#experimental beep

[nicothedestroyer]

Acoustics

[robotsafari]

a mind palace’s (unasked for) renovations [DO NOT TAG AS SHIP]

bonus under the cut:

white mushroom more like “butlershroom.”

anyway. yep! my headcanon is that the mushroom series of heartless were essentially like early versions of ansem. experiments to see if creating a heartless with a will of its own were even possible. (the mushrooms just wanna play charades and go on nice walks! they wont steal your heart because their instincts tell em’ to! they’ll only snatch it if they feel like it <3) how can you make an “immortal” successor if they cant even understand the research you left for them? so thats why they were created!

[cpirits]

WASH ]: sender begins to wash the receiver’s hair. (Marco to Eren)

He was grimy from having been rescued, and so Marco decided to help Eren clean himself up, he didn't know whether the boy even knew how.

Seated on the side of the large bathtub, he ran warm water into the porcelain container, as Eren watched with curious eyes, a huge towel wrapped around his little body. "What are you doing? Am I going to go in that thing?"

It seemed he didn't know what a bathtub was. Marco softly sighed, turning to the boy and nodding his head. "We're going to get you clean, yes you're going in here, but I'll be here so you won't be alone."

Scuffing his bare feet on the floor, Eren shyly looked away from Marco, cheeks turning pink. "Father used a rough sponge, to wipe everywhere... You won't use one like him, right?"

Eren clearly knew what getting clean was, but it seemed that possibly Grisha had cleaned Eren in a bad way, maybe even painful. Marco looked sad and splashed the water before turning off the faucet. "No, I'm going to use something soft, but your hair is first to be washed, come here."

Picking at a scab on his arm, Eren trudged over to Marco, releasing the towel. The older male finally got a look at the child, he was bruised, and had dirt in places he normally wouldn't think you could have it. Scars littered the boys arms and legs from needles, and he was so... thin.

Steeling himself, Marco took both of Eren's hands and smiled softly. "Don't worry, the water may sting, but I've but healing salts in it. We need to get you feeling better." Guiding the boy to step into the tub he had to pretty much pick Eren up as he was short.

The boy's green eyes shut as he silently made a face when skin hit the warm water. Marco frowned and as he helped Eren to sit in the water, he rolled up his sleeves. "Are you okay? I hope it's not too painful."

Eren's mouth was a line as he continued to suffer in silence, it was clear he had been conditioned to not show pain, which was sad. Marco once again softly sighed and reached for the shampoo. "Well, let's get you clean."

( @verratensduo )

[zeoumren]

"Fazbear MediT cares deeply about all its patients and asks that all patients stay in their specified wards. Thank you for coming to Fazbear MediT we hope your stay with us is comfortable."

Just a lil AU where Fazbear industries branched out into medical care and prosthesis I just could not get the image of Moon out of my head surrounded in a pool of red and saying "I work in the children's ward." and no one batting an eye.

Lots of famous people would come to the hospital, but not many can afford the prosthetics that Fazbear Medi Tech has, but if you can it can be life-changing, they have robotic limbs, eyes, and even certain organs, and no one questions why this industry built on entertainment is suddenly making very functional body parts...but then come the lawsuits, the red tape...and you. a person with an illness that is slowly breaking your body down. and FazMediT just so happens to have a new operation, fully ready to try anything, knowing you could just die as this is an experimental operation that you are signing up for to basically become a human experiment ...but death is worse. you are scared and alone and someone is making sounds in the vents above your cold hospital bed...humming lullabies, speaking reassurances...You think it is your mind deteriorating along with your body...but you start talking to it...your lonely vent friend...on the day of your operation before you fully go out you see a flash of purple overtaken by red, such a deep red.

then you wake up.

A human was back, and they were scared...because that meant a body, that meant blood....that meant HIM. They wanted to get rid of it, make certain it would not become another husk for the scientists to use...another vessel for the glitch...but.

It was so sad, humming soft lonely songs, yet it wanted to live so bad, every breath was a struggle but it fed birds outside its window and greeted children from the adjoining ward. a bright soul about to be coated in darkness like ink, like THEM. they spoke, all of them. it was blunt, thought they were a hallucination from pain, witty, charming, self-deprecating...They were hooked.

They had to make sure you would be safe when you came online. no glitch would touch you...they broke some rules, maybe. fiddled with files, and changed designs...the rabbit motif was a bit too much for them.

you were too bright for that.

a burst of joy, a wish come true

a shooting star, they would wish on you with all their might

they would make sure only you would wake up.

Only you,

starlight.

Star bright.

[rallentando1011]

certain ineffable things

(rise Donnie x touch starved gn reader - little bit of angst, mostly fluff) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lazy circles drawn on hips.

Tender pats on the shoulder or head, conveying much more than mere words.

Nudges of encouragement or of endearment or at least conveying that someone else was there.

Various affectionate displays - all luxuries experienced in the most painfully infrequent intervals.

 At least, they were to you.

Home definitely wasn’t the place to be seeking out stuff like that - your upbringing had all but made certain of that - nor was anywhere with your colleagues or friends. Any time anyone so much as got near, your skin seemed to crawl and spine shivered and-

In short, it seemed an endeavor destined to fail.

That wasn’t to say you didn’t like it. The physical contact part, that was; the yearning and all that was inarguably awful.

But the occasional touch or elbow rub or hug just absolutely made you melt. Only when you felt like it though. And normally only when you initiated it. And typically only with a certain purple clad significant other-

A hand grasped onto yours.

You snapped back to the present, sitting in Donnie’s lab where you’d been idly passing him tools and utensils as needed and he’d been discarding them back into your palm, and where a misunderstanding where each of you thought the other to be passing them something and extended two empty hands made quite the startling connection of the two.

“Sorry!” Your hand retracted as if repulsed by his. “Sorry.”

He jolted on his own accord before looking over at you. “You alright?”

“Are you?”

Donnie blinked. “You shuddered as if I transferred a few thousand volts which, considering my current field of experimentation, is feasible. Did I do something wrong?”

“No, not at all.” You shifted uncomfortably in your seat. What a way to get dragged out of a soliloquy. “It just, uh, caught me off guard is all. What about you? You just about leapt out of your seat.”

“All’s good on my end.”

“Yep. Same here.”

“Alright then.”

A terse moment passed. Despite how fervently you hoped he’d turn back to his work and drop the upsettingly awkward conversation, Donnie’s softly confused gaze stayed fixed on you. 

It made your stomach churn in a manner halfway between flustered and unbearable - that was to say, leaving sounded like a viable option.

“You know what? I might go get a snack or something; it’s been a minute since I had anything so...”

“Right. Want me to have S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. fetch you something?”

“No!” You took a deep breath upon realizing you were nearly shouting. “No, that’s quite alright. I don’t mind moving around a little bit.”

“Oh. Okay.” Donnie remained wide-eyed and immobile, tracking you curiously even as you moved for the door. He probably kept that up as long as he could, as long as you were in his sight before going back to work, not that you knew for certain, of course. You had squared your shoulders and rushed out as swiftly as possible, only easing up when you reached the kitchen.

You set straight to work on that snack and a warm drink to help you recuperate.

With a sigh, you prepped a kettle on the stove, leaving it to boil as you ventured mindlessly to the pantry.

After retrieving something to munch on, something easily poppable, you returned to an eagerly whistling kettle, the contents of which you quickly emptied into an eagerly awaiting mug. You plucked a tea bag from the cabinet adjacent to the stove and dunked it in, setting a timer.

As the tea steeped, you tried not to do so in your thoughts. Swimming and swarming uncomfortably through your brain with unpleasant reminders of how unfairly you’d behaved earlier, how unfair the circumstances around how averse you felt toward simple contact were-

No, not going there right now. You busied yourself with snagging pieces of your snack, losing your thoughts under the fervent sound of crunching and grinding and-

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Right. The tea.

Steeping over and tea bag tossed, you gathered your bearings and paused in the doorway. On one hand, you could go back to the lab and talk things out like a sensible person. On the other hand, cowering away in Donnie’s room was also there.

“Psh.” You shook your head lightly at yourself and trudged your way to his room, ever the craven.

You sipped at your earl grey contentedly, navigating around stacks of thick books and planters filled with rich soil and plum-colored tradescantia. Donnie, ever the botanist at heart.

Following the oh-so-perilous journey across his purple-fluorescently lit room, you settled on his mattress. Something struck you as funny in a deprecating sort of way when you sat - going into his room uninvited and making yourself at home on his bed seemed less intimate than simply coming into contact with him. Maybe you were just desensitized to eradicating his personal space but still quite opposed to doing the same with his personal bubble.

Yes, it was funny. Pathetic, too, but ironically funny nonetheless.

You couldn’t remember the last time you purposefully came into contact with someone and liked it. Like, genuinely, when was the last time you were touched?

Yes, sometimes it happened out of necessity - someone helping fasten on a bracelet’s clasp or zip up an outfit or something of the sort - other times it happened by accident - like earlier - but other than that, you hadn’t the foggiest idea of when you’d last sought intentional contact with anyone. All you knew was that it had been a painfully long time which made it a painfully sore subject.

The quiet shuffle of steps made a sudden appearance, ones you could recognize as Donnie’s without even looking up. So you didn’t.

A weight settled a considerable distance away from you on the bed, the sounds of the anxious pops of phalanges and the wringing of wrists making it even more apparent it was him.

You took a long, slow sip of your tea, savoring the last bit of warmth cascading down your throat before deftly discarding the empty mug on his busied nightstand.

You shuffled.

Talking, right? That was what was supposed to, what needed to come next, right?

Hashing it out verbally, coming to a resolution, going back to sitting in the lab with hardly a word exchanged and certainly no skin brushing by skin.

How do you ask someone why they scarcely touch you without sounding inappropriate or impotent? Not exactly a normal thing to ask. Or feel.

And how do you describe the niche feeling of wanting to feel any kind of contact but only under the most specific of circumstances?

Daunting, it was. All of it.

“Do you want to talk about earlier?” Donnie broke the silence.

The shake of your head was nigh indiscernible, but he perceived it nonetheless.

He twiddled his thumbs.

You cleared your throat.

He looked up from his lap.

You cautiously extended your arms out. An invitation to skip the words and go straight to the resolution.

Hesitantly, his hand met yours, the feeling electric, burning as his digits slid across yours to take gentle hold of you.

The two of you met eyes and, upon seeing no disapproval, continued with the utmost care.

You couldn’t recall which one of you moved to lay down first, but the other quickly reciprocated the shift, both of you ending up facing each other on silken violet sheets.

Legs tangled lightly for the purpose of pulling each other closer.

Tridactyl hands lightly glided to your sides, as if handling something delicate.

Yours made their way up, joining together behind his neck.

“I’m being so honest right now: if you want to stop, we’re stopping,” you voiced quietly yet surely.

Lazy circles on your hips drawn by his thumbs drew you in, drawn by thumbs that had increasingly more bravado by the second.

“Seriously, any moment you’re done, we’re done.”

A low hum sounded his amusement.

“Not as in done done, like done with this specific-”

“Respectfully,” Donnie interjected lightheartedly, “shut up. I’m good if you’re good.”

“…”

The silence this time once again carried an awkward air, but it was decidedly less insufferable.

Another second was spent before he cleared his throat, not wanting to misinterpret your silence. “You’re good?”

“Mmhm.”

“Then it’s good.”

With that, you decided his advice to shut up was the best idea you’d heard all day and did so, nuzzling your face into his neck sleepily. The reverberating churr and tighter hold you received in return were exquisite.

Oftentimes words proved to be the best and most concise way to convey a message; however, sometimes actions took that distinction, able to show as opposed to tell certain ineffable things.

[diaryofanidiot]

The Experiments

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem!Reader

Chapter list: Prologue, 1, <2> ,3 ,4 ,5

Cw: Swearing; torture; blood; medical experiments; panic attacks; malnourishment

Summary: For over a year, Y/N was held in a soviet experimentation facility. Forced to fight and claw her way to live, she managed to stay alive. When the 141 rescues her, they get way more intel than bargained for.

Chapter Two

The blades of the evac chopper beat against my ears painfully as I was escorted into it. A headset was placed over my ears to muffle the sound as I looked up to see Soap faintly smiling down at me.

It wasn't connected to the other's comm sets so once they spoke during take off, I couldn't hear a thing. All I could do was wonder if I really trusted these people. I glanced to Ghost as I did, a faint sense of faith settling in my gut. Him rescuing me from that hellhole was enough for that primal connection to click in my brain.

Yes. If I could trust him, I could trust them. They all seemed close anyway. Hard won battles sealing their connection to each other.

The next few hours were agonizing as the chopper landed, and I was brought on to the compound. From ID photos to a full body scan for any tracking devices on my person; it seemed they weren't taking any risks with me.

Gaz and Soap would often give me a sympathetic glance as I was pushed around to each check-in task in a wheel chair as I was still too weak to walk fully.

"We're gonna have you looked at in the med bay, then we will need you to recount some info for us. That alright with you?" Asked Gaz. I nodded, appreciative that he made it seem like I even had a choice.

I sighed heavily, ready for it all to be over. The adrenaline had worn off just enough to make me realize how sleep deprived I really was.

Machines beeped, and faint chatter could be heard throughout the medical building of the compound. I underestimated how stressful the environment would be. My fingernails dug into the arms of the wheelchair as Gaz steered it.

Soap was beside me, Price and Ghost having left to recount the mission and write a report of some sorts, he seemed to notice my fear.

"None's gonna hurt ya, Lass." He assured me as I was wheeled over to a hospital cot. Him and Gaz lifted me onto it as I looked around wide eyed.

"No.." I coughed out, my voice raspy and once again dry. "No.. Doctors..." I strained, trying to move. They both held me in place, Gaz giving me a stern look.

"They're just going to look over your injuries. We will be right here the entire time." He tried to assure me.

I shook my head rapidly. Ghost... I wanted Ghost here. I didn't have time to wonder why my thoughts went to him, I just needed to get free. I struggled against their hold as a woman in a clean white coat pulled back the curtain around my cot.

My breathing grew heavy and the room seemed to spin. My nails dug small crescents into my palms as I tried frantically to break free. I heard voices and felt a hand on my back but the sounds felt like they were underwater.

I saw a white lab coat flash in front of my vision and I bared my fangs, my lips trembling fearfully.

Danger?

Gotta run...

Can't run.

Fight?

No... yes. Fuck

Fuckfuckfuck

I felt a sharp prick in my neck and turned my head rapidly, biting towards the hand near my face. I heard someone hiss in pain as my teeth broke flesh.

My hair was grabbed, along with my jaw, until I released my hold. My vision blurred and muscles twitched as I struggled.

It all went dark after that.

My dreams melted with reality as I woke and tried to shift in bed. A frown appeared on my lips as I realized I couldn't move my limbs. Fuck.

My eyes flew open as I tried to sit up, the restraints clanging against the metal bars of the cot.

"Easy." My attention flew toward the source of the voice to see none other than Ghost sitting beside me.

I gave him a quizzical "what the fuck" look and his eyes focused on mine sternly through the mask.

"You had a panic attack. Flew off the handle. Hence, the restraints." He sat back in the chair, never once taking his eyes away from me. "Those fangs of yours can really do some damage. Gaz won't be able to throw a good punch with that hand for bout a week."

I swallowed thickly, realizing what I did as he spoke. A faint leftover metallic taste of blood lingered in my mouth. I looked down with guilt.

"Nobody blames you." He huffed. "Hell, not even Gaz. Traumas a bitch."

He paused before continuing. "They had to sedate and restrain you for your safety. Once you're cleared, they can be removed."

I thew my head back with a sigh. I couldn't lie. It genuinely sucked to be moved from one set of restraints to another.

"Look at me."

I turned my head.

"I'm gonna bring the doctor back in here. She's friendlier than I am, promise. Think you can manage?"

I bit my lip in contemplation, my fangs drawing a small dab of blood from my lip as I did.

"Don't worry. I'm staying here."

I took a deep breath and nodded before Ghost peered out the curtain. "She's ready." I heard him say.

There was some shuffling before the doctor walked in. Her eyes showed no fear as if she were used to similar reactions like mine.

"My name is Harriet." She began, holding a clipboard to her chest. "I'm the doctor that's been assigned to you. We did a small checkup while you were sedated, I hope that's okay."

I nodded slowly, trying to keep my breaths steady.

"The Lieutenant informed me on where you came from, so I understand your anxiety around me. You've been put on an IV for the time being to replenish your nutrients until we can be sure you can handle an actual meal."

It was then I noticed the needle in my arm. I frowned at it, but the sight didn't bother me as much as this place. Ghost seemed to be keeping an eye on me, likely to ensure any more freak outs didn't ensue.

"I need to take a look at your throat real quick, do you mind?" She approached me calmly. I flinched but eventually agreed, opening my mouth in response. I watched as she shined a light down my throat, a compressor holding down my tongue.

She scribbled something on her clipboard. "I've been informed on your... alterations. Do you have any other abilities we need to be aware of?"

I thought for a moment and nodded my head slowly, holding up a single finger. She pursed her lips and grabbed a pen and paper.

"You can write, I assume?" She made a motion toward Ghist who unlocked my right arm, leaving the rest of the restraints on.

"Easy, girl. Behave." He said. It seemed like a slight hint of a joke. I took the pen and wrote sloppily on the paper.

Echolocation.

Her eyes widened slightly as she read. "I'm assuming this relates to your altered vocal chords?"

I nodded, averting my gaze to the white flooring.

"Well." She clicked her tongue, putting the clipboard back to her chest. "The good news is that with time, your ability to speak should clear up. It's mostly from dehydration and lack of use; the former being taken care of via IV. You have several infected cuts and a slight fever, along with those infected raw spots on your neck, but those will heal up just fine as well."

I took a breath of relief.

"With enough physical therapy, you should be able to walk just fine. Now the bad news.... we can't reverse the changes made to your vocal chords. If you like, the fangs can be dulled by a dentist, but that one is entirely your choice as neither alterations threaten your livelihood."

As I frowned in thought, Ghost stopped me. "You can decide that later."

I looked back to the doctor who gave me a small sympathetic smile. "One last thing, then I'll let you get some more rest. Do you remember your name? It isn't on the file that was brought with you."

I watched as I was given the pen once more. I closed my eyes and dug through my memory, searching for any remnants of who I was over a year prior.

A woman's voice echoed through my head. No, not a woman. A mother. My mother. She called out to me in agony.

My breath quickened as the memory played like hazy snapshots. Her hand grasping at my shirt. Being dragged away. Her hold on me failing. A gun to her head.

Everything was blurry. Everything was muffled.

Except...

I took the pen and wrote a name on the paper. The same name that echoed through my mind over and over.

A scalding tear fell down my cheek as the doctor nodded.

"It's nice to meet you, (y/n)."

A/n: sorry bout the tendons in your hand, Gaz. 🫡 had to be done.

I'm sorry this one is so short but I was fairly busy today. I'll make it up with the next one, promise ^-^

Taglist: @warenai @linoskitten11 @jamesrifftapes @justmare @hk-4ever @thriving-n-jiving @katelouis98 @tayaisback @josieguts @btszn @lemmyyy0606 @msecho19 @cory-viv @cybercl0ne @randomhumans-blog @vinithechocolatevampire @embermdk @itsryuken @neothewitch @undercover-smutlover

[mynameisjag]

For @babbling-babull and their prompt!

Plastic Man gets mistaken for a ghost.

Hope you enjoy it.

“Under the Ecto-Acts, you must surrender and give yourself up for extermination and experimentation!”

Plastic Man just sighed as he sagged like a wet noodle on the light post he was on top off, “Jeez, you guys are relentless.”

White suited men had their guns aimed up at him, they had been nonstop on their hunt of him which was more annoying then anything else.

Like come on already!

The first group he had taken out by wrapping around them and taking them for a spin as a giant ball, the second group he took out with the first in a game of bowling ball. Then there was the two who rudely interrupted his lunch at the diner and boy did they not care for being juggled out the door.

Taking the form of one of the vans steering wheels and trapping them inside as the kept going around and around and around a turn about probably didn’t help.

The suits in that escapade went from white to a mix of colors after all the spinning got to them.

Also the pickpocketing…so much pickpocketing…actually they might be after him more for that then these so called Ecto-Acts…which sounded fake. No one in the League ever mentioned them before.

Speaking of which, he can hear the faint buzz of a com link beeping at him to connect, “Yellow! Plastic here!”

He brought one of his hands closer to his face, forming his hand into shape of a googled eyed Flash as the man began speaking, “Plastic Man, hi! Um, so, yeah, there are no laws or Ecto-Acts, no-one knows what those men are talking about.”

“Well, they sure act like they knew what they were talking about,” he extended an eyeball out like telescope, eyeing the group below as the continued on their rant.

“Yeah, so, there’s an investigation now, think you can round them up and get them ready for transport?”

Patrick popped everything back into place, now standing on top of the light pole like Superman, “Are you kidding me, I can do it faster then you can get here!”

He precede to slinky his way down, his presence signaling the men to start shooting and missing ever shot.

“I’ll take that bet!”

It was a bet that Flash lost…he was always late to the party and this time would be no different.

[lysatoru]

I’ll never smile again - Frank Sinatra

a little angst, reader is a neurosurgeon, neutral pronouns, ""friendship"", geto’s death is mentionned, cuss words, mention of death, mention of medical treatment, mention of graveyard

gojo satoru x reader

"time of death 10:34pm"

the monitor beeps. The noise is continuous and getting heavier and heavier to bear. You put down your scalpel, raise your hands and step away from the body. You look around, at a few people in the observatory, friends and journalists who’ve come to watch the first surgery about your experiment on a certain type of tumor, a new surgical approach to removing that tumor. A rather invasive approach indeed, but one that worked in clinical trials.

The intern begins to close the patient's skull. Drops of sweat begin to drip from your forehead, your vision starts to deteriorate more and more, you've got to get out of there. "I killed him, I killed him" goes round and round in your head. You smile slightly at the journalists in the observatory, including your best friend, your friends and Gojo. "I'm sorry, I have to go" you inform the other surgeons and doctors in the OR.

You leave the room quickly. Your best friend has seen the distress in your eyes, she knows you, she knows what you're like. "That's not a good sign" she murmurs before rubbing her face with both hands. Gojo looks at your best friend blankly and gets up, leaving the observatory. "Where are you going?" she asks Gojo "I won't be long" he replies.

You take off your coat, gloves and cap, throw the coat and gloves in the trash and your cap on the floor. You're trembling, suffocating, everyone was counting on you and you failed, you killed him. You needed air, you knew the journalists would be here as soon as possible. You walk into the x-ray room. You see them, the scans of your late patient, "what the hell happened?" you look at them over and over again. You go in circles in the room, biting your lip and rubbing your eyes. You rip the scans off the wall and throw them on the floor, "fuck!". Tears start to roll down your cheeks, unintentionally.

"Are you all right?" you hear a voice coming from behind you, you knew exactly who it was. Gojo slowly closes the door behind him and moves closer, "Everything's fine, everything's fine".

"Everything's fine?! Do you really think everything's fine?! Are you kidding me?!" you reply.

"Shh, it's not your fault you know" he tries to stay calm.

"Who operated on him? Who opened his skull? Who performed an invasive surgical method on him? It’s me!" you lose all control, gojo is not your enemy in this situation, quite the opposite. You move closer to him, pointing at yourself, tears flowing, your voice starting to break little by little

"You need to calm down, it was experimental and you know it" gojo puts his hands on your shoulders

"Do not touch me!" you reply, backing away violently.

He sighs and raises an eyebrow, leans back against a wall, crosses his arms and legs, "I'm not going to teach you your job, but death is part of your job. there are things you can't foresee".

"He was 15! He was 15 and he had a tumor since 13! He died at 15 because of me! It’s not fair!" you say crying your heart out . "Death was almost inevitable, you know that" he replies calmly.

"And what do you know about death? how often do you come into contact with it?" you approach him.

"What do you mean?" he approaches you too, clenches his jaw, the tension begins to build between you. "Don’t start with those things it won’t get us anywhere" he sighs once again. He didn't want to get upset because you'd just lost a patient who was very important to you, but he soon realized that the subject could take a rather dramatic turn.

"You dare lecture me about death and inevitability when you literally killed your best friend?"

— silence.

Gojo straightens up, uncrosses his arms and looks at you, raising his eyebrows, again "What did you say?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" you’ve gone too far.

"Do you really think I wanted this? That I wanted all this?" he approaches you again, his eyes wide.

"I know I didn't, I'm sorry-" you slowly back away

"Do you really think that your job as a neurosurgeon, which you chose, and my job, which was imposed on me, are the same? Do you really think that I don't deal with death? You don't kill patients, you fail to save them, it's not the same. I kill people on purpose, that's the difference between us. — the more he talks, the closer he gets to you, you find yourself leaning against a wall involuntarily. You raise your head more and more to look at him because he's so tall — I have no choice but to do this job, you do. I kill those around me for ungrateful people like you"

"Satoru, please wait-" you start following him

The door slams and you find yourself alone in the scan room, you'd just pissed off the only person who'd come to support you after your defeat, Gojo considered you a true friend so much so that he confided about his friendship with Geto and how much he was suffering today, from his death. You knew that your patient's death and Geto's were incomparable, and yet you compared them. Why were you so stupid?

You start to follow gojo through the corridors but the journalists start to come between you "I'm sorry I have to-", "Did you make a mistake?", "why did he die?", "He was only 15, how do you feel?" fucking journalists. You see Gojo disappear in the hallway.

When you get home, you try to call Gojo, but he doesn't answer. You try to send him messages, but he doesn’t reply.

11:57pm

i’m sorry Satoru i know i fucked up

12:03pm

please, can we talk?

12:32pm

i think i know where you are, i’m coming

You get in your car and head down to the graveyard. A few minutes later you arrive in front of his grave and there he was, crouching, wearing his mask as usual, you've always wondered if it was also a way of hiding his emotions, the eyes speak, but his, what do they say ?

"Hi, you didn’t reply to my texts i was scared" you say softly. He doesn’t say anything. "I’m sorry you know i didn’t mean that" — "Why did you come ?" he say not looking at you but still looking at the grave. "I was worried". He laughs ironically "really ? you really are the last person i wanted to see here."

You decide to approach him a little. "I wanted to make sure you were fine" — "And I am, you can leave now"

You don’t know what to say anymore, it was all your fault anyway. "Satoru I-" — "leave" he looks at you and you decide to leave.

You know he’ll never smile the same again without Geto near him.

hi, first post since almost nine months *tries not to panick*. I don’t know how to feel about this, i think i lost the way i was writing before ? i don’t know. I have a feeling this is botch :( I wanted to try something new but anyway.

even though i’m not a big fan of this work, i’m really happy to writing again^^

if you think i use deepl for this one you’re right 😜👍🏻

[forggywrites]

I been thinking about make this request,basically platonic headcanons of Miguel with a gn reader that is very young(14-15) and have a symbiote, reader meets miguel due to him as spiderman rescues reader from some bastards that were experimenting with reader for the perfect symbiosis they had, the reader is very skinny and easily scared and the symbiote is very protective over reader, miguel is also very protective over reader and theach them how to control their power,basically miguel being a mentor/father figure for the reader Who admires him and want to protect the multiverse like him(like a sidekick).

If this is so Long youre Free to ignore

I LOVE this idea!

PLATONIC Miguel x GN teen reader w/venom symbiote.

I’m trying to make this as general as possible so anyone can read it, but sorry if I make any mistakes.

CW: use of y/n, Miguel might be slightly ooc, talk of human experimentation, kidnapping, abuse, violence, medical settings, venom needs his own warning.

—————————

It was cold.

So fucking cold.

The only color on your skin was dark blotches from struggling against your captors.

You were unsure of how long you’ve been locked in this dank room.

You had barely eaten or drank anything since ending up here, so you were multiple pounds lighter than you normally were.

Your muscles had lost a significant amount of definition from only moving when they moved you.

You didn’t know who they were or what they wanted, but you did gather they didn’t target you specifically.

The experiments were painful.

No matter how much you screamed or cried they never stopped.

After one of the first experiments you started hearing a voice.

The voice was deep and grainy, it told you that it was known as Venom and it came from space.

”These people took me as well… I can help you escape.”

You had ignored the voice, telling yourself it was just the trauma and isolation.

Until a particularly painful test.

Your entire body felt like it was burning, your screams were deafening.

Suddenly the restraints that held you down snapped, and you felt something ooze all over your body.

You were unable to control your actions. The lab was destroyed and your captors were all dead. Heads had been ripped off and digested by the thing controlling your body.

You watched as your much taller body escaped from the hellhole you had been kept in.

As soon as you got out the black goo dissipated, leaving your much smaller, frail body in its wake.

”You’re welcome” the voice rasped.

Your legs started to move, you ran as far and fast as you could, tears streamed down your face as you were finally free.

Before you knew it, you had ended up in a crowded city. You were unaware your tattered clothes were covered in blood.

Your tired feet tracked down the sidewalk, many avoided you, uncaring of your beaten and bloody form.

”Hey, kid-“ a hand landed on your shoulder.

Venom did not like that.

Suddenly your body was taken over once again, wreaking havoc on anything and everything.

People screamed as your monstrous form throws a tantrum.

Then you hear a thwip and your once again muscular arm gets pulled.

A man in a dark blue and red suit starts to face off with you.

His attacks were deliberate and calculated, quickly taking your exhausted form down.

You feel your head smash against the concrete and loose consciousness once more

—————————

There you were, in another lonely room. Trapped yet again.

But this time it was warmer, you were lying in a comfortable bed with tubes and wires running from your body to various machines.

The high pitched beeping was annoying you, so off came the wires as you tried to stop the noise.

But it only got worse.

A high pitched scream came out of the machine next to you, your body felt like it was on fire once again. You covered your ears as you screamed in pain.

With the noise a group of doctors and the man from before rushed into the room, attempting to reattach the monitors and calm you down.

Your arm reached out, wrapped in the familiar black goo, and shattered the machine. Stopping the noise and actions of the oddly dressed people in the room.

Venom’s goo retreated back into you, soaking back into your skin.

Everyone in the room was frozen. Not knowing what to do or how to respond to the outburst.

”Where am I?” You rasped out, your throat was dry and scratchy from dehydration and screaming.

One of the people left the room and quickly returned with a bottle of water. You gulped it down in no time, panting from the lack of oxygen.

”You’re in a secure location.” The man from before piped up, he was still wearing the odd mask and outfit.

The doctors and nurses attempted to restore what you had ripped out, but you flinched as a hand touched you.

They stopped again, not wanting more destruction.

”Please let them help you, you’ve been injured.” The man says.

You looked at the tall man in front of you.

”Why am I here?” You question him.

”You attempted to destroy the city.” He grunts

”No I didn’t! It was that thing those “scientists” gave me!” You shout, trying to defend yourself.

“I AM NOT A THING, CHILD. I AM VENOM. AND I HELPED YOU!” Venom screamed, though only you could hear him.

“What thing, and what scientists?” The tall man inquired.

”The black gooey thing, Venom. It appeared after one of the experiments the guys who took me did…” you trailed off, struggling to explain exactly what had happened to you.

The man stands for a moment, thinking. “Were you kidnapped?” He asked.

”I- I don’t really remember…” you look down, uncomfortable with all the eyes on you.

The tall man sighs and approaches you slowly, his mask suddenly dissipated before he started talking.

”I’m Miguel, what’s your name?” He had a small smile on his face, trying not to intimidate you more than he already has.

”it’s Y/n.”

“Well Y/n, I want to help you. Can you tell me what happened?”

—————————

After a long explanation Miguel told you that he needed to work some things out, so he left you under close watch by the nurses.

While he was gone you were given a small meal consisting of a sandwich, some carrots, and a cup of chocolate pudding. The doctors didn’t want you to eat too much as to not cause your malnourished body any harm, but you were still hungry.

Until you got to the chocolate pudding.

”That is amazing, I love it.” Venom says.

”it’s chocolate pudding.” You respond.

”I need more. I don’t feel as hungry anymore.”

—————————

When Miguel returned there was a pile of empty chocolate pudding cups on the bedside table and you were asking for more.

A nurse was trying to reason with you. ”Why don’t I get you some more carrots? You shouldn’t be eating so much sugar-“

”I need chocolate, that’s what he wants.” You argued.

”Hey kid. What do you mean by “it’s what he wants”?” Miguel questions you.

”Venom. He said chocolate makes him less hungry, and I was hoping if I kept eating it he’d finally shut up.” You avoided making eye contact with the tall male.

”Interesting… I did a little research and it seems that you’ve become a host for some sort of extra terrestrial being.”

“Well duh, Venom told me that already.” You give Miguel a deadpan look.

”It would have been nice to know that…” Miguel sighs. “We can start looking into removing the…”

”Symbiote”

”Right, Symbiote. We can look into removing the symbiote if you’d like.”

Suddenly the black goo emerges once again, taking over your face.

”I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE YOU SPIDER SHIT!” Venom roars and then sinks back into your skin. Leaving you back to normal.

…

“I don’t think he wants to leave…”

”Well that was kind of obvious.” Miguel sighs.

—————————

It had been a few days since your arrival at the “secure location”, which after enough bugging of Miguel, you found out was the spider society. A place where spider folk like him from hundreds of different universes came together to protect the multiverse.

You had started trusting Miguel, and he the same with you. It was odd to others to see such a cold man being so caring and protective of a child who had “tried to kill him”.

He wasn’t the biggest fan of Venom, but when he realized you had a certain knack with the alien he stopped trying to convince you to separate from him.

Soon enough you started to train with Venom, Miguel helping you along the way. Miguel taught you hand to hand combat, self defense, and so much more.

Once Miguel believed you were ready, you started to go on missions with him. You met many other Spider folk and even made some good friends along the way.

Miguel knew that Venom needed phenylethylamine (or PEA for short) to survive. And since the only places you could get that was from brains or chocolate, he made sure there was always a large stock of chocolate around for you and venom, at least until he could develop something to give you the PEA you needed in a different way.

Miguel was glad that he had gone out on patrol that day, knowing that if he didn’t, he might not have met the kid who changed his life for the better.

—————————

Thanks for reading y’all! This was WAY longer than I was expecting, but hey, I got into it. I might make some separate or more headcanons with this reader/scenario.

(Also I got my first dose of testosterone done this morning, so your boy is finally on T!!!)

[heartbeatsnice]

Visibly Beating

Soft beeps accompanied by wet thuds fill a room. A room where a single occupant resides upon a surgical table.

A handsome man in his early thirties, with a broad chest and shoulders as well as a firm stomach bare naked for the world to see rests there strapped down for what is to come. Clearly, this man works out regularly and the results show.

A perfect specimen for their experimental drug.

Hooked up to IVs feeding him with painkillers and electrodes pasted all over his chest and two more on the source of the thudding. There, cut open and pulled out for the world to see, is his heart. Beating away exposed, each beat slapping against his pec.

The subject lays there, awake and panting as oxygen fills his lungs from the mask strapped over his mouth and nose.

“Starting with starter drug No. 1.” A feminine voice speaks up over the beeping and thumping of his heart. Feeling gloved fingers wrapping around his heart and gently being picked up, he feels a prick as a needle is slowly stabbed into the myocardium and the contents injected.

Dark veins started to protrude all over his chest, his heart starting to pump harder and faster. He groans, the apex of his heart punching the air as it slams away. “Inserting main drug No. 328.”

Another pinprick into his powerful heart and he starts to gasp as the muscular organ only speeds up.

“Heart rate up at 195 BPM and increasing.”

Will his heart give out then? Or will it continue beating on, fighting for its life?

But before his heart could reach an conclusion, the mysterious doctor gives one. Clenching her hand around the thumping heart, she squeezes hard enough to make it balloon between her slender fingers.

Alarms rang out as the pressure on his sensitive heart is too much. With one last exhale, his heart sinks into an fibrillating mess, his vision going grey and his senses dull.

A whining fills the air, and the doctor leans in smiling as she holds two internal paddles up for him to witness. “Don’t quit on me now.” Giving a few squeezes on his heart with the metal spoons, she presses the paddles tightly and with the press of a button, his vision goes white as he feels his heart lurch forward.

Will this do it? Will this get his heart going again?

Or does it need an extra push?

[toomanyideasandfandoms]

I apologize if I'm clogging up ur inbox, but the brain did another screech and I am curious. Would the Creator have a "favorite" in terms of who they'd rather come across?

After the first few couple rounds of deaths, I imagine they'd go for the folks who they learn will give them a quick and (relatively) painless end. Like "Well, shit. It's Inazuma again...maybe I can find Itto or Thoma? At least if off me, they'll do it fast, unlike Kujou Sara, that [beep]ing Crow 🐩"

Then as they slip into their Death Seeking mentality, they start looking for the ones who enjoy fighting and will instigate shit. "Oh looky here, it's Childe! Time to start some chaos! 😈"

Also, random thought I offer up: the idea of the Death Seeking Creator, but someone (let's say Albedo) decides to capture them and try to study them, as to learn how they came to possess the Creators face/learn why they keep coming back. Yay or nay?

Hmm, tbh I would say they only have a "favorite" before they started to get mentally broken. Which is basically them trying to talk to those who are seen as the most peaceful and easier to negotiate with characters. Though that doesn't really work since even the laws of the world are against them (we can thank the Primordial One for that ya bitch-).

Once they do start breaking down, they don't necessarily care who ends up finding them? Sure they'll still kick and fight for maybe even a chance at being left alone. But once they're totally broken and completely believe their purpose is to be the prey of everyone, then they seek those who would be believed to give more "entertaining" deaths like you've said. Though entertaining wouldn't equate to just looking for a fight.

One character they would probably go out of their way to find would be Dottore, his experimentations would lead to all sorts of different ways to die. Though the creator only does it rarely since the time it takes for them to die tends to be long (since the doctor would want to note down what's happening and wouldn't give them to give up immediately) even with the pain they feel urging them to die faster.

And as for the whole coming back bit, that's actually not known of until the truth of the creator's title is revealed. What everyone assumes, even when the creator is broken, is that the imposters are just those who were either born unfortunately (only certain characters think this) or who've massacred their image in order to look like the creator as either some religious fanatic or because they seek power or they simply wish to defile the creator's face abd reputation. And when our creator is broken the main concensus is that these imposters have grown mad, believing they're living multiple lives and talking nonsense about death.

It's only when Nahida, who would be one of the first to discover the truth, immediately holds a meeting with the archons to ensure an effort of capturing (they hated using that word but there was no other way than to refer to the creator as some wild beast with the mental state they're in) the creator and rehabilitating them.

[estellan0vella]

Taking Back Control ❀ Toge Inumaki Masterlist HFBU

The idea is risky. Cursed speech is powerful, but it's not something to be used lightly, especially not on something as complex and delicate as the human brain. But the thought of having a way to stop a seizure in its tracks is too tantalizing to ignore.

Now, as you sit in the living room, the atmosphere is a mix of anxiety and anticipation. Shoko sits beside you, her medical expertise offering a sense of safety and reassurance. Gojo lounges on the opposite couch, his usual carefree demeanor somewhat tempered by the seriousness of the situation.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Shoko asks. “There’s a lot we don’t know about how cursed energy interacts with neurological conditions.”

You nod, feeling the weight of your decision. “I know it’s risky, but if it works… it could change everything.”

Toge reaches out and takes your hand, his touch warm and reassuring. He’s wearing his usual high-collared jacket, which he nervously adjusts with his free hand.

Gojo leans forward, his usually hidden eyes visible through his lowered sunglasses. “Alright, here’s the plan. Shoko will monitor your vitals closely. Toge, you’ll be on standby. If a seizure starts, you’ll use your cursed speech to try and stop it. If it seems like things are going wrong, we'll figure it out"

Shoko sets up the equipment to monitor your brain activity and vital signs, her movements precise and efficient. “Ready?” she asks, looking at you with a reassuring smile.

You take a deep breath and nod. Toge squeezes your hand gently, and you feel a surge of determination. You’re ready for this. You have to be.

As the minutes tick by, you try to stay calm, focusing on your breathing and the warmth of Toge’s hand. The room is quiet, everyone waiting in a tense silence. Then, it happens. You feel the familiar, terrifying aura of an impending seizure—a sense of unreality, a detachment from your own body.

“Toge,” you manage to whisper, your voice trembling.

His eyes lock onto yours, filled with a mixture of fear and resolve. He takes a deep breath, focusing his cursed energy. “Stop,” he commands, his voice firm and clear.

The effect is immediate. You feel a strange sensation, as if something invisible has wrapped around your mind, holding it steady. The aura recedes, the seizure stopping before it can fully take hold. Your body, which had started to tense, relaxes. The room is silent except for the steady beeping of the machines.

Shoko leans in, checking the readouts with wide eyes. “It… it worked. Your brain activity is stabilizing.”

Gojo lets out a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned. Looks like we might be onto something here.”

Toge pulls you into a gentle hug. “Tuna mayo,” he says softly, his way of expressing his feelings when words fail him.

The next few days pass in a blur of cautious optimism and careful observation. Under Shoko's vigilant eye, you and Toge repeat the experiment several times, each trial bringing a mixture of anxiety and hope.

Each time, Toge’s cursed speech successfully halts the seizures. The results are consistent, and with every successful attempt, the initial trepidation starts to give way to a budding sense of triumph.

One afternoon, as you sit in the medical wing with Shoko, she goes over the data collected from the trials. “Your brain activity shows significant improvement during and after Inumaki's intervention,” she says, her tone a mixture of amazement and caution. “But we need to keep in mind that this is still very experimental. There’s a lot we don’t understand about how cursed energy interacts with the brain.”

You nod, understanding the gravity of her words. “I get it. But it’s a start. A really good start.”

Shoko smiles, placing a hand on your shoulder. “It is. And I’ll be here to make sure you’re safe every step of the way.”

Later, you and Toge take a walk through the school grounds, the evening air cool and refreshing. The sun sets in a blaze of orange and pink, casting long shadows across the lawn. Toge’s hand is warm in yours, a comforting presence as you navigate this new chapter together.

“Toge,” you say, breaking the comfortable silence. “Thank you. I know this hasn’t been easy for you either.”

He stops walking and turns to face you, his eyes serious. “Mustard leaf,” he says softly, his way of conveying that he’s doing this for you, because you mean the world to him.

You smile, squeezing his hand. “I know. And I appreciate it more than you can imagine.”

Months continue to fly by, and the routine you and Toge establish becomes a new normal. Shoko remains ever-vigilant, her careful monitoring ensuring that you stay safe.

Gojo, in his own way, continues to offer support, though his methods are often unconventional. He even suggests training sessions to help you and Toge better synchronize your efforts, making sure you’re prepared for any situation.

One afternoon, during a particularly intense training session with Gojo, you feel the familiar aura of an impending seizure. Without missing a beat, Toge steps forward, his eyes locking onto yours.

“Stop,” he commands, his voice steady and filled with authority.

The seizure halts almost immediately, the sensation dissipating like mist in the morning sun. You take a deep breath, feeling the wave of relief wash over you. A rare warm smile forms on Gojo's face, the man knowing first-hand the toll your condition takes on you, physically, mentally and most of all emotionally.

“Excellent,” Gojo says, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “You’re getting the hang of this. Both of you.”

You glance at Toge, who is watching you intently, his eyes filled with a mixture of relief and pride. His hand finds yours, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Salmon,” he says softly, his simple word conveying so much more—his unwavering support, his pride in your strength, and his love.

Gojo claps his hands together, breaking the moment. “Alright, let’s call it a day. You both deserve a break.”

As you walk back to the dormitory, the setting sun casting long shadows across the training grounds, you feel a deep sense of accomplishment. The progress you’ve made with Toge’s help is more than just a physical achievement; it’s a testament to the bond you share.

Later that evening, you find yourself in the common room with Toge, Shoko, and Gojo. Shoko is reviewing the data from your latest session, her brow furrowed in concentration. Gojo, meanwhile, is lounging on the couch, a rare moment of stillness for the usually hyperactive sorcerer.

“You know,” Gojo says, his voice breaking the silence, “this whole thing has got me thinking. Maybe we should document your progress. It could help others in the future.”

Shoko looks up from her notes, nodding thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad idea. The data we’re collecting is invaluable, but personal experiences and observations are just as important.”

You look at Toge, who nods in agreement. “Fish flakes,” he says, indicating his support for the idea.

Over the next few weeks, you and Toge begin documenting your journey, writing down your experiences, your feelings, and the progress you’ve made. It’s a therapeutic process, allowing you to reflect on how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown.

One evening, as you’re writing in your journal, Toge sits beside you, his presence a comforting constant. He reads over your shoulder, his hand gently resting on your back.

“Do you think this will help others?” you ask, looking up at him.

He nods, his eyes filled with conviction. “Salmon,” he says softly, his way of saying that he believes in the impact of your story.

Months pass, and your routine becomes a new normal. Shoko continues to monitor your condition, while you and Toge grow more adept at managing your seizures with his cursed speech. It’s not a perfect solution, but it gives you a sense of control you haven’t felt in years.

One evening, you find yourself on the dormitory roof with Toge, watching the stars. The night is clear, the sky a canvas of twinkling lights. You lean against him, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath.

“It’s strange,” you say softly, breaking the comfortable silence. “I’ve spent so long fearing my seizures, feeling like they controlled my life. And now, thanks to you, I feel like I have some control back.”

Toge’s arms tighten around you, his silent way of offering comfort. “Salmon,” he murmurs, his voice a gentle reassurance.

You turn to face him, your heart swelling with gratitude and love. “I don’t know what the future holds, Toge. But I’m not afraid anymore. Not with you by my side.”

His eyes meet yours, filled with a depth of emotion that words can’t capture. “Tuna mayo,” he replies, a promise of his unwavering support and love.

The stars above seem to shine a little brighter, the world feeling a little more hopeful. With Toge by your side, you know you can face whatever challenges come your way.

[cpirits]

(For our Marco rescues Eren au) Marco smiled gently as he gently caressed the bump on Eren. “To think we have come to far since I pulled you from that basement hmm?”

Eyes flutter shut as Marco touched him. The young boy had certainly made strides, yet there was a lack of voice from him. A hand curled into Marco's shirt and he shivered.

He didn't want to think about that, those memories of what had happened were so scary. Whimpering he pushed his head into Marco's chest. He just wanted quiet, to just be held.

[whumpy-wyrms]

The Last Lab Rat #17: Close Your Eyes

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content: lab whump, captivity, clones, drugging, dehumanization, nonsexual nudity, murder mention, restraints, experimentation, mind control, noncon body modification, eye whump, medical whump, winged test subject whumpee, creepy scientist carewhumper

teehee Dew finally gets ice cream in this one yay

(if you can’t read this because of the eye whump, here’s an eye whumpless summary!)

— 

Anton was up late into the night, getting his test subject’s new clone ready. As Dew slept, Anton had injected him with something that’d make sure he wouldn’t wake up in the night during this ordeal. He didn’t want Dew awake and watch another clone come to life. He didn’t want Dew to watch Anton set another version of him free.

The cloning machine was on the other side of the lab anyway, so Dew would hardly be able to see it from his room. Still, it was a necessary precaution. Dew was already going through so much pain; he didn’t need more stuff to worry about.

Anton was far too familiar with making clones. He’d spent five years of his life alone in his lab with nobody to experiment on besides himself and his clones; he’d grown familiar with the process of making and breaking multiple versions of himself. He’d grown used to not viewing these things as real people, because they weren’t.

The process was always the same. Inject a DNA sample into the machine, and wait a couple of days. The clone would come out with all of the memories of its original, it would… most of the time be an exact copy. Of course, Dew’s clone couldn’t be an exact copy of him now, not with his wings, so Anton had to do some tweaking. Make a clone of the old clone; a copy of a copy. Easy enough. No harm, no foul.

In the early days of making clones of himself, there was a recurring problem Anton had noticed. There were too many times where a new Anton would see himself standing before him, lab coat bloodied and hair disheveled, and know right away what its pathetic life would be used for. There were too many times where the clone would fight back, try to outsmart him and escape.

He needed a way to keep himself safe— from himself— so he implemented something into the machine that sedated when they first came out. It kept them weak and docile, lessened the shock of being a test subject, and kept them unable to fight back. It’d come in handy now, as well.

The machine whirred to life, lights lighting up and beeping. Anton didn’t miss that sound in the slightest. It brought him back to his darkest times, times he honestly wouldn't mind to forget completely, if he hadn’t already.

After a few moments, the clone was ready. Anton swallowed his nerves and walked up to the machine.

“Hello,” Anton said, helping the new Dew step out of the machine.

“Hi,” the clone said, looking up at Anton with wide, curious eyes. It stood in front of him, calm and relaxed. It wasn’t wearing any clothes, but it didn’t care. It just stared ahead. So innocent. So blissfully oblivious to the horrors just under its nose.

“Do you know your name?”

“It’s Dew…” The clone looked around, curious eyes dancing across the strange and unfamiliar laboratory. Though, it didn’t look scared. It turned its gaze back to Anton. “Where am I?”

“Don’t worry your silly little head about that,” Anton said, patting the clone on the head. “Put these on.” The scientist handed the clone some folded up clothes, and stepped away.

It felt wrong, to Anton. This wasn’t the Dew he had grown familiar with the past couple months. It didn’t have top surgery. It didn’t have wings. It was just a lie made to keep his friends at bay. All Anton saw when he looked at this thing was all his hard work gone. This clone wasn’t the real Dew, and for that, he despised it.

Anton shook those thoughts away. Of course this wasn’t the real Dew, that was the point. The real Dew would be safe with him, here. He never needed to think about clones again after this.

After the clone was dressed, it started looking around again, expression noticeably more dazed than before.

“Woah, what’s that thing?” It said, looking closely at a giant cylindrical tube-like vat of green fluid. It was tall, going up all the way to the ceiling, and the glass looked very thick. There was nothing inside of it besides a bright green and glowing fluid that was mesmerizing to look at. And even though the rest of the lab was dark, this lit up the area around them well enough.

“Nothing. Follow me.” Anton grabbed its arm and swiftly led it out of the lab before it could ask any more questions.

“What’s going on?” It asked, catching up to Anton’s pace.

“I’m taking you home.”

“Oh. Who are you?”

“…It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh.” Besides the pair of footsteps, there was a long silence as they walked up the stairs. “This place kinda reminds me of the strongholds in Minecraft… Hey, I’m kinda cold.”

“We’re almost there.”

Anton led Dew’s clone to his car and sat it in the passenger seat, put its seatbelt on, and shut the door. It had stopped talking now, seemingly too tired to ask anymore questions. As Anton drove, he couldn’t help but periodically glance at the dozy, docile thing sitting next to him, looking out the window at the dark forest. It had no idea what was happening. It was almost cute.

“I’m sleepy.” The clone yawned. The repetition of the trees going past the car was almost hypnotic.

“I know. Just relax. It’ll be a long drive.”

“Okay,” It said softly, resting its head against the cold window. “G’night…”

Anton gave a bittersweet smile, and watched its eyes flutter shut as it drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

In around four hours, Anton would be dropping this clone off at its house. He would wipe its memories of the night, and it’d live its life as Dew, its friends none the wiser.

He just had to drive back to Dew’s old house. It was easy.

Anton had tried to ignore the horrible feeling in his gut, his memories of the gory and grotesque scene his lab rat had caused in that room, only a few days ago. He had tried to forget it, tried to focus on the fact that his test subject had escaped, and what had to be done about it. The murder could be easily taken care of; disposed of, cleaned up, and forgotten about. It was in the past. It didn’t matter anymore.

And yet…

Visions of Dew’s bloody and broken corpse flashed through Anton’s mind. The way his favorite little lab rat was lying lifeless on the carpet, blood pooling under the limp and stiff body that was littered with stab wounds, knife only inches away from the scene. The way the light in the poor guy’s eyes was gone. Just like that.

The way Dew was dead.

Dew was dead. Not the real Dew, of course, but that didn’t matter. Anton had seen a Dew’s bloodied corpse laying in front of him, and it sickened him.

He had tried to ignore it. There were more important things to worry about than his feelings— than those horrible feelings of sadness and grief flooding through him at the sight of his test subject, dead on the ground. More important things like the fact Dew had escaped, and needed to be brought back home. The fact he had to punish Dew for disobeying.

But how could he possibly punish someone who was hurting so bad to the point he drank one of Anton’s vials, or shot himself with one of Anton’s inventions? How could he possibly hurt someone worse than they were already hurting? He couldn’t.

Of course, Dew knowing he had been cloned and that there was nothing to do to escape his life as Anton’s test subject was probably punishment enough. It was obvious now he felt completely hopeless; Anton had stolen each and every ounce of hope the man had left by replacing him with a clone and threatening his friends.

So Anton didn’t punish him for escaping. He didn’t punish him for his obvious disobedience and attempts to get out of experiments— too caught up thinking about if Dew had grabbed any other vial, any other invention, it could’ve been so much worse. He didn’t want anything bad to ever happen to him. So he’d been kind, comforting. And it seemed to have worked. Dew was content here, he seemed to finally accept things, which was all he really wanted.

Anton arrived at his test subject’s old address. The clone was still fast asleep, and it took a few light nudges of its shoulders to wake it up. It was alert now, as normal as it could be, acting like the spitting image of Dew. The two of them got out of the car and it questioned him, but Anton was quick to hit it with a quick blast of his memory eraser. He left it by the curb of its house, and drove around the corner out of sight. Memories of that night left its mind, and it stood alone in front of its house. Shrugging its shoulders, it walked inside, out of sight, and Anton began his ride home.

. . .

The scientist had been preparing for an experiment all morning, and Dew had no idea what it was.

Anton had agreed to take a few days off and let Dew rest, giving them both a much needed break and start experiments again once he was ready. Of course, he’d never be ready, but if it was going to happen anyway, it was best to get it over with, and Anton seemed to be itching to start again.

It had to have been almost lunch time by now, and without Sasha to keep him company, Dew spent the morning curled up in his room, drawing and listening to music, blocking out the rest of the world and hoping whatever Anton had planned for him wouldn’t be too agonizing.

Without anything to be hopeful about, that was all he’d been doing lately. That was all he could do, now. Anton didn’t seem keen on letting him outside anymore, and Dew was too petrified to ask.

Dew could’ve spent more time with Anton the past few days. He’d thought about the birthday party he threw him, and their time spent outside together, playing with animals and flying, and when they had watched Dew’s favorite show together upstairs— the last time he had interacted with Anton before he’d ruined everything with his stupid escape.

The truth was, Anton had been fun to be around sometimes, and at this point, Dew wasn’t afraid to admit it. He’d been scared before, when he still held on to the possibility of being free, but now? If he really was stuck here forever, maybe it was in his best interest to use Anton’s friendliness to his advantage. Dew hated the man, but at least he wasn’t cruel. At least he was trying to keep him happy.

If Dew was really going to be a test subject forever, as depressing as that sounded, he should make the most of the rest of his life.

So he sat on his bed, waiting apprehensively for Anton to finish preparing his torment and bring him into the lab. As he doodled in his sketchbook, he heard the scientist’s footsteps coming towards his room. He put his sketchbook down, brought his knees to his chest, and stared at the door.

“Okay Dewey,” Anton walked in, smiling menacingly, yet giddy with excitement. “It’s all prepared. Let’s go.”

Dew slowly stood up, hospital gown already on, and stared incredulously at the scientist as he pulled out a long chain.

“W-what is that?” Dew asked, taking a nervous step back.

Anton sighed. “The past two days you have hurt yourself using the things in my lab. I don’t know if I can fully trust you in there unrestrained anymore. And this experiment has to go perfectly, I don’t want any more delays, okay?”

Of course. Dew had lost all of Anton’s trust, it only made sense for him to be extra restrained in the lab. That didn’t stop his heart from racing, though. “O-okay.”

Anton smiled and clicked the chain around both of Dew’s wrists in front of him, then the two of them headed into the lab. Dew ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach. This was his life now, and he had to be the best test subject he could be so that Anton would be nice to him. He had to be good. He had to.

He hopped up on the operating table, and was told to lay down. Anton placed a pillow behind his back so his wings would be cushioned semi-comfortably. Dew was thankful for that, at least.

As Anton started messing with the restraints on the side of the table, Dew looked up at him with teary eyes. “What are you doing?” he asked meekly.

“You’ll have to be restrained for this one,” Anton explained, tightening the straps around Dew’s legs. “Can’t have you moving around too much. This too tight?”

“N-no.”

Dew weakly protested as Anton tried grabbing his arms. The scientist shot him a look, and he meekly complied, allowing the scientist to spread his arms flat against the table and strap them tightly in the restraints. Dew shuddered as Anton gave the straps an extra tug just to make sure they were secure.

Anton took out his tape recorder and pressed record. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s cold,” Dew whimpered, goosebumps running across his skin.

“Don’t worry.” Anton ruffled his hair. “I’m sure you’ll forget all about the cold after we begin.”

The scientist began rummaging around the tray of tools, and Dew’s nervousness got the better of him. “W-what are you gonna do to me?” he asked.

Anton looked up, a giddy smile creeping across his face. It made Dew’s stomach drop. “Eyes are fascinating, aren’t they?”

“Um, what do you mean?” Dew mumbled.

“Eyes. They’re so fascinating, so complicated and intricate. We rely on our eyes to see the world around us, but… what if there was more? What if there was a way to see beyond the threshold of reality? I want to test something I’ve been working on for a while now, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to do it.”

“You mean— test on my eyes? You’re going to experiment on my eyes?”

“Yes! I won’t tell you the exact details though, I want it to be a surprise.”

As much as Dew wanted to behave as well as possible, he was beginning to panic. “N-no! No, Anton, y-you can’t! They’re my eyes! Please—”

“Remember that one time you asked me to give you night vision?” Anton joked, nonchalantly waving around a long syringe. “Don’t you want this?”

“No!” Dew screamed, but quickly realized that resisting would only make things worse. That’s right, he had to behave. He took a deep breath, trying to calm down, and looked back up at Anton. Maybe they could talk this through? “Wait— wait. Can’t you j-just test this out on a clone instead? What if something goes wrong?”

“I would, but that’s why you’re here, silly.” Anton booped his nose. “And nothing will go wrong. I’ll make sure of it.”

“No— c’mon, Anton! I th— I thought we were friends!”

Anton furrowed his brows, looking at Dew with a sad expression. “I need to do this, Dew. You’re my test subject. This is what you’re here for. …How about, after this, I’ll get you some ice cream? How does that sound?”

“B-but— Ah!” Dew yelped and squeezed his eyes shut when he saw Anton’s hand come towards him, only for him gently taking his glasses off. Still, that was not a good sign.

Dew peaked an eye open to see Anton picking up a giant, blurry needle.

“Wait— wait wait wait wait WAIT!” Dew cried, imagining all sorts of horrible things Anton could do to his eyes, and knowing this would probably be the worst thing he’d have to endure so far. He struggled against the restraints fruitlessly, only tiring himself out. “I— I’ll do anything, anything but this! Please!”

Anton sighed. “C’mon Dewey, be a good test subject.” As Dew continued pleading and blabbering as if his life depended on it, the scientist took out a roll of duct tape.

Dew’s eyes went wide. “Wait! Wait wait wait, please! Please n—”

“Stay still.” Dew’s breath hitched as he was rendered completely motionless. A chill ran down his spine as the scientist put a strip of duct tape over his mouth, smoothing it out with his hand. Dew glared at him, and Anton ruffled his hair, smiling. “There you go.”

He was eerily still as Anton prepped the syringe. Dew whimpered into the gag as Anton brought the needle closer, grabbed his arm, and injected a strange fluid into his veins. Dew only hoped it would ease the horrible pain that was sure to come.

“This’ll just make you feel a little groggy. A small sedative, that’s all it is. But I need you awake for this, can you stay awake for me?”

Dew nodded, already feeling drowsy, as tears fell down his cheeks.

“Good. Let’s get started, then.” Anton said, snapping on black rubber gloves.

The scientist picked up a small glass bottle that was filled with a very bright blue liquid. It was neon teal and glowing bright, with small bubbles swirling around inside it. Anton took an eye dropper and filled it with the substance. Then, Dew hazily heard a command to keep his eyes open, and he realized he was unable to close them no matter how much he wanted to.

The scientist was smiling to himself and saying something into the tape recorder, something Dew was too dazed and terrified to make out.

His chest heaved as he watched Anton’s hand slowly approach his eyes. He quickly turned his head away, only causing the scientist to wrench his head back with a rough hand entangled in his hair. Dew wanted nothing but to squeeze his eyes shut, but he couldn’t.

His eyes burned with tears. Everything felt like a hazy dream, far far away and yet so real. A wave of terror flowed through him. Anton held the eyedropper above one of Dew’s eyes and squeezed it, causing a couple of drops of that glowing blue liquid to fall into his eye. 

No no no NO NO NO! Dew couldn’t move. It felt like his eye was on fire. Something was coating his entire eyeball inside and out and he couldn’t get it off of him.

Anton repeated the process with Dew’s other eye.

Anton looked down at his test subject. “Hey, hey, don’t cry, Dew. Stop crying.” His tears dried up immediately after.

Dew could only watch in horror, his vision blurry and pained, as the scientist picked up another object and brought it towards him.

Dew’s vision was fading, and so was his consciousness. He hoped that only implied he would fall asleep soon. Yes, sleep, that sounded nice. Dew tried to relax as the room went dark, as he let Anton do whatever he wanted to do to him. He felt himself drift off, succumbing to the drugs. He barely heard the scientist’s voice anymore. He was so, so tired.

Right as Dew was about to close his eyes, he felt a sudden sharp sting on the bottom of his face. Anton had ripped the duct tape off.

“Wake up, Dewey.” It was the scientist’s voice, shaking him and his mind awake. That’s right. Dew was supposed to stay awake.

Anton loosened the straps enough for Dew to partially sit up, and held a cold flask of liquid to his lips. “Drink this.”

Dew moved his head away groggily. “W-w-why are you doing this?” Dew sobbed. “M-my eyes! What did you do to—”

“Shhh,” Anton said. “You’ll find out soon. Now drink.”

Dew didn’t have a choice but to gulp down whatever strange substance Anton had just given him. It tasted juicy, a strong sour, yet empty and cloudy at the same time. He all so suddenly felt lightheaded and dull, thoughts sizzling out into nothing. His head felt foggy, and he felt far, far away.

Dew didn’t know what happened after that.

. . .

In situations like this, during experiments like these, it was easy for Anton to get carried away, fueled with the excitement of creating something new. It was easy to be blinded by the power he held, and forget all about how his poor test subject felt. Experiments like these were what fueled him, what reminded him of why he still did this in the first place. Testing the limits of the human body, creating things nobody ever thought possible. This was why he loved science.

Not a single ounce of hesitation went through Anton’s mind when he took out a spoon and brought it to his test subject’s face. Right now, Dew was completely out of it. He wouldn’t remember any of this, which was a huge relief. At least he wouldn’t feel what was about to happen.

Anton brought the spoon closer to Dew’s glossy eyes. And…

Whatever was in that glowing blue liquid seemed to have worked, creating a link between the eye and the brain, no optic nerve needed. He was holding his test subject’s left eye in his hands. His eye.

It was easy to assume there was no coming back from this. Dew may as well have just lost an eye. But Anton was sure he’d be able to pop it back in place eventually, that was part of the experiment, after all.

He held the slimey, squishy, disgusting thing in his hands. It stared back at him, brown eye wide and still and petrified. It disgusted him. It made him feel sick to his stomach at the thought of permanently making Dew lose an eye. But the thought of this experiment being a success outweighed any guilt or remorse he felt, replacing it with the exhilarating thrill he’d been searching for. He held the eye between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a slight squeeze, just to see how it felt. If this experiment went right, everything would change.

He talked into the tape recorder as he prepared for the next step. An injection here, a bit of lasering there, he worked quickly and meticulously, lost in his own world. Once he was ready, he popped Dew’s eye back into place, and repeated the steps with the other one. One last injection with another strange substance, and Anton stepped back to take a look at his handy work. If all went well, things would start happening any minute now.

And he was right.

All of a sudden, Dew started writhing against the restraints, screaming at the top of his lungs. The straps keeping him restrained to the table pulled taut, and Anton was glad he decided to make them extra tight this time. Feathers flew everywhere as he flapped his wings in the midst of the struggle. The sound of nails scraping against metal filled Anton’s ears, but that was nothing compared to the screams. Anton hadn’t hurt such visceral, gut-wrenching screams in a long time. It made him feel sick, but he couldn’t stop watching.

All too quickly, something bubbled its way to the surface of Dew’s skin, bursting out of his forehead with a pop. There was minimal blood, to Anton’s surprise and relief, and he was almost sad that it had happened so quickly.

And then, eerie silence. Dew collapsed down against the table, limp and heavy, erratic breathing turning deep and calm.

Anton approached him slowly, heart pounding through his chest. On the center of Dew’s forehead was an eye. Wide and bloodshot, staring directly at him.

. . .

A few hours later, Anton watched his test subject stir awake, unrestrained and laying flat on the table. He was at his side in an instant, ready to provide painkillers or sedatives or even comfort if needed.

“Dew? Are you awake?”

“Y-Yeah,” Dew said, still feeling groggy. He looked around and started to panic. “I… I can’t see anything—”

“There are bandages covering your eyes, it’s okay. You’re okay. Just calm down.’’

“W-what did you do to me?”

“We’ll talk about that later. First, tell me how you feel.”

“I…” The lack of sight caused Dew to panic as he remembered what was happening before he blacked out.

“Dew,” Anton said, putting his hands on Dew’s shoulders. “Calm down. I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.”

“Y-you— my eyes!” Dew cried, twisting out of Anton’s grip. “What did you do to my eyes?!”

Anton swallowed thickly. This was not going well. “I’ll tell you later. Are you in any pain?”

“I-I… kinda? Everything’s still- still weird. Like, numb, almost. What did y-you do to me?”

“Hm, okay. That’s to be expected.”

Dew flinched in surprise as he felt the scientist grab his arm. “H-hey, what—”

“I’m just giving you something to help you relax. Stay still.”

Not being able to see only caused Dew to focus harder on the injection, unable to drown it out. Dew tensed as he felt a needle enter his skin, and choked back a sob when he felt the sting of the contents entering his body. But, like always, it was over as soon as it began.

“There, that wasn’t so bad,” Anton said. “I should check on your eyes. Try to relax, okay?”

Dew nodded, and Anton peeled the bandage off slowly. He sucked in a breath the second light hit eyes, and he batted the scientist’s hand away.

“Too bright!”

Anton winced. “Sorry.”

“Wait—” Dew lifted his hands up to his eyes and peeled the bandage off. He slowly peaked out, and breathed a sigh of relief when he realized he could still see. Thank fuck. Anton dimmed the lights, but everything still hurt to look at, so Dew covered his eyes again. “I-I can see fine, but- but it hurts.”

“We might need to keep those bandages on for a few weeks, while they heal, and just while your brain and body gets used to… a new eye. “You can handle that, right?””

Dew’s heart skipped a beat. “A— a what?” He squeaked.

“Another eye, Dewey.” He heard it in his voice that Anton was smiling wide. It made him shudder. “I made you grow another eye. On your forehead.”

“What?”

“That’s not the only thing, don’t worry. There’ll be more changes in the coming weeks, which is why the bandages have to stay on. It’s gonna be great.” Dew flinched as he felt the scientist’s hand gently ruffle his hair.

“O-okay.” Dew nodded, numb to it all. A new eye. He didn’t want to think about it. He was just thankful his vision wasn’t gone completely, a few weeks of darkness wouldn’t be too bad.

“Oh yeah!” Anton exclaimed, putting a cold bowl of something in Dew’s hands. “Ice cream, like I promised.”

“Th-thanks,” Dew said. It was vanilla, not his favorite, but he realized he didn't remember the last time he’d eaten ice cream, so he’d take what he could get.

Once Dew was done eating, Anton gently lifted him up and started walking to his room. He wrapped his arms tightly around Anton’s shoulders as a way to balance himself, disorientated from not being able to see and afraid of being dropped. He felt the scientist gently petting his back, probably trying to be comforting. Dew was carried up the stairs, through the door, and gently set into bed. He put his knees to his chest and reached a hand up to itch at his bandages, but Anton quickly stopped him.

“Don’t touch your bandages.” Anton reminded him, holding his wrist away from his face.

“They’re really itchy,” Dew said. “Do I really have to keep them on?”

“Yes. Your eyes need to heal.” Anton sighed. “I don’t wanna do this but… I don’t know if I can fully trust you either.”

“Do what?”

Dew flinched as he felt something rough and scratchy brush against his wrist that the scientist was holding, wrapping around it tightly. “Hey! What are—” He weakly pulled away, but Anton was stronger.

“Calm down. It’s just so you don’t mess with your eyes while you sleep. I can’t risk this going wrong.”

Dew looked down and allowed Anton to tie both of his wrists together behind his back. “There. That’s not so bad.”

“Easy for you to say…” Dew grumbled, flopping into bed. He curled into a ball, and the scientist tucked him under the covers. He thought he must look so defenseless like this, eyes covered, body restrained, completely unable to see anything coming. He hated being this vulnerable.

Anton petted his head softly, and smiled when Dew leaned into it. Dew wasn’t his clone, but he was still as cute as ever.

“Goodnight, Dewey.”

Dew heard the scientist leave the room and close the door. The click of the lock echoing through his ears. He heard footsteps get farther and farther away from his room, and assumed Anton had already turned the lights off and left the lab. He was alone.

Dew laid there on his bed, unable to move his arms that were restrained behind his back. He was still groggy from the drugs, dozing in and out of consciousness while he tried to focus on anything else but the incessant itching of the bandages and pain in his eyes. But it was dead silent in his room and he wasn’t even able to turn his music on. Unable to see, move, or hear anything, Dew was left to wallow in his own mind until he drifted off into a deep sleep.

. . .

Now that it was late at night, and Anton was by himself, the events of the day had caught up to him. It must’ve been so scary for his test subject, painful as well. Anton had to admit he was a bit blinded by the thrill of the experiment for a moment, and didn’t stop to think about how Dew was feeling. He could tell how much he was hurting, such a distressing and risky experiment would do that, he should’ve been more careful.

Anton felt disgusted with himself. But it’d be okay. Dew would forgive him eventually, and they’d move on, like they always did.

“Hey Anton, are you okay?” Sasha asked. They seemed to always see right through him.

“Yea—” No, he had waited long enough, it was time to tell his friend the truth. “No, I mean… Dew’s back.”

“...What?”

Anton fidgeted with the hem of his sweater. “I brought him back. Your guys' escape plan failed. I’m sorry.”

“Oh…”

“Don’t feel bad. It was inevitable. And there was no way he could live a normal life out there with his wings. I’m just… trying to protect him.”

They were quiet for a moment, then, “Can I see him?”

“He’s asleep right now and… I think it’d be best to leave him alone for now. After the experiment today… he needs time to heal from it. I can’t have anything interfering with the results. Though… maybe after a week or two, some enrichment would be good for him. I know you two are friends, it’s not right to keep you apart.”

“Will he be okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

“Well, that’s good. Tell him I said hi?”

Anton smiled. “I will.”

“G’night, Anton.”

“Goodnight.”

— 

eyes are so strange and wacky am i right

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[alicanta77]

pairing: alien!jisung x human!reader themes: fluff, angst, alien au warnings: abduction, experimentation, imprisonment, execution (sort of?) words: 16k synopsis: waking up from the deepest sleep of your life to find out that you had actually been abducted by aliens and were on their ship was not how you had thought your tuesday morning way going to go. but when a shy alien bursts through the door asking for your help you find yourself saying yes. however, as the two of you get closer to each other, you find yourselves uncovering a twisted web of lies that threaten everything the two of you have ever known.​​​

i. good morning sunshine

Your eyes fluttered slightly, the hold that sleep had on you felt much deeper than you were used to. Normally you weren’t a seriously heavy sleeper, but somehow you felt absolutely knocked out. You rolled over onto your side, reaching for your duvet to pull it over your head and drown out the sound of your alarm. However, your hand grabbed at empty air instead of your warm covers, causing you to squeeze your eyes further shut in confusion. You must have kicked your duvet off during the night. Annoying, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened. You rolled over and buried your face into your pillow, groaning in the usual frustration that came with waking up.

You made no attempt to get up, already tired at the idea of going off to lessons. It was only then, in those seconds you weren’t moving, that you took in the silence around you. There was no high pitched repetitive beeping of your alarm, alerting you that it was time to wake up. You couldn’t hear your mother downstairs, banging pots and pans around as she made breakfast. There was no shouting from your father as he tried to reason with his business partners over the phone. Nothing. No, your room was completely silent. There was no sign of life anywhere.

Your eyes slowly peeled open, hoping to check the time on your phone by your bed. You flung an arm out, a small yelp leaving you when it hit nothing and instead the momentum of your movement caused you to roll rather ungracefully off your bed.

You landed on the hard ground, confusion and sleep clouding your mind. You must have been lying on the very edge of your bed. But you hadn’t fallen out of bed since you were a kid. Also, since when was your bed that small? And your floor somehow didn’t feel like carpet anymore?

You pushed yourself up into a sitting position slowly, rubbing the part of your forehead that still dully ached from you not so gently landing on the floor. As your eyes gradually adjusted to the light, you took in your surroundings. 

The walls and floor were a matching light grey colour. In fact, the entire room was varying shades of grey. You jumped up, practically throwing yourself to your feet, but your body felt like jelly and you stumbled backwards into your bed. You closed your eyes tight, trying to get rid of the black dots slightly clouding your vision. Your control over your body began to come back to you, just as you came to a terrifying realisation.

You had no idea where you were.

Your breath began to shorten as you tried with everything you could to keep yourself calm.

Had you been kidnapped? What kind of place is this? Are they holding you for ransom? Why did they want you? Who on earth could “they” be? How long have you been asleep? How much danger are you in?

Just as these worries began to completely consume you, you heard the door begin to click, signalling what you assumed was a lock. Your eyes shot around the room, looking for anything that could pass as a weapon if you needed. However, the room was minimalist, basically empty, and there was nothing that you would be able to pick up and defend yourself with if you needed. Your heart was pounding so hard you wondered if it would be heard by whoever was trying to get into this room. Whoever had taken you.

Dear god you hoped not.

The door suddenly opened at speed, and a tall figure burst in before shutting it again behind them just as quickly. They turned around as you finally got a look at their face.

It was a boy. He was tall and slim, and staring down at you with his eyes wide with panic. His hair lay messily on his face and you couldn’t quite tell if it was a very dark blue, black or purple. It was as if each colour changed with the movement his head made. He kept looking over his shoulder, checking behind him for something before turning back to you. When he spoke his voice was deeper than you were prepared for, the husk in it surprising you. But nothing surprised you as much as the words he spoke.

“You have no idea how many rules I’m breaking here but my human studies final is coming up and I really need help because I’m going to fail it.”

Your mouth hung open, the words that left the boy’s lips making zero sense to you. You tried to form a sentence, no words making their way out of your mouth. You wanted to ask him so much, what he meant by ‘human studies’, who he was, where you were, yet all you could get out was:

“You’re long.”

Long... not even tall. Long. Wow, well described y/n.

You shook your head, looking around you again, taking in the grey walls. Your gaze eventually came back to rest on the, according to you, long boy who stood, now with a perplexed expression on his face. He looked down at himself, as if trying to understand what you meant.

“Umm,” You muttered, brushing your hands off on your pyjama bottoms, feeling the hard material move under your fingers.

Wait... your pyjamas weren’t hard. Your head shot down, finally taking in the grey jumpsuit you were in that was definitely not what you had gone to sleep in. A scream built up in your throat, one that you tried with all your might to stifle, leaving just a squeak to get through.

“Ahhh.” The boy muttered and your panicked eyes looked up at him. “Yeah, the materials you humans use to make clothes don’t really work here, so that’s the best I could do.” He looked down, biting his lip nervously at your reaction.

You stared at your clothes again, your mouth opening and closing without any words coming out of it. The amount of questions that were swimming around your mind were suffocating you and, even though he had tried to give you an answer of some kind, all it had done was made you even more confused.

“Are- are you okay?” He stuttered, his deep voice wavering slightly.

“No.” You answered blatantly. “Of course I’m not okay! I went to sleep at home, in my own bed and now I’ve woken up in this strange grey room, in clothes that aren’t mine, and you’ve appeared telling me that you need help for a human studies final? I have no idea what the hell is going on.”

The boy swallows, his expression changing to one of guilt and sympathy.

“I’m sorry.” He mutters. “I really need to pass this exam and I panicked. I promise you can go straight home afterwards.”

“Afterwards? After what?” You asked, wanting nothing more than to get off this ship and go home now.

“Well, you’ve been asleep for longer than I expected so we moved off and we won’t be coming back to this place for a little while...” He revealed.

The realisation hit you and you stepped backwards, your legs hitting the hard bed you had been lying on. You let them give out, sitting down on the grey material, breathing out a shaky breath. You couldn’t go home. And, whatever this place was, you had no idea how long you’d be stuck here for.

You looked back up at the tall boy, tilting your head at him, and watching as he did the same thing back. The seemingly innocent action might have brought a small smile to your face if it weren’t for the dire situation you were in.

“I’m stuck here?” You whispered and he nodded in response. Your heart sank and a new kind of fear set in. “For how long?”

“I’m not sure. Time doesn’t move the same way for us as it does in your world.” He explained, yet his explanation, once again, made no sense.

“My world? What do you mean by my world? And what did you mean when you said ‘you humans’?” The way he was speaking was starting to scare you, as if he was something strange that wasn’t from Earth. He looked human, but he seemed to believe he wasn’t.

“I guess I’m what you would call an alien?” He revealed and you raised your eyebrows at him. “Really I am!” He insisted, his voice whining a bit when he realised that you didn’t believe him. 

“So what... are you like E.T. or something?” You scoffed slightly, getting a little offended that he expected you to believe something like that

“My name is Jisung and I’ve never left this ship. My planet was destroyed before I was born and we’ve been travelling around in this ship trying to find a new place to settle.”

You frowned at him disbelievingly. This has got to be some kind of prank right?

“So, you’re telling me that I’ve been abducted by an alien and I’m currently on your UFO because you need help passing a human studies exam?” You summed up, almost laughing at how ridiculous the whole situation sounded.

But Jisung just shrugged mutter a soft:

“Pretty much.”

You shook your head, looking down at the grey floor again.

“Can I just go home please?” You asked, your voice much firmer this time as you knew none of this could be real. You stood up, pacing around the room as you spoke. “Or can you at least wake me up? Oh my god, I’m dreaming! Of course I’m dreaming. Oh this is fun I’ve never had a lucid dream before, I wonder what I can do.”

“Listen!” Jisung grabbed you by the shoulders, forcing you to look at him. “You’re not dreaming, look out that window.”

You followed where Jisung was pointing, approaching the six-sided window that sheltered the view from you by a thin cover. You pulled on it, letting the cover fly up and reveal all that you had been missing.

“Wow.” You gasped, staring out at what you saw in front of you.

Jisung came up behind you, looking out of the same window. “Does that look like something you can see in a dream?”

“Kind of.” You answered honestly. “But not one of mine.”

The sky was black, stretching out for miles beyond where the eye could see. Small bright dots that you recognised at stars decorated the view. But closer, closer than that was a planet. Bright purple with white and yellow swirled through it like paint. It had a moon next to it too, the tell tale white colour with craters carved out of it.

You still couldn’t understand how people thought the moon was made of cheese.

You lifted a hand and placed it on the glass, unable to find the words to describe how you were feeling. The colours seemed to move as you went shooting through time and space. Watching the planets move away from you only reminded you of the fact that with every second that passed you were being taken further and further away from your home.

Your hand slid down, falling limply by your side. You let out a deep breath, your gaze falling down to the grey floor at your feet.

Jisung watched you from behind, a harsh guilt flooding his system at the sight of you. He truly hadn’t realised that you would be stuck here and now all he could focus on was how selfish he had been. He opened his mouth to ask if you were alright when he was stopped by the sound of you clearing your throat.

“So... um...” You started, blinking away the few tears that threatened to form on your waterline and turning around to face him. “How come everything is grey here? Is this the same for all of your rooms?”

“Oh, no,” Jisung replied. “The walls aren’t actually grey but because you’re human you wouldn’t be able to look at the colours we have.”

“Why? Would I go blind?” You joked, cracking a small smile.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” Your smile dropped as fast as it had formed, that familiar sense of fear bubbling up again as you swallowed it down. “Cool.”

You walked a bit around the bare room, running your fingers along the walls as you did.

“How far away is your exam?”

Jisung blinked a few times. “Exam?”

“Yeah? The exam you need help with?” You reminded him, holding back a smile as the realisation formed on his face.

“Oh! Yeah, well, it’s hard to explain. Time moves differently in space compared to Earth. It will feel as though it passes the same, but it’s moving at a completely different speed. One that you aren’t able to measure. Earth time is almost standing still at the moment, so when you do go home no time will have passed at all there.”

“At least my family won’t worry about me.” You sighed. Now that was one issue out of your mind. But you now really had no idea how long you would be here. How else were you going to pass the time?

“I guess... what do you need to know?”

ii. space school... about earth... but in space... sure

“Okay, what do you want to work on today?” You swung your legs off the edge of the desk you were sitting on. Jisung had adjusted some type of colour setting in your room and helped add some “human” colour to your previously grey surroundings. As well as that, in order to help you both easily identify who was talking about which species, you’d agreed amongst yourselves to refer to them as “humans” and “aliens”. Even though Jisung had pouted and insisted it was a large generalisation, he agreed eventually and promised to never call you an Earthling - not that you understood why. But you assumed it wasn’t a compliment from aliens.

Jisung opened his large folder, a load of papers falling out as he did and landing on the ground with a loud thud.

You chuckled at him. His clumsiness was a rather endearing quality of his, and one that you had grown to like first. In truth, his overall personality was very endearing, from his clumsiness, to his initially shy nature to how now that he was comfortable around you it was hard to get the boy to stop talking. He seemed to want to do anything other than focus.

You were starting to see how he was failing.

“How about... biology? Or education?” Jisung suggested, trying to find the relevant papers.

You jumped off the edge of the desk, reaching out and grabbing a paper that you saw had fallen further from the pile. You brought it up to read it, studying the information there that Jisung had yet to learn.

“Biology.” You decided. “We did education recently so there’s no point in going over it already.”

Jisung groaned, flopping face down on the bed, allowing his arms and legs to hang off the edge.

“I hate biology. Plus your education is so difficult to understand I think I need to go over it again.”

“No you don’t.” You laughed at him. “Plus we have so much to get through in so little time, your exam is getting closer everyday.”

“But we’ve started Biology!”

“So tell me what you’ve learnt! Talk to me about how to differentiate humans from aliens.” You shot back, grinning at him.

He sighed, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

“There were multiple things we’ve covered but the biggest thing, that’s also the weirdest by the way, is that you have different reactions than we do. While our emotions can come out in changing our hair colour, yours can come out in your cheeks, through... blushing?” He repeated, his face splitting into a grin as you nodded. “Can’t believe your face turns red, how weird is that...”

“Well, not everyone. It depends on skin colour and stuff. Basically the level of pigmentation in the skin depends on how visible blushing is.” You corrected him, flipping through his textbook for your next subject.

“That’s cool.” Jisung mused. “I wonder what I’d look like if I blushed... Would it show up on me?”

You looked over at him chuckling. “Well you’re on the lighter side of skin tones, so yes, I think I’d assume it would. I can’t believe this book didn’t mention anything about blushing...”

You turned another page in the book, searching for some paragraph about it but frowning as you read what was written instead.

Jisung noticed your expression, asking a quick “What’s wrong?”

‘It’s just... the information in this book... When did it come out?”

“Last year. Why?”

You shook your head. “That doesn’t make sense. It says here that aliens and humans have a long history together. And it goes into saying how, when it comes down to it, we have a very similar history. Like, we basically come from the same place.”

You looked over at Jisung who was looking back at you, looking a little lost as to what you were saying. “I don’t follow. How is this important?” He asked.

“If we started so close together, how did we drift so far apart? And what is it that actually separates you from me? What is it that makes us so different? Because it’s not from the fundamentals.”

“Oh...” Jisung murmured, shifting closer to you on the bed. “Do you think that’s why some of the books are inaccurate?”

“Possibly.” You mused. A while back, you had been flicking through the biology textbook and some of it had made you quite confused. There were details in there that you knew were wrong and inaccurate and you couldn’t figure out why. “Maybe they think that we’re still the same? And that’s why it’s wrong because they assume we work the same way as you!”

“But we don’t work like that.” Jisung shut down your idea. “Aliens don’t have to shed their skin each month either.”

You looked back at the book, flipping towards the page that held those details and began to read out loud.

“Humans have skin that covers their entire bodies. It is this skin that provides a defensive layer over them and keeps their bodies in its proper shape. To ensure the quality of their skin layer, they undergo a ‘shed’ each month, which consists of using force to lose the recent skin layer. They have tools that may help them with this, of which these tools have harsh jagged edges to encourage the shed to commence.”

You sighed to yourself at the paragraph. You couldn’t wrap your head around how it was so outlandish and wrong. 

“Technically people do exfoliate, which is where they remove dead skin off their bodies. But not like this, this is bizarre.”

“Are you sure? There’s no way these things could have gotten confused?” Jisung asked, and while you were sure he was searching for a solution, you knew that this wasn’t it.

“Absolutely not. Exfoliating is something people do in the shower to keep their skin smooth. This is an exorcism.” You giggled to yourself slightly at your own joke, but sadly it seemed to go straight over Jisung’s head. You shook it off realising he probably had no idea what an exorcism was and moved on.

“Right, well where in Biology are you least confident?”

Jisung groaned. “All of it! Especially since you say that half of it isn’t even true. What do I do then? Do I write about what you say or do I write about what’s in the book?”

“Well, I would write about what’s in the book I guess. After all, that’s what you’re being taught.” You answered.

“Can we please take a break?” He pleaded, bringing out his puppy dog eyes.

“We’ve barely started-” You began to protest but he cut you off.

“Then let’s learn but why don’t you ask me questions? What do you want to know about how I live?” He swiftly changed the topic but you completely fell for it, invested in the secrecy around who he was, even if you hadn’t said so.

You shrugged, playing it off. “Okay then. I guess, what happens if we don’t get back to Earth before you take your test? What happens to me then?”

“I’ll keep you hidden until we do.” Jisung replied as if it was that simple.

“So you’re not going to turn me in? Allow them to perform experiments on me, figure out how I work so they can update their textbooks?” You joked. And even though you were joking there was a part of you, a rather large part of you, that was terrified that that might actually happen.

Jisung just stared at you in complete confusion.

“No.” He answered slowly. “Why on earth would I do that? And why do you think we would perform experiments on you? We’re aliens not barbarians.”

You blinked a few times, confused at yourself for your reasoning.

“I- I don’t know, I just assumed that’s what aliens would do if they captured a human.”

“Okay.” Jisung pointed a finger at you, as if you were under some kind of inspection. “I haven’t abducted or captured you, just... borrowed for a short period of time. And second of all, have you ever thought that, maybe the reason you think aliens would experiment on humans is because that’s what humans would do if they discovered we exist?”

The normally shy alien raised an eyebrow at you challengingly, his eyes never left your face and you had to force yourself to look away under his intense gaze. You felt guilty at what you said as he continued to talk.

“We know that’s what you would do. And that’s why we keep ourselves so hidden. And why we don’t... borrow... humans.”

“So, why did you ‘borrow’ me?” You asked him, adding some air quotes around the word “borrow” as you did.

“I was desperate. You really don’t want to fail classes here, it decides what job you have after you graduate and I am not going to be stuck in something I hate. And, I guess I trust you now that you’re not going to say anything about me.”

You smiled to yourself slightly, looking down at your hands at his words. For some unknown reason you found it rather difficult to meet his eyes at this moment. A warm feeling spread throughout your chest as you looked back at him.

“Understood, my presence here can never be discovered from either side. So what about Area 51?” 

Jisung groaned at that, falling backwards on the bed as he did. 

“What?” You whined. “Stop doing that, you said you’d answer my questions!”

“Area 51? Really” Jisung complained. “Do you think I’d be going through all this trouble to hide you and make sure you keep our existence a secret if you had this base filled with aliens back on Earth? It’s just humans being bored, dramatic and wanting to believe there’s something more to this world than what they were told.”

“But there is.” You said softly, smiling down at him as that warm feeling spread through your chest again. He looked over at you. “There’s you.”

A shy smile broke out across his face at your words. And if you didn’t know better, you could have sworn you saw him blush.

iii. quarantine deja vu

Jisung had been right when he said that time worked differently here. You had no idea how much time had passed, you couldn’t even begin to guess really. But one thing you knew for certain, was that warm fuzzy feeling that you got whenever you were around him was not going away. In fact it was getting worse.

You weren’t sure what it was about him, but somehow almost everything he did made your stomach flip. But no matter what, you knew it wasn’t love. There was no way that you had fallen for an alien.

No matter how many textbooks told you otherwise...

But none of that mattered. You would be leaving soon apparently. Jisung’s exam was coming up and they would be close enough to Earth to drop you back home the night before.

And you would never see him again.

“Y/n?” Jisung’s voice cut through your thoughts. “Are you okay?”

Jisung had been looking out for you a lot recently, and part of it was because he felt guilty about bringing you here to help him. He knew he had turned your whole world upside down and you hadn’t ever faltered at helping him.

Jisung had always been shy. It was part of the reason he struggled so much in school. It takes him ages to open up and trust new people, but somehow you had just appeared and walked through all of those nerves without trying. There was something about you that made Jisung be his complete open and honest self. And that scared him slightly. No one had ever had that effect on him. 

And on top of that, you were human. He couldn’t afford to get this attached to you. Not when he had to send you home.

But then you looked at him, with that smile on your face that Jisung was sure made his hair turn colour and exposed him and he knew.

God he was dreading the day he had to let you go.

“Yes, of course, sorry. Your exams are nearly here, how are you feeling?”

“I think I’m okay!” Jisung grinned at you, something he’d noticed himself doing more and more these days. “Without your help I really would have failed.”

“What would happen if you failed the exam? I mean, it must be pretty bad for you to have gone so far as to bring me here to teach you.” You mused, your hand reaching up to the paper plane necklace that hung around your neck. You fiddled with the pendant, dragging it up and down the chain.

Jisung watched your movements. He’d noticed that chain from the moment you arrived. It must have been important to you if you’d slept in it, which he realised when you noticed it was missing and almost cried. He couldn’t have snuck you onto the ship in your human clothes, so he found something else for you. Luckily, since then you’d found a way for you to wear outfits that weren’t a grey jumpsuit so you were happy with that. But finding your necklace was the most important thing to you.

“If I’d failed the exam I would have been kept back a year.” Jisung said, and you nodded at that.

“That doesn’t seem like the end of the world.” You said. “I’m just wondering why it was so desperate that you needed to bring me here to help. Would your parents have gotten mad or something?”

“I don’t really know.” Jisung replied. “Our system doesn’t work that way. Parents have a very little impact on and relationship with their children. They are with them when they’re babies but after that we all just go through school.”

You were silent, not sure how to respond. You couldn’t imagine having your teachers as parental figures for your entire life.

“That sounds lonely...” You murmured, feeling sorry for the alien boy in front of you.

“It’s not when it’s the only thing you’ve ever known though.” Jisung shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s like to live in a home with parents doing whatever it is that they do for you. That seems weird to me. Instead we go through each year and when we pass the exam we move onto the next. That way, everyone is at the same level and once you finish school you get assigned a position based on your result. The faster you go through school and the better grades you get, the better position you have.”

You began to understand. “So that’s why you said it would affect your job.” You realised and Jisung nodded, smiling as he saw you grasp the concept.

“Yep. If I get held back a year, it basically rules out a bunch of good jobs and I don’t want that to happen. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a job you hate for the rest of your life. Also each level has a higher pay so... yeah I really didn’t want to be held back.”

You lay backwards, your back resting on the hard floor, looking up at the ceiling. You wondered how many stars were out there, and how many more civilisations there were.

“What’s that around your neck?” Jisung’s voice cut through your daydream.

You hummed at him while sitting up.

“On your necklace. What is it?”

Your hand instinctively came up to grab at the silver pendant. “It’s a paper plane.” You answered.

Jisung shook his head at you, signalling that he had no idea what you were on about. Your jaw dropped slightly.

“Origami!”

“Origami?” He repeated, his face a picture of confusion.

“It’s called origami.” You explained. “It’s where you take a piece of paper and fold it to make different shapes.”

Jisung tilted his head, looking intensely at your necklace. “And people can do that?”

“I can teach you.” You offered, and he nodded at you.

You stood up, walking over to the desk he was sitting at. You rummaged through some of the papers until you found a blank sheet.

“Okay, so the first thing is to fold in lengthways...” You gave him the instructions, demonstrating as you did, so that he could watch what you were doing. “And then bring in these corners... flip the paper over and fold again...”

Jisung was watching you intently. His eyes never left your hands until you held up the newly made paper plane. His eyes widened at the finished product reaching up to grab it to look it over, but he stopped before he reached it, looking up at you as if for permission. You nodded eagerly, holding it out to him to encourage him to take it.

The paper plane rested in his big hands and he turned it over multiple times, trying to make sense of what you had created. He looked at it as if you had created it out of thin air using magic.

“Throw it.” You instructed.

His head shot around, his face a picture of confusion and slight offence.

“Not out. Don’t throw it out, just throw it in the air. Use the tip as a guide and throw it in a straight line.”

Jisung looked at you questionably, but still complied. He lifted the plane up and gently threw it. The paper plane soared, travelling to the other side of the room. his jaw dropped and he spun around to look back at you with a huge smile on his face. You grinned back at him, unable to stop the surge of happiness you felt every time you saw that gummy smile appear.

“It’s streamlined. The sharp point and triangular shape allow it to easily cut through the air.” You explained, walking over to pick it back up.

Jisung looked at you in admiration and awe. He couldn’t believe that he’d got so lucky as to get to know you. You brought so much light into his life that he had no idea that he had been missing.

“Streamlined...” He repeated the unfamiliar word to himself quietly, a habit he had gotten into recently. 

In between your study sessions you and Jisung had been talking about alien and human life, where they overlapped and where they differed. Such as, how you had after-school clubs and Jisung was horrified at the idea of voluntarily staying in the school longer than you had to every week. In his words it was ‘torture disguised as a fun activity’.

He had a tendency to be a tad dramatic sometimes.

Slang had become Jisung’s favourite thing. The fact that humans had become so lazy that they didn’t even say full words anymore was hilarious to him. His current favourite word to say was lol, but he had been enjoying the use of sarcasm and was developing a big habit of saying ‘same’ anytime something goes remotely wrong.

He also had a habit of singing to himself. You’d noticed it during an intense study session early on, you had been falling asleep with a textbook over your face to block out the light when you heard him mumbling. You didn’t move, just listening to his voice, shocked at how beautiful it was. He had a deep voice with a soft tone that put you at ease anytime you heard it. Jisung was far too shy to actively sing in front of you so you had to settle for listening in when he sang to himself.

If only you had your phone you would have taken a voice recording of it. God, you wanted some piece of him to take back to Earth with you. You hated the idea that you’d have to just pretend like this whole experience never happened, like Jisung never existed. The thought made your stomach tighten.

“Do you ever wonder where aliens and humans come from?” Your thoughts were interrupted by Jisung’s question.

Honestly, you had, multiple times. But no matter how many textbooks you read, or how long you thought about it, you couldn’t seem to figure it out. All of their books seemed to say different things.

“Yeah, it’s confusing. There’s something so similar about us yet so different.” You mused, watching Jisung continually turn the paper plane over in his hands again. It was something he’d started doing often recently. He’d have something to hold onto that he could flip between his fingers, as if he had too much energy that he always needed to be doing something.

In reality, Jisung just needed something else to look at otherwise he would spend all his time staring at you.

“Maybe we’re the same. Not similar like that book said, but actually the same.” Jisung grinned, finally allowing himself to meet your eyes, and feeling that grin grow the second he did. “Maybe we’re like two descendants of the same species that have evolved in different ways.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense, you know.” You laughed, sitting yourself down in the chair that Jisung had abandoned to play with the paper plane. “Our anatomy is identical and it’s only certain things that put us apart from each other.”

“Like hair colour and blushing.” Pride was in Jisung’s voice, happy that he was bringing in his Biology studies without being prompted. “But there’s one really big one as well.”

“Oh yeah?” You raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yep. You can’t survive in space. We can. Our lungs can adjust to different atmospheres so we can live anywhere in the universe.” Your jaw dropped at his words.

“Really? How have you never told me this? That’s so cool!” You exclaimed excitedly. You loved when Jisung spoke about alien life, it was fascinating.

Jisung shrugged, chuckling at your reaction. “Never came up I guess. We have a setting in each room of what atmosphere we’d like to breathe in. This one is set to Earth so that you can breathe.”

You looked around for what Jisung was talking about. You weren’t too sure what exactly you were looking for but this had intrigued you.

“It’s over here.” Jisung answered the question that you hadn’t been able to ask yet, gesturing to a small white panel that hung on the wall next to the door.

You wandered over to it, analysing the object that could quite possibly kill you if it malfunctioned. Then you realised that you probably didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole of how easily you could die here and that your life was literally in Jisung’s hands, so you closed that door up and left the panel alone.

As you turned to face Jisung, you saw him already looking at you. There was a soft smile on his face, such gentleness in his gaze that you felt the urge to curl up in his arms and hug him until time ran out. You had nothing to be scared of when Jisung was around.

Jisung would never hurt you.

iv. it wasn’t fair

The paper plane necklace that usually hung heavily around your neck was on his desk, hidden inside his Biology folder. You wanted Jisung to have something to remember you by.

The unspoken sadness in the room was evident. Jisung’s exam was in two days and you were hovering over Earth at that very moment, meaning... you had run out of time. You had to go home. And you had to say goodbye.

Jisung had been especially quiet. That had been your first clue that something was wrong. He hadn’t come bounding into your room like an excited puppy, instead he’d opened the door slowly, unable to meet your eyes and you felt your stomach drop at the sight of him.

“We’re over Earth, but it’s our only day here because we’re moving fast so we have to get you home tonight.” His voice was wavering as he spoke, and he tried to swallow the lump in his throat but it was too difficult. It was taking everything in Jisung not to break down and cry and beg for you to stay, but that wasn’t fair and he knew it.

In fact, as far as Jisung was aware, none of this was fair.

It wasn’t fair that he’d had to get your help. It wasn’t fair that you had agreed. It wasn’t fair that you had become possibly the closest friend he’d ever had in his entire life. It wasn’t fair that he’d fallen for you. It wasn’t fair that he had to send you home. It wasn’t fair that he had no idea how he was going to continue his life without you in it. It wasn’t fair.

Maybe in another universe, there was somewhere that the two of you could have been together. And Jisung would have spent his life searching for that place if he could. But he couldn’t.

And it wasn’t fair.

You walked up to him, slowly lifting his face to look at you in the eyes and smiled sadly. You could feel the tears forming so you quickly hugged him. You wound your arms around his waist as he grabbed you pulling you closer before wrapping his around you as well. His cheek was pressed against the top of your head, with one hand stroking your hair and the other around your shoulders. You breathed in the scent of him, trying to memorise everything that you could.

This was the first time you’d ever hugged Jisung. All this time together and yet, this was your first hug.

Jisung couldn’t believe he’d never done this. You fit so perfectly in his arms it was as if he had been built for this purpose. He didn’t want to let you go. Why did your first hug have to be your last?

It wasn’t fair.

Jisung knew that he hated fair. He would scream and curse out fairness for the rest of his days if he had to. Fair took you away from him. Nothing about this is fair.

“Grant me one last favour? Can you... shut your eyes?” Jisung whispered, hoping that you couldn’t feel his tears falling onto your head as they made their way down his cheeks.

You nodded. You put your head fully into Jisung’s shoulder and cried, finally allowing the emotions to overcome you.

Then you closed your eyes.

v. sometimes things break

It had been two weeks. Well, by human time at least. You had no idea how much time had passed for Jisung. But for you, it had been two weeks since you had left Jisung.

That night you had hugged him goodbye, you had closed your eyes and when you opened them, it was to the sound of your alarm clock waking you up for school. God, you really didn’t want to go to school that day.

But you had to. You’d gotten up, gone to school, done your work, come home and lived your life as you were supposed to. But it all felt so much more empty now. Now you knew that there was so much more out there, everything felt so incomplete. And without Jisung, it was all so boring.

Your friends didn’t seem to understand you like you remembered, and none of them got you the way Jisung did. You didn’t feel as relaxed around them as you did around him, you didn’t feel as at home.

How did you feel more at home when you were in space?

Of course you knew all of this was because you loved him. That tall alien boy with the gummy smile had a hold on your heart you couldn’t break. And you were grieving him in silence as nobody else even knew he existed.

You took a sip of the glass of water you were holding. Sleep had gotten more difficult each night you had been back to the point where you had almost given up now. You had one hand resting on the sink as the other held the glass, hoping that the water would be able to settle you slightly.

You sighed, absentmindedly reaching up to your empty neck where the silver paper plane once sat.

You wondered if Jisung had found it yet. Or if he maybe wore it. And you wondered if he was thinking about you the same way you were thinking about him.

You sighed again, before refilling your now empty glass and taking it back to your room with you. You walked through your house, your feet making soft noises on the carpeted hallways as you went and you quietly shut your door behind you, knowing that your parents had long gone to sleep.

You moved towards your bedside table, going to place the glass down next to your bed. As you walked closer, you stopped to take another sip, letting out another huge sigh. It felt as though that was all you did these days.

The glass was placed on the coaster on top of your oak bedside table. Without the coaster your mum would have lost her mind at there being a water ring on the wood. You turned around, a slight flash catching your eye as you did.

That’s weird. As far as you were aware there wasn’t anything reflective on your bedside table. You turned back slowly, approaching the surface and looking down at it. You moved your glass off for a better look and gasped at what was lying there.

The glass had slipped out of your hand in shock, hitting the floor and splashing the water everywhere. But you didn’t care. You reached forward, picking up the object that you thought you would never see again.

And there, hanging from your fingers, was your silver paper plane necklace. The one you had left with Jisung before you’d left him.

You whirled around, looking for some sign of him. There was no other way that this could have come back to you. But you could see him. Your room was completely empty.

Next to your bedside table were your curtains. You rushed towards them, throwing them open and staring out into the garden, desperately looking for some sign of him between the trees and your mother’s prized rose bushes.

Where was he? He had to be here...

That was when you saw something. A flash of a shadow of something. You couldn’t tell if it was him, or a bird, or a fox, or just your eyes playing tricks on you but you didn’t care. You had to find out. 

You ran. You ran out of your bedroom, flying down the stairs and sprinting through the kitchen until you reached the back door. You grabbed the handle, but it wouldn’t turn. Your father must have locked it for the night.

Luckily, the keys were hung up next to it. So you grabbed them, fumbling to find the right one before unlocking the door and throwing yourself outside to try to find him.

You ran out into the garden, the grass soft under your bare feet.

“Oh come on.” You pleaded to yourself. “Please please please be here.”

You kept turning, your hair flicking around you as you tried to spot him. The word ‘please’ kept leaving your lips, a quiet prayer that you would get to see him again.

You ran further, going outside of the back gate and onto the fields of the local park. Then your feet came to a sudden stop.

Normally, when you came out here, you would see people walking their dogs, or sunbathing, or having a picnic with their loved ones, but none of those sights were better than seeing Jisung standing in front of you.

“You’re here.” You whispered, the words escaping you in disbelief.

Nothing could have stopped you. You ran forwards, and once you got close enough you grabbed onto him, holding him in one of the tightest hugs of your life.

Jisung had reacted instantly, his arms wrapping around your waist as soon as you were within distance. He dropped his head, burying it as close to your neck as he could get. He held onto you as if you two were the last people on the Earth. It was like the rest of the world faded away.

You couldn’t believe it. He had some back to you.

You tried to pull back, to see his face and ask him why he was here, but Jisung wouldn’t let go of you. And that was when you heard him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry y/n. I’m so so sorry.” 

Jisung was crying. He couldn’t seem to stop apologising, the same words leaving his mouth over and over again. With each time he spoke you felt your nerves rising.

“Jisung, what’s wrong?” You asked fearfully, not knowing what could have happened to get him so upset.

Out of nowhere, a huge harsh light shone down on the two of you. It took a second for your eyes to adjust again, and when they did you finally took the time to pull yourself properly out of Jisung’s arms.

He didn’t want to let you go, still trying to grip onto you, he didn’t want to face you, he couldn’t. But you got away, stepping backwards slightly and looking at him, the constant apologies finally starting to make sense.

He looked up, meeting your eyes for the first time since he had arrived again, and the sight nearly broke him all over again.

“What have you done?” The words fell out of your mouth, each one laced with hurt, and that was all it took.

The tears streamed uncontrollably down Jisung’s face, and he saw the hurt in your face morph into the realisation that he never wanted you to have.

Jisung had betrayed you.

“Jisung?” You said in disbelief as you finally understood. “No... Jisung.”

You felt yourself beginning to lift off the ground, the sensation sending you into panic. You had no control, and you couldn’t get back down. You began to speed up, rising upwards and towards a large dark shape that you could just make out above you. 

You twisted in mid air, looking out for Jisung again. And when you saw him, he had his head down, his hands covering his eyes and you could see his body shaking as he cried. Then someone came out of the darkness. All you could tell was that they were older by quite a bit.

The last thing you saw was them putting a hand on Jisung’s shoulder and walking him into the centre of the light.

vi. i didn’t sign up for this

Jisung walked down the corridor, trapped in between two guards who stalked down either side of him. Since he’d been caught he wasn’t allowed anywhere unaccompanied. He had been living in hell since being discovered and punished. Every day had been awful, and since you had been taken, his life had dissolved into hell.

He didn’t understand why they had to take you, all of this had been his fault but they hadn’t understood that. Or if they had, they hadn’t listened. But no one had wanted to hear his side of the story. No one had been willing to listen to him talk about you, and convince them that you should be left out of what was going to happen.

But they had wanted you as well as him. And they had made him go to get you.

That might have been the worst part. Seeing you look at him with so much hurt, it was as if Jisung could see your heart breaking and it tore him to pieces. He didn’t know what part of him was left to break because having to hurt you had shattered him into so many pieces he didn’t think he could ever put himself back together again.

Then he had reached it, the cell you were being held in. Alien ships don’t have “prisons” exactly, but there is a glass solitary confinement unit, and that was where you were being held.

And there you were, sitting against the wall facing your bed, the glass wall Jisung was standing across from you so that he was looking at your side profile. Your food tray sat half touched, as if you had picked at what you could and Jisung could see the dried tear marks down your cheeks.

And another part of him broke.

“Y/n?” Jisung approached the bars, sinking to his knees to be level with you and lifting a hand to place it on the glass. “Y/n please... Please just look at me.” His voice was breaking, but he could help it. You hadn’t looked at him since that night where he betrayed you.

And Jisung didn’t blame you. He had lured you outside for his people to kidnap you, Jisung wouldn’t blame you if you never looked at him again. It was what he deserved.

“Y/n... I just- I didn’t- I...” Jisung didn’t know how to put into words what had happened after he took his exam, and how quickly everything had fallen apart. 

Instead he just leant his head against the glass, allowing the tears to fall down his cheeks. It felt as though all he did was cry nowadays, but there was nothing else for him to do. It was hopeless. All he could do was cry and beg for your forgiveness. 

“I’m so sorry.” He whispered, closing his eyes and feeling the cool glass underneath his forehead as he imagined that if glass didn’t exist, he could wrap you up in his arms and apologise that way. But he had to settle for a glass wall and broken words filled with tears.

And you sat there, still staring down at the floor, crying silently over the boy you lost and found again, and how he broke your heart.

vii. please don’t

A loud beep woke you up, startling you into a sitting position. If you thought you had no sense of time when you were last on this ship, you had a whole new definition of that now. At least with Jisung there was some element of time passing, with his exam getting closer. But here, you didn’t know what was morning and what was night. You didn’t know whether you’d been here for days, or weeks. You were completely blind to what was going on in the world around you.

With the harsh beeping noise, two guards burst into your cell. They grabbed you under one arm each and hauled you to your feet, quickly snapping on some kind of handcuffs as they did. You scrambled to get your footing, wanting to walk to wherever they were going to take you rather than be dragged.

Part of you was expecting to see Jisung with them. Whether he would be trying to stop them or walking silently next to them... well you’d rather not find out.

You were walked through the corridors, and as you went you couldn’t help but look at the surroundings. When they’d brought you here, you had been crying so much you couldn’t even see what was around you, not until you were put into your cell. The walls were the same grey as the previous room was, but, of course you’ll never know if that’s their actual colour because, if what Jisung told you was correct, you couldn’t see their colour spectrum. Flashes of light passed every few seconds, and after a while it was so intense that you were forced to look away.

Instead of watching the walls, or looking around for Jisung, you watched the floor. Seeing your hands held together by the strange glass-like material. There wasn’t a chain connecting them, instead they seemed to be held together like magnets, making it impossible for you to move your hands away from each other.

You thought about Jisung a lot. In fact, Jisung was practically all you thought about these days. But every time you thought about him, that hurt feeling spreads throughout your chest and takes up your being.

It was impossible to think of Jisung without feeling your heart break all over again.

You couldn’t understand why he had done it. Why had he sold you out? Did he get something in return for it? Maybe he’d been found and had no other choice? Maybe they had threatened his future? Maybe they’d known about you first then discovered about Jisung?

All these questions and many more had been circling around your head for ages. But the thing that really hurt you, was that Jisung had been the bait. He must have known what was going to happen to you, because he was apologising over and over again when you found him. Someone only apologises when they know they’ve done wrong.

No matter what you were threatened with, you would never have tricked Jisung the way he tricked you.

And now, you had no idea what was going to happen to you. You didn’t know if they were going to let you go, or if they were going to force you to stay with the alien community, or if you were going back to Earth, or if you were just some pawn in Jisung’s punishment.

There were so many unanswered questions you felt as though your head was about to explode.

When going over all of this, you hadn’t noticed how far you’d been taken. You only came back to reality when you were pulled to a stop. You were standing in front of these huge doors, with massive bolts going across them.

The bolts began to unlock and you were taken through. This was when your heart started to pound and the fear began to kick in. You really had no idea what was going to happen to you.

It was quite a large room, and looked a bit like a theatre, only it was all grey and incredibly foreboding. The second those doors opened goosebumps grew all the way down your arms. You were taken towards what looked like just beyond the back half of the room and placed on a small circular platform facing the front which held a semi circle of raised seating, in which were countless aliens. Of course, they looked just like humans, if not for their ever changing hair colour.

It slightly resembled an amphitheatre staging set up. Except it felt as though you were on trial more than putting on a show.

At the middle, and halfway up the seating, there was a panel of five aliens who you assumed would be the ones judging you as everyone else was sitting in the “audience”.

“We are the governing body of this community and we are brought here today to discuss the crimes committed against us by y/n l/n. Y/n, you stand here on trial for treason. We will discuss the evidence to the court then we will decide on a suitable punishment for your crime.”

The alien in the middle said all of this, and the more he spoke the more panicked you began to get. What was the point in giving you a trial when they clearly had already decided on your guilt?

“Here is the first piece of evidence of y/n’s presence on this ship.” The alien in the middle, who you now assumed to be the head of all of this, stood up. And there, dangling from his fingers, was your paper plane necklace. “This is a human piece of jewellery, found around the neck of one of our own. The alien who took her here, and hid her. Park Jisung.”

Hushed murmurs echoed around the room and heads turned in sync, all of them looking for Jisung. It was at this moment that the doors opened again, and Jisung was brought in. He wasn’t wearing the same constraints that you were, but he was held by two guards, one on each arm and was standing at the corner of the room, near the only door.

The alien continued.

“Jisung hid y/n here, unknown to all of us for quite some time and also managed to sneak her out. And if it weren’t for this necklace and Jisung’s exam, we may never have known about this crime.”

The alien to his left passed some papers to him and the head flipped through them.

“Question 4 section C of Jisung’s human biology exam. Describe one biological difference between aliens and humans. And Jisung answered saying ‘A main difference is blushing. This is where blood rushes to the human’s cheeks when struck by certain emotions, or after heavy exercise. However, it is important to note that not all humans blush depending on the pigmentation of the skin.’ We do not teach this here. It is not in any text book or database and there is no way for Jisung to have come across this information without human help.”

At this, he threw the papers back down on the desk with a loud smack. You flinched at the sound, your entire body alight with nerves. Your eyes flickered back to Jisung and you found him already looking at you.

This was the first time you had looked at Jisung since being brought back here, and the sight of your eyes nearly made his knees go out from under him. He was already terrified, worried to death about what may happen to you. He was exhausted from being so constantly scared for you. But you had to know that he was here for you and he would fight for you no matter what happened or what that meant for him.

“On top of this-” The head’s voice cut through the room like a chainsaw, destroying everything in its path. “Aliens can’t blush. Yet, Jisung somehow seems to have this ability. And his hair, it hasn’t changed colour in a long while.”

Shocked gasps rippled around the room, and your jaw dropped at that revelation. You thought you had seen it but as far as you were aware, it couldn’t have been possible.

Yells of ‘How is that possible?’ and ‘I won’t believe it until I see it!’ were heard everywhere, each shout bouncing off the walls. The head lifted up his hand for silence, and it fell immediately. He then gestured to the back wall and something began to play.

You turned around to see what it was and saw a video there, and it seemed to be of Jisung. It looked like he was on trial just like you are, the cuffs were around his wrists and people were shouting all around him. It looked like he went through hell.

Then you heard what the video said.

“She has done something to one of our own, and as a result must be punished.” You recognised the head alien’s voice.

Jisung’s head shot up at this, his eyes wide and pleading.

“No! You can’t, just leave her out of this, it was my fault. I brought her here, and I’ve changed because of it, just punish me, not her. Leave her out of this.” 

“You, Jisung, will go back down with us to bring her back. If she cares for you as much as you seem to for her, then seeing you will be an easy way to bring her out. Then we will put her on trial ourselves.”

You watched as Jisung’s eyes filled with tears on the video and he started struggling, pleading with them not to do this.

“Don’t take her, please! Do whatever you want, whatever you need to do to me, not her! You can break my soul, take my life away, beat me, hurt me, kill me even! But for the love of god, please don’t touch her.” He begged, the tears falling down his face at this point.

The video faded to black, leaving the arguments to start all over again at the evidence.

You couldn’t believe it though, all this time, they had made it seem like Jisung had betrayed you, yet he had tried as hard as he could to protect you. You turned around, searching for him, wanting to find some way to communicate to him that you trusted him and you were sorry for ever doubting him.

His eyes found yours easily, as if they were the only thing he was searching for. Even with tears clouding your vision, you could still see him as clear as day. He just sent you a sad smile, as if he was apologising, but you didn’t want him to do that.

“Y/n has infected one of our own!” The head’s voice cut through your moment once again, causing your head to snap back towards him. “She is nothing more than a parasite. Y/n L/n has turned Jisung human! And as a result she must be charged with treason. And since she is in our land, she will face the same punishment one of us would.”

The room erupted into shouts, and it seemed as though half the room agreed with it but the other half didn’t.

Jisung couldn’t believe what he just heard. At those words he felt as though everything went underwater. Treason... That was a horrible punishment even if you were an alien, but for a human like you... There was no way you would survive it.

“Take her to the ejection capsule!”

The guards moved on that final instruction from the head, grabbing you again and they started to drag you away. Even though you had been sentenced, you still had no idea what was about to happen to you, and you were terrified.

When Jisung saw them moving you, his entire body burst into action. He couldn’t let them do this. Not to the person he loved. He began to struggle, trying to break free of the guards holding him captive.

“No!” He screamed. “Y/n! No!”

But no matter how hard he found against them he couldn’t overpower them. And he was helpless as he got dragged down the ship after you. He kicked and screamed the entire way, trying to reach out for you, but to no avail. He saw you trying to do the same thing, attempting to wrestle out of their grip but it wasn’t working

They reached the ejection capsule slower than due to Jisung struggling, but once they got there, more guards helped to hold him down and before he knew it, he was pinned up against a wall, unable to do anything but watch as you faced your fate.

You were brought up to a much smaller glass door that shot open to reveal a space big enough for one person. You knew now, was that you were on the edge of the ship, and the name “ejection capsule” was starting to make a lot more sense.

They were going to send you out into space.

Jisung was still screaming for you, trying to break free to grab you, but you could see the number of people holding him back and you knew, there was no way he was going to be able to save you from this.

This was it. You were going to die. You couldn’t survive in space.

The head governor approached Jisung and grabbed his face to force it towards you.

“You will watch this.” He growled, his grip tight as iron. He held Jisung’s head towards you, and gave a nod to one of the guards.

Jisung cried out for you again, and you looked back at him.

“It’s okay.” You whispered, praying that he would understand.

Inside your stomach was turning at a million miles an hour and adrenaline was pumping through your body and you were trying with everything you had not to cry, but you couldn’t let Jisung feel guilty about this. He had tried so hard to keep you safe and it wasn’t his fault.

The guard turned back to the capsule, and pulled the level next to it. The door behind you opened and you shot out into the atmosphere.

The guards holding Jisung released him as he screamed and sank to the floor. He was on his hands and knees, crying and screaming out for you as you drifted further away from him into space.

Being weightless was a strange feeling, it was like floating on top of the water, but effortlessly. You had the urge to move your hand around, when the realisation hit you like a truck.

You were alive. And as well as that, you were breathing. You were breathing in space. But that isn’t possible, you couldn’t understand it. All you knew is that somehow, you were floating untethered in space and you were alive.

You managed to turn back to face the ship, and that’s when they saw you.

They all stared at you, none of them able to move from shock.

Jisung was the first one to react, and it gave him a chance. He ran to the door, and pulled on the level to open the glass doors. From there he could just about reach you.

Your hand drifted out, tiredness pulling at you as you tried to reach him too. God you were exhausted.

“Come on y/n, reach me.” Jisung pleaded, stretching out further. 

Eventually, he grabbed onto the ship tightly with one hand and jumped out of it to reach you. This gave him the final distance he needed to grab your hand and pull you in.

You floated towards him and he held onto your waist tight as you got back into the ship and the door closed behind you, causing gravity to take hold on you once again.

You collapsed in Jisung’s arms, and he fell to his knees holding you. Your vision went black as the world around you faded away.

Jisung frantically checked you over, but there was nothing to show you were in any distress. Even your pulse seemed strong. You were passed out in his lap, but there were a lot of unanswered questions.

Sadly, there was no time to discuss them as the guards wasted no time in grabbing you both again.

But the truth hung over everyone’s heads that day.

Not only was Jisung not alien anymore, you weren’t human.

viii. what are we?

You felt as if you were in a dream, completely dazed as you finally came to. Your memory was fuzzy, the details were a bit muddled and you couldn’t quite remember what had actually happened or what you had dreamt.

“Y/n?” You heard a muffled voice and as you struggled to force your eyes open, you saw a blurry figure above you.

Were you dead? Was this it?

“Y/n!” The voice was clearer now, and you recognised it as Jisung’s.

You tried to say something back but all that came out of you was a pained groan. You brought your arms behind you, in an attempt to pull yourself into a sitting position, but your whole body ached and they gave out immediately.

You would have smacked your head on the floor if Jisung hadn’t noticed what was happening and caught it last minute. He got his arms underneath you and pulled you up, resting you against a wall as he went to get you water.

Jisung handed you the cup, and you took a few gulps, feeling your strength come back to you as you did.

“Better?” He asked, his brow furrowing with worry and you nodded in response.

“What happened?” You croaked out, hoping that he may have some answers.

He let out a sigh, sliding down on the wall next to you, his feet planted on the floor and his knees up, close enough that your legs were touching.

“How much do you remember?” He asked quietly, and you thought for a second.

“I remember the trial, then getting pushed into this small room when...” You looked up at him with wide eyes as the memory came rushing back to you. “They pushed me out into space! I was left out there and I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t. How is that possible?”

“The same way it’s possible that I can blush and my hair doesn’t change colour anymore. We’ve changed. Somehow I’m not just an alien anymore and you’re not human.”

You weren’t sure how to react to what Jisung said.

“What does that mean ‘not human’?” You asked, but Jisung just shrugged sadly.

“I don’t know.” He turned to face you, his eyes watering. “I’m so sorry y/n. This is all my fault, if I had just let you be then none of this would have happened.”

“Hey...” You whispered comfortingly, bringing a hand up to cup the side of his face. “You have nothing to apologise for, you couldn’t have known that any of this was going to happen. This isn’t your fault, it’s theirs. I saw how you tried to protect me.”

“But I couldn’t.” He choked out, a tear tracing its way down his cheek and you shook your head.

“But you tried. That’s what mattered. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you out, I thought- well I don’t know what I thought. But I’m sorry that I blamed you.”

Jisung leaned his head forward at your apology, resting his forehead on yours. He let his eyes flutter shut, breathing out a sigh of relief. His entire world was crashing down around him and the only thing that he cared about was that you were alive. 

“I guess you were right all along. They are going to abduct us for experiments.” He joked dejectedly, and you let out a sad smile.

“I’m always right, you should know that by now.” You teased. You leaned back on the wall, Jisung watching your movements with a heavy heart. “Is there anything we can do?” You asked, and he could hear the fear in your voice no matter how much you tried to hide it.

But he shook his head. “It’s hopeless. They’ve made up their minds and even if we broke out of here, there’s nowhere to go, we’d end up wandering the stars for eternity.”

“What do they think we are?” 

“They told me some things while you were unconscious. I don’t know why exactly but I guess it was about time we got some answers.” Jisung answered you, explaining as much as he could remember from the conversation. “Apparently, aliens and humans are like two branches of the same species. For example, like how doves and penguins are both birds even though they look different and work in different ways. We share almost exactly the same make up, but it’s our brain that’s different. Now it’s been so many generations that aliens don’t associate with humans as they don’t remember how we used to be alike.”

“So you were right in the end. But, why did we both change after spending time together?” You wondered.

“They seem to think that the more aliens learn about humans, the more human they become.” He said.

“That’s why the book was so inaccurate.” You realised, and Jisung nodded. “But, that still doesn’t explain me.”

“That’s where the experiments are going to come in...” He revealed, his voice trailing off at the end.

You looked up at the ceiling, the realisation of what your life is going to become, finally dawning on you.

“This is horrible.” You whispered. “They’re going to experiment until they figure out what parts of us are human and what are alien.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “And, I know it sounds completely insane but, if I was going to be stuck in a cell for the rest of my life, I’m happy it’s you.”

“Me too.” You agreed, smiling at Jisung’s words. “You’re the only person I want by my side here.”

Jisung tilted his head to the side, watching you as you closed your eyes and took a deep breath.

“I love you y/n.”

His confession made you snap your head towards him, checking to see if you heard correctly. But he was calm. For once in his life, Jisung wasn’t scared, he wasn’t shy, he wasn’t overthinking every possible outcome, he just loved you. And if he was going to die tomorrow, he wanted you to know that.

You two were sitting so close now that your noses were almost touching. Jisung was done being scared, he brought his hand up to the side of your face, stroking your cheek with his thumb as he leant in for a tender kiss.

Finally, after all this time, all the waiting, the longing, the pining, the secret whispers, the hidden feeling, you finally kissed. The rest of the world faded away as he kissed you. It was as if nothing could touch you and for a second there it felt as though time actually stopped.

“I love you too Jisung.” You whispered to him, so quiet that not even the stars heard your confession.

Jisung wasn’t sure if he believed in soulmates but he definitely did now. There was no denying it. You were made for him and him for you. 

In that moment you both knew that no matter what happens next, you would be okay. Because you had each other.

ix. all the stories are true

“You’ve got three days. Then we begin.”

The words were still ringing in your head, even more so now that you knew you were on the final day. Tomorrow, the experiments would begin. The guards weren’t watching you 24/7 anymore, instead stationed outside in the hallway. They’d dropped off a few books each day, providing a small amount of entertainment, and your new selection had just arrived.

Selection was a generous word considering they gave you three books between the two of you, and Jisung knew them all already. Apparently, they’re recommended reading books during their school years.

‘So what’s this one?” You asked, holding up a large black book with white writing on it.

“That is a full detail of our history. It tells how our planet got destroyed and how we’ve adapted to living in ships and flying through the stars instead of settling.” Jisung explained and you flipped the book over, looking at the cover.

“Sounds interesting, I’d love to know more about your history.” You said. “Though they’re probably doing this to make me as ‘alien’ as possible before they start testing us.”

“Yeah, probably.” Jisung muttered. “Though I doubt they’re even looking at what they’re giving us. They’re probably grabbing from a pile and chucking them in here.”

The two of you both tried cracking small jokes, attempting to lighten or challenge the situation with humour, but the atmosphere was so heavy that it was almost impossible.

You grabbed the next one you saw, and held it up for Jisung. “This one?”

“Biography of our previous head of government. And probably the most boring thing I’ve ever read.” Jisung groaned at the sight of it.

You chuckled, throwing it back down into the small pile that had accumulated over the past three days. You crouched down, grabbing the final one. It was a smaller book, with a dark green leather cover on it and gold writing on the front that was partially rubbed off with age. The title read “The Forgotten Land.” You opened it, the smell of the old book gently surrounding you as the aged pages stared back at you. You handled it with care, knowing that too much force might damage it.

“What’s this?” You asked, gently closing the book and showing it to Jisung.

He looked up, but brushed off the answer with a simple “That’s just an old legend.”

You looked back at the book, your fingers tracing out the delicate lettering on the front when you heard Jisung saying something to himself.

“Wait a second... That’s- Wait a second!”

Before you knew it Jisung was looking over your shoulder, staring down at the book. You held it up, looking at him quizzically.

“Do you want to read it?”

He took your offer, taking the book and flipping through the pages, skim-reading it as he went. He finally stopped on a certain page, his finger tracing under the sentence he was reading before slamming it shut with a triumphant shout.

“Are you okay?” The question slipped out of your lips at Jisung’s erratic behaviour. 

He spun around to look at you, his face alight with excitement. Jisung’s mind was running at a million miles an hour, because if he was right about this, he might have just saved you. And for once, he wouldn’t have failed at protecting you.

“This legend, we used to read it when we were children. They would read it to us in school, and every alien child knows this story. But, I don’t think this is just a story. Because a myth is more than just a tale. It often hides the essence of a true story. This story talks about how our true form is a halfway point between alien and human, and how these will be brought out of us to help us achieve who we are truly meant to be. This isn’t just a legend. It’s the legend we’re currently living.”

You gasped at this, jogging towards him and taking the book from his out-stretched hand. You opened it, reading through as fast as you could. You came to stop on a certain page.

“This says that each of us has a fated soulmate... And only that person brings out the hidden side to us.” You looked up at Jisung, only to find him already looking at you. “Would that mean...” You trailed off, unable to finish your sentence from the way Jisung was looking at you.

It was as if you could see the love he had for you in his eyes. 

“We don’t know how much of the book is true but...” Jisung’s voice faded away as he abandoned the end of his sentence.

Enough was said from the way the two of you were looking at each other, you didn’t need to say it out loud. If this part of you the book was true, you and Jisung had been destined to find each other.

It made sense to him now, how he hadn’t been able to explain why he chose you to help him, and why he’d found himself more able to be himself around you in such a short amount of time than he had with people he’d known his entire life.

Things were adding up for you as well. You understood how it was so easy for you to say yes to staying with him, and how you’d felt so far away from home when you came back to Earth. 

You and Jisung were destined to find each other.

“So what happens now?” You asked tentatively. “I mean, this is incredible but we don’t even know if it is real, and on top of that, there’s no way to find this and we have a day until we’re taken from here.”

“I know.” Jisung said. “But I think we should try to find it.”

Now that got your attention.

“What? Did you not hear what I said? It might not be real. And where would we even start?” Question after question was thrown at him, but still a grin grew on Jisung’s lips.

“I’m not staying here for them to experiment on us. Not a chance. I’ve found the one person who I need in my life, and I’m not letting them choose what happens to us. I would rather get lost in the stars trying to find a better place for us than give up and let them take us.” Jisung had never been so sure of anything. He wouldn’t give up on this. He wouldn’t give up on you.

It wasn’t fair that these were your choices. But Jisung was done with fair, he was done with choosing between options that sucked, he wanted to take back some control, for once he wanted to be able to protect you.

“Jisung...” You breathed. “I’ll follow you anywhere. But how do we get off here? There are guards in the hallways and, I know we can survive in space but I don’t think us floating around is really a stealthy getaway.”

Jisung simply grinned even wider. “I’ve got a plan.”

x. run until we’re lost

“I don’t like this plan.” You muttered, pacing back and forth. “I really don’t like this plan.”

“I know. But it’s the only one we’ve got. Besides, we have nothing to lose.” Jisung shrugged.

If he was being honest, he had very little faith in his flimsy plan as well, but he wasn’t about to tell you that. It would take a miracle for the two of you to get off this ship with your lives, but, hey a miracle brought you into his life so he had to believe in them.

“Ready?” He asked and you nodded, sending up a silent prayer knowing it was now or never.

Jisung nodded back at you, sending you a comforting look before he suddenly collapsed to the floor. You repeatedly whacked your hands against the wall dramatically, screaming for help.

The guards came running, sluggishly stumbling into the cells. You pointed down at Jisung still yelling incoherently.

“What happened?” One of the guards asked.

“I don’t know.” You cried. The tears began to fall easily down your face from how scared you were of the whole situation. “He just collapsed and he’s not waking up and I don’t know what to do!”

“We need to get someone.” The second guard said but the first one shook his head rapidly.

“We were meant to be watching them! How will we explain that we fell asleep!” The first one snapped back, before suddenly looking back at you. “Move aside.”

You did, still hyperventilating and crying as they walked towards Jisung. You waited until they had both walked past you before shoving the smaller guard as hard as you could in the back, sending his stumbling over Jisung’s legs. Without wasting a second you deftly delivered a hard kick to the back of the left knee of the other guard.

He went flying as well, still drowsy from sleep and completely taken by surprise at your attack.

Jisung sprung up at the commotion, not hesitating a second before grabbing you and sprinting for the door. He got you there before turning around and pressing random buttons on the control panel.

“Come on.” You urged and Jisung desperately hit them trying to find the right one. He eventually opened up a new menu, clicking on the blue hexagonal shape just as the guards picked themselves up.

A beep sounded and the doors slammed shut, locking with a resounding click and the two of you looked at each other in amazement, letting out a deep sigh of relief.

“Well, that’s phase one.” Jisung said excitedly. Maybe this plan would actually work. “But we won’t have long before those two gain attention so we need to run.”

You nodded and the two of you took off down the hallways. This whole process was going faster than you thought it would. Jisung had told you that you needed to head to the navigation room to get the maps and then the escape pods. According to him there were smaller ships that you could take and escape in.

You ran down the halls, your heart beating faster than your feet were moving. The adrenaline was coursing through your veins as Jisung led you through the maze of corridors.

“Okay.” He said, skidding to a stop so suddenly that you almost ran into the back of him. “We need to cause a distraction to evacuate the navigation room.”

“Like pulling a fire alarm or something?” You asked.

“Kind of.” Jisung said. “But something that is going to keep them busy for longer... like cutting the lights. The electrical room is right next to it.”

“And we can use the vents to go to the next room.” You couldn’t help but let out a little giggle at your own joke.

“Yes we could!” Jisung grabbed your hand and took off again.

You were taken completely by surprise. Apparently Among Us was more accurate than you thought.

Jisung turned a sharp corner and burst through a door that led you into the electrical room. He pointed out a vent on the floor, telling you that if you went through there it should take you to navigation.

“How do we cut the power?” You wondered, completely overwhelmed by the huge number of wires in front of you.

“I don’t actually know.” Jisung mumbled.

“Maybe just pull the main switch.” You offered, only to be responded to with a confused look. “There. It’s like a giant switch that should shut off power to the whole place.”

“That will draw attention.” Jisung mentioned and you nodded.

“Probably. But so will the guards shouting for help in our cell. At least it may make running through the ship easier as we’d be harder to recognise in the dark.” You proposed.

Jisung went up to the switch, grabbing it with his right hand. “It’s our only option.” And with that he pulled it.

For a second nothing happened. Your heart began to beat faster again, a feeling you had become all to familiar with.

Then, everything went black.

“Wow. That’s darker than I was expecting.” He said. Jisung rubbed his eyes, trying to get them used to the new light enough for him to see you.

Once he saw an outline of your body he reached for your hand, slipping his gently into it. You jumped slightly when he made contact but the feeling of him rubbing his thumb on the back of your interlocked hands provoked a rush of calmness through your chest.

He tugged on your hand slightly. “Let’s go.”

You let Jisung lead you through the room, hearing the vent be pulled open. He climbed in first, offering you a helping hand. The vent was bigger than you were expecting, so big you could stand if you bent over slightly. 

As a second thought, you reached up and pulled it shut after you. Then you followed him down the tunnel. You tried to run as quietly as possible, but the metal clanged underneath your feet and all you could do was pray that it wasn’t heard from anywhere else.

It wasn’t long before Jisung pushed open another vent and you poured out into a small room.

“There’s normally only one or two of us in here, so I’m not surprised it’s empty.” He explained. “Grab as many maps as you can.

You wasted no time, placing multiple pieces of paper on top of each other and folding them over and over again to hold them together. You knew you didn’t have long. 

But when you reached for the last map you could see, something fell off it and onto the floor. You crouched down, grabbing the small object and held it up. You couldn’t quite make out what it was, but gradually you recognised the feeling of it. 

It was your necklace. Your eyes had adjusted a lot better by now and you could see the chain lightly hitting your hand as the paper plane sat between your fingers. You couldn’t believe it.

You looked back at the map and your jaw dropped again. It was your city. This must have been when they were trying to find you. You traced your fingers over where your home was, thinking of what your life used to be. You hoped everyone would be okay. And you wondered if you would ever make it back.

At least time moved slowly there in comparison to up here. It had probably barely been a minute since you had been taken.

After thinking about it for a second, you grabbed that map as well. You never knew when you might need it.

“Ready?” You looked up, seeing Jisung looking down at a particular map as well. You walked over to him. “Jisung?”

Jisung swallowed. This map had hit him like a sucker punch to the gut.

“This is our planet. Where I came from. I thought it was destroyed and that’s why we are travelling around but this is dated as two years ago.” He didn’t know what this meant. Was his home still intact? He was told it was hit by an asteroid and became uninhabitable due to the atmospheric changes that were caused but this map was making him question everything he ever thought he knew.

“Jisung, bring it with you. Fold it up but we have to move.” You shook him gently, trying to get through to him.

Jisung nodded, messily folding the paper and pushing it into the small pile he was holding. He grabbed your free hand with his and began to run again.

You ran through the hallways, trying not to get spotted by anyone but people were running everywhere. They were trying to reach the electrical room but there seemed to be some kind of commotion outside it.

“I blocked the door from the inside.” Jisung leaned down to you and whispered in your ear. “That should buy us some time.”

You nodded, squeezing his hand as a signal to go. If they knew the problem was in the electrical room then it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out you two were behind it.

“How far?” You asked between breaths.

“Down this hall and to the left, then down the stairs.” Jisung explained.

Thankfully, the left turn came up fast and the two of you thundered down the stairs, jumping down the last three.

Jisung let go of your hand and handed you his pile of maps as he set to work organising an escape pod.

“Thank god I actually listened in engineering class.” He muttered to himself, thankful that his teacher had found a way to get through to him. It was the only subject that he had enjoyed and the one that he had hoped to go into once graduating.

He fiddled with the controls, overriding one of the ships and instructing you to go inside. 

Just as he did that the lights came back on, blinding the two of you as they shone in your eyes

“They’ve escaped!” A voice echoed down the hallway and you and Jisung looked at each other in fear.

“Go!” He whisper-yelled at you, pushing you into the ship.

You climbed in the hatch, going down the ladder and landing on the floor. Jisung closed the hatch behind him, locking it with a twist and took off down the hallway again.

You followed him. While this ship was easily miles smaller than the previous one, it was still big for the two of you and took a solid minute of running to get to the front.

Jisung opened a door and you burst into what you assumed to be the front of the ship. There were two seats facing a large window and a maze of buttons on the control desk. Lucking Jisung seemed to know what he was doing.

“They have to know that we’re going for one of these.” Jisung said, pressing the buttons to start the ship as fast as he could. You put the maps down on the seat that Jisung wasn’t stood next to before stepping back to get out of his way. The buttons lit up in front of you and the ship hummed to life. “We’re ready.” He whispered as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

“Jisung!” You suddenly said and he spun back in a panic, thinking you had been caught. “Are you sure? I just want to make sure you’re one hundred percent sure you want to do this.”

“I am.” He said with such confidence that it was almost hard for you to believe it was the same awkwardly shy alien you met all that time ago. “If you’re sure as well?”

You nodded in response and he stepped forward and stroked your hair.

“There’s no going back y/n.”

“I know. You’ve gotten braver since we first met.” You told him, resting your hands on his sides.

“I’ve got something to be brave for.” He confided, leaning down to kiss you sweetly.

You didn’t think you could ever get tired of Jisung kissing you.

“As long as I’m with you, I’ll travel the stars forever.” The words came from your heart, and Jisung said the two words you’d heard multiple times today from him, but this time they caused excitement to run through you instead of fear.

“Let’s go.”

You were done being afraid.

Down you sat in the seat, staring out at the vast, never-ending space in front of you. You didn’t know what you were anymore. You were too human for outer space, but too alien for Earth. And you were going to spend your days walking through two worlds but belonging to neither.

Just as the legend intended.

Jisung pushed a level forward and the ship dropped down before taking off. He turned it to the side and you saw the huge spaceship you had been held captive in to your right. The two of you watched it for a second, but you didn’t want to stay so, once again, Jisung pushed forward and you shot off into the stars.

“We’re going to get lost.” You said breathlessly, as he nodded in agreement.

“Yep. But you have to be lost to find a place that can’t be found.”

His words brought a smile to your face, and you looked over at him to find him grinning into the sky as well. You found a notch in the ceiling and reached up to hang your necklace from it. It had meant so much to the both of you that it only made sense to have it close.

“Hey.” You called for his attention, and he looked over at you. “I love you.”

His grin grew even more into the huge gummy smile that you adored.

“I love you too.”

Together, the two of you shot off into the stars, searching for the forgotten land you were destined to find. With nothing but a few maps, and the paper plane hanging from the ceiling guiding your way.

[aaknopf]

Martyr!, the poet Kaveh Akbar’s propulsive debut novel, tells the tale of Cyrus Shams, the son of a lost mother (victim of a 1988 U. S. Naval snafu in the Persian Gulf that killed 290 people on a commercial airliner) and the long-suffering father who emigrated to Fort Wayne, IN with his baby boy. We meet Cyrus as a student of poetry at Keady University and a reformed addict. In this excerpt, he’s at the local open mic with his friends; we also share one of the poems from Cyrus’s bookofmartyrs.docx, helpfully supplied by Akbar, the poet behind the fictional poet.

. .

The Naples Tuesday night open mic had become a mainstay of Cyrus and Zee’s friendship. It was a small affair, not much to distinguish it from the myriad other open mics happening elsewhere in the country—except this was their open mic, their organic community of beautiful weirdos—old hippies singing Pete Seeger, trans kids rapping about liberation, passionate spoken-word performances by nurses and teenagers and teachers and cooks. As with any campus open mic, there was the occasional frat dude coming to play sets of smirky acoustic rap covers and overearnest breakup narratives. But even they were welcome, and mostly it felt like a safe little oasis of amongness in the relative desert of their Indiana college town, a healthy way to spend the time they were no longer using to get drunk or high.   Naturally, Naples didn’t have its own sound equipment, so Zee would usually show up fifteen minutes early with his beat-up Yamaha PA to set up for Sad James, who hosted every week. Sad James was called this to distinguish him from DJ James, a guy who cycled nightly through the campus bars. DJ James was not a particularly interesting artist, but he was well-known enough in the campus community to warrant Sad James’s nominative prefix, which began as a joke but somehow stuck, and to which Sad James had grown accustomed with good humor, even occasionally doing small shows under the name. Sad James was a quiet white guy, long blond hair framing his lightly stubbled face, who played intensely solemn electronic songs, punctuated by sparse circuit-bent blips and bloops, and over time at Keady, he had become one of Zee and Cyrus’s most resilient and trusted friends.   On this night, Cyrus had read a poem early, an older experimental piece from a series where he’d been assigning words to each digit 0–9, then using an Excel document to generate a lyric out of those words as the digits appeared in the Fibonacci sequence: “lips sweat teeth lips spread teeth lips drip deep deep sweat skin,” etc. It was bad, but he loved reading them out loud, the rhythms and repeti­tions and weird little riffs that emerged. Sad James did an older piece where the lyrics “burning with the human stain / she dries up, dust in the rain” were repeated and modulated over molten beeps from an old circuit-bent Game Boy. Zee—a drummer in his free time who idolized J Dilla and John Bonham and Max Roach and Zach Hill in equal measure—hadn’t brought anything of his own to perform that evening, but did have a little bongo to help accompany any acoustic acts who wanted it.   On the patio listening to Cyrus talk about his new project, Zee said, “I could see it being a bunch of different poems in the voices of all your different historical martyr obsessions?” Then to Sad James, Zee added, “Cyrus has been plastering our apartment with these big black-and-white printouts of all their terrifying faces. Bobby Sands in our kitchen, Joan of Arc in our hallway.”   Sad James made his eyes get big.   “I just like having them present,” Cyrus said, slumping into his chair. He didn’t add that he’d been reading about them in the library, his mystic martyrs, that he’d taped a great grid of their grayscale printed faces above his bed, half believing it would work like those tapes that promised to teach you Spanish while you slept, that some­how their lived wisdoms would pass into him as he dreamt. Among the Tank Man, Bobby Sands, Falconetti as Joan of Arc, Cyrus had a picture of his parents’ wedding day. His mother, seated in a sleeved white dress, smiling tightly at the camera while his father, in a tacky gray tux, sat grinning next to her holding her hand. Above their heads, a group of attendees held an ornate white sheet. It was the only picture of his mother he had. Next to his mother, his father beamed, bright in a way that made it seem he was radiating the light himself.   Zee went on: “So you could write a poem where Joan of Arc is like, ‘Wow, this fire is so hot’ or whatever. And then a poem where Hussain is like, ‘Wow, sucks that I wouldn’t kneel.’ You know what I mean?”   Cyrus laughed.   “I tried some of that! But see, that’s where it gets corny. What could I possibly say about the martyrdom of Hussain or Joan of Arc or whoever that hasn’t already been said? Or that’s worth saying?”   Sad James asked who Hussain was and Zee quickly explained the trial in the desert, Hussain’s refusing to kneel and being killed for it.   “You know, Hussain’s head is supposedly still buried in Cairo?” Zee said, smiling. “Cairo, which is in which country again?”   Cyrus rolled his eyes at his friend, who was, as Cyrus liked to remind him when he got too greatest-ancient-civilization-on-earth about things, only half Egyptian.   “Damn,” Sad James said. “I would’ve just kneeled and crossed my fingers behind my back. Who am I trying to impress? Later I could call take-backsies. I’d just say I tripped and landed on my knees or something.”   The three friends laughed. Justine, an open mic regular whose Blonde on Blonde–era pea-coat-and-harmonica-rack Bob Dylan act was a mainstay of the open mic, came outside to ask Zee for a cigarette. He obliged her with an American Spirit Yellow, which she lit around the corner as she began speaking into her cell phone.   In moments like these Cyrus still sometimes felt like asking to bum one too—he’d been a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker before he got sober, and continued his habit even after he’d kicked everything else. “Quit things in the order they’re killing you,” his sponsor, Gabe, told him once. After a year clean he turned his attention to cigarettes, which he finally managed to kick completely by tapering: from one and a half packs a day to a pack to half a pack to five cigarettes and so on until he was just smoking a single cigarette every few days and then, none at all. He could probably get away with bumming the occasional cigarette now and again, but in his mind he was saving that for something momentous: his final moments lying in the grass dying from a gunshot wound, or walking in slow motion away from a burning building.   “So what are you thinking then? A novel? Or like . . . a poetic mar­tyr field guide?” asked Zee.   “I’m really not sure yet. But my whole life I’ve thought about my mom on that flight, how meaningless her death was. Truly literally like, meaningless. Without meaning. The difference between 290 dead and 289. It’s actuarial. Not even tragic, you know? So was she a martyr? There has to be a definition of the word that can accom­modate her. That’s what I’m after.”

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

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