#Guardrail Roll Forming Line

[starlight-sev]

A View From Above (Severus Snape x Reader)

Or, that time you shared New Years Eve with a kindred spirit.

A/N: Happy (belated) holidays! I hope this season treated you well. This is a gentle, fluffy one, a hug in writing form to anyone who may find the holidays to be a struggle. It’s not always an easy time, and I’m thinking of you ❤️

The cold night air bit at your cheeks as you nestled yourself further into the nook of the Astronomy tower. It may have been cramped, and not to mention near freezing, but it had one of the most beautiful viewpoints in the entire castle.

And not to mention the quiet. This was the only place you were able to clear your head properly.

“You’re not off at the party with the rest of the staff.” The sudden remark nearly made you jump, despite being quietly spoken. You shifted in your little corner, looking up to find Severus standing a few feet away. He wore his trademark stern expression, but for a split second you could’ve sworn he was biting back a smirk.

“I thought you were a student, the way you’re all crammed up in there.” Severus nodded to your little corner, and this time a tiny smile did make it to his face. “I was ready to take points away and send you to detention in the morning.”

You snorted, pushing yourself up out of your corner to properly greet your coworker. While you wouldn’t go so far as to call Severus your friend (he’d have your head if you did, probably), you felt… comfortable around him. It was more than could be said about the other staff.

“Drew the short straw and got put on patrol, I guess?” You asked, stretching your legs a little as you moved to lean against the guardrail of the tower. Severus followed suit as he settled in beside you, scoffing.

“They’ve come to know over the years that I never attend Dumbledore’s bloody holiday parties. Since I don’t go, I get patrol duty. It’s become… an unspoken rule.”

Severus paused, gazing curiously at you.

“Had I known you wouldn’t be attending tonight’s party either,” he continued slowly. “I would’ve volunteered you for patrol tonight.”

“Why?” You retorted with a small laugh. “Missing out on the festivities now, after the fact?”

“No,” Severus drawled. He rolled his eyes at you, but you caught the small huff of a laugh that left him. “It would be nice to celebrate the new year in peace. Alone. Like you’re doing now.”

“Well…” you thought for a moment. “You can stay here with me. I won’t say a word, it’ll be like you’re alone.”

As you looked out at the lake, you caught Severus turn to gaze at you properly out of your peripheral vision. Heat crept up to your cheeks, and you kept your gaze on the water below.

“You went away for the holidays.”

You blinked in surprise, finally turning to meet Severus’s gaze.

“I’m surprised you noticed I was gone.”

He nodded. “But you came back early. classes don’t start for almost another week.”

Despite the constant statements, your co-worker’s dark eyes were filled with questions. You usually appreciated Severus and his matter-of-fact nature, but things were feeling… too close.

“My family.” You sighed, not wanting to go into too much detail. “The holidays are hard. I go visit because I have to, but this year was too much.”

You braced yourself for more questions, but to your surprise Severus simply nodded.

“The holidays are godawful.” He murmured.

“Is that why you never go home for Christmas and New Years?”

Severus pressed his lips together in a thin line. Now he was the one to keep his gaze on the lake below.

“Let’s just say, I’ve burned many bridges over the years.”

You gazed at him, watching the way memories of his past left a murky darkness in his eyes. You shuffled over a bit more, instinctively wanting to provide some sort of comfort, to let him know you understood. To your surprise, Severus didn’t step away.

“Want to know why I come up here?” You asked softly. Severus raised an eyebrow in question.

You beckoned him back over to your little corner a few feet away, and crouched down to the small window.

“Here, squeeze in,” you murmured, tucking your knees in and wrapping your arms around your legs. Severus glared at you skeptically.

“You’re much smaller than I am.”

“Oh, stop it. You’ll fit. Come on. Just tuck your legs in a bit.”

A ragged sigh and an unintelligible grumble later, Severus was crammed into your little spot beside you. You were surprised at how warm he was, despite the cold air that drifted around you.

“See there? Down there, to the right?” You pointed through the window to a far-away cluster of tiny lights. “It’s a village. Right at midnight, they set off the most beautiful fireworks. From here, they’re so small, it’s like watching them from space almost. It’s nice, without all the noise and chaos of actually being there.”

You glanced quickly at the time and smiled. “It’ll be midnight soon. Not much longer now.”

“You can’t- argh, my leg-” Severus cut himself off as he shifted positions, trying to fit beside you comfortably. Your knees knocked together and you tried your best to shuffle in further to give him a bit more space. Your hands brushed together as a result, and you fought to ignore the way your heart jumped.

“You can’t see this from anywhere else more comfortable?” He asked, his voice strained. You couldn’t help but let out a small giggle.

“No. The lookout doesn’t stretch this far. If you’re lucky you’ll maybe catch one or two fireworks if they go astray, but this is the only place where you can see them all.”

A comfortable silence fell between the two of you, save for Severus shifting every now and then to keep his legs from cramping up as he sat beside you.

“Have you ever been kissed on New Year’s?” You murmured softly, resting your hand against your cheek. The look of surprise on Severus’s face mirrored your own feelings as you realize what you just said. You expected Severus to scoff at you in his usual tone, but to his surprise he shook his head.

“No. I suppose going to parties would’ve certainly helped with that, however.”

You held back a laugh, only to let it bubble up as Severus glanced at you with perhaps the only warm smile you’d ever seen him show.

“And you?”

“Yes,” you answered softly. “But it was… odd. It felt forced. We were both drunk.”

“How romantic.” You laughed once more at the sarcasm that was evident in Severus’s reply. “You’re really selling the tradition from how you’ve described it.”

“You’ve really never been kissed at midnight?”

“Was my first answer not clear enough?”

Despite the biting reply, there was laughter in his eyes.

“No, just… I’m surprised, that’s all. It’s something everyone should experience just once.”

“So is getting hungover, but you don’t see me scrambling to experience it ever again. Besides, who are you to talk? You just said your New Year’s kiss was awful.”

“I never said that!” You protested, only to receive another signature glare. “It was just…”

Severus snorted. “Certainly wasn’t good, from the sound of it.”

“Okay fine,” you sighed, running your hands over your face. “It wasn’t good. But it wasn’t awful either.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

You laughed, elbowing Severus teasingly. To your surprise, he nudged you back gently.

“I’m glad it was you that found me up here.” You murmured, pulling your knees a little closer to your chest. Severus gazed at you, smirking.

“Why? Filius or even Minerva would’ve enjoyed this spot. At least they would’ve fit.”

“Not that.” You rolled your eyes. “It’s just… you’re the only one I feel I can be myself around. Like now. I’d never be able to talk about this kind of thing with anyone else.”

Severus gazed at you silently, his eyebrows knitting into a tiny frown as he processed your words.

“Sorry. That came out of nowhere.”

“Don’t apologize.” He replied softly. He didn’t say anything more, but there was a comforting warmth that filled his eyes. No words were exchanged, but you felt as though you understood.

A tiny spark flashed in the corner of your eye, and you glanced out the window as tiny fireworks bloomed in the distance.

“Oh.” You gasped softly. “We missed the countdown. It’s midnight.”

“Mm. So it is.”

You turned your gaze to Severus, whose gaze was fully absorbed in the fireworks. The conversation from a few minutes earlier ran through your mind, and you leaned forward to press a tiny kiss to Severus���s cheek. He gazed at you, bewildered.

“Happy New Year.” You managed to squeak out. The shock faded from his eyes, and it was replaced by that familiar warmth as he softened. Severus dipped his head respectfully in acknowledgement.

“Happy New Year.”

The two of you sat together in silence, watching the fireworks. Then, to your surprise, Severus tapped your arm lightly.

“This, us tonight, stays up here?”

To your surprise, it wasn’t a statement. You could see there was a bit of nervousness in his eyes. You nodded.

“Yes. Of course. This is our secret. Why do you ask?”

The air felt heavy for a moment as Severus paused in thought, before closing the already-small distance between the two of you. He pressed his lips softly to yours, caressing your face with both of his hands. In the back of your mind, it hit you that he was gentle and calculated in literally everything he did, not just potions. It made your head spin, and your heart race.

The fireworks were over by the time the two of you pulled away. Severus let his gaze fall away, but you caught his hands in yours before he could pull away completely. You squeezed his hands reassuringly to let him know it was okay, and he returned your action with a kind smile.

“Hopefully that… wasn’t as awful as your last New Year’s kiss?”

You let out a giggle, and felt a rush of pure joy run through you as Severus shared your laughter.

“That was, by far, the best. And hopefully not the last?” You added shyly.

In response, Severus leaned in and kissed you again.

[dustedmagazine]

Danny Paul Grody Duo — Arc of Night (Three Lobed)

Photo by Ian Albert

The guitar-drums duo concept has produced a lot of good music lately, whether in Gunn-Truscinski’s abstract explorations (sometimes augmented with Bill Nace) or Jim White’s percussive conversations with Marisa Anderson. Like these outfits, the Danny Paul Grody Duo often allows the drummer (in this case Rich Douthit of The Drift) to range free form, using percussion as a color and a mood as much as a timekeeper.

Arc of Night follows the similarly titled Arc of Day by about a year, and it’s very similar in texture and vibe, though perhaps a little moodier and introspective.  Once again, the tracks foreground Grody’s lyrical guitar lines but this time, there’s more space for Douthit and other guests are kept to a minimum.  Only two tracks feature artists outside the duo. Trevor Montgomery adds some electric bass to eerie, hovering “Hawk Hill,” while Chuck Johnson joins on pedal steel for the slow-blooming, very nocturnal “Moon Garden.” 

Both of those cuts have their own appeal, but perhaps it makes sense to focus first on unassisted tracks. Grody and Douthit have an undeniable chemistry that comes through best when it’s just the two of them. Consider, for instance, the opening “Last Light,” which unfolds in a free-form, unhurried, unconstrained way. Grody unspools a thoughtful melody, his tone full of force and clarity, but with long meditative pauses between phrases. Into those gaps, Douthit inserts abstracted bits of cymbal shimmer, short drum rolls and unexpected thwacks. Their interaction sounds like a conversation, the guitar proposing, the drums answering with bursts of conciliatory or contradictory energy. There’s a fluidity to the piece, which moves as it will, without the guardrails of obvious time signature.

Later, the two extend their dialogue into a longer form in “Coyote Valley at Dusk.” The guitar licks flurry upwards from a single lingering low note. At first, the percussion simmers a barely audible jangle of bells. Then, in time, a rhythm asserts itself, first in the guitar line, later picked up in a minimalist cadence of cymbal and snare. The piece takes on purpose and propulsion; it sounds a bit like Chris Forsyth’s extended grooves with Solar Motel Band. You can hear the two musicians testing cracks in the repetition, finding ways to make a repeated motif fresh from measure to measure without violating its integrity. The addition of slide (or maybe e-bow?) in the second half infuses ethereal spirituality, turning the music from chug to free flight.

The music is quite beautiful in a somnolent, dusky sort of way. It can fade into the background if you let it, but there are details worth hearing if you take care and listen closely.

Jennifer Kelly

[zhishang-steel]

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[cecilyv]

I do want to talk about this one. This might get long.

We actually started writing what became this fic for the third part of What Binds -- the fic that became Leave the past behind. Initially, we called it "Tommy gets injured" and it was more about his found family and Buck figuring out how to help him. Him figuring out how to let them.

It actually got really far in this form -- we wrote and restarted and reorganized it at least three times (names for this fic have included Tommy gets injured, Another Pokémon Card, Twisted Guardrails and then eventually its actual title). We started in early June and at some point, we realized it wasn't working. Tommy being the one who was injured just didn't get us to the storyline we wanted -- so we pivoted, and that's where Leave the past came from. There's still elements of that original story in there.

So, we had a lot of Injured Tommy words but no story, no plot, but I still liked them. As Lim said above, I really hate how the show just steamrolls through recovery. Injury recovery is hard, it's long, it's debilitating mentally and even people who have positive outlooks can lash out. 911 likes to put our favorite people in danger and then never, really fully addresses what that does to them and the people around them (except with Buck that one time).

I thought Tommy would be a terrible patient and he really wouldn't want Buck to see him like that, and he would want Buck to have -- everything, to be with the perfect person.

So, I took the remnants of the fic, extracted all the What Binds elements from it, wrote a mini-recovery timeline, and told Lim:

okay, honestly, we've still got 5k of fic and pieces that we can change around, and I actually think it works? I think it works better, honestly because we can divorce it from time we can just be like, future date, Buck's moved in and blah blah bah Also they can fight with impunity

And then came the most basic of plot:

at the start he's not broken and they've both found home (wrote the opening scene). but at the top it's, like, concepts of home wrapped in love and sex and togetherness and then that stops and how do you find your way back to home again when what helped bring them together is taken away.

And then I kept throwing out walls of text at Lim because apparently I really had feelings about this, like a lot of feelings.

I wanted this fic to feel right, to hit people in their chest and make them stop breathing just for a second, and to do right by everyone who's been impacted by long-term injury or illness and show how it changes you (and doesn't). Changed the people around you (and doesn't). And how you're still a person, even if not exactly the person you were, and you still want things.

I don't know how well we did at that last part -- this was honestly the fic I was most nervous about sharing, the one I was really worried about people saying we got it wrong.

I think the moment I thought we could actually write this was when Lim texted: he's embarrassed that he's not hard, but it's hard to hold on to that when Evan's looking at him with exactly the same amount of lust, touches him like he can

at the exact same moment I sent her: Evan tells him, “I’m not here because of what you — your dick— can do for me,” and Tommy had to give him side eye because… and Evan concede, “okay not just for for that”

and those lines just encapsulated the story I wanted to share.

So to recap, I think this is story that I was most honest in. There's a lot of me in this fic, in a way that there's not in others.

Oh and I got to make DTF joke which I was so glad Lim just rolled with that one. I love that joke.

⭐️ inside you’ve got heaven and earth?

Oh man, I feel like @cecilyv should answer this one, because this was a story she really wanted to tell - about recovery, and having to find a new normal, and about not ever getting back to who you were before and that's okay.

911 puts it's characters through a lot, and very rarely is the recovery process anything like realistic. I think the closest they got was Buck with the firetruck crushing his leg, and even then most of the recovery process was handwaved at. And, I get it - it's a procedural ensemble show about firefighters. But, we wanted to look at something where the healing isn't instantaneous, and where it's hard on both people but in sickness and in health isn't just a thing you say but a thing you live because you love each other.

And, I think we wanted to give Buck the thing the show very rarely gives him - which is the chance to step up and show up, and show us how much he's not the kid he was in S1 anymore.

Somehow in all of these answers - @cecilyv's and mine - it somehow sounds like none of these stories are mine, or that I'm just along for the ride. And that's not true (as me about a comet's misfortune) - but this one really was hers.

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[sapphire-writes]

Down in Flames (modern!HOTD) 9

previous ~ next ~ series masterlist

pairings: modern!Aegon x Reader & modern!Aemond x Reader

summary: You, Helaena, and Daeron race to the hospital, unsure of what happened, and the state of everyone. No one is answering their phones. You have to get there. Before it's too late.

warnings: descriptions of the hospital, medical equipment, injuries, mentions of a car crash, Aemond's medical trauma, emotional distress, angst, mentions of addiction

word count: 4.2k

note: no spicy stuff in this chapter, just angst & tooth-rotting fluff!

masterlist

The car ride to the hospital was a nightmare, you nearly threw up out the window as Daeron drove, the nerves eating away at the lining of your stomach. Despite the rain, you rolled the window down, hanging your head outside of it, clinging to the feeling of the wind, the angry pelts of rain against your face. You call again and again. 

Aemond’s voicemail is always greeting you, the sound of his voice sending a stabbing pain through your chest.

You try again. 

The phone rings and rings.

Still no answer. 

WhathappenedwhathappenedwhathappenedAemondAemondAemond. 

Daeron skids the car to a stop outside the emergency room doors. An ambulance is parked in front, the paramedics blinking as the headlights illuminate them. The ambulance is empty, with no sign of Jace. No sign of Aemond. Or Aegon. Or Luke. 

“Go!” Daeron tells you, and you fly out the door like a bat out of hell.

Helaena holds your hand tightly as you race forward, her silver hair plastered against her skin from the rain. You are soaked to the bone, but you barely feel the chill. 

You’re in a panic running through the hospital, the fluorescent lights blinding you, nearly slipping on the shiny floors, as you hurry to the nurses' station.

A bright-eyed nurse smiles at you, jet-black hair pulled from her face in a high ponytail. She has a giraffe clipped next to her nametag, and a pink stethoscope around her neck. 

“Can I help you?”

The doors open behind you and Daeron jogs in to join you both. You wet your lips, trying to calm your nerves enough to form a coherent sentence. 

“Yes, I- I am looking for-”

“Y/N!” 

You turn and see Baela running toward you. You push away from the nurses' station and throw your arms around your best friend. She hugs you tightly, so hard you’re afraid your ribs will crack as you bury your face in her silver curls. 

Helaena stays at the nursing station, talking with Daeron to the confused nurse. Her voice is soft but insistent, violet eyes shining with tears. Daeron is vibrating with nerves beside her, clinging like a silver shadow. 

“What the fuck happened?” you ask and Baela shakes her head.

“The roads were so slick, the rain was coming down in fucking sheets,” Baela says, tears streaming down her face, “Jace lost control of the wheel; the storm came out of fucking nowhere.”

You nod, listening intently, but your thoughts are racing.

Where is he?

“They hydroplaned, they crashed into a guardrail, but they were okay,” Baela sobs, “but then Aemond came around the corner.”

Your heart stops at the sound of his name and Baela shakes her head.

“I don’t know what happened, but he hit them!” Baela cries, “he must have lost control of the wheel, he probably didn’t even see them and they crashed.”

The panic is slashing through you like a knife, cutting you into ribbons. You’re sure any minute you’ll start screaming, the urge is crawling up your throat as Baela speaks.

“Where is everyone? Where’s Aemond?” you say panicking, “where’s Jace and Luke? And Aeg-”

Baela’s fully panicking, choked sobs escaped through her clenched teeth. Her breathing is ragged as if she’s drowning, gasping for air. 

“Luke hasn’t woken up!” Baela sobs, her body heaving, “he won’t wake up!”

You put your hands on her shoulders to steady yourself. She clings to you, tears dripping from her face to the linoleum floor. 

“Baela, where is Aemond?” you ask again, but she has dissolved into sobs. 

You hold her against you, shaking. You’ve never seen Baela like this, this inconsolable. You’re still holding her when Jace appears from down the hall. There’s a cast on his arm, a butterfly suture on his eyebrow above his swollen eye, and his lip is also cut.

Baela leaves your arms, throwing herself in Jace’s. He maneuvers so she doesn’t touch his injured arm, wincing, but holding her close. 

“Jace,” you say, voice breaking.

His eyes are wet with tears. His brother hasn’t woken up. His brother. You’ve rarely seen one Velaryon without the other. Luke is his brother’s shadow. And now he may be his brother’s ghost. 

You feel so selfish. So incredibly selfish but all you can think of is Aemond. Is Aemond alright? Is he lying in a bed like Luke, unconscious, alone in a hospital again like when he lost his eye? Where is he, where is he, WHERE IS HE?

Helaena says your name but it sounds like she’s speaking it through a tunnel.

It’s like you’re moving through a fog as you turn to her. Daeron trails behind her as she places a hand on your shoulder. She’s wearing little dragonfly earrings, with green gems at the tips of their wings. For some reason, you haven’t noticed until now, but there they are, hanging from her ears sparkling in the hospital lights.

It's so strange at this moment that’s all you can focus on, your brain feeling fuzzy as you watch them spin.

“Aegon’s in room 223,” she says, tears falling down her cheeks.

You nod wordlessly, letting her guide you. Baela and Jace sit in two chairs in the hallway, wrapped in each other's arms. You will come back to them later. You turn the hallway, head pounding as Helaena scans the room numbers.

210…211….212…

You can see 223, just in view down the hall when the door opens. Suddenly it feels like you can breathe again as Aemond steps through, glancing down the hallway. There is a slash above his eyebrow, the scarred part of his face and that’s it. He looks fine. He is fine. 

Aemond’s face forms a soft smile as he sees you, tense shoulders relaxing.

“Hey princess,” he says quietly.

Your heart has begun beating again, tears gathering in your eyes, and overflowing, spilling warm streams down your cheeks. 

“Say that again,” you beg. 

Aemond’s smile grows, his violet eye glassy.

“Hey princess,” he repeats and you’re running to him.

There’s nothing else to do. You run and he’s there. Right in front of you. You throw yourself into his arms, clinging to him. Wrapping your legs around his waist, Aemond holds you tightly against him, burying his face in your hair. You breathe him in, the scent of his cologne, the faint smell of rainwater, and cigarettes. His arms hold you tightly against him. 

“I thought I lost you,” you cry, voice nearly whispering, “I thought…I thought.”

“I’m right here,” he murmurs, “I’m right here.”

Gods he’s here, he’s real, he’s okay.

“Don’t ever do that again,” you tell him, voice muffled in his chest, “do you hear me?”

Aemond chuckles, sending vibrations through you. You pull your face away from his chest, as his hands move below your ass to keep you seated at his waist. You don’t waste any more time, slamming your lips against his, capturing him in a passionate kiss. Arms wrapping tightly around his neck, a desperate relieved moan leaves your lips as his tongue enters your mouth. 

“Woah,” a small voice says from down the hallway. 

You pull away, still holding onto Aemond tightly as he lowers you to the floor. Legs shaking you stand on your feet turning your head. 

Jace’s jaw has slacked but Baela wears a much more neutral expression. You can feel your cheeks begin to burn. Even at Alicent’s, you weren’t this affectionate in front of the others. This kiss makes it real. 

Your hands cling to the fabric of his shirt, knuckles blanched from how tightly you hold the fabric between your fingers. 

“What happened?” you ask.

Aemond keeps his arms around you, as a frown comes over his face.

“It was my fault,” he says softly, “I looked away for a second…Aegon was choking on his own vomit in the back seat. It was just a second…”

You nod, understanding. Aemond watches you carefully.

“Do you want to see him?” Aemond asks, “he’s alright.”

You glance down the hall at Aegon’s door.

“Yeah,” you tell him, “yeah I’d like to see him.”

“You go,” Aemond tells you, “I’ll tell Helaena and Daeron.”

The door to Aegon’s room is closed. You place your hand on the handle, turning it. The door creaks when it opens and you see him, lying on the bed, lip split and swollen, a cast on his arm. His eyes open when you enter, a small smile on his face.

No matter what, Aegon is smiling. You wonder at this point if smiling is more of a coping mechanism or a trauma response. 

“It’s you,” he says groggily, lifting his arm to wave. 

It’s always you.

The tubes and wires don’t let him raise it high and he winces. You smile. You don’t think you’ll ever hate him, not truly. It’s Aegon. 

“It’s me,” you answer, walking over to him, “Hey Aeg.”

You brush some hair from his forehead, watching his eyes well with tears. He places his free hand in yours, holding on tightly.

“Is everyone okay?” he asks quietly. 

You’re still smiling, nodding your head. Aegon closes his eyes in relief. You glance around the room.

“Where’s Cass?” you ask.

“She went home, after the dinner,” he tells you, “I don’t really know, she said she had some shit to figure out.”

You nod, coming to sit in the chair next to his bed. You scoot closer to him, still holding onto his hand. 

“You want me to call her, let her know you’re here?” you ask.

Aegon shakes his head. 

“It’s okay,” he says, thumb stroking the back of your hand.

Gods, Aegon. 

It all comes back to him, doesn’t it? Aegon is chaos in human form, and you were addicted to it for too long. You craved the adrenaline, the violence, the unpredictable whirlwind of him. The way he touches you now would have made your knees buckle a year ago and would have sent shivers tingling down your spine. 

The vulnerability in his eyes, the helpless, watery glance.

He needs me, your heart used to scream, he needs me.

For so long you’d disguised yourself as a healer, as the person who could fix him. Finally, it truly feels like the thread between you has snapped, that desperate need to save him leaving your body like water being drained from a bathtub. 

Aegon doesn’t need me, you think to yourself, Aegon needs himself.

You don’t know why it's taken you so long as the memories flash through with every stroke of his thumb against your hand. You were never going to rescue him. You were never going to save him.

You smile softly, the newfound knowledge warming your chest. It stings brutally, burning through your veins. You don’t want chaos anymore. You don’t want what you thought you needed. 

You want the calming presence in the storm, the line to your kite. The light of the moon shining the path home through midnight darkness. 

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” you tell him.

“Why?” he asks, chuckling softly, “I’ve been so horrible to you.”

You tilt your head. 

“That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

Aegon’s lower lip wobbles and tears begin to pour down his cheeks. 

“I’m such an asshole,” he whispers, “I don’t deserve you. I never did.”

You don’t say anything. You’re not going to validate him in his verbal self-flagellation. But you’re not going to disagree either. 

You feel your face becoming wet as your own tears fall, mirroring his. 

“I think I need help,” he says softly, voice sounding like a scared child, “I really think I need help, Y/N.”

Your expression falls as he speaks. You’ve waited so long, so fucking long for him to come to this conclusion. For him to truly hit rock bottom. Relief floods over you like a wave. It’s a weight that rises off your shoulders, off your lungs, letting you finally breathe again. A sob escapes you as you hold his hand tightly, and you nod, before brushing some hair from his face. 

“It’s okay,” you tell him, “we’re going to get you some help, okay?”

Aegon nods, beginning to sob. Helaena enters the room with Daeron behind her. She places a hand over her mouth as she watches Aegon cry. Daeron looks to the floor, but you see a tear fall down his cheek. The siblings silently join, Helaena climbing beside Aegon, taking his head against her shoulder as he cries. Daeron sits at the foot of his bed, silent tears escaping. 

You sit with them for a bit, before leaving, giving them some privacy. The silver siblings. The green siblings. You care about them all so much. 

You find Aemond seated, still as a statue in the waiting area. He hands you a coffee before speaking. 

“I hate hospitals,” Aemond tells you, knuckles turning white from how hard he clutches the arm of his chair. 

You think about the trauma he shared with you and imagine Aemond, younger than he is now, perhaps less hardened by the world. You wonder what that boy was like before everything happened. Sometimes you see glimpses of him, you think. In the way, his eyes soften when he speaks to his favorite people; in the way he interacts with Alicent. With Helaena. 

With you.

He looks so out of place in the sterile environment, the dark colors he wears in juxtaposition with the shocking white floors and walls. Aemond shrinks in his chair as doctors hurry by, the sound of pagers and machines whirling in the air. 

You place the coffee on the table, before grabbing his hand and placing it on your own. He glances at you.

“Everything is okay,” you tell him, thumb stroking the back of his hand, before you bring it to your lips, kissing it softly.

Aemond squeezes your hand, holding on tightly to the lifeline you offer him. He could crush your fingers if he needed to, there’s no way you’d complain. There’s no way you’d let go. Emotion swells in your chest as you look at him. 

Shit.

Aemond meets your eyes and you’re sure he’s peering into your soul. You think about the calm you long form, the warm feelings of home. The line to your kite. 

You love him.

“Y/N,” Baela calls, beckoning you.

You turn to Aemond, cheeks flushed from your realization.

“I’ll be right back,” you tell him, and he squeezes your hand. 

“Mhmm,” he hums, before releasing your hand.

You get up walking toward Baela. 

“You go,” Baela tells you, “I’ll keep him company.”

You nod, before continuing toward Luke’s room. 

Baela sits down next to Aemond, taking your seat. Aemond’s leg bounces nervously. The two sit quietly side by side, unsure of what to say to one another. The vending machine beside them churns, a gentle hum emitting from it. Baela turns her head.

“You gonna hurt her?” she asks, the question blunt. 

Aemond glances at her sideways. She’s sitting on his blindside, so he’s forced to jut his jaw out to meet her gaze. 

“I’m going to try my best not to,” Aemond tells her. 

Baela sizes him up. She thinks back, analyzing memories, flipping through them like a scrapbook in her mind.

“You know,” she begins, “I always thought there was something off. About the way you treated her.”

Aemond looks away. There are not a lot of people that intimidate Aemond Targaryen, but Baela is your best friend. Her opinion means everything to you. 

“But I always thought it was nothing. That it couldn’t be anything,” Baela tells him.

Aemond says nothing. Baela’s gaze does not falter, her lilac eyes burn against the side of his face. 

“It was from the beginning, wasn’t it?” Baela asks, “even though she was with Aegon. Even then.”

Aemond breaks away from her gaze, before giving her an answer. 

“Even then.”

Baela takes a sip of coffee, and the two remain seated together in silence. 

You open the door to Luke’s room. Rhaena is sitting in a chair she’s moved beside his bed, knees curled up against her chest. 

You enter the room, tears spilling down your cheeks. He’s laying in bed, tubes and wires connected to him.

Rhaena is seated in a chair dragged to his side, knees held against her chest, fingers laced through Luke’s.

“He’s breathing on his own,” Rhaena says quietly from her perch, “they took out the incubator. They said-” she swallows, “they said we just have to wait.”

You place a hand on Rhaena’s shoulder and she does not pull away. She doesn’t flinch from your touch as you had expected. Instead, she reaches her free hand up, covering your own.

Tears spill down your cheeks. 

“Rhae-”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she tells you quietly, “it was so stupid anyway. None of it matters now.”

Her lower lip trembles.

“Poor Luke,” she says, voice cracking, “I wish.. I don’t know.”

“He’s going to be okay.”

“Or maybe he won’t be,” Rhaena says, voice laced with panic, “and then what?”

“I don’t know,” you tell her. 

“I wish..I don’t know,” she says again, “I wish I had been nicer.”

Your eyebrows lift as you sink beside her, wrapping your arms around her shoulders.

“Rhae, you were always nice,” you assure her, “Luke knows that.”

“I just…it’s Luke, you know?” she says, looking at you with watery eyes, “I never…it’s Luke.”

You nod your head, simply listening to her try and express what she’s feeling. 

“And then I saw him in this bed, in the gurney they wheeled him in on…” she looks back at Luke, her hand still holding his, “it’s Luke. My heart felt like it was dying. Like it was rotting inside my chest. It still feels like that.”

She keeps crying, the end of her sentence turning into a sob. 

“And I’ll never get to tell him, it’s not fair,” she sobs, “I was so stupid. For taking this long.”

“Rhae, it’s alright,” you try to soothe her, “Luke knew you were friends. He knew you cared about him.”

Rhaena’s sobs continue, her free arm clinging to yours. She won’t let go of Luke’s hand. You hold her close, it's all you can do at this moment. Until a breathy sigh escapes the mouth of Lucerys Velaryon. 

Rhaena’s entire body stills. Your eyes widen as you both stare at Luke. His lips have parted, eyes remaining shut.

“Rrrrr,” he rasps, “Rrrra…”

Rhaena sits up straighter. 

“Luke?” she whispers, squeezing his hand, “Luke? Can you hear me?”

Luke’s eyes open, the warm brown color of his eyes barely visible. But they are there. His mouth tugs upwards into a weak smirk. 

“You ladies crying over me?” he says with a hoarse voice, straining to get the joke to leave him. 

“You prick,” Rhaena hisses, “we thought you were going to die.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Luke says, wincing as his smile widens.

“Luke,” Rhaena says, bringing her other hand to his. 

Luke looks down, cheeks turning pink as he notices their interconnected hands.

“I wish… I’d known this is what it takes,” Luke begins, “would’ve gotten hit by a car a lot sooner.”

Rhaena laughs, despite herself. 

“You’re an idiot,” she says through her tears, through her smile.

You release Rhaena, stepping back, giving them some space when Luke’s eyes meet yours. 

“Everyone else okay?” he asks and you nod.

“We’re all okay,” you tell him.

And we are. 

Luke sighs with relief, turning back to Rhaena. You continue to back up out of the room to give them some privacy, and to let the others know that Luke was okay. 

You walk back to the small waiting area where Jace, Baela, and Aemond are seated. Daeron and Helaena are presumably still with Aegon. 

“Jace..” you say, smiling softly. 

His eyes light up and he springs from his chair, hurrying down the hallway to Luke’s room, Baela flies down the hall behind him, silver hair a whirlwind behind her. You can hear his laugh of relief from down the hall, followed by his grunt of pain. You assume he forgot all about his broken arm when he saw his little brother’s smiling face. 

When Baela and Jace return a little while later their cheeks are streaked with happy tears. 

Rhaenyra appears down the hallway, with Alicent by her side. When Rhaenyra stops at the sight of you all, Alicent continues to the room where her eldest son lies. Her firstborn. Her face says it all, a mask of sheer panic. 

Aegon was her first baby, you think to yourself. The first child who made her a mother. You know parents say they do not have favorites, but that has to mean something. Aemond is the first to address Rhaenyra. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I heard what happened, I was worried,” she tells him, hands ringing the umbrella she holds. 

“Were you?” Baela snaps, and Jace squeezes her shoulder.

Rhaenyra looks at her, eyes scanning Jace’s bruised and bloodied form. Droplets of water drip from her fingers, splashing against the floor like tears. Rhaenyra doesn’t cry. Aegon used to tell you he had never seen his sister cry before. Rhaenyra and Aemond are alike in that way, he would say. That always confused you. Her eyes trail to Aemond. 

“Is everyone okay?” she asks, and Aemond nods. 

Rhaenyra’s eyes meet yours, and you think back to the conversation you had, just a few hours prior. She holds your gaze and you hope she’s thinking about it too. Rhaenyra looks away first. 

“I’m going to go see Luke, and Aegon,” she tells you all.

You take your seat next to Aemond once more, and he drapes a hand over your leg, drawing smooth circles on your thigh. Rhaenyra starts down the hallway, heels clicking against the tiles. She stops, her head dropping, not turning around. 

“I’ll agree to a settlement,” Rhaenyra says, back still facing you, “have your people call mine.”

Have Otto Hightower call Daemon Targaryen, she means. 

You glance at Aemond. He’s staring at his sister’s back, an unreadable expression on his face. Rhaenyra doesn’t turn, doesn’t ask for confirmation if anyone has heard her, and Aemond does not give her one. She simply remains still for a moment, shoulders tense, before she releases a breath and begins walking once more, headed to Luke’s room.

Baela sighs, placing her head against Jace’s shoulder. 

Aemond walks into his brother’s room once more, hands in his pocket. Alicent is curled up in a cot by the corner of the room, in a deep sleep from the exhaustion of the night. Daeron and Helaena have left to explore the hospital cafeteria as the adrenaline fades, and their stomachs rumble. 

Soft snores echo throughout the room, along with the white noise of an infomercial on the old television that hangs from the wall. Rain drizzles outside the window, the storm long over. Aegon looks at him.

“Are you treating her well?” he asks gruffly, swallowing the lump that has formed in his throat.

“Yes,” Aemond tells him.

Aegon purses his lips.

“Why did it have to be her?” Aegon asks, a tear rolling down his cheek. 

Aemond lifts his gaze from the floor, meeting his older brother’s eyes. There are so many things he could say he doesn’t even know where to begin.

Because when I met her everything changed, he wanted to say. When she walked into our lives, it was like the sun came out for the first time. It was like seeing the goddamn sun for the very first time after living in a world of midnight darkness. 

“I love her, Aegon,” Aemond admits softly.

Aegon sighs, his eyes still glassy. He nods, lips pressed tightly together. He doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry.

“It’s hard not to,” Aegon agrees, settling on that as the final words he will speak on the matter.

The brothers do not speak again as a gentle rain begins to fall, fat drops making music against the glass window. But Aemond sits beside his elder brother and does not leave until Aegon has fallen asleep.

When he exits the room he’s greeted by you sitting in a chair, knees curled against your chest, a cup of coffee cradled in your hands. You smile softly as he walks toward you.

You are the sun greeting him, bathing him a warmth. 

“Let me take you home,” Aemond says, reaching for your hand. 

You lace your fingers through his as he takes out Daeron’s keys. 

“They’re staying?” you ask, beginning to walk down the hallway.

“Yeah, they’re going to keep mom company,” he tells you, leading you out of the hospital.

The clouds have begun to part, the rain stopping once and for all as the light begins to shine from the east. You climb into the passenger side of Daeron’s car, shutting the door behind you.

You both sit in silence for a moment. Aemond looks at you.

“You ready?” he asks, though something in his eyes wants to say more.

You smile taking his hand, your expression mirroring his.

The kite and the line.

The moon and the sun. 

“Let’s go.”

note: 🥹🥺 1 PART LEFT 💖 MY BABIES 😭 I hope you enjoyed my loves! 🥰

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[rollformingmachine-blog]

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[absolute-flaming-trash]

Hey ho it’s me again

This is literally a result of me writing a whole fic based around a single line of dialogue that wouldn’t leave my brain instead of me focusing on the requests sitting in my inbox because I ✨suck✨

Also this is my second official time writing for Chrollo, so pls don’t rip me to shreds. 💛

✨Enjoy✨

Pairing: Chrollo x Fem!Reader

SFW

Word Count: 1′623

Warnings: Yandere, Implied kidnapping, Noncon touching, Implied somnophilia, Sleep deprivation. Chrollo is a cryptic fuck and Reader lets their exhaustion level get the better of them.

Falling asleep always felt like a task.

A lot of the time you required some kind of white noise in order to drift off, whether it was in the form of a random podcast, or one of those “10 hour thunderstorm vibes” videos that always seemed to pop up in your recommended section; which more often than not were the most effective.

The pre-recorded sounds would never compare to the real thing, though.

The pattering of rain against the rooftop should’ve been more than enough to lull you to sleep, but these days the white noise was now more akin to tv static in terms of pleasantry. Each drop against the metal tiles seemed louder than the last, making drifting off damn near impossible.

Any sleep you did get felt like a purgatory between the conscious and unconscious worlds. Not quite awake, but not nearly asleep... you could never tell what was real and what was a dream half the time.

It felt like a pit of grasping hands pulling you this way and that - ripping at your clothes and gripping whatever flesh they could, whether it be your arms, your legs, your hips, your breasts…  dragging you into a never ending pit of ink that left you unable to breathe and unable to force yourself awake.

The fragmented recollections left you more tired than you had originally been when you closed your eyes.

The exhaustion escaped you in the form of a defeated sigh as you rolled onto your back and sat up; gritting your teeth to keep your sounds of discontent to yourself.

Your bones ached from the concrete. You would’ve thought you’d get used to sleeping on the floor with only a jacket for padding after the first few days, but the pain in your muscles was proving the opposite. Out of instinct you looked towards the large analogue clock that hung above the main floor of what you could only describe as an abandoned steel mill. The position of the hands hadn’t changed from the last time you looked at it, nor from where they were when Chrollo first brought you to the mill.

He kept you with him on the walkways above the main area. The coolness of the guardrail against your forehead did little in terms of pulling you back to the land of the living while you looked down below, but you clung to it nonetheless. The ground was covered in patches of sphagnum moss - a steady stream of water from a hole in the ceiling kept the moisture levels high enough for certain patches to be surprisingly thick. The biggest area was currently enveloped in moonlight and was occupied by one of the four present members of the gang Chrollo engaged himself with.

You weren’t stupid, you knew exactly who they were. Hell, you had to be either living under a rock, or an infant to not know who the Phantom Troupe was, since all you had to do was pass a goddamn newspaper stand to know the basics of the infamous group. But that was all you knew. The basics.

The only details you really knew were the names of your captor and the one member sitting cross-legged among the moss… Machi.

You’d only met her once beforehand, but a part of you still held a special distaste for her. Not simply because of her status as a Troupe member, but because she was the only other woman around. It was sadly ironic since you thought that a feminine presence would’ve somehow… eased the situation you were in, for lack of a better word, but the fact remained that she had yet to even spare you a passing glance.

It made any hope you had in your mind of her helping you down the line vanish into thin air.

When it came to the other three members, it was harder to put a name to a face, but it wasn’t like Chrollo allowed you down to the lower levels to walk around, let alone start a conversation…

“You didn’t sleep long.”

You closed your eyes with a sigh, pressing your face harder against the metal. Speak of the devil.

“I didn’t.”

Chrollo hummed, the noise followed by a soft thud of a book closing and the crunch of debris under his feet.

You peaked a half-open eye at him. “Were you watching me the whole time I was trying to sleep?”

“Not entirely.” He admitted, stopping about a foot from your left.

The ambiguity of the statement overshadowed the relief you should’ve felt, but you didn’t rise to the bait. Instead silence fell between the two of you as it usually did while you rubbed your closed eye with the pads of your fingers - stars appearing behind your eyelid from the pressure. 

“You’ve been sleeping differently.”

You tittered humourlessly, “Can’t say I noticed, maybe it’s because my living arrangements have been inexplicably changed.”

“You had something I desired.”

“Which you now have.” You dropped your hand back down into your lap unceremoniously, tears pooling behind the closed lid from the irritation. “If you still think I’m hiding something more valuable than Tamerlane of all things in the shop that you and your ruffians quite literally tore apart, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“You don’t possess anything else that I want.”

“So then am I free to go, or are you going to kill me?”

A small smile appeared on his face but he didn’t answer.

You huffed, teeth catching your lower lip for a moment. “So you are going to kill me.”

The moment of false bravado was gone nearly as soon as it came when he crouched down so he was eye level with you, and the texture of the jacket’s fur lining became like hay under the grip of your fingers.

He leaned forward and you leaned back.

“Not unless it’s warranted.”

You laughed again, but it came out more as a shaky exhale. “And you’re surprised I’m sleeping differently.”

You repressed the urge to flinch when he brought one of his hands up, relief soothing the adrenaline somewhat when he reached for a corner of the jacket and began to gently pull on it. You took the hint and stood up while eyeing him warily.

“I made the comment because you usually sleep on your back.” He brushed his hand along the back to clear the dust from the St. Peter’s Cross. “You’ve resigned to sleeping on your stomach now.”

You blinked, tears of irritation still dripping from your eye, which you wiped away in annoyance. “What’s your point?”

He stood to his full height and shrugged on the jacket, straightening the lapel and running a hand down one of his arms to brush off the remaining dust. “For someone suffering from poor sleep, being on your stomach is going to increase those problems, not improve them.”

You hummed. “I wasn’t under the impression that you cared about anything other than the objects you obtained.”

“On the contrary, if I cared for them I would not get rid of them once I admired them.”

You paused for a moment, mulling over the information that just made you feel heavier, and you placed a hand on the guardrail for support.

“You tore apart my shop… ripped me from the life I had made simply so you could what? Read the original copy of a book created nearly 200 years ago without paying for it?”

He smiled. “And you placed it right into my hands, so tell me who is more responsible for your position between the two of us?”

“Why am I even here, Chrollo?” You sighed, too tired to stop the words from slipping out. “Whether it’s my own fault or not, whether I am getting sleep or not, what does it matter?! You said so yourself, I have nothing more that you want!”

“I said you don’t possess anything else I want.”

“Then what?!” Your voice was raised enough that it echoed throughout the building. Out of the corner of your eye you could see the heads of Machi and the others turn towards you briefly before going back to their own business and you felt a small amount of heat creep up your cheeks.

You forgot you weren’t alone.

“What else do you want from me?”

Debris crunched softly under his boots as he closed the distance once more, and you only resisted slightly when he brought his left hand underneath your chin.

“What, indeed?” He mused, keeping your face towards his with his index finger while his thumb traced over your chin. “When the value of things is more arbitrary rather than based on an official system...”

You grimaced, pulling back out of instinct from the hand that was giving you a terrible sensation of deja vu, but he kept you rooted in place.

The way he had trailed off made the silence that followed heavy with something you were undoubtedly missing - the obvious lost to the fog of an exhausted mind. Your grimace deepened when he ran his other hand along the length of your arm and rested it on your shoulder - the callus of his palm against your skin feeling like that of sand, and you braced yourself to be pulled downwards into the inky depths of black you had become so familiar with… but it never came.

One last tear fell from your eye, but even you weren’t sure if it was left over from the irritation, or from something else as your tired mind slid things into place.

“Are you going to get rid of me?” You asked. “Once you’ve admired me?”

He smiled again, but didn’t answer.

And silence was shared once again.

© absolute-flaming-trash 2022. Do not repost, modify, copy, or claim.

Taglist: @prettycutebunny​, @sai-my-beloved​, @we-are-so-close​, @shorkbrian​, @biby-24k​, @forcefulkitten​, @eleventhdoctorsangel​, @siphite​

[chelsfic]

Leftovers Part 9 - Nandor the Relentless x Reader Fanfic

Previous parts: Masterlist

A/N: Quick note-- most roller derby leagues don’t actually take a break from practicing during the off-season *shrug.* Hey, hey, hey, guys? Let me know what you think! I am an ACTUAL ENERGY VAMPIRE, but I feed off your kind words and support--love you!

Summary: Nandor is on the reader’s shit list, but will they reunite when a minor medical emergency pops up? (yes)

Warnings: Female Reader-insert, Angst, Medical shit (migraines, lasting effects of the vamp attack at the rave), Hypnotism

---

“Guillermooo! I’m ready for my slumber now!” Nandor bellows, standing impatiently by his open coffin and waiting for his familiar to arrive so he can complete his bedtime routine.

Guillermo appears, huffing and puffing, a moment later, “I’m sorry, master! I forgot…”

“Well, that’s unacceptable, Guillermo!,” Nandor whines with a scowl. “You’re my familiar. It’s your job to remember these things. You’d think after five years--”

“Eleven,” Guillermo interjects with a pained smile. “Eleven years, master.”

Nandor looks momentarily shocked before regaining his momentum, “Okay...Eleven years… Fine. You’d think that you would remember to come and help me get ready for bed. It’s not that difficult.”

Guillermo lets the scolding roll off his back. He knows his master is hurting. In truth, Nandor hasn’t wanted Guillermo’s help at bedtime in weeks. It’s only now that his coffin is feeling a little lonely that he’s reverting back to his old ways. Guillermo rushes to untie his master’s cravat and helps him slip off the heavy cape. The vampire looks temporarily mollified.

“Very well,” Nandor sniffs, taking Guillermo’s hand as he steps up into the coffin. “I forgive you.”

“Thank you, master,” Guillermo smiles lightly and moves to take hold of the coffin’s lid. Nandor suddenly reaches up to stop him.

“Guillermo…” he fidgets and avoids eye contact as he asks, “Do you think she’ll be angry with me for much longer?”

Guillermo looks down at his master, feeling contrary ties of loyalty tugging on him as he decides what to say.

In the end he takes pity on Nandor, reaching down to pat his soft hair and murmuring, “I’m sure she’ll forgive you soon, master.”

“Thank you, Guillermo,” Nandor sighs, shutting his eyes and crossing his hands over his chest. “You’re a good familiar.”

He gently closes the lid, feeling a happy swell in his chest despite his concern. It’s been a few days since the orgy and his friend still hasn’t shown any signs of forgiving Nandor. He knows she’s hurt, but Guillermo silently hopes things will smooth over soon. An angsty vampire makes for an unhappy familiar.

---

After Nandor let you out of the basement you ran to the shower, dousing yourself in steaming water to chase the chill out of your body. But no matter how many hot showers or layers of clothing you put on, you can’t ever seem to warm up. At least not on the inside. In the span of just a few days you’ve gone from the heights of happiness to the dumps of misery. The worst part is that you’re not even angry anymore. You’re numb to it. All you want is to fall back into Nandor’s arms and let him make you feel good like no one else has.

But…

It’s not that he slept with who knows how many people at the orgy. It’s not even that he locked you in a basement and forgot about you. It’s that he treated you like a thing. Like his possession, whose feelings and thoughts are insignificant in the face of almost eight hundred years of immortal life. For a little while Nandor made you feel special, and then he’d gone and ruined it.

You don’t even have your usual outlet! Bout season is over and practice won’t start up again for another month. And to make matters even better: all this drama seems to be aggravating your stupid brain because, for the first time in weeks, you’re feeling the dragging ache in your head left by the vampire attack at the rave. It’s been a dull, throbbing pain for a couple days now, but tonight it’s grown into a pulsing, stomach-churning migraine. You lock yourself up in your room with the lights off. The housemates probably assume you’re brooding over Nandor. But mostly...you’re just in pain. And scared.

It’s after midnight and the pain shows no signs of diminishing. You finally drag yourself out of your room, squinting blearily against the blinding glare of the candlelight, and seeking out one of the two licensed drivers in the house.

---

“The closest urgent care is on Richmond, but according to the Google reviews, we’ll have shorter wait times if we drive a bit farther to the one on Victory Boulevard. Of course, it’s entirely up to you but--”

“Colin,” you interrupt, your voice barely above a whisper, “can you please take me to the closest one and maybe try to resist the urge to feed? I already feel like shit.”

Colin pauses, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel and saying, quietly, “I wasn’t...I was just trying to be helpful.”

You immediately feel guilty and then you question if, in fact, he’s still feeding. Being friends with an energy vampire is...draining.

He drives you to the urgent care, walking inside the crowded waiting area with you and taking charge of your intake paperwork. Okay, now you could kiss him, because bureaucracy is like Colin’s native language and you’re pretty sure he uses some of his power to manipulate the staff into getting you seen sooner. In under an hour you’re leaving with a prescription and feeling a little less anxious about the possibility that you might drop dead from an aneurysm. 

You’re pulling out of the pharmacy parking lot and back out onto the road when a small, squeaking, flying thing suddenly soars through your open window and erupts in the backseat, transforming into your dark, sullen vampire lover. 

You shriek in alarm, looking out the window and noting the lightening sky on the horizon. Your heart jumps up into your throat, “Nandor! What are you doing, it’s almost daybreak!”

Nandor sits forward in his seat and leans in close to you as he speaks, “Guillermo told me you have been to the human medical shamans! What is wrong, my human?”

“It’s...nothing, Nandor. I’ll be fine. I had a bad migraine,” you mumble. You’re too exhausted to be having this conversation.

Nandor continues, unphased, “Then you should have come to me, not fucking Colin Robinson!”

“Why?” you blurt out, suddenly done with avoiding the hurt you’ve been dwelling in for days. “Because you care about me? Or because I’m your property?”

Nandor looks bewildered, “You are my human…”

You shake your head violently, turning away in your seat with an angry growl.

“...And I do care, my love…”

Sighing, you fix your eyes on the metal guardrail at the side of the road as it flashes by. Colin Robinson is sitting rigid in the driver’s seat, beaming as he gulps down the emotions flooding the vehicle. Nandor reaches out to curl his fingers through your hair just as the first rays of sunlight break over the horizon.

“Nandor, the sun!” you cry, all thoughts of your hurt and anger flying from your head. You turn around in your seat to lock eyes with your lover for one meaningful instant before he transforms into his bat form. 

You scramble for the purse at your feet, upending it onto the floor before holding it up and frantically gesturing to the flapping little bat in the backseat. 

“Get in, baby!” you plead, uncertain of how much communication actually gets through in this form.

You breathe a shaky sigh of relief as Nandor flies into the bag, curling up at the bottom with a frightened squeak. 

“Fucking hell,” you mumble. Your heart is racing in your chest. Cautiously, you open the purse to peer inside at the furry, winged creature who is...your boyfriend. You reach in and gingerly stroke your fingers over his little head. The bat’s teeth close on one finger in an affectionate, soft bite. “You’re okay now…”

Colin Robinson pulls up outside the house and turns to you with his eyes blazing, “Well, this has been quite the night!”

---

You carry Bat-Nandor into his room, taking him out of your bag and gently placing him in the fur-lined coffin. Even though you’re expecting it, you can’t help but jump back when he transforms before your eyes. You’re still not used to witnessing actual magic. 

He looks up at you with a look that’s all soft, liquid eyes and remorseful submission. 

“Will you stay with me?” he asks diffidently, toying with a tuft of rich fur on the coffin lining. “Please?”

You weigh your options. On the one hand you really miss falling asleep in Nandor’s strong arms, with the comforting scent of him wrapped around your body like a blanket. And when you pause for a moment you realize that the ache in your head hasn’t bothered you since he flew into Colin Robinson’s car. 

On the other hand…

“Is there anything you want to say to me, first?” you prompt, arching your brow expectantly. 

Nandor swallows his pride, thinking back to those horrible days when Guillermo left him for fucking Celeste. He sits up and takes your hand in his as he says, “I’m sorry I treated you like a belonging and not a person. I appreciate you very much. And I--I love you. And also, I’m sorry for forgetting about you and Guillermo in the basement…it probably won’t happen again.”

You let out a laugh, tears stinging your eyes as you reply, “I love you too, Nandor. And...I’m sorry, too. I don’t even care anymore about the stupid orgy anymore. But I should have...tried to understand it more. I think.”

Nandor sits up, grasping your face between his hands and pulling you in closer. 

“I wanted you with me at my side, my mortal,” he hisses, dropping little kisses onto your lips. “One day you will be. I’ll make you a vampire and together we will be the life of every vampire orgy. We’ll feast on virgin blood and make love until the end of time.”

Before you can form anything approaching a reaction, he claims your mouth with his, sucking your lower lip and pushing his tongue forward to tangle with yours. You cling to the fur collar of his coat, hanging on for dear life as your knees go weak. Every time you kiss it feels like you’re diving into a hot spring, losing yourself so deliciously to the sensation of his touch.

“You want that don’t you, my mortal?” he pants against your lips, reaching down to casually lift you off your feet and settle you on his lap. “Immortal life? Immortal love?”

He pauses kissing you and you rest your cheek against the top of his head, enjoying the soft brush of his hair against your skin. Do you want that? To be a vampire? To never see the sun again? To drink blood to live? To never say goodbye to this beautiful, idiot man you seem to love?

“Yes, Nandor,” you murmur, pressing your lips into his hair and breathing his scent. “I do.”

He leans his head back and kisses you once more, running his lips over your cheeks, your jaw, the long column of your exposed throat.

“Uhm!” you interrupt, a little panicked. “But not this minute, right? You have to give me some warning…”

Nandor chuckles, smoothing his hands up and down your back in reassurance.

“No, mortal. Dawn isn’t exactly an ideal time to make a new vampire…”

“Oh...okay, good,” you sigh, settling down into his arms once more. “Because I have one condition…”

---

A little while later, you’re sealed up, snug as a bug in Nandor’s coffin, with his arms wrapped around you and your face tucked into the crook of his neck. You press a kiss to his cool skin and his chest rumbles with a satisfied purr. For the first time in hours and hours your skull doesn’t feel like it’s about to crack in two and you ponder the reason for that. Of course, like all vampires, Nandor has the power of hypnosis. Maybe his very presence has a soothing effect? Like he transmits a frequency that cancels out whatever that asshole did to you?

“Nandor?” you whisper, unsure if he’s fallen asleep yet or not.

“Yes, my mortal?” he answers at once, tightening his arms around you.

“When I’m with you my head doesn’t hurt so bad… But, do you think--do you think that vampire did some kind of...lasting damage?” the question has been on the back of your mind ever since the attack but you’ve been too afraid to give a voice to your worry. 

A low growl escapes his throat as he replies, “That shit chicken vampire hurt you because he can’t even hypnotize correctly.”

“But...” you pause, steeling yourself. Are you really about to put this level of trust in him? “You can fix it, can’t you?”

Nandor pauses, swallowing down a lump of nerves as he considers. He wants nothing more than to make you feel better. But there was the time he and Laszlo gave Sean the brain scramblies…

But this time would be different. He would be so, so gentle. So careful…

He raises the lid of the coffin, sitting up and pulling you with him. A few candles still flicker from the tables around the room, forgotten in his eagerness to have you in his arms. Nandor’s pale skin glows faintly in the low light, the lines of his body lost in shadows. 

“Look into my eyes, little human,” he commands, his voice is deep and drawling. 

You obey, looking up at him as your body visibly trembles. You’re frightened.

“Shh,” Nandor hushes, running his hands up your arms and settling them onto your shoulders. “I’m going to take care of you.”

You nod, remembering how fragile and weak he’d felt when you’d carried his bat-form in your hands. You can give him the same trust. You can put yourself in his hands now and know that he won’t hurt you.

His dark eyes burn with intensity as he continues, “You are now under my command…”

---

A/N: I require CAKES AND CREAMS!! Candies and streamers and sticky, sticky toffee! Actually I just need some soft comments because I AGONIZED over this??!?!?!?! 

Tags:

@festering-queen @kandomeresbitch @strangestdiary @glitterportrait @scuzmunkie @redwoodshadows @sarasxe​ @rileyomalley​

[prurientpuddlejumper]

Spit-Roast Psychiatrist [Part 5, Male Reader][18+]

<- Part 4 | Part 6 ->

Frederick Chilton x Reader x Bryan Kneef

For @thatesqcrush‘s Summer Bingo: anal square

With apologies to all medical professionals in the audience. I am absolutely sure this violates hospital policy :)

Warnings: NSFW. Hospital sex. Threesome. Anal sex. Blowjob with bedridden burn patient. Improper sterility procedures for removal of a foley catheter. Basically sounding. Not exactly piss kink (despite the debauched suggestions on Discord, no one drinks from Chilton’s catheter like a sippy-straw) but there is a bit of pee I mean not much but look it just kind of happens, OK?

5,500 words

Bryan Kneef shifted uncomfortably.

In another room, a heart monitor beeped quietly but incessantly, and if it continued much longer, he might go insane. The dry air filling the sterile white walls was slightly too cold for someone dressed in cool linen, prepared for a southern summer. Outside, bees and flowers filled the hazy orange world, but it was always winter inside the Chesapeake Hospital burn ward. His eyes darted around for the offending AC vent. Searching for anything to fixate on besides the man in front of him.

Frederick Chilton was laid out on a hospital bed like a corpse. Inflamed skin wrinkled with scars wrapped too tightly around his bones, as if there were no muscle in between, and white teeth grinned from his skull like a mummy. He hadn’t moved from that bed in months.

Bryan wasn’t one to cower from difficult situations, but this? He didn’t know how to behave around the sick.

“Well, you look like shit,” he at last blurted.

Frederick Chilton rolled his eyes, scowling as much as his face was able without the assistance of lips.

In the bedroom, Frederick reveled in being humiliated, the ego of his outside persona stripped away and torn down. He deserved it, and fuck, he loved getting what he deserved. And the praise for being a good little slut made him melt.

Outside was an entirely different matter. That carefully constructed persona—the esteemed psychiatrist who demanded respect—could not be threatened. Not by a vulgar, unpredictable man like Bryan who knew his filthy secrets.

So why did he call?

“I assure you, it looks better than it feels,” Chilton grunted. His speech was slow and deliberate. Daily sessions with a speech therapist were helping his cheeks and tongue learn to produce shapes and sounds his lips once handled, but it would never be quite the same.

Bryan took a step toward the bed. He puffed his chest out and pretended not to be bothered by the skeletal figure that seemed barely clinging to life.

“I’m not your dick-for-rent you can use whenever you want,” he said, cutting to the chase.

Chilton coughed—a weak, wheezing sound, accompanied by involuntary spittle. “Yet here you are, running when I call.”

Why did he come?

“Any chance to fuck our boy,” Bryan smirked. In other words: I’m not here foryou.

The flash of pain in Frederick’s eyes made him instantly regret saying it. It wasn’t the cute sort of jealousy when he had Fred on his knees, desperate to come—it was the kind that made his eyes drop to the floor.

A few hard lines on Bryan’s face softened. His lips went slack in their bearded nest. He would never admit that he had been worried sick, or the tears he’d shed when he heard the news. Baltimore Psychiatrist Mutilated by Red Dragon. He was pissed that he had to read it in a newspaper first, but your voice was so trembling and weak when you finally called—when you told him the doctors all said Frederick wasn’t going to make it. You were too distraught to think. He had to remind you to eat something. You asked if he wanted to come to the hospital to say goodbye, and he pretended he was too busy with a case.

But Frederick didn’t die.

A stillness came over the room, both men so lost in their thoughts they hardly noticed the other had also fallen silent.

“As you can see, I am in no condition to provide… sexual release.”

“Shame. You used to give great head.”

Affronted by Bryan’s piercing gaze, Frederick turned his head away as far as he could. It wasn’t far enough to hide his tattered mouth.

“I suppose I could return the favor,” Bryan mused, daring to lean closer over the bed, dropping his voice.

Blood rushed to Frederick’s cheeks and between his thighs. He had sucked Bryan off many times, but never had Bryan in a submissive position. The image of him between his legs, piercing eyes gazing up at him with a mouth stuffed full of his cock sent a shiver up his spine.

“No,” he stammered. “I asked you here for one reason.”

He was too skittish for such a thing now—too accustomed to Bryan’s roughness to trust him with his fragile body. Besides, he had not missed the shock on Bryan’s face when he entered the room, or how he almost turned around at the door. What would he say if he saw his grafted cock? Mere weeks ago, the poor organ had been flayed—flaps of skin peeled around the bloody shaft, stretched, split, pinned back down in place, and stitched together again under the head.

It was better now. The surgeries corrected uneven scarring that would have made erections painful, and it had time to heal. But it still felt… tender. Sore in a way that was not physical. It looked like a medical experiment.

No. He was not ready yet. But he wanted to see you happy. Bryan could give you pleasure his bedridden, broken shell could not.

***

You were surprised to find Bryan Kneef sitting in the visitor’s chair in the corner of the hospital room. He was flipping through an issue of The Wall Street Journal with a bored expression, one leg crossed over the other, but smiled and stood when you walked in.

“Bryan? What are you doing here?”

He paused long enough before answering to suggest the question stung—as if you were implying he shouldn’t have been there, which was not what you intended at all. In fact, it explained a few things.

“Shh. He’s sleeping,” he whispered.

A glance at the bed showed that Frederick was dozing peacefully—a rarity these days. You nodded your understanding. It would be a shame to wake him.

With a quiet sigh, you rushed into Bryan’s arms, burying your face against his solid form. Thick arms closed around your waist, warm and comforting, and his beard rubbed the back of your neck as he rested his chin over your shoulder.

“It’s good to see you,” you sniffed, and just like that, hot tears were rolling over the brim of your eyelids, soaking into the collar of Bryan’s white linen jacket.

“You too.”

He held you tighter, surprised at the lurch in his heart. His eyes hung on the broken figure sleeping on the bed and imagined what it had been like for you all these months. This gaunt thing was Frederick recovering. You were all alone when he was unconscious, his body an open wound, machines keeping him alive. Alone because Bryan was too selfish and cowardly to be near that kind of sickness. But he was here now, and the way your body clung to him, he knew it had been a long time since you had someone to comfort you.

***

“Right here in the hospital?” You quirked an eyebrow. Frederick had a private room in the burn ward, since his care was so intensive, but there was a constant stream of nurses in and out.

“Yes, here,” Frederick replied. “I want to see you.” A hungry spark entered his eye, and he sucked a quick breath to prevent his salivation from escaping.

Now that his plan was so close to fruition, excitement roiled in his stomach that he hadn’t felt in a long time. At first, calling Bryan was only meant as a gift for you. But suddenly, a familiar heat flared up in his belly, and he wanted to see—wanted to watch your eyes roll back as Bryan split you open.

“Don’t worry, we bribed the nurse supervisor not to disturb us,” Bryan added, hand on your lower back.

“Did you do as I instructed?”

The pressure in your ass seemed to increase as your mind was drawn back to it. “Yes,” you swallowed heavily. “I was wondering about that.” A plug kept your tight hole stretched and prepared, worn under your clothes, just as he had asked.

“Good.”

“So… you want to watch Bryan fuck me?” you purred, starting to get into the mood. You put your hands on the side of the bed and smirked down at Frederick, sticking your ass out for Bryan.

Before Frederick could answer, Bryan interrupted: “No.”

Frederick opened his mouth. You gave an equally confused look.

“I’m his dick-for-rent today,” Bryan chuckled, low and sultry. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Chilton? I’m going to fuck you for the doctor, since he can’t do it himself. Whatever way he wants.” He ran his palms over your shoulders and down your arms as if he were presenting you to Frederick as a gift.

Frederick nodded, not missing a beat as he pretended that was his plan all along, and not an unexpected act of charity from a man who seemed anything but charitable. When he woke to find the two of you conversing in hushed voices like a couple of dear old friends, he felt a sting of fear that Bryan was stealing you away.

So Bryan was going to let him be in charge? He liked the sound of that. After three months of bondage within his own skin, he liked the sound of that a lot.

***

“Pull it out slowly,” Chilton instructed.

Your ass spasmed around the flare of the plug as Bryan gradually removed it, and, under Chilton’s guidance, drizzled more lubricant over it.

“Push it in again. Fuck him with it a little.”

“Yes, doctor,” obeyed Bryan.

A guttural moan escaped your chest as he plunged it back inside, twisting it, fucking the lube back into your tight entrance. Your fingers clenched on the metal guardrail at the edge of the mattress.

“That’s right,” Chilton mumbled. “Good.” He raptly watched you bent above him, arousal building by the second.

He had never been more pleased with Bryan, following his instructions perfectly as he worked you open, first with the plug, then with his thick fingers.

“He’s dripping for you already,” Bryan said, drawing a finger through a bead of precum

He held the slick digit out to Chilton, and he extended his tongue to lick your essence off Bryan’s calloused pad. A familiar taste flooded his mouth.

“I missed the way you taste,” he moaned.

It had been too long since he sampled your arousal, and it pooled like heat in his stomach. Bryan’s breath shuddered at the sensation, or perhaps the monstrous sight of a tongue probing forth from bared teeth.

Finally, the thick, round head of Bryan’s cock was notched against your prepared opening. Fisting the base of his cock, he circled it lightly over your puckered ring, listening to the breathy whimpers it elicited.

“Take a deep breath, my love,” Chilton said. He held your eyes, steadying you with his gaze. “And let it out slowly.”

He nodded to Bryan, who rocked his pelvis forward little by little, stretching you open around his impossible girth. You gritted your teeth and tried to relax under the invasion, but it was no longer Chilton using Bryan to fuck you—Bryan was so much bigger than Frederick ever was, the illusion was shattered in that moment. No plug could prepare you for this. You wanted to squeeze Frederick’s fragile hand, but with the intense burn you were feeling, it might have shattered like glass.

“Shh. There you are. Good boy,” Frederick whispered, and even though you weren’t touching, it was like he was helping you. That soothing, soft, carefully-spoken voice caressed your ears. You felt your lower body relax, the muscles opening up for Bryan, allowing him to penetrate deeper, deeper. “You are doing so well for me.”

Your body surrendered with a heave of breath, allowing Bryan to slide in all the way until his balls were pressed against your ass. You were so full, it frightened you to move. Frederick saw how wide and wild your eyes were, the tremble in your limbs as you gripped the rail, and told Bryan not to move.

“Let him get used to you.” He added regretfully, “It has been a long time for both of us.”

“I’m never in a rush,” Bryan said. A powerful hand gently stroked the side of your face as he waited, stock-still with his cock buried inside you.

Slowly, you experimented with moving your hips. Grinding against him just slightly, you felt the way he filled your walls, stretched your entrance as he slid in the lubricant. It was so hot, so impossibly hard, but it made blood rush between your legs, your cock throbbing to be touched.

“F-Frederick… please, make him touch me,” you whimpered.

There was a flash of jealousy in his good eye for a fraction of a second. He wondered why you didn’t beg him to touch you, even though he knew he couldn’t. You might be able to ride his hand and let his fingers haphazardly twitch over your flesh, but he could never reach your cock from here.

At Chilton’s command, Bryan began stroking your heat, and soon your moans filled the sterile hospital room, drowning out the background hum of medical equipment. He guided Bryan in exactly how you liked to be touched, sharing the secrets of your body. Your lower half was on fire, screaming out for more until you were impaling yourself on Bryan’s length, hips bucking, indifferent to the pain.

Then Bryan began thrusting.

Chilton’s breath was heavy as he watched your chest heaving above him—bent over the edge of the bed so you were hovering above his face, giving him the perfect view as you were fucked brainless. Each swing of Bryan’s hips rocked you forward, your jaw slack, skin misted with a sheen of sweat.

His arms were too weak to reach up and touch you or to stroke his own cock, but he whispered words of encouragement that made your skin flush. “Good boy. You take his cock so well. That’s it… A touch faster,” he ordered, and the slap of Bryan’s skin against your ass quickened. You gurgled out a strangled moan as his cock hit a deeper spot.

“Good. Give him more. He can take it. Do you want more, dear?”

You closed your eyes as you nodded, throat too tight to form more than a strangled growl. It was almost too much—almost. But you wanted to take more for him. You wanted him to see you at your limit with Bryan rutting into you like a beast. Bryan stopped stroking your cock and fixed both hands to your hips like a vice, fingers bruising your flesh as he fucked you harder, drawing a cry with each brutal thrust.

Chilton’s cock stirred between his narrow thighs, envious of the pleasure just out of his reach.

“Kiss me,” he rasped.

You leaned over the railing and kissed his neck first, sloppy and unfocused, lavishing affection all over his skin. Down the side of his neck, over part of his shoulder exposed by the loose-fitting hospital gown, then up his jaw, your panting lips and tongue left a trail of saliva wherever they traveled.

Finally, he gasped softly as you found his toothy, exposed mouth. Your lips became its protection, replacing what was lost. He thought he would be scared—that insecurity and disturbing memories would surge to the surface—but for a beautiful moment in time, he was whole again. He had lips, and they were warm, and soft, and everything he missed. Then your tongue was exploring the smooth surface of his teeth, and his hungry tongue licked up to consume your muffled cries, inviting your sweetness deeper inside.

“Harder,” he groaned.

Your hand snaked around the back of his scorched-bald head and pulled him deeper against your mouth. Bryan obeyed the command, too, pounding you against the side of the bed until its locked wheels dragged scuff marks into the floor, and you were so breathless you almost collapsed on top of his fragile body.

Frederick’s mouth captured your wailing moans as Bryan’s massive cock nudged against a place impossibly far inside you. And suddenly, you were breaking—ropes of cum ruining the sheets, your ass spasming around Bryan’s cock. It hit you so fast, you were practically drooling into Frederick’s mouth, melting as he kissed you through your release. When you parted, a string of saliva connected your tongues. Bryan’s cock was still buried deep in your ass, but he paused to let the two of you catch your breath.

“Keep going,” Frederick nodded to him, and he thrust again.

An inhuman noise choked out of your lungs, your body exploding with overstimulation. Stuffed to its limit, and you wanted more. Frederick wanted more, too. He wanted to be more than a spectator, trapped inside a broken body.

Your searching hand groped low on the blanket until it found a satisfyingly hard bulge buried between Frederick’s legs. You lightly squeezed around it, and he gasped out.

“I want to suck your cock,” you moaned, voice thick with need.

He froze, both eyes wide, the green seemingly as blind as the pale blue one in its scarred socket. You were already throwing back the thin blanket. A tent strained in the center of his hospital gown.

“Please let me suck it?”

“I… There is a…” he hesitated. He wanted it so badly, but fear held him back. Mortification merged with lust in his face, the inflamed pink scar tissue nearly beet red.

You shifted to the foot of the bed and gently grasped his ankles, spreading his legs wide enough for you to crawl onto your belly between them. Bryan followed with you, slipping his cock back inside you, his legs pressed up against the edge of the bed, nested between yours. He smirked down at Frederick, giving a few lazy thrusts.

Frederick glanced between you and Bryan, then back to you, your lips so close to his touch-starved erection. Watching you get fucked turned him on, and he was desperate to feel your mouth, but he did not want Bryan to see it… what was beneath the gown.

You had been by his side since he was admitted, witnessing every embarassing medical treatment he endured. But how would Bryan react?

The nervous stammering Frederick gave as you lay between his thighs wasn’t a no, and you had a safeword if he needed to stop, but it wasn’t an enthusiastic yes, either. Considering the circumstances, you didn’t proceed any further, just rested there, searching his eyes with a gentle expression as Bryan smoothly rolled his hips in a holding pattern.

Somehow your willingness to wait made him feel safer. He was in control, Frederick reminded himself. Bryan was just his puppet today. What did it matter if he was disgusted?

“Suck it, then.” His voice was sure. Aloof, even. But it trembled with emotion churning just below the surface.

You pulled the medical gown up over his hips.

And there was his cock, standing partly erect, with all its rosy mesh texture. In a few months or years, the graft texture was supposed to fade into smooth skin, indistinguishable from the original, but right now, it looked like a fishing net of flesh had been pulled over it and sewn with a zig-zagging seam down the underside.

From the center of its tip snaked a long yellow catheter, the other end feeding into a urine collection bag strapped to his thigh like a gun holster.

You circled the meeting of the tube and his cock with your finger. He hissed, and it twitched. You pulled away and glanced up to his face. His jaw was hanging open, but with no lips or eyebrows, it was difficult to assess whether it was slack with lust or open in a silent scream.

“Did that hurt?”

“N-no. Oh god,” he groaned. His fingers dug into the sheets. They could not grip tightly, but his body shuddered with the attempt.

Frederick instructed you on how to take the catheter out. You had seen it inserted and vaguely understood the process, but fortunately, he had a medical degree and academic knowledge of the procedure (if not as much practice as a nurse).

“That syringe there will do,” he gestured with his chin and signaled when you found the right one.

Bryan pulled out and patiently assisted the scavenger hunt, though he was averting his eyes from the reconstructed thing between Frederick’s legs. It did not make Frederick feel appealing, but at least it was better than a sarcastic remark. Even a half-joking “you look like shit” comment would have made him crumble, and perhaps Bryan was skilled enough at exploiting vulnerabilities to recognize that.

“And bring the kidney dish. Yes, that one.”

After disposing of the half-full plastic bladder of warm yellow liquid, you brought the supplies over to the bed and sprawled back out between his legs. Bryan stood nervously behind you, kneading your ass cheeks in his large palms.

“There is a small inflated balloon holding the catheter inside my bladder, so it cannot slip out. You will need to deflate it first.”

“A balloon?” You tilted your head curiously. “How does it feel?”

Taking the end of the yellow rubber tube in your fingers, you gently pulled until you felt resistance, the tiny inflated ball pressed against the wall of his bladder at the entrance of the urethra. You twisted it slowly, rubbing the ball against the internal opening.

Frederick’s back wanted to arch, but he was helplessly immobile in his body, completely at the mercy of whatever you chose to do. He realized in that moment how vulnerable he truly was—that you could do anything, and he couldn’t escape or resist. He gasped out, but not in pain.

“You like that?”

His breath stuttered, but he couldn’t quite form a response. He didn’t know if he liked it. It felt strange. Not unpleasant. He felt full. On the threshold of torture, but something was thrilling about it—electricity sparked and built deep inside as you kept moving it.

You were barely touching the catheter anymore, only holding the end as you searched for the balloon port, but each tiny vibration made him whine softly.

“The orange cap. Use the… s-syringe… to… drain the…”

By the time you drained a few milliliters of water into the syringe, he was moaning loudly, incoherent.

Now when you pulled, there was no resistance to the tube sliding out. As you started to remove it, the deflated balloon passed over his prostate. You recognized it by the familiar whimper—the same stuttery, breathy cry he gave when you fingered him and found just the right spot. You stopped pulling and let it slide back in a little.

He choked, panting and begging, “P-please… please!” but wouldn’t tell you please what? Stop? Faster? More? Don’t?

In truth, he did not know. It burned, but it felt like stroking the shaft of his cock from the inside. It was humiliating—urine dripped from the end of the tube. He had no control over it. He felt so alive. So wanted for the first time in months of lying in that bed. The way your eyes lit up, your lips quirking at his every trembling breath. The way you whispered, “Easy. You’ve got this. Almost there.”

He was on the verge of coming when you pulled it the rest of the way out and set it aside in the tray. You gripped his cock firmly but gently, tilting it up to show Frederick the tip.

“Look at that. Your cock is gaping open like your asshole when Bryan fucks you,” you smirked. A bit of that rough, teasing quality entered your voice—an echo of the way you and Bryan used to use Frederick like your personal sex toy.

But you were going to be gentle today.

Extending your tongue, you laved over the head of his cock, soothing the stretched hole. Then all at once, your warm, wet mouth sank over his entire length, and he let out a shattered wail that was heard through the hospital wing.

Frederick went absolutely brain dead at that moment. His entire existence floated in a shimmering void with no up or down, no gravity. There was nothing but dizzying pleasure consuming his senses. Going without sex—and until recently, without touch—for so long made every sensation more intense than seemed possible. Your head bobbed up and down in his lap, lips wrapped around his cock, and waves of volcanic heat exploded up his vertebrae with each stroke. He still could not arch his back, jerk his hips into your mouth, or writhe beneath you. All of that frustrated kinetic energy came out in uncontrolled vocalizations. The nurses must have been bribed well to not come running at the hoarse, fevered cries.

His cock felt like a cock again, not some pathetic thing discarded after surgery. He couldn’t wait to come down your throat.

He almost didn’t notice Bryan was still standing there watching, obediently waiting.

“Fuck him,” Frederick managed to hiss.

A small pink smile flashed across Bryan’s lips as he nodded and leaned over you.

Your throaty groan vibrated around Frederick’s cock as Bryan pushed forward, gripping your ass to hold you still as he split you open again. He didn’t wait for you to adjust this time, doing just what Frederick had asked—he fucked you. Skin slapping skin echoed through the small room as you choked on Frederick’s cock, powerful thrusts pushing you forward and down.

Bryan sharpened your focus. You had started with your tongue languidly exploring the underside of his cock, flicking over the sensitive area beneath the crest of its head. Warm wetness traced along scars where stitches had been removed and the flesh was still raised, making his skin erupt in tingles. Now, you hollowed your cheeks and held on for the ride.

Continuous moans tore from Frederick’s throat, louder as you drove him toward his climax. He wanted to really fuck your mouth, control your pace, but he couldn’t even lift his arms.

As if reading his mind, Bryan’s large, veined hand ran down the length of your spine and settled possessively on the back of your neck. His eyes met Frederick’s, bushy grey brows raised in question.

The corner of Chilton’s mouth quirked—a tug of his cheek—and he nodded. “Yes… faster. Make him go faster.”

Bryan’s fingers snarled into your hair and pushed you down onto Frederick’s cock, then dragged you back up and shoved you down again. Frederick sighed in relief as you gagged on the head striking the back of your throat. He pretended it was his hand controlling you—savored the tears streaming from your eyes, the drool smearing your lips and pooling around the base of his cock. Most of all, he relished how willingly you took him—let him abuse your mouth for his pleasure. You were so eager.

Sensing that Frederick’s mind was gone on that last, desperate stretch toward release, Bryan took charge, setting a punishing pace as he fucked you harder and faster in time with the rhythm he was pumping your head. Bryan was a bit skeptical at first, but listening to you gag, he wished he could have a turn sucking Frederick off. But it was almost as good using your mouth like a masturbation sleeve to jerk him off.

“Take his cock like a good boy. Nice and sloppy,” Bryan growled. “Make him come, and don’t spill a drop. You swallow it all.”

Frederick moaned again. He was so close. Heat coiled in his lower body; his balls felt so heavy and tight, ready to burst.

Each time Bryan pulled you back, your tongue did this perfect little swirl, sometimes over the tip or under the crown of his cock. A sinful flourish before his heavy hand impaled your throat on Frederick’s throbbing length. He wouldn’t last much longer at this rate. Looking down at the both of you—Bryan’s face drawn in effort, sweating, and you beneath him, cheeks hollowed as your nose met Frederick’s scarred-bare pubic mound—he couldn’t help think he didn’t deserve you. Either of you. So devoted to him in his time of need. A maddening heat rose under his abdomen. He was going to… going to—

“C-come inside him. Come in his ass,” Frederick choked out. Saliva ran down his chin wantonly without lips to collect it. His eyes were barely open and rolling back in his head.

Bryan’s breathing grew erratic and turned to audible grunts as he chased his pleasure in your tight little hole. There was no restraint now—he mercilessly abused your ass and your mouth, creating a symphony of Chilton’s cries and your choked gagging. He wasn’t sure if you could take it—usually, it was Chilton he treated this way—but your walls were gripping around him, eagerly pleasuring his cock while your hips pushed back into his thrusts. You were just as needy a cockslut as your boyfriend.

The antiseptic air seemed to still for a moment, like the perfect silence that precedes a thunderclap. Bryan’s rutting hips hitched, then came crashing back down, sheathed to the hilt inside you as he sheathed your throat around Frederick, and in an instant, you were filled with hot cum from both ends. Frederick gave the small whimpering cries of a dying animal as his bitter release coated your tongue, salty, coppery, and thick. Bryan’s roar was that of an apex predator, your inner walls flooding with his seed.

A euphoric feeling settled over you. The feeling of being claimed, totally and completely, surrounded by two men you loved and trusted, knowing you brought them satisfaction.

You sucked Frederick through each twitching aftershock until there was nothing left to be milked from him, and his cries turned to uncomfortable sobs. Only then did your lips release him, shiny and red, and already softening.

Bryan, on the other hand, was hard as steel when he pulled out of you, and knowing his quick recovery time, ready to go again if need be. But that wouldn’t be advisable, considering the hospital staff would only look the other way for so long.

You quickly pulled your underwear back on, cringing at the squishy feeling of Bryan’s dripping cum being pressed into your skin. After returning Frederick’s legs to their usual closed position, you carefully crawled onto the edge of the mattress, avoiding the paths of tubes and wires attached to him, and gently cradled his prone body.

His breath was steadying, and his eyes were watery with emotion, coming down hard from his high. You surreptitiously brushed a tear away with your thumb. He wouldn’t want you to notice he was crying, but it would be worse if Bryan saw. So you held him, whispering soothing praises, and helped him calm down while Bryan cleaned himself up and made sure there were no stray fluids on the floor.

Then Bryan stood, once again unsure.

Where did he fit, with the bed too narrow for two people to cuddle on, much less three? Did he even want to join? Hospitals reminded him of death, and Frederick’s cadaverous figure made it worse. Fucking you with him was fun, but it felt like a last request—a favor for a dying man. Though as he understood it, Frederick had already beaten the odds and was going to survive, barring complications. But it still made him shudder.

He watched you smiling at him, gently whispering comfort with your arm so carefully draped around him, and watched his mutilated mouth try to smile back. Your eyes were transfixed on each other. Another pang throbbed through Bryan’s heart. He wanted to be part of that.

He took a step forward.

What if Frederick didn’t want him to be part of his lovey-dovey snuggle? It was stupid. Bryan was only here to fuck, anyway. It was what he was good at. Bryan Kneef didn’t do clingy emotional bullshit, and this was way too fucking Hallmark right now.

He took a step toward the door. It was roughly in the same direction. The last thing Bryan Kneef wanted was to appear indecisive.

But before he could pass the foot of the bed and lock his trajectory toward leaving, Frederick’s eyes shot open and froze him. He repressed another shudder, still freaked out by his ghostly blue eye.

“Thank you,” he said. His face was unreadable (there were not enough features left to read), but his voice had a hopeful edge.

“My pleasure.” A surprisingly uncomplicated reply. It didn’t seem the time for tacky vulgarity.

You looked up at him, too, and the combined forces of your puppy-dog gazes broke his resolve. He pivoted away from the door and pulled up a chair beside the bed so he could lean close, resting his head against your warm shoulder and gently stroking Frederick’s withered arm.

Frederick hummed contentedly at the contact, and he let out a long breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

• ● • ━━━━━─ ••●•• ─━━━━━ • ● •

Tags: @beccabarba / @itsjustmyfantasyroom / @thatesqcrush / @dianilaws / @permanentlydizzy / @mrsrafaelbarba / @madamsnape921 / @astrangegirlsmind / @neely1177 / @onerestein / @dreamlover31 / @isvvc-pvscvl  / @shroomiehomie / @storiesofsvu / @welcometothemxdhouse / @feedthemadness-sweetie / @law-nerd105 / @amelia-song-pond / @michael-rooker / @xecq / @madpanda75 / @alwaysachorusgirl / @bananas-pajamas / @leanor-min / @mad-girl-without-a-box / @katierpblogg / @worldofvixen / @sassyada / @detectivebarba​

[greenninjagal-blog]

Deja vu pt4

Hey guys! Sorry for the long wait! Who’s ready for 19 pages of Remus angst? If you’re new around [Here] is the first part, and [Here] is the previous chapter for those who want a refresher!

(To that one person who asked if Remus’s vision would get any clearer: I am so sorry.)

Summary: Remus has been able to see the future since he was eight years old. He thinks that maybe his mother would have loved him a bit more if he hadn’t. (aka, Remus calls home.)

Words: 7879

TW: attempted suicide, blood, death, bad parenting

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

By the time he’s twenty one and four months, Remus is no stranger to cross country traveling. He’s been all over the country, all over the back roads, the main roads, the highways and the interstates. He’s had paper maps from greasy gas stations stuffed in his go-bag since he was eighteen, and keeps souvenirs of his travels in the form of pins and buttons he’s clipped on the shoulder strap. 

He had made it a habit to never travel with a plan. He had chosen directions on a whim, following signs when he felt the need to sleep somewhere, and picked up cars from dealerships when he had been too lazy to use his casino-breaking powers to get the cash to pay for it legally. 

Travelling is something Remus has always been familiar with. The freeing feeling of pressing his foot to the floor and blowing through endless cornfields, of burning more gas than strictly necessary, of getting himself lost on backroads without cell service-- He loves driving with the windows down and the long distances. During the billions of times that he had slept in whatever car he was using, he had enjoyed climbing on the hood and staring up at the stars until sleep dragged him away again. 

Travelling with Dee, however, is something else entirely.

At first it had been different just because there were two of them: the presence of another person made him feel the need to talk to fill the silence, made him actually have to answer the “where are we going” question, made him unsure of if what he was doing was the right thing to do.

(Not the morally right thing-- no that he knew the answer of. He meant the right thing as in the thing that Dee wanted him to do. He imagined in those first few weeks he acted a lot like a pet dog, always checking back to Dee to see that he was doing good, and wagging his metaphorical tail whenever the Shapeshifter gave him that delicious validation.)

Travelling with Dee almost means the death of sleeping in the car they were using. The Shapeshifter believes him when he says that they aren’t gonna be attacked in the night or the police aren’t going to come knocking on their windows, but Dee, as much as he tries to pretend he’s new to riches and money, is a fucking elitist. 

“Why sleep in the backseat when there is a hotel with a bed and breakfast right there?” He used to ask, sometimes still asks, never needs to ask anymore. “Why act like a ruffian without a home when I can live like a king?”

And, well, Remus had looked into his eyes for too long and gotten lost in the depths of them. Dee was pretty, you see? And Remus’s stubbornness was a learned trick that Dee knew how to circumnavigate. 

Travelling with Dee means hotels with beds and fake names in a log book. It means showers with mini bottles of shampoo and crisp covers freshly cleaned and watching the stars from the balconies while Dee smelled his money (again). It means complimentary breakfasts that aren’t super great, but they’re something that Remus hadn’t had in a while and sharing a room with another person who didn’t trust him not to run off with all their money, counting the near silent inhales and exhales, and trying not to think about stupid things like “family vacations” or “Just share the bed, Roman, its one night!”

It means no more stealing cars, because Dee rations out and puts aside money in the most atrocious order-- something that he won’t describe to Remus beyond “you’re cute, but not that cute” no matter how many times Remus asks, or when he asks. Somehow he always has the money for a new car and food and a hotel room and anything else they saw and wanted for whatever reason. 

(“Not that one,” Remus had said, grabbing Dee’s arm before he could even look in the direction of the car in the lot. And Dee blinked but didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t pick out any other silver sedans and Remus managed to make it all the way to the bathroom before vomiting his guts up. Funny, isn’t it? That he can still see blood on a bumper and hear the screams of ambulance sirens thirteen fucking years later?)

Some things are the same, though.

Remus takes note of them as he drives calmly through the evening, like he used to in the four years where he had between running away from everything he’d known and running into Dee’s arms. The air still feels nice with the windows down, his eyes still burn when the opposite traffic forgets to turn off their high beams, the radio is still soft and soothing and plays along to his heartbeat. Dee’s still curled up in the passenger side seat, wearing a fresh pastel peach button up tucked into black dress pants and dress shoes bought straight from the rack. 

He’s still cute like this, vulnerable, with scales on display and his seatbelt imprinting a line on his opposite cheek. There’s a duffel bag of stolen money at his feet, all counted and tagged in his pocket notebook that he never lets Remus flip through. In the backseat are two more duffel bags with just Remus’s atrocious half of the money and another couple of suitcases that contain their material possessions.

Something stirs in Remus’s gut at the sound of Dee’s soft snores. He really is asleep, really does trust Remus not to drive them into a guard rail or off a cliff or into another car. He really trusts that Remus hasn’t been hiding a switchblade in his sleeve, just waiting for the right moment to plunge it into Dee’s throat before making an abstract art masterpiece out of his blood. He really trusts Remus not to park somewhere on the shoulder and take all the money they have between them and disappear in the night without a trace.

He trusts Remus.

And he doesn’t have a clue how much that means. 

Well, maybe he’s guessed a little. After all, Remus still gets that surprised look on his face when Dee actually listens to him, still finds himself rolling that purple coin from the Basilisk Casino that he’s kept, still gets a little shaky when he tells certain futures because this is it, this is gonna be the time where Dee says he’s stupid and crazy and dumb and he’s not gonna listen--

Trust was a hard thing to come by after Remus turned eight. How can you trust the crybaby that starts sobbing every time someone gets a little scratch? How can you trust the psycho kid who needs medication to go to school? How can you trust Roman’s Weirdo Brother when he says he can see the future like some sideshow circus attraction?

But Dee trusts him enough to keep travelling with him, enough to keep robbing banks with him, enough to let down his glamour and show his real self while he’s sleeping.

It's all well and good and fine.

Remus wishes he trusted himself the way Dee trusts him.

The music playing is still something that Dee had picked out hours before, classical and Remus doesn’t hate it necessarily, but he did turn it down so slow that the engine is louder than those stupid violins. Remus has an appreciation for people who find the screeching strings pleasant rather than just annoying, he swears. But the rumbling of the engine, the bump of every uneven bit of road, the slow winding turns is a familiar comforting melody.

Home, Remus knows, is more of the road than any building he’s ever been in. It’s more of the feeling of Dee’s hand in his over the console, more of the smell of pine tree air fresheners mixed with new car, than any concrete solid place he’s ever been.

Which is silly, maybe. Remus thinks if he squeezes his eyes closed really hard he can still picture the layout of the house he and Roman lived in. (Not “home”, not “the place he grew up in” and he definitely didn’t grow up in there-- because it wasn’t until he was seventeen and sleeping in gas station bathrooms in two hour spurts that he learned how the world really was.)

His mother really tried, Remus thinks. She really tried to be a good person, a good mother, a good role model. She made sure they cleaned their rooms and taught them how to do the laundry. She made sure he brushed his teeth and was fed and healthy and smil--

Listen when he--

Helped him take his med--

She tried, okay. Remus thinks that if he had been a normal child he might have grown up happy. He thinks that if she had had any other son to twin with Roman she would have been a fantastic Mom. He thinks that if he hadn’t gotten his power at eight fucking years old he would have been able to articulate what the fuck was going on and they might have had a chance.

Then he wonders what the hell they would have had “a chance” at. 

And then he gets angry about himself even thinking about it and---

---drives his car directly into the guardrail. Killing himself instantly with the force of the side collision and the air bad while Dee gasps for life he desperately was clinging too and the car that had been behind them for three exits screeches to a stop a dozen yards ahead of them and with passengers scrambling from their pickup truck screaming for help---

---drives his car directly into the guardrail. Killing himself instantly with the force of the side collision and the air bad while Dee gasps for life he desperately was clinging too and the car that had been behind them for three exits screeches to a stop a dozen yards ahead of them and with passengers scrambling from their pickup truck screaming for help---

---drives his car directly----

 And Remus keeps driving on the quiet road, switching lanes so he’s in the middle lane rather than the side one.

Its not a good night.

Well in all honestly it hasn’t been a good day either. They had spent most of it driving and Remus hadn’t meant to be quiet, but his thoughts had been so loud he forgot that not everyone could hear them. They felt like screams, like a blow horn directly into his ear drums, like his brain was being torn apart with each and every fire of a neuron. 

Thinking hurt. He hated to do it. 

Dee must have picked up on it, must have taken note of his change in attitude since that morning when he had grabbed the car keys off the dresser and hoisted their bags into the car. He had asked once, Remus thought, maybe. It would have been out of character for him not to ask what Remus was doing with the keys, but if he had asked he had only done it one time.

And Remus hadn’t answered it and Dee hadn’t asked again.

He also hadn’t asked where they were going. Remus thinks that was blessing, a mercy, a silent kindness that he was too selfish to even say thank you for. He didn’t know where he was driving to, just that he had blown through a full tank and a half and somewhere over ten hours of driving and that they had crossed timezones again.

And the concept of timezones had made him angry enough to slam his foot to the floor and nearly run a blue minivan off the road entirely.

He switches hands he’s steering with, flexing and stretching his digits to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

There’s four hours now. 

And Remus knows this because even if he hadn’t graduated highschool he knew how to read a clock. Which was what he had been doing all day: watching the speedometer and watching the clock and watching his blood pressure rise with every mile he drove.

There’s four hours between them now. Which means nine o’clock for him, which means the dim sky, which means the peaks of the faint stars through the grey cloudy sky, the closed mom-and-pop shops and the dwindling number of other cars-- which means that everything around him currently is not the same thing for someone who is four hours behind them.

Dee is asleep, shifting tiredly, when Remus, grinds his teeth together so hard and violently and angrily.

His skin feels wrong, too tight, too small. It feels like someone else and he’s only borrowing it. It twists around his lungs, constricting around him like a python and stealing every breath from his chest and getting smaller with every inhale. 

His legs burn with a restless energy and his eyes hurt from driving for so long and he’s hungry.

The radio fuzzes as he drives, as they reach the end of the station's signal range, as the violins finally die and leaves them with just static. The noise is grating in a way that Remus can’t quite place, something more annoying than the screeching of his own thoughts that won’t shut up. He reaches blindly for the power button, trying not to take his eyes off the road because he doesn’t want to plow them into the back end of the SUV they’ve been trailing behind for the better part of fifty miles. 

The radio goes off. 

Remus’s thoughts do not. 

The cloudy sky makes it darker than it actually is, making him turn on his headlights and make him growl at the lane reflectors he comes across every so often. The words on the signs might as well be written in Greek because Remus doesn’t bother reading them at all.

Mostly.

He tries not to. 

But there’s one that spells out “RESTSTOP” and it gouges its phantom fingers in Remus’s brain, refusing to leave him alone after he sees it. He drives and he tells himself it's because they haven’t eaten all day, because Dee probably needs to use the restroom, because he needs a stretch. Dee hasn’t complained at all, you know? Remus owes him a little bit of a stop. Maybe they can look for a fancy hotel with a penthouse edition and get himself drunk on the minibar delights.

That’s all.

It hasn’t nothing to do with the four hour time gap.

Dee doesn’t wake even when he pulls into a well lit parking spot. There’s a handful of other vehicles in the lot: a deep green hatchback with two bikes strapped to the top, a jeep with no doors and a lot of mud, a group of sixish motorcycles and the owners of them standing nearby talking quietly. He counts at least seven eighteen wheelers resting for the hour all with a collection of name brands and graffiti on the backs. 

 Remus puts their own car in park and sits back, taking it all in. 

He’s no stranger to travelling, hasn’t been for a long time. At twenty one years and four months old he’s no longer scared of the dark and certainly not scared of going to a public restroom. The signs clearly mark eating areas, restrooms, the dark, creepy, not-at-all well lit path into the woods for those who need to stretch and want to be murdered by psycho crazy forest clowns. There’s vending machines that take credit cards for sodas and packaged foods and Remus even spots one selling cheap portable phone chargers.

There’s a payphone booth.

Three actually.

None of them are in use, currently.

Remus looks back at the clock in their car-- its a quarter past nine-- and wishes that he couldn’t do math so well in his head. Maybe if he hadn’t been able to count he would have been able to take the stupid urge by is scrawny neck and throw it out the window while he drove right on by. Maybe if he hadn’t been able to keep track of days so well he would have been able to ignore the date. Maybe if he hadn’t been so great at counting he could have been better at something else, anything else, something normal.

She had tried, hadn’t she? 

So Remus should have been thankful, grateful, happy at least about that, right? It was his fault that he hadn’t been able to figure out that his visions were telling the future until a year later, until the doctors told him it was all in his head, until his own mother had decided he was making it up. She had listened to him those first few times, listened and reassured him, and held him close when he couldn’t breathe from the crippling fear that Roman was going to die. She had weathered each of eight-year-old Remus’s breakdowns with the patience of a saint.

And he still hadn’t been able to be that perfect son for her.

“Take your meds, Remus,” She had still told him when he was sixteen and had stopped crying when he watched her cross the parking lot without looking. “Take your meds and you’ll get better.” She had said even though that wasn’t what the meds did for people who actually took them. The meds hadn’t been the glue to piece him-- or anyone-- back together. They just reminded people of how their pieces fit without scratching and breaking and shattering even more.

And Remus hadn’t even needed them back then, because his problem hadn’t been like anyone else's. 

It hadn’t been delusions and hallucinations in his head. It hadn’t been him going crazy, it hadn’t been him losing himself. 

She had tried though. To be a good mother. To love him and all his….quirks.

“I don’t need you!” Roman had said. Very loudly, very openly, very angrily. And Remus thinks about that day a lot, often, all the goddamn time. Because they had been arguing all the way up the stairs, had been fighting verbally and their mother, their mom, Mom, had been just below them in the kitchen making dinner-- or maybe it had been a dessert, baking? Or just messing around in the kitchen. She had been there.

And they had gotten in trouble for arguing much quieter before.

Remus thinks about that day. He thinks about the vision of Roman dying by his own hand, of the blood and the gore and then fluttering pulse and the concept of a soul leaving the body. He thinks about how his parents would have come running the moment they heard Roman scream in pain.

He thinks. 

Maybe he thinks too much. 

And maybe one day he’d get the courage to ask himself the big looming question: Had she loved him? Or had she loved the concept of him?

Today wasn’t, hasn’t been, isn’t that day.

It’s nine thirty, here, at this rest stop somewhere in Oregon, where Remus is clawing his fingers on his thighs and letting his unevenly chewed nails catch on the holes in his fishnets. Its nine thirty here on the day where Remus is twenty one and four months old and staring at a payphone like it was about to ring all by itself. Its nine thirty one and Remus is thinking too much, too loudly, not enough.

It must be around five thirty for her. Right in the middle of dinner. Or after. Maybe she’s doing the dishes under scalding water that boils her hands right off. Maybe the dinner was poisoned and she’s clawing at her throat right now. Maybe she went out for the evening and got hit by a car when crossing the street.

Remus knows he could check. He doesn’t.

Because his skin is already itching and his breath is too hot and he wants to cry but he’s too old to be crying over things like this, just like his mom has said a thousand times over. 

He wonders if she would believe him if he told her how many times she had cried over Roman, how many times she had frozen at the sight of her precious baby boy going still and silent, how many times she fell to the ground and clutched at his body screaming her sobs like there was a chance any god out there would hear her anguish and give her son back. 

Like she had only one to love and cherish.

She had tried.

Remus wants to laugh so badly it hurts. The urge itself rips through his body, shredding his organs with a razorblade and filling his lungs with fluids followed and squirming its way up his throat inch by inch with a determination Remus hasn’t seen in himself since that gas station four years ago where he saw himself jump in front of an eighteen wheeler and felt his insides go splat! for the first time.

Remus wants to laugh, because she had tried, and it hadn’t been enough and Remus still---

He still---

Remus pulls the keys out of the ignition and throws them in the cupholder next to the sleeping Dee. He exchanges it for his wallet, which had seen far better days and been handled far nicer, but that’s beside the point. His driver’s license is overdue but nothing short of a nuclear bomb will get him back to the state he had once lived in-- he skips over it and the various rechargeable cards he had picked up over the years (Starbucks, Seven-Eleven, a Techron Advantage Card he got for fun and never actually used because Dee always paid for gas) and goes straight for the cash.

They’re all large bills. He takes a fifty.

Dee murmurs softly as he unbuckles his seat belt and flies into a wide blown panic when Remus opens the door. Quicker than Remus thought was possible for a guy to move, he springs over the dividing console and grabs Remus’s arm with-- OW FUCK DEE -- claws.

Remus yanks back on instinct, throwing himself against the already open door and tumbles into the empty parking spot next to them. His arm howls with pain, with an agony, with a cacophony that drowns out all his other thoughts for the moment. 

The blood is red. 

Remus is twenty one and four months old and his body wracks with such a vehement hatred for the color it makes the rest of his blood, the blood in his veins, the blood in his body, his blood boil. Its red, and he hates red, has hated red, will forever hate red.

Because red was the color of Roman’s favorite jacket when they were eight, the color of Roman’s shoes that he left out on the stairs too many times, the color of Roman’s blood too.

Red had been the color staining the bumper of a silver sedan, the color of a broken snow globe hitting the carpet, the color of Remus’s insides on the freeway, and the underside of an eighteen wheeler, and the bottom of the motel bathroom tub. 

“Remus!” Dee yells from inside the car, morphing, changing, panicking in a way that is not like him at all. He clambers into the driver's seat looking too pale for a guy whose skin tone could be any color he wanted it to be. “I’m sor-- I didn’t know we ha--- Oh my god I’m sorry!” 

He grabs all the napkins they have squirreled away in the crevices of the car, then the half empty tissue pack from the last time Remus had decided to check to see if the line in McDonalds was going to be long, then a scarf Dee had bought before he remembered that it was warm enough to cook eggs on the sidewalk in most of the places they went to. He spills out of the car even less gracefully than Remus had, bubbling up apologies like his mouth was a fountain. There’s an emotion wafting off him, something that taints the air and makes the hair on Remus’s neck stand on edge.

“It’s okay,” Remus whispers.

“You’re not okay!” Dee frantically responds, turning a stripe of his hair blonde and completely missing the part where Remus did not say he himself was okay.

Dee’s fingers feel like bugbites up and down his arm, like cigarette ends being jammed into his flesh, like he was the cake and Dee was placing enough candles in him to make up for every birthday his mother had missed celebrating.

“Its okay,” Remus says, tugging his arm away before Dee can turn him into a house fire that burns down the whole block.

“Remus--”

Remus stands up. “I need to make a phone call.”

Remus doesn’t need to make a phone call. He probably shouldn’t make a phone call. 

“Remus!” Dee says standing up too. He’s taller this week, today, now, than he’s been before. He’s got an inch on Remus, and he uses that inch to look down at him and breathe like every inhale might be his last. There’s blood on his hands from trying to mop up where Dee had clawed him. Remus can feel the warmth of his blood trailing down his fingers even now. 

“What the hell is up with you right now!” He demands in a way that makes Remus’s stomach churn, that makes his knees weak and his throat feel all lumpy in all the wrong places. 

He should be mad. Dee should be furious at him for ignoring him all day, for driving them through a handful of states, for not pausing for bathroom breaks or any type of food, for not waking him when he stopped at the rest stop. He should be so angry he can’t see straight, so enraged that he stood up and grabbed the keys and drive the fuck away from here. He should be mad.

So why does he sound so scared? 

“Is this about the Mall?” Dee asks, “I can do better, Remus, please! I’m sorry!”

He’s babbling like a brook, about things in the mall that Remus barely remembered because it was a day and a half ago and three, four, five states gone. He’s talking about the Mall the same way that eight-year-old Roman had been apologizing for name calling, while Remus was three sheets in the wind during a tornado on his own thoughts.

“No,” Remus says, which is about as effective as shoving his finger in a hole in a dam.

The parking lot lights make Dee look like he’s standing in a spotlight on stage. Remus hates the sight, hates the feeling that they’re putting on a production for someone else's entertainment, hates that he should know his lines by now and because he doesn’t he's ruining everything around him.

Dee moves like a clockwork mannequin with rusted gears. Remus thinks he can hear each individual gear screech as his back straightens and his weight shifts back and Dee looks more like Roman than he’d ever know.

“N--n--” Dee repeats, “No?”

As if he didn’t know what the word meant.

“Like….no I can’t do better?”

-- “Like, No Get Back in the Fucking Car, Dee!” Remus explodes.---

--“Like No, Leave me alone for five seconds!” Remus erupts.---

--”Like No, Its not your fault I’m a fucking mess!” Remus chokes.---

--- “Like No, Its not your fault. I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me.”--

-- “Like No, I’m making bad decisions and I’m sorry and I don’t know what to do and I know that you don’t really love me the way you think you do because no one ever loves me that way. Like No, this is a future that I’m not going to choose but I wish I had because keeping this all in my chest hurts like a little bitch, Dee. It hurts so bad. Like no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m going to have such a nose bleed from this one, and because you’re you, you’ll know that I’ve been bullshitting my way through this for a good while. My power’s broken, Dee. Don’t you see? And once I tell you what's going to be left for you to stay?.”---

“Like No,” Remus says, defeated. “I don’t even remember what happened at the Mall.”

Dee stares at him with stolen sapphire eyes, with an emotion he can’t place, with wordless questions Remus doesn’t want to answer.

He doesn’t know what time it is.

A drip of his blood leaks down his lip and lands on the asphalt at his feet. That’s okay.

He breathes in the dry air, feeling it scratch down his throat and butcher his lungs with each inhale. “I...need to make this phone call.”

“Why?” Dee pleads, and Remus thinks that if even Dee can tell it will end badly, he should know better than to go through with it. 

But Remus has been thinking too much lately, about too many things. He’s been trapped up in his own head, and the last people he tried to let help him gave up on him.

And he still can’t give up on them.

“It’s her birthday,” Remus says with a smile that borders on deranged, “And she tried, you know?”

He doesn’t know. Remus can tell by the look on Dee’s face. But that’s okay. They made a pact after all, after that first night, that they wouldn’t get personal, that discussions of feelings were off the table. And Dee had said in a future that hadn’t happened that Remus was an investment that will pay out one day. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know.

“Remus,” Dee says, controlling the stage like he was born to do it. “What will she say?”

Remus shrugs and turns away because he’s never been able to make it past intermission of any production he’s watched. The fifty in his hand has splatterings of blood, his arm aches and whines as he uses it to smear away the waterfall from his nose. At least a couple of the sidewalk lights are broken so he doesn’t scare every single normal person chilling at the rest stop as he walks up.

Remus is twenty one and four months, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t waste forty seven dollars on snacks from a vending machine just to get the change in quarters to call cross country. He’s not hungry but he peels open a Cliff bar and takes a bite anyway. The rest of the food he leaves on the patio floor around the vending machine for whatever comes by, be it the kids he can hear yelling or the raccoons watching from the tree line.

He glances back at the car, their car, Dee’s car. Just to make sure its still there. That Dee didn’t drive off without him.

Dee hadn’t, didn’t, doesn’t. He’s sitting in the driver's seat with the door wide open, half in half out, and it looks like he was fiddling with the radio again.

Remus tosses the other half of the bar into the trashcan and walks the last three steps to the payphones. 

She had tried. Remus puts the phone to his ear and tries to remember how to breathe. 

The buttons are stiff. Remus’s knuckle leaves behind traces of his blood as he dials. The back of his throat tastes like his inside of his stomach. There’s a gritty feeling along his teeth and the bottom of his mouth from the Cliff Bar. He’s knees tremble to the sound of the ringing, leaving him swaying in the too-long silences, in the bated breaths, in the calm before the hurricane. 

“Hi! It's the Regis Family! We’re not available right now, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you!” 

Remus’s mouth tastes like blood. He swallows it down, breathes through the rest of the message, the beep and another moment where his chest just aches with a billion words he doesn’t know how to say.

“H….hey.” His voice is raspy. Why is his voice so raspy? He clears his throat. “I, uh...I was calling to say, Happy Birthday. Hope it was a good one. That’s all. B--”

“--Hello?”

Remus’s jaw clicks shut at the noise, the words, the voice. Because even four years later Remus knows it like the back of his hand, can still imagine it screaming his name in the store, of it laughing as she brushed through his curls, of it whispering softly that everything is fine, everything is okay, I’m right here, Remus.

“Ha, Hi! Sorry about that, you caught us just as we were getting back to the house! Oh, this is embarrassing… Who is this? Our caller ID isn’t working…”

She trails off.

Remus thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe.

She sounds out of breath, flushed and happy and excited in a way that he doesn’t remember her ever being before. His vision tunnels through memories, through scenes in his head where she’s smiled and laughed and giggled the way she’s doing right now. He’s coming up blank.

He grabs the wall to keep himself steady.

“Hello?”

“I’m here,” Remus croaks.

She’s different now. So is he. Everything is different and the world seems to stop at that mind blowing statement.

“.....I’m sorry,” She says, “I really need to know who this is, now.”

Remus should hang up. 

Remus needs to hang up. 

He laughs, like he’s on death row, like the barrel of a gun in on his temple, like his foot just left the ledge.

“What?” He asks, “Can’t a mother recognize the sound of her own son's voice?”

There’s a breath. A moment. A second. Remus feels it. Like it's tangible, palpable, real. Like all the clocks in the world decided to stop. Like a tick without a tock. Like the past and the present and the future didn’t exist at all. There’s a breath, and Remus thinks that she had tried once, maybe she could try again. 

They both could try again.

“Oh my god. Is that...Baby, is that really you? I’m so sorry for what I said. You were right.” 

“Wait--”

“You’re always right. And I’m sorry about-- about everything. Please let me make it up to you?” His mother says and Remus gets a sinking feeling in his chest.

“What--”

“Or at least talk about it? Can we do that?”  His mother says and Remus should have hung up.

“Mom--”

“Can you come back home, Roman?” His mother says and Remus sees red.

Because, of course, she thought he was Roman. Of course. 

Red is the color of Roman. The color of his jacket and his shoes and the ball Remus should have thrown into the road when they were eight. The color of a past Remus can’t get rid of because every time he does anything he can only hear Roman’s voice in his head or picture his mom with her red lipstick telling him to take his pills and stop being so abnormal. It’s the color of a future that he can’t reach because every time he gets a little bit of hope he’s reminded that he’s unnecessary and forgettable. 

Red is the color of Remus’s blood that looks just like his twin’s but somehow has always been valued less to their mother.

He squeezes the handle of the phone so hard his fingers go numb from the pain, and the scarf around his wrist turns scarlet. His body trembles and bubbles and boils like its housing a volcano ready to erupt, or a thousand termites are trying to chew their way out of him, or every atom in his body is trying to shake themselves apart.

Remus is twenty one and four months old and he hangs up the phone so hard that it pops right back out of the slot and swings to the ground by its cord.

He doesn’t fix it. In fact he doesn’t even see it because he’s too busy seeing red. Too busy seeing Roman’s head collide with the bumper of a silver sedan, too busy seeing Roman’s neck break when he falls off the swingset wrong, too busy seeing Roman’s body on the ground of his carpet surrounded by the shattered remains of a snowglobe, too busy seeing all the things he should have done or let happen or helped happen.

Too busy knowing that hindsight is 2020 and Remus’s insides suddenly want to be outsides and his arm hurts and he wants to-- 

He wants to--

--“REMUS!” Dee shrieks from across the parking lot, sprinting towards him because he forgot that he can shapeshift into something faster. There’s a terror in his eyes, a fear, a horror in his expression that's like being stuck under a collapsed building and knowing that no one is gonna come. “REMUS! SOMEONE HELP!”---

--“REMUS!” Dee shrieks from across the parking lot, sprinting towards him because he forgot that he can shapeshift into something faster. There’s a terror in his eyes, a fear, a horror in his expression that's like being stuck under a collapsed building and knowing that no one is gonna come. “REMUS! SOMEONE HELP!”

But no one is close enough and Remus’s knots are a practiced stubborn thing that has his body convulsing before Dee remembers he can make claws and cut the scarf off.---

--“REMUS!” Dee shrieks from across the parking lot, sprinting towards him because he forgot that he can shapeshift into something faster. There’s a terror in his eyes, a fear, a horror in his expression that's like being stuck under a collapsed building and knowing that no one is gonna come. “REMUS! SOMEONE HELP!”

But no one is close enough and Remus’s knots are a practiced stubborn thing that has his body convulsing before Dee remembers he can make claws and cut the scarf off.

But by then Remus is already dead.---

But no that’s not right. 

He doesn’t want to die. 

His mouth tastes like metal, and he’s so sick of the taste of metal, of the smell of blood, of the sight of red on his clothes and on him. He’s so sick of being the weird twin, of being the one everyone wants to forget, of being gifted with a power that's so shitty it his own body rejects it. He’s so, so sick.

And tired.

And angry. 

That he spent all day trying to figure out what to say to his mother and she doesn’t even remember him. That his family pushed him away and now he watches himself jump off buildings or into traffic or off tables at a rest stop. That his skin feels too small and his mind too big and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with him but everyone still treated him like there was.

“Pardon me,” A voice says to his left. “Hello? Sir? You seem to be bleeding...”

It belongs to a guy with glasses, big thick blocky glasses that match every other part of him: his sharp jawline, his stiff spine, his set shoulders. It belongs to a guy with hair so dark it might as well have been a black hole, with eyes swirling with so many blues they looked like nebulas, with skin so pale it might as well have been the surface of the moon. It belongs to a guy that reaches out oh so carefully and touches Remus’s shoulder to check that he’s alright and---

-- “A stick in the mud?” Logan suggests sourly as they walk. The rain speckles his glasses and plasters his hair to his head.

“I was gonna say prude, but that works too,” His younger brother shrugs, sipping loudly from his drink. “Girl, you really just need to loosen up. You’re always so stressed!”

“I do not need to loosen up,” Logan counters, “In fact, if anything, I need to tighten up my interactions with people more. You saw what happened to the baristas at the Starbucks.”

“Yeah, and it was Awesome!” His brother motions to the drink in his hand, “Free drinks!”

“Will it still be awesome when they get fired and lose their source of income because they unwittingly gave away merchandise to customers?” Logan asks. He tugs his jackets around him tighter, hunching his shoulders and wishing that between the two of them they had thought to bring at least one umbrella.

His brother rolls his eyes because the rain doesn’t bother him anymore than the slight chill or the cars passing dangerously close to their sidewalk. “Honey,” He says, “Its two free drinks. It’s not gonna kill the infrastructure.”

Logan grunts, dismissing the rest of the argument as he was prone to do more often these days. “Remind me again why we’re here.”

“That prince dude is supposed to be around here today!”

“You mean, Princeps,” Logan corrects. “Assumedly named after the swordsmen from Roman armies pre-Marian reforms. Which does not make any sense considering that he does not carry a sword and his perceived power does not--”

“I wanna get his autograph!”

Logan squints back at his brother. “You want the autograph of a man who is running around the country in tights? You don’t even have anything for him to sign.”

His brother shakes his mostly empty drink and points to the spot right below where the barista had scratched out his own name, not that Logan can see it, or anything. “Duh.”

Logan shakes his head, as his brother prattles on about Princeps face, his biceps, his thighs. And as much as Logan enjoys listening to his brother talk about things that interest him, he wishes that it was something other than men that thought “superhero” was a stable dayjob. He sighs and removes his glasses and to clean them as best as he can with the raindrops being the nice of dimes.z

 He hates the rain, hates that he couldn’t ever see more than three feet when it so much as sprinkled, hates that his brother has no such problems at all and can continue walking without a care in the world.

“LOGAN!” His brother yells.

And Logan has just enough time to feel his stomach jump straight to his throat, before he walks blindly into an open manhole. His forehead slams on the outer rim so hard he sees actual stars in the corners of his blurry vision. And he fumbles and  flails and falls and...

And the empty air catches him, covets him, carries him off. Because he’s dead as soon as his head hits the concrete floor ten feet below---

Remus inhales like he’s been drowning for the past four years, and hasn’t been able to find the surface. He stumbles back from the stranger who had approached him, from the man who has a younger brother, who doesn’t like superheroes, who’s name is Logan. He stumbles back and feels the whole Earth roll under his feet, turning the solid ground to an uneven puddy.

Logan jerks back as well, be it shock or surprise or something in between and equally bad. He looks at Remus, the way that the first dealer from the Basilisk Casino had, the way that the new freshmen at their high school had when the older kids told them to steer clear of the guy who looked just like the theater star, the way that Roman had when he had first seen the orange bottle of pills that were supposed to make Remus not cry all the time.  

“My apologies, you seemed to be in distre--” Logan starts.

“Don’t touch me,” Remus says quicker, louder, angrier. Because Logan doesn’t know that he’s going to die some day in the future, that its going to be a stupid sudden death, that his brother that he actually loves and whom loves him back is going to witness it. Because Remus doesn’t know why he knows either.

His skin blisters and bubbles and itches in a way that tells him he needs to take it off. His arm burns from the scratches, his blood is making his hand and wrist all sticky and his head feels a bit like cotton. His mouth tastes like Starbucks Hot chocolate and ash. 

“Don’t touch me,” Remus says again, because he feels radioactive and can smell petrichor in the air and everything about it is wrong. If he says anything else he thinks he might throw up or cry or both and he doesn’t think anything other than more blood can come up.

Remus turns and runs. 

“Remus?” Dee asks, when Remus throws himself into the passenger seat the way he should have that morning.

Remus shakes his head. And keeps shaking it because if he stops his thoughts will catch up and then they’ll really be in trouble.

“Drive,” He manages between his inconsolable gulps for air.

“Where?” Dee asks.

“Don’t care.”

He doesn’t. He just needs to be somewhere other than here.

Remus is twenty one and four months and he’s no stranger to travelling without a destination. Dee buckles his seat belt and pulls out of the parking spot without another word. Remus brings his knees to his head and counts, and counts, and counts. If he closes his eyes he thinks that he might see the silhouette of Logan standing next to the payphones staring at his hand still so he doesn’t close his eyes.

“That’s just what I’m saying, John.” The radio says, “All these new people with what can only be classified as “superpowers” and what is the Police doing about this? Nothing!” 

“Hotel,” Dee says, “We can order some food there and actually look at those marks on your arm.”

“Whatever,” Remus says.

“Well what do you expect the Police to do?” The radio says, “Their answer to everything is “shoot it.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the police shooting at a kid who just so happened to be able to make lightning. You heard about that incident in the Idahoan Mall didn't you? Times are changing. It's up to the people to police themselves now.”

Dee sticks his tongue out ever so slightly, like a snake smelling the air.

“You’re encouraging the actions of people like that dragon guy from that incident? The child from that event is in the hospital right now. 

“So is the man that had been robbing the store. Which is better than him being the morgue. I’m not saying that I think that putting children in the hospital is a good idea! I’m saying that only protecting the lives of “good” people is telling everyone to become judge, jury, and executioner. The Idaho Mall Incident could have been handled better-- in fact I think if the new guy, the one around the east wearing the white? You know the one I’m talking about, Karen.”

“Yeah, yeah, the Prince? I think he called himself Prince.” 

“Yes. If the Prince had been the one who had handled the Idaho Mall, it could have been handled completely peacefully, without either parties having ended up in the hospital.”

Dee grips the steering wheel, tightly.

Remus reaches out and turns the radio off.

[Part 5]

[jugmug-rollf-orming]

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Conclusion

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[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Crane Team: Tamayuki Ghost Road

This is a continuation of the ReWritten series told in 3rd person. In Dragon Raja’s Fifth novel, there is a mention of a Team of White King Hybrids that are mixed between Hydra and Devil Clan mere months after those two gangs fought in a fiercely bloody Gang War. How that team came together is the subject of this shorter (shorter) series.

In the hills outside the Tama River, most areas were completely closed to the public. The hills were covered with thick forest that served as a buffer zone between the city and the surrounding area, absorbing water runoff and pollution and serving as one of the last remaining bastions for wildlife. That’s not to say there was nothing. Military and civil engineering projects regularly went on here and there were a few ancestral plots of land owned by citizens.

One such citizen had a small tourist hut for hikers and bikers wanting to explore the woodlands. He called himself Tamayuki and claimed the land here was named after his family. A doughy faced man who looked deceptively young, he greeted Yoko and Crow as they drove up the gravel driveway to his small flat surrounded by trees.

“Come for a drive?” Tamayuki greeted them in a grey kimono. A thin grey beard rested in front of his chest, one of the few actual indicators of his age.

Yoko tossed her dark hair over her shoulder. “I think I’ll take the Supra today. Tamayuki-san. This is Crow.”

Crow stood next to his red sports car and nodded to him. “Nice to meet you. This is a race track?”

“Not really. It’s actually a private road up to an observatory. The Lady likes to use it as a personal track though.”

“Lady?” Crow looked at Yoko and she smiled back at him as she walked away to a large garage behind the house.

The massive roll up door opened and the lights turned on, each one highlighting supercars of modern and old eras.

Crow took the cigarette from his mouth. Some of them were genuine racers, formula one cars with numbers painted on in decals and colored blue, black, yellow and red, but most were modified cars, Toyotas and Fords, suped up and trimmed down for maximum speed. Yoko knew exactly which car she wanted and opened the door to fish the keys from the magnetic holder. She didn’t even ask permission. The door slammed, the car roared to life and she drove out the other side of the door onto another gravel driveway without a word.

Tamayuki turned to Crow. “Care to chat over tea?”

“Got anything harder?” Crow asked. 

“Of course,” He chuckled. 

They made their way back to the house. The shadow of the mountains made the sun set early and without the fanfare of a sunset of colors. There was light, and then there was just the dark shadow of the mountain. The soft tap of a deer-chaser provided a rhythm to the chorus of crickets.

“She doesn’t usually bring people up here. Are you someone special to her?” Tamayuki asked.

“I shouldn’t be. We don’t really know each other. Why do you call her Lady?”

Tamayuki clasped his hands behind his back. “Because she is the Dragon Lady. The wife of Ruri Kazama.”

“So is she the leader of the Devil Clan?” Crow asked, glancing at him, blowing a thin line of smoke. They were approaching an enclosed patio. The lights were on and it seemed to be larger space. Too large just for some lonely old man.

“She doesn’t think of herself as such… but … that’s what she is whether she accepts that title or not.” He opened the glass door to a room with an array of mounted TVs connected to cameras set on various areas of the road. From this room, they could observe the activity of the entire mountain road. 

Tamayuki took a small bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, a fine Japanese Scotch, and brought it back to Crow to show him.

“You don’t have to bring out the good stuff, Pops.” Crow kept his eyes on the road.

“I insist. She brought you.” He poured them the fine spirit.

“I’m just a driver. Nothing more.” Crow insisted firmly.

Tamayuki chuckled again. “Oh, no. You are a Hydra. I can’t expect you to understand. But you are with her, a Devil Clan member, a high ranking one. In the middle of the woods, no one would question you very much if she just disappeared. She has to have tremendous trust in you.”

Crow lowered his glare to the cup. “Things are changing right?”

“That’s hard to say. I don’t think anyone is expecting too much.” The man sighed.

Crow glanced to the TV screens. “Car racing huh? Not something I would have assumed looking at her.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call what she does racing.” Tamayuki sat back to watch the cameras and grimaced. “It’s more like torture than racing. By the time she reaches the top of the hill, the tires and suspension are completely wrecked and the car is smoked well before that. Normally, the speed is only around 25 miles per hour but she will run up the road at near or over 100.  On one run, I clocked her doing 140. It will take the average driver an hour at legal speeds to drive this road, but she does it in 10 minutes. I do my best to maintain the road but bumps and cracks and ridges will form overnight. There are no braking markers, turn indicators or even any frame of reference for where she is. The road is completely dark. Just the sky in front of her and a one hundred foot drop off. No guardrails.”

“Is she trying to die?” Crow’s eyes were wide.

Tamayuki watched the cameras. She was using headlamps that pierced the darkness, but at those speeds they hardly mattered. Her car was only on the screen for a split second at a time. “She says when she’s up there it feels like she’s flying away from the world. She has the road memorized.” He eyed Crow for a long time. “But… if she dies, it will be one less Ghost in the world. Right?”

Crow didn’t respond to that, he tilted the ice in the glass.

Tamayuki let the silence sit, eyeing him with an unspoken accusation.

Crow met his eyes with an even sharper glare. “Look, old man. Ghost killing wasn’t ever something I enjoyed. It’s not something I brag about or I’m proud of. But it’s not something I can say I regretted. It’s just the way things were back then. You’re a Ghost. Aren’t you?”

The man nodded.

Crow licked the remaining alcohol from his lips, his heart pounding. “You didn’t just poison me did you?” He laughed lightly.

“She doesn’t bring Hydra here… for a reason.” The man’s face was suddenly cloaked in shadow, and Crow noticed that there was a faint golden brightness in his eyes that was far from natural. “She trusts me with you, as much as she trusts you with me. I can’t say I’m happy that she brought you here. But I'm not about to break the bond I have with her. She’s a very lonely woman. And I am a very lonely man.”

A bead of sweat rolled down Crow’s temple.

“I spent my forty years in detention as a ghost. All the best years of my life were squandered. I never found a wife, never had kids, or got a steady job. I only live off my inheritance. I guess, you could say, I never was able to escape the prison they put me in. She comes and races my cars. I can see her, have her close to me. That’s as much as a man my age can hope for.” 

He finished off the whiskey. He watched the screen as Yoko pulled off a drift on a spectacular hairpin turn. The back of the vehicle hung off a one hundred foot drop and it skidded for a moment, throwing a huge plume of dust,  before zooming off into the night. “She likes throwing dirt off the road. She gets a kick out of it.” Tamayuki smiled.

Crow swallowed hard, realizing that if she went off that cliff, he was a dead man.