#More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse

[bucketbueckers]

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME

pairing: paige bueckers x fem!reader

content: au, language, slight spoilers for sinners (2025) but it kinda deviates from the plot a bit, angst, blood, death, ending is happy but happy could be debatable tbh, complicated history between reader and paige but they love each other a lot 😕, smut, make up sex(ish), oral (r!receving) (bc what is sinners if not a movie about eating puss), scissoring, spitting 👅, what do you call sex when your partner is trying to kill you but they Can't so they're fighting against their nature and their body and mind but they get you off so it all works out (kind of?), period typical mentions of racism, homophobia, & misogyny, minor historical inaccuracies, slight soulmates, horribly rushed ending, terrible proofreading

wc: 22.5k

synopsis: You and Paige Bueckers had a complicated history. You existed in that weird plane between lovers and something doomed by a bitter narrative, a relationship marred by the hatred of your time and the impossibility of desire. The two of you weren’t ordinary — you were an orphan taken in by a Hoodoo practitioner, and Paige, who wasn’t quite something or the other, was a woman who just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. You should have known that she’d leave one day, not one to be tied down in a place she clearly didn’t belong. There’s no misery worth complaining about in the Mississippi Delta, but when Paige returns from Chicago with Smoke and Stack in tow, you realize they’d brought with them a whole lot more than ambition and foreign liquor.

notes: i have nothing to say besides i love sinners and i really hope y'all like this one 🙏 if you're hesitant about reading bc you haven't seen sinners, you really don't need movie knowledge, although i have a link to a totally legal website if anyone's interested in watching. this one was a challenge to write but im happy w how it turned out (even though i definitely failed my exams because i wrote half of this in a day when i should have been studying)!! please be gentle in the inbox bc i hurt myself with the end too but i debated three different endings and thought this one was Right 💔 as always tho i hope y'all enjoy 🫶

When it happens, you’re surprised. Almost devastatingly so.

You’re surprised because you know that you love Paige Bueckers. You had told her as much. You’re surprised because she had told you the same. Because she promised that one day, she would get the both of you out of the Mississippi Delta. That she’d take the both of you north, perhaps somewhere more tolerant of two women being together. It comes as a shock to you because of the way in which she left – silently, unassuming, simultaneously remorseful and unforgiving.

It’s surprising because she’d clearly been thinking about it for a while. She didn’t leave like she’d shared a stranger’s bed for a night, guilty and ashamed and clumsy all in one. Paige left in the same way you’d once watched a ranch hand put a horse out of its misery when it broke its leg – like it was inevitable, carefully thought out, meant more to save you than to keep you in pain.

That was the confusing part to you. You thought that you and Paige were fine. Having grown up together, you were friends for a long time until it blossomed into something more. Perhaps something more taboo, but you were never quite sure how something so pure could be considered wrong. You knew that you and Paige were unconventional. The Mississippi Delta was all thorns and flames, a region wherein its history was stiflingly pressed down on everyone who wasn’t white or male or wealthy. So, you knew that to be young, and women, and in love in the Delta was difficult, but that had never seemed to be an issue – not one that you would have allowed to tear the both of you apart.

She left you in the morning, and the night before was perfect in a way that gives you emotional whiplash. Annie, a Hoodoo practitioner who had taken you in at a young age, was out, leaving you alone in your shared home. You were standing at the counter, carefully layering pie lattice over a thick bed of apple filling, when Paige knocked and let herself in like she lived there her entire life. She may as well have, considering how much time she truly spent with you.

You grinned at her when she made her way into the kitchen, carefully toeing off her shoes, knowing Annie’s rules. She was carrying a bag in her hand which she set down on the counter before she pressed up behind you, her arms encircling your waist and her lips dusting a sweet kiss to your temple. “Smells good,” she’d commented, watching your fingers work the pie crust.

“Thank you,” you responded. “Flattery doesn’t mean you get to taste it before it’s finished, though.”

Paige sighed, the sound wounded and dramatic, and you laughed because you knew her so well. “What if I make you a deal? We can negotiate.”

You rolled your eyes, cutting the excess crust off of the edge, missing her warmth when she pulled away to reach for the bag she’d walked in with. “You’ve been spending too much time with Elijah,” you muttered. “Always tryin’ to swindle us good folk.”

You didn’t need to look over to see the mischievous grin on her face. “I prefer the term ‘looking for a bargain.’”

“A pig’s a pig even if you put lipstick on it,” you retorted, and Paige huffed something under her breath that sounded a lot like mockery. She pulled a container out of the bag, presenting it with a flourish, her smile wide like she’s holding diamonds. You glanced at her, then at the container, a smile of your own growing despite your attempts at trying to be nonchalant. “That ice cream?” you asked.

“Of the vanilla variety,” she said snootily.

“My favorite,” you hummed.

Paige pretended to look surprised. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea. Although I heard it pairs real well with pie.”

“Baked pie,” you said gently.

“Pig’s a pig,” she responded immediately. “Baked or otherwise.”

You couldn’t help the sharp bark of laughter that ripped from your chest as you shook your head fondly. Reaching for a spoon, you dipped it carefully into the filling, still warm from combining the softened apples with the sugar syrup, and you held the utensil out for Paige. With a beaming smile, she enclosed her lips around the spoon, humming in happiness. It almost reminded you of when the two of you were younger and you always begged Annie to share the spoon when she was baking. That made you realize just how long you and Paige had been in each other’s lives, and how badly you wanted to stay in hers.

“That’s all you’re getting,” you chastised. You couldn’t keep your expression neutral for too long – Paige had looked so soft, so earnest, so full of love that it made something in your chest swell and slam against a cage made of bone.

But she’d just leaned in, a gentle hand settling on your hip, and pressed her mouth to yours with a sort of gentleness that feels like the flutter of eyelashes against your cheek and the warmth of the sun pouring in through the windows in the early morning. When she pulled back, the both of you were smiling, and she promised, “I got all I need.”

Your smile widened. She wasn’t talking about the apple pie waiting to bake in the oven. She wasn’t talking about the container of ice cream resting on the counter, already melting and the condensation sweating outside. In a language only the two of you could understand, she meant you. The two of you. The bond that you share and the love that you’ve nurtured despite society’s turmoil. It was sweet in a way that made you question how she could be so gentle, so in love with you, and leave you before the sun rose the morning after.

She spent the night. Once the apple pies were finished, you cut them into even slices while she carefully portioned out scoops of vanilla ice cream onto the top. She had looked so focused, leaning down to compare the amounts, and when she was sure, she handed you the plate that had more ice cream melting from the heat of the desert.

You and Paige retired to your bedroom, curling up in bed together with your slices of pie, bodies pressed together tightly under the blankets. You ate pie until your stomachs ached, laughed until tears slipped from your eyes, and kissed until her hand burned against your waist and the taste of her began to blend with the sweetness of the ice cream and the warmth of the pie.

It escalated from there. With the moon as your witness, you were sure that her lips had touched every inch of your skin and her hands knew the map of your body like it was her own. Like it was something sacred. That you were something to revere, to deserve, to love.

It felt different. Softer, vulnerable. Almost as though words weren’t enough and she was trying to fill in the blanks with her hands. You didn’t know at the time that it was an apology. You never considered that it was a goodbye, that your last memory of her would be one of love and not of her leaving you with the warmth of her body lingering in the sheets next to yours.

You laid together in bed, legs tangled and sheets bunched up at your chests. Your nose was tucked into the crook of her neck. She smelled like warm pie, like something earthy and sweet from her cologne, like something heady from the sweat that had glistened on her skin while she made you fall apart for her. The night was quiet, alive with the sound of crickets chirping, the slow drag of the wind through the crack in your window. You were asleep, breathing gently, ignorant of how Paige laid awake for hours.

It would have been so easy for her to change her mind, she thought. To stay in bed with you until late morning, to pull you back under the covers when you tried to dress. To begrudgingly (happily) follow you out for breakfast, then entertain (annoy) you at Annie’s shop, sneaking kisses when you weren’t organizing the roots or helping customers. It would have been so easy for her to tell Elijah and Elias that she wasn’t going to go with them to Chicago, to tell them that as terrified as she was, she was willing to be strong. For you. 

The south may never let the two of you be in love. In your lifetime, you may never be fully accepted for who you love. And that was scary, because all Paige ever wanted to do was love you in the open. Proudly, unashamedly. The thought of keeping your love indoors made her sick. You deserved someone who you didn’t have to hide with. That someone may never be her.

The letter she had tucked into her pocket was nothing more than a cop-out. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to leave your side if she had to look you in the eyes and tell you the reasons why she was leaving. It was an apology because literally and metaphorically, she could never be the man for you. She couldn’t be what society deemed as proper, couldn’t be the person to hold her family together, couldn’t be the one with the guts and the confidence to stay.

So her decision was made. She didn’t sleep a wink that night. As soon as the first breaths of sunlight poked through the window and the first rooster announced the moon’s retreat, she carefully slid out of bed, pushing her pillow to your chest, her heart shattering as she watched you bury yourself further into the blankets, seeking a heat and a body that wasn’t there anymore. She placed the note on your nightstand, tucked next to the satchel of black cohosh you keep for protection.

Paige stared at you for a long while, throat burning with the struggle of keeping her tears at bay. She watched the gentle rise and fall of your chest as you breathed, tried to commit your image to memory – the slope of your nose, the way your hair billowed out on the pillows, the dark bruise you sported under your jaw because selfishly, she wanted you to remember her after she left. She just didn’t know how badly you’d ache in her absence.

Unable to resist, she brushed a featherlight kiss across your temple, if only to remember the way your skin felt beneath her lips, and you hardly stirred. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or for worse.

Then she was gone. And you were left to pick up the pieces of yourself.

“This all for you, honey? Just the thistle and the High John?”

The little girl peeking over the edge of the counter nods at you quickly, and you don’t bother to hide your smile as you carefully pinch off the High John and put it safely into the small, cloth bag. Thistle is quick to follow. You tie it gingerly, holding it out to the girl – Elise, you think her name is, a regular at Annie’s shop, and you make eye contact with her. Her brother Will ambles quietly behind her. “Now, you remember Miss Annie’s rules, right?” you ask her. “Don’t sell none of that on the way home.”

Elise smiles at you brightly, tucking the bag of roots into her dress pocket. “Yes, ma’am,” she agrees sweetly. In return, she hands you a folded up piece of paper – more like a credit than actual currency, but you and Annie both knew how hard people had to work to obtain these bills.

“Thank you,” you say, and the two children skip out of the shop.

From across the room, Annie glances at you. She’s busy rearranging and restocking her wares. Her lips curl into a smile, one that’s a quiet kind of pride, a silent appreciation. “Those kids love you,” she comments. You drop your head in a gesture of shyness. Finally satisfied with her work, Annie crosses the room and you hand her the currency. “I mean it. You remember the other day when you were stuck tending to the goat?”

You huff a little, leaning back against the counter with your arms crossed. “That goat hates me,” you mutter.

Chuckling, Annie continues, “Well, all Elise and Will could ask was, ‘Where is she? Can we see her? Can we say hi?’ Think they come more for you than for the roots.”

You laugh. “You know that’s not true,” you say.

Annie just gives you a knowing look, but before either of you can say anymore, you hear the crunch of gravel under tires. Instantly, your hair raises on end, knowing that you mostly get foot traffic. Cars were rare, especially amongst those who shopped with Annie.

You crane your head, glancing out the window, but you can’t see much. You and Annie share a look. You follow the older woman to the back door, peering out, and you simultaneously relax and tense up at the sight.

There’s a man squatting next to the grave of Annie’s late baby. He’s dressed formally, pristine, and he’s laying down white flowers next to the clearing. His blue hat sticks out like a sore thumb. You know instantly that it’s Elijah – or Smoke, as most people know him by, and Annie sucks in a deep breath next to you.

If Elijah is in town, then you’re sure that means Elias – Stack – is too. And if the twins are back in town, then that means–

“Let me go talk to him,” Annie interrupts your thoughts, already stepping outside before you can say anything else. For respect and privacy, you close the door behind her, but you almost jump out of your skin when you turn around and you spot her in front of you. You react before you can think better of it.

“Jesus!” Paige exclaims. She catches you by the wrist, a blade gripped firmly in your hands, surprise on her features and an amalgamation of feelings on yours. Guilt, shock, anger. Despite the fact that seeing her again pisses you off beyond belief, your body doesn’t know what your brain does – it still yearns for her as if the two of you were years younger, more immature and devastatingly in love when being in love was the last thing two women of your statuses should have been.

You missed her. You hate that you do. But you know you couldn’t be surprised by it, even if it’s been months – or closer to over a year.

“You welcome in all your customers like that, or just the tall and pretty ones?” she jokes, but her humor does little to diffuse the tension. Your eyes narrow and her face falls slightly. Paige, not unkindly, carefully pries your fingers off of the blade in your hand and closes it in on itself, handing it back to you handle-first.

“You can’t just creep up on people like that,” you mutter, pocketing the blade, and putting space in between your bodies like you know that she and her are more of an inevitability than a possibility. You’d fall right back into her without a second thought. “I could have killed you.”

Paige hums, shoving her hands into her pockets, and that’s when you get a good look at her. Growing up, Paige was never a woman for wearing dresses, something that clearly got her into a lot of trouble with a lot of people. She’d pretended like she never cared for their perception of her, but you knew it weighed on her, even when she dressed how she preferred. Now, she’s wearing a pristine pair of black loafers paired smartly with a deep, purple suit so dark that it looks black. Her blonde hair is pinned back in a low bun.

Despite the distance, it’s clear that time has been kind to her. She’s aged beautifully – no longer the sixteen year old girl you’d found crying in town, trying to hold onto both parts of her family like it was sharp, unforgiving barbed wire. Paige had always struggled to belong. You should have known that insecurity and fear would take her far away from you, but you wish you’d fought a little harder for her, even when you bear guilt and anger of your own.

Maybe she should have fought a little harder for you, too, but you’re older now. Wiser. You know the both of you could point fingers at each other for as long as you wanted to, but it would solve nothing.

“I don’t know about kill,” she muses, a charming grin right back on her face. “I taught you to fight. I know you.”

Confidence seems to be something she’d picked up in Chicago, too, or maybe it’s just audacity. The audacity to come waltzing back into yours and Annie’s shop like she wasn’t the one who left you before the sun came up with nothing more than a note, an apology, and the aching feeling in your chest that you may truly never be happy again unless it was with her. The audacity to joke with you like there’s not a greater distance between you and her than there is distance between Mississippi and Chicago. The audacity to claim that she knows you when, if she did, she would have stopped hiding behind a bravado she picked up from Stack and started with an explanation. An apology. Anything at all to let you know that what the two of you had wasn’t something you hallucinated and that she loved you in the first place.

You don’t humor her, your face twisting up. “What are you doing here?” you ask instead, your tone flat. That cracks through Paige’s poised exterior, her throat bobbing like she’s resisting the urge to flinch. You take a step closer to her. She stands several inches taller than you, but you stare up at her fearlessly. “What ran you out of Chicago? Was it the Irish mob? The Italians?”

Paige presses a little closer now, something in her eyes flashing recklessly, her body eclipsing yours. You don’t stumble back, nor do you avert your gaze from hers. If anything, you push your chest into hers, feeling your heart beating out of your ribcage, her breath fanning against your skin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mutters, brows furrowed in quiet anger.

“Don’t I?” you snarl. You pinch the fabric of her suit between your thumb and index finger, tugging it slightly, and in her surprise, she falls against you, her arms shooting out to cage you against the counter. But you hardly react. “You’re wearing a pinstripe top. Italian. Tweed trousers. Irish. Playing both sides again, aren’t you? Both at the same time?”

Paige says your name firmly, like she’s begging you to stop talking. You don’t, feeling the anger of her abandonment hit you again. “You can’t always be in two places at once,” you hiss. “But you always will be ‘cause you keep fucking running away.”

That makes her anger return tenfold. “I’m not running,” she scoffs.

You reach into your dress pocket, producing a worn scrap of paper, and you slap it against her chest with a firm noise. “Yeah?” you whisper, cocking your head. She holds onto your wrist with one hand, and with the other, she unfolds the paper, her body stiffening at the sight of the words scribbled in an all too familiar, messy scrawl. Her words, the very ones she’d left with you when she went off to Chicago, leaving the Delta behind in the fading shadow of the night. “What do you call this, then?”

She’s silent, her throat bobbing under the weight of her apprehension. You wonder if she’d admit it. If she’d apologize. But her blue eyes find yours, glassy with unshed tears, and you don’t realize you’re crying until her palm raises to wipe the water off of your cheek. Her hand lingers, though – her skin warm against yours, callused and rough from time but soft in a way that reminds you that it’s Paige in front of you. You’re not sure if that reminder is supposed to comfort you or make you cry harder.

“A regret,” she murmurs finally.

Oh.

Your eyes search hers. For deceit or for honesty – the difference between the two can be hard to tell apart most times. But you see earnestness. It makes you soften.

“I walked away,” Paige admits, her voice breaking. “From the one person in my life who’d made me feel like I belonged. Like I had a place. Like I was more than who my parents were or who my parents weren’t. I left a note and I ran to a city that cared for me even less than the Delta did.” She pauses, trying to find the words. “I regretted that decision every morning when I woke up on a dirty mattress in Chicago and realized I wasn’t next to you.”

“Was it worth it?” you ask, if only to hear the answer.

Paige doesn’t hesitate. “No. None of it ever was. Not when I had to lose you.”

“Why did you go?” You can feel the hesitation in her body, and you press a little further into her. “And make sure you tell me the fucking truth, Paige. No bullshit.”

“I didn’t deserve you,” she murmurs. “Shit, I still don’t. You deserve to be loved in the open, by someone who can provide for you and keep you safe. That was never gonna be with me.”

“I never wanted any of that,” you seethe, fisting your hand in her suit, dragging her closer to you. Her breath hitches, remorse and guilt on her face, but you continue speaking. “Do you understand that? I never needed anyone to provide for me, to keep me safe. I just wanted you to be with me.”

Paige doesn’t break eye contact when she utters, “They’d never let us be in love.”

You swallow your grief. “And what about we?” you say. “What about what we want? I’d rather love you in the dark than someone else in the sun.” You’re both silent. A lone tear slips from Paige’s waterline. You wipe it away gingerly, and her hand catches yours by her face, tangling your fingers together. “I just wish I got the chance to tell you that before you left.”

She nods, the motion like acceptance. Like she understands where you’re coming from – that she always has. That maybe she just needed to hear those words from you to understand it was never about what she thought you deserved, but about what the both of you wanted. As two women in the Mississippi Delta, it was always difficult to carve out that space for yourselves, to want so openly, to want each other so openly. You and Paige have been defying the norm for years now. You’d always thought that it would catch up with you. The love you had for Paige eclipsed that fear.

“Wasn’t the mobs in Chicago,” she confesses under her breath. You cock your head at her, and she deflates. “At least…not yet. The twins wanted out – something about coming back down here to open a juke joint. They brought liquor. Irish beer and Italian wine. They asked if I’d return and I…” The words get caught in her throat. She tries for a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. It’s one that says I’ve done everything I’ve could so maybe it’s time to let someone else do what I can’t. “Figured it was time to stop running. From us.”

“For good?” you murmur.

“For as long as you’ll have me,” she responds, thumb brushing across your knuckles. “If that’s still on the table.”

You tilt your head back, far enough away just to look at her. To study her. She’s older now. So are you. The two of you weren’t always going to have a simple story, on account of the both of you being women and being completely different people. But you loved each other, and while you’ve never made it any less complicated for each other, you knew in your heart of hearts that you would take complex with her rather than easy and loveless with anyone else.

But you’re not one to kneel. Bravely, you ask, “And how do I know you mean that?” That gives her pause, something in her expression falling – like guilt and acceptance and a I deserved to hear that all in one. “How do I know I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and you’ll have left another note?” you continue. “You hurt me, Paige. I laid in bed for days and wondered why I wasn’t enough for you to stick around. That doesn’t go away overnight.”

“I know,” she admits, her voice cracking. She meets your eyes, the blue in them so easy to drown in, water shimmering on the surface like sun on the waves. “I can’t undo that. Believe me, I tried.” She laughs a little self-deprecatingly. “Every day I prayed that leaving you was a bad dream I’d eventually wake up from. That I’d find the courage to tell the twins that I was getting on the first train back here to right my wrongs before you slipped through my fingers completely. But I couldn’t – I thought I fucked us up. For good. I thought that we were something I couldn’t save or be enough for.”

Your chest is tight, but you can tell that Paige has more to say, so you remain quiet, your fingers trembling in her hold. She takes a deep breath, trying to find the right words to say, but her shoulders sag in a way that feels like acceptance. Like finally understanding that she may never say or do the right thing, but the effort in honesty is more than enough. You’d always try to fill in the blanks. You didn’t need her to be perfect. You just needed her to be here.

“I know I hurt you,” she continues. “But I also know that I love you – that I’ve been in love with you since we were sixteen and you showed me what home is supposed to feel like. I know that I missed you.” Paige swallows thickly, not breaking eye contact, and she flattens your palm against her chest. You can feel the steady thump of her heart beneath your fingertips. “I missed you here.”

You can tell how much this means to her. You can tell that she’s genuinely remorseful, that she’s probably spent months beating herself up for leaving you in the way that she did. “I’m not expecting you to forgive me immediately,” she murmurs. “I can’t erase a year’s worth of pain overnight. Asking for one more chance is a lot, but I also know that I’d spend the rest of my life and then some making it up to you. I’m not running anymore. Not from you. Not from us. I’m not going to fuck this up again.”

You knew what your answer would be long before she answered you. Maybe you just needed to hear it – the promise, the vow that she’s not going to repeat her same mistakes twice. It makes the tension in your chest ease up, the lines on your face soften, and your shoulders relax. Your palm is still on her chest, so you lift your hand to trace the line of her collarbone absentmindedly. “I’m making pie tomorrow,” you say, glancing up at her with a wry, softer grin. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s something close to it, and Paige smiles brightly because she knows. “You should come by.”

She leans in ever so slightly, her lips brushing yours, and it makes your breath hitch at the contact. Her hands drop to hold you by the waist, her grip both firm and reverent like she’s committed to not letting you go unless you ask. “You gonna let me have the spoon?” she asks coyly, and your smile grows.

“Maybe,” you whisper. Then, you pull away slightly, enjoying the expression of shock on her face. “Now, tell me why you’re really here.”

Paige laughs, the sound full and relieved, and it makes you feel just a little bit more gone. “Already told you, baby,” she says. The nickname softens every sharp edge you’d whittled while she was gone. “The twins wanted to open a juke joint. Smoke came by to ask Annie if she’d cook.”

“Smoke did?” you echo, raising a brow, knowing about his and Annie’s lost baby. You knew that him coming here took a lot of guts. He wouldn’t have if he didn’t mean it. Paige hums in confirmation, the sound respectful as she knows the story, too. “They’re serious, huh?”

“Mmm,” Paige agrees. “Bought the old mill and everything.”

You exhale a little breathlessly, a smile on your face despite it all. “And you?” you ask. Paige’s eyes blink open, something curiously reckless in them. “Where do you fit into all this?”

“Was just hopin’ you’d still like me enough to dance,” she answers, her eyes bright and yearning. Her lips brush yours again, the touch like electricity after so many months of being apart.

You pretend to think about it, which makes Paige shake her head with a laugh and a grin. “Get me a bottle of that Italian wine and you’ve got a deal.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paige murmurs, her eyes finding yours again with a flicker of hope. You can’t hide your amusement nor the love you have for her, so you finally give in, your lips meeting hers with a deliberate softness. She sighs against you as you press up on the tips of your toes for better leverage. Literally and metaphorically, it feels like coming home again. Your body could never forget Paige nor the way she makes you feel, even if the both of you were dealt an unfair hand of cards.

You feel her grin against your lips, adjusting the angle of her head to deepen the kiss. Your fingers tangle in the loose hair at the back of her neck, warmth creeping into every crevice of your body.

The kiss doesn’t last nearly long enough. You can hear the turn of the lock at the back door and you and Paige pull away from each other quickly, working on adjusting your clothes as Annie and Smoke walk in, a quiet air around them as well. Annie meets your gaze – a brow raising in both question and concern. You nod at her, mustering a small smile, and her features relax, drawing your silent exchange to a close.

Finally, you gather your belongings, letting Paige lead you out towards their truck. There’s only space in front for Smoke and Annie, so you and Paige opt to sit in the back with the liquors, which you’re not too upset about. It gives you the time and the privacy to curl up next to Paige, your argument and reconciliation not completely forgiven nor quite forgotten. Right now, it’s enough for the both of you, knowing that you’ll have the rest of your lives to figure this out. You know that neither of you are going to let this slip away again.

Once you all make it to the old mill, you all get to work. You and Paige work on sweeping the floors and cleaning while Annie works on frying the catfish. Countless friends stream in – old and new – like the Chows, Delta Slim, a pioneering blues performer who you’d thought to have mostly been a legend, Smoke and Stack’s cousin Sammie, and even Cornbread, who’s been hired to play bodyguard.

Everyone’s in high spirits, laughing and enjoying the time. You catch Annie looking at you and Paige with a fond look in her eyes and you try not to blush too much, even when Paige spins you around to the beat of whatever tune Slim is plucking on the piano.

Before you know it, everything is ready. Paige helps to set out the liquor, smiling wryly at you when she stashes a bottle of her wine in her suit, and you laugh as you serve a patron some of Annie’s catfish. The old mill fills fast, people looking for a break, to have fun, to let loose and listen to Sammie sing the blues.

For this one moment in time, everything feels…right. Peaceful. Like there’s not a single worry in the world, and you think that you can get used to this. The sound of soul in your ear, of laughter and love swirling around you, the heavy feeling of Paige’s gaze on you while she regales some of the customers with charming stories about who knows what. Her eyes find you more than appropriate, though, and you find it hard to stay polite in front of everyone.

But she sidles up to you, empty wine glass in hand, and her smirk is mischievous, loose, like she’s about to ask you to do something you can’t quite say no to. Her hand finds your waist behind the bar, palm warm against your skin, and you raise a brow at her. “Think I can convince you to stop workin’ for a bit and have a drink with me?” she asks, gaze predatory and sharp. “Pretty sure I owed you a glass of wine.”

“Sounds like you’ve got ulterior motives,” you comment, looking up at her through your lashes. “You tryin’ to get me tipsy?”

“Just relaxed,” she murmurs, her eyes trailing your figure unashamedly. “Anything after that is purely coincidental.”

“I’m sure.” Your tone is flat, but your eyes are amused. “Would have thought that you’d give it a few more days before you tried finding your way under my skirt. Just this morning you were begging for me to forgive you.”

That sobers her instantly. She blinks at you like she’d forgotten all about that, and it makes you swell with affection for this idiot in front of you. “We don’t have–”

You can’t help but laugh, tanging your fingers in the collar of her suit, and you gently drag her a little closer to you. It makes her breath hitch, but the look on her face makes it all worth it. “Pour me a glass and meet me in the back,” you murmur, releasing her. Just before you walk away, you offer her a teasing smile. “And don’t keep me waiting.”

“Yes ma’am,” she rushes out, already reaching for another glass under the bar, and you know she’s hot on your heels as she follows you to the back. You leave the door slightly ajar and she shuts it as soon as she’s in, the lock clicking into place as you take a seat on top of the table tucked into the corner. Her gaze is a little predatory when she steps forward, looking as though she wants to ravage you but be respectful about it – like she doesn’t quite know where the two of you stand after your difficult conversation that morning.

But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t rush to fill the silence, even as she holds the wine glass in between two fingers and slowly tips the bottle over, filling it with the dark red liquid. Your eyes follow the way her fingers move, the veins in her wrist that protrude, and it’s then that you’re reminded of just how beautiful Paige Bueckers is.

It’s not something you consciously forget. You haven’t seen her in a while, and this is the first time in a good amount of time that you’ve allowed your walls to fall down. To allow yourself to want her so openly. It makes you ache because you know she wants you to and this entire thing – her pouring the wine for you, her fingers lingering on yours when she gives you the glass, is more of a formality than anything else.

You wait while she fills her glass, too, and then you tap the sides in cheer. “To a successful first night,” you murmur, catching the dark of her gaze over the dim lighting.

“To you,” she says. “And to us.”

To hide the blush growing on your cheeks, you roll your eyes slightly, tipping your head slightly to drink the wine. You like that Paige’s gaze is hooked on you, following the bob of your throat as you swallow the wine. She already looks like she’s unravelling and all you’ve done is drink. “Always have to one up me, don’t you?” you state, and she takes a sip of her own wine. The flavor is pleasant – not too sharp, but not too sweet. You can see why Paige and the twins played the Italian mob like this. They make excellent wine.

“Just wanted to be honest,” she retorts. “Something actually worth toasting about.”

You raise your brows, watching her figure as she takes a seat in the chair next to the table, her gaze locked onto yours. “Are you not actually into the juke joint?” you ask, curious.

She shrugs a shoulder. Her eyes linger on the way your skirt rides up your legs when you cross them at the knee. “This was the twin’s project,” she says, not unkindly. “I was just here to help. And to stop running from the things I love.”

You snort into your wine. “That sounds like something to unpack.”

“Probably,” she admits. “Sometimes…I look at a good thing, and my first thought isn’t that it’s good. It’s how devastated I would be if I were to lose it.” That makes you soften, and you reach for her hand, intertwining your fingers. “I think that’s why I was so scared of…staying. I thought I wouldn’t be allowed to be happy for long, that it would be taken away from me. I didn’t want to lose you. I guess it was easier to leave than to risk it.”

“But not anymore?” you question.

She shakes her head. “Still lost you,” she says. “Just in a different way. One that hurt a lot more.” Paige takes a long sip of her wine before she speaks again. “There was this Italian guy I met while I was in Chicago. He caught me at a bad time. I was drunk off my ass at a pub, and I guess he recognized me from running with the mob. He took me home and I started rambling about you. About missing you. How you’d give me peppermint to chew on when I was plastered because it would help my headache.” That makes you crack a smile as you listen to her go on. “Think I got really upset and lost it, and then he says, ‘How lucky you are to have loved someone so strongly that saying goodbye is hard.’ I woke up the morning after. My head hurt, and all I could think about was you and how not having you turned me inside out.”

Paige pauses for a long moment, clearly having more to say. You just brush your fingers across her knuckles. “I don’t think I’m scared of that anymore,” she confesses. “Not – of losing you. I don’t ever want to do that again. But I don’t think I’m scared of loving you. That’s a blessing by itself. And no matter how long…or how short…I think I’m lucky to be able to do that.”

You swallow thickly, realizing the seriousness of the moment, and you admit, “I don’t want you to feel like you have to run from me.” That catches her attention. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this alone. We’re…together.” Your voice catches on that word, unsure if that’s a term you should still use to describe your relationship, and you think that was a good choice because Paige’s face lights up. “I just want you to choose me when it gets hard and trust that we can figure it out.”

“I will,” she states firmly. “God, I swear to you, I will. I’m not gonna fuck this up again.”

You smile at her, gently, because you know she’s not going to. Not when she swears like her life depends on it. “I trust you,” you promise her. “But even if you do…it’s gonna be okay. I don’t want perfection. I just want you.”

That makes her smile turn a little tender, a little bashful. “I can work with that.” She finishes the rest of the wine in her glass and her voice is a hoarse when she says, “Think you might be stuck with me now.”

Your smile turns a little mischievous. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

When she looks at you again, her gaze is a little dark, hungry. “Depends on how you look at it.”

You set your wine glass down, not bothering with a response before you shift on the table, facing her fully, and you cup her cheeks in your hands as you pull her against you. She’s quick – groaning against your lips like she’d spent the entire day thinking about the next time she’d get to kiss you, and her arms encircle your waist, fingers pressing firmly into your skin.

She tastes like wine and something unmistakably Paige that makes your head spin. Her lips drag against yours, already making something in your core swell with heat and tighten, her tongue brushing against your bottom lip in permission. You don’t give it to her, tangling your fingers in the loose bun at the back of her head and tugging slightly, and she gasps a little breathlessly at the feeling.

“You’re a brat,” she mutters, standing from the chair fully. The movement forces you to disconnect your lips and with the natural pause, you slide your hands under her suit top, pushing the blazer down her shoulders.

“You’ve got a lot of groveling to do,” you retort. “Something about spending the rest of your life making it up to me, I think.”

Her resulting smile is a little sharp when she looks at you. “Oh, is that so?” she murmurs. You nod, already reaching out for her, and you wrap your arms around her neck while you connect your lips again. It’s wet, hot, and the both of you slide against each other with little restraint, the alcohol in your veins loosening the both of you up and intensifying the feeling. “You just want me on my knees, don’t you?” Her voice had dropped low, her tone teasing and rough, and it makes you squeeze your thighs together, which was obviously something that she picked up on. “You liked that?” She says it like it’s a surprise to her, like she’s discovered a secret you didn’t want to share, and you feel her grin as she kisses you again, drawing a moan from your lips when she squeezes one of your thighs.

“Would that make you feel better, baby?” she coos, fingers trailing a hot path between your thighs, pressing against the thin lace of your underwear. You’re already breathing heavily, and judging by the way she sucks in a deep breath, you’re sure that she’s found the wetness at the apex of your thighs. “You’re soaked for me and all I’ve done is kiss you. Still all mine. Doesn’t matter how long I’m gone.”

Your cheeks burn, and your fingers grapple for stability on her shirt. She leans in to press another filthy kiss to your lips, her tongue probing out to trace your bottom lip again, and you’re too lost in the feeling to open up for her. She doesn’t like that – an annoyed sound building at the back of her throat when she bites down on your lip – just a gentle nip, enough to get your attention but not enough to truly hurt, and she slips her tongue inside while you gasp.

It’s pure dominance from then on out – she unravels you with her lips while her fingers rub maddening circles against your clit over the lace. She was right. She hadn’t done much, but she’s always been good at tearing you apart. Even if she hasn’t been near you in months, she still knows what works, how much pressure you need, exactly where to touch you. And your body responds like it knows Paige’s touch. It doesn’t embarrass you to admit that there wasn’t anyone else while she was gone. This feeling has been building ever since the day that she left, and you suppose that it is her responsibility to handle it.

She breaks away from your lips to trail kisses to your jawline, sucking a dark spot at the edge of it. You can feel her smile against your skin as your mouth falls open in wordless pleasure. Her fingers are insistent, continuous, as she follows a path across your skin that only she’s the expert in, her lips enclosing around the lobe of your ear, the spot behind it that makes you shiver, your pulse point, the base of your throat where your necklace glitters.

Paige lingers, a little breathless at the sight of you, and the hand not tending to your leaking cunt reaches up to cup your breast, thumb tweaking your nipple over your top. Moaning, your head falls back, giving her ample space to work with, and she latches onto your neck immediately. Her teeth scrape against your skin, drawing a ragged sound from your throat. Her words vibrate against you when she speaks. “So fucking beautiful,” she murmurs, punctuating her words with another kiss, her tongue poking out to trail across your body.

It makes you shiver for an entirely different reason now. You reach up with one of her hands to cup the back of her neck, pushing her a little closer to you, and her finger swipes a little more firmly against your clit, making you keen. “Please, Paige,” you beg. “Need you, need more.”

“I got you,” she promises, finally sinking to her knees. Breathless, you clench around nothing, instinctively spreading your legs for her as she peers up at you through her lashes. Her palms are warm against your skin as her hands slide up your thighs, pushing your skirt up to give herself more space to work with. “Keep your eyes on me.” You don’t have the brain space to ask Or else what? but you’re so high strung that you don’t want to test her.

The edge of her smirk is hungry, predatory, like she’s seconds away from drooling, and it makes you ache. She presses her lips to your thighs, littering gentle kisses across your skin while she makes her way towards your cunt. Needy, you cup the back of her head with your hand, encouraging her to get a move on, and her smile softens as she listens to your wordless command.

She tangles her fingers in the lace covering you and pulls it down with an agonizing slowness, breath catching at the way a strand of your slick sticks to the fabric and snaps when the stretch is too great. Then, almost deliberately, she folds your underwear, setting it gently on the chair she’d sat in, and you’re seconds away from beating the shit out of her. “Paige,” you hiss, trying for an assertive tone, but you just sound whiny.

She doesn’t respond – she doesn’t have to. She slides her hands under your thighs and lifts your legs gently over her shoulders, opening you up for her, and she groans at the sight like you’re one of the ancient wonders of the world. Paige doesn’t waste anymore time before she dives in, her tongue already relentless as she strokes from your leaking entrance to your aching clit, moaning against you and already addicted to the taste. You whimper, head lulling back as your fingers tighten in her hair, but she nips at your clit. It doesn’t sting, but it gets your attention, and you return your gaze down to her.

Your slick already coats her mouth, glistening in the light, her eyes hooded and pussy drunk in the way she always gets when she gets to put her mouth against you. She’d once joked that she could die happy down here and you truly never realized how serious she was until now. Her brows are pinched, pleasure evident on her face like she’s the one moments away from falling apart, and her tongue traces every sopping inch of your cunt as though she’s afraid to let a single drop go to waste.

Her tongue slides in to drink directly from the source. Her nose brushes against your sensitive clit and it sends a lightning bolt of white hot pleasure up your spine, curling low in your belly, and drawing a whimpering moan from you. She works you like it’s her last day on earth and getting you to come is her only chance at salvation. Her pace makes you a little dizzy, her tongue going from hole to clit to kissing the aching bud until the pressure makes your hips buck. She’s everywhere all at once as though she’s trying to reacquaint herself with your cunt, like she’s trying to make up for lost time.

She said she’d make it up to you. You think she’s doing a damn good job, especially when her fingers tighten around the fullness of your thighs, pushing herself in deeper, and you spread yourself open a little more, too far gone to care about much of anything that’s not how good Paige Bueckers looks when she’s on her knees with her face buried in your cunt.

And then she starts talking. There wasn’t a chance in hell that you were going to last after this, not when she’s holding onto you like she’s the one who’s about to float away, and whimpering, “Missed this.” The whine in her tone makes you a little crazy, your fingers tightening in her hair, your hips bucking against her face as you try to chase a high you know she’d rather die than deny you. “Missed you so fucking much, baby. Missed the way you taste. The way you sound – fuck, the way you fall apart for me.”

“Please,” you choke out, but you’re not quite sure what you’re begging for. Paige nods anyways, the motion causing you to gasp when her nose brushes against your clit again, and she somehow doubles her pace, her tongue sliding against you with a vicious efficiency that all but pushes you to the edge. You’re teetering on it now, inches away from slipping off completely, and you ramble, “Shit, Paige, so close. You’re so fucking good, love you so much–”

Your words get stuck in your throat when she latches onto your clit and sucks. You’re almost sure that she breathes the very soul out of your body as you crumble completely, your legs tightening around her head as your hips buck wildly against her mouth. The sounds spilling from your lips are unrestrained, unintelligible, but Paige hums against you and drinks up every drop from your cunt like you’re the first sip of water she’s had in years. She’s always a little messy when she’s got a glass or two of wine in her system, but you think you like her this way – when she behaves like your pleasure is the most important thing to her and that she died if you weren’t unravelling on her face.

Sensitive, you cry out softly, tugging her back by the hair to give you room to breathe. But she doesn’t budge, her grip tightening on your thighs, and she glances up at you, brows tented, chest heaving, her expression nothing short of begging. Her face is slick, lips, cheek, nose, and even her neck covered with your arousal, and it makes something in your core simmer with heat. “C’mon, baby,” she pleads, her tongue already working you again. The oversensitivity makes you tremble, but you’re bucking into her mouth mindlessly, needing to come for her again. “One more. Lemme give you one more.”

You’re nodding, but you know she can’t see it, her tongue already sliding through your folds and lapping you up with a fervor. It won’t take much – you know she knows that, and she hums against your cunt in pleasure when you leak into her waiting mouth. “So fucking good for me,” she mutters against you. She’s lost in your pleasure, which makes you ache again, already teetering dangerously close to the edge.

This time, you don’t even have the chance to warn her. Her teeth close around your clit, nipping gently enough to make your hips twitch, then soothing the sting with a harsh suck. You spill over her instantly, your second orgasm somehow feeling stronger than the first one, and your head falls back in desperate pleasure while her pace finally slows. Paige helps you ride out the aftershocks, her tongue cleaning every inch of you before extracting herself from your cunt with great difficulty. If you were any more conscious, you might be able to see the way she stares forlornly at you while she draws back, like she’s a soldier heading off to war.

You can’t focus on anything but the way her palms rub your thighs soothingly, how she unfurls your hands from her hair and tangles your fingers together to help bring you back down to earth. The hand not holding yours curls around your neck as she lifts herself into a standing position, pulling you into her body, pressing her lips gently to your temple while she strokes the hair at the base of your neck.

Strangely, that’s what actually brings you back into a state of coherency, because her lips are sticky and wet from where she’d just spent the better part of fifteen minutes sucking the soul out of your body through your cunt. “You need to wash your face,” you mutter, not actually that bothered by it, and you wipe your own slick off of your forehead immediately.

Paige catches your wrist, slipping your finger into your mouth and sucking gently, her cheeks suctioning from the pressure. If you could feel your legs, you might knock her ass to the ground and return the favor, but the surprisingly serious expression on her face gives you pause. “Don’t waste that shit,” she reprimands you, gingerly wiping the rest off of your face and licking it off her fingers. “Haven’t had you in over a year and you wanna deprive me?”

“And whose fault is that?” you retort, not really intending to be mean about it, and Paige narrows her eyes at you.

“I just gave you two earth-shattering, mind-numbing, toe-curling–”

“Get to the point.”

“Two orgasms,” she emphasizes. “Two. How many more until I’m out of the doghouse?”

You roll your eyes, a little amused by how fucking annoying she is, and you curl your fingers in the collar of her shirt to plant a chaste kiss to her lips. You can taste yourself, but it doesn’t bother you. “You’re an idiot,” you mumble.

“You love me,” she fires back.

At that, you can’t really help your smile, and the next kiss you press to her mouth is a little more gentle. Softer. Full of something that words can’t really convey, even as you admit, “I do.”

The beaming smile on her face would be a little endearing if you forgot about the two orgasms she’d just drawn from you. “I love you, too,” she promises, and part of you aches for a different reason now. You’re not sure how long you’d been waiting to hear those words from her again, but it makes warmth bloom in your chest, curling around your heart like it belongs there.

She helps you back into your lace underwear, only half pretending to not miss seeing you naked, and the two of you leave the back room with your empty wine glasses in hand. At the bar, Annie raises her eyebrows at you knowingly, but you don’t say anything for both of your sakes – Annie practically raised you, and there were things she just did not need to know. Paige, blessedly, keeps her mouth shut, but she smirks at you as though she’s already thinking about the next time she can have you.

Spirits are high in the juke joint. You can spot Smoke brooding on the second floor, something you’re not really surprised by, and you have no clue where Stack is. You spotted Mary a while ago, which didn’t really surprise you, either; she always had a difficult time staying away from trouble, but so does the blonde who’s lingering in your shadow, not wanting to let you out of her sight.

The party rages on for another twenty or so minutes – everyone is still singing and dancing. Delta Slim is still plucking away at the piano, and you’re deep in conversation with a woman who frequents Annie’s shop when you hear a commotion at the front door. That’s what actually surprises you. The night had been peaceful so far. Cornbread hadn’t actually had to enforce his bouncer duties, but it seems there’s a time and a place for everything.

You follow Annie (and Paige follows you) to the front door. You step up behind the twins, then Mary’s behind you, and you’re all a little concerned at the sight. Standing at your doorstep are three individuals. They’re holding three different guitars and the man on the far right has a lantern clutched in his grasp. They’re white, so you can see why their arrival gives everyone pause.

“We heard a tale of a party,” the white man at the front says. You struggle to place his accent, your head cocking in confusion. There’s something…off, about him, something lurking beneath the surface, and you can’t place that, either. But your gut is never wrong. You nudge Annie, a silent conversation passing between the two of you, and she nods. She suspects it, too. “Drinks, food, blues music and the like.”

Cornbread looks perplexed. “You did?” he asks, his tone believing.

“We like to drink,” the man says. “We happen to be musicians, and, uh…we walked here. So, we hungry as dogs.” The other man with the lantern backs this up with a very emphatic woof woof! that disgusts you immediately. You shift uncomfortably and Paige curls an arm around your waist subtly. “You wouldn’t mind us coming in, now, would you?”

Cornbread narrows his eyes. “I think y’all are in the wrong place,” he states.

“What makes you say that?” the woman asks.

The man turns his gaze from cornbread to the twins, his features softening. “You fellas must be the owners of this establishment.”

“That’s right,” Smoke agrees. “And you are?”

They introduce themselves – the man in the middle is Remmick, and his companions are Bert and Joan. But when Sammie comes into view to check on his cousins, Remmick’s expression shifts. “You must be that voice I heard from out here. It was beautiful.”

“Goddamn beautiful,” Joan agrees unsettlingly.

“Even through these walls,” Bert adds.

You narrow your eyes, only half listening to the rest of the conversation as you try to place why these travelers unsettle you so. It’s not the color of their skin – far from it. It’s the almost robotic detachment, the way they’re here, uninvited, and Joan and Bert have positioned themselves  on either side of Remmick and far enough behind him to be considered respectful. They’re not equals. Remmick holds a sort of power over them, and you feel like you’re nearing the answer the more you stare at them, at the way Remmick stares into the juke joint as if searching for something.

The conversation passes. Questions like where are you from? Are you Klan? Even an unsettling rendition of Pick Poor Robin Clean that makes your hair stand on end. Smoke ends it abruptly, not a fan of the lack of blues, and Remmick points out that he and his friends have a lot of money they’d like to spend. They exchange a few more words before they walk away with an exaggerated slowness, stopping just short of the road leading into the woods.

“They gave me the willies,” Pearline, another of the singers, mutters.

“Crackers at night time will do that to you,” Stack says. Then, Smoke and Stack start arguing over why they’re here, if they’re actually Klan, before Smoke firmly states, “Don’t let them in.”

That seems to be the end of that, and the tension dissipates slightly. You return to the bar with Annie and Paige in tow, something uncomfortable settling low in your gut, and you top off your glass of wine and you take a long, slow sip of it. “I don’t trust them,” you declare in a huff, feeling Paige’s hand slide soothingly around your waist. “That man barked.”

“Woof, woof,” Paige imitates, and you wrinkle your nose at her in a way that makes her face fall. “Not funny. Got it.”

“I don’t either,” Annie admits. She glances up to the second floor where Smoke and Sammie are locked in conversation. Something makes her lips twist as she cleans a glass, something that looks a whole lot like I hope he knows what he’s doing.

Across the room, you spot Mary and Stack conversing, then you watch as Stack slips a small handgun into a holster tucked under her skirt. You know what her plan is long before Mary walks smoothly to the bar, sidling up next to you and Paige, looking at the taller blonde with a quiet request. “They’ll listen to us,” Mary says, her tone soft, spoken like it’s one of the quiet truths about the world and society that you’ll have to accept. “Remmick and them. The twins aren’t breaking even – too much plantation credit. The juke joint won’t be able to operate for another night if they can’t afford it.”

Paige draws her bottom lip between her teeth. You know her well enough to understand that she’d made up her mind. You give Mary a gentle look and she nods solemnly, stepping away from you two and giving you some privacy.

“Five minutes,” Paige utters, her voice hardly above a whisper. You might not be able to hear her over the thrum of the crowd. “Just to feel them out and keep an eye on Mary.” You don’t say anything, only looking up at her with an expression of calm concern, and she reaches for your wrist, pressing your palm to her hip where you can feel the outline of her holster, the handgun settled against her skin, unassuming.

You had a bad feeling about them, although it was significantly better for Paige and Mary to be out there together, both armed, than to let one or the other go alone. You didn’t like the situation, but you couldn’t do much. Sucking in a deep breath, you enclose both of Paige’s hands around yours, bringing them to your lips, and the both of you close your eyes as you pray over her. For safety, for protection. For the clear eyes to spot deceit. When you finish, she brushes a quick, gentle kiss to your cheek, squeezing your hands once before walking out of the door side by side with Mary.

Your chest is tense the entire time that she’s gone, but you try to keep yourself distracted, chatting with Annie while the two of you work the bar in tandem. She serves the fried catfish while you pour the drinks, an easy rhythm between the two of you. Even though you’re busy with the crowd, your eyes still trail off to the front door, hoping to see the tall blonde walk in sooner rather than later.

Eventually, she does, and Mary’s right behind her. You feel as though you can finally breathe a sigh of relief, although you wrinkle your nose when you watch Mary throw herself onto Stack and lead him into the back room you and Paige had already visited not even an hour prior. You suppose it’s a happy night for everyone, and you smile fondly at Paige as she rounds the bar once more, her palm finding your hip. “How’d it go?” you ask in a hushed whisper.

“Nothing to worry about,” she reassures you, but she doesn’t add anymore, which confuses you. Her hand presses against you a little more firmly, a knee slipping between your legs, and you can’t help but gasp at the pressure.

“Paige!” you hiss, glancing around, your heart in your throat. Annie is occupied with an inebriated man who is struggling to cut his fish, but it doesn’t make you relax anymore. Her grin is sharp, eyes dark, and you can smell the wine and something distinctly minty on her breath as she leans in. “You’re insatiable.” You try for a reprimanding tone, but you just sound a little breathless, feeling a heat coil low in your belly when she pushes you down on her knee slightly. “We just–”

“Still gotta make it up to you, don’t I?” she murmurs, the muscle of her thigh flexing under your weight, and you sigh softly at the drag, trying to not look like she’s ruining you in a room full of people. “Let Annie handle this. You deserve a break.” Her lips find the shell of your ear, her voice a rumbling, low timbre when she says, “You deserve to feel good, baby. Lemme help you.”

Still breathless, all you can do is nod, and she guides you upstairs, the both of you searching for a quiet corner. Paige pushes open the door to the loft area and her lips are on yours before the door clicks shut. She’s insistent, ravenous, something so different from the way she kissed you downstairs. Her hands curl under your thighs, lifting you easily, and she presses you against the door.

Your fingers tangle in her hair, ruining the bun she’d messily fixed after your earlier rendezvous, and she groans against your lips when you tug. She disconnects your lips, her head tilting back in pleasure at the slight sting of pain, and you don’t waste any time before you’re leaning into her. You sink your teeth into her neck, your tongue soothing over the mark. Her hips buck like the feeling of your lips on her neck already has her close to the edge. You trail your lips down, nipping at the vein protruding from the side of her neck, the tender area where her neck meets her shoulder. Paige’s fingers tighten around you, her muscles straining, and it sends white hot desire to your core when your palms slide down, feeling the definition in her shoulders and her biceps.

Your lips meet again and Paige breathes into you like she’s trying to gather your taste, to eat you alive. Her tongue meets yours, hardly needing permission this time around, and you sink into it, letting her unravel you. It’s a lot – the feeling of her teeth in your skin, the dangerous, almost instinctual way she kisses you, the primality in how she squeezes bruises into the skin of your thighs. It’s rough, heady, and right now, it is perfect.

You break away long enough to speak, your chest heaving. When you meet her eyes, her pupils are blown out, the darkest blue you’ve ever seen them, and you swear you see the smallest fleck of drool spilling out from the corner of her lips, but you can’t be too sure if it was from her or you. All you know is that you need her – right now. You need her, pressed bare skin to bare skin, her hips rutting against yours, her mouth on your chest or your neck or quite literally anywhere. “Need you,” you whimper, your lips brushing against hers, and she squeezes you once that feels like some strange mix between a warning and an apology.

She lifts you off of the door, her teeth scraping against your collarbone as she leads you backwards. There’s a fleece blanket spread out on the floor, the one that had been used to cover the piano during transport, and she lays you against it gently, a devastating contrast to the viciousness in which she’d kissed you with. Something in you aches at the sight of her. The heat coiling in your belly, the pulsating feeling between your legs, begging for attention. You’ve never needed anyone more than you need Paige right now.

When you peer up at her through your lashes, you’re almost taken aback by how different she looks. Her fingers are trembling as she unbuttons her dress shirt, but there’s simultaneously a stark rigidity in her spine, a tense feeling in her shoulders. It’s like she’s fighting between two different parts of her – her brain and her body, or something else otherworldly, like maybe some instinctual urge.

At first, you wonder if she’s only doing this because she feels as though she truly has to make up for her absence in making you feel good. Maybe something had gotten lost in translation or jokes that didn’t land well. So you reach out, stopping her movements when your fingers wrap around her wrists, and her entire body goes still. The tremor is gone. Her shoulders sag with something like realization, or relief, as though a weight had been lifted off of them. And her eyes – which had been burning with a heat, a desire you don’t think you’ve ever seen before, have calmed.

Gently, you whisper, your tone echoing a promise, “You don’t owe me anything.” You watch her throat bob as she swallows, her eyes trailing from your eyes, to your lips, before honing in on your neck, where the pulse from the organ behind your ribcage thrums in your neck. “We don’t–”

“I want to,” she breathes out, shrugging out of her shirt, and your eyes follow the lines of her body. You didn’t get to see them earlier. Her breasts are covered by her bra, something worn yet unshakingly reliable, the firm lines of her muscles crossing over one another and dipping beneath the waistband of her pants. Paige leans down, her hands pressed into the floorboards on either side of your head, her arms caging you in. The position shouldn’t make you feel as safe as you do, but she dips her head down to kiss you again. It’s gentler, more like what you’re used to from her, and the difference makes your headspin. She goes from rough to demanding to gentle and soft within minutes, and your body struggles to catch up.

“Wanna make you feel good,” she whispers, her voice wrecked, as she scrapes her teeth against your neck again. She pauses, her nose nearing your pulse point, where you’re sure she can feel the way your heart beats for her. Paige breathes in, like she’s trying to memorize the way you smell, and she presses a gentle kiss to your pulse point. She lingers there, her breath hitching, almost as though she’s forcing herself to keep moving. Like she knows she’s doing something she shouldn’t quite be doing.

“Wanna watch you fall apart for me,” she continues, her tongue darting out to lick the salt off your throat. She hums at the flavor and you arch into her. Paige leans back on her heels, reaching out for you, and she quickly unzips your dress at the back. “Wanna see you. All of you.” She punctuates her words by slowly pulling the fabric down, revealing miles upon miles of glistening skin, and her breath hitches at the sight. You’re bare, nipples already pebbling from the cool air of the room, and she sneaks in a feel as she pulls your dress down your torso.

It comes off easily. You lift your hips to help her out, leaving you in nothing but your lace, which is still damp from earlier. Her gaze lingers, and naturally, you spread your legs for her, allowing her to settle in between you with something like wonder on her face. But there’s something in her expression that’s still pinched.

You forget all about her weird behavior when her lips enclose around one of your nipples, her hand reaching up to fondle the other one. The pressure is otherworldly, all but forcing you to press up against her, and her free hand shoves your hips down with ease. You gasp a little, already sure that you’re leaking again, but she hums deep in her throat, the sound sending a shockwave straight through you.

“Paige,” you whimper, your voice breaking around a moan as she alternates, her mouth finding your other breast. “Please touch me.”

She laughs, fingers tracing the waistband of your lace, slipping under when you least expect it. But she doesn’t find your clit. She doesn’t press against you in the way that you need, doesn’t slip her finger inside like she usually would. She’s trying to draw out your pleasure, to make you beg for it, and that thought alone makes you wetter. “I am touching you, baby,” she teases. Her lips leave your breasts to trail down your stomach, nipping gently, soothing the sting with her tongue.

Huffing, you wrap your legs around her waist, tugging her a little closer to you, and something dangerous flashes in her gaze. “Don’t be a jerk,” you chastise, trying to sound strong, but your voice is breathless, full of need, and Paige knows it.

She grabs your thighs, pressing your legs back down onto the blanket, and leans over you with something dark in her eyes. “Don’t be a brat,” she retorts. The tone of her voice makes your entire body burn. “Think I don’t know what you need?” Her palms press against your stomach, fingers poking where she’d sucked brusies against your sensitive skin. It makes your hips jump. “You think I don’t know how to touch you? That when you’re turned on, and I press here…” Her palm finds your stomach, pressing down precisely, and a gasp falls from your lips. The smile on her face is far too smug. “…You make those sweet little sounds for me?”

“Paige,” you cry out again, feeling your need seep out of your cunt, surely staining your lace.

But she just keeps going. “You think I don’t know exactly how to fuck you? To make sure you feel me?” She shakes her head, lost in it, and she tangles her fingers in the waistband of your underwear. “I know you, baby. I know you’re soaking through this fucking lace for me. Know you’ve been wet all fucking night. If I had my way, I would have had my head between your thighs for hours until you cried for me.” Paige pulls your lace down slowly, her jaw falling open as she reveals your dripping cunt.

She glances at you, a satisfied little smile on her face, gaze heated, gone. “Is it that serious?” she coos, her tone teasing, eyes dropping to your thighs. “So fucking wet for me. Just want me to take care of you, huh?”

That’s when you spot it – the shining, viscous liquid pooling at the corner of her mouth, sliding down her chin, her neck. She’s fucking drooling. That realization hits you like a fucking truck, arousal seeping out of your weeping cunt, and you’re a little breathless when you ask, “Is that serious?” while you gesture to her lips.

Almost as though she’s coming back to herself, she reaches up, fingers finding the spit leaking out of her mouth, and she stares like she’s been caught. Something clears in her eyes. Embarrassment, maybe. Probably something else. Feeling your heartbeat in your cunt, you reach out for her hand, wrapping your lips around her fingers, and moaning in pleasure at the taste of her spit.

You can hear her groan – impossibly wrecked, destroyed entirely. She watches with rapt attention as you take her fingers down to the base, your tongue sliding between them, making sure you get every drop. When you’re done, her fingers are soaked, coated in your own saliva, and you drag a finger across the remainder pooling at the base of her neck. “What’d you say earlier?” you whisper, tone saccharine sweet. “‘Don’t waste that shit’?” You pop your own finger in your mouth while her brain catches up with her.

Ruined, she wipes her chin and her neck, offering her hand to you, and you don’t waste any more time before you’re taking her fingers in your mouth again, making sure to maintain eye contact. She groans, the sound low and devastating in her throat, her eyes not once moving away from you. When her hand is clear, she wraps it around your throat, not applying any pressure, but the hold is firm enough to push you back down onto your back. 

“Open,” she commands, and you do so wordlessly. The hand on your throat holds you still while, slowly, she lets her spit pool on her tongue, letting it fall into your mouth. You shudder at the feeling, your body impossibly hot, and her smile is a little reverent when she releases your throat to push your jaw up. You swallow immediately. Paige rewards you with a bruising kiss, groaning at the flavor of your combined tastes.

There’s no more foreplay from there, the both of you burning for each other. She fumbles with her belt buckle and shucks off her pants and boxers with an unnatural quickness. You reach for the hem of her bra, not wanting to be alone in your nakedness, and she raises her arms to allow you to pull it off of her.

The first press of her skin against yours feels like a lightning strike to your overheated skin. It makes you gasp, and she takes advantage of your pleasure to slip her tongue inside again, already working on pushing you to the edge with her lips alone. Her hands trail down to your thighs, pushing them open even more. She fits against you like a puzzle piece, pulling you flush against her, and you’re sure you ascend completely at the feeling of her wet cunt pressing against yours.

You both let out keening moans, your name falling from her lips while a curse falls from yours. Your fingers grapple for purchase on her back, your nails sinking in and scratching, and she moans against your lips at the sting of pain. Her forehead presses against yours, her hips rolling sensually into yours, and when your sensitive clits brush against each other, desire shoots up both of your spines simultaneously.

Her arms are caging you in again, the bulge and ripple of her muscles dragging you closer to a long awaited peak. Her hips roll with a newfound intensity, your combined slick making the slide impossibly smooth, and every brush of her clit against yours makes a moan tumble from your mouth. You’re unable to say anything, the pleasure immense and the words caught in your throat, and Paige kisses you like she understands, anyways. It’s needy, desperate, and reverent all in one.

Paige’s hips slam against yours, the both of you chasing your highs, and she releases your lips to press her mouth to your neck, directly over your pulse point. She kisses it, sucks a deep, bruising mark into your skin, and noses against your skin like she’s trying to memorize the way you smell – the way your blood smells as it courses through your veins. 

And then her teeth scrape against your neck. It makes you keen, tilting your head back to give her more room to work with, and she whimpers against your skin like the pleasure is too much. Her hips keep moving, even when her lips stall, but she mouths against your neck, almost as though she’s trying to gather confidence for something. Like she’s at war with her mind and she can’t make a decision. Like there’s something stopping her from sinking her teeth into you completely and feasting.

Eyes glazed over from pleasure, you finally peer up at her through your lashes, wondering why she’s pausing. Hesitating. Why she’s whining against your skin like she’s simultaneously hurt and seconds away from combusting with pleasure.

The sight above you isn’t one that you’d been expecting. It sobers you instantly, only halfway, the bump and grind of her clit against yours still sending shockwaves up your spine. There’s drool pooling at the corner of her lips again, but what truly gathers your attention and steals your breath away is the sharpness of her canines, the fangs protruding from her mouth. Her bottom lip is bitten raw, blood staining her mouth and dripping down her chin, as if she’d bitten her lip trying to prevent herself from biting you.

It’s then that you realize why the travellers had given you so much pause. Why you didn’t trust them. You’d been able to sense that lurking beneath the surface, they weren’t as they’d appeared. It wasn’t an inherent evilness. Even with Paige hovering above you, fangs out like she’s about to eat you alive, you can tell that she’s not evil. But she’s not herself either.

“Can’t,” she whimpers, almost as though she’s coming back to herself. You realize she’d been so weird ever since she returned with Mary because she’d been afflicted, fighting her mind and body and something else purely instinctual from the very moment she’d been let back into the juke joint. There’s something else in her head pressuring her to do something that she clearly doesn’t want to do – turning you, killing you – and she’s fighting every synapse and urge in her body to keep you safe. “I fucking can’t, ‘m so sorry.”

Her body and mind are split down the middle. Her fangs poke out, lips twisted up like she’s battling every urge to sink her teeth into your neck. But her eyes are as clear of a blue as you’d ever seen them. She doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to be this monster. Doesn’t want to hurt you anymore than she already has.

Then, there’s a flash of red in her eyes, something glowing, and she cries out as her head shoots back, her fangs digging into her lip again. She breathes heavily, and when she glances down at you, the red is gone and tears are pooling at her waterline. Blood dribbles from her lips, staining her teeth red. Your heart is caught in your throat, mouth open in disbelief and fear – not of her, but of what will happen if you lose her.

“Can’t hurt you,” she mutters again, her voice hoarse. “Won’t.” Her entire body shudders as she battles the urge. “Help me. Please, baby.”

Your fingers are trembling when you nod, wrapping your arms around her, and pulling her closer. She cries out like the temptation is blinding, pressing at every crevice of her body, but you trust her. God, you do. Despite everything that has led up to this moment, you know you’re safe with her. That she’d never hurt you. “It’s okay,” you promise, your voice steady, breathing hitting her ear. “You’re okay. Just move with me.”

You can feel her nod shakily, her hips resuming their slow motions against yours, and it’s this – this human connection, this bond between the two of you that’s more than just physical – that stabilizes her, tethers her to the reason why she can’t bring herself to sink her fangs in your neck and drain you like the urge in her brain is pressuring her to. “You won’t hurt me,” you whisper, squeezing the back of her neck, and she nods again. “Say it. You won’t hurt me.”

“I won’t hurt you,” she affirms, no hesitation, her forehead resting against your shoulder. Her breath comes out in a shudder, the pleasure coursing through her veins muddling with the uncertainty in her head. Paige noses against your neck, breathing in your scent, and something in her shoulders relaxes.

“You are not what he made you,” you say, one of your hands brushing through her hair.

“‘M not – fuck –” The words get caught in her throat, but she presses more firmly against you, and she breathes through it. “I’m not what he made me.”

Your lips find her cheek, her temple, grounding her, and your hips start meeting hers. “You are Paige Bueckers. You’re safe.”

Her voice is rough, but her tone is a little clearer when she repeats it. “I’m Paige Bueckers,” she whispers into your neck, her lips kissing your skin, almost like an apology. Like gratitude. Like a literal You are the only person keeping me here right now. “I’m safe.”

Your palms come up to cup her cheeks, pulling her out of your neck to meet her gaze. Her eyes are startlingly blue, tears slipping from her eyes, and her fangs are mostly gone. There’s still a slight edge on her canines, but you can feel it. She’s rejecting the bloodlust, the pressure of the hivemind she’s been trapped under. You kiss her gingerly, tasting the salt of her tears and the iron of the blood on her lips, and she sobs against your lips like that was the one thing she needed to remember who she was.

“I love you,” you whisper – you promise, and her hips are still chasing yours.

But you don’t give in. Not until Paige presses her forehead to yours, swearing vehemently, “I love you, too.”

You hold her gaze. Your eyes are steady, sure, and hers are trusting. She trusts that you’ll get her through to the other side of this, just as you trusted that she wouldn’t give into the feeling. So, you smile at her, faithfully, and you whisper, “Come back to me.”

She does. You latch onto each other as you fall apart in tandem. She’s still holding herself up by her hands, but her body shudders through the aftershocks as you kiss her temple, her nose, her lips, murmuring gently to her. You pull her onto your chest, her arms giving out, and she curls up next to you while she hiccups through the remainder of her tears. Her legs tangle with yours, her face tucking into the crook of your neck, her arms holding onto you like she’s afraid you’re going to run.

But you’d promised – the both of you did. There’s no more running from the people that you love. You brush her damp hair off of her forehead, kissing her skin gently, and it makes her shiver. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Paige look like this – scared of herself. Of what she is. She looks so young. It makes you hold onto her a little tighter.

“Where are you?” you whisper to her after a while.

She hardly shifts. “With you,” she promises. The last bit of tension in your shoulders dissipates. Paige is silent for a long moment. Then, you feel the heat of her tears dampening your skin, and you tighten your arms around her as she cries. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, the same way a sinner might as he stands before God on judgement day. “I’m so sorry. I almost–” Whatever she was trying to say gets stuck in her throat, and you trail your fingers soothingly up and down her back as she finds coherency. “I almost hurt you. Again.”

“You didn’t,” you remind her, your voice firm. “You couldn’t.” Her breath catches like she’s trying to force herself to believe that. “I trust you. In every definition of the word. I trust you, Paige. If I’m not safe with you then there’s nowhere else I’d be able to survive. You didn’t hurt me. You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s not your fault.”

Paige nods; then, brokenly, she murmurs, “It’s not my fault.” You hum in agreement, feeling her body relax against yours. You both lay in silence for a moment until she speaks up again. “You saved me.”

“You saved yourself,” you retort. You cup her cheek, your finger tapping against her temple, and you draw her eyes up to meet yours. “Up here. You did that. I just helped you down here.” You press your palm to her chest, where her heart is. She settles her hand over yours, sinking into you.

Then, Paige stiffens like she’s just remembered something. “Mary,” she states simply, and the dread seeps back into your chest.

“She took Elias to the back when she got back in,” you mutter. Paige glances at you once before the both of you haul yourselves to your feet, redressing quickly, and you make your way downstairs.

The both of you are already too late. The juke joint has been cleared out, with only a select few people remaining. Smoke, Annie, Pearline, Sammie, Grace Chow, Delta Slim. They all linger around the door to the back room. Mary’s missing. So is Stack, but Paige winces like she knows exactly where he is and what happened to him.

Annie catches sight of you first. Her face crumples with relief and she marches over immediately, pulling you into a tight hug that you eagerly reciprocate. “You’re okay,” she breathes out.

“I’m okay,” you murmur, mostly to soothe her, and Annie pulls away. She takes one glance at Paige and she stiffens, knowing that she’d left and returned with Mary. Her eyes narrow, but none of you get the chance to say anything before a handgun cocks and Smoke is pointing the barrel directly between Paige’s eyes.

She flinches, not because of the gun aimed at her. But because Smoke is one of her best friends and he hadn’t hesitated before he turned the gun on her. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” he says firmly.

For that, Paige has no real answer, but you step in between her and the barrel of Smoke’s gun. “Because she wouldn’t kill us,” you declare, your voice soft, yet it echoes in the emptiness of the juke joint. You glance back at her. Paige’s eyes are shining. “Couldn’t kill us.”

Smoke looks at Annie, who looks at you. Something in her features softens. “They’re not Haints,” she announces. “They’re vampires. Fangs, red eyes. Garlic, silver, sunlight, and wooden stakes are lethal. When they’re turned, they’re killed. Their soul is trapped inside their body and they’re unable to move on. But…there’s always a rare case. Sometimes souls are shared.” Annie meets your gaze again. “You’re the reason why she’s resisting the curse right now.”

You nod solemnly, already knowing as much, although you didn’t have the vocabulary for it. Smoke’s eyes linger on you. Then Paige. Then Annie. He lowers the gun, sliding it back into the holster, and Paige relaxes immediately. So do you. You step back, linking your fingers together. The tension in the room doesn’t completely dissolve, but it’s not nearly as heavy now.

Everyone starts making preparations. Annie assembles jars of pickled garlic. Silver jewelry is shared. Chairs are broken down and whittled into sharp, wooden points. Paige helps, but she’s a lot slower, her fingers trembling around the stake in her hand because she knows she’s holding the one thing that could ever kill her. You stick close by her if only to offer support, and you converse in hushed murmurs.

“You can’t stay here forever,” you say. Her throat bobs, quiet acceptance on her face. “The sunrise will kill you.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she argues.

You look at her. Your features soften. “Paige,” you whisper, your voice cracking under the weight of your emotions. “You couldn’t kill me.”

“Won’t.”

“I can’t kill you,” you confess. “Won’t.” She pauses, her gaze meeting yours. “I can’t sit here with you until sunrise and watch you burn up.”

“I don’t want to die.” Her voice is a quiet murmur. “I don’t want to be where you aren’t.”

You reach out, plucking the stake from her hands. She’s shaking. You slide into her lap, her arms immediately encircling you, and you press your foreheads together. “I don’t want to lose you either,” you say. “Which is why I want you to run when I tell you to. I’ll find you.”

She chokes on a laugh, but it’s watery. “I thought we said no more running,” she says, trying to keep the mood light, and you can’t help your giggle.

You kiss her gently. “If you die, you’re running away from me. You owe me.” She nods against you, her smile a little softer. “Promise me you’ll go when I tell you to.”

She’s silent for a moment. Her fingers trace your skin, the blue of her gaze searching yours. And she gives in. “I promise.”

You kiss her again. You hold onto her for a little longer, and then the both of you get back to work.

There are a few interruptions as you do. Stack returns with Mary in tow, asking to be let in. Obviously, no one lets that happen. Then Bo Chow returns – Grace’s husband, and you can sense that she’s moments away from giving in. At least, until Remmick shows up next to Bo and says something in Mandarin that makes Grace lose it. She’s dragged away kicking and screaming while someone slams the doors closed.

You can hear Remmick and the rest of the vampires locked in another haunting rendition of Pick Poor Robin Clean. Grace is at her wit’s end. You and Paige stay close, but commotion draws your attention. Smoke and Annie are holding Grace back while she thrashes. All you hear is, “Come on in, motherfucker!” and you know that your night is about to get a whole lot worse.

The subsequent fighting passes in a blur. You hardly remember it. You drive your stake through the chests of a few vampires, and so does Paige, even if the look on her face makes it look like she’s killing herself, too. You think you’re starting to make good progress until you see Stack hovering over Annie’s body, his fangs in her neck.

Everything goes devastatingly still. The fight still rages on. Gunfire echoes through the rooms, the cries of staked vampires falling on deaf ears. All you can see is the way Annie’s jaw hangs slack, pain etched on her face, and you can hear the agony in Smoke’s voice. Paige’s head turns, her face crumbling at the sight of her body.

She doesn’t hesitate. She tackles Stack, punching him clean across the jaw and disorienting him. The infighting causes a ripple of confusion among the vampires and it gives Smoke enough opportunity to stake the one holding him down before he rushes over to Annie.

You’re already next to her when Smoke falls to his knees next to her. He applies pressure over the wound at her neck, but you rest your hand over his, your fingers trembling. “It’s too late,” you tell him, your voice choked up.

Annie manages a nod, and with a weak voice, she wheezes, “You promised.” Her gaze is locked on Smoke.

He knows. With shaking hands, he reaches for his discarded stake. You wrap your hand around it, too, and together, you and Smoke both murmur, “I love you,” and Annie nods again like she understands. The both of you drive the stake through Annie’s chest, finally allowing her to move on and be at peace.

Her death causes a massive retreat. Paige grabs onto you, joining the rest of your friends as you hurry upstairs with Sammie. Delta Slim hangs back, cutting his own wrist cleanly, and drawing a crowd of the remaining vampires and allowing the rest of you the chance to escape.

On the second floor, there’s a door leading to a staircase outside. Smoke is ushering all of you out of it, and one by one, you make your way down. You glance up at the sky, noting how close to dawn you are. With your heart in your throat, you grab onto Paige’s hand, and you force her to meet your gaze. “Go,” you command.

She swallows thickly, glancing behind you to the crowd of vampires who have made their way out to intercept you. She doesn’t want to leave you. Not when this is what you have to face without her.

“You promised,” you remind her, your voice cracking when you recall that those were Annie’s last words, too. Paige seems to recognize that, nodding, and she presses her forehead to yours once more.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs again, kissing you gently. You just hold onto her a little tighter. “Please be okay.”

“I will,” you swear – because you will be. Paige has made sure of it. “I love you.”

Paige glances up at the sky, at the way the sun has begun to peek out from the horizon. She bows her head in a defeated acceptance. “I love you, too.”

Then she’s gone – her figure disappearing behind the trees. Her absence still aches. As strong as you try to be, you don’t know what the morning holds.

The sun comes up while Remmick and Sammie are locked in on each other in the shallow pond. Smoke comes up behind you, looking defeated, and you wonder about what happened to Stack. All around you, the vampires clutch their heads in agony as the sun blisters their skin, bright balls of orange flame encompassing everything.

The night ends in a way that makes you wonder if it’d even happened at all. There are no piles of ash, no indication of what just transpired if not for the blood on everyone’s clothes or the burn marks at the front of the juke joint from Grace’s molotov cocktail. The morning is still. Quiet. You watch as Smoke and Sammie hug each other tightly, as if they can’t believe that they’re even alive. Smoke sends Sammie off. He was supposed to help his father with the morning service, and the fact that Sammie goes willingly reminds you more of a trauma response than anything else.

You watch the sunrise with Smoke. Neither of you say anything, a shared sort of grief in your heart. When he looks down at his dog tags, at the chest of weapons he’d stashed in his truck, you know of his plan before you think he does. Gingerly, you wrap him in a hug, and you murmur, “Say hello to Annie for me.”

His fingers tremble when he hugs you back. “I will,” he promises. “Go be with her.”

You nod, releasing him. You find a car that had been left behind, find the keys left on the seat, and you drive a little catatonically back to Annie’s shop. The sun is well into the sky by the time you make it there. Everything is quiet. Unmoving. You cut the engine, step out, and make your way to the door. You open it.

Paige has you in her arms before the door even closes. You sink into her embrace, clutching onto her tightly, because she’s somehow still the one thing that makes even a little bit of sense in this fucked up world. She lets you cry into her chest and you’re pretty sure that she’s crying into your shoulder, but the two of you just remain locked in each other’s arms. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask you if you’re okay or how you’re feeling. She knows. She gives you the space to quietly grieve, to not be strong. The both of you had lost so many people tonight. Friends. Family. Everything else.

She didn’t expect you to be okay. You didn’t know how long it would take for things to feel okay. To feel normal. Maybe the truth is that you might never feel normal again. Your girlfriend is stuck under this curse for the rest of her days, even though she’s still Paige Bueckers, but there’s so much you’ll need to learn. To do. You’ll have to change so much about your lives just to survive.

But you’d made her a promise a while ago. You would rather love Paige in the dark than have anyone else in the sun. You hadn’t realized the irony of your words until now, but you mean it. As long as you and Paige have each other, this new part of your lives might not be so difficult. It will just be yours. For now, that’s all you can really ask for.

“You still makin’ pie today?” she asks, her voice soft and exhausted at the edges.

It draws a light laugh out of you. It relieves you to know that you could still be happy after this. “Yeah,” you promise. “I’m making pie today. And you can have the spoon.”

Paige holds onto you a little tighter after that. And she doesn’t let go.

Life after the night at the juke joint is…different. An adjustment.

Sammie disappears to only God knows where, although in the years after, you’d heard whisperings of a blues singer who’d taken the world by storm. As much as you cared for him, you struggled with keeping up with him and his adventures. He reminded you too much of that night and everyone you’d lost – Annie, Smoke, Delta Slim, the Chows. Even Cornbread.

But Paige doesn’t remind you of the horrors. It’s always a little different with her, even if she isn’t what she used to be. She’s trapped in that supernatural plane between being human and something not quite. Following Remmick’s death, she was no longer shackled to that all-consuming hivemind of hate and malice. Not that she was fully in it in the first place – her heart was a little too human. She’s more like herself now than she was that night, which does bring you some comfort.

You’re not comforted by the fact that her soul is trapped in her body, though. Not comforted by the fact that she’s dead, yet she’s still living half of a life for your sake because she’d been unable to kill you while under the spell of vampirism and you were unable to kill her yourself, too. Paige is a walking folktale, unable to touch silver, eat garlic, or feel the sun on her skin. She hides in the shadows during the day and comes out during the night if only to feel your skin against hers.

You’re not an ordinary pair. You’ve never been – two women connected by fate and bonded by love in Mississippi. You fell in love despite the fact that the world thought you shouldn’t. You survived the attacks at the juke when it was improbable. Now, you’re still two women learning to navigate life as one of you ages and the other remains stuck at 23.

After that night, you return to town. You try your best to explain to Lisa, the Chows’ daughter, what happened. You don’t think she believes you – you wouldn’t either. But life goes on for her, even though her parents never return. You take over Annie’s shop, still serving Elise and Will and telling them that Annie and Elijah had actually gotten married and moved out of the Delta. They were too young for the truth, and you didn’t have the heart to explain it to them.

During the day, Paige helps you in the shop, confined to the shadows indoors, staring longingly out the window. She’d once told you that she never realized how much she’d miss the sun until it was gone. That made you feel a little guilty, but she just kissed you, forgiveness and atonement on her lips. She wasn’t going to hate you for being unable to kill her when that was also a crime she’d committed.

At night, she’s glued to your side, trampling gently over weeds and grass in the woods as you search for roots for the shop. You don’t practice the craft like Annie used to – it wasn’t your place. But honoring her memory makes you feel less like you’re drowning. Only after sunset is Paige able to go outside and feel the ground beneath her feet, inhale the fresh air without burning up. Truthfully, it brings you both closer, just having to figure out different ways to love each other.

Neither of you run, even when it’s hard. Paige is there to console you after horrible dreams of that night. You’re there with remedies when her gums ache. Her pain is a little more instinctual than it is medical, but it does bring her some relief. 

Stack and Mary came to visit one day. Paige had stood glaring at your side while the two of them spoke with you. They meant no harm. They told you that much when they knocked on your door and asked for an invite inside. Perhaps foolishly, you’d believed them, but you chose to believe they were capable of goodness despite their new nature, just as Paige was. Stack told you about a place they’d come across during their travels, a state in New England – Connecticut. It would be a fresh start away from the horrors of the Delta.

You weren’t sure. Part of you wanted to keep up Annie’s shop, honoring her practice and her traditions for as long as you could. It was difficult to be incognito when half of the town disappeared suddenly one night and the juke joint was littered with bodies. Stack and Annie hugged you before they left, telling you to visit if you ever found the time. You could only nod, and Paige was only able to breathe once they were gone.

You’re tangled in bed together that night, your head on Paige’s chest, listening to the juxtaposition in the sound of her breathing despite the lack of a heartbeat. You never knew that you’d miss that sound, either. Her nail drags up and down your arm soothingly, almost lulling you into a slumber, but she breaks it to murmur, “Connecticut?”

“It’s pretty far,” you respond. “A lot colder than it is here.”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell,” she jokes, which rips a surprised laugh out of your chest. Her finger pauses in its movements, but she shifts, slinging a leg over yours and pulling you closer. That wasn’t anything new – Paige was always physically affectionate, long before Remmick turned her into this. Now, it means something different. You’re warm. Having you close makes her feel a little more alive, even if the skin-to-skin contact can’t fully replace the lack of her own body heat. “We can’t stay here forever,” she continues, her voice softening. Then it breaks when she says, “I can’t stay here forever.”

Her family had long since been shattered down two lines. Still, it weighs on her, the idea of never seeing her parents again, or her siblings. She couldn’t keep them and lie to them about the nature of her being. She also knew they would never believe her fully or see her the same. It would be impossible to explain to people why you continued to age, yet Paige remained the same for years. Impossible to explain why no one ever sees her in town anymore, not even for the holiday celebrations she’d loved as a kid.

“I know,” you whisper.

You had no one left here besides her. All of your friends had passed during that night. Your only connection to the Delta was keeping Annie’s memory fresh. But customers would dwindle, and you know better than anyone else that Annie would tell you to move on. Be happy. 

You shift in bed, craning your head to meet Paige’s eyes, and you find that she’s already looking at you. She’s soft, her hair mussed, flowing down her shoulders in wavy strands. She has an imprint of your teeth on her neck from where you’d gotten a little too carried away but she wears it more like a badge of pride than a symbol of irony. Her smile is so tender, her hands cradling you like you’re her entire world, because you are and you know it and she knows it.

It makes you ache a little. But it’s a good ache. You don’t have to give the idea any more thought before you’re asking, “Well, how do you feel about the snow?”

She kisses you gently on the lips, chaste, innocent, something that makes you feel warm all over. “Anywhere’s good as long as it’s with you.”

It takes a few days, but eventually, the two of you make it to Connecticut. You settle down in a small town called Storrs, and honestly?

It’s really, really nice.

Storrs is nothing like the Delta. It doesn’t get nearly as hot. You feel a little more free here. And while you do miss the authentic fried catfish, you think that you can turn Storrs into your home. Your neighbors are kind and they don’t ask questions about you and Paige – they just leave you be. It’s not in a way that makes you think they don’t care about you; rather, it feels like respect and grace, because you weren’t different. You and Paige weren’t something to be stared at. You just were, and your neighbors seemed to understand the value in minding their own.

You and Paige attend three different welcome dinners, getting to know your neighbors and their families. They tell you what life is like in the neighborhood and which establishments were hiring. They send you home with leftovers and you make sure to clean and return them along with one of your homemade pies. It’s a comforting tradition of feeding and taking care of each other.

Paige lands a position at the local high school as an assistant coach for their basketball team. She knows next to nothing about the sport but the position had been vacant for years. She’s a quick study, though – she’d helped lead the team to the district championship by the end of the year. You were teaching language arts at the elementary school, having always enjoyed a good book, and the kids loved you, too.

And so your routine was simple. Not monotonous enough to be boring, but stable enough to be peaceful. Paige would drop you off at the elementary school with a kiss goodbye and a surprise in your lunch bag. It was always a sweet little note consisting of reminders to breathe and to smile. She’d drive to the high school, where she’d scout other teams and draw up training plans or practice drills, often being a role model to her boys and keeping them on the straight and narrow. They came to her for any and everything – advice on how to be better players. One even asked her how he should ask out his crush, which had endlessly amused the both of you as you chatted over it at dinner.

You asked her what she advised him to do, obviously. She’d gotten a little quiet, a small sort of smile spreading across her lips as she brought a piece of chicken up to her mouth. “Told him to be honest,” she said after a moment, looking at you meaningfully. You softened. “That he shouldn’t be afraid to want her.”

“Sounds familiar,” you commented wryly, and she smirked at you over a glass of water.

“Sounds real,” she shot back.

Your kids, while younger, aren’t lacking for stories, either. You tell Paige about the time you watched a boy push a girl on the playground during recess, only for the girl’s friend to step in, hands on her hips like a disappointed mother lecturing an unruly kid. He’d gotten punished, obviously, but it warmed your heart to see the girl standing up for her friend like that – without hesitation.

Then, on the same day, one of your students came to the front and loudly demanded to know where babies came from.

So maybe children came in all shapes and sizes.

Months passed. You and Paige don’t change. You’re still hopelessly in love, finding new ways to love each other. It’s all about the intention and effort and reading the nutrition labels on your food to make sure the suppliers hadn’t slipped garlic in there or making sure to keep the curtains drawn on the days there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It’s buying large umbrellas and telling your new friends that Paige has a severe skin condition where she burns easily in the sun and you have yet to find a sunscreen that works. It’s cuddling up with her late at night, pressed skin to skin with hardly an inch of space left between your bodies, because Paige craves the body heat like she craves having you next to her.

The school year eventually ends and over the summer, you and Paige visit Stack and Mary, as promised. They’re still down south. Mary looks radiant and when you hug her, you congratulate her on keeping Stack out of trouble. Stack had nudged Paige with a raised brow and a look that clearly said I’m keeping her out of trouble. You make a joke about needing an invite into their home and the four of you laugh about it three hours later when you’re all a little tipsy from the wine.

Seeing them makes you feel like you haven’t completely lost anything. That you can still find your family so long as you know where to look and as long as you trust them. You spend a few days with the two of them, and then you and Paige make your way back up to Storrs.

You teach, reminding your students of the importance in looking between the lines, in reading and learning from the source. Paige coaches, instilling grit, passion, and integrity into her players. It wasn’t about being perfect or anything of the sort. It was about doing what you loved with all that you were. The two of you live on, happily.

A year passes. Then two. You’re transferred from kindergarten to the second grade after one of the teachers retired. Paige gets promoted to head coach after winning the district championship win and taking her team to the state finals. You’re turning 27 this year and Paige is still 23. She likes to joke that she’s being preyed on by an older woman and you wish that she wasn’t virtually invincible because you’d like to flick her head just once and have it mean something.

The fact that you’re aging and she’s not isn’t really a concern right now. You’re happy. That’s what matters.

Paige asks you to marry her a year after that, when you’re 28. You say yes, obviously, and Stack and Mary make the trip up to see the both of you. Your wedding is intimate, private, not quite official but official in every way you need it to be. On legal documents, no one would ever know that you were Paige Bueckers’s wife, but you knew that, she knew that, and your closest friends knew that, so it was good enough for you.

You teach. She coaches. Storrs is your home now, even if you miss the Delta and everyone who didn’t make it out. Their loss isn’t your gain. It’s your memory and you honor them everyday. Slim, when you listen to the blues, thinking about how much he’d like this new shit, as Paige calls it. The Chows, when you go to the grocery store and smile at the elderly couple who runs it. You always pay a little too much, pretending not to hear them calling about your change when you walk out. But when you return days later and find that they’ve repaired a light fixture or have a new cash drawer, you can’t find it within yourself to mind too much.

TIme is constant. It moves. It’s unyielding. You get older. Paige doesn’t. But it’s okay.

Years pass. A decade. Two decades. Paige eventually steps down from the head coaching position at the high school because she’s supposed to be almost fifty but doesn’t look a day over twenty. Your neighbors ask how she remains so youthful, and her smile is always a little sharper when she says, “I’ve got great genes.”

She doesn’t look at you like you’re anything less than the woman she’s been in love with since she was sixteen. You don’t forget that, not when there’s crows feet at your eyes and your forehead is beginning to wrinkle. Not when teaching is catching up with you and the hair at the crown of your head starts greying. But you don’t give it up. Paige looks at you like you’re still the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen in her life. She finds other employment opportunities, ones where nobody knows who she is and wouldn’t be confused by her image.

She builds stuff now. She’s a carpenter. She plays basketball in her free time when she’s not working on projects and offhandedly, you comment, “Well, you could always enroll at that college a few miles away and play ball for them.”

You could tell she was always really into that idea, but something was keeping her here with you. You would never find out why and Paige would never tell you if you asked. But the truth was she just wanted to spend as much time with you before your age started actually catching up with you. Paige liked going on your late-night walks, breathing in the cool air and making you laugh by telling jokes that aren’t even funny anymore. Paige liked that you’d try to play basketball with her, even if you couldn’t fully dribble the ball between your legs. You knew that she just liked “defending” you, which meant that her hands wandered everywhere the ball wasn’t, but you liked it too, so you never called her out for it.

Nobody tells you how difficult it can be to be nearing sixty and being in love with someone who’s been twenty-three for three decades. You don’t have the same energy you did when you were younger. Paige didn’t love you any less.

Years pass again. You’re nearing seventy. You retired from teaching a few years ago, but you’re still active in your community, keeping up the local garden and smiling at the daughter of the elderly couple at the grocery store. Your neighbors ask you about why they don’t see Paige anymore and you can’t quite meet their eyes when you say it’s difficult for her to get out because of her arthritis.

You’ve lived a good life – that much you can admit. You survived, you got to keep Paige, and you made a career for yourself at the elementary school. You were afforded a lot more happiness than you ever thought you would have. You wonder what it would be like if things were different – if you and Paige were both cursed to be forever young, or if the both of you hadn’t made it out before the sun rose. You like what you’ve built, so this life was good enough for you.

The 90’s roll around and in spring of 1991, you’re sipping on tea when Paige quietly informs you, “I think I’m going to apply to UConn.”

You try for a wry smile. “Perfect. A twenty three year old with, what, sixty years of basketball experience? That’s just what that new coach needs.”

That made her laugh a little. “I think I’m prepared enough to walk on,” she teases. “Hopefully those freshmen don’t pick my pockets.”

You raise your brows at her and she relents like she’s accepting the possibility that she will get embarrassed by eighteen year olds. Like…actual eighteen year olds. Then you soften, setting your tea down, and meeting her gaze. “You’re serious?” She nods shyly. “Well, just make sure you bring your own pen and paper to class,” you say, lips quirking again. “Us teachers aren’t made of money.”

She laughs again, the sound gentle. Paige stands to brush a kiss across your temple, murmuring, “Don’t worry. I’ll be the best student ever.” She’s off to locate the application, and you smile at her retreating figure.

Neither of you are quite sure how, but she manages to get in. You didn’t consider the fact that her diploma was awarded in the 20s, and truthfully, you don’t really want to know what she did to get her application accepted. By fall, she’s enrolled full time at the University of Connecticut. In August, she walks directly into Geno Auriemma’s office, requesting to walk on in tryout. Afterwards, Paige will tell you that Geno stared at her for a solid minute and a half until she felt like she was slowly being gaslit. “What the hell,” Geno had said, standing up from his desk. “I’ve got time today. Let’s see if you can actually hold a ball, hotshot.”

You knew that Paige could do a lot more than hold a ball. Considering the fact that Geno let her join the team, you guess he figured out that Paige could do a lot more, too.

Everyday, she comes home with stories from practice, telling you about the drills they ran and how Geno sees perfection and demands something more. She doesn’t have to tell you for you to know that she really likes the intensity, the rigor. Geno works them so hard that she forgets she’s able to live forever because one practice makes her feel like it’s her last day on earth. You’re just happy that she’s happy.

You attend all of their home games, unable to be seen with Paige until the both of you are home and you can congratulate her on a good game. But the next four years pass quickly. The first three are winless. You and Paige both know that the Huskies are very close to a national championship win.

In 1995, they finally earned their long awaited one. Their first program win, Geno Auriemma’s first national championship win, and Paige’s, too. She’d led her team there, filling out the stats sheet, and she cried when she held the trophy for the first time.

It must be different for her, you think, to have been cursed to live forever from a young age. There will be no growing old for her. No children or grandchildren to ask her what it was like to win UConn’s first national championship. There will be no huffing and puffing about dentures or anything of the sort. She probably won’t be remembered after this year, but winning feels like building something permanent. It feels like being alive – like truly alive, and you wonder if she holds any resentment towards you for being unable to save her at the juke joint.

But the kiss she dusts across your cheek afterwards, the long hug she pulls you in – sweat and all – makes you feel like she could never be angry at you for that. Especially not when she murmurs, “Thank you for giving me this life,” and you realize that the two of you had sacrificed so much for each other without truly knowing it. Whether the two of you realized it or not, you made something beautiful with the life you’d been given. Not many people can say that.

Paige doesn’t keep the championship net, only the small fragment that she’d cut down. She leaves hers with Geno, who obviously doesn’t understand why she wouldn’t keep it, but he’d coached her long enough to realize there’s no arguing with her.

You think that this is what happiness feels like. What love and fulfillment feels like. All you really know is that you were glad to do it with Paige.

After the national championship win in 1995, the years pass in a blur. You’re slowing down. You can feel it.

You’re well past 90 in 2000 when you realize that this was it for you. You’ve lived a long, good life. You’ve seen a lot, touched the lives of many people around you, and you know that there’s not much waiting for you here. Having no tangible family, assembling your will is an easy task, opting to have your wealth donated to the UConn women’s basketball program anonymously.

In early July, the evening is just beginning to wind down when Paige finds you sitting on the porch. The sound of crickets echo around you, the distant hoot of owls cooing, accompanied by the sound of squirrels running through the underbrush. She takes a seat next to you on the sectional, not a day past twenty, a staunch dissimilarity from you.

You’re both silent for a moment. Contemplative. You don’t have to say anything to know that the both of you are likely thinking the same.

Softly, she murmurs, “I’d like to watch the sunrise with you,” and you know better than anyone what she means by that. What the consequences of that mean.

So you do. She grabs a blanket from inside, large enough to drape over your shoulders, and she helps you onto the earth. Paige guides you to the edge of your property where a small pond rests, the glow of the moonlight reflecting off of the still waters. You sit together, your head on hers, and you spend the entire night talking.

You reminisce about the first time you’d met – you, adjusting to life in the Delta, and Paige, wanting desperately to get out of it. The both of you laugh when she recalls the first time she’d ever met the twins. Elias claimed they were cousins, baiting her perfectly. You remember all of your firsts. The morning when she left you for Chicago – even now, she still apologizes for that, to which you respond with, “Well, don’t leave me in our next life. How about that one?” and she laughs, a determined little smile on her face as she declares, “I’d spend every moment of it looking for you.”

The hours trickle by. For years, you’d thought of this moment, about what would occur when one of you inevitably decided that it was time to go. You imagined nerves. Uncertainty. Fear. Now, you’re comforted by the knowledge that you and Paige are just going to find your way back to each other no matter what. All you feel is a deep rooted peace, like you’ve finally earned a happy ending after the turmoil of your life. Maybe in the next one you’d be able to love her openly, but your promise from this one stands: you’d rather love her in the dark than take someone else in the sunshine.

You hear the chirp of birds before you see the sunrise. You feel Paige stiffen next to you, knowing it’s more of an instinctual discomfort than it is pain or fear, and you wrap her hands in yours, calming her with the heat of your body. She tries to relax – she does, but the both of you know this is it. It’s a heavy feeling, not one of a damning finality. One of hope, because no matter what, there’s so much more waiting for you both.

You glance at her. Paige is already looking at you, her gaze reverent and full of love, and she dusts a kiss to your wrinkled cheek. The sun is rising higher now, the rays poking through the trees and peering above the early dawn clouds. Her body begins to shimmer, some sort of golden flame licking at her skin, and she breaks your stare to look up at the sky, a slow smile curling on her lips.

“I love you,” she whispers to you, something like a promise. A vow, one that will hold true for more than this moment. “Don’t keep me waiting, okay?”

You smile, too, reaching up with your hand to cup her cheek. It’s warm to the touch. “I’ll see you soon,” you swear. “I love you.”

Her hand wraps around your forearm, leaning into your touch, and she presses the lightest ghost of a kiss to the inside of your wrist as the gentle flames consume her completely. Before you know it, Paige is gone, and your hand falls to your side limply.

But you’re not too far behind, either. You wrap the blanket tight around your body, leaning your head against the rich soil, and you gaze out at the pond before you, memorizing the blue of the water, the peace of the moment, the beauty of the life you and Paige managed to create for yourselves when it all felt impossible. Content, you shut your eyes, knowing that it’s finally time to rest.

(The next time you open them, Paige is standing before you, her arms extended wide, and you sink into her embrace like you know it’s the one place you’ll always belong. Like she’s the one place you’ll always be able to call home. And maybe it’s because she is. Maybe it’s because the two of you are just getting started, and you have so much time together. Your lives are just beginning.)

bonus

Coach Geno Auriemma, now in his sixties, is poring over recruitment film in his office during a calm day in May 2015 when his associate head coach, Chris Dailey, knocks on his door. She enters moments later, iPad and clipboard tucked close to her chest with a pensive expression, and sits down across from Geno.

He looks up, brows raised and lips drawn into an unimpressed line. He hardly seems concerned by CD’s expression as he says flatly, “What did Stewart do now?”

CD ignores that comment. “I was looking through the middle school film. Watch #1 in blue.” She flips the iPad around, pressing play on the video on screen. Geno hones in on the player in question – blonde, perhaps a little undersized compared to her peers, but he can tell this is an eighth grader playing on varsity. She’s dribbling the ball at the top of the key, calling for a screen, and she ducks around the defender on the right, stopping just short of the free throw line and shooting the ball gracefully from the midrange. It sinks in – because of course it does – and the player backpedals for defense.

It’s then that the camera catches her features. It’s grainy, but Geno can recognize that face anywhere. The assured confidence, maybe a little misplaced and delusional, but it’s almost as trademark as the midrange pullup. Something in him simultaneously softens and breaks.

In 2000, Paige Bueckers, the player who had won UConn’s first national championship for women’s basketball in 1995, had disappeared. Not a trace. She had no family to reach out to, and when Geno approached police and authorities for a wellness check, he’d been told that there was no record of her. Nobody could explain how she lit up the court every week yet ceased to legally exist. It would become one of UConn’s greatest memories. Surely everyone had just missed something.

But this? This wasn’t a coincidence.

“Paige Bueckers,” CD says quietly. “Same face. Same jumper. Same player.”

“Born 2000 or 2001?” Geno asks. CD nods resolutely, and the head coach leans back in his chair. At his age, he’d thought he’d seen everything, but this takes the cake completely. “Well,” he mutters after a while. “Guess I must have really pissed someone off to have to coach her twice.”

In the same office years later, the 2020 season has just begun, and Geno is waiting for a student to arrive for a meeting. Her name had sounded so familiar to him, and after the whole situation with Paige Bueckers, Geno is learning to trust his gut a little more when it comes to things that feel more like fate than coincidence.

There’s a gentle knock at his office door, and he calls for the student to enter. That’s when you walk in, a little flushed from your walk over, bag slung over your shoulder. Geno knows he’s never seen you before in his life, but there’s still something familiar about your face, the energy you’ve brought into the room simply by sitting. You’re a kinesiology major – pre-med, you’d specified in your email to him, inquiring about whether or not the conditioning team would have any space for a freshman looking to intern.

If you were any other person, he would have told you that his hands were tied with the season’s preparations and recommended that you reach out to the conditioning team. But this was different. You were different, and so was that blonde point guard from Minnesota whom he’d put his heart into recruiting – not because she would change the program. She’d already done that back in 1995. He did that because he knew God didn’t put people in his life twice in a row for no good reason.

You and Geno talk for a few minutes, and he’s no closer to placing where he knows you from until there’s another set of knocks on his door. He has half a mind to send them away, but in walks Paige Bueckers, and that’s when the entire room stills. You and Paige lock eyes like he’s not sitting a few feet in front of the both of you, awestruck expressions on both of your faces like this isn’t the first time you’ve met – even though it is.

In this life, at least.

You introduce yourself to Paige and that’s how Geno realizes. He knows that infatuated look in Paige’s eyes. It was the same one she had so many years ago when she was clearly in love but couldn’t quite be honest about who it was and whatever fashion it came to be in. Geno may never understand the true nature of why Paige had kept you a secret while she was at UConn in 1995, but he knows what this is.

It’s not a coincidence. He wasn’t the man to believe in fate or luck. But this is just how things are supposed to be, so he bites back a smile when Paige stands in his office like a bumbling idiot in your presence.

“Well, Bueckers?” he says dryly, which gathers both yours and Paige’s attention. The blonde’s ears are slightly red, which amuses Geno to no end. “You gonna keep flirting with our new conditioning intern or are you gonna show her around the facility?”

You look at Geno with a gleeful expression, shock lacing your features, and Paige stutters over her words as she nods, saying, “Yeah, I got you, Coach.” Clearly having forgotten what she’d initially come in to pester him about, Paige holds the door for you, shutting it gently, and Geno can hear your shared laughter through the walls.

He smiles to himself, leaning back in his chair with crossed arms. This wasn’t the first time you and Paige have met. He knew that much to be true even if he couldn’t prove it. He also knew that this wouldn’t be the last time, either, and he would never admit it, but he’s really, really grateful to have been part of yours and Paige’s stories twice.

[melinoelabs]

Dear Sirs.

SCP-682's powers are metatextual. He's unkillable because the story says he is nearly unkillable and no solution would be satisfying. His nickname is 'the very hard to destroy reptile' for rigour's sake. You don't have to be Grant Morrison to put this together.

The solution is to alter the narrative so that there is a means of killing him that is satisfying. Unfortunately, only full-on apocalypse scenarios or the use of SCP-682 as a jobber for an even worse threat would fill that criteria.

So unless you want to unleash something even more tiresome, like the Black Moon or the Scarlet King or the Yellow Submarine or whatever other color-coded doomsday monster you have on tap, you're just wasting jumpsuit filling doing anything at all.

The easy alternative is to simply stop trying to kill him.

Just focus on holding him in the most boring, routine ways possible, rendering him increasingly less interesting and thus reducing the time between stories focused on him and thus, the resulting breaches and disasters.

Or you can do what we did. If you aren't chicken.

Ours wasn't a rotted lizard. It was a sort of mummified horse the size of a 1996 Volkswagen Harlequin, and it was a she, but otherwise same deal. Regeneration. Vat of acid. Mass casualties. Violent opposition to the use of breath mints. Endemic to all life. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

We figured out the how it worked, and we speed-ran the whole concept, hurling that vile beast through a veritable plinko-fall of thousands of extermination tests and controlled rampages until there was literally nothing left to do with the 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse'.

And we trust the populace enough to not lie to them for 'their own good'. Because its funny? Sure. Profitable? Absolutely (don't worry, shareholders!)! But never for 'their own good.'

So we turned those experiments into a 17 season reality television program hosted by Greg Kinnear and force-fed them to a sludge-hungry populace.

There were 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' calendars, coffee mugs, t-shirts, two different animated spin-offs running at the same time for some reason, four movies starring Chris Pratt as the voice of the horse, an ongoing sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' "acid bath" sour candy flavored yogurt in a tube, a series of increasingly inadequately playtested gameboy cartridges, a 27-issue limited series from Image comics, and adorable plush mummified murder-horse plushes with little suction cups on their red-felt hooves so they can stare balefully out the back of your station wagon at that ASSHOLE Kevin in his souped up Trans AM who does not understand the concept of a safe following distance, and you JUST want to run him off the road with the magno-lifters and recreate the scene from Lost Highway with Robert Loggia, but "you can't use the magno-lifters for revenge" because it's "against OSHA regulations" and "technically assault!"

And once the first shipment of 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' Funko Pops hit store shelves, the creature's cultural cache cratered so hard that it became a parody of itself so predictable it's "containment" is now a Universal Studios attraction with two failed executions and a containment breach each night, with double shows on Saturdays.

Now, it was a rocky ride getting there, especially for Utah (projections say you'll get those House seats back in two, maybe three, generations at most, don't you worry!) but we've proven that even if it isn't killable, you can, in fact, beat a dead horse.

Hope this helps.

Humbert, Outreach Liaison Melinoë Laboratories "Hoc non veniet ad nos mordax"

[gorgeys]

purple tongues ★ mari ibarra x fem!reader

some couples measure their love in pictures, or flowers, or kisses.  you and mari measure yours in slurpees.

word count: 2700 warnings: maybe mari a little ooc?

a/n: this is barely edited so it's a little rough around the edges

also this is supposed to be the first part of that big mari fic i was teasing here. i started writing a part 2 with more snapshots of mari and reader's relationship in the future but it might never get done who knows.

missing my shayla sm 💔💔

it started the night before everything began.  the night before you left for nationals.

you and mari had ditched the bonfire party early on, mari claiming "this looks like a scene out of can't hardly wait, minus anyone fuckable."  instead, the two of you walked down the lonely, dark neighborhood roads, music fading out of earshot and hands brushing with each step.

mari filled the silence by making fun of everyone's outfits that night just to hear you laugh.  you filled the space by leaning into her side and finally grabbing her hand, which left mari's heart thumping against her rib cage.  until you both stumbled across wiskayok's only 7/11.

sure it was cramped and old and smelled like weed, but the way mari opened the door for you and drawled "after you, milady," made it seem like the fanciest place in town.  you laughed all the way to the slurpee machine, mari guiding you with a hand on the small of your back, where you both reached for big gulp cups.

"half cherry, half coke," you say, filling your cup to the brim.  "just like god intended."

mari scrunches up her nose in disgust, but it's more cute than anything.

"no, no, no.  see, you gotta get blue raspberry like a real adult," mari says as if she's enlightening you.

"yeah, right."  you roll your eyes, but your smile speaks volumes.

she grabs a few crumpled dollar bills from the back pocket of her jeans and throws them down on the counter like it's not even a question that she's paying for you.  then she tugs you by the hand out the door and finds a nice spot on the curb illuminated by the overhead streetlight.

she outstretches her legs and lazily leans back on one hand, the other bringing the straw to her lips.  she moans dramatically after taking her first sip.

"enjoying that?" you ask, glancing over at her with a raised eyebrow.

"oh yeah," she says, grinning back.  "a thousand calories and enough artificial sweetener to kill a horse.  nationals here we come!"

you laugh, the sound mari's come to love so much, before taking a sip of your own.

there's a beat of silence.  it's something mari used to hate, but has come to understand since meeting you.  she actually finds herself enjoying the quiet when it's shared with you.  still she's always one to break it.

"isn't this so much better than getting puked on by randy walsh?" 

you look over at her and grin.  because yeah, that had actually happened last year and she would spend the rest of her years teasing you about it.  but you also smiled because there was no one else you'd rather be with.

"yeah, it really is," you say, breathlessly and genuinely.

when mari turns and sees the way you're looking at her, full of love and everything she doesn't think she deserves, she feels like her heart might as well jump out of her chest and into your hands. because mari, whose first language is sarcasm and shit talking, somehow harbors a soft spot in the shape of you.

"don't look at me like that," she says, but her words lack the bite they usually have.  her eyes flicker down to the asphalt, a similar smile spreading across her face.

you lean in closer, lowering your face so she's forced to meet your eyes.  mari's the opposite of shy, so you can't help but take advantage of moments like this, when she's nervous to show how much she really cares.

"like what?" you ask, a teasing edge to your voice.  like you already know what she's going to say.

"like you love me or something," she says, trying and failing to sound casual.  she looks back up at you, leaning back on her hand with that easy smirk.

"but i do," you say, resting your cheek against your knee, still smiling up at her.

"obviously, you dork."

a breathy chuckle pushes past your lips before you cup her face in your free hand.  your lips meet hers halfway in a strong, sure kiss.  it's not perfect by normal standards --both of your lips are freezing and taste like artificial sweetener and you can hear boys shouting on the other side of the parking lot.  but in that moment, it feels perfect to the both of you.

when mari pulls back she grins like she's just won the lottery.

"i love you too," she says, the words rolling off her tongue more naturally than her own name.

you smile, reaching down and interlacing your fingers with hers on the pavement.  you don't have the guts to say it, but a part of you is thinking it: maybe this could be forever.

if you had known that was going to be your last taste of normal, you would have stayed there even longer, would've bought mari another slurpee, would've kissed her one more time under the neon sign of the store.  instead, you walked her home an hour or two later, kissing her cheek at the door and whispering how beautiful of a night it had been with her.

the next time you think about slurpees, you're a thousand miles deep in the canadian wilderness.  you're starving, borderline freezing to death, and you've just watched your closest friends die.

you're tucked under as many blankets as you could find, legs tangled with mari's beneath them as you try to keep out the cold of the approaching winter.  your faces are so close that you can feel her warm breath fanning against your nose, a welcome reminder that she's still there.  she can feel your hand trembling as it holds onto her arm and the way you stiffen each time a strong gust of wind enters the hut, as if you're waiting for something bad to happen.

you think she might be asleep until you feel her fingers start to trace your cheekbone.  her touch is so gentle you have to question if it's really there or if you're just imagining it.

"do you remember our last night?" she whispers.

you open your eyes, and from the way the moonlight reflects off of them, mari knows you do.

"i think about it all the time," she confesses.  "when i can't sleep, i just try to remember you that night.  how pretty you looked under the streetlight and how stupid i was for not telling you then."

your lips curl into a weak, sad smile.

"and how you threw your head back and laughed at everything i said, even when it wasn't funny.  and-and how everything felt perfect when you held my hand."

"mari..." you whisper, leaning forward so your forehead rests against hers.

"and how happy you were to just be there with me.  i'm scared i'll never see you like that again."

you squeeze your eyes shut, feeling the tears start to swell.  you haven't cried in a while, but as every sight, sound, and taste from that night comes rushing back to you, you suddenly realize how much you've lost.

"i'm scared too, mar," you say, hand moving from her arm to her cheek.  "and i don't know what to say to make it better."

mari exhales, shaky and slow, like she's trying to keep it together for you.

"you don't have to say anything.  it's just...my favorite memory.  you're my favorite memory.  even if you do get that disgusting cherry coke mix that tastes like battery acid."

"shut up," you laugh quietly, pushing her shoulder.  it's a small, broken laugh that catches on the edge of a sob.  "it's so good and you know it."

"yeah, whatever," she says, smiling wider than you've seen in a while.

"i think i'd cut off my left arm just to have another one of those," you sigh.

"what?  slurpee?"

"yeah, that.  but also just...another night with you."  your hand's cradling her neck now, holding her like she's the only thing you've got left.

"tell you what," she starts, voice nearly breaking.  her fingers brush your hair out of your face.  "first thing i do if we get rescued, i'm taking you back to that place.  i'm getting you your battery acid slurpee.  we'll sit on the curb and you'll hold my hand and i'll kiss you so hard our tongues turn purple.  we'll rewrite the memory.  i promise."

a loose tear trickles down your cheek as you nod your head. 

"deal," you whisper.  then mari leans forward and kisses the tear away.

"i love you."

"i love you more," you say, wrapping your arm around her as she buries her face in your neck.

you close your eyes and you see that image of mari: laughing, carefree, straw between her lips.  and for the first time, you let yourself imagine what it will be like after you're rescued, when you get to see that version of mari again.  and it's the first time you have a semblance of good night's sleep since the plane crash.

and then it finally happens.  rescue comes even though a part of you had given up on it entirely.  and mari's there, holding your hand through it all.  from the hospital, to the anxious plane ride home, to seeing wiskayok for the first time in almost two years.

and then, just like she promised, you're sitting the passenger seat of mari's car as she drives you back to that 7/11.  it's a quiet drive, one where you're staring out the window and taking in the sights and sounds of the town that hasn't changed a bit since you last saw it.  and mari's fingers are tapping anxiously against the steering wheel while her other hand rests in yours over the center console like a lifeline, grounding you when everything feels like too much.

when she finally pulls into the parking lot and puts the car in park, you both just sit there.  it looks exactly the same way it did on that night: neon sign outside, too-bright fluorescent lights inside, and the kids with their bikes loitering around the entrance.  it was as if time had frozen that night, and the store had been awaiting your return all these months later.

mari exhales a heavy breath from beside you.

"you good?" you murmur, eyes never leaving the store.  this feels like a dream.  one you thought you'd never get to fulfill.

"yeah, it's just...a lot," mari says.

it shouldn't be a lot.  it should just be a random 7/11 in some random boring town.  but to you and mari, it's everything.

"i know," you say, squeezing her hand.  "we don't have to if-"

"no, i want to.  i've been waiting to.  it's all i've been thinking about for two years and now it's here."  she looks over at you and smiles.  "come on, let's go."

she gets to the door first and holds it open for you.

"after you, milady," she says, just like last time, except her voice is softer and more careful now.  it's a small but sharp reminder that you'll never get back the innocence you once had.

you don't throw your head back in laughter this time, you just smile, hand still in hers, tugging her inside after you.  the smell of weed hits you like a freight train, but for once, you don't mind.  you lead mari to the slurpee machine that's still in the same spot and you sigh when you see the flavors are exactly the same: cherry, blue raspberry, coke, and that weird sugar free green one that nobody gets.

"god, mar, i might cry," you say.  you expect her to tease you like usual, something about how much of a sap you are, but instead she releases your hand and holds your waist instead.

"me too," she says, resting her chin on your shoulder.  you spare her a smile over your shoulder before reaching for two of the largest cups.

"coke and cherry?" she asks.

"just like god intended," you say, pulling on the cherry lever.  mari watches you, no longer bothering to hide the fondness in her eyes.

she eventually heads for blue raspberry, telling you, "somethings never change."

"and i never want them to," you say.

"me neither," she says, looping an arm through yours and guiding you toward the unbothered cashier.

mari tries to pay but you're quicker this time.

"nope, i've had this debt for two years.  time to repay it," you say, sliding a couple crumpled bills of your own onto the counter.  you had been sure to grab them before you left the house just for this very occasion, so that, for once, you could be the one to take care of mari.

"it's two dollars, you idiot," mari teases before dragging you outside to the same spot on the curb under the same flickering streetlight.

the two of you wordlessly sit, knees brushing.  for once, the night air is warm and the sounds of wiskayok hum in the background and there's no weight on either of your shoulders, no fear.

"we're really here," mari says, leaning back on her hand like muscle memory.

"just like you promised."

"i didn't even know if we were going to make it out when i told you that," mari admits.

"i know," you say, elbows resting on your knees.  "but that didn't matter.  just thinking about it made everything a little less bad.  and now, being here, with you, it's better than i could've ever imagined."

she recognizes the way you're looking at her, like she hung the stars in your sky.  it's the same look you gave her that night, the one that made her heart jump and scared her a little.  except now she doesn't shy away. she melts right into it.

she lifts her cup in the air like it's something sacred.

"to making new memories," she says. 

you tap the rim of your cup against hers, making a plastic clinking sound.

"to us," you add. 

because that's what it's been all along, the two of you. and after everything, you know that's how it's going to stay: the two of you tethered, two halves of a whole.

you hold eye contact as you both take your first sips, until the slush hits her tongue and mari's eyes roll back in her head.

"oh my god, that's the best thing i've ever tasted," mari groans, dramatically throwing her head back in true mari fashion.

you can't even respond, you're chugging it so fast.  but then reality hits

"fuck!" you curse, squeezing your eyes shut and pressing your palm against your forehead.

mari turns to you, smirking as if watching you suffer is her favorite comedy.

"brain freeze?"

"yep," you wince.  "battery acid's never tasted so good."

mari laughs, setting her cup down on the pavement.  then she turns her body fully toward yours, like she's about to say something immensely serious.  but there's still that mischievous glint in her eye that tells you she's got something up her sleeve.

"now, time to fulfill the prophecy."

you blink at her and the sudden tone shift.

"what?" you ask, giving her a concerned look.  "are you going all lottie on me?"

"no, dummy, purple tongues," she says like it's the most obvious thing ever.  "i gotta keep my promise, don't i?"

a breathless, free laugh escapes your lips.  it's been so long since mari's heard it, she thinks she might cry.

"you're so stupid," you say, though you're already leaning in.

she grabs your face with both hands, still cold from holding the cup, and pulls you into a kiss.  it's not stolen like it was before.  now it's slow and timeless, but still certain.  she kisses you like she wants to steal back every moment she thought she'd never get with you.  and you're more than willing to let her.

"love you," you whisper against her lips, her hands holding you firmly and not letting you escape her.

"love you too," she whispers back before kissing you so hard you get dizzy.

and that's how your favorite tradition is formed: you, mari, slurpees, and a whole lot of love.

[seasprincess]

cowboy!rafe and mayors!daughter

he’s here😋

Warnings:suggestive talk but no actually s3x, author doesn’t know cowboys that well

Being the daughter of mayor meant two things. One everyone knew you. And two, you were off limits unless your father had approved of the guy. And he’s a tough man to please.

Many men have tried. And many men have failed. Your father saying they aren’t rich enough, or smart enough or classy enough. But it wasn’t all down to him. All the bachelors that have come your way have not been what you see fit. Because you may or may not have your eye on a certain scruffy cowboy.

Rafe knows you’re off limits, he knows that there isn’t a world that he could be with you. You’re like a diamond and he’s a measly piece of copper. You’re clean, tidy and proper and he’s a muddy, loud mouthed cowboy who gets in trouble as easy as it is to breathe. You are out of his league in so many ways.

But there was one positive of being a cowboy in this situation. He knows his way around horses. And your family just so happened to be looking for a stable boy as you begged your daddy for a pony. Even though you know nothing about them or how to care for them. Or ride them.

And he was keen to help you out.

Rafe has been working for your father long enough to secure that job working at the stable. He’s perfect for the roll. So of course there was no hesitation when he asked. He got it straight away. Your father was beaming to get you and that damn horse off his hands and onto a trusted person.

This is definitely an upgrade from his usual jobs.

Your cute new ‘cowboy’ boots lead you down to the stables. Wind blowing your white dress a bit The suns out and it’s perfect for a day of riding. Apparently.

As your heels reach the wooden floor of your new stable, the sound makes a certain muscular cowboys head turn around from the hay.

“Howdy.” The word drawls from his lips and you just can’t help immediately getting flustered. God dammit. All he said was hello. Well ‘howdy’. This boy is trouble and you know it. But you just can’t stay away.

A moth to a flame.

“Daddy said you’d help me ride.” Your fingers make their way to your plaits, fiddling with the bands as you look at the cowboy. His hat the very one you bought him for his birthday. He lives in that hat because you brought it for him. Eats, breathes and probably sleeps in it too.

“That’s right darlin’.”

God even his voice just makes you feel a certain way you shouldn’t be feeling. Dad said not to get involved with this type of crowd. But here you are. Getting involved.

“She’s all set up for you. Just need to get on.” Rafe says as he twiddles a toothpick inbetween his teeth, eyes locked onto you and the way that dress is just the right length for him. Perfect for his thoughts later when his hand is wrapped around his shaft, touching himself to the idea of you.

He couldn’t help notice the cut off the top of your dress. The way your perky breasts were on show. God did you want to kill him?

“What if it chucks me off? What if it-”

Rafe cuts off your rambles with his hand as he looks at you. You begged for this horse and now you refused to get on it.

Classic.

“How about you ride with me? She likes me.” Softly Rafe brushed the horse, eyes never leaving yours as he tilts his cattleman hat back. He takes the toothpick out and chucks it on the floor. Rafes been riding horses since he was a young boy, so he could teach her a thing or two about riding.

In more ways than one.

“You sure?” You ask sweetly, actually praying he means his words. That he will ride with you. Because you need him on that horse with you for reassurance. For help. To teach you how to do it properly without dying, or hurting yourself. Which you know would happen. Your clumsy ass would fall off with in a minute of being on her. Her being maple the very horse that’s huffing in front of you.

You called her maple due to the fact earlier in that day that you got her you had spilt maple syrup down your new dress. The marks still there today. It’s a bit of a stupid reason but to you it’s cute. And Rafe just thinks you’re the cutest thing ever so of course he thinks it’s cute too.

“Yeah course doll. Let me help you up.” Rafe hops onto the horse with ease. It’s sort of mesmerising, hypnotic even, that someone can be so effortless at something that takes you a lot of effort.

“Put your left foot in there darlin’.” Rafe points to the stirrups. At least you know one thing. His other hand is out towards you so that your little hand can just slip so perfectly into it. The impure thoughts that flood his head about them are something that would send him to hell. Good thing he doesn’t go to church.

Your boot slips into the stirrups as you pull yourself up. Pulling on his hand as you hoist yourself up. Your legs swing over the horse as you slot in perfectly behind him, gripping in to him like a koala bear.

And Rafe just thinks you’re so cute.

“You ready?” He says as his hands find the reigns, the horse moving slightly as you grip to him tighter. Still worried about this whole situation. But something in you is excited. And enjoying being close to the cowboy.

Those little butterflies that appear in your stomach when you see him chopping wood or when he’s been out all day and is sweaty. The little white shirt highlighting his muscles. Making your panties wet.

Well those butterflies have grown bigger. Finally touching those muscles you’ve been thinking about. Of course you’ve had a few small touches here and there. Doing those things where you pretend to be feeling how strong he is.

You know he’s strong, he knows he’s strong. He’s proud of it. He’s always flexing his biceps in unnecessary times. Just to show off to you.

Cause unknown to you, he sees the way you cross your legs and advert your eyes from him embarrassed. The way you stare at him when you don’t think he’s watching. But he knows. He sees.

Your soft clean hands are wrapped around his waist. Your nails painted a nice pink colour. The difference between yours and Rafes hands is incredible. His are rough, dirt under the nail and cut hands. All that labour he does for your father. Wearing them down over time. And you’ve never worked a single day in your life. Your hands are soft, clean and cared for.

Your chest is pressed against his back, chin on his neck as the horse trots along in the field. The warm beeeze of the afternoon air kissing your face. You’d be lying if you’d say you weren’t scared. You’ve never properly been on a horse before. Thank god for Rafe.

“Calm down darlin’. You’re fine.” He says like he can read your mind. Tilting that god damn hat back again. He can’t leave it alone for five minutes.

“I’m just a bit scared.” You admit. Rafe makes you feel safe, with that southern drawl and sweet words. God is he so sweet. You just can’t help thinking about him late at night when your frilly nightdress is pulled up and finger rubbing that lovely spot in-between your legs. If only you knew what he did too.

“Well bless your heart.” He smiles as he keeps a hold of the reins, guiding the horse on this journey that he is loving. A pretty girls tits pressed against his back as he trots on a horse? He’s in heaven. “‘M gonna give you lessons in riding.”

If only you knew just what that means…

a/n: okay girly pops i’m going to write a part 2 to this maybe. this was a tad bit based of of Hannah Montana icl.

divider- @anitalenia

tags- @littlelamy

[spicybunni]

GENTLE (Xenomorph x reader)

A/N : It makes me happy a lot people matched my freak with my alien fanart!! i wrote a little Romulus drabble if Y/N was the one who was caught instead of Rain. I hope you enjoy!

⚠️ WARNINGS: ALIEN ROMULUS SPOILERS / SFW / VIOLENCE / FALLING / ALIEN

You were so close. Rain's finger were nearly within reach, the zero gravity almost putting you in the perfect position. Andy was holding onto her with one hand while the other gripped the ladder. You didn't want to think about how many floors up you were, just focusing on your hand reaching as far as you could to your remaining friends.

"Come on Y/N, almost there...reach!!" She pleaded with you, as if you could control the situation any better than she could.

But alas, the sudden alarm of gravity came back to you. You could see Rain's eyes widen in horror as your fingers finally brush hers, only to descend downwards with the rest of your body. Andy grips her shirt tighter as she falls against him, using his strength to hold himself and Rain against wall ladder.

"Y/N!!!" She screams as she watches you fall. The balance of having no gravity to having all the pressures of falling to your death make you scream down the elevator shaft. Of course it was all happening too quickly, but you know at this point you should accept death. At least Rain and Andy would make it. At least someone was going to make it to the sanctuary planet away from Jackson's dangerous mines. You watch as the floor levels pass you by, making you dizzy with thoughts of impact on the final floor.

Unfortunately, you would meet no quick fate.

A sudden blur of black passes your vision, the creature, holding onto the walls. Lacking any breath to gasp or scream at the sight, the remaining is knocked out of you as a slithering tail curves around your back, breaking you fall, and wrapping around your torso. It's sharp end makes a careful move to wrap around and not poke you. The ridges of it's tail feel uncomfortable against your back and stomach, making you arch as it holds you mid air.

You peer up to see the xenomorph looking down at you, as if to see that you're alright. You let out a whimper as it hisses at you. And before you could process anything else, it lifts you. Without any effort it brings you to the opposite side of the wall, gently settling you near an emergency ladder. You grab hold, but it's tail tightens around you, keeping you in place as it adjusts itself to come to you. Quick breaths are all you can produce, knowing it can't speak your language, knowing it just wants to kill you or use your body for some sick incubation. You start to cry and it's head leans down, almost as a horse would. It lets out a few hisses as it regards you. A spider like hand reaches for you, grabbing your jaw as gentle as it could for a space alien. Turning your head from side to side. Your form was shaking uncontrollably, helpless at the creatures mercy and too scared to do anything in fear of angering it.

The xenomorph was more than pissed at this point. It's hosts it's produced so far have not been suitable for the parasites to incubate offspring into. It's failed too many times to let even one of the remaining healthy hosts to just fall to their death. It would have impaled you with it's tail. But it needed you unbroken, alive. The creature inspected you for any injuries it might've caused or that you had done to yourself. Again, it needs you to be healthy. It was going to reserve you for a queen parasite. That way this pack had a hive leader, a queen Xenomorph.

It's tail drops from your waist as it's hands reach out you, grabbing and lifting you over it's shoulder. You passed out from sheer terror and exhaustion. It seemed pleased that your body went limp, you were making it all the more easier to take you to the hive....

[tinmate]

It’s so important to me that the Foxes annoy Kevin.

Like the poor boy had no friends on his team and throughout his childhood. The only people he loved and cared about after his mom were

Jean, who he had to watch be and beaten and tortured and abused until the fight went out of him and then until he tried to kill himself and then be tortured again for failing to die and at least Kevin was a pet, Jean just a toy to be broken and taken away and used and discarded.

And Riko who abused him and manipulated him and took pleasure in beating him down while acting like they were closer than friends, actual brothers.

The Master who is so horrible that Kevin barely even speaks of him.

And then he’s treated as this godlike son of Exy by the public. Aside from Jeremy, it seems like the other teams aren’t even immune. He’s not a college athlete, he’s this unfathomable celebrity.

And then the Foxes are just SO unimpressed and actively annoyed with him. They bicker and tease but there’s no bite. Not like the Ravens. They drag him along on their fun excursions at knife point because it’s important that he’s there with them. They force him to have fun and ride horses and hike in the mountains while also respecting his skills on the court. They stock their home with cheese and candy bars and make him eat ice cream at crap diners and go dancing in clubs. And not all of it is healthy, Kevin’s self medicating with vodka for sure, and the behavior of the monsters is dubious at best especially in the first book, but they bring him along because they want him there. Not Kevin Day: Rising star of Exy. They want Kevin Day: Mega Nerd.

The Ravens hurt and tore each other apart in any way they could, nothing but venom and malice behind their words. Nicky calls him a brat and the in the affectionate ton calls him family. Kevin and Jean’s sexualities were used against them, another item for Riko’s amusement, the Ravens have hate sex more than actual care. Allison is visibly disgusted at the thought of hooking up and no one pushes it beyond characteristic teasing

Andrew is chronically annoyed with Kevin but follows him everywhere like a goalkeeper shaped safety blanket because years of the Nest leave Kevin anxious when alone. He’s capable of the same violence as the other Ravens but he never actually hurts Kevin until the last book. He gives Kevin his pills and his game and his house and his family and his trust but not his respect. Not always. It’s the same brutal healing he gave Matt.

Allison calls his tattoo, a number forced on him since childhood, a tramp stamp. Riko would kill him for removing it but the Foxes basically riot with happiness when he changes it.

Kevin was locked in the Nest, monitored at every move, watched and betrayed and even when he was able to leave, was shackled to Riko and Ichirou and forced to lie and perform while hurting. Wymack gives him keys to the court, to his home. Abby opens up her home for him to stay at over the holidays. Andrew and Aaron and Nicky bring him into their home and their favorite restaurant and club.

Do you think Kevin’s ever afraid of turning into Riko or Ichirou? We know Jean struggles with Raven impulses, especially when teaching. Do you think Kevin ever looked at tiny, fierce, stupid, stubborn Neil Josten and was afraid he’d hurt him on instinct? Do you think he was crushed by the honor of knowing that, in Nathaniel’s last days alive, he still wanted Kevin to train him?

No one could ever speak out against Riko, Kevin could never truly be himself. Everyone speaks out against Riko, Neil actively sasses the press.

Everyone teases Kevin and rolls their eyes and pushes his buttons while holding him close

And then, the one time true violence is turned against him by a teammate it’s in defense of Neil and immediately three other teammates intervene. They all platonically share a room because they’re so worried about Neil when he comes back. They’re angry and upset with Kevin but Andrew threatens him at knife point to go on vacation with them. They hear about the ugly truth of Kevin’s life and again and again and band around him every time. They treat him like a person, like a teammate, like family.

It’s important to me that they, like the fandom, think Kevin is a little bit of a diva and that they tell him that to his face. That they think he’s a nerd but let him ramble.

They call Neil his “mini me” and they all love Neil so much. I hope Kevin sees how they treat Neil who’s equally obsessive, equally intense, equally traumatized, equally as tied to gangsters and realizes that they love him too. That the insults and teasing are a love language

Idk man, just Kevin being treated like a person. This big burning star getting vetoed on a candy drawer and receiving his teammate's playful horror to his media personality because that is NOT our boy and being accepted for exactly who he is: a person who’s allowed to be imperfect and dramatic and safe to tease about it.

[leth-writes]

hotd x oblivious reader

I’m thinking about a reader who’s kinda oblivious. They aren’t super aware of everything going on around them, they’re just confused as to why no one is getting along.

You’re really close with both team black and green, to the point that they’re fighting over you, but you’re not even aware of the actual conflict; you just think it’s petty interpersonal drama.

They’re over in the corner threatening each other with dragons and swords and you’re just… hanging out with Helaena, looking at butterflies and asking to pet her dragon.

the second you express interest in the dragons, there’s practically a line; you’re the most nervous with Daemon and Aemond’s dragons, for obvious reasons given their reputation, but Luke has a pretty small dragon so you grow closer to him through that. Rather than the size of the castle, Arrax is about the size of a particularly large horse, or maybe a big bear. More manageable when you know they can’t swallow you in one bite.

This drives a wedge further between Aemond and Luke, with Aemond outright glaring every time he so much as catches a glimpse at Luke. Not only did he take his eye, now he’s taking a bonding opportunity out from under her?! He’s pissed and challenges him to a duel. You still think it’s all fun and games, and you’re cheering for both of them, and they’re both trying to fucking kill each other, it’s pretty intense.

no matter who wins, you’re ecstatic, and you hug them both and kiss them both on the cheek. The blush that blooms on their faces and the almost goofy smiles that stretch across their cheeks are perhaps the only thing they’ve had in common in years.

Aemond totally uses his injury to ingratiate himself with you. It makes you feel bad for him, and while he doesn’t normally want pity, he’s fine using it to his advantage. Once Luke is out of the way, he reckons, he’ll be able to reveal his true self slowly over time.

Daemon’s also pretty likely to get into physical fights, though he sues his silver tongue to make you blush just as often. He really is quite sly, and he’s the only one to outright proposition you. He’ll get Jace to take you out for a night in the town, slowly working their way to the brothels, trying to sully your reputation just far enough that you’ll have to marry him. It worked for Daemon, after all, and he just wants you connected to him. He’s fully aware that he’s not going to be able to live without you. Having you tied to Jace is just the perfect way to keep you close.

Rhaenyra is also taking advantage of your oblivious and gullible nature. She definitely tries to take advantage of the fact that you aren’t able to catch on to her true intentions. She’s convinced you to cuddle with her by telling you she’s too cold, and that Daemon’s too busy, and you felt so bad for her you were totally willing.

She’s more straightforward, pushing Jace to try to court you. He’s fighting off any of your various suitors, and anyone who is trying to take advantage of your obliviousness to secure a connection to the family.

You’re targeted by people from all over, mainly because of your close bonds to the various members of the nobility. Everyone has to work together to keep you safe when it’s announced you’re willing to court some random lord. You think you’re in love, they need to convince you otherwise.

Daemon immediately gets to work sullying the reputation of that lord. Then, he murders them. He’s not above paying a prostitute to seduce them in a place where you catch the two of them in the act, ravaging your heart.

Aemond and Jace both try to step into that void. Aemond, who takes a slightly more subtle approach, asking you to ride on Vhagar, fails; Jace, under the advice of Rhaenyra, takes a more direct approach and is able to begin dating you.

Alicent practically loses it, seeing her child so defiled by Rhaenyra’s child. She’s trying to convince you to marry Aemond or Aegon instead. Aegon shows up naked in your room; you can’t miss that clue, after all. It doesn’t work, you’re convinced he just mistook your room for his. Your rooms look nothing alike, but Aegon’s too charmed to even mention it.

Finally, Otto steps in to prevent Alicent from snapping and attacking someone. He’s not willing to let his precious grandchild fall into the hands of one of Rhaenyra’s bastards, after all.

Viserys is informed, even on his deathbed, that you should be married to Aemond. It’s to secure the familial line, after all, and your children will surely be strong and loved, the perfect combination.

So, he announces that you will be married to Aemond, breaking your relationship to Jace. Jace is heartbroken, Rhaenyra and Daemon are ready to burn the castle to the ground.

Thus begins the fight of the century.

[ramblings-of-a-chaotic-neutral]

Ok, since you guys liked my last silly Merlin au idea, here's another one! :D

I think that the Knights of Medhir should have come back in some way. They're so versatile as villains, and supposedly any sorcerer powerful enough to awaken them could control them.

Combine their versatility in the story with my saltiness that Merlin never really got any minions despite Morgana getting, like, four whole armies, and I think there's a fun little au in there!

So, I'm imagining around season 4 the knights of the round table plus Merlin and Arthur are on a quest, but there's some sudden bad weather, so they need to seek shelter. However, the only shelter around is the ruins of Idirsholas, much to Arthur and Merlin’s discomfort. However, they’re reassured by the fact that the knights of Medhir are long gone after Morgause's failed invasion.

Let's say that Merlin was injured by a bandit’s blade, giving him a shallow but bleeding cut on his arm. They were able to bandage it with some cloth, but it was still bleeding a bit. As the knights and Merlin prepare their camp for the night, Merlin lights a campfire for them in the courtyard, put as he leans over the firepit, his bandage comes loose a bit, causing some of his blood to spill onto the fire. He thinks nothing of it as he rebandages his arm and starts cooking dinner.

Meanwhile, in the crypt underneath the ruins, the Knights of Medhir have been awakened by a powerful sorcerer lighting a fire in the castle, and then got a massive power-up thanks to being awakened by a blood sacrifice by Emrys himself!

So, the Camelot knights settle in and sleep, while the knight of Medhir are waking up more powerful than ever before. However, their new master hasn't given them any commands yet, so they're just... standing around. For now.

The next day, the knights of the round table pack up and leave, heading back to Camelot. The knights of Medhir can sense their new master getting further away, but they still don't have any orders, so they stay put.

After a couple days, the knights return to Camelot, just in time for a big tournament! Of course, with a big tournament, there's a bunch of rude and downright awful noble knights that show up and make Merlin's life miserable by treating him like dirt behind Arthur's back. One in particular throws a goblet at Merlin's head, and not playfully like Arthur does, and it strikes Merlin's head, giving him a small cut and making him bleed.

The knights of Medhir, sensing that their new master is hurt and hopping onto their demonic horses: We ride at dawn bitches!

So, a couple days into the tournament, the knights of Medhir crash the party! But strangely enough, they only attack a group of non-Camelot knights, even killing a few before they suddenly stop their attack. Then, the knights of Medhir make their way into the castle's courtyard and await their master's next commands, as still as statues.

Arthur, Merlin, and the knights of the round table are scrambling to find out what sorcerer summoned these knights, for what purpose, and why were those foreign knights targeted? Merlin in particular is pulling his hair out over this because the last thing he needs right now is another power-hungry sorcerer trying to take over Camelot!

What's the most confusing is why the knights are just... standing in the middle of the courtyard, unmoving. The Camelot knights try to take this opportunity to destroy the knights of Medhir, but nothing works. They try stabbing them, beheading them, drowning them, even setting them on fire, but nothing could destroy the undead knights. The knights of Medhir just stand there, unmoving.

The Camelot knights, after trying and failing to destroy the knights of Medhir for the twentieth time: They're just standing there... menacingly!

Merlin's also tried a bunch of spells to get rid of them, but nothing's working. It's like his magic refuses to destroy the knights! (Because his magic is now connected to the knights, but he doesn't know that.)

After a while, everyone just sorta accepts that the knights of Medhir are apparently just going to be creepy permanent statues in the courtyard, and life goes on. That is, until another assassin sneaks into Camelot trying to kill the king and Merlin's trying to secretly catch them, but is out in public, so he can't rely on his magic.

All of a sudden, and to everyone's horror, the knights are moving again! The knights of Medhir tear through the castle, thankfully not hurting anyone, but not letting anyone get in their way. They eventually make their way into the throne room, where the assassin is about to strike at Arthur. They brutally murder the assassin (whom only Merlin knew about) in front of the entire court and then march back out into the courtyard, going still once again.

And that's when Merlin realizes it: he's the sorcerer who summoned the knights! And now he apparently has them under his command.

Cue Merlin's life getting a hell of a lot easier.

I feel like this could go in a pretty humorous direction, with Merlin trying desperately to hide the fact that the knights are under his control, but he keeps needing to them save his friends (and himself).

But then Arthur sees Merlin and Gwen being constantly protected by the knights of Medhir, and comes to his own horrifying (and incorrect) conclusion that he himself may be the one commanding them, as they seem to be prioritizing their safety (since Arthur doesn't see them saving his life), which is what Arthur does himself. So Arthur thinks that the knights tearing apart people who hurt Merlin or Gwen is the knights acting on his own darkest impulses, and which makes him very uncomfortable.

I think that there's lots of potential here!

Thanks for reading through my rambling! :D

[gracefireheart]

Some nordic folklore creatures, but in (at least sort of) Gravity Falls style! :]

Got them here in separate pics + notes I tried to somewhat write as Ford. Though, I probably have massively failed 'cause I just can't replicate the fancy literature speak he does :')

Nisse

Might be related to Gravity Falls' own Gnomes, but with a few variations to them. For one, they are a little bigger than our resident Gnomes and have pointed ears instead of rounded ones. They also are more chaotic, but can become docile when given porridge of all things. And they tend to reside inside barns instead of the forest.

Such an interesting creature I wished I could speak to. However, whenever me and S have encountered one, they only speak in one of the languages of the nordic countries. They seem to understand us- calling us "turister," which a local have told us meant "tourists"- and absolutely despise us. Unless- like I mentioned earlier- we give them porridge. I would have to talk to the Gnomes and see if they have the same fascinations with porridge as these Nisse do.

Huldra

The locals I have talked to about Huldra have told a few different tales that either go one way or the other. Either they just want to get married, resulting in their cow tail popping off of them. Or they want to lure men away so they can kill them.

In a way, Huldra could be classified as a land version of a Siren. The only real big difference between one of these ladies and a regular woman is the cow tail I mentioned.

From what I have gathered, the Huldra have adapted a bit over the years to not only know the nordic languages, but also many other languages like English, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and so on. I do hope me and S can find one of them while we're here, I just hope it will not end in another rescue mission.

Nøkk

Nøkk- or Nøkken as some locals call them- is a creature that resides in lakes and sometimes rivers. Although it is probably one of the easier creatures to try and look for, we did not have the time to rent a car or walk all the way to one of these lakes that people had seemingly seen one in. Maybe some other day.

The descriptions of this creature, however, was still nonetheless interesting. It is mostly made out of algae and seaweed, has bright yellow eyes that gaze at you, and- during the full moon- can transform into a shining, white horse. The locals that have told me about this "horse form" have spoken about Nøkken luring people onto it's back before diving right into the water to drown them.

Draug

Draug- or Draugen- is a creature I have been advised to not encounter at all. The few that knew of it told of tales of sailors, fishermen, and seafarers alike stumbling upon this creature, then soon after meet their demise. Some have said Draugen is the one that kills them, some have said Draugen is simply there to warn of their upcoming death. No one is sure which is true as no one has met it and survived.

Another thing a select few locals have mentioned is how Draugen might have been once a human itself, but then met a tragic end out on the ocean. It would've been nice to try and speak to it, but considering the possibility of S and I dying as a result, I would rather not take the risk.

[leynaeithnea]

Diomedes

Ok so this wikipedia article was a LOT more elaborate than I expected, I just spend over two hours going through it and making notes Nobody asked for it but here are my notes on Diomedes, theyre not consistent, i changed style and detail a few times, but alas here we go:

Diomedes:

strong defender of justice, deserves better

lost a lot of people

warrior very young

athenas favorite warrior

his fathers glory (and shame)

breast plate from haephestus

shield from his father blessed by athena

fathers sword

spear

boars, lion

most expiereneced warrior of achaeans

doesnt like achilles

brought 80 ships

Sthenelus, chariot driver, best friend, epigoni

youngest of the kings

(post homeric: offered immortality, divinified)

helped Odysseus kill Agemenons daughter

helped Odysseus kill Palamedes (bitch deserved)

brave, NOT haunted by hubris

wounds both ares and aphrodite (same day) and attacts apollo, but withdrew in time

granted divine sight to see immortals (on that day)

grew up way too soon

big battle when 14

more level headed than Ody (can take an insult)

doesnt hesitate to call out bs

“let him go or stay, the gods will make sure that he will fight” (hc: he tried, very humbled by the gods)

athena joined his fight once, driving his chariot and guiding his spear

“friends” with glaucus (trojan) (“i wont fight more immortals” “bro, our grandparents were bros”, “ok give me your gold armour, ill give you my bronze one”)

saves Nestor (ody runs away when he asks for help :(

wants to kill hector so he doesnt get taunted (Nestor says no, Zeus says no 3x /+1 lighting) he eventually turns back and gets taunted, he kills another guy

he attacks the trojans at night and wins, after hector boasted, in the end diomedes is the one worshipped as immortal

agamnenon wants to leave, Dio says hes a bad leader (yes), and that he’ll stay to fight the city that is doomed to fall, even with zeus fighting for the trojans, nestor says he has no better idea, proposed to appeall to achilles with gifts (ody and agamenon agree), they fail, Dio tells them “told you so” (but it doesnt matter anyway, theyll win)

he sleeps outside his tent in armour (they wake him n others at night for council about spies, Dio volunteers, he gets to pick a second, he goes for Ody, ody didnt rly want to go, Dio choose him anyway despite deserting him)

Dio and ody face the spy of the trojans Dolon, (hiding between corpses) he almost runs away but Athena “is fighting to be known” doesnt want someone else to strike first, so she makes Diomedes throw the spear and orders him to stop, Dolon tells them good gossip, including white horses, Dio kills him

they do some more bs, like killing people in their sleep (dio) and stealing horses (ody) dio considers unaliving more until athena suggests he may stop so other gods dont get jealous

both kings are good at being stealthy AND open combat

Rhesus horses are badass (first sign for the fall of troy), Dio gets them (bedding gift?), people without the horses and king leave W for the achaeans

Lord of War Cry

dio throws a spear at hector, apollos helmet saves him, but he mingles with the crowd, first time that Dio speaks back and calls him a dog (even the best men loose their temper at times)

Paris shoots his foot, (fucking moron blasts about it, Dio gives him a verbal lashing) he withdraws under cover of Odysseus, ody gets an ouchy

agamennon wants to flee (again), Dio tells them they should just let themselves get wounded again

Dio wins all funeral games of patroclus (though wounded) – Athena makes sure of it – draws first blood in the fight with Ajax, they stop him worried he’d kill him

Athena appears to him undiguised, Athenas favorite

kills some amazons, Achilles kills his cousin (who was a bitch), dio mourns him though and wants to have achilles punished

Dio and Ody bring Achilles son to Troy after Achilles death (bc they could not win the war without him there)

Ody and Dio sent to negoiate for peace after Paris’ death (by poised bow that the two of them stole?)

dio and ody gotta steal a statue of athena, ody disguises himself as beggar at night, dio follows later and brings the statue out

Ody tries to stab him in the back?? (to get the glory himself???) Dio catches it and ties him, and shoves him infront of himself, but refrains from punishing him because they need him (“for the greater good”)

dio is one of the warriors inside the trojan horse

dio leaves immediatly after the fall of troy (after the achaeans angered athena through the rape of cassandra by ajax the lesser) and arrives home safely (favored by the gods) Post Trojan war possibilities:

when he gets there his wife has commited adultery and keeps him out of town (palamedes brother having told he brought a different woman) aphrodite being pissed about the scratch helps her get many lovers, he has to leave again

gets kidnapped by some guy to get sacrificied to ares, gets saved by a girl

comes to the court of some other king who offers him his daughter as wife and lands, if he fights for them, so he does, and has two sons with her

he refuses to fight more trojans later on, he just wants to live in peace

birds haunt him and his men (his men cried so much over his death they got turned into birds)

[reingkings]

Why do you ship inhun? Does the ship make sense? I don't kinda see it but I guess there is something between them, I'd really like to know your thoughts about it

Hmm. Interesting question. I do think they “make sense” in a shippable way.

Note that if you’re not into not-entirely-sane ships then it might not appeal to you. However, I can try to answer what appeals to me. I’ll try to put screen caps or links but ngl I’m not gonna try hunting down all of it. Here’s the manifesto:

1. The narrative casting them as character foils

So each character in the show often not only represent themselves, but to some extent the show’s themes. Since before Gi-hun becomes a victor, he is shown to be discongruent with the nature of the games. The first “true” meeting between In-ho and Gi-hun happens to be at this point in S1:

Mind you when this occurs, it’s after the gamemakers deliberately starve the players to incite violence between them. Deoksu/101 just killed a man. This outcome is exactly desired.

In a way this is a microcosm of the rest of their ideological struggle — that being whether or not humans are inherently selfish and cruel.

We later see the theme again during the last fight scene, when Gi-hun reaches his hand out to Sang-woo. Not only is this a moment of ultimate compassion, but for In-ho who we see is an avid lover of the arts. What else does this resemble?

The painting, The Creation of Adam. Aka the creation of man. (Stick with me on this, I promise I’ll explain).

Notice that this shot not only resembles the painting on a superficial level but in spirit. Adam is in repose and God is the one who reaches out, the one making the most effort to make a connection. In-ho’s face isn’t visible but imagine how he, looking down on it, feels at the very moment:

It’s giving new religion. Later on, In-ho will say something along these lines:

Race horses. And yet, besides his brother, at this point Gi-hun is the very first person In-ho takes his mask off for, something he does not do for even the VIPs. This scene also comes after he kills a guard because “when they find out who you are, you die.”

This treatment marks In-ho’s transition into seeing Gi-hun as his only equal (and yes, In-ho is arrogant that’s kind of his appeal, I don’t believe he thinks that highly of the VIPs either).

Another aspect is that in their final scene at Il-nam’s death bed, they are kind of marked at the inheritors of Il-nam’s system.

Gi-hun leaves Il-nam to witness his one failure. In-ho closes Il-Nam’s eyes.

So it’s the end of S1. We don’t know a lot about In-ho. However we can assume a few things. Both he and Gi-hun are both victors and victims of the oppressive system. Both of them went through anguish after their victory (In-ho’s is mostly inferred, but there’s a deleted scene paralleling Gi-hun’s). Both of them failed to save what mattered the most. Both of them can’t move on from the games and returned. They both abandoned everything in their life for this pursuit.

In a way, there is no other person in the world than can understand them more than the other.

And here is where the character foil aspect comes in. Despite their similarities, their character arcs are the opposite. Gi-hun at the beginning was kind but flawed, an impulsive gambler who could steal money from his mother and disappointed his daughter at many turns. In-ho seemingly was a well-loved, upright citizen who made sacrifices for his family.

And yet, of the two the one who became cruel and heartless was In-ho. The one who became more self-less and compassionate was Gi-hun.

How does In-ho react to meeting his polar opposite? It could easily be hatred or disdain. Instead it’s well, my next point.

2. In-ho’s subtextual obsession with Gi-hun

Season 2 within the games is when most of us really saw the ship’s potential but there are many hints beforehand.

I and others have made some posts about In-ho’s wildly inappropriate actions towards Gi-hun even in S1. Why does he have to stuff the bank card in Gi-hun’s mouth, why does he send the invitation through a bouquet of flowers (actually he sends this invitation twice), why does he decide to physically be there when meeting Gi-hun in a limo on his birthday? A day, mind you, that he needs to be prepping for the games. In-ho doesn’t have to be there, he literally talks to Gi-hun through a speaker he could be in a nice hotel room. Somehow, it’s important for him to be there.

Can this be read as anything but a fixation?

Even when he joins the game his sole focus is on Gi-hun. He makes a concerted effort for Gi-hun to like him (playing hero, baring his true wounds, defending him from the ire of other players, even coming up with an flimsy excuse because he slipped up and called Gi-hun by his name). If he wanted to torture Gi-hun, he could easily turn the players against him. According to the director, his goal is:

But in front of our eyes he does shit like this:

He even bullies his guards:

Does that look like a hit to you 😭 I dare anyone to say that a different player would have passed. Especially when In-ho interceded in the first place.

Another victim:

And the looks. so many looks. You’re not behind a camera anymore, In-ho. Gi-hun can see you.

The one that makes me laugh the most is in the last episode of S2. Gi-hun is stressed about the vote, trying to come up with a plan, and In-ho is staring so hard he’s not even blinking, to the point where Gi-hun has to look at him.

And then again. Gi-hun is explaining about the control room upstairs. Meanwhile, In-ho:

He doesn’t even glance up. He just stares at Gi-hun until Gi-hun finally looks at him. Honestly this isn’t even all of them but I don’t have everything saved.

And the ending. Honestly this part is a bit heartwrenching and I think a few of us fans ignore it (I do too), but I’m trying to contextualize canon here. It’s interesting that despite how dangerous Gi-hun is – causing the disruption of the game, killing guards, and aiming to end the games on the whole – In-ho does not kill him. He has plenty of opportunities to. He even shoots his own guards to keep Gi-hun alive (despite Gi-hun in that moment running the rebellion). But he shoots Jung-bae instead and gives Gi-hun this last lingering glance.

Arguably, you can say In-ho does all this because he is sadistic. However, if that were the sole reason, then he has 400+ people he could similarly torture every year. Hell, he could have joined the games any year he wanted, too.

If it’s just an ideological struggle, then Gi-hun lost when he decided to sacrifice the X players for the greater good. Then, we are left to wonder what else he can want with Gi-hun that he has kept him alive.

The fact that the motivations are never stated and are subtext adds a layer to how fans are free to interpret it. Lots of kindling for our fire.

(I’m not necessarily planning to prove if it’s canon in this part, it’s just a treatise on why we see their potential due to this subtext).

3. Gi-hun’s reciprocity

I think if it were just a one-sided fascinating then there would still be shippers but simply not as much. The part that hits with Inhun is that In-ho’s efforts are not necessarily “unrequited.”

In the beginning of Season 2, Gi-hun has no one. He had been isolated for three years. He has no friends. He has no home. Consider this heartwrenching shot:

Gi-hun’s on the phone, calling the only person in the world he has a connection to, and he can’t even say a word to her.

Even before this, he was largely unappreciated. His mother was disappointed in him. His ex-wife resents him. Jung-bae his friend did not help him in his time of need. Sae-byeok was only in his life for a few days, but she was rude to him for a good part of that. Sang-woo – well Sang-woo is complicated. I don’t think he meant everything he said in the fight before the end, but I do think Gi-hun is the last person on earth he wants to meet after his failures. No one really talks to him kindly besides Ali which is more of polite friendliness than looking after him.

So as a #1 Gi-hun fan, it’s really nice to see someone just genuinely seem to want Gi-hun there? Not as a last resort or as an alternative, but the first pick (in a twisted way).

And Gi-hun is so receptive to it? I made a post about this before, but Gihun is starved for affection and I don’t think all that used to being treated gently. Despite knowing In-ho for a short time, he seems so. He just kind of… opens like a flower?

The first time he laughs in this season is over In-ho’s corny last name joke.

The look in that scene in general:

How he reacts to In-ho calling by hist first name:

Or when In-ho confides in him about what happened with his wife:

Or this one, when he’s dealing with the guilt of misleading all the players, and In-ho says this:

But also the moment in mingle where Gi-hun is so worried about In-ho, Jung-bae has to drag him into a room before the timer runs out. He wanted to risk it all I tell you.

And then, when everyone is calling out to him, In-ho only calls out for Gi-hun’s attention. Literally he couldn’t care about the others. He bee-lines to Gi-hun.

Or how he looks when In-ho shoots the guard for him:

Look at his face, and In-ho’s face when he gives In-ho the gun. They’re going to kill me.

4. The versatility

Finally, this is more of a meta point but it’s kind of fun that this ship doesn’t always have to be that serious? We can go from writing about deep at times darker themes of obsession and manipulation and whatnot and then turn around and clown on them for being total losers with a crush (affectionate). Usually, it’s the same person doing it. Like me in this essay. We can also just make AUs with no squid games and still have the freedom with keep the parts we like (be it obsession or devotion or a mutual understanding) and toss out the rest, and they still make sense. They just always make sense (to me).

Honestly there are stuff I had leave out because it would just maybe at tad too long-winded (as if I didn’t talk your ear off lmao).

Again, this is not an argument on whether it’s canon or not, it’s just an explanation of fanon perspective.

[hoboblaidd]

Talking to @lostinquisitor about immediate post Big Sleep Solas needing a serious high fat high protein diet to regain his strength, and it really is surprising that Bull and Vivienne and those who are suspicious of Solas’ distinct ‘lack of personal history’ never brought up the most glaring, obvious explanation there is for his (lack of) background - Solas is a runaway slave from Tevinter.

He's secretive as hell about his background, and tells you upfront that he won't be upfront. robyn put it best: "if i was a runaway slave and the ‘anti-slavery’ nation i was in actively sold slaves north within living memory i’d also not want to be identified." Yeah Loghain I'm talking to you. Which could be the reason Bull, Viv, and co. wouldn't push - if they figured that was his story, no one in Inquisition is cruel enough to mess with that cover story. They get it, even if they don't personally like him.

I don't think Solas intended this to be his cover - I feel like he was convinced the 'apostate hobo' act was a good one (tho it's really not). But if he caught wind people were whispering this sort of thing about him, he wouldn't dissuade it. If it proves to be a stronger cover than the one he came up with, he might even subtly encourage it.

oh I have to add this robyns killing it: it just makes the most sense!!! i can EASILY picture him as a tevinter slave, who awakened powerful magical abilities, and who was NOT freed ‘as he should have been’ because what master wouldn’t want a friggin somniari in their pocket??

below the cut is just rambling on circumstantial evidence that supports this theory.

Solas ‘grew up in a village to the north.’ So he’s already placed himself further away from Ferelden/Orlais than any other companion save Dorian, and a vague ‘the north’ can reasonably be assumed to mean Tevinter.

'The Tevinter Imperium is not the safest place for an elf' - an obvious statement from any elf. But in whole it could be taken as speaking from experience.

Discusses the culture of slaves in Tevinter and city elves in alienages - again, could be taken as experience in either.

‘While in Tevinter, magisters compete with each other instead of keeping their volatile friends in check.’ Again could be a guess, but also as a personal witness.

Solas has a surprising aptitude for magic despite no formal training. Someone raised in a magister’s home or belonging to a magical entity like an archive, library, etc. would be exposed to a shit ton of magic.

Same line of thinking, robyn noted that he’s bitter when he says ‘and those with magical talent are freed, are they not?’ 

Solas has a lot of experience with spirits, who are regularly enslaved by Tevinter mages.

Solas is a Dreamer. Somniari aren't exclusive to Tevinter by any means, but it's most associated with Tevinter in Thedas from what we can tell in in-game lore.

He has a surprisingly nuanced view on blood magic. Could reasonably be because he's an apostate, though it is widely practiced in Tevinter. Same conversation, he says 'Inquisitor: You don’t need to sacrifice a slave’s life to make a dagger. Solas: I suppose it depends upon the dagger.'

He’s bitter about Tevinter claiming elven magics, etc. Could also reasonably just be an elven thing. ‘His empire’s magic was built on the bones of my people' and 'Tevinter's foundation stones are the bones of ancient elves with slave-blood for the mortar. It is an example of nothing more than gilded savagery. Pitiable, in a way. They always succeed through power, so they have never had the chance to learn another way.'

He paints Corypheus’ goal to retake and rebuild Tevinter - obvious, and straight from the horse’s mouth. But still interesting to frame it that way instead of bigger picture. 'I'd never believe a Tevinter magister could unlock such a powerful artifact.'

He’s hostile to Dorian, and never loses the chip on his shoulder when talking to him. He holds him responsible for all of Tevinter’s (modern) failings. Solas tells Dorian to make amends by freeing all Tevinter slaves - an unreasonable ask - and hits him with the ‘then how sorry are you?’

His general comments/attitude could support this too:

Slavery is the thing he vocally hates most in the world, save for the Qun. And he hates the Qun because it’s slavery of both mind and body in his opinion. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but Tevinter’s been at war with the Qunari for centuries and there’s a lot of learned hatred on both sides. 

He knows way too much about history and languages to have lived alone in the wilds and a small village his whole life. The sheer amount of languages he reads, from ancient to modern, is just too much. 'The Fade' doesn’t explain the breadth of his knowledge. Working in a library or archive does.

He was part of a 'skirmish', he's joined his share of causes, he's seen a blood mage healer shed her own blood to heal. Not very solitary.

He’s waayyyyyyyyyy too comfortable in and familiar with high society to have been a wandering hermit. He doesn’t miss a beat, and his "oh well never personally" is such a badly told lie.

[loredrinker]

"Inquisitor - I. There has been an attack on Wycome."

Josephine's voice is soft, careful.  

A pause. The moment stretches. Josephine grips the letter she holds.

"I am sorry, it was...they killed most of the elves within. And your entire clan."

Saethre Lavellan looks at Josephine's sweet and sad face and sees the words fall from her lips like clotted blood. They hit the floor, creeping toward her, crawling up her legs, seeking a way in. 

Cullen, Leliana, and Cassandra stare at her, their faces sombre. Apologies sit heavy in their silence.

Yes, Inquisitor, we will draw the horses immediately.

Yes, Inquisitor, we will notify the others of your departure.

No, Inquisitor, we insist on accompanying you.

"And will you stop my hand when I cut the throats of every human who did this?" 

The words do not leave her mouth, but they burn in her eyes. 

They look away. 

Solas finds her afterward on the ramparts. She does not run to him, does not seek his comfort as he approaches.

"Stop." 

He does. There is a knife in her voice, and he feels the edge of it. 

"Do not give me words of understanding. Do not placate me with poetic explanations of the inevitabilities of war." Her breath is unsteady. "I want judgment. Tell me what I should have done. Tell me how I failed." 

Solas regards her a long moment. When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet. 

"You wish for condemnation?" His words are deliberate. "For me to lash you with the failures you already carry like stones in your heart?" 

Saethre feels his voice more than she hears it. It settles into her bones like something old and aching. 

"You believe judgment will ease this weight you carry." He watches her, as he draws closer. "But guilt is a cruel master, and it is never satisfied." 

"Pain does not fade with time. It shapes you into something new." A pause. A breath. "The question is whether you will endure it." 

He is beside her now, but still, she does not face him. 

"You failed." 

The words tighten like a noose. She closes her eyes, embracing them, letting them choke down the pain.

"You failed to save your people. You failed to make the right decisions." His voice does not soften. "And you failed them because you are only one woman, no matter how much the world has demanded otherwise." 

At last, she turns to him. And in his eyes, she sees it - his recognition of what is growing within her.

A hollow, yawning void. A pull, slow and insidious, dragging her toward something darker. A quiet, simmering rage, waiting to uncoil, to strike. It is not justice. It is not righteousness. It is something colder - the terrible clarity that comes when there is nothing left to lose. He carries it too. A wound carved into him long before she knew his name.

She remembers how he did not hesitate when he killed those mages.

Just as she will not hesitate to kill the men who murdered her clan.

Solas holds her gaze, a witness to her rage. And in his eyes, she sees his answer.

He will not stop her. Just as she did not stop him.

[ijumpbridges]

Cafeteria incident 🐝

Ft. Scp 035, Scp 049, Scp 073, Scp 076, Scp 682, (Dr Bright Removed), Dr Clef, Dr Kondraki.

Plot: Reader causes an incident in the cafeteria. The reader brings a backpack at the cafeteria, everyone notice this, a strange thing that happens is your backpack seem to be vibrating. It was really suspicious to the point your boss came and demanded you to open your bag. Even if you protested you open it anyway, and that's when everyone around knew this was a huge mistake, a bunch of bees came out of your backpack you look at your boss with a dead stared while everyone scream and run out.

035:

He is afraid of bees

It took her time to realized what just happened you bringing a bag full of bees

He yeets his ass out probably screaming causing a contaiment breach

He is a drama queen so you can imagine what he will say when see you

He will lecture you in the most dramatic way

From the inside he is glad that you are okey but angry for the fuckery you had done

He will say he is hurt even if he is completely fine

Since he is now out of the cafeteria he tried to escape the facility again

Obviously failling

He is now more afraid of you with a backpad than anything beside of bees

He could take advantage of this and also breach with 049

049:

Oh boy he will take advantage of this to 'cure' people.

He seems calm but he is screaming in the inside

He also will be on the loose maybe with 035

Seeing people with bee bruises will make him want to 'cure' them

When he finds out you where the one who was behind them will also lecture you really bad

If he see you with a backpack again he will definitely take it from you

He will ask you if you are okey amd you need to say yes unless if you want to be a 049-2

Thanking god everyday that 049-j was not in the cafeteria in the moment that happen

He will still lecture you for a whole week

He is also glad that you are okey

But will not forget this and out an eye on you

073:

Another bitch who will run for his life just trying not to be afraid

Bess could be really confuse when they try to sting him because of his anomalous effect

He still feel the pain

He has more than 7000000000000000000 questions to asks you for doing that

He might had scream or maybe internally scream

He will search for you and lecture you

He will ask you where did you found those bees

I will take you to the nurse if you get hurt

On the way the two of you going to the nurse he will hold your hand

He will secretly find a possibly excuse for you to use which fails to do

He knows damn well that you are going to be in trouble

076:

He is confused at first

He starts moving around a lot trying to get away from them triggering them

One of the first person who got sting by a bee

He had killed several bees and flee the scene

He will wait for you but not tell you that

Seceretly he is worry since you will be yell at for bringing a bag full of bees

Also wonders where did you find them

He would be sad if he finds out that he won't be able to bath kitten with you, though will never said it.

682:

He is not affraid of bees

But those wonder how the hell did you bring those

He gets also stings by the bees, but doesn't might

He wonder how did you find those bees, but never asks.

He will try to help you to not get stings from the bees but if he fails he is not going to try

He thinks you did something really stupid

He will breach contaiment with you

If he sees 053 or the young girl she might join

079 will also join this adventure

Though would ask several questions about you

You were recontain with the others

There is a high change that they are going to separate you from him

Dr. Clef:

If you see him smiling that's a scan in real life

If is not afraid of bees but he dislikes them

He yeets his ass with you while looking at you with a smile

He really wants to laugh amd cry at the same thing

Since he is your boss you at least your punishment won't be so bad

Kondraki will ask him

If a horse wasn't enough imagine maybe 682 is

682 crush his arm and his neck

H̶o̶w̶ i̶s̶ h̶e̶ s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ a̶l̶i̶v̶e̶?

He will on purpose get you involve "If i fall im taking you with me"

You two got hospitalized beacuse ypu got horrible stings and clef got injuries

Dr. Kondraki:

He looks at you with a face of 'What is wrong with you'

He grabs you and yeets his ass with you

He tries to use his camera to make his way out which it makes it worse

He will lecture you like a mama hen

"yOu ThInK tHiS iS fUnNy!?"

He will aslo get stings because of triggering the bees with the camera

He might use the helo of Clef abd brigt to stop the bees making it worse

We got a horse now we can cosplay texas but kondraki will ride 682

He felt, like horrible felt from 682

He felt above you and broke your elbow and you broke his leg

Now you two help each other to get back to work

Dr. Glass:

He is probably screaming.

He will help the others to get them out including you.

He will get stings, poor babyboy.

If he finds out that three asshole group (coof coof bright, clef, kondraki) are together will go crazy.

When he realizes that theres is a massive breach he will take you to a safe zone or send an MTF to take you out even if you refuse.

He was attack by others scp thank god you were there to save him wo you two team up.

After the team up you two got weapons and aim for the scp and bees.

You both end it up in the nurse's offices.

He will still lecture you.

[demonsslayersstuff]

I’m here for you (Levi Ackerman x Reader)

A/N: Here is an angst heavy Levi fic. Post mission, Levi is there to comfort you in his own way as you struggle with the trauma of a failed mission beyond the wall. (Gender Neutral Reader)

Warnings: Mentions of death, survivors guilt, ptsd, trauma, and suicide. If these trigger you, please do not read! This is not a happy drabble, but it is ends on a lighter tone.

You slide off your horse with a defeated slump. Today had been easily one of the most difficult days in your life. You were use to death, nearly every scouting mission past the walls resulted in someone’s death. But today, today you’d lost more than half of your squad.

You look over your shoulder to see the three remaining members you had left. You note the hollowness in their eyes, the gauntness in their faces. Your words still in your throat and for the first time in a long time, you feel tears form in your eyes. You turn your face back towards your horse, gripping the reins tightly as you lay your face against its neck, trying to calm yourself.

“Captain”, you hear called meekly out to you, forcing you to take a deep breath. “Dismissed, you all deserve a much needed rest, report back tomorrow morning”, you manage to get out in your typical commanding voice, but deep down you didn’t feel like a captain, you felt like a failure. You watch as they dismount, leaving their horses to the stable hands before they quietly make their way to the barracks in silence, clearly traumatized by the previous events that had befallen your group.

You sigh knowing you should do a mission debrief with Erwin, wash the wet blood that caked your face and clothing, and probably eat. But you do none of those things. Instead you find yourself heading towards the wall, the very one whose gates you just passed through. It’s not long before you find yourself atop the stone structure, walking the familiar path. You walk past squads who are taken aback by your appearance, but say nothing, something that you are grateful for. You find a quiet place, one that rarely gets much foot traffic, and plop down, feet dangling off the edge.

You sit there for a long time, numbly staring out of the vast expanse of an unknown world, knowing that somewhere out there were the corpses of your squad members, unable to be brought home for a proper burial. You sit there long enough that the blood that coated your face and body has completely dried and the sun has long set past the horizon. It’s only then do you feel his presence. “How long have you been watching me?”, you ask quietly, making no effort to look in his direction. “Long enough to miss dinner, so I guess we are both going hungry tonight”, he states before finally walking towards you. “You’re not my babysitter, you could have left”, you remark finally glancing to your left, taking in his figure.

“True, but something told me to stay”, he replies gruffly coming to stand next you. He lowers his gaze to yours, looking at you carefully. “I’m not gonna kill myself Levi”, you mutter. “I know”, he simply replies, though his tone indicated that he didn’t fully believe you. You don’t say anything, instead focusing your vision back out towards the darken fields, sighing. You had a job to do and you needed to do it, regardless of how you were feeling. “Should probably go shower and hand that mission report in”, you say, but still make no effort to actually get up. “It’s not your fault”, Levi tells you suddenly, easily reading your thoughts. You look up at him, anger flashing in your eyes. You open your mouth to say something, but he’s quick to cut you off. “Don’t do this to yourself, don’t. They chose to join the scouts on their own accord. They knew what they were getting into, so you cannot blame yourself”, he tells you sternly.

An uneasy silence falls between the two of you. You knew his words were true as harsh as they sounded, but they didn’t help ease the pain that you were feeling. Levi sighs before offering you his hand. He wasn’t very good at handling big emotional things, but Levi knew how well you easily responded to his touch, his physical presence often helped calmed you down when you were having a bad day. You look up at him questionably, surprised at the fact he was openly offering you his hand, in public no less. “Just take it brat”, he states. You place your palm in his own as his fingers interlock with yours. Levi gives you a subtle, but reassuring squeeze. “Let’s go get you cleaned up”, Levi says, his tone a bit softer than his previous remarks as he pulls you up to your feet. You follow him quietly as he leads the way towards the barracks, his grip on your hand remaining as you weave through streets.

It’s not long before you find yourself in front of the shower house, practically deserted at this late hour. “Go shower. I’m going to grab you some fresh clothes”, Levi tells you, his authoritative voice back as he loosens his hold on your hand. With a squint of his eyes he quickly recedes down the hallway towards your shared quarters as you push open the door. You strip your dirty garments, tossing them into the laundry bin before you step into one of the showers.

The temperate water stings your skin, loosing up the caked blood. You watch as the draining water turns a dark tone of red and you wonder which of your squad members blood it was. Memories flash through your mind; laughter over a drink on a rare evening off with your crew, teasing during trainings, proudness as you watch them take down their first titan. As quickly as it started, it quickly ends and you feel a strangled scream erupt from the back of your throat, the reality of their deaths crashing down on you. All you’d have of them now would be memories.

You hit the concrete wall with your fist as you cry, the pent up emotion spilling out from years of keeping your feelings in check. The pain as your knuckles scrape against the hard material keeps you grounded from completely losing it. As you move to hit the wall again, you feel a hand grab your wrist, stopping you. You turn your head to see Levi standing there with a look on his face you’ve never seen before. His blue eyes lock on to yours and you can see the sadness that lingers in his gaze, equal to the worry that is held in them too. “I just…fuck I just…I don’t even know”, you cry. Levi pulls you towards him, not caring that your wet body soaks his clothes, he wraps his arms tightly around you, holding you. “Just let it out”, he whispers.

The two of you stand in a tight embrace for a long time as you cry into his shoulder, before the tears eventually subside. You pull away from him slightly, a guilty expression evident on your face. You open your mouth to apologize, you’d never been this emotional in front of Levi before. However Levi just shakes his head, “Don’t, sometimes we need to let it out”, he tells you. Levi leans up to briefly kiss your forehead before stepping away to grab you a towel. When he comes back you let him towel you off, relishing in his gentle touches.

You quickly put on some fresh clothes before you finally step out of the shower house, back into the dark hallway. “I suppose it’s too late to give the commander my report”, you muse as the two of you walk down the hall. Levi makes no effort to talk about the breakdown you’d just had. But that was Levi, never forcing you to talk about things until you were ready to. “Seeing as it’s two in the morning, probably not. Do it first thing the morning”, Levi tells you, as he opens the bedroom door. You nod your head as you step through the threshold, kicking your boots off as he quickly changes out of his wet uniform.

As the two of you slide underneath the covers you turn to face Levi, scooting closer to him. “Thank you”, you whisper. He wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you flush against him, maneuvering your head to his chest. “I’m always here for you”, he simply says, leaning down to kiss your temple. “Now sleep”, he commands softly as you snuggle into his body, feeling a bit better. You knew a simple cry session would wasn’t going to fix this, but you knew with Levi by your side you’d get through it.

[08melancholie]

I'm writing a Micah fic and I'm not satisfied with how I write him 💀 you have any tips?

This is a great question, and I can definitely find a few tips you can go off of that I usually memorise before I go ahead and write him. So first; lets section it off into five parts.

1. Micah's usual nature.

2. Behaviour I.—In camp.

3. Behaviour II.—Missions/outings.

4. Behaviour III. —Valu(able)s.

5. Language/the actual writing.

I'll go through every section and give you my tips and information that fits. Hopefully this helps your writing!

Most important highlighted/summarised in colour of section<3

1. Micah's usual nature.

First, let's break down Micah's character; he presents himself in a very cold, closed-off manner. He isn't that much of a helpful character, nor is he very social. In fact, Micah seems very asocial to me. You'll rarely find him socialising with camp members if he's sober, the only exception being when he drinks, where you'll find around 3-4 camp interactions (Javier, John, Bill, Arthur,...) in the game. He might come up to Arthur for a normal conversation a few times, but they mostly end in mockery or some sort of self-gain. You won't find Micah doing (re)quests for people, seeing as he's very focused on himself—excluding errands for Dutch since he's his boss. While on the topic of his nature in camp, lets continue this in "2. Behaviour I.—In camp".

2. Behaviour I.—In camp.

If he's actually found talking to fellow camp members that aren't Dutch, Micah enjoys antagonising any and all characters in the game. He throws crude comments and jokes people's way in his free time—which he clearly has a lot of, considering he doesn't ever do chores in camp, as confirmed in an interaction with Arthur where Micah says he "buys the clothes, not washes them". He also looks for ways to get under people's skin a lot. As for the women, there's quite a few interactions of him catcalling and harassing them, plain simple. He doesn't seem to care about being called a creep for it by Arthur either, as thats just entertainment for him.

3. Behaviour II.—Missions/outings.

Micah is very confident in how he works. He knows he's a great shot and one of Dutch's best gunmen, that much is sure to me. If he's doing better than Arthur, for example in "A Short Walk in a Pretty Town", he'll comment on it, saying "You're getting sloppy, Morgan." to him if he fails to get all four people in the gun store. You need to write him as such; keep his confidence in his abilities, and his subtle blood-thirst as well. Micah is much ruthless and somewhat of a brute, not to forget unforgiving and uncaring of his victims; killing Maddy, Norman's wife for.. little to no reason, as far as we know, or the little girl when you play as John later on in the game and are told so by Cleet in Strawberry. While on topic of Strawberry; massacring an entire town over two guns—another point that emphasises his self-worth. He killed and had Arthur kill off an entire town, despite much protest and complaints from Arthur about this choice. And yet he still didn't think much of that choice of action, laughing about it to Arthur after they stopped getting chased. Again—uncaring, ruthless, self-centred.

4. Behaviour III.—Valu(able)s.

This part is mostly useful for the start of a fic, since valu(able)s can change by the end of the story, and especially if you're writing a fix-it fic. We'll start with valuables, since Micah's are very simple; he values two things in his life over everything; his two custom-made DAs (Double Action revolvers) and his horse Baylock. We know he cares a lot about his guns, from the fact that he risked shooting up an entire town just to get them back when it would have been very simple to buy another set—this can be used to write an unhealthy attachment, or show vulnerability with risk of losing said weapons. Baylock is also pretty self-explanatory; he cares a lot about that horse, and IMO, he sees it as its best friend. With that, there's also one more thing that tethers between valuables and values; he doesn't want a future like many, a wife or family and stable life—those are mostly out of interest to Micah. His most important wish, at least Chapter 1—Chapter 6, is the future he wants for himself—a strong gang; "five to six strong men",as he says. This is his main goal in the game, and it'll be very valuable to him at the start. Then, come the values, and like many in 1899, he'll be very old-school; he wouldn't want women in his ideal vision of a gang, obviously. Micah sees them as beneath him and as too weak for the life—which is much obvious in the game... If you're writing a fanfic with F!Reader that's got the attitude of Sadie, I wouldn't instant make him jump for that type of woman. Micah expresses he's more into feminine women anyhow, so that's also important to remember when writing Micah/Reader fics.

5. Language/the actual writing.

Now, the way Micah speaks. He's very obviously and shamelessly open about how he talks—like I mentioned in the second section with the women; he'll openly harass them, uncaring of being reprimanded by Arthur for it. He's very vulgar and direct, so you won't see him hold back too often. Can't forget this part, of course—Micah has an accent like many characters, and I like to emphasise that by changing up the way some things are spelled; "you" turns into "'ya", "and" into "an'" and such, little changes that let the reader know how they should be reading the words said by the character, especially good if someone doesn't yet know who Micah is and your fic is their first impression, they can immediately assume an accent.

As a tip here, I'm gonna try and put a few grammatical details I usually keep in mind when writing my texts.

Verbs I.: if it ends in "-ing", leave out the 'g' and add an ' at the end.

For example: "Well, safe to say she's changin' her ways."

Verbs II.: If they don't end with "-ing", like with words that aren't in the present for example (and irregular verbs), I look for ways to change them which I then memorise for the future.

For example I.: "It just burns a little, 's all." —> "is"

For example II.: "She's just wen' and gone!" —> "went"

"You, you're, your": The change here is very obvious, and the only warning I have is for for using "you're" and "your"; the change is the same, so if you have both in one sentence, only change one.

For example I.: "But he said 'ya didn't like the gift?"

For example II.: "How?! I know yer supposed to be gone!"

For example III.: "You know yer left shoelace is undone?"

These are a few of my tips, and I'm hoping that they'll be helpful to you—and anyone else that is looking to write Micah. Thank you for the lovely ask, and as always, good luck! <3

friend wanted to be tagged: @angel-w1ngsss