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pascalispretty · 2 months

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each man's mad desire

General Marcus Acacius x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Marcus Acacius is a conqueror. You invite him to conquer you.

Word Count: 3.8k

Tags: marcus fucks a nymph, predator/prey, knifeplay, blood, thigh riding, rough sex, sorta consensual-non-consent? Reader very explicitly wants him and invites him to hunt her down. Marcus has an unfashionably huge dick.

A/N: I swore I wasn't going to write for another character from an unreleased film, yet here we are. I loved studying Classics, so there are easter eggs within for those familiar with mythology. "Nymph" is more Greek than Roman, but it's also the better-known version of the word. Barcinus is a completely made-up cognomen for him (from the Latin name for Barcelona). Ichor is a Greek concept, but too delicious not to borrow here. Big dicks really were considered unattractive - it was a sign of barbarism to have a big penis. Title from Book IX of The Aeneid. Painting is 'The Charmer' by John William Waterhouse. (ao3)

The battle is won, the men are settled, and General Marcus Acacius is restless. He wears the efforts of the day in the blood and grime and sand coating his skin, the ache in his muscles. The city is retaken. The barbarians have been slaughtered or captured. He knows he should rest.

And yet, he wanders.

The camp is close by the beach. As he walks, the sound of the army behind him fades away, drowned out by the sound of the sea. The inviting aroma of the campfires and roasting meat is replaced by the smell of salt. There are sentries out here, somewhere in the night. He pays them no mind; he wishes to be alone. Grass turns to sand underfoot and still Acacius walks on. At the edge of the sea, he pauses briefly.

Across the Great Sea, to the east, stands Rome. It’s veiled by darkness and distance, but he turns to look for it anyway. He misses it the way a loyal son misses a beloved father. Word of a great victory will travel before him, the whispers moving faster than any army can.

When he returns home, he hopes he will be warmly welcomed. Those seeking to ride his skirts into Imperial favour will doubtless fall over themselves to praise him, at least. They will preen and flatter, and he will nod humbly and thank them.

“The Gods were with me.” It is always his answer, when asked of his victories. It is a clean answer. Men praise him for his piety; they do not imagine the lives he has sacrificed, the atrocities he has committed, the horrors of sacking a city. The Gods were with him; he does not have to speak of loosing his men like feral dogs upon innocents, of slaughtering barbarian sons so they cannot grow up to seek their vengeance on Rome.

Acacius turns and walks down the beach, leaving the camp behind him. The silvery light of the stars and moon light his path along the coast. He simply enjoys being away from all others, the crash of the waves and his own footsteps the only noise he can hear. The ground to his right begins to rise, soft grass yielding to rock. He has no sense of how long he has walked for when the beach before him suddenly ends. The shoreline curves sharply inward, creating a rocky inlet.

He has no desire to turn back now. Perhaps the path reemerges on the other side. He follows the curve of the stone inward. Ahead, he can see the path sloping down towards the waterline, leading towards the dark mouth of a cave. The tide is coming in; the water at the entrance to the grotto must be at least knee-deep.

Acacius is turning to leave when he notices her.

The inlet in the rock forms a pool at the entrance to the cave. Even in the silvery moonlight, the water looks beautiful and clear. It should not surprise him that a maiden might come to bathe there, away from prying eyes.

For it is a maiden that stops him in his tracks, fixes his boots to the stone. Her back is turned to him; she is perched atop a rock, her bare feet dangling in the saltwater of the pool. Now that he is aware of her, he thinks he hears her singing over the sounds of the waves, a melody he does not recognise.

An honourable man would depart. Acacius can only see her back, but she must be noble. Her dress is so white it is almost blinding, even in the starlight. Her feet are bare, but he spies a pair of finely-wrought sandals on the rocks beside her. Certainly a noble lady then.

His mind is made up to leave.

And at that very moment, she turns.

***

You had not expected to be discovered. Perhaps you might have toyed with him if you had. You could have disguised yourself as a maiden in need of assistance, a princess cast ashore by a shipwreck. There are endless amusements to be found among the mortals.

Yet he has stumbled upon your grotto quite by accident, and from your first glimpse, he intrigues you.

Marcus Acacius Barcinus.

Something whispers his name to you; you know it as soon as you see him, just as you know he has dark hair threaded with grey. You allow a smile to play on your lips.

To his credit, this man does not move. Confronted with something so nakedly celestial, other men have lost their minds. What is it for a man to look upon the face of the divine? They do not always survive it. This one seems strong. He may yet survive you.

“Hail, noble General,” you start, turning in your seat on the rock so you may face him more directly. He is a handsome one. His lovely dark eyes drink you in from head to toe.

“You know me?” He manages after a moment. Not mad then, not yet anyway. You laugh, and he seems startled by the sound.

“I do.” Sliding off the rock you step into the water, your stola clinging to your skin. “General Marcus Acacius Barcinus, son of Gaius Acacius. Your piety is known.” He is always attentive with his sacrifices. You can smell the burning flesh and spilled wine dedicated to the heavens from here, in honour of his latest victory.

You take a few steps towards him. He’s still atop the rocky crest, almost looking down on you. You near the base of the slope, your skirts drying the moment they leave the water, and halt again. The mouth of the grotto is to your back; you can hear the lap of the waves echoing against the rocky walls.

“And which noble goddess do I have the honour of addressing?” He asks. You have many names, too many to sift through. A mortal wrote you into a poem once; you give him the name the poet gave you.

“I had not thought ever to look upon a nymph before.” There is something in the way he says it; a tone of disbelief colouring his voice. It’s as though he expects to wake up in his tent at any moment. In the dark violet light of twilight, the blood on his skin looks brown and rusty. You can almost taste the iron on the air.

“Are you content merely to look?” You ask him, a sly smile on your lips. You already know he is not. This man is a conqueror, and he is looking at you with all the intensity and desire of a man set upon conquest. He does not speak for a long moment. Perhaps he is afraid of offending you, of saying the wrong thing and finding himself transformed into a pig or sea foam.

You walk a little closer to him, emerging from the water. Closer now, the smell of him drowning out the salt of the sea. He reeks of man, of blood and sweat and such pure vitality you nearly stagger. He’s so breathtakingly alive. If all mortal men are thus, you understand why your sisters seek them out and take them to bed, even bear their children.

“I admire a man who knows how to take what he desires. A conqueror in all things,” you continue, feeling the warmth of his gaze as he watches the sway of your hips. Once you are an arm’s length away from him, you reach out. You cannot help it. He’s such a marvellous specimen of manhood, the kind that ought to be honoured with a kingdom or a divine son or his form traced in the stars.

He does not stop you when you rest your palm against the leather of his cuirass. It’s warm to the touch, whether from the heat of his body or a day of the sun beating down upon it. The black leather has a gilded woman’s face across the front; Minerva perhaps. It gives you pause. If he values Minerva and her strategies above Mars and his frenzy, he may not enjoy your games.

Nevertheless, you will not let the tastes of mortal men unnerve you. He watches you as you undo the knot at one shoulder, and wordlessly reaches to help you. Together, the two of you free him from his heavy armour. As he sets it down gently against the rock, you nearly choke on him. You can hear the thrum of his heart, smell the salt of his sweat, the iron in his blood.

You have never starved. Yet this conqueror of men is like being blessed with a feast and realising for the first time that you have been dying of hunger all your life. Freed from his heavy leathers, you step so closely to him that your glimmering white dress brushes against his filthy red tunic. You reach out to cup his jaw, enjoying the way his skin feels to your touch.

He swallows thickly, his lovely eyes searching your face.

“I want you.” He says it simply, though you know it must have taken courage. Men have died for such insults before. You let a smile curl around your lips.

“Mars himself had my maidenhead. I do not submit easily to the advances of men.” Standing on tiptoe, you lean in until your lips nearly touch the shell of his ear. “If you want me, you will have to take me.”

It’s all the prompting you give him before you turn and run.

You run down the beach, back the way he came. You have more powerful kin who could outrun him with ease, if they chose. Minerva could be a continent away in moments, if she chose. You do not have their same powers; you might be fleeter of foot than a mortal woman, but you cannot transform yourself into a swan and fly back to the heavens.

Behind you, you hear Acacius’ feet pounding against the sand. The noise blurs with the roar of his heartbeat, thumping harder as he chases you. You run faster, pulling your skirts up with one hand so they cannot tangle around your legs. It has been far too long since you felt this exhilarated. Off in the distance, you can see the lights of his camp, the torches and bonfires burning brightly in the twilight.

You lose yourself to the chase, paying the distance no mind as you race down the beach. Sand flies up beneath your bare feet, gritty under your toes as you run. Something in you wants to turn around, to see if the handsome general is still close behind you. You can hear him well enough to know he is behind you, but not well enough to gauge the distance.

You don’t look. You only run.

Even though you had invited the hunt, desperately hoping to be caught, the hand that catches your waist surprises you. He seizes you by the waist and tackles you into the sand, pinning you beneath his muscular bulk. The feeling of being trapped sends a perverse thrill racing through you, something warm stirring in your belly.

Though he has caught you, you do not give in so easily.

You thrash underneath him, trying to throw him off you. Acacius is unyielding. His large hands grip your arms; his knees squeeze at your sides. You get one arm free and bring it up. You’re not sure what you intend to do; you don’t want to break him. Scratch him, perhaps? You never get the chance to find out.

Before you see him move, he seizes your arm and pins your wrist beneath his foot. One hand flies to your throat; the other draws a dagger from its sheath and holds the point against the swell of your breast.

For a long moment, you cannot breathe. The large hand at your throat squeezes just enough to threaten a loss of air. The foot on your wrist makes the delicate bones there grind together on just the right side of pleasure-pain. And oh, the blade at your heart. The tip pierces your skin and you don’t know whether to scream or cry or vomit from the shock.

You have never been so still in your life.

When has anything mortal ever pierced your skin? When has anything mortal managed to cut through the skin of your kith and kin? You have vague memories; bandaging Mars’ side after the great spearman Diomedes struck him outside Ilium. You watch in horror and awe as a bead of ichor seeps from the pinprick wound. Mars has made you bleed before, but you never thought a mortal might draw your glittering, golden blood.

You look up at him, your conqueror. He is panting hard, but his face shows no exhaustion; only determination. His eyes are nearly black with desire, and his lovely black and grey curls are damp with sweat. Gods, you want him. You want him to hunt you down as he would a deer, to throw you down and take you like some common mortal whore.

Watching you closely, Acacius eases his grip on your throat. A man used to gauging the weakness of his enemies has seen right through you in turn. He knows you do not need air to breathe. He knows he has done something astounding in the knife at your breast. He holds it steady as he reaches beneath the skirts of his tunic, pulling at the strings of his underthings. He pulls it free with a grunt and discards it beside you in the sand.

Free from its confinement, his manhood pushes against the skirt of his tunic. Something low in your belly twists in anticipation, slick coating the insides of your thighs. Your blood feels as though it’s boiling beneath your skin as Acacius grips the fine cloth of your stola in one filthy hand.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes upon,” he tells you, in all sincerity. You tremble underneath him as he pushes your skirts up around your waist, another bead of ichor welling up around the tip of the blade.

You gasp as the metal shifts, and his eyes flick to your face. Almost lovingly, his hand wraps around your throat again.

“Do you yield?” When no reply is immediately forthcoming, he presses his advantage. The hand at your throat and foot at your wrist push harder; more glittering blood beads at your breast. The surface tension finally breaks, sending the blood dripping down towards your neck.

“I yield.” In an instant, he relaxes his hold. The foot on your wrist disappears, as does the blade. The hand on your throat remains, tipping your head up so he can kiss you. He kisses like his master, Mars; hard and demanding. You return the kiss with bruising intensity, nipping at his lower lip. It seems only fair that you make him bleed a little, in turn.

His beard prickles against your skin, and you answer it by sliding your hand into his curls and pulling roughly. Acacius groans against your mouth, crushing himself closer to you and forcing your legs apart with his knee. His muscular thigh presses against your bare cunt, the pressure sending liquid fire dancing through your body. You rut up against his thigh eagerly, your slick smearing against his skin.

Acacius notices your movements, breaking off the kiss to stare at you. The raw lust in his eyes makes you keep going, rocking your hips desperately against him. His thigh flexes between your legs, and you groan loudly. Without taking his eyes off you, his hand drifts to cup your breast, tantalisingly close to the tiny wound on your unblemished skin.

“Are you going to stab me again, slayer of men?” You ask him, tauntingly. You wouldn’t mind if he did.

“No, dear mistress. I’ll watch you debase yourself on my thigh.” Oh, you want to keep him. Your sisters have kept mortals before; you remember well the fuss around sweet Hylas, cunning Ulysses. Your conqueror finds your nipple through the fine material of your dress, the flesh stiffening beneath his fingers as he toys with you.

Your hips roll easier, faster as you sink deeper into your pleasure. Every glide becomes slicker as you soak his skin. It’s been some time since you’ve so blatantly sought your own pleasure, and you welcome it back eagerly. That familiar tension is coiling tightly in your belly and sends you spiralling higher with every movement.

Acacius watches you with fascination. His own pleasure is forgotten for the moment, though you suppose he is enjoying this. Something divine rubbing against him like a cat in heat; no man alive would believe him if he told them. Your breath comes in short, sharp gasps and you clutch at Acacius’ wrist to ground yourself. He’s so solid and warm to your touch; his vitality is unlike any aphrodisiac you have ever known.

It’s not long before you come with a cry, your nails digging into Acacius’ skin as you shudder against him. The fire in your belly burns through you, the heat of it radiating out to your fingertips. It leaves you boneless beneath your conqueror. He seizes the advantage, pulling your legs wider apart to slot his other leg between them.

You struggle. Why not? It amuses you to make him manhandle you into place. He pulls your legs wider with one hand. With the thumb of the hand at your breast, he presses just below the cut. The burst of pain makes you hiss. Cowed, you let him pull your legs apart, his eyes feasting on your cunt. You must look a mess, swollen and soaked.

Acacius lets go of your leg and pulls up the hem of his tunic. He’s big, unfashionably so for his countrymen. Beads of fluid leak from the reddened tip, and he swipes them away with his thumb. He settles himself between your thighs, and you gasp when he notches the blunt head of his cock against your entrance. Without warning or reprieve, he forces his cock inside you.

You throw your head back against the sand, stars exploding against your closed eyelids as you dance along the knife edge of pleasure and pain. A deep groan rumbles out of Acacius’ throat as he presses deeper, working against your tight muscles to seat himself within you. He’s unrelenting, his length thick and twitching as it fills you.

There’s no other word for it; you wail up at the star-strewn sky, pleasure flooding through you. Your body feels too small to contain the fire being stoked inside you, deep in your core. You pull at Acacius, nails clawing, dragging him down to kiss you. His lips meet yours in a messy crash, all tongues and teeth as he finally seats himself fully within you.

He barely allows you a moment to adjust. He retreats almost fully, his cock nearly leaving you completely, before sliding back in with one fluid stroke of his hips. You’re shaken by how willingly your body accepts him, colouring any pain with so much pleasure you barely notice the discomfort. His hand finds your throat again, squeezing just enough to make you feel lightheaded.

Acacius’ incursions become sharper, harder, as he finds his rhythm. Your hands slide under the hem of his tunic to clutch at his back, your nails leaving behind tiny red crescents in his skin. Every breath you take is shared by him, your mouths so close together you can taste the wine lingering on his tongue. The two of you move together, your moans melting into one another as you fuck like animals in the sand.

It doesn’t take him long to send you over the edge again. Bliss wipes all words from your mind; you can only lie there and let your release crash over you. The ichor in your veins feels like it’s singing. Acacius looks down on you in awe, and it only drives you higher. You want to keep him. The Heroic Age is too far past; the world is lacking for heroes. Perhaps you and Acacius can make a few; handsome, strong boys, half-god children who reflect their father’s divine favour.

“Would you give me sons, Acacius?” You ask, breathless at his onslaught. Your foreheads are pressed together still; you cannot see the look on his face. He groans sharply, his hands clutch tighter at you. Is that a yes? What greater blessing to a pious man than a son born to a goddess.

He certainly shows no signs of stopping. He fucks you with the same vigour he fights with. You feel like you’re floating, high above your own body, lost completely to pleasure. Jupiter himself could command you to stop, and you’d be unable to obey. You grow restless beneath him. His hand has slackened around your throat, so you lean down to lick a line across his neck. The taste of salt and iron explodes across your tongue, so delicious that you have to force yourself not to sink your teeth in.

Acacius grunts above you, forcing you back down against the sand. His hips are stuttering; a sign that he’s close to his own release. You want to cry, want to prolong this as much as possible, but you know he has limits. Your sisters have pushed mortal men too far before; you will not make the same mistake, not with so delicious a playmate.

Instead you spur him on. Your nails dig harder into his back, making him groan sharply. His short, desperate thrusts make your eyes roll back into your skull as he touches something deep and private within you, unknown to anyone else.

“I- I must-” He starts, words failing him as he chases his release. You pepper his face with kisses, nip at his kiss-swollen lips.

“You must,” you agree. “I want you to fill me up.” You’re both breathless, barely any air between your bodies to breathe. One of your hands slides into his curls, pulling at them. You guide his head down until your lips are at his ear again.

“I could give you a son,” you whisper. “But only if you finish inside me. Claim me; mark me as yours. Conquer me.”

He tips over the edge with a loud groan, his hips stuttering as he comes. You can feel his cock twitch inside you as he does, filling you with his seed. Perhaps something might catch; he seems virile enough. You cradle his head against the crook of your neck as he catches his breath, his body heavy as he relaxes on top of you.

“Noble Acacius,” you murmur fondly, stroking his curls. “Marcus. What do you make of your new conquest?” He is quiet for a long moment. The crash of the waves fills the silence, the tide drawing closer. Soon, the two of you will have to move.

“I shall never know another victory like it.”

Taglist:

Tagging some people who might be interested: @iamasaddie (per their request for Acacius filth) @avengersfan25 @misscharlielulu @apenny4thots @its-nebuleuse

#general marcus acacius #marcus acacius #marcus acacius x reader #marcus acacius fanfiction #gladiator 2

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signedkoko · 7 months

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Signed with Love - Overlords & Sins

What is this? - A valentines gift to my lovely readers! Its valentines/love letters from your favourites 🖤

Series Parts Hazbin Cast - Here! Helluva Cast - Here!

Dear to the dearest,

You've always got me running myself sappy, but I'd like to offer my hand to you this valentines.

You know how popular Ozzie's is on Valentines, so how about a nice spot for brunch and then we pick a song to perform together tonight? Just you and I on stage, surrounded by people who wish they had what we do~

Eagerly awaiting your reply,

Prince of Lust, and yours forever;

Asmodeus

Heya lovely!

I'm so fucking excited to be spending valentines with you this year, and I don't say it enough so here it is in writing!

Normally I throw a party but I don't know, I kinda rocked with the galentines dinner you suggested, I'm thinking we invite some of our closest and have a hell of a good night, yeah?

You're the only party that matters,

Your Queenie Bee🐝

Mi vida,

I think it's about time we get away from work and the girls, how about we take valentines off?

I've always wanted to show you some of the places I used to frequent, since you always ask it only seems fair. I'm sure you'll adore the cuisine, I miss it dearly.

I'll help you get ready before we leave,

C. Carmine

Sup hottie!

How about we ditch my valentines show and leave it to the performers to take care of shit? I much rather be with ya anyways.

Anything you want, just tell me. I'll take care of everything from there babe.

Love ya more than you know,

MAMMON

Sweetest darling,

I reckon its about time I follow my own advice and pursue the one I love this valentines.

We can take a break from everything and go sight seeing! I don't get away from the town much, but everything you tell me sounds exquisite. We can go somewhere with a nice tune and I can really show you how I used to swing!

What do you say?

Your Rosie

Querida cariño,

Theres no reason for me to ask what I already know, and I don't want to hear another valentines joke about my name.

I know work has kept me busy babe, but this Valentines its just you and I. We can laze around all you want or you can drag me wherever, I'll make sure we get in.

Like a moth to a flame, eh?

Val.

Heya gorgeous,

Ive got two outfits in our sizes that could use a little test drive around town this valentines.

Already booked the photographer, so I hope you'll come model with me for my end february magazine, yeah? If you do a good job we can do dinner and drinks after, though you've never disappointed me, dolly!

You know I love you, always have & will

Velvette

Hope you're doing well, angel

You always joke that I can't write for shit so heres proof. In fact, I'm here to ask you to be my valentine.

I already know its a yes anyway, so how about I let you in on the itinerary? I got breakfast at the local spot booked with live music, an afternoon just the two of us, and for dinner I have our main reservation and a backup in case you don't like it.

Romantic or what?

Owner & CEO of VoxTek, Beloved valentine of you, Vox

Greetings,

Tis with great pleasure that thou is still by thine side after such an overwhelming year.

We must beg thou has considered indulging such an old soul in an evening of romance. Perhaps thou would dare to consider looking upon their bed, for there lays a gift.

Yours affectionately and forevermore,

Authors Note - Who are you expecting a letter from? Who will you accept? I'd love to know! Heres to another part of the valentine sseries 🖤

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astrophileous · 1 year

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Every Single Day

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female Reader

Synopsis: When his daughter demands him to tell the story of how the two of you met, Spencer can't help but oblige.

Warning(s): dad spencer🥰, established relationship (eventually), parent-child relationships, alcohol consumption, brief interaction with a douchebag, made-up astronomy facts, made-up places, idk if there's any cursing but I'll throw it in here to be safe, implications of sex and nsfw themes (minors be advised), pregnancy, mentions of illness, mentions and/or implications of character death, topics of loss and grief, angst and fluff because I love the best of both worlds👍 (pls lmk if I missed anything)

Word Count: 7700-ish

Author's Note: hi 👋 I'm back again with another dad!spencer fic bc apparently I'm a sucker for him. I got a lil carried away with this one lol but anyways, I'm also writing this for the meet cute challenge hosted by the amazing and talented @imagining-in-the-margins so pls go head to her profile and show some love cause she's a peach ❤️ don't forget to leave a LIKE+COMMENT+REBLOG

Criminal Minds Masterlist

The air smelled of freshly brewed coffee. Against the wind, shades of crimson and orange swayed on the trees. Fallen leaves crunched underneath his feet to the cadence of his leisured steps.

Two deep breaths, in and out. Spencer Reid greeted autumn with the deep longing of an old friend.

Next to him walked a source of light bigger than the sun, jumping and bouncing excitedly on the sidewalk. Her tiny fingers emitted warmth inside of his hand. There was a skip to her step that reminded him of the innocence he had long lost. The innocence she now possessed.

Spencer loved this little girl beyond everything he had ever known.

"Puddle, Dee."

The tiny bundle of joy jumped to escape the small pool of water, grinning up at her father, who then began ruffling her hair until she evaded his onslaught with a shriek.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Pumpkin?"

"You never told me how you met Mommy."

Spencer glanced down at the 6-year-old, dressed gorgeously in her favorite floral dress, complete with a sweater that had entailed a hearty discussion about humans' perception of cold. It was only after he bribed her with the promise of a chocolate cupcake from Wakey Bakey did Spencer finally convince her to wear the woolen piece of clothing.

His daughter stared at him with a radiant smile peeking out behind a curtain of hair. A smile which Spencer always argued had belonged to you, even though the rest of Diana Aurora Reid was the splitting image of her beloved father.

"Surely I've told you before, Dee."

"Nuh-uh."

"Of course I have."

"No, Daddy. You haven't."

"Pumpkin, you know I don't forget stuff ever," Spencer said, looking at the little girl who was swaying along to the rhythm of her footsteps. "I used to tell you that story all the time. Back when you were still a baby."

Just as predicted, Diana let out a dramatic gasp as if Spencer had uttered the most offensive thing known to mankind; like claiming the earth was actually flat, for example. Spencer couldn't contain his grin upon seeing her reaction.

"But Daddy, that was so long ago!"

"Do you not remember, Dee?"

Diana shook her head.

"Fine. But Mommy must've told you the story already, right?"

"She has, but--"

"But?"

"But I wanna hear it from you."

Little Diana knew that her father could never resist her puppy dog eyes, especially garnished with that adorable pout on top. Once upon a time, you declared it sickeningly cute and annoying whenever Spencer would pull the same trick on you. When Dee started doing the same to him, you had simply laughed and kissed his cheek, letting him get a sweet taste of his own medicine.

Spencer smiled at the young girl next to him, squeezing her nose and relishing in the gleeful squeal that echoed from her chest.

"What do you wanna hear, Pumpkin?"

Diana held her chin, seemingly deep in contemplation before deciding, "Everything, Dad! I wanna hear it from the start."

"The start, huh?" Spencer hummed thoughtfully, his mind already reeling back to the first moment he ever laid eyes on you.

The story began on yet another ordinary Friday night.

Luck was on the BAU's side when the team managed to wrap the case they had been working all week just before Friday afternoon. By the time the sun was setting, their jet was already high up in the sky, en route from the state of Delaware to Quantico, Virginia. Spencer was looking forward to going home at a reasonable hour for once--maybe catching up on the four reading materials he had promptly pushed aside after his team was called to Delaware to work on the latest case--but that plan dissipated when Derek Morgan suddenly appeared by his side.

"Drinks. Tonight. Everyone's coming, and I'm not taking no for an answer," Derek said before dragging a reluctant Spencer away with him, ignoring the protests that the younger man kept grumbling under his breath all the way to the team's favorite bar.

Spencer just hadn't known it yet, but later down the road, he would spend the rest of eternity thanking Derek Morgan for dragging him along that night.

The Friday night crowd at Shaw's was borderline brutal, but fortunately for the team, a booth in the corner became vacant the moment they stepped into the threshold.

Two hours later, Spencer's fellow teammates weren't even close to calling it a night. The last chorus of "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" by Whitney Houston had just finished blasting from the speakers when Derek sauntered back to the booth, twirling a flushed Penelope Garcia in front of him. Spencer slipped out of the booth to allow them in--preferring to stay on the most outer seat instead of crammed between his tipsy friends' bodies--before sitting down once more.

"Hey, Genius," Penelope called, waving her empty beer glass in front of Spencer's face. "Be a darling and get me a refill, will you?"

"Garcia--" Spencer quickly snatched the glass from her hand before she could send it smashing against someone's head, "--are you sure you want a refill?"

Penelope scrunched her nose. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I think you're plenty drunk already."

"I'm not that drunk," Penelope denied, giggling when an unexpected hiccup interrupted her slurred words. "Derek, tell the beautiful Doctor I'm not that drunk."

"She's not that drunk, Reid." Derek grinned. "While you're at it..."

Spencer could only sigh when Derek slid his own empty glass across the table.

It was past 10 o'clock at night, and the crowd of people in the establishment seemed to have doubled in the couple of hours that the team had been there. Spencer had to squeeze himself through the ocean of patrons flooding the bar, barely able to move his limbs without other people's arms or elbows bumping against his ribcage.

Spencer was waiting for the bartender to complete his order when he happened to glance towards his right, catching sight of the concealed panic that triggered every profiler bone in his body.

Any other person would have taken one look at your face and presumed that everything was alright, but Spencer knew better. He recognized the frantic movement of your eyes, the tight press of your lips, and the impatient knocking of your fingertips on the counter. He only caught the tail end of your voice before discreetly listening to what the man you were talking to had to say.

"--so, unfortunately, I can't."

"I told you, Baby. My Veyron runs at over 260 miles per hour. We can go to Red Clover Hill and get you back home safely by twelve. It's simple math," the guy slurred smugly.

"Actually, that's not true."

The drunken man turned around at Spencer's interruption.

"Excuse me?"

"The Red Clover Hill State Park is approximately 229 miles away from here. Though theoretically, you could drive your Veyron at its maximum velocity, which is around 268 miles per hour, it's very unlikely you'll be able to maintain that speed for the entirety of the ride, considering the terrain you would have to go through between here and there. The fastest you can probably get to the park is in 60 minutes, give or take, and that's being generous. You would have to drive back to D.C. as soon as you arrive at the park if you wish to be back by twelve. It's just realistically impossible."

The man in front of him couldn't be less impressed by Spencer's lengthy rant.

"And who the hell are you?" the drunken guy said, pinning Spencer with a stare that was clearly supposed to be intimidating.

Spencer didn't even flinch. "No one. Just a guy who happens to know a lot about... simple math."

Your loud cough tore Spencer's attention away from the drunk man and towards you, who looked ready to burst from the laughter you were holding underneath. Even under the terrible lighting of the bar, Spencer could still pinpoint the hint of unspoken amusement glimmering inside your eyes.

"Sorry, Bill," you said to the man. "I really do need to be back home by twelve tonight. Maybe some other time?"

Bill didn't need to be told twice. He received the message loud and clear.

Spencer watched the other man scurry away, tail between his legs, before your charming smile enraptured him once more.

"Thank you for that. I was beginning to think he might never leave."

"Happy to help." Spencer smiled thinly, scratching the back of his neck even though the spot wasn't itchy. "What did, uh, why did he want to take you to Red Clover Hill, of all places?"

"Oh. That was... partially my fault." You grinned innocently. "I didn't know he was gonna be an insufferable drunk when he came over, and I was in the middle of watching this."

You pulled out a silver tablet from your lap. Spencer took a peek at the screen, seeing what looked like a live feed of the night sky--over North Carolina, judging by the visible constellations on the vast scene--stamped with the day's date at the bottom of the footage.

"You're watching the Roux-Nell?" Spencer deduced after gathering the facts: the live feed of North Carolina sky, the mention of Red Clover Hill State Park that harbored one of the highest grounds in North Carolina, including a collection of some of the most sophisticated telescopes in the country; you must have been planning to view that night's sighting of the Roux-Nell comet, its first time since the last one in 1927, and only its third one in history.

"Yes! How did you... don't tell me. You're an avid astronomy fan, too?"

Spencer's responding smile only made you beam even brighter.

"Anyway, that guy earlier, Bill, he approached me and asked what I was watching. So, I started talking about the Roux-Nell and about how I wish I was at Red Clover Hill right now since everyone keeps saying it's one of the best spots to view tonight's sighting. I thought he was genuinely interested until he started talking about his Veyron this, his Veyron that. I didn't even realize until a whole five minutes later that he was talking about his car!"

When you finally finished explaining, your eyes locked with Spencer's hazel ones before you seemed to cower shyly.

"Sorry. I can get a little excited when I'm talking sometimes."

"No! Don't be, it was--" Spencer stopped himself before he could complete his sentence.

What was he about to say?

Insightful? Entertaining?

Endearing?

Eventually, Spencer opted to settle for something safe and simple. "I get that way too, sometimes. A lot of the times, actually. So you don't have to apologize."

The fire flickered back inside your gaze following Spencer's admission. It burned brilliantly beneath the kindness you radiated, forged by the sharp intelligence he could see shining out of your eyes.

"So--" Spencer cleared his throat, attempting to shift the conversation in order to distract his racing mind, "--why did you tell him you needed to be back home by twelve?"

"Oh, that? I told him I'm donating blood tomorrow morning, so I need to at least get seven hours of sleep for the night."

"That's a clever lie."

You tilted your head slightly at his statement. "What makes you think it's a lie?"

"Because you're here. Nobody drinks alcohol before they're supposed to donate blood."

Your eyes flashed with surprise. "Not bad, Mister. You're very perceptive."

Spencer shrugged, trying not to appear too flustered by your casual compliment. "It's what I do."

You raised an inquisitive eyebrow at his reply.

"I'm a profiler."

"Profiler?"

"With the FBI."

"FBI, huh?" You hummed, something akin to intrigue swirling in your eyes. "So, you study criminals? Trying to decipher their way of thinking, why they do what they do. Dissect their past history for any related trauma, maybe even pinpoint a psychological stressor that could trigger a criminal behavior, that kind of stuff?"

Upon hearing your response, it was Spencer's turn to be intrigued. "Exactly that kind of stuff. How did you...?"

Grinning sheepishly, you pulled a professional badge out of your pocket, holding it up in front of Spencer so he could see the emblem covering its surface.

"Edgewater Psychology Center," Spencer read the words aloud, understanding dawning on him as he found your eyes once more. "You're a psychologist."

"Guilty as charged."

Spencer couldn't fight off his amused smile. "That explains it, then."

"You know," you began, leaning further against the bar counter to shorten the distance between you and Spencer, "I've never met a profiler in person before. Most of my colleagues, they have consulted on a federal case at least once in the past few years, but the bureau hasn't yet contacted me so far."

"Really?" Spencer took a step forward, closing the distance by a mere inch. "Sounds like a big loss for us. We're idiots."

You bit down on your bottom lip to suppress a smile, your gaze flicking between Spencer's own lips and eyes. For the shortest of minutes, nothing else existed in Spencer's world but you; your smile, your scent, and your kind eyes. You were a magnet carved out of his wildest dreams, and Spencer, well, he might as well have been made out of the purest of irons.

But before Spencer could get lost deeper in your relentless gaze, a shout of his name slashed through the air from across the bar. Back at the booth, Derek was waving his hand frantically in the air, stopping only when Spencer signaled him to sit back down and that he was returning in a minute.

"I have to go." He smiled tentatively, apologetically.

"Oh?"

Spencer tried not to revel too much over the small dip of disappointment at the edge of your voice.

"My friends. They, uh--"

"Oh, no, it's alright. You don't have to explain," you told him gently. "See you around, Mr. Profiler. Hope you have a great night."

With that said, you went back to watching the live feed on your tablet while Spencer, begrudgingly, trudged across the room with two refilled beer glasses in his hands, back to where his friends--minus Rossi and Hotch who were conversing among themselves at one of the standing tables--were waiting.

"Finally," Derek groaned once Spencer slammed the glasses down on the table.

"Who was that?" Emily asked as he slipped into the booth.

"Huh?" Spencer followed Emily's gaze, finding you perched up at the very end of it. "No one."

"No one?" Emily's eyebrows rose. "She didn't seem like no one from where I was sitting."

Spencer took an insanely large sip of his leftover beer.

"Holy shit, you like her, " Derek muttered. "He likes her. Pretty boy's got a crush."

"No, I don't."

"Yeah? Tell that to those red cheeks of yours." JJ chuckled.

Instinctively, Spencer touched his own cheeks as if he could physically feel the change of colors on his skin.

"I'm just tipsy," he tried to reason.

A collective scoff reverberated through the entire booth.

"What's her name, Spence?" JJ asked.

When a full minute ticked by without so much as a grunt of acknowledgment from Spencer, Penelope reached out and slapped the man right across his shoulder.

"Ow!"

"You didn't ask for her name?!" Penelope exclaimed.

"It didn't come up!"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say, Reid," Emily noted before sipping her margarita.

"Nope. I'm not having this. Not tonight. Look at me, Sunshine." Penelope grabbed Spencer's face in her hands, forcing him to stare directly into her glasses-rimmed eyes. "I'm not letting you spend the rest of the night like this. You will get your cute little tushy out there and talk to that girl. You will get her name and also her number, maybe even ask the nice pretty lady out while you're at it. Now, have I made myself clear?"

Spencer barely managed to swallow his nerves before he offered Penelope two tiny nods.

"Good. I don't wanna see your face back here if you're not at least pocketing her phone number. Now shoo."

Penelope sent Spencer flying across the bar with a dramatic stumble. By the time he reached your side, Spencer was nothing less than a stuttering mess and a thundering heart.

"Hi," Spencer breathed out once he found your welcoming eyes.

"Um, hi?"

"I'm Spencer."

"Okay... Spencer?"

"Reid. Spencer Reid." He cleared his throat. "Sorry, it's just... I realized while I was sitting over there--well, my friends actually made me realize--that I, uh, never got your name. Which, you know, of course I never got it because I didn't ask. So, I was coming here, wondering if maybe you'd like to give it... to me?"

You blinked once. Twice.

By the third blink, Spencer wished the earth would open up and devour him whole.

"You want my name?"

Spencer nodded.

"What are you planning to do with it?"

"Call you?" At your bemused expression, Spencer quickly elaborated, "Not call like call. I meant referring. Yep. That's it. Although, maybe if you want to, I would love to call you as well. Sometime. And perhaps, you know, ask you out... on a date?"

Spencer swallowed the lump of nervousness in his throat. In front of him, you were pretty, even with the conspicuous scrutiny in your eyes as they assessed Spencer as if he was some sort of an enigma. Embarrassment burned hotter through his veins with every second that passed by. He was merely two exhales of breath away from dashing out of the door when you finally spoke up.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

Smiling, you produced an old receipt seemingly out of thin air and asked the bartender to lend you a pen, scribbling something down as soon as you had it between your fingers. When the tiny piece of paper emigrated to Spencer's hand, the Cheshire cat in him jumped out once he noticed the ten digit numbers written neatly underneath a name he could only assume as yours.

"Will that be enough, Spencer Reid?"

"For now," Spencer replied before grabbing his wallet and shoving the paper containing your name inside. "I'll call you."

"You better."

After Spencer's departure, you returned your attention back to the tablet in front of you. Barely five minutes later, though, your serene watching session was once again interrupted. Only this time, it was by the ringing of your phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is Spencer."*

Surprised, you swiveled your head left and right, stopping once you spotted Spencer standing on the other side of the room. His eyes were trained towards you, and behind him, a booth of four people seemed to have directed their attention at you as well.

"Spencer?"

"I know this is very untoward," he began, "but would you like to go out with me?"

"Boy, you certainly don't waste any time at all, do you?"

"I believe it's called being efficient," he countered, making you laugh. "So, what do you say?"

"Sure," you answered, enjoying the way Spencer beam at you from across the room. "I would love to, Spencer."

A breeze blew gently against Spencer's face, caressing the tendrils of curly hair that had fallen over his forehead. Diana's little fingers started to grip his tighter as the wind strengthened.

"Did you take Mommy on that date, Daddy?"

"Of course," Spencer replied, reminiscing the exact day when he had picked you up in your apartment, sweat glistening on his palm as he clutched the bouquet of flowers in his right hand. "We went to see a Mark Rothko exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, and before I took her home, we stopped by Wakey Bakey to buy some lemon tarts."

Diana gasped. "Wakey Bakey?!"

The little girl's reaction compelled a chuckle from Spencer's chest. "Yes, Pumpkin. Wakey Bakey."

"What happened after that, Daddy?"

"What do you think happened after that, Dee?"

"Um--" Diana pursed her lips, deeply lost in thought, "--did you become girlfriend and boyfriend?"

"Yes, we did."

"And you got married?!"

Spencer laughed at Diana's apparent excitement over the prospect of her parents getting married. "We did, yeah, eventually. After I proposed to her."

"Oh! Oh! The proposal!" Diana exclaimed, jumping up and down in the middle of the sidewalk without a care in the world. Spencer had to tug her back towards him before she could harm herself or the other pedestrians. "Tell me! Tell me! Tell me about the proposal, Daddy!"

"You wanna hear the story about how I proposed to your mother?"

"Yes, please!"

Chuckling to himself, Spencer mumbled a quick fine before his gears had started turning towards a specific memory in his mind. Spencer was sure, even without his eidetic ability, there was no way he could have ever forgotten about the day in question.

The day you agreed to have him as your forever.

Spencer had fallen in love with you during the first date, right around the time of yet another one of his animated ramblings, where instead of shaming him to shut the hell up, you had simply stared at him in awe and said, "You're pretty when you talk."

The young agent was sure he couldn't get rid of the blush adorning his cheeks for at least an entire week.

By the time the fifth date rolled around, Spencer was absolutely certain that you were the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. It wasn't a surprise, then, that a few weeks before your first anniversary came up, Spencer had pocketed a diamond ring with a promise of forever on the tip of his tongue.

Combing the courage to take this historical leap was easy. Difficult was trying to conjure up the perfect proposal plan that he would deem worthy enough for someone like you. There were no rooms for mistakes. Spencer wanted everything to be perfect because he believed you deserved nothing less.

Which was why, in moments of desperation, Spencer ended up turning to his fellow teammates in the FBI for help.

"I don't know if I'm the right person to ask about this, Spence. Will only ever proposed to me after finding out about Henry, and we only got married after I thought he was gonna die on the field," JJ explained. "It was never the most ideal of situations, but I would never change a thing even if I could."

Unsatisfied with JJ's answer, Spencer proceeded to find the BAU's tech genius in her bat cave.

"Go big or go home, my friend," Penelope said following a 10-minute hysteria she erupted into upon learning about Spencer's intent to propose. "Splash out on the bottle. Don't hold back on the grandeur. Spend all of your savings if you have to."

"Garcia--"

"Fine, maybe not all of your savings. You should leave some for the wedding."

Spencer spent weeks mulling over Penelope's advice.

Working as an FBI agent didn't pay as well as most people thought it would, and Spencer's tendency to collect first edition books wasn't exactly an affordable hobby. It meant that as much as Spencer wanted a proposal filled with the greatest grandeur--just as Penelope had suggested--he didn't have a fat enough balance in his bank account to make his ideal proposal concept a reality.

And Spencer probably would have spent the limited fund in his savings down to its very last cent, had it not been for Derek catching him browsing through the internet for the cost of a hot air balloon ride.

"I just want to give her the perfect proposal," Spencer admitted after he finished revealing everything.

"Kid, it doesn't matter," Derek said. "Don't you see? She doesn't care about hot air balloons or any kind of grandeur. She only cares about you. There's no such thing as a perfect proposal. You're just using it as an excuse to put off asking her 'cause you're scared of what she's gonna say. But you don't need to. You two are so devastatingly in love, it's disgusting."

In the end, grandeur wasn't even present in the room when Spencer decided to pop the question.

On that particular night, Spencer arrived in his apartment just a few minutes before midnight. His aching muscles were calling for sleep as he toed his shoes off, but his footsteps soon ceased when he caught sight of his dimly lit living room.

You were fast asleep on the couch, face illuminated by the television light. Spencer's movements were careful as he knelt in front of you, studying the soft and hard edges of your features like historians would an ancient scripture. He couldn't help it when his fingers reached out on their own accord, brushing the softest of touches against the high point of your cheekbone. Inside its cage, Spencer's heart started to stir.

You were so beautiful.

Even after one year of being together, Spencer was often still taken back by how lovely you were. He adored every detail of your being, most fervently the scars that littered your skin in a constellation of stars. All of the places in your body where your scrutiny had wandered in a fleet of insecurity were the same places that Spencer wanted to worship for the rest of his life. In his eyes, you were eternally magnificent, and this thought clouded Spencer's mind as he went to shake your shoulder gently.

"Spencer?" Your groggy voice sounded meek in the comfort of Spencer's apartment, the same one he had been sharing with you since you moved in three months prior. Your lips tilted with the tiniest hint of a smile at the sight of him, and Spencer thought he would melt when your fingers instinctively reached for his face. "You're back."

"I'm back," he confirmed, leaving a trail of kisses on your palm. "Why aren't you in bed, my love?"

"I was waiting for you," you admitted. "I have something to say."

"Really? Me too."

"Hm?" Curiosity flared in the center of your eyes. "You first."

Smiling, Spencer leaned down to steal a quick kiss before saying, "Marry me."

Your breath hitched.

After a few seconds of silence, your nervous laughter filled his ears. "Right. That's a nice one, Spencer. Very funny."

"I'm not joking, sweetheart."

Spencer reached into the inside pocket of his satchel, pulling out the velvet box that had weighed down his bag by several grams for the past few weeks. Any remnant of sleep you still had in your eyes was instantly washed away the moment he opened the box to reveal a pretty ring sitting inside.

"I've had this for a while now," Spencer admitted. "I kept putting off asking you because I believed I wanted everything to be perfect, until Derek knocked some sense into my head and made me realize that I was just afraid of taking the leap. He's right, as always, but don't tell him I said that."

Spencer paused at your teary laugh, relishing in the melodic sound that made his heart nearly burst in two. "My love, I don't need the perfect proposal when you're the promise of a perfect life. Any life with you is the one I want to live for the rest of my time, and I want to start living that life from this point onward. What do you say, sweetheart? Will you marry me?"

Spencer never thought the word yes could sound so incredibly spectacular.

The celebration had started right away, commemorated by the shedding of clothes from each other's bodies, finalized by panting breaths and entangled limbs beneath rumpled sheets. You lay on the bed with your palm on Spencer's chest, his own hand tracing invisible patterns on the vast canvass of your skin.

Spencer watched as you stared at the ring circling your finger. "Do you like it? We can exchange it for a new one if--"

"Spencer Reid, don't you dare."

"Apologies, ma'am." He grinned, continuing the random patterns he was drawing on your skin before he spoke again, "By the way, you said you also have something to tell me."

You looked up at him with a blinding smile before scooting out of Spencer's arm and reaching for the nightstand. When Spencer saw what you had rummaged out of the bedside drawer, Spencer thought his heart had forgotten how to beat.

"Is that--"

"Surprise," you murmured giddily, handing over the object in your hand into Spencer's awaiting palm. "I found out yesterday, but I wanted to tell you in person."

Spencer sat up on the bed, staring with disbelief at the small item in his hand. He only realized he had started to cry when a drop of tears fell down, blurring the two tiny pink lines in his vision.

"This is... you're..."

"I'm pregnant, Spencer," you professed.

Just an hour earlier, Spencer thought the word yes was the best thing he could ever hear falling from your mouth. But as he held you in his arms, his lips catching yours once more in a heated kiss, Spencer realized that you had many more surprising admissions waiting to be said out loud.

And Spencer couldn't wait to spend the rest of his life listening to every single one of them.

"Daddy, are you saying I was already in Mommy's belly when you proposed to her?"

"Yes, you were, Pumpkin," Spencer said, smiling at the blatant curiosity in Little Dee's eyes. "You were a surprise we didn't see coming."

Diana's responding smile was a picture of satisfaction. The father-daughter pair continued to walk down the street until Dee's voice tore through the silence once again, "Daddy?"

"Hm?"

"I thought you said a man and a woman can only make babies after they're married."

Spencer's footsteps halted on the pavement.

The silence must have stretched for only a partial of a minute, but the expectant stare Dee was nailing against his face, along with the internal panic that had short-circuited Spencer's brain made it seem as if the world had skidded into a standstill. Frantic eyes darted everywhere for a chance at rectification, and Spencer couldn't stop the words from tumbling off his lips when he saw the worn-down sign of a florist up ahead.

"Dee, would you like to buy some flowers for Mommy?"

The little girl squealed an excited yes before skipping the few steps left towards the flower shop. Spencer let out a relieved breath at having narrowly escaped such a harrowing crisis.

Once Spencer stepped into the shop, a multitude of fragrances immediately enveloped his surroundings. Diana was lingering back and forth around the vibrant displays when Spencer approached, her tiny eyebrows frowning in the most adorable way as she assessed the rows of flowers in front of her.

"Have you decided yet, Pumpkin?"

"Can we get some of Mommy's favorites, Dad?" Diana requested, pointing her tiny finger at the display of flowers she knew to be your favorites. "And then we can add some of these daisies, too!"

Spencer couldn't fight the smile blossoming on his face as he asked the florist to assemble a bouquet made out of daisies--Dee's favorite type of flowers, the same one printed all over the dress she was wearing--along with your favorite flowers in the center. Diana stared in awe at the deft work administered by the florist, her mouth forming an "O" once the bouquet was wrapped and ready to go.

"Do you think Mommy will like them, Daddy?"

"I know she will, Pumpkin," Spencer answered earnestly, his memory replaying that first time he had come home bringing the same arrangement of flowers in his hand.

Spencer came home to the apartment in utter disarray, and yet, it still was the best view that he had ever witnessed in his entire life.

Ever since his office was transformed into a nursery, the books he previously kept in there had to be relocated to the living area. Most of them had gone by now--some donated, and some others sold at second-hand bookstores--but piles of them still littered in various corners of the room.

Apart from his mountainous collection of books, small trinkets also covered every available surface of the place. From the empty nursing bottles in the kitchen sink to the breast pump on the counter, and the tiny socks on the coffee table to the pacifier jammed between the sofa cushions; every single one of them contributed to the mess that his apartment had become. Yet as he paused to inspect every inch of the place, Spencer couldn't find any other emotion besides warmth flooding his chest.

Muffled footsteps padded towards the living room before you appeared from the hallway with a freshly bathed Diana in your arms. As soon as your eyes locked with his, the crease between your eyebrows automatically vanished.

"You're home."

"I'm home." Spencer grinned before welcoming you into his embrace.

He stole a quick kiss from your lips before bending down to smother a 7-month-old Diana who yelped in glee when Spencer began attacking her with kisses all over her face.

"She's been fussy since yesterday," you told him. "I think she missed you."

"Did you, baby? Did you miss Daddy?" Spencer cooed. "I can take her for a few while you rest. You look tired. Are you feeling okay?"

"Gee, Spence. What a way to a girl's heart."

"You know what I meant, sweetheart."

"It's fine, Spencer. I just got a headache, but it's all better now that you're here."

Spencer smiled as he kissed your free knuckles. "If it's any consolation, you're still the most heavenly creature that I've ever laid eyes upon."

A sneaky laughter rumbled past your chest. "Fine. I'll let you go just this once," you said before letting Spencer take a yawning Diana into his arms.

As Spencer carried Dee towards the couch, you noticed a bouquet of flowers lying next to the kitchen sink in the corner of your eye. You glanced at the young genius with a discreet smile before aptly transferring the flowers into a vase.

"These are pretty," you commented, joining your family in the living room. You put the vase in the middle of the coffee table amidst the books and various baby clutters before dropping yourself against Spencer's side.

"They're your favorites."

"I know. As usual." You smiled affectionately. "And daisies. You've never bought me daisies before."

Spencer's eyes gleamed. "I bought the daisies for Dee."

"Oh?"

"I think daisies are gonna be her favorite."

"You do, huh?"

"One hundred percent."

Spencer's eyes looked up from Diana to you then, whose own gaze had been kept intently on your husband and daughter. Darkness embellished the area underneath your eyes, and Spencer couldn't help but count the lines of fatigue that seemed to have multiplied on the contours of your face. Even then, Spencer thought you had never looked more stunning than you did at that moment; as his wife, the mother of his child, and the woman who owned the sole reign of his heart.

Confusion wandered into your eyes when you noticed Spencer's stubborn stare. A surprised squawk escaped your lips as Spencer unexpectedly captured them in a rather long kiss. When he pulled back, Spencer looked the very image of a man who was drunk on love.

"I love you. You know that, right?" Spencer confessed as he squeezed your hand twice in his palm.

"Spencer, what's going on with you?"

"Nothing. I just--" he paused for a chuckle, seemingly trying to find the right words to say before he could continue, "--I owe my life to you, sweetheart. For all of the times you have pulled me out of the darkness, to the light you've brought into my life. You and Dee are the reason I keep on breathing. Without the two of you, I'm nothing."

"Spencer," you breathed out. "Where did all of this come from?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "I just wanted you to know how grateful I am to have you in my life and that you've brought Dee into ours. Everything worth fighting for about me is because of you."

The telltale signs of tears began to cast a shadow over your eyes. You pressed your hand to Spencer's cheek, feeling the rugged sensation of his newly shaved stubble stroking your skin. Spencer melted into the warmth of your touch.

"You're giving me far too much credit here, Spencer," you whispered. "Everything you are has always been your own doing rather than mine. All I ever did was cheer you on from the sideline. You would still have become the person that you are today even if I weren't in your life."

Spencer physically shuddered at your last statement. "Don't say that. I can't even begin to imagine a life without you in it."

"Well, even if such day does come, when I won't be a part of your life anymore, I know you're gonna be just fine. Because you'll have Dee with you--" you stroked Diana's head lovingly, "--and I know that the two of you will give each other enough love and strength that you won't even notice I'm not around anymore."

The frown on Spencer's face deepened.

"You're not allowed to leave me. Ever," Spencer decided childishly.

"Fine. I won't. But you have to remember--" you brought your palm towards Spencer's chest, feeling each rhythmic thrum of his heart which seemed to flutter ever so slightly underneath your fingers, "--I'll be right here if you need me. Always."

Spencer's own hand landed on top of your hand, entwining your fingers together without ever tearing his fierce gaze away from yours.

"Always."

The sun was shining down in flimsy rays when Spencer and Dee finally walked past the familiar gate. Glimmers of gold sneaked past the reddish leaves on branches before falling upon the ground.

Next to him, Diana was humming a melody that Spencer recognized from one of your specially curated playlists. Her little hands struggled to carry the gigantic bouquet that she couldn't wait to present to you. It didn't matter that the bouquet itself was nearly as tall as she was, Diana still refused to let Spencer assist her.

"I wanna give Mommy the flowers myself," she had told Spencer in a manner that reminded him too much of your own stubbornness.

After a couple more minutes of walking, Spencer's reverie was soon broken by the excited squeal coming from the little girl beside him.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Diana dashed into a sprint before words of warning could fall from Spencer's lips. He watched intensely as Diana's little feet moved upon the ocean of fallen leaves on the ground. Her tight grip around the bouquet never wavered even when she ran up the grassed hill, all the way towards the destination in her mind.

All the way towards the headstone with your name written on it.

When Spencer finally got there, Diana was kneeling next to your grave with panting breaths, but the smile stretched on her lips was the biggest one that Spencer had ever seen.

"Hi, Mommy. I'm back with Daddy," Diana announced. "Daddy, go say hi to Mommy."

"Hello, my love." Spencer smiled before taking a seat next to his daughter.

"We brought flowers, Mommy! They're your favorites. I added daisies to make them prettier." Diana beamed before putting the bouquet against your headstone. "You're not gonna believe what happened in class yesterday!"

As Diana animatedly began to recount the funny incident in her classroom--somehow involving a boy named Patrick and a cup of slushie--Spencer watched over her with a permanent smile on his lips. The little girl loved to talk--a trait she obviously acquired from both of her parents--and Spencer knew just how much you used to adore listening to Dee's rambling at any time of day.

It must have been at least ten minutes later when Diana's story eventually whirled to an end. Her attention instantly shifted to the family who was paying their own respect just two headstones over, a small squeak of puppy tumbled from Dee's lips before she dashed towards the boy with a golden retriever pup beside his legs.

Spencer shook his head affectionately at his daughter's antics.

"I know we were just here a couple of weeks ago, but Dee wanted to tell you about the slushie incident herself," he said. "And, well, I can never deny the chance to visit you, love."

A loud laughter boomed a few feet away. Spencer watched as Diana ran around jubilantly with the little boy and his dog. The boy's father waved at Spencer from the distance, which he replied with an acknowledging nod.

"She's getting so big, sweetheart. Sometimes, I just wanna stop time and keep her as my little girl forever. I wish you were around to see how much she's grown." Spencer smiled ruefully. "I can't believe that it's been more than a year since you were gone."

Spencer thought back to the last few moments you spent on this earth. How just a few months prior, the doctor had advised you to stop the treatment and take a rest at home instead.

The chemo isn't working, was what the doctor was really saying. You should be spending as much time as you can with your family.

So, that was exactly what you ended up doing.

Spencer had quit his job at the FBI shortly after you were diagnosed, opting to take a full-time job of teaching where the hours were more humane and reasonable. The day you were discharged from the hospital, Spencer made a vow to himself to make every day as memorable as he could, and he was keeping true to it. Those last few months were filled with countless road trips, an unforgettable weekend at Disneyland, and visits to various museums across the states. Spencer made sure that each day was charged with love and laughter, a perfect day culminated by an equally perfect night, with you falling asleep in the safety of his arms.

Until one morning, when Spencer woke up to your cold and lifeless body lying by his side.

"Do you remember what you told me once? About how Dee and I would never notice you were gone because we would have each other?" Spencer recalled. "You were wrong about that, sweetheart. Your absence is the first thing I notice every time I start my day. The moment I open my eyes, I notice that you aren't lying next to me on the bed like you're supposed to be. I notice the cold imprints on the sheets where your warmth used to linger. I notice you in every corner of our home, but most importantly, I notice you in Dee."

Spencer glanced at his little girl, playing and running around a pile of fallen leaves with her newfound friend and his pet dog. His heart floundered at the scene.

"Everyone keeps saying that she's an exact copy of me, but I see glimpses of you in her more and more every single day," Spencer admitted. "She's the only anchor I have left now, my love. Without her, I'm lost. I try constantly, with whatever strength still resides in me, to give her everything she would ever need. Shower her with every ounce of love I have left in my heart."

A lone tear cascaded down Spencer's cheek. He quickly erased it away with a wry chuckle.

"What I would do to have a minute with you again, my love. I hope you know I'd give my heart and soul to have those extra sixty seconds just to stare at your beautiful face. To hold you in my arms one last time. I try my best to fill the void that you left for Dee's sake. Some days are difficult, and I keep thinking about how much better it would be--how much better off she would be--if it were you here with her instead of me. I'd trade places with you if I could. I fear that all of me would never be enough for her, because she needs you. We both do."

Spencer inhaled a breath, forcing the imminent wave of tears from breaking the dam he had masterfully crafted since the moment you were gone. He promised a long time ago never to allow the grief to consume him.

He still had his daughter to think about.

"I'm beginning to think people are wrong when they say time makes everything better. The pain never lessens. It just becomes bearable with time. Dee makes it bearable," Spencer confessed. "I can only hope I'm doing the same for her."

"Daddy! Daddy!"

Spencer hurriedly wiped away any sign of tears from his face before he caught Diana in his arms. Her innocent laughter was a balm to the gaping wound in his chest, and Spencer allowed himself to bask in the bliss that his little girl brought to his life.

"What is it, Pumpkin?"

"Look what Brian's mom gave me!"

Spencer looked at her tiny hand to see a plastic daisy ring gracing one of her fingers. He looked up towards the family in the distance, mouthing a thank you to the mother who waved him off with a smile.

"It's very pretty, Dee."

"Like me?"

The young dad chuckled. "Yes, very much like you."

"Like Mommy, too?"

Spencer's smile softened. "Very much like Mommy, too. Yes."

The exhilarated smile Diana rewarded him could probably light up the entire state of Virginia at night.

Five minutes later, Spencer found himself bidding you a goodbye, with Diana promising to visit again very soon to give you an update over the slushie incident that supposedly got Patrick in a lot of trouble at school. The air was getting even chillier as the two walked the path they had taken after arriving at the cemetery. Spencer tugged Diana closer to his side once he saw the familiar gate lurking a few feet ahead, keeping her safe while simultaneously seeking her warmth.

"Daddy?" Dee's voice arose shyly once the pair had reached the main street.

"Yes, Pumpkin?"

"I miss Mommy," she admitted quietly.

Spencer's fingers instinctively tightened for a split second around his daughter's hand. "I know you do, Pumpkin. You just need to remember, even if she's not physically with us anymore, that she's always watching over you and keeping you safe."

Diana nodded her head understandingly. "Do you miss her, too, Daddy?"

"Every day, Dee." Spencer smiled, glancing back towards the gate of the cemetery behind him. "Every single day."

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r--kt · 6 months

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Do you like Kakashi's dogs? Let's talk about why there are eight of them.

another example of naruto's ✨cultural code✨

contents | the eight dog warriors chronicles · legacy · eight confucian virtues. also look at the cuties love them sm

Naruto Vol. 10 CH 90

[ one dog is wonderful, I'm saying as the owner of a sweet little york terrier. two dogs are good, they won't be bored together. three dogs? yeah, cool! how are you going to walk them though? four? yes... look, maybe we have to draw the line h- wha- EIGHT? Excuse Me!? ]

surely, it's worth starting with the fact that eight is a lucky number in Japanese culture — everybody watched Hachi. of course, this is not the only cultural detail where the eight is mentioned. I want to pay special attention to a thing that I didn't know about until I googled it, and this is clearly what Kishimoto was doing homage to with Kakashi's eight ninken.

The Eight Dog Warriors Chronicles

Better known as Nansō Satomi Hakkenden. and it's not just some kind of book, it's a novel, consisting of 106 booklets written by Kyokutei Bakin in XIX century. Hakkenden is considered the largest novel in the history of Japanese Literature. this is one of the main representatives of the gesaku genre, which includes works of a frivolous, joking, silly nature. further I will emphasize a few more times how damn popular this work is and how often it is reflected in culture.

here are some illustrations for these books

now let's talk about the plot. It's weird, but it's weird at samurai-dogs-story level so stay here.

In brief, the story tells about the commander Satomi Yoshizane, whose native lands were attacked by the army of a man, whose forces surpassed those of Satomi, and the samurai in despair swore to a dog named Yatsufusa that the dog would get his beloved daughter Fuse as a wife if he chewed that man's throat. surprisingly, the dog not only understood the owner, but also fulfilled his wish! after that the commander refused to keep the promise. however, Fuse, true to her word of honor, went with Yatsufusa to the mountains and became his wife. upon learning that his daughter was pregnant, Satomi, in a rage, sent a samurai to kill Yatsufusa and bring Fuse home. she stood up for the dog anyways and died with him. at that moment, eight pearls with hieroglyphs that denoted the foundations of Confucian virtue burst out of her womb. (...cheers for mythology, I guess)

Soon, eight dog warriors who were Fuse's spiritual children were born in different parts of Awa province. after going through hardships, they got together and became vassals of the Satomi clan, then won the battle, and soon reached peace.

some more illustrations made by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. from left to right: Inukawa Sōsuke (the dog warrior), Inumura Daikaku (the dog warrior), Princess Fuse (their mother).

the novel mainly tells about each individual warrior dog and his shenanigans in a funny adventurous way. huge fame has led to excerpts from Hakkenden being staged at the Kabuki Theater and mentioned in the anime and manga, such as Inuyasha, Dragon Ball, as it turned out, Naruto and so on. there's also a lot of films and video games.

The eight virtues

these are loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, honesty, justice, harmony, and peace.

they relate more to Chinese culture, but basically Hakkenden was inspired by it too. since I did not read the whole novel, I would still like to mention at least the values on which it is based, and which were embedded in the symbolism of this story. It's quite interesting to apply this to Kakashi's dogs. gives them more weight and depth.

It is also interesting to note that the reason why Fuse gave birth to dogs was also that her father was cursed earlier in the story in a way that his descendants would become depraved like dogs. in Japanese culture, dogs embody the duality of character: the same mentioned filth and depravity, and devotion and bravery. so as samurai. but this is a different conversation, more related to Kakashi and his dog poetry.

Did you get here? Here's an additional discovery for you✨

Pakkun's name (パックン) is derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia “pakupaku” (パクパク) which reflects the sound of munching.

Kakashi, that's very sweet of you.

thank you for reading this to the end ♡

#kakashi hatake #kakashi #naruto #naruto shippuden #Kakashi's dogs

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maladaptivedaydreamsx · 4 months

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How the Rhodolite princes would react to their firstborn/newborn

Rating: PG-13 (?) Ikepri itself contains a lot of mature themes however, as such, mdni 🔞

Warnings: Brief mentions of (past) character death, grief, pregnancy/childbirth themes (no actual birth depicted), gn but implied afab, & the usual tragic Ikepri cannon.

A/N: Tried to write how they'd hold their kid and what they were feeling when meeting them. Spoiler warnings for the Rhodolite princes routes, tried not to bring up anything major though (Luke's is probably the most spoilery?). Tried to keep the princes' spouses GN, though implied afab bc newborns. (One very brief mention of Belle, but mc/reader is not Emma.) Might eventually make pt2 with the others..? Please read the warnings and proceed only if comfortable! :)

(Apologies for anything that seems ooc, I haven't written much in awhile and this is my first piece for Ikepri! I'm more used to fics rather than hcs, but I tried my best! o7)

JIN 🦅

There's so much Jin can't help but worry about. His past, his future, his country... and now he's got not one but two loved ones he would do anything for. The little bundle of joy in his arms reminds him of the times when his younger brothers were born, and how cute they used to be (well, some of them, anyway). The bleary, garnet eyes trying to look into his own have him wondering.. is this how he looked to his dear mother? There's so much he cherishes, and so much he fears, but he won't let the history of Belle repeat itself. He'd fight the entire palace if he had to, but for right now, he'll settle for tackling pesky burps and dirty diapers. Jin coos at his baby, baritone voice suddenly startling the poor thing, and he can't help but pout. The baby in his arms continues to fuss, feeling hungry.

Jin pulls something out of his breast pocket, looking over at his spouse. "So.. how much longer until they can have lollipops?"

CHEVALIER 🐅

Chevalier would likely be a bit awed upon holding his firstborn, much like the quiet way he takes in Emma's precence. Chevalier is known to be awkward with his affections, as he's far from practiced, but it's been shown on several occasions how he tries to gently pet an animal that dares to come close, or how he clumsily takes care of his love when they're feeling under the weather. He may look fine on the outside, but he's actually quite hesitant, trying to sort things out logistically at first, before sort of just settling for standing there and holding his newborn with both arms. He stares down at their gentle features, taking in every detail, making sure they're comfortable and warm in their sleep.

Looking over at his beloved in all their tired glory, in his very own Chevalier-approved affection he says, "You did well, Simpleton." While he only speaks four words aloud, his faint smile speaks the thousands he didn't quite know how to express.

CLAVIS 🐆

"Dearie me," Clavis says, holding his newborn, full of wide-eyed excitement. "They look so much like you, I can see the bunny ears already."

Being someone who values life so dearly, bringing a new one into this world, with the love of his life no less, is enough to send Clavis' heart soaring into the stratosphere. He just can't help but want to drown them in affection, but they're so small and fragile, and Clavis knows better than to risk scaring them now. He's so, so gentle with his child, unconditional love flowing off him in waves as they bond quietly (please don't get used to this, it will not last), and looks upon their splotchy tufts of lilac hair. The Lelouch genes live on through yet another generation, he smiles to himself. Clavis slowly comes over to stand by his love, placing a gentle kiss on their head.

"You're so lucky to have such a wonderful husband like me. But I'm even luckier to have you both in my life."

LEON 🦁

The happiest day in Leon's life. Second only to your wedding. Scratch that, the wedding is second.. he thinks. He's a bit frazzled from work, labor stress, and all the chaos, cut the guy some slack. No one is immune to this sweet lion's charisma, not even a newborn. They can't help but stare at his flowy hair and bright eyes, like a cartoon character come to life right before their eyes. Leon gently caresses their neck, very lightly pressing a kiss into their soft kiss to their temple. What kind of person will they grow up to be? Will they eat as much as he does? Will they fall asleep when they read too? There's a lot that runs through his mind, but ultimately, he is hopes for them to be healthy, and live happily. This child is going to be absolutely spoiled (within reason), and always have someone in their corner, rooting for them and ready to help learn from their wrongs. For now, he can worry about righting their posture instead. He tries to hold them like he read (how his partner read) in the parenting books, supporting their necks and all. It was really hard to stay awake during those, but the excitement of fatherhood helped him push through, and he's going to put it all into practice now.

"When do we start working on the second one?" (If not for the literal newborn currently in his hands, he'd be busy dodging several pillows.)

YVES 🐈

There's a lot of suppressed guilt for his mother's death in mind, and so many worries for his darling's health before, during, and after. He's a bit scared to hold his newborn, for fear of his clumsiness and "bad luck". With some assurance, he finally takes hold of them, and he could not physically be more careful with his firstborn. Clear eyes like the sky blink sleepily up at him, and Yves is fighting back tears solely for fear of them landing on the baby and somehow hurting them. The smile on his face could split his cheeks if it got any wider. The baby falls asleep in its father's arms, and he even tries breathing softer so he won't wake them. He's just trying his best, please reassure this sweet cat, he means well. (And he absolutely lost the battle against those blasted tears anyway.)

"Thank you for loving me, and for bringing our child into the world with us. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

LICHT 🐺

(Twins having twins cliché may seem redundant, I made 'em different for each brother, pinky promise.)

Licht was blessed with not one but two bundles of joy. Beautiful twin boys, who had what looked to be his vibrant silver hair and his beloved's eyes. He couldn't help the memories that surged, of happier times, and the worst of times. He knew all too well just how ruthless the court could be, but he had a chance to make things different this time. Licht seriously considered building that house he'd once mentioned, and moving you all somewhere much more peaceful. One twin in his arms, one with their other parent, he feels all thought subside when the one he's holding tries to grab at his sleeve. Licht's now-famous smile blooms across his lips much the way the sun's rays appear over daybreak; subtle, then all at once. He takes a gloveless hand, letting their tiny hand hold onto his finger as best they can, eyes gleaming from the sight before him. Licht looks over in wonder at his spouse, only to find them already watching with a tired, quiet smile.

"Things won't be easy but.. I know we can handle anything. I adore you. And I adore them."

NOKTO 🦊

(Twins for both may seem redundant, but I changed things up drastically ok, we got this.)

Nokto wasn't entirely surprised to have twins, but he had also hoped luck would be in their corner in avoiding similar fates. Two little girls, jewel-like eyes like his, and his beloved's hair color (or so it appears, though it's hard to tell for sure with so little peach fuzz). Nokto sits at the edge of the bed, holding one newborn in his arm, and reaching his other hand out for the one in his love's arms. Aside from the memories of his own upbringing, he's now having Typical Girl Dad thoughts about how to keep them safe and teach them how to stay away from cooties (boys), among other things. With a soft sigh, he gently burps his newborn after she's done feeding, rocking her slowly as she tries to chew on her father's lucious locks. Laughter bubbles past his lips at her cute antics, and Nokto feels the stress fade away, even if just a little. His heart is still getting used to receiving love and believing in it, but it's grown enough by now to love his 3 new favorite people in the world.

"If they like my hair this much now, just wait till they start to grow their own."

LUKE 🐻

Luke could not be more the picture of a teddy bear than with his newborn all swaddled up and snuggled in with their giant of a dad. He can't help but wonder if his sister is watching over them, laying next to his spouse on the bed, their newborn but a tiny dot among the two full-grown humans taking up most of the space. He promises to be there for his child the way he never really had anyone, and hopes to live more in the present now, the stakes feeling higher than ever before. A whole new life, created on purpose, gently resting in one arm and atop his broad chest, nestled comfortably and trying to suck on their thumb. Luke holds his spouse's hand with his free one, squeezing it gently, looking into their eyes with the intensity of his own emeralds.

"Look at 'em.. they're so small. Just like you," he jokes before letting out a big yawn, "But sleepy, just like me."

All rights for the characters and original intellectual property belong to Cybird. My writing belongs to myself, Maladaptivedaydreamsx, and shall not be reproduced elsewhere without permission. Ok to translate as a reblog to this post. Ok to reblog, no permission required (for those who like to be safe and ask first, all's good little homies) 💜

If you enjoyed these, I might try to make a pt2 with the other characters soon? Likes and reblogs appreciated, thank you kindly for reading! If you have any hc's of your own, please feel free to respond with them, I'd love to hear what you all think! 😊❤️ (If you'd like to be put on a tag list for any future works, please reply, though it will be a general list for writings as I'm getting back into things slowly atm,, 🙏🏻)

Also, to the lovely person who sent this in likely about 2 years ago (after I'd stopped writing on here bc life happens) ... if you're still somewhere in the fandom and end up seeing this post, thank you for your patience, and for sending something in. I'm finally trying to combat the writer's block again! 🙌🏻

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daenerysstormreborn · 5 months

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Time to ramble. I’m thinking about the way Arya and Sansa fans seem to get into this debate about who was more lonely and neglected in Winterfell. Which is kind of funny because then the arguments get totally reversed when debating other aspects of the characters. But anyway. The general arguments seem to be:

1. Arya was clearly the neglected outcast. This is clear in the meta narrative because of her connection to Jon and the fact that she doesn’t look like her true born siblings. The more direct evidence comes from the way Sansa and Jeyne teased her, the harshness of Septa Mordane, and Catelyn’s exasperation. It can be inferred that Arya feels a sense of insecurity wrt to her family ties as she wonders if her own mother would want her back after everything that happened. It can be assumed that she was a bit of an outcast based on her disinterest in the things expected of her as a girl, and we see the way many characters look down upon non-conforming women and girls in-universe. Sansa, on the other hand, receives praise from her mother and the septa and has two named close friends in Winterfell. She happily conforms to what is expected of her as a highborn girl and we can assume she would fit in in Winterfell.

2. Sansa was clearly the neglected outcast. This is clear in the meta narrative because she is the only one to lose her direwolf, which is the family symbol. The more direct evidence comes from contrast with Arya, whom Sansa observes can “make friends with anybody,” seemingly in contrast to herself. Ned agreed to kill Lady despite knowing she was innocent and indulged Arya’s interest in swordplay whilst being unenthusiastic about indulging Sansa’s interest in tourneys. Arya is demonstrated to be beloved by Ned’s men in a way we do not observe with Sansa. We can assume that Sansa didn’t feel like she belonged because of her interest in sothron culture, something none of her siblings share. Arya, on the other hand, is extroverted, makes friends easily, is northern in appearance, and has no interest in sothron culture, so we can assume she fit in in Winterfell.

I actually don’t think a lot of the points in the two arguments is mutually exclusive. We also have to remember POV bias. Arya doesn’t reflect on Any friends her age she had at Winterfell (I am not including Mycah because I am under the impression they became friends on the way to King’s Landing), but Arya is not one to reflect and reminisce. Sansa notices that Arya can make friends with anyone, but she doesn’t experience Arya’s inner world. What does Sansa mean by making friends? Does she see Arya having fun and being at ease talking to anyone and feel envy, since she herself feels like is performing, always minding her manners, when she’s socializing with most people? Could it be that Arya is friendly but struggles to find long term close friends like Jeyne and Beth, attributing this disparity to Sansa’s “ladylike” interests? Could it be that being teased by Sansa and her friends and scolded by Catelyn and Mordane has made Arya assume that other girls wouldn’t be interested in close friendship with her, causing her to be friendly but keep a certain distance? (**please note I am not trying to make a case for nlog Arya. I think keeping a distance because you assume you’ll be rejected is different and does not require that she looks down upon other girls, because there is no evidence for that here**)

I don’t have a good conclusion I just think it’s interesting that this is something that gets debated because the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. We can’t know because we get very few flashbacks and the story picks up when their normal lives in Winterfell end. I can’t speak to George’s intentions but if we pretend they’re real people I’d speculate that both would have felt misplaced within Winterfell at times, envying certain traits about the other

#asoiaf #valyrian scrolls #valyrianscrolls #arya stark #sansa stark

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lookforsomeoneelse · 2 months

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Just wanted to say that I love your work and can't wait for more also if you ever run out of ideas then here I had these in my head it's the only things in there so take good care of them please (.1 what if after they failed to bring the reader to them they went to the reader to reverse isekai style. 2 {not sure of your boundaries when it comes to writing so please ignore this if you feel uncomfortable with it also sorry if it makes you uncomfortable} what if reader is hurt like self harm/ assault/ robbery or something like that how would the characters react would they be mad?. 3 what if you made a hand made gift for every character how will they react and for my last idea how would they react to the reader singing or cooking or even the characters reading a fanfic about the reader maybe even a book the reader made?) anyway that's all that's left in this head but remember to take breaks even if you don't feel like you need one trust me you do burn out isn't something that's fun also remember that even if your mind plays tricks on you and tries to put you down remember that you are loved and appreciated also take care of yourself to many people aren't doing that and I don't want to be anyone's mom yet

From 🐉

wow

cool first emoji anon

alright uh

i’m gonna split this into parts

writing the first and second suggestion first because i think they would work well together

Started creation on: 7/7/2024

cw for (implied?) death and the incredible tension and maybe some other things

Breathe in.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Somebody is in your house. Don’t panic. Whoever it is doesn’t know you’re here. It’s a small, cramped space that you’ve hidden in, but you don’t notice that fact when your life is on the line.

You’re not sure if the intruder is armed or not, but you aren’t giving up your disguise to find out.

A long creak of the door notifies you that they’re definitely approaching your safe haven- which is slowly becoming a danger zone.

You place both hands around your mouth to try and mask some of the sound your breathing produces.

You can hear footsteps.

The light is let in.

You let out a scream.

_________________________________________

They- more specifically the combined intellect of the geniuses of the realm that stood- were sure.

Blue moon the chances may be, the geniuses could hold and draw upon fortune and fate just for this very moment, as the imaginary concepts were drawn in by the thought of the madness they were going to commit once again-

They were trying to see their beloved Guide once again. Having learnt their lessons from the last attempt, the new collider was much more durable and steady; and more importantly, it was safer. Because now the devotees weren’t just attempting to bring the Guidance to them, no, they were trying to transfer theirselves to Their realm.

“Is everything in order? We don’t want to fail a second time, don’t we?” Walking down like a bride on the aisle, the (most definitely) unmarried Herta stared at her work partner, Screwllum.

“Affirmation: Absolutely. The Absolute Exclusion Harness is ready for use. All we need now is for someone to use it. Question: Who will take up the mantle?”

“Me, of course! I had the Harness tailored to my proportions, after all.”

Screwllum paused for a moment, his CPU processing the information given to him.

“…Question: You… brought your actual body here?”

The puppet that Herta was using shut down and fell limp, its eyes going dark as a sign of lost connection. Herta- The real, in the flesh, Herta- waltzed into the room. She looked more mature than most of her puppets, though still quite young for her certain age.

“Of course. What kind of acolyte would I be if I couldn’t even see my master in person?”

”Affirmation: You already know the answer.”

They both remained silent for that fleeting moment, before Herta decided to make her move.

“Start it up.”

_________________________________________

It’s a small, cramped space that she appears in, but she can manage. She knows already that it will lead to the greatest moment of her lowly life.

“Looks like the harness didn’t come with me,” She mused, “I’ll have to improve on the design…. that can wait, though.”

She opens the door to what she assumes is a closet, letting the light in. She ponders why The Almighty would live in such poor conditions compared to what They deserve.

A corpse falls out of the closet she was just in. It brings her disgust.

And then she sees who the corpse is- or rather was.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

nononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononono nononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononono

She hadn’t cried in a long time. Her eyes began to pour tears, and when no more were left, she cried blood. Like a child scared of the dark, with a closed door and no nightlight, she held her God ever closer, trying to find some sort of signal that They were still alive- breathing, pulse, brain activity, anything.

In place of her dreams, now there was an eternal nightmare.

Like a banshee, she- and the rest of the universe she called home- would weep.

_________________________________________

First Edition completed on 7/10/2024.

A/N: wow procrastination hit me hard. also i am very sorry for the low quality ending. maybe i might make edits to this? anyway i have more to work on so i’ll get back to the other suggestions later

#sahsrau #self aware au #yandere honkai star rail #yandere hsr #yandere hsr x reader #sahsr #self aware hsr #honkai star rail x reader #cult!au #angst?#angst.#uhhhhhhhhhhh #idk about this one #🐉 anon

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agent-cupcake · 1 year

Text

grimm

Pairing: Death (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish) x f!catgirl Reader

Synopsis: The series of unfortunate events and clichés that lead you to meeting a familiar nightmare in the middle of the woods beneath a full moon. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

Warnings: 18+, explicit smut w/ a nonhuman character (not a nonhuman cock though), noncon, death, violence

Tags: alternate universe, angst, size kink, object insertion, masochistic reader, praise (voice) kink, outdoor sex

Words: 18.5k

Notes: It's been a while, huh? Yes, today we are going to fuck the furry from a kids movie, I'm not sure if y'all are even surprised but. Anyway. On the one hand I'd say I feel shame but on the other they shouldn't have made him talk so sexy, which is not my fault. All the Spanish is from DeepL and context.reverso. Hopefully any mistakes aren't too bad and you don't find it too cringe, or you can manage to look past it for my sake.

Once upon a time there lived in an unassuming little corner of the world a man. A husband to a beautiful wife and a father of two lovely children. He was strange, perhaps, for the ears atop his head, and the vertical irises through which he looked, and the spry springiness of his limbs. Stranger too for his chosen lifestyle, a traveling merchant whose blood couldn’t get any lower. Ravi, sons and daughters of Bastet, relics of a bygone era. For all that he was strange, however, he was steadfast. Bolstered rather than weakened by the critical eye of other men, the unyielding cut of his silhouette and unshakable confidence made the man a lord in his own right. He had been here, and there, traveling wherever the wind called him, and always with certainty. If his chosen path was obstructed by a swath of trees, he would see the forest leveled before he so much as considered choosing a different route. A further measure of his determination, however, would prove that if he were told that those same obstructing trees were sacred, he would scorch the earth so thoroughly that not even ash dared remain beneath his boots when he trampled on the hallowed ground.

One day, the man looked down to admire how far he had come throughout the years, to smile upon the many grand achievements he had stacked up along the way. But then, looking a little closer, he couldn’t help but notice how long his shadow had become. While he had been distracted, the sun made its arc above him, and now it was falling towards the horizon, casting him in ever dimming light. Taking with it, he thought, Ra’s blessing. He began to tally up all of the things he had been ignoring. A stiff back, sore joints, fatigue after a day of travel, a headache after a night of frivolity. He noticed that while his son had grown tall and strong, he had been shrinking. The lovely apple cheeks of his beloved wife had begun to dull, wrinkles forming around her eyes. This realization filled the man with a feeling he had never experienced before—uncertainty. And then, fear.

Unable to face the dark, he vowed that he would not allow it, he would do whatever it took to escape such a terrible fate. Unbeknownst to him, this audacious belief invited the attention of a creature with a unique penchant for mischief and an appetite for fear. A wolf. He told the man that he could run, he could fight, he could rage, he could try to pull the sun back with all his might, but in his desperate frenzy to escape the night, he would only incur a great debt. An immeasurable bounty. One, perhaps, that would condemn not only him, but his family and the legacy he had created. A terrible fate.

“I do not fear you,” the man said.

The wolf laughed.

It was to be a chase, then. A hunt. The man ran, searching for something, anything, that would save him, traveling here and there with purpose, scouring the shadows, tracking down myth and rumor with a passion bordering mania. There had to be, he reasoned, a way to remain in Ra’s boundless glory. Circling ever nearer, the wolf harried his prey to the last.

Until, on the lush outskirts of a certain small village, a small ravi family set up their wagon for the night. The woods swarmed with the sound of bugs, the early summer heat simmering back down into the cold dampness of spring nights. Haunting and dreamlike, echoing in the dark, signaling finality, a song. And then, a figure in the dark. A familiar face, a frightening foe.

There, in the night, beneath the full moon, the hunt ended. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run, his obsession had taken him so completely that the only remaining recourse was a final fit of fury against the dying light. Perhaps, in those last moments, the man realized what a fool he had been. Too late. The wolf had grown bored of the game.

Horror of horrors, serendipity struck. A child who should have been tucked up tight in her bed, sheltered and safe from what lurked in the dark, grew bored of counting sheep. She hadn’t yet learned to fear the night, thinking her father to be playing a delightful trick. Creeping, quiet, curious, and ignorant to the cruelty of the dangerous unseen, she breached the forest’s uncanny shadows. Deeper, deeper, until she discovered the truth. Her father’s corpse hit the ground, his empty eyes never seeing her terror, his deaf ears never hearing her scream.

The gray wolf bid her to run, and she did. It was inevitable that they should meet again.

one chance.

Before that night, you never gave much thought to death, or luck, or malevolent forces, or tragedy. It was only when you were huffing, puffing, screaming for help, crying wolf, that true fear crept into your life. Once the door opened, it could not be closed. Although the monster was long gone, its shadow remained.

And they said: you were lucky to have escaped. They said: ravi law, loose as it was, could not be counted on for satisfactory justice. They said: the murder could not have been committed by any of the simple townsfolk. They said: it would be a blight upon the poor ordinary people for the case to drag on and on. And so the crime was tried thus—your brother, suffering a fit of drunken rage, donned a mummer’s wolf mask and murdered your father.

Not even a day passed before the so-called trial was held. The only building that could accommodate the gawkers and jury was the local barroom, a place that stank of old wood and fermentation. You didn't know the man acting as judge, you did not recognize any of the faces around you, only that they were indifferent, cold, and your brother's life rested in their callous hands. He sat near the front as the case was laid out for the gawkers, his face drawn and shadowed. Clapped in irons, his mouth covered to protect his jailors from his sharp ravi canines, ears as low as you’d ever seen them, looking not so much a man on trial than livestock on auction.

"You’re the daughter, are you not?” the judge called. It took you a moment to realize he meant you, his dull eyes signaling you out.

Someone spat at your feet.

“Filthy half breed."

"They’re incestuous, the father must have found them in the act."

“They’re both guilty.”

“Go ahead. Run. No one escapes me.”

The low whisper, practically a growl, made your ears twitch, your heartbeat racing as you scanned the faceless crowd with dry eyes, blinking fast to try and find the source of that terrible voice. But the faces were all human, drawn with cruelty and disgust, but human.

The judge banged on the table, catching your attention. “Young lady! You witnessed the crime, yes?”

You shook your head in rejection of the phantom voice and cleared your throat, breaking free of your mother’s grasp to stumble towards the judge. "Yessir," you said. "Yessir, I am… I-I did."

“Go on, then. We’ll hear your testimony.”

It was difficult to breathe, the air was stuffy and hot, your skin too tight. You could feel the people watching you, the weight of their eyes.

"You've got it all wrong, sir,” you said. “It-it wasn't him. He couldn't-"

"The facts only, if you please," the judge said, cutting you off. "Did you or did you not see the man who attacked you?”

Hot, heavy tears formed in your eyes, primed to travel the same salty tracks down your cheeks left by those before. Fear, pain, sadness, exhaustion, all of it compounded and ached within you. You didn’t want to remember. You didn’t want to think. But you had to.

"It was no man, sir," you said, your voice choked.

“Do you mean to tell me a woman killed your father?”

“No sir, it was an… an evil spirit.” Behind you, people muttered and whispered with disbelief. Shock. Doubt. Anger. The judge's jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing. “He had the head of a jackal, or a-a a wolf. ”

“A mask.”

“No, sir. It was not a man.” You heard your mother’s scolding voice from behind you, and your brother raised his head to look at you with shock, but you ignored it all.

"I should hope I don’t need to remind you of the severity of these proceedings,” the judge said, his eyes narrowed into slits.

"I know what I saw,” you replied, your hands balled into tight fists at your side.

"Your testimony is that an evil spirit with the head of a wolf murdered your father and attacked you?" The judge clarified, not so much as pretending to believe you. The question pulled a bit of laughter from the crowd. Your mother grabbed at your arm to pull you back, but you refused to let her. Instead, you set your stance and jaw.

"Yessir."

More laughter, as if there was anything humorous about this situation.

“I know,” the judge said loudly, silencing the crowd with a wave of his hand. “I know that you’ve been through a terrible thing, and I am sorry about that. That’s no excuse, however, and I mean this, it is no excuse for you to lie. You might think you’re defending your brother, but anything less than the absolute truth only strengthens the case against him. And, if I’m to be completely honest, I find this behavior deeply troubling. Perhaps it is acceptable among your kind to believe in stories of evil spirits and the like, but it is not appropriate here. We’re a good, God fearing people.”

“This isn’t a story. I saw it,” you insisted, your throat swollen and the world blurring up with tears. “The beast might still be in the woods, if you just look-”

“Look for the big bad wolf?” the judge asked, a bushy gray eyebrow rising high, inviting further discontent and disbelieving laughter from the people behind you. He sighed, once again calling for order and shaking his head. “It pains me greatly, you must understand, I want to be fair considering your circumstances, but this really is unacceptable. If you won’t testify against him, your father’s killer-”

“I told you,” you insisted, a little louder.

“No, young lady. And I repeat—no. What you have done is insult me and the fine people of this town with your absurd heathen fiction,” he told you.

“That’s not-”

“Your kind think you are above civilized law, but understand that we are giving your father the justice he, as a son of God, deserves by right. Your father brought fear and tragedy into the hearts of these people, and your scoundrel brother committed an unthinkable crime. There are those who don’t believe your brother is deserving of a trial at all, considering the substantial evidence against him. Indeed, this is a kindness I am extending to you and your mother. So, for the last time, I will not tolerate your pagan fiction. Do you understand?”

“I do,” you said, although you could feel your confidence wavering, a shaky cold sweat beading up on the back of your neck, pooling acidically in your stomach. He wasn’t going to listen. He didn’t believe you. “But I haven’t lied, I know what I saw.”

That caused an uproar, the people’s voices overlapping, a relentless and meaningless wave of noise. Demanding you be silenced, removed, executed.

“That is enough,” the judge exclaimed, and you didn't know if he spoke to you or the people. “So far, I have disregarded accusations that you were complicit in your brother’s crime, but if you continue to behave in such a manner, I may have to reconsider. That is a charge of patricide, young lady. Do you not have enough decency to spare your mother the loss of another child?”

You looked at him, really looked at him, overcome with a dizzyingly caustic rush of pain and disbelief at the injustice. He didn’t care if your brother was or was not guilty, or who had actually killed your father. To him, the death of a ravi man was meaningless, let alone two. Let alone three. He saw your eyes and ears and that was it.

Trying to fight back the thick swell of fear and pain and anger, you breathed carefully in and out, staring straight up in an attempt to fight the tears.

“It wasn’t my brother,” you said, forcing the words from your mouth without inflection. "He would never, ever… he wouldn't."

“Did you,” the judge asked icily, bluntly, “or did you not see the face of the man who attacked you?”

Red eyes, a long snout, a canine mouth full of deadly sharp teeth. A spirit attempting some approximation of the god of death with twin sickles in hand, trying to twist the kind shepherd’s image into one of terror, a creature wearing the face of evil itself. But the truth cowered away from something far more potent, shamefully grotesque. Self preservation.

“No,” you said, realizing too late the damning significance of that answer, wanting to add more but not knowing what. When you looked your brother in the eye, you understood. And it didn’t matter what you said after that point. You were the girl who cried wolf.

two times questioned.

That night, a great storm blotted out the stars and made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of yourself. You made off into the night with your meager possessions packed up in a sack and some vague idea of where to go in the back of your head, mostly memories of better times. Anywhere was better than the home for wayward girls you had been shuffled into, a place that was a charity in name only.

Ultimately, you didn’t make it far, not even out of the city. There was no place in the world left for you, and you were afraid of the dark, and it was so, so cold.

Falling to your knees at the side of the road, mud splattering you with the force of each raindrop, you cried. Sobbed, curling in on yourself, desperate to wish it all away, wailing louder than the winds could blow as if your misery would overcome nature itself. You tried not to cry much anymore, tried not to show your weakness, but now it all came flooding out. Agony deep enough to drown, heavy enough to crush.

Until you heard a song beneath the gale. Impossible that it should reach you above the riotous storm, impossible that you should know its melody. Panic slushed through your veins in an instant, and you stumbled upright, ready to run from a danger you had so desperately tried to convince yourself didn’t exist. Red eyes and silver sickles and-

When you whirled around to run, you were not caught by a wolf, but by the man you could only think of as the prison warden.

Caked with mud and soaked to the bone, he dragged you back to the home, and you let him, fearing what lurked in the darkness more than you feared the punishment your escape attempt would earn.

Although it wasn’t bright, the light blinded your glazed eyes. You slipped when he released you, but felt nothing when you fell, leaving a muddy smear upon the tiles. Your fingers, bleached of color, were numb to all sensation, slipping when you tried to support yourself. The cold burrowed into your very core. You shook. Violently, as if your soul itself trembled.

Fear had kept it all locked up tight in your chest. Fear of your shame for crying wolf. Fear that if you gave breath to the creature that haunted your dreams, he would be made real. You told yourself that your father was murdered by a man in a mask, but the wolfman haunted you, the face of oblivion, that song and that laugh.

Distantly, you became aware of a commotion, and then the headmistress appeared before you. A towel was forced into your clumsy hands by the same girl who helped you get to your ice-block feet, muttering something about drying off. You doubted a single towel would manage that feat, but you held fast onto the fabric with fingers you couldn’t feel.

“Where in God’s name,” the headmistress demanded, haughty even in her dressing gown and curlers, “do you think you were going?”

You hugged the towel to your chest, feeling the fluffy material grow heavy and limp from your embrace. Ruined by your touch. Shaking so hard your teeth clacked, the entire world jittered and hazed, your bones practically vibrating, tears and snot dripping down your face with the rainwater.

“I asked you a question,” she said, her tone a little more shrill. Anger smoldered in her voice, but your eyes found purchase only on the lacy hem of her nightcoat. Such fine lace would have been imported from the north, your father had sold more than his fair share of it. You owned several pretty dresses decorated with similar frills, once. A lifetime ago. A life that ended with one decisive slash of silver. “Where were you going? Running off with a boy?”

Wide open fields of rippling golden wheat, smooth red cliff sides overlooking deep drops into the abyss, frothy blue waves licking pale sandy shores. Places you knew, places you had only heard about. Ravi weren’t meant to stay in one place, yours was a people of wanderlust and breeze.

The lady stepped forward and slapped your cold, numb cheek. You stumbled, slipping back onto the floor. “You will answer when I ask you a question,” she said. “I will not repeat myself again.”

“I wanted to see my mother,” you finally told her, your voice barely comprehensible from the way you were shaking, more tears welling up. The pain was there, was always there, and it burned hotter than the biting blue on your fingers and toes.

“Oh, for the love of… you’re well on your way to joining her,” she said. “What in the world was I thinking, allowing you into my home…”

You stayed silent. There was no defense you could offer, no excuse you could provide. She sighed, annoyed.

“I’ll decide your punishment in the morning. Assuming you don’t catch cold and die.” She laughed once, a short sound. “I should be so lucky.”

Die. Your sluggish brain was slow to process that word, churning it round and round in a swirl of equally unpleasant thoughts. When you breathed, the air rattled in your chest. Your mother made the same sound at the very end, as if death had already planted its seed in her body, slowly infecting her from the inside out. Fear had never come for her, not like with your father or brother. There was only vacuous ecstasy, the madman’s bliss of fever. When you pictured what she looked like, it was her hollow eyes staring into nothingness, her bones poking out beneath waxy skin in unnatural angles and blood bubbling upon dry lips. “I am going to see them soon,” she told you, smiling. It was the first time since your brother’s execution that she didn’t look at you with blame smoldering beneath her pained eyes. “We’ll be together, and it will be beautiful.”

But it was not beautiful.

Death was a hideous, terrible thing. Despair and empty eyes and rotting flesh without poetry or resolution. Blood dripping from curved blades, lives harvested without mercy, red eyes flashing with glee. A neck snapping and a body gone limp at the end of a rope. Agony in a small room that smelled of human waste and sickness. Death was not beautiful.

three failures.

The other girls called you, among other things, murderer.

“She pushed her.”

“Her kind are all like that, thieves and murderers.”

“Freaks.”

The two of you were stuck cleaning windows, balanced precariously high up in the air. The platform got loose, teetering uncertainly two stories up. It could have just as easily been you rather than her, but it wasn’t. Of course you hadn’t pushed her, but who would believe the word of a ravi?

And who would believe you when you told them of the shadow which greeted her down below? A monster you couldn’t believe in. The bastardized form of a benevolent god. The real murderer.

They saw your fear as guilt. And that was that. Murderer. You hadn’t pushed her, that was a fact. But it was suspicious, wasn’t it? There was a pattern of death surrounding you. Punishment.

Every night, you begged forgiveness, begged for freedom from the creature that haunted you. Bastet did not answer. Ra did not answer. Your prayers became pleas, and your pleas weakened into whimpers. Eventually, you stopped asking.

It followed you. Death, less an intangible concept than a lurking threat circling ever nearer, followed. Your father, your brother, your mother, other girls in the home. But not you, no matter how close you came. Accidents happened. Punishment became more and more brutal. Part of it was because of what you were, a belief that a beast could handle rougher treatment. Part of it was your attitude. Punishment. Live, but live in misery. Survive, but survive endless torment. And they said that you were lucky. The beatings were never deadly, although they should have been. The accidents were never fatal, although they could have been. You shouldn’t have survived, but you did.

four minutes.

It was spring, then. The river beside the road gushed with newfound force, overeager after an especially snowy winter. Even the season of life and rebirth was ripe with violence and death. The scent of it seemed to cling permanently to your dirty clothes, cloying in the chill of night. You and three other girls from the charity house followed by the riverside on the way back to town, your faces dusty and feet heavy from a long day of work. There was, as it turned out, quite a bit of money in renting out orphans to satellite farm estates who could launder clothes, clean carpets, polish silver, and scrub cast iron. No money for you or the other girls, but money nonetheless.

The three chatted as they walked in front of you, a conversation you tuned out. Long had you grown accustomed to walking behind them, ignored and withdrawn. Trailing behind like a shadow, an afterthought. In so-called polite society, that’s all ravi were. They—they with their round irises and human ears, with their unmarked faces and smooth canines—didn’t want you at their side. You understood things like that now, things you had been so blissfully unaware of in your childhood.

You watched their worn-out shoes marching on in synchronized steps. Watched when they suddenly stopped, your eyes drawn up in confusion as they turned towards you with big smiles.

"Those flowers are awfully nice, you should see if you can cross the river to pick some for us."

"I’d go myself, but your kind are more agile than real people, right?"

"The rocks make a perfect bridge for you to cross."

Requests from them, although you weren’t sure they could be called anything other than orders, weren’t abnormal. The only thing lower than an orphaned girl was an orphaned ravi girl. That was the way of it. Rather than forming a bond of solidarity, they emphasized what little status they had left by pushing you around. Surely there were similar flowers on this side of the river, but that wasn’t the point.

Biting your lip, you looked at the rocks spanning the river’s violent course to the other side. It wasn’t much of a bridge. Attempting to cross was, at best, stupid. If you fell, you would be helplessly carried away by the water, thrashed about against the rocks. Dead, surely. But if you denied them, they would almost certainly do worse. Whisper words of your supposed misdeeds to the headmistress, spread lies that would earn you punishment. Malice gleamed in their empty, hollow eyes.

"All right," you said, feigning indifference as you sized up the river.

The girls smiled and tittered as you faced the river. The water roared. Nerves had your hands shaking, but you didn’t let them show.

With a big breath and a mental prayer to Bastet to steady your feet, you stepped onto the first rock. Beneath the worn sole of your boot, the rock was slippery. You set your jaw, going to take another step.

Something knocked against your back. While it was a light touch, the surprise jolted your balance.

Just like that, the rock slipped out from under you. An undignified squawk left your mouth, and your arms flailed around empty air desperately to regain your footing, but you couldn’t manage it.

The water hit as hard as the ground might, immediately dragging you under.

For a moment that seemed to consume forever entirely, animal panic. You inhaled a lungful of water, thrashing wildly. You tumbled sideways as the river dragged you along, hitting rocks on the way. You violently struggled against its unstoppable current in an attempt to get your head above the water.

Unable to breathe, unable to orient yourself, you were as good as dead.

Then you slammed against a rock. The agonizing impact gave you enough of a painful shock to find purchase against it, slicing your palms against the rough edges as you held fast against the water’s oppressive tow. Blindly, you managed to find which way was up and dragged yourself to it. And then you were vomiting river water, hacking it out of your lungs and desperately trying to suck in gasps of air.

Feeling as heavy and broken as a corpse, you managed to flop onto the bank, covering your entire front with mud, crawling through it to drag yourself out of the water completely. It was there that you came eye to eye with three familiar pairs of shoes.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bump into you.”

“I guess cats can swim after all.”

“You’re lucky that rock was there, huh?”

You coughed up more water, coughed until you were hacking up blood, wheezing and shuddering with bone-deep violence. There would be a terrible bruise on your stomach. But you were alive because of it. Pain, and life. Lucky you.

five years.

Barely into your lanky teens and with nothing more than meager pocket change to live on, you made your final escape from the charity house and went west. The most recent beating was proof enough that if you stayed, you would die. The woman who stitched you up said you only narrowly avoided it this time. You knew a coffin was the sole eventuality waiting for you there. So you left. Despite the time spent there, you parted with no sentimentality for what you would be leaving behind, or excitement for what laid ahead.

In a way, you were following your father’s example. His legacy. In his final days, you heard him muttering about the sun going down. Your brother whispered that he’d grown paranoid of his own death, that it was why your family never stayed in any place for too long. He was driven by a mean, feral fear and even aggression towards death, the cornered-rat instinct to defend your life at any cost, to protect the pitiful remains of existence as an animal would. You thought you understood. So you pressed against your bruises and exhaled slowly, accepting the pain as proof that you were still alive.

Dust kicked up a big cloud behind the wagon, baking beneath the heat of the sun. Although the world was alive with birds and bugs and the sound of hoofs on the road and wheels crunching over ground, you couldn’t empathize. Crusty from a night of fitful sleep, your eyes cringed away from the garish sunlight, your head pounding angrily. Pain and anxiety from your first night on your own kept you awake and, when you did manage a few hours of sleep, you had bad dreams. A fiction where your family was restored and you were all together again. Whole, untainted by horror and death. You woke up hollow and sick and empty, unalive but breathing.

“Are those real?” the girl beside you asked, breaking you from your thoughts. She pointed at your ears, her eyes wide with curious innocence. You imagined that question had been building up for a while, ever since you hitched a ride on her father’s wagon to the nearest town, the two of you sitting in the back of the bed with your legs swinging over the passing road. She was very young, her round-cheeked smile missing a single tooth and bright colored ribbons in her hair. He was going to the next town over to sell goods from his farm.

"Quinta!" her father scolded sharply.

“It’s okay,” you said. It was better to be asked outright than to endure the side glances. “They’re real.” You tilted your head to show her. Quinta reached out to pet the fur, her chubby little hands cautious.

“What are you?” she asked, getting another stern look from her father over his shoulder. Not that you blamed her. He probably didn’t know either, ravi didn't often leave their small communities, and they were practically unheard of in this part of the world. Little wonder, some establishments wouldn’t so much as let you inside. It was a very positive mark on his character that he allowed you to ride on his wagon in the first place, most people wouldn’t.

“I’m ravi.”

She blinked. “Is that why you look like a cat?”

“I guess so.”

Quinta considered that for a moment, staring at you unabashedly. It wasn’t just your ears that were different, otherwise you could have covered them up and avoided the scrutiny. With round eyes and vertical pupils, markings seemingly painted over your cheeks, you stood out regardless of what you did or where you went. Ravi were strangers to everyone, uprooted and adrift, low as the dust trailing beneath your feet. That fact hadn’t changed after you ran away from the charity house, you merely traded the title or orphan for that of vagrant.

“My mom won’t let us keep cats, we only have a dog,” Quinta finally announced. “Do you like dogs?”

You shrugged.

“Are you afraid of them because of-” She put her hands over her head, mimicking your ears.

“We are natural enemies,” you said, although the comment didn’t come across as the joke you intended. Perhaps because it wasn’t a joke.

Quinta didn’t say anything, looking back at the passing road and her swinging feet. The warm air smelled like trees and dust and the stacks of straw piled up on the back of her father’s wagon. When the breeze blew, you got whiffs of the approaching town. Manure, cooking food, fire smoke, and that tangy, sweaty scent of so many people all crowded in one place.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Somewhere else.”

“Oh.”

You looked down, staring at the road. The sun beat down on your neck, sweat beading up on your hairline. You could hear the chorus of a small town’s buzzing crowds as the wagon pulled closer.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Quinta said. “Will you come to our house? I bet you’ll like my dog, he’s really, really nice. My mom is there, you can meet her.”

You smiled, feeling a sharp little pang at her sweet innocence. “Thank you, I’ll think about it.”

“Oh, please say you will.”

“Quinta, that’s enough,” her father chided. She frowned, but said nothing else.

The wagon pulled to a stop where the animals could be hitched. You hopped off and stretched, looking around the town. You weren’t really sure where you would go next. Far away. As far as possible.

“Thank you, sir,” you told the man, bowing politely.

He nodded gruffly, and you knew you shouldn’t linger. Still, you couldn’t help but glance back at the sound of his heavy grunt. When he passed the wagon bed, Quinta jumped up onto his back, her arms wrapped tight around his neck. He was quick to rebuke her, scowling as he put her on the ground. That clearly hurt her feelings, turning away with a trembling lower lip and furrowed brows. You felt, for a terrible moment, a great pain in your chest.

You wanted to tell her that he was just busy. Maybe he could be cold and stern, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. You wanted to tell her to love him while she could, that time was finite. Right then, you weren’t looking at a stranger and his daughter, but at a little girl with ears too big for her head and a man who waved at her from the driver’s seat with a sun-crinkled smile, a man who tweaked those fluffy ears with calloused fingers, and a man who kissed her forehead with paper-dry lips.

But then you blinked, sunblind and a little dizzy, and turned away from the scene.

You thought of your father, love for him tender sweet and swelling in your chest, overwhelming. But quickly, always so quick, his smiling, twinkly eyes were emptied as his body fell to the ground, deprived of dignity in those final moments. And the monster turned from him to face you with a wild expression, a growl in its throat. He said you would meet again. The big bad wolf was not real, he was a masked madman, a creature of fiction. All the same, your anxious, cold gaze scanned the crowd of many faces around you. Haunted. Hunted.

sixth sense.

Blisters covered your hands, and you couldn't stop coughing, your body seizing with fits of it. The tangy sour stench of smoke infected every pore of your body, saturated your lungs with its acrid excretions. Somehow, despite the horror of escaping a building as it burned down, you were alive. You had no idea what had woken you up, but it happened before anybody even noticed the fire. Others weren’t so lucky. The girl who slept every night two beds down from you, who was innocent, who had never done anything at all to you, was dead.

"It's not your fault that you couldn’t get to her in time. You were lucky enough to get out with your life," you were told, an attempt at consolation. A lie.

It was your fault. Your punishment. Your presence invited the flame to spark a blaze in the boarding house for working young women, and yet you had lived while someone else died. Above the sound of so many voices, of a chaos world attempting to fix such a tragedy, you could hear it. She screamed for as long as she was able, until her lungs were too coated in sooty black smoke to make a sound, until her flesh melted by the infernal heat. Other women boasted swaths of charred skin, blisters popping bright red and gruesome, bones broken from leaping out windows. Their lives would be ruined by this, by the sheer misfortune of being near you.

And as the flames licked the sky, you could have sworn you saw an inhuman face at the flickering orange edge where the light tapered into shadow, his eyes not so much reflecting the blaze as they were consuming the fire’s callous violence, soaking in the terror which mingled with the smoke.

Then you blinked watery eyes, and the shadow was just a shadow.

There was nothing for it, you left town as soon as you were well enough. Not soon enough, clearly.

It was your fault, your punishment, but terribly, shamefully, you kept thinking, over and over and over, at least it wasn’t you. You breathed in air that still stank of the memory of murderous smoke and felt grateful that you would recover from this incident.

That selfish drive was the crux of it all, the reason you could never allow yourself to move on. After so many years, most people would have found a way forward. They took their anguish in stride and did something with their life. But you didn’t. For you, there was no forgetting, and there was no moving on. You couldn’t be allowed happiness in a life others had been denied, a life that you hoarded so rabidly. Even cowards had to draw a line somewhere, didn’t they? No matter how miserable, you struggled to squeeze one more day out of the harsh world, to carve yourself another miserable hour, and then, crippled by pain and smoke and fear, felt a coward’s joy when facing tragedy because at least it wasn’t you.

Lucky, lucky, lucky you.

seven rainbow hues.

"Watch out!"

It happened so fast. That was the cliche, but the truth. Time did not wait for you to catch up in moments where survival came down to muscle memory. Panic and surprise cut up your perception in choppy little bits. One second you were walking down the road, you noticed a man beneath a falling beam and lunged, and then you were flat on your ass in the middle of a road, adrenaline spiking your heart rate and your entire body shaking with it. So little time had passed that the warning was still tangy in your mouth, the sound stifled by the echoing impact.

Someone was shouting. Screaming.

Sitting up, little rocks grinding into your skinned palms, you looked at the fallen beam not even a foot away. Had you erred even a few inches to the right, you would have been, at the very least, catastrophically injured. Just like the man you tried to push out of the way. He was screaming. His leg was crushed.

But you were fine. Alive.

People swarmed the man to free him from the beam while the world blurred extra bright, the colors of shock overloading your brain, dozens of different voices buzzing together. Someone asked if you were okay. You were. Of course you were. Alive. The carpenter jumped down from his ladder, finally getting the man out from under the beam. A gruesome mess had been made of his shin, bloody and broken. You only watched, a sort of cool numbness had taken the place of adrenaline.

The man's leg was a ruin of flesh and bone, and your only injuries were a bruised tailbone and skinned palms. You should not have survived that.

eight shots of moonshine.

“He reared up real tall, howling like a beast, and that’s when I stuck him,” the hunter said, his expression animated as he recounted the story. It was, by your count, his ninth drink, and the fifth version of his story about how he fought, and escaped, the terrifying half-man-half-wolf beast—el hombre lobo, in the local dialect. It made sense that some cruel spark of fate would invite the subject matter wherever you happened to be, especially now. That’s the way these things always happened, wasn’t it? The world had a way of kicking you when you were down.

You listened to him with half an ear, staring at your chapped, cracked knuckles. Working as a laundress was not kind to your skin. Unfortunately, being ravi and having a limited skill set meant that simple labor was just about all you could get. So you did odd jobs and, once you had enough money, you would be on your way to the next place, and then the next, and the next. Passing through like a ghost, and then gone. Temporary. Just like this bar, this drink, this man and his story. Transient.

“The sound he let out was deafening, and I mean that,” the hunter continued. “I’ve never heard anything like it, not in all my years.”

“That’s not true,” you said loudly, pulling the story to a screeching halt before its predictable conclusion. You hadn’t meant to speak, but you did. If nothing else than to just make him stop. Details changed, but the ending was mostly the same each time. The creature put up a fight, but the hunter was stronger and smarter. Maybe he’d mention the bear trap again, how he watched the wolfman trying to gnaw off its own leg. And it wasn’t like you cared what some random drunk had to say. You didn’t, really. It was the alcohol, and the memories the alcohol was meant to be suppressing, and some misplaced well of fury crammed deep into your gut, unable to be reached or drained or expressed in any meaningful way. Or maybe it was something else, something less palatable. You had a way of testing people’s tempers. Pain was proof of purchase, after all. And you had paid more than your fair share.

“What was that?” the hunter asked, glazed eyes surprisingly lucid when they landed on you, twinkling with an amused sort of incredulousness at being challenged. He had on a sweat stained red shirt and the ruddy complexion to match. Everyone around you was in similar states of drunken disrepair. So were you, for that matter—a shot of something hard and foul tasting past reasonable. Two shots away from having the energy to engage in this stupid argument, which was ridiculous considering you were the one to involve yourself in the first place.

“That didn’t happen,” you said. The few people who had been paying attention in the first place laughed at you, but the hunter seemed intrigued, if irritated, by your attitude.

“Are you calling me a liar?” he asked.

“Do you expect us to believe you fought the big bad wolf?” Those words were old and mean, that of a horrible old man without a shred of mercy in his heart.

Red-shirt’s eyes narrowed. A couple of the men laughed again, sending a few drunken jibes in your direction.

“Is that what you’re supposed to be?” One of his friends called, gesturing at your ears, which twitched under his attention.

“No, no. She’s one of those cat people. The eastern savages,” the man sitting next to you responded, roughly tweaking your ear. He’d made a few friendly comments in your direction throughout the night. And then a few less friendly ones as the liquor loosened his tongue. You winced and ducked away, scowling at him. He grinned. “Have you got any wares to sell us, gata? Or maybe you’re here to put on a show.”

Another laugh, a playful wolf whistle.

“Ah, I understand. I was mistaken,” red-shirt allowed, a mean grin spreading across his face. “It was no wolfman after all. You ought to tell your pa to keep away from these parts. Next time I see him, he won’t get off so easy.”

That drew a bigger laugh from the few people bothering to pay attention. A part of you hated him a little bit, hated him with a riotous, evil sort of passion. His ignorance, his audacity. You hated yourself more for not holding your tongue.

“No, it was her ma,” another man chimed in. “Must have been in heat if she was so focused on you.” You felt a red hot flush rise to your cheeks at that, some uncomfortable mixture of embarrassment and anger.

Needing to calm the impulse of rage, and kicking yourself for having spoken at all, you took a deep breath.

“Aw, pobre gata, don’t be upset,” the man next to you said. Poor cat? He drew out the condescending pet name with a sugary sweetness, going for your ears again. You scooted back to avoid him, nearly falling from the alcohol-induced sway of the world. The men laughed again. “Where’re you going?” he asked. “They’re just teasing.”

You licked your dry lips. You needed to leave, it wasn’t the sort of place you should have been hanging out in the first place. Part of you worried that he might try something. He looked hungry. Worse, part of you wondered if he would, wanted to stick around and find out what kind of situation you’d dug yourself into. Curiosity didn’t come from desire or lust, but from something darker, the impulse of deserved violence. Alcohol made it worse, made you think that maybe you could want it, that you might enjoy being roughed up and used in a vulgar game of intimacy.

“Let me buy you another drink,” he offered. “I promise not to tease you.”

You pursed your lips, and knew you would hate yourself later, and decided that it didn’t matter all that much anyway. “Okay.”

Hours later, you were sweaty, sour with alcohol but no longer drunk enough to tolerate the discomfort, and ultimately dissatisfied with the interaction as you stumbled through the quiet town back to the room you had been renting. The unpleasant scent of sex was all you could smell, it clung to your rumpled dress and messy hair. Evidence of your mistake. Despite being so forward, he hadn’t been what you hoped. Whenever you pulled back, he thought to coax you further with sweet words rather than rough hands. You’d have been better off trying to antagonize the man in the red shirt to get what you really wanted, not a quick upright with a man who wanted to slobber on your neck and call you beautiful.

Disgust, shame—a sickening feeling of wrong had you ducking into an alley, vomiting up a stomach full of bile and alcohol like a homeless wretch, shaking hard enough that your teeth clattered. Snot, stomach acid, and tears smeared against the side of the building when you pressed your fevered cheek against it, the material rough on your skin. But it was cool, and solid, and you were breathing. Alive.

Miserable. Beautiful. That was your mother’s word. An ugly, ugly word. Your shoulders heaved with half-hearted sobs, your skin crawling and stomach twisting. You were alive because the only thing you feared more than the hideous pain of living was beautiful death, and that was the ugliest feeling you could possibly imagine.

Eventually, you collected yourself, wiping your mouth and eyes, and completed your walk of shame, your thoughts lingering on el hombre lobo and the furious hollow in your chest, and the sort of hatred which begged violence and cried for pity.

nine lives.

Afternoon faded into sunset as you walked, and you weren’t too concerned. If anything, you felt the same relaxing sense of relief you always felt when you left one place for another.

No, you didn’t worry at all until twilight gave way to the rise of the moon. That’s when you stopped, frowning up at the sky. Either you were lost or you had severely misjudged the distance. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done other than continue on and hope that you reached civilization soon. You pulled your cloak a little closer to fight off the chill, adjusting your bag uncomfortably. Summer was coming, but the air retained the cold damp newness of deep spring.

And so you trundled along, reminding yourself over and over that it was okay. While possible, it wasn’t likely that anything would happen to you.

Your anxiety wasn’t helped by the full moon. A morbid coincidence, and a mixed blessing. It was full that night. Illuminating your father’s twisted expression of fear, haloing the impossible beast looming above you, lighting your way when you ran, dying your blood into the color of ink. As always, it was a bit of mischief the universe was having at your expense. It shone the same steady pale silver, bleaching the world in imitation sunshine just like it always had, always did.

A gentle breeze shook the tree canopy, the leaves shivering. Above them, the perfect velvet blue veil of sky was mostly undisturbed by clouds. The stars twinkled and winked, dulled slightly by the radiance of the moon. Bugs wailed and frogs sang their nighttime dirge, an unsettlingly miserable sound. No matter how uncomfortable the sun could be, blinding and revealing, the night was worse. It was the place where nightmares lived, after all. And the woods, the place where the big bad wolf hid.

Right. These were the woods where the hunter claimed to have seen the wolfman those few weeks ago. A chill slithered down your spine at that realization. While it was most certainly a lie, in the dark, it troubled you. It frightened you. There were many things in the deep, dark woods to be afraid of. Hiding, lurking.

Huffing with annoyance at your paranoia, you vigorously shook your head and focused on the path instead. Everything was fine, you just had to keep going.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the wind began to blow a lot harder, catching the hem of your cloak and loose strands of hair, crawling beneath your clothes to make you shiver. At the same time, a shadow slowly closed in around you, a stray cloud covering up the moon. The sudden lack of light made the shadows darken significantly. Goosebumps crawled across your entire body in response to the windy chill, hairs standing on end and visceral discomfort lurching in your gut like a hook behind your belly button. Surrounded on all sides by darkness, stranded in the woods, you were completely and utterly vulnerable.

Then it all—bugs, the frogs, and the wind—everything died. Not slowly, tapering off naturally, but all at once, as if a great dampener was suddenly pressed into the air. And that was strange, that was eerie, that was cause for fear, but the first whistled note shot straight into your core.

Trees were hungry things. They, with their thick wood and big bodies, had an appetite for sound. Echoes, however, were mischievous. They would rather play tricks than be eaten. Back and forth, from everywhere and nowhere, a tune you knew all too well danced amidst the silent forest. The notes jumped from one to the next in a song that should have been cheerful but wasn’t. You didn’t move. You felt like you couldn’t. Standing there, ears perked and twitching in search of any noise aside from the whistling, heart racing, cold sweat gathering on the nape of your neck, you suddenly knew, with an alarming degree of certainty, that you weren’t alone.

Slowly, eyes watering from the sudden burst and disappearance of the wind, you looked up.

The whistler, seeming not to notice you, was no more than a dozen feet ahead, a darker shadow amidst the void, a little off the edge of the clearing. Jarring surprise shot like lightning down your spine at the sight, at how close you were to somebody you hadn’t noticed, so powerful that you stumbled backward on pure instinct. But your foot landed on a mossy rock and the squishy material slid out from under your boot. You tried to find your balance, but you wound up overcorrecting, sending you forward instead. With a yelp and a loud thump, you tumbled onto the ground, landing hard on your elbows and knees.

The song ended.

“¿Tan deseosa estás de ser engullida?” the man asked, amused. You looked up, terrified, but without any moonlight to help you see, the most you could make out was the vague shape of a hooded figure leaning against a tree.

Fear made your hands shaky, your body unwieldy and awkward. Scrambling, unsure if you should have been embarrassed or scared, you got up to your feet. At least you weren’t hurt.

“I-I don’t… no entiendo,” you said, wondering, hoping, fearing, unsure. At least it was just a man. That shouldn’t have been the consolation it was. It shouldn’t have been any consolation at all.

“I asked if you needed any help,” he clarified in an accented voice, amused in a way that made you think he was making fun of you. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I, um… I was just surprised, bu-but it’s okay,” you said, trying very hard to calm down. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I would hate for you to wind up like the last girl who got lost in the woods,” he said. You squinted into the dark, but you couldn’t see any details beyond a shadow. Covered moon or not, the dark was borderline unnatural. “She was gobbled up whole, her granny too. You’ve even got the red hood.”

It took you a second to register that he was messing with you. Entertaining any sort of interaction was foolish, but you couldn’t help your nervous laugh, pulling your cloak closer. “Oh, yeah.”

The stranger laughed in turn, forcefully friendly in a very uncomfortably stilted way. The sound sent a fresh shiver down your spine. “They don’t get very many people coming all the way out here to visit,” the man said. “Are you here to see family, gatita?”

Your ears twitched nervously. “Um… Excuse me?”

“Is that offensive? I can never remember what you beast types call yourselves. Ra… something.”

“Ravi,” you said.

“That’s right. I’ve never been much of a cat person myself, but I can see the appeal. The big eyes, the fuzzy ears… Very cute.” He paused. “Hey, can you purr too?”

You drew back, your awkward moment of uncertainty giving way to dread at the underlying danger of a question like that. While many people scorned you blindly, there were those with a particular taste for half-breeds.

“I need to get going, it’s late,” you said slowly. You didn’t want to turn your back on him, and you had no idea how close you were to town, but anything was better than here.

“Wait, before you go, I heard a story recently,” he said, unconcerned with your response. “It’s about your kind. Stop me if you’ve heard it before.”

“I don’t-”

“Once upon a time,” he said, speaking as if you hadn’t, “a gato got it in his head that one life wasn’t enough for him. Even though he had everything he could ask for—a wife, two children, a successful career, he was proud. He didn’t see why he should have to abide by the same rules as everyone else. Of course, he was warned that it was a bad idea, but it became a… preoccupation of his. He traveled just about everywhere, certain that he could do what no one else had.”

The man paused, giving you a moment to register his words, to feel the slow drip of horror pooling in your stomach.

“It didn’t work out for him, in the end. It never does.”

“Who are you?” you asked, although you had a feeling. A very strange, awful feeling. “How do you-”

“Do you know how it ends?” he asked, pushing away from the tree and standing up, stepping out of the shadows, only a few feet in front of you. Your eyes were better adjusted now, taking in as much light as possible. His hood fell back, letting you see the man in full.

Only, he wasn’t a man.

For a second, the ears on the top of his head made you think he was ravi too. But they were too small. Pointed. Distinctly canine.

Then the rest of it registered.

He wasn’t a wolf standing on hind legs, or a person with wolf features, but some inhuman, impossible mix of the two. His long, toothy snout was distinct to a dolichocephalic skull. A beast. That’s what you would assume given all that thick gray fur, round eyes, and the pointy ears directly on top of the head. But somehow, despite all of that, something about his face registered as perfectly, sickeningly, uncannily human.

And you knew him. You saw him in your nightmares, in the shadows, in the darkest places of your mind. No matter what resolve you had before that moment, all you wanted was to run. You needed to run. But fear, pure and distilled, paralyzed you.

“No? That’s fine, it’s just a story, after all,” he said, the words far too well articulated considering the wolf’s muzzle they were coming from, the shiny sharp teeth through which they were spoken.

You opened your mouth to respond, and instead you whimpered as you exhaled.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You remember me, don’t you? I remember you. Although, you were a lot smaller back then. Who would’ve thought that you’d turn out to be such a looker?" He laughed at that, a stilted chuckle. When you didn’t respond, his demeanor dropped, darkened. “Your fear was intoxicating.”

Leaning forward, he closed his eyes and sniffed at the air like a dog. You couldn’t do anything, your limbs refusing to move even though every cell in your body screamed at you to run. When he leaned back and exhaled, his lips pulled back in what was very distinctly a smile, an expression that should have been impossible for a wolf to make.

“I’ve waited a long time to see you like this again, I worried that it would be disappointing,” he told you, red eyes opening. They were mad. His smile was mad. Dread overwhelmed your system. “But you smell even better than I remember.”

He took a step forward. With a few unnerving exceptions, his body was human enough. Tall, broad shouldered, slightly hunched, wearing clothes like a person. His hands were almost like paws with pads and claws, but were articulated like your own—short one finger. He was no monster. He was a nightmare come to life.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Surprised to see me?”

“No,” you whispered, shaking your head. “No, you’re not… not real.”

You could see the excitement in his eyes as he licked his lips with a long tongue, another entirely animalistic motion. The perfect meld of human and wolf traits was fascinating. Sickening. Something that should not exist.

You did nothing other than stare at him with wide eyes as he leaned in. And you did nothing as he raised his hand, dragging the claw in a butterfly kiss over your cheek. “You think?” he asked, the growl in his voice almost like a purr.

That woke you out of your trance and you stumbled back, covering the skin which tingled from the very real touch.

He laughed and straightened out, but didn’t follow you. “It’s not safe to be out here so late. You never know what you’ll find lurking in the woods.”

You swallowed hard, your breathing picking up, the old well of fury cracking open just a little. There should have been more, but the fear was too intense, cold in your veins. “What are you?” you asked, barely audible. Frightened of the answer, but desperate to know.

“Your father called me Anubis. That’s one of your gods, right?”

“You are not a god,” you said, an objection because you couldn’t allow this nightmare, any degree of holy pedigree that you had feared for so long. There was doubt in your voice though, doubt you couldn’t stifle.

“It depends on how you look at it,” he allowed. “But it’s true that I have no interest in being worshiped, and I certainly don’t want your faith. I prefer fear.”

You swallowed hard, shaking your head in a hazy attempt to fight back the swelling tide of fear, to deny him that. “I'm not… not afraid of you, wolf."

That didn’t so much as make him blink. "You fear me more than you fear anything else."

"No! You killed my… my—I hate you."

“Sure you do."

“And because of you, my brother was…” You couldn’t finish the statement, your entire body nearly vibrating from the way you were shaking. “And then mm-my mother...”

“Execution and, what was it, some kind of sickness?” The wolf clicked his tongue. “It’s a harsh world.”

“You took them from me,” you said softly. “You took everything.”

“Do you want revenge, gatita? You wouldn’t be the first.”

The mocking tone of his voice was as bad as a slap across the face. Even if you wanted revenge, what fight could you possibly put up against an impossible creature like him? You flexed your hands and clasped them together, your breathing picking up with the confusion of old fury and sadness and fear.

“I want to know why,” you finally said.

The wolf sighed, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated—and far too human—way as he continued to circle you. “Everybody thinks there’s a reason. There isn’t. Who lives, who dies, it’s all the same to me in the end. But there are those who… tempt fate. Although, I prefer to call it tempting death."

"You're saying that my father wanted to die? You're crazy,” you argued, your shoulders tensing in some form of defense.

"He was especially tempting. His pride, his ego, his fear… I gave him several chances, and he chose to insult me over and over again.” He paused for a moment before continuing, “I may have gotten carried away. You can’t blame me for wanting some fun now and again."

Despite the relative warmth of the night, the air chilled whenever you inhaled, your skin raising with goosebumps. Something in your head clicked, the understanding you had been trying very hard not to acknowledge.

"What are you?" you asked again, but you were thinking that you knew. Of course you knew, it was something you’d known for a long time.

"You know who I am."

"Death," you whispered.

“And you know all about tempting death, don't you? To be honest, I’m starting to lose my patience, gatita,” he practically whispered the pet name, leaning down behind you so the word brushed intimately against your ear, his breath disturbing the fine hairs and making them twitch.

You yelped and jumped away, twisting around. All you could think about was how close all those teeth had been to your ears. Your neck. Death watched as you stumbled even further backwards, hitting a tree and falling against it.

“Watching you survive things that would kill anybody else over and over, it’s unbearable. You throw yourself into danger like you’re trying to tease me.” Genuine irritation glowed in his eyes. Frustration. You shouldn’t have been able to see an emotion like that on such an inhuman face.

You needed to run. Whether or not that was a good idea no longer mattered. Surely he wouldn’t follow you out of the woods, surely sanity would take his place once you were back among civilization, out of the moonlight’s pure lunacy. Your insides squeezed sickeningly. Your heart raced.

“Is it a cat thing? You inherited the ears, the eyes, and, what, the nine lives? I guess that skipped a generation,” Death mused, his demeanor shifting completely right back into amusement. “Or maybe it’s just dumb luck. What do you think, gatita—are you feeling lucky tonight?”

Run. You needed to run.

Death stepped forward.

You had to run.

Rather than get any closer to him to follow the trail, you rolled off of the tree to the side so you could escape into the trees, letting your pack drop to the ground to avail yourself of the extra weight. With your back to the wolf, you sprinted, not caring where it took you, only that it was as far away from him as possible.

Behind you, you heard him calling out to you. You heard him laughing. You gasped and choked for breath, your feet pounding against the forest floor, your streaming eyes blind to anything other than what was directly in front of you. Running, catching the sharp fingers of trees across your arms and face, stray logs and squishy moss and wet grass threatening to trip you with every step. All around, you could hear his laughter, echoing around amidst the trees and in your head.

And for what? Your escape had been doomed from the start, nothing more than the animalistic instinct of prey.

It really only made sense when you realized that Death stood directly in your path, a hulking shadow with red eyes. Your body jolted on instinct and you skittered into a hard stop, momentum pushing you forward while your feet tried to backtrack.

“¿Dónde vas, gatita? Haven’t you heard that it’s dangerous to stray from the path?”

Thoughtlessly, you twisted around, but you were too slow. Or he was too fast. Grabbing a fistful of fabric from the back of your cloak, Death dragged you backwards. And then you were looking into a pair of bright red eyes, choking as your cloak’s tie tightened around your windpipe.

He growled as a wolf would, and you felt base terror in your very core. No matter how humanly he expressed emotion, his face was very decidedly that of a wolf, of a predator that you were naturally wired to fear. A rising surge of bile burned in your throat from running and all you could hear was your heartbeat, thundering ever faster. You choked out a yelp, lashing out however you could in a bid to get free. He easily avoided every attack you threw out, seemingly bored by the attempts, casually holding you at arms length.

“What I really can’t stand,” he told you, his voice low and calm, “is how you waste it. Fighting so hard to stay alive, and for what? Nothing will be lost when I end it.”

“Shut up!” you cried, choking the words out through gritted teeth. You would live. Survive just like you always did. He considered that, licking his lips before irritation once more gave way to excitement.

“Then again,” Death said, letting you down enough to stand on your toes, allowing you to take a breath. Oxygen hit you in a hard rush, you might have fallen over if he weren’t steadying you. “I’m in no rush.”

“Let me go,” you demanded, your breathing ragged, your ears buzzing and ignorant of his words.

Death smiled, his wolfish muzzle pulled back in an expression so human it bordered on obscene. His face was right to yours, you could practically count each of his deadly sharp teeth, see into the soulless depths of those evil eyes.

“Your fear is positively mouthwatering. The poor little kitten is really terrified of el lobo feroz. That fear is the only thing that’s ever given your life purpose. If you think about it, I’m the only reason you keep going. It’s almost flattering.” He licked his lips again, considering you intently. “You don’t mind having some fun before I kill you, right?”

“No!” you screamed the word, but all it did was make his eyes flash with hunger.

“I’m going to eat. You. Up.”

Every muscle in your body went taut, seizing with a different sort of horror. That confounded curiosity to know what he intended, the disturbing impulse to tempt violence, was only heightened by the adrenaline in your system. You had no word for the dark feeling, for the disturbing impulse. Only disgust, swirling dark twisting up hot and low in your gut. With shaking hands, you finally managed to undo the tie around your neck, dropping out of your cloak and onto the ground. And then, before you could even stand up, you were running.

This time, Death didn’t react. No laughter or jeering taunts followed your escape. Dampened beneath the rush of blood in your ears and your feet pounding on the forest floor, the woods were full of the normal sounds. Bugs and frogs and birds and the breeze.

All the same, you knew that el lobo feroz wasn’t far behind. You knew that, and you knew you wouldn’t escape from him. Not this time. But you couldn’t just stop. So you made your frantic flight through the trees, sprinting as fast as you could to escape a creature which existed in opposition to all that was sane or safe. Death himself.

From behind you, in front of you, on both slides, all around, the lilting whistled tune finally began. Panic, bright red and raw, caused you to trip. There was a jolt when your foot caught on something, sending a little shockwave all up your body, then a lurch as gravity forced you down and momentum dragged you forward. For a moment, true weightlessness. And then you were skidding and somersaulting along the ground, skinning your hands and knees all over again before you collapsed, your chin painfully knocking against the ground when you completed your tumble. No pain registered, just numb confusion. You were breathing so hard your lungs burned, your tongue paper dry and sour. Despite the deafening sound of your heart beating and the wheezing rattle of air in your lungs, you could hear his song.

Everything, everything hurt, but you forced yourself up, to shamble into the bushes, curling into a ball to wait.

The song ended.

Seconds—less than that, really—passed before anything happened. Then you heard him. He allowed you to hear him, your pursuer wasn’t concerned that you would manage to escape. He didn’t need to bother running after you, or disguise the noise of his approach. You squeezed your eyes shut until you heard heavy feet crunching through the grass and twigs right in front of you, peeking them open to watch a figure emerge from the darkness.

Death stopped to sniff the air like the predatory beast he appeared to be. You pressed both hands over your mouth and nose, your entire body shaking with the tension of staying stiffly still. For a moment, you hoped he would move on. You didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“This has been fun,” he said conversationally, “but you’re not exactly the most challenging hunt. So, make this easier for yourself and come out, or make it more fun for me and stay put. Your choice, gatita.”

Your sore, overworked body twitched, wanting to obey and spare yourself. But if he knew where you were, he wouldn’t be looking around randomly like he was, right? Unless this was another game and he was trying to trick you, to see how you’d respond to that threat. But he could be bluffing. You didn’t know, and that uncertainty kept you in place.

Death chuckled ominously, leaving your line of sight. Somehow, that was worse than anything else, the nothingness of blind anticipation.

For a fleeting moment, you hoped he had moved on after all.

“Did you really think you could hide from me?” Death asked. Behind you, above you. A short little scream ripped from your throat as he grabbed you by the hair, wrenching you upright so fast that your body went limp with dizziness, head spinning with terror and a fresh rush of energy. He kept you up by exchanging a fistful of hair for the front of your dress. “Me temo que no tiene suerte.”

Getting your bearings, you yelped, thrashing out of his grip. Death let you go too easily, causing you to stumble. You went down hard. This time, it did hurt. Your hands and knees were skinned raw. But still, you crawled. It wasn’t a choice, it was instinct.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” Death said, crouching down behind you. He laughed. “I’ve got a feeling that you will too.”

“No—no.”

“You can’t lie to me. I can smell it. Fear mixed with desire… It's delicious. I can’t wait to have a taste.”

All you could do was grunt when he grabbed you by the waist, easily lifting you up and manhandling you onto your back. You fell with a heavy sound, dizzy all over again.

“I’d say I was surprised, but… Well, I’m not,” Death said, straddling you. His legs were completely wrong. They bent like a man’s at the knee, but bent again with the backwards angle of a wolf’s legs, ending in a set of thick paws. His face was worse. He spoke with such vivid animation. It shouldn’t have been possible for a wolf’s face to emote like that, it shouldn’t have been possible that Death himself could look so gleeful, so excited. When you attempted to drag yourself away, he settled more of his weight on top of you. “This is how you like it, right? Rough. It makes you feel alive.”

Even in your terrified panic, you knew what he was talking about. How long had he been watching you? How intently? Had you ever managed to escape from him, or were you just running around like a headless chicken, never knowing you were doomed? Furiously rejecting that, you bucked upward, bowing your back to throw him off. When that didn’t work, you grasped fistfuls of fabric from the front of his shirt to get leverage.

Death growed low and grabbed your face, slamming your head against the ground, claws digging into the soft skin of your cheeks. He followed while you were still reeling, leaning down to talk directly into your ear.

“Do you feel alive now, gatita?”

You whimpered, squeezing your eyes shut so you couldn’t see his frightening face. El lobo feroz. His nose was cold and leathery when it brushed your face as he pulled back, air ghosting across your cheek and making you whimper. Death laughed, sitting up.

“The ears really are cute,” he told you, releasing your cheeks to take hold of your ear instead. The rough pads caught on the delicate skin, brushing the fur up in a way that made you shudder. He saw that, you could tell by the way his red eyes flashed, the way he licked his lips again. “Who knows, maybe you’ll change my mind about cats.”

“Stop it,” you said, covering your face in an attempt to find peace from this absurdity. He hadn’t broken skin with his claws, but your chin and palms were busted up, your cheeks latticed with shallow scrapes from the trees.

“I told you. You can’t hide from me,” Death said, his voice dragging with a growl. The threat was emphasized by the sudden cold edge dragging lightly against your neck.

Stiffening, you lowered your hands, looking up at him with wet eyes—looking at the humanoid wolf claiming to be death, who had killed your father and ruined your life, who had haunted you every day since, whose mere shadow terrified you to your core, and once you came to grips with the unbelievability of what you saw, you had to contend with the knowledge that you were powerless to such a nightmare. Utterly, completely powerless.

Death groaned. Or hummed. Or growled. It was a happy sound, excited. “Está buena, gatita,” he told you, saying it like praise. “I don’t normally go for this sort of thing.” Casually, he nudged your chin upward before dragging the sickle down so the point caught beneath the neckline of your dress. “I shouldn’t. It’ll have to be our secret, hm?”

Willful ignorance had done nothing for you thus far, but you still clung to it. He couldn’t be talking about what you thought he was. He couldn’t be that human.

In a sharp movement, he pulled the sickle downward. Fabric ripped loudly in the quiet night. Yelping, you tried to pull the scraps back together, to cover yourself because that indignity was too far, wasn’t it? Nudity could mean nothing more than a prelude to violence to something like him, but it was different to you.

Death growled in annoyance, pressing the weapon’s tip into the soft give of your stomach.

“Hands off,” he told you. You didn’t move, and he pressed down. Not too much, just enough to break the skin, to draw blood.

“Stop,” you said, clinging even more desperately to the front of your ruined bodice, “that hurts.”

“I’ll keep going. To. The. Hilt.” Death drew out each word, pressing down with each word to make his point, the sickle’s edge disappearing into your skin. He meant it. Obey or suffer.

Looking straight above at the uncaring night sky, you released your bodice. He chuckled as he pulled the weapon away. It might have been that sound, or the crushing disgust of being exposed. There was very little thought behind the way you lashed out, capitalizing on his moment of distraction as he readjusted himself.

Your pathetic attempt at escaping the inevitable lacked any art or intelligence, only the final burst of energy that came from knowing you’d have no more chances after this. Death avoided your thrashing limbs, letting you wriggle your way upward, twisting around to try and crawl away. And then he drove the sickle into the ground right beside your hand, the blade only narrowly missing your fingers as he drove it into the dirt. You yelped, flinching away. Death used the moment to flip you around again, slamming the air out of your lungs.

"Delicious," he growled, curling over you to get at the exposed skin of your torso. Fabric that hadn’t been properly cut was torn away by his hands. Hands, paws. Human finger articulation and the thick pads of a dog’s feet, each tipped with dangerously long claws. They caught your skin, the rough pads like sandpaper on your sensitive flesh. Just as quickly as the fabric was out of the way, his nose replaced it, his hulking form hunching over your body. Each rapid inhale tickled your skin, pairing disturbingly with the cold of his nose. Unlike his hands, his tongue was soft, lapping up the blood he’d drawn on your stomach before he moved up. The uncanny mixture of sensations made you squirm.

“Stop, stop now,” you said, jerking in uncoordinated little bursts beneath him more on instinct than rational thought. Fur filled the spaces between your fingers as you tried to push him off. He didn't react to you tugging on it, all it did was remind you of how bestial he was. The whole situation was terrifying, yes. But, more viscerally, it was gross. Deeply uncomfortable to feel his long, smooth tongue, to endure the threat of teeth as he moved up, to choke back disgust and terror as he passed over your nipples. “Stop,” you whined the word despite yourself, your eyes screwed shut in an attempt to separate from reality. Death chuckled, moving up across your flushed chest, to your neck, leaving you flushing bright red and slick with his saliva.

“Impatient?” he asked, the words brushing over your fluttering pulse. “I’m not surprised. That’s fine.”

The waistband of your dress didn’t part as easily as the top. He worked from the other end instead, making a slit to tear the fabric up and expose your stockings and panties. Claws made short work of the thin, well worn cotton, carving shallow lines into your skin to strip you entirely.

“Nn-no, what are you doing? Stop, st-” your words cut off with a heavy ‘umph’ when he pushed you back down. Death didn’t so much as look at you as he admired his handiwork, let alone respond to your plea.

“Just like I thought,” he said. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“No,” you said, desperately shaking your head. All you could see was his sharp, sharp teeth, those deadly claws. And your body was electrified, covered with drool and chills and thrumming hot with blood. There was no way out of this, you couldn't even comprehend the pain he could cause. Out of options, you pushed down the remains of your skirt, attempting to close your legs.

Claws dug into your thighs as Death forced them back open with a little growl, sparing you no indignity. The moon deprived you of the cover of darkness and it shouldn’t have been so embarrassing because he wasn’t a man, but it was. Just like he had with your torso, Death explored the exposed skin. The puffing brushes of air as he sniffed and licked along your thighs was humiliating and obscene on its own, nevermind when he nipped at the sensitive flesh to make you whimper, forcing you to contemplate the damage those teeth could do where you were most vulnerable.

The thought of such agony had you try a final time to close your legs, only to have them spread even wider, giving you the perfect view of el lobo feroz with his muzzle pressed against your pussy, his long pink tongue lolling out to drag across your slit. It wasn’t the pain you anticipated, but it was just too strange, too surprising, too disturbing. Having the snout of a beast between your legs, regardless of the creature's perceived humanity, was enough to make you feel sick, twisted and filthy.

“No, no, don’t,” you demanded shrilly, kicking in an attempt to displace him. Death growled, claws puncturing into your skin as he pushed your hips back down, peering up at you. His eyes didn’t reflect or catch the moonlight. They glowed. Empty. Evil.

“Ten cuidado, gatita,” he warned. “Haven’t you ever been warned about getting in the way of a wolf and his meal?”

“Please,” you said, unable to comprehend that this could happen. That this would happen. “Please don’t… don’t. You can’t do this.”

“What are you going to do to stop me?”

That was awful, too awful for words. Fight and risk more pain, or let it happen and… And what? What rational response could you possibly have to this other than disgust and despair? Maybe you should have been glad he wasn’t about to rip you to bloody shreds and feast on the remains, glad that you would be spared pain and immediate death, but that consolation felt terribly cheap when confronted with the equally unimaginable.

“You can’t,” you said, your voice too high, terrified into a whine. “You’re not even… I mean it’s not like you can… like you’ll… you can…”

Death hummed in annoyance, you could feel the vibration of the sound. “Te voy a comer. Y luego te voy a coger,” he told you, the words easy like he was explaining something very simple which, considering you couldn’t understand them, only made it that much worse. “¿Está bien, gatita?”

“No,” you said. “No, I don’t…” Understand. Believe. Consent.

Death laughed, arranging your legs into a more comfortable press towards your chest to make room for his hulking form. There was nothing you could do to make him stop.

The pads of his fingers were painfully rough against your pussy’s outer lips, catching on the sensitive flesh as he parted them. His tongue, however, was softer than anything you’d ever felt, lapping at your entrance, up to your clit. You squirmed uncontrollably, locked in some limbo of disgust, discomfort, and embarrassment.

You thought that if you just closed your eyes, if you just blocked it out, you could pretend that this wasn’t happening, but Death hummed out an animalistic growl, and his tongue was far too long and dexterous to be human, and his fur bristled against your thighs, and there was no way out. Already, your body was waking up to the stimulation. Responding. There was something wrong with you. You knew that, you’d known that for a long time, taking pleasure in beatings, wanting sex to be rougher and rougher, needing to be brutalized like it was an itch to be scratched. This was a new low, the grotesque indulgence of those most perverse.

Like you.

“Please stop,” you whined, another plea to add to the string of ignored requests. Death made a sound you could feel more than hear. For reasons other than fear, you shuddered at the noise.

With your clit acceptably swollen, your body twitching with every movement, his tongue slicked downward. Your hips jumped, legs closing and opening with surprise, but Death wasn’t deterred.

“No-oh,” you sounded so weak, your rejection coming out pathetic and breathy.

Death made another growl-like sound, pushing you down flat with mean claws that poked fresh holes into your skin. You hadn’t been trying to escape, you just couldn’t stop from squirming as he tested the flinching muscles of your entrance. This was new, and different, and terrible, and foul. His tongue was soft and long and far too dexterous, pushing into you with a few hungry strokes. No human man could do that. It wasn’t physically possible.

You whimpered, your head falling back in some vain attempt to block it all out. Escape wasn’t so easy. While his tongue lacked the pressure and weight of something solid, he attacked your g-spot with precision. Eating you out. Eating you. Given that long snout, it had to have been awkward, but that didn’t seem to deter him. And every time his head moved, his nose ground against your clit. He was probably watching you, watching you twitch and gasp and writhe helplessly, but you kept your eyes squeezed shut. The sight of a wolf’s head between your legs like this would kill you, surely it would.

Unbidden, you remembered telling the child Quinta that dogs were your natural enemy, and your penchant for seeking the companionship of those who promised animosity, and the wicked sort of sense it made that you would find yourself here, and you could only laugh at it all but the hysterical sound came out like a sob, and then a low groan, and then a sharp whine when Death pressed the rough pad of one of his fingers against your clit instead, dragging small little circles against it while his tongue continued to torment you.

“No, no, no, no-”

Whatever you were denying, it was pointless. Noise for the sake of it, words getting all tangled up with your choked moans and sobs and hiccups. The little addition of pain from the too rough texture on your clit was enough to give you what you really wanted, what you always ached for.

Pleasure lurched in your core, your hips bucking wildly. Death growled again and it was mean. Aggressive. You seized up, mouth open wide as if for a scream, your feet planted so you could tilt your hips up for more. More pleasure, more pain. Disgust, shame, fear, all of it became white hot and foul, agonizingly sexy in the few moments where the high of orgasm negated the living nightmare between your legs.

And then you were coming down, hips jerking into the tongue of a wolf monster, the creature that had killed your father, Death himself, and you actually sobbed, shying away from his touch as little sparks of overstimulation promised something worse. Unable to escape in any material way, you covered your face. Tears, dirt, and blood smeared together on the feverish, sweaty skin, nearly suffocating as you panted.

Death let you be and sat up, laughing. Laughing at you.

“That was faster than I expected.”

Peeking out from between your fingers, you saw the way his muzzle was glistening before his tongue swiped it away, saw the way he was smiling as he mocked you. “Ah. Unh-no, I-”

Death leaned over you. You flinched away, but he only grabbed the sickle he’d driven into the ground beside you. Casually, he flicked the blade out. The cool metal winked in the moonlight. Although you were still trembling with the aftershocks of orgasm, you weren’t too far gone to feel a fresh wave of fear. Immediately, you curled in on yourself, covering as much of your vulnerability as possible.

“You cower in fear, but I can taste your desire,” Death said, licking his lips. “It’s not half bad.”

“Please just… just stop.”

“I’m doing you a favor. You’re too tight.”

Death didn’t elaborate on that, positioning the weapon’s hilt between your legs, pushing the flared base between your folds before you could figure out what was happening. Everything was wet with a mixture of saliva and your own arousal, slick enough for the weapon to press against your entrance. You figured it out then, but he pinned you in place with a hand on your stomach, claws pressing against the flinching skin. There was nothing you could really do to avoid it, and you didn’t dare close your legs around the blade itself.

“This might hurt.”

“Stop, please stop, you can’t—”

Death didn’t say anything, watching your expression as he pushed the weapon’s grip into you. To see such a sharp blade between your legs in any capacity was dizzying, and that was without the intensely physical pressure of its grip rubbing against your inner walls.

“I told you, didn’t I?” he asked. “To. The. Hilt.” With every word, he drove the weapon deeper, your body jerking with each movement.

“Stop, just stop, please, take it…take it out.”

“I’d do it myself, but,” Death said, holding up his off-hand, “I’m not so sure you’d like that.” His claws practically gleamed in the moonlight, and you knew exactly how rough the pads were. The idea of those inside of you was enough to make your insides wither, although all that really amounted to was your cunt tightening around the weapon. You grunted at the feeling, shook your head fast, panicked.

“No! No,” you told him as coherently as you could. Your tongue was dry as bone, you choked on the grit.

“Thought so,” he replied, pulling the sickle back only to slam it back in.

The textured grip felt disturbingly good in some mad, broken way. His tongue had been so smooth and soft, but this was solid and firm, forcing itself into you. He used it like a tool, not bothering to simulate sex, twisting it this way and that, forcing your pussy open. Making room. You couldn’t help but writhe with each movement, your cunt tightening around the grip, hips tilting up as you were consumed by a confusing twist of disgust and need. Violence and pain were things you knew and understood. Familiarity had you dripping around the weapon, you could hear how wet you were, and his harsh motions only emphasized the vulgar sound.

“Not bad,” Death said, amused by the sight. You shut your eyes. “This weapon killed your father. It’s only fair that you should die by it too—una pequeña muerte.”

“Don’t,” you said, body going painfully tense with disgust, with hate, with fear. Death pulled the sickle out, pushing it back in with an ugly squelch, dragging a pained yelp from your mouth, and then a distinctly less pained one when he twisted it slightly. “No, no, I…”

Little death. You belatedly realized the implication of that. You’d already come once, it wasn’t nearly as difficult to build you up again. Especially not when he was being more deliberate with each thrust, when the sandpaper-rough texture of his finger nudged at your clit again.

Nothing in particular set you off, maybe it was just the acceptance of sensation, the acknowledgement that it would buy you a few moments of madness from this unthinkable situation. Gasping, flushing, writhing like a creature possessed, you seized up, pleasure flushing through your system with a white-hot sort of frenzy. You didn’t think it could be compared to death, not really. You felt distinctly alive for a few seconds of shivering, wet heat.

Until it ended, abruptly dropping you back in the middle of an unfathomable predicament.

Death hummed as he stopped, letting you wilt back onto the ground, trembling and hot. “I prefer a fight, but-” Without much ceremony and a disgustingly wet shlick, Death pulled the weapon out of your pussy. “You put on quite the show, gatita. This is going to be good.”

“What are you doing?” you asked, drawing your legs in, wincing at the feeling. Some part of you still rejected what was happening, what he was capable of doing. Of course that got a little harder to believe when he pushed his pants down. Was it flattering that a monster would be turned on by torturing you? You wanted to think that it couldn’t be, that you weren’t that depraved, but the part of your deepest self that stirred in reaction to the sight frightened you. It seemed that the human shape and build of his body carried over to his primary sex characteristics. It was sick that the revelation should be relieving, but at least you would be spared the particular grotesque indignity of inhuman genitalia. Maybe if you shut your eyes, if you blocked it all out, you could pretend that it was just a man raping you.

Because that was so much better.

You weren’t even aware that you were trying to crawl away until he clicked his tongue, grabbing your waist to pull you back into place. The pads on his fingers were so rough, claws threatening to rip the sensitive flesh. He licked his lips with wolfish excitement. Fur brushed your bare skin. There was no way out of this, to escape el lobo feroz. Not mentally, not physically.

You pressed your thighs together as tightly as you could, ignoring how slick they were.

“It’s too late for that,” he said, easily prying them apart. Fur brushed against your skin, but you were more concerned with the sight of his cock as it bobbed up before settling against your abdomen.

Heavy. That was your first thought, right before the comparison between your body and his cock really settled in your feverish brain. The head alone was thick enough that you couldn’t fathom it getting past your entrance, let alone that you’d be able to take the rest.

“No, no, no, you-you can’t do this,” you said, staring at his dick with a crawling sense of fear that had nothing to do with his inhumanity—in all regards—and everything to do with the size. “It won’t fit.”

“You can accommodate new life,” he said, a hand going under his cock to press against your abdomen, right above your womb. “Let alone Death. You’ll be fine.” He said it like a joke, like it was amusing. He was sick. You were sick. This was…

When he moved, the slap of his dick on your abdomen was audible, punctuating a joke that wasn’t funny to begin with. Death clearly wasn’t concerned as he rearranged you, pushing your legs up and apart until your thighs screamed, his body bearing down against you for leverage. The unyielding press of his cock between your legs made you panic, but he had you utterly pinned. You couldn’t do anything other than feel it slide across the sensitive flesh, settling right against your entrance. You couldn’t do anything to stop this. Death grunted as he readjusted you, claws digging fresh lines into your flesh, and began to rock his hips forward. When you yelped, bucking up against him, the sharp points broke skin. It would be easy for him to rip you up with nothing more than those claws.

“Quédate quieto,” he growled. You didn’t need to understand to be still.

So close like this, you realized that you could smell him. Not the stench of a dog, of wet fur or a poorly maintained pelt. Not the scent of a man either, familiar and human. Death smelled like a cool summer night, and torrential rain, and a river’s violent rapids, and acrid smoke, and the dry dust of an old road. Although it wasn’t entirely unpleasant in the way you might have expected of a wolf man, it made your stomach churn, doing nothing to help you relax as he continued to press the thick head of his cock against your pussy.

For a moment, you thought that it really was impossible, that you would be spared. That single second of relief was all it took for the head to pop past the initial barrier of muscle. Your mouth dropped open at the feeling. Surprise, maybe. Your legs were spread wide enough to mitigate some of the dragging pain as he forced himself a little deeper, just past the ridge. Death made a sound low in his chest, but all you could manage was stiff, cold shock. Surprise at how surreal it all was. But reality marched on all the same, with or without your comprehension. You weren’t sure what you expected it to feel like, but you would have been wrong anyway. Stretching, aching, too much, too much, too-

Grunting, he rolled his hips, pulling back just enough before thrusting deeper. Little by little, letting you adjust and relax ever so slightly before pulling back to go further. You whined each time, back arching, your pussy tightening around him. It was probably a protective measure, trying to keep him out, but it hurt, pulling a rumbly growl out of his throat, his hips pushing forward despite the painful resistance.

“No more,” you got out, the words tight, pained.

Muttering something under his breath, Death leaned back to let drool drip from his long tongue. It landed heavily where the two of you were joined, splatting with an unattractive slap onto the place where you were joined, onto your swollen clit. He laughed at your girlish yelp of surprise.

You let your head fall back, your hands covering your face. They smelled like dirt and blood. At least the extra lubrication helped, and you knew your body was responding to this. Whether to protect itself or out of some truly disturbing reciprocation, your pussy was soaking his cock, making way for him as he rolled his hips back and forth.

Deeper, further. You were going to split apart.

“Stop, please,” you finally broke enough to beg, pressing against his stomach, ignoring the sickening feeling of fur beneath your hand. You were almost surprised when Death stopped, huffing hard. Worse, you were grateful.

“Too much, gatita? And you were doing so well.”

A pathetic little whine tore from your throat when you looked down at the remaining few inches of cock between your straining pussy lips and his grotesque inhuman body, despairing at the sight. “I can’t,” you whimpered. “No more.”

Death growled in frustration, claws digging painfully into your skin as he shifted back and forth a few times, trying to ease himself deeper. You could see the shadow of distension shifting across your abdomen as he did, proof of how deep inside of you he already was. But no matter how he rolled his hips, or twisted you around, there was no more room.

“Stop,” you said, the word getting caught in your swollen throat, your body desperately straining to get away for fear that he’d just force it in.

Death stilled, exhaling hard to steady himself. It sounded like a growl. Your pussy unintentionally clenched hard around him at the noise. It hurt, the muscles unable to adjust to his size. The reaction had his breath catching, and that became a throaty laugh.

“Fine,” he said, finally dragging his hips back. It was what you wanted, but it still hurt, the stretch worsened by the way your pussy squeezed and pulsed around his length. Death stopped when only the head remained inside of you. “You just need to be broken in. That’s fine.”

You looked, stricken, from the dizzying sight of his cock—now, at least partially, glistening with your own arousal—to the sickening expression of manic glee he wore. How could a canine face express such viscerally human emotions?

And then, in the back of your empty, dizzy head—why was this happening?

“No more,” you begged, squeezing your eyes shut, your pussy trying to push him out despite the discomfort of it. Claws ripped into your skin when his grip had to tighten to keep you in place, his hips chasing yours as you tried so desperately to escape. It hurt all over again. Maybe not as bad, but now you knew what to anticipate.

“It's better like this.” He stopped when he was as deep as he could go and you were grateful that he didn’t push it further, grateful that he was taking it slow. The stretching, pinching ache wasn’t any better, but it wasn’t worse either. “What is this… Two? Three inches?” You looked down, realizing that he was referring to how much of his cock couldn’t fit inside of you. It had to be more than that, although you were stuck on the sight of your pussy stretched around him. “By the end of the night, there won’t be anything keeping us apart. That’ll be… poetic, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t fair that his voice should be that of a man, should be low and dripping with a villain’s dangerous charisma. All you could do was groan weakly, your breathing shallow. Despite what he said, there was nothing poetic to the sound of it. Slick, filthy, disgustingly wet. Every thrust punched a sharp noise out of you, although most of them were nothing more than heavy breaths. Death wasn’t very quiet either, making noises that fluctuated seamlessly between that of a man and that of a beast.

“Hurts,” you whimpered in protest, willing him to slow down. He didn’t.

“Good.”

The single word, the cruelty of it and the accompanying set of a harsher pace, hurt in more ways than the physical. You couldn’t help but wail in despair, writhing with pain you couldn’t escape, unable to get away as he fucked you. Deeper and deeper, forcing you to stretch out to accommodate him.

“You like the pain, right?” Death asked mockingly, his voice low enough to nearly get missed beneath the filthy squelch of each thrust. And all you could do was whimper. Did you like the pain? No, but there was a perverse satisfaction of justified destruction. You had no idea how he knew that.

“I don’t,” you said, needing to reject him. To reject all of this because otherwise you were afraid it would end like before, that you would give in. That you’d enjoy this. But it was too late. You couldn’t help your hips from twitching of their own volition, and a particularly sharp thrust pulled a surprised gasp from your open mouth.

“Buena gatita,” he said in a low voice, half growl. The sound, the language, the speaker, none of it mattered because your body knew praise, and the kind that came with cruelty was what you craved in the sickest part of your brain. “Muy buena.” Your cunt fluttered weakly around him, your hips rolling upward to meet his next thrust. It hurt, and it felt good.

As soon as you admitted that to yourself in any way, you were lost. A few more thrusts and you had to bite your lip to keep from moaning. There wasn’t a single place within you that wasn’t full of him, not in your head or your pussy or your chest. Consumed entirely by Death.

Gods help you, you could hear the fresh wave of wet arousal your body provided with that awful thought, so eager to submit to his dominion. As if sensing that, he stilled, his cock buried deep into you. Your eyes opened unintentionally, confused by the sudden break.

“Well, well, would you look at that,” Death said as a way of explanation, self satisfied. You followed his eyes, looking at where the two of you were joined. There was nothing between, his pelvis flush between your legs, the fur matting with how wet everything was. You opened your mouth to say something, but nothing came out. His hips shifted and you could see the bump of distension, more pronounced now. “Like I said—poetic. All you’ve done for years is tease me and now-” He laughed. “Now you’re mine.”

Death pulled back slowly, letting you see how much of his cock he’d forced your body to accept. It looked about as impossible as it felt, you couldn’t really comprehend it on any level other than the most base—sickening satisfaction. Ensuring you were still watching, his hips snapped forward. Once, twice, three times, making sure each thrust was solid and steady, filling you up entirely, the thick head of his cock brutalizing your cunt in a way no human man ever could. The battering against your cervix hurt in a profound, electric way, a way nobody had ever managed to hurt you.

And you took it. Your mouth open dumbly, your head tipping back into the dirt, your body rolling with each movement.

Even suffering such intimate, awful pain, you couldn’t deny your feeling of pleasure. Sublime friction, pressure in every place you needed it. And, to a dreadful degree, Death seemed to be aware of your reactions. Aware enough, at least, to take note when you couldn’t help but moan aloud, to exploit the angle that had you seeing stars. He grabbed you off the ground, forcing you to throw your arms around his neck. Like that, you were even more at his mercy. Full enough to split, you could understand the indulgence of size, of craving excess. Beautiful. Your boiling brain pulled that word out from its scattered nothingness, and it was beautiful. Repulsive, disturbing, grotesque, and beautiful.

“That’s right,” Death practically purred into your ear. “Look at how well you take it, you’d think you were made for this.”

“Oh, gods, oh—please, I can’t, I…” You weren’t even sure what you were begging for, it was too late from the second he praised you, sending you spiraling, coming hard, your pussy squeezing his cock so hard it hurt, your fingers pulling hard at the fur on his neck. Death laughed breathlessly, not slowing down for even a second. You didn’t care. If it hurt, it felt good, an endless feedback loop of madness.

Holding so close to him, you were more aware than ever of how terrifyingly powerful his body was. He could easily destroy you if he wanted.

This was Death at his gentlest.

Dizzy, reeling, hardly able to scrape together any coherent thought beyond that, all you felt at the realization was the vague veil of fear. Letting yourself get fucked by the big bad wolf. Coming on his cock, moaning like a whore for a being that shouldn’t exist in the middle of the woods beneath a full moon.

His hips stuttered then, a groan catching on a growl in his chest.

“Delicious,” he said. “Your fear, I could just…” Death didn’t finish that thought, or maybe you couldn’t hear it as his thrusts became well and truly punishing. Seeking his end like a man would. That was what you expected, in a distant way, but you didn’t expect that a mystical—mythical?—creature would ejaculate, only that you’d had enough encounters with men to know you shouldn’t let it happen. Not inside. Never inside, that was way too dangerous.

“Nn-no-”

He didn’t listen. You couldn’t escape, and you stopped caring after a moment because the heavy, carnal weight of him coming inside of you was enough to make you squeal, your pussy squeezing his cock, your body straining in an arch against his. You didn’t know if you were coming again or if it was just a continuation of the onslaught of stimulation that your brain couldn’t make rational sense of, but there was a sort of lunatic’s bliss in the feeling, in the agonizingly hellish ecstasy of pleasure. Of complete and utter excess. You could feel the rumbling vibrations of his growl, it entwined with the human groans. The two shouldn’t have suited one another, but your broken mind accepted both gleefully, losing yourself in the sound.

After a few jerky, halting movements, Death released you.

He was slow to pull out, which was probably a mercy. Even softening, his cock was painfully big, you couldn’t hold back your pained whimper when he pulled out. The absence was immediate, cold, and hollow. You wilted when he let you fall limp onto the ground, defeated. Deflated. Breathing as if you’d run a marathon, it was all you could do to keep it together, the gravity of all that happened setting in.

Something landed on your naked, sweaty body. Scared, you opened your eyes. But it was fabric. A second passed before you realized it was your red cloak. The one you left behind to escape from him before. It felt like a lifetime ago. You gratefully used it to cover your nudity, glad for the moment to catch your breath with some dignity.

“Ah, that was good,” Death said, satisfied, rolling his neck and shoulders. He’d already fixed his pants and retrieved his weapons. “The fun’s over now. For you, at least.”

“I don’t know… how to get back to the trail…” you said, wincing as you sat up and looked around. His cum dripped out of your gaping, sore pussy, sticky on your thighs. Vaguely, you wondered what sort of monsters would come from such a coupling, but you disregarded that thought just as quickly. If he was done, you needed to get away. Then again, you weren’t even sure if you could walk.

“I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Death’s less than friendly tone rolled over you like ice water. Slowly looking over at him, you exhaled a big, shuddery lungful of cool night air. He stood high above you, his looming figure blotting out the moon. Right then, he looked no different than he had all those years ago. Brilliant red eyes, gray fur, silver sickles. The big bad wolf in all his glory.

“What?”

Those bright red eyes held a different sort of intensity than before. Swirling, passionate madness without any of the ravenous hunger. “You know, I’ve been watching you ever since that night. Every time you narrowly escape death, and every time you get other people killed. But you know that, you’ve seen me. That’s why you run, thinking you can escape the inevitable. For whatever reason—luck, fate, the blessing of those gods you claim to believe in—your life has been spared over and over. And yet, you do nothing with it.”

There was malice in those words, a visceral sort of disgust that reflected what you so often felt for yourself. You considered trying to stand up, trying to run again. Fear thundered in your chest, urged you to escape as you always did. But, honestly, you didn’t think your legs could support your weight. No. You couldn’t run. You never had really managed to escape him anyway.

“So, I thought, why does it matter if you die now or later—your life has no meaning. If I finish it now, you won’t be able to keep teasing me, and we’ll both have some peace.”

“I don’t want to die,” you said, your voice hushed to hide the tears.

Death looked down at you, and you wondered if it was disgust or pity you saw on his inhuman face. But then you realized, it was neither. His jewel bright eyes gleamed with glee, passion of a type you couldn’t understand, that belonged to something beyond the realm of what you could possibly comprehend. A living nightmare.

“Your fear,” Death said, inhaling deeply as he took a step forward, his sickles in hand, “has the most intoxicating smell. I might even miss it.”

#death puss in boots #death x reader #death the wolf #not sfw #my writing #tw.noncon

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nyxshadowhawk · 4 months

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A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

youtube

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

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eoieopda · 11 months

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FORCE QUIT // EPISODE I: SCRAPS

you didn't have "anti-capitalist revolution" on this year's bingo card, but you never turn down a good time.

pairing: lee felix x reader | series masterlist (1/4) | next episode series summary: it's 2077, and life's a fucking nightmare. corporate titans ate the state and shat it back out, leaving citizens of the new republic to fall in line, or fall to their knees. a reckoning is coming — where will you fall? au: series — dystopian, cyberpunk; episode — childhood friends to strangers to something ➢insp. by: cyberpunk 2077 + the true lives of the fabulous killjoys genre: smut + angst + some fluff word count: 15.4k rating: 18+— minors do not have my consent to interact. series warnings: violence (hand-to-hand, firearms, explosives), depictions of injuries (blood/bruising/burns), some characters have cybernetic modifications, class conflict + poverty, surprise - corporations are bad!, unethical medical/tech experimentation, self-indulgent references to non-skz idols, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns. episode warnings: above + trainer!felix, edgerunner!reader, pov switches, time skips, reference to food insecurity + reader living check to check, reader experiences temporary vision loss after being knocked out, oral sex (f receiving), unprotected p in v penetration. reader notes: afab & uses she/her pronouns; has cybernetic retinal mods + one in her hand; grew up in (what is fka) korea and speaks korean — however, it’s not stated that she is asian and/or that her family is; does not speak fluent english; has tattoos; has long enough hair to put in a ponytail & use bobby pins (hair not otherwise described). ➢ notes added/expanded upon during 8/6/24 inclusivity review. a/n: each episode features a different member x reader pairing, but the plot is linear, so you'd need to read them (in order) to get the full picture! you can sign up for the taglist to be notified of the next uploads. thank you to my beloved @sailoryooons for beta'ing this and @jihopesjoint for being my emotional support internet wife even though she doesn't stan skz. ily both endlessly!

You don’t deal in absolutes, but you know two things for sure: vending-machine burritos are a crime against humanity; and Han Jisung is a dirty, rotten bastard.

The firm stance you’ve taken on the latter may or may not have something to do with the former, but you can’t draw that conclusion now — not with the abuse your taste buds are currently suffering, anyway.

“Who the fuck —”

You cut yourself off to spit a mouthful at the ground. Notably, the remnants of that half-chewed abomination look just as awful on the way out as they did on the way in.

“— Replaced this queso with battery acid?”

Chipmunk cheeks stuffed to bursting, Jisung blinks back at you. He says nothing — suddenly too polite to speak with his mouth full — and shrugs, unbothered. That’s when the realization hits you like a boot to the skull. Drenched in disbelief, your muttering comes out in slow-motion:

“You spent the last of our cash on these.”

He swallows, though you don’t know how he could bring himself to do it. That act alone makes the rage you’re simmering in bubble over.

You repeat yourself through gritted teeth, pausing emphatically between every word, “The — last — of — our — cash!”

“My bad?” He eventually offers. Tongue flicking out, he tries to gather the unidentified sauce that clings to the corner of his mouth. He fails. “Not sure what else I was supposed to find with that little money in this part of town, but go off, I guess.”

You bite your lips together to hold back the guttural yell you’re seconds from releasing. At your sides, your empty hands clench tightly. Instead of snapping — with your words or your fists — you close your eyes, inhaling slowly through your nose. Deep breaths won’t do you any fucking good in this smog, but your brain tends to work a little bit better without visual interference.

I can go another twenty-four hours, you think. Maybe.

It’s been a while since you’ve last eaten and even longer since your last job. This isn’t out of the ordinary; gaps are to be expected when you live on the fringe, jumping from thread to thread. Still, it isn’t like Changbin to leave you hanging the way he has been lately. It sure as shit isn’t like him to dodge your calls, either.

So, you figure, if you make an unsolicited visit to his office — the stock room of a bar you know better than to frequent — he won’t have a choice. He’ll have to look you in the eye and explain the dry spell, personally. He owes you at least that much.

With your plan finalized, you hold out your left hand to Jisung. In the few moments you’d taken your eyes off him, he’d apparently gone from sitting on the hood of your car to reclining fully with his own eyes closed. Basking like a little lizard in the sunlight, it’s a miracle the hot metal hasn’t burned a hole in his shirt.

“Come on.” You nudge his bent knee with your knuckles to no avail.

As Jisung is wont to do, he pouts. “But it’s so nice out — and your car still reeks, by the way.”

The absolute, rakish audacity.

If you didn’t love him, you’d probably kill him.

Strike that.

Love is irrelevant. You wouldn’t kill him unless and until there was a price on his head. After all, your mother taught you better than to do the things you’re good at for free.

“Do we want to talk about whose fault that is?” You ask with a roll of your eyes. The affection’s still there; you know he sees it. “If I recall correctly — and I think I do, having been the only sober person present — you were the one who got blasted and barfed on everything I love in this world.”

“I got blasted and barfed exclusively on the floor of your car.”

It’s your turn to shrug. “Exactly. End of list.”

Groaning, Jisung rolls his eyes as far back as they’ll go, but he still takes your hand. He always does, always has. With your help, he scoots his ass down the hood and lands with both boots — precisely where your ejected burrito bite did, not five minutes earlier. You can’t stop the satisfied grin from spreading when he whines again, this time louder and with twice as much despair.

After playfully shoving your passenger towards his door, you unlock your own. You don’t dump yourself into the seat, however; not yet. A wall of horrible heat is waiting for you the second the door opens, and you know better than to run into it, headlong.

Jisung is less patient. He’s also more regretful, face twisting in self-imposed anguish when he drops down onto the sun-scorched leather seat. And, to your delight, the hits keep coming. You watch with a smile when the consequences of last weekend’s actions hit his nostrils. The look he gives you falls somewhere between humbled, apologetic, and absolutely dead inside.

“Not one of my finer moments, I’ll admit it.” He acknowledges with a wave of his hand. Resigned, he sighs, “I’ll scrub the shit out of the floor mats the next time we can afford a wash.”

Satisfied, you finally climb behind the wheel. Pushing through the slightly-muted sting of the seat against the backs of your bare thighs, you put your foot on the brake and lift your right hand to press your thumb to the ignition port. The roar of the engine covers the way your breath hitches, but Jisung doesn’t have to hear it to notice the grimace that accompanies it.

“Still sore?” He asks.

To his credit, he looks genuinely concerned as he reaches across the center console and takes your hand in his. It’s gentle, the way he tilts your palm up, but the movement burns in every single one of your tendons. This time, you know you have a captive audience, so you don’t flinch.

Despite the trouble it’s giving you, you have to admit that the new enhancement looks beautiful in the sunlight. In the center of your palm, two rectangular, silver brackets refract iridescence. Their shine contrasts sharply with the matte, midnight black cybernetic plating that now covers the majority of your palm, spreading to the first knuckle of your fingers but coating the length of your thumb in its entirety.

More than beautiful, it’s deadly — and it aches like a motherfucker.

“I read a study about these ballistic co-processors last night while you were knocked out,” he hums.

Classic Jisung.

He has no medical or academic background whatsoever but wastes his time reading crank doctors’ research for fun. And, of course, he makes sure to mention it — casually and apropos of mostly nothing — in order to impress.

Gingerly, he runs his finger along the edge of the cyberware, mumbling, “It usually takes five days from installation for the musculoskeletal inflammation to chill.”

Your fingers twitch of their own volition, which prompts him to look up at you curiously.

“Yeah, well…” You grunt.

Less carefully than you should, you pull your hand from his, tap the gear shift, and throw the car into reverse. Peeling out of the lot, you scoff without even bothering to look his way:

“It’s been ten.”

When the War came and went, it took the old way of life with it on its way out. You might’ve been late to the party by fifty or so years, but you’ve got the gist now. It goes something like this:

Korea, as it was once known, crumpled like a beer can in the face of a corporate uprising and was quickly kicked curbside with the trash. In its place came the New Republic — in all its stolen, neon glory — promising technological revolution, profit in excess. Although the world’s eyes were trained on the peninsula then, not everyone stuck around to watch democracy die in real time.

Not up close, anyway.

Some people had enough cash to run but not enough to make staying worthwhile. With their tails between their legs and their life savings in hand, they left before the capitalist rot could set in fully; chose willful blindness and headed for countries where corporations rule from the shadows rather than broad daylight.

Most people, however, didn’t leave. People like your grandparents, who hadn’t looked up long enough to notice things going to hell in a hurry. And if they did — well, maybe they saw things for what they were: shitty, same as anywhere else.

Five decades later, that fact hasn’t changed much.

Regardless of why a person opts to stay in the New Republic, their options for survival are effectively limited to two. Simply put, a person can sell their soul to the very corporations that strangled the state, or they can starve.

Nobody ever chooses the latter.

You can safely assume everything you need to know about a person based on where their next steps take them.

For example, those who crave both chic, penthouse apartments and blood-soaked streets are most likely to fall in line with WraithCo.. The name suggests that it’s a criminal enterprise run by fucking ghouls because that’s essentially what it is. More than that, it’s the arms manufacturer monopoly that out-manned and out-gunned the national military without breaking a sweat.

The high-powered, highly-paid WraithCo. executives find joy in three things and three things only: designer suits; missiles that explode into clouds of fiberglass upon impact; and testing said missiles out on non-violent nomad encampments outside city limits.

Fucking ghouls.

Despite being the most openly violent of the major players, you find WraithCo. to be the most boring. They lack nuance, don’t bother with a false front or a positive PR spin — it’s all a little too predictable. Thanotech, on the other hand, is subtle; the perfect cover for those who like to convince themselves they’re doing more good than harm.

In furtherance of that delusion, Thanotech replaced all public hospitals with state-of-the-art, for-profit rejuvenation centers. Worse, their lobbyists ensured that medical licensure was limited to employees of those centers, outlawing the provision and receipt of medical care outside of authorized Thanotech facilities.

In short, those who can’t afford Thanotech’s astronomical rates — specifically, poor fucks like you — are left to fend for themselves in back alley clinics; to pray that they don’t wind up worse-off than they started, that the police don’t sniff them out, and that their new modifications aren’t just garbage-tier knock-offs.

Of course, some people give more of a shit about these designer mods than the patients who may or may not wind up with them. In that case, the last of the three titans has them covered.

It’s no fucking surprise that the Ulsan Corporation is the crown-jewel of the New Republic — it’s primarily responsible for killing the old one. As the world’s premier technology and cybernetics conglomerate, Ulsan is also primarily responsible for the research, development, and distribution of cybernetic enhancements.

Like the one your body is currently acclimating to.

No such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, right?

Ulsan may be less obvious with its bastardry than its counterparts, but as far as you can tell, it’s not good guy behavior to eat an established state and shit it back out. Even if you can’t tie any specific, ongoing atrocities back to them, you have no qualms about adding the desperate state of the union to their indictment.

You can blame them for the desperate measures they’ve necessitated, although you won’t give them an ounce of credit for the spark of resistance they so recklessly lit.

Despite it all, there are still people out there who refuse to accept things for what they are. They find an alternative to the comply or die ultimatum — run along the razor’s edge, taking what they can get, whenever they can get it.

Like Changbin, one of Seoul’s best-connected fixers.

Like you, a gun for hire.

Like Jisung, sitting in your passenger seat as you drive across town, who’s just happy to be included.

Generally speaking, piss and vinegar don’t mix well with club security.

If you were anyone else, rolling up to The Crypt like you own the place would be ill-advised. More than that, it would be asking to get your teeth kicked in faster than you could say, “I’m on the list.”

Thankfully, as it often does, your reputation precedes you. Nobody in the block-long line bats an eye when you cut right to the front, a fact that has Jisung smirking in a way that might otherwise get him killed. Still, the bouncer shoots you a look that says you’re more trouble than you’re worth; and you agree.

Before your friend can change the muscle’s mind, you grab Jisung by the wrist and tug him through the front entrance. You don’t let go when the door shuts behind you, although it’s more for convenience than concern for his safety. He has a tendency to wander, and you don’t have the patience.

“Haven’t been here in a while,” he muses as you drag him towards the main bar, head turning to look in every direction except the one you’re moving in.

You don’t slow down.

Winding your way through the drunks at the counter, you inch closer to the large booths along the far wall. Inside, draped nonchalantly over the plush benches, sit the big guns — mercenaries with far more sway than you, far fatter wallets. They’re living the high life you’ve always dreamed of, and they don’t even notice you staring as you pass.

“Oh, shit!” Jisung waves overhead to one of them, reminding you without trying that he — unlike you — has other friends.“S.Coups, where have the fuck have you been, man?”

You still don’t slow down.

Not when you reach the stairwell at the far side of the main floor. Not when you shuffle down the steps to the employees only section. Not even when the security camera overhead silently demands that you do.

There’s only one locked door amongst the few; you fly to it like a homing pigeon and beat against the metal with your free hand. It isn’t until the burning ache sets in that you realize you chose your right.

“Goddamn it.” You growl down at it, as if your hand will apologize for hurting. Turning your vitriol towards the door, you kick it hard, steel-toed boot forcing out a thud. “Changbin, open this shit up!”

Jisung glares as he scolds you, “Manners, maybe?”

You roll your eyes, but his expectant expression doesn’t budge.

“Fucking — fine, okay? Fine.” Hands thrown up in defeat, you take a deep breath. Your next words come out saccharine, accompanied by fluttering lashes that can’t even be seen. “Changbin, darling, could you please open this shit up?”

The two of you wait in dead silence for several seconds before Jisung’s hands fly up to your hair, unprompted. Your surprised yelp doesn’t faze him. He grabs the bobby-pin from where you’ve stashed it under your ponytail, drops to his knees, and starts to work.

You snort, “Well, damn. Look at you!”

Truly, you’re impressed. Jisung normally leaves the dirty work to you, yet here he is — breaking and entering.

They grow up so fast.

He tries not to look proud of himself, but his cheeks blush a shade of sakura and rat him right out. Though you’re sure he’d love to, he can’t even lift a hand to wave you off before the lock clicks. With a quick twist of the knob, he pushes the door open.

Changbin’s office looks close to normal, with a few notable exceptions. For starters, he’s not in it. The man you’re dealing with never sees the light of day if he can help it.

Jisung pipes up first: “Okay, what the fuck?”

The office chair Changbin normally occupies is spun to the side, as if his ass left it in a hurry. Even odder than that is the small, green light which indicates that he didn’t shut off his computer before leaving it unattended. It’s not a decision someone like Changbin — neurotic and paranoid to a borderline clinical degree — makes on his own.

That, you know outright, is a problem.

Cautiously, you slip past Jisung and walk on eggshells towards Changbin’s desk. You know it’s stupid, that no one would bother rigging the floor tiles to blow under the weight of your boots, but you can’t ignore the way your gut twists with every step. That dread only gets worse, the closer you get.

To the right of his primary screen, there’s a half-eaten vending-machine burrito that’s so covered with ants, you almost mistake them for pepper flakes. That sight makes bile rise in your throat, in and of itself, but it’s the untouched cup of coffee that sends a tingle of panic down your spine. Around the base of the glass, hardly visible on the sheet of paper underneath, is a water ring.

That coffee — at one point, however long ago — was iced.

Changbin would kill you for it if he were here, but he isn’t, so you drop down into his chair. You pause as soon as your ass settles onto the leather, still not convinced that one wrong move won’t set off some sort of trap. The breath you’ve been holding leaks out slowly when your actions go without consequences.

A quick glance up at Jisung confirms that he looks exactly as spooked as you feel. You watch his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows hard.

He knows the answer before he asks, but that doesn’t stop him. It comes out scratchy, riddled with hesitation that says he doesn’t really want to hear the response. “He hasn’t been here in days, has he?”

You shake your head, just barely, then turn to the desk. Bottom lip pinched between worried teeth, you scan the surface for anything you missed on your first pass.

Give me a hint, you motherfucker. All I need is a breadcrumb.

It’s the absence of something that grabs your attention. Eyes narrowing, you lean forward in your seat to get as close as possible to his monitors.

“Does that…?” You start to ask but your voice trails off before you finish; thoughts moving too quickly to inventory before the next one arrives.

Though black, the screens in front of you aren’t lifeless. If anything, they’re still backlit, glitching subtly in a way they shouldn’t — not if the system had been locked, powered off, or otherwise put to sleep. You don’t have to be a netrunner to know that someone is running an opp, fucking up the computer’s processing and leaving it brain dead.

It’s so small that you almost miss the minimized window at the bottom left-hand corner of his secondary monitor, screen otherwise barren. Hesitantly, you reach out your hand and press a trembling finger to it.

Jisung is hovering so closely over your shoulder that you can practically taste that burrito on his breath. You elbow him once in the chest, hard.

He coughs, pointing to the screen as he sputters, “What the hell are those?”

“Numbers, Jisung.” You deadpan. “They’re called numbers.”

Ignoring the way he grumbles in response, you grab your mobile from your pocket. It springs to life at your sudden touch and broadcasts a holographic home screen in the air just centimeters above the glass. Just as fast, it tracks the movement of your eyes flicking through the list of applications. With the faintest shudder, the GPS navigation consumes the screen.

You repeat what you hope are coordinates:

35.2029, 128.6001.

As the map loads, you and Jisung exchange glances that are underscored by tense swallows. He knows it, and so do you:

No matter where that pin ends up dropping, you have no choice but to go.

It takes three hours to drive from Seoul to Changwon. Although it’s not a route you’ve taken in years, or one you ever expected to take again, you still know it like the back of your hand. You can still navigate every turn — every crater and curve — with your eyes closed, even now.

Despite that fact, your decision to race to the southeast this time has nothing to do with sentimentality for the hometown you left five years ago.

This is just for Changbin, you repeat like a mantra, pressing harder on the accelerator.

With every stoplight and thought you race through, the background grows blurrier but the big picture gets clearer. Changbin himself has nothing to do with it; and you’re not as selfless as your inner monologue keeps claiming. You correct yourself:

This is for me and my empty bank account.

Really — who could blame you?

You need steady contracts in order to eat. Without Changbin, those get fewer and farther between. It’s the transitive property, or whatever; basic math. You might starve without him, and that is the one thing in this life that you’re unwilling to do.

In the passenger seat, Jisung stirs. When he speaks, his voice isn’t weighted down with exhaustion in the way it usually is, halfway through a car trip. For some reason, it makes your stomach turn to consider that — for what is probably the first time ever — he isn’t sleeping through a drive.

“He left in a hurry,” he quietly notes.

Out of the corner of your eye, you glance at him and confirm the presence of that worried crease between his eyebrows. It’s not accompanied by the usual, furiously-bouncing knee. That makes your stomach turn, too. Clearly, he’s vaulted over mere anxiety and landed somewhere close to shutting down.

You nod. “He did.”

It spooks him when you take your right hand off the steering wheel and give his elbow a brief squeeze. You’re not the affectionate type; you both know this. It always makes your rare touches more ominous than comforting.

“Do you think he was running to something, or running away from something?”

Leave it to Jisung to say the quiet part out loud.

Normally, you have an answer for his constant questions; and if you don’t, you resort to lying or guessing. This time, however, you don’t bother with either of those tactics because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the correct answer is, it’ll still feel wrong because Changbin doesn’t run.

Period.

Full stop.

So, the conclusion your brain keeps trying to come to is that he didn’t — he wouldn’t — if it came down to choice. The only reason Changbin would’ve disappeared like this, suddenly and wordlessly, is if he was taken.

Pulse hammering loudly in your ears, you don’t hear Jisung announce that your destination is only a few hundred meters down the road. Without his emphatic pointing out the windshield ahead, you simply would’ve continued racing forward, taking the speed limit as a suggestion to be ignored. Thankfully, your lead foot switches to the brake with enough time to make your turn. Tires hit dirt; your car fishtails as it transitions from the road to the worn-out path to your right.

“The fuck is this place?” You mutter, more to yourself than to Jisung.

It’s obsolete, you know that much.

Something akin to an industrial park, but one that clearly hasn’t been used since before the War. There are electrical towers dotting a perimeter around the space, none of which are operational; the grid system was replaced by wind power, then by solar energy no fewer than fifty years ago. The driveway below is so cracked that patches of weeds have overtaken most of what remained of the pavement. All the rest is weathered, reduced to broken bits of cement and dirt.

Your car slows to a stop halfway down the parkway, surrounded on both sides by empty storage units with doors either broken or missing entirely. Hair raising on the back of your neck, you park but don’t kill the engine. Slowly, you rest your right hand over top of the holster strapped to your thigh and open your car door with your left.

The sun set a few hours into your drive. Its absence hasn’t done a damn thing to break the thick heat waiting for you outside. Humid air settles on your skin and leaves a sheen of sweat behind like a handprint, sticky.

“These were the coordinates,” Jisung affirms with a sigh. He stays seated inside the vehicle, leaving you to wonder why. He’s either too panicked to move, or correct in assuming you’d tell him to sit his unarmed ass back down before you made him.

You don’t respond.

Instead, your eyes continue to scan the property for signs of — well, anything. Movement, a heat signature, whatever might register on your optical mods. There’s nothing, save for the stray tumbleweed somersaulting across the empty lot. You narrow your eyes to zoom in, heart pounding with anticipation.

You almost scream when you see it, but you swallow the urge. Fear won’t do you any good, but the semi-automatic strapped to your thigh might. It’s in your palm before you can blink, cocked and aimed at the figure ahead. At the bottom of your field of vision, your ammo count glows in translucent, block letters.

So, the ballistic co-processor is worth the pain.

Their posture is casual, legs dangling from the metal catwalk they sit on. Their elbows rest against the railing in front of them, as if they’re leaning on a counter in a bar and not spying on you from a scaffold four meters overhead. The way they’re watching in silence is unsettling enough; the wooden tal obscuring their face is fucking nightmare fuel, if you’ve ever seen it.

Head tilted curiously to the side, the stranger stares down at you through small eye holes, wooden mouth frozen in a hand-carved smile. Whoever they are, they’re immersed in the bit. They exaggerate every slow movement for their audience of two.

Good for them, you scoff to yourself.

Gloved hands come up to pantomime “don’t shoot” mere seconds before they grab hold of the railing in front of them. Just as quickly, they swing themselves underneath with a kick of their legs until they’re falling, falling, falling towards the ground below. They land easily on their feet without so much as a grunt. All the while, dust swirls in pirouettes around their ankles, spot-lit by your car’s headlamps.

“What — what the fuck?” Jisung squeaks.

You don’t answer, but that doesn’t stop him from repeating his question, over and over.

Hands still raised, the stranger slowly closes the distance between you. Their fingers wiggle slightly in some demented version of a wave; they’re taunting you. The unhealed part of you wants to shoot those fingers off, one by one.

You’ve never been fond of clowns.

“If you like having kneecaps without bullets in them, I suggest you stay still, chingu,” you scoff, now more annoyed than alarmed.

To your surprise, they listen. Their feet still, side by side; and their hands stay where you can see them. That is, until they curl all of their fingers into their palm, except for their right index finger. With it, they point silently over your shoulder.

As soon as you can whip your neck around, a gloved fist collides with your temple. The last thing you see before your vision goes black is a second, wooden smile looming over you.

A hushed tone manages to nudge you awake.

“You really can’t keep doing this. Seriously, your people skills are awful.”

The whole world’s blurry, and you can’t make out the source of the sound, but you’re coherent enough to know it when a second voice chimes in. It’s much less gentle than the first, higher in pitch and twice as exasperated. It snaps, “She was armed.”

“I had it under control,” the first voice huffs.

The two seem to be too lost in their argument to notice your eyelids fluttering or your fingers twitching. Your wrists aren’t bound, you realize, but that fact doesn’t help you much in your current state. Back resting heavily against the thin nylon cloth of a cot, it’d take more energy than you have to spare in order to get to your feet. Worse, your eyes don’t seem interested in cooperating.

They should be by now.

They’re open, you’re conscious, and —

Motherfucker.

The more awake you become, the more the ache in your temple reverberates down your jaw. You know without looking that the right side of your face is bruised to hell and back. Scraped up, too, if you had to guess; you hit the gravel like a bag of bricks.

They must’ve done it on purpose, hitting you exactly where they needed to in order to scramble your visual input. The most you get is shapes, black and white static. It wasn’t the hardest knock you’d ever taken to the head — not by a long shot — but it was perfectly targeted and timed.

Clearly, they’re no amateurs.

One such shadow kneels down next to you. Gentle fingers tuck a strand of hair behind your ear while their other hand tilts your drooping head to the side.

They tut, “Just look at what you did to her face.”

“From what I’ve heard, she’s been through worse,” the second voice scoffs. You watch the shadow’s shoulders as they shrug, wishing you could focus on their face well enough to bash it in.

The retort comes quickly, but it doesn’t come in Korean.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t do better.”

The hands that gently cradle your face pull away, leaving you cold. The action itself isn’t as jarring as the sudden use of English, though — especially the accent it’s spoken with. You may not be fluent, but you can sense what’s missing: the consonant on the end of that last word.

You sense something else, too, but you’re still too disoriented to follow that thought from start to finish. It’s on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach.

Who — ?

The bastard that broke your brain must notice your face scrunching in confusion because their next words seem to be aimed at you. Clipped and unapologetic, they mutter, “Should be fine within the hour. Already been out for —”

They suck in a breath through their teeth. You can’t tell if they’re stalling in order to toy with you, or if they’re genuinely doing the math.

“— Seven hours or so, now.”

Fuck!

One of the two snorts out a laugh; it’s the only reason you piece it together that you spoke out loud. Emboldened by the confirmed functionality of your voice, you speak again without thinking it through first.

You don’t care where you are or who you’re with. You only have one question:

“Is Changbin still alive? Because if he is, I’ll kill him myself.”

The man kneeling next to your cot chuckles, soft and low, but he doesn’t acknowledge your question beyond that. Instead, he addresses his hamfisted friend. “Can you please get her some water?”

“Am I a waiter now, Yongbok-ah?” The other snips, though his tone is devoid of any real heat. If his face wasn’t blurred out of existence, you’d likely find a sneer on it. “Should I roll some gimbap for her, too?”

“Actually, you should,” counters this Yongbok. His response is buried so deeply under his breath that his back talk may as well be a secret for your ears only. “Punched her clean into the next weekday — so, yeah. It’s the least you could do.”

It grows silent enough that you can hear every incredulous footstep as the waiter storms off.

The remainder says, “Sorry about him,” and for whatever little it’s worth, he sounds like he means it. You say nothing, simply marinating in your resentment.

Meanwhile, he shifts from his knees in order to sit fully on the ground next to your cot. Elbows extended, he leans back onto his palms and sighs gently, “Minho’s not as bad as the first impressions he makes.”

You scoff so forcefully that you feel it in your sinuses. “This is the second. His first is the reason I can’t see who’s holding me hostage.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The shape beside you sits up suddenly. He sputters, “You’re not a hostage, and this isn’t a kidnapping —”

“Then what the fuck is it?” You snap, “Huh, Yongbok?”

Blindly, you throw out a half-balled fist in a half-baked attempt to even the score. It misses by a mile, nearly knocking you off balance in the process. Your wrist is encircled by the same warm fingers you felt before, doubling over but exerting no force.

“We were scouting you. You know, like, soccer?” He chuckles sheepishly. “Changbin mentioned that you were a free agent, so to speak, and we thought you might wanna join the team.”

What the fuck?

“And — it wasn’t supposed to wind up like this.” His shadow’s hands gesture vaguely at the room you can’t see. “I did try to warn you. You just didn’t turn around in time.”

There are too many questions swirling around in your skull to choose from. One of them must break free and nudge your retinal chip back into place because something turns the lights back on. Glitching wildly, your vision flickers from low contrast to high definition. It doesn’t hurt, but the surprised gasp you choke out could easily be interpreted that way.

The man next to you is back on his knees in a second, both hands finding your shoulders to either comfort you or immobilize you — and you aren’t sure which. Against your better judgment, you ignore the reflex that tells you to fight or flee. Instead, you reach out and touch his cheekbone to confirm that the faint spots you see are freckles and not lingering sensory damage on your part.

He doesn’t even blink, much less say a word. There’s no jerk to get away, and there’s not a single question asked about what the fuck you’re doing — just tolerance. Far more than you’d be extending if the roles were reversed.

Freckles.

You aren’t embarrassed, but you drop your hand quickly and scowl at him until he does the same. Once again, he raises them as he leans back. Notably, he doesn’t wiggle his fingers like the first time you crossed paths.

That reminds me —

Abruptly, you draw your arm back to deck him in earnest.

Just like the last time, he catches you before you can strike him; however, instead of capturing your wrist, it’s the entirety of your fist. His palm absorbs the shock, fingers closing around your hand. It’s the gentlest trap you’ve ever been ensnared in, which you hate.

Smart of you to prevent another attempt.

“Can I finish explaining myself?” He asks, voice soft.

Bright doe eyes scan over your face cautiously as he contemplates letting your hand go. It’s disarming, sure, but you’d rather die than admit it.

You give him absolutely nothing to work with, so he adds, “You can hit me when I’m done, if you still want to.”

All you give him in return is a glare, which he somehow correctly interprets as permission to keep going. The grip on your fist loosens, although it wasn’t constricting to begin with. Like nothing happened, you pull it away and cross your arms.

As if nonchalance has ever been your strong suit.

He stares at you, deep in thought, for longer than you know what to do with. Eyes sweeping over your features like he’ll be quizzed later, taking in every detail. It’s unsettling — what about you is even worth gawking at?

When he frowns, that spark of light in his eyes stays put. “You don’t remember me.”

It’s not a question because he isn’t asking; he’s telling. And you have no goddamn clue what he means, no matter how loudly the voice in your head screams that you should. The familiarity buzzing through your brain can’t place him — not the button of his nose, not even those fucking freckles.

“I don’t know anyone named Yongbok,” you counter, frustration evident.

You wouldn’t be this harsh if you know how not to be. Part of you feels guilty when you see the hurt flicker across his face, but both emotions — his and yours — are gone as quickly as they appear. Consequently, the walls stay up, refusing to give. Despite you, the corner of his mouth hitches up in a lopsided version of a smile.

That’s familiar, too.

“Never really went by it,” he chuckles. As he does, he tilts his head quizzically.

Another bell rings, yet you can’t name the note.

Shyly, he takes his half-smile with him and looks anywhere else. The anticipation is spinning cartwheels in your stomach, tingling down the back of your neck, and you’re seconds away from trying to smack the trapped words right out of him.

Who are you to me?

After a deep breath in and out, he glances back at you from the corner of his eye. His hesitation does nothing to prepare you for his response, which isn’t his name at all. It’s yours — a nickname, more specifically. One no one has used in damn near a decade.

“Been a while, Scraps. Hasn’t it?”

Felix has never seen anyone freeze the way you do when the realization finally hits. For a minute, he worries that Minho did more damage to your poor brain than either of them initially diagnosed; it wouldn’t be the first time. Minho’s never been known to be careful or tactful.

Your silence — and your total lack of physical response — doesn’t last, though. He nudges your kneecap with his knuckles just to make sure you can feel it. You blink rapidly, as if you’re just now remembering how.

He starts to ask, “Are you ok—?”, but your fist flies out, pops him right in the jaw, and he chokes on the rest of that question. Hands flying up to cover his face, he collapses back onto the floor with a groan. When the initial shock wears off, it dissolves into laughter that shakes his shoulders.

Honestly, what did he expect?

In a flash, you shove yourself off your cot. You’re on top of him before he can blink, pinning him down. You grip his shirt in one fist and raise the other. He braces himself for impact but doesn’t flinch, too taken aback by the fury you’re capable of communicating without a single word.

“You’re fucking with me,” you spit, breaking the silence.

Your glare is borderline feral — burning — and that makes him laugh even harder.

“You haven’t changed a bit, you know that?”

To both of your surprise, you don’t hit him again; you don’t even try. You freeze, but unlike the last time, your eyes are shaking. Your raised arm is, too, like it’s taking all you have to keep whatever you’re feeling to yourself.

Classic Scraps.

You mutter, “You’re dead,” and it’s not a threat.

Not even close, really. It’s a declaration, one accompanied by an expression that’s as close to vulnerable as he’s ever seen from you. All at once, you lower your arm; the rest of you slumps, too. Whispering, you repeat, “You’re dead.”

Something about your tone hurts worse than the burgeoning bruise near his mouth. It aches, even more so when he frowns. You deserve an explanation — an apology, too — but Felix doesn’t know where the fuck to start.

Maybe he should cash that reality check first.

“Is that what people are saying?” He asks.

He’s not sure what about that trips him up. It makes perfect sense that this is the conclusion people wound up jumping to. After all, he left without a word and never came back — didn’t leave a trace, either.

Felix wasn’t the first teenager to slip through the cracks, so he’d figured that his would be another run-of-the-mill disappearance. Sure, people tend to notice when kids go missing; but that doesn’t stop the world from turning. Sooner or later, people stop looking, either too busy or too hopeless to keep holding a torch.

Eventually, they forget.

At least, that was the reality Felix had subscribed to — that, after a while, he’d slipped through the cracks of collective consciousness. It was easier to tell himself that he wasn’t missed. His guilt couldn’t keep him up at night if nobody remembered that he existed in the first place; especially when a decade slipped past in his absence.

But you did remember.

You missed him.

You lift your knee so that you’re no longer straddling him and drop onto your back at his side.

It’s funny, he thinks as he stares up at the ceiling. The two of you spent years just like this, albeit on the hood of some junkyard sedan. Two pairs of wide eyes were always fixed on constellations, dreaming of something bigger than both of you. Of some future where you weren’t still stuck in the gutter.

“There was no trace of you anywhere.” You speak so softly that Felix is left to wonder whether you’re talking to him or yourself. “No records that you fled, no word from you, no hits on CCTV — nothing. The cops said there’d be a trail if…”

Your voice fades out before you can finish that thought, so Felix picks up where you left off: “If I was alive to leave one.”

There’s a long pause before you speak again.

“This is where you disappeared to?”

He feels a shift beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the way you’ve tilted your head to gaze at him. By the time he does the same, the moment is gone, and you’re taking in the room around you.

It’s not much, but it’s all he has: A small room in a decommissioned factory, smelling faintly of sawdust despite not containing any. The cot you just sprang from is where he’s spent most nights since he was fifteen.

The floor underneath it — underneath you — is more dirt than concrete now, no matter how many times he’s scrubbed it; and the few iron shelves that hang along each wall are just as gross. So are the knickknacks he’s set on them, but he doesn’t mind.

The site itself is long forgotten. It’d be an eyesore if anyone ever looked, but no one bothers.

Even satellites have stopped paying it any attention, leaving it to fade into dirt and obscurity, not even a shadow of what it used to be. Once plush and inviting, the surrounding forest was leveled in a firefight that ended with ninety-percent of the nearby buildings getting blown to shit.

The New Republic could’ve easily organized a relief team to dig through the shattered city. At any point in the last fifty years, they could’ve rebuilt what burned in that failed uprising, but they didn’t; and Felix knows they never will because that rubble has a function. Apart from burying one of the country’s most impoverished districts, it serves as a cautionary tale. A threat left behind to the masses: this is what happens when people pose risk to profits.

Still, flowers can grow within cracks in concrete. After all, his life with you started just a few kilometers away.

“Are we still in Changwon, or did you and that asshole drag me out of the province?”

That edge of yours is ever present, and Felix is glad. It’s one of the million things he’s missed about you; a feature on the long list of reasons he wishes he could’ve called — messaged, sent a smoke signal, anything — to keep you around in whatever capacity he could.

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

Felix feels the weight of a lost decade sitting heavy on his chest, so he does what he always does: he chooses light. Smiling brightly, he asks, “D’you remember that junkyard we used to run away to after curfew?”

You roll your eyes. You don’t have to say it out loud; he knows you do. The two of you spent more time there than you did in your own homes, lining glass bottles along the wooden fence posts and firing stones at them with a homemade slingshot.

“We’re a few kilometers up the road, actually.”

At this, you sit up so that no part of your body stays pressed against his. Dead silence settles in the space between you like a brick wall. You bristle, then you snap, “All that time you were dead, you were still within spitting distance?”

Felix opens his mouth to respond, but your rigid posture makes it clear that you have no desire to listen. He closes it again without saying a word. It’s what he deserves, isn’t it?

“Traded in your family, your home, your — Me.” You clear your throat to hide the fact that your voice breaks. It’s too late. “And for what, Felix? To haunt some abandoned building like a ghost?”

You clench your fists, like a grip tight enough might keep you together. That part of you hasn’t changed either, it seems. Neither has the extremely unsettling way you get quieter, the more upset you are. Just like that, he’s reminded of what you used to say: the more it hurts, the less it shows.

“I couldn’t pick you out of a fucking lineup despite all of that history,” you whisper, deflated. “And you were here the whole time.”

Talking won’t do him much good, so Felix opts to show you. Palms pressed to the ground, he pushes himself to his feet, and he doesn’t bother dusting off the back of his pants once he stands. It won’t make a difference, anyway, when the whole damn city is covered in it.

Once he steadies himself, he extends his hand to you, half-expecting you to slap it away. You don’t budge. You never do, he recalls fondly.

“One chance?” His eyes are pleading, even though you don’t look up to meet them. “It’s hard to explain, but it’ll make more sense if you see it.”

Without looking, you lift your arm and slap your hand into his. A small concession, but it’s enough to make his smile reappear. He’s practically beaming when he hauls you to your feet, and you grip his forearms to keep steady.

“Fine,” you concede with a huff.

Then, you round on him with one pointed finger, jabbing him in the center of his chest with force. It’ll bruise, but he supposes that’s the whole point.

“This better be worth all the fucking theatrics, or I swear to god —”

“You’ll make me swallow my own teeth?” He rolls his eyes with a low chuckle and tugs you along after him on his way to the door. “Yeah, yeah, yeah — Heard that threat a thousand times, Scraps, and you’ve never once made good on it.”

Just to emphasize his point, he looks over his shoulder at you and grins with all thirty-two of them.

All things considered, you take everything in stride. You don’t react much at all when you discover that the abandoned building is anything but; refuse to bat an eye when the two people you woke up to are revealed to be a tiny fraction of the whole.

You even keep your hand in his as he ushers you from room to room — through the clinic, the makeshift and woefully under-equipped armory, the Hub — and introduces you to whoever you come across. He might even go so far as to call you friendly, which is a first. Receiving any kind of warmth from you typically requires high-level security clearance.

Or, at least, it used to. Felix has to remind himself more than once that, small echoes aside, there are parts of you he doesn’t know anymore. This could very well be one of them.

Halfway through the tour, you finally offer up more than a lukewarm greeting and your name. It’s just the two of you now; you don’t have to make yourself palatable anymore. Blunt as ever, you throw out, “This is a cult, right? You ran away from home to join a cult?”

There she is, he thinks.

Felix pulls a face in disapproval, which you either don’t catch or don’t care about. Instead, you turn your head in the opposite direction and let your gaze sweep over the loading dock you currently stand upon.

It’s the closest thing they’ve got to a sitting room, filled with the only comfortable furniture they could get their hands on — half-busted arm chairs, ratty old couches, tables held together with duct tape and a prayer. You drop suddenly onto one such couch, jerking him back until his ass winds up next to yours on a tattered cushion.

Felix can’t tell if you pulled him down on purpose, or if you simply forgot that you were holding onto him. Either way, he doesn’t mind, but part of him hopes it was the former.

“It’s a collective,” he corrects you, lips flattening into a firm, straight line.

“You don’t have to sugarcoat it. If it’s a sex cult, just say so.”

He tries not to laugh — really, he does — because the last thing you need is an enabler, but your deadpan delivery has always hit him where he’s weakest. He tries again while swallowing a chuckle: “It’s the Black Screen, home to the most talented and ungovernable motherfuckers on the peninsula.”

You don’t look impressed. Felix doesn’t take it to heart.

“We’ve got a reconnaissance team, netrunners —”

As if he’s doing a roll call, he points to nearby stragglers with every position he names.

“— corporate defectors, combat vets, medics, ex-fixers —”

He nudges you with his elbow, wiggles his eyebrows and murmurs, “— Edge runners —”

If that look in your eye is any indication, you still hate it when he does that.

“And a couple of wayward drunks who — well…” Felix pauses for a moment to think. It doesn’t help, so he shrugs, snickering, “I dunno how they got here, and they don’t contribute much, but they’re fun to have around!”

The corner of your mouth twitches, ever so slightly. He grins down at you, as if to say gotcha.

“So, it is a sex cult,” you repeat flatly after a beat.

Felix can’t beat your bit, so he may as well join you in it. Bested, he sighs, “Yeah, pretty much.”

You hum in acceptance of his defeat, clearly amused by how easily he still gives in to you.

With pursed lips, you continue to take in your surroundings. Your brow furrows while you process the information you’ve been bombarded with so far, but you don’t offer up any further questions or snide comments. Thankfully, the silence that falls over you both feels a lot less like lead than the previous one.

Felix’s gaze stays fixed on you, though you’re too busy looking elsewhere to notice. Maybe you couldn’t recognize him, but shit — he’d know you anywhere, anytime. You’ve gotten older, of course, finally grew into those features of yours. Still, there are hints of the kid he used to know hidden all over your face.

Original traits aside, the new additions — the tattoos, for starters — all read like you. In fact, Felix is fairly confident that he’d know who they belonged to, even if the other context was removed. After all, the cyberware installed into your hand can’t undermine the familiarity of it resting against his palm.

And it sure as shit still hits like it used to.

He considers it a blessing, really, that so much of you survived the years that flew by without him. That the scrawny girl next door — ready and willing to fight God over a single slight — still rolls her eyes the same way, still speaks in that satoori his non-native tongue could never mimic.

“Maybe I’m missing something,” you announce suddenly. The unexpected sound of your voice startles Felix so much that he jumps, knocking his shoulder into yours in the process. You ignore his reaction and continue, “This just looks like someone is collecting people as a hobby. What are you all doing here?”

Oh.

Yeah, that’s a fair question.

“We’re… starting a fire,” Felix muses.

You arch an eyebrow expectantly, although the rest of your face remains impassive. It’s less of a demand for him to continue than it is permission for him not to stop.

“And we’re going to burn it all down.” He hits you with a devilish grin, drops his voice low in a way that makes you shiver involuntarily. “The corpo-rats, the lies they sell — all of it.”

“Sounds like anarchy,” you say, tilting your head to the side. There’s a beat, then you grin to match his. “Sign me up.”

Felix stands at the far side of the dining area with his arms crossed and his head leaning back against the cinder blocks behind him. His legs are crossed at the ankles, knees aching from the sheer amount of time he’s been holding the wall up.

As much as his body wants to sit, the rest of him is out of options. The only table that isn’t full is the one you’re occupying with Changbin and Jisung. After the day you’ve had, you deserve time alone with something familiar. He recognizes that he isn’t that.

Not anymore — and not yet, either.

He finds it hard to stray too far, though. You’ve always been able to fend for yourself — that black-and-blue jaw of his is proof enough — but it’s a role he can’t help falling into, looking out for you. Muscle memory.

Although Felix can’t quite make out anything that the three of you are saying, it’s clear as a damn bell when you slam your palms down on the table. Just as obvious is the split second in which your anger gives way — when the pain in your right hand finally registers in your brain.

“That one going to be a problem?”

Hyunjin, as usual, seems to appear out of thin air. He sidles up to Felix and takes up the spot next to him along the wall. All it takes is one quick glance to confirm it — he’s exhausted. Dark half-moons sit in the wells beneath his eyes like ink, silently informing Felix of yet another all-nighter; still keeping secrets as to where he goes at night when everyone else is sleeping.

But Hyunjin isn’t a mystery Felix will ever be able to solve, so he looks back in your direction and asks, “Who, Scraps?” Then, with a shake of his head, he sighs, “No. She’s a cherry bomb, but she’s reliable. Far more than most, actually.”

It’s odd, Felix thinks, that Hyunjin didn’t already know the answer to that question. As the reconnaissance leader of the Black Screen, there isn’t much Hyunjin isn’t aware of. Felix doesn’t comment on that piece, however. Instead, he does his best to interpret your reaction.

“If I had to guess, Changbin just told her about the fake kidnapping.”

And Hyunjin doesn’t do a damn thing to conceal his smirk. That was his plan, after all.

Two weeks ago, Seo Changbin stumbled upon a lead by accident. While Felix isn’t privy to the details of what Changbin dug up, he knows it must’ve been significant. That’s the only explanation Felix can come up with as to how Changbin wound up at the rendezvous point. Nobody — not the corporate ghouls, their war dogs, or any other sorry soul — finds the Black Screen unless they want to be found.

Felix is privy to what happened next because it’s the only reason he wound up involved in this at all:

Whatever intel Changbin had was groundbreaking enough to score an invitation to the revolution, but he had more to offer the higher-ups than that. He dropped the name of someone who could be an asset, under the right circumstances. Someone who wouldn’t follow a breadcrumb trail for free but would tear the peninsula apart to find whoever owed them.

For what it’s worth, Felix disagreed with that characterization the second he heard it. Despite the mask you like to wear, you’re incapable of being self-centered. You’ve never been profit-driven, heartless, or attachment-avoidant. Just hellbent on survival for you and the people you feel responsible for, even as a kid.

The only reason Felix hasn’t asked you about your motive outright is because he knows you’d lie. The truth is simple: Unless it was for someone you care deeply about, you wouldn’t waste gasoline on speeding back to a place you hate.

Hyunjin clears his throat, pulling Felix out of the daze he’d fallen into. Given the pointed look on his face, Hyunjin must be repeating himself when he says, “She got you bad, huh?”

Confusion forces Felix’s brow to furrow.

“This?” He takes a wild guess and gestures to the bruise on his jaw before waving dismissively. “Nah, her form is terrible. Truly garbage-tier follow-through. I can teach her, though.”

Hyunjin pushes himself off the wall and moves to exit the dining area. As he passes by, he gives Felix a patronizing pat on his shoulder. “Not what I meant, Yongbokie.”

Felix frowns, unsure how to take what he’s being given.

The fuck?

“Not even close,” Hyunjin calls over his shoulder.

He shoots Felix a wink, and then he’s gone, disappearing out the door the same way he entered it — like a goddamn apparition.

“Wow. Recruited? That’s — wow.”

Jisung is doing a terrible job of pretending he isn’t blushing. He clears his throat to keep his voice even, but it’s useless. He’s not fooling anyone.

“I didn’t realize we were so sought after.”

“You’re not,” Changbin responds bluntly. He gestures across the table to you but maintains his eyes on Jisung. “She is. You just happened to be present, and they couldn’t leave a witness behind.”

Jisung doesn’t bother to hide the way his face falls. When he opens his mouth to whine, you raise your hand and silently demand that he spare you the earache. It seems to work; he slumps dejectedly and leans with his elbows against the tabletop. You proceed to ignore him.

Affect flat, you stare straight ahead at the source of all your fucking problems. The half of you that wants to hug Changbin for being alive and well is significantly quieter than the half of you that wants to grab him by the nape of his neck and shove his face into his yukgaejang.

Bastard.

“I no longer give a shit how I ended up here,” you state coolly. Liar. “That ship has sailed, and to keep it a buck with you, Binnie —”

He cringes at the nickname, which is exactly the reaction you sought.

“— I’m not interested in stroking your ego for getting one over on me. It won’t happen again. What I’m still waiting on —”

The only reason you leave that clause hanging in mid-air is to see the anticipation stir in his eyes. From where you’re sitting, it’s what he deserves: a little bit of unnecessary suspense. Really, it’s a form of reparations for the giant fucking inconvenience he’s been lately. His balance is way past due.

Jisung, perpetually along for the ride, shovels shrimp chips into his mouth while his eyes dart back and forth between your face and Changbin’s.

You shoot Changbin a sly smile and grab his beer, tilting the can his way in lieu of a bow. His eyes narrow, visibly annoyed with your stalling, but he doesn’t audibly complain when you down the rest of his drink. Resigned, he accepts the empty can that you hand it back to him

At long last, you clear your throat.

“— is an explanation for why you’re here,” you finally sigh.

Changbin rolls his eyes so hard that they go all-white for a moment. Then, to your surprise, he glares across the table at Jisung.

“You know, my life was way more pleasant before you dragged this one,” he huffs, gesturing to you with his chopsticks, “Into my bar.”

Just for a moment, Changbin sits with his annoyance. He’s entitled to some of it, you’ll concede. You’re not easy to love — you never have been — and you’re occasionally even harder to like. Despite that, he’s been known to look out for you in his own, mostly useless way; even in moments like this, when you’re being a fucking gash simply because you can.

But the fact remains that you dragged your ass across a peninsula for him. He knows damn well that you accept payment in the form of secrets when cash is too hard to come by, so….

“Spill,” you demand.

That tough exterior of his collapses like wet cardboard, just like you knew it would. He glances around the room quickly to confirm that no one is listening in, then he pushes his empty bowl out of the way. With the threat of staining his white t-shirt neutralized, Changbin leans in and asks, “Do either of you know Jung Wooyoung?”

Simultaneously, you and Jisung respond:

“The boxer?”

“The biter.”

Just the same, your friends turn to you with identical looks of bewilderment. You shrug, declining to elaborate because Changbin asked if you knew him, not how or how intimately. Truth be told, you’re not sure that he’s prepared for that answer.

“Anyways,” Changbin segues after clearing his throat. “He’s not up to either of those tasks these days.”

Genuinely curious, Jisung asks with a frown, “Did someone finally kill him?”

Fair question, you think.

With the way Wooyoung runs his mouth, it’s a wonder he’s lived as long as he has — assuming, of course, that he’s still alive. Beyond picking fights with people three times’ his size, his specialties include fixing matches and swiping other fighters’ significant others. If he’s not dead yet, you figure, it’s only a matter of time until the consequences of his antics come calling.

Changbin shakes his head, and the look on his face seems weirdly solemn, like the answer is even worse than that. It’s sobering; it knocks the smirk right off your face.

“He was short on cash, so he signed up for some clinical trial promising a million won for participants.”

Jisung, the resident non-doctor, sits up at this development. “Thanotech?”

You’re in the middle of rolling your eyes when Changbin intercepts, grimacing: “No, that’s the fucked up part. Well, one of the fucked up parts.”

Two pairs of expectant eyes lock on him.

“It’s Ulsan running the trial.”

You don’t pretend to be well-versed in any of the biomedical, cybernetic shit going on around you, but you do know that this particular corporation never leaks details of its research and development — not ever. Doing so would run the risk of a lesser titan swooping in to try and to dupe it.

But that’s not the only revelation that smacks you upside the head.

“Ulsan pays for lab rats now?” You scoff, surprised by your own interest. “Here I was, thinking they used ex-employees for that shit.”

It sounds callous when you say it out loud, but it’s a universal assumption. Part of the New Republic’s mythology, so to speak.

In your lifetime, you’ve never come across a single person who used to work for the Ulsan Corporation — not one. Just the same, you’ve never heard about anyone leaving; no one you’ve ever met has. It’s beyond the realm of possibility that a corporation like that has no turnover, so where do people go when their turn is over?

The dumpster out back, some say. According to others, they wind up in a secret mass grave in the oil fields.

“When he came back, I didn’t know where he’d been or why; I just saw him wandering around like a fucking zombie.” Changbin shivers. “He’s empty now, all sucked dry.”

Jisung looks pointedly at you, shit-eatin grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Is that what happened when you —?”

An elbow to the center of his chest stops his question before he can finish asking it. He yelps instead, scooting his chair further down the table to get away from you, your sharp edges, and your even sharper glare.

“It freaked me the fuck out, and I didn’t have any answers, so I started poking around for something — anything — that might make sense of it.”

“So, that’s how you got pulled into the web.”

The voice from nowhere makes all three of you jump. You whip around to find yet another stranger.

How many fucking people do I have to meet today?

This particular wild card sits on top of the table directly behind yours with arms gently crossed over her chest; not closed off but cold, judging by the goosebumps making themselves known across her bare arms. Her boots rest on the chair in front of her, one chrome leg shining next to flesh-and-blood.

Whoever she is, she’s beaming. That fact confuses the shit out of you because you’re not often met with friendliness, especially from unknowns. Or maybe, you think, it’s a well-concealed effort to disarm you. Whatever it is, it’s working; the urge to snap at her for intruding is dead on arrival.

You open your mouth to ask what she means, but you can’t get the words out before someone else interjects.

Minho, that bastard, shouts from across the room, “Spider! Got a minute?”

Her eyes light up in a way that says she has several, so long as he’s the one asking. Without another word, she hops to her feet and pushes the chair that held them back under the table. As she heads his way, she sends you an apologetic smile, like she somehow owes you anything.

“I don’t know what they unraveled by pulling that thread,” Changbin sighs, nodding towards the pair exiting the room. “But this place has been buzzing since I got here.”

You need something to chew on that isn’t this, so you reach over and grab the bag of shrimp chips from Jisung’s unsuspecting hands. The frown he gives you is cartoonish, but as usual, he doesn’t put up a fight. Your version of an apology is holding a spare chip out to him, which he happily accepts.

After shoveling a handful into your mouth, you mumble, “So now what?”

“I don’t know about you, but if these guys —” Changbin gestures vaguely around the room with his index finger pointed. “— Give me a target to point at, I’ll pull the trigger.”

You snort, “That’s a lot of trust.”

It doesn’t mean much, coming from you. Your metric is beyond fucked, and you know it. That word is foreign, though; so far out of your grasp that you can’t wrap your brain around it.

“Maybe it is,” Changbin mutters while he looks down at the empty can in his grip.

For a moment, that’s all he says. All he does is stare into the black hole of its opening, as if there’s some answer lurking in the emptiness below it. He must not find it, though, because he crumples the aluminum like a piece of scrap paper.

When he glances back up at you, you see the uncertainty in his eyes. It reads like fear, which manages to unsettle you.

“I just — I can’t see what I saw and do nothing.”

Your second month in the compound starts with a bang — no, a thud.

With your body being forcibly ejected from your cot, crashing onto the ground, and your jaw clenching shut quickly with a click of gritted teeth.

“How many fucking times are we doing this?” You growl, less than half-awake.

Already past today’s quota for rage, you form a fist and swing your arm back violently against the capsized cot; it scrapes along the cement floor and skitters further away from you. The sudden burst of movement doesn’t do anything to make you feel better, but it was worth a shot, you suppose.

Felix, whose sunshine smile is too goddamn bright for this hour, crouches down in front of you. He at least has the decency to look apologetic when he lilts, “Until you learn to wake up to an alarm, I fear.”

He pauses, eyes scanning for any genuine distress beyond your shitty mood.

“Does that hurt?” He frowns.

Bleary eyes follow his pointed finger to your elbow, now prickling with blood where you skinned it against the floor. It doesn’t; and you’re not even remotely concerned about it, so you swat his hand away without answering his question and shove yourself to your feet. Once standing, you wander over to your steamer trunk to grab something clean enough to wear.

The shadowy one, Hyunjin, brought your shit to you a week ago — thank god. He provided no explanation whatsoever for how he knew where you lived or how he managed to get inside your building, but you’re a beggar, not a chooser. You’d rather enable his burglary than keep wearing the same, re-washed clothes you came here with or borrowing from people you still don’t know well.

As you peel yesterday’s tank-top up and over your head, your gravelly voice flies out to Felix, who stands and moves to lean against the wall. “You at least going to feed me breakfast before you bore me with more target practice?”

That’s most of what your time together has been so far, anyway. The chain of command is sorting out details above your pay grade; and you condition yourself to jump as high as they may eventually ask you to.

Felix doesn’t answer you, which isn’t like him. You look at him out of the corner of your eye and find him staring up at the ceiling, like his life depends on it.

“What are you —?”

Oh.

You glance down, cutting your question off midway through. He’s giving you and your semi-exposed body privacy, that’s what.

Sensing blood in the water, you swim in to scoff, “You have no problem flipping my bed when I’m in it, but bras are where you draw the line? What kind of gentleman are you?”

Still averting his eyes, he rolls them. You do him the favor of tugging on a different, slightly wrinkled tank-top; but you don’t give him the courtesy of letting up.

“Where do you stand on ass, Felix?”

“Are you always this annoying, first thing in the morning?”

Amusement slips through the cracks despite his efforts to conceal it. You slip out of the cotton shorts you slept in, dip your toes under the fabric pooled around your ankles, and flick them at him. He concedes his staring contest to the panels overhead in order to catch them.

Impressive reflexes.

“I’m this annoying at all hours of the day.” You grin impishly for just a second, then shrug. “You’re just less able to handle it, first thing in the morning.”

Bending back over your trunk, you dig through for something denim. You land on black, high-waisted shorts with a triumphant, “Aha!”, and make a big show of raising your trophy overhead. Once again, you glance at Felix to see if your attempt to get a rise out of him was successful. In a way, yes, it was — just not in the way you expected.

Based on the way his gaze lingers on your thighs and the curve of your ass, you don’t think Felix even noticed your theatrics. You don’t think he means to stare, either. As far as you can see, it’s the perfect opportunity to fuck with him further.

“Admiring the tattoos?” You arch an eyebrow and wait for him to blush out of panic at being caught. “I can recommend the artist, if you want to hit them up.”

To your surprise, you don’t rattle him. Dark eyes flick up from your body to your face, and they don’t seem ashamed of where they’ve been. Your plan backfires. More than that, it blows up right in your face, which is starting to heat up.

“The cantine closes in five minutes. Training starts in ten,” he states matter-of-factly, holding your gaze. “So, you can either eat, or you can keep pretending you’re not trying to flirt with me.”

Your mouth drops open, but you can’t even snap back at him before he chirps, “The choice is yours, Scraps,” with a playful smile.

With nothing more to say, Felix leans away from the wall. On his way out the door, he gives you a lazy, two-finger salute. Dumbstruck, you stand there, watching him leave; wondering where the hell your bumbling, sweetly shy friend from back home managed to disappear to.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Felix waggles his finger at you. A smug smile toys at his lips when you let out a frustrated grunt. “That’s the problem.”

He takes a step away from you, raises his fists to mimic your posture, and throws a right jab out into the air ahead of him. When he draws it back, he pauses with his shoulders even.

“D’you see the issue with this?” He asks, loosening one fist so that he can gesture from shoulder to shoulder.

You roll your eyes. “Is it that nobody’s currently hitting you?”

Felix, to his credit, is completely unbothered by the attitude you keep giving him. He’s far more patient than he should be with you. You, however, do not take criticism well.

“You square yourself off instead of retriggering an attack,” he gently corrects you. “By not turning and leading with your shoulder —” He twists slightly backwards, so that his body is angled similarly to the way it was when he struck in the first place. “— you leave all this surface area open.”

Okay, fine.

You’ll concede that this makes sense, but you will not admit to poor blocking. In fact, deflecting is what you’re best at, so that’s precisely what you do.

“And how exactly am I supposed to block hits that aren’t coming?”

Felix relaxes his stance with confusion scribbled all over his face. You don’t wait for him to ask what you mean, plunging right into your notes for him:

“This sparring shit doesn’t feel real because you refuse to hit me. It’s been weeks, and there still aren’t any stakes. If you’re going to insist that I learn this — which, by the way, feels pointless when I’m already armed —”

You gesture down to your thigh, where your pistol is normally strapped.

“— then you have to make me care.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, opting instead to quietly chew on the challenge you’ve raised. For a split second, you think you’ve finally grasped the straw that’ll break his back. He turns towards the door and walks away, seemingly giving up on trying to teach a rabid dog new tricks.

But Felix defies your expectations yet again, grabs your gear off the counter at the far side of the room, and heads back to you. As he walks, he pulls back the slide to fish out the round that waits in its chamber. Bullet still in hand, his focus shifts to the magazine, which he easily removes from the base of your pistol’s grip. After tucking your ammunition into the back pocket of his jeans for safekeeping, he holds your now-empty firearm and thigh strap out to you.

“Gear up.”

Now, it’s your turn to be confused. You accept the items he pushes into your hands with both eyebrows raised.

“Are we giving up on hand-to-hand, then?”

“Absolutely not,” Felix snorts with a shake of his head. “I’m just going to prove the necessity.” When you don’t budge, he waves his hand to hurry you along. “C’mon, Scraps. Strap in.”

Eyeing him suspiciously, you slip the vertical strap over your belt loop and fasten it before doing the same to the horizontal piece around your thigh. Once it’s nestled snugly against your skin, you slide your weapon into its resting place.

Holding your hands up, you fire off a saccharine smile like the brat you are. “All done,” you chirp.

The smirk that appears on his face makes your stomach flip for two reasons, the least of which is the anticipation of his next move.

“You want it to feel real, right?” His voice drops so low that you feel it deep in your abdomen. “Fine by me.”

Like before, Felix steps slightly backwards. With a nod of his head towards your firearm, he challenges you, “Draw.”

It’s unfamiliar, seeing him counter you like this. Growing up, he was content to go in whichever direction you nudged him in. The version of Felix you knew back then was passive, agreeable to fault. You may not know what the fuck he’s planning now, but he radiates newfound authority that you almost want to respect, so you listen.

“Fine,” you demur while your fingertips trail over the cool, metal grip. “Make your point and move onto something useful.”

The next sequence of events flashes by so quickly that your brain can hardly keep up.

Just as soon as you pull the gun from its holster, Felix turns in his spot, channeling the momentum into a strong push off the ground. He’s in the air before you can even level the barrel; and in the blink of an eye, the side of his boot collides with your hand, forcefully ejecting the gun from your grip. The power behind his kick sends the weapon flying several meters away, where it clatters to the floor with a smack amidst the quiet.

Gasping more so out of surprise than pain, you recoil your stinging fist and clutch it to your chest. He reads your expression incorrectly, if his widened eyes are any indication. Immediately, Felix breaks his stance to step across the distance in between you.

Worried hands come to rest on your biceps, squeezing gently. He urgently asks, “You alright?”

You blink back at him, throughly stunned by how fucking fast his reflexes are, and he misinterprets that, too.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he sputters. His next words come out so frantically that they bleed together over the course of one breath. “I really didn’t want to hurt you; I just needed you to understand that your gun can’t always save you. Sometimes, you have to —”

“That was insane,” you blurt out.

Felix’s eyes widen, caught completely off-guard by your interruption. It’s understandable, you think. After all, it’s the closest thing to a compliment you’ve given him over the past few weeks.

He peeps, “Oh?”

You nod vigorously — and there’s that sweetly shy boy from down the block, blushing slightly under the weight of your attention.

Somehow, seeing him this way feels like home; the one you knew before he disappeared, that you might actually admit to missing. Acting solely on instinct, you unfurl your right hand and seek out the warmth of his cheek, like it’ll flip a switch and turn the clock back.

It doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t — but you can’t help feeling like this is fine, too.

Until you realize what the fuck you’re doing, and you see the starry-eyed look he’s giving you. Then, you do what you always do.

You dodge.

Patting his cheek patronizingly, you breeze, “I guess I’ll let you train me, then,” before turning to retrieve your gun.

“Oh, really now?” He laughs, like he’s already forgotten the way your mask just cracked. You can’t tell if you’re grateful for this, or disappointed. “Is violence all it takes to win you over?”

Disappointed.

You wish he’d called your bluff again, like he did so long ago in that closet you’re currently calling a bedroom. Once wasn’t enough; you want to be caught out, to have someone refuse to let you get away with the bullshit you’re always trying to pull. For some proof that you’re not the bulldozer you pretend to be.

Felix raises an eyebrow as he tilts his head teasingly to the side. “Are you actually going to shut up and take instruction this time?”

Like that.

“Maybe.” You crouch down to grab your discarded pistol off the ground, lips pursed to keep the satisfied smile off your face. “Are you going to stop pulling punches?”

Three weeks of sparring tick by before you manage to clean his fucking clock.

It came as a surprise to both of you; not just that Felix slipped up in the first place, but that you were fast enough to capitalize on an opening he’s otherwise never created. You might’ve gasped even louder than he did when you managed to seize the opportunity — but that memory is fuzzy already. It doesn’t matter, anyway, not to him. Either way, the point stands:

You actually learned from the shit he’s been trying to instill in you.

Having hobbled from the training room to his bedroom, Felix now sits on top of the old, metal counter that once served as a workbench. It’s not comfortable by any means, but he’d rather die than move from his current position. Between his knees, you stand close to him, holding a frozen sponge to his left eye with your right hand.

Funnily enough, that particular hand is the reason he needs an ice pack in the first place.

For a while, the pair of you exist in comfortable quiet. It’s nice, he thinks, just being present. He would’ve been happy to carry on that way for as long as possible, but the shitty voice in the back of his brain keeps yelling that he’s letting more moments slip by than he has to spare. Wasting time that he should be making up.

He clears his throat to shake off the rust, prompting you to glance down from his forehead to his eyes. Your expression is hard to read, but there’s anxiety in there, somewhere. Felix worries that you’re worried; you’re searching for a sign that you’ve somehow injured him further.

“You’re a quick study — if and when you want to be.” His teasing sounds pathetic because his voice is barely more than a groan. Still, he smirks, “Those corporate mercenaries won’t stand a chance.”

With his good eye, Felix watches as your mask cracks a little further in the shape of a smile.

For once, you simply nod in acknowledgement and let the compliment slip through your defenses without trying to deflect it. He wants to compliment you for that progress, too, but he’s hesitant to push his luck when he’s already flying half-blind by the seat of his pants.

Then again, it might be worth the risk to push the envelope — even if you succeed in punching his goddamn lights out for good. He doubts that he’d complain, if that were the case. You’d be an incredible last sight to ever see, wouldn’t you?

His internal monologue pipes up again, demanding that he gamble.

Every single muscle he has aches after spending hours sparring with you, but that’s not at all what he’s talking about when he says, “You’re a knockout, Scraps.”

It’s a cop out, but it’s something.

Just for a second, Felix wonders if you heard what he meant, and not just what he said. All his doubt disappears when that shy smile tugs even harder at the corners of your mouth.

“Shut up.” You roll your eyes, chuckling quietly. “If you want to get technical, you didn’t even lose consciousness —”

Carefully, you bring your free hand up to his forehead and brush flyaway strands of hair out of the way of the makeshift ice pack. By contrast, your fingertips are warm enough to simmer on his skin.

“— so you’ll have to try that joke again when you actually do.”

Although you could, you don’t take your hand back after unsticking his hair from the condensation on his skin. You lower it gently, let it rest on his shoulder, and leave Felix to wonder if it’s a choice, a convenience, or a reflex.

This eats at him.

A long time ago, this little gesture wouldn’t be something he’d have to guess at. He used to just understand, never once needed to be told. So far out of practice, he’s no longer fluent in your body language — and he hates it.

Unwilling to leave anything else up to interpretation, Felix looks up at you with one, unobstructed eye. “Wasn’t joking,” he murmurs.

You freeze without meeting his eyes.

If he didn’t know better, he might think your retinal mods had been knocked loose again. You don’t seem to see him, and that’s all he wants. All he gets is quiet, so he tries again: “And I’m not bullshitting you, either.”

It’s his low voice speaking your real name that finally draws you out of hiding. Surprised for just a moment, your expression softens when you notice the way he’s studying your reactions. You don’t speak at first, but your bottom lip is pinched between your teeth; a telltale sign that you’re trying to.

“Since this is apparently honesty hour,” you start with an exhale.

Felix braces himself for whatever evasive maneuver you’re going to throw next.

Shockingly, you don’t throw out a joke to change the subject. You take the ice pack off his eye so he can see you properly, set it down next to his thigh on the counter, and scrub your hands sheepishly over your face.

“You freak me the fuck out.”

You laugh despite yourself, and then you pause just like that; like you’re waiting on him to laugh at you, too. When he doesn’t, you take it as your cue to keep going: “Am I insane, or does this feel easy?

“I think both things can be true.” You shoot him a look that could — and might — kill him. He holds his hands up in surrender, but he keeps his eyes locked on you. “And I know you’re not used to easy.”

Felix doesn’t know what he expects you to do next, but your next move isn’t one he would’ve guessed. In the end, it’s your still-chilled palms reaching up to meet him, and your fingers filling the empty spaces between his. Brow furrowed, you study the way you fit together, like the words you’re searching for are hidden somewhere in the gaps of your chain-linked knuckles.

“I’m not used to it because I avoid it,” you correct him, frowning. “Easy scares the shit out of me. It just feels like a trap, you know? Like, the second you stop looking out for it, the other shoe will drop and knock your unsuspecting ass to the dirt.”

Keeping his fingers interlaced with yours, he lowers your joined hands until they rest against the tops of his thighs. You watch them go; he watches you, and he can’t help thinking that he’s the reason you armored up in the first place. That him leaving was the blow to the head that taught you to wear a helmet.

“I’ve got good reflexes,” Felix whispers, squeezing your hand.

At this, your eyes flick upwards. A microscopic crease forms between your eyebrows, and he knows exactly what’s coming next, so he says it first: “Excluding today, obviously.”

When you smile, it hits him even harder than your right hook did.

“What are you saying, exactly?” You ask, head tilting to the side as you narrow your eyes.

“Fuck the shoe.”

The look on your face suggests that he can’t possibly be serious, but he’s never been more so. Maybe he can’t promise you easy in a world like this one; and he can’t keep that fucking shoe from dropping, but he swears he’ll catch it when it does.

Felix has to let go of your hands to hold you properly. You lean into his touch when he snakes his arms around your waist; and you rest your forehead against his, careful not to press into the bruise that borders his eyebrow.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he whispers. You hum in reply, confirming your willingness to trade. “Kiss me now, and we’ll batten down the hatches later.”

Felix may have called you a quick learner, but you have to wonder what his basis for comparison is. From your vantage point, it’s him that catches on in a heartbeat, like nothing unexperienced is truly new to him.

Coincidentally, it’s also him that’s kneeling between your thighs, bearing the weight of your hinged knees over his shoulders and making you shake with his tongue alone.

“Fuck, fuck — nngh — fuck!”

It’s all you can say because it’s the best you can do.

Over and over, too drunk on the sensation of his mouth, you let profanity spill out of yours. He has you dripping in more ways than one, pooling on that godforsaken counter, and you can’t spare a single thought about the mess you’re making.

Every neuron fixates on him, the cotton-candy blue strands gripped tight between your fingers, and the way he devours you, like he’s making up for skipped meals.

“F-Felix,” you beg, breathless.

Looking up at you from under his lashes, he feigns innocence. It’s bullshit — he knows you’re on the brink of death, knows your whole damn body is buzzing — and his sweet smile doesn’t match his actions. You jolt, wailing, when another kitten lick trails over your clit.

“Hmm?” That low timbre of his vibrates through you when he pulls back, panting.

God, you’re spent already, but you can’t collapse until you know what he feels like, buried to the hilt in you. Something about that need makes you shiver; has your bottom lip quivering when you manage to squeak, “Please.”

Absolutely boneless, you slump against the wall behind you. With far more grace than you, Felix maneuvers his way out from under the tangle of your legs. He ensures that they fall gently back into place on the countertop.

“Gotta work on that stamina if you’re gonna help wage a war,” he teases.

The half-powered glare you shoot at him doesn’t stop him from leaning in and pressing a kiss to your forehead. It doesn’t keep his fingertips from tracing languid lines down the lengths of your bare thighs, either.

Your voice is fucked out and weightless, far softer than you’ve ever heard yourself sound. “Is that what this is? Conditioning?”

The hand not caressing your thigh comes up to cradle your jaw, like it’s something fragile. It’s the first time anyone’s touched you as if you’re breakable, worth protecting — and motherfucker, you’re one soft smile away from crying.

“No.”

He states it much more firmly than he kisses you. So gentle that you can’t believe it’s real until you taste yourself on him, so warm that you dissolve like a sugar cube on his tongue.

Fuck any other person that’s ever pressed their lips to yours and called it a kiss. They’re liars, all of them. One by one, their names disappear with every passing second in which you know better.

“Need you,” you moan into his mouth.

Fistfuls of his shirt can’t bring him close enough. Even when his head dips down and his lips are at your throat, the ache wins out. You crave him anywhere — everywhere — all over you.

“Going crazy —” You gasp when his teeth nip at your collarbone. “— waiting on you.”

Greedy hands drop to the button of his jeans, fumbling to no avail. Apparently, your dexterity flew out the window two orgasms ago. A frustrated whine jumps out after it, pushing your head back as it goes.

Felix’s low chuckle soothes you, but it’s nothing compared to the relief you feel when his hands nudge yours out of the way. That, too, is a drop in the bucket; bliss crashes in waves when there’s no denim left to separate you. His hands land on your hips, fingertips pressing into your flesh as he guides you further down his length.

Never — not fucking ever — have you made a sound quite as pathetic as the one you bury into the crook of his neck. You can’t classify it, not as a moan or a whimper. It’s desperate — loud. It’s an air raid siren; every fucking barricade you’ve built over the years being blown to smithereens.

This is it, you think.

Fuck your bank account.

Fuck staring at the sky and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Fuck your contracts, your shithole apartment, and the million different ways you were set up to lose in this life.

This isn’t about you at all. It’s about you and him; all the space and time you’re dead set on reclaiming.

This is for us.

a/n: thank you so much for reading! i’ve been working on this since JUNE, and it’s a much bigger undertaking (creatively and….. mentally) than anything else i’ve done before, so i’m scared and also excited to start sharing it with y’all.

while likes are appreciated, comments/tags/reblogs with your thoughts are really what make my brain go brrrtt.

tagging: @saintriots, @mal-lunar-28, @dabiscrustyfeet

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#stray kids #skz #felix #felix x reader #felix smut #felix angst #felix fic #lf #stray kids fic #skz fic #stray kids smut #stray kids angst #skz smut #skz angst #stray kids series #skz series #jade writes #re: force quit #kvanity

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