#anyway that last one is about the depth of fear | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

underskz · 3 months ago

Text

➪ ‘TIL NEXT TUESDAY

➪ mark lee x cisfem!reader ✩ w.c 8.5k — NSFW ✩ 18+ minors dni —

✰ NON-IDOL AU

pov: you're a camgirl with a secret admirer who's a little (okay maybe a lot) obsessed

note: y'all do not understand the pain,,, the struggle,,,, the trauma that this fic has inflicted upon me <//3 i quite literally started writing it last year on mark lees stupid lil bday and have been typing away at it for so mf long and have had to dig into the deepest filthiest depths of my brain to finally finish this,,,,, anyways welcome to my twisted mind and we can all blame mark lee my greatest enemy,,,, i hate u… anyways pls make note of the warnings !!! btw don’t ask me what website they’re using idk i couldn’t be fcked to think that hard

warnings: NSFW CONTENT, aka smut, obsessive behavior, viscerally lewd comments, uh lying LOL, wolf in sheep’s clothing energy (good church boy mark lee and his hidden demons <3), honestly both reader and mark r freaky (aww they match each others freaks!), readers thinly veiled shame kink, unsafe sex/no condom, barely any prep lol, not beta read bc im a full send girl (sorry for any typos etc LMAO)

There’s clearly something wrong with user ‘66golden_boy99’ and you can’t quite figure it out. Sure, he seems to be just another fan of your work. And maybe his comments tended to be on the imaginative side.

i wanna dick you down til next tuesday

stuff your guts this thursday and stay buried in you thru the weekend

til youre cryin to me about how you can feel my dick in your throat

how pretty would you cry for me?

That little voice in the back of your head whispers (the one that sounds far too much like Donghyuck), an annoying little I told you so, someone was bound to get obsessed. It wasn’t like you never considered or even feared the possibility.

But these comments, this person, there was something there. You click into a different video, scrolling down to a specific cluster of comments.

i wanna ruin you so fuckin bad

ruin that pussy for anyone else

wanna hear you beg me to stop

until it turns into begging me for more

sound fun sweetheart?

Every video, every clip, every single little teaser you post; there’s a thread from him. His stupid username right there, ‘66golden_boy99’ and a digital paper trail that ranges from being unforgivably horny to borderline demented and most of the time a combination of both.

fuck if i could keep you in a little cage…

i’d fuck u every day all day

turn you into my perfect little pet

made just for my cock

don’t you want that too?

You can’t help but let your mouth gape at that one, a cage? Your head spins at the thought, trying (and failing) to not let your imagination wander.

There’s a certain thrill that crawls down your spine, twisting itself deep into your gut and lodging itself there. An ache that you can’t quite sate yourself, barely sated by these comments.

So yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with user ‘66golden_boy99’ but that could only mean there’s something wrong with you.

“Mark, read this! Isn’t it insane?” Donghyuck all but smacks him in the face with your phone.

“Oh! Um.” He immediately flushes, no doubt flustered by the nature of the comments along with the fact he’s one of your few friends who still gets a little red in the cheeks by your choice of profession.

Good church boy Mark Lee at your service. Who thankfully plucks your phone from Donghyuck and passes it back to you— most likely to avoid further being subjected to such filth in broad daylight.

“Don’t bust a tit Hyuck, it’s just some dude living out his freaky fantasy while hiding behind a screen.” You knew it was going to be brought up the moment you saw your friends, but you had hoped that Donghyuck would have the decency to not mention it while seated outside a popular cafe on a busy street.

Jokes on you for thinking he could keep his cool about this. The moment you had sent a screenshot to the group chat Donghyuck had been rearing for a fight, overly scandalized and always righteous whenever he thought his friends were being treated badly.

There was no way in hell you’d tell him those comments piqued your debased interest.

“It’s a little creepy.” Jungwoo settles on, stealing a blueberry off of your parfait. “He doesn’t message when you’re live though.”

“Nope, only comments on clips and videos.” You bite back your disappointment, maintaining an almost clinical tone.

“Does he even watch your streams?” Jungwoo questions as he attempts to swipe a strawberry this time, narrowly thwarted by you whacking his hand with your plastic spoon.

“What difference does it make? He’s a fucking perv!” Donghyuck snipes.

The answer is yes, he does watch every single one of your streams. Occasionally donates too, yet no messages. No live interactions.

“Hyuck, my whole fanbase are pervs.” You ignore the glare of an elderly woman as she passes by your table. “When did you become such a prude?”

It’s enough of a jab to send the man into a fit, ranting and raving about how he’s perfectly freaky enough and that his boyfriend(s) is (are) so into how weird and kinky he could get.

“Seriously though, is he scaring you?” Mark whispers, careful to not catch Donghyuck’s attention lest he starts laying into you about your “creepy” admirer again. Mark’s considerate like that.

For a moment you sit with the question, mindlessly spooning around your half eaten parfait. Were you scared? You knew full well you were bound to deal with the occasional creep when you decided to pursue camming as a full-time job after university.

But you weren’t— aren’t scared, initially you had maybe been a bit unnerved. Yet you hadn’t shared the messages because you wanted your friends to “save” you or anything. More so because you were shocked by the sheer audacity and of course by what was being said.

If Donghyuck wasn’t so busy talking about getting spit roasted much to the horror of Jungwoo, he’d be pestering you for the answer too. And you would’ve lied, told him that you were a little nervous but nothing that’d keep you from carrying on as usual.

Instead you have Mark asking, no trace of judgment behind his thick rimmed glasses, just a curious glint with a healthy dash of concern for a friend.

“He’s not.” Is what ends up coming out. It’s simpler than the whole truth, cleaner as well.

You couldn’t admit to one of your best friends that it sent a thrill down your spine, to have someone so obsessed they comment utter depravity on every post you make. That you’ve checked to make sure this mystery creep was watching your every stream. And that there’s nothing you’ve ever wanted more than to be craved so deeply, to be ached for, to be someone’s sole obsession.

“If you do get freaked out or anything, uh understandably so, we’ll figure something out. I’ll beat him up?” Mark offers one of his dorky smiles, and despite his statement inspiring little hope — seriously Mark is way too sweet to ‘beat’ anyone up — you still appreciate the sentiment. Offering him a big spoonful of whipped cream and strawberries for his valiant statement.

“Hey! Why does Mark get fed and I have to fight for a crumb?” Jungwoo cries out only causing you to roll your eyes and spark even more outrage from him.

You're thankful that the rest of the outing goes on without another mention of a certain fan of yours. Though Mark seems to be shooting more indiscernible looks your way than usual, but that’s easy to chalk down as him just projecting his own anxieties onto you.

When you all start to bid farewell Donghyuck wastes a few minutes to preach about the dangers of internet strangers, while Jungwoo goads and teases him until his nagging is turned onto Jungwoo.

Again Mark offers comfort — though you really have no need for it, considering the fact you honestly are enjoying the debased behavior more than you maybe should — and you pretend to appreciate it.

needa fuck you over and over and over

til your pretty lil pussy is gaping open

so i can see the way i paint you up inside

wouldn’t you like that?

Yes, you dig your teeth into your bottom lip, fuck yes.

You had just posted a teaser for your next video, a simple reaction to some random threesome video your subscribers had begged you to watch.

And as always without fail, only a few minutes after you’ve hit post your phone lights up with notifications from ‘66golden_boy99’. You should hate how much you look forward to it— how you’re practically gagging for it (him).

You remember his first thread of comments, remember the scandal that pumped through your veins as the words registered in your brain.

The thrill.

well aren’t you a sweet thing

He had started it off so normally.

you look like you dont care for just any kind of fun

you look like u need to be fucked within an inch of your life

thrown around and violated like a stupid little toy

i could do that

It’s the only time he hadn’t ended with a question. The only statement needed to stake his claim, to solidify his place.

It planted the seed right in your lust ridden mind, the growing need to see more and more. It becomes a sick little ritual, to go looking for his comments just after you tuck yourself into bed under the guise of resting for the day.

You’re desperate enough to reread old ones, to stare at the same comments from days or even weeks ago. Sometimes he’ll throw you a bone, coming back to leave another thread of comments for you to find.

wanna fill you up so bad

make you take it over and over and over

til my cum is dripping outta you for days

so that all that’s in your pretty head is the thought of my cock pumping you full

wanna make it happen?

Maybe it’s the way you’ve never replied to them, or even acknowledge them in a stream. It doesn’t deter him from continuing, his perverted dedication proving something to you. Something twisted and delicious and all too tempting.

need you so bad

just need to use you over and over and over and over so fuckin bad

turn you into my own pretty fleshlight to use whenever i please

just wanna use you all up baby

how much can you take?

Thursday streams are one of your three weekly streams, and while it had marginally less viewers therefore profit than your Friday and every other Saturday ones, it was by far your favorite.

The chat is far more relaxed, which means you have a better chance to interact with viewers, to have a more intimate stream.

It means you can instead sit at your desk, dressed in nothing but an oversized white tee, playing with your hair and batting your lashes. While making idle conversation as your viewers dutifully pay you compliments and donate small amounts as a hello.

66golden_boy99: hey there

“Oh? Golden boy? And here I was thinking you weren’t interested enough in having a live convo with me.” You wonder if he waited for this, a Thursday stream with an even lower than usual number of viewers to finally send his first message in chat. Was your little freak shy? Only able to sling his filth when nobody was paying attention?

Too late for that, he was in your sights now.

66golden_boy99: nah just liked sitting here and watching you too much

“Is that so?” You feign distraction, looking off towards the side as you tap your chin thoughtfully. “But here I am, doing nothing. Isn’t that boring?”

There’s a flood of no’s in the chat, messages ranging from horny to sweet about how some like just chatting and others saying that you should at least take off your shirt.

“My shirt? It’s only been twenty-ish minutes since I’ve started and you all don’t wanna butter me up first? Tell me how pretty I am?” You’re accused of being a tease, which is of course your exact angle. Some of them bite, sending cooing comments about how they’d love to see your shirt off, some going as far as to send in a few dollars.

$200 from 66golden_boy99

it’s okay sweetheart, show em what’ll be mine

Your jaw drops, because while he had tipped in the past, it was never this much. You can’t help the shiver that itches down your spine, ‘what’ll be mine’ he says, like he already has you in the bag.

“Aww you wanna see me that bad? Everyone say thank you to Golden Boy!” You goad, making a show of hooking your thumbs in the hem of your shirt. Slowly you drag the fabric across your flesh, inch by inch exposing how you truly had nothing under your flimsy excuse for clothing.

66golden_boy99: and where’s your thank you?

“That’s right, you were so generous after all, I should give you a little treat to show my appreciation.” Again you flutter your lashes. “How do you want me?”

66golden_boy99: spreading your legs like a desperate slut

66golden_boy99: wanna see you fuck your fingers

66golden_boy99: cmon babe show off your perfect pussy and open yourself up for me

“Anything for you.” And maybe you’re a little fucked in the head for how much you mean it.

You’ve never had a favorite before. Nobody in your chat, comments and so on have ever caught your attention. They’ve never bothered to be so interesting, to be so openly obsessed.

Slowly you let your hands wander, cupping your tits before letting your fingertips dance along your ribcage, inching down, down, down.

You pathetically think of him, wonder who’s on the other side of the screen. It could be some old man, or some greasy incel, maybe it’s someone you’ve met on the street. It could be anyone, and it sickens you almost as much as it excites you.

Carefully, you plant your feet on the edge of your desk, sliding down a few inches in your chair as you spread nice and wide for the camera.

“This what you want?” The words jumble in your mouth as your fingers continue to find their way south. You dig your nails into your thighs, moaning loudly at the bite of them into your tender skin.

Shame was something that had long escaped you in this field of work, only the tastefully faked sense of it ever gracing you these days. But there’s that all too familiar burn crawling back into your chest after almost years of nothing. Scorching away at your insides as your fingers drag along your waiting pussy.

You’re wet, you’re wet and it’s because of some fucking freak on the internet. Your eyes zero in on the chat, hoping to catch a comment from him.

66golden_boy99: fucking perfect for me always so good

It’s all you need to keep going, to let wanton moans tumble out left and right as your back arches into your own touch.

The sense of shame doesn’t diminish, doesn’t fade as you tease your clit and pump your fingers pitifully into your sopping cunt, loudly bemoaning the fact you didn’t grab a toy.

66golden_boy99: you’ll cum just like this baby, no toys, just your fingers and wishing it was me instead

“Nnn- please.” It’s whiner than you’ve ever heard yourself, because goddammit you are wishing it was him. Old man be damned he had a wicked way of speaking, of sneaking into the dark recesses of your mind and ripping you open. Exposing a side of you that you’d long since buried, a side of you craving to be devoured wholly.

Pleasure snakes through your body, dropping down into your belly as you cum with a whimper. You make a show of bringing your fingers to your lips, tongue flicking out to taste yourself, that sick part of you hoping it makes him want you more.

You slump against your chair, mindlessly answering chats as you fix yourself into a more comfortable position. You don’t bother looking for your shirt, letting your viewers enjoy watching your chest rise and fall in panting breaths, admire the way the sweat gleams on your skin.

You hope his eyes are glued to his screen. You hope you’re driving him absolutely insane.

“I fear I might be tapped out for the night, but don’t worry there’s always Sunday.” You manage to get out a real sentence, your brain still a little mushy from the post-orgasm haze. “Sweet dreams everyone!”

You take a moment to let the chat fill with well wishes, a few more donations and scan for a message from one user in particular.

66golden_boy99: good night sweet thing, dream of me

And oh, you just might.

Ending streams were nothing special, just a click of a button and your privacy was all yours again. Leaving you with a plethora of thoughts, a tiny remnant of that formerly elusive shame and a craving for something or more accurately someone.

Send a friend request to 66golden_boy99?

What did you have to lose? What did you have to gain?

There’s a little angel on your shoulder in the shape of Donghyuck, your ever annoying moral compass, telling you to go shower and to never feed into this anonymous man’s delusions again.

While the little devil on your shoulder shaped like Yuta does nothing, sits there and smirks at you knowing full well you’ll choose his route.

You always do.

Sorry Hyuck.

Friend request sent!

Three days go by, no comments, no messages on stream, nothing. Absolute silence.

You can’t help yourself but watch each excruciating second tick by, waiting for something, anything from him. Three whole days of obsessively checking your phone, every social media tied to your occupation and nothing.

It’s like he up and fucking forgot about you. And maybe three days seems too short of a timeline to be losing it, but this is a man who has been all over your account — and notifications — for months.

And he gets scared off by a friend request.

God, you should’ve known better than to trust Yuta, even if he was just a figment of your imagination at that moment. Though the real Yuta would’ve said the same thing anyway, therefore still making this whole ordeal his fault.

But as fun as blaming your friend and obsessing over whether your twisted little admirer would accept your request, let alone give you something to work with nowadays. It was driving you up the fucking wall.

You need a distraction, and you need it badly.

Your usual and immediate reaction to having nothing to do and needing attention would be to ask Donghyuck to go out and do something stupid, but the lucky bastard was on vacation with his boyfriend(s?) probably getting fucked into the new year.

So you’re left to consider your options but Jungwoo is definitely still at work and Yuta just left to visit his family. And your other friends lived too far.

That only left you with Mark. God, you need more friends in close proximity. Not because you don’t like Mark, you adore the man if anything and still consider him one of your best friends. It's just that despite all the years of friendship the two of you just haven’t figured out how to quite mesh conversationally like the others.

You need more spark, conviction. Mark Lee talks like a wet noodle came to life and decided to use ‘yo’, ‘dude’ and ‘woah’ on a permanent rotation.

At least he’s a great listener.

And since he’s one of your closest friends nonetheless, he would have no problem with you coming over to eat his snacks and lounge on his couch while he works from home.

So you shoot him a text.

TO: marky markmarkly sparkly can i cum over ;P

FROM: marky markHaha sure dude! I told you stop spelling it like that > <

TO: marky markprude be there in 10 want coffee ?

FROM: marky markSure! Caramel latte please :3

He even texts like a good and innocent church boy. But he’s definitely had girlfriends, and that one boyfriend, so there’s no way he’s a virgin. Is it possible to be a blushing virgin in spirit and at heart?

“Hey beautiful, what can I get ya?” The barista’s stare is nothing short of sleazy, not even bothering to make eye contact as he tries to magically see through your clothing.

“I’ll take a caramel latte, lemme double check what my boyfriend wanted, hmm just a regular coffee.” And okay it’s a little demeaning to Mark to switch your coffee orders in front of this greaseball.

The boyfriend comment works well enough, if you take the guy opting to just stare at your ass as you walk out the door instead of bullying you for your number a win.

Thankfully Mark's apartment is just around the corner, and somehow you manage to key in the code not once but twice despite carrying two drinks.

“Marky! Coffee!” Immediately he comes tumbling down the hallway, eyes wide with confusion. His hair is sticking up in different directions, his glasses crooked and half-hanging off his face. His sweat stained white tee, and low hanging gray sweats only the cherry atop the homebody trainwreck sundae of a man before you.

“Hey, yo, shit! Uh dude!” He stops a few steps in front of you, scratching his head sheepishly. “I thought…you would take longer.”

“Do I look like Jungwoo? Or worse, Yuta?” You feign offense with a dramatic gasp.

“Nah! Ha…ha, um come on in, it’s a fuckin’ mess but like you know, ‘m swamped with work and…”

You hand him his latte and push past him, barely batting an eye at the nightmarish state of his apartment. There’s mountains of paperwork and books stacked along the walls, empty food boxes, bags and wrappers scattered across the floor (along with any other available surface) and you’re trying desperately to not gag at the state of his kitchen.

“Johnny would clean?” You muse as you kick aside an empty pasta box.

“Johnny would clean.” He sighs. Johnny, being Mark’s roommate, along with (one of) Donghyuck’s boyfriend(s???) is currently on vacation. On top of that, from what you've heard, he’s barely been at the apartment at all the past few months. Definitely too busy catering to every single one of Hyuck’s whims and dramatics.

“I could help?”

“Woah! I couldn’t ask you that, I made this mess on my own. I’ll clean it er.. eventually.” He gestures loosely.

“Mark Lee.” You muster up your best deadpan tone. “I’m so bored I’m gonna chew my own hand off, please let me help you clean your awfully disgusting apartment.”

“That bad?” He snorts.

“I think that pile of dust moved on it’s own.” At least you’re hoping it’s a pile of dust and not some undiscovered rodent that thrives in the apartments of bachelors with piss poor cleaning habits.

“…I think you’re right. Hey um, lemme just shower and change, I think I’m just as gross as this place. We can clean together. So just…” He shoves aside the pile of laundry inhabiting the couch just enough to give you a place to sit. “Sit for a second?”

The poor guy looks like he’s on the brink of a meltdown, and if you didn’t know Mark as well as you do you would’ve called an ambulance. But he just always has that air around him, exhausted and overworked— but always smiling through it.

“I’m in no rush.” You pat his arm before taking a seat in the space he so generously carved out for you. The second Mark walks off to the bathroom you make yourself nice and comfortable, switching on the TV, straightening out some of the magazines and assorted papers on the coffee table.

Mindlessly you even start folding some of the laundry next to you. The thought of taking pictures and sending them to Donghyuck so he could show Johnny just how far his roomie has fallen in his absence promptly interrupts your side task.

But to your dismay you find your phone is barely holding on by a few measly percentages. Looking around the living room you know there’s definitely no hope in trying to find a charger on your own. So instead you head off towards the bathroom, following the sound of the shower pouring down.

“Mark!” You knock harshly, hoping he can hear you okay.

“Yeah?” His voice comes through clear, sounding only a little startled by your sudden presence.

“Need to charge my phone!”

There’s a moment of pause and you can only assume it’s because his room is so hellish he can’t even remember where he put the thing.

“By my bed!”

“Thanks!”

His room is actually better than the living room and kitchen, not by much, but still better. You navigate around the clothes and books strewn about the floor. Giggling at his wastebasket full of balled up tissues and a used up bottle of lotion, you definitely couldn’t wait to tell Donghyuck when he gets back.

Making fun of Mark was an art, a beloved pastime of your friend group. And he always took it like a champ.

You plop down on his unmade bed, looking around for his charger. It’s half under the bed when you spot it, tugging the cord only for there to be a bit of resistance. Carefully you lower yourself to the floor, yanking at the charger and forcing Mark’s IPad to come flying at you.

“Shit!” It lands next to you face down on the hardwood and you pray to whatever gods that you haven’t cracked it. Slowly you pick it up, carefully flipping it over as you prepare yourself for the damage.

“Oh, my god.”

Because it’s not cracked, it’s not even locked, it’s still open to what Mark had been watching last to be exact.

One of your streams, one of your streams with you bent over one of your pillows, both holes stuffed with toys in the perfect position for the camera to see everything. It’s not even a new video, you haven’t done anything like that in months.

There’s a blur in your vision as you shoot up, lightheaded from standing up straight so suddenly. A scorching heat begins to burn in your gut, creeping through your veins.

You can still hear the shower going, and you know it must be wrong, to go through his private device like this but…it’s you. He’s been watching you, one of your most bible-thumping, prude-built friends who can barely look you in the eyes and blushes whenever you or your friends make dirty jokes, has been watching your debaucherous streams and has never said a word.

Sure, Yuta and Jungwoo have confessed to watching more than once and Donghyuck is a fucking mod for your streams. It never bothered you if your friends watched, it wouldn’t bother you now.

But this is…this is different. He kept his viewership a secret, and you weren’t sure what to make of it. Was he too embarrassed to say? Was he afraid it’d ruin your friendship?

You close out the video, looking through his watch history which consists solely of your videos, looking at who he follows — you, only you, and you can’t tell if that’s a good thing yet — and now the used tissues in his trash bin don’t feel so funny anymore.

“Oh.” You mutter lamely as you open up his comment history. Fucking oh.

66golden_boy99: wanna fuck you with my tongue til youre squirting all over my face

And your world collapses, punctuated by the sound of the shower turning off— yet that’s lost on your ears. You can’t hear anything but the furious pound of your heart trying to dismantle your ribcage, your blood rushing through your veins and sloshing around your head.

Mark Lee, sweet, kind and innocent. Mark Lee, who stutters just talking about who he likes. Mark Lee, the resident saint of the group.

Is him.

The man who’s been peddling filth into your mind, who’s been haunting you every time you decide to start your stream or post a video, skulking around every comment section with your name on it.

Is Mark fucking Lee.

“Heya! Did ya find…it.” It’s cinematic honestly, the way his stride slows as his eyes frantically flicker back and forth between you and the IPad. “Y-Y-You!”

It’s instantaneous, his face turning a brilliant crimson as he trips over himself to grab the tablet and throw it haphazardly to the side.

His chest is heaving, panic creasing his features as you look him over. He kept the same color scheme, you think emptily, white tank top and gray basketball shorts. It does nothing for your brain as you stare at him mouth agape.

“I c-can explain?” He has the audacity to squeak, to look ashamed even. He’s trying to hide behind his bangs as they fall over his eyes, trying to look so innocent despite his filthy secret coming to light.

“Why didn’t you accept my friend request?” It’s probably not what you should open with, and Mark’s jaw simply hanging open at the question might be a testament to that.

“…What?” His croaks, voice hoarse.

“You didn’t accept it, why? And where have you been, it’s been three whole days? I’ve been fucking waiting for—”

“You’re not mad?” His voice is still uneven, and even a pitch higher.

“Mad? Mad? I’m pissed, you, you idiot!” And you are. Probably. Your mind so fucked from trying to comprehend this newfound piece of info you don’t even know where to begin with how you’re feeling. So mad must be the best place to start.

“For months I’ve been wondering who had the fucking balls to send these freaky borderline insane comments.” He flinches. “Wondering just who the hell was making me feel like, like…that.”

“I—”

“And it was you! Right under my nose, looking at me with those stupid round eyes and big glasses a-and you just pretended like you knew nothing? …I got off to you on stream?” You hate the way your voice sounds so high in your ears, teetering on the edge of full blown shrieking.

“Please, I’m sor…”

“When Hyuck showed those comments were you even ashamed?” You hiss.

He’s blubbering now, eyes pinned somewhere to the ground; half cooked sentences or maybe excuses scattering about the floor with the rest of his mess. It’s all lost on your ears, a million different thoughts in your head drowning it all out.

His hands raise as if admitting defeat, even beginning to back away in a pitiful attempt at escaping but like hell you’ll let the fool get away from you now.

“Goddammit, Mark Lee, look at me!” And he does, his mouth snapping shut and eyes focusing on you. His stupid glasses are nowhere to be seen, giving you an unfiltered front row view of how his pupils are blown wide. “Did you mean it?”

“Mean…what?” You could kill him, you really could because how after all these months of sending you towards the edge with the crudest, filthiest words he can barely say a proper sentence standing before you.

“Any of it! All of it, was it all just talk?” You must’ve hit a nerve. He’s silent again, eyes narrowing for a moment at the accusation. But it slips away, a fickle persona he shoves down.

His hands lower to his sides.

“...What do you want?” His voice is more even, eyebrows knitting together.

You know what he’s asking — he was obvious like that, his heart always worn so proudly on his sleeve — because even now with his disgusting secret out in the open between the two of you. He has the audacity to try to take the gentlemanly route of getting you to explicitly state what you want from him, if you want him.

When all you’ve been waiting for was for him to take.

“What do I want, huh? Let me tell you what I think first.” You know this will definitely make or break what happens next, and maybe even your friendship. But you’re sick of his games, of dancing around whatever the hell was going on between the two of you. “I think you’re all bark and no fucking bite, I think you hide behind a screen because you’re a coward and you probably couldn’t fuck your way out of a wet paper bag.”

His eyes narrow once more.

“You hide behind your good little god fearing boy next door persona when you’re a freak who likes watching one of his best friends get off on camera!”

He takes a step closer.

“I think you’re filthy and depraved, a repressed weirdo with disgusting kinks. A borderline incel!”

And another step.

“I bet the second you actually got inside of me you’d cum and cry yourself to sleep in a matter of seconds.” His expression darkens at that, and now you’re starting to think that you should stop.

But where’s the fun in that?

“You couldn’t handle even half the shit you said online, you cowardly little prude, you tiny dicked—”

You don’t realize his hands are on you until you're backed against the wall, one tightly gripping your hip while the other lands on your chest keeping you firmly in place.

“You never shut up. Even in your streams and videos you're constantly yammering on, whimpering and whining and begging.” His voice is low, buzzing around your ears and in your head. You look down at the tent forming in his shorts, mouth drying and watering simultaneously.

“That for me?” Your tongue feels thick as you look up at him through your lashes.

The hand on your chest inches up, until his palm settles against your throat and you're left wondering if he’ll indulge you by tightening his fingers. Even just a little.

“Even now, can’t shut the fuck up.” He moves in closer, until his hardened cock is against your thigh and he’s forcing his knee between yours. “I asked what you wanted, not for you to insult me.”

“You-”

“So I’ll tell you what I want.” And you feel so wildly out of your depth, there’s a cognitive dissonance you can’t quite escape. Good church boy Mark means wholesome activities, ice cream in the park, farmer’s markets and, and–

“And then you’re gonna try again for me.”

“M-Me?” It comes out lamely. Is this really Mark Lee? You think belatedly. Looking at you like he wants to tear you apart inch by inch with nothing but his teeth and tongue.

“I want you on my tongue, on my cock, want you begging for me to stop but it’s all just a filthy fucking lie. I want you to want me to ruin you, this, us.” His voice is raspier, laced with a desperation and craving you’ve never heard before and damn do you need to hear more, so much more.

“So try again. Tell me what you want.” And you can see it, that plea in his eyes for you to just say it. To know you want this as badly as he does, the promise, the threat of him finally letting go looming over the two of you.

“Want.” You grab him by the face, pressing your nose against his and staring into the black depths of his pupils. “Want good boy Mark Lee to die right before my eyes, wan’ you to eat me ‘til nothin’ is left.”

It’s slurred, you’re delirious, so drunk off the way he’s already hard off of you screaming at him (or maybe it was getting caught), at the way he’s demanding you to express your want for him when you’d rather just be on your knees.

But the thing is you always have wanted, craved. That underlying itch to see one of your best friends let loose, the borderline wanting (what you thought was) a random stranger to break into your apartment and do filthy, unmentionable things to you. When you flipped over that IPad thinking you broke it to find yourself being the object of his debauched desire, when you saw his username on the site.

You ached.

It’s stupid and toeing the line of embarrassing with how badly you want, no, need him, how turned on by the fact he doesn’t even know which person to be in front of you. Doesn’t quite know how to be both.

“Let him die.” Is all he can say, having the audacity to take advantage of your stupor to kiss you. To push you back up against the wall and slot his lips against yours, pulling back just to dive back in before you could truly feel his absence. Over and over each one messier, hotter than the last as a debaucherous hunger flows between the two of you.

“You don’t get it.” He mumbles, pressing himself firmly against you, sweat starting to prickle against your skin. “When y-you started camming I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

And suddenly you could see it, vividly. Just behind your eyelids was Mark hunched over in his bed, one of your streams or videos playing in the background as he furiously chased his release. Only to be left wallowing in the shame of jerking it with cheap lotion to you, forced to clean himself off with even cheaper tissues and spending the rest of his night completely alone.

“Your perfect fucking pussy, for everyone to see…when I’ve been waiting.” He rasps, hands finding their way back onto your body. “Couldn’t stand it, couldn’t fuckin’ stand it.”

“Mm, Ma-ark…” Without hesitation he twists his head, allowing himself to sink his teeth at the base of your throat. Pulling away to focus another dark look at you, that heady mixture of unmitigated want and wicked promises swirling in his eyes.

“S’All I could think about, even with our friends.” He noses along your jaw, nipping at your earlobe as his breathing turns ragged. “Wanted to haul you onto the table and fuck you ‘til your head went dumb, ‘til all was left was you squealing like a fuckin’ whore while they all watched.”

There’s a cartoon halo of stars around your head, surely there is, each word from his mouth adding another to the ditzy constellation circling your brain. This is him, this is Mark ‘Golden Boy’ Lee and his once hidden (and so deliciously unhinged) silver tongue.

“Pl-Please, oh fu— please.” His lips are back to working against your throat, and just as you try to reach up and grab at him, to try and sway him into relieving some of the tension building in the air.

He steps back, yanking at your arm.

Yet he doesn’t give you a chance to simply fall, or even react. Instead he uses your off-kilter balance to push you onto your knees, thankful that he’s a sloppy loser when you land on a pile of clothes.

“This.” He doesn’t bother being shy about tugging his shorts and boxers off in one fluid motion. “This is how I want you.”

He pauses, as if to let you admire the view and you’re not nearly above doing so as your eyes roam so shamelessly.

Of course he’s cut, with neatly trimmed hair adorning his groin. And though he's just above average in length, he definitely makes up in girth. You think hazily that calling him tiny dicked was definitely a lie.

Your mouth waters.

He lets out a low chuckle of all things, surely laughing at the way your eyes have widened. And maybe you did let your tongue swipe over your lips in anticipation.

“Go ahead, before I make it hurt.” His words are delayed, understanding creeping in slowly; impaired by having long let that fog of desperation cloud your mind.

You move before you can think, nosing along the side of his cock, pressing a kiss to a cute little mole that you hope to revisit at a later date. But for now you’re flattening your tongue against the base of his shaft and dragging it up his length at a frustrating rate.

He’s heavy on your tongue, thick and heavy and so so hot, and fuck he tastes good or maybe you’re just already addicted. Doomed from the start.

There’s a war raging in your mind, whether to try your hardest to please him with your mouth, all too tempted to hear the pretty, desperate sounds he’ll make and maybe it’ll earn you a bit of praise. Or to tease until he’s pissed off enough to throw any regard for you and your (throat’s) wellbeing out the window.

The latter is far more appealing.

Coyly you look up at him again through your lashes once more, bringing your tongue to tease at the tip of his cock, licking off a bead of precum forming.

“Are you tryin’ to blow me or piss me off?” Ah, so he has you all figured out.

“Haven’t decided.” You reply properly by taking his tip into your mouth, swirling your tongue around it before sinking further down and ignoring the slightly uncomfortable stretch of your lips. You could get used to this.

Languidly you try to mind your teeth as you sink further down, your jaw aching at the unprecedented stretch. Shallowly you bob your head, barely giving anything as you look up to meet his burning gaze.

“Enough.” He groans, clearly sick of the teasing as his hand comes around to hook his fingers around the back of your head.

It’s enough of a warning as your hands come up to grip at his bare thighs, whimpering at the first tentative thrust. Unable to escape, knees aching and you can’t help but wonder how damp your panties will be by the time you get them off.

He’s careful at first, not to be too rough in his movements, trying to be considerate of your comfort. It’s ridiculous, and you let him know as much by stabbing your nails into his thighs only forcing him to accidentally bottom out.

Tears well in your eyes as you choke, gagging around the sinfully thick intrusion into your throat.

“Woah! Fuck, I’m sor-”

He starts to pull away, and desperately you chase after him. But the fucker pulls out, grabbing you by the cheeks to look you in the eyes.

“Do I have to start calling you names again?” Your voice is already wrecked, but not nearly enough, it could be worse, so much worse. If he would just fully let go. “Or are you just scared?”

He blinks at you, once, twice, those stupidly big eyes of his narrowing into something dangerous.

“Two taps if it’s too much.”

“It won’t be.” You barely finish the sentence as he grabs you on either side of your head with both hands, pressing the leaking head of his cock against the seam of your lips, precum smearing across. You barely open your mouth before he’s shoving his entire cock down your throat again.

You can see him, blurred by the tears stuck to your lashes, watching you with such reverence as you pitifully try to relax, still unable to avoid gagging and choking. Yet this time he offers no reprieve, keeps you firmly in place as tears stream down your face and your nails continue to dig into his thighs.

“T-That’s it, choke.” The break in his voice sends something hot through your chest, snaking through the rest of your body and creeping into your veins. How embarrassed would you really be if you came just from having your throat fucked?

“Where are you?” Your wandering thoughts immediately cease, drawn back in by his fingers dancing along your cheekbone before settling at the back of your head.

He doesn’t even have the decency to let you catch your breath after pulling your attention, shallow thrusts turning reckless as he fucks your face with little regard for you— it’s everything you’ve every wanted from him.

It sends another surge of heat down into your belly, pooling between your thighs and now you’re wondering if your poor panties will even be salvageable after this.

“Fuck that’s it, so fuckin’ good for me.” He bites his lip, and a part of you wishes you could be tugging on it too with your teeth.

Use me, use me, use me. The thought fills your mind, leaving room for nothing else but Mark and his cock and your jaw and throat struggling to keep up.

Frantically you tap on his calf, his response instantaneous.

“You good?” He pulls out again, swiping his thumb along your bottom lip to wipe away a mess of spit and precum.

“Need you,” and you could care less how your voice shakes and rasps, “need you in me so bad. Fuck me.”

Your fingers dig into his thighs as you muster up the best pitiful look possible, silently begging for more.

“C-Condom, need, condom.” He huffs, looking around his room frantically.

“Like hell, what happened to painting my insides huh?” Shakily you stand up, managing to push him towards the bed which he doesn’t even bother resisting. “Thought you wanted your cum dripping from my pussy for days.”

And he fucking growls, the sound so wildly animalistic you can barely believe it came from him.

“That what you want? You wanna feel me for days?” You’re on your back in a matter of seconds, his forearms landing on either side of your head to cage you in. He’s staring you down with an uncharacteristic intensity; a predator sizing up his prey.

“Ruin me for anybody else.” It comes out broken, desperation seeping from each word. How much more do you need to bend before he finally breaks?

He’s back on you, a barrage of teeth and tongue assaulting your flesh as his hands leave no part of you untouched, kneading and feeling. Just as you try to bring your own shirt over your head he pushes away your hands, allowing him to take over stripping you bare.

Each caress of his fingers leaves a trail of fire, almost too hot to bear.

“Please Marky, please.” It comes out high and whiny and so very needy. “Touch me more.”

“I’ll give you what you want, just lemme…fuck lemme look at you.” He catches your wrists just as you try to bring your hands up to cover your face, pinning your arms against your sides as his eye shamelessly trace over your figure. There’s a glint of something hungry, swirled with something akin to adoration.

“Y-You like m-me, you’re obsessed.” You

“Yeah, I really fucking am.” He’s grinning, all teeth with a hint of gums that makes your heart somehow pound even harder and you know you’re well and truly fucked. “Like you s’much gonna keep you on my cock forever.”

He lets go of your hands, grabbing at your thighs to spread them apart, callused fingers dragging up until he’s almost carelessly pressing a finger into you.

“Fuck, you can… o-oh keep me!” You whimper as he bullies one, then two more fingers into your throbbing cunt— there’s a determination bordering on desperation creasing his brow in order to prep you as quickly as possible.

“Next time, I’ll spend fuckin’ hours doin’ this.” You whine as he drags his fingers out of you.

His hands hook under your thighs, pressing up and up until he can hook your legs over his shoulders and he’s pressing the blunt head of his cock against your hole. There’s a slight sting as he pushes in, the stretch unfamiliar and despite how wet you are some lube would’ve helped.

But you well and truly could care less.

“I don’t care who sees this, you, I’m the only one who gets to touch, the only one who gets to fuck you like this.” He rasps, bottoming out in one harsh thrust and punching the air out of your lungs.

He’s kind enough to let you catch your breath, indulging you with a few soft kisses along your jaw and nipping at your bottom lip. But it doesn’t last long, following a sloppy kiss with a tentative grind of his hips, then a soft thrust.

Those desperate whines you usually play up for your streams easily escaping your lips as he builds a steady rhythm.

“Yes, yes, yes, Mark.” It’s perfect, every single thrust is perfect, the way you're folded in half, the feeling of his fingers digging into you, the strain of toned muscles under flushed skin; so fucking perfect. “Only you.”

And you mean it, fully, wholeheartedly without any hesitation. Only Mark, if that’s what he wants then you want it too, whatever Mark wants he can have.

“M’Close, fuck, I’m so close.” You whimper, raking your fingers through his still damp hair.

“Already?” It spears through your chest, harsh and burning and tears down your belly.

There’s a split second of perfect silence interrupting the sound of skin slapping against skin, a ringing in your ears followed by the crash of your heart into your ribcage.

Pleasure slices down your spine, rippling through your body in crashing waves and leaving your head spinning.

He fucks you through the high, any chance of a coherent thought spilling right out of your ears, his name garbled and strained as it forces it’s way past your lips.

He slows, as if he’s about to waste both your time and do something stupid like pull out and finish on your stomach. And like hell you’re letting that happen, grabbing at his head with both hands and smashing your lips together, pulling away just enough to stare into blown pupils.

“Cum inside me, you bitch!” His teeth come down on your bottom lip, the bite of iron and tang of sweat and spit swirling together on your tongue dizzying, intoxicating. He slams back into you with a force you didn’t know he had, swallowing down a broken moan from his lips as he spills into you.

“I’m still gonna stream.” The two of you have settled on his now made bed, tucked under the covers. You had no problem letting Mark dress you in a clean tee and boxers, watching sleepily from his desk chair as he made his bed before depositing you in it.

“I’ll still watch.” He hums.

“And comment?” It brings up the matter from earlier, the one you never got an answer to. “Why didn’t you?”

“I…I didn’t know what to do. Uh, it was one thing, hiding, but then I thought you…didn’t…”

“Didn’t?” You raise your head, trying to level your gaze to his.

“Didn’t like m- it, the comments, those messages in chat, all of it. Thought you were just tryin’ to message me to stop. And then I got scared you somehow knew it was…me.” He has that sheepish look smearing his features, a hand coming up to scratch at his nape.

You stare at him silently, watching as his eyes bounce around your face searching for some hint of what you could possibly be thinking.

“Look where that got us, I can’t even feel my legs, oh my god you have to fuck me on stream, please!”

“H-Huh? Live? Yo I can’t just-”

“Think about it, Marky.” Aching hips and sore muscles be damned, you somehow manage to climb into his lap and straddle his thighs. “Fucking me, on camera, for everyone to see just what you do to me. I’d be so good for you.”

You can see it, what little resolve he had starting to crumble, just a little more.

“Don’t you want that?” It’s his words and he knows it, starting to see the monster he’s created. You run your fingers along his jaw, settling one hand on his shoulder while the other comes up to muss up fluffy brown locks. “Stretching me on your fat cock for my pitiful little viewers to see, wishing it was them driving me insane.”

“Baby…” The pet name from his lips is instantly addicting, and you need so much more of it.

“Please.” And now you’re not sure what you’re begging for, your body screams for you to stop, to not roll your hips against his because it’s far too soon to be fucked into the mattress again.

“If, if you don’t stop doing that.” He groans. “You’re not gonna be able to stream tomorrow.”

You blink.

“Wow you really are my biggest fan.”

“Huh?”

“Got my schedule memorized and everything, does that mean we could do it tomorrow? You’ll fuck me on stream tomorrow?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Seriously I–”

“Actually, cancel it.” He’s hooking his hands under your thighs, drawing you closer. “Don’t look at me like that, I said cancel it.”

“Mm, I don’t know if I can go again yet.” But there’s no conviction behind your words.

“You’re fine, I’ll do all the work.” You’re fine he says, it sends a thrill up your spine right into your brain, reworking the entire chemistry in there. It had been there in the back of your mind, slipping in somewhere between finding out his secret and that first kiss.

You’re absolutely hooked, simply addicted, to Mark Lee.

“Okay.” You grin at him.

#mark x reader #mark lee x reader #nct x reader #nct 127 x reader #nct dream x reader #nct smut #nct 127 smut #– miki writes #– mark

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lovebugism · 7 months ago

Text

✶ ┄ HOLY GRAIL !

part one | part two

summary: in ancient rome, where survival is determined by the whims of a mad ruler, the empire's beloved general gives you – his first and only love – to the crazed emperor to ensure your safety. (6k)

pairing: marcus acacius / fem!reader, emperor geta / fem!reader

contents: established relationship, strangers to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort cw for mentions of war and violence, mentions of sex work, swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, m receiving oral, unprotected sex, cuckholding, exhibitionism) (this is a pretty dark fic so pls heed the warnings!!!)

Marcus Acacius was the name on the lips of a thousand fallen empires. His ledger ran a deep scarlet color, which dripped like proof from his sword. The war had destroyed the General over the years — had turned the man into an empty thing filled only by untamable ghosts. The relentless battle had wrung his boyhood from his body like a slow, merciless death. Any remaining innocence has since been replaced with violence.

Rome made a legacy of his grotesque evils, turned him into a saint. Marcus Acacius did not want to be a saint. He did not want to be angry; he did not want to be cruel. He only wanted to love and to be left alone with his tenderness. His mouth filled with blood instead.

You loved him like all doomed, grotesque things are meant to be loved. In the dark. In the shadows of war. In the depths of the soul.

“This is me,” he confesses, the great General Acacius, returning to you like a ghost to its haunt. “This is who I am.”

His golden armor is sullied from a victorious battle, tainted now with blotches of soil and dried blood that’s not his own. His dirtied, unholy fists tremble at his sides as he fights the urge to cross the threshold of your quarters to meet you. Marcus knows he doesn’t deserve to be held by you now. Not when he still wreaks of death.

He can still feel the breath of a fist on his bruised cheek, but the way his sword felt plunging through the beating heart of an enemy soldier plagues him most of all.

“Love turned on me long ago— It is not a burden I compel you to carry.”

So, please, do not love me, he doesn’t say. I only know how to destroy you.

You smile at him, eyes soft with sympathy, and cross the threshold of longing with an admirable effortlessness. You cradle his weathered, war-torn face in your palms, willingly staining your delicate hands with the blood stained there.

“I love you despite. So I imagine I’ll carry it anyway,” you coo to him, gentle eyes locked firmly with his heavy ones. “And I’m certain you love me in return, regardless of what you think the siege has made of you.”

“There is naught I can do about it,” Marcus admits, words heavy with choked-back emotion. He melts into your touch but continues to deny himself the want to hold you back. “Not while I still oversee this campaign. Not while there is a war to be won—”

“We love each other, don’t we?” you interject, pleading eyes searching for emotion behind his dark, stoic gaze. Marcus swallows hard. His scruffy chin scrapes your palm as he nods once in response. You grin and say the unforgiving truth out loud. “So fuck the war.”

You pull him down by his face to press a kiss to his unclean lips. Marcus rests his shaking hands over your waist and lets you build cathedrals in his mouth with your tongue. The blood in his teeth turns to holy water.

Marcus long understood that bringing you to the city would be his last act of love.

Keeping you in the heart of Rome was the only way he could ensure your safety, with the surrounding towns still under merciless siege. The people there were docile, and loyal most of all to the General who had won them a thousand wars. They would not hurt you because it was not in their kind too, and because they feared General Acacius’ wrath as much as they respected his mercy.

This was known to everyone in Rome except its Emperors.

Geta and Caracalla ruled together following their father’s untimely demise but shared not a brain between them. They were boys, after all, the oldest being hardly two-and-twenty –– it was in their nature to talk more than they listened, and to pretend as if they knew the world despite never leaving the city walls.

They were as cruel and as stupid as anyone who wished to rule an empire would be.

But the two of them relied heavily on their General to keep the restless public at ease. It made it easier for Marcus to bring you with him, knowing he had the trust of the most powerful men in Rome. He knew Geta kept meticulous care of his most precious gifts — all Marcus had to do was get you there, really, and the Emperors would do the rest for him.

It was simple, but it was not easy; though he imagines no war ever has been or would be. Both of you had survived, yes, but neither of you had been spared. Bringing you here was a testament to that, which you seemingly could not comprehend. You were as soft and green as the countryside he plucked you from, too naive for politics.

Marcus tells himself that this was the merciful decision, anyway, as he gives you a tour of Caracalla’s labyrinthine gardens — the place farthest from the feasting hall where the noblemen dined. Hidden behind climbing leaves, free from prying eyes.

“I can’t imagine why you would be so apprehensive in bringing me here. It’s beautiful,” you marvel aloud as you walk ahead of the man guiding you.

Your sandals pad faintly along the cobbled trail as you skim your palm over the bed of blooming roses. The petals feel like silk against your skin. You pluck one from the soil, careful to avoid its thorns, and hold it up to your nose. You turn to face Marcus with the crimson flower resting on your cupid’s bow.

“And it smells better, too,” you quip softly, tilting your head to your shoulder as you smirk behind the budding rose.

Marcus just barely manages to bite back his own grin until you reach out for him, tapping the delicate flower against the bridge of his strong nose. He exhales hard through his nostrils in place of a laugh.

Your giggling comes carried on the breath of a warm summer breeze — a symphony of salty ocean, dainty florals, and the pretty oils you’d bathed in. The wind billows through your thin, white gown and creates music with rustling leaves. You squint one eye when the setting sun peeks through the swishing tree limbs, bathing you in a golden-hour aura.

You’re as beautiful as sin. Sweeter than death. Smiling at him like this is the beginning of something that died the moment you entered the city walls.

Marcus clears throat and gently guides your hand away. His cautious eyes flit around the vacant garden. He’s constantly looking over his shoulder, you find, despite being the strongest man in all of Rome. You feel safest at his side, so you don’t know why he always looks so frightened.

“I know you are drunk on youth and immortality, petal, but we cannot get ahead of ourselves,” he advises, all stiff and stern, though the term of endearment spills effortlessly from his mouth. “We’re in the city now. So we must play the part. Like we discussed.”

He speaks to you with an unintentional sort of vagueness that makes you bow your head like a scolded child. Your arm falls limp at your side. A scarlet petal slips from its stem and hits the unforgiving stone.

“I know,” you murmur with a poorly hidden frown that conveys otherwise. Your sheepish gaze flits from the ground to Marcus’ unwavering stare and to the ground again. “I just thought— whenever we were alone, that we might—”

“We aren’t alone. We must behave as though the city is full of eyes. Understand?”

“I can’t,” you confess, peering up at the General from beneath your lashes.

Marcus’ chest stings, like the fiery sun blazing his newly-fashioned armor. “What do you mean you can’t?” he bites emotionlessly.

He looks like a corrupt sort of angel in this light, unnaturally handsome and hopelessly wartorn. He was as hard as the earth below your feet — a statue made of clay, iron, and marble — cold to the touch and melting only for you.

His heavy eyes were so brown they looked almost black, and they shone with a perpetual sort of gloom. His gaze swam with the prophetic darkness of a man who’s seen too much, though you often felt like you could drown in its void. For a man so adept at killing, he looked at you with a remarkable softness.

It wasn’t as shallow as physical desire. It was something far more cruel. You wanted Marcus Acacius the same way flesh wanted to knit itself together over a healing wound. It was simply in your nature to love him.

“I mean, it’s impossible,” you ramble with a concerned furrow to your brow. Your grip on the flower’s papery stem tightens until the bulb rattles with the force. “How am I to be here with you but not touch you? That’s like asking the seasons not to change— It’s unnatural, and it’s cruel—”

Marcus swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His hands begin to ache with the urge to touch you. He balls them into fists instead.

“It’s the only way I know to keep you safe!” he confesses, words sounding heavy in his mouth. His eyes flit across the garden in a paranoid search of something that isn’t there. “Emperor Geta will take care of you. I know he will. And his brother is a half-wit, but he is kind when he wishes. He’ll take a liking to you, I’m sure of it—”

You interject his anxious rambling with a stubborn shake of your head.

“I can’t be someone else’s,” you murmur, voice as wet as the tears glittering in your wide-eyed gaze. “I don’t know how.”

“You will learn,” Marcus tells you with an emotionless stare. Not because he’s sure you will, but because he knows you have to. “For me.”

Your pretty features swirl with anguish. “Marcus…” you whisper his name in a feeble whimper caught in your throat.

He does not soften at your emotion like you’re used to. He’s practiced apathy for so long that it comes naturally to him now. He bites his tongue to keep from kissing you and lets the blood stain his teeth all over again.

“If not for your own sake, then for mine. The Emperors would have my head if they understood the pretenses I brought you under.”

You flinch at his words, perhaps finally understanding the weight of the unforgiving world in which you live. The surest example of such cruelty stands before you now, in the only man you ever loved now using your purest devotion as a means to keep you pliant. But your anger for the merciless arrangement is long eclipsed by your yearning.

“Then I will,” you tell him, rigid with a glacial disposition Marcus hasn’t seen before now.

The choices here were few. Either you were slaughtered outside the city walls by soldiers and pillagers, or you were slaughtered within them — in the metaphorical sense that burns physically in your chest now.

Being without Marcus feels like a fate worse than death, but you want him so desperately to live. So much so that you’ll fall on the sword of your longing and bleed out at his feet. Knowing that you’re under the same sky would have to be enough for you.

You can’t tell which it is — sacrifice or self-slaughter — but Marcus knows it isn’t as poetic as all that.

Death is death.

Emperor Geta staggers drunkenly down the spiral stone steps of the west wing of his castle. The path to his chambers is illuminated by several dwindling torches hung along the brick walls. The subtle squeaking of his leather sandals sounds much louder in the quiet — filled only by crackling flames, a distant dripping noise, and the song he slurs under his breath.

The latter ceases suddenly when he stumbles to a stop at the sight of General Acacius. The man stands like a statue outside his bedroom door — arms crossed behind his back, old spine perfectly straight — like the obedient guard dog he is.

The thought makes the Emperor’s lips curl into a crooked smile. “What are you doing here, dog?” he calls to the General as he approaches him, voice echoing down the soulless corridor.

“Your nameday present, your majesty—” Marcus answers and tries not to make a face when the Emperor stands before him. The bittersweet scent of wine stains his breath, overwhelmingly so. Geta was never one to practice temperance. “—I was told to see that you got it.”

The younger man hesitates. “From my uncle?” he wonders aloud.

Marcus nods wordlessly in response.

Geta pauses for a moment. His wide, glassy eyes flit over the General’s shoulder to the arched doorway behind him. His stomach swirls at the thought of what may lie inside. The last nameday present his uncle sent from overseas was a monkey his younger brother has grown much too attached to.

“Well… What is it?”

Marcus swallows hard and steps aside. “Look inside, your majesty.”

Geta takes a deep breath in and swings the creaking door open. His bedroom is lush with crimson silk and golden candlelight, familiarly fragranced with cinnamon and sweet myrrh. It’s accompanied by something foreignly floral, a feminine rosy-lavender that catches his attention before his eyes ever find you.

He steps through the threshold and finds a strange girl standing by the window, before a platter of fruit and wine — bathed half in the silver beams of a full moon, and half in flickering orange flames.

White silk adorns your frame, so delicate it’s nearly see-through. One of your shoulders is mouthwateringly bare, and there’s a slit in the fabric that rises to your hip. You look as pure as a dove, though you’re so obviously built for sin.

The ground sways beneath Geta’s unsteady feet.

You crunch audibly into an apple before you realize anyone’s there. The juice runs down your chin before you swipe it away with the back of your hand. Only then do your eyes lock with the Emperor’s, who seems equally stunned to see you there. You tense and say nothing as you hide the bitten fruit behind your back.

“It’s a woman,” Geta observes to no one in particular, though his dark eyes have not yet wavered from yours.

Marcus stands behind him and nods — hands still clasped behind his back, heart still pounding against his ribcage. “Yes, your majesty. In plain terms.”

“Well,” the Emperor glances over his shoulder. “What does she do?”

“Whatever you want,” the General answers, though the words taste like vinegar on his tongue. He swallows the bitterness down like bile and leers at you, looking upon his lover as though she were a stranger. “You need only ask.”

Geta, satisfied by his answer, turns back to you. His initial surprise has ebbed into something more pleased, diabolically so. His pink lips curl into a sneer as he walks slowly towards you, eyeing you up and down with curious eyes — a predator stalking its prey.

“Is that true?” he asks you, voice ringing through the quiet room. “Or is he confusing you for a dutiful hound?”

“A dutiful whore, your majesty,” you correct with an acquiescent smile, following the story as Marcus intended.

The half-truth comes easily to you. Not a lie exactly, but not the whole tale either. You’d spent many of your years working in a brothel on the outskirts of Rome. You were a young woman, unmarried, without family or viable prospects — whoring seemed the most obvious decision then, though it feels so long ago now.

You’d waited your whole life for something, for Marcus, though you hadn’t expected it to kill you when you found it. You won’t die a saint if the crazed Emperor decides to take your head, but perhaps you could be a martyr. Perhaps that’ll be enough.

Fear beats through your body like a second heart, but your eyes never waver from the Emperor’s. It’s easiest to meet his gaze. He feels more like a human that way.

There are flecks of gold in his dark eyes, and dark strands in his gold hair. He’s got stubble on his long neck, spots on his broad nose, and wrinkles on his forehead. Not quite as perfect as the pristine white-gold armor would let on.

His eyes flit down your form once more. Something sparks in the deep brown of them, a flicker of silent realization. He spins suddenly on the heel of his sandal to flash Marcus an accusatory glare.

“Is she your whore, General?” he lilts into the heavy silence. His brows raise when he receives no answer from the man across the room. “The question was not rhetorical, Acacius.”

“No, your majesty. She is not mine,” Marcus answers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. It’s like he’s plunging a knife through his own heart. He can feel the cold sting of the sharpened blade and the burn of the blood on his skin. “Though, I don’t believe whores belong to anyone.”

A boyish chuckle spills from the Emperor’s mouth. “No. They don’t,” he says with an airy giddiness. “Not before now, anyway—”

Geta spins back again, pleated skirt fanning around his pale thighs. His smile fades with an eerie swiftness. “What are you waiting for? Undress,” he commands with a wave of his ringed hand.

Your wide eyes flit instinctively past him to Marcus, who still idles in the doorway. Only then does he realize how long he’s been staring at you. He forces himself to glance off in another direction, but his gaze keeps finding yours — like a magnet, or a planet with its own gravitational pull.

Your eyes lock, and the only thing you hear is each other, though neither of you has spoken a word. This is the only way, you hear his voice in your head as clearly as your own. This is the only way to stay together. The only way to survive.

Geta mistakes your fear.

“Don’t worry about him, little dove,” he coos, and taps the bottom of your chin with his fingers — as soft and petaled as your own. He smiles when your attention turns to him again, speaking loud enough for the General to hear. “He’s only the guard dog. And good boys get scraps, don’t they, Acacius?”

Marcus’ face screws like he’s tasted something sour. He’s grateful the Emperor isn’t looking at him to see it. “They do, your majesty,” he monotones.

“So you will watch. And report to my uncle how his lovely present fared,” he calls to the older man, though his eyes remain locked with yours. You tense when his pale hand reaches suddenly for your face. He holds your cheeks in his fingers until your lips jut in a soft pout. “Let’s hope I don’t have to send him back your head, little dove.”

He says it with an absentminded effortlessness, as though it’s something he’s done before.

Still, you manage a small smile and blink up at him with innocent eyes. “What good is a dead whore, your majesty?” you quip.

Geta’s grin widens. “Precisely. Now undress.”

You reach for the singular sleeve of your slip with trembling fingers. Your right hand sweeps across your left shoulder, skin blazing with fear and anticipation. The fabric trails down down down your arm before falling to your feet in a puddle of milky white silk. Your bare body glows silver and gold between moonlight and flame.

Goosebumps pebble over your skin despite the humid summer night as Geta circles you like prey. His eyes trail slowly down your form in time with his rhythmic steps. The sound of his sandals scrapping the stone floor, crackling candlelight, and subdued breathing are the only sounds in the quiet room for several long moments.

The Emperor disappears behind you, and you forget how to breathe. Your wide, wet eyes find Marcus once more — pleading, though for what, you cannot say. His face reveals nothing but wrath burns in his gaze.

Geta reappears at your right side. You smell grape wine on his breath when he nears you, breathing heavily through his mouth as he reaches out to touch you. His ringed hands smooth over your collarbone. Your breath catches in your throat. He smiles as though your fright pleases him.

“You’re skittish for a whore,” he muses, playful in a way that makes your stomach wrench. “Are you sure the General didn’t bring me a virgin?”

You swallow hard as his hand trails down your body. Over the swell of your breast, skimming his thumb over your taut nipple, before tracing the expanse of your ribs. His fingers run down your stomach and past the thatch of hair between your legs. They dip finally between your thighs.

Geta hums a faint moan at the velvet feeling of your pussy. The way your lips part for his fingers, silky skin warm and wet to the touch.

“I’m whatever you want me to be, your majesty,” you answer, breathing hard through your nose when he pulls his hand away — a warmth you find yourself begrudgingly grieving.

“I need only ask…” the Emperor coos, running his middle and pointer finger over your bottom lip. They shine with the honey you leak despite yourself. Your mouth parts, and he rests the pads of them on your tongue. “…Do I not?”

You nod wordlessly through the salty fingers in your mouth, trying to imagine their Marcus’.

Geta smiles when he parts from you. “Undress me,” he demands.

You work at his tricky armor with nervous hands and bated breath.

You unclasp his cape first. The white fabric, now free from its chain, falls heavily to the floor behind him. Your fingers have gone noticeably clammy as they struggle with the sleeves of his tunic. It takes you a beat too long to loosen the laces at his shoulders. The cloth falls finally and puddles around his feet, leaving his lean body on display before you.

His torso is lean and mostly hairless, save for splotches of chestnut on his sternum and stomach. His skin is smooth and flushed from the alcohol. His stomach is slim but noticeably full. The Emperor is well-taken care of, though his subjects outside the keep suffer from the consequences of war.

Your trembling fingers curl around the hem of his loincloth. His pale skin is warm to the touch, boiling with desire while you freeze over with fear. You crouch before him as you drag the garment down his scruffy thighs. You hear Geta sigh above you when his half-hard cock meets the cool summer night air.

He’s paler there compared to the rest of his golden body, though the mushroom tip glows a faint strawberry-red color. A vein trails in jagged lines to the base of his heavy cock, fading as it reaches the thatch of dark blonde hair at his pubic bone. He’s not nearly as thick as Marcus, though not many people could hope to be — but he is long and thin and soft like velvet.

“How do I look?” Geta wonders as he steps out of his loincloth. He tilts his chin to his chest to peer down at you, on your knees to untie the intricate laces of his sandals. You blink up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. “Without my armor,” he adds, then repeats. “How do I look?”

You realize, then, that he wants your praise. Though you’re unsure why, you’re not in any position to deny him of it. “You’re a— a very handsome man, your majesty,” you respond cautiously, with a wavering smile.

You hear his breath catch at the compliment. The corner of his mouth flickers upward, and his nostril flares as he takes a deep breath in.

“Well, go on, then,” he insists suddenly, nodding his head to egg you onward. “Good whores don’t keep their masters waiting, do they? You don’t want to see me impatient, little dove.”

You wrap his stiff cock in a tentative fist, averting your gaze as you give an experimental kitten lick to the bulbous, strawberry tip. Your tongue swipes away the pearlescent pre-cum beading there. The salty tang is foreign on your tongue, sweeter and thicker than you’re used to.

You imagine your lover when you take the Emperor’s cock in your mouth. A practiced form of dissociation that comes naturally to you now.

You focus on the way the stone floor digs into your knees as you cup his balls in your hand — a desperate attempt to finish him quickly. Geta shudders when you swallow him whole, burying your nose in the coarse thatch of hair at the base of his cock. His head tips back as he groans at the ceiling.

“You are a proper whore…” the Emperor moans with a delirious smile. He tilts his flushed cheek to his freckled shoulder to sneer at Marcus, then frowns when his eyes meet the back of him. “Are you distracted, General?”

The man keeps his back turned and his eyes trained on the wall, counting the bricks there to distract his racing mind. His mouth snarls at the Emperor’s words. His hands ball into fists as he fights to keep his composure.

“Just giving you your privacy, your majesty.”

“Nonsense!” Geta laughs, loud. “You should watch! You should observe— so you know what to tell my uncle.”

Marcus can hear the mischievous lilt in the younger boy’s voice. Like it’s all just a game to him. Like you’re just a whore to be played with, and like Marcus’ only hope of companionship is warfare. Both might’ve been true once, but not since you find each other.

The general smacks his lips against his teeth. “As you wish,” he deadpans and spins on the heel of his sandal.

He’s strangely grateful to find the Emperor’s body obscuring your own. Geta’s lean, pale form towers over your kneeling one — back muscles flexing, hips thrusting, fingers knitting in your hair.

But Marcus can still hear the sounds of your mouth on the other man’s cock. The room fills with heavy breathing, wet noises, and the Emperor’s unabashed whines. Embers of envy burn in the General’s empty chest. A wildfire of want and wrath rages behind his ribcage.

You swallow with Geta’s cock in your throat and squeeze softly at his balls. You hear his breath hitch just before a lengthy moan spills from his parted mouth. Several loads of salty cum spit down your throat a second later. The man shows you little mercy as he holds you by your hair, keeping your nose pressed to his pubic bone. You take shallow breaths through your nose and try not to choke.

You pull off of him when he lets you go. A string of saliva threatens to keep you connected. You take a deep breath in and swipe at your swollen mouth with the back of your hand, staying on your knees while the Emperor tilts his head back. He exhales a breathy laugh of relief at the ceiling. You peer up at him with wide, wet eyes, still so uncertain of your fate.

“Proper whore, indeed,” Geta muses, almost to himself, as he drops his heavy head once more.

His flushed chest sparkles with a foreign feeling at the sight of you beneath him — eyes teary and fearful, lips swollen and rosy, features flushed with sweat and sex. His cock jerks, still sensitive but threatening to harden again. He grips himself with a loose fist.

“On the bed,” he instructs suddenly, then grins madly at your shock. “You didn’t think I was done with you, surely. Not until I mount you like a mare, anyway— Treat you like the bitch in heat you are…”

Geta cups your warm cheek in his free hand. His touch is strangely gentle as he cradles you there, right before he smacks gently at your jaw to urge you upward.

Your bare feet pad towards the bed, then. Geta swats your ass as you go and laughs when you squeak in response. You fight the urge to look at Marcus, lest you see the rage burning in his eyes — lest he see the heartbreak swimming in yours.

Marcus watches you crawl over the silken sheets, both of you sporting similar far-off gazes. He feels a bit like a ghost now. An empty, invisible thing, doomed to watch the rest of the world go on without ever being able to live in it. It’s dreadfully symbolic of how he’s lived most of his life, and how he’s spent the years loving you. Because even if a ghost is full of love, the only thing it knows to do is haunt.

The silk pillow feels cool under your burning cheek. The mattress dips under the Emperor’s weight when he kneels behind you. His ringed fingers smooth over your ass and down the arch of your back. He treats you with an uncharacteristic sort of tenderness, as though he were molding you out of clay.

“You are a pretty thing, aren’t you?” he whispers under his breath. “And timid, too… I like that…”

Your pussy clenches at his words despite yourself. Geta’s chest swells with pride accordingly. “You don’t have to be scared, little dove. I’m going to take such good care of you.”

Despite his words, he does not bother to ready you for his cock when he positions himself at your pulsing entrance. You hadn’t expected him to, of course — not many men were as kind as Marcus in that way, who often treated your pleasure as if it were his own. But the slick sticking to your thighs has made your pussy more than pliant. Your velvet walls swallow Geta’s cock with a pulsing vigor.

The Emperor groans as he fucks into you, savoring every inch as he buries himself to the hilt. His ringed fingers dig into the plush of your waist, as though you were a toy he didn’t want getting snatched away.

“Look at the hound!” Geta giggles boyishly to himself. “He’s itching for a feel of you— I just know it.”

Marcus remains as still and stoic as the battalion trained him to be. He reveals nothing on his face, though his skin prickles with flames of envy beneath his armor.

Marcus Acacius was not a jealous man. His love for you was a testament to that. He visited the brothel you boarded in and spared the same coins as every man in the establishment did. But it was different now. Because the Emperor does not deserve you, and he forces Marcus to watch as if he knows it, too.

Something within him seethes, like a feral animal trapped behind his ribcage, desperately clawing its way out.

“Look at him,” Geta snaps when he sees you staring at the wall, eyes glassy and glazed over. He’s grinning all over again when your gaze snaps to Marcus’.

The soldier’s weathered eyes burn with tears then. General Acacius has faced death a thousand times over, but it wasn’t quite as heartwrenching as this. His wrath simmers to a boil. He swallows it down like fire.

This is her salvation, he tells himself. This is how she survives.

Your features twist with the anguish of being seen as the Emperor lays himself over your back. His slick chest sits flush with your spine, pinning you to the mattress. “I bet he can taste you now. Smell you,” he murmurs in your ear, chapped mouth brushing the shell of it. “His mouth is salivating at the thought of putting his tongue on you— Isn’t it, dog?”

Marcus swallows through the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away stinging tears and feigns an air of nonchalance. “It would be… impolite to talk so brashly about something that doesn’t belong to me, your majesty,” the General responds. Obedient. Loyal like a hound.

Geta grins wide. “Good answer, Acacius.”

When the Emperor finally fucks into you, it’s with a sloppy sort of precision. There is no rhythm or care to his thrusts. He is led only by his blinding pleasure, like a man who has only ever fucked playthings and his own fist. He props himself on one forearm and curls the other beneath you, holding your breast in his ringed hand.

Geta’s flushed cheek presses against your own while he slides in and out and into you again. You hear his groaning as you feel it rumbling in his chest, still laid against your back. You stare at a framed portrait on the wall across the room and wait for it to be over, even as your body refuses to dismiss its simmering orgasm.

Your swollen clit ruts against the silk sheets with each of the Emperor’s sloppy thrusts. You can feel a wet spot forming beneath you, and your stomach twists at the thought of seeing proof of your own pleasure.

His balls smack your leaking cunt, creating a symphony of lewd noises — moaning, whimpering, clapping, smacking. Marcus thinks the sounds of war were more merciful than this.

“Do you understand what that means, little dove?” Geta croons into your ear, words choppy through his labored breaths and irregular thrusts. “You belong— to me now… So whatever you used to be— whoever’s you used to be— no longer matters.”

He thrusts once, hard, and shudders above you with a choked-back groan. You grit your teeth to swallow down your own noises of pleasure. The assault on your clit, though unintentional, is still yet relentless. You feel the distant white-hot burning feeling begin to swell in the pit of your stomach. A coil about to snap.

“Fucking me— Making me feel good—” the Emperor pants, punctuated by his hips against your ass. “—Is your only duty now. Understand?”

You nod, cheek running over the silk cushion as you grip it in your fists. “Yes, your majesty,” you gasp.

Geta presses his smile to the apple of your cheek. He can feel you leaking around him. You’re enjoying this just as much as he is, to be sure. A proper whore, indeed.

“Now… Take my spend like a good bitch, and thank me for it—”

He fucks you harder, and your face twists with a pleasure you’re too weak to fight away.

Your gaze falls instinctively to Marcus as your orgasm threatens to swallow you whole. Your eyes squeeze shut in a feeble attempt to hide. Your mouth parts with a silent moan as you cum around the Emperor’s cock.

“Thank you, your majesty,” you whimper obediently into the pillow as you tremble beneath him. “Thank you.”

Geta buries a whine in your neck when he cums again. He gives you only two pitiful, warm loads but still possesses more stamina than your Marcus. He stills, then shudders, then rests his unforgiving bodyweight on top of you when pleasure makes a puddle of him. And of you, you assume, as a mixture of your spend leaks out of your cunt and onto the sheets.

“Write to my uncle, Acacius—” Geta slurs into your skin, heavy through labored pants. “—A thank you for my nameday present.”

Marcus forgets, until then, that he can still be seen. He felt more akin to a corpse hidden in the walls, forced to spend his afterlife in a merciless purgatory. His heart has stopped beating, frozen over, and now sits dead in his chest. He will never be as gentle as he was with you. He will be bloodied knuckles and pulsing wounds. Rough and cruel and angry.

“Yes, your majesty,” the General nods, thankful that it’s over now.

Geta rolls off of your body and onto the empty spot beside you — not shy about his nude form or yours. The sudden lack of warmth makes you shiver.

“And tell him to send another— To keep the General’s bed warm, too,” he says, patting your ass with his palm before smoothing tenderly over the skin. “One whore’s as good as any other, I’m sure.”

Marcus flinches at the thought of being with anyone other than you. He couldn’t hide the look of disgust if he tried. It makes the Emperor laugh loudly in response.

“Oh, did you— Did you want to try this one?” Geta muses knowingly, pointing to your limp body, still trembling beside him with the aftershocks of your orgasm.

“No. No, no, no— See, this one’s mine,” he corrects the General as if he were a child. “And it would be impolite to touch something that belongs to me, would it not? It would be treasonous, even.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Marcus nods, lip flickering in a mere hint of a smirk as his plan finally comes to fruition. “It would be.”

The Emperor sees you now as his property, and no one hurts what belongs to him without meeting a certain death. Marcus is comforted only by the thought that nothing can touch you now. Not even him. But perhaps that’s the price he pays for love. Perhaps, in the end, love is grief.

“So best tread lightly, Acacius,” Geta warns with a crooked smile, petting you like a dog. “I’d hate for someone to get hurt.”

5K notes · View notes

quickestgold · 3 months ago

Note

1) Love your writing and cant wait to see more!! 2) For the prompt inspiration, what about something along the lines of Jack's girlfriend, that Dana and Robby don't particularly like, shows up seriously injured at the Pitt?

Someone New: Dr. Jack Abbot x Reader

Synopsis: After witnessing the fallout from Jack's failed marriage, Dana and Robby have been skeptical of his new relationship. But when a freak accident forces them to see the depth of Jack’s feelings, their perspectives shift.

Warnings: Canon-typical depictions of trauma; traffic accident, death, injuries, mentions of a failed marriage, divorce

Word count: 1.9k

A/n: LMFAO guys, most of my requests rn are for injured readers are we okay? Anyway... enjoy xoxo (also, thanks so much for the compliment!! messages/comments like these are super motivating <3)

Mistress. Homewrecker. The Other Woman.

You’ve called yourself worse a thousand times. The guilt over how things started with Jack weighs on you. And though his love feels sweet and pure, it offers little comfort in the face of their judgment.

You wish you’d met under different circumstances. Started things the right way.

But in your heart you know it’s real. Even if they don’t.

The truth is, Jack’s marriage was over long before you came into the picture. They were separated when you met, though the divorce wasn’t final.

So you let others believe that it was your fault. Made little effort to dispel the rumors. To introduce yourself properly.

Maybe you were embarrassed.

Definitely ashamed.

Perhaps they had a point and you destroyed a perfectly good relationship. Or at least got in the way of Jack and his ex trying to salvage what was left.

But it doesn’t matter now. Not anymore. Nothing does.

“Female. 30s. Car vs. pedestrian. In and out of consciousness. Possible head injury. Probable femoral fracture”, the EMT presents.

The cold metal of the gurney beneath you makes you shiver, harsh sterile lights flickering overhead.

“Woah. What happened?” Dana’s voice is laced with concern.

“I’m fine", you murmur, but your voice betrays you, weak and unconvincing. “Just a bit sleepy.”

Why is everything spinning?

“You hit your head?” Robby's voice is sharp and suddenly close, the light of his pen so bright it feels like it’s burning through your skull. He instructs you to follow his finger. You try, but your vision is distorted, like shattered glass. You can barely manage to focus.

“I- I’m not sure”, you confess, struggling to catch your breath, your lungs burning.

“Someone pushed her into oncoming traffic", the EMT continues, calm and clinical, part of his routine. "A bicycle hit her head-on and a car slammed into her hip."

His words hit you like a punch to the gut and your stomach twists with horror.

You can't remember any of it.

You try to move, to sit up, but your body refuses.

Why is your face wet? You beg, pray, it’s just tears. It has to be.

But it’s thick and warm. And the familiar, metallic smell makes your head swim.

“J-Jack… I-“, you plead.

Robby’s movements are faster now. His commands sharp and alert. He gestures to Whittaker, who immediately reacts, moving swiftly, as he rushes out of the room, a quiet urgency in his steps.

Everyone knows about you and Jack. Though it feels like no one approves. Almost no one.

“Y/N, it’s okay. Just keep your eyes open for me, alright?” Collins’ voice is warm, grounding. She takes your hand and squeezes it tightly. You’re thankful. Thankful for her presence. To see a friendly face amidst the chaos.

But you can't shake the quiet fear that maybe... it’s the last one you’ll ever see.

Heather is one of the few who welcomed you, made an effort to get to know you.

You’ve become friends.

You meet up for coffee, chat for hours about the boys. And though her and Robby’s relationship ended, you can tell there is unresolved sadness between them. You wonder if either of them will ever admit it.

“Heather… I-I’m…” Your voice is barely audible now. You're slipping. Slipping fast.

You fight to stay awake. To hold on. Just a little longer. At least until you see Jack.

Until you get to say goodbye.

But your eyes grow heavier by the second, something pulling at you, each blink slower than the last.

You can hear yourself saying something. But it’s far away.

You’re shaking. Why is this hospital so goddamn cold?

Before you can say another word, everything fades to black.

“Male. 20s. Cyclist vs. pedestrian. Unconscious. Blunt force trauma to the head. Multiple fractures", another EMT announces, as they rush the gurney into Trauma Two, the team prepared and ready to work in perfect sync.

Jack's moves are quick, methodical. Driven by one clear, urgent goal: to stabilize the patient first, then assess for further injuries.

“Dr. Abbot?” Whittaker’s voice is tentative, his gaze flicking nervously between Jack and the patient on the table. He hovers just inside the doorframe, not quite sure whether to disturb Jack or not.

Jack glances up briefly, his hands moving over the patient's chest, steady and determined.

Whittaker hesitates, his voice shaky. “We need you in Trauma One.”

“I’m a little busy.” Jack mutters. “Get Robby!” His voice laced with authority. An order, not a suggestion.

He isn’t finished with this patient yet, not ready to be pulled away.

Whittaker hesitates, before he nods and steps back. Jack watches him go, but there's no time to think about what might be waiting in Trauma One.

His focus is here, the young patient's life literally in his hands.

“Abbot?” Robby growls, frustrated at Whittaker’s failed attempt.

Whittaker shakes his head, his expression tense. “He’s treating the cyclist in Trauma Two”, Whittaker answers, almost apologetic.

Robby curses under his breath, his eyes flashing to Dana.

He knows Jack will never forgive them if something happens to you and they didn’t tell him. If Jack doesn't get to you in time.

Dana knows, too. She knows that this isn’t just about the accident. It’s about what they owe Jack and what they owe you.

“Hold compressions.” Jack orders.

Everyone’s eyes are fixated on the monitor, but the flatline continues.

“Okay." Jack’s voice drops. "That’s it.”

“Time of death: 10:35”

Jack takes a minute of silent reflection. He’s been here before. Too many times. But it never gets any easier.

He steps out into the bay, taking a breath. His eyes search the nurse’s station, which is unusually empty.

Javadi almost crashes into him, gripping a blood bag tight to her chest. Jack steps back, putting distance between them.

“Slow down. If you trip and fall you’re no good to anybody.” Always the teacher, calm and collected. “Where’s Robby?”

Javadi stumbles over her words, struggling to catch her breath. “Trauma One, a- a pedestrian got hit.”

“Shit." Jack mutters. "I just called it on the cyclist.” His brows furrow. “Need any help?”

“Not sure… it’s not looking good.” And with that, she rushes back in.

Jack watches her go, making sure she doesn’t run into anyone else. His gaze flicks to the glass doors of Trauma One, catching Robby’s eyes. He's pressing into someone’s chest with practiced ease.

But there’s something else. Panic.

Jack’s alarm bells go off. He moves, quickly.

But before Jack reaches the door, Dana steps into his path. She places her palm against his chest, gently pushing him back.

“Jack”, her voice calm but firm. “You can come in, but we need to do this the right way, honey.” Her eyes soften, full of compassion. “Robby’s doing everything he can.”

In that moment, Jack catches a glimpse of the patient’s face. Your bloodied, gorgeous, beautiful face. The woman he loves.

Multiple hands are on you, your own dangling off the side of the gurney.

His eyes lock on the delicate ring he gave you only a few days ago.

The one that was supposed to be forever.

“What the fuck”, Jack tries to push past Dana, but Langdon and Matteo are already there, hands on his arms, holding him back.

“Dana”, Jack’s voice cracks.

“I know, hon. Take a breath”, she rubs soothing circles on his chest, then steps back. “We’ve got her!”

The sincerity in her voice, comforts him, if only slightly.

The fact that he just called his patient’s death a few minutes ago, tells him everything about the severity of your injuries.

There's a deep ache in Jack’s chest as he follows Dana into the room. He steps to your side, his hand brushing gently over your forehead, the way you like it. The way he’s always calmed you.

“I’m here, baby”, he whispers, his voice raw. “I’m here.”

He watches Robby and the team work, each movement calculated, each second agonizing.

He knows his place. He won’t overstep. His only focus is you.

Like many times before, Jack finds himself on the rooftop. Each inhale of the harsh midnight air a painful reminder of you in that hospital bed, fighting for every breath.

Jack feels someone approaching, doesn’t have to turn around to know who. “Who pushed her?” Jack's voice is low and raw with pain.

“They’re…-" Robby pauses, scratching his neck nervously. "They're still looking.” His tone is soft.

Jack nods, but the corners of his mouth turn downward. “You’ve been too hard on her, man.” He exhales sharply.

“I know, brother.” Robby's words are filled with guilt and regret. He wants to make this right. Needs to.

Jack's gaze hardens. “She was afraid, you know. Felt like you were judging her… more than me.” He huffs out a humorless laugh.

Robby’s remorse is palpable. “We were worried about you. Didn’t want to see you get hurt. We had no idea it was serious between you.”

“Does it matter?” Jack’s voice cracks on the last word.

“I- I suppose not.” Robby shakes his head. “I’m so sorry.”

Jack nods. He doesn’t need Robby’s apology. You do.

“She gets it. She gets me.” Jack's looking straight at Robby now, barely bringing himself to say the words. “I wish you’d had the chance to get to know her. You would've loved her…” He tries to hold in a strangled sob, but it escapes anyway.

Robby steps closer, placing a hand on Jack's back, voice gentle and reassuring. “I still can… If she’ll let me.” He realizes he needs to carry that hope for both of them right now.

Jack isn’t convinced, but Robby’s belief gives him a moment’s peace.

The door to the rooftop suddenly slams open. Jack and Robby both turn instinctively.

Dana stands in the doorway, her pulse racing. “Jack.”

Jack is terrified to hear what she has to say, assuming the worst.

The midnight air suddenly feels suffocating.

“Jack?” Your voice is barely a whisper, fragile and tired, the effort of speaking taking all of your energy.

“Hi, gorgeous.” He moves closer to your bed. “Are you in pain?” The concern in his eyes certainly isn't helping, it hurts to see him like this.

You shake your head, but it’s a lie. You know it and Jack knows it too. He doesn’t hesitate, moving swiftly to the IV to adjust the meds with practiced hands.

Warmth floods you and you exhale slowly. The deep physical ache subsides and your thoughts clear. Only now, you can fully appreciate that you’re alive. That Jack’s here.

“I’m here," he repeats, more to himself than to you and for a second you wonder if you said the words out loud.

Jack's hand is gentle against your skin, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face. “Robby and Dana feel badly about how they’ve treated you.” The words heavy with sorrow.

“They shouldn’t.” You're exhausted, but you mean it. “They don’t even know me.” You give him a smile, weak but genuine.

“Maybe it’s time we change that?” Jack leans in gently stroking your forehead, like he always does. Like he always will.

His other hand traces the space where your ring used to rest. You realize it’s no longer there. It was taken off during the chaos of saving you. But Jack knows where it belongs.

With a tender, deliberate touch, he slides the ring back onto your finger, a symbol of the forever he’s promised.

Hahahah aaall the fluff!! It was needed after so many angsty requests lol Pls comment/share your thoughts below. ♡

#the pitt #jack abbot #jack abbot x reader #dr abbot x you #dr abbot x reader #shawn hatosy #the pitt hbo #michael robinavitch #dr robby #jack abbott #jack abbott x reader #dr abbott x reader

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fairyysoup · 1 year ago

Text

easy living

pairing: eric (a quiet place: day one) x fem!reader

summary: You ran into Eric on accident. Now you're facing the end of the world together. How do you get to know someone when you can't make a sound?

tags: smut, oral (f receiving), dry humping, piv sex, silent fucking, angst, hurt/comfort, survival, discussions of trauma, slight suicidal ideation by reader, words of affirmation as a love language, stay silent or die (obviously), strangers to lovers, apocalyptic, the cheesiest ending bc it's me writing, billie holiday lyrics bc it's also me writing

a/n: here it is, the silent fucking fic i promised y'all a year ago when this movie was announced. it was supposed to be like 1-2k words of plain smut but then I got too into the theory of what one does when you can't show affection through words and I genuinely discovered a tidbit of trauma I didn't know I had while writing it so I will be talking to a therapist about it, and also I'm literally out here baring my soul lol.

i also want to thank @bigtiddythanos @raraeavesmoriendi and @maximoffwxnda for supporting me throughout this writing process <3 this fic literally would not have been finished or published without y'all

ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

The rain has ended. Morose, you stare up at the ceiling, wondering when you’ll get something close to free reign with your voice again.

Of course the world had to end while you were at fucking Whole Foods.

You’ll miss certain things. Things you always took for granted, that you never even considered made a lot of noise until now. Typing on the computer. Making stir fry. Microwaving a burrito at 3am. Lighting a match, washing your face. Taking a shower.

And other things, too, that are more obvious, like singing while making cookies. Slurping the bottom of a milkshake. You’ll never be able to have a pet bird. You’ll never be able to see another concert again, and damn it if you didn’t really want those Glastonbury tickets a month ago. But it all just seems trivial, now. You don’t see why you shouldn’t just lay here on the couch forever.

On the other side of the coffee table there’s a gentle shuffling. Eric rouses as quietly as he can; at the very least, your apartment creates a hospitable enough environment that he isn’t startled awake. It’s so silent in the apartment that you can hear the slight shift in his intake of breath, the rustle of the pillow as he turns his head to look at you.

You want to look at him, but you fear that you’ll end up wanting to talk. So, you say nothing. You do nothing. You stare at the white paint on the ceiling and you wonder whether it would be better to get on one of the boats headed out into the water, or to move inland, away from people, away from sound. There has to be somewhere far enough away from the city that the… creatures won’t go, right?

Eric waves his hand in your periphery, so that you have no choice but to acknowledge that you know he’s awake. You have no choice but to turn your head and look into the depths of his eyes, and feel all the pain of the last 48 hours return to you. You’d been able to talk last night, just enough, in time with the rain and the thunder– enough to learn that he has family across the world.

You can’t imagine knowing that somewhere, across an ocean and half a world away, your parents may or may not be dead. No way to contact them, no way to know what’s become of them. You can’t even begin to fathom the fear that he’s feeling, as much as you’re despairing.

Eric’s big eyes tell you everything. Sadness and fear, and trying to grasp at the smallest hint of normalcy he can get. He blinks at you, and mouths, You okay?

No, you’re definitely not okay. Things are not okay. Things are broken and can’t be fixed. Things will never be the same again. He knows that, as much as you know that. But you nod anyway, even though you feel your heart beat a little bit slower than usual, like it wants to just go ahead and give up already. Tears prick at your eyes, and you have to close them before you let on that you’re lying.

Eric knows you’re lying, of course. How could anyone be okay, in this kind of situation? But he waits until you open your eyes, and then he mouths, Coffee?

You let out a small sigh of relief, and a smile that’s indescribably warm crosses your face. Even though he can’t make a sound, he knows exactly what to say.

You don’t have a coffee maker that doesn’t also make a ton of noise. But through some kind of witchcraft, Eric quietly empties two k-cups into a glass measuring cup and boils a soup pot full of water on the stove, and suddenly you have hot coffee in front of you.

On a notepad left on the counter, you write, Wish I had some tea for you.

Eric’s lips turn up at the edges, and he takes the pen from you. You’re able to doctor your coffee for about one second before he slides the notepad back to you.

Bloody American.

Your ensuing huff of a laugh is enough to make him turn pink around the ears, and he turns to place the dirty measuring cup into the sink. He reaches for the faucet, but then thinks better of it. You’ll have to figure out how to wash the dishes later.

You both drink your coffee in silence on the couch. You never considered yourself uncomfortable with silence; you’ve lived alone, you’ve gone for weeks without uttering a word before. But it’s so difficult to be sitting next to someone– someone you feel you could really get to like– and not be able to say a word. To make a sound, laugh or cry or snort or grunt.

You’ll never be able to know what Eric’s laugh sounds like, or listen to his favorite song with him, or watch some stupid rerun of Friends with him while ignoring your responsibilities. He’s right there next to you, he’s risked his life to save you once already, and yet he’s so far away. You’ll never get to know him in all the ways you want to. Will you ever really know him at all?

He’d created a diversion when one of the fucking things had you trapped in a corner, between a dumpster and a brick wall. He chucked a rock at a car and set off an alarm, and then ran with you down an alleyway, his arm wrapped tight around your waist. Eric looked so sad, following you like a lost puppy. He was fucking drenched, too, so you know he’d probably been through one hell of a morning. And then the rain started, and the creatures were confused and… well, you weren’t just gonna leave him, scared and alone.

You, too, were scared and alone.

Eric’s hand appears to brush away a tear that had begun to fall down your cheek, betraying your internal monologue. You look to him with puffy eyes, and he pulls his hand away, suddenly unsure of whether you’re okay with such an intimate gesture.

Your coffee cup meets the table with a quiet tap. You’re slow to move, but you scoot towards him, his arm still outstretched towards you, his eyes wide. Eric has the prettiest eyes in the world, you think. You want to tell him so.

But you’re a little too choked up to form words, anyways. Your forehead meets Eric’s shoulder, and his arm comes around you before you can huff the first silent sob that brims up. He coos softly into your hair, so softly that you can barely hear it, but it conveys enough. It does enough.

The world is fucked. Your life is fucked. You have tunnel vision and you can only see things getting worse from here on; the only good thing you know anymore is holding you and caressing your head so gently that it pushes your tears out for you.

You’ll never get to see a movie in a theater, and smell the stale popcorn again. You’ll never drive down the highway with the wind in your hair. You’ll never ride a roller coaster or sing karaoke. You’ll never go to a club and have a drunken heart to heart with a stranger in a bathroom.

“Do you think it’s worth it?” You whisper, so faintly that it’s barely above a breath, your lips pressed to the shell of his ear. “To try to exist in a world where you have to pretend like you don’t exist?”

Eric pauses, holding you to him. You can see the wheels turning in his head, while he tries to figure out what to say. Then he turns his face to put his lips against your ear, the same way you’d done to him.

“I think it’s worth it to try to survive.” His breath tickles your skin when he whispers, “So survive with me, yeah?”

You nod solemnly, your tears threatening to rise up again. “I can’t stand not talking to you.” It’s so hard to keep your voice from cracking, from rising above the merest hint of a whisper, directly to him and no one or nothing else.

Eric takes it in stride. “You are talking to me.” He pulls back and bats his eyelashes, and you think, he oughta fucking know what that does to me.

“Not like this,” you breathe to him, because that’s really what it is– it’s a breath. A sigh. A gust of air and nothing else, barely anything that registers on your vocal chords. Your hand on the back of his neck, pulling him close to you. His hand, tightening on the middle of your back, holding you there. “I want to talk– I want to get to know you.”

“Well, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Eric turns his head. His forehead nudges yours at the temple, and you swear you see a flash of a smile on his face. “What do you want to know?”

His forefinger traces up and down, up and down, a gentle pattern that keeps you grounded. You bite your lip, trying to keep from letting the sounds come out too loud. You say the first thing that comes to mind. “What’s your favorite song?”

“Easy Living. Billie Holiday.”

“You’re kidding.” You’re blushing, hot in the cheeks. You’re imagining it; slow dancing in the kitchen with him while oldies plays on the radio. You didn’t think such an innocent question would send you spiraling like this, but it hurts worse to know that it will probably never happen.

“Absolutely not.”

“Somehow… I can’t picture you listening to jazz.”

“Picture it all you want,” he whispers. Eric swallows, and continues, “My granddad used to have these records, and we used to play them on Christmas. But when– when he died, the records went missing. I couldn’t find the song until a couple years ago,” he explains, and his voice cracks just slightly into a murmur.

You both freeze. You wait for the sound of creatures coming down the hallway, busting down the walls… nothing happens. You let out a breath, and you pull his face closer to yours. His eyes flick over your face, and you put your lips against his ear.

“You have to be so quiet. Can you do that for me?” Eric nods in your hands. “I wish we could do anything but this. I wish that we could have met in better circumstances. I wish… I wish I had known you before all of this. I think we would have had a lot of fun. But if this is the only way I can get to know you, and hear your voice now, I’ll take it.” You’re nodding as well now, like you’re trying to convince yourself of it. “I’m telling you this because I don’t know how long we have. Together, I mean. And I don’t want to waste it passing notes. Okay?”

“Okay.” He sounds clipped. His hand fidgets on your back, and you pull away to find him misty-eyed, his brows turned up. He fishes for words that don’t come, and then he nods. “Okay.”

Neither of you move. The atmosphere around you feels heavy, like it’s pressing in on all sides. Eric’s hand slides up your back and to your face, and you remember that you’re still holding his. You’re near sitting in his lap with how close you’ve become, and the realization of that feels like a punch to the gut.

You think you should pull away. You don’t.

Eric’s thumb traces a gentle arc across your bottom lip. It’s so featherlight it’s barely there– his eyes are honed in on your mouth, clearly lost in thought. You’d let him stay there as long as he wants, but you want every minute you can get. “Eric–”

He closes the gap and kisses you. The way you’d said his name– or not said it, rather, you sort of mouthed it against his thumb– had done the job you wanted it to. It feels like this was the obvious conclusion to the system you’d worked out, the close proximity and your shared fears. He’s scared, he said as much last night. You’re scared, you said so just now.

Nowhere to go, nothing else to do except be right here, living. Alive, together. Kissing Eric, and him pulling you close by the waist, so that you do swing your leg and seat yourself in his lap. And as much as you love talking, and it breaks your heart that you can’t jabber at him, there are some things you just can’t put into words. Like the way that his hand on the back of your neck lights you up inside, or that you can’t think of anything other than all the areas where his skin is touching yours, and how you suddenly wish there was way more of them.

It’s stupid how much you like him already, really. You can feel your nonexistent friends clucking their tongues and shaking their heads, saying, “One day? That’s all it takes? You find some guy at the end of the world and you fall in love in 24 hours?” And they’d be right– maybe it’s not love. Not yet, anyways. But you could see it easily becoming that. And that fact scares you even more.

Your hands find Eric’s chest and the frantic beating of his heart tells you nearly the same thing. You break the kiss, trying to quietly catch your breath without gasping like you’re half-drowning. It’s harder than you expected.

“Been wanting to do that all morning,” Eric whispers. And just like that you’re falling again, faster this time, like he’s just melted your wings right off and sent you plummeting.

You struggle to keep from gasping aloud when he kisses your jaw, just beneath your ear. It’s the lightest touch but you swear it burns, sears your skin.

Your hands find the back of the couch, twitchy fingers digging in to keep you steady. Your mouth finds his again, his tongue tasting of coffee, and Eric kisses you a bit harder now, a bit sloppier.

Breaking away, you open your eyes to find his wide, starstruck, his mouth hanging open like he’s been shocked beyond belief. You didn’t honestly intend for this to happen– you wanted to talk. But somehow this seems better, more appropriate.

How do you get your feelings across when talking isn’t really an option? When innocent attraction becomes… whatever this is?

You press a single finger to his plush lips, signaling exactly what you mean without a word. Quiet.

Eric purses his lips, kisses your finger without breaking eye contact. His pupils are blown out so far that the barest hint of golden brown surrounds them, glinting in the sunlight from the window.

You lean forward, until your mouth touches his ear. “Your eyes are so fucking pretty, Eric,” you whisper to him, and your teeth latch onto his earlobe to tug gently. You can’t help it– you grind your hips down into his lap, without even thinking of doing it. “You’re so pretty.”

Eric whimpers. It’s a soft sound, hollow in the back of his throat, but it’s still too loud for the world that you’re in. You clamp your hand down over his mouth, and his breath comes out sharp and hot over your knuckles as he tries to regain composure.

“Do you want me to stop?” You ask him, whispering gently in his ear. Against you, he shakes his head no. “Want me to keep going?” Eric nods his head yes.

He’s shaking under you, his fingertips digging into your lower back like he can’t hold onto you hard enough. At the thought, your pulse pounds, blood positively humming through your veins.

You nuzzle his cheek, and give him the sweetest kiss you can while your hand is still clamped over his mouth insistently. “You have to be. Fucking. Silent. Do you understand?” He nods. “We can’t make a sound. Okay?”

Eric nods again, and keeps nodding until you let him go. If the rain was still pouring like earlier, you could tell him how much you want him, too. How you don’t want to be mean, you just don’t want to get hurt. This is a bad idea, all things considered. But Eric slides his hand down and cups your ass to lift you up a bit, and the words bad and idea suddenly fucking vanish from your vocabulary.

You stand long enough to kick off your sweats, your day old panties going down with them. You hadn’t dressed to be sexy yesterday, you dressed to get groceries. You don’t necessarily want Eric to see your faded cotton underwear with the stretched out elastic and multiple frayed holes. You don’t think it would add to your sex appeal right now.

He doesn’t notice the lack of a strip tease– he’s already taking you by the hips, not even waiting for you to shuck your t-shirt. He pulls until you’re stood in front of him, and then hooks your leg over his shoulder.

So. Eric doesn’t need to be asked to go down on you, he just does. The gentleman. His hands are firm on your ass as he nuzzles into the patch of hair between your legs, and the precarious balancing act makes you snatch onto the back of the couch again.

His tongue glides through the folds of your pussy slowly, methodically. You aren’t sure if he wants to take his time, or if he’s going slow so that he doesn’t make too much noise when doing it, but he latches onto your clit and sucks agonizingly softly, like he knows he should do it harder but won’t risk making you moan.

It’s so gentle, and it builds. Pretty soon, you’re having a tough time keeping your whimpers in, even when he’s basically just teasing you, flicking his tongue over your clit with even the barest pressure. Your head has fallen back on your shoulders, your hand now clasped over your own mouth to stifle your sighs.

Then, Eric’s hand glides up to splay across your lower back, and he sucks long and hard at your clit, and your hand squeezes murderously at the back of the couch while you ride out your orgasm on his tongue.

Knees buckling, you collapse into Eric’s lap. He has a doe-eyed look on his face that’s way too innocent after what he just did to you. With panting breath and shaking hands, you cup his rosy cheeks in your palms, shaking your head in disbelief.

Eric’s brows tilt in worry, like he did something wrong. He opens his mouth, but you put your fingers against his lips to silence him, and lean forward to breathe, “You’re too sweet for me, Eric.”

He traces his fingers lightly up your spine, and turns his head. “Maybe one day I won’t have to be sweet. Maybe then I can really fuck you.”

The sound of his whispering voice in your ear makes you shiver, your lust reaching a boiling point. The idea of him really fucking you– that this isn’t even him as normal, that he’s having to hold so much back– makes you burn hot all at once. That this isn’t something he’s planning on doing once. That there’s a ‘one day’ that he sees in the future with you in it.

With a nod, your breath catches in your throat. You find your way to his mouth again, kissing him desperately. You can taste yourself lingering on his lips, and your hips rock forward against his again.

Eric inhales sharply, stifling his own moan. You guess you have to take it just as slowly as he did, ease him into it. You work your hand beneath his unbuttoned fly and palm him, keeping your touch gentle against his hot skin. He shakes, his hands laid out against your spine, his eyes sparkling when he looks up at you.

You push your forehead against his as you sink onto his cock, letting yourself adjust to his size. His breath stutters as he tries to keep quiet, small puffs of air spilling out and meeting your electrified skin. You curl your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, rocking your hips just barely, settling into his lap.

This is more intimate than you can ever remember being with anyone, but right now it just feels right. Maybe it could be cathartic to fuck like a couple of animals in the face of doom, but Eric pulls your body flush against his, one strong forearm around your waist, and his nose nudges yours, and you think this is better. This is what you both need. Closeness. Sweetness.

There isn’t a lot of movement– you can’t risk it. You and Eric seem to be in agreement on that, because as soon as you start trying to move in earnest, he just pulls you back to him, his arm around your waist and his hand petting the back of your head.

Eric rocks his hips up into yours slowly, deeply, and it’s the depth of it and the slow sensuality that keeps you floating. Your clit catches on the patch of hair at the base of his cock each time you roll your hips with him, and you have to kiss him to keep from keening aloud. He doesn’t seem to mind it.

You know he’s close when he tucks his face against your neck, his arm tightening around you. “Feels so fucking good,” comes his whine in your ear, and you gently shush him, your hand resting on the back of his head to keep him muffled against your shoulder. You want so badly to look at his face when he cums, but there’s that pesky issue of staying alive, and that hinges on whether or not he can keep quiet when he does.

To his credit, he bites your shoulder and only whimpers a little bit. It’s just a squeak, but really, he could have been much louder about it, and then you would have both been in trouble. Imagine having to run for your life with your pants down.

Ever the gentleman, he keeps you there even after he’s spent and sensitive, his hand clamped down on your thigh to prevent you from moving. His thumb finds your clit, and he lifts his head to watch you, his hooded eyes trained on your face as he brings you to the edge and over it again. He watches the way your brows tilt up, the way you struggle to keep your own eyes open, and the silent moan that threatens to break past your parted lips.

Eric claps his hand down over your mouth before it can. Your eyes fly open, your cunt clenches down around him, and he bares his teeth as you cum hard. It’s cyclical, comes in waves as he continues to stroke you through it, as he keeps his hand clamped down on your mouth to keep you quiet.

To keep you quiet.

Feverish and exhausted, you come down with your chest against his, Eric’s head flopped back onto the backrest of the couch. Your knees fucking hurt and you have yet to get off of him, and you sort of dread the moment when you have to. But this means your mouth is positioned right next to Eric’s ear, and you’re nothing if not a talker.

“Eric?” you whisper, and he turns his head just enough to let you know he heard you. “I’m glad that I met you when I did. Even if it’s terrible timing, I’m glad we met.”

A sweet, tired smile flits across Eric’s beautiful face. He nudges his nose against your temple. “I’m glad, too.”

You shift off of him, and he squeezes your thigh just at the same time as he scrunches his face. He’s such a trooper about it, you kiss his cheek as you go, leaning over to grab a pair of earphones from the coffee table.

You hand one ear bud to him, watching as confusion crosses his face. He watches you type on your phone as he tucks the bud into his ear, and you the other.

On low volume, you listen to the soft piano and saxophone intro to an old jazz standard. Eric grins, his hand finding your cheek before he pulls you in for a kiss.

And then, Billie Holiday’s voice plays for only you two to hear.

Living for you is easy living, It’s easy to live when you’re in love And I’m so in love, There’s nothing in life but you.

#eric a quiet place day one #eric a quiet place x reader #a quiet place day one #roses*#eric x reader #eric a quiet place day one x you #eric a quiet place x you #eric a quiet place day one x reader #eric fan fiction #eric x you #joseph quinn

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slashmagpie · 6 months ago

Text

Break Like an Artist

My fic for @hermitadaymay's Solstice Social Collaborative Fanwork Event! I was paired up with the wonderful @eydilily to create something spooky, dramatic and contemplative featuring Gem and Pearl, and it's been an absolute blast putting this together. Please go check out Eydi's art for this AU, it's absolutely gorgeous. CWs: description of a corpse, dismemberment, loss of awareness, fire/flooding/destruction, and depiction of a panic attack. Wordcount: 5.8k

There is a plague sweeping Pearl's hometown.

One by one, she watches as her friends fall to the infection, the colour and life drained out of them and leaving hollow, apathetic husks behind. Even with the devastating loss of her friends, her village, and her regular life, the worst part of this situation is not the infection.

It's that Pearl knows that Gem is the one spreading it.

[Read on AO3]

It’s a grey day in the fishing village that Pearl calls her home. Not that it’s ever not a grey day, at least not anymore. She stares out of her window at the thick encompassing fog that’s claimed the bay, at the desaturated buildings that dot the shore, and she twirls her paintbrush in her fingers.

The canvas is blank, of course. She doesn’t remember the last time she sat down to paint and didn’t end up with a blank canvas. It must have been—months ago, at least. Back when the last monster from the depths had attacked, and not a single person had had the heart to fight back. When Tango’s house had been shattered in two, and Tango with it.

(He seems to be dealing well with the loss of his arm, at least. Or, as well as you can deal with anything, when the only things inside of you are all-consuming numbness and apathy. Pearl feels it in her chest, the yawning emptiness, and thinks that if she were to lose her arm right here and now, she also wouldn’t be able to summon the energy to care.)

She’d painted after that, though. She remembers it vividly, waking from a nightmare and running to her studio to capture lashing tentacles and inky waters and splatters of crimson blood. It’s a frenzied piece, a disturbing piece, and the moment she’d finished it she’d been filled with so much dread that she’d turned it around to face the wall and refused to look at it since.

The dread’s gone now. Along with the anxiety, and the uncertainty, and the fear. It’s all gone, and Pearl’s left sitting here, paints drying on the palette as she stares at an empty canvas.

Across the house, she hears her front door swing open and closed. A familiar voice shouts, “Pearl? Pearl, where are you?”

“Studio,” Pearl calls back, her voice flat. She continues to twirl the paintbrush as she waits for Gem to trek her way across the house to find her.

“Studio,” Gem echoes as she pushes open the door. “Oh, Pearl, are you painting again? Oh, I’m so happy for—oh.” The joy in her voice vanishes as she takes in Pearl, sitting on her stool, paintbrush raised and canvas empty. “Oh, Pearl…”

Sympathy. Pity. Concern. Pearl can pick apart the emotions in Gem’s voice, even if she can’t feel them herself. She stares back blankly, because she can’t find it in herself to care about either aspect of the situation, whether it be her own inability to paint or the way that Gem’s looking at her like she’s a wounded animal.

“Come on,” Gem says softly, crossing the room and gently prying the brush from Pearl’s fingers. Pearl lets her. She’s not really painting, anyway. “Let’s get you to bed, shall we? A nap will do you some good.”

Pearl lets Gem help her up, lets Gem allow Pearl to lean on her for support as they make their way back to Pearl’s bedroom. It’s not like Pearl has any difficulty walking. She’s not sick, she’s not injured, she’s just…

Cold. Empty. Not quite lifeless, not in the way Mumbo had been when she’d last seen him, skin and eyes and hair all the same shade of grey-white-nothingness as he’d stared into the distance, completely unresponsive. Listless, maybe, is the better word. She’s halfway to a fate worse than death and she cannot find it in her to care at all.

She feels colder where Gem touches her. She looks down, and she’s not sure if it’s her eyes playing tricks on her, or if her skin is more desaturated where it brushes against Gem’s. She lets Gem help her into bed, lets Gem fluff the pillows and fuss around her, lets Gem sit next to her as she hands Pearl a bowl of soup (“Your favourite!”) and watches her to make sure she eats.

If Pearl were more herself, she would care about what Gem’s doing to her. Care enough to stop it, maybe. Care enough to—no, not to confront her. Every time she’d tried, the words had gotten stuck in her throat. Because she’s known for a long time who’s been behind all of this, behind the corruption leeching all colour from their village, their home, their friends—

And she’d never said anything. Too worried about Gem’s feelings. Too worried about their friendship.

…Pearl realises, as Gem goes to take the empty bowl and brushes her hands against Pearl’s, that she’s not worried anymore.

She waits quietly as Gem washes the bowl in her kitchen, chattering to fill the silence as she does, updating Pearl on their friends’ conditions. Her tone is bright and optimistic, even as her words are dour. Scar seems to be doing the same. Grian’s getting worse. Joel’s down to communicating only in broken phrases—but he should be fine. It definitely won’t be like Mumbo, or Cub, or…

Gem returns to Pearl’s room, regarding her for a long moment before bending down to give her a hug. “Get better soon, okay?” she says into Pearl’s ear. “It’s not the same doing my rounds without you.”

Pearl knows that she’s not getting better. So does Gem, so Pearl doesn’t bother pointing it out. She just nods, lets Gem withdraw, lets Gem run one last hand through her hair.

“You should rest, Pearl,” Gem says, stepping away from Pearl’s bedside. “I’m going to go check on Impy now—”

Pearl’s moving before she’s even properly registered it, grabbing onto Gem’s wrist with force, holding her in place. Gem freezes. Pearl looks up at her through strands of greasy, greying hair.

“Gem,” she says, and it’s the first thing she’s said in days, and her voice is hoarse and her throat sore from the strain.

“...Pearl?” Gem replies, and she sounds almost scared.

“Gem,” Pearl repeats, getting used to the sound of her own voice in her mouth again. “I know.”

Gem laughs. It’s a nervous, tittering sound, the laugh Pearl remembers from when they’d gotten into trouble together as kids. “Know what?” she asks, voice strained.

“That it’s you,” Pearl says flatly.

Gem stares at her.

Pearl stares back.

Gem swallows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “Pearl—”

“I know you’re the one doing this to us,” Pearl says, more specific this time, choosing her words carefully, and Gem—

Gem tries to pull away.

Pearl tightens her grip.

“Pearl,” Gem whines, eyes wide, tugging. “Let me go—”

“Why?” Pearl croaks, and Gem snaps her mouth shut.

---

Pearl’s in the midst of mixing a particularly tricky shade of green when there’s a loud, frantic knock on her front door. She sighs, setting down her brush to rest, and gets to her feet. “I’m coming, I’m coming, hold on!” she calls as the knocks continue, echoing through the house.

She pulls the door open and Tango’s there, a nervous ball of energy, just about ready to bolt. “Pearl!” he calls. “Pearl, come on, we gotta go—”

He grabs her by the arm and drags her off. Pearl just barely manages to close her front door behind her.

“Wha—? Where are we going? What’s going on?”

“Something washed up on shore,” Tango explains. “The whole town’s there, c’mon.”

Accepting that she’s not going to get an explanation out of him, and now deeply curious about this something, she lets Tango lead her down to the shore by the lighthouse. Sure enough, the whole town is there, a chattering crowd gathered around a spot on the shore that Pearl can’t quite see. Impulse is standing on the edge of the crowd and catches sight of them, raising his arm in a wave. Tango makes a beeline towards him, ducking under the crowd, and Pearl follows behind, apologising to False and Keralis as she bumps into them.

“Did you decide what to do with it yet?” Tango asks as he comes to a halt and finally lets Pearl go.

Impulse shakes his head. “We’ve decided it’s Gem’s call,” he says. “After all, she’s the—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence as the crowd suddenly goes silent and parts for Gem, her hair wild and eyes wide behind her thick-rimmed glasses. She’s got her lab coat pulled on over her day clothes, clearly not prepared for this in the slightest. She reaches the front of the crowd and stops dead still, staring at the thing that has washed up on the shore.

Pearl follows her friend’s gaze, and sees it for the first time.

It’s a body. Of course it is. A corpse, taken by the sea and ravaged by the waves and washed ashore by the brutal bay currents. The body’s clothes are torn and sodden, the skin beneath so pale that it could practically be paper. Pearl is stricken, for a moment, with the mental image of her taking a brush to this canvas, filling it back in with colour, painting contours back into its skin, breathing life back into the body.

She shakes her head violently, banishing the thought. Where did that come from? This isn’t a canvas, it’s—

It’s a person. A person who was alive, and is now dead, washed up on the beach like a dead whale and just as much of a spectacle. His eyes are open but rolled back, only the whites showing, and his hair is white too, just as pale as his skin. It stands as sharp contrast against the dark fabric of his torn clothes, a mask wrapped around the bottom half of his face.

Pearl swallows hard and averts her gaze back to Gem, who looks just as disturbed by the body as Pearl feels. It takes Gem longer to pull her eyes away, to glance around the crowd. “I’ll—I’ll take it back to my lab,” she says. “Investigate, and—and give him a proper burial.”

The words reassure the crowd, a low chatter beginning up again.

“Skizz, will you help me carry him?” Gem calls.

Skizz does, stepping forward from the crowd and helping Gem maneuver the bloated corpse. Pearl finds herself looking at it again, noticing dark striations in the skin, caught in glimpses between the tears in the clothing as it’s moved.

She shakes her head again, forces herself to look away as the body is carried out and the crowd disperses. The image of the body lingers in her mind. Something settles uncomfortably in her stomach, and she wishes that she’d never opened the door.

---

Things go back to normal after that. Or, well, as normal as they get in the village, at least. False monitors the currents and warns of any incoming floods or monster attacks. Impulse and Tango work maintenance on the fishing boats that Grian and Skizz and Keralis take out into the bay. Mumbo runs the fish market. Cub and Scar come and go along the trading routes. Joel maintains security, or at least the illusion of it.

Gem hides away in her lab running experiments she never explains, and Pearl paints.

She tries to return to her usual fare, brightly-coloured landscapes with fantastical features, but something about her paintings rings hollow when she looks at them. She decides she needs a change, to switch things up and just relax, so she pulls out her paints and a blank canvas and begins with no intentions. Her movements are fluid and free and thoughtless and she falls into a flow state that lasts hours, until she blinks her eyes and awakes to find a portrait before her, a colourless face in full saturation.

The corpse’s visage, so alive she can’t believe it’s not breathing, stares back at her from her easel, and Pearl flinches like she’s been burned.

She hides that painting away, face turned towards the wall, and returns to painting landscapes. They come easier now, and for a time Pearl feels normal, as long as she ignores the canvas in the corner.

It’s Impulse who notices that there’s something wrong first. It’s not surprising that he’d be the first to pick up on it, really. Skizz is his best friend, after all. Of course he’d notice when Skizz stopped laughing, stopped joking, stopped drumming out tunes with his fingers on the side of his boat. And when Pearl sees him, she notices changes too—his skin paler, like he’s spent several weeks locked inside a basement instead of out in the summer sun, his eyes no longer their regular bright blue.

“Hey, Skizzly,” she greets brightly, trying to play at normal, throwing him a bone to grab onto.

Skizz just glances at her before responding with a flat, “Oh, hey Pearl.”

Pearl’s smile falters. “How are you feeling? Impulse told me you’re a little under the weather.”

Skizz shrugs. “Fine, I guess. Did you need something?”

Pearl swallows, something cold sinking in her guts. “No, no, just checking in on you.”

“Gem already checked on me,” Skizz says. “She said I’m not sick.”

“Gem’s not that type of doctor,” Pearl reminds him with a weak smile.

Skizz shrugs again. “She’s the only doctor we’ve got.”

Pearl tries her best not to let that unsettle her.

---

It’s not just Skizz.

It starts with him, but it doesn’t end there. Keralis is next, and then Grian. Mumbo gets sickest the quickest, going from his anxious, affable self to a nearly-unresponsive husk within a week. That scares them all, because even Skizz is still responding when spoken to, still moving when instructed to, even after nearly a month of being infected with… whatever it is that’s going around.

False gets sick without anyone noticing, sequestered away in her lighthouse until she comes into town for groceries looking like a photograph that’s been left in the sun for too long, and that’s when people really start to panic.

And that’s when Gem declares, with all the authority that being a doctor of anthropology afforded her in a tiny town with no real doctor, that she’s putting everyone into quarantine until they can determine the source of the illness.

“I’m not sick,” Pearl tells Gem when her friend knocks on her door, dressed in full lab gear, her hair out of its usual ponytail and falling forward around her face. She’s pretty sure she isn’t, at least, having hyper-analysed the shade of blue in her eyes in the mirror every morning for the past month.

“I know,” Gem says. “I want to—I need to—can I come in?”

“Yeah,” Pearl says, stepping aside. “Of course.”

Gem enters, heading down the stairs into Pearl’s living space and staring at the paintings on the wall. Pearl watches her for a moment before stepping closer, resting a reassuring hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“What’s eating you?” she asks.

Gem snorts out a laugh at that. “I’m not a real doctor, Pearl,” she says.

“I know that.”

“They all need me to be a real doctor for them. I—” She breaks off, runs an anxious hand through her hair. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I need help.”

Pearl raises her eyebrows. “I don’t know how I can help,” she says. “I’m even less of a doctor than you are.”

“I know,” Gem says. “But you’re my friend, and I trust you, and I need—please?”

She stares at Pearl, bright green eyes magnified through thick glasses lenses. Pearl has never been able to say no to those eyes.

“Okay,” she agrees, letting out an uncertain breath. “Okay. What do you need me to do, Dr. Tay?”

Gem laughs again, high-pitched and anxious, and Pearl feels hot and cold all at once.

---

They do house calls. Once a day, Gem and Pearl, and sometimes Impulse, will make a round of the village, checking in on everyone. Gem brings some of her lab equipment and a notebook, where she scribbles down all the readings she takes from her instruments and any observations she makes. After the first week or so, Pearl also takes to bringing a sketchbook and a small travel painting kit, attempting to record the desaturation rate in her friends’ colours.

It doesn’t matter which way they look at it—the situation is bad, and rapidly getting worse. Most of the town is infected now, and Skizz is approaching Mumbo’s level of deterioration. Cub fell ill two weeks ago, and Tango—

Well, he’s not quite grey yet, but he looks washed out where he sits at his table, especially next to Gem, all bright copper and ocean blue and forest green. His voice is flat, all of the emotion in it gone, and while he responds in full sentences to Gem’s questions as Pearl attempts to capture the moulded-straw colour of his hair, none of his words sound like him.

Gem wraps up her check-in, and Pearl follows her out, paints packed away in her bag and sketchbook held carefully so as not to smudge the paint. Impulse is waiting for them outside, staring out into the bay, where a low-lying fog has been hanging for days.

He glances over at them, voice shaking as he asks, “How is he?”

Gem hesitates. “About the same?” she offers.

Pearl shakes her head. “Worse,” she says, offering her sketchbook to Impulse, pointing out the differences in values between the colours she’d sampled from Tango two days ago to the ones she’d taken today.

Impulse’s hands are trembling as he hands the sketchbook back to her. “What do we do?” he asks. “They just keep getting worse—Gem, what do we do?”

Gem’s eyes are fixed somewhere out at sea. Her expression is so scarily blank that Pearl would worry she was infected if not for how bright and vibrant she looks against the backdrop of the village. (Are the houses getting greyer? Surely not—surely it’s just the fog, and the fact that the sky has been overcast for a fortnight now—surely—)

“We look after them best we can,” Gem says. “I’m trying—every night I’m working on a cure.”

“And do you think it’ll work?” Impulse pushes.

“I have to,” Gem replies. “It has to.”

Pearl swallows, and does not voice what all three of them are thinking: what if it doesn’t?

---

Impulse turns up one morning a shade dimmer than he had been the day before. Pearl notices immediately, her stomach lurching at the sight of him. He offers her a smile that’s smaller than his usual ones, a greeting that’s a little flatter than it would usually be. Pearl’s not sure if Gem even notices.

But Pearl notices, and her eyes sting, and she throws herself at him in a way that catches all three of them off-guard.

“Uh, Pearl?” Impulse says, stiff and uncomfortable beneath her. “You okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Pearl mumbles against his ear.

“Pearl?” There’s a peak of distress in his voice but it’s not enough. Gem hears it, too.

“Oh no,” she breathes.

“Okay, guys, seriously,” Impulse says, pushing Pearl away. “What’s going on?”

They just stare at him.

Realisation dawns across Impulse’s face. “No.”

“Maybe…” Gem sucks in a breath. She reaches out to take his hand and squeezes it. “Maybe you should go home, Impy. Get some rest.”

“I’m fine,” Impulse protests. “I’m…” His protest crumbles under their gazes. He slumps, and Pearl knows that he would normally never crumble like that. He’d protest and fight back and keep working until he passed out on the docks and had to be carried back to bed.

“C’mon,” she says softly. “I’ll help you home.”

Impulse doesn’t protest that either. He knows, as well as the two of them do, how this ends. He knows that there’s no fighting this.

Pearl, very valiantly, does not cry about it.

---

With everyone except the two of them infected, Pearl manages to convince Gem to split the rounds, with her taking half of the houses, and Gem taking the other half, swapping halves every couple of days. Gem is reluctant, but she has no good argument against Pearl’s that this is more practical, and so she agrees.

And that’s when Pearl notices.

She thinks she’s imagining it at first, but the colour swatches in her sketchbook back up her suspicions, damning evidence she can’t ignore.

When she visits her rounds, she finds that the people she’s visiting appear to have stabilised, at least for a couple days, no greyer today than they were when she saw them the day before. And then she swaps with Gem, and notices that Gem’s half of the rotation are far paler, far less responsive, than they had been the last time Pearl had seen them. They stabilise for a couple days, and then they switch, and Pearl’s original rotation have deteriorated massively in the several days since.

There’s really only one conclusion she can draw from that, and she doesn’t want to draw it. She doesn’t want to believe that the one responsible for this is—

The fog is a permanent fixture of the village now, blanketing the bay in a thick blanket of quiet. Pearl finds it hard to sleep, even the familiar sound of waves muffled by the mist. Kept awake into the early hours of the morning, she finds herself in the studio, a brush in hand, letting the paint take her where it will.

And where it takes her is familiar: the village, desaturated and coated in fog, dark looming shapes in the mist beyond, rising out of the ocean. And there, in the midst of the painting, a bright spot in all the gloom, is Gem, so vibrant she practically lifts off the page.

Pearl stares at it for a long, long time, and then places it face against the wall and tries her best to forget about it.

---

In all the dread, they’d forgotten something important.

The sea isn’t safe. It never has been. Growing up in the bay you learn how to weather the storms, to predict the tides, to flee from floods. You learn how to build barriers, and you learn how to rebuild once the ocean drags them down.

Pearl knows that her village can handle the sea: she’s seen them do it time and time again over the years. Together, they move as a well-oiled machine, responding to threats from the depths with weathered ease. That’s why she doesn’t expect it, she thinks.

There’s never been a monster attack that False didn’t warn them about.

But False isn’t capable of doing much of anything at the moment.

And so when the tentacles rise from the waves, there isn’t a warning.

Just a deafening krk-crash that wakes Pearl from a dead sleep with a bolt of adrenaline that’s nearly nauseating. She scrambles from her blankets, still in her pajamas, and rushes up the stairs to throw on her boots. It’s edging towards winter now, the weather much milder than the summer months, and though it’s not cold by any stretch of the imagination the chill of the air still makes her shiver. She grits her teeth, racing from her front door to the village proper, and there—

There’s a sea monster, dark purple tentacles reaching out to the shore, destroying everything in its wake. The fish market is half gone, and it’s awful, but it’s a relief, in a way, because nobody lives there.

“Gem!” Pearl screams into the night.

“Pearl!” she hears echo back, followed by distant footsteps, growing ever-closer.

Gem’s face is flushed, her hair wild, her eyes wide. She’s also in her pyjamas, her lab coat that’s been ever-present for months now gone, and Pearl finds her eyes drawn to dark striations in her skin. They look like—

“Pearl,” Gem says again. “We need to get everyone out, away from the shore, up to the research centre—”

Pearl nods. “Got it,” she says. She points towards the docks and says, “I’ll head over there.”

Gem nods. “Be safe,” she says, and then she’s off again, pelting in the direction of the lighthouse.

Pearl doesn’t bother knocking as she throws Impulse’s door open. He’s still lucid enough that he’s been startled awake by the noise, though it hasn’t driven him to do much more than put his shoes on and stare out of the window at the dark shapes rearing up out of the fog.

“Impulse!” Pearl cries.

“Pearl?” Impulse says, glancing at her with dull eyes.

“We need to get people out,” she says.

There’s an extended pause, then, “Okay.”

“Can you get Skizz?” she asks. “Tango, too, maybe? I need to go to the beach, help everyone down there.”

Another extended pause, then a nod. “I can do that,” Impulse says. He moves too slowly, not driven by the same panic flooding Pearl’s veins, but it’s good enough. It has to be. Pearl doesn’t have time to consider the alternative.

She goes racing off for the beach. She throws open Keralis’ door first, relieved that he is, at least, wearing underwear when she drags him from his bed and into the night. She leaves him there while she grabs Grian from his hut, and then takes them both by the wrists, pulling them along behind her while she races for the cliffside.

It feels like hours that she races back and forth, grabbing her friends from their homes and dragging them in various states of comprehension to the safety of the cliff before running back into the danger zone. Grian’s hut is gone, and so is a large portion of the road. The tentacles have taken a chunk out of the farms further up the coast. Gem’s been taking the people she rescues a different route up to the research facility, the path that Pearl’s taking cut off to her by debris.

Once she’s got everyone on her side of town, she collapses panting on the grass, her lungs aching with the strain. There’s a fire somewhere down on the shore, someone’s lantern knocked astray by swinging tentacles. Her eyes burn just from looking at it.

A voice says, “I got him.”

Pearl looks up.

It’s Impulse, manhandling a colourless, greyscale Skizz.

Pearl goes cold.

“Where’s Tango?” she asks.

Impulse blinks. Slowly. Too slowly.

“Oh,” he says. “I’ll go get him.”

Pearl shakes her head, rocketed up to her feet by panic once again. “No, I’ll go,” she gasps. “You stay here.”

And then she’s off running again, beelining for Tango’s house, praying to any higher power that will listen that she’s not too late. Her lungs ache. Her legs burn. She can’t quite catch her breath. She’s shaking.

And then she’s knocking down Tango’s door, grabbing him from his bed against the far wall, dragging him away—

The roof coming down sounds like thunder, like the sky split open and gutted for parts. Pearl goes down hard, stars bursting behind her eyes, her breath coming out empty and then as a whine. She blinks, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, for her ears to stop ringing, and that’s when she hears it.

It’s—not a scream. More of a whimper, or a wail, stretched out and awful and pained and punctuated by short, desperate gasps. It goes straight to her stomach, straight to making her sick, and she doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want to move.

But, god, she has to, doesn’t she?

She wiggles her fingers, her toes, and lets out a deep groan as she pushes herself up onto her hands and knees. The world has narrowed in on itself, the open air of Tango’s house reduced to a crawlspace, and she shuffles down it, rubble and debris tearing her skin open and leaving bloody red marks on desaturated wood. It is a far cry from the blood she finds, practically brown with how much colour has been leeched from it.

“Oh, my god,” she chokes. “Tango…”

Tango just moans in response. She can’t tell if he’s pale from blood loss or pale from the infection, but either way it has the effect of making him look half dead. He’s half buried beneath the rubble, body jerking with what she can only assume is pain, barely felt beneath the weight of numb apathy.

“I gotta get you out of here.” The words taste acrid against her tongue. Or maybe that’s the smoke. She can’t tell. “I’ve got you.” She grabs Tango by his good arm and grimaces. “It’s gonna be okay.”

It’s not a reassurance for him. Not really. Pearl’s familiar enough with his condition by now to know that he can’t really care about being okay at this point.

It’s more for her as she does her best to get leverage in the small space and pulls.

When Tango screams, she knows it’s completely involuntary, an animal howl of agony that stops her short. Pearl gasps, tears on her cheeks, head spinning. “Please, no,” she begs, and she doesn’t know if she’s talking to him or the higher power that’s been ignoring her for weeks. “No, no, I gotta—I—”

“Pearl?”

“Gem!” Pearl cries. “Gem, please, I need—it’s Tango—he’s—”

“I’ve got you,” says Gem’s voice, familiar and close as footsteps pound across rubble. There’s a series of grunts and clunks as rubble shifts, and then there’s light pouring into the crawlspace, which is no longer so much of a crawlspace. Gem stares at the two of them, Pearl in tears on her knees and Tango half buried and lying in his own dull blood.

“Okay,” she gasps out, and she sounds terrified. “Okay,” she repeats, steadier this time.

Pearl wants to be relieved, but she’s just on the other side of hysterical. Gem’s holding an axe, which she must have used to clear the rubble, and she steps forward with it held between white knuckles.

“Hold him still,” she tells Pearl.

Pearl swallows. “Gem?” she whispers.

“Please.”

Gem glances down at Pearl, and god, she never has been able to say no to that, has she?

She shuffles forward, puts her weight against Tango, holds him still. Squeezes her eyes shut.

It doesn’t make it any better.

It doesn’t stop her from hearing the sick crunch of the axe cutting through bone or the blood-curdling scream Tango lets out.

It doesn’t stop her from feeling the sudden lack of resistance as she pulls Tango’s bleeding body away from the rubble, leaving his arm behind.

---

Pearl manages to hold it together until they’re able to get Tango safe and stable. Once the wound has been cauterised and disinfected and bandaged, and he’s left sitting with a mostly-unresponsive Skizz and an Impulse who’s just aware enough to be awkward about how little he feels for his friend, she walks away from the town’s refugees on the hillside until she can no longer hear them, and they can no longer hear her. She stands for a moment, surveying the damage below, the sun rising over the sea and the flooded streets and destroyed buildings, and she sucks in a breath that knocks her to her knees.

The panic attack comes in quick half-breaths and waterlogged wails, her hands gripping at her hair and pulling it hard enough to hurt. The world blurs around her as she chokes on saltwater and bile, her ears ringing with screams and funeral bells. When the hands settle on her shoulders she barely feels them—only feels them when they rise to her wrists and untangle her fingers from her hair.

“—earl? Pearl. Look at me. Come on, I know you can do it.”

“Ge-em,” Pearl chokes out. “I can’t—I—”

“I’ve got you,” Gem soothes. She takes Pearl’s hands in hers, squeezes them tight, real and grounding. “See, come on, that’s it. Breathe with me.”

Pearl blinks tears from her eyes as she tries to time her breathing to Gem’s. She’s not very good at it, her heart too quick and Gem’s too slow, but it helps, dragging her down from the high of panic.

“That’s it,” Gem breathes. She lets go of Pearl’s hand, reaching up to push the hair out of Pearl’s face, cupping her cheeks in her palms. “See? Nice and calm. Everything’s fine, see?”

“Yeah,” Pearl agrees, and the words feel hollow. Her panic feels hollow, somewhere above her body, her soul sunken to somewhere below her knees. She sucks in a breath, lets Gem wipe tears from her eyes with her thumbs.

Gem is so bright. A searchlight in a storm, a ray of rising sun through the dark. The world seems to grey around her.

Pearl reaches out, splaying her hand against Gem’s cheek, a clumsy echo of Gem’s own reassuring, grounding touch. Gem is still so bright, vivid enough that Pearl doesn’t think any paint could capture it.

And Pearl, held in comparison, is grey and dull. A shade, drained of life.

She swallows. Lets out a shaking breath. Looks up into Gem’s green eyes, sees the fear and regret in them, and can barely summon her own panic or hurt in return.

“Oh,” she says, and the word falls like a stone, plunging into the depths.

---

Pearl lets out a breath. “It was the body, wasn’t it?” she asks, loosening her grip. “The one that washed up. It did something to you.”

Gem swallows. She pulls away, holding onto her own wrist where Pearl had dropped it, clutching it to her chest. “I’m so hungry, Pearl,” she whispers. “I fade so fast now. I need… I need…”

“You’re going to kill us.” Gem flinches at the words. “You know that, don’t you, Gem? You’re going to kill us. You are killing us.”

“I just need your colours,” Gem replies, a whine in her voice. “I just…”

“What happens when we’re gone, Gem? What happens when you’ve taken all the colours? What happens then?”

Gem stares at her. There are tears in her eyes. They don’t quite fall, but Pearl can feel them drip into her hollow heart. There’s an ocean between them now and Pearl doesn’t have the wits to cross it. She doesn’t care enough to cross it, and she doesn’t feel enough to care about that.

“I have to go and check on Impy,” Gem repeats, her voice thick. “I’ll see you later, Pearl.”

“You won’t,” Pearl calls after her as Gem hurries for the door.

Gem doesn’t reply, just slamming the door shut in response.

Pearl sits in bed for a long time, staring at the wall with hazy vision. Her thoughts are muffled under the thick fog that chokes the village, and so when she finally stands, she’s not entirely sure why. She lets her body carry her back to her studio, picks up a canvas from against the wall, and places it on her easel. She sits down in front of it and stares.

Gem’s face stares back at her, the only alive thing in a dead and colourless world.

#solsticesocial #hermitaday #hermitcraft #fanfiction #magpie feather quill #if you're seeing this immediately after posting the ao3 link might not work #i am spending most of posting day on a plane so i am going about it in a way that's a little janky

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willyoubemycherryy · 6 months ago

Text

What I hear now… (Salesman x reader)

Summary: Piano strings thrum in place of the ones belonging to your heart; playing a requiem for feelings that were never supposed to bloom or even make it.

Contains: angst, hurt, longing, conflicted feelings, music, confusion, he likes you in a way that isn’t homicidal and struggles to deal, you’re just emotional, fear and hopelessness with a few flickers of comfort

A/N- this is how I’m coping with TikTok being banned. I miss everyone so much right now. Cried writing this so I’m sorry.

｡ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ₊ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ｡˚ ｡ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ₊ ˚ ︶︶

This was new.

Tentative breaths shake the atmosphere of the unfamiliar space as you try to quietly adjust. You don’t even remember how you got here, to his apartment but here you are. It’s comfortable, furnished and organized with monochromatic colors and a piano in the middle of the large space and that’s when you remember.

You’d asked him after one of your trysts if he had any secret talents. The question- like you- was unusual but he answers out of the barb-teethed fondness he’s grown for you.

“I’m quite good on the piano.”

Your eyebrows shoot to your hairline at the unexpectedness and you wonder if anyone who’s ever known him knows about his hidden gift.

“You’ve gotta play for me one day.” It’s the first time he’s heard that word without any of the usual foreboding. Play. He can’t recall the last time he ever has in such a meaningful way. He surprises himself by agreeing, nodding with one of his pretty disarming smiles.

“Sure. Maybe I’ll even sing for you too.”

And that’s how you got here. Laying on plush carpet as you lean up on your elbows, next to the large piano as you watch the man sitting at its keys. He’s in a simple dress shirt with the forearms rolled up, black slacks and grey socks. Less put together as strands of hair fall in his face but still beautiful and you feel your heart ache. He shuffles closer before glancing down at you, smiling with the side of his mouth then turning back to the instrument. Seconds later music fills the quiet space around you, stopping your heart before it jumps to your throat as your recognize the melody from the first few notes alone.

He hears your gasp and knows you know exactly what song he’s playing but he doesn’t stop to taunt you- instead he keeps playing. Notes growing in volume then tempo as they spin over each other, cascading in and out of depth before they descend. You go still with wide eyes as you listen, lips shaking from the onslaught of sudden emotion and you swear you hear the words as he shatters your defenses with sure, precise fingers on ivory keys; leaving you bare in all the ways that matter and it’s as mesmerizing as it is heartbreaking.

It was a dangerous dance feeling what you’re feeling for him because he was so limited in both heart and character.

You still didn’t even know what he did for a living but you became familiar with him anyways, what was a fun convenient thing bled into something more with each time he sought you out.

The quiet life you maintained was like a soothing balm to the mangled parts of him he’d given up on healing years ago; accepting that he was just too far gone.

But then there was suddenly you. Scolding him on the train that he “shouldn’t bully the misfortunate” or else one day he’d wake up ugly and even agreeing to play one of his games only the beat him the first and only time you did, refusing to entertain him. Sticking your tongue out at him before getting off at your stop.

“Not hot shit now are you? Dirtbag…”, glaring with a curled lip as you walked off. Maybe it was then. You picked an issue with him not for profit but to stand up for someone you didn’t even know and he couldn’t wrap his head around it. So, he settled for his arms instead and you were nice but nicer when he was nice too and it gave him a glimpse into the other side of life. One he’d never given a thought to.

Yes; he might be able to live with you one day but he could never stay and you could never know why. He refused to drown you in the heavy blood of his world.

When he winds the chorus back, and you find yourself close to tears as you listen to each key; phantom lyrics ringing in your ears.

“I used to hear a simple song,

That was until you came along.

You took my broken melody-

and now I hear a symphony.”

You close your eyes to stop the water because when it rains it pours and against everything, unfortunately- you like him.

The final string of notes soften their crescendo as the song ends and silence fills the space once again. Even with the music gone, you still feel like crying.

He really was quite good on the piano.

You can’t keep your eyes closed forever though but when you open them, he’s already looking at you and your misty eyes, cooing at the tremble in your bottom lip.

“Aw. You’re sensitive to music too-?” You ignore the flippancy in his tone as you cut him off, voice small when you throw caution to the wind for the comfort you so desperately need right now before you fall apart wanting to keep something that was decaying.

“Can I please have a hug?”

Your request shocks him enough to knock his usual ever-present grin off his face for a minute before he wordlessly slides down to where your sitting on the floor, watery eyes firmly fixed onto the carpet before he pulls you into his lap, wrapping you in his arms and you stiffen before melting into him with a sigh, burying your head in his chest.

He doesn’t say anything. If he did, it would end in disaster because he’s never comforted anyone honestly in his life. He could’ve ignored you but he found he didn’t want to, instead he let you need him- wanted you to need him as he consoled you.

You were so unlike him. So different from the strife he normally caused and he wasn’t sure what to do.

“If I knew it would’ve upset you so much, I’d have said something pointless like solving a rubix cube.” You snort at that and the sound gives him a strange sense of relief.

“It’s fine, I’m not upset so don’t worry. It’s not like you.” He stays silent because he knows. He knows any kind of concern that comes from him is abnormal but it’s you.

“Getting soft on me-“

“I could make you cry again if that’s what you’d prefer?”

You two bicker way too casually for the amount of gaps in your relationship but somehow it fits, driving you to settle into him more with a deep breath, enjoying his scent. Neither of you knew what was going on but you’d cross that bridge when it got to burning. For now though;

“You can do that later but let’s just stay like this for a little while longer?”

“….”

“..alright.”

#squid game #squid game x reader #the salesman #the recruiter #gong yoo #the salesman x reader #the recruiter x reader #gong yoo x reader #squid game angst #the salesman angst #gong yoo angst

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sleepingdiaryzzz · 8 months ago

Note

hold on,hold on,Yandere!Conner Kent x reader🙏🏻

(sorry for bothering😭)

U ain't a bother and if anybody tells you that u do, then, they gonna face my pinky, my thumb and my fist they gonna run. 😼🐺🧏🏽‍♀️ nobody messes with my first ever anon 😠👊

Anyways

The night has fallen quietly over Metropolis, the cityscape softened under a blanket of stars. The world feels smaller somehow, contained within the walls of your apartment where Connor sits, angled slightly toward you, his gaze unwavering yet serene. He has that brooding, intense look—a mix of steel and tenderness—that you’ve come to recognize as uniquely his. It’s as though he’s carrying a burden, one he won’t let you see, and yet you feel its weight as if he’s drawn you into his orbit without permission.

“Connor,” you say softly, trying to break the quiet, “you’ve been… around a lot more lately.”

His eyes flicker, something shadowy dancing behind them, a vulnerability he usually keeps hidden. He doesn’t answer right away, just lets his gaze travel over your features as if memorizing every detail. The room feels charged, the air between you like the fine thread of a spider’s web—delicate and unbreakable all at once.

Finally, he speaks, his voice hushed but firm. “I just want to make sure you’re safe. Is that so wrong?”

There’s a faint, haunting cadence in his words, something raw and possessive yet laced with an almost tragic reverence. You feel the intensity radiating off him, a barely restrained storm beneath his calm exterior.

“Nothing could happen to you,” he continues, almost to himself. “Not on my watch. I’d make sure of that.”

You’ve always known Connor’s protectiveness runs deep, but tonight, it feels like there’s something else lurking beneath the surface. An edge, a quiet desperation that clings to the room, thick as fog.

“Connor…” you say his name with a gentle tone, hoping it might pull him out of whatever dark place he’s retreating into. He’s so close now, leaning forward, his hand reaching out as if compelled by some invisible force. When his fingers graze your cheek, his touch is featherlight, as though he fears you’ll vanish.

“If I could keep you here,” he whispers, his tone taking on a dreamy, almost poetic quality, “locked away from the world… I would. Not because I want to take anything from you, but because I… I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”

It’s a confession wrapped in longing, and you see the truth of it in his eyes, where constellations seem to burn just for you. There’s something about his gaze that feels eternal, as if the universe itself has handed him the task of guarding you.

“You mean a lot to me,” he says finally, each word slow and deliberate, as though he’s trying to etch them into your soul. “More than you know.”

In that moment, his love feels like an uncharted ocean—beautiful and terrifying, with depths you’re not sure you’re ready to explore. But his sincerity anchors you, and, despite the intensity of his words, you can’t help feeling safe, cocooned in the quiet power of his devotion.

(A/n: is it just me or do you guys also feel suspicious of how I could post every day despite saying I'm too lazy to do so... Maybe my laziness hasn't kicked in yet which is weird and scary considering I'm writing dis rn in front of my 10 homework activities, and yes I am doing it last minute but so what...? I'm too lazy to do all of em and rn I'm don't know what I am talking about... I love yapping but I'm a introvert does it make me a extrovert when i talk too much but not as loud? Guys I'm turning crazy, I need someone to talk to and all my best friends are busy idk why they've been busy since last week....my gf is not replying for like 20 minutes now...im going crazy. Also sorry for spamming the Batfamily tag even though it's not the content I posted, I just feel like it's more famous than the others and also idk how to tag... Though mainly because I'm scared of being a flop hehe...)

#yandere dc #yandere connor #yandere conner kent #yandere connor x reader #yandere connor kent x reader #connor kent x reader #connor x reader #yandere batfam #yandere batfam x reader #yandere batfamily #yandere batfamily x reader #yandere batman x reader #yandere batman #batfamily x reader #batfam x reader #😺– request

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aixeko · 8 months ago

Text

──────<3 MINDFUCK ༺♱༻

WEEK 4 | SINNERS SAVAGERY + APART OF @edgeray EVENT

| Synopsis | Demons linger where shadows play; in silence, hearts betray, whispers echo, and desires catch fire in the haunting depths of the night.

With every kiss, a scythe may cut, in which terror envelops one's gut; together they dance on the edge of fate, finding beauty in a love that is too late.

So let the night weave its spell, for in the dark they know so well, and though demons are whispering fright, in their twilight, the lights are ignited.

| Starring | Slasher!Arlecchino x Investigative-Psychologist!Reader

| Setting | SLASHER/SERIAL KILLER AU

| Scenario | [ ONESHOT ] SMUT Porn with plot. Long Introduction. Dark romance. Intersex Arlecchino. Manipulation. Body worship. Dacryphilia. Obsessive & sadistic Arle. Cunnilingus. Fingerfucking. Degrading & Praise Kink. Implied cannibalism. Mastrubation. Unreliable character. Female anatomy for reader, pronouns are not mentioned.

► RADIO CHANNEL [ Author note ]

⚝ TAKE OFF MY CLOTHES, OH, BLESS ME, FATHER. ⚝ Ended on a cliff hanger lmfao, I will probably expand on it since this is only ⅓ of the ideas I have for Slasher Arle. ⚝ Anyway, thank you so much to Ray for letting me participate in this event <3 Even though it’s quite late but nonetheless thank you for accepting my work as a part of your event…! ⚝ This is how I imagine Slasher Arlecchino to look like or basically arlecchino from commedia dell'arte

[ Word count: 5147 ] | Art credit: Nut_nog on Twitter | Heart divider gif

"In and every heart that is meticulously dissected by my hand has its part in orchestrating the string of fates to bring you closer to me... and further away from life, my greatest tragedy."

Those were the exact words spoken to you during a mysterious call on the very first Halloween Eve when the infamous Mirthless Harlequin made her debut as a renowned and feared killer.

Frightened citizens have declared many titles for the Mirthless Harlequin, such as The Jester who doesn't laugh, The Living Embodiment of Demons, The Surgeon, and The Heart Collector.

Yet all these titles are of little to no comparison to the true identity of the beast that lies dormant behind that twisted, sinister mask.

The muted saturation of the walls is splotched in what is most likely the victim's blood; written on it is the detail of what had transpired before the crime scene occurred, and the freshest blood drips down the wall, spelling the name of the person responsible for the attack as if in pride or apathy toward the fallen soul.

At the centre lies a chair and a small table draped in a deep velvet cloth; an organ rests atop it, the very one that would become a trademark for the killer's distorted way of leaving a mark behind. A heart, perfectly preserved with it carefully wrapped in crimson ribbons, each twist and turn creating intricate patterns that speak volumes about the attempt at humanising the organ.

Around the table, papers of various poems and photographs of the victim's missing parts were scattered across, but even with those morbid aspects, one letter in particular has caught the eyes of the world. A letter in which a cryptic note rests inside, hinting at an obsession, not towards the killing but towards the person who will, no, whom she wants to investigate and find the truth behind the "Mirthless Harlequin."

The second paragraph was quite strange, switching from the gruesome details of the first to quoting a poet and novelist for children and young adults as follows:

Walls have ears. Doors have eyes. Trees have voices. Beasts tell lies. Beware the rain. Beware the snow. Beware the man. You think you may know.

But it wasn't until the very last paragraph that you would finally choose to be the one in charge of leading the case; there your name is written repeatedly, blood surrounds it like the base of a cake, and an unknown white substance decorates it like frosting, a substance you come to identify and regret upon investigation.

A mask which you dreaded oh so much, a mask which you wanted to rip apart, and yet when that day arrived, you prayed to the Lord above to take away the sight of what lies hidden by the mask, a sight of the unmistakable face your body and soul have fallen into the grasp of.

The aroma of caffeine envelops your senses, overshadowing the aching desire to rest. Although it keeps your consciousness awake, you cannot replicate the same for your body.

Your blinks began to weigh your eyelids heavily with their slow momentum, and at any second now, you feared your body could give out on you and you would fall face-first onto the office coffee machine.

Much anticipated, your body did give out, but the harsh feeling of the appliance never came into contact with your skin; rather, a calloused yet careful hand pressed against your forehead, strong enough to prevent you from falling over.

"It's no wonder you haven't answered my messages or calls," an inviting yet foreboding voice sounds beside you. "Working overtime isn't going to earn you an easy ticket to an ongoing decade-long murder case—"

"I know, I know, you don't have to lecture me like everyone else; I have heard it about a thousand times already," you grumbled, grabbing her wrist and using it to straighten yourself before your eyes made contact with her crimson-crossed ones.

Arlecchino's eyebrows are furrowed, darkening her expression further; her eyes, which are often alluring and enigmatic due to her ability to hide the complexity of human emotions, seem to take on a more dangerous underlining.

Whatever tiredness had anchored you suddenly disappeared as she pulled your hand off hers, switching it so that she would be the one gripping your wrist. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, each second tightening the tension in the air and reflecting her thinning patience. She leaned down, her head turned to the side to whisper into your ear, but when she parted her lips, no words sounded out—a rare occasion showing the intensity of her frustration.

Her jaw clenches. "But you still refuse to listen; how can they depend on their best investigative psychologist when the one in question has not a single sane cell left to think with?" she asks, a rhetorical question you noted, but her words come out more like a growl demanding an answer.

"I am sane enough to work, and excuse me...! I didn't study my fucking ass off for nothing; I will have you know that just because I let you have your way with me so often doesn't mean I am not independent; for fuck's sake, I graduated with high honors!"

You expected her to fire back a remark rebutting your claims, seeing the twitch of her mouth, but she quickly caught you off guard when she placed her hand on your knee and held you over her shoulder.

You let out a surprised sound, instantly yelling with fisted hands coming into contact with her back in a furious retort, "ARLE! LET ME DOWN."

"Stop acting like a child; this is for your own health."

"I AM PERFECTLY HEALTHY-" Arlecchino interrupted you, her voice booming throughout the entire police department. "Healthy is a word that perfectly describes the OPPOSITE of what you are; you have been skipping your meals and overworking yourself to the point of passing out."

You tried giving your two cents, but sensing your next moves, her voice increased in volume. "I WILL be taking you back home, and you WILL have a warm bath, eat a proper meal, and go to sleep; end of statement."

Like a cowardly dog, when its owner is disappointed in it, you can only soak in annoyed silence and mumble incoherent, derogatory language that Arlecchino chooses to ignore.

Arriving at your car, Arlecchino put you down in the passenger seat, buckling your belt and closing the door for you before going to the driver's seat herself.

You turn to look at her the moment she has settled down, leaning as close to her as possible with the seat belt wrapped around you.

"Peruere-! You don't get it, Halloween Eve is coming up in a few days, which means she will be committing her 13th crime this year! Thirteen victims-!"

Arlecchino slowly turns her head to you, her facial features clearly expressionless to the naked eye, but to you, this is the most enraged you have ever seen her.

"Do you hear how insane you sound right now? You're obsessed. To think a criminal has you acting this way; I would even dare say you sound downright in love with this murderer." Arlecchino leaned in closer, and instinctively you flinched away slightly. "Don't tell me that you would prioritise your parasocial relationship with a killer over the person whom you married." Although it doesn't sound like a question, it was phrased like one by her tone.

You bite your bottom lip and slump back into your seat with an audible groan; it wasn't because you couldn't answer the question, no, far from it. If it were any normal argument between you two, then you would've easily answered no; you wouldn't choose a killer over her, your lover, but the fact that she would assume such things from you has hit a spot you never knew she could. How can she think so lowly of me to presume the worst betrayal of all, obsessive towards THAT forsaken woman? Can someone not do their job without any intent of malice anymore?! The absurdity of the situation has your head aching, to believe that it all started because you wanted to make sure no one else would die from the 'Mirthless Harlequin' anymore, all because you chose selflessness over selfishness.

The ride back home would be in complete silence as you stubbornly refuse to apologise for your actions, nor would Arlecchino stoop so low as to abandon the facts and satisfy a brat.

"I'm going to prepare your bath; don't do anything unnecessary while I'm gone."

Arlecchino has calmed down from the argument during the quiet ride back home and is rather friendly now; monetarily, she places her hand on top of your head and ruffles it as she makes her way past you.

"I'm not your kid," you groan, running your hands through your hair to fix the mess that she made.

Your lover only glanced over her shoulder with a glare, a silent threat to your words, but nothing you couldn't handle, and thus she left for your shared bedroom to prepare a bath.

You stand in the hallway, confused about what to do next as you're not usually this free; it's not that you overwork often; it's that you're often way too engaged in what you are doing. Admittedly, you couldn't really say that 1 a.m. is early, especially for most people, as they are asleep by and/or before this time. You turn around for a split moment to make sure the door is locked before you take off your shoes and place them in the wooden shoe rack.

"Might as well analyse that data report Navia gave to me earlier."

You stifle a yawn as you walk up the stairs, turning the corner into the hallway that leads to your office and shared bedroom. The quiet of the night surrounds the house with the exception of the light sound of water coming from the bedroom, a perfect blend with the soft creak of the floorboards beneath your feet.

You perk up and see the many portraits displayed across the hallway of you and Arlecchino, some of them including your friends and coworkers. For what seems like the first time in a long time, a curve is formed in the corner of your mouth.

You stand in front of your office door, eyes gazing at the portraits beside it featuring Arlecchino and you back when you first started dating one another; you still remember that day vividly. It was 12 years ago, a week before the infamous killer first appeared. Your eyes narrow slightly; what a coincidence, you think; life works in such mysterious ways, but it's still often shocking how different destinies are all tied together in the pathway of fate.

Shrugging it off, you grasp the wooden handle of the dark oak door leading to your workspace, twisting it before cracking it open slightly. Just then, a memory of the earlier argument between Arlecchino surfaces, piercing your thoughts.

"Don't tell me that you would prioritise your parasocial relationship with a killer over the person whom you married."

Now that you think about it, Arlecchino has been acting quite out of character today; when you usually have over time, she isn't as mad as she was today, but then again, you did ignore her messages and calls for almost 24 hours. However, in your utmost defence, you need to have your phone on silent mode so you won't be distracted and procrastinate. Coupled with the recent data, you and the rest of the Harlequin investigation team have been hard at work accumulating it over the last few months.

In one of the meetings discussing the various sources gathered for the infamous killer case, a single piece of evidence caught your attention: "A single white hair strand," you mumbled.

"What are you muttering about?"

A shiver runs down your spine, a moment of fear clouding your mind at the sudden sound of another voice, but you're quick to calm down once you recognize the voice belongs to none other than Arlecchino.

"Peruere..." You turn around and say, "Don't creep up on me like that again; it's scary."

Arlecchino raises an eyebrow, crossing her arms and shaking her head in disapproval. "You are standing in front of the door, mumbling incoherent words to yourself in the dark; if it were any other person, wouldn't you be considered the unsettling one?"

Blink, blink, blink. You couldn't even deny it because she's right, and the truth hangs in the air like a balloon waiting to pop.

"Arg... Whatever, forget what you heard and saw; I was thinking about work. By the way, you're done with setting up the bath, right?" You grab her hand, not waiting for a reply to lead her inside and into the bathroom.

"You wanted to bathe together?" Her voice softens, tinged with an unexpected apologetic tone for not considering this turn of events. "I'm afraid I can't; I need to prepare dinner for you since you have been eating only processed food lately, and it's detrimental to your heart."

"Ah..." A wave of embarrassment crashes over you as you realise how swiftly you had dragged her inside and assumed the fact that you would bathe together before even asking for her permission or if she was in the mood to do so in the first place. "I see... It's okay."

Seeing the flustered and disappointed undertone of your words and expression, Arlecchino devises a solution to improve your mood.

"If I am fast enough, I can join you later; is that alright with you?"

Much to your shame, you nodded way too fast for your liking, which in turn resulted in a light smirk from Arlecchino sent your way for the sudden clinginess. Her dark, tattooed hand rises and descends gently, resting on your head as she pats it lightly. The gesture is both comforting and oddly intimate, a soft reminder that you are her lover and the only one capable of seeing this side of her, seeing Peruere.

"Call me if you need anything."

"Mkay, I love you," you whisper, getting closer to the bath as you begin to take off your clothes.

"... Yes, I... love you too."

You didn't question the odd pacing of her words, assuming that she's still not used to saying those words back even after a decade of being together. The door closes with a soft click, and you're fully undressed, a sigh leaving your lips as you step foot inside the hot bath.

You allow your body to relax in the tranquil warmth of the softly cascading water, sinking deeper until only the features above your nose remain above the surface. The gentle flow conceals you whole, creating a cocoon of serenity, an occurrence that is rare for the likes of you. As you close your eyes, the world outside seems to fade away, leaving only the soothing sounds of the water and the faint echoes of your thoughts. In this moment of peacefulness, you allow yourself to let go of all the things that have weighed you down, allowing comfort to wash them away and ground you in a sense of much-needed peace.

Your thoughts linger on what food Arlecchino will be making for you, how pleasant her skin would feel against yours right now, and the upcoming Halloween Eve.

"A single white hair strand? How do I know this isn’t some sort of ploy she set up?” You question Navia, arms crossed in a vice-like grip, as you analyse the hair under the microscope. “Is it fake hair or from a doll?”

"Haha, it's simple, Dr. Snezhevna, because she herself stated in this letter that the hair strand belongs to her,” Navia replies, her tone steady and amused as she watches your demeanour shift dramatically upon seeing the familiar letter in her hand.

An audible groan escapes your lips as you snatch the letter and another from the pile of letters dedicated to the killer to compare the heart stamp and writing styles. As you read, the distinct vocabulary matches flawlessly, with not a single difference between her signature stamp and her writing style, confirming she deliberately left her own DNA behind.

“This woman genuinely pisses me off... Does she think I’m a fool? Or is she that cocky to be under the impression we aren't capable of matching her information with our extensive network database?”

Navia lets out a light chuckle, leaning back in her chair and looking drastically more relaxed than you do.

“I’ve heard Commander Wriothesley uncovered that the fresh blood she uses to spell out her name contains a secret, obscure code imprinted onto it and that it doesn't belong to the victims, though we don't know exactly who it belongs to as of now.”

“Seriously?! God forbid this damn criminal gives me a break!” you exclaim, frustration bubbling over. “The day I finally catch her, I’m going to give her a piece of my damn mind, alright.”

You open your eyes and rise from the water, leaning back against the bath as you take a deep exhale.

"Who are you, and why am I the one you desire so much...?" You said aloud to yourself, your mind foggy with the jester again, easily shattering the peaceful atmosphere that had settled around you.

"Who am I?" Arlecchino's voice echoes throughout the bathroom, causing you to yelp at the unexpected sound.

"Peruere...! Do you seriously have to always randomly creep up on me?!" You turn to face her, your heart racing as you look up at her with displeasure.

"It is not I who am the problem, but it is you who lack awareness, darling; I called your name countless times, and you keep muttering to yourself as always."

Oh.

"Ah, oh, my apologies... hm, wait, are you already finished with cooking? How long have I been here...?" you ask, looking down at your reflection in the water with much shame before raising your hands from under to see the pruney fingers caused by your prolonged exposure to aqua.

"Less than half an hour, the food has already been brought up; you can go and eat right now if you want."

"But—" you tried protesting since you still wanted to bathe with her, but, as always, she read you so easily and responded before you could even get a sentence out.

"We have an eternity before us; you should eat first lest you want an upset stomach, and you should also begin getting ready for bed."

"Sigh, if you say so," you stand up from the bathtub, the warm water dripping from your skin as you reach for the towel hanging beside the tub, wrapping it around yourself snugly. You glance at Arlecchino with a small smile that then turns into a smirk. "You should keep the door open while you're washing up."

As expected, the teasing remark made little to no effect on her, and you're left with her staring at you, unamused.

"So bland, my love, you could have faked your expression or agreed for my sake."

You leave the room with a laugh, and as you take in the sight before you, you can't help the soft smile that replaces the smug smirk that had once dominated your features moments ago. Clothes carefully selected for your comfort and a perfect amount of portion for you to relish are laid out before you on your shared bed; what a thoughtful soulmate you have, you mentally acknowledge.

You lie contentedly inside the soft blankets, the light of the waning moon illuminating your features through the window, painting your face in its most desired parts. You sink further inside, your body never wanting to leave this paradisiacal space; yet likewise, life often works against you, and a notification causes you to straighten yourself grudgingly.

Who would be texting you this late is your initial thought, but the moment your eyes land on the unknown caller who has sent you a voicemail, you nearly drop your phone. Rapidly, you scan the room for the calendar, completely forgetting the phone in your hand has a built-in one, and your heart nearly drops as you realise it's the 29th. Two days before Halloween Eve and two days before the woman strikes again. Another unfortunate soul is soon to fall victim to a killer whose identity is yet to be known aside from her details as a woman with a jester-like appearance.

Shakily, you search for your earbuds and pair them to your phone upon retrieval before you open voicemail and press on the recently sent one. A chill runs down your spine at the sound of the familiar voice beginning to talk to you.

"In the ticking shadows where time slips away, a hero stands tall yet fears the fray.

With every heartbeat, the clock's cruel hand counts down the moments that they both understand.

Time is a thief, relentless and cold.

As you chase the thrill, the stories unfold.

Yet in this chaos, a bond begins to bloom.

Two souls entwined in the depths of doom.

A hero and a villain, bound by a thread.

In the twilight of choices, where both may tread.

The dawn of your death is arriving, my dearest angel. I await the day we shall personally introduce one another, which happens to be only two days from now."

Tsk. You clutch the phone in your hand, slumping back onto the mattress with a hand over your eyes. How frustrating it is to be haunted by someone who is seemingly untraceable, and now you have suddenly received confirmation on who the next victim will be, which conveniently enough happens to be you. You feel calm; you look relaxed, yet internally, you would be lying to yourself if you said you weren't terrified of what would happen to you on that fateful day.

You didn't realise you had been crying until Arlecchino's gentle hands brushed away the tears that streamed down your cheeks in quietude.

"Peruere..." You murmured, the sudden feeling of everything around you crashing down.

You removed your hands from your vision and wrapped them around her waist, pulling her close as you began to sob uncontrollably; the warmth of her body brought comfort to what was left of you. Your lover didn't say anything, opting to keep silent until moments later when the clock struck two.

"She's going to kill you on Halloween Eve," Arlecchino said eerily and softly.

You froze in place, the tears continuing to fall unchecked, but the moment she uttered those words, something sounded incredibly hard to swallow; you had worn earbuds the entire time to prevent her from hearing the voicemail, and there was not a soul who could have heard the message aside from you and the sender, the killer herself.

"But how did you know...?"

Arlecchino looked at you like you were a lost dog, and without many words, she shook her head in yet more disappointment. "Why else would you be crying? It's an obvious assumption based on how you have been acting as of late, the sudden unease, overworking for the past month, and your muttering about some sort of finding."

Right, right, of course, that's correct; how foolish and frightful of you to think beyond the possibilities.

"Ahaha... Of course, I'm sorry, Peruere... I just need to relax; I am just... so scared. I have never felt such fear before, you know."

Arlecchino stared down into your glistening eyes in wordless moments, a long and slow pause of lifelong connection and understanding passing within those time frames. Slowly, she leaned down, her movements calculated and gentle, as if afraid to break your already fragile body.

Like second nature, your hands subconsciously trail her barely dry body to the nape of her neck, enveloping it and pulling her cooler frame to your warmer one.

Her gaze remained locked on yours, searching for the discomfort and fear lingering in your soul and how she, as your lover, could dissolve those worries into mindless tranquillity.

"Whatever happens," she whispered, her voice a sultry murmur in your ears, "you're not alone."

Multiple kisses follow those words, a few on the right side of your jawline to the left side, one here and there on your neck, and lastly on your collarbone, where she's blocked by the fabric of your shirt.

Simultaneously, Arlecchino pulls the cover off you and runs a hand through your hair, pushing back the strands that have obscured your beautiful features for her hungry eyes to feast on.

"Let me take care of you, little dove."

At the sound of the slight neediness in her raspy tone and that insatiable stare, you could feel a knot forming in your stomach and an aching feeling below it. You couldn't bring yourself to trust your own words, so, choosing the best possible option, you consented to her request with a nod.

Usually, the woman would say something about the lack of vocalisation, but today the air was of a different flavour because she took no time lifting your shirt just above your breasts.

She peppered kisses on every inch of your perfect imperfection, savouring the delicious taste of your body in her mouth; oh, how she wished she could devour it all.

"Peruere... please," you plead, desperate to cloud your mind with her rather than your impending doom.

"Patience," Arlecchino enunciated, her salivating tongue trailing your body but avoiding the part where you desire her the most.

Your impatience overwhelms you, and your hand goes to grip her wet hair, pulling her upward to your hardened nipples. In a weak attempt for her to fasten her pace, you let out a pathetic, whiny plea.

Through lidded eyes, her pupils direct to your face a prideful, almost invisible smirk that flashes on her lips at the sight of you breaking apart under her feathery touch.

"I have barely touched you, sweetheart, and here you are," Arlecchino pressed her knee directly on your clothed vagina, causing you to shamefully moan, "so eager for me."

Her hot mouth latches onto the right side of your perky nipple, making sure to give the left one the same attention by pinching it with her thumb and forefinger. A gasp is involuntarily ushered out of your lips, followed by more pleas for her to continue her relentless assault.

Pitying you this time, Arlecchino's pull at the hem of your pants causing a short cry of pain to be released from you and an unexpected whimper at the feel of the icy air against your womanhood.

"Naughty girl, such innocent looks but such perverted thoughts; you're already this wet," the tip of Arlecchino's finger touches your clitoral area. "And I haven't even started."

The slow progress of her foreplay obliterated to nothingness as she forcefully thrust two colossal fingers inside your aching cunt. A high-pitched scream pierced the room, but it would not be long until you were silenced by her mouth.

"How... adorable," Arlecchino groaned in between kisses, her eyes wide open to observe every twitch and change in your lascivious expression.

Like a starving animal, Arlecchino wanted more; she needed more, she craved more, and in a split moment of lost control, she decided to satiate her desire for your addictive melodies. Thus, she pulled away from your lips, increasing her speed and slipping in a third finger as your pussy morphed and fit her fingers like a puzzle piece.

You bite your lips, trying to muffle your sound as she plunges faster and deeper into you, and of course, this doesn't go unnoticed by her because how dare you try to get rid of the sound she's craving so much?

She manoeuvred you into a more advantageous position, pulling your legs over her shoulders, thrusting into the deepest part of your cunt, and rubbing your clitoris furiously with her thumb all the while she got to enjoy your pleasurable sounds up close.

"Good girl, fuck... just like that, sounds so good for me; you're so close, aren't you, doll?"

Arlecchino's hand comes to latch itself onto your hair, pulling it with satisfaction as an ominous grin creeps its way onto her once monotonic features. Her eyes seemingly take on a deeper vermilion hue at your face, filled pathetically with pleasure and fat with tears in those precious, mindless gazes.

"MMPH-AH," pant, pant, pant. "Don't stop! Fuck, fuck, fuck! I'm so close...! AH! PERUERE—"

Your back arches off the bed, eyes rolling back as you see a distorted reality comparable to that of heaven; so much pleasure and so much energy are used that the next thing you know, you are passed out on the bed while Arlecchino licks your cunt clean.

Arlecchino's thumb swipes over your lip in a tender touch, eyes scanning your serene sleeping form, and contrasting with the loving touch is a sinister grin spread across her features, a mix of admiration for her work of art and something darker that dances in her eyes during the dead of the night.

Her hand trails down to the aching bulge that's imprisoned in her pants as she studies the rise and fall of your chest. She pulls her hardened cock out, rubbing the leaking precum all over the base of her length like it is lubrication.

For a moment, she allows herself to bask in the sight of you all peaceful and unaware, completely vulnerable in your deep slumber. A mix of a moan and a groan sounds from her lips as she moves up and down her enraged member, the corners of her mouth curling higher as she considers the delicate line between protector and predator, each heartbeat echoing the thrill of the beautifully unknown night.

"Sweet dreams," she whispered, her words laced with a playful edge that held secrets only the abyssal night could understand. She masturbated faster, her climax coming quicker than she expected, but not one that was unappreciated. She pulled back slightly, that sinister grin never leaving her swollen lips, an unsettling mixture of warmth and foreboding in the stillness of the atmosphere.

She switched the same hand that was used to fuck you senseless to her mouth, and effectively, she came as she tasted your arousing scent and ejaculated all over you soon after.

A satisfied enough sigh emanates from her, opting to settle down on top of your chest after calming down from her high to feel the sound of your heartbeat against her ear. The smile that seemed to stretch endlessly expanded at the thought of your heart in her hand, devouring her mind. Soon enough, the beating of your heart shall be in her hands for her to safeguard until it can no longer pulsate without its host.

"My greatest tragedy."