yet.” Cass hopped down after she responded, Wick doing the same. As the sunlight began to illuminate the jungle through the thick leafy canopy overhead they were able to take better stock of their surroundings. The ground was thick with water-foliage, from small lily-like plants to winding weeds and algae like growths in addition to great, broad-leafed bushes. They thrived in the low soft ground that frequently dipped down into small slow-moving creeks and pools that connected into wide swamps. High trees pulled up from the drowned plant floor, the ones closer to the water were more like the one the pair slept in, wrapped in smooth black-brown bark. Yet, despite the thriving jungle, it seemed bare, lifeless almost.

This did not do anything to make the pair less wary.

“Check the map,” Wick ordered, taking out his pistol to check it was still functioning as he glanced around for any watching predators. Cass pulled out the maps, along with a compass she had snatched up as well, wary that the magnetic field could be unusual.

“We left the settlement from this side here,” she stated, tapping the map with a claw as Wick looked over her shoulder at the map, “we ran roughly in this direction, but I don’t know how much distance we realistically covered so we are around this area,” she finished gesturing to a wide area of deep green forest that covered the map. She looked at it with a silent frown, Wick looking at it with seeming disinterest as his eyes scanned the creased linen sheet.

“There’s a river to the west, we can follow it northwards and work our way from there,” he suddenly announced, referring to a wide river that ran as a long, wide scar through the terrain, marked as a patrol route, a few sites labelled as UN facilities on the far bank of the river.

“Keep low in the treeline?” Cass asked, an exited smile flashing on her face like she was a child playing a game of tag.

“Yep, I don’t know how frequent the patrols are likely to be, but it’s the best bet of finding our way… At least compared to stumbling around this place until something decides to have us for lunch,” Wick replied, a sardonic tone crackling in his voice as he stretched his arms, flexing his fingers before checking his watch for the time.

They set off, not lingering in the same place for too long. They had to wade a long way through the soft ground, made of silt-heavy soil and dead plant matter, the ground revealing the small alien insects that thrives in the nutrients rich ground, the only animals that showed themselves. It was hot and humid, even before the sun reached its despotic throne of midday, the pair making sure to ration their water as the marched. After about an hour they came to the river, staying a good way into the thick tree cover that crept right up to the waters edge, knotted vines as thick as a man’s wrist tangled round the circuit like roots of the trees. A few irregular shapes lounged in the water, swimming down its course or hiding in glittering masses of reeds, their thin eyes or silent snouts poking above the water. Neither felt inclined to investigate further, particularly due to the rotten, septic corpse that bobbed in one of the small eddies that formed at the broken edge of the river bank. It was an ugly, unnatural creature, with the gangrene and rot hard to distinguish from genuine flesh. It was covered in ratty black fur, half fallen away or eaten by rot or the insects that swarmed the carrion wreck, and featured a hideous long face edified with sharp razor blade like teeth, long and thin laying horizontally in the jaw.

The pair stuck within the brush, set on a small ridge set back from the river’s edge, likely the end off its floodplain the river still swelled up to it from last night’s storm, drifting slowly past its edge, stained green-brown chocked with foliage and broken limbs of trees. After about an hour they heard the sound of breaking water and ducked further into the brush, silently watching the river as the sound approached. After a slow, sweltering moment a pair of river boats, part of the UN’s brown-water navy ran down the river, kicking up great cascades of water as their bows lifted out of the water from water-jet engines. Cass and Wick glanced to each other before both pulled back from the rivers edge, though still close enough that it was still visible, then continued walking. When they reached the turn in the river that marked where they would change course, they noticed a patrol boat moored up by the shallow river line.

Cass shifted forward to look at it, leaving Wick behind before he could tell her to wait. Luckily the boat was empty, not a single soldier left in it, though not looking abandoned. It seemed almost in situ, a game of cards left in play in the centre of the deck on an upturned crate of ammunition next to a crate of drinks. As Wick approached, keeping his pistol in his grip as he came over, carefully scanning the tree-line staring out into the opening in the thick woods that the craft’s bow seemed to point into.

“Anything useful?” He called to her, looking down at the ground.

“Not really, they took all the rifles, so the spare ammunition doesn’t have much use,” she answered, walking over to the sunken cabin to see a gaping hole where something had been yanked from the floor, “and it looks like they’ve taken something to disable the boat.”

“They’ve gone to patrol the jungle,” Wick stated flatly Cass coming out to see him crouched close to the ground, gesturing to it with the barrel of his pistol, “they’ve left tracks in the mud going in, so we’ve got to be wary as we goo further in. Its unlikely that they’ll be going the same way, but its better to be on guard,” Wick stated, watching the tree-line fruitlessly then putting out a hand as Cass grabbed a drink from the crate in the boat. The fruity drink threaded the line between medicine and a soft drink, Wick turning it over and seeing it had rehydration agents in it. He downed the rest quickly before chucking the can into the boat, Cass doing the same, though a grim look on her face from the taste.

It took another day of travel until they began to get close. As they came closer they noticed how some of the larger rivers that came close suddenly, unnaturally ended, the river-beds further on filled-in leaving unnatural lanes of young foliage and dying trees, isolated from much needed water. It was an unnerving dichotomy that began to overtake the area as they made their way slowly closer. New, strange plants began to appear more and more as they approached closer, displacing old and dying natives plant. They were unnatural, being of great proportions or nature, almost impossibly for their own structure as the sound of insects finally began to appear in the air.

The pair soon found that this was in no way a comfort.

Overhead buzzed an oversized, menacing creature resembling some nightmarish wasp, yet the size of a eagle, its carapace a deep black muddled with green, resembling the underside of the tree canopy. The pair shifted away from the thicker brush after that, seeing a few smaller animals as they continued, mostly insectoid. But, even here the space seemed depopulated.

Finally, the pair stumbled into a thin break in the tangled growth of the forest, the light overhead illuminating a waterlogged square of grass, no more suspicious from any angle except when stood within it. The ground was lumpy, but not in a natural way. It suddenly popped up a few inches from the forest floor… like something had been left under the blanket of waterlogged flora. Cass walked up to it first, feeling the shift in height as she stepped onto the firmer section, kicking her heel into the soil to feel for anything underneath, already looking like much of the original growth had died or washed away. As Wick kept watch, she suddenly felt as her foot hit something hard, giving the sensation of cold, wet metal.

“I think I found it!” Cass shouted, kneeling down and tugging at the sodden ground, the root-ridden soil coming up in great clumps, the eight-inch-deep soil soon baring forth black-grey steel resembling a bunker door as Wick came over to help. After about ten minutes, the whole of the door was exposed, revealing an eight-by-four-foot bulkhead door, raised slightly from a concrete plane set deeper into the soil. “Hah, this looks interesting, now we just need to find a way to get into it!” Cass declared with an excited relish.

Wick himself leaned close to the door, inspecting the edge of the door as he kneeled over it, then reaching over it to the raised lip of the door’s face and pulling out a lever set against the lip far from him, then doing the same for its twin close to him. With a clunk and a hiss, the door suddenly shifted, hinging up at its narrow edge like a flip phone as hydraulics pushed it up along a new but tarnished rail.

Cass looked at Wick surprised - her mouth hung slightly agape. “It was a standard type of lock used in some of the older nuclear-shelters – thought I should try it at least,” Wick explained flippantly, his voice revealing some of his own surprise that it worked. It seemed a bit lax in terms of security for how hard they had tried to hide the site so far…

“I have a bad feeling about this…” Wick murmured, looking down into the dank stair well that was slowly being illuminated as the door open wider and light dribbled into the mildew-stained space.

“Has there been anything to feel good about?” Cass quipped light-heartedly, the thin-ice of confidence willingly showing she shared his uncertainty. Wick grimaced, his lips twisting over his bared teeth before he stepped over the lip of the door, his boot landing on one of the concrete steps and beginning his descent, Cass following after him. They descended the stairwell into darkness, the alien sunlight soon floundering in the depths or the tunnel as the pair pulled out torches. The tunnel went down deep, stale air sitting low in the off-white concrete chamber, then coming to a small room, dirty with litter, discarded papers and speckled dried blood that glistened like cheap rubies under the torchlight.

At the end of the room facing the stairs, there was a steel door, a complicated electric combination lock on its face, just above an industrial lock… rendered useless as the door stood slightly ajar, a thin sliver of pale blue light falling through the gap when the two pointed their torches away. Wick crept towards the door, holding his torch above his head with his left hand while he readjusted his grip on his pistol, hung loosely in his right arm. He checked to make sure Cass was ready, the Neidr in question aiming her pistol determinedly at the door, before quickly but quietly pushing the door open. Wick kept behind the door frame as he waited for any noise or sign that anyone was waiting, or had heard them – but he was met with silence.

Wick looked through past the doorframe, seeing a wide corridor with white linoleum floors, an empty checkpoint booth set into the wall to the left, laid in darkness only mitigated by a clinical, almost nuclear blue emergency lighting that filled the whole space. The plexi-glass front of the checkpoint had a number of holes shot into it… Wick stepped into the hall, switching off his torch and putting it away, looking further around the hall, tapping his trigger finger on the side of his pistol as he crept forward. Cass entered after, in a similar stance as she went to the wall by the checkpoint, examining it in the weak light. As Wick came closer to the end of the hall, and the T-junction it split into, looking down one end and seeing an empty hallway, Cass called back to him, “Hey, I think I found a floor-map!” she called, trying to be quiet as she spoke. Wick turned back, quickly making sure the hall was clear before coming back to Cass, the woman in question inspecting an A3 size floor plan of the site, the outline done in black on the white poster, with a small dot to show where the pair were stood. The site seemed much larger than the two had expected, a great mess of right-angle tunnels that went off in an elaborate interweaving pattern, with a few extreme promontories that formed isolated complexes, many sections done in different colours with small labels placed next to rooms or entire sub-complexes, the largest being in green, the other two being far smaller by comparison.

But… there was no legend on the map – not one of these guiding features was explained. Either the map had been defaced, or a separate document was needed. “At least we know how big this place is, at least…” Wick mumbled concernedly. The pair moved on from the map, returning to the junction Wick had looked down. They turned down the left corridor, remembering how the map showed a collection of rooms further down the corridor, down a right turn. The space was wholly illuminated solely by the sickly nuclear blue emergency lights, many having failed as rainwater dribbled down the concrete walls, covered in rashes of hair-line cracks where the weight of the world above was crushing the secret space. As if stamping on a discarded cigarette. Their foot-falls continued, splashing in puddles of stagnant water as they turned the corner. As they walked down the hall to the rooms they had seen, they saw, though hard to make out in the blue light, a light blue stripe suddenly appeared on the concrete walls which continued on as they went further into the subdivision of the complex. Another map could be seen just at the corner of the corridor where the blue stripe had begun, Wick turning on his torch to inspect it. It showed a similar map of the complex as the first, though this time shrunk down in the corner of the poster, the main focus being a blown-up diagram of the subdivision of the complex the pair had come to. It showed what looked like at least twenty offices organized around a space, almost like the cloister of a church – the role of the centre being still unclear, along with the whole area as the map lacked a legend, the same as the map at the entrance.

Wick grimaced at the map as Cass peered around the corner, looking left to see the unassuming steel-faced doors that lined the corridor. She kept her pistol drawn as she approached them, pressing them open with her free hand as she pointed her pistol into the room, feeling the stagnant air lurch from the abandoned room into her face. She stepped into the room confidently, but light-footed, raising the muzzle of her pistol up, pointing it to the roof as she advanced. The room was cold, sat in the dark, the emergency lighting failing to reach into the windowless room, though the dull hum of an air-vent overhead sang in a low baritone through the room. The room was occupied by a few pieces of furniture, namely a desk covered by rotting and stained paper and a cannibalised computer – the screen’s top corner shattered and the rear panel pulled away to show a ravaged array of internals, snapped where something had been pried out. Along with that, a drawing table, covered with the torn corners of what looked like blueprints forming an abandoned collage on its surface and a few other small office effects, and small bed cot set against the wall perpendicular to the door.

The place had a general air that whoever had worked here had been bundled out in a hurry, taking only the essential.

Cass shoved her pistol into her holster and crouched down to inspect one of the documents scattered on the floor, shining her torch onto the off-white paper, attempting to make sense of the text. They were unimportant documents, discarded on the ground, covered with complex equations, electronic diagrams – the latter being much more Cass’s field, up to a point – order requests and general communiques. All that could be gleaned from it was that at least some involvement with something electronic, and that there was a central computer for the site, one that had a flaw that the absentee occupant of the office routinely complained about.

She collected a few of the circuit diagrams, and the note about the computer server, and then stood up, seeing Wick lingering near the doorway, keeping vigil in the hall then shifting as Cass came out and leading her into the next room that he wanted to check. He led Cass down the hallway, to a door that faced down the right turn of the circuit of corridor that surrounded the central room. As Wick tried the door it simply rattled in the frame, knocking against the lock. As Cass moved to pick the lock Wick bashed his shoulder into the door, causing it to fall from the frame, its hinges dragging down two blocks of rotten concrete with them.

Wick stared forward into the space nonchalantly, switching on his torch as he strode in, stepping on the door laid in a shallow puddle of water, trickling in from the roof down a stained pillar thick with algae and pond scum. The office was far worse than the one Cass had inspected, herself stepping into the room after Wick, half of the floor flooded with stagnant water as the roof seemed to collapse at one end, above the bed.

“See if you can find anything useful,” Wick stated as he stepped off the door and walked to the desk near the centre, half sunk in water, algae growing up its legs.

“Right,” Cass stated, looking for any similar papers to the ones she had found in the first office. She spotted a notebook in a low shelf, the bottom of its cover sat just under the water-line, and picked it up, shaking it slightly as water dribbled from its bottom edge. As she peeled apart the pages, staring hard at the bleeding-black letters that seemed to amount to a cross between a ship’s-log and the diary of a teenage girl, Wick called her over. As Cass came over, she saw Wick shining his torch onto a small ID card, the type attached to a lanyard, showing a bust-height photo of an ebony skinned man in a lab coat, next to a set of coloured lines – blue, green, and red - labelled ‘Robotics’, ‘Biotics’ and ‘Medical’ respectively. Cass reached for the card and inspected it closer when Wick handed it to her.

“I think we found the other half of our map,” he remarked sardonically as he stood back up, a smile flashing half-heartedly on his face. “From this, it looks like we are in robotics…” Wick mused, stepping over to the door and peering back out into the hallway, his eyes lingering on a door into the pseudo cloister of the sub-complex. “Why don’t we see if we can find anything about your Lauxes then Cass?” he asked with a slight relish in his voice as he strode over to an entrance of the centre room. He pressed open the door with his right forearm, still gripping his pistol, as he shined a torch into the space.

The centre room was an open space, though not too much larger than the offices themselves, with the appearance of a workshop under the blue emergency lighting. It was filled with workbenches covered with loose tools - calculators, measuring instruments, blow torches etc. – loose notes strewn about them, or stuck onto conspicuously empty whiteboards nearby half-rubbed out notes and diagrams.

What caught the pair’s eyes, however, was a half-assembled robotic creature, discarded on one of the workbenches, half of its scorched panelling pulled away to show a complex set of servos and hydraulics muffling a minute assortment of dead electronics. It resembled a Laux heavily, their eyes – if you could call them that – were of a similar shape and colour, though the face of this one was far more pointed, much more akin to a something like a Doberman than the Lauxes flat faces, an assessment reinforced by the jagged lower jaw the creature was fitted with.

“What even is this?” Cass asked, moving to inspect it, shining her torch onto the exposed internals of the wreck, half of its side blasted off with the frayed edges stained black by soot. Both she and Wick investigated it, looking at the metallic skin – notably made of thin, hollow rectangular tubes that seemed stained with some long-removed content, and also highly malleable, bending hard under a soft press from Cass. Whatever the power source was, and how the lasers in the eyes worked was not clear.

“I suppose this is some relative of the lauxes… though I much prefer them to something like this,” Wick commented as he lifted the head of the failed robot, pressing a finger close onto the blade-like teeth sporting the monster’s mouth. “But why this is a secret that they would be willing to kill over is still a bit beyond me…” he grumbled, a bored expression coming with his exasperated tone.

“Maybe it’s not just because of the Lauxes… maybe it’s because they came from this place?” Cass posited, turning to wick as she leaned over the creature, looking over a few scattered documents, including one talking about lead-bismuth coolant for a fusion reactor. Wick didn’t respond as he scanned the room with his flashlight, cocking his frown on his face as he mulled it over.  

“Its as good an idea as any…” he mused back, then glancing at the lanyard for a moment. “… let’s have a look at Bio then. If anything, it looks like robotics was an afterthought compared to how much bigger the other one is,” Wick declared, tucking the lanyard into his trouser pocket, Cass noticing the CLR logo on its back as he did. “You find anything useful in the offices btw?” Wick asked over his shoulder with a tired expression, his face sanguine in the sickly blue light.

“Not really, a journal and a few scrap forms and things. Nothing clear-cut,” Cass answered in a nonchalant tone, folding her arms behind her hooded head. Wick nodded back as the pair left the room, heading to the corridor they had entered the sub-complex from. They felt uneasy in the claustrophobic space, smelling of mildew and rot. The path to bio, which the checked as they passed the map, continued down the first corridor they had begun down.

As they approached that side of the complex, another smell began to overtake that of damp and abandonment. The scent of blood, of animals and raw or rotting meat. A map sat on the wall just before the walls sprouted a deep green paint, like moss on a dying tree. Or gangrene on an open wound. The map was similar to the one from robotics, though this time focusing on the Biotics complex. It showed a winding complex of corridors, far more disorganized than the robotics department, looking like a tangled blackberry bush, rooms attached like fruit to the winding brambled of hallways. Wick looked at Cass with a blank expression, seeming to scan the neidr for a moment as the woman’s face, checking to see if she noticed the change in smell, which, of course, she had.

Wick lurched forward and used the momentum in his first step into the biotics complex, Cass following after, having to walk slightly fast due to her shorter strides, keeping her tail off the floor. As they crept further into biotics, they soon saw a number of large, raking-tears in the concrete, like those of a wild animal.

The pair re-adjusted their grips on their weapons.

As they rounded a corner, the stench of death hit them full in the face. One side of the corridor was lined by what looked like animal cages, with thick plexi-glass fronts, perforated by air holes at shin height. Four fifths of the cages were broken open, the five-inch plexi-glass laying in thick shards across the ground, spattered with dried blood, gnarled and scratched deeply. In those that were still sealed - and really that amounted to just one to the pair’s right - the rotting forms of monsters lay abandoned in death, only just illuminated as they hid in the corner of their cells in resignation, or had their bleeding and broken forms illuminated, displaying their last futile attempts at escape.

On the opposite side of the hallway was a small steel-faced door stood next to a wide shock-proof window. The door had buckled in the frame, becoming sealed in the process, while the window showed massive cracks from where some massive force had tried, yet only just failed to break the three-inch thick plexi-glass. The pair moved to the door, Cass standing by it with her pistol raised as Wick inspected the door. When they were sure it would not budge, they continued down the hallway, to the next office. This one was open, but contained very little of use, documents being torn up and torn into by some wild creature that had then burrowed out of the space through the concrete wall, water and soil still slipping into the room as the concrete seemed to crumble as the pair leered at it.

“I think we should spend as little time here as possible,” Wick stated, not really leaving the decision up for discussion. Not that Cass disagreed.

“On the map there was a larger room further in to this side, that might be the best place to check. It might be something like a main office or server-room,” Cass suggested, knocking aside a chunk of plexi-glass with her foot as she stepped forward.

“Then let’s go there then, you’ve got the route in mind I assume?” Wick agreed, gesturing for Cass to lead on.

“Of course!” she asserted proudly, striding forward as she kept her pistol, vigilant even as she seemed to be acting negligent. It took about twenty minutes to reach the large office. Between where they had entered and it, the complex showed signs of decay and disrepair and more tellingly defacement. Things torn from the walls, unintelligible bar from the empty space they left behind which told of their now lost presence. The empty cages were everywhere, with discarded equipment the only possible hint to the nature of whatever kind of creature had escaped them.

The room itself opposite a blank wall, no cages being located around it, the most notable feature being a small plaque nearly pulled from the wall which read ‘Division head’. The second most interesting being a set of three empty shells casings left on the floor near old splattered blood, an unnatural orange in colour, like an insect. Wick checked Cass’s expression as he approached the door, making sure she was ready, the woman nodding back, checking either end of the hallway as Wick pushed open the door.

The inside was at least twice the size of the other offices, and nearly spotless. The wall opposite wall of the window – covered by a thick black-out curtain – was occupied by a small shelf stuffed with books, flanked by stripped filing cabinets. Not a single personal affect tainted the room, but, unlike the other offices it seemed like none ever had. The room had been scavenged for files far more than the other offices, this space picked clean bar from a small notepad tattooed with hurried diagrams that Wick leafed through. As Cass looked over the complicated books Wick moved over to the desk, about to search through it, though seeing the scavenged computer on his desk and absent drawer. But, his foot caught on something, and stopped himself from falling by slamming a hand against the back wall, glaring at what he now saw to be a thin-spider thread thin trip-wire.

Only now visible as it was contrasted against Wick’s leg. Wick’s eyes darted around for some IED or trap, but none was present. As Wick was looking for a trap, a voice recording suddenly broke the silence in the room, “Professor Francano Garcia Hernandez, Head of the Biotics division for the CLR led combined research project…” the voice intoned, Cass and Wick turning to look at each other in surprise, “Evolution doesn’t have a plan, It makes frequent and catastrophic mistakes,” the recording of Francano spat, his voice bitter, speaking from some deep seated hatred as a projector suddenly began to shine from the wall behind the desk, displaying its image on the wall opposite.

“The examples are numerous, from the arduous respiratory system of amphibians, to the natural flaws in homosapiens bi-pedal skeletal structure, to the point that existing and using the skeleton as it has evolved causes monumental damage to it,” the recording continued, as if delivering a presentation or lecture, while the slide-show on the opposite wall displayed film-grain photographs – seemingly self-taken – interspersed with animal diagrams followed along with the speech. “Evolution is not planned, it has no end solution. It is a rabid, genetic committee that throws out ersatz solutions to immediate problems without any thought into the genetic repercussions that these will cause in the long term… It should of course be said, that these solutions, if taken considering only their ability to solve a problem, are genius. Solutions that can only be solved by the sheer creativity and adaptability of animal and botanic genetics. But, genius without direction and control is useless. It leads to temporary success and long-term disaster. That, is where our role begins,” the voice declared in a self-assured tone, the slideshow snapping onto a new image.

The image that illuminated the opposite wall in a pinkish-grey was something unnatural. Something twisted. The mangled form of a creature that did not, should not exist, that seemed unbound from its own biology. Its throat had multiple teeth like a moray eel, a separated jaw like a snake, hair that seemed to tread the line between feather, fur and scale all at once, its figure of some unnatural quadruped.   

“We undertake evolution ourselves. We create the perfect creatures, both for our own ends, but also for the needs of nature and environment,” the voice continued, the slide switching to another creature, one that resembled the one Wick shot in the UN camp, though this time with it’s shape more defined, with half of it splayed open as it was dissected. “What greater goal could there be than to create these perfect organisms? To work the tools of biology and genetics like the great masters of Rome and Greece worked marble? To make perfect sculptures of nature like Bernini? That is the ultimate goal of my work here. And I have put it into practice along with my subordinates. Here in this garden of Eden I have created creatures of such perfection that not even God could create them!” the voice raved as horrible creature after creature flashed against the wall, of every shape and size and every horror that could accompany them.

“That is the purpose of this facility! That is the purpose of-” whatever the raving professor was going to say next is cut off by a thunderous shake and the final failure of the sickly blue light that had hung in the room. The entire complex seemed to shake as the pristine office was suddenly disturbed.

Even as the shaking was going on Wick turned his torch to the wall he had bumped, finding what seemed a secret compartment and popped it open, seeing a recording device and set of recordings on a few USB drives next to an audio system and what seemed like a port that led up to the projector. He grabbed them all and shut the compartment, turning to look at Cass who was creeping her head around the doorframe, checking up and down the now pitch-black labyrinth.

“What do you think that was?” Cass asked, taking a moment to check that a round was in the chamber of her pistol, her eyes spotting the faint glint of brass through the half-racked slide.

“Nothing good,” Wick replied tiredly, rubbing his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to linger around in this place for any more time. Let’s get out,” Wick stated in a monotone voice, glancing up and down the black corridor her stepped out the office, his footsteps silent.

“Oh, that’s not happening,” a voice declared coquettishly behind Wick’s head. Wick spun round, a wild grimace on his face as he saw a trio of people in black suits. He clutched his pistol as he squeezed the trigger to fire at the trio, only for his arm to be grabbed from behind and pulled down, pinned to his back before he could fire. His arm was pressed into his back, and with it his pistol, as the one who had grabbed him pulled back the opposite shoulder. Cass was similarly restrained, being held in an armlock by a thick-armed woman with short-cropped hair. “Well, aren’t you two some convenient nuisances?” the voice again spoke, coming from the central figure of the trio. The pair recognized the voice as the leader of the group that had attacked them on the CLR ship, the effeminate tone distinct in his voice. In addition, the pair noticed how the tone of his voice was also seen in his physiognomy, the man having a rather feminine appearance, with foppish blonde hair and freckles on one side of his face, but still one that could still identify as masculine.

The other two were still secluded in darkness and could not be made out.

“How likely is it that we can just leave here?” Wick asked in a disinterested tone, as if he was a mafioso talking to a cop. The leader’s face split into a manic smile in response, lurching forward toward the pair as he chuckled softly.

“Ah, while it’s true that we didn’t come here for you two loose-ends today, unfortunately, you both are personas non grata as far as our organization is concerned.” The smaller man smiled up at Wick, absent of a single lick of good feeling in his expression, his blue pin-prick eyes looking at the taller man with unrestrained dislike. “So, I would say you leaving is highly unlikely…” their smile faltered and fell from their face as they concluded their taunt, standing back up straight before turning to the two guards behind him. He seemed to about to issue some orders when a sound echoed down the hallway, making him pause, his mouth hanging open as he searched the darkness with his eyes, keeping still. “What was that?” he asked, looking at one of the guards who shrugged back in response, readjusting their grip on their rifle as they looked around, beginning to bring it up to their shoulder.

Before they could make any other reaction, a monster rounded the corner and slammed its mouth over the tensed form of one of the guards, leaving only the waist and legs as a half-hearted fountain of blood, staining its pillow-white jelly-like flesh its leach-like mouth filled with a seeming infinity of cookie-cutter fangs. As it’s shuddering roar echoed down the hall it was pre-empted by the roars of rifle-fire, .308 bullets splitting across the space to slam into and uselessly deflect off the creature’s flesh. As the guards were quickly distracted by the nightmare that had become disinterested in simply stalking them, Wick too his chance. He suddenly leaned forward, letting his legs buckle slightly as he pulled the stunned guard down with him. Them, Wick turned his hand away from his back, pistol still in hand, and pulled the trigger, the .32 calibre bullet boring through the bottom of his chin and out of the back of his head, Wick taking advantage of his new liberty to fire into the arm of the one holding Cass. The latter took advantage of the muscled man’s injury to elbow him in the stomach and throw him off herself before both Cass and Wick turned tail and ran away from the collection CLR’s monsters.  

“Don’t let them escape!” the leader ordered, pulling out a weapon that he levied at the monster, a few hidden guards joining him in fending off the monster. The pair sprinted away, running for all they were worth down the twisting passages of the complex, hearing the yells of the monster as well as the orders for them to stop coming from their pursuers, seemingly surrounding them second-by-second. They ran on further and further, just barely eluding the guards.

Then, they came to a collapsed T-junction, the cantilever path filled in with rubble like a blocked rabbit warren. The noises of the guards echoed down from both ends of the hallway as Wick and Cass pressed against each other’s back’s, cornered. Then, before they could be captured, someone swiftly covered their mouths and pulled them through a disguised door, having swung down from the ceiling.

Before either Cass or Wick could make a noise of surprise or questioning, the third figure shushed them with a hiss, Cass able to notice the familiar haircut of the woman. The trio stayed quiet as they stood up in the dark space, Wick levying his pistol at the door as they listed to the muffled sounds of footfalls and rattling equipment coming close to the door and lingering for a few slow minutes, that dragged on like congealed blood.

Then, the sound of retreating footsteps of around five people.

Shortly after that the third figure piped up, “they’re gone, we can relax for now,” she said, stepping away from the pair further into the back of the cramped space.

“Well that’s good, now, what the fuck are here Alice?!” Cass snapped, her voice shifting from a mirthful tone quite quickly as she looked at Alice. She was dress in the same type of suit she had been wearing on the spaceship, the black cloth matching her dark skin and deep red hair, an uninterested expression on her face.

“Helping you, isn’t that obvious?” Alice returned curtly, glancing to Cass over her shoulder.

“And why did you help us?” Cass cut back, looking at Alice with a deeply untrusting gaze.

“Right, yes,” she began, seemingly searching for words before she suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Cass with both shoulders, “I need you to get me the fuck away from these people!” she cried in a pleading voice, a frenzied look on her face, her shaking, crooked smile underneath sat twitching eyes.

Cass could only balk in surprise at the unexpected response, unable to say anything before Alice stormed into a panicked rant, “After we failed to capture you at the ship, they suddenly told I wasn’t allowed to leave, and that I apparently had a massive debt for the cost of the surgery that kept me alive – that wasn’t what I was told! The deal was that I just had to help them find you then I could go! These people are fucking crazy! They’ve killed so many people! I can’t do it anymore! If I don’t run for it now, I’ll end up as their slave forever!” Alice wailed, twisting and bending at odd angles as she ranted Cass flinching back as she saw her fair-weather friend thunder out her fears.

“Why should I help you?! You left me for dead and stole my ship!” Cass yelled back at her furiously.

“And you killed me! I think you got your revenge!” Alice snapped back, making Cass pause for a moment before she responded.

“To be precise Wick was the one who killed you, but I get your point,” Cass replied dismissively, Wick giving her an annoyed glance before he lost interest, keeping an eye on the door.

“Do not argue semantics with me Cass!” Alice snapped, her frantic smile twitching on her face as she glared at him.

“Fine, fine. So, what are you offering to us?” Cass asked, looking down her nose at the woman opposite her, deeply suspicious.

“I help you get out of this fucking nightmare hell-hole, you take me off this fucking planet,” Alice answered flatly.

“…That’s a good offer,” Cass muttered, putting a finger to her chin as she seemed to think for a moment, “Done! Lead the way!” Cass declared, a wide smile on her face as she grabbed and shook Alice’s hand. Wick looked at them from the corner of the room with an annoyed grimace, not bothering to bring up the obvious complaint of Cass inviting someone else onto His ship, taking a moment to check how many shots he had left in his magazine. Alice moved over towards the door, pressing the side of her head to the door, then correcting herself and pressing one of the feline ears newly on her head against it and listening to it. After a second, she pulled back slightly from the door as she lightly touched the handle of the door and twitched it open slipping through it. She held the door slightly ajar as she crouched in the hallway, checking either end, before she gestured for the pair to follow her out.

She led them forward, keeping to the shadows and back-paths of the complex as the shouts of the CLR troops echoed about as they continued their search. Wick eyed her as they walked, curious how she knew about these back-paths, and more so of where they led to, though his wariness was hidden from his face.

But eventually, the trio was led close to the entrance again, both Wick and Cass keeping a few steps behind. “Wait here, I’ll check for anyone then open the door,” she ordered, whispering to them before she crept over towards the entrance room. She glanced around the room, finding it empty, then began punching in a code to open the door.

“What are you doing over here brat?” a voice snapped behind her, making the woman flinch and spin around, hiding the code behind her back.

“Ah, uh, I was just getting something from the tra-” she began before the suited man levied a revolver at her head, silencing her.

“No, you were trying to take advantage of the confusion to try and run.” The man, a short-stocky figure with thinning blonde hair.

“No, no! I wasn’t I-” Alice insisted, her voice pleading as the man cocked the hammer of his revolver.

“Don’t bother. You’re never going to get away from us, not with how much you owe,” the man stated bitterly as he moved his off hand toward what seemed to be a miniature walkie-talkie pinned to his right breast.

Before he could speak into it however, a hand gripped his mouth shut as an arm slipped under his right armpit and forced him arm upwards as the arm slashed forward with a knife through the man’s throat, blood gushing from the severed artery, the man twitching before falling slack.

Alice looked up at Wick, the man wiping the blood off the blade of his knife – a Douk-Douk knife to be specific – before folding it up and tucking it back into his pocket as he turned to Alice. “Well? Open the door, we should get going,” he said unenthused, the pooling blood staining the sole of his shoe.

“… right, sure,” she said, blinking before she turned and finished inputting the code, the door pressing open once again. Wick strode forward out through the door without a word, Cass coming through the door to the entrance room after him and looking at Alice with a smile, grinning at her as she saw the dark-skinned woman look up at Wick stunned.

“He’s quite good, isn’t he?” she chuckled out with a coy smile before hopping up the stairs after him. Alice shook her head and climbed the stairs, not allowing herself to feel relieved just yet.

[astoldbyaja]

The Pink Blossom- Ch.17

Later on, that day, I walked through the fields. It felt different this time, walking in the fields. I would never see such beautiful land again after tomorrow. Nathan was talking with Katsumoto, and I knew it was about our journey. I decided to just take in this beautiful place I once feared for the last time.

The people and everyone in it have grown accustomed to me as I them. They were my neighbors who were not afraid to share their life experiences with me.

As I was walking, I noticed more men training in the fields. I attempted to walk past in silence, but they all saw me and suddenly straightened up and bowed at me. I was stunned at their actions but respectfully I bowed my head, and we all went about our day.

When I returned to Ujio’s lodge, I saw Taka leaving and we both paused at seeing each other.

“Taka?” I asked, and she bowed her head at me.

“Grasuh. I was just returning your dress. I know the last time you saw it, it was stained with blood, and I didn’t know if anyone washed it, so I had it cleaned, but I was sure you would want to wear it when you return.” she responded. “The shoes you wore are clean as well.”

So my old identity was coming back to me, the identity of a colored woman, a slave. I nodded and smiled.

“Thank you so much for your kindness.” I replied, and she gave her usual shy smile before walking past me. I was not sure where she placed my dress until I found it in Ujio’s room.

I decided to put it back on. It had been so long since I actually wore it. I slid off my kimono and took my time putting the dress back on. It felt different wearing it now. In my kimono I felt freer then in this dress, a dress most colored folk wore because we couldn’t really wear much else without challenging the social class of the whites. I even pulled my hair back and attempted to put it up in its tight bun. But I no longer had pins to hold it together.

The door suddenly slid back, and I gasped and looked, my hair falling over my shoulders as I looked and saw Ujio standing there staring with his usual rough stare.

My body loosened, from the tense stance it was in, and I gave a soft smile, but as he looked me over, I could see he looked discouraged. I guess seeing me in this dress just made things seem more realistic now, our separation realistic. But who would want to think of that now? I let my fingers gently slide across the buttons on my chest and slowly, I began to unbutton them. Ujio looked up at me now, his eyes a mixture of softness that transitioned into a deep stare. He slowly removed his topknot letting his hair flow down his back and he moved up to me. I held my hands out to him, and he just wrapped his arms around me kissing me deeply. I moaned out airily as his lips devoured mine, our arms pulling each other closer to one another.

His hands moved over my chest, and he quickly continued unbuttoning my dress. I let my hands work at his kimono and as our kiss deepened into want and lust, our hands worked faster to remove each other’s clothes.

As our clothes began to hurriedly slide down our bodies, our faces buried in each other’s shoulders and chest and neck kissing and biting at each other. We even held each other for a split second, our faces buried into each other’s skin to inhale our scent. We were just teasing each other, enjoying the feel of the other body against our flesh. Ujio guided our bodies down over his mat and he rolled us over, so he was on top of me. His face buried itself in the crook of my neck, and I felt him kissing and licking over my flesh causing me to inhale sharply. I feel his hand curl into my own and I just look over, giving his lips more access to my neck. I just watched his hand as it tightened into my own. Soft yellow flesh cascaded and dominated my warm black flesh, my flesh that was seen as inferior and easy to discard.

I watched his knuckles tighten every time my hand squeezed his. He was trying to hold on to me. I now looked at him and he met my eyes, his hair falling over my face some, and I shook my head softly.

“I’m not going anywhere right now.” I said gently, and his head tilted some as he closed his eyes and released a low sigh. I lifted my head some to now meet his lips. He returned the kiss slowly, and I felt his body start to push into mine, his legs moved between mine. I parted my legs so he could fit perfectly between them. I feel the head of his cock pressing into my warm entrance and Ujio groaned lowly and as he pushed in, we both let out soft moans.

He fit so perfectly inside me. My walls were ringing with pleasure, happy to have him back inside me. He began an even pace, staring deeply at me as he moved. I gasped and panted beneath him as he moved. His fists now planted into the ground on either side of my face, and I grip his forearm feeling as if I needed something to hold on to. Our eyes closed gently as the pleasure grew inside us. I could feel him pulsing inside me, and I let my head fall back and my chest arch some, so I could be closer to him. Already my hips were moving to meet his thrusts.

I feel his forehead suddenly on mine and my eyes flutter open just a bit so I could watch his face concentrate on his thrusts that began to increase in speed.

My soft whimpers and moans confirmed such bliss from his firmer thrusts. I now feel my nails rake down his back, and he growls lowly in reply. My body is on fire, and I whimper feeling as if the pleasure would never end. Everything feels like its popping inside me, my walls tightening and throbbing with each ragged thrust.

I could feel my sanity hitting the invisible ceiling in my head, I was growing closer and closer to my climax. I gripped Ujio’s muscular arms once more, my moaning growing louder and faster. Ujio speeds up his thrusts in order to make sure I get there, and he was definitely pushing me over the edge. I moaned out hard, my body tensing up some as I feel tremors of pleasure take over my body. Ujio continues his fast-thrusting pace before groaning hard and biting down on my shoulder. It didn’t break the skin, but I felt there would be a mild bruise. His shaft throbs more as he releases everything, he has inside me.

He looks down at me and we stare at each other intensely for a moment before he captures my lips hard and fast.

“No matter what happens, no matter where we are, whether we are in the same village or separated by land and country, you will always have my heart.” he pledged against my lips and at that moment, I knew he was saying his goodbyes to me. I felt my eyes water some at his words, but he nuzzled his face into mine, and rolled off me, pulling me into him. I just hugged him tight silently crying.

“And you will always be in my heart.” I replied, and he held my tight in response.

The next morning, warriors were lined up on horses preparing for departure. Nathan and I were walking together, back in the very clothes we were taken captive in. I looked up at Nathan with swollen eyes. He just nodded at me letting me know I would be okay.

“GRASUH!” I heard a small voice call, and I stopped and turned looked around to see Magojiro running to me and behind him were a few of the kids who I had met when I first arrived. They all ran to me with arms out, and I winced in pain of having to leave them. I got on my knees and opened my arms to them, and they embraced me. I sighed heavily feeling more tears fall. And for once no mothers pulled them from me, they did not run away with their kids in fear or disgust of me.

“I will miss you all.” I said to them as I heard them crying. I wiped some of their faces gently.

“Grace… we have to go.” Nathan said after a few seconds of hugging the children. I looked up at him and nodded and the children slowly moved from me, and I stood back up.

I was directed to a horse and Nathan helped me up onto it. I watched as he mounted his. I noticed how close I was to Katsumoto and his warriors at the front. Now it was time to say goodbye. Katsumoto looked at me and nodded before calling out to his men and now we began to ride into the forest from whence we came. My horse remained close to Nathan and Ujio and for that I was glad. Now we were going back into the real world, and I needed the sight of them for comfort for I knew us coming back would cause trouble.

[praebitorem-glaciei]

First Time

Uhm yeah.

tag: @hamausagi

They’d both had revelations about one another.

Told truths. Katsumi of Masuyo, Eiji of his less than human nature.

Accepted despite this, loved despite this.

Eiji's ears twitched when he heard the shrine door open then close. He hadn't realized the time, so there went his plans to make his lover dinner. Or, well, breakfast. 

But he didn't have time to apologise for this perceived slight. Katsumi’s arms wrapped around his waist, face buried against his shoulder. Eiji smiled softly, arms coming to wrap around the kitsune. His tails began to wag, swishing behind him.

“Long night?”

Eiji couldn’t see his injuries, but he could smell them. The scent of the man’s blood always made his stomach churn. “Mhm..” Katsumi sighed, nuzzling his face against the feline’s shoulder. “I just wanna curl up and take a nap..” 

Katsumi gasped when his boyfriend picked him up, despite his weight, Eiji always carried him like he was a feather. He was carried to their shared bedroom and then gently set down on the bed. Eiji then departed from the room to gather the necessary supplies to wrap his wounds.

He returned to the bedroom quickly, setting the warm water on the bedside table. Katsumi was in the process of taking his armour off, abandoning it on the ground without a care. He then unwrapped his hands, tugging the dirtied bandages off and tossing them on the ground on top of his armour.

The feline started with his face, wiping the cloth against a cut on his cheek, cleaning it tenderly. When he pulled away to wet the cloth again, Katsumi pulled his boots and then pants off. His kimono barely came to his thighs, but it worked for what he needed.

Eiji washed his hands, paying special attention to his poor torn knuckles. With his hand not in Eiji’s, he reached up, tugging his hair ribbon free and letting his long hair fall. He reached around the man, setting it on the bedside table where it was secure.

Katsumi watched his face, the look of concern and concentration, it made his heart sing. Eiji blinked, mismatched eyes widening in surprise as his lover kissed him with warm lips. He quickly closed his eyes, kissing him back with a softness reserved only for him. 

“You’re still hurt.”

“I’m okay, really. I can’t feel it.”

Eiji sighed, resting his forehead against the kitsune’s, staring into his enchanting blue-green eyes. He leaned over, placing the cloth in the water, he then cupped Katsumi’s cheek, leaning in to kiss him properly.

He fell back against the bed, wiggling back so that Eiji would hover over him to kiss him properly. They hadn’t gone much further than this exact position, their relationship only a few months old. Love? Yes. Trust? Yes. Sex? Terrifying. 

A knee came between his thighs, keeping them spread as they kissed passionately. Eiji hesitated when he felt the man shake beneath him, pulling back but his lips still ghosted over his. 

“Are you uncomfortable?”

“I'm fine.” Katsumi chuckled, eyes opening to meet his. “Your hand is on one of my cuts.” Eiji looked down, his palm on Katsumi's hip, red bled through the white kimono. He quickly pulled his hand back, apologizing profusely to the laughing kitsune. 

“I'm so-”

“I'm okay, my sky. I'm fine.” He promised, capturing his lips again. Eiji’s resistance was muffled by him kissing back, as long as Katsumi was okay. He was okay, too. He was more careful about his hand placement, holding Katsumi’s other hip instead. 

Katsumi's hands ran into the man's tied robe, revealing parts of his chest and causing the belt to become loose. His actions were always so bold and confident, his tongue pressing between Eiji’s cold lips. 

His chest was stroked and felt up by the touchy kitsune, the actions left a trail of warmth in their wake, but Eiji enjoyed every second of it. Katsumi made him feel desires he'd never before felt, made him feel ways he didn't even know he could feel. His touch was electrifying, it was ironic.

Eiji’s hand roamed up, almost mimicking Katsumi's actions. But the kitsune caught his wrist before he could get under his kimono. “Eiji…” The feline froze, afraid he'd overstepped his lover’s comfort. 

“I apologise, should we stop?”

“No.. it's just..” Katsumi breathed out. “I've never done this before either.” That surprised the shrine guardian. Katsumi was loud, brash, bold, confident. He acted like he knew what he was doing. The man even taught him the basics! Like kissing. His surprise must have been obvious on his face, the kitsune laughing nervously at his expression.

“We don't have to.”

“I want to though. I trust you.”

Trust.

Eiji trusted him too. 

And with that trust, Eiji undid the belt of Katsumi's kimono, pushing it down his shoulders and revealing his chest. 

He paused.

Katsumi's eyes widened.

“Wait- I forgot to tell you-” 

The scars were large and jagged, spiked out and shaped oddly. They underlined his breast area, connecting in the middle in almost a W shape. Their colour was odd too, lighter with a slight blue tinge. Upon closer inspection, the jags were almost more diamond shaped. They were beautiful scars.

“I.. I would understand if you don't want me anymore now that you know.”

Eiji's head snapped to his lover's ashamed expression, violet brows furrowing in, well.. He wasn't mad at Katsumi, he was mad at the very premise that something like this could break them apart.

“I love you. This revelation doesn't change that.” He promised the kitsune, sealing it by leaning down and kissing one of the beautiful scars. “You’re still you, Katsumi.” Eiji switched to the other side, kissing along the scars. Katsumi breathed out, blinking away any tears that collected along his waterline.

When Eiji repositioned on top of him, Katsumi properly undid his belt, pushing the fabric off of him too so they were both relatively nude, sans underwear. But this was where the feline stilled, unsure of what to do. He had no experience, he didn’t really read those types of books. He was at a loss. 

Katsumi sat up slightly, the feline resting on his chest moving up with the action. “Don’t worry. We can learn together.” He giggled, kissing his lover’s forehead. Eiji relaxed at the notion, giving a nod. “We should get naked first, under the blankets probably.” And Eiji obliged, settling beside him to do so.

“We’ll just take it easy. Do what feels good.”

Eiji scanned his body, mismatched eyes flicking over every visible scar, bruise, but also the dips and crevices of his body. The puppet swallowed, he was beautiful, and he made him feel things. He reached over, trailing his fingers up the man’s thigh, feeling his warm skin. 

“Like what you see?”

Katsumi teased, spreading his legs to let Eiji touch him as much as he pleased. He touched further upwards, fingers teasing the kitsune’s wet entrance. But his attention was quickly caught by the enlarged clit, rubbing it with his thumb. Katsumi exhaled, cheeks flushing at the man’s curious touching.

“Is this normal?”

“I take medicine for the effect.” 

Eiji nodded, he licked his lips as he realised just how slick his lover was from the simple prodding. What did he taste like? He opted to wiggle down, underneath the blanket between Katsumi’s legs. The kitsune tilted his head but a soft whine immediately escaped him as Eiji’s tongue licked up his cunt.

Something stirred in his stomach, the taste changed him in some way, he was sure of it. His eyes closed as he sloppily licked at his cunt, enjoying the warm wet slick on his rough tongue. Katsumi’s hand smoothed his hair, fingers tangling in the violet locks. 

Katsumi devolved into a moaning mess as his silent lover sucked on his clit and prodded at his cunt. There was no rhyme nor reason to his actions, but it still felt good. Katsumi writhed as Eiji’s fangs accidentally grazed along his sensitive skin.

“Careful- Your teeth are sharp-”

“Hm?” Eiji looked up, eyes glazed with a haze the kitsune didn’t quite recognise. “Oh.. Sorry, love.” 

Before he could accept the apology, Eiji was back between his legs, face buried in his cunt. It was good, but not quite enough to get him to his peak. The teasing left him feeling heated and delirious, tugging on Eiji’s hair to try and get him up. 

“Put it in me.”

“Put it in you?”

“Yes, Eiji! Please?”

Eiji nodded, trying to find a good position. But his actions felt a tad awkward, Katsumi helping out by wrapping his legs around the feline’s waist once more. “Is this good, Katsumi?” The kitsune nodded. “Will it hurt?”

“You? No. Me? Possibly a little.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Katsumi laughed, laying his head back against the pillow. “I’ll be okay. Just be slow.” He waited as Eiji lined himself up, pushing in slowly. Too slowly. “You can be faster than that.” Eiji obliged, he listened to his lover’s every word, every moan or whine. He wanted him to feel good.

His chest pressed against Katsumi’s as he sheathed himself inside of him. He was quiet, listening to his lover pant. The silence unnerved Katsumi, but he felt awkward commenting on it in the moment. So he let Eiji find his pace instead, he wasn’t overly thick, but he was perfect for Katsumi. 

Eiji waited for further instruction, stilling inside of him. He could feel Katsumi’s pulse this way, clear as day, his walls squeezed him in tandem. “Uhm.. Eiji?” Katsumi mumbled, averting his eyes from the feline who stared into his face with curiosity. 

“Yes?”

“You need to move.”

“Oh.”

Katsumi hissed when he pulled out fully, leaving him cold and gaping. Not to mention the speed hurt. “Was that wrong?” Eiji’s expression softened, concern on his face at the pain apparent on Katsumi’s. But the kitsune shook his head, breathing slowly to steady himself.

“Not.. Not like that. Let me.. Ah..”

Eiji shuddered when Katsumi’s warm hand wrapped around his cock, sliding it back into him with ease. He then pressed his hips as into the mattress as he could, dragging himself along Eiji’s cock but from beneath him. 

“Oh! I see.”

He mimicked Katsumi’s action but on top, pulling out only to the tip before he pressed back in gently. He did it a few more times and Katsumi nodded his head, flashing him a bright reassuring smile. Eiji couldn’t help but kiss him, swallowing his pretty sounds as he kept up his gentle pace. 

Katsumi was more than happy to kiss back, claws gently digging into Eiji’s hips as he enjoyed the feeling of the man. Being intimate like this was completely new and exhilarating, it made his heart race with glee. 

“You can go harder.” The kitsune whispered against his lips, his body ached with the need to get off. To feel that sense of pleasure wash over him. He’d only masturbated a handful of times, but he knew what that sensation felt like. And he wanted Eiji to cause it. His request was quickly obliged.

The bed squeaked beneath them and Katsumi still found the lack of sounds a bit odd. But he turned his brain off, letting Eiji do his thing. The squeaks and sounds of their bodies moving against one another and Katsumi’s whimpers filled the room. It only served to turn Katsumi on further.

The kitsune shuddered, eyes snapping open in surprise when Eiji came inside of him. It was a new feeling, one that made his cheeks darken. He found he enjoyed it a little too much. “Are you alright?” Eiji’s voice was lower, slightly raspier. Mismatched eyes once more on his lover’s face to try and read him.

“I’m good- I- can you keep going? Or should we stop?”

“I can keep going.”

“Please keep going then.”

“Of course, my love.” 

Katsumi would get overly unnecessarily anxious about the concept of puppet foxes later. Far too blissed by being vulnerable and open with his lover instead for the time being. Especially as Eiji adjusted and hit a particular spot that made him cry out the man’s name.

[honeyblockm]

The Death Poem, Part Two: New L'Manberg

Masterpost | Part One: L'Manberg | Part Three: Empowerment | Part Four: Legacy

Text:

12/6/2020: Karl Jacobs stages his death in a bid for independence

Or death. 

People seldom listen to anything else

Even my fiances agree 

Here I feel like a ribbon snapping in the wind--

Sovereignty must be anointed with flesh

It is known

and what have I to fear?

Not death, 

Death will come in a thousand more times

for me, like the tide

Taking with it the sand

and all the shells, pulled to sea

12/11/2020: Tommyinnit shoots down Jack Manifold 

You’ve been missed, I don’t know

if anyone’s told you that. 

Not that they need to. It’s hard

not to hear the silence you’ve

left. To forget that you had once

lived here as if Tubbo’s found the heart

to wash your graffiti off the walls yet. 

There you are. I’ve been looking. 

We've been trying 

to reach you. 

12/13/2020: Mexican Dream is murdered

My best qualities, if asked:

I am good at making friends. 

Even better at protecting them. 

1/14/2021: Vikkstar and Lazarbeam disappear, dying an unknown number of times over an unknown number of days

now that my memory’s begun

to blur let me hold your head in my 

hands Cradling your cheek for these

brief moments Minutes here are 

only minutes but in the darkness years

and years Between these intermissions I do not 

remember so clearly anymore your last 

birthday or our anniversary or the color

of your eyes but slowly I’ve watched

your hair streak gray Just like we’ve

planned I am at your side as our bones 

turn brittle O for everything at

least we are growing old together

1/?/2021: Punz and Dream kill and revive each other an unknown number of times

We take turns holding each other’s heads under the water just 

to see what it’s like to drown It’s his arms hooking under 

mine when I stop thrashing against the hand on my 

neck Pulling me out Licking from my mouth the taste of 

chlorine Now I can't tell you what it is to trust without 

reservation I have left behind the tenets of unconditional 

loyalty and the boys who carried them everywhere I 

went Love it's been shown is strong but the heart is 

inconstant I’ve seen it spasm blood through my 

fingers Cutting its gliding way into 

flesh No I do not love but this I find 

acceptable The brush of knuckles against my 

throat His skin a pressing 

warmth What affection it is that a spider must have for its 

web or the branches on which it’s 

attached His reassembling of 

me is the softest I’ve been touched in a long 

time If my heart gives out now it will only 

be because he has gripped it and held it still

12/16/2020: Technoblade takes an anvil to the head and lives

I've made it clear that I 

cannot die, though not for lack 

of trying and you have surely tried 

the hardest of them all. Even 

through the bitter tundra, chasing

me. For your

efforts here it is, your

brief victory. I watched the anvil and did

not flinch and it shattered

my skull. Bone cracked and splintered like

ice and then the totem did

too, but in the interval between that I was no

longer alive. You laughed, I commend 

you. The scale’s shifted and now

that the ball’s rolling you’d do

well to remember what

violence begets.

12/16/2020: Quackity takes a pickaxe to the teeth

All men can die. Nothing else remains 

constant and therefore just, so

I must become a butcher. Swinging

down my knife before you hit

back. Do I think I can take

you? Well, I’m not a man of half 

measures--this is how

high I had to stack the odds just

to look you in the eye. Now 

that we see each other clearly I catch, 

also, a glimpse of a harder 

truth and do not flinch. Your 

pickaxe, slate gray, cleaving in two the

bones of my face, crunching

like Arctic ice. I must be still too

soft, if I cracked open just

like that. 

1/6/2021: Jack Manifold falls into hell hours after doomsday

as per usual this one 

is also an afterthought 

the floor pulled out under me

a sly trick 

nothing too serious is reserved

for me

even hell is lonely

the fire my only companion

as my charred bones pull themselves up

I don’t know why I thought

when my hand finally hit overworld air

that someone would be there

pulling me up

the rest of the way

1/20/21: Tommyinnit kills Dream twice, nearly three times

      It didn't hurt. 

Not the first time, 

by the second strike 

    he was beginning to feel the sting of axe 

            and cloth and bone. 

     Everyone watched: 

     that part was new. 

     He couldn't say he liked 

     the attention, 

     as if the eyes alone would make it real. 

In his pooling blood's indigo reflection he caught 

            glimpses. Colossal sleeping beasts 

         of blackstone, boxes, 

         years lost down bodies of water. 

            At pressures like these, there is only room in your chest 

            for turgid lungs or beating heart. 

One of them has got to go. 

[angel-inked]

Patriarch, Chapter 17: The bird speech

1638 words... and I'm not finished 😳

Also have this gem that was in my yt recs

Taglist: @vvkingofgaybisciutsvv @thequeenofthewinter @hecatemoon87 @potter-solomons

Howard watch Forrest' eyes snap in the direction he said he heard the deer in, suddenly a gun shot was heard in that direction. "It's about die" Forrest muttered as he pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit it. "Now, I don't know much about it" Howard started, making Forrest turned toward him. "But does that whole wolf blood thing that you talked about have anything to do with this?" The eldest asked, Forrest stared for a moment before staring off into the woods again. Calmly chewing the butt of his smoke, offering no signs of answering his brother's question. "Why do you do that?" Howard asked, changing the subject. "Do what?" Forrest asked, turning to face Howard and removing the cigar from his lips. "Chew on them things" Howard explained, pointing to the roll of tobacco in his baby brother's hand. Forrest shrugged and replaced the cigar in his mouth and continued to bite it, seemingly more intensely if that was at all in possible, he definitely made it more pronounced and brought emphasis to it now that Howard pointed it out and brought attention to it.

At some point Forrest started heading toward the truck and Howard followed, as they neared it they saw someone peering into the back of it. "Hmft" Forrest grunted softly. "Can we help you?" He exclaimed, catching the man's attention. "This yours?" The guy asked, gesturing to the old vehicle. Howard was content to let Forrest handle the situation but was ready to pounce if he needed to. Forrest glanced down and noticed a knife not so hidden in the man's hand, a would be thief if you well. "Oh, now listen here mister" Forrest began, removing his hat and gesturing with it. "We got no way of understanding this world, we've got about as much sense of it as a bird flyin' in the sky" he continued. The man looked past Forrest at Howard, both seemingly equally as confused as the other, only difference being was Howard didn't let his guard down. "Now, there's a lot that bird don't know but it don't change the fact that the world is happening to him all the same" Forrest slipped his hand into his pocket, "what I'm tryin' to say is, the course of your life, ya know, it is changing.. and you don't even see it" he finished. "The hell, speak English would ya" the man exclaimed, stepping toward Forrest, which proved to be a mistake. Forrest grinned as the man took that step, signing his own fate without knowing it, Forrest pulled his h from his pocket and connected it with the man's face, the guy dropped to the ground instantly and as Forrest let his arm fall back to his side, Howard saw the bloody brass knuckles he was holding and smiled. "Yeah, alright now. Meditate on that for a while" Forrest chuckled to Howard's surprise, as he stepped over the unconscious man, sounding almost proud of himself for pulling off the ruse.

"That was quite the speech baby brother" Howard smiled widely, as Forrest got in the passenger's seat. "And probably the most I've heard you talk all month" Howard added, getting in and turning the engine over. Forrest tapped the side of his head, "it's all up here, if you can play your cards right, they'll drop their guard and you can catch'em by surprise. Besides, that metaphor is basically a 'round about way to say let me get the upper hand and fuck you up" he explained. "Impressive, as always" Howard replied, his grin growing wider and Forrest shook his head and grunted, returning to his usual routine of quietly staring out his window on car rides.

They returned to the Pate farm to retrieve Jack, "oh Forrest" Mrs. Pate exclaimed, wiping her hands a towel and stuffing it in the pocket of her apron. She heard the door open from the kitchen and came to see who had let themselves in, now she was examining Forrest' slightly bloody knuckles with concern. "Let me get a warm wash cloth for that" she said hurrying off. Forrest watched her leave the room and Howard stepped up beside his brother "I'm surprised you didn't tell her you were fine" Howard smirked. "Wouldn't have done any good" Forrest murmured. Jack, Cricket and Juniper ran in with Mr. Pate following close behind. He too stopped dead in his tracks once his eyes landed on Forrest' bloodied hand. Jack didn't seem to notice if he did, he didn't pay much attention to it. Ha had seen his big brothers in fights before and considered it normality. Mrs. Pate returned with the wash cloth she'd promised and gently cleaned Forrest' knuckles, once most of the blood was washed off she saw only a few small scrapes, definitely not the source of the blood. She looked up at Forrest with unapproval, knowing now that the blood wasn't his.

Forrest looked away and cleared his throat, avoiding eye contact with the older woman. Not only because eye contact made him uncomfortable but because Mrs. Pate had given him and Howard an ear full for getting into fights before. However, this time she didn't scold him, instead wrapping the rag around his hand and closing his fist. He found his nerve and met her gaze, she nodded and smiled at him. Moving to the side of him, "here for your younger brother?" She asked as casually as she could. "Yep" Forrest murmured, turning his head to watch Jack play with his friends. Forrest knew he was hoping him and Howard would talk to the Pate's for a while so he had more time with Cricket and Juniper, "just five more minutes?" He would ask. Typical of a boy his age, Forrest obliged this for a while, standing idly as Howard, as the middle brother predicted he would, struck up conversation. The brothers weren't exactly in a rush so Forrest moved to the other side of the room, laying his hat down on a chest of drawers and leaning back against it, burying his hands in his pocket and itching for a smoke but not looking to get back on the hook Mrs. Pate had surprisingly let him off of.

Suddenly thunder cracked overhead, "maybe you boys should stay here for the night, I know home isn't far but I don't want you getting caught in a storm" Mrs. Pate explained, moving closer to Forrest. "I don't see why not" Forrest mumbled, his eyes still glued to Jack. "You mean it?" The youngest Bondurant asked. Forrest nodded, Jack ran up and hugged Forrest' waist. Forrest rubbed Jack's shoulder awkwardly before the three young boys ran off to another part of the house. "I'm gonna make up some beds for you" Mrs. Pate said with a smile. "Thank you" Forrest mumbled. "Oh, no need for that" she exclaimed, patting his shoulder as she walked past. "You agreed to stay just so she wouldn't hound you, didn't you?" Howard smirked, walking up to Forrest. Some choice words bubble up in the back of his throat but out of respect for the Pate family, he only glared at his older brother.

Forrest ambled to the door and stepped out on the porch, he walked toward the truck and retrieved his journal from the passengers side. He wasn't exactly sure why he put it in the truck that morning but since the brothers were staying put to give Mrs. Pate piece of mind that nothing was going to happen to them, he was glad he did. He walked back inside with the book tucked under his arm, Mrs. Pate smiled at him as he reentered. "Um.." he mumbled, "do you need something dear?" Mrs. Pate asked. "Do you have a pen I could borrow? I don't have one with me" Forrest explained. "I'll find ya one" Mrs. Pate smiled. Forrest grunted his thanks as the woman riffled through a drawer, "this work?" She asked, "long as it writes" Forrest murmured. Mrs. Pate nodded. Forrest entered the guest room Howard and him always slept in when they stayed at the Pate's house, Howard was already making himself at home, sitting on his usual bed and flipping through some random book that didn't even have a title. "Are you even reading that or are you just turning the pages?" Forrest asked. "Eh, a sentence here and there. I prefer your books if I'm honest" Howard said, tossing the book aside. Forrest nodded, accepting his brother's compliment. Forrest settled at the vanity and opened his journal, shaking his head as he watched Howard start flipping through the untitled book again in the mirror. Forrest was curious, not curious to ask but nonetheless curious what the title was, it was probably on the spine of the book or the front page, something like that.

Forrest started writing what Howard had dubbed "The bird speech" for future reference. Once he finished, he closed the book, rubbing his face with his hands. "Tired?" Howard asked. Forrest grunted as he stood and exited the room. Howard looked on confused but as soon as Forrest closed the door behind him, Howard got up to follow him. He found his baby brother leaning against the front porch railing, he heard Forrest exhale and saw a cloud of white smoke. "So that's what you came out here for?" Howard asked, walking up beside him. Forrest glanced between Howard and the rain that was falling, groaning well doing so, "well.. the way I see it, if the Spanish flu couldn't kill me then what's this gonna do?" Forrest mumbled, gesturing his cigar toward his big brother. Howard shook his head, "I haven't the slightest idea baby brother" he murmured, as Forrest replaced the roll of tobacco between his lips.

[getosubaru]

𝑔𝓊𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝒹𝑜𝑔

ryomen sukuna x gn!reader

best friends to lovers drabble series; based on these prompts

wc: 639

tw/notes: small text only for description; no curses AU; sukuna & yuuji as twins; choso as their brother; violence (not @ reader); reader gets cheated on; everyone’s 21+; as fluffy as you can get for sukuna

prompt: punching the guy that broke your heart

He might scowl when others call him your bodyguard, but there’s an air of truth to it.

So when you burst through his door in tears, his previous guests flee with a look of terror on their faces.

Everyone knows better than to fuck around with you.

Everyone, it seems, except the piece of shit you’ve been dating for a few months.

Sukuna gets the story out of Yuuji, quick texts sent while you bawled into his ratty t-shirt.

The waste of carbon decided to cheat on you with the coworker he swore was just a friend.

You only found out because you stopped by his apartment to grab your gym bag.

Sukuna’s always been careful to keep his temper away from you, never wanting you to see him go off the deep end. You knew about the bar brawls, the street fights, the run-ins with the cops. But you’d never actually seen him strike anyone.

He locks all that away with you. Your calm, gentle presence humanizes him in a way that he had learned to crave. You bandaged his knuckles, paid his bail, and never asked for more than he could give you.

He wants to give you everything.

But never at the risk of damaging you with his own brutality.

Sukuna waits until you’ve exhausted yourself crying into his chest. Yuuji accepts your weight when his twin passes you to him, nodding at the barely contained bloodlust on his face.

“Choso’s got eyes on him,” says Yuuji. “I’ll text you when Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”

Their eldest brother flicks his finished cigarette away when Sukuna approaches, gesturing at the packed bar across the street. “Megumi and Maki are taking bets over who’s going to be the one to hook the fish.”

“What are the odds on Maki?” asks Sukuna, voice bored and at ease. The only sign of his building rage is his fists buried in the pockets of his hoodie.

“Good enough that Megumi will be paying for most of my back piece.” Choso holds out a collapsable baton, only for Sukuna to shake his head. “Tsk. You’re the one who’s going to have to explain your fucked up knuckles.”

True to form, a grinning Maki leads your ex out of the bar by the hand. He’s a dead man walking, but he hasn’t quite figured it out yet.

Sukuna is happy to catch him up to speed in the alley behind the bar.

“If I ever see your face again…” He punctuates the threat with a kick to the man’s kidneys. “If I ever have to even hear your name again…”

He’s idly aware of Megumi and Choso arguing in the background, his twin’s boyfriend more than a little put out about how expensive Choso’s tattoo artist is.

Sukuna draws your ex up by his bloodied collar and shoves him against the wall. The fucker probably won’t remember any of this, but he’s going to make his point.

“Death will be a mercy too good for you. Understand?”

His answer comes in the form of blood and booze vomited on his shoes.

Sukuna showers the night off, wrapping his hands once they’re disinfected. You’ll scold him if he just lets them heal without anything.

Yuuji’s washed your face and swapped out your tear-stained shirt for one of Sukuna’s old band shirts. The neon horror printed on the fabric is comically contrasted with the peace you radiate in his bed.

You roll over when he climbs in next to you, arms reaching out to pull him closer.

Sukuna thinks you’re still sleeping, still lost in a hazy dreamscape as you nuzzle into his chest and trace your fingers over scars you’ve long since memorized.

“Thanks, ‘Kuna,” you mumble.

He might be the one dreaming when you kiss his chapped, split lips.

“You always protect me.”

tagging a few friends ilysm: @73sorcerer @bunnaccino @satorhime @xo2dee @abberant-butler @muertasanta

a/n: i got way too attached to this little AU so i might come back to it. lmk what characters y'all wanna see next and throw me an ask if you wanna get tagged!