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cas-backwards-tie · 9 months

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Chapter Five: Threatened to Reset

Bruce Wayne x Daughter!Reader

Heiress of Gotham

Masterlist | Previous Chapter

Summary: With the family's help everything is planned for the big move. A trip to Bludhaven to organize, pack, and move all your belongings leaves the past to be drug up. How will they react to your home? Will any secrets be found? Will emotions rise? Will your past be disclosed? It's all up to you... and maybe a crime boss and his goons.

Words: 4.3k

Warnings: The usual Banter and Bickering, Cursing, Knives, Threatening, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Arguing, Fighting, Shame, Guilt, Fight or Flight.

Mentions of: Sex Trafficking, Criminal Activities, Police, Drug Busts, Prostitution, Assassins.

A/N: There's a lot of information to digest in the chapter, and really what was meant to be one chapters I actually am going to have to split up in order to make them manageable. It's been awhile, and while I'm still trying to figure out how to manage my life in the sense of hobbies, work, my health, a possible second job, and extracurriculars, I request you all be patient with me. I definitely do have more in store, yet for now this chapter isn't proofread (at least the beginning and end) I just need to get this one out.

Having discussed tomorrow’s events as a group at dinner, your Father let you lead the charge in what would happen with your apartment’s belongings. Decided on packing everything up and either donating the things you don’t need, storing the important things, and transporting the things you do need, it all was simple enough. Nothing a little packing tape and rounds of boxes won’t fix.

Starting the day with a hearty breakfast from Alfred, you all packed into a minivan you didn't know or think the Bruce Wayne would ever own or have anything to do with. Nevertheless, the ride was fairly timely to get to your old apartment building. Saying hello to the few neighbors coming in and out who you recognized and knew, you led the gang the seventeen flights and begrudgingly let them inside. You knew sooner or later they'd out where and how you lived. It definitely isn't as nice as Wayne Manor, but of course, what else could you expect?

Assigning everyone to different spots and or groups of items in the apartment, you really feel like they went for overkill. A welcoming and slightly overwhelming sense of love blossoms in your chest as they really didn't all need to help, but everyone insisted on coming. Even Tim's girlfriend, Stephanie. How nice, you think, for someone to actually care that much to go out of their way. Family almost congesting the apartment, you focus on your room and belongings. The fact that Damian hasn't even made any rude remarks (that you know of) is surprising.

After almost everything is packed and it's a few hours past noon, Alfred gets tired. Damian insists he's spent enough time in this 'hellhole' and almost demands that Alfred take him home. With the time having gotten away from you and some of the others, it seems to no one's surprise that Tim and Stephanie also apologetically explain their need to leave. They have homework they need to get done; and with that, Alfred agrees that it might be best to head back to the Manor with everyone who needs to leave. Dick lives in Bludhaven, so there's no surprise he'd stay, and while Jason has his motorcycle, he says he doesn't mind staying until it's all finished. Bruce having come separately after checking in at work explains that the two of you can drive back together once everything's done. It'd been lucky enough that he'd brought his car, and not one of the nicer ones, either.

Searching all the nearby boxes, you don’t find it. It’s nowhere to be seen, and if it’s not here then that can only mean one thing: They took it. Opening up the box near the kitchen you retrieve a butcher’s knife. Hand gripping the handle tightly you storm to the front door and lock it.

“Woah, woah- what’s going on?” Jason asks, hands raising in concern as he stops boxing the books that’d been on the nearby shelf.

With a tense look in his eyes, you adjust the knife in your palm, getting a better and more sturdy grip on it. Other hand rising to your mouth you place your pointer finger before your lips. A tacit command of ‘silence’. Jason’s fear had drawn the attention of the other two, though you ignore them as you quickly storm through the living room and down the hall.

Eyes flitting back and forth out the window, up and down the fire escape you quickly return with the same fervor you’d previously held. “Why do you have a knife?” Dick questions.

Back to the front door, you simultaneously listen to the hallway, hoping that if anyone were to come, you’d hear them first and be ready. In the attempt at a raid via bursting in through the door, at least you’ll be the first one in the line of fire able to protect everyone. While the worst case scenario always pops into your mind first, you’re not oblivious to the measly chance this could simply chalk up to coincidence. Holding out the knife, you point to each man in the room as your gaze shifts between them.

“Look. There was a gun in there last time we were here. It’s always there. If none of you have seen it, let alone packed it away… then we have a big problem,” you reveal. Knife pointed in the direction of the safe that's now open within a drawer of the tv stand, it's clear that everything else has been packed away.

Between the couch and television diagonally to your left stands Dick. Hands raised, he holds a stoic expression as he stands closest to the safe. His blue eyes flit to Jason. Knife shifting toward him, he too stands with his hands by his waist, palms facing you. Eyes filled with confusion and concern, he shifts his weight as he stands across the room in the corner between the kitchen's counter and beside the opening to the hallway. His green eyes shift to Bruce.

Before you can even turn the knife on the man closest to you, diagonally standing in the kitchen opening to your right, someone speaks up. “I took it,” Jason announces. All eyes dart to him and you watch as he slowly starts to reach around his back towards his waistband. Out of the corner of your eye you spot Bruce move.

“Don’t!” You warn, stepping back and pointing the knife at him. He’s not going to disarm you. Eyes back on Jason, you motion with the knife for him to place the produced gun onto the table between you two. Gun dangling from his fingers, he doesn’t move, so you gesture again with more of a ferocity this time. “Put it on the table.” It’s a command, not a request.

He slides it across the table. Three steps close the distance between you and the item. Though Bruce could easily do something behind your back, just out of your peripheral vision now, you focus on the task at hand. One look at the gun has you skeptical; face tense, you use the knife to turn the gun around. The examination is short. One flip of the gun onto its other side and a quick lift into your hands to make sure the safety is on, you release the bullet cartridge to find that one bullet is missing. With a click of the cartridge locking back into place, you toss it back onto the table.

Storming back to the door where you're at a far enough distance from all of them, your forearms rest against the splintering wood, face buried within them for a moment to gather yourself. Slowly turning back toward the men, but more specifically Jason, you glare daggers at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me you had the gun when I first mentioned it missing,” not waiting for an answer, your head tilts a bit as you don’t play his game. “Nevertheless, did you really think I’d be stupid enough to not recognize that that’s an entirely different gun? So what’s your game?”

Silence lingers. Jason knows he’s fucked, and they all know it too. Why did he think she’d fall for that? It was worth a shot, sure, but the real gun is still back at the Batcave. However, she can’t know that. “There’s no game,” Bruce says your name, a sincere look in his eyes.

“I wasn’t asking you,” you bark, knife turning on him as he tries again to take a step closer. His hands are still raised in an attempt to de-escalate the situation.

The silence is expected, however, the smile that creepily inches across your lips is not. A shift of the knife in your palm has you gripping the handle in an underhanded approach, ready to stab, rather than slice. “Ha,” you scoff, “I knew it… too good to be true. I can respect the lengths he’ll go to play his little games, but this is just beyond fucked. A ploy to what? Fuck with me, pretend to be my family, and now what? Kill me? I knew it. After yesterday, I just knew it was coming.”

“What are you talking about?” Jason asks incredulously, a hint of anger and fear within his tone.

“Who?” Dick asks coldly, taking a step closer.

“Antonio Marin?” Bruce asks. Eyes darting to meet his, you shift the knife in your palm again to get a better grip on it.

“Oh, you wanna play it this way? Act all fucking coy and innocent now?” Gears shifting, you eye the other two men. “Unless he’s just another victim to his plan, I don’t buy it. Richest man in the world and he’s a good guy? Yeah? No.”

“Should’ve known,” you sigh, shaking your head. “BPD? Too obvious.” With a sad smile and tears beginning to threaten your eyes, you chuckle. “Well if he wants me, then go ahead. I’ve got nothing left. If I’m the last piece to the puzzle then do it. Kill me. It’s three to one, I know you’ve got a gun and more than enough bullets to take me.” You thump your chest with your free hand, open, ready to accept your fate. “Do it! Shoot me, Jason. Right now! Kill me.”

As if the reality of the situation suddenly dawns on you, fear readily replaces the confidence you’d just boasted. Backing up against the door you shift the knife in your hand to a stabbing position again, as you continue to shift it, unsure which approach will be best in your defense. Suddenly you're terrified of what’s to come. “No… no. Three big men on one teenage girl?” The way Jason had hesitated, it’s apparent. “I knew he was expanding the business, but like this? NO.” Chest heaving with rapid breaths, you’re suddenly running on pure adrenaline. Panic sets in as you know what the man's got planned for you. “If you want me then I’m not going down alone. I’ll kill myself before I let that happen to me- and if that doesn’t work then I’ll mangle myself SO badly that nobody will buy me,” you threaten, voice deepening in a terrifyingly chilling way.

Placing the knife against your neck, you’re more than ready to take yourself off the table. You won’t let that happen to yourself. You won’t let anyone take advantage of you that way. A punishment worse than death is something you're not willing to participate in, nor offer.

Dick calls your name in a calm tone, one far too calm for this situation. “This isn’t any ploy, or game. We don’t work for anyone. If you think someone’s after you, you need to tell us. We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s going on.”

“Oh,” you relinquish too easily, knife falling back to your side. Turning to face the door your eyes settle against it for a moment before spinning back to face the man. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that Officer Grayson from the BPD was here! I’ll just tell you everything so you can either arrest me or take me out on his behalf!” With a step toward him, you raise the knife by your side again. “Do you really think I’m that stupid, Grayson? That I wouldn’t realize you’d try to get a confession out of me, record this- have them take a voice memo? This isn’t my first rodeo.”

"It's not like that. We're just trying to help! You can't seriously believe this is all some conspiracy against you," Dick argues. His voice is still calm, and while the raised brow elicits a begrudging irk and prick of paranoia in your mind, his words do nothing but continue to cause the gears to mentally turn. "If someone wanted to take you out there would've been easier methods. You would've been dead weeks ago."

A wry chuckle leaves your lips, a knowing smile still set on your features as you two stand off with one another. "Sure... if it was anyone else. Yet that's not how he plays his game and you know it."

"You still think I'm corrupt?" Dick asks, shifting his weight to lean into his hip on one side.

"How could you not be?! Look at me and tell me that you're not! That you don't know about Perdy Chapman, or any of the sabotage the BPD plays," you demand.

"I know about the sabotage. I don't know about Perdy Chapman, but if you know something," he recites your name, "you have to tell us. I can't do anything or help anyone if everyone's keeping secrets."

"What? So this is all a loyalty test? An attempt to get me to come back? There's no way he's that desperate."

"Come back? You worked for Antonio Marin?" Bruce pipes up, concerned blue eyes turning on you as he shifts his gaze between you and Dick. Hands still up in surrender, he takes a step towards you.

"Quit fucking with me! If this is because he thinks I'll rat, I won't! I'm not a fucking rat. We got out, we left! We don't owe him anything!"

"If you know where he is you need to tell us," Jason voices his concern, also taking a step closer. "No one is taking you back, no one is gonna hurt you. I'll be damned before that happens." Jason whispers your name, garnering your attention as he gives you a serious look, "If you think he's after you, we need to know. We can't help you if we don't know what's going on."

With a stomp and a slash of the knife by your side as you realize they're right, you won't do this without a stipulation. "Fine! But... I can't go to the cops. I can't... file a report. I can't do anything. Promise me-" you respond, voice starting off confident until his falls short of a whisper. Jason nods, starting to close the space as he pulls out the last chair remaining at the dinner table.

"No cops, you got it. Just... tell us what happened, what's going on," Jason concedes, hand settled on the back of the chair.

As you shake your head in decline toward the chair, Jason easily swivels it around and sits on his backward, attention on you. As you place the knife on the side table by the front door, you start to pace. "I... don't know where to start," you voice your thoughts.

"From the beginning," Dick encourages, voice gentle as he realizes Jason has made progress by building a rapport. Something he hadn't realized he could be making more of an effort towards, he supposes. Even if he already feels like he's done more than he can for the girl.

As the Detective sits on the back of the couch and Bruce leans against the wall, your eyes can't help but find his... your Father's. "I... I can't-" you realize. Steps coming to a halt, you find yourself face to face with the last person in your life who you feel like you can't lose. The only person you need to impress, to suck up to.

"This is important," Bruce says your name, head tilting further downward as he offers a more straight-on look with your height differences, not to mention the sympathetic look that cross his features.

Eyes falling to the floor, you shake your head. "I can't. I don't want you to look at me differently, and I know you will. There's no way you can't." It's a warning, a vague divulgence on the subject matter. There's no way this conversation can happen without someone's impression being changed or shifted. It's just not possible.

"That won't happen," Bruce reassures.

"There's no way it can't happen. You don't know!" You argue, hands gesticulating the emphasis of your seriousness.

"This is your safety we're talking about," Jason reminds.

"We all have pasts," Dick reiterates your name, "we've all done things. It won't change anything."

"I promise," Bruce adds on, following up with Dick's words. Crouching to be on your level, he holds out his pinky, and while part of you hesitates, the seriousness in his eyes begs for a piece of trust. An inkling of hope, sincerity, vulnerability, trust. Wrapping your much smaller pinky around his, you shake on it.

As he lets go and returns to leaning against the wall, they all sit in anticipation, waiting for you to speak. "From the beginning?" You question.

"From the beginning," Dick echoes again, trying his hardest to be patient. With a tacit gesture of his hand, he guides you to sit on the couch cushions. Despite his offer, you choose to sit on the floor in front of the couch, back leant up against it as Dick chooses to sit in the armchair to the left of it. Jason comes closer, perching himself on the edge of the tv stand, while Bruce lingers by the back of the couch to your right, still in your periphery.

"It... all started about, I don't know, two years ago?" Jason nods in encouragement, a sign for you to keep going. "I don't- I don't know exactly when, I can't really place a time or say because I didn't know- I didn't- I never thought- I mean," the words tumble from your lips as your thoughts begin to race with the memories. Heart beating faster, there was never a definitive point in time you could place. "He just... started coming over. After-" swallowing the thick lump that forms in your throat, the faint burning sensation of tears threatening to start welling up becomes real. "-Mom got laid off."

"Mhm," Dick hums, hands clasping in his lap as he expresses the fact that he's listening.

"Everyone knew who he was. We all do, but of course, you're nice to people you don't necessarily know. You don't wanna start any problems. I guess Mama met him one night when she was out with my Tia. He said he could get her job back, that he could help her make money again, that we wouldn't have to move, to get evicted. He'd get her job back. So he did. She didn't ask, she didn't even want her job back after everything they said and did to her, firing her just because of her skin- but... he did it anyways. He got her job back at the hospital and even got her a promotion. How? I never asked, but if you know Marin, then I guess you can imagine how."

"Then he told her she owed him," Bruce speaks up as you take a breath. His tone is definitive, certain, as if he knows. A shake of your head lets him know he's wrong.

"Of course, she went back to see him at the same bar. She thanked him, we all did... but that wasn't the end of it. He said if she ever wanted anything more, a side job, extra money, anything else, that he could give her that. That all she need do is ask." A sigh escapes your lips and you subtly shake your head again. you know you'll have to tell them. It'll get there eventually, yet there's no way of knowing how they'll react. "They became friends. I always thought he liked her, that's why he was so nice."

"But he showed his true colors, didn't he?" Jason comments, a dangerous and almost vengeful tone in his voice as he leans forward so his elbows rest on his knees. His hands curl in and out of fists as he listens.

"No... he was... just nice." Finally looking up to meet their eyes, you gauge the room. Each man has a different expression on his face, looks of curiosity, intrigue, suspicion, and anger all around. "He'd be at the parties, come over, take us out, have a drink. He became a part of the circle, at least... for a while. I think it all changed when Mama said no to him. He asked her out, and she finally understood why he'd been so nice to her. Yet, that didn't change anything. Being friends, he was still coming around. Maybe he was doing more, becoming more distant, but not much changed. He kept offering, and offering, and eventually I think she figured if she had control, and it was something he'd offer, then how could it hurt? It was only after that year and once the gifts died down that, well..."

"What?" Jason raises his eyes again to meet yours as he'd been mulling over his own thoughts for a moment, head in hands. A chuckle shakes his chest subtly as his hands shoot out in gesticulation. "You can't just say 'after that, well...' and not finish the story!"

"Come on, Jase-" Bruce gently reprimands with a look.

"It's clear there's more," Dick interrupts his Father to address you, still in the position he'd been in. Eyes intent on your figure as he waits for an answer, a scowl on his lips.

"I finally asked him if there was any way I could do something. Something small to make money; like mow someone's lawn, pet-sitting, house-sitting... things like that." Eyes falling to the pilled carpet by your sock-clad feet, you pick at the fluffy brown fabric. "I had school. My mom would hate me if she knew I asked him, but everyone else was getting money, and I figured if he was like my Uncle or Dad it's normal to ask for those things... I think." Hair falling over your shoulders, it masks your face as you rush to get the rest of the story out.

"He... had me do jobs for him. It was easy. Deliver presents, bouquets, envelopes, packages, things like that. No problem, lots of people do that, right? But I was making at least a hundred every week, if not more, and, and I didn't think about it. It was easy money! I could buy whatever I wanted, I could save, I could spoil my friends, my mom... I never thought about it until I... got curious." Words trailing off, you risk a glance up at Dick. Tucking your bangs behind your ear, his expression is immovable. He's stoic; a pickup of heartrate leaves you anxious as you haven't been able to easily read him like many of the others.

The movement of Jason's lips slowly opening garners your attention, and as his eyes widen you quickly duck your head back down again. "You were..." he tests the waters.

"So one day I decided to stay. They never opened their packages in my vicinity. Never opened the presents, envelopes, packages, or undid the bouquet. It didn't feel right. I haven't gotten many presents in my life, but I'd think if I got a big one like those, I'd open it right away... see what it is." Continuing with your story, you didn't give Jason even half a fraction of time to finish his thoughts. "So I delivered the package like normal, watched them count out the money and hand it over before I was on my way. Around the corner, I was halfway down the block when I realized I could probably wait it out, hide somewhere across the street and watch them from one of the store windows. They wouldn't notice. I could just put on my hood, if anything, and... well, then it-" eyes shifting back up to Dick, you don't look away this time, "-it happened."

"I hadn't realized it but parked on the opposite side of the road and right by me out of sight from where I'd come there were cop cars parked. Cops lined up with their guns pulled, batons and riot shields ready. I froze..." At this moment it seems like the gears in Dick's mind are finally starting to turn and place things together. "I thought I was caught, for something I only suspected, but... within seconds the cops were ushering me out of the area while the second team were busting the gang of boys I'd come from for having drugs."

"They were using you," Bruce states, an air of sympathy encased in his word choice.

"You were a mule f-" Jason affirms.

"-But that wasn't the end of it," Dick says confidently, his dark blue eyes still set on you, unmoving, a quirked brow joining his visage. "You said you're out. So if that's true then how'd that happen?" He asks, finally shifting in his seat as his head slightly tilts. It's almost as if he's testing you. "Exactly," he clarifies.

"Once I realized what was happening I ran home. I-" jaw clenching, your eyebrows furrow as you don't want to have to admit this. Especially not when Dick looks so confident and arrogant. You know he'd seen you that day, just like you knew you'd seen him. A silent staring match follows,a few seconds, before your resolve crumbles upon the memories. "I told my mom. I was crying, and she was shocked and surprised and angry and mad and I didn't know what to do! I didn't know where to go or who to tell, and I knew she'd be mad but she said she wasn't mad at me, but at him and that it was okay because she was gonna get us out of it. We met up with Anto- with- with Marin," you correct yourself. "We demanded out, and... he let us go. He said we were free to go as long as we didn't say or do anything that went against him. MY mom didn't want us involved with him anymore."

"He just 'let you go'?" Dick reiterates.

"Yes. That's it," you reveal, a shrug following as you don't bother to make eye contact. "Now you know!" The revelation leaves you upset and unaware of anyone else's responses. You just know that this changes everything, now that they know... they know that you're a bad person. You dealt drugs. You worked for a mobster. A gangster, a criminal; you stocked up drug money, saving it, keeping it. Blood money, one could even claim in earnest... and you couldn't argue with them.

~~~~~~~~

forever taglist: @ohdamnadam , @safarigirlsp , @jynzandtonic , @moonlightsolo

hog taglist: @luvly-writer , @clairese1980 , @theroyalmanatee , @azazel-nyx , @nightrose-18 , @vanessa-boo , @ih4temy5elfs0b4d , @agent-nobody-knows , @scarlett13 , @hoeinthehouse

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kithtaehyung · 11 months

Note

I would love if you could do a 3tan slice on the studio guys!

“Fuck!”

Yoongi shifts attention from his phone, but it’s Hoseok that responds to the anger brimming over the front console—shortly after a short puff of amusement,

“What’s up?”

Tsking, Namjoon leans his chair back. “Nothing. Just felt like saying it.”

Goddamn it. Yoongi can’t help but laugh along with Hobi, both of them getting that sentiment wholeheartedly.

“We can tap in,” he offers, even though he really doesn’t want to after the snap you just sent. Fuck, what he would do to see you in that dr—

“Could y’all, please,” Joon sighs, already getting up with squeaky wheels. “Gonna piss.”

“K.”

“I got it,” Hoseok cuts in front after standing first. “You look caught up.”

Oh, shit. Did he see? “I’m good.”

As Namjoon closes the door, Yoongi gets a knowing look before the working track is played.

“Who is it.”

“Who?”

Another huff from Hoseok makes him pause. “I see you on that phone,” he snickers. “You’re never on that thing when we’re working.”

“Lies.”

“You aren’t! At least, when we’re really in it.” Hobi isolates the strings tracks, listening intently before smiling again. “It’s cool, bro. I don’t care who it is. Just something I noticed, you know?”

Yoongi simply shifts in his chair. He didn’t know he was being that obvious, and he always makes sure to lay low.

What are you doing to him?

“My bad,” he apologizes, knowingly and willingly not deflecting for the first time since seeing you. “Won’t happen when we’re swamped.”

As he wipes his face with full palms, forcefully trying to wrench the weariness from his features, Yoongi hears Hoseok whisper,

“I can fill for you if you ever need to dip early.”

Huh?

His look must be a strange mix of sleepy and incredulous because his friend laughs way too hard.

“I can!” Hoseok gives a firm back pat. “Seriously, if you need to go see them once in awhile, I can—”

“Sup, bros!”

Both of them whip heads to the loud presence filling the room, both arms lifted high with grocery bags.

“Got food from a corner store along the way. Did you know they’re selling banana milk here now?”

Hoseok laughs, and Yoongi uses this opportunity to face the console, back straight and focus one-hundred. “Still drinking that?”

“Me? Of course!”

He shakes his head, murmuring to the screen but addressing the man next to him,

“Don’t worry about me, Hob.”

A blink.

“But I might consider that later.”

As Namjoon is the last one to enter the studio, Hoseok simply faces the console, too, hands moving with Yoongi’s before they both watch the television above,

“Always got you, Yoong.”

—

3tanslices: mini-scenarios!

series: three tangerines

#well gdi😭😭😭#I MISS THEM😭😭😭#thank you for this babe!#literally just typed and didn’t stop haha #anon #asks:3tan #3tanslices #*ryenfictalk #3fan:studio #yoongi angst #bts imagines #bts reactions #3tanextras #mailbox💌#ryenwrites

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underfaller · 1 year

Text

Chapter 4: γ

Pairing: dottore x angel!reader

Summary:

✧˖°.I am the rot and the ache beneath your skin! I am the angel sent down from above!˖°.✧

You are a Heavenly Messenger from Celestia that's been captured by a mysterious Doctor

CW: noncon

Word count: 2.7k

Dottore looks through an old journal. His vermillion eyes flicker as he turns the pages. The 4-pointed sigil engraved into the leather front cover is a dead giveaway that this was from Khaenri'ah. Not only that, from what he could gather from the intricately drawn diagrams on its pages, Dottore is fairly certain that this journal detailed the art of Khemia.

The ability to create life.

The ultimate experiment in blasphemy.

He acquired the journal from an adventurer while on one of his expeditions. Of course, the young man had been less than eager to hand it over to Dottore. However, it’s a bit hard to protest against someone robbing you when your head’s detached from your shoulders.

There is just one simple problem: Dottore didn’t know Khaenri'ahn. Or at least this form of it. The words on the pages are useless gibberish now. He asked Pierro, but the old Jester told him that this form of the dialect was so ancient that even he didn’t know so Dottore was back to square one.

Typical.

Dottore isn’t too bothered. He’ll simply decipher it using the modern form of the language and cross reference it with the journal’s scrawls. What’s a dead language to a genius such as himself?

Dottore stuffs the journal into a drawer at the bottom of his desk. He puts his feet on the wooden top, swaying idly in his chair, his arms bend behind his head as he stares at the ceiling above.

The journal is only one project he’s working on. One project of dozens that he switches rapidly between. Despite being a dedicated and diligent worker, his attention span is the complete opposite. The man simply could not focus on one topic at a time. He jumped between them, obsessing over whatever interested him at the moment.

And at that moment, the topic is you.

You are certainly the most fascinating subject he’s had in awhile. Even more so than the Eleazar patients he experimented on while in the Akademiya. Your immortality is undeniably an invaluable trait, but there’s something else.

Dottore finds immense joy in experimenting on you.

He’d always had disdain for the gods, especially Celestia. Dottore thought them to be incompetent, arrogant fools. He knows he can surpass them. One day he would. They deserved to be overthrown--crushed like the maggots they were under his boot.

It’s what they would get for turning their backs on him when he needed them. He may have been accustomed to rejection, but that did not mean Dottore didn’t harbor scorn.

He’s actually very vindictive.

Dottore knows you’re simply a pawn of the gods. Yet, he can’t help but cave into his desire to torment you in Celestia’s stead. He sees the gods’ folly in you. Their stupidity. Their negligence. His dejection. He despises you.

So he made it his goal to destroy you in every way possible.

It’s then that Dottore has a twisted, yet hilarious idea.

What if he made you fall in love with him?

He already has complete autonomy to your physical state, but he wants more. He wants to control you mentally, psychologically, and emotionally. He wants you completely wrapped around his finger before he snaps you in two.

Dottore laughs aloud. Even by his standards, it’s devilishly cruel. It would be difficult, yes. After all, you were certainly a difficult individual. You certainly won’t fall for cheap tricks. He would have to be meticulous and cunning in his manipulation.

But difficult puzzles were always the most satisfying to crack.

Love is such a weakness.

Dottore picks up a manila folder on the desk. There’s dried droplets of your blood still on it. He smirks as he writes something in your file.

Experiment 42: Anaxiphilia

***

You were starting to wonder if it was you who was meant to receive divine punishment. That must have been the reason for your suffering. How else would you explain your situation? You must have done something wrong. Despite your defeatist attitude, that particular thought made you a bit defensive. You didn’t think you did anything wrong. In fact, you thought you were a pretty good individual up until this point.

But, there was a reason, right?

There had to be someone to blame.

Dottore kept you in a cramped cage when he wasn’t experimenting on you.You huddle in the corner of your metal prison, pressing your knees to your chest. Your wings are bound by a rough piece of rope. A wistful feeling tugs at your heart when you remember how you used to soar through the skies above Celestia. You missed it. You never thought you would, but you missed your home. You missed your mentor. You missed your old life.

You watch the clock across the room, its little red hand slowly sliding across the numbers like syrup. You could practically feel the seconds slipping away. Still, you had trouble keeping track of time in this lab. There was no calendar or window in here and Dottore refused to give you even the most basic information. How long had you even been here? Days, weeks…. A month? What the hell did it matter? You found it ironic that you’ve existed for over a hundred years, yet the short time you’ve been here felt longer than all those years in Celestia.

Perhaps it’s because that short time has been nothing but torture. You were starting to wonder if what he did was actually for research and not purely for his sadistic pleasure. You’d been sliced open more times than you could count and injected with enough substances to kill a small village. You’ve never been more acquainted with your own screams until now. Your eyes glance at the multiple bandages wrapped around your body. At least he would always bandage you afterwards. It was the one thing he could do to compensate for your cooperation in his experiments. Sometimes, if the Doctor felt extra merciful, he would administer a healing serum afterwards. However, he only did so in order to move on to another way to torment you. Something about not wanting a different experiment’s variables affecting his current trial.

You despise him with every fiber in your being. The man has an overbearingly unlikable presence. Even if you didn’t have reason to hate him, you would’ve simply disliked him based on that. He’s simply one of those people you could not get along with.

And that mask he wore, it was utterly pretentious and frankly, silly. Why hide your face constantly like that? He must be terribly hideous.

Dottore certainly knows you detest him. If looks could kill, he would’ve died a hundred times over. Even through your tears and pain, you aren’t afraid to tell the Doctor what’s on your mind. Oddly enough, he’s never lost his temper with you. Even when you curse and scream at him, he simply gives you that simpering, disgusting smile. In fact, Dottore’s mannerisms were often gentle towards you, even kind-- or as kind as one could be while abusing you. He often speaks to you as if he were speaking to a small child or a dog.

It makes him even more infuriating.

“How is my little birdie?”

You glare at him, not answering. He bends down, looking at you through the bars of the cage.

Of course, he’s smiling.

He unlocks the cage, opening the door.

You stay where you are, peering at him through your matted bangs.

“Still wary of me? I suppose that’s to be expected,” Dottore murmurs.

“You must be hungry. I brought you something.”

The Doctor places a plate in front of the cage, just a few steps away from you, as if he were trying to lure a wild animal from its hiding place. Despite the fact that you are in fact, starving, you give the man an incredulous look.

“Oh don’t look so skeptical,” Dottore retorts. “Can’t I be nice? You’ve been such a good patient. I simply wanted to reward you.”

His doting words make you even more suspicious.

However, your basic survival instincts are more powerful than your distrust in the Doctor. Slowly, you crawl out from your corner, approaching the seemingly inconspicuous dessert.

“What is it?” You ask hoarsely.

“It’s called Ptichye Moloko or translated, Bird’s Milk Cake. It’s a common treat here in Snezhnaya,” He explains, smiling. “I had an agent fetch me some from the city.”

“Is… Is it poisoned?”

You can’t help but ask.

Dottore bursts out laughing.

“Poisoned? Silly, it isn’t poisoned.”

“ I… don’t believe you.”

His smile falters a little. You were certainly beginning to get on his nerves. However, he doesn’t let his facade slip. Instead, he pulls his black glove off one of his hands, skimming the chocolate top with his finger and licking it. “See? Not poisoned,” He grins.

Seeing the Doctor not keel over from the cake makes you let your guard down. Perhaps this really was just his odd way of being nice. He doesn’t give you any utensils, so you have to use your hands. You take a small taste. It’s delicious. A bit tangy, but also sweet. Certainly more so than the gruel he’s been feeding you. Dottore’s toothy grin only grows larger as you continue to eat.

“That’s a good girl! Eat more!”

You quickly finish it, licking your fingers clean as you continue to look at the Doctor. Your eyes haven’t broken from him this whole time. Him sitting this close made you uncomfortable, like he would lunge at you any moment.

“Thank you,” You whisper almost inaudibly.

“You’re certainly welcome,” Dottore responds. “Now come. We have some testing to do.”

Oh.

You’d hoped he wouldn’t say that, that you wouldn’t have to endure an experiment today, but alas.

You stand up but as soon as you do the room begins to spin around you. You stumble.

“Oh? What’s wrong, my dear?”

“I…”

Your body starts to tingle, becoming warmer by the second. Your head is light and dizzy. You take a shaky breath. Dottore approaches you, putting a hand on your shoulder. Even that small gesture is enough to send shivers down your increasingly sensitive body.

“You’re already starting to feel it? It seems like your body is reacting well to the effects of the aphrodisiac.”

You look at him with horror. Your hand flies to your mouth, the taste of cream and chocolate still on your lips.

He tricked me.

Dottore chuckles, observing your realization.

You curse yourself. You should’ve trusted your gut. How did you fall for such an obvious trap?

This was all your fault.

“You lied. You did poison me.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch. What I gave you can barely be considered a poison.”

Dottore picks you up, bringing you to an all too familiar metal table. Your body feels like a ragdoll as he lays you on the cold surface. The sudden cold touching your sensitive skin causes you to inhale sharply through your teeth.

“I must say, it’s a pleasant surprise you’re able to elicit such a reaction. This will certainly be an interesting experiment for both of us,” The Doctor hums as he begins to unbutton your shirt, slowly removing your clothes. Your stomach drops.

No, no, no.

You try to push him away, but your arms are so heavy. Every move you make is laborious. You can only weakly whimper in protest.

“Shh.. darling,” He whispers in your ear. “Just relax now.”

The Doctor kisses you, sliding his tongue into your mouth. The slick organ overpowers your own, exploring every crevice and corner. As he pulls away, a thin strand of saliva connects the both of you for a brief second before snapping. You let out a small gasp as Dottore plays with your breasts. Even the slightest touch sends waves of pleasure throughout your body. Your wings quiver. You try to regain control of your body, but your resolve is quickly dissipating as your mind becomes foggy with stimulation. His hands move further south until they reach your thighs. His hands brush against the plump skin and you shiver a little.

“A-ah!”

Your breathing hitches as Dottore begins to play with your clit. He rubs the sensitive bud gently. The pleasure is almost unbearable and you whimper softly, squirming against his grip on your waist.

“You like that, don’t you, pet?”

You try not to show how much you’re enjoying this. You try to bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from moaning.

Your poker face is terrible, he can read you like a book.

You can feel something building up inside you-- a tight coil begging to be released. The feeling grows more and more intense, but just as you were about to orgasm, Dottore pulls his hand away from you, looking down at you, smiling darkly. “We don’t have to do this, of course. I’ll only continue if you want it.”

You really don’t want to continue. You want it to stop. You want him to stop.

But the aphrodisiac has turned your body against you. Your cunt is begging for more. Your brain is screaming, trying to fight the effects of the stimulant, however, it’s no use. The only thing you can think about is the Doctor’s hands on you. You need that release. You need Dottore to keep touching you.

No! What are you thinking?

You wiggle, trying to rub against his hand and relieve the throbbing in your nether regions. He pulls his hand away once more.

“Hm? What is it you want?”

You whine a little.

“Use your words, darling.”

“I…I want you to continue, Doctor.”

Traitor.

“As you wish, my pet.”

He delicately inserts a finger into your cunt.

“Heh. You’re so wet already. I won’t need to use lube.” Dottore murmurs. “Hmm…and your hymen is still intact. That’s good.”

You’re barely processing his words. Your body quivers as the Doctor unzips his pants, freeing the erection that had been uncomfortably pressing against his pants.

Dottore climbs on top of the lab table, positioning himself at your entrance.

“This may hurt a bit as it's your first time, but don’t worry,” He whispers. “I’ll be gentle.”

Dottore penetrates your opening, roughly pushing deep into you. So much for being gentle. He’s big-- you're surprised you can even take it. You cry out, hot tears pricking your eyes as you grip onto him, your nails digging into his skin.

“That’s a good girl. You’re doing great.”

The tears are flowing now. You’re begging him to stop, but it comes out as incoherent babbling. It wouldn’t matter anyways, he wouldn’t have stopped even if you asked him to.

The Doctor laughs softly. Seeing you cry like this makes him even more aroused. That pitiful, humiliated look on your face is so pathetic, it’s beautiful. Blood mixes with your fluids as his thrusts become quicker.

Slowly, the pain and discomfort turns to pleasure. You soon start to enjoy the feeling of him. You grip him tighter, panting. Lewd noises escape your lips and you arch your back. The sound of your bodies fills the room as he continues to move inside you, going deeper each time. When he hits a certain spot, you yelp, your walls contracting around his cock. He grins mischievously at your reaction, continuing to pound that same spot over and over. You feel your core tighten once more.

You place your arm over your face against your tear stained eyes. You don’t want him to see how much you’re enjoying this.

Dottore chuckles and lifts your arm. “That won’t do. I want to see that pretty face of yours.”

“Ngh…Ha…Ah..!”

Your body betrays you once more and you climax.

He fucks you through your orgasm, grabbing your waist firmly as he keeps going fast and mercilessly. His thrusts soon become sloppy and he cums deep inside your womb.

The warmth of his cum fills your insides. Your body feels like jelly as you come down from your orgasm and the aphrodisiacs. You grip the Doctor's lab coat as you rest your head against his chest, visibly trembling.

Dottore looks down at your bleary tear-stained face, leaning down to kiss your forehead softly. “That must have been quite intense for you. See, wasn’t that enjoyable? If you continue to behave, we’ll have lots more fun like that together.”

“After all, you are my favorite test subject.”

#dottore x fem!reader #il dottore #dottore #fatui harbingers #genshin impact #genshin fanfic #genshin smut #dead dove do not eat #genshin impact fanfics #fic: dead doves do not mourn

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urdepressedslut · 1 year

Text

The Girl and Her Golden Boys

⇨ Chapter One: The Bells

♡ Pairing: 40’s!Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader, 40’s!Platonic!Pre-Serum!Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader

♡ Chapter Summary: You find yourself back in your hometown, unfortunately it’s for the passing of Sarah Rogers. You meet up with your boys, as it’s been awhile since you’ve last seen them.

♡ Chapter Warnings: angst, fluff, mentions of parent death

Italics are flashbacks

You hadn’t gotten through a full year of Boarding School, when you had heard Sarah Rogers had passed. Growing up she had raised you when your Father was absent, which was a lot of the time. She became the Mother figure you needed, being a girl and all, it was important to have a woman guide you. Hearing that she had passed was devastating, feeling like you were losing your true Mother all over again.

Your Father had picked you up, and the two of you were now headed to the funeral. Silence filled the car, not many words ever spoken between him and you, that’s just how things were after your Mom had died. The usual tension that came with the silence, wasn’t noticed by you, as your mind swirled with thoughts. Specifically, Steve Rogers.

Your heart ached for him, knowing how badly he must be hurting. Losing a parent was a bond being torn, and no matter the years gone by, you will always wonder if they’ll come back. If maybe, just maybe— that bond will amble.

You knew it was vital that you be here for Steve, knowing what it like to lose a parent, you would try and make sure he didn’t lose himself like you did.

Steve was your first friend in school. Fourth grade, you remember a tiny boy tripping through the doorway of your school, his books flying everywhere, pages folding unnaturally.

☆

You were quick to collect his books, and help him back to his feet, pulling him to the side to dust off his now dirtied pants. He was slightly embarrassed, watching you clean him off like his mother would. You on the other hand, didn’t realize you were crossing a line, instead acted out of pure instinct.

“T-thanks… My shoes are a little too big. Hard to walk in them sometimes.” He told you bashfully.

“That’s okay, you’ll grow into them eventually,” You assured him, sticking out your hand, “I’m (Y/n)!”

Steve smiled at your kindness, grabbing your hand with a shake.

“I’m Steve, happy to meet someone nice on the first day of school.”

“I know it’s scary, but you’ve got me now! I promise I won’t let you trip… Again.” You declared, handing him his books back, all stacked nicely.

Steve giggled and smiled, excited that he had found a friend.

☆

Steve had become more of a brother to you as you two had grown. Although you two didn’t get along as well as you first did, you two still loved each other and would never go to bed angry. At least, that’s what Sarah would tell us.

The car halted to a stop, alerting you that you had arrived at the cemetery. Knots formed in your stomach suddenly, Sarah’s passing fully hitting you now. You wanted to stay strong for Steve, you didn’t want him to see you upset. You wanted the focus to stay on Steve, he was the one who deserved all the love today. But the closer you were getting to the group of sniffling people, your walls started to crumble.

You scanned the small crowd, spotting Steve standing next to Bucky. You had a good assumption Buck was trying to convince Steve to stay with him and his family, but Steve being stubborn, you knew that was going to be war.

You smiled at the closeness of the two, the brother bond always warming your heart. Steve needs someone like Bucky, and Bucky needs Steve just as much.

Before you were away at Boarding School, you were here with the boys. It was you three versus the world, going on adventures, getting in trouble, and sometimes getting hurt together. You didn’t care what mess you got yourselves into, as long as it was one of them that was putting the bandaid on.

Quietly letting your Father know you were headed over to the boys, you walked silently, keeping your head down, trying to swallow down the lump forming in your throat.

You stopped some feet away, glancing at the both of their glum faces. You started towards Steve first, not saying a word as you embraced him in a tight, needed hug. Steve closed his eyes, relishing in your comforting embrace that he had missed so much. He patted your back appreciatively, both of you stepping away from each other.

“Let me guess, you’re here to say you’re sorry for my loss too.” Steve mumbled sarcastically, his eyes vacant and unfocused.

Frowning at his words, you fiddled with the ends of your dress, and cleared your throat.

“I don’t think anything I say is going to make you feel better right now. I’m here because my friend needs me, that’s it.” You explained softly, watching his eyebrows raise slightly in appreciation.

Steve opened his mouth to respond but his eyes went dull again, and he closed it. Attempting to blink away the oncoming tears, he excused himself, choosing to stand farther away to give himself a moment.

You watched with worried eyes, not wanting to let him walk away, but knowing that he needs time to himself.

“You being here means the world to him, ya know.” Bucky spoke finally, breaking your gaze from Steve. You met his eyes and forced a smile, walking towards him slowly.

He opened his arms, caging you in his protective embrace. You looped your arms around his lower back, pulling him closer, if that was even possible. Your face was smushed into his chest, but it didn’t stop your eyes from tearing up, your nose burning.

“I’m trying to be strong for him but… It’s h-hard.” You whimpered out, your voice wavering by the end.

Bucky rubbed your back soothingly with one hand, while the other cradled the back of your head.

“I know Doll, I know. You can let it out.” He whispered, holding you tight as your body shook with quiet sobs.

Bucky always had this this effect on you, he was able to bring your guard down. You blamed it on the fact that his embrace always felt so safe, always feeling like it was just you and him. Bucky was the oldest and protected you and Steve growing up, of course you saw him as a hero. But you knew there was something deeper to the connection, but you never spoke up about it. You valued the friendship too much to risk putting your feelings out there.

Your sobs died down, just as quick as they had started. Bucky’s aura alone, making you feel better.

“Thank you Buck.” You mumbled into his chest, and he chuckled.

“No need, you know I’m always here for you.” He told you, making you lift your face from his chest to meet his gaze.

“I know.” You whispered, smushing your face back into his chest, wishing you could stay here forever.

Approaching footsteps got both you and Bucky’s attention. Glancing to the direction where they came from, Steve was walking back, wiping his eyes dry.

Breaking apart from Bucky, you focused back on Steve.

“Hey Stevie, ya ready?” You asked him softly.

Steve knew you were talking about the burial, which he didn’t feel he’d ever be ready. But he glanced to you, then to Bucky and he felt safe. He wasn’t alone, he had his family right here.

“I guess.” Steve muttered, starting to walk but slowed his pace when he felt you intertwine your fingers through his.

You and Steve were hand in hand, when suddenly you felt your right hand being laced with Bucky’s fingers. Glancing over to him, you met his soft eyes, and you felt your cheeks heat up.

Steve watched from the far left as you and Bucky gazed into each others eyes for a split second, and for the first time today, Steve smiled.

The three of you all made your way to the small crowd, holding hands, keeping each other grounded.

As long as you had each other, everything was going to be okay.

A/N: 40’s buck and steve hold such a special place in my heart and i felt i had to start a series set in the 40’s. a lot of this series i want to be domestic stuff, but eventually it will be full of drama and hydra EWW. i’m excited to see where this might go, let me know what you think🤍

#reader insert #light angst #fluff #buckybarnes #marvel imagines #bucky x female reader #marvel cinematic universe #bucky x y/n #steve rogers #pre serum steve #40s steve rogers #40's Bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes angst

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mysteriawrites · 11 months

Note

hello this is unit 4402 let's do a matchup trade :D

i'm one of those people that enjoys their alone time but when i'm with someone i'm comfortable with, i'm super noisy and goofy. i like to make people laugh! and i like walking to the beat of my own drum too. it's easy for me to fixate on the things that interest me to the point that i forget to take care of myself even though i want to take care of others. i prefer to take the lead and make moves first, but i'm tsun as much as i hate to admit it lol

ty for the request! feel free to send one in and i'll do one for you 👍

-unit 4402

We Interupt your regularly scheduled program for.......A MATCHUP TRADE WITH

@brisquad-unit-4402 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thx for the trade I hope you’re not disappointed. Took me a good minute to decide who to match you with i had a handful of options but I like the potential of this pairing so DRUMROLL PLEASE!!!

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

FULGUR OVID!!!

(Srry if you wanted Sonny or Ike I know they’re your oshies but i just think this a nice balanced pairing)

I think you guys would work really well when it actually came down to it. Just a unique vibe of chaos and comfort. You and Fulgur both have a tendency to take care of others while both still being absolute chaos gremlins who know how to have fun.

You guys are like the fun aunt and uncle of the family, but you both make sure to take care of each other and not let the other get burnt out. You’re definitely the more chaotic or the two of you however Fulgur does like to indulge your goofy nature. He’s just happy that you’re happy being yourself

You guys met after he joined niji. you were part of a (non existent) earlier wave and were assigned with Ike to host the new wave debut program. You had gotten a little bit of a chance to talk to the new wave before, but only exchanged a few words. However you were pleasantly surprised to find out how completely unhinged the new guys were. You had to admit you were intrigued.

You had arranged for you to collab with one of the Noctyx members named Fulgur Ovid. Up until them he seemed kinda quiet to you, but when you guys were collabing it was like hanging out with old friends. You were making jokes and bantering like there was no tomorrow. Your fans even started shipping you guys which jump started your will they won’t they campaign.

Since then all of your interactions would be slightly flirty, suggestive, and/or teasing. You two did still get very close though, even met up irl after he moved to the states and did and off collab.

When Fulgur’s health declined a bit and he had to go take a break for a little bit you took care of him, and that’s what led him to falling for you. After that his flirting had a lot more feeling behind it, He would be genuinely flustered whenever you flirt back, and sad if you dodged his advances.

One day you were over at his house playing valorant. He thought you were so hot when you were focused he could barley focus on the game. When you guys won your last match you turned to him with a proud smile on your face and that destroyed him. You two stared at each other for awhile as the sexual tension grew until he asked if he could kiss you and you said yes (let’s just say you found out how about Fulgur’s detachable part worked) (this is how sexual tension works right?)

Since then you guys became a real thing. Going for walks with dog, playing games together, drinking together, and just chillin and hanging out.

He takes care of you when you get caught up in your fixations, but still encourages you and tries to learn more about it so you guys can share it together.

You guys aren’t super cuddly but you have your moments especially at night or watching a movie. He has a lot of movies to show you (with some help from Vox)

Speaking of which you 3 (+ Aia) play dnd together every weekend. Your party is a group of absolute murder hobos, but at least you all are having fun and try out other ttrpgs when you can.

You guys all in all are a pretty chill and playful couple, and the new parents of Nijisanji EN.

This one is less lore connected and kinda short because I’m still not 100% sure on Fulgur’s lore so idk how to integrate it into the story so I just wrote about after he started streaming. Anyway hope you like it.

Runners Up: Luca Kaneshiro, Ren Zotto, Sonny Brisko, Kyo Kaneko

Disclaimer for anyone else reading this: all of my nijien writing and fics are fictional and don’t pertain at all to the streamers behind the model. Please respect them and others in the community thank you.

#multi fandom blog #multifandom #multifandom account #multifandom writer #multi fandoms posts #multifandom fanfiction #matchups #multifandom x reader #multifandom imagines #nijisanji en #fulgur ovid #fulgur ovid x reader #noctyx

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keefwho · 11 months

Text

July 19 - 2023 Wednesday

7:51 AM

I think maybe I have a case of imposter syndrome. Something I was reading related to how I think, “They wouldn’t say I was good if they knew what I was REALLY like.” It makes sense too, believing you’re a bad or broken person despite operating well on the outside will make you feel like that quote. But as soon as I defuse from self criticizing thoughts and develop better perspective, my self opinion improves greatly.

2:11 PM

I feel like writing every time I am in distress which is almost constantly. Its EXACTLY like when I had my major anxiety problem because there was actually no break. It was constant, every hour. I do feel like I’m taking my first effective step in getting better about my situation though. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself because it’s only been a few days now that I’ve been applying focus on just a couple of things. Those two things are reminding myself that I’m me as much as possible, and identifying/defusing from thoughts that cause me distress. Whenever I feel ‘bad’, I try to think about what exactly is making me feel this way. Often times it will come down to a thought or belief that may or may not be true but either way is occupying my mental space in an unhelpful way. I’m trying to improve on noticing these thoughts and not letting them get to me so much. I can still feel bad about things as long as I’m not getting too sucked in.

3:29 PM

At my core I just want someone to share things with. Experiences and feelings. Some to feel open and safe with. Someone who loves me as much as I love them. The yearning is strong.

3:55 PM

The thoughts are coming on strong. Thoughts like: “How did I fuck up everything so bad.” “Can I really move forward.” “What if I lose them.” “I can’t talk to anyone, they’ll hate me.” “I’ll never see improvement.” “My relationships are on the downhill.” “What if I stay lonely today?”

But they are only words. They might be true or untrue. They are just appraisals made by my mind about everything I got going on.

Im always irrationally worried that today will be the last time I talk to my bestie. I’m afraid she will become too aware of how fucked up I am.

4:48 PM

I’m deep in, trying to defuse from my thoughts. There are just so many. I also have to defuse from the thought that I won’t be able to defuse. Its INSANE. I could use some perspective if only I could find a way to get it right now. I feel like I’m stuck in the past in a place that doesn’t exist.

For awhile I was hopeful that I could rekindle a friendship with someone I had a falling out with but I think I’m far too late. Its something I let slip away and I’m upset at myself for it. I see old pics and feel sad that they are probably looked at by the other person as something hurtful. I handled everything that happened very poorly, all because I didn’t know how to handle my feelings properly and didn’t have a good grasp on myself. Thats why I’m still afraid now. I’m afraid I’m going to mess everything up again for similar reasons. Things I can’t even see yet.

10:44 PM

This morning I ate beefaroni with some saltines in it and an applesauce. Kind of a weak breakfast but it was different than usual at least and very convenient. I tried making a stellar cup of coffee with extra sugar but got some coffee grounds in it. I did a warmup off stream and a little bit late. I felt very strongly that I wanted to make something mushy for my bestie. Just a little thing to show her how highly I think of her. I started my stream after that and only went for 1 hour 15 minutes instead of 2 because of how behind schedule I was. Since the commissioner is paying double I could afford to do that. We watched the King Ramsey episode of Courage today. I was also kinda brain dead like I didn’t know how to make non-awkward conversation. After stream I procrastinated a little bit before my workout. It was a pain in the ass setting it up but I got my mic, wireless headphones, and xbox controller configured to play VRchat while I walked. I did stay occupied but unfortunately made no conversation with anyone. I watched Henry’s Kitchen stream on the side. I did 2.5 out of 3 miles on the treadmill and ended early so I could mow the lawn which would also count as my cleaning for the day. Half the lawn is basically fully dead at this point and I don’t know what to do about that. I had a quick shower before making lunch. I made Rice a Roni Pilaf with broccoli, green beans, spinach, onions, and tuna. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t cut the onions very well and I don’t like the texture of pilaf very much. At this point I was starting to get in a bad mood and eventually got around to doing today’s request but I decided not to do project work today. I felt like sulking a little bit instead. Also my eyes hurt. I knew I couldn’t just sulk though and tried to work just a little bit on anything I knew I wanted to do. I played Pony Town and made a little addition to my house. I made the Hopping Homies VRchat group and a stand-in banner. I set up 2 new channels in my server specifically for my art and VR content. Might expand that in the future but this’ll do for now. I watched XQC stream and hopped into his discord server’s VC and actually made some nice little conversation while all watching him together. I kinda trauma dumped but so did the other guy I was talking to. It would be helpful for me to stop saying “im fine” even to strangers when I’m not actually fine. I’m not trying to sympathy farm, just be open and honest about being down because it’s okay that I am. I had a little VR time with the bestie after that and a nice feelings chat with her. I probably have something to talk about almost every night but I do worry if discussing each other’s sorrows so often could be a bad thing. Thats just my brain talking, I feel as though it is good but on the surface it seems like it could get out of hand. But maybe not. It’s something I’ll figure out by feel.

I think today it would have been best not to make that sketch, only because I sort of promised I would give less to my bestie because of how it can make her feel like she needs to do more. I made sure I wasn’t doing it out of obligation or anything though, I really wanted to do it. I got satisfaction out of it. I definitely wish I hadn’t of procrastinated as much as I did or shirk my project time. I did do a good job of channeling my energy into doing things afterward though. I popped off around VR time because I really do feel like myself around my friend. I feel at home in a way. It’s one of the few times I know what I want and who I am.

#journal #diary #imposter syndrome #love

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4adriana44 · 1 year

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Roses

There are roses outside of the bakery, Doms on Washtenaw. It’s funny how things are stolen from Natives and forgotten. For example, the word, Washtenaw; originally Washtenong. Meaning, ‘far away waters,’ in Anishinaabemowin. It’s just a street. But I wonder, the streets, in this city as rivers like veins to a greater source. But still, there are roses here.

Last week I was driving down the highway at 80 miles per hour. my grandma besides me, and sisters playing in the backseat. My hands gripped the wheel, and I stared down the yellow white lines.

They cut down the garden at the house, she told me. As if it was still somehow her’s, our’s. This new couple owns it now. Like ghosts we visit often. Like losing the marriage, then the house, the jobs, and the old cat- the garden slammed the door to her old life behind her.

Driving, I could offer little sympathies. I just reached for her shoulder, now full of bones and small, in my small hand.

“I won’t go by there again. Not for awhile,”

It’s for the best, I said.

“But, they had enough sense not to take out your rose bushes,”

Spoken as if I had planted them. No, my grandmother planted those roses off the porch of that old house. She planted them in my name, in my honor, at the house where I played. Where I wished to always be small and for the world to stay that way. Where I was loved. Held. Where I was uncombed and overfed, dirty from the wood I emerged from. That house. Those roses. At least we have that. And they will have that piece of us. As if anything else was worth keeping.

You can never return home

I focus on the road ahead. Lost in the clouds, content in that loss, and satisfied in my mission of driving the people I love home.

I am looking for a new home myself. I toured an apartment in a house, in the town I went to college in and barely ever tried to leave. I waited out in the new heat, waiting for some door to open. There, off a porch was a rosebush. As pink and red as the other roses in this poem. And I smiled. Knowing, that this would be the place. This could be my home, for there are roses.

The name for roses in botanical science is Rosa rubiginosa. In Anishinaabemowin, it’s Oginiiwaatig. Scientific names remove the spirit of the word. It claims knowing, and strips any identity of the rosebush. It says,

‘Yes, I know a rose: It has X qualities, this genus, that biome...”

The native tongue says,

‘Yes, I know the rosebush. I have felt it, I have seen her. She’s my home. My grandmother’s love. She is kin to me, and her fragrance reminds me of sweet, hardworking women.

I sat on a bench covered by the shade of a tree dedicated to staff on their lunch breaks. Birds, soft delicate things bathing in dust near. Cracked open my book and read Odell’s words about roses;

“Beautiful garden, vs terrible world- it really did feel like a survival tactic,” spending hours doing nothing, but being in a rose garden. How those roses could keep me alive, as I keep them, as the whole world does.

On my walks I stop often. Putting my face in every fragrant branch; making it my essence to stop and smell the roses. Really smelling them reminds you almost of winter to come. Spring, already gone. It’s summer now, I’m young now. Nothing lasts forever.

This is what concerns me; Nothing. I’ve made my life, confronted by Nothing. And found none other than myself. I have the time. We have roses. And this is how we live.

#poetry #roses

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stayarmytinyzenmoa-l · 2 years

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I know this question isn’t related to any stories on your blog but do you have any study tips? Recently I’ve really had to buckle down and study but some of the information just won’t stick in my brain. All throughout school I’ve luckily never had to study because I was just someone who picked up on things rather quickly but now that is really coming back to bite me in the ass. I’m currently taking a course online and they provide videos but the instructor’s voice is really monotone and I notice myself zoning out more easily than I usually do. They also include a lot information that can be considered “fluff” so I’m not sure how to decide what is important for me to know and what is considered “fluff”. Only taking notes on what my teachers had on their PowerPoints also came back to bite me in the ass. 😭😭

I’ve been following your blog for awhile now and noticed that you take mini hiatuses to focus on your studies and am wondering how you do so especially considering the difficult classes that you take and have to keep up with year round.

Any tips are greatly appreciated 💕

Hi, love! Yeah I’m happy to help! Studying can be a pain so I get it. Just for context tho, I’m a STEM student so a lot of my studying skills are geared towards Science/Math based classes, but I’m sure these tips can be applied universally. Anyway, onto the tips!

Pomodoro Technique - Online classes are such a pain too, it’s easy to get distracted! That’s where this comes in. 20 minute study intervals with 2 minute breaks in between, and after two hours have elapsed a 30 minute break. This especially helped me with online lectures as I couldn’t just sit still and watch an hour and a half lecture every time, and this works for general studying too! As you get more proficient in this method, feel free to extend the study interval in increments of 5. And if it’s too hard, feel free to decrease it to 15 instead of twenty.

Active Recall Techniques - Flash cards, flash cards, and more flash cards. I think I killed a couple of trees in my last quarter alone (it’s okay I use ecosia LMAO). See, it’s nice if a professor provides a formula sheet, but that’s time wasted during an exam. Pick out key words and remember phrases. Cornell notes also helps a lot especially when writing down questions to ask your professor later during office hours or such, and it helps with revising later!

Different Notes Methods - There’s no one way to write your notes! I’ve always hated it when people said “you can only do your notes this way!” Because every person is different! For me Cornell works well, but I can see why that wouldn’t work for some people! But if you’re following active recall, try not to just copy paste your notes onto paper from the PowerPoint, rather, try writing your notes from memory instead! Copying your notes activated passive learning, which isn’t as effective for some people. Again, just try what works best! To revise I usually make mind maps, for example.

Mind Maps - Write the central topic of one chapter and expand upon it similar to a branching tree! The leaves are the details while the branches are broad ideas! Do this from memory first and, with a different color, write in extra details you missed when cross referencing with your notes.

Practice Problems - I cannot stress this one enough. You can be amazing at concepts in theory, but if you don’t practice them you won’t fully grasp them. The best way to test if you understand concepts is to do a problem on it!

Summarize - When it came to studying for exams, I found that blatant revision, at least for me, wasn’t effective (but if it works for you go ahead!) instead, I would try to summarize the chapter (by memory) in a compact form (1-2 pages) as if I were making a study guide. Similar to the mind maps, if it wasn’t something I could recall off the top of my head, I wrote it in a different color.

Unfortunately, I can’t help much on sorting through fluff. For me I had to memorize or understand everything because I never knew what would be on the exam, but hopefully the methods above can help! Happy studying! You got this, love <3

#asks #anon

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s-creations · 2 years

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Quomodo Mundus Cadit - Chapter 7

The defeat of the Devil should have been the end of it. The Cup Brothers won and all debts were to be forgiven.

At least…that was the original plan. No one was expecting the world to fall apart. Whatever was contained in the Devil was not unleashed onto the world. Now it’s up to two powerless children, a dice with no title, and a immortal being with no powers to fix what’s become broken.

(Story idea inspired by artwork created by @inazumaneko)

Fandom: The Cuphead Show/Cuphead Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Relationships: Cuphead & Mugman & The Devil & King Dice, The Devil/King Dice Warnings/Additional Tags: Lots of Characters, Violence, Blood, Sacrifice, People are gonna die, Death, Elder Kettle is in this but won’t appear for awhile, AU, Inspired by Tumblr, End of the World.

The cart was quiet as it traveled along the dirt path. The brother’s huddled together in the back, both hovering around passing out. The lingering adrenaline the only thing keeping them awake. The ex-con man had a tight grip on the reins, looking straight ahead as his mind raced. His body so tense he felt as if he was ready to snap. Lucifer wasn’t doing much better. The demon staring down at his still bloody hands, occasionally twitching, clearly just on edge as Dice was.

They didn’t pull off until Dice had difficulty seeing the road ahead. Both from the darkening sky and eyes barely open. He found a small clearing that was thankfully near a running river. Dice turned to Lucifer and shortly said, “Go wash off.”

Lucifer merely nodded before walking off. As Dice gathered supplies to set up camp, he looked up seeing Cuphead move. The former quickly caught the kid’s attention and gave a shake of his head. Cuphead paused before giving a small nod before sitting back down, holding Mugman once more.

Dice felt exhaustion eventually settle into his bones. No longer needing to focus on the road, his own adrenaline seeped from his body. Mind foggy, Dice rather clumsily tripped over his own feet. But was saved from landing on his face with an arms wrapping around his chest.

“Why don’t you take a seat. I can finish this.” Lucifer said softly.

“I…might pass out if I do.” Dice mutters back.

“Well, you do need sleep. You and the boys.”

“...Okay…” Dice gave the supplies over before more or less collapsing. Leaning against a dead tree to watch Lucifer move items around. Thankful for the fire that sent warmth over the area.

The ex-con didn't mind when two smaller forms pressed onto either side of him. Cuphead and Mugman peered up, silently asking with drooping eyes if they could stay. Dice merely grunted before wrapping an arm around each brother. All passing out while Lucifer’s movement becomes comfortable background noises. When Dice woke again, the boys were still clinging to him. Still fast asleep. A large wool blanket draped over all of them.

Lucifer was sitting by the fire, staring at the flames. The scene gave Dice an eerie feeling as this looked too close to what he saw at the beginning of this ‘adventure’.

“Have you slept?” Dice asked quietly.

“No, I’m to… My fur is itching.”

Dice hummed softly. Reaching up to gently place a hand on either boy’s head. “So… What the actual hell happened back there?”

“...I got angry.”

The ex-con man nodded softly. “I’m not sure what that really means.”

“I’ve been feeling so numb since this started. Emotions have never been my strong suit. You know this.”

“I’m very aware of this, yes.”

“But I’ve felt nothing for so long, I thought it was just because I lost my powers. The empty, numb feeling created from losing something so large of myself. When we went to the village, I felt…I felt again. A small part of whatever’s missing was suddenly back.”

“Is the smell you remarked about…would that be related to this?”

“Yeah… It was Pride.”

Dice blinked. “What? What does that mean?”

“The Mayor, he was dripping with Prideful sin. He stenched of it.”

“Wait, sin. You can still detect sin?”

Lucifer shrugged weakly. “I think it’s more that I can recognize the smell… Kind of like smelling a favorite recipe I haven’t had in a long time.”

“Why couldn’t I smell it?”

“Because you’re not a demon.”

“Okay, I guess that checks out. So, when you had the Mayor trapped, did you… What did you do to him?”

“Sucked the sin right out of him.”

“Ew.”

“You asked.”

“Do you feel better? You seem a bit more aware.”

“I feel as if something important has been returned to me. But I’m still not…okay.”

Dice nodded, staring into the fire. “I haven’t seen you that angry in what feels like a long time.”

“...I heard Cuphead.”

“Heard?”

“He called for help.”

The ex-con man let out a slow sigh, gripping the cup’s arm gently. “Okay… You said something about the villagers not really being alive. Or that they were dead? You weren’t super clear.”

“That’s pretty much my life right now, right? Having so much information but not really sure how to explain any of it. I wasn’t lying when I said those villagers weren’t alive. The closest thing I could relate them to would be zombies.”

“So…they were undead?”

“Had been for a while.”

“What was keeping them alive?”

“The Mayor, it was his sin…it was so embedded into the mortal. All of it caused it to…grow, change, alter, I’m not sure how to put it.”

“Like…his sin became a power?”

“More like a festering growth. One that leeches onto that horrid trait, that sin. It had become so strong that he was able to manipulate the world around him. Whoever he truly was before, his negative traits were for us to see. Pompous, narcissistic, full of himself. It seems those traits were amplified due to the world as it is. Kind of like…if I’m not in control, sin becomes wild.”

“Hmmm…Sounds like a terrible mayor.”

“Sounds like every politician I’ve ever met.”

Dice frowned. “Do you think we’ll run into any more of these people? These…powerful sinners, if you will.”

Lucifer snorted, but made no comment on the name. “No doubt. I’ll just have to pay closer attention to new areas we enter.”

“And to not rush in like an absolute idiot.”

The demon full on laughed this time. Dice’s heart beating furiously hearing it, hoping his cheeks weren’t flushed. “Yeah, I’ll work on that… How are you feeling?”

“Overwhelmed. It was a weird comfort seeing you act that way. I thought you had returned…”

“To a point, I thought I had too… But I guess that would be too easy, huh?”

“That village was the only one on the trail to our goal.”

“Then let's hope we don’t have to do anything like that again.”

“Agreed.”

___________________

It was slow waking the next day. Mainly for the fact that it was the first time in a while Cuphead felt safe. As well as being remarkably warm. He let out a wide yawn before fully opening his eyes. He was leaning against Dice, who was snoring softly, with a wool blanket draped over him. Mugman was sleeping on the other side of the adult. Pressed as close to Dice as he could. Seeming to think the adult was a large stuffed toy. Cuphead laughed softly.

He carefully pulled away. Not wanting to wake the others as he slowly stood. Cuphead paused when he looked up to find Lucifer, wide awake, sitting by the dead fire. The cup instantly became nervous as their eyes connected.

“Um…morning?” Cuphead offered.

“Morning. Take a seat.” Lucifer replied.

Cuphead shuffled over carefully before sitting by the pile of ashened logs. Looking anywhere he could that wasn’t near the other.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

The cup faltered at that, peering up slowly. “I mean… You haven’t killed us so far.”

Lucifer laughed and nodded. “Fair.”

“...You also came to rescue us.”

“You asked for me to.”

“I called for help because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

Cuphead nodded weakly. “...You were really scary yesterday. You didn’t look like that when we faced you.”

“Don’t know what to tell you. I’m just as surprised as you are.”

“Will…you turn into it again?”

“Don’t know.”

“...Did you know what you were doing?”

Lucifer looked over in worry hearing this. Cuphead’s eyes shifted back down quickly. The demon suddenly felt nervous. Was he supposed to comfort the kid? How? Dice was the one who was the people person. Lucifer skulked in the shadows. On top of that, Cuphead was his enemy…right? Didn’t the cup still seem like him that?

Taking a deep breath, Lucifer inched closer. Reaching out and carefully placing a hand on Cuphead’s shoulder. The younger flinched, but didn’t pull away. Looking up slightly. “I may have been in a rage, but I was very much aware of what was going on. I wasn’t going to hurt you or your brother…or Dice. I should probably include him in there as well.”

“...Yeah?”

“Yeah…I should be thanking you. You’re what spurred me into action.”

“Really?”

“Yep. It was strange. Hearing you call out in fear seemed to kick something in me. Strange, right?”

“I think that’s called a ‘parental instinct’.” Cuphead teased, which Lucifer laughed at.

“Oh goodness, could you imagine that? Me, a parent?”

“I just shivered from the idea.”

“Feeling cheeky are we?” Cuphead merely laughed, leaning closer to rest against the demon. Lucifer tensed slightly at the action. Worried for a few seconds before realizing the cup intentionally meant to do that.

The older placed a hand on Cuphead’s arm. Looking up, he was surprised to find Dice awake, watching the scene with a small smile.

Which Lucifer returned easily.

Mugman was still asleep, moved to the front of the cart as the rest picked up the camp. Remaining there while Dice took the reins. Lucifer falling asleep in the back with Cuphead leaning against him. Awake, but content. Just as Dice said, they didn’t come across another village. Taking another two whole days before they arrived at their destination.

There was an eerie feeling hanging in the air as the carted entered the large clearing. The structure before them was a tall, dome building. Seeming to have been carved by a large rock and not built from the ground up. Whether it was already there or it had been moved there, it was unclear. Said structure was decorated with golden markings that seemed to shimmer. Even with the overcast in the sky. A large wooden door was the only barrier keeping the group out.

Dice pulled the cart to a stop right before said door. Taking a deep breath before turning to Lucifer. “What…do you think we should be expecting?”

The demon frowned. “Honestly? No idea. If this is the last stronghold of the Calix Animi, then they would have no doubt built something to hold outsiders back. What that is, haven’t a clue. We’ll just need to move carefully.”

Dice nodded before turning towards the boys. “We will be going in first. If there are any issues, you two are going to run.”

Cuphead puffed out his chest to argue. Only to be silenced by Dice pressing a finger over his mouth.

“No arguing.”

“...Fine.”

Lucifer led the party in, taking a deep breath before pushing the door open. A small but towering room greeted them first. Not a soul in sight. Right across from them was a set of golden double doors. Depictions of the Calix Animi were carved into it. All carrying weapons, halos of light behind each carved head. To the very right of it was a rather plain archway. The hallway winding around to go deeper into the building. They ignored it, heading right to the golden doors.

The first shock of worry came when they realized the doors…were already open.

“They’re open.” Lucifer whispered back to Dice, who’s eyes widened in worry. The latter waved the boys to remain back while he and Lucifer went on the defense.

Slowly opening the door further, the group was greeted with both good and terrible news. It was a moment of relief to see the vault was empty. But that was also the issue of it being empty. The entire vault had nothing held inside. No weapons, no shields, no potions, nothing.

“No…” Dice choked out.

“Are you…kidding me. Where the hell is everything!” Lucifer roars out in absolute rage.

“Shit…shit! Who else would have even known about this? Could they have moved the weapons?”

“How could anyone else know!? How could they have even found out? We had a God damn book written by the idiotic being themselves! There’s no way for anyone else to know!”

“Were there any other places that we could-”

“There was nothing else Dice, nothing! This was our best bet!”

The ex-con man let out a slow breath. Looking back hearing a fearful whimper, finding the boys had entered now. Mugman clearly scared, Cuphead in shock. Before he could say anything, Dice was pushed out of the way. Stumbling slightly as he watched Lucifer stalk out of the room. Cuphead kept his brother behind him as the demon walked by.

“W-What do we do now?” Mugman asked quietly.

Dice huffed weakly, rubbing his eyes before looking around once more. “Perhaps…there’s a secret room. Something of another hidden area. A backup of some kind. Look around to see if you can find anything. Just…move carefully.”

Lucifer felt rage bubbling in his chest. It burned and expanded in a way he was sure he was about to burst. Pacing around the room they’d first entered in, hoping to exhaust the fire out in some way. How could it turn out like this? He was so sure this was going to work. Now stuck with no way forward or any idea who could have beaten them here.

During his frantic pacing, a flash of light caught Lucifer’s attention. Looking up to see a rather corroded over plaque that was mounted to the wall next to the golden doors. A corner of it clear enough for the smallest amount of light from the outside reflecting off of it. Curious, Lucifer walked over. Just able to make out what had been inscribed.

“To allow entry…to destruction… One must be given for the many. What…does that even mean?” Lucifer frowned, running the words through his mind.

Breathing slowly through his nose, he gave a pause when an unwelcome and faint scent hit him. Decay, something that’s been here for a while now. Nothing had been spotted so far, meaning that…

Lucifer’s attention went towards the curved hallway. With the way it was built, it was unclear where it led to. But it was the last palace to search. So what could be the harm in looking? Leaving the voices of his companions behind, Lucifer headed in. Footsteps became muffled as the walls enclosed around him. The uncomfortable smell grew more as he followed the winding path. Soon reaching the end.

Past the presented archway was a small room. An altar resting against the furthest wall. And lying at the foot of it, unmoving and rusting away, was Elder Kettle.

Lucifer felt fear creep into him as his eyes rested on the familiar form. Without the need to check for a pulse he could tell the kettle was dead. The silver was corroding away, the flesh slowly rotting. No doubt this was where the smell was coming from. It was also clear that there was nothing to be done. Elder Kettle had been dead for a while now. Yet Lucifer couldn’t move. Unable to get his feet to respond, to get away from here.

“Lucifer? Where’d you go?”

Cuphead’s voice sounded from the main room.

Cuphead.

He and his brother were here.

The fear weighed heavier in Lucifer’s stomach.

“Lucifer?” The boy’s voice sounded closer, footsteps heard in the winding tunnel.

Shit.

Feeling returning to his legs, Lucifer quickly turned. Able to stop Cuphead before the final turn. Right before seeing the body. The demon slapped on a clearly forced smile. “What’s up Cuphead? Did you find anything?”

The cup shook his head weakly “No, Dice and Mugman are thinking about what we could do next. I wanted to come and find you. Are you okay? You got…really angry. I was worried you were going to change again.”

Lucifer allowed the smile to falter slightly. “Uh, yeah. I’m not the best with plans not working the way I want. With this being the best way to end this…”

Cuphead nodded again. “Okay…”

“I told you at the campsite, I’m not going to hurt you. Just…when I’m like that, give me room. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay… So, did you find something? I didn’t even know this hallway was here.”

Oh, the fear was back.

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing is back there, just another empty room. Oh…darn! Really boring, promise.”

Cuphead raised a brow. “...You seem really nervous.”

“Uhh…”

“Come on, let me see, I’m curious now!”

Shit!

“Nope, it’s nothing! Let’s go back to the other’s to see what plan they have no doubt-” Lucifer had placed a hand on Cuphead’s shoulder. Attempting to pull the cup back to the front. Only for the smaller form to slip by easily and dashed towards the room. Lucifer felt bile crawl up his throat. “Cuphead, wait!”

“I just want to see what-”

The demon knew the moment when Cuphead found Elder Kettle. The cup frozen in the archway. Eyes focused on the unmoving form. Lucifer gently reached out to take the younger’s hand. Trying to pull him away. “Cuphead-”

“Elder Kettle?” Cuphead called out weakly.

“We need to go back to the others-”

“Elder Kettle, wake up!”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“No! No no no, he’s right there! Elder Kettle please!”

Lucifer’s arms were now filled with a squirming child. One desperately reaching out, tears flowing as Cuphead called out his caretaker’s name. Stress only grew when Mugman appeared, no doubt benign drawn over by his brother’s cries. Lucifer called out, unsure if he was trying to tell Mugman to stop or to get Dice to collect the child before it was too late. All amounting to nothing as the mug found his caretaker as well.

Mugman let out a scream of distress, going to no doubt try and shake Elder Kettle. Lucifer quickly pulled the mug closer. Dice finally appeared. Taking the entire scene with a quiet calm. Eventually turned to Lucifer and said, “Let them go Lucifer.”

“But-”

“Just…let them go.”

The demon frowned but did as instructed. The boys instantly rushed over to Elder Kettle’s side. Rolling the kettle onto his back, showing a collapsed and sunken face. Eyes closed, face set into a deep frown. The small room was filled with cries and wails of desperate pleas from Cuphead and Mugman. Begging for their caretaker to wake up, to move, to say something. But Elder Kettle remained unmoving.

The boys eventually tired themselves out. Leaning against the other while they gripped onto the kettle’s hand. Lucifer and Dice only able to stand back and watch. The former eventually stood, quietly saying to the other, “Stay with them.”

Dice didn’t argue back. Eyes still on the boys while the demon walked out.

Lucifer left the large temple, making his way over to the cart. Grabbing the shovel before peering around the wide area. Selecting a spot near the edge of the tree line, heading over, and started to dig. He wasn’t sure how long he worked, but he soon had a deep and wide hole created. Sticking the shovel in the ground, Lucifer shook off the sweat before heading back to the cart.

Digging through the pile of blankets, Lucifer pulled out one of a deep purple color. Laying it out on the ground as flat as he could. Taking a deep breath to steel himself before Lucifer returned to the others.

Between the sniffs and soft sobs, it was unnervingly quiet. All right where Lucifer had left them. Dice said nothing as the demon passed by. Kneeling next to the brothers, Lucifer gently pulled the kettle’s hand from their grasp. Mugman gave a small noise of complaint, but nothing more was said. Being careful, Lucifer easily collected the unmoving form in his arms.

None questioned or argued as Lucifer walked out of the temple once more. The demon laying the kettle down on the spread out blanket. Wrapping it around Elder Kettle before lifting him up once more.

Mugman, upon seeing the large hole they were heading to, began to cry once more. Dice picking both boys up, all watching solemnly as Elder Kettle was placed in the newly created hole. Lucifer climbed back out, grabbing the shovel once more and began to toss dirt in.

Not a word was said as Lucifer finished up. Patting the dirt down as gently as he could before calling it finished. Going to stand by the group at the foot of the newly created grave. Lucifer was slightly surprised when Cuphead reached out for him. But took the cup without complaint, the other hand still holding onto the shovel.

There the group remained, saying nothing, eyes on the grave before them.

The light slowly fading. Yet they didn’t move.

Physically and mentally unable to move forward.

#cuphead #mugman #the devil #king dice #inazumaneko #s-creations #fanfiction #inspired by art #au world #also on ao3

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rezdragon · 11 months

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Hm, how about a project update (August 4, 2023)

The Disaster Archives Since I finally finished Normal, now I can invest all of my TDA time into Everyday, which is TDA’s next story. I’m still working on Rez’s route, but TDA is currently taking a backseat while I focus on other projects, which I’ll talk about below. You could definitely say that it’s currently in the pre-production phase and I’m going to be spending way more time in pre-production this time. Zero promises when it will be out. I want to say 2024, but even that I feel isn’t totally accurate. It depends on a lot of factors as to when I will finish it.

Behind the Scenes Video for Normal I took a break from working on anything for almost two weeks and then started making an album instead (more on that below). In the middle of that, I thought “Oh, I better work on the behind the scenes video.” because I nearly forgot about it (depression). I’ve gotten about 7 minutes into it so far, I’m starting to run out of behind the scenes footage heh.

New Album - State of Agony A new album has been rumbling inside of me since early July and I’m finally getting it out, this is what I’m working on currently. It’s called State of Agony, but I’m taking my time working on it. I probably won’t release it until September. I’m trying to make real sounding music on it, but hey, dark ambience stuff slipped in there anyways. I promise, I’m actually trying really hard to NOT make this an overly long monster like AloneSea was. There’s one track that I finished this week that I think I’m gonna share after I make this post (at least here on tumblr, elsewhere will have to wait).

Fine Art Shows YES! This is what I’ve been working on since literally May of this year, but your creature Rez is working on showing in Fine Art shows! I’ve entered into a show in Spokane, Washington called Terrain. I’ve been waiting for an acceptance letter which is suppose to come next week! If I get into Terrain, I’ll be busy with getting that set up and ready to go. I’ve got a table that I have to destroy. It’ll uh... it’ll make sense when I finish the piece, you’ll see, I’ll post about it. I’m also working on getting into another gallery in Spokane with an art group I’m in. If you’re wondering what medium it is, it’s SOUND! I’m known as the sound artist of the group!

Ghost Stories of North Idaho I want to come back to this project, would love to get it out in time for Halloween. I think I needed some space away from the stories before I give them a second look over. I know I keep threatening to work on this, but I think I will legit come back to this once I finish tinkering with my album.

Short Film Writing has stalled pretty badly on this, and I’m getting tempted to start over because I’m having a lot of trouble writing the conclusion. I really wanted this out in time for Terrain, but I just could not get the writing to work with me, and I didn’t want to submit sloppy work. There’s always next year, but I was a little disappointed in myself that I couldn’t submit a film (has to be a film I can legally sell, so machinima is a no-go).

Orintheous’ Revenge I posted about this awhile ago, but I’ve been wanting to focus on more original content that I can sell, and the fine arts galleries and shows is why. I’m trying really hard to get my name out there (believe me, I’m pestering public radio), and I’m beefing up my portfolio as well. So unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on OR, but I will come back to it someday, that story is too good for me to ignore (although I should really spend a day writing out the series bible before it all leaves my brain, having been forced out by TDA).

The Trickster It’s been shelved for the time being, for the same reasons as OR, but I will ABSOLUTELY come back to it someday, I have wild ideas for it and I want to use them.

#updates

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applesontheground · 2 years

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Hello!! I saw that your requests are open and 👉👈 Could I possibly get just a small little imagine? Look look, I know Patrick Bateman is a jerk and would kill me but like.. Imagine if you were dating him and one day he comes home from work tired and worn out and actually gives you the chance to be soft with him! Forehead kisses and all as he sleepily grumbles. Sorry if thats a lot 🥺 Thank you so much!!

- @slasherb1tch

oh...oh i actually enjoy this idea a lot!! let me see what i can do for you. >:3

also, i know you said ‘small’ but. kinda went off, my bad 😬 i apologize in advance if you wanted something with more straight fluff, but i’ve been kicking around other ideas about him for awhile now, so i tried to balance that out with your prompt! let me know how i did ;-; thank you for giving me an excuse to write for this fuckin’ guy.

every night you stay 💼

SFW | Word Count: 1,258 | Patrick Bateman x GN Reader

contains: mentions of cheating, bateman comes as his own warning

🎼: look at this really cool playlist ❤

Where could you even fucking begin with this?

Tracing the crystalline edges of a few CDs sitting on his coffee table, you looked up at the clock on the wall with a twinge. You knew it wasn’t right to see him as much as you did, especially after realizing where you stood in such a two-toned life. Even in the moment, you could sense that there had to be something wrong about that smile, something that turned to pure manic spite the second the lights went dim and no one besides you was left looking.

The revelation that he was engaged wasn’t what you expected to be the thing that made you uncertain. If you had known he had other commitments, you wouldn’t have looked twice at the damn guy to begin with...or at least, that was something repeated to yourself until you believed it.

Could you say no to him? You’d seen what happens in the face of denial towards Patrick. It never ended well, but the aftermath at your feet was also something you couldn’t deny: the obsessive need to control it all, to hang the picture over these dents in the wall that was his image for everyone else. He had to use such a painfully smooth affront that no big shot coworker or unsuspecting acquaintance would even try to see past.

You knew you were someone who could -- and here you were, still walking around with a pulse. He let you exist in this strange grey area because you could ignore it, even play along when necessary. That was all he would ask from you.

Even now, you were paying no mind to the way that your skin would shoot up and down with bumps of fear whenever you remembered he would be home any minute. Why he had handed you his spare key that day and walked off like nothing had happened was enough to know that he had expected you to be here, and that something was going to be different after you walked out.

His fiancée looked so sweet. That thought alone made your fingers flex harder as they curled against the arm rest of the sofa -- his sofa -- and the stupid crossword that you had mentally occupied yourself with to fade further into the background of your awareness. Your focus was on the man who was due home, and for whatever reason he was trusting you in here without him.

Just as that curiosity to look around tapped on your shoulder, the door clicked to open. You didn’t even look before he muttered, “Don’t ask me too many questions. I’ve had a long day.”

You hummed at the familiar hostility, and when you knew he was looking, you merely nodded and kept your eyes on your lap.

“...Nothing to say?” He prodded, and you replied plainly, “That’s alright, I won’t ask.” You stood slowly, settling the magazine back on the arm of the sofa.

Breath against the back of your neck, seemingly out of thin air along with the dark suit caught in your peripherals, startled you into silence again. He didn’t have to lay a finger on you to get everything to freeze. Even your blinks were slow and careful, like you had to think about them before you let them happen. You stared straight ahead, but the late afternoon Sun was reflecting off of the window so that you saw the shadow of his face hovering over your shoulder, his brow scrunched together and the rest of his body rigid.

The only indication that he was alive was the shallow breath in your ear, soon broken by his methodical voice. “Don’t go anywhere.” He cleared his throat, trying to hide the remnants of exhaustion. Your eyes cast down, but what he said next made the breath you had held in your chest tumble out. “I want you to stay the night. Not for anything like we normally do, I…”

You turned slightly, meeting his unattainable gaze and not sure how to take his twitching expression. It was like a malfunction in his very nature, sliding between cold, desperate, sad, tired, and then giving a final flash of approval when you slowly replied, “O-okay, if you say so. I’m here to alleviate your headaches, Bateman. Not make more of them.”

You turned, swiveling away to find something to distract you again. Every thought you had was making it hard to breathe in his presence, but you did your best to disguise it as the disinterest. He commented sharply, and you heard him step to follow you, “I deal with my headaches just fine, [Y/N]. You know that.”

You hummed again, this time stopping abruptly and letting him get close to your backside again. The breath on your ear was wavering, even more shaky with a second attempt. At what? What usually happened when he got like this wasn’t ideal -- but you then considered that between this debacle between love and violence, you were in that pocket.

The next time you were coming back to earth, your hands were on either side of his face, daring to ghost a kiss over the side of it. He sneered at the gesture, but the only hands he laid on you were against the outsides of your shoulders, holding you at a distance that he couldn’t commit to breaking yet.

“I don’t need a companion, [Y/N].” He muttered, sounding more of a statement to himself rather than something you should take in, “I just need someone to help alleviate these urges I have. I’ve told you before.” You hummed in affirmation, kissing his jaw next, “I can’t let them loose on the woman I’m going to marry. Do you know what that sort of behavior would make me out to be?” You froze at the reminder, but then replied, “I can imagine.”

He sighed deeply, and you realized that he believed that. You pressed another kiss onto the middle section of his neck, and shied away before being asked. The way that his eyes sought yours out immediately along with the intensity that he still held onto you made it impossible to turn away. You took another leap of faith and set your head against his shoulder.

He adjusted uncomfortably, but seemed to allow it as he muttered, “The only reason I don’t hurt you too badly is because you’re a constituent, I mean-“ You could hear it in the way his voice had faltered, saying it only to keep you out of these strange emotions you hadn’t seen before. Even the ones he had shown in public were contrived in a sort of way. It made him fit in rather uncannily, but this was ugly. It was selfish, and it was the most human you had possibly seen from the guy. No wonder he was on edge: he was once again just covering a base he wasn’t ready to reveal.

Still, you were merely a person allowed within that grey area, and there you would stay. You could never leave to the better side, where the man before you was still an unsightly VP with a picture perfect appearance and a raving social prowess that could sell anyone on anything he needed. If you ever got let out of this, it would be into the other side. It’d be dark. It’d be painful.

Maybe this pocket wasn’t the worst spot to be in after realizing what waited there.

Maybe he knew that just as well as you did.

#patrick bateman x reader #patrick bateman x y/n #slasher x reader #slasher x y/n #slasher requests #requests #✏️#💼#slasherb1tch

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yoongsisbae · 3 years

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Bon Voyage: Into the Sea - Chapter 3

BTS fantasy AU. OT7 x reader. werewolf!Namjoon x werewolf!Hoseok x werewolf!Jungkook x siren!Yoongi x vampire!Jimin x vampire!Jin x whatis?Taehyung. This is the "vampire chapter" :'D

Thank you for all the love on this random nightmarish story lol. This extra update is for all the readers who made it my most popular post! Thank you! <3 Also this is my contribution to the start of the spooky season :D

Warnings: Hi, remember when I said this was horror? This chapter in particular is pretty horrific, you have been warned! blood, fighting between m/w, blood, graphic violence, blood, imprisonment, blood, blood, blood, minor character death, vampires doing vampire things including noncon blood drinking, human imprisonment, mind manipulation, stockholm syndrome, dubious consent, slut shaming, anal, degradation, foursome, orgasm control, orgasm denial, what a ride, you must be over 18 to ride this ride, scary scary scary

Word Count: 22k

---

“Scared, y/n?” Jimin’s face sends you a wicked smile.

You look back and forth between the men, uttering an unconvincing “No.”

Seokjin speaks again, “You should be.”

---

‘So did you get the answers you are looking for?’ You sit up, jolted out of your sleep, Hoseok’s words echoed softly in your mind.

Seokjin moved so fast, his striking face in front of you in an instant, his red eyes centimeters from yours, delicate lips curving into a smile over his fangs as water splayed around where he stood. That was the last thing you remember.

He smiled down at you sweetly and held you by the neck, putting pressure on your vein until you passed out. It all happened so fast your scream remained halted until this moment. The response came out of you abruptly, as fleeting as the memory.

And now where the hell were you? It looked like the room of an old bed and breakfast; large bed, writing desk, love seat, high windows; but to your captors the breakfast on the menu was you.

The first thing you notice is how the curtains are drawn together blocking the sunlight, but you know it’s there, just out of reach, as evidenced by the small line of light that trails its top edge. The room you found yourself in was dark, from the wallpaper to the furniture, the stillness unsettling, you listened as your own rapid breathing filled the silence.

You were seated right in the middle of a king size bed. They left you atop the cleanly-made white bed sheets, a treat placed in the center of a platter. You shiver, your clothes still remained damp from the night before, cold and stuck to your skin. That is why you shiver, you tell yourself, because you don’t hear them, but you feel them...watching you...

You build up enough courage to scan the room, and that’s when you see two pairs of red orbs staring back at you from the corners’ shadows, glowing in the darkness. Eyes of beasts, watching you, studying you.

You try not to react, not show your captors how scared you are, but every mechanism in your body betrays you, and the pair immediately pick up on your rapidly beating heart, the sweat on your brows, your unsteady breathing-

“Good morning, y/n,” Seokjin says, walking out of the shadows. Jimin stays hidden, but you can hear his soft laughter.

Those answers you wanted, where are they?

Seokjin slowly moves to the edge of the bed. “It seems like our friends have taken quite an interest with you and I want to find out why. Is that okay?”

You purse your lips, keeping your eyes trained on the thin strip of light showing at the top of the window curtains. You sit in silence. Has your breathing always been this loud? The shaking of Seokjin’s legs, a sign of his growing impatience, rattles the bed and your resolve.

He clasps his hands together, finally saying “If you don’t want to speak to me,” he leans in slightly and whispers the rest, “I can always let Jimin pry information out of you, but I don’t think you’d appreciate that very much.”

The pounding of your heart and the uneasiness in the pit of your stomach makes you feel like you’re going to become sick at any minute, but you manage to form a coherent sentence to ask him, “What do you want to know?”

“First, I want your permission to find out,” he speaks softly, placing a gentle hand on your calf, but you flinch away anyways. That’s a loaded question if you ever heard one. You wonder if it’s all an act, the same way Jimin fooled you. You stay silent.

Seokjin sighs again, looking over his shoulder, “Jimin?”

“No!” you yell. “Not Jimin! You...you, okay I give you permission.”

“Thank you, y/n.” He smiles, “I’ll be gentle.”

You yelp. Seokjin’s cold hand travels down your leg, wraps around your ankle and pulls you down the bed closer to his body, and in an instant his lean frame is hovering over yours. This close, his beauty is intimidating alone, but his eyes feel like they are piercing through you, digging inside, seeing all the ugly secrets you try to hide from even yourself, you feel like you could catch fire the way his gaze burns you.

He holds you down loosely by the neck, fingers searching for a pulsing vein, eyes focused on you with the concentration of a doctor performing surgery. Seokjin wipes away the tears that begin spilling from your eyes and smirks, “Don’t cry Dove, I promise this time will be the least pain you’ll experience from now on.” His words are devoid of any real sympathy, a false comfort, a looming warning.

You consider fighting back, but in this position there is no way you would be able to reach for your dagger (hidden away in a secret pocket in the front of your corset) without Seokjin stopping you, and even if you were lucky enough, there’s still Jimin, waiting in the shadows.

So you choose to wait, and try to find comfort in Seokjin’s twisted words. It could be worse. A tiny voice inside you reminds you it will become worse. You’ll just have to escape before then. You take a deep steadying breath, preparing yourself.

Don’t cry.

Seokjin’s lips latch onto your neck, soft and full as he rolls his tongue harshly over your pulse point. Goosebumps bloom across your body, and you try to focus on the sunlight rather than the vampire above you and his overwhelming aura, that sliver of light that you pray won’t dim.

This could be worse. This could be more painful. This could be Jimin.

Seokjin can feel the jumping of your pulse against his tongue. The vampire wants to know your story, what is it about you that riled Jimin up more than he’s ever seen him. But with your sweet scent enveloping him and the cocktail of emotions Seokjin’s keen senses could smell: fear and anger and mounting arousal, you smelled better to him than the finest wine and he can’t stop himself from teasing you a little longer, drink it in just a bit more and savor the moment.

Seokjin still understood the importance of ‘living’ in the present, he enjoyed taking his time with things. Others would have gone mad by now with the infinite amount of time, but not Seokjin, he used it to his advantage. Your warm body, your addicting smell, the softness and saltiness of your skin, the shifts in your breathing, Seokjin took his time to savor the gifts of life that he still missed.

You try not to react to his sensual touches, tensing your body under him, until you feel two sharp pricks on the surface of your skin. Your reaction is involuntary, you grip the bedsheets with your fists and let out a soft cry, moving against him. His bite hurt for only a second, like a pin prick, but Seokjin in his precision had nicked an artery for optimum bloodshed. With each gasp of breath you take, with each pounding beat of your heart, you feel your blood drain as it escapes the punctures in your neck and into Seokjin’s waiting mouth.

Seokjin groans against your skin, sending fire through your veins, pressing himself harder into your body. The vampire is better at keeping his physical responses to blood drinking at bay than Jimin, but he hasn’t had a new taste in awhile, and you’re so responsive.

When he pulls away from you you reach to cover your neck and stop the blood, a reflex in an attempt to save your own life, but Seokjin grabs your wrists before you can, pinning you to the bed, studying, his red gaze challenging you.

You gasp as the blood rushes out down your neck, over the sheets, seeping into your clothes. ‘They’ll underestimate you...’ Yoongi’s words replay in your mind and you stay still. No matter how much you want to fight back, this time you have to be smarter, you have to believe in Yoongi’s words.

Jimin has stayed quiet for this long, staying in the shadows, but your whimpers and grunts of pain are music to Jimin’s ears, the blood pouring from your body like an offering to him. His groans can be heard from the shadows.

He holds himself back for now, waiting for his turn. Jimin wonders where all that fight went, he had expected a show, for you to thrash away from the older vampire like you did the merman. He can’t help but feel a little disappointed. When it’s his turn, he thinks, you’ll become more entertaining then.

You watched in silence as Seokjin licked his lips clean of your blood. The red liquid that he had stolen from you, that was now steadily seeping from your wound and covering the white bedsheets underneath you, like a Rorschach picture mapping your life. “You’re strong,” he grins, speaking too tenderly for the brutality he was inflicting. “Stop fighting and it will end sooner, y/n. Let me into your mind.”

What does that even mean?! In your blood loss the tips of your fingers begin to feel cold like your captor’s, your head pounds and your vision blurs with each passing moment as the blood drains from your artery, you don’t want to give in, but if it will end this torture...

You shut your eyes tightly, and turn your head to expose your bleeding neck further to the monster above you. When Seokjin lowers his lips to your neck, you try to think of sweet Jungkook instead, his warm body instead of Seokjin’s cold one. You didn’t dare wish to be with him again, you didn’t dare think you made a mistake, that you should have stayed. Now all you can do is hope you can save him and yourself from this horrible island. Jungkook doesn’t deserve to be imprisoned with the likes of them.

Seokjin drinks the warm liquid pouring from your throat. You listen to him gulping down your blood, How much longer, until he finds what he’s looking for? You feel your fight escape you with each swallow, you feel yourself slipping away. It reminds you of drowning, it reminds you of Yoongi and how he kissed life into you instead, but this was the kiss of death.

‘Yoongi,’ you close your eyes and think of him. And then you felt it, the pull inside your mind. Your current circumstance falls away in shambles, your memories are pulled out of you through the cracks, the images race through your mind as Seokjin bears witness to it all.

---

Yoongi sits at the table, hair and clothes dry, turning his head to see you awake.

The relief that softens his features as he’s walking to your side.

The delicate way he places the hairpiece back in its place.

The way his eyes melt at your words.

Why hadn’t you seen it before? Seokjin saw it all. The way Yoongi screams at you, the rage and embarrassment in his eyes as he tells you how much he can’t stand you, the way he licks his lips when you yell back. His eyes studying you when you yank him closer, full of anger and full of-

You weakly push against Seokjin, you don’t want to remember, you don’t want to miss him. You can’t stop it, you can’t stop the memories flooding through your system.

You suddenly remember Jungkook’s sparkling round eyes watching you, wanting you, the crinkle of his nose when he laughs, the pink flush on the edges of his ears when you talk to him, the muscles of his arms flexing as he cages you under him, his deep groaning in your ear, the vein in his neck when he pushes into your wet heat, the truth in his voice when he says he’ll protect you.

You feel Seokjin’s hands travel down your body the same way you remembered Jungkook. You curse him in your mind, but your body couldn’t tell the difference, your stomach tightens and you’re no longer cold, warmth spreads over you to the tips of your toes.

You want to scream, scream for Jungkook, but you’re frozen, lost in your own thoughts, confused by your senses. Jungkook feels as real as Seokjin, but you know he’s not really there, no matter how much you wanted it to be true.

You remember Hoseok’s harsh looks, the growing anger in his eyes, the hurt in his eyes, the pain in his eyes, the pain still present in his eyes even in his wolf form when he howls and cries at you. He’s begging you to stay, he’s telling you he can’t bear to lose someone again. How could you leave them? Why can’t they be enough for you? Hoseok will treat you better, if you just stay with him, please. You understand his barks and howls now, because Seokjin understands. Tears well up in your eyes and you try to move away, but Seokjin is too solid, too powerful, and unyielding in his search.

Namjoon’s eyes are on you as you eat next to his brothers at dinner, filled with nothing but warmth and happiness. Those brown eyes, you miss them. You feel dizzy and helpless, you can’t take it anymore. You grab a fistful of Seokjin’s hair to try to pull him off of you.

“What have you done to Jimin? What have you done?!” Namjoon’s voice roars in your memory. But it’s not any memory you remember having. Before you realize what you are doing, your hands hold on tightly to Seokjin’s hair, pulling him closer and holding him to you so you can see more.

---

“It-It wasn’t me...” The tall vampire is covered in blood. Some of it is Jimin’s blood, yes, but the majority of blood that drips down his face and hands, that covers his clothes, belongs to five other men. Dead men. Men who beat the broken man in his arms to the brink of death.

Seokjin found his dear friend screaming in pain. He saw them over Jimin’s bleeding body, blood Seokjin treasured just as much as he treasured his bond with the compassionate and playful man. His friend, Jimin, who wailed for Seokin, for Namjoon, for Hoseok, for Taehyung, for anyone to help him, while his bones cracked, lying in the dirt, choking on his own blood, precious blood.

Seokjin explained to Namjoon when he saw them laughing, like hyenas over a carcass, spitting hateful slurs down at Jimin, he couldn’t control himself. Seokjin tore them apart one by one. He chased each one down like the pathetic animals they were, and tore the limbs that touched his dear friend straight from their bodies.

Seokjin had been weak, he had become too accustomed to the harmonious life he and Namjoon had created for themselves. Had it been decades before, he would have endured, but living with the pack had softened him too much and he couldn’t stand the pain of losing Jimin, so when he found a weak pulse he gave Jimin as much of his venomous blood as he could.

Namjoon simply nods at the information, his weary eyes examining his two friends, friends who were like family to him. He didn’t want to lose Jimin either. “We need to take him somewhere safe...to the island, before he wakes up,” Namjoon places a hand on the trembling vampire’s shoulder.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?” the vampire’s voice shakes, he notices the cuts on Jimin’s face and body have yet to heal themselves.

“That’s not something you should be worried about,” Namjoon runs his hand through Jimin’s tangled hair, gently placing the dark strands back into place, his eyes filling with tears, “it’s when he wakes up, we need to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Seokjin nods weakly.

“Go now. I’ll clean up the mess, brother.”

Your hands fall, the blood loss making you too weak to grip onto Seokjin’s hair. Seokjin had taken more blood than he intended, lost in his own memories.

The vampire pulls away from you, even as the edges of your vision blurs, you see his eyes, glowing red and glassy with unshed tears, staring at you with a mixture of pain and surprise. He shakes away his bewilderment and rips into the flesh of his wrist, placing the cut across your lips as you can no longer hold consciousness.

---

When you wake again it’s night time, the light behind the curtains has left you.

Your body aches. You run your fingers along your neck, searching for the punctures, and you can only feel smooth skin crusted in dried blood. Your head feels like it’s splitting. You groan in pain.

You see Jimin before you hear him, and even then you’re not sure if your brain created the sounds to ease your mind as he stalks closer to your waking form.

“Finally! Now what could you have possibly done to Jin?” Jimin says, contemplating the reason his friend holed himself up in his office, refusing to speak to Jimin or even look at him.

He jumps on the bed, shaking your already pounding head. “He refuses to let me bite you,” he whines, “Explain now, pet.” Jimin prods you with his foot. “Explain what memory of yours Seokjin pulled.”

You just groan back, turning away from Jimin, burying your head into the cold pillows of your bed, one of the few things not soaked in your blood. Everything is so cold you can’t stand it. Jimin places a hand on your shoulder to make you face him. Cold fingers touch your skin, everything is cold.

“Don’t touch me!” you pull away from him, yelling.

Your face stings. Jimin had slapped you hard, you come to the realization only after the fact, the skin he touched burns hot. It makes you laugh, because you wanted warmth, didn’t you?

Jimin’s eyes narrow on you, “Say that again, I dare you.”

You bite back tears and ask, “What the fuck happened to you?!”

“So you’re back to being a disrespectful brat. You’re not on the same level as me, human. Learn to behave.”

“No! What happened to you to make you so heartless? What changed you?” How did the bleeding man you saw Namjoon cry over in Seokjin’s memories become this monster? He was human at one point too, you wouldn’t have believed it if you didn’t see it for yourself.

Jimin rolls his eyes, “Don’t act like you know anything about me, bitch.”

You take a deep breath trying to calm your temper. Not only had you seen Seokjin’s memories, you had felt his emotions. His pain lingers in you still, beside the fear and hatred you feel, you look at Jimin and feel...sorry for him. You have to look down, the emotions are too much and too overwhelming. It was easier when all you knew was the monster before you. Jimin takes your silence as obedience instead.

“Now can you be a good little pet and answer my question,” he says, tapping you on the head hard enough to make your headache roar back to life. You flinch and search the eyes of the man before you. Or rather the shell of a man, you think bitterly.

And what a beautiful shell it is. Jimin is stunning, bright white hair pulled away and styled so you can see the delicate features of his face. He holds himself gracefully, like a dancer, his elegant figure hiding his true strength. You wonder what he was like before turning into a monster, what kind of man was he? Someone whom Namjoon cared for.

“It wasn’t my memory...you. I saw you…” You whisper, knowing Jimin’s sharp senses can hear you loud and clear, “I saw Seokjin turn you.” Silence falls over the room again, a silence so deafening you start to hear the pounding in your head becoming louder.

The vampire stares at you, soft features stoic. He looked lost in thought, you pictured his face full of cuts, bloody lip, black eye, human, and Seokjin so unsure, scared, worried, trembling, so unlike themselves now.

“How did he turn me?” It surprised you how genuine Jimin’s question sounded. Did he really not know?

You keep your mouth shut, you don’t think it would be wise on your part to tell him. Jimin seems like the type to shoot the messenger. Unfortunately, unlike Seokjin, Jimin had little to no patience. His expression changes like lightning, full of anger. He pulls you by the hair dragging you off the bed and onto the floor.

The vampire crouches over you and grabs your face, holding you down to the wood floor, pressing his sharp nails into the skin of your cheeks making you yell.

“Ahh there’s your voice! Tell me.”

“Why don’t you ask Seokjin?!”

“But I rather you just do as I say,” he says playfully, as his fingers dig harder into your skin, cutting the flesh and drawing blood.

“Why don’t you just bite me, then?!” You spit the words out through clenched teeth.

You watch the vampire lick his lower bottom lip, thinking it over briefly as he pulls your face closer to his, you struggle against his painful grip. “How impetuous...” he watches you squirm like an insect stuck in glue. “You’re rather dumb, aren’t you?”

Should you reach for your dagger now? Should you try to kill Jimin?

Every time you thought about hurting him, you remembered Seokjin’s crying face, and you wanted to cry as well, what was happening to you?

“Jimin, leave us.” Jin stands in the doorway to your room.

Jimin stands up in a huff, letting you go. You fall back onto the hardwood floor. He balances on his heels, ignoring you and scrutinizing Seokjin. He wanted to question the older vampire, he has so many questions now, but decides against it. What does it matter anyways? The idea of being a weak and powerless human revolts him. “I’m getting impatient,” he says before he leaves, slamming the door and making you jump.

“T-thank y-you.” You try to calm your breathing.

Seokjin looks at you with a frown, extending his hand out to you. You hesitate and place your hand in his and he easily lifts you to your feet. You watch the older vampire walk slowly around the room, drawing his fingers along the furniture he passes. You stand awkwardly, you don’t think making a run for it would gain you any favors right now.

“I’m hungry,” Seokjin says. He doesn’t even look at you when he says it, continuing to meander around the room, waiting for your response.

You clench your jaw. So this is what you’ve been reduced to, you think, a late night snack. “Are you going to just keep me trapped in this room? I’m hungry too, I haven’t eaten anything-”

“Dinner's already passed. Before I let you go roaming around, I need to make sure you’re going to behave yourself, do you understand?”

No, you don’t understand at all. It sounds like he’s going to starve you into subservience, and you have to get out of this room, you have to find the portal.

“I will do as you say...please...” you walk over to where he’s standing, trying your best to seem meek. “I’m starving,” you reason, “I’m sure you know how it feels to hunger for something” you say, turning your head to stare at the windows, curtains now open to the night sky, extending your neck to the vampire. His eyes are pulled to your attention, following the lines of your shoulder. You roll your neck, loosening the stiff muscles, moving close enough to him that your chest bumps into his. You look up into Seokjin’s eyes through your lashes, “I-I will behave.”

Seokjin smiles, bringing his head down into the curve of your neck, lips skirting across the skin. Your fingers reach up to caress the back of his head. You can see the pair of you in the bedroom mirror. Another myth proven wrong, you think, as you study your seduction, how his lean frame bends closer to yours, his arms wrapping around the lower part of your back.

In truth, Seokjin wasn’t hungry. He had taken more than enough blood from you this morning already, but Seokjin wanted to see if lightning could strike twice. Never had the pull been so strong for him that a human had been able to enter his memories, not even when Jimin was alive. He needed to learn more.

Seokjin licks your face, tongue tracing the cuts Jimin’s nails left behind. You hold your breath, trying to act like you enjoyed it. You hated it, you wished you could stick Yoongi’s dagger into Seokjin’s cold dead heart and be done with it already.

Seokjin trails kisses back to the place he bit you before. He keeps kissing your sensitive skin until his lips reach your ear and he whispers, “I’m not Jungkook, little Dove, you’ll have to do better than that.”

You stumble backwards but it’s too late, Seokjin already has you in his clutches.

He pulls you into a tight embrace, walking you backward even more. His bite is precise, you suspect perfectly precise to where he bit you this morning. Your arms are locked tightly in between your bodies as he holds you to him.

Thunder roars in your memory, you feel yourself drowning. Your muscles ached, your lungs burned. You feel Yoongi’s hand on your ankle, pulling down, hand on your waist, pulling down, hand on your neck, pulling you closer, his lips on your lips-

You cry and yell against Seokjin’s grasp. Cold turns to warmth as you see Namjoon, Jungkook, and Hoseok laughing around the firepit, and Seokjin, and Jimin, laughing too. Yoongi sits with a calm expression on his face, his lips curved upward, and a man you don’t recognize sits next to him-

Seokjin yanks his mouth away from you and you fall backward, back hitting the bed while you struggle to breath. You cover the holes on your neck with your palm to stop the rushing blood.

“How?” is all Seokjin can say, shaken by the happy memory that even he had forgotten about.

You stare up at the high ceiling dazed and too weak to move, “Do I...” you can feel the blood spill between the gaps of your fingers, “look...” you gasp, “like a vampire expert...to you?”

Seokjin moves to the window, his back to you. He watches the waning moon and lets his mind wander to his old friends. If they were off the island, he could see a scenario where you and he would meet at a bar, laugh over drinks, but the ending would always be the same. “You look,” he looks over his shoulder at you, “like you could use a drink,” his lips curving into a half smile.

“Are you,” you gasp, “offering?”

He walks over to you slowly, bringing his wrist to his mouth, and then extends the sliced skin to your mouth, waiting expectantly.

You take his offering bitterly, gulping down the metallic liquid, the wounds burn like fire as they heal over. The pain is nothing like you’ve ever experienced before. You shut your eyes tightly, you want to cry, or scream, but like Namjoon said, no one can help you here. You feel fingers intertwine with your bloody fingers, pulling your bloodied hand away as you weakly protest. The room spins, even if your wounds are healed, your blood is still gone and you’re feeling the effects of two feedings.

Seokjin brings your hand to his lips and licks away the blood, tongue circling your fingers. “This can hurt or it can feel good,” he says slowly.

You laugh, delirious from hunger and blood loss. “I wonder, that memory,” you gasp, still laughing, “does it bother you to be reminded of your humanity? Does it hurt you?”

You probably shouldn’t have said that, but the blood loss is doing funny things to you, or maybe you just really wanted to get a reaction from the guarded man, no, guarded vampire.

If your accusation angered Seokjin he didn’t show it with any emotion, instead he sighed and bent over you, biting down hard on your shoulder. The searing pain makes you scream. You cry out, not expecting the sharp and throbbing kind of ache from his bite as Seokjin’s teeth stayed deep in your flesh.

Seokjin pulls another memory out of you, and you curse your luck in remembering Jungkook again, remembering his tanned and muscled body next to yours. Jungkook kissing your knuckles and telling you how he’s yours now. Jungkook kissing down your body. His head between your legs, his mouth feverishly licking at your folds. The more you try not to think about him the stronger the memories feel. The pain in your shoulder dulls as your legs tighten around the vampire's sides.

Perhaps it was your bloodloss mixed with Seokjin’s bloodlust seeping into your consciousness, the memory of Jungkook’s length buried deep inside you and feeling of Seokjin’s growing bulge pressed against your stomach makes your head spin and you just want to feel more. You hear Namjoon’s deep authoritative voice whispering dirty things in your ear, it makes you shudder, a moan escapes your throat-

Seokjin pulls away from you abruptly at that, his eyes are deep red, so dark they look black. He watches as your body twitch in pain, as he focuses on calming the storm of human emotions, your emotions, running through him, as he tries to forget the compromising memory of his old friend. He bites down on his bottom lip until he draws blood, his blood mixing with your own blood in his mouth, and he presses his lips on yours.

You realized how passionate Yoongi’s kisses were compared to Seokjin’s. The merman was distant, but his actions were full of feeling, whether they be good or bad. Seokjin was cold in body and mind, a hard shell, you felt like you were kissing a statue as you choked on his blood, the liquid metallic and sweet.

You can feel the punctures in your skin closing, it hurts so much worse than when he bit you, you distract yourself by licking into his mouth, feeling his tongue against yours.

Seokjin jumps off of you the second your wounds are healed and leaves without saying a word. You can hear the door lock in your daze.

You scoff, what was up with him, you wonder, dining and dashing like that. The blood loss has you quickly falling asleep despite wanting to use the time alone to plan your escape.

---

They both leave you alone all day until night again. You wake up hungry and weak. When Seokjin wordlessly stalks towards you that night you tell him so.

“I still can’t trust you to play well with others.”

“I need food! I need to eat! I am not a goddamn vampire like you! I can’t survive off your blood!” You throw your pillow at him. Should you have done that? Probably not, but you’re too hungry to care.

Seokjin pauses, looks at the floor where the pillow lays at his feet after coming in contact with his chest. “I’ll bring you food later tonight, now lie down, I’m hungry too.”

Ugh.

---

There were so very little things now that intrigued Seokjin, and this connection had become a mystery he wanted to solve. The strength of his pull on you was so intense it had become almost addicting to feel for Seokjin.

A vampire's pull had always been one-sided, but this pull acted like a wave, crashing onto the shore of your consciousness, pulling back and forth, dragging his memories along the current too.

Promised food, you comply, lying down against your better judgement. You glare at him as he lies next to you, and he smooths your furrowed features with his fingers instead of matching your anger. It makes you feel self conscious, the way he watches you with searching eyes. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

“So demanding, do you want me to bite you that badly?”

Is he teasing you? “No. I don’t. At all!”

“Okay then.” he lies back down, his arms underneath his head.

You sit up to look down at him. “Is this a joke?”

“I’ll wait, I don’t mind. I can wait for days, the question is can you?”

If you tried to stab him now he would definitely be able to stop you. Too bad. “I think I can’t stand you.”

“You barely know me!”

“I’ve seen enough,” you scoff.

“I’ve lived a long time,” Seokjin says, serious again, “you don’t care to see more? Who I really am?”

“Who are you?”

“Let me bite you and find out,” he winks.

'Well, he seems to be in a better mood,' you think. You wonder why he is even bothering to ask you, you’re his prisoner, after all. “So this is not just about feeding anymore?”

“I’m a vampire, of course it is.”

You sigh, you’re hungry and tired from blood loss. “Okay, bite me, but choose some place else,” you rub the sensitive spot on your neck and shiver. “NOT THERE!”

Seokjin stops pushing your legs open. “But there is an artery in your leg-”

Your face goes hot, you shove your wrist in his face. “Here then!” He sighs and lies back down again, pulling you over his body easily. You sit awkwardly against his lap as you watch his fangs prick your inner wrist. The blood loss this time wasn’t so bad, but it still made your weak body sway, your free hand bracing yourself against his chest.

He does the same thing to you again, pulls memories of your life. You saw memories from before the boat wreck to your childhood, and you saw glimpses of Seokjin’s life as well. You learned at one point in his very long life he stopped being a complete monster and became a part time bartender.

For decades he moved from taverns, to pubs, to bars. The perfect career, and as his beautiful looks were admired everywhere he went, he was never short of meal options. You woke in the morning and you laid on clean sheets, there was water for you and bread and butter and jam, an apricot and an apple, food not found on an island. The portal.

Tonight. This night you will be ready for Seokjin. You quickly realized you weren’t just remembering with Seokjin, you were feeling, and he was feeling too. If you could distract him well enough with a memory, you think you’d be able to escape!

---

Tonight Jimin walks into your room instead.

“Where’s Seokjin?”

“You didn’t miss me?” He holds a pear in his hand, throwing it up in the air and catching it easily. “He is busy, the others were feeling neglected by him-”

“There are others? Other humans?!”

Jimin smirks at your wide eyes. “Yes, pet, did you think you were special?” You swallow, keeping your questions to yourself. So Seokjin really meant it when he talked about playing well with others. Who were they and how long have they been here? Could some of them be your friends? Maybe you weren’t the only survivor on your boat! More humans, more people to help you fight against Seokjin and Jimin, if you could just meet them and somehow convince them...

Jimin heard your accelerating heartbeat, could see the happiness dance across your features. “What ever you are thinking, I suggest against it. Actually, go ahead and try, I haven’t punished anyone in so long.”

“Are you going to bite me or not?”

“Oh, so now you’re eager for it, it’s always the same.”

“Still not allowed, huh? Must suck to be you. Ha! Get it?”

“Do you think you’re being cute? Jin said I can’t bite you, he didn’t say anything about not hurting you.” Jimin throws the pear in the air again, “What? No clever retort?”

“I don’t know about Seokjin,” you speak softly, “but you used to be human, why do you act like this?” You watch as Jimin drops the pear on the ground and steps on the fruit with his feet. You bite your lip. What a waste. You consider pulling out your dagger just for that.

“Being human?” Jimin runs a hand through his hair, “I don’t remember anything about that. I can’t imagine being so weak and foolish.”

“You really don’t remember?” You look at the pear, squished into a pulp. “Can you do what Seokjin does, with the memories?”

“What makes you think I want to learn about your pathetic life?”

“No,” You idiot. You sigh. “But maybe you want to learn about your pathetic life?”

You scream, Jimin’s nails were digging into your skull, a handful of your hair in his fists. “Call me pathetic again,” he threatens lowly.

“Pathetic,” you say bearing your teeth. Jimin smiles, because in that moment you reminded him of someone. He’s going to enjoy breaking the bones of your body and watching your limbs reassemble again. He grabs your forearm, pulling your arm closer to your face. You wince as his grip tightens, struggling against his tight hold on your hair. “Call me pathetic again,” he sings, his eyes sparkling with delight.

You weigh your options in that moment.

“Seokjin!” you scream.

Jimin laughs, tightening his grip even more so you are sure to have bruises, “Do you think he really cares about what happens to you?”

“Jimin was a regular at your bar! Wasn’t he?!” You had seen the younger vampire, only briefly, you barely recognized him with dark hair, but you knew it was Jimin the way you felt your own heart soar when Seokjin glanced at him for the first time.

You screamed louder than you’ve ever heard yourself, making the vampire wince at your volume, because in that moment Jimin snapped the bone in your forearm. “Even if you don’t remember,” you cry, mumbling out the words through your pain, “you were human. Just. Like. Me.”

Jimin grabs your upper arm this time, and squirm in his hold. You start to cry harder despite trying to hold the tears in. The door to your room slams open. Seokjin looks furious when he steps towards the both of you.

“Jimin leave!"

“What?” The white haired vampire loosens his grip, but stands his ground. Seokjin doesn’t speak again, only gives him a look, and Jimin relents, breaking his stare with several blinks and releasing you. The younger vampire can’t hide his emotions as well as Seokjin and you see the hurt twist his beautiful features.

You sit on the ground grimacing in pain, holding your broken arm to your chest. Outside your room you hear the familiar crash of glass and scrape of wood and you suspect Jimin is not taking Seokjin’s orders well. Seokjin looks much more unhinged than you ever recall seeing him and then impassiveness washes over his face again, much to your disappointment.

“He is usually not like this. He can go months without drinking blood, it seems my ban has just made him all the more obsessed with you,” he sighs.

“Greeat,” you wince, “Lift the ban then, might as well.” If you were being honest with yourself, you were curious what would happen if Jimin bit you. Maybe then he wouldn’t despise you so much.

“The ban is not to protect you, naive little dove.” He sits down on the floor next to you. You find the sight comical, Seokjin in an expensive suit sitting on the dusty floor.

You roll your eyes. Of course. “You care a lot about him,” you whisper softly. He nods. You turn to him, “Do you remember why you started caring? Do you think who he is now still acts in the same way that made you care so much for him?”

“You think I’m a fool?” he laughs softly, “I know Jimin’s...lost his way...” You sit in silence as you struggle to take your mind off the pain in your arm. “For us, time, is infinite. This is only a small stretch of time compared to what I’ve been through. Jimin will come back around, I know it.”

“Well I think he’s a lost cause,” you mumble.

“He’s not, no one is...This is going to hurt a lot, if you don’t mind, I can make it quick.” His hand traces your jaw and turns your head to face him, eyes glancing towards your lips.

“Am I going to have to get used to this, you fixing the pain he causes-”

“Am I going to have to get used to you both provoking each other all the time?”

You bite your lip, he started it, it’s not your fault he freaks out over every little thing you say. You change the subject. “Are there really other prisoners here? Other humans like me?”

Seokjin tuts disapprovingly, “House guests, y/n! They can stop being in service to us whenever they want, we provide them all with a choice.”

“Oh, and what are the options, be your personal feeding supply or die?”

“Ahh see, you catch on quickly, and Jimin calls you stupid.”

Your eyes narrow on him, “Not much of a choice there.”

Seokjin leans into you, “it comforts them, when they think they have some control. You know, you would all be at the bottom of the ocean if it weren’t for us.”

You pull your legs closer to your body, it’s hard to look at him, much less listen to the disturbing things he says, “Why are you telling me this? Am I supposed to be grateful?” You shuffle your body, trying to get comfortable despite the throbbing pain of your broken arm.

“Perhaps,” he scrutinizes your body, “At least don’t provoke Jimin. Ready?”

You hum, “Yeah, I’m ready for my medicine, Doctor.”

He looks down, nodding. “No anesthesia for this surgery I’m afraid.”

He motions you closer, bites into his wrist and fills his mouth with his own blood. You’re careful not to jostle your arm too much as you move in front of him. His long fingers hold your head still as he presses his mouth onto yours, feeding you his blood. Even when you scream in pain he holds you to him as your bone readjusts itself and heals back together, your body in excruciating agony. He holds you tightly, his mouth swallowing your screams until the process is complete, until you pass out in his arms.

---

You wake up to clanging silver. The light feels warm on your face, and then you feel nothing as the curtains are drawn. You open your eyes, ready to protest.

“Oh my god!”

The woman before you jumps at your words. “Your breakfast,” she motions to the tray.

“You're real, oh my god, it’s true! Help me! Please, we can escape together!” The woman stumbles away from you as you desperately try to hold on to her.

“What?” Why is she looking at you like that? Why is she acting like that?! She pushes you away as she opens the door. You’re too stunned, too hurt by this stranger who you thought could help you to question her when she says, “There is no escape.” She closes the door, locking you inside. What just happened?!

Now that you’re alone again you search the room from top to bottom, desperate now that you’ve realized you’re up against so much more. All the drawers are empty, not even a pen and paper in the desk. The window opens but that doesn’t help you because you’re several floors up. The bathroom has running water and the prettiest bathtub you’ve ever seen, so you give up and spend the day soaking yourself, in your clothes. The dress floating and surrounding you reminded you of a certain man, well, merman. No one visits you that night.

The day repeats itself six times. You try different approaches to try and convince the older woman to help you and every time she refuses or ignores you completely.

You don’t get it, you don’t understand, and her behavior disturbs you. You had asked her, “Don’t you want to see your friends and family again?! Do you have children? Or a spouse?” Her answer was, “I don’t think so.”

‘I don’t think so.’ She couldn’t tell you how long she’d been here either. The implication scared you.

You sit at the door, your ear to the wood all day. Sometimes you’ll hear footsteps, you know it’s not Jimin or Seokjin, because they don’t make any noise when they walk. Sometimes you yell and bang on the door waiting for a response that never comes.

One day you yanked down the drapery, opened the window completely letting all the sunshine in, and soaked it in like a cat. Before you woke up the next morning everything had been set back the way it was. It was maddening.

So one day you flooded the bathroom, just to see if anyone would come to stop you. They didn’t and the next morning the tub was gone. You cried all night.

For six nights you’re alone. The fifth night you dig into your dress pockets to find the tiny shell Yoongi gifted you. You tap it three times and wait, holding it to your ear.

“Y/n?” His groggy voice fills the sea noise. You can’t bring yourself to speak, or you would really break down. Hearing his voice was enough.

---

Before the sun sets on the seventh night there is a knock on your door. You’re already so close to the entrance you can hear the soft click as it unlocks and you swing the door open to see Jimin.

He smiled down at you, a picture of sin. The young vampire wore casual loose-fitting clothes, shirt hanging over his shoulders. He dresses so relaxed, so opposite to Seokjin, who wore his shirts buttoned up to the collar. All you wanted to do all day was talk to someone, be heard, but with Jimin here you feel like an animal cornered in a trap, and you want to hide.

He gives you a cocky smile and drapes his arm over your shoulders, dragging you back into the room. “Look at you! Perfectly fine, Seokjin always overreacts,” he whines, “I’m tired of waiting. I can trust you not to tell on me, right pet?”

The vampire presses himself against your back and wraps his arms around your waist, locking you to him, chin digging into your shoulder. You stand frozen against him, Jimin is excellent at making sure you feel like you’re trapped and powerless when you’re around him.

His nuzzles your neck, lovingly like a lover would, inhaling your scent. You craved human contact, but this man isn’t exactly human now, is he? Your stomach turns as the familiar feeling of fear bubbles inside you.

“And if I don’t?” you whisper, and his grip tightens around you.

“You tell me, what do you think will happen, if you don’t?” he mumbles against your neck, teeth grazing your skin and he moans softly. He wrapped himself around your body, caressing your curves, it confused you at how affectionate he was being, or was he just a snake constricting his prey?

Your stomach tightens, you were stronger than this, right? A week in time out didn’t work on you, right? You couldn’t stop the sounds escaping your lips every time Jimin shifted against you. You blame Seokjin’s fondness for him that must have rubbed off on you. You try to step away but Jimin pulls you in closer.

“I thought I was a disgusting human, are you the one who missed me, Jimin?” You ask him softly.

“There are things about you that are only barely revolting, I guess.” He can feel the shift in your mood as annoyance bristles through your body, it makes him smile. You are so defiant for being so scared, it makes him want to break you even more.

You’re scared, but deep down there was a part of you too curious for your own good, that just wanted Jimin to bite you, just to see why and what Seokjin was protecting him from. It would only be to your advantage, if that was the case, right? You stretch your neck to the side slightly to see what Jimin’s reaction would be. His fingers dig into your hips. “What’s this?” Oh no.

Jimin pulls the shell hidden inside your pocket. You grab at his hands, but he’s too fast, dancing around you as he pushes you away, pushing you to the ground.

Somehow you always end up here on the floor, at Jimin’s feet, probably exactly where the vampire thinks you should be. You’ve never seen him more excited, it twists your insides.

Jimin’s cold fingers inspect the tiny shell, tutting. He mouths the words, ‘bad girl’ silently. Tapping the tiny shell, he brings the shell to his lips.

“Yoongi, I know you’re there. Do you want to hear y/n?” He crouches next to you, lifts your chin so your eyes meet his, smiling as if you were playing along on an inside joke. “Do you want to hear her cries? Do you want to hear her moans?” his sinful voice sings tauntingly.

The younger vampire promised Jin he wouldn’t touch you, but Seokjin has so many rules, and this just proved you couldn’t be trusted, that you needed to be taught a lesson. Seokjin will forgive him, Jimin thinks, he always does.

“C’mon, Yoongi wants to hear you, y/n! I bet he misses you. Let him hear your pretty voice.” You just glare at him, staying silent. Jimin didn’t seem angered by your defiance, in fact, he seemed happy.

He pulls your hair, moving your face closer to the shell, his nails dig into your scalp, and you feel them pierce your skin. The pain causes you to let out a strangled cry. “That’s it!” You hold back tears as you glare at him, Seokjin is wrong, Jimin can’t be saved.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” you grit out, scratching at his hand.

“Oh, no?” He releases your hair. You jump up but Jimin pulls you down to the ground again. Even as you kick and hit him, it’s obvious it’s not hurting the vampire. He easily pins you down, caging you in with his thighs, his knees pinning your arms to your sides. His fingers wrap around your neck, holding you tight as you grunt against him. You’ve become a mouse, trapped by a snake.

“Afraid yet?” You know he won’t kill you, it seems like torturing you is just too much fun for him. Jimin may be stronger than you, faster than you, but he’s as caged as you are, stuck on this island, leashed by Seokjin’s rules, acting out like a child.

“No.” He lets go and you heave in air, coughing. “Seokjin will find out, even if I don’t say anything. He said-”

“Jin,” he bares his fangs, “says a lot of things.” He brings the shell to his mouth again, “What bone should I break first?”

Jimin laughs, and you wonder what the merman said to him.

Jimin grabs your jaw, tilting your head to the side, reveling in your struggle. He places the tiny shell next to your ear. You try to silence your heavy breathing. “Yoong-g-gi?” You hear the ocean, the rumbling of the sea, and you hear-

“Y/n!” Yoongi’s voice rumbles through the tiny shell, he calls out to you, words rushed and worried, full of concern that has your heart dropping, “Jimin has a weakness, It’s T-” Jimin crushes the tiny shell between his fingers.

Jimin pouts, “I thought he would have used the opportunity to confess, now he’ll never get the chance.”

He moves away from you, “Well, aren’t you going to make a run for it? I didn’t lock the door.” He lifts his eyebrows up, nodding towards the door.

You lie on the cold hard ground stunned. Yoongi's gone. You think of a scenario where you rush towards the door, only to be stopped by Jimin as he tackles you again. No, you won’t do that. Jimin takes and takes, you're going to make it your mission to take from him. You stand up on shaky legs and walk towards Jimin.

“Actually, I rather you just bite me instead.” You’re not confident that he’d really go against Seokjin, so might as well egg him on. “Unless you’re scared of Seokjin?”

Jimin scoffs, jaw clenching in annoyance and eyes narrowing. “Any other cute little means of communication you tried to sneak in here, hmm?” He yanks you close to him again, his hands pull at your dress, wandering over your thighs, skirting dangerously close to your center. He smirks down at you as you pretend to act unaffected by the way his hands glide over your ass, kneading the flesh. His hands run up your corset, getting closer and closer to your dagger.

You run your hand over the front of his pants. It was the only thing you could think to do to distract the vampire before he found your dagger and really killed you. It worked. Jimin stops you, digs his nails into your wrist, but he doesn’t pull your hand away.

So without many other options, you send your quarrel with the vampire off into a whole other direction as you grab for the bulge in his pants. You feel the weight of him in your palm, your mouth drops a little at his size. Jimin’s jaw tightens as you rub up and down his bulge.

You’re stuck in a staring match with the vampire. Two stubborn beings, challenging each other to see who breaks first.

Surprising you, he spins you around and starts undoing the straps of your corset.

No, no, that’s the opposite of what you wanted! “What are you doing?” You try to wiggle your body to face him again, “Just fuck me already!”

Jimin cages you against his lean frame, crushing your body to the closest wall with his own. He inhales into your neck. He can sense the torrent of your spiraling emotions, he feels your hatred for him radiating off your body stronger than ever as he slows his advances down.

“You are acting more stupid than usual, pet.”

“You wanted to play,” you say, “Well, let’s play then.”

He’s never played this kind of game before, and you’ve enticed him, he has no problem calling your bluff. His hand runs along your cleavage, kneading the flesh.

Jimin pulls your dress up slowly, his cold hand running up your leg. You rest your forehead on the wall, shuddering when he drags his fingers across your center. “Your hands are cold.”

He pushes two fingers inside you, deep, you were barely ready for the stretch, crying out from the sudden intrusion and cold sensation. Jimin groans as you whimper against him, “Forget what I am already?” He licks your neck, fingers pumping in and out at a dizzying pace.

“How could I ever forget?” you whisper.

“I regret destroying that shell, I would have liked to let Yoongi listen to what a whore you are.”

Your body tenses and Jimin leans his body harder into yours, pressing another finger inside. “What would the dogs think, knowing their bitch is so wet for their enemy, hmm?” Making you angry is too easy, he thinks, and makes you smell so much better, sexier. Jimin is used to fear, he’s grown accustomed to desire, but your rage makes him ravenous. If Jimin wasn’t so consumed by his carnal desires, he might question himself as to why he wants someone to hate him so much, but all he can think about is how he’s going to drive you to madness with just his fingers. He resists the urge to bite you by sucking harshly on your neck, pulling the blood closer to your skin and leaving dark marks behind.

Before you have a chance at release he pulls his fingers out of you, leaving you empty and holding up the evidence of your arousal, the clear substance clinging to his fingers as he licks them clean, moaning in your face. The sight is depraved, and you can’t look away. He smiles smugly at you as he smells your lust surround him.

“I knew you wouldn’t bite me.”

“We will get to that, we’re playing a game remember? Or do you want to stop now?”

“All this talk and I still haven’t been bitten or fucked, are vampires impotent or something or is it just you?”

Jimin laughs, yanking your body to face the wall again and pinning you to him. “I’ll make you forget everything but my dick while I’m fucking you, you won’t have a single other thought in that pretty little head of yours other than giving me all your pleasure.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m waiting.”

Jimin laughs again, pressing three thick fingers deep inside you again, you legs go weak as he holds you up with the force of his body against yours. He drags his fingers out and higher until he’s circling your other opening. His digits press into both of your holes, filling you up completely as you cry out. You haven’t had someone give attention to that part of you in so long, you tense at the unexpected stretch. His thumb works against your clit expertly as he rocks his hand against yours. You feel so full and overwhelmed by Jimin. “So close already? Beg me to make you come, pet.”

“I’m not your pet.”

You take his torture silently, hold in your moans as he brings you to the brink of release and stops short of satisfaction over and over again. He thrusts his fingers in and out of your holes, until the tight stretch goes away, his fingers easily gliding in and out of your wetness, until the ache is replaced with a need for more. Your entire core pulsates as he slowly and torturously circles your swollen bud, changing the pressure just enough to drive you crazy by ghosting over your clit when you needed more and rubbing even harsher circles when it all becomes too much, his touch making you feverish and sick with desire. When you clench around his fingers, closer than you’ve gotten to release since he started this torture, he pulls out of you completely, pressing his hard cock, straining against the cloth of his pants, into your sore center.

“You smell so good,” he moans. You don’t want to think about Jungkook, you don’t want to taint his memory, but Jimin’s words are so similar. Jungkook is nothing like Jimin, but they are more similar to each other than to a human like you. Perhaps you are just as weak and pathetic as Jimin says, a human can be no match for a vampire, and you’ll never be able to win against him.

“Please Jimin...just let me cum...”

“Beg me.” His usual airy voice drips with arousal, and he presses his bulge harder into your wetness.

You don’t do as he says, you can’t, so he continues his torturous little game, until you’re moaning loudly, head thrown back against his shoulder, whimpering every time he stills. He pulls his fingers out of your dripping core, focusing his attention on your ass, thumb rubbing harsh circles into your throbbing clit, you feel so empty and painfully full as your sensitive walls clench around nothing and his fingers stretch your rim open for him. Your entire body vibrates, but you’d rather stay unsatisfied than say please to Jimin ever again.

Finally, as the sun sets and the last bit of light around the curtains disappears, Jimin realizes he can play his game no longer and pulls away from you completely. Your legs give out as you slide down the wall, mind finally free from the haze of lust Jimin kept you in.

“So weak,” Jimin tuts.

“...impotent...dick...”

“Pathetic slut.”

“I thought about Seokjin the entire time,” you whisper.

“...liar.”

---

You must have fallen asleep, you feel a hand cupping your cheek, and you open your eyes to Seokjin, blonde hair, red eyes, suit buttoned to the collar. You let out a small laugh, and then groan once the pain in your joints wakes you fully.

Jin carries you back to your bed. You tug on his sleeve.

“Please take the pain away,” you ask softly.

Seokin’s eyes search the expanse of your skin, “There are no cuts on your body.”

Groaning, you sit up and kiss the vampire who freezes against you. So you take the opportunity to straddle Seokjin’s lap, and start unbuttoning his shirt, kissing, licking, biting his smooth skin. Jimin’s harsh words replay in your mind and sting you. Screw him, let him think whatever he wants, let him hear you. This had been a part of your plan anyways, first Seokjin, and then you’ll worry about him, might as well have some relief too.

“What happened?” Seokjin asks as you rut into his body, tearing his shirt open. He doesn’t look upset that you popped the buttons, does he ever get upset anymore? You hastily unbuckle his belt. His hands cover yours, repeating his question, “What happened, y/n?”

You grab his hand and move it under your dress. Seokjin stills as his fingers come into contact with your thigh, slick with your wetness from hours of Jimin's teasing. His hands travel up your shaking leg.

“You’re so wet,” he groans, “...Did Ji-”

You silence him with a kiss. “Fuck me, I feel like I’m dying.”

Seokjin laughs against your lips, “Humans are so dramatic,” but he’s already pulling you closer, turning you around to lie on the bed. He bends down to your core, pushing your dress over your waist, you spread your legs wide open for him.

He licks your arousal from your inner thigh, fingers massaging your aching center.

“Ugh fuck, stop teasing me,” you whine. Seokjin fills you with two long fingers, pushing inside you to the knuckle. His teeth bite down on your inner thigh, it stings but your lust somehow lessens the pain. Your body tenses, you clench around his fingers and he speeds up, pulling more blood from your veins.

You flinch when you see Jimin again, reliving the memory from Seokjin’s mind. He’s half naked, kissing a beautiful woman who is fully naked, right in front of Seokjin.

Jimin looks so different, dark hair, flushed skin, tenderness in his eyes.

The girl lowers her body between the men, and fills her mouth with Seokjin’s hardening length. You feel yourself become wetter. Seokjin moans against your feverish skin, biting you for a second time, higher up your leg. It stings again, but you’re too busy trying to get off on his fingers to care about anything but release. Seokjin bites the mound of flesh close to your center, his tongue pressing against your hood, your vision goes white and then-

You see Yoongi’s sharp eyes above you, his naked body on top of yours, cold and wet, hard cave rocks against your bare back. You see Namjoon, a younger version of him, long hair pulled back into a low bun, across the room in bed with another woman. The room is small and empty. Two beds, two couples, Seokjin watching his friend fuck the random girl senseless.

You feel jealousy, watching Namjoon through Seokjin’s eyes. He looks so different, so feral and savage. The bed creaks loudly underneath him as he grips the headboard, and thrusts into her wildly. Jin pumps his fingers inside you in time with Namjoon's thrusts, it makes you feel like you’re going to burst into a thousand pieces. Namjoon’s eyes glow yellow as he gives Seokjin a wicked grin and you’re scared for the first time of Namjoon as he growls, releasing into the woman.

“Don’t make a mess,” he drops the spent girl on Seokjin’s lap, who caresses her face. She’s breathtaking, you feel inadequacy course through you, you feel jealousy, you feel turned on when her full lips envelop Seokjin's thumb. Namjoon pulls the sleeping naked girl from Seokjin’s bed, tapping her check to rouse her awake.

Seokjin’s arousal is overwhelming you. He slams into the woman’s body from behind, chasing his high while holding her face down into the bed, and then his fangs pierce her back as her screams are muffled. You don’t want to come to this, to the feeling of her blood filling his mouth, arousing him and arousing you. Namjoon’s grunts and sounds of sex fills your mind again and you come undone in a silent scream around Seokjin’s fingers.

---

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

You run around the room, darting around Seokjin who watches you rather calmly for the unfolding situation. The rest of his body frozen, the blessed dagger lodged in between his vertebrae, stopping his regeneration.

Once you came, thighs snug around his head, you pulled the dagger from your corset and stabbed him in the back. You kicked him away from you before he could attack and he fell backward, the dagger piercing deep into his back, and that’s where he was currently, frozen on the floor, watching you as you run around the room in disbelief that you actually managed to stab a vampire.

You trip over him by accident and he lets out a soft grunt. “Fuck! Are you okay?” you sit next to his frozen body, “Like, relative to being stabbed, I mean? Don’t answer that...because you can’t. Oh fuck.” You put your head down, resting it on his chest, you don’t hear anything but your laboured breathing. ‘Believe in yourself, y/n! Yoongi believed in you…’

You gather yourself up once again and you move to the window, jiggling the handle. It’s still unlocked! You’re too high up to escape but...

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you whisper, “I really am sorry,” you grunt as you heave the immobilized vampire to the window, inch by inch, Seokjin’s body like a sack of bricks. You place him against the wall and crouch down so you can look him in the eyes, patting down his messy hair, tousled in your struggle to move him, “I’m sorry,” you repeat again, “but you’re a vampire right?” You say encouragingly, and you give him a couple of pats on the cheek, his eyes dart down to watch the action, “Technically, you can’t die.”

With every ounce of strength you have left inside you, you shove Seokjin out the window.

---

You quietly lock the door to what had been your room and prison cell behind you, quickly walking through the halls. You’re not sure what you expected, maybe a gothic interior fit for Dracula, burning candlesticks and red velvet drapes, but you got electricity and mid century modern eclectic, the walls were colorful with art pieces, deep emeralds and golds and blood red. You open the first door you come across.

A young woman sits on a large bed reading a book, looking up at you. Is that how you looked to them? A more disheveled and unpleasant version of her? She looked happy, until she noticed you, and then her smile fell, disappointed you weren’t Jimin or Jin. You slam the door shut and lock it again.

You race as quietly as you can through the halls, you have no idea what you’re looking for, quickly peeking into each room you come across. Strangers, stop what they are doing to look at you, waiting like obedient lap dogs. You have yet to find an empty room. Four doors you’ve opened on this floor, no empty rooms, and you begin to feel hopeless.

You open the fifth and final door and you’re assaulted with the loud sound of moaning. The moaning comes from a woman specifically, her cries almost as loud as the slapping of her skin against Jimin’s naked body. Jimin had needed an outlet after his time with you, specifically, someone to use and bite that wasn't 'off limits.'

You stand frozen in shock, it feels like all the air has escaped the room, filling the woman’s lungs instead as she screams in ecstasy. He is standing next to the bed, fucking into her at an inhuman speed, holding her hips in the air as she struggles to hold the rest of her torso horizontal. You can’t look away, because her body, her stomach, her large bouncing tits, it’s all covered in blood. You almost scream, almost, but the small huff of air you let out instead is enough. The bed stops creaking as Jimin’s movement stops and you meet his surprised eyes.

You shut the door, lock it and run.

You run down the stairs, you see the entrance and you almost run out the door, but you instead run down the hall, flinging every door you see, praying you find something. There's a kitchen, a dining room with the longest table you’ve ever seen, and an empty room! It looks like an office! You run inside. You run to the desk, looking over the papers. Weird markings litter the pages, it reminds you of the markings on Yoongi’s bag. You have to be getting closer to your objective, you have to be! You scatter the papers around, yank open the drawers, hoping to find something useful. There’s a bookcase behind the desk, and you start pulling down books, nothing is catching your eye. You pull on the bookcase, you run your hand across the wood frantically, searching for perhaps a trap door-

“What are you looking for? I can try to help.”

You jump, almost screaming. You hold your heart, it hadn’t stopped, to your surprise. You had no idea someone else was in the room with you. You stare back at a calm man with messy brown hair, he looks at you timidly. “Sorry, I didn’t want to scare you. I just wanted to help, and it took me a while to organize those books,” he laughs softly. The man shuffles back to the wall, you hear metal clanging and look at his feet, they have chains around them, his hands too.

You look down at your feet, papers and books are all around you “I-I’m sorry. I was just-I didn’t know-” You had no idea how much more time you had to spare so you cut to the chase. “Is there a portal here?!”

The man’s eyes go wide, “Not here,” he speaks softly, “One level lower.” He gave you the answer you were looking for without any hesitation, was this a trick? You look at him more closely, his clothes are loose, like pajamas, and he’s barefoot, he looks at you happily, like you didn’t just storm into his room and destroy his things. The innocent expression on his face reminds you of Jungkook.

You remember why he looks so familiar, “You were sitting next to Yoongi!”

The man tilts his head confused, and then he stares at the door, “you need to leave now,” he rushes towards you, “Go down the stairs to the right.” He finds a pen on his desk. “The portal is in the basement, in Seokjin’s office. You’ll need this to open the door, it will only work once.” He grabs your hand and writes a long looping character on your palm, it burns gold and then disappears, while you stand still in shock.

Before you can question him the door bursts open. Jimin stands in the doorway, looking at you and the other man. His anger is replaced by an expression you don’t quite understand. Heavy silence envelops the room. The awkward tension is cut when Jimin speaks to you calmly saying, “Come here. Now.”

The man steps between you and Jimin. “Stay here, he can’t come inside, just like I can’t leave.” The man leans against the desk, his long legs blocking you from leaving, his chains clanging again.

“Y/n, come here now.” That was the first time Jimin said your name. You look between the men.

“Why would I go to you? You’re going to kill me!”

Jimin runs a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes to the side, “I promise you I won’t kill you if you come here right now.” He says the words as sweetly as he can in his growing irritation, trying to coax you to him, but to you he sounds patronizing and angry.

“Jimin’s lying,” the man next to you whispers, confirming your suspicions.

“Tae, just bring her to me!” the vampire screams.

“No, I don’t want to, you’re going to hurt her.”

‘Tae, he said. Is this Taehyung?’ The same man you saw next to Yoongi, the same man Namjoon warned you about, the man who is protecting you and gave you a way out of this hell of a place?

“Can’t you just do the right thing for once?!”

“You haven’t come to visit me in how long, Jimin?”

They yell at each other like an old married couple. You stare down at your hand, it looks perfectly ordinary, you think you might have just imagined it all, what Taehyung did, but you realized on this island nothing was impossible.

“A-are you a wizard?” you interrupt the men’s arguing.

Taehyung turns back to you surprised and gives you a bright smile, “No, I just learned from one. He didn't call himself a wizard, though” he laughs, “I think the correct term is warlock?”

“Oh, okay, good to know,” you mumble. Jimin quietly seethes at the doorway.

“Why do you have chains on if you can’t leave this room?”

“Yeah, why do I have chains on, Jimin?” He turns to the vampire accusingly.

“Just wait until Seokjin comes,” Jimin mutters, and he pulls the dagger you used on Seokjin out of his back pocket, holding the handle with a handkerchief. “Nice trick, by the way, y/n. Seokjin is still healing himself from the fall. You’re going to regret not coming to me when I asked.” He glares at you.

“So that’s what fell!” Taehyung roars with laughter.

“I said I was sorry,” you mutter, biting your lip. How the hell are you going to get out of this situation now? As if you summoned the Devil himself, Seokjin appears next to Jimin.

You hide behind Tahyung out of instinct, grabbing onto his chained arm. Taehyung holds in his joy while the two vampires' expressions darken.

“Don’t fucking touch him!” Jimin seethes.

You let anger get the best of you and wrap your arms around Taehyung’s waist instead, glaring from behind his shoulder.

“Y/n-” “Don’t,” Taehyung interjects. “-get away from him,” Seokjin warns.

“Why?! How do I know you both aren’t going to murder me as soon as I leave this room?”

“Is there not a spell we can use to get her out?!” Jimin turns to Seokjin ignoring you. You grind your teeth. Two can play that game.

“Why are you locked in here? How do you know Yoongi and Namjoon?”

“Yoongi? We all met him when we came to the island.” Jimin screams Taehyung’s name to silence him, but he ignores him easily. “You should have seen Seokjin and Jimin, he got them all wet and they vowed to make sushi out of him!” he laughs, turning his body around in your arms to face you instead of the pair.

You look over to the two vampires who have gone quiet. “And Namjoon?”

“Taehyung..” Seokjin warns.

“What? I’m not even allowed to talk about it now?” Taehyung whines.

“Enough! Y/n come here...please.” You hadn’t expected a request from Seokjin. “I swear, I won’t punish you for what you’ve done, just come here.” he holds out his hand for you, you can see the magic swirl around his fingers, burning his skin. He winces, but doesn’t move his hand away, even when his tips begin to turn black with char.

“What about Jimin?”

“Yes, fine, I won’t punish you, just hurry the fuck up,” the younger vampire looks anxiously at Seokjin’s hand.

“Y/n, please no! I’ve been here by myself for so long, I can’t stand it! You’re the first person who’s visited me. I don’t want to be alone,” Taehyung whimpers, a high pitched whine as you hesitantly make your way to Seokjin. He reminds you so much of Jungkook. He paces around you, begging you to stay.

“I-I don’t want to be locked in that room anymore.”

“Okay! Just come here!” Jimin yells.

“How can I trust you? How do I know you won’t go back on your word?!”

“They will, y/n, please! Look, Jimin promised he would visit me, he lied!”

Seokjin pulls his hand away, completely burned black and puts out his other arm instead. “You’re just going to have to trust us, like we will have to trust you not to pull any more stunts. We’ll trust each other, okay?” Seokjin pleads with you.

“I-I’ll come back to visit you,” you say to Taehyung. “Right?” You turn to Seokjin who relents and gives you a hasty nod.

“No!” Taehyung whimpers, “They are going to lock you away! Please believe me! You’ll never be able to escape.”

You reach for Seokjin’s hand, but Taehyung jumps in between you, holding out his chained hands. “Look at them! Look closely, what are these made out of, y/n? LOOK!” You study the metal, it looks shiny and silver. It’s silver.

Seokjin lurches forward quickly, his suit catches fire, his warm hand grasps onto yours and pulls you out of the room and away from Taehyung and everything goes black.

---

You wake up in a different room. You’re not alone. Another woman sits on the bed next to you, she jumps when you wake up. It makes you jump, ‘fuck why is everyone so jumpy here?’ you think holding your head in your hands to calm your nerves.

You try to scoot away, and you feel a tug on your ankle, so you pull the covers off of you. You’re in a new dress, all white, like the sheets, like the woman’s dress next to you. You see a chain connected to your foot that reminds you of Taehyung’s shackles but darker metal. No. “My clothes!”

“They made me, I-I’m sorry, I had to give them your clothes. The necklace wouldn’t come off, I-I didn’t tell them,” the woman pulls at her sleeve. “I kept your secret, but I can’t promise you they won’t find out, Master might look into my memories.” Your hand traces the gold watch chain around your neck, calming down.

“Okay...thank you.” You whisper uneasily. “H-How long have you been here?”

The woman thinks, humming to herself. “I lost count, Master did give me this on our Fifth Year Anniversary!” She shows off the blood red jewelry dangling from her ears.

Ugh. “That’s nice,” you say and get out of bed. The dress is tight around you, covering your arms and flowing down to your ankles, the one place the fabric doesn’t touch is your neck, the hemline sits off your shoulders and plunges into a deep V. You scoot your way to the door until you can’t take it anymore and reach for the bottom of your dress, pulling the fabric until it tears.

You hear the woman let out a soft, “oh no.”

The chain stops you from reaching the door, even if you stretch out your legs you can’t grab the handle. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

You wheel your body back around, “Hey, what’s your name?”

The woman thinks, humming to herself. “I don’t remember.”

“Listen, I’m going to need you to-WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T REMEMBER?!”

The woman flinches from your volume. “Well Master calls me his little doll and I like that name a lot, and I just, well, forgot my other name.”

You take a deep breath as you try not to be sick. “Well Dolly, your MASTER IS A HUGE FUCKING ASSHOLE. YOU FUCKING LIARS!”

---

The group in the parlor turn their heads to the small voice echoing through the halls, Jimin winces, hearing your words clearly, moving one of the women off his lap. “She’s awake.”

“I’ll go-”

“It seems you failed at controlling her, brother. Why can’t I just try?”

Seokjin scoffs, “You can barely control yourself.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches. “I’ll-” he coughs, “-use restraint. I won’t hurt her.”

---

“Monsters!”

“Oh no, they’re going to be so mad.”

“Taehyung was right! I swear to God-”

“So so mad, oh no, oh no no no.”

“I won’t let you get away with this! Liars! Bastards!”

“Master!”

The door opens and Jimin stands against the door frame, ignoring your irateness and addressing your new roommate with a smile, “Hey Doll.”

Jimin standing in front of you had extinguished some of your rage and replaced it with apprehension, halting your tirade for now. “You fucking lied,” you glare at him.

“It’s not locked, I’m not forcing you to be here,” He looks over your shoulder, “Right Baby Doll?” The woman nods enthusiastically back. “The chain was a precaution, I’ll remove it, I promise. We just need to set some ground rules, okay pet?”

“I am not your fucking pet!”

He moves around you, like a buzzard circling it’s next meal, “You look so much better in this instead of that ugly sea dress.”

“Don’t I look pretty?” you hear the woman’s tiny voice ask Jimin.

“Of course!”

You rub your temples, “Jimin, just take this chain off me.”

“After everything you’ve done, and you’re still trying to make demands? Do you know how incredibly lucky you are? Can’t you just show a bit more gratitude like her?”

Jimin kisses the woman and she moans against him, deepening the kiss. You rub harder at your temples. You're chained, a captive audience to what ever the hell display is happening in front of you, becoming more uncomfortable and annoyed with each passing minute.

“Seriously?”

He drapes his arms around the woman’s shoulders and stares at you, “Jealous?”

You scoff. You think back to the version of him in Seokjin’s memories, with the other woman. You remember the tenderness in his eyes as he watched her and you swallow down the lump forming in your throat. You are not jealous! And anyways, Jimin’s tenderness is all gone now.

“She doesn’t even remember her name anymore.”

“She doesn’t seem to mind,” he winks at her, and the woman giggles at your exchange.

“Her entire life has been taken away! What happened, it’s worse than death.” You hug your arms close to your body. Was that going to become you if you stayed here?

“Worse than death?” Jimin echoes your words and you notice him stare at his reflection in the room’s mirror. You stand in silence, watching him as he runs a hand through his hair, pushing back the loose strands while the woman softly hums to herself a sweet melody. She doesn’t sense the looming danger all around you and it makes your chest tighten in anxiety.

“You’re right y/n. Come here.” He holds out his hand for her.

He pulls her into a kiss, she smiles against her lips. You awkwardly shift at the exchange. She seemed happy with Jimin, even if she couldn’t remember the person she was anymore. It makes you wonder if she had resisted in the beginning or had always been this irritatingly agreeable...or maybe she even loved him, maybe her love was the only thing left in her.

Jimin holds her face in his hands, dragging his lips across hers, a spectacle of two lovers. She’s beautiful like Jimin, they fit perfectly together, a rose and a thorn.

It happens so quickly you stand stunned, you don’t have time to scream or stop him. She’s on the ground, neck twisted, dead.

You’re so stunned you can’t even cry, you just shake, fallen to your knees, staring at her beautiful lifeless face. Her red earrings dangle from her ears catching the light.

“What have you done?” Your voice sounds tiny and high, like hers.

“I saved her from a fate worse than death, according to you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

You can’t speak. He moves closer, putting a hand on your cheek, the same way he had held the woman’s head a few seconds ago. His cold finger wipes away your tears. When did you start crying?

“We aren’t liars. I’ll unchain you. So, will you behave now?”

---

You walk the halls during the sunlight. You stop by Taehyung’s door knocking four times, opening the door an inch. “I found this in the kitchen!”

“I’m...allergic.”

“Allergic to chocolate?! I-I’m sorry,” you mutter, though it doesn’t stop you from enjoying the bar yourself.

You lean forward into Taehyung’s room, he puts his chained arms over your head, and gives you a hug. He reminds you of Jungkook so much, sweet and gentle. But he’s not warm like him, he’s still a stranger to you, always dodging your questions. Namjoon’s words constantly play in your mind not to trust Taehyung. Even though out of everyone here, you trust him the most, you like him the most. Being able to spend time with him, even if your conversations are shallow and lighthearted, is the best part of your day.

“Y/n?”

“Hmm?”

“Why haven’t you escaped?” He whispers.

You play with the hem of your dress as a distraction, “I don’t know.”

He always asks you the same question and you always give him the same answer, but today Taehyung persists. “They won’t catch you if you go now! Isn’t that the whole reason you let yourself get caught?” Even though you hardly know anything about Taehyung, he knows so much about you already.

“I’m...I’m scared.”

He pats your head, you shake his hand away, lightly shoving him back. “I’m not a dog!”

Taehyung laughs, “Yeah, you’re a scaredy cat.”

“How dare you!” you hit his leg as he giggles.

“I want to show you something! It will help you when you finally escape!”

You cover his mouth with your hands, shushing him. Looking around to see if there were any others lurking around you, but no one ever comes around Taehyung. “What is it?”

“Well, um, you’ll have to come all the way inside.”

“...I can’t.” You move away from him again and lean your head against the door frame.

Taehyung sighs. “I knew you’d say that!” he whines. “Do you do everything Jimin says now?”

You roll your eyes, “Not even close,” you mutter. “And it’s not just Jimin...”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been told not to trust you...and you haven’t been very open with me, have you?” you look down at your hands, intertwined with his, you trace the gold markings along his chained wrists.

“It’s complicated,” he whispers.

“I can’t see how it could get more complicated than being a werewolf trapped in a house full of vampires.”

“It’s much more complicated,” he pulls on your arm, staring at you with pleading eyes. “Leave a shoe outside and they won’t notice you’ve come inside, I promise!”

You hum, searching for a compromise. “How about this,” you scoot over the entrance, sitting closer to Taehyung while making sure to keep your legs outside. “Technically, I am inside and also outside.”

“But the magic won’t work unless your body is fully inside here,” Taehyung pouts. “The spell on the room will clash with mine and who knows what will happen then!”

“How do you know so much about magic?”

“I can’t say…” Taehyung whispers.

Your expression turns sour, ‘What can you say...’ you think. “Well can’t you just like, Houdini yourself out of here?”

Taehyung shakes his head regretfully. “No, if only it were that simple. And please don’t ask me to explain,” he teases. Taehyung scoots behind you and pulls your body onto his lap. “Let’s stay like this for a while.”

“Okay,” you hum.

“Let go of each other!” You wake up on the floor with Taehyung cuddled to your side, one lone foot of yours still remains outside the door. Jimin pulls on your foot before you can untangle yourself from Taehyung, dragging the rest of your body into the hallway. Taehyung grunts, waking up as you’re pulled from his embrace.

You blink away the sleep from your eyes, face-to-face with Jimin, his head hovering over yours, eyes bright red with anger.

“Leave her alone, Jimin!”

“I-I am allowed to talk to him,” your words come out small and high when you finally speak and you hate it, the way your fear strangles your voice.

“On one condition, just one.” Jimin hisses.

“W-well, t-technically-”

"You're being so unfair!" Taehyung yells. "Do you like her that much?"

“Tae, enough!” He slams the door in Taehyung’s pleading face.

There is a bang on the door, only once, so loud and strong it shakes the entire connecting wall, the picture frames wobble and dust falls from the ceiling, the sound so abrupt and booming it makes you, and even Jimin, flinch.

---

“Jimin told me you were in a...compromising position, with Tae today.” You and him watch the stars from your bedroom window, now locked.

Your stomach tightens. “Taehyung is lonely, maybe if Jimin spent time with him I wouldn’t have to,” you mutter.

“Do you care about Taehyung?” Jin’s eyes study your features, his sharp hearing picks up your heartbeat, waiting to hear any lies in your answers.

“No, I just-He’s the only normal person here.”

“Person? Normal?” Jin quietly laughs.

“A werewolf is a person too.”

“Ahhh, so you think Tae is a werewolf.”

“He is, isn’t he?” You spin around to look at Jin but his poker face is as strong as ever as he smiles down at you.

“Is a vampire a person too?”

You chew on your bottom lip, “I guess so,” you side eye the man next to you, “Deep down. Somewhere.”

Jin kisses your lips softly, carrying you back to your bed and placing you beneath him. You’ve managed to latch onto Jin since that night, a lesser of two evils. The vampire truly was a forgiving man, and even if parts of you were weakened by fear, your mind had impressively blocked Seokjin’s pull since that night as well, so he had deemed you his personal pet project, his puzzle to solve, keeping Jimin an arm’s length away from you.

Jin was nice, sometimes. And sometimes, you enjoyed his company too.

You play with his soft blond locks. You know the pain is coming eventually, so you do everything you can to distract yourself, admiring the vampire’s beautiful features before you. He pulls the deep neckline of your dress easily down your body, exposing your chest to his piercing eyes. His eyes stop on the gold piece nestled in your cleavage, like always, he ignores it. He knows what it is, what he doesn’t know is why Namjoon gave it to you.

The cold air and Seokjin’s cold fingers kneading your breasts sends you into a bout of shivers, when he drags his tongue across your skin you arch your back and push your chest closer to his soft lips. He’s so gentle with you now. Sometimes, you wish he was rougher, like the Seokjin you witnessed with Namjoon.

“Won’t you let me in again, Dove?” Namjoon’s watch falls into the dip in your clavicle, replaced by Jin's fangs as he bites the flesh of your breasts, his fingers pull at your nipples distracting you from the pain. He doesn’t drain you unconscious anymore, instead Seokjin likes to covers your skin in lovebites, taking all night with you.

“I-I can’t control it.”

“Let’s practice control,” Seokin smirks, lips stained red, and he moves his hands down your body.

He takes time stretching you full with his fingers, his lips never leaving your chest, steadily building up the pressure inside you with each quick stroke of his thumb against your core until you’re tightening around his digits. “Don’t cum.”

You tense around him, unable to successfully hold in your moans. “I can’t. I’m going to-”

“Just try, Dove.” You would hope he’d stop moving his fingers, at least slow down, but he’s steady and relentless, his digits pushing inside you in the most perfect mind-numbing pace. There’s no way you could stop your impending orgasm, but you try to hold it off, just two more three four five agonizing seconds longer. Seokjin sucks on the sensitive skin of your breast, mouth pulling as much of the mound as he can fit inside while you pulse around his digits. You feel his teeth sink deep into your flesh and his name escapes your lips in a strangled moan.

His usual dull eyes look up at you shinning with desire. “Let’s try again.”

---

“I brought biscuits.” You hold up the sweet cookies in front of Taehyung’s confused face.

“Thank you, y/n.” Taehyung gives you a bright smile and hugs you extra tight when you peek your head into his room.

“Ready to escape?”

“I-I don’t know.”

Taehyung pouts. “You’re-I'm-” Taehyung struggles to say the right words, “We’re running out of time, y/n.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just need a couple minutes with you, please. I have everything ready!” Taehyung runs to his desk, pulling together a stack of papers. “You want to see everyone again, don’t you? You friends and family?” he pleads.

Your family, you’re ashamed to admit you haven’t thought about them. It wasn’t even purposeful, your mind just had stopped wandering to thoughts of them.

Yoongi, Namjoon, Jungkook, and Hoseok, you couldn’t bring yourself to think about them anymore either, it hurt too much. The small traces of their personalities that Taehyung reminded you of had become sufficient enough as you tolerated living. “W-What do you mean we’re running out of time?”

“I think I have just enough magic to fill your necklace,” he whispers, “but if I remember correctly, that model only holds twelve weeks worth of time. How long have you been on this island, y/n?”

Your fingers clutch at Namjoon’s watch resting against your heart. Could you really rewind back time to when you never got on that damned boat! “I-I just need to take off a shoe?”

Taehyung’s face lights up. “Yeah, or something that has your scent that they can still sense, just in case”

“So the more I leave the less noticeable it would be?”

“Well, I guess so?”

You look around at the hallway, still empty like always, and pull off both shoes from your feet. “Do you have a shirt I can borrow?” You begin to shimmy out of your dress. Taehyung’s eyes go wide, and he wets his drying lips, then he springs into action, searching his closet for something to cover you. You pull his large sweater over your body and take a hesitant step inside.

Taehyung wraps you into his arms in a proper hug, holding you close. “I’m so happy you found me, y/n. I’m so happy.” He whispers.

He holds you tight to him, you're ashamed how affected you are by his kind gestures, you shouldn’t feel this way about someone who Namjoon told you to stay away from, it felt like a betrayal. “Don’t forget about me once you escape,” Taehyung whispers.

You melt into his embrace. “I won’t. Isn’t there a way to break the spell on the island? There just has to be! There has to be a way to save you and Yoongi and-”

“You like him,” Taehyung pouts.

“What? Who? Yoongi?!” Your face flushes hot.

“I don’t like sharing,” Taehyung mumbles into his sweater currently draped over your shoulders.

You swallow thickly. “Tae?”

He pulls away, holding you loosely, searching your eyes. During your interactions, you usually kept your attention around Taehyung, unable to focus too long on his intimidating aura and good looks, worried you'd start feeling too much for the mysterious man, worried you'd disappoint Namjoon. But now Taehyung is all around you, and his magnetism is too strong for you to resist. “Tae-”

His kiss is brief, however no less impactful, the way he pours his desires into you until your lost in a haze, following his lips as he pulls away, entranced by the small smile he shows you.

When he lifts his chained arms over your head, he pulls your necklace off as well. You were surprised how easily he removed it, when even Jimin couldn’t pull it off you (much to the vampire’s annoyance). You watched intently as Taehyung turns the watch's dial and whispers a spell in a language you can’t understand. “There, it worked, I set it to the full twelve weeks. you’ll know when to use it.” He places the watch around your neck again, his fingers cupping your cheeks and he rests his forehead against yours, content. Your face burns hot, Taehyung is so affectionate and sweet and treats you like glass.

This close, you can peer into his deep warm brown eyes, irises twinkling back at you so beautifully, it looks like gold swirls in them. “Just one more thing, and then the world is ours,” he says.

---

You sit up in your bed abruptly. Your fingers search for Namjoon’s watch as you try to steady your breathing. The hard gold feels comforting against the tips of your fingers as your eyes adjust to the darkness. You’re reminded of the night you first arrived. But gone is Yoongi’s colorful dress, the clinical white fabric of your new dress, sits tight around your body like a straight jacket and blends in with the white bed sheets.

Weren’t you just with Taehyung, what happened? You remember he told you you were running out of time. Then what happened?

You have to go find him!

You leave the bed and search out his room again. Jimin passes you in the halls, as quiet as a cat, startling you so much you almost fall if it weren't for his fast reflexes. “There you are, ugh I figured you’d be headed to Tae’s room,” Jimin frowns, “Let’s go.”

“Where are you taking me?” You fight against his grip as he pulls you in the opposite direction.

“I haven’t fed in weeks, and my favorite meal is gone because of you.”

You shut your eyes tight, trying to push away the images of the woman who haunts your dreams.

“So you’re taking her place.”

“What?!” You're doing what now? “J-Jin said-”

“Are you his parrot now? Well lucky for me, tonight Jin went to go speak with Yoongi,” he says smugly.

You step into Jimin’s room. The dresser was covered with random items that don’t seem personalized to the vampire’s taste at all. Unread books, countless jewelry pieces, and a plethora of knives.

“Don’t even think about it, pet.” Jimin warns as he sees your eyes stop on the sleek blades.

“I wasn’t,” you mutter. It was the truth.

There’s no window in his room, no mirrors, just wood furniture, covered in scratches and dents of aggression. The areas of his room, like his dresser, are littered with things, so many discarded things. The room is soulless, like Jimin, it feels like a lavish prison cell.

“So,” you don’t look at Jimin, instead you look at his things, trying to find some sense of his personality, “I guess you’re going to finally prove to me you aren’t impotent after all?” you mock. You know you shouldn't poke the beast, but Jimin is like an annoying itch you can't help but scratch.

Jimin scoffs, “Slut, can you go a night without getting fucked?”

“Can you?!”

Jimin smirks. “I'm almost going to miss that.”

You take a step away from him at his words. “What are you going to do?”

“Jin is too sentimental, he only skims the surface of his powers now. There is another aspect to a memory pull, it’s much more fun. Can you guess what that is, pet?”

You’ve been guessing and trying to make sense of everything since that night. “That woman's memories, you took them, right?”

Jimin claps his hands, slow and mocking at your right answer. “It’s not a simple task, but she was particularly compliant,” he bites his lip in memory. “She was much more willing to part with her past, her previous life wasn’t so great if you were wondering...some would see what I did as a blessing.”

The vampire stands in front of you cupping your cheek. “But I’m sure you...” his hand follows your jaw, “...will put up an impressive fight.”

You let out the breath you've been holding, if you can do what happened to Jin, maybe you can find something you can use against him. Maybe his torture won’t work on you...!

“You’re going to regret this,” you say, pulling your head away from his hand.

He laughs, “I regret not doing this sooner.” Jimin was tired of Jin's special treatment of you, all these new rules, all the things you've gotten away with when he wasn't even allowed to drink from you, follow his most basic of urges, it was annoying, you were annoying.

You feel exposed under his penetrating stare, you turn your head and hold your wrist out to Jimin, “Well? Go right ahead.” You think the inevitable has been dragged out long enough.

He looks at your wrist, lips rolling over his tongue as his fingers glide over the thin skin, and then he pulls you closer so you stumble into him, yelping. He looks up and down your body, his hair brushing against your forehead, the strands ticking you. You're supposed to hate each other, but the way he holds you and touches you, it’s too intimate, too rough and too soft for you to make sense of it.

“Do you have to ruin all the dresses we give you?” He noticed the slit you cut into your too long dress.

“Why are they so tight?” you say, watching his eyes as they roam over your exposed skin, feeling hot from his attention. You try to keep your thoughts calm, pure, so he doesn't notice what he's doing to you. “I can barely walk around.”

“Then maybe you should stay on your back,” his voice low and taunting. His free hand reaches for the torn fabric and as quick as a flash Jimin tears the slit higher up to your hip bone.

Your hands attempt to pull the slit closed in vain, and Jimin takes the opportunity to pull at the neckline of your dress, ripping the line even lower, exposing your cleavage to him. You slap him across the face, like you would have done any other man, but Jimin is not just a man, not anymore. He turns his face around and you see his fangs against his curled lip, he looks delighted, like you gave him just the reaction he wanted.

He grabs you around the waist and you feel vertigo as you're thrown across the room. You land on his bed, sinking into the mattress, and before you can scream Jimin is hovering over you.

“Your foreplay sucks.”

Jimin pulls your head back, laughing down at you.

"Get it?" you struggle to speak, “because you're a-”

You scream as Jimin finally bites the column of your neck, his body weight pressing down on you. Pain erupts and you can barely breath. His bite is somehow even more painful than Jin's, you hit his shoulders, pull at his shirt, trying to push him away to release you.

---

“What’s your name?” You can barely hear Seokjin’s voice over the trumpets of the band.

“Jimin.” He yells back.

“Military man,” the bartender nods to his uniform, “This one is on the house.”

“Thanks, um?”

“Seokjin.”

Jimin pulls his bottom lip in, studying the handsome stranger. “Thank you Seokjin.”

---

Jimin pulls away from your neck, breathing heavy. You laugh, and laugh, feeling exhilarated, eyes meeting the vampire while you laugh again. Did you just beat Jimin at his own game?

Your laughter stops when Jimin flips you on your stomach. His fingers dig into your hair, bending your back up to meet his chest. You grunt, jaw slack. “Still waiting to see what you've got, Jimin.”

You’re confusing. Jimin doesn’t even smell fear on you anymore, even when he tightens his grip. You must be feeling overwhelmed, like Jimin, who is trying to make sense of the long forgotten emotions coursing through him right now.

For the first time in a long time, Jimin feels uncomfortable, struggling to make sense of your taunts and why you aren’t submitting. Something unpleasant inside him stirs. He’ll make you regret acting like this, he’ll break you in half until you beg for mercy. He’ll do it. So why isn’t he doing it?

“Well?!”

“Fuck, you’re annoying,” he hisses into your ear.

“So I’ve been told, military man.”

Jimin knows you're goading him, yet still, blind rage courses through his veins, stinging his chest. He rips the back of your dress, tearing it down the center.

Was Jimin fulfilling a twisted fantasy you had ever since you saw Namjoon and Seokjin fuck that nameless woman senseless? Could you admit that to yourself as you feel your core become wetter as he presses his hand down onto your bare back.

You push up on your elbows, but Jimin uses his strength to push you back down, holding your head down. His sharp hearing can hear your muffled moan and the unpleasant feeling in the center of his body twists again.

"You like this?" He groans, affected by the smell of your lust. “Fuck, you act like such a desperate slut.” He palms his dick, needing a release. His moans fill your ears as his stokes himself to the state of your body.

You feel his spit hit your skin, his hard length running along your center, covering his member in your juices and his saliva. His tip teasing your entrance, you push back into him seeking more, and his hands hold you down, making you all the more feverish.

Your arousal hits the vampire’s senses in waves, affecting him more than usual as he tightens his grip to keep you still, focusing on the blood blotting your neck. His cock runs up your slit until he rests over your second hole. You look over your shoulder, prepared to taunt the vampire even more, but his dark expression, filled with carnal desire, slightly unraveled, entirely captivated by you, sends your thoughts into a tailspin.

Jimin pushes his thick length into you, stretching you over his cock, inch by inch until your whole body spasms.

Jimin stayed pressed up against you, a small kindness, his fingers circling your aching core. “Don’t-” you moan, and he stills against you, “d-don’t hold back.”

"I wasn't intending to."

And he doesn't. Your orgasm wracks through you, you feel so full and empty as your walls clench down on nothing while he pounds himself into you relentlessly. You start to shake in overstimulation. His thrusts are wild, your neck is there, you smell so delicious and he's so close to release.

When you come close again, at the peak of arousal, he bites down on your soft skin. You yell, clenching around him even tighter.

“This is your fault.”

You see Tae laugh, so unlike his usual sweet boisterous laugh, he chuckles deep, fighting against the chains around him, his wrist markings glowing gold, then deep orange like fire. “No, this is your fault. You were supposed to kill Jin, we could have had everything we ever wanted. How could you betray me like this?”

Jimin’s hands go lax around your waist, so you put yours over his, holding on as tight as you can.

You see Seokjin and Jimin under a street lamp, you and Jimin watch the way the flies dance around the bulb.

“You’re a vampire.”

Seokjin tenses, so Jimin continues, “I saw you with that girl, the regular with black hair.” His eyes scan the man beside him.

“And what are you going to do now?” Seokjin’s words come out low, almost menacing. Jimin laughs.

“Would you believe me if I said you’re not the strangest thing I’ve seen?” Breaking the awkward silence, Jimin brings an arm over Seokjin’s broad shoulders, pulling the man into a headlock. “I forgive you for always ditching me for lunch.” He teases.

Jimin releases his mouth from your neck.

You shift beneath him to look up at the vampire. Jimin’s bite wasn’t as meticulous as Seokjin’s who knew how to expertly pierce an artery, so you weren’t profusely bleeding, but the wounds still ached. Seokjin has the precision of a doctor, Jimin is messy, wild, his entire front is covered in blood. Jimin's eyes were unfocused, you could tell he was lost in thought.

“Jimin?”

“Enough,” his voice shakily commands you. “I’ll just take the part of you that keeps doing this.”

He pierces your exposed flesh once more concentrating harder.

---

Jimin is tiny. His head reaches the older woman’s knee as he hugs her leg. He points to the butterfly, wings fluttering back and forth slowly as it sits on a leaf Jimin found.

“I fixed it, see!”

“My beautiful son,” she kisses the top of his head, laughing at his cuteness. She looks weak and fragile, sunken eyes and skin pale.

“I’ll fix you too, I’ll learn!” He hugs her leg tighter. She soothes her little boy, knowing it’s already too late for her.

“Grow up to be a doctor, heal people.”

---

He pulls away from you. His eyes look wild, like an animal’s, caught. “Stop looking into my mind!” He screams.

“I can’t control it!” You’re just as stunned as Jimin, you never expected to see a version of himself so innocent.

Jimin holds you down by the neck, he doesn’t squeeze your neck enough to stop your breathing, even though he should, he thinks, he can’t do it, he can’t bring himself to tighten his grip.

“Do it again and I’ll fucking kill you,” he lies.

“I said I can’t control it, asshole!” you struggle against his hold, “Maybe if you weren’t so weak-minded-”

Jimin roars. Pressing his weight back on you, his fangs strike at the sensitive flesh between your collar bone. Your first kiss was so special to you, you could still remember it to this day. You were young, awkward and shy, he was your first crush, a cute boy, his features reminded you of one of your favorite idols at the time, who was-

What did he look like? What was his name? When did he kiss you again? It was after school, you think, you can’t remember. How did he kiss you? That’s right, it was an awkward kiss, because you and him were...friends? Weren’t you? You can’t remember, you can’t remember what had happened, it was so special to you and now it’s gone.

Jimin sucks harder onto your skin, pulling more blood out of you. He took it, your first kiss, you know he did. Jimin, if that sweet little boy could see himself now.

You start to cry. You cry for your stolen first kiss.

His teeth sink into your neck again, pulling more blood greedily, trying to silence the memories he found with the steady beating of your pulse instead. He drags his fangs across your skin, more blood releases, so much blood lost already that everything spins around you. “Jimin!”

He covers your mouth to stop your protests. Jimin seems determined to lose himself again, ravaging your body with more bites. So you close your eyes and your thoughts drift to the young boy.

“Good job!” the soft voice of his mothers fills both your minds. Jimin holds a syringe full of milk to a tiny kitten’s mouth. “You have to take care of her now, remember, treat her gently. There you go!”

“She’s so cute, momma, I love her.”

“You both have to watch out for each other when I’m not around, okay?”

You can hear Jimin whimper into your neck.

You feel sadness wash over you. He could have been a doctor, he could have been a healer. He is, in some twisted way, he been given the gift of healing, and yet he uses it to inflict pain. Even if he wanted to pretend he didn’t experience it, you felt the love that he held so dearly for his mother as a small child. You can hear his laughter, he had the same laugh as his mother.

‘Jimin, I’m going to save you too.’

---

You wake up healed, your head pounding. You look around, Jimin lies next to you, he’s out like a light. You both look like you’ve been in a massacre. Your clothes shredded and blood everywhere. You move away from him, his features look angelic, but his skin is covered in dried blood, like a killer. What the hell happened? You take a step and your legs buckle, you cry out when you knee hits the hard floor. The vampire next to you sways, moves across the bed until he falls completely out of it, groaning.

You crawl your body to the other side of the bed where he is still lying on the floor.

When you look at him again, meeting his eyes, you come to a realization. You know his secret.

“Oh Jimin...”

“Y/n...” his voice is shaky, he covers his face with his hands and his soft cries fill the room. You struggle to get up, everything feels tilted on an axis. You sway and hit furniture as you make your way to the door.

There’s a ringing in your head that won’t leave. You follow the halls down to Seokjin’s office, a place Jimin has been so many times before, retracing his footsteps from a memory of his.

Taehyung’s spell worked just as he said, opening the door to Seokjin’s office, the bright markings glowed and then burnt away from your skin, leaving a trace of ash. ‘Taehyung,’ you’ll have to deal with him later, you think. First you need to get away, as far from the island as you can and try to find Jimin’s family.

There’s a large door to the right of his desk, wood an alien shade of purple. The high pitched ringing in your ears makes the room sway again, but you’re able to grip the handle and fall through to the other side.

---

You sit on the floor of a tiny shop. There’s intricate gold pieces; statues, vases, piled high on countless of glass shelves, every inch of the shop is filled with items, it reminds you of someone but you can’t remember who. You can’t even remember how you got here. Where the hell are you? It feels dangerous, it feels wrong.

You move to a corner and hug your knees to your body. ‘Where am I? Wait, who am I?’ You try to remember anything, any memory from your childhood, from your adulthood. And the past five minutes replays in your mind instead. Gold jewelry in glass cases and the feeling that you shouldn't be here, and a deep voice in your head whispers, “y/n.”

Y/n, is that your name? Your hands skim over the fabric of your torn dress, looking for pockets, looking for anything that might explain something to you. You need to get out of here, you need to leave, but you don’t even know where you are.

You hear a ding, a bell alerting an opening door. You hear a man speak to another. You run out the door while the man behind you lets out a surprised yell to come back.

You run and you run, past buildings past people. You’re barefoot, your clothes hang off you. Eventually you stop. Eventually you decide to ask an old couple who looks unthreatening where you are while you unsuccessfully try not to burst into tears. The old woman holds your hands and strokes your arm to calm you while the husband calls the police.

At first they suspected you were a victim of abuse. They took you to a hospital. The doctors performed several tests on you, each one worse than the last. You had no old memories, and all your new ones were horrible. Clinical, painful, strangers prodding and poking your body. Your dreams were filled of palm trees and warm sunshine on your skin, a sparkling blue ocean, laughter, happiness. So you slept most of the day.

Then one day, detectives came with nurses and they told you who you were. That it took so long because you had been pronounced dead over a month ago. Your parents were on a flight to come get you. You listened to them explain the events hoping to have a jog of memory but nothing comes. They talk about the boat, the crash, no survivors. Always another horrible new piece of information. When will it end?

When your parents picked you up, a lovely man and woman who you tried desperately to remember, the hospital staff gave you a bag with the clothes they found you in. There was a gold pocket watch, an item you didn’t remember having, but you didn’t remember anything, so it didn’t surprise you. You told them to throw everything away, but you kept the watch with you.

You have to stay with them, everything in your life had been reduced to a few boxes they had kept. You lost your home, your identity, you had no money, no job, the only thing you acquired during this whole time was a death certificate.

You start remembering your childhood, slowly at first, a memory here and there, a fall and cut knee, a tea party with stuffed animals, a school field trip, and then years at a time.

You found yourself again. You remembered who you were, your entire life up until you didn’t, the memories fracturing at the end, and the harder you tried to remember how you could have ended up in a different country across the world, your mind would construct horrible images instead, blood, drowning, and death. You couldn’t bare to think of it.

---

“Y/n!” you make your way into the coffee shop, you reconnected with some old childhood friends now that you were back in your hometown.

“Hey, oh my god, who is this big cutie?” Your friend’s dog barks excitedly while you fluff the black fur on his head. He’s so cute, his ears flop to the side with each happy bark.

“Y/n, are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“You’re...well you’re crying?” She looks at you concerned.

You touch your wet cheeks. Why? You don’t know when it started, but as your friend’s dog nudges his head into your palm for more pets, your heart aches.

---

One night, a crazy thought enters your mind. You want to go back to that shop. You want answers. You leave a note for your parents telling them your intentions and pack your freshly made identification cards and travel documents into a suitcase.

So here you are again, in a foreign country, alone again, filled with purpose that seems to pull you in despite how terrified you are.

You scroll through your phone while you lie on the hard foreign hotel mattress. You open a map of where you are on your phone, and zoom out until you see water.

There's islands around the peninsula, you zoom into each one and search each name on your phone, learning each habitat, who lives there, if it is accessible. You do that to pass the time until you fall asleep.

“It’s too dangerous.”

You reach for the merman, grabbing at Yoongi’s shirt and pulling him closer, your eyes meeting his. “Explain.”

Yoongi is taken aback, licking his lips trying to think of a good way to start. "We made a blood pact to protect this island from the outside world, it's indiscoverable and once anyone does come here, they can't leave."

"Why..." you let go of his shirt, but he stays close, "Why would you do that?"

"Think, just think what you humans have done to the world...the others needed some place safe to go to and I-" the merman huffs, "At the time, I thought...well, they were...at the time I didn't mind sharing the island with them. "

Your fingers roll over the bracelets Yoongi put on you. "That was nice of you." The merman glares at you in return.

"You know, they'd come here, we all spent time together." Yoongi's stare is faraway and distant. "In the beginning, at least."

"I-I'm sorry." You hold his hand, and he stares at your fingers only briefly before shaking you off.

"Whatever, I'm surprised they didn't start trying to tear each others throats out sooner," He mutters. "We had portals of course to leave when we wanted to, but one day Namjoon and those dumb dogs destroyed all the portals-"

"What?! Why would they do that?"

"I don't know all the details, but I believe Namjoon did it to protect the rest of his pack. I can respect him for that...but the problem is they trapped us all here like idiots!"

"Is that why you're helping Jin and Jimin?"

"What? To get back at Namjoon? Pfft no. Jin came to me with a deal. He looked off, sick, and he offered me anything I wanted, so I helped him. That's it."

"So technically you can leave the island?"

"I can swim the waters, but I can only go so far, the magic always pulls me back eventually, it's useless to try," he mutters.

You hum.

"Anyways, what Namjoon doesn't know is Jin used some leftover magic and created a portal. Jin has lots of friends that serve him, owe him favors, he uses it as a delivery system."

"So you think if I?"

"That's the only portal I know of, but the magic is dangerous, the vampires put so many protections on their house, they won't even go through it themselves, there has to be a reason, right?"

"I...I'll take my chances."

"They wont even chance going through it, and you will?"

"Yes! And what if I can find a way to break the spell? Then you can finally leave! Yoongi, you have to let me at least try!"

"You're going to get yourself killed one way or another," Yoongi scoffs.

"No, I refuse to believe that."

"You're impossible to understand."

"I'm going through that portal. Then I'll come back for you."

"Wait, you'll come back?" Yoongi asks.

"Well, yeah, if you help me, a deal is a deal. Yoongi please, help me come up with a plan and I swear to you I'll come back with your payment. You're the only one who can search the ocean, you just have to find me again, so what do you say merman?"

"I'll find you again."

---

Your alarm wakes you up. 'What a weird dream,' it felt so realistic. Like all your dreams, the more you think about it, the less you remember, but that man's scarred eyes, whose name you forgot already, they stay with you.

You brush your teeth and wash your face. You notice something as you rinse off your skin. 'What the hell is that?' You inspect the gold writing behind your ear. Taking some more soap, you work to remove it but it doesn’t come off, the glittery ink is permanent. You rubbed your skin raw trying to take it off, it didn’t look like a tattoo, but nothing you did would get rid of the gold markings. You pace around your hotel room, things are getting weirder and you start to feel a nagging sense of dread, but there's a voice inside you that says to keep going until you find the answers you are looking for.

You don't walk right into the shop at first, instead casing out the place. You drink coffee at a nearby restaurant and keep watch on the shop. There are not many visitors, and those who do enter are not who you would expect. You would think maybe some older people who were looking for vintage items would decide to enter, or eccentric younger people, but it was almost always a intimidatingly large man entering, bringing items in rather than taking items out.

You’ve gotten into the habit of playing with the gold chain around your neck, the gold pocket watch had become a permanent accessory.

It's almost closing time for the restaurant, so you reluctantly make your way to the shop, and walk in after a group of tourists.

The shop looks different than what you remember, new items litter the shelves. You hide behind the large cases, studying the objects, until you come across something that makes you hesitate. A necklace with a large red gem hidden behind a thick glass case with a lock.

“You’re that girl! You...you came back.” Your head turns into the direction of the voice, a very old man stares back at you. He looks at you incredulously while you can only stare back dumbly. “C'mon, let’s go,” the old man says, he grabs your elbow. “Seokjin should be awake by now.”

“Let me go! You can’t keep me here!” You pull away from his grasp, your hand tightens around the amulet.

He laughs at you amused, giving you some space. “You walked into my shop, did you not? You don’t want to talk to Seokjin?”

“I…” Do you?! Would he know what happened to you, why does it make you shiver hearing his name.

Wait...you look down at your hand, to make sure you didn't imagine it, and there you see the necklace in the middle of your palm, heavy in your hand, you hide it behind your back, looking over your shoulder to the empty case, the shock of it makes you freeze.

The man looks at you cautiously, “Why are you here, girl? Are you here for Seokjin?”

Seokjin. That name fills you with dread. A vision of a man flashes across your mind only briefly, “I d-don’t know.” The old man raises an eyebrow at you. “Stay here, girl. I'll be right back.”

Where is he going? What is he going to do with you? Your mind spins and the skin behind your ear stings. 'Now y/n. Do it now.' that deep voice is back. You panic when the old man comes back with two others.

'Use the watch, y/n. Use the watch. NOW!'

---

“On one condition, just one.” Jimin hisses.

As you lie on the ground you feel like the weight of the world just crashed upon you. Your chest feels like it’s going to explode, there’s a ringing in your ears, the skin behind your ear still burns hot.

Jimin noticed the sudden shift in your demeanor, the way your heart begins to race as you start to break down. Every day, starting on the night your boat was capsized, replays in your mind as you start to remember your time on the island. You see Taehyung, who looks at you and then his eyes go wide, realizing the situation, eyes ablaze with growing excitement.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Taehyung’s deep baritone voice breaks the silence. You can only take in shaky breaths as your tear filled eyes try to focus on where you are. You traveled back in time, precisely twelve weeks to the second, you’re back on the island, thrown back into your nightmare like you never left. The only difference now is your left hand clutches a second pocket watch, now broken, and your right hand clutches the amulet.

Jimin looks between you and Taehyung. “What have you done?” Jimin accuses Taehyung, whose eyes haven’t left yours. Taehyung’s lips curve into an encouraging smile, he holds out his chained wrists to you. The vampire whips his head in your direction, but it’s already too late. You throw the amulet into Taehyung’s awaiting hands. You didn’t want to give it to him, but as if Taehyung had pulled strings around your body, you complied to his silent request. The minute the gem touches his skin, the gold markings around his wrists burn away.

The explosion knocks you back meters, everything is broken, everything is dust, you can’t see and your body aches. You hear screaming and yelling and groans of pain. You crawl through the debris searching for a way out.

Red light flashes through the smoke. You choose to crawl towards it, hearing Jin’s loud booming voice.

Taehyung pulls you back, his body behind you like it just materialized out of thin air. "C’mon y/n. Let’s escape."

“This...This is all your fault!” He looked surprised by your reaction.

“What you think you know, you’re mistaken.” He lifts you to your feet easily.

It feels like the air around you is vibrating, your body feels lighter in Taehyung’s presence.

“Please let me go,” you cry.

“Don’t worry, once we escape, we’ll be fine again.” His hand holds your hip tight to his body as he drags you in the direction of the portal.

Seokjin crashes into you both, knocking Taehyung away from you. You hear their struggle, and you’re back to crawling away through the smoke helplessly. Your fingers hit the hard cold gem of the amulet, and you wrap the chain around your fingers.

You can’t remember how you found the stairs, the wood half shattered, or the exit, blown wide open by magic, you can’t remember leaving the mansion, you just remember once your bare feet hit the soft grass outside you ran and you didn’t stop running, until you heard the sounds of waves. You ran until water hit your feet and then you screamed.

---

YAY I FINISHED THIS MONSTER OF A CHAPTER (Get it? I’ll shut up). Thank god, I felt as trapped in this chapter as y/n in that damn room :’). Okay, but now we’re getting somewhere! What do you think is going to happen now? Looks like this story might finally be headed off the island :D. I’m excited!

Questions to ponder for the next chapter: What is Jimin’s secret? Looks like there was a good reason for keeping Taehyung locked away, so what is his ultimate goal? What did Taehyung do to you? And why are Jin and Namjoon no longer friends?! Those are just some of the questions floating around in my mind as I am writing the next chapter, now do you have any questions you want answers to? Let me know! <3

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no-droids · 4 years

Text

Kar’taylir

gif credit @sersi

Part Thirteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 11.8K

Warnings: language, angst and fluff, descriptions of a dead body, no real smut in this one but there is some nudity and touching, uhhh i think thats it tbh

A/N: Omg hi hi hello this was written in a week and a half so please be gentle, also I’m back on my linguistics bullshit and I can absolutely guarantee a vast majority of it is inaccurate

***

Everybody is asleep and you’re just a complete mess.

Truly. And it fucking sucks, because this should be enjoyable. This is home. You’re in hyperspace, the hull is pitch black, the baby is asleep, and Din’s breathing is slow and quiet through the darkness. Your cheek presses to his chest as it rises and falls hypnotically, you’re comfortable and safe and this would normally be a dream. But your eyes are wide open right now and you are just going through it. Spiraling in the midst of the most stable surroundings you could possibly conceive.

You suppose that this is partially your fault. You don’t know why literally any part of you expected Din would explain himself without prompting from you, but you still couldn’t work up nearly the nerve necessary to ask. Every potential question you came up with contradicted your intent, every way you tried to mentally phrase it gave off the wrong impression. How do you ask somebody if they were being serious about something without revealing anything about your own intentions? You can’t—that’s a downside of staying silent.

Din hasn’t said a single word since he urged you to leave the shooting range earlier, and he didn’t really seem like the quiet didn’t suit him, if that makes sense. Yours was awkward, it fit you wrong. You struggled for words while he easily ignored their existence altogether, able to navigate the Crest into hyperspace and exist comfortably around you without ever addressing the giant bantha in the room. Maybe that’s part of the reason you floundered so hard—he didn’t avoid you, he held the kid while you took a shower in the small fresher, and even though he was quieter around you than he’d been in awhile, he gave no indication that anything was wrong at all.

You spent that time getting clean but also formulating some sort of plan. As you bathed in actual water for the first time in a week and scrubbed your body clean, you tried to figure out at least why you were having so much trouble coming up with something to say, but even then, words evaded you. You spent the entire time staring blankly at the metal wall, at a complete fucking loss.

When you came out of the fresher with wet hair and comfortable clothing to sleep in, Din was armorless and resting in your makeshift bed on the floor, the baby tucked soundly in his crib next to him. You turned off the lights and carefully found your way under the blankets next to him in the pitch blackness, feeling him lazily reach around you and pull you to rest against his chest. His fingers gently drew circles along your arm for maybe the first few minutes while you worked up the nerve to speak. You needed to say something, this was your chance—

But then his hand soon fell to rest in one place on your shoulder and he passed out. Helmet on, not even a few minutes of your quiet breathing next to him.

So now, you’re here, just… a little ball of stress in the middle of paradise. Hours have passed, you need sleep after such a physically exhausting week but it’s like you haven’t even processed the fucking proposition he presented to you yet. You’re having trouble even thinking the words, that’s how much he’s got you fucked up.

He said… hit the target and I’ll ma…. hit the target and I’ll marrrrr…

Fuck. You stay on that loop for ages until your eyes begin to grow heavy, until you just settle on thinking about it with them closed. Slow breaths from Din under one ear, the silence of hyperspace all around you—how are you supposed to contemplate when his body is so warm? No, you can ask tomorrow, you’ll ask him tomorrow.

Eventually, you’re able to drift off into a troubled slumber, dreaming of bells made of beskar that deafen anyone who rings them.

***

You wake up what feels like two minutes later.

It’s not, but you don’t know that. You’re so warm and the second your eyes open, they start stinging and burning and tearing up like your body just wants to cry for even being awake right now. You finally got to sleep—you moan pitifully and start to turn your head further into the warm blankets, but then a gloved hand smooths your hair back and a voice whispers quiet through the darkness.

“I have to go.”

And oh, his touch is just the gentlest thing, but what he says makes your already fragile mental state want to shatter. The first words he gives you in hours and they’re the ones you loathe to hear the most.

“W-Wha? No,” you whimper and automatically reach for him, your throat starting to close up. Maker, you’re so tired, you’re so tired, you feel so fucking emotional and vulnerable right now and you’re not even awake enough to realize it. “Why?”

Din just catches your hands and brings both of them together in front of him, slowly pressing your knuckles to the cold beskar on the face of his helmet.

“I meet with Karga in three days,” he murmurs back, voice pillow-soft and barely loud enough to come through the steel under your fingers. It’s gentle and lulling and it makes you want to sleep again, but you can’t and you feel like you could burst into tears for that reason alone. “He gave me four pucks, I need four bodies.”

You can’t argue with it, the logic is perfectly sound. But you still want to, and everything inside you revolts at the thought of allowing him leave like this without fighting for more. Which means you have absolutely nothing reasonable or compelling to say to appeal to him; all you’re left with the glaring truth.

“But I don’t want you to leave,” you whisper, tightening your fingers.

And, perhaps if you were even half-conscious, you’d wince. You’d cringe at the shake in your voice, you’d remind yourself that he has to make a living, he’s said it over and over again. If you were completely awake, you’d scold yourself for being such a needy mess, but right now, all you can think about is how much you want him to stay, just this once.

After a moment, you feel the gloves carefully collect both of your hands into just one of his, and then he slowly reaches out with his free hand to cradle your jaw.

“I won’t be gone long,” Din murmurs. “I can’t be.”

Your head turns slowly in his palm, and you’re just so, so sleepy. Your voice is small and your words slur. “Stay with me.”

Quiet, and though you can’t see him, the leather continues to press so warm to your cheek. Your eyes slowly drift shut, needing him to stay exactly like this, stay right here just like this. Karga can wait, the quarry can wait, the galaxy can wait—everything else can wait when things are like this, when he’s looking down at you breathing slow into his palm.

You’re almost asleep again when you hear him say something.

But… you have no idea what he says. You hear it. You hear his voice come through the pitch black, quiet enough to sit just on top of the silence and let the mysterious words simply become a part of it, but it’s strange. Like his cadence lilts in a different way, the vowels are longer than what you’re used to, and your comprehension abruptly falters like it would if he was speaking another language altogether.

Maybe it’s just because it’s the first thing to pull you back from the edges of sleep, that has to be right. It doesn’t sound like Basic because your mind is stupid and slow right now. You need to ask him to repeat himself, but all that you can muster is the soft sound of confusion, not even able to open your eyes anymore.

His hands pull away from you and once again, you suddenly can’t decide between sleep and crying, quickly lifting and trying to reach out for him in the darkness. You can’t feel anything, it’s like he’s completely disappeared from where you assumed he’d be, except then something tiny is placed into your hands instead and it makes an unhappy little sound at being disturbed. You automatically hold the baby close to your chest and strong hands touch your shoulders, urging you to lay back down again.

“Leave the engine running, you’ll freeze if you don’t,” he mutters, quickly tucking the blankets up under your body while you close your eyes and feel the tears wet your lashes. Fuck, you’re so exhausted, you just need to sleep. “If I’m not back in sixteen hours, I’ll use my e-comm and you’ll have to fly out to me.”

He steps away from you, walks quickly and with purpose to the side of the hull, and a blast of frigid air fills the room before the door is slammed shut behind him.

***

Your head hurts.

Sparks and wires give your fingers mean, zapping reminders to pay attention every time your focus slips, but you still feel like you’re in a daze.

“Come on,” you drone, trying to use your voice to snap yourself back into the present, but the sound of it isn’t even interesting enough to pull you away. “Come on.”

Maker, you’re going fucking crazy. Is this just all an elaborate scheme to make you experience the same kind of insanity he told you he struggles with in your absence? Because you don’t like this—you hate feeling like this, you can’t concentrate on anything and even if he hadn’t instructed you to do so, you’d likely still be counting the hours of his absence.

Fourteen have passed so far, not the sixteen you’re waiting for but getting close. It’s one thing you’ve been able to accomplish. Counting. You can still count right now, so at least there’s that.

Oh, and another hoop you’ve jumped through. Understanding words. You can listen and repeat, even if you still can’t fully comprehend, but you’re getting there.

Din said… hit the target and I’ll marry you.

He said that. Yep. You’ve accepted it, you’ve accepted the words that were said. Indeed.

Okay, but now… like…

What did he mean by that? Why did he say that?

No matter how much you tell yourself he was just messing around—no matter how many times you offer up that perfectly logical answer to the burning question you’ve been sitting on, you still aren’t satisfied with it. Something keeps tugging your mind back to it, a tether constantly pulling you away from the work that’s designed to be your distraction.

You frown down at the box of machinery. Whelp, if he was serious, he’d probably immediately take the offer back after witnessing your behavior this morning. You embarrassed yourself terribly, you acted like a clingy baby in the looming shadow of unconsciousness and what’s worse, you can’t even remember what he said after you begged him to stay. It could’ve been a quiet, “Stars, pull yourself together,” for all you know.

And honestly, just… fuck these electronics. You’re at the point where you’d probably cheer on whatever brutal impact damaged them so atrociously if you weren’t also well aware that this box was very likely attached to Din’s chest when it was crushed. The magnetics are a complete mess, and you’re mostly just attempting to see how the individual components of each piece are supposed to communicate. Turning the switch on doesn’t do much at all besides make the capacitors put out heat. Not enough to shut it down or be a hazard to the housing when you close it, but enough to know that it’s going to present a problem for you at some point.

What’s more, you’re so lost in your own thoughts and busywork that you don’t see two green ears poking out over the top of the pile of armor on your temporary workstation (literally just the floor) until one of the thigh braces comes clattering down and the whole thing collapses with a ruckus.

You suddenly shove the metal box away from you in frustration and you reach for the little troublemaker with a sigh, scooping him up and getting to your feet.

“This isn’t going to work,” you grunt to him, hearing your words better for some reason when you direct them at the baby instead of talking to yourself, and his eh? allows the thoughts to come clearer and easier. No, you can’t be distracted when your distraction is just another part of your status quo, you can’t use fixing mechanics to occupy yourself because it’s what you’ve done to occupy yourself your entire life, it’s worn off at this point. You need something newer. Something that takes your entire focus to do.

Eventually, your eyes drift over to the one metal panel on the wall that you’ve rarely ever opened. One that takes up a comparatively enormous amount of space in the hull considering what you know it holds. You eye the kid in your arm, who suddenly has sneaky painted all over his expression. “You thinking what I’m thinking, demon?”

He squeaks his affirmative and you move over to the armory, pressing a few buttons before the doors slide open by themselves. Because of course Mando invested in hydraulics for the gun closet but not for the hidden cot he used to sleep on, of course.

“Maker above,” you groan as the metal slides open, needing to lift your chin to eye the enormous collection. How many fucking…? All this for just one person? What does that big one in the middle do that the others stacked strategically around it don’t? They all kill whatever you point and shoot at, you’re assuming? Are you missing something?

The baby makes a tiny sound of awe as you carefully look over your choices, not expecting nearly this many to be offered, before settling on one that looks the simplest. A sleek silver one that’s still too big for your hand but smaller than anything else on the rack.

Grabby fingers reach out for the shiny metal as soon as you remove it from the shelf and you very purposefully set it down out of his pitiful wingspan. “Nope. Now come on, gotta bundle up.”

You make your way back over to the bed and pull one of the thickest blankets up, settling it over the open shield and then situating your partner in crime in his usual spot inside. You strategically stuff and stack the fabric around him to make sure he’ll be warm enough in what you know has to be far below freezing temperatures, lifting it up over his ears and wrapping it around his neck in a loose hood. He blinks up at you with gigantic eyes and an open mouth, clearly thrilled about your willingness to go on an adventure with him this time instead of being the tall nuisance that consistently holds him back from one, and you scoff down at him as you partially close the lid on his levitating nest of blankets for extra protection. He should be warm enough, you’re not going to be outside long.

And then you pull out nearly half the amount of clothes you own and suit up in what feels like ten layers before grabbing the blaster. The swirling wind nearly shoves the heavy hull door into you as soon as you open it and—Maker.

You look back at the kid behind you for a second, wondering if it’s too late to change your mind. His expression narrows and he makes a triumphant ha! while pointing three fingers at the grey blizzard through the small open space in his crib. Try as you might, you can’t ignore a call to arms when delivered with such ferocity.

Both of you step outside and take in the view after you wrestle with the door to haul it shut. You don’t know the name of this planet but from what you can see, it’s one giant ice ball, mountainous and cold as fuck. Though, to be honest, your only indication that it’s truly cold as fuck is the continuously accumulating snow blanketing the landscape and the flurries dancing in the whipping wind. You’re too warm-blooded for climates like these—anything below room temperature and you’re freezing, you have absolutely no tolerance for cold whatsoever.

Keeping that in mind, you don’t travel far at all. Just a few steps beyond the entrance to your shelter before eyeing what appears to be a large white boulder in the distance. There’s a solid target, you figure—you’ll be able to see chunks splintering off when you hit it and the ice isn’t strong enough to bounce plasma back, you won’t have any ricochets.

Okay. Okay—safety, where’s the safety on this one? Ah, yes, okay—safety, off. Stance, find your stance. There it is. Alright, now lift. Lift, get that stupid frozen ball right in your sights, line it up. Hold. Hold. Hold.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale—

Fire.

You watch with bated breath as the bright red bolt launches from the end of the barrel and travels across the distance before melting a hole in the snow just to the right of your target.

“Mother fucker!” You yell into the frigid landscape without warning, suddenly infuriated. What’s the point of even having a sight if every gun is just gonna say fuck you no matter what? Could there be some sort of mathematical reason why you seem to be fucking atrocious at this, you wonder? Are you fucking up the angle somehow while trying to read the scope? Should you just ignore it and try to aim without thinking too hard?

Admittedly, you spend the next five minutes shooting at that stupid fucking thing, not making a single shot. It’s not been long at all, but your entire body is already trembling uncontrollably and it is just too fucking cold out here. Freezing your fucking ass off isn’t going to help your aim of course, but it’s almost just tragic at this point. Either you’ve got to accept that you’re just absolutely hopeless at this, or you’ve got to… blame the little womprat behind you for messing up your shots, yeah. It wouldn't surprise you.

As a last ditch effort, you consider trying something a bit ridiculous to see if he really is fucking with you.

“I’m firing one last shot,” you call out loudly over the sound of the bristling wind and flurries, making sure he can hear your narration from his little blanket cave behind you. “If I hit the target… I will present our demon overlord with a chunk of raw meat later for dinner.”

You give the offer a moment to sink in before raising the blaster, and then you jerk it up at the very last second while pulling the trigger. The arc of plasma quickly disappears into the gloomy skies over the top of the ice boulder, completely straight.

You switch the safety on and turn around to say something smart to him, but… well. Uh. That’s an empty crib.

Sudden panic rips through you at the sight of the wide open shield, the blanket left abandoned inside. Your head whips around in horror, wondering where the fuck he could’ve gone—but then you’re able to spot tiny footprints in the snow. Your eyes quickly follow them up and see the baby wading his way up a large hill, slow against the terrain and trying in vain to get to something at the very top.

You drop the blaster and bolt through the blizzard to get to him while calling out through the freezing air and wishing, not for the first time, that you had a name to roar and strike fear into his tiny little heart. In this case, you prefer a middle name as well.

Finally reaching him and yanking him up from the snow, you tuck him under the warmest part of your arm and open your mouth to start venting the terror from your body, but he makes a distressed noise and starts climbing. You fumble with him on your way back down, not expecting that response, but he’s so distraught and preoccupied that he’s unable to stay still, trying to find different ways of escaping your grasp and making more and more sounds to indicate something is wrong.

“What the fuck are you—” you stuff him into the shield and at least get the blankets wrapped around him before looking back and trying to spot whatever he’s still wiggling and attempting to get to. Frustrated cries start filling the icy air and… okay. “Okay,” you tell him, your breath puffing like smoke in front of you, “okay okay, we can go look, but you need to stay warm.”

You clutch the edge of his metal shield and urge it to follow you back up the snowy hill, feeling the crunch of your feet disappear further and further into it as you climb. Your outer two layers are probably soaked by now—stars, it’s so fucking cold. You know you’re not exactly the best judge, but you’ve been outside less than five minutes and you’re already worried about getting sick or frostbite, already jumpy and wanting to go back to the warmth of the hull.

But as you reach the top and look out in the distance, you can just barely make out a familiar metallic glint on the horizon.

Your heart picks up, but the baby makes another distressed sound. Not… happy, not thrilled that his dad is coming back. Some strange sort of dread begins to fill you, carefully holding the kid in his shield with one hand and looking at the bright reflection of light a little ways away just to make sure it’s…

No, it’s not moving. Not disappearing and reappearing, not catching the sunlight differently. Completely stationary in this absolutely horrendous weather.

You immediately make your way in that direction, your body deciding to outright abandon its trembling in the wake of this newfound worry. You’re suddenly sweating, way too warm. That’s Din, you recognize the glint of his armor anywhere, but why isn’t he moving?

The closer you get, the faster you move and the more you’re able to see. He’s laying facedown in the snow. There’s quite a bit of it covering the back of his cape, maybe a few inches, and… there’s also someone laying equally as lifeless behind him. Your heart is slamming now, you’re doing your best to run in the unforgiving terrain, and you finally see that it’s… a corpse, a frozen corpse is behind him with a rope tied around its ankles, clutched tight in Din’s unmoving fist as it lays against the pure white backdrop.

“Mando?” You call out, dropping to your knees as soon as you reach him. “Hey—hey, can you hear me?”

The beskar strapped to him is frozen over and feels colder than ice when you try to shake him. He doesn’t respond. He’s dead weight; you do your best to turn him over on his back, but you still get nothing from him. You shove your trembling fingers up under the helmet, and the only reassurance you have that he’s even alive comes from the petrifyingly slow pulse beating underneath. His skin is ice cold.

Shit, he’s still breathing but he’s hypothermic, you have to get him back to the Crest right fucking now.

You fumble to get in position above his head while hooking both your arms under his, before leaning everything you have into it—but fuck, he’s so heavy. You can barely lift him even just a few inches off the ground—the snow is deep, his armor makes him weigh a ton and the fabric wrapped around him is sopping wet. You try again, making a tight sound in your throat while you haul, but it’s no use.

“Fuck,” you curse, starting to panic even fucking harder. You’re gasping and breathless and getting dizzy and scared, continuing to try and find different angles to heave—

—until suddenly the burden is lifted.

You nearly fall backwards on your ass at the abrupt removal of tension, playing tug-of-war with a team that decided to give up with no warning. But it’s like it almost doesn’t even phase you; you don’t even look behind you to see the baby’s eyes closed tight in concentration, you just recover and pull with both arms, feeling Din’s body gliding easily along the snow now and leading him all the way back down the hill.

Once you get inside the Crest and shut the door to the raging blizzard behind the three of you, there’s an extended moment where you just… you don’t know what to do. You know all about how to deal with heatstroke, but this is the opposite—he either spent too long in the cold, or he exhausted himself trying to get back too quickly and then spent too long in the cold. He said he’d use his e-comm if he wasn’t back in sixteen hours—was that the cutoff? The point where the temperature outside would shut his body down and he’d need you to come get him?

Regardless, you need to warm him up. Yes, that’s your priority, and you figure the quickest and safest way to accomplish it has to be the shower in slow increments. The kid helps you move Din into the tiny fresher in the hull and then you sit on the floor with him, holding his limp body to your chest while reaching up to turn the faucet on.

Cold water sprays down and then suddenly—oof, he’s heavier than fuck again. Air leaves your lungs and your neck cranes back under the unexpected increase in pressure on top of you to see the kid climbing down from his shield, no longer focused on mentally bearing most of his father’s weight or directing his own hovering form of transportation along behind you. The baby disappears out of sight and you huff, completely trapped under Din as freezing water rains down on you.

Fuck, it’s so cold. It’s way too fucking cold for you, but your core body temperature is also mostly normal right now. Din’s isn’t, you’ll probably shock his system if you try to warm him up too quickly. So you reach up and twist the knob, keeping it at a temperature he’d probably find just the slightest bit warm while inspiring violent shudders from you.

“H-Hey, I’m gonna t-t-take this off, o-okay—” you stutter down at him, knowing damn well he isn’t conscious to hear you but giving him that reassurance on the small chance he is, and then reach with trembling fingers to work at his armor. You worry that the beskar is keeping the cold trapped the same way his clothes are, like having solid pieces of ice strapped to his body and nothing to protect him besides a few layers of soaking wet fabric.

The chestpiece comes off and you throw it blindly over your shoulder into the hull with a clang—admittedly, without thinking about where the baby is at all anymore. The pauldrons come off next, but not before you reach up and turn the heat up just the slightest bit. Your jerky limbs just want to blast it and remove the rest of his clothes in steamy hot water, but you can’t. Even though your mind is hurtling at a thousand lightyears an hour, whatever reason you have left reminds you that you have to be patient or risk losing him entirely.

Eventually you’re able to get all the armor off but you hate the way he’s breathing right now. Slow and shallow, like he just doesn’t really need the air at all but his body is still fighting for it on instinct. His chest barely moves with it even when it’s got nothing weighing it down.

“You’ll b-be okay,” you say aloud, talking to the both of you even though only one is capable of responding. “Y-Y-You’ll be o-okay—”

You reach up to inch the temperature a little higher, shivering terribly now. His body feels slightly warmer under the shower than it did with the beskar, but you know you need to keep going and take the fabric off now. Maker, it’s nearly impossible—the black clothing clings to his skin and its such a small space to maneuver, but it gives your mind and hands a clear goal to focus on while the water incrementally heats up.

Strangely, your adrenaline has been rocketing for so long that you almost lose track of time. You just keep deadly focused on your task of undressing him and slowly heating the shower, trying not to think, trying not to get in your head and bring about disaster in such a crucial set of moments.

At some point, the water is warm. Comfortably warm, and Din’s body isn’t ice cold anymore. It’s warm, too, laying back into your chest and naked besides the helmet, but he’s still not moving. No response, no matter how much mindless drabble you supply, no matter how steamy and hot the shower has become, no matter how much your own body has heated up. Your fingers have found their home under his jaw, pressed right to his pulse point and feeling it continue to beat slow and faint, but you’re starting to feel the terror set in. Real terror, the kind that makes you stupid and emotional, the kind that turns you back into a child again.

“I don’t know if it’s working,” you suddenly choke out, close to tears. He’s warm, what else can you do for him? Why is he not waking up? “I-I don’t know what to do, Din, I…”

No—no, you cannot lose your shit, not yet. You will exhaust every fucking option before you let that fear set in. He’s not waking up because he needs to recover, his body needs time to work things out in a warm, comfortable environment. He’s breathing, his heart is beating, he’s warm, and he’s still with you, so… you need to still be with him.

You turn the water off and clumsily get up, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him back into the hull. He’s still heavy but it’s so much easier than before to move him; there’s no armor weighing him down anymore besides the helmet, no cape or snow or friction to catch him, no cold to lock your muscles up. It’s slow going but you’re finally able to settle him in the warmth of your shared bed and then cover his body in the collection of blankets you’ve amassed. You stand up and peel off all your wet layers of clothing, letting them plop to the metal floor while glancing around for the kid—

—who is currently swinging from the ladder to the cockpit with one hand.

It startles you for just a moment, just long enough for you to wonder what the fuck he thinks he’s doing up there, but then you figure that if he found some way to get up there then he can surely find his way back down again.

As you quickly drop to the bed and scoot up next to Din’s limp body under the blankets, the Crest’s engine suddenly gives a low rumble below the floor and heat starts blowing through the hull vents. Again, you’re too preoccupied to even notice the gift much. You’re tugging and tucking blankets around him and up under the metallic edge of his helmet when...

Maker, you need to take this off. If the inside is wet, it’s probably keeping his head cold while the rest of him is warm from the shower. You know it’s not a light thing—you know… you know at least a fraction of what this means. You won’t look, you won’t look unless something absolutely drastic happens and it’s completely unavoidable, but you need to take his helmet off.

You catch the shoulder furthest from you and tug at his heavy body until he’s on his side, facing you on the bed.

“Din, I have to take your helmet off,” you warn him, saying it slowly and clearly. Again, just in case. “I’m not gonna look. Nobody is gonna look—” your gaze flicks behind him to eye the baby, who is now somehow on the metal ground and waddling up to you both. He blinks enormous black eyes at you, looking between you and his father huddled together under the blankets.

“Close your eyes,” you tell him very seriously, no room for negotiating. “I know you understand me.”

It takes just a few seconds before he lifts his hands up and does exactly what you say, placing his fingers over his closed eyelids and then even so much as toddling around to face the wall. You gasp in relief, clenching your eyes firmly shut and then pulling the helmet up, making sure you catch his head before it falls with one hand while tossing the beskar somewhere in the hull with the other.

Cold. His hair is soaking wet and so cold, and his head rolls slightly as you guide it to rest in the warmest part of your neck. Your hand stays attached to the back of it, wanting to transfer every single bit of warmth from your palm to him, and your eyes open to the kid’s back as your other arm wraps around Din’s bare spine.

And then all at once, you just feel… helpless. He’s in your arms but Maker, you don’t know what else you can do. The heat is blasting, you’re warm and pressed against him under multiple blankets, the engine is slowly heating the metal floor, but his breathing. Slow. Shallow. Barely able to be felt against your neck. He’s here but he’s not. And you have no way of knowing if he’s getting closer or further away from you.

Tears start coming before you even realize. But you have nothing to say. After spending the entire time talking out loud, providing reassurances, narrating, distracting yourself—you don’t have anything anymore. The silence twists you tighter, the nothing becomes inescapable, and the sudden sob that leaves you echoes hauntingly throughout the hull. You pull his limp body as close to you as possible for comfort. Wake up. Wake up.

Your vision is watery—you don’t see it. You don’t see the kid slowly turn around and take a few steps forward. You only notice he’s there when green catches in the abstract blur, but you sniff and blink quickly to clear it. It only takes a second to see the baby’s hand, extending and pressing against the blanket covering Din’s back, and you watch with wide eyes as he closes his.

And then there’s a second. A second where you dare to hope. Where you wonder if it’s even something that can be done.

The kid lowers his hand just a moment later and stumbles back a few steps, before plopping down on the ground and slowly falling backwards. You have just enough time to see his little body inhale and exhale a few times as he sleeps, and then—

—and then Din suddenly jolts in your arms, bursting with too much life after spending too many heart wrenching moments without it.

“Shhh,” you breathe, instantly tightening your grip on the back of his head so he doesn’t pull away from you in a panic and keeping it tucked into the warmest part of your neck, right where your pulse thrums fast and present. Your eyes clench tightly shut just in case and your heart bursts with pure, blinding, heavenly relief. “Shhh sh sh, stay right here, just stay right here…”

As soon as he seems to recognize your voice and figure out that he’s not dead, his body immediately starts wreaking with shivers. You squeeze him tight to you, feeling his large, quaking frame curl inwards into you for warmth, burying his own face into your neck even further and breathing shallow but quickly now, like his body actually wants the air again. You do your best to will your blood to pump faster and provide him that relief, stretching and opening your body as much as possible to give him warmth.

And then you spend the next few hours like that. Holding him, murmuring gently to him, providing him with your body heat and stars, he fucking clings to you. He presses tight to you and trembles, and you don’t even know if he’s listening, but you keep talking. Finding words for hours, and while some of them are just different ways of saying the same thing, you say them anyway.

He’s okay. The kid is okay. Everyone is okay.

Eventually, the shivering dies down until it stops altogether. Din stays in one place and goes completely limp again, but this time he continues to breathe you in, slow and deep into the crook of your neck. Fast asleep in your arms, and you thank the good fucking Maker above for the little angel passed out on the floor behind him.

***

He has to meet with Karga in two days.

After a few more hours of holding him and making absolutely sure he’s going to be alright, that’s all you can stupidly think about.

A deadline. A very quickly approaching one.

You don’t know why. But it might have something to do with the fact that you want nothing more than to climb up into the cockpit and navigate the ship off this horrid planet, and you can’t. You’re confident that the hull and blankets are warm enough by themselves to keep Din comfortable as he recovers, and you’ve also had quite a while to regroup and get your mind thinking logically again, so you’re not worried about getting up and leaving him right now, no. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that there’s a corpse outside. You know this. You know it’s there, and you know he needs it. Nobody’s gonna take his word for just saying they’re dead, much less pay him for his services; no body, no bounty. You also know it’s probably being covered with fresh snow right now, or maybe some sort of wild animal has already gotten their teeth into it, if anything can even survive out there. And you’re the only one awake. The only one capable of going to get it.

You’ve been arguing with yourself. For about an hour, you’ve been struggling with the thought. Din is soft and warm and every breath makes you focus less on the terrifying moments that occurred and more on the need to step up once again.

In the end, it’s the kid who gives you the final push. You’re not going to leave him laying on the floor like that for any longer. Not after what he did.

You take a second, grabbing the blanket and pulling it up all the way over Din’s head as it rests warm and comfortable in your neck. You’re incredibly careful to cover his face, and even while climbing out of the warm cocoon of the bed, you keep your eyes firmly shut and continue to pull the fabric even higher, making absolutely sure you’re not going to see his face on accident. You shouldn’t, you don’t think, as long as he doesn’t jerk awake and pull it down himself, but you want to take extra precaution regardless.

After quickly yanking on some clothes, you immediately make your way over to the kid and pick him up, seeing his little mouth open as he snores—and oh, you just have to. You pull him to your chest and give him the most heartfelt, thankful embrace you can while not squishing him, before setting him down in his much more comfortable hovering blanket palace and closing the lid on it.

You know you have a very clear task now, but for just a few moments longer, you do your best to stall despite the ticking clock. You start to pick up the mess in the hull—you close the fresher door, pick up Din’s discarded armor and set it in a neat pile close to the bed, place the helmet under the vent to encourage the padding inside to dry faster, and then you collect his old armor and stuff it back into one of the storage cubbies with your toolbox.

Only, an idea suddenly occurs to you as you’re putting away the chestpiece. When you open the door to the hull, you know that a blast of cold air is going to flood the ship. The engine is still heating everything inside and making sure you don’t get trapped in the snow by continuously melting it on the outside, but you don’t want Din to start shivering again.

So you grab the dented piece of electronics you were working on and flip the power switch, feeling the capacitors slowly start to heat up inside the housing. You go back over and lift the blanket near his feet just enough to tuck the metal under it, close enough to Din that he’ll feel the same amount of warmth your body was providing him but not enough to overheat.

And then you make your way over to your bag and pull on the rest of your clothes, now exhausting almost every single clean thing you own just to make another trek through the snow. You’re in the middle of pulling on your fifth pair of pants when the thought truly sinks in.

A corpse. A dead body. That you’re actually considering going out into the worst fucking weather in the galaxy to search for, haul back to the ship, and put into carbonite. Because of a fucking deadline for an occupation very much not your own, very much not chosen by you.

You quickly walk over and leave through the door on the side of the hull before you can change your mind, slamming it shut behind you.

***

Well, it’s… It’s not too terrible, you guess.

It’s been frozen out here for hours, that’s why. It’s not bloody, not gory, not demented or malformed in any way. Tranquil almost, like the creature died in its sleep in this nightmarish landscape, perfectly at peace.

You still don’t want to get anywhere close to it, but you have to. You pull a face and slowly reach out, absolutely not thinking about the literal impossibility of it playing dead and just waiting for the moment to strike, but even still… Even if there was nothing more sinister hiding underneath the surface of this scene, it’s still… existentially fucked up. The last time you were confronted with a dead body, Din had to be the one to dispose of it—you couldn’t even think about it without threatening another wave of shock to your system.

And now you’re voluntarily grabbing the rope around one’s ankles and dragging it back down the pure white slope to the Razor Crest.

It doesn’t weigh that much and its icy exterior seems to work in your favor; it slides easily along the snow as soon as you get it moving. As the ship comes back into view, you hurry to the door and you’re just about to open it when you suddenly get the feeling that you’re forgetting something…

Oh—

It takes a few moments of searching around in the freshly fallen snow, but eventually your fingers brush metal underneath and you stand, reaching behind you to tuck the blaster into your waistband. When you’re positive you’re not going to accidentally shoot a chunk of your ass off on accident, you shove open the door and pull the body inside, before locking it tight behind you and keeping the frigid winter from touching this warm, quiet safe-haven.

There. Halfway done. You almost don’t want to look in case he wakes up unexpectedly, but then you find yourself peeking over your shoulder at the silhouette of Din’s body still passed out under the blankets and you’re thankful the squeaks and slams didn’t disturb him.

And then you take just a second to wonder if this is what it must be like for him. Minus your obvious discomfort and ickiness at beginning to haul the corpse over to the carbonite chamber, it seems like it’d be reminiscent of any other time he’s brought back a dead quarry while you and the baby slept soundly. Trying to be quiet, wanting it done and over with just to get back in bed that much faster, doing everything you can to prevent anything out there from so much as breathing on anything in here.

You do your best to hold on to the loveliness of the thought, because this part is the part you’re most anxious about.

The body needs to go into this slanted upright space so you can freeze it in carbonite. And in order to do that, you have to grab it and put it there. With your hands, you have to grab it. With your hands.

You look down at its face, calm and at peace, frozen and forever etched into that expression, and something twists in your heart. If it weren’t for the kid, that could’ve been Din. If it weren’t for the kid walking barefoot through snow, fighting an uphill battle to make sure you get to him, helping you drag him back here and then overexerting himself to make sure he’d be okay, that could’ve been Din. He drives you crazy on a consistent basis, but he came through today.

Know what? If that little squirt can save a grown man’s life twice in a few hours, then the least you can do is finish this job for all three of you and fly your asses out of here.

Weirdly enough, being frozen solid allows for way better handling than the alternative. It means you don’t actually have to touch it too much; you don’t have to deal with the limpness of death, it doesn’t seem as much like a person as it does a rigid board you’re simply moving from one place to another. You can just grab the shoulders and yank and the entire fucking thing goes with it, solid and upright, naturally wanting to lean back into the chamber so you don’t even have to hold it in place. The perfect quarry for you basically, day one stuff, as easy as it could get.

Almost done, almost done—you study the key panel on the upper-right frame before eventually pressing a few buttons, and then you step back as gas freezes and solidifies the corpse in its carbonite prison.

Yes. You’re done. You already want to take another shower just from touching it for a few seconds, but that can wait. Quickly making your way up the ladder and into the cockpit, you fire up the thrusters and then navigate the ship through and beyond the swirling white atmosphere of this dreadful fucking planet, before punching in familiar coordinates to Nevarro.

***

“Din,” you murmur, making sure you have your eyes completely covered with one hand before gently easing the blanket down from his face with the other. “Din, I want you to drink some wat—”

He jerks awake so suddenly that you hear the metal canteen fall over on the floor next to you, thank the Maker its lid is on tight. You automatically reach out to steady him, pressing your free hand to his bare chest and continuing to speak calmly and gently to reassure him, but he still scrambles to take in his surroundings after sleeping longer than he probably has in weeks.

You know what he’s seeing, even though you’re blind right now. You took time to make sure everything was settled before waking him. The hull is clean with only a single light to illuminate it, the baby is still snoozing in his closed crib, his armor is stacked in a neat pile, the blaster is put away, and you retired your makeshift blanket heater box so the only thing left is you. Freshly showered, hair dripping, offering him water, and dressed in just a thin shirt with nothing else (you ran out of things to wear).

“Wh-Where’s my h-h-helmet—” is the first thing he asks, voice broken and raspy. Stars, he needs water.

“The padding inside is wet,” you quickly supply, keeping your hand tight over the bridge of your eyes to make sure his freshly conscious mind immediately understands that you have no bad intentions. “I swear I didn’t look, and I made sure the kid didn’t either. He’s sleeping now, it’s just me—I swear nobody looked, I swear.”

You might just be saying the exact same thing over and over again and admittedly, that might be putting some weird kind of suspicion on you, but you just want to make sure he knows. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s important that he knows he’s safe and that everything is okay now, even if he collapsed and spent an unknown amount of time in a purgatory where nothing was.

His body trembles under your palm, waves of shudders attacking him even after hours of keeping him as warm as possible. “Are—Are we st-still on H-Ho—H-Hoth—”

“No,” you answer. “We’re in hyperspace. Everything’s okay now, I took care of it. We’ll get to Nevarro on time.”

It’s like he takes just a few extra moments, as if he’s trying extra hard to remember before responding. “But—I d-didn’t—”

“You have four bodies for Karga,” you tell him, not letting him get too lost trying to recall something that no longer poses an issue. “I took care of it. You need rest, I only woke you up to make sure you drink some water, so please—” you blindly reach your hand out for the canteen you know has to be around here somewhere, but all you feel is…

His. Catching yours.

“Y-You took c-c-care of…” His hands are trembling harder than his voice. “Sh-shit, I’m freezing, I—”

“Drink some water,” you tell him, squeezing his fingers. “I’ll go turn off the light so you can sleep more, but you need water.”

His hand feels like it doesn’t quite want to let go of yours yet, but eventually it does and you hear the sloshing of water as the metal flask is picked up with an unsteady grip. Purposefully turning your back to him and making sure he’s not in your line of sight whatsoever, you finally let your hand drop and blink your eyes open at the wall across the hull. You hear Din shakily unscrew the lid while you stand up and find the light switch, before turning around in the pitch blackness and using his loud gulps as your guide back.

Your hands and knees are barely on the blanket when you hear him toss the empty canteen to the side and grab you, pulling you down to him.

Fuck, you’re not expecting it. You fumble in the dark but he doesn’t really give your clumsiness much of a choice—Din pulls you under the blankets like he needs you, his body craving that warmth even though his skin doesn’t feel cold at all. He hooks a strong forearm around your tummy, keeping your back pressed tight to his chest while the rest of him curls to fit every part of you, and you have to adjust the blankets yourself.

It’s not even a few seconds after you settle into position when his trembling hands jerk down to grab your shirt and yank it up. You quickly scramble to help him get you as naked as he is, feeling his palms drag greedily across the heat of your tummy and breasts before you’ve even finished wiggling the fabric over your head. The shirt lands somewhere in the darkness and you’re squeezed back against him, your hands landing on his forearms as they wrap around your waist and he clings shamelessly to you.

“You…” Din’s body still shivers every once in a while but the heat and closeness allows his voice to even out just a bit. He clears his throat and swallows, tucking his head and burying his face in your hair before trying again. “You brought back the qu-quarry?”

“Yes,” you confirm, confident in your reassurance but gentle at the same time. “It’s in carbonite.”

All you can feel or hear in response is his breathing. His heart beating steady and strong against your back.

And then Din’s arms suddenly squeeze you tight—tight. He lets out a low shaky exhale against the back of your shoulder and presses his lips to your skin. “Sweet girl.”

And he says just… so much with those two words. Slow and purposeful, the steadiest thing you’ve heard from him in hours. But the two biggest competing emotions you hear tugging at his vocal cords are gratitude and apprehension. Like he already knows that it couldn’t have been easy for you. Like he’s not taking it lightly.

You don’t want to talk about it. You don’t want to talk about anything that happened in the past few hours, not right now. “It’s okay. Please.”

This time his silence seems to be on the brink, as if he wants to say more but the extra plea you put on the end makes him hold onto his words, at least for now.

“How d-did you find me?” He asks instead, scooting his legs up enough that yours actually go with him. Cradled in his naked body, radiating heat so he can recover, pressed so close to him that you feel like gravity itself would be pushing you into his lap if the world weren’t sideways.

“The kid,” you tell him. “We were goofing around outside and he dragged me ov—”

It’s like he’s still so cold that even just the surprise of hearing you say that makes his whole body lock down and convulse a few times against your back. “You were wh-what?”

“I was practicing,” you openly admit to him, feeling like the earlier events already occurred a lifetime ago and you have no reason for being shy about it anymore. In fact, you’re glad you were there, being terrible at shooting. The alternative is unthinkable. Though, something tells you also improbable, having a little supernatural sidekick who cares so deeply for him. “I raided your armory. We weren’t outside for more than five minutes before I wanted to go back in, but then he found you.”

And you think he’s going to get after you, for some reason. Seems about on par, you figure—going outside for even just a few minutes on a planet whose name you now remember is colloquial slang for hell, even if it’s the only reason he’s not an icicle right now.

But he’s just quiet. Breathing. So you just relax into him, thinking that’s the end of it. You take a few deep breaths in through your nose and just… rest. In the near perfect silence of hyperspace you used to find haunting, but now only find comfort in. It reminds you of him.

“Did you hit the target?” He asks you quietly, and at first you scoff, about to ask if he’s kidding. No, of course you didn’t hit the…

Only, after a remarkable delay, hearing him phrase it that way suddenly makes your stomach decide to drop and do a fucking somersault on the ground out of absolutely nowhere.

Everything comes flooding back. The conflict you used to think was the most pressing thing, the one that kept you awake and your thoughts scrambled for hours. It feels like it was ages ago. An entire lifetime has passed since that happened, you might’ve forgotten it altogether if he didn’t decide to ask that very simple question in a very specific way.

“I…” you mumble in response, your heart suddenly pounding. “Not… not yet.”

Okay, that’s a good answer. It’s the truth and you’re giving nothing away by saying that. So now what is he going to say? What is he going to say? You spoke your piece, it’s his turn now, that’s how conversations work. Well typically, that’s how conversations work—but with Din… you probably should’ve known.

He falls back into silence almost immediately, appearing to accept your answer just the way it is without anything else to add. You feel his heart continue to beat strong against your back, but there’s something too tense about his stillness that doesn’t imply he’s relaxing anymore. His body goes slightly taut, but not from the lingering chill in his bones.

He’s going to make you ask him, you realize. He’s waiting until you confront him about his choice in words at the shooting range. Which means he wasn’t just joking around. He wasn’t just messing with you.

“Din…” you whisper uncertainly, and his face suddenly finds its way into the crook of your neck as soon as the word leaves your mouth, arms tightening up around you. You spent forever trying to find the words to even bring this up, and here he is, already knowing exactly what you’re asking just by the tone of your voice. Still, you ask anyway, sounding small and so unsure of yourself in the darkness. “Why did you say that? On Tatooine, why did you…”

Din’s chest expands against your back with a long, slow breath, and then he lets it out against your neck, hot enough to raise goosebumps all over your body.

“I… don’t know,” he admits, voice muffled and quiet, but it’s not… casual. Not like he’s brushing you off or indicating he doesn’t want to talk about it, but like it’s actually a complete fucking mystery to him, just as much as it is to you. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know…” you repeat slowly.

“You had said something,” he mutters, shifting just a bit behind you. His palm slides up your bare tummy, stopping in the warm spot just under the swell of your breast. “Earlier that day. I thought about it, and then I just… s-said it.”

You? Said something that made him ask that?

“What?” You blurt out, genuinely startled and having no fucking clue. “What did I say?”

“Something about…” He gives the smallest shudder from behind you, and you don’t actually know if this one is from the cold. “Not wanting anyone else to know me the way you do.”

Your heart rapidly kicks up and you flush, hating how unbelievably possessive your own words sound coming out of his mouth. “Oh shit, I… I didn’t mean for that to be… that sounds so bad, Din, I swear I didn’t mean for it to—”

He cuts you off by clutching you tighter, burying his face deeper into your neck and breathing out shakily. “Tell me you meant every word.”

You blink a couple of times in the pitch black before sighing, letting go of any charade or front you think about putting up for him to save some dignity. “I meant it.”

Because it’s the truth. You said it when you were caught off guard, throwing it out to him along with other mindless drabble that came from a place that was very real. You don’t like the way you phrased it, but you meant it. You do mean it. Every word.

If there weren't so many things still left unsaid right now, you might actually worry he fell asleep on you. Din loosens up considerably after you admit it, letting go of more tightness you didn’t even know was inside him. His head slowly drops from the crook of your neck to the back of it and he breathes hot air on your nape, quiet for a long time.

And, you suppose you’d actually be okay with it if that was the end of the conversation. There are, of course, millions of things left to ask. But he doesn’t know the answers, just as much as you’re left clueless about the questions. You’re not expecting him to elaborate anymore, and if he’s waiting for you to ask, he’ll be waiting a long time. Soon your eyes close and you almost feel yourself beginning to drift. It’s been such a rough day today and to just be here in his arms, it’s more than enough for you.

But then his low baritone comes through the darkness.

“In Mando’a,” Din’s voice suddenly whispers against your skin, “the verb, kar’taylir… it means to know. Su kar’tayli, you know, kaysh kar’tayli, they know. Ni ke kar’tayl nu… I don’t know.”

Your eyes pop open and you immediately forget all about sleep, wide awake and suddenly hanging onto every word as it rolls so gently off his tongue. You’ve never heard the language spoken aloud, you’ve never heard anything about the Mandalorians directly from one before. All of the stories seem sensationalized, passed down by word of mouth and chipping away at the kernel of truth until it disappears completely.

“The language is dying,” Din continues, murmuring soft and gentle along your nape. “By the time I learned it, too many words had been lost. The ones left were the ones that were needed.”

“What do you mean?” You whisper, almost afraid of breaking the quiet. Not wanting him to feel distracted or pressed, but needing to express your curiosity lest you somehow overflow with it.

“There are only three pronouns,” he answers slowly, and you’re already fucking fascinated. “Ni, for I or we. Su is you or you all, and kaysh is third person. Subjective, objective, possessive, singular, plural—doesn’t matter. Three words, for every individual or collective in the entire galaxy.”

You blink in the darkness, your logic telling you that it sounds so simple it’d become confusing and then your logic also telling you that doesn’t actually make any fucking sense at all. If that’s true, it’s unbelievable. How do they differentiate? Just context?

“How do you distinguish?” You ask him. Admittedly, you don’t know much about linguistics—not anywhere near the extent he does, but it seems so counterintuitive. I can’t be the same word for we, the amount of misunderstandings would be a nightmare.

“We… don’t need to,” he explains to you, slowly, like nobody has ever asked him these things before and so he’s unsure how to phrase it. “Individuality isn’t valued, it’s not a concept.”

And… you almost can’t wrap your head around it. “What do you mean?” You ask again, knowing you’re sounding like a broken record without specifying more, but trying with your whole heart to understand.

“I mean… we swear oaths to never reveal our faces,” Din tells you, something you shouldn’t need to be reminded of. “We abandon our names. We become… whispers, of the same voice. There’s not many words in Mando’a with a unique meaning, almost all of them are homonyms. Interchangeable. Transient.”

Your eyebrows shoot up, suddenly blown away by the implication. Almost all of them are homonyms? How in Maker’s name are you even supposed to communicate at that point? That’s… unthinkable.

“Most words have two meanings?” You clarify, wanting to be absolutely sure you’re getting it right.

“Most have five or six,” he returns, and you’re downright shocked now. “Everything just depends.”

“Stars…” You breathe, moving a palm up the length of his forearm and holding the back of his hand with it. Fuck, you hope this is the direction he’s intending instead of veering him off course, but you’re incredibly invested. “What else does, uh… kay—er, kar… kar’taylir mean?”

Din lets out a slow breath from behind you, and you can… you can feel his own heart beating faster when it presses up against your spine at the apex of his inhale. “It’s… a rare word, it only has two meanings.”

You bite your lip and start to feel butterflies in your stomach for some reason. Slowly, his hand begins to travel up your breast and then to your sternum before heading just the slightest bit left, and your own hand moves with him.

“To know,” Din says quietly, “but also… to care very deeply for.” He doesn’t stop until his palm presses right above the rapidly pounding organ in your chest. “To hold in the heart.”

“To know,” you swallow thickly, curling your fingers around his hand and praying he’s saying what you think he is, “or… to love?”

“When Mandalorian’s take vows, there’s no ceremony,” he whispers into the back of your neck. “No witnesses, no celebrations. We just take our helmets off in front of the other and look. It doesn’t sound like much, but… our secrecy is our survival. Letting someone see our face and swearing lifelong devotion to them, it’s the same thing. To know is to love.”

Your eyes close tight and your lungs empty themselves, too full of emotion to even fit oxygen inside you anymore. Din’s lips press feather soft behind your neck, and now you’re the one shivering uncontrollably. The move up and trail along your neck in the darkness.

“Ni kar'tayl su,” he murmurs, shifting back just slightly and pulling at your shoulder. “I know you.”

You go with him, facing the ceiling as he fits his head under your throat and places slow, open mouth kisses down the curve of it.

“Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum,” he goes on quietly, his voice starting to sound raspy again, dragging his hand down your torso while his lips brush your collarbone. “For an eternity, I’ll know you.”

Water wets the corners of your lashes and you inhale three or four times before exhaling, shallow hiccups and desperate for air.

“Ni ke vaabi nu kaysh ke kar’taylir su te ni kar’tayl su.” Din says, slowly moving his mouth back up when your fingers tangle in his hair and beg him to come that way. The words dance along your skin as he whispers them, forever searing themselves into your memory. You can’t see them, you’ll never have a visual to reminisce upon, but you’ll know how they felt. Right under your ear, brimming with quiet devotion. “I don’t want anyone else to know you… the way I know you.”

Your face goes blazing hot at the sound of him translating your own rushed and half-assed sentence into something gorgeous and flowing, something that sounds so much more beautiful than when you blurted it out earlier. You told him you loved him in that hangar, right to his face. Unashamed and stupid about it, but meaning it with every part of your body.

“I knew you’d say no,” he finally admits, staying in this one spot. Unmoving. Telling you the truth, allowing you to know it. “I just wanted to… say it.”

That… that makes sense to you. The last part does, at least, it makes so much sense to you. The first time you said you loved him, you said it just to say it. You wanted to feel the words, sound them out even if neither one of you could hear them. It felt freeing, like coming to accept a universal truth.

The first part, though. You’re still behind. “You knew I’d say no?” You ask him, feeling him ease back just slightly. Staring down at you through the pitch black, even if he can’t see either. Keeping his palm over your heart as the ship hurdles through nowhere and everywhere at once.

“You wouldn’t take my first name without convincing,” he reasons quietly, and then moves back to lay in the blankets once more, leaving the rest unspoken.

But he’s… oh stars, he’s so right. If he’s going to take his helmet off and let you see his face—if he’s going to commit to you that way, it is not going to be because you shoot a blaster correctly. Not after today, not after what he’s told you.

So you move up to your elbow and turn to face him, trying to let him know why even if he’s already guessed the what correctly.

“I want it to mean something,” you say after a moment. “I want it to… have the meaning it’s supposed to have.”

Your palm finds its way to his chest in the silence following. Right over the beating of his heart, feeling it thrum hard and rhythmic while he considers his response.

“This is The Way,” Din finally murmurs, settling his hand over yours, and you repeat the words back to him. Respecting them. Feeling like, for the very first time, they now apply to you in some way instead of belonging to some mysterious creed you’ll never know anything about.

But when a shudder subtly rockets up and down his body, you realize the blankets have been pulled down with the changing positions and his whole torso is bare and exposed to the hull. So you pull them up until you’re both covered again, before you lean down and press a soft kiss to his shoulder.

Din shudders again when your mouth opens and the hot glide of your tongue catches his skin, but you know it’s not from the cold this time. His breathing deepens while you slowly move over him. You ease him further on his back and let him keep feeling the warmth of your mouth on his body, alleviate the lingering chill by sucking gentle hickeys into his skin and feeling the goosebumps raise under your tongue. He moves with you; he stretches his neck when you want to nibble his collarbone, arches when you mouth down his chest, shifts his elbow to let you drag your tongue along his ribcage.

And… and it’s as if all the stars and systems hold even more still for you than the relative physics of faster-than-light travel can explain away by themselves. You’ve always felt timeless in here, living from one fleeting eternity to the next, suspended in perpetuity while the rest of the galaxy ages without you. But when you’re with him and it’s pitch black and there’s no light to streak across your vision, no evidence that time and space have all but disconnected from each other just to let your insignificant little bodies through… it’s like you’re meant to be here. In some strange, unexplainable way, you feel like you could’ve died out there with him in the frozen wasteland today and this is exactly where you’d still end up, no matter what.

To know is to love.

“Do you have brown eyes?” You hear yourself whisper under his jaw, and you feel Din’s fingers thread in your hair and ease you up enough to brush his lips against your chin.

“Yes,” he whispers back, and then his mouth is on yours.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #fanfic #star wars fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din djarin #no-droids #reader insert

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