#kind of. on the gore part. i mean its hardly visible but

[hellonerf]

gimme Ivan and Alfred eating each other please

please

nah one of us gotta change

[storiesbyrhi]

Witch!Reader x Bat/Vampire!Eddie Munson Series Masterlist The Grimoire The Timeline

Warnings: canon typical violence, horror genre typical violence/some infrequent gore, swearing, animal death, no beta, death in childbirth (mentioned, not described), abusive parents, suicide, spiders/bugs, grief/mourning; light smut; warnings updated each chapter.

Synopsis: No witch has stepped foot in Hawkins since 1845, but when Vecna opens the ground and poisons the town, a voice begins to call to you. Have you been brought back to this cursed place to heal the townspeople’s wounds, to save a hexed bat that always finds its way to you, or to redefine your history with a reunion 150 years in the making?

Chapter Summary: Homeward bound. 2738 words.

1986

Every now and then, you’d catch a glimpse of Eddie swooping by, keeping pace with your car. It was mid-afternoon by the time he grew tired, burrowing into his front seat nest and sleeping until twilight. As soon as the sun was safely locked away on the other side of the world, Eddie chittered and you responded by turning him back into himself.

He stretched out, making dramatic noises and pulling faces.

“You okay there?” you asked him, laughing at the show of it all.

“Only trying to make you smile, my little witch.”

Damn.

“So, you were right,” you changed the subject. “About not being the only non-witch,”

“Wolf, right? I could smell him.” Eddie’s face screwed up in disgust.

“What happened to the support group for monster lovers?”

“I draw the line at lycans.”

The seriousness of his expression made you laugh. “Well, you’ll have to redraw it, because Ev has it bad for him. The others already knew all about it too,”

“And we believed we were special,”

“I mean… We still are… Witches and werewolves aren’t mortal enemies…”

“Of course. Wolves’ mortal enemy being their own tail and all,”

“Eddie! Stop,” you laughed, hitting him with the back of your hand.

He grinned at you, then looked out at the road. “And the other?”

“That one is a bit more of a secret. Ash is seeing one of the fae folk. It’s still very new. Taking it slow… Making sure they’re not actually trying to lure her into some centuries old curse. You know how they are,”

“Trickster sprites,”

“Exactly,” you nodded. “And then there’s Steve fucking Harrington… who has elected to inexplicably haunt Mel,”

“Why? I assume he never met her,”

“Yep, but she came and asked me if the ghost in her house was him. It was. He says he’ll leave her alone but had this stupid puppy dog look on his face… So… Maybe there is a whole new world of witch romances to come.”

Eddie grinned, he liked the sound of it. Though, he really didn’t want a werewolf as a brother-in-law. “Do you want me to take over?” he asked then, pointing to the steering wheel. “I’ve been practicing,”

“And here I was thinking you disappeared in the middle of the night to eat,”

“Oh, I do. I find the worst person I can. I eat them. Then, I take their car for a lesson,”

“A two birds, one stone, kind of thing, huh?”

Eddie nodded with a disconcertingly innocent smile on his face.

“I was thinking about that actually. I think I can help,”

“With which part?” he asked. “The eating or the thieving,”

“Neither. The choosing.”

The joy left Eddie’s expression. He looked away from you, suddenly studying the hardly visible horizon out his window. “You don’t need to be a part of it. You don’t have to have it on your conscience,”

“Neither do you. Not in the same way, at least. What if I can take some of the guesswork out of picking who is, you know, bad,”

“It’s not guesswork. I watch them. I find them while they’re-”

“I know. But what if you didn’t have to wait for them to do something bad? What if you could tell what they had already done?”

Eddie stayed quiet. There was a gas station up ahead, the lights shining brightly. You pulled in and cut the engine.

“I know it’s always going to be on you. You’re always going to have to make that call, about if they have sinned and if the sins are…”

“If they justify death,” Eddie finished for you solemnly and still not looking at you.

“Yes. But what if you could see them? The sins. If you could, I don’t know, just touch someone and see the worst of them. And only when you wanted to. Would that help?”

He was clicking two fingernails together, pensive or maybe anxious. Eddie got out of the car and looked around. There was a family inside the gas station. The kids were screaming about peanut butter cups and soda.

“Would it help you?” he asked after you’d got out and walked around to him. His hands were shoved into the pockets of the sweatpants he’d been getting in and out of, vampire then bat then vampire then bat. “It might make it more precise. But it’s still conjecture. Still a judgment. Still a human death.”

You tried to read him, but he’d locked you out for the moment.

He continued, “Sometimes it hurts. Or, sometimes I think it hurts. Or, I think it should hurt. I don’t know if I can tell the difference. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I can stop myself from hurting them. But I don’t know, really know, if it weighs on my conscious. I don’t even know if I have one.”

It had been easy to get lost in Eddie’s goodness. It had been the important thing to show your coven. But it was never going away, the darkness. He might have been a good vampire, not a properly made monster, but it didn’t change the fact that he was still a vampire.

“If I say it would help me-”

“Then, I am sure, it would help me. What is good for you is good for me,” Eddie told you. “But I can tell which of them are more like me than you. I can see it in their faces. But if this makes you feel more in control of it, then I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

The neon sign of the station buzzed and crackled, the cicadas trilling back at it. The family got in their car and hit the road again, the radio turned right up to drown out the noise of bickering children.

You could see the station’s clerk watching you and Eddie from behind his counter.

“Loving you doesn’t make me feel guilty. I’m not ashamed of what you are,” you told Eddie then, looking back at him. “I’m not trying to make you into something you’re not.”

He nodded. “I know.” He saw it on your face, a flash of exasperation. “What are you trying to do?” he asked. “Because I’m not ashamed of what you are either… You don’t have to be a lawful, virtuous witch.”

There was a small smile playing on Eddie’s lips and you knew it meant he’d cottoned on to the fact that the seed of darkness that lived inside you was working its magic.

“It’s not just about making things easier for you or for me. It could be… A kind of justice…”

“Ohhh,” Eddie almost laughed. “I am your weapon, and if you can point this blade in the right direction, then well fuck, it might work faster than the humans’ courts and witches’ spells?”

Eddie had only recently started to swear, a habit he was picking up from you most likely. Fuck, in particular, sounded terribly good coming from his mouth.

You looked at him and slowly nodded. He threw his head back and laughed into the night. The gas station clerk sighed in relief at the sudden change of atmosphere around you both.

“Oh, my little witch. You do continue to delight me.”

Eddie pulled you into a rough kiss, letting the tips of his sharpest teeth run along your bottom lip. You were warm and tasted so sugary. He had been itching to eat you up since leaving the Catskills.

“I love you,” you said breathlessly when he let you come up for air.

“I love you too. Entirely.”

…

Waking up alone was bittersweet. Although you missed the weight of Eddie next to you, the immediate crawl of his body to yours, it did mean he was likely up to something. Mostly, it was innocent domestic work.

Pre-turning, Eddie never really had a place to call his own. As a vampire, the idea of home meant something different too. But now, the boy could nest. He cleaned and picked flowers to put in vases and glasses all across the trailer. He was also dabbling in cooking, though he could not eat the fruits of his labor.

So, mostly, it was domestic work, but now and then, you would wake up to him doing something different. A week after returning from the Catskills, you and Eddie had fallen back into routine, but this morning was out of the ordinary.

Eddie had stacks of books crowded around him. Pages of handwritten notes were spilled across the coffee table, your altar supplies stacked neatly below it.

“Looking very witchy there,” you greeted, voice gravelly with sleep.

“Hi, my love,” he replied without looking up. “I’m almost finished.”

Looking around, you realised it wasn’t just the books Eddie had been combing through. Herbs and other potion-brewing bits and pieces were lined up along the kitchen bench.

“Almost finished what?” you asked.

“The spell.”

Nodding slowly at him, you waited for the explanation. It never came. Instead, you let him work on his craft and went about your day.

By mid-morning, he was ready.

“Little witch!” Eddie yelled loudly. You were outside, watering your potted plants and herbs. “Little witch! Come!” There was childlike enthusiasm in his voice and it made you smile.

“Where do you need me?” you asked him, but he was already ushering you to the couch.

“I have written you a grounding spell,” he announced.

“A grounding spell?”

“Yes. Something to reconnect you to the natural world. To promote health and healing.”

Eddie was wide-eyed and on the verge of mania. He had a little dirt smeared across his cheek, and it was caked under his nails. Although his hair was pulled back in a bun, single coils of curls had fallen out throughout the night. He was beautiful.

“Go on,” you urged.

“It starts with malus domestica,” he began.

“It always does,” you noted, already holding back a giggle. He could have just said apple. Still so very dramatic.

“They connect you to the earth. Sacred. Biblical.” He really had been doing his homework. “Then, black hellebore root.” Eddie was at the kitchen bench, holding up a jar that he’d already dug through. That explained the dirt.

“I hope you’ve been careful with that,” you warned.

“I know. Extremely toxic. Even witches sometimes wear gloves to handle it,” Eddie said, reciting one of the books he’d read. “But it is also symbolic of rising from the past. And has a long history of use in witchcraft.”

Eddie had read about hellebore poisoning, how it brought on hallucinations but could also cure mental affliction. He read about how it could be harnessed and used in banishing spells and for purification. About white versus black hellebore and all the folklore surrounding them.

“Okay. What do we do with this apple and root?” you asked, playing the part of a captive audience.

“Core the apple and thread the root through it. Let it air overnight, by moonlight. Come morning, it gets wrapped in willow then cooked,”

“Willow?” you tested.

“Willow that is strong and true. Willow that takes pain and fever and grief and releases you from it.”

You nodded and smiled.

“When the apple is cooked through, falling apart, you take the hellebore root and powder it,”

“Then what?”

Eddie hesitated. “Alas, I do not know…” he admitted. “I can’t find a way to close the spell,”

“Do you have any ideas?” you asked, standing up and coming to the kitchen counter. You looked at everything he had pulled out of the apothecary.

“Moreso, bad ideas. What not to do. Consume it, for example,”

“Yeah. That could kill me. Maybe even turn me into a werewolf,” you joked. The look on Eddie’s face was priceless. “Kidding. Hellebore is an active ingredient in lycanthropic ointment though… Mostly it’s used in what we used to call flying ointment, or magic salve. So no, I cannot consume it,”

“Yes… Well… I thought then, returning it to the earth. Burying it. That didn’t feel right,”

“Mmmhmm… I think you have a clue here,” you told him, pulling a bowl of eucalyptus seed pods forward. “Did you read about these?”

Eddie shook his head.

“They’re kind of amazing. Eucalyptus trees are native to Australia, but are planted ornamentally around the U.S. They produce a highly combustible oil through their leaves. Little fire bombs, basically. They catch ablaze easily. But, these little seedpods are fireproof, and when threatened with fire, they drop lots of seeds and fertilise the scorched ground. Within a couple of years, the burnt earth is already returning to its gloriously green form,”

“Very smart of them,”

“Very smart,” you agreed. “Maybe we can learn from them. We can not just withstand the blaze, but add fuel, let it all burn, and start again,”

“The powder… we let it go free…” Eddie said slowly, catching on to what you’re saying.

“Ah-huh. We give it to the wind.”

Working side by side, you and Eddie cored apples and filled the void with black hellebore root. You set them on the kitchen windowsill ready for the moonlight. (You’d have to take down all the window’s covers though, sunproof house and all.)

Eddie was proud. It was written all over his face.

“Now who’s the little witch?” you whispered to him, stepping up to his body, pressing yours to his.

In reply, Eddie pulled you close, wrapping his arms tightly around your frame. He kissed the top of your head then pressed his cheek to it, resting on you.

“Thank you. Nobody has ever written a spell for me before… Well… Not a good one…” You looked up at him. “You are good, Eddie. And you’re allowed to be. You can be… both. Everything,”

“Everything,” he repeated quietly.

“Yeah… So… What now? We can’t work on them until tomorrow.”

Eddie swept you off to the bedroom by the time you opened your eyes after your next blink.

“But it’s not bedtime,” you said voice saccharine and purposefully dumb.

Eddie grinned. “It’s not. I don’t want you to go to sleep now anyway,”

“No?” You sat on the edge of the unmade bed, looking up at Eddie.

He stood between your legs, reaching out to cup your face in his hands, his thumbs running softly across your skin. He smiled wide, teeth sharp. “I’m very, very hungry.”

Eddie rarely let himself taste your blood, though the occurrences were becoming more regular. He was scared of a multitude of things. Not being able to stop. Seeing something in your magic blood he couldn’t unsee. Pissing off some ancient and unknown creature that would resurrect if ever a vampire munched on a witch.

Sometimes, if you begged pretty enough, you’d get a small bite out of him. But it was better when he came asking for it. The soft inner thigh was his greatest weakness.

Lifting your arms up, Eddie followed the instruction and took your shirt off. You fell back against the bed and let him push your skirt up. He dropped to his knees and kissed the tops of your thighs. Up, up, up, until his mouth was bruising the skin above where the femoral artery was pumping blood.

You still didn’t know how he did it, how he could make it feel so good. You didn’t want to know. It was his own secret vampire magic and it was one mystery that would never appear on your murder board.

Eddie’s teeth sank in and your hot, red blood began to flow. He pushed you further back on the bed, then held your leg up, so the blood would pour down towards where you were already wet. His tongue lapped at blood and arousal fast. He didn’t waste a single drop.

You writhed under him, eyes screwed shut, and body on fire. The vibration of his tongue was pulling you ever closer to climax, but he wouldn’t stay in one spot long enough to let you get there.

Eddie grabbed your hand and smashed it to where he’d bitten you. “Heal it,” he growled, barely able to form words. You did what he said and he licked your palm clean of blood as a thank you. He hooked his arms under your legs and ripped you back to the edge of the bed. Then, he was positioned exactly where he needed to be to let you get there.

End Note: We're back in Hawkins... Now what? Reblogs and comments are appreciated!

Fic Taglist:  @paranoidmunson  @idkidknemore @paprikaquinn @stardustworlds @loz-brooke @wyverntatty @vintagehellfire @dark-academia-slut @scarletwitchwhore @becks1002 @mrsdollardog @heyndrix @luceneraium @rosaline-black @devilinthepalemoonlite @goldencherriess @iamwhisperingstars @wiltedwonderland @blueywrites @breezybeesposts @jadehowlettthewolf @spikesvamp79 @foreveranexpatsposts @tortoiseshellspells @wingedpeachjudgegiant @stardustmunson @live-love-be-unique @fangirling-4-ever @reanimated-alice @b-irock @gh0stlybunnie @myown-worstenemy-2003 @woozzz @cyberxlust @hiscrimsonangel @buckysbarne @m00nlight101 @word-wytch @spicysix @briasnow-blog @goth-cowgirl-03

All Eddie Taglist: @solomons-finest-rum @ruinedbythehobbit @sweetpeapod @thorfemmes  @corrodedhawkins @grungegrrrl @lilzabob  @averagemisfit03 @ches-86 @ilovecupcakesandtea @onehotgreasymechanic @hazydespair @mel-the-fangirl @eddies-hid3out @siren-lungs @aheadfullofsteverogers @hiscrimsonangel @dashingdeb16 @cultish-corner

[lideria]

Wayfaring. | Winter.

➥ characters: genderneutral!reader, mark, johnny, jaehyun, yuta, taeyong, haechan; to be added

➥ genre: apocalyptic!au (apocalypse based on the game “the last of us”), very much angsty, kind of action-y, sad, sometimes fluff 

➥ warnings: violent themes, blood&gore (detailed depictions), gun use, mentions of killing/m*rder, mentions of s*icide, depictions of corpses, swearing, zombies ofc, i would like to guess that that’s it but please contact me if there is anything i need to add, and as always English is not my first language so if there are any errors, please excuse me!

➥ word count: 19.3k

➥ summary: every little thing you had, had been built and preserved in the pool of nothingness. and now, you lost it all.

➥ author’s note: !!PLEASE READ!! hoping after all this time that i’ve not posted this doesn’t get taken off the tags. after much thinking i decided to make this big story a series, because i’m pretty positive the overall product will be over 60k words. this is the 1st part and there will be 3 parts. to make it a bit more meaningful, i’ll be releasing the winter part now (in winter for where i live), spring part in mid-spring (possibly around april), and summer in again, around mid-summer. the playlist will also be revealed then. i am hungry for feedback, any and all is much appreciated! also, i’m not over tlou still haha fu- there’s also going to be a taglist since the updates will be so slow, so please drop by my asks if you like it and i’ll gladly add you to the taglist!

➥ taglist: @nct-writers

i hope everyone enjoys this, have a great morning/day/evening/night!

The night was freezing cold.

You walk through the streets of a mix of stone and wooden buildings, lights mostly dim because of the scarce population. Most of the people were at the city square. They were laughing and dancing the night away as groups of people sang for them with the old, occupied instruments that belonged to who-knows-who all those years ago when all of this first started. ‘This’ as in survival of the fittest, as some would say. And from what science could explain, a fungal infection that took over the brain and body that eats away at your tissues until it has completely taken over your motor functions and skin, and can spread its spores to others freely. An infection that could basically ‘zombify’ and fungi-ify people.

That is what everybody who has experienced the outbreak day would tell you, at least.

Being born into it is apparently easier, that is what the older adults tell. Because people have it figured out, there are communities like the one you are in; nobody has to roam around alone and lose so many people in the process. You did not agree to that. Nothing was easier, except for maybe gathering the knowledge of handy survival skills.

Perhaps living in a community was easier, as well. You loved it. You specifically loved your community. The stone and wooden houses, the olden cafés and restaurants, actual electricity that was not a thing outside of the gates, fairy lights hanging across porches and roofs, kids and bicycles around, horses, elderly people. Schools. A whole cinema and market places. People who were hunters, people who were guards, people who were wanderers, people who were recruiters; people who had the luxury of just being parents or students or more. And people, perhaps after seeing the world fire up and fall apart, were filled with love towards each other. Compassion, respect; a lot of things that the outsiders did not have. For the most part, of course. Evil was still a thing even within the community.

You smile at the children hurrying towards the square with a few apples in their hands, laughing and skipping around with joy— one of them waving at you as they pass you by. You wave at them as well, chuckling at one of the boys’ claims on how he will make a run for the sugar in the cafeteria so they can caramelize them.

This is why you love it. Even though it is hard.

Just as snow starts to fall from the sky that was clear with visible stars just moments ago, you take your last turn and make your way to your destination. The light shines from their porch and emphasizes their house as you pick your pace up with your boots that are crunching the asphalt that is too old for its own good, cracked and overgrown with the unkempt vegetation.

And surely enough, he is there. You cannot see him clearly since his silhouette’s too dark with the light hitting from behind, but there is only one person who can be as tall in that household even when they are doubled over.

Not making eye-contact even once as you approach the house, you take big strides through their garden and get on the porch. He does not turn to you and opts to stay silent, still doubled over with his elbows placed on the somewhat high fence. You do the same and let out a huff; a laugh too airy and low to be considered one. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

Johnny smiles, still not meeting your eyes. “I freaked out.”

“Over a kiss?” One more huff. “Sounds nothing like the Johnny I know.”

“Yeah,” He nibbles on his lip a little, and smiles at their neighbor whose kitchen window is just across their porch that is grabbing a glass of water in greetings. “I just don’t like the idea of kissing someone and having it not mean anything anymore. Feel like I’ve passed that stage.”

Your eyes lock on a star in particular when he turns his head to look at you. “Reasonable,” You let out nodding your head. A witty smile creeps up onto your face at that second, and you turn to look at him also. “I guess it comes with growing old.”

That makes him giggle and playfully punch you on the side of your shoulder, prompting you to let out an ow, motherfucker, because he is too strong for his own damn good and he seems to never realize that. “I’m not old.”

“Yeah, yeah,” You brush him off, massaging the side of your shoulder, the smile still on your face. “Tell me though, was the kiss good? It looked good.”

His brows furrow in unfiltered concern. “You watched me kiss?”

“Well if you just adhere onto someone’s lips like they glued you to each other in front of the bar I’m trying to get a drink from, Johnny, I’m kind of obligated to see it for like a second at the least.” He laughs at your ramble and breaks the furrow of his brows. As if he is defeated, he nods at the end a little. “It was amazing.”

“Oh so it’s like that,” You lean into him, hardly containing your giggle. “What does that mean?” He asks back with his own smile still on his face, clearly amused. Your eyebrows furrow this time albeit not seriously. “You damn well know what that means.”

Johnny sighs. Long and deep. Then, he speaks. “I love you, you know. You’re the best annoyer I never would’ve asked for.”

At that you chuckle, letting your shoulders shake with the force of it. “Good thing they didn’t ask you then.”

He does not say anything after that for a while. The two of you stand in silence, you looking at the stars and him looking at the street— or maybe the overgrown plants, you do not know. He fiddles with his calloused hands slightly, and it is only then that you realize that the house is much quieter than how it usually is. His parents must still be at the square, even though you have not seen them at all that day.

That night, to be more honest. During the day it was not really like you could see a lot of the folk.

Johnny must have somehow read your mind, because he speaks up again with only a heavy huff. “I heard about this morning,” His gaze is directed at you again. You break your smile and lean further, letting your head drop lower to the fence as you sigh yourself. One of your hands instinctively go to your face and to the spot where everything aches right on your cheekbone, tracing over the few burn scratches you got when you fell onto the ground. “It was nothing.”

“That wouldn’t have been believable even if I hadn’t known you.” He stands upright then. You see his hands come into your vision before they pick your arms off the fence and force you to straighten up as well. He inspects your face for a bit, tracing your red spots and scratches with his fingertips, and frowns. “Sometimes I think you’re a bit too careless.” Johnny mumbles just above a whisper, making you smile. Not particularly with happiness or being flattered, but something rooted more from embarrassment. “You say that a lot.”

“Yeah, because I want you to come home in one piece.” He takes his hands off of your face. “So you can finally get it on with Jaehyun.”

He immediately receives a shove to his chest and full on laughs at that, watching your pissed off face that is rather scary for anybody else. After years of knowing you ever since you first walked into this place only with another survivor, coming from a smaller settlement that went to absolute chaos, Johnny could not ever fear you. Fear you in a respectful sense, yes, absolutely. Because he has seen what you are capable of doing outside to survive. And in actuality, it is not the capability that made him fear you in that respectful sense; it is that he has seen you melt into the nature of it all, sometimes losing yourself in the things that surround you and the things you are feeling. Johnny has always differentiated himself from everything, so seeing that was what made him fear you.

The very same things made people fear you, as well. A lot of people stayed away from you, which always made him feel bad. He found it extremely admirable that as a teenager you were able to look for a settlement without any guardians and with only a companion, even though your earlier settlement was not too far from the city. At the same time, he could not fear you knowing how you can get with people when you care about them. He had learnt about it all first-hand when he was the first to approach you at the grey and distressing identification center after you arrived, after his parents encouraged him to ask you over for dinner, after visiting you many times at the lonely dorms and helping you fall asleep by tiring you out with his jokes and conversations, after helping you move into your own place when you were old enough, after going on patrols with you and much, much more.

“You’re disgusting, does anybody ever tell you that?” Your annoyed voice almost echoes to his ears after the many shouted singings and overall shouts he had heard that night. “The word you’re looking for would be ‘teasing’ and I just know it’s on the way. That relationship is long overdue.”

“Hey!” A familiar voice interrupts your bickering, and when you turn to the direction it is coming from, you see Yuta just behind the fence. He climbs up a bit and hangs off the railing, not fully climbing onto the porch. “Hey, man. Why don’t you just come to the porch?”

Yuta holds a hand up and waves it around, and both you and Johnny fear that he will fall down with only one hand on the fence helping him sling over, so you both take a step towards him in a hurry. But he does not fall and places his hand back. “I’ll just go home. I’m very cold and kinda drunk.”

Johnny mumbles a we can see that under his breath, but he cannot say it louder because Yuta points a finger at you, prompting you to take another step. “You are patrolling with me tomorrow.”

You finally get a hold of his arm and Johnny takes care of the other one, so now his feet are planted to the ledge of the porch and you two are basically holding a whole grown man up on his feet. That does not hold you back from complaining, though. “What, why? I was out just today.”

The drunken man shrugs. “Don’t know why you, but I think I saw Jaehyun sign your name up with us.”

A closed-mouthed snicker comes from Johnny at Yuta’s words and you snap your head at him, looking into his eyes, warning him not to do the very thing he is doing right now and to shut up about it afterwards. “Fine, I’ll come with you tomorrow.”

“You didn’t exactly have a choice.”

The knock on your door wakes you up the next morning.

Groggy a little from drinking the night before, and from the soreness of your face, you are not the happiest when you open the door up to greet Yuta and Jaehyun. They are standing on the thick snow that has covered the ground overnight, all equipped up and ready to go. The two of them look noticeably more content as well whereas you are just there basically ready to beg them to let you sleep some more. Actually, ready to beg them to leave you alone altogether.

You could really use a day off after falling face-first to the concrete yesterday. It has been long since you have had a day off anyway. Lately it was either you were going out on a patrol or sweep, or you were training the new recruits and the volunteers. You kind of did not remember the concept of sleeping in at this point.

“I would say good morning, but your morning looks far from any of that.” Yuta says in an annoyingly bright tone, and then he points at your face. “Your face didn’t swell up. I don’t know if you can tell, but that’s magical.”

Your fingers reach up to your sore cheekbone once again. Yuta is all true, there is no swelling up although it hurts so bad still as if you had not cleaned it up, when you did. Multiple times. “Just come in. I’ll wash up and grab my coat.”

They walk in when you hold the door open for them and scoot to the side, and make their way to your couch, plopping down on it without any care. You make your way to the bathroom in silence and quickly wash your mouth and face, only bothering to change your clothes because you see a change hanging over the shower cabin. After doing so you hurry over to your wardrobe in your room and grab your coat along with your gear, and make your way to the pair of boots you had been wearing for quite long. You ask your question while you are struggling with putting them on. “Why are we going out anyway? I thought every spot was clear.”

“Someone said that the crops are dead already outside the walls,” Jaehyun answers. “Means the winter’s coming faster and harder. And that means herds may come in faster. Taeyong just wants to make sure nothing’s out of control.” Which does make sense that him and the council would decide on something like that, especially after the chaos that was a couple of years ago. Uncontrollable increase in infected meant uncontrollable increase in herds moving around, and that meant uncontrollable fullness of areas, which meant hunting for supplies were almost halted, which meant there was a serious shortage in supplies. “Plus, we’re running low on medicine. So if we find any on the way,”

“Yeah, okay.” You nod as you let your foot fall after tying the last knot. “Is it only us three?”

“No,” Yuta jumps at the question, almost. “Donghyuck’s coming as well. Said he needs to let off some steam.”

“Why?” You chuckle. He looked dandy fine last night at the square, warming himself up by the fire and chatting and laughing with people. “I heard they fought with Mark.” Jaehyun, once again, answers.

“Again?” Grunting as you wear your coat, you zip it up before opening the door and holding it out once more. The boys stand up and walk towards the door. “Why can’t they keep their stuff to themselves?” You laugh, dearly hoping this fight is not another one feisty enough to keep them from talking to each other for months.

“Wouldn’t know.” Jaehyun mumbles, and waits for you to close your door before starting to walk with you. You smile at the close proximity he keeps with you as you two walk behind Yuta, following him to the stables near the big metal gates through the lively streets.

Donghyuck is already waiting for you when you arrive. He complains about his horse being taken by someone else first thing when he spots your group, prompting the stable staff to laugh behind him, presumably at the fact that he is not complaining that he will be going out for a patrol in the freezing cold, no, but that he is complaining about ‘his’ horse that is technically not his being taken away. He does not really bother to greet you as well. It is a common theme with him, so you do not take offense.

Once you are handed your horses over to you, you make your way to the gates, holding them from their reins— just in case if they ever get freaked out from the sounds the gates decide to make.

You spot a familiar face at the gate. Walking over to him is basically an instinct. “Hey,”

“Hi.” Mark smiles at you, and pets your horse on the nose a little.

Mark is important to you.

He is the person that has accompanied you on your way here after your last settlement got raided by a large group of people that belonged to a community called Nox— the largest community ever established after everything went wrong with the world, and the most developed, as well. Their recruiting process was very disciplined, they had spread all over the country in years and mostly aimed specifically for the big cities, which allowed them to have plenty of resources and people with ‘greater’ professions (like doctors, scientists, military officials, agents, anything that was deemed to be handy in an apocalypse) in their communities.

That had been what happened. It was supposed to be a recruitment, but once people denied to be a part of them and stood up for themselves, they did not like that. At least the branch that they had sent out did not like that.

Your settlement was up in flames by the time you and Mark made it out of there. The night had brightened up as if it was the morning.

Then, it was a month full of almost-dying. The two of you had been out of your settlement before, but not for long periods where you also had to look for some place that would take you. Infected wanted to get you, and if they did not, it was the people. Sometimes they would take you in for a short while, letting you use their resources before changing their paths and letting you go with a bit of a help; maybe weaponry, maybe food, maybe medicine.

Mark and you would have to find hiding spots and places to sleep, and a lot of the times you would just make do with sleeping under a vehicle in the cold in unpopulated areas. Although hard to believe, those spots were one of the least visible and most secure.

The two of you had saved each other perhaps countless times from dying. You were not friends before you ran away from your settlement. You did not exactly know a lot about each other beforehand, only acquainted as a familiar face you would see on the street. Yet when you ended up together, you cared about each other so unexpectedly much.

After you came to the city, though, it had changed a lot. They put you on schedules and dorms and houses that mostly did not go with each other, so the communication had broken— except for slight communication through Johnny who was your middle ground with his role of being a mutual friend. The sheer care you had for each other had stayed the same, though. It would have been difficult to let go of that.

“What happened to your face?” Mark asks and instinctively reaches out for it, making you hiss when his fingers come into contact with the sore red spot. He immediately retracts. “I fell.”

His brows furrow as if he is not believing it, so you laugh to calm him down. “No, I really fell. Planted face first onto the concrete.” That makes him chuckle, but his brows are still furrowed. “Of course you’d do that.”

Mark takes a deep breath. “You have everything you need?”

Someone shouts from behind, one of the watches. “Herd patrol, open the gates!”

“Yeah, I do.” You answer him, and he smiles a bit more reassuringly. “Be safe out there. Let me see you from the gate when you come back.”

There is the screeching sound that the gates do whenever they open that would surely attract some infected if there were any of them around, so you could only hope there were not. Your hold on the rein gets tighter when your horse gets a bit agitated from it. “I’m coming back and you know it, Mark.” Smirking, you step on the foot hold and mount onto the saddle.

He says only one thing before he lets you go. “I do.”

Outside the gates could have been just as pretty as it always was if it was not for the thick snow that coated everywhere and made it hard to travel.

Underneath the thick cover of snow would be overgrown grass and wild plants and flowers that definitely were made to not be natives of the land before any of this had happened, but were now claiming their home to themselves and growing freely without any control. You did not know what most of the plants or flowers even were, even though they had taught you back in school— but you knew you would never be a farmer or a wanderer. You knew you would never have to rely on that knowledge so giving up on it was pretty much an instant thing.

Above the snow, though, were pines and willows thriving in the humid cold. Corkscrew willows, narrow leaf willows and glaucous willows were painting the very much white and grey scenery some lighter shades of green and pink, glistening with the snow sitting on them when the silver but blinding sunlight hit their surface.

You were pretty much on watch the whole time as the possibility of a herd passing through occupied your mind. There were the occasional wildlife passing through the valley, mostly rabbits, dogs and squirrels, and the occasional deer. They run around, sometimes passing under the horses or too close to them and scaring them a bit off. It was nothing that you could not take care of though.

Through a mutual agreement, you go to the town first since it is a good distance away from the city still and is one of the places that is sure to have any signs of a herd if they are coming in. That was because there were not a lot of traces of the infection since there is no people that still live in that town, and the infected would just roam through to potentially find a host.

Some of them would just die on their own from the cold and spew out spores in hopes of reaching something. They usually did not.

When you are in the Western-looking, red and brown brick-borne town, you divide the sections and go your separate ways. You probably would not have done that had the entrance of the town been crowded, but it had not been anything close to that. Yuta insists on his advice for all of you to do everything as quietly as you can just in case, and you all seem to agree on that, considering this is only a patrol and not a sweep and you do not have that much ammo.

The South of the town was mostly empty to your delight. Definitely more crowded than how it usually was this time of the year, but nothing you could not take care of. You did not even have to waste too much of your ammo taking out the infected that were already there— ones mostly freshly infected. Runners, who could still see you and who could still run and who still looked like humans except for their blood covered mouth and hands. They looked alive. They grunted, they made humanly noises, they twitched in their place. It almost looked like whoever they used to be was still inside them and was trying to fight that damn thing off.

It made your blood go cold at the thought every single time.

Once you are done with the infected you could see so far by the help of your trusted stealth skills and dagger and only some of your ammo, you check on a couple of buildings that were on your list that had not been explored yet. But after being open for anybody to come and loot year after year, there was not much that you could find. Some rubbing alcohol hiding away in a stash of unusable supplies, some canned food that were very suspiciously still not out of date, and a few more things. Nothing too useful.

Within a bit over a couple of hours at the least, you make it back to your meeting point at the main street of the entrance, the supplies stacked behind your horse and on the board she was equipped with that would help her in being able to drag everything comfortably. To your relief, everyone is already there, and there are no infected in sight. “Anything useful?” Jaehyun asks, and you shake your head.

“I could get some rubbing alcohol and some gas for the generators, but that’s about it.” Yuta nods at your words. “Same here— except I found this stash of ammo and some meds, but I didn’t take any of it.”

Donghyuck glares at him with an obviously visible amount of anger in his eyes, which makes Yuta further explain himself. “I don’t want to mess with them if they’re a trespasser. I’ll give it a week, and if it’s still there then, I’m just gonna dive in because the prick had some good stuff in there.” He sighs. “I also left a note, saying you’re kind of fucked, friend, because the herd’s coming. Told them to head down to the river following the valley and that the place with working lights and big metal gates would welcome them if they’re smart about it.”

Sometimes Yuta could be extremely innocent, wanting to believe everyone is good, but he had something about him where most of these people he left notes for would actually turn out to be decent people that would join your community. So you could only hope whoever this was would be the same. “That is so sweet of you, but I think some of the herd is already here.” Donghyuck says, and all of you turn your heads to him. “You know the hotel half of it’s said farewell? It was flooded with infected. Of all kinds.”

“Sounds like a fucking dream.” Jaehyun murmurs, kicking around the snow a bit with his boots, looking down. You lay a supportive hand on his forearm. “Sweepers will be lucky though. Some of them are loaded with stuff— backpacks on and everything.”

But his words still hold a heavy weight to them, because these poor souls just did not survive for as long as they planned for. And it makes you wonder, wonder if they were alone or in a group, moving or not moving, had a family or not, had friends or not; what was their original plan? Did they even have a plan, or did everything just happen when they were hidden away in somewhere?

“I found a safe, like a whole dark room,” Jaehyun says. “Inside an apartment. I guess they were a pharmacist or a doctor or something— there are a lot of bottles and boxes of medicine and compounds. And I hardly think they belong to anyone at this point because the door lock was literally rotting away.”

“You think it’s okay to take?” Donghyuck asks Yuta, who nods promptly. “Let’s not take all of it just yet, though. Leave it for the next patrol or the sweepers, they can get the remainder later.”

And then he clears his throat. “Why don’t you two go ahead?”

You two. Jaehyun and you.

Before you know it, you are already sent that way and are trotting your way down to the apartment with your horses. The apartment is definitely not close to the meeting point, especially had you been on foot, but with trotting your way down it was much easier to access. You see the infected Jaehyun has taken down, and again, most of them were Runners; the only explanation you could come up with was that the actual herd had had a feast in another settlement or an area ridden with survivor groups, and since they are Runners they can move faster which is why they are already here with the cold. Basically that they are the herd before the herd.

You dismount when you arrive at the brick and brown, dirty looking building and follow Jaehyun up the stairs that by some miracle do not just collapse, watching him easily open up the doors after having broken into them.

Like he said, the room is there, mostly dark but only lit when its door is open and light spills in through the shutters, and it really is packed with medical supplies.

“I randomly inspected some of them, most of it’s not out of date yet.” You nod at him when he looks at you. “Okay.”

But something genuinely pisses you off. It has been pissing you off for some time, so the only thing you can do is confront him when you are alone. “Jaehyun,”

“Yeah?” He kneels onto the floor and starts inspecting things again, placing some of them into the bag he had grabbed from the side of the saddle before you made your way in. You kneel in front of him and sigh, looking down at his hands and spotting the slightly scarred knuckles. Probably from subconsciously pushing on doors while breaking in. “I know it was weird a few nights ago because everyone was around, but it’s weirder right now because you have a thing where you go awkward and quiet when you feel that way,” His eyes bore into yours. “And I really can’t stand that,” You let out an airy chuckle, and he kind of smiles as well. “So either kiss me like you mean it next time or never do and let us stay as friends.”

It was supposed to be a basic thing.

Jaehyun had kissed you a few nights ago at a movie screening. He had asked you to watch the old sci-fi movie with him, and had waited for you in front of the cinema, stuck between the crowds of people of all ages. Throughout the movie you had just whisper-chatted back and forth, almost none of your attention on any of the scenes even when they got louder. The topics of your chats had been lighthearted and fun as well, gossiping a bit about your friends and telling each other about funny encounters you recently had with people around the city or outside. Sometimes the chats were about the movie, with questions of what would you do if you were living in that universe instead of this one, which one would you prefer and more, debating on the questionable answers; throwing your dried and seasoned corn at each other if either of you thought the other had absolutely ran out of any sanity.

After the screening he had just asked you if he could kiss you as if it was the most normal thing he could ask, saying he could not wait any more, and you had let him because the mutual attraction had been there for too long and you wanted him to kiss you just as much as you had been wanting to kiss him.

But he had gotten shy about it— crowds were never Jaehyun’s thing, and that was fine. The thing that was not fine was how he acted around you for days after that, quiet and somewhat cold and awkward, when you were okay with it all and had expected him to make a move last night at the square.

He breathes out a laugh through his nose and looks down, playing with his hangnails and the traces of the rein that is left on his fingers, not deep but definitely visible still and a bit pink around the outlines. He smiles under his nose, you can see it because the lines of light that hits his face illuminate the side of his lips that is curled up, and when he picks his head up and the lines hit his brown eyes, you are smiling too.

Because Jaehyun places his hand at the back of your neck and kisses you.

Firmly, with care, and like nobody else is there— there is nobody there, but this time it feels like even if there were people he would have been fine with it. He lets you place your hands on the spots between his chest and shoulders, and lets you pull him further down with ease, spreading his other hand that is holding you on your back to give you better support. He opens his mouth first for you, maybe to show he is meaning this and he means so much more, and you give into it. That goes on for a while with hands roaming wherever they can. You only come back to your senses when his teeth scratch your bottom lip.

He stops when your hands push against him lightly. “Any longer and Yuta will never let this die down.”

Nibbling on his lip with his teeth, Jaehyun huffs a smile and nods. “He really won’t.” And he leans in again, only pecking you this time.

Johnny and his predictions that gave you the bravery and encouragement to do these kinds of things could go fall face first onto the concrete.

The rest of the patrol and getting back to the city go almost seamless, except for the fact that you had to pass by a couple of groups of infected— some Runners who had spotted you and alerted the Clickers (one of the older stages of infected where the infection has taken over most of their skin and has made its way out, taking over their eyes and using echolocation with the clicking sounds that comes from their throats) with the sound they made. They caused a bit of a hassle, but nothing you could not take care of; not with Jaehyun’s quick bow skills as you galloped through the occupied areas of the valley and all of your leftover ammo. “You’re losing a lot of arrows, don’t you think?” Donghyuck asks Jaehyun, shouting a bit out of breath since the galloping motion is taking a toll on him.

Jaehyun pulls the reins to himself harshly. “Yeah,” His horse halts without any discomfort, and you see him from the corner of your eye before he is left behind. “I’ll meet you at the gate!”

And he starts galloping to the opposite way.

If it was anybody else, any and most probably all of you would have started screaming some sense into him. But it was Jaehyun. Whose way of doing things outside, although stealthy, was very impulsive. So you do not take your gaze away from the road ahead of you, locking your eyes on the city just now visible as you make your way down.

It is already dusk by the time you are at the gates and the watches see you, asking where the hell Jaehyun is and offering to open the gates when Yuta tells them he is collecting his arrows back from a small area, so he should be back any minute. All of you agree that you do not want the gates to open before he comes so the noise does not attract anything more than it needs to.

Just as you expect, the missing person of your quad comes sooner than later. A proud smile is on his face as he goes on about being able to get back five of the seven arrows he had used, waiting for all of you to make your ways in before walking in himself.

“We have some gas and some meds,” You tell the watch who is there the second you walk in, to unleash the supplies behind your horse. “With plenty of infected on the side.” Donghyuck adds, too upbeat for the news he is delivering. One of the gatekeepers is quite mortified to hear that which is why he feels inclined to add more to his words. “Not a dooming amount, but we definitely need a few sweeps. It’d be worse if the herd caught up to them.”

“Why don’t you just go tell that to Taeyong?” Mark cuts in, and you can immediately tell how irritated Donghyuck gets. His face gets red, his eyes drop and squint, and he completely forgets about getting off his horse which all of you do at that point. “Oh would you look at that,”

Mark tries to hold a snicker in, you can tell, because his lips curl inwards. “It’s almost as if that’s not exactly what I was about to do. Fucking asshole.”

Mark finally gives in then, letting his shoulders shake when he greets you, giggling. He tries to check if you have any bites since it is a procedure he needs to do, but he cannot do it effectively with how much he is giggling— which was fine, because he could very clearly see you did not have any bites. None of your clothes were torn, and your face, hands and neck that was not covered up was just very visibly in quite okay condition.

“I’m having dinner at Johnny’s tonight,” You tell Mark as he lets go of your hands, making him pick his head up. “Just saying.”

“I’ll see if I can pay a visit.”

You smile at him and make your way over to Jaehyun, letting him put an arm around your shoulders and walk away with you, planting a kiss on the side of your head.

He does pay a visit.

The night is pierced through with Mark’s laughter when Johnny’s mouth drops open. He stops mindlessly strumming his guitar when it takes over him. “Dude, I’m telling you,” He says between his laughs. “They didn’t even look at each other when they were leaving, and somehow they were all lovey-dovey by the time they got back.”

“Fuck you,” Johnny nudges you rather hard in your side, and this time you are snickering along with Mark just at the sight of his face. “You called me creepy when I knew all along.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Johnny. I apologize for not crediting you enough on your talent of predicting relationships.” Your smile dies down a little after that, and your voice goes a bit quieter with the confusion. “Well I don’t know if it’s a relationship yet. It just happened, sort of.”

Johnny shrugs at that and puts his arm around your shoulders, pulling you closer to him on the couch with one of your legs dangling over and one of them propped up. “That’s fine. You guys can let it brew for a bit more. Just test the waters.” A breath of a chuckle makes its way out of your nose at his words and how the high you had felt a few hours ago had crashed down into this weird oblivion, but Mark nods in agreement.

You do not see it, but Johnny smiles down at you while you fix your eyes on the photographs on his wall. Some of his, some of his parents’, some of his newborn days— the final days just before the infection started taking all over the country and the world. There are a few with you and Mark, too, a couple of them looking downright awkward with Mark and you too numb to the friendship he was offering you after coming to the brink of death maybe tens or maybe hundreds of times, and another couple of them where the photos are just blurry with how much you were laughing and it made steadying his parents’ old camera harder.

He turns his head to the opposite side, facing Mark. “You got any sick raps, Mark?”

“What is that question?” Mark howls out, laughing his chest off like he always does. “When you say it like that I don’t wanna rap ever again.”

But he does, because Mark is like that.

Johnny and you do your best in hyping him up, shouting and howling and springing in your place to the beat of his lyrics. You two let him rap until he really does not feel like it anymore, and you listen to him when he goes back to strumming his guitar, softly singing some things every now and then. So quietly that you almost do not even hear it.

The night goes on like that. You just lounge around, Johnny between you and Mark, cozy and warm.

If there was anything about them two, it was that they made you feel normal somehow. Which is maybe why you cherished them so much, and what the three of you have.

Unfortunately, you wake up early once again in your own room in the morning even though you do not have any reason to.

There are some upsides to that when you have the day off, as much as you hate it. You get to take a shower with all cold, yet much appreciated water, and properly change your clothes into new ones after a long while, to make a breakfast with what you have stored away in your cupboards, and maybe even do laundry if you had any leftover homemade soap.

Sometimes you paid a visit to the dorms, checking up on lonely recruits if there were any that you had grown some kind of attachment to.

That morning you do all of that, too. You get your hair and body feeling and looking all clean, eat somewhat of a nutritious breakfast that is much better when compared with just going with an all empty stomach, change into some of your newest clothes that Johnny and Jaehyun had gifted you once after an outing for hoarding. Except while you are making your way to the dorms just to check on the newest recruits, you stumble upon a group of people lining in front of the entrance to the stables.

Your interest peaks when you spot Johnny, who is writing his name down on the board at the gates that open to the place. You hurry over to him as best you can in your still sleepy state. “Morning,”

He hears you but does not bother to turn his head to look at you, knowing you would come to stand next to him. “Hey.”

As expected, you halt when you are there. You look at his name on the board and his signature along with the date, and you know for a fact he is going out. “Sweep?”

“Yeah,” He lends the pen to the person next to him, and moves out of the line, prompting you to move away with him. “Signing up last minute. Taeyong and Yuta can’t make it out today, so.”

“Why?” You furrow your brows, and he shrugs a little. “Yuta’s needed at the training grounds today, and who knows what Taeyong has to take care of.”

He watches you as you sigh, truly tired of it, but the inner conflict is louder than any type of exhaustion you could possibly have. “Well I’m coming with you.”

When you try to walk into the line he steps in front of you, and puts a stop to whatever madness you are planning. His hands physically stop you as well as he places them on your shoulders. “No you aren’t,” Johnny’s voice is firm, and his brows are furrowed just slightly. “You need a day off. Your whole face looks purple with the cold, the lack of sleep, and the scar— and you look awful.”

He smiles then as if he had not just dragged the way you look all over the floor. “Just go and relax. Maybe spend some time with Jae, hm?”

You bite down on the insides of your lips and nibble on them, and furrow your eyebrows at the squeeze of your heart. “Just do me a favor and be careful. There are a lot of Runners around,” One of your hands come up half-bothered to point at the people in the line. “Tell that to the group as well.”

There is a silence that lasts a couple of seconds, but then Johnny pulls you in for a hug. “You know,” He mumbles. “If you actually talked to more people they’d like you better.” He knew what you would say, that you do not like the stares that people throw at you anywhere and everywhere, and that it stops you from approaching them. So, he stops that from happening before it can. “I’ll take your horse if that will make you feel any better.”

Stepping away from him, you smile and shove him a little. “Take my horse if it will make you feel any more secure, and send her back if your ass can’t make it.”

“Will do.”

Dusk comes, and the sun sets.

Some people do not return that evening, and Johnny is one of them.

Supposedly, his whole group is missing— which is a good thing, because it is not completely uncommon that people camp in some sort of a hide-out if the infected in the area are too much for them to handle with the amount of people they have and they think it is better to wait it out.

Which is why, although bitter, there is hope inside of you.

His parents are distressed when Taeyong comes to tell them the news, and they remain just as distressed afterwards if not more. Whenever you see them, you cannot help but notice how their faces are overborne with concern. Their brows are always furrowed, their mouths are always pointed downwards in a frown, their eyes always glazed over with what looked like thousands of thoughts racing all around, and the wrinkles on their faces are deepened in some areas with the weight and tension.

You grow distressed and restless as well, as hours— days pass. The concept of night and day loses its significance because you are too distracted during the day when you are supposed to be training the recruits, and too uncomfortable during the night rolling all over the bed without a drop of sleep in your eyes.

And it must be not only you that is feeling that way, because Taeyong knocks on your door in the dead of the night a few days after Johnny’s disappearance. When you open the door his arms are crossed over his chest, and he looks a lot paler than he usually is, his eyes red all around.

He gets straight to the point. “You, Yuta, Jaehyun and Mark. I want you to search for them while another group goes for a sweep.” His voice breaks at some point because of how tired he must be feeling and how scared. You nod slightly, the tension pulling and burdening your face. “Okay.”

After your mumbled, quick and short answer Taeyong turns right back on his heel and walks down the stairs of the porch. You cannot bring yourself to close the door just yet when you see him, a friend of a friend but a figure as protective and wise, walk away with his guards clearly down. “You should try and get some sleep,” You advise after him, even though you yourself are suffering from the same problem he is. “What you do matters.”

Taeyong does not slow down, and is out of your sight within seconds after he leaves your backyard.

Next morning, it is as if you had done a mutual agreement between the four of you, because you are all by the stables with the slightest hue of sunlight.

No one is smiling or looking content in any way or shape, but no one is agitated, either. The most healthy thing at that moment is to force yourselves to go numb altogether and you all know it.

With so much as some collective huffs you write your names down on the board and sign in the hand-drawn boxes next to them, being able to see all of the missing people’s names that were out just before you— it was never a pretty situation. The stables are kind of empty from all the horses that are missing as well and it feels weird to not be able to go out with the horse, your horse that you had considered a companion for years on end.

But Anubis, the black horse assigned to you that day, was a good compensation. He was surprisingly comfortable with you from the get-go.

The stable you were in got too empty after all of the search and sweep groups took their horses with only a couple of them left behind, and before you knew it, you were on them and stationed in front of the gate. Handwritten documents were in Yuta’s hands mapping out yesterday’s group’s sweeping locations.

And as he said just before you all mounted on your horses, no one would be parting ways that day.

When the gates open, you immediately start galloping behind the sweepers— they collectively had more ammo than your group, and they were going in the same direction for a while, so they could be some sort of a shield for you if the groups had somehow started moving much faster all of a sudden. Your group would be heading to the settlement just a bit further away from the town you had gone through yesterday; most probably what used to be its business district if any of your predictions were true. The sweepers would be going to the town, figuring the groups that were saturated behind the town must be at its downtown now.

The way up the valley is rather empty, which is almost more unsettling when you think of how many people are missing.

Six, to be exact, counting Johnny.

You try to focus on different things, like how your backside hurts as you gallop upwards and Anubis pants under you. On the fact that he is a rather strong horse and you had never noticed that when anybody else was riding him. How he is maybe the most elevated horse you have ever had, and how his back is very uncomfortable to ride on even with a saddle. How he is very enduring considering he does not slow down in the slightest even after the valley starts getting a little rough, not falling behind any horses and even passing some of them if it was not for you that took him back under control.

It helps you, focusing on him, because you do not want to focus on things that might get your guard down.

The sweepers part their way with you at the point they need to, making a turn for the northeast once you enter the town, letting you pass straight through. Without any goodbyes because you have officially entered the danger zone.

And you truly have, because there are Runners around with not as many Clickers roaming through in the visible distance where the sweepers are headed. You can only internally wish them good luck.

It takes less than an hour to get to the probable business district that is filled with concrete and glass covered buildings unlike the town, overtaken by vegetation (and snow) that has washed over its blues and greys and beiges and the financial personality it once had— again unlike its brown and red brick counterpart.

All of you make your horses come to a halt once you enter the environment, again, just to make sure there is as little noise as possible. Dismounting from them and taking the reins in your hands is an instinct. “Where do we go first?”

Yuta looks down at the papers with Mark’s question. His fingers trace over the words until they find what they are looking for. “Well,” He huffs, placing a hand on his nape with a wince. “They were going to the law firm, the bank in southwest, the city hall and they would meet at the conference hall. They must be around these areas if we’re lucky.”

“And if they’re lucky.” Jaehyun says under his breath, but you hear him loud and clear. And you have a feeling that everybody does.

Yuta drops his hand that is holding the papers and sighs. “The bank’s the farthest one, let’s go.”

They are not at the bank.

Not in the bank, not around the bank, not in the subway station under the bank where there is a hide-out in one of the conductor rooms, not inside the surrounding business buildings all of which have of their doors opened whether it is one of the back/staff doors or the front entrances as if it is an all-you-can-get open buffet of places to roam around for the infected. When in actuality, your people’s strategy is to close the doors and lightly barricade them after coming into any contact, trying to keep as many infected on the roads so it is somewhat easier to wipe them out by narrowing their moving space. It also helped indicating whether there had been any recent trespassers at all, because most people not acquainted with your settlement would not bother with closing the doors behind them as they lost themselves in all the possible places to hoard.

And it all just means that there must have been trespassers recently, making the infected harder to find since they were free to go into the buildings, which must have messed up with the sweeping.

It does not feel right at all.

The law firm which is a rather small building is of no help as well. No alive, normal human is inside, not in any of the five floors that you have to clear out a little or around, and once again the doors are open. All you can find are supplies lying around the fifth floor that are definitely from the city’s storage so you know that they must have stayed for some time there at some point. You take them back. But there is nothing more.

To be truthful about things, none of you had your hopes up about the city hall. It was an extremely open space and was most definitely not the safest in this situation, nor the most resourceful place to hide or camp in anytime— or to hoard things with nothing but once-fancy tiles all over the interior and no leftover supplies from passing groups. However, they would have gone there to check if there was anybody hiding away, because people (especially in groups) who passed through did that since it is a quite distinctive and low building in between all of the higher buildings for those unfamiliar with the area. They would have brought them back to the city if any of them were there. So it does not surprise you when you find the city hall empty as well, except for the sea of infected that swarm the grand entrance to the hall that make your eyes widen and immediately shut the door close when you first open it up. Plus holding onto dear life pushing against the doors with Jaehyun when some of them are attracted to the noise and make a run for it.

Sweep season was the worst season.

Through a mutual agreement, you barricade the doors a little (a lot) tighter with fire truck hoses that have long been detached from the abandoned truck between the hall and one of the high-rise buildings that most probably was sitting there since the outbreak day, where fire trucks were not only used for the countless fires that started especially in the traffic, but also to rescue people stuck in upper floors of buildings that were taken over by the Runners.

There is no way the infected trapped in the hall can open the doors through layers upon layers of a thick hose wrapped and tied around the handles of the entrance, at least you all would like to believe that.

When your heart rate picks up is when you spot a building with its visible doors closed on the way to the conference hall. “Wait.”

Everyone stops, prompting their horses to do the same as them. The guys look at the direction of your gaze, and they all seem to come to a realization. “Do you think-?”

“I think there’s no reason we shouldn’t.” But Yuta does not look too keen on it, so you have to agree further. “There’s something obvious here, and I think it’s an objective point when I say that.”

He nods at that and clears his throat, looking up at the building for a split second. “Is it okay if you search with Mark? Jaehyun and I’ll be here, I kind of need a second thought as I plan out the mapping for if they aren’t here or at the conference hall.”

“That’s fine.” You assure him, and nod your head at Mark. “Let’s go.”

Inside the building is eerily quiet, but brightly lit with the afternoon sun shining through all the glass. You have never been in this building before, at least you do not think so, because the lobby does not ring the slightest bell to you.

There are bodies of infected that are taken out lying all around. They paint the light creme flooring red with their blood, but it is comforting. Because it is for certain that they have been here, at least.

A fire exit door is all that you are looking for, or a staff room that could possibly lead to the stairway, but it takes a bit of an embarrassingly long time for you two to spot anything in the seemingly open-spaced, bright lobby. You come to learn a bit after starting to walk around that the entry to the stairway beside the elevators just outside of the oval lobby is also blocked with something on the other side.

“There’s a crack in the elevator doors,” Mark suggests, and although ladders are the one thing you hate the most, you agree to take them to the upper floors.

It is so dark and humid inside with years upon years of unventilated air, the smell of rust and rot is absolutely disgusting, and you fear that the years-old ladders will break any second with both you and Mark’s weight on them. Not to mention how tiring climbing up a ladder can be for your arms and legs when you hold onto the thin and flimsy metal waiting for the other to separate one of the elevator doors, most of which are rightfully blocked.

On one of the far upper floors, though, there is no blockage, and you can swing yourselves onto the hallway. Which is scary to be honest, especially when you are all this way up and if you miss anything your way down will be met with an old, hard, rusting top of an elevator on your back.

But god bless the planners (maybe their souls) of this place, because the ladder is close to the opening enough that you can swing onto the floor without too much hassle. Neither of you slip after jumping down onto it.

“Do you think,” Mark dusts himself off as if it would help with anything, takes a deep breath in his tired lungs, and rephrases his words. “Do you think they came all the way up here through that?”

“Maybe they blocked the stairway and the doors,” You suggest instead, and it sounds a lot more like the option the two of you would like to believe in. “Right half yours left half mine?”

“Sure.” He answers, and the two of you go your separate ways on the big office floor.

A few doors open to the empty, messy office rooms and you check through the drawers for anything worthy to take back with you even though there is not much of it. One of them provides you with some scissors and lighter liquid, which end up being the most usable things you get out of them. Some doors do not even budge with whatever is blocking your way.

But there is a room at the visible end of the hall where the door will budge, but will not open.

You resort to using your shoulders to break into the room rather quickly. There is not any particularly loud sound coming from behind the thick, polished wooden door, and something about it being left secure but still accessible made you think there must be something behind that door that is useful. Maybe a stash of actually usable supplies or much preferably, anything that leads you to your missing people.

The door opens with your fifth push, and you hear the sound of a broken lock clink on the ground.

You also hear the shriek of a Runner who jumps you immediately after being attracted to the sound.

With the force of your push you have basically thrown yourself into the arms of the Runner which is never a good thing or in any way close to an ideal situation, and you have to duck away by kneeling lower and throwing yourself to the sharp opposite side of where the infected is facing to make sure it does not grab your arms. You take a few steps away but it is just as fast as you are, so you have to use your quick wit and draw out your gun in the blink of your eyes, shooting it in the head— impractically unable to care whether there were any infected on Mark’s side or not because it was either you or whoever they were with the shock and the pace of things.

The mess of a creature falls down with a slump, your heart absolutely racing but also dropping— because as you look down at it you can see that you know who she used to be. You were not friends or even really acquaintances, but you know for a fact that she lives in the city. So you turn back around to the open-planned office with your fast approaching panic and adrenaline.

Which is when you see it.

Johnny, slumped onto the floor, sitting with his legs spread out. Johnny, whose ankle looks broken. Johnny, who has his gun in his hand.

Johnny, who has a bite mark on his exposed right arm where orange-salmon colored fungi is growing out, extending upwards to his shoulders and neck.

Johnny, who has a hole on the left side of his chest, red spatter over the wall behind him, slumped on the floor with fungi growing out of his arm ready to grow all over his glowing skin until he grows into the wall and starts letting out spores.

Johnny, dead.

You do not know if any air makes its way into your lungs. It surely does not feel like it. Your ears ring and your eyes go dark with purple spots all over your vision and you get dizzy and nauseous, but somehow, you stand.

“Mark!” You shout out, surprising yourself, calling and alerting him when you can already hear his fast approaching steps thumping on the floor at the sound of the gun fire. Before barely a few seconds can pass he barges into the room with his gun in his hand but stops when he sees you frozen in place. Then, he follows your gaze.

Even from the side of your eye, it is obvious he flinches. “What the hell happened here?” His voice is not above a whisper.

You look at the less familiar face lying on the ground, and its shoulder. “The bite marks look similar.” There is no sense of stillness in your voice as you speak. “I guess they just locked themselves away,” Teeth grinding tightly, you let out a silent and choked sob, because you cannot believe any of this bullshit your eyes are seeing.

Mark takes a few steps towards Johnny and picks something up from the ground— a paper— making his way to you. But he stands on his own while he reads with his slightly shaky hands, and crumples the paper once he is done skimming over it. He sits next to you on the hard, carpeted but otherwise concrete floor. “They got bit while they were clearing out the basement,” His lips wobble a bit, but he quickly covers it up by placing his fist over his mouth until it goes away. “Locked themselves in here so they wouldn’t harm anybody.”

“If the trespassers didn’t go through the district leaving every goddamn door open, none of this would’ve fucking happened.” Maybe you were trying to blame it on someone, or maybe you really were mad at them for their ignorance as they went through the city. You did not know for certain, although it felt a whole lot like it was the latter. Because they would not have had to camp here anyway. There would not have been infected in the buildings in the first place.

You sit down where you are standing, looking at Johnny.

All you know is that this was unfair. If anyone deserved surviving long in this world it was Johnny. He was physically strong, and he had a good mental attitude, and he was so purely good that the last thing he deserved was to die the way everybody did, alone and scared and not wanting to turn into one of those things. He deserved to die of old age if anything after living a happy and healthy life, continuing to help lonely recruits like you and Mark— doing what he likes to do until his very last days. Training, falling in love, teasing and pestering his friends whenever and wherever, giving advice, making people’s stomachs hurt with his smooth and not-so-smooth jokes, doing photography as long as that camera of his would survive, spending time with his family and not moving out of their house even though there are available houses until the time comes when he absolutely has to.

But he cannot do any of those things anymore.

He also cannot be there for you or Mark anymore.

Your trembling hand comes up to spread over your eyes and your fingers rest on your temples, and you hitch a breath in. “What are we going to do?” You ask Mark with your just as trembling voice as if he would know. The question is not necessarily about this particular moment in time, but about the far future as well. He lets it linger in the air as his eyes switch between the two bodies.

“Well,” He clears his throat when his voice shakes violently and looks at you, his hands playing with the carpet, picking and tearing away. He chooses to ignore the far future, at least for now. “We’ll have to tell his parents first.”

The hand on your face falls down. You look at Mark, and he notices how wide your eyes are. He knows you cannot comprehend it by the way your eyes look, looking right through him with your shell shocked, hundred-yard stare. “No,” You whisper. “Mark, I can’t.”

“That’s fine,” He looks into your eyes with his own that are glazed over, and nods reassuringly. “I can.”

But it does not feel better. Instead, it makes you feel worse immediately, because you feel like you at least owe Johnny and his parents this. It makes you feel ashamed that you will not do even one thing about it, because you do not think you would ever be able to look into his parents’ eyes again; knowing you joked about it before he left and you were too unbothered to go out after him before you were ordered to do so. There is nothing in your heart, mind, or body, that tells you that you can do it without completely losing yourself in the process.

The two of you collect yourselves and come back to your senses as quickly as you can, because you knew Yuta and Jaehyun would be on you if you were any more late.

Mark helps you in carrying the bodies down the stairs which is an extremely tiring task considering you go down several floors, and the mental toll it has on you. The two of you unblock the fire exit door and push the metal drawers and organizers aside, opening the door and carrying them to the lobby.

Then, you head outside. Yuta and Jaehyun do not spot Mark and you until you get closer, but when they do, their brows immediately furrow. “We need two bags.” You mutter, feeling your chest stutter with the words. Their faces fall at that very second. The grip Yuta has on his map that he is holding tightens and his knuckles go white, and he sighs with utter disappointment. Knowing Yuta, it is at himself.

“One of them’s Johnny.”

The muscles on their faces relax only for their eyes to widen.

It takes a few hours for all of you to get back to the city once you put them in bags and start riding, not galloping nor trotting; deciding not to look for the others knowing it would take a longer time to get back and not wanting to stress out anyone in the city further. A night group could easily replace yours.

When you are at the gates the sun has long set. Questions arise once the gates open and the bags dragged by the horses are seen. You and Mark answer them since you are the ones who found them in that state, where you found them, which building, which floor, was there anything written around them, any symbols, any human spotted around the area— anything useful.

You give them the answers still in a daze, and let them take Anubis from your hand. Without waiting for anybody you start walking, on the way to your house.

Except, you do not end up in your house for a while. You wait in the dark, just around the corner leading to Johnny’s house and you watch Mark deliver the news to them. Although you cannot hear what he says to them, you can see it clearly with the light on their porch. How Mark delivers the news with his hands linked in the front, fiddling with his fingers a little as he looks at their expectant faces. How Johnny’s mother hugs into his father once she hears the situation, both of them shaking with sobs. How Mark’s shoulders drop and how he tries to console them, but stopping when Johnny’s mother does not take a step away from her husband and he waves at Mark presumably wanting some space and time alone to themselves.

You watch as Mark nods and leaves, and you head to your house. Hurrying into your backyard, you swing open the door and kick off your boots. Not bothering to put them in their place, you take your bag off your shoulders and the only reason that you do not let it fall onto the floor is because of the guns packed inside. Then, you make a move to take your coat off.

And the damn zipper gets stuck.

With a sigh, you force it down. But it does not budge. So you try again, but it will not move. You wait, nibble on your lips, give it time to change its mind: maybe it was frozen and it needed to thaw.

But when you try again, it just does not want to move down.

Pissed off, you try to strip out of the coat. But that proves to be almost harder. Everybody wears thin but warm, lightweight coats to make their movability better, especially outside. But moving your whole arm to yourself and then down while holding the two layers of clothes, one thick sweater and the thin coat on top of it was undoable— because then they were fully limiting your movement.

And you had to take it off. You need to take it off.

Your hands then start picking and grabbing at the coat trying to rip it off, and that is when your door opens without any alert beforehand and Jaehyun walks in.

“What are you doing?” He whispers and walks over to you near your couch. You only stop struggling when he stands in front of you. “I can’t get it off, it’s stuck.”

He notices how you will not look into his eyes in the dark, and he notices the tears streaming down your face that you probably are not realizing. “Okay.”

Jaehyun walks over to your bathroom and takes a bar of soap you have. He walks right back to you in complete silence and dabs at your zipper with the sleeves of his hoodie up and down to take off the excess moisture, and starts slathering on the soap along the zipper until its sharp corner has visibly softened and the zipper looks white with the coat of it. He then fumbles with the zipper for a few seconds before it slides right down.

It makes you feel a mixture of embarrassment and anger, and you sniffle, only then realizing that you are crying after feeling the wetness in your inhale. Your lips waver as you try not to let a sob out. “There you go.” He mumbles as he helps you out of the coat and places it on the arm of your couch. He picks your boots up and places them next to the door.

“Let’s wash your hands.” He suggests, and you look down at your hands, seeing the blood from that Runner.

Jaehyun is almost late to hold you once your face violently scrunches up and you start fully letting it out, shaking with choked sobs.

Because your crying does not subside for several minutes, he ends up going to the bathroom again and comes back with a couple of wet rags, soaping one up and cleaning your hands delicately before wiping them off. He leads you to your bed then and lets you lie down, pulls the cover up, and kneels down in front of your face. “Try to sleep, okay? Force yourself to if you need it.”

You nod at him, and let him leave after he smiles at you.

His eyes had looked empty, which was always the worst for Jaehyun.

The next morning you hear your door lightly opening in your sleep, and being carefully shut. A few steps make their way over to you slowly and the empty side of your bed sinks with a somewhat loud huff.

Whoever it is waits for a bit, lets you sleep a little more even though you are not deep in it. That goes on for a few minutes before your bed sinks closer to your back, and it sinks a bit less than before— an elbow.

Fingers start running through and playing with your hair. It must be Jaehyun. And you are right. “Taeyong let me and Donghyuck take over you and Mark’s work for a couple of days, so you don’t have to go in today.” He softly whispers, and you nod slightly. “How’d you know I wasn’t sleeping?” You ask in hopes of distracting yourself from the thoughts and views that race over your eyelids, and open your eyes when it does not exactly work out.

He answers with a slight smile. “Your lashes fluttered when I walked in.” You feel him place his chin on your shoulder. “You slept any?”

Gulping, you shake your head. “Just got some shut-eye.”

“That’s okay.” Jaehyun whispers. “Better than keeping your eyes open. I’m happy you got some sort of rest.”

He sighs and takes his hand off your hair then. “Yuta wants to see you and Mark eating so he’s preparing breakfast. I have to leave, but head out soon and try to eat for me. A few bites is all I’m asking for.”

“Okay.”

Porridge and bergamot tea.

The breakfast Yuta has prepared for you and Mark, with some dried plums and apples inside that he fried on the pan a little. It smells nice, looks less so.

There is no one to greet and welcome you initially when you are in front of his house that is on the same street as Johnny’s. But it does not matter because you barge in to avoid being seen by his parents, taking big strides from the start of the street. You hear the stir of the wooden spoon inside the metal pot, and the fruit that spills in while you make your way to the kitchen.

Mark is sitting at the island counter of Yuta’s kitchen with his elbow on the surface, his head leant against his hand.

Yuta turns away from the cream colored counters and his electric stove once he hears the footsteps. “Morning.”

You see Mark’s head only tilt a little, but not fully to the extent that he can look back at you. “Hey.” Your voice does not really come out, so you clear your throat. Yuta’s face falls a little at that. “Is there tension in your throat?”

“Yeah.” You sit down next to Mark. With your hands placed on the surface, you turn your head to look at him but his face is covered by his hand and arm. “There’s some powdered ginger you can take in the pantry. But you should try and relax your muscles first.”

With that he pours the porridge into the bowls he has taken out for you, and serves them with a slight smile on his face. Then he pours the hot tea inside two small jars and hands them out as well. “Dig up.”

It does not feel right. The atmosphere is too heavy, but you know you will not get out of it unless you really eat something, so you pick up the spoon and take a spoonful of the meal, gathering a piece of everything. Letting it steam for a few seconds as you watch it, you contemplate putting it in your mouth because ever since yesterday you feel this sickness in your stomach. It is more fragile than it ever could be on any given normal day.

Even so, you take a bite. At first it feels like you will throw up at the sheer hue of sweetness in it.

But you chew, and continue chewing, and you do not throw up.

“I heard you’re going out again today.” Mark mumbles, which makes you perk up, looking at Yuta. His eyes widen in the slightest. “I am,” He says, his eyes looking boringly only at Mark.

You chuckle drily. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Taeyong wants me there. He’s going out too.” His explanation does not calm your heart, which feels like it is being squeezed, at all. You turn back to your bowl and continue picking some porridge. Just to avoid his gaze.

Yuta does not say that he would come back or that he would be okay. Because he knows that those words do not hold any meaning to them whatsoever, especially now. “I have to go soon, so you should better be finished with these before I do. I’ll let you drink the tea by yourselves.”

Mark and you start eating in complete silence. Mostly because Yuta is watching you eat and it is extremely uncomfortable, and it would be awkward to just talk as if he was not there.

It makes you both rush your meals as well. The bowls empty out in a matter of minutes and your stomach feels heavy, though in all honesty, it was a pretty good breakfast Yuta had prepared for you. It was a fact that you would not have bothered to cook or even to prepare something that did not need to be cooked.

When the two of you are done with your meals, Yuta smiles and takes the bowls away to wash them quickly. Mark tries to intervene and says that Yuta could go out and he would take care of the dishes, but Yuta shuts him right up saying he needs the distraction anyway.

You can see Yuta’s hands shaking slightly.

It is always difficult to know for sure what he is feeling. But if you had to give it a shot, you would say he is feeling either anxious or shocked, or both. He is the type to live his emotions very secretively, and you could never recall an instance where Yuta’s grief was noticeable. Maybe only when he had lost one of his recruited, young survivors on the way back home. That had changed him as a whole; losing someone (especially much younger than him) under his responsibility.

He leaves once the bowls are washed, not looking at your way or telling you goodbye. You are simultaneously thankful and angry at him for doing that.

The bergamot tea is still steamy. It somewhat burns your hands when you put them around the jar to warm yourself up and start looking into the dark substance, looking so deep into it that you start feeling as if you are part of the dark liquid.

Mark clears his throat. “You’re wearing the same things as yesterday.”

That is true: even though there is nothing that you want more than to take them off and trash them to never see them again. But at the same time, there is something inside of you that does not want to let go of them. Even if it is just taking them off.

You look at the side of his face, and see him taking a sip from the jar. “Could you sleep?”

He shakes his head with a gulp. “No, no. You?”

The two of you make eye contact when he finally properly looks at you, and you shake your head as well. “I kept seeing it like a picture— like something projected at the backs of my eyelids.”

Mark nods, and that is it for a while. No one speaks for some time and you sip your beverages together as if it is a chore that you have to do, as if Yuta would see you two if you spill the tea into the drain of the sink and would come after you, trying to get done as quickly as possible so both of you could leave to be by yourselves. And it goes on until Mark decides to speak in a low voice. “They buried him early in the morning. His parents didn’t want anybody to see.”

Your eyes burn and the lump forms back in your throat because you can understand why they would not want anyone to see, but at the same time, you cannot. “Some of his older recruits left him flowers and letters, seeing that made me feel a bit better.”

You nod. “He deserves that.” And so much more. Despite yourself you smile slightly, and Mark joins in understandably grim, nodding. “He does.”

The day goes by extremely slow, yet so fast once you are back at your house.

You let yourself take refuge on the bed and do not move much throughout the day, trying to sleep. Expectedly, you are not too good at doing that. You toss and turn and huff and look up at the ceiling meaninglessly until you can no longer hear kids playing outside and the adults going about with their daily duties; until daylight loses all of its significance. Until you realize you have melted into this state of mind and have completely forgotten about your needs, using the toilet, eating, or drinking water.

Yesterday’s clothes are still on you. And you cannot bring yourself to change out of them, again, even though there is nothing in this world you want more than to never see them again.

The night would have not had any significance whatsoever as well if it was not for the sounds of hurried shuffles through the snow that were coming out of your room’s window at whoever knows o’clock. Before you could even show any type of physical response to it- whether it be surprise or suspicion- there were loud and hard knocks on your door.

It takes probably all of the strength you have in you to get up and walk to the door. You laze your way over to it and swing it open, rubbing your eyes.

You would have expected it to be Jaehyun, since he must have gotten done with his duties. But it was not him. It was Mark.

Mark, whose eyes and face were lit up with adrenaline. There is not a single emotion you can make out from the way his face looks. The world could actually be ending for all you know, or the community might have been getting raided.

You cannot make anything out from the way his voice sounds, either, when you hear him speak the millisecond after the door knob turns. “They found the trespassers.”

The look in his eyes- whatever it was, shifts into concern for a split second before he carries on with his words. “One of them’s the one Yuta left a note for, they were making their way over here when Yuta found them.”

Those words spark a light in your chest because of course. Of course they were the ones that caused this whole thing in the first place and it sounds stupid to you now that you had not even thought about them when you noticed the doors were open.

Which is because the doors at the nearer town were, in fact, closed while you were there.

Now it does not make sense. “Wh- how- that doesn’t make any sense. The doors were closed when we were out earlier.”

Mark shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess they got the theme by the time they were there. Yuta told me about the whole interrogation,” He chuckles humorlessly, shaking his head. “They claimed everything before they could even ask the questions.”

“Do they know they fucking killed people?” You ask, and Mark flinches at the harshness of the words. However, he nods promptly. “Yuta told them. They said they were sorry-”

It makes you laugh at the sheer comedy of it. “They were sorry? That doesn’t bring them back or make up for anything.”

“Nobody ever said it does-” Mark defends, but you are too angry at them to stop. “You know how fucking miraculous it is to survive twenty five years- the whole ordeal, especially when you go outside frequently. His parents pushed through thick and thicker with a newborn baby just to get to where they are now, to give him a damn chance at life and this is how Johnny goes? Because of someone else’s stupidity and inconsideration?” Shaking from anger, you wipe at your eyes that have gotten a little wet while your blow-up was going on. You gulp and shake your head, feeling the tension in your jaws. “They should save their apologies because not even a billion of them,” Faster than lightning, you hold a finger up in the air in between you and Mark. “Would make up for a single hair of Johnny’s that got hurt nor for a single tear of his parents.”

Mark, your poor friend and companion, only nods a little. He knows how you get when you are angry, and he knows how fed up you must be feeling, and he can see how tired and out-of-it you look, so he does not talk. He knows that if he were to say anything you would spill words from your mouth you would either regret saying or would only upset you more, and he did not want that to happen.

Though, Mark did have to say one thing. A part of the truth that would concern the two of you. “They’re from the Nox.”

He watches your eyes slowly widen. In a matter of seconds, you look awake and aware as if you did get all the sleep you had lost the past two days within those few moments. You lean your shoulder against the door for support or from the shock, he cannot be sure. “What?” You whisper.

Mark shifts from his place, the tips of his shoes touching your socks as he leans in much closer- most probably to drown his voice out. The neighbors should not hear more than what they might have already heard so far, even though you had been conversing in low tones. “From the headquarters,” He whispers, looking into your eyes. “They came to recruit people from this area. The others are with them.”

Your brows furrow with the oncoming nerves. “So there were more of them and they just joined?”

After a second’s hesitation, Mark nods. “Seems so.”

“Why would they?” Upon the question, Mark takes a deep breath and pushes his shoulders back much like a school kid being questioned on a topic they have not studied, and looks at the side. The yellow lights from other people’s windows hit his face as he nibbles on his bottom lip indecisively. When he turns back to face you, the lights still illuminating the right side of his face, he shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Mark does not get surprised when you chuckle humorlessly. “Well I think it’s pathetic to run with people who’ve killed your own.”

It is quiet for a few seconds as he nibbles on his lip some more, but in the end something- that looked much like defeat- washes over him before he just nods a little. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Maybe five seconds of quiet before he speaks, looking down at his hands where his fingers are picking at scabs formed over his knuckles that seemed to be there every living day. “Um,” He swallows the words that would come after that at first, but he thinks, and thinks some more. It takes a couple of seconds, but he does decide to speak up. “You know what, nevermind. Maybe later.”

You get a bit taken aback but he cannot tell, because your brows are still furrowed a bit angrily and there is no other emotion over your face. “Do you know where Jaehyun is? He said he’d come straight after his duties.”

Mark’s mouth opens but no word leaves it. “He uh,” It closes and opens once again, his eyes widening a little. “He’s- he volunteered,” He clears his throat and looks down. “He volunteered for filiation.”

“Of what?” Your heartbeats have gotten significantly faster, stronger and heavier, but you cannot say if it is worry or the oncoming anger. “The trespassers’ base. Taeyong was looking for someone he could trust and he-,”

“Amazing,” You chuckle and shuffle on your feet, crossing your arms over your chest. “That’s amazing.” Mark sees you lower your head and your tongue swipe over your bottom lip as you smile bitterly, and when you raise your head back up, he can see the unshed liquid shine with the moonlight. “Why does nobody act responsible?” You whisper, and he sees the falter in your furrowed brows- the stutter.

But Mark knows you better.

He knows this is not how you truly think. He knows you out of all people want to move at the front, he knows you want that the most, and Mark knows you blame yourself for the things you are (in his opinion, rightfully) unable to do. He knows it is because you are scared. He knows you are terrified. Because it has been long, so long since either of you two have even gotten close to properly surviving outside and in all honesty: through these years of routinely going out for shorter periods of time and not having to dwell on things out of the gates, you two have grown accustomed to the feeling of homely safety. It really had felt like nothing and nobody would be able to reach you or anyone around you, even if it felt like it just inside the walls. The bubble of routine reality hidden in the much chaotic and unforgiving reality that was this community had slowly but surely implanted the expectation of seeing your loved ones get back home as if it was just a shift of a pre-apocalypse job- what they called 9-to-5.

And Mark knows this is almost like a reset, and that the sense of security and whatever this place has brought you feels like it is gone. He feels like it too.

Mark hates to see you this way. He hates to feel this way. He hates that Johnny was the one who had to go out of everyone, because he was the best of you.

But he knows he should take care of who he has left. In whatever way he can.

When he looks at you, the concerned look in his eyes from a few moments ago is back. “Have you slept any?”

You shake your head. “No.”

He nods as if he expected the murmured answer. “We’re going back to duties tomorrow, you need to sleep some.” Mark sees you chuckle just once and hears you mutter an ‘Easy to say.’ while tilting your gaze down, but he interrupts you by pointing inside, albeit a bit reluctantly. “Do you want me to help?”

“Would you?” He nods, the genuinity somehow visible from the way he does, and steps in gladly when you get away from the door and open it wide enough for him to walk in.

It had been long since the last time he had helped you sleep. It was a few years ago when you were on your own, having just separated from a group of survivors the two of you had become somewhat attached to. Their goals with life were much different than Mark’s and yours- two mere teenagers whose only wish was to not be much farther from home in hopes of reuniting with the people you had grown with.

Who could ever know that a little over three weeks of traveling on foot would already be too far from home, and too impossible to ever cross paths with? A miracle, really, ‘for kids your age’ (as people who were around the age of your parents would say).

Some nights the hopelessness and the feeling of never belonging to any group would take over you. Mark was the only person you could depend on, and you were the only person he could depend on. With how young you both were it was only natural that both of you had times where the cycle of hunger, loneliness, the paranoia of surviving and being infected, almost-dying but being saved, seeing the only person you depend on almost die but saving them, either being showered with love from other survivors or being hated for whatever reason, and getting left behind either way would get too much to deal with.

The two of you were camping overnight inside a completely empty water tower, warm and dark in the winter night- the last gift of the survivor group you had tagged along with had been an old map marked all over with safe and hopefully clear places to settle in. Plus the groups you should never encounter.

So he had done what he was doing right now. He made you lay down like right now, that time on the hard concrete and now on your kind of soft mattress that was slowly rotting away, knelt in front of you unlike in the past when he laid down beside you, started playing (more like softly scratching) with your hair and scalp because he knew it worked well to make you sleep, and sang in a low tone because he knew you loved it, and found comfort in it.

His voice sounds rougher than ever when he starts.

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,” This song is much too familiar, and it is Mark’s favorite verse of it. It means so much to him, having been brought up with faith in a world he once stated he felt was ‘too far from it’.

“And I will dwell on this earth forevermore,” His voice is soothing and soft, even though you knew he preferred his rapping much better over his singing. “Said, I walk beside the still waters and they restore my soul,”

He stops a little to take a breath, an unnecessary one, yet heavy. “But I can’t walk on the path of the right because I’m wrong.”

Mark’s voice is working its charm- or maybe it is knowing you are not alone, you do not know. But your head was getting clouded and dazed with the sleep creeping up to take you over already. He, however, continues. “Well, I came upon a man at the top of a hill,”

His voice cracks a little. “Called himself the savior of the human race,”

Through the cloud of sleep, you try to reach him. Only mentally, but you try to reach him. You wanted to hear him until the end. “Said he come to save the world from destruction and pain, but I said ‘How can you save the world from itself?’”

You barely make it to the end of the line, only hearing a glimpse of his sporadic whistling.

When you open your eyes you see Johnny sitting down next to your hand laid in front of your face, hugging the pillow. He smiles down at you, ruffling your hair for a bit. The room is dim- only the wall lights are on. The environment is mostly dark, even Johnny’s face that is much closer to you than anything. You can still see him pretty well, though, in the dim, warm yellow lighting.

His clothes are relatively clean. A few stains and tears here and there, but nothing unusual. Him and his parents’ ways of doing laundry were always superior to many others. You wanted to learn how but Johnny said you would have to come and do it with them once to properly learn once you are out of the dorms. Sometimes he would offer to do your laundry for you when the queues and waiting periods of the laundry got too long in the dorms- it was easier to have problems with water at a rather small place where a lot of people lived, and when they got their clothes really dirty almost every single day while getting educated on survival skills and agriculture.

His face is bright. His eyes are puffy just the right amount; he looks energetic. His smile is of genuine fondness towards you, and it makes you smile as well.

“Sleeping too deep?” He asks quietly. The dorm room is unoccupied excluding the two of you; your roommate had gotten a bad cold and was kept in the small hospital ward. You shake your head at his question but the yawn you let out contradicts with the motion. “I was just taking a nap.”

Johnny nods and looks down for a second, sighing a little before looking back at you and slightly raising his hand which held a tea cloth, showing off the little pouch. “Eomma sent some cornbread. I brought some dried figs as well.”

Excitement washes over you, and you take the cloth out of his hand gratefully when he holds it out for you. Unable to hold yourself back, you break a small piece off of a slice of cornbread and happily put it inside your mouth- giggling in delight when you notice the fresh corn taste and the fluffy texture. Johnny chuckles at your reaction and coos only a little.

His smile dies down pretty fast despite its brightness just a moment ago. Which is unusual for him, who likes to stretch his smiles out for as long as he possibly could.

“Can I lie down?” He asks and points at the pillow reluctantly. You nod and scoot closer to the wall, arching your back a little and tilting your head back to secure the tea cloth of snacks inside the small, empty vase placed on the windowsill. It operated as a whatever-holder: sometimes it was actual flowers, sometimes it was small jewellery or gifts you had gotten on your birthdays, sometimes the very occasional letter from Mark even though he was just two buildings down, but usually it was snacks from Johnny.

He lies down next to you and does not bother to get under the blanket, placing his hands on his stomach as he looks at the ceiling. You watch his chest rise and fall three, maybe four times before he can start speaking. “Did you ever observe one?”

“An infected?” He hums at your question. You look at the ceiling and try to remember a time you might have but nothing resurfaces. “Not really. Was too busy trying to save my ass. Or Mark’s.”

“You never went outside before the raid?” Johnny asks, quite curious. You shake your head again even though you are not sure if he would see it. “Not never, but we were in school mostly. It was high up in an apartment so it was the safest place. I did not have to worry much about them until we were older.”

An exhausted sigh makes its way past your lips and it is not only because you are physically exhausted. “And then we ran.” Turning your head to the side to look at his face, you smile. “And now I’m in a different kind of school.” Calling the dormitories a school was simultaneously a far reach and not. It was mostly to train people to not be shenanigans until they became adults, and to be responsible with their duties and communal living once they were one.

A hand laid on his stomach reaches out for one of yours and he holds it, squeezing in a way that could not be described as tightly but rather, strongly. In a way that reassured you and calmed you down, in the way that made all your past worth the present. “You’ll get to be a Wanderer soon enough. Just a few months more.”

“I just like the idea of having my own place,” You chuckle as you shrug, acting like being a Wanderer was the least of your interests. “A bathroom all to myself, a less shitty bed and having the freedom to walk around whenever…”

“Just make sure you don’t forget about us when you get your luxury.” He smiles and looks at you, and you smile back at him devilishly. “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” At that, Johnny’s mouth drops open in surprise and happiness, but you cut him off before he can even start, playing your game further. “You see, unfortunately most people I consider friends in here aren’t peaceful, calm farmers or healers or-”

“Yeah, we all have a fucked-up liking of the outside,” He nods as he talks to himself, eyes slightly squinted. But he comes to his own rescue with a protest. “It’s not like anybody can blame us. Being lost in the old world is quite dreamy when there aren’t screeching mushrooms running around.”

It makes you laugh the way he addresses once-people back from the dead, even snort a little. It had been long since you had seen one. Young recruits, or recruits that basically were not at the age of maturity, were not allowed to go on patrols, research scouts, or sweeps unless it was absolutely necessary. From what Taeyong had told you the first time you ever stepped foot into the dorms and were told about the way things went around the city, it was to give people, especially teens, a chance.

A chance to live at least until the day they were considered adults.

“Speaking of,” Johnny’s smile dies down once more. He takes a big breath, and his chest rises with it, and he holds it there for a few seconds. When it is let out, it sounds sad more than anything. Maybe even a bit depressed. “When we were out on a patrol today with Taeyong, there was this small group of Runners at one of the checkpoints,”

He looks at you, but you do not say anything, so he continues. “So we were clearing the place out as we do, and I went upstairs while Taeyong stayed behind just to be safe. I went into the studio to write down the report,”

With that he turns his gaze back to the ceiling, scrunching his eyebrows slightly. “And there was this.. Runner, it- he didn’t hear or see me so I hid behind a table. But he wasn’t moving around, you know? Just standing at the same spot. It was very early stage, he had just turned. Maybe a couple of days ago, I don’t know,”

He starts fiddling with his fingers. “He looked around the same age as me, or maybe a bit younger. Wasn’t flimsy, didn’t look like he’d been starving- he just looked healthy otherwise. But as I looked at him and the way he flinched, the way his hands moved and his shoulders cramped; the way he grunted.. it sounded too human.”

There is silence for a second or so, but he picks his words right back up. “And his eyes- his eyes,” Johnny breathes, and the sound that comes from his nose sounds a bit too stuffed and wet to be normal. “They didn’t look completely empty. Not even meaningless.”

He looks down at his hands that are still fiddling, his lips hanging out a bit the way they did whenever he was sleepy or sad. Then, he nods a little, confirms whatever is going through his mind. “I think he was there,” His voice cracks and stutters. “Inside. Trapped and waiting until it consumed his brain whole. Trying to fight back as if it would be any help.”

“And I couldn’t help but think, as I shot him down,” He shrugs and shakes his head. “That I’d never want to be trapped in my own body and have to wait until I have no control over it, if it ever happened to me.” And he looks at you.

Johnny looks at you.

With his sad, brown, dark eyes. His empathy for the Runner and for his own self. He looks at you so deep, almost like he is frozen.

Because he is.

You reach out your hand to touch his arm, and find it to be extremely cold, and stiff.

He is gone.

You wake up breathless and almost shoot yourself out of your bed with the force you are sitting up. Mark is gone, and nobody else is there. You are completely alone. The sky is just turning a bit grey, signalling the coming of the morning.

Sighing, you try to relieve some of the pain in your jaws and chest; trying to forget the memory of Johnny that was now your nightmare. You had clenched up too much, it felt stiff everywhere. Now, your head was hurting too.

There is not a single drop of sleep left in you- even if there was, you hardly think you would be able to go back.

So you get up.

Walking to your closet in a hurry, you pick out some clothes in the dark. In all honesty you do not even know what you are picking, but it does not matter. There would be very few people outside at the dead of the night if at all, and you could not care less about how they thought your outfit was.

This felt like the only time you could actually visit him. You just wanted to be alone with him, and the silence.

Once you wear your coat you are already half outside. You shut your door as quietly as you possibly could in your hurry, which was undeniably a little loud even if it had been a reasonable time to leave your house, but it was not like people would care. Unless someone or something was screaming, nobody really cared.

From your house to the cemetery took around ten minutes of walking, which was a reasonable distance given how spread out this city was. How it came to be this big you did not exactly know. Johnny had told you sometime that the bigger series of stone buildings belonged to a winery- the wines would be fermented in the summer and then shipped out here in the fall to age before being sold, which was what his parents told to him. It made sense, because the stone buildings all had underground basements that were all connected, some of which were used as a hospital ward and some of which were used as a communal living space for people who did not really have families nor a role in the community like a Farmer, Wanderer or Sweeper. Basically for people who were deemed unqualified to have their own houses.

It kind of sucked, but then again, some people actually preferred being there. The director of the basements and dorms, this lovely woman called Sarwendah, had told you once that even though it was not the majority, some people found comfort in living with other people openly since it made them forget the reality of everything as long as they were in that bubble.

The wooden buildings were either built after the gates were built- which, the gates were built after the army claimed the zone to themselves at the start of the outbreak, whose control over the area for something around 11 years, Johnny remembered those times in his childhood- or they were the ones already built for the winery’s workers and their families.

Johnny. That bit of knowledge came from Johnny too, as well as many others.

And when you are in the cemetery walking through the graves, looking for his name and spotting it without much time passing, you see a silhouette standing right at the foot of the grave.

Who, upon walking closer, turns out to be Mark.

Who, also upon walking closer, seems to be fully equipped with bags and his gun.

“Why so equipped?” You ask, and it startles him, but he does turn around and watch you as you walk over to him. “You’re going outside to join Jaehyun?”

He clears his throat. “No, he got back,” There is a split second of silence that feels a bit too long in your confusion for how long it actually is. Mark rolls his shoulders back and takes a deep breath, lets it out, creating a rather long-lasting vapor. “But yeah, I’m going outside.”

“Where?” You ask further, and he visibly winces. He avoids the question to play with the stones around Johnny’s grave with his foot, nibbling on the inside of his mouth before mumbling. “I should’ve told you before but I couldn’t.”

Your brows furrow as a string is pulled at your heart with the suspicion and the piecing of things together. “What were you going to say?”

One more exhale, but this time sharp and clear-cut. Controlled. He looks at you, looks in your eyes, and tells you the words you would have never imagined he would. “They’re releasing the trespassers and I’m leaving with them.”

Everything kind of slows down at that moment if that is even possible with the lack of action-filled things around you. Shock, was it? Or utter betrayal? “I’m sorry?”

Mark takes a step closer to you and fully turns his body to face you, towering above you not so much with his height but more so with his body language. “They’re working on a vaccine. They trust what they’ve got in their hands and they’re traveling around recruiting people to guard the headquarters. They’re afraid someone might-”

It was all too much.

“Mark, what the fuck are you talking about?” You snarl, and it shuts him up effectively. Yet, after that, you do not say anything. You wait for him to explain himself and after a couple of overwhelmed inhales, he takes the opportunity. “I’m going there to work as a guard. They’re afraid of the possibility of someone stealing the samples, or worse, attacking the lab. They need every volunteer they can get right now.”

Anger.

Pure anger is what you are feeling, and it is indescribable. It covers you from head to toe, right to left, inside and out; it feels hot and yet, icy cold. “Johnny’s blood hasn’t even dried yet, and you’re leaving with the very people who caused his death?”

Mark looks taken aback. “Be sensible. They couldn’t have known about the doors, they’re the first group from the headquarters to come here in years. It’s life or death out there, and they probably didn’t have the time for details.”

You take a step closer to him as if it is possible, and hit his shoulder lightly. “How about you be a little sensible? How can you trust them so easily? What if they’re saying these just to recruit all those people- and to travel all the way through there-”

“They have a car. Takes three days.” Mark cuts in, which makes you chuckle humorlessly. “Okay, great. What if they just recruit you to use you as a scapegoat for when they encounter bandits? Or, like I said, they just recruit you to have more guards? The vaccine has been a word since forever, Mark, and we know it. It’s a stupid hopeless rumor.”

“I’m telling you, they have scientists and they have evidence-” Mark starts, but you cut him off. “Yes! But their people also raid towns, and these people themselves are inconsiderate enough to screw up our whole system and kill our friends along the way-” You are basically trying to make sense to him with your whole body, pointing at the grave and getting closer to him and looking at his eyes to make him regain some of his sense. Just enough to keep him here, where he should be. “How can you trust them with your own life when they’ve been so inconsiderate of the others’ time and time again? You walk out of here with them and the next thing you know, you’re dead, Mark.” You point to your left, which is the direction of the big gates where the trespassers must be leaving, as they need to leave under the Leaders’ watch.

He is silent upon that. It takes him a few moments to come up with the words he is going to say, and his eyes flicker around under the confused sunlight signalling the coming of the early morning.

But he comes up with them nonetheless. “I owe it to people and to him,” He points at the grave. “To do whatever part I can to end this someday. And if I need to go to great extents and forgive them, so be it.”

And with a determined gaze in his eyes you had never seen from Mark before, he says what he really thinks. “I’d rather die running after something I believe in than live with the shame every day.”

You understand.

Not him, but that he is going.

That maybe, he is already gone.

“You leave,” You look at the grave and bite the inside of your cheek before looking back at Mark. “And I’ll come looking after you.” You whisper.

He looks away and bites down on his lip, placing his hands on either side of his hips. And then, he shrugs, not even trying to think it through. “That’d be up to you.”

And he starts walking towards the left, leaving you at the cemetery.

For the first time, you are alone.

[my-whumpy-little-heart]

Persistence - 8

No BTHB prompt for this part. Find the masterlist for this series here, or the previous part linked in the first line.

Tag list (dm or ask to be added or removed): @whump-tr0pes, @burtlederp, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @doitforthewhump, @shameless-whumper, @endless-whump, @theycomeinthrees, @faewhump

CW: creepy whumper, painful wound cleaning, mild gore for brief description of stitches, stockholm syndrome-y vibes (but the whumpee is just delirious, not attached), pet whump mention (again, not actually)

“You’re gonna make such a good mage for me, aren’t you? Just for me, that’s right…”

Somewhere just beneath the surface Floyd desperately wanted to shake his head no no no a thousand times over, but he settled for dry heaving onto the floor next to him before blacking out.

Floyd opened his eyes and everything set in slowly. Arms pressed against him and the cuts all along his body, holding him against someone’s chest. The sharp haze of pain clouded his senses, the world a buzz of noise and color around him.

Eventually he felt the ground rise up to meet his back once again, and he must have passed out again. When he woke, he was being moved around from behind.

“Wha… what’re you doin’...?” Everything was still bleary, but it looked like there was another person in the room standing right in front of him.

“Trying to help you,” he recognized Percival’s voice in his ear, “Now sit up before I drag you by your hair.”

Drowsily, Floyd rolled over and started slowly pushing himself up, but lethargy still clung to his autonomy. He slumped back to the ground, trying to peel his eyes open long enough to see the world spin around him, but it was too little too late. Fingers reached and twisted in his hair, and sharp sparks of pain jolted him to his senses.

The grip tightened and shoved him into a sitting position, Percival’s hands coming around to grab Floyd’s upper arms, an iron grasp pulling him to sit upright.

He blinked in surprise, still dazed by the sudden movement, and noticed that there really was a second person in the room. Narrow, tired eyes looked back at him, glancing before--He? She? He really couldn’t tell--turned back to the table in the corner of the room. His stomach churned at the memory of being strapped to that same table not even a day ago, and he leaned unwittingly back into his captor’s chest.

“Hey, hey, none of that now. Casey’s gonna stitch up those cuts, and you’re going to hold still for them so they don’t mess anything up,” Percival chided, shifting him closer as Floyd tried harder to pull away.

“Nnh- I… what do you mean they? There’s only one pers’n here…” he muttered, finally stilling when he realized he was far too weak to get away.

“Yes. Casey is one person, they go by they, and it’s in your best interest to respect that, Benedict,” he hissed.

“Don’t bother,” came a bored voice above, slurred and careless as they turned away from the table with supplies in hand, “it’s not like your pet’s gonna understand the fine intricacies of human decency.” Casey chuckled quietly to themself as Percival’s face twisted.

“Hey, this one’s not a pet. He’s just a pet project I’ve taken, ah, special interest in.” He pulled a hand through Floyd’s hair as he said it, pulling back on greasy red curls so the boy looked up with a shiver.

Casey stood over him, a needle with some sort of thread in one hand and a bottle of ale in the other. They bent down and he eyed the bottle warily, thirst threatening to overtake him. Alcohol wouldn’t do much to rehydrate him, but to have any liquid at all would be a blessing.

“See that, darling? I saved some ale just for you.”

“Yeah, whatever. Hold it still; it’s not gonna like this,” they sighed, uncorking the ale and kneeling up to get a better look at Floyd’s body. He shivered, feeling bare under their critical gaze. He cringed when they peeled his pants back from dried blood and cuts, rolling them up to have better access.

They reached back for the ale as Percival held him carefully still, and only when it lowered towards his legs did he realize it wasn’t to drink. Casey tipped the bottle and translucent red streaks poured over his legs, mixing with darker, viscous fluid and sliding neatly into slices all the way down to the deep wounds in his heels.

It was a small, cool pressure like the saltwater, but then it was hot and steaming and sharp and overwhelming. He could feel every single pinprick of pain as alcohol flared and raged, as opposed to the hazy, deafening torment of salt. His muscles locked up at the awful sensation, shivering as he clenched his jaw and tried to swallow down a cry. The breathy whimper that came out made him wish he’d just screamed instead.

Floyd gasped deep, hitching breaths when it finally faded into a dull thrum up and down his leg. It was done, and he took his time to calm down before the stitching started. He could make it through this, and maybe mercifully pass out once it was over.

Casey’s hands wrapped around his ankles, and Percival’s around his shoulders, and he’d been spun around before he could protest. His back now faced out, and that left him staring forward into his captor. Agitated cuts on his legs pressed into the floor under him, but he couldn’t shift before he felt the unmistakable sensation of more liquid rolling down his injured back.

Before Floyd could even think, his hands were fisted in Percival’s shirt, head pressed to his chest, and eyes screwed shut as ale seeped quickly into the deepest wounds. This time he let himself shout when it sank in, writhing against the pain. Percival’s chest shook with laughter he couldn’t hear. His arms circled around Floyd’s back in an awful mockery of a hug, hands skimming over cuts and fingers with long, cracked nails pressing cruelly into them. He yelped and shivered every time, feeling them slip under his skin where he never should have been able to feel.

“You do know there’s no point in me cleaning its cuts if you just stick your dirty fingers right back in them afterwards, right?” Casey grumbled, busying themselves with threading the needle. Percival laughed again and moved his hands back up to massage at Floyd’s shoulders.

“Let up, Casey,” he clicked his silver tongue, waving them off, “didn’t you see him? The first hint of pain and he came to me to support him. I think it’s sweet.”

Floyd shivered uncomfortably, flushed with embarrassment and anger. Of course he used Percival to support himself; that freak was the one holding him in the first place. He didn’t have another option.

“...wish it wasn’t you,” he muttered, too scared to confront his captor with anything else he was thinking.

“Oh, Benedict, you poor thing,” Percival pouted maliciously, cupping Floyd’s chin in his hands and tilting it up to look him in the eyes. “There’s nobody else here who would even bother to hold you while you cry. Is seeing my face really such a price to pay?”

He averted his eyes in a silent concession.

“Then why didn’t you just say so in the first place?!” he exclaimed, the shift in his tone just startling enough to drag Floyd’s gaze back up to him. “I can do that for you, darling.”

Percival’s eyes flashed with hot, swirling magenta tones before he faded from vision. He… he turned invisible. That wasn’t what Floyd wanted at all.

“...alright, I’m just gonna start on the stitches so this doesn’t take forever. Hold it still,” they sighed, placing a light hand over one of the wider cuts and positioning the readied needle. Percival pushed his captive back against his chest, looping arms under his shoulders and nodded.

“Go on,” he gestured.

Face buried in his captor’s chest, he struggled to draw deep breaths before the needle slid in, tugging through the corner of a slice. It felt… wrong. It didn’t hurt so much as it tingled, sending his stomach fluttering at the sensation. He held his breath as the next stitch slipped through, slick now with his own blood, pulling sickeningly at skin as the last one tightened further.

Stitches painted a canvas across his back, moving on to another when they closed the first wound. Slowly, Floyd felt himself falling out. His tense muscles went limp, only jumping at occasional deep pricks of the needle, and he closed his eyes. If he imagined hard enough, he could almost pretend the sturdy frame he was curled up against wasn’t his captor, but Ray. The long strings of hair that tickled the back of his neck were Ray’s dark curls, and the sharp scent left on his shirt wasn’t vinegar, but the salty, sandy smell of everything Ray wore.

Slowly, his hands loosened from fists in Ray’s shirt, and wrapped around his midsection in an embrace that the recipient leaned eagerly into. He could hardly feel the needle sliding through his skin anymore, and focused more and more on the comfort of his captain, holding him close after this terrifying nightmare was over. Kind, and warm, and soothing, like a father to his son…

“Alright, that’s it. I could get the ones on its legs, but they’re small and I’m bored,” Casey said, pulling Floyd back to reality. He blinked, realizing that the man he was up against was visible once again and the illusion shattered. He had been hugging Percival,and burying himself in that awful vinegar scent, and feeling his arms around him. At the smug look on his tormentor’s face, Floyd let go of him as quickly as possible and scrambled as far away as his sluggish limbs could get him. He’d just willingly hugged the man who kidnapped and fucking tortured him, and imagined he was someone he admired.

Anger flashed in Percival’s eyes, and he flew forward kneeling right over Floyd and catching his shoulders to keep him from moving any further.

“Don’t. Tear. Your. Stitches.” he seethed. “Casey worked very hard to make sure you don’t bleed out or get very, very sick aside from what I’m going to do to you. So, if you ruined their work this quickly after getting it done, I’d be loath to let you get away without severe punishment.”

He left the threat hanging in the air, but Floyd nodded quickly, face still flaming. He didn’t need examples. He already had them bruised, cut, chafed, and slowly scarring across his body. He didn’t need any more. Percival smiled, dismissing Casey before he spoke.

“Perfect. How do you feel about a meal, then?”

Next part

[angelanimedesaray]

Survive Or Live Chapter 3: One Way Barter

AN:  I didn’t see anyone tell me “Never attempt to write Levi again!” so I’m going to assume its safe for me to continue with Levi POV in the future, lol.  Also, disclaimer--I know jack s*** about medical stuff, what is in here is me googling and then bulls***ing about knowing what I’m talking about, lol.  Next, please have mercy on me, I AM still feeling out Levi’s character from a writing perspective.  Finally:  After two action opening chapters, joy, we’ve hit the slower talking range XD That’s more just me bemoaning, talkie chapters as I call them are harder for me to write, I just really love my action XD

Characters:  Levi, OC (Mae Brooks)

Pairing:  (Eventual) Levi x OC

Warnings:  Language

Word Count:  4885

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(Gif by Charise Harp Photos)

*Mae’s POV*

“What do you intend to do now?”

Mae held perfectly still, eyes not on the blade whose edge rested across her chest, but instead on the man who was on the other end.  He looked rough--covered in gore and dirt stains, body tense, and those steel blue eyes hard and focused solely on her once again.

“I intended to find out who jumped into my truck.  Since they stayed instead of hopping out of the truck at the first turn.”  She tilted her head curiously at him.  “So why’d you stay along for the ride?”

No response.  At least not a verbal one.  She felt like he was studying her far more closely, and she felt the blade waver just a hair--she wouldn’t have been able to see it, but since it was right against her chest, she felt it.

“Okay then, different question.  How the hell did you end up with what may have been all the rotters in town on your tail?  Cause you don’t seem like the type for stupidity to be the reason.”

His eyes narrowed slightly at that comment, but again, he didn’t say anything.  He was just letting her run her mouth, probably figuring her out more and more with every passing second while she continued to only get stoic silence from him and the smallest reaction twitches here and there.

With a slightly bitter laugh, Mae raised a hand to run it through her hair, shaking her head.  “Longer than I can keep track of not seeing another living person, I finally run into someone that so far hasn’t given me a reason not to trust them, and they hardly say a word outside of cursing me about my driving.  Figures.”

“Seems you’ve forgotten something,” he finally said, the blade at her chest applying a little more pressure as a reminder.

Mae smirked, gesturing towards the blade. “Oh, that?  That’s just how people say hello these days.”

He arched an eyebrow at her.  “That doesn’t make you too friendly, then.”

“That’s because you didn’t see my hand on my gun when I first walked out here.”

It was true--her hand had hovered over the gun holster at her back as soon as she opened the truck door.  When he hadn’t immediately sliced her in half or shish kabobbed her with his katana, she’d let her hand slowly lower from the gun, and her hand hadn’t come near it, since.  She got the sense if he’d planned on killing her, he would have done it by now.

He actually didn’t look surprised at her statement.  It was more like she’d confirmed a suspicion...which meant he probably knew she’d had a hand on a weapon the first half of that conversation.  It wasn’t just his blade that was sharp, then.  Good.

She held out her other hand in an offer to shake it, that way both were visible to him and neither were near a weapon.  “I’m Mae.”

Yet another silence passed that Mae spent being sized up by the stranger in front of her, hand outstretched between them, that razor sharp katana lightly pressed against her chest.  Finally, he removed the blade from in front of her, sliding it back into its sheath and ignoring her outstretched hand.  He still hadn’t given her a name, but at least he wasn’t holding his blade on her anymore.  That counted for something.

Dropping her hand, Mae leaned on the side of the truck.  “So, do I get to know your name, or do I have to keep calling you The Stranger in my head like we’re in some twisted western?”

“Are you always this talkative?”

“I haven’t seen anyone I could actually talk to in months, forgive me for wanting something of a conversation.”

“I’m not here to entertain you.”

“Of course not, though I still have yet to know why you are here, since you didn’t have to stay in the back of my truck once we were away from that horde.”

And they were right back to a one sided conversation as The Stranger looked away, out towards what Mae assumed was the barn on the other side of the hayfield.  Instead of answering her, he shifted in the bed of the truck, his hand gripping the edge as he started to pull himself up, but for some reason, he stopped halfway up, and simply started to slide his way to the tailgate, reaching over the edge to lower it.  She eyed him as he moved, following slowly along the edge of the truck, and noticing that he seemed to be putting more weight on his right side than his left.  She still held her tongue, waiting a few more moments to see…

When he reached the edge of the tailgate, his right leg swung over the edge without hesitation, stabilizing himself on the ground...but he hesitated with the left, moving slower, like he was testing how much weight he could put on it.  It was a familiar motion, and since she felt she had a good guess at what was going on, she decided to speak up.

“Hold up, are you--” she started to say, reaching out instinctively to stop or steady him, she wasn’t sure.  He knocked the closest hand aside, shooting her a glare.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t think--”

“I said I’m fine.”

Mae huffed, stepping back, and then around so she was standing in front of him.  “You know, I have a medical background, if you’re hurt, I can help--really help.”

Well, that caught his attention.  He looked up at her with those probing eyes again, stopped right on the edge of the tailgate with both legs dangling over the edge, leaning forward.  “What kind of medical background?”

Ah, shit...I was hoping he wouldn’t ask for that specific.

Fighting the rising blush in her cheeks, Mae planted herself as confidently as possible right in front of him.  “Well...I was a vet before the world turned into this shitstorm.”

“There’s no way in hell you’re a veteran, so by vet, you mean veterinarian,” he said bluntly before she’d even finished her sentence.

“Hey, that still means I have more medical knowledge than most of the remaining living population,” Mae said defensively over his rather loud ‘Tch.’  “And I do know the differences between treating humans and animals, if that’s what you’re worried about.  So are you going to let me look at you, or not?”

He started to turn away, looking like he was about to refuse and insist that he was all right.  Mae narrowed her eyes at him, and despite her better judgement telling her not to, she reached out with one hand to stop him, the other hand giving his left leg an experimental nudge.

The Stranger let out a hiss of pain and pulled back, one of his hands twitching towards the blades sheathed at his side and knocking her helping hand aside once more.

“Did I say you could touch me?”

Well, at least she knew for sure that there was something wrong now.

“You’re being stubborn, and I’ve seen enough animals and people limping around on a leg injury to know what one looks like.  If you keep trying to move around on it, that’s just going to make it worse--”

“I know that--” He said through grit teeth, but Mae kept talking right over him before he could protest again.

“--so I’m going to look at it whether you like it or not.  Before you do more damage cause you can’t even give me the benefit of the doubt enough to properly look at you,” she finished bluntly, already kneeling down in front of him to get a closer look at his leg.

And to think she’d once been a lot more soft-spoken and easygoing.  The apocalypse tended to make people a lot more...forceful.  It didn’t help that she was out of practice interacting with people.

Mae’s fingers probed at his leg much more gently this time, feeling for any breaks--though she figured he’d be showing more pain if he’d broken it--before she tried telling if it was a fracture or a simple sprain.  The Stranger didn’t make a sound this time, though she felt his leg reacting to pain beneath her fingertips, other subtle twitches like the tightening of his grip on the tailgate’s edge giving her an idea that he was in pain.  And those reactions were coming when she applied a little more pressure closer to the bone.

“It’s looking like it might be a fracture.  X-rays aren’t an option, so I can’t give you specifics or a truly one hundred percent sure answer, but I can tell you how, and I have the stuff, to treat it.  I’m sorry to say a fracture involves a lot of time off your feet, though.”

“Figured as much,” he muttered in response.  She wished he didn’t have that scarf wrapped around his face--maybe she’d be able to get a better idea of what he was thinking if she could see all of his face.

“While I’m doing this, did you happen to get hurt anywhere else?”

He didn’t answer, though in the silence and with her closer proximity, she could hear his breathing, which seemed shallow and deliberate to her.  Now that she was thinking about it, he had to have landed on his back or his side when he’d jumped into her truck.  He’d been pushing himself up when she looked back.  Maybe he’d suffered some kind of chest injury from the impact.

He stiffened as her hands moved upward, ignoring the gore on his jacket as her fingers probed around his chest, another hand reaching around to feel at his chest and side.  He leaned away from the contact, demeanor somehow getting a little chillier.

“You can stop touching me now,” he said, his tone letting Mae know it wasn’t a suggestion.

Still, she ignored him as she applied a bit more pressure to his ribs.  “As soon as I know what’s wrong, sure.  Until then, you’re going to have to deal with the medical probing.”

As her hand put pressure on the upper part of the side of his ribs, she heard a sharp intake of breath, and his hands suddenly trapped her own, pushing them away from his chest.  “It’s just some bruised ribs, I’ll be fine, just stop touching me.”

He had a point--it must have been weird to have a stranger poking and prodding at his injuries without really asking permission.  She didn’t think anything of it because she was used to prodding animals who couldn’t do much to protest.  Though in her defense, he was hurt, he was being stubborn, and he kept not answering her questions.

Mae stood back up, hands on her hips as she gazed at his leg and let out a soft sigh.  “Well...After some RICE, I’ll be able to give you a more definite answer, but in the meantime, I’d say play it safe so that if I’m right and that is a fracture, you don’t make it worse--there’s not exactly ER operating rooms available if that leg ends up needing surgery.  If I’m wrong and it's just a sprain, you’ll only be down for two to four weeks.  If I’m right...you’re looking at something more like six to eight.”

He didn’t ask what RICE meant, which gave Mae the impression he already knew what it meant.  Perhaps he had some at least basic medical knowledge, then...though that thought only made his current resistance to her helping him all the more frustrating.

“It’s a sprain, and I heal fast--I’ll be fine in a few days,” he returned bluntly, moving like he was about to get off the truck.  Once again, Mae stopped him.

“If you can walk five steps without that leg buckling from pain, then I’ll say maybe to that.  But for now, either way, you need to be off that leg for a few days before I even take another look at it.”

He ignored her and planted his right foot on the ground.  “Five steps, you said?”

Sweet Jesus, I think he’s actually going to try it...this should be interesting…

With a look of single-minded determination in his eyes, The Stranger carefully placed his left foot on the ground, then paused.  For a moment, Mae hoped that putting weight on the leg was making him rethink this attempt.

Gingerly, he stepped forward with his left, stiffening with fists clenching at his sides as he shifted the weight onto his left leg with an audible hiss.  He’d cast his eyes down so she couldn’t gauge any degree of what he was thinking, but that reaction had been enough to tell her his leg hurt like a bitch.

Is he going to try for the next--yes, it seems he is.

He lifted his leg again, placing it carefully on the ground in his third step, and attempting the fourth, putting his weight back on the left.

He might just make it to five, Mae thought in surprise, beginning to feel impressed as she watched him.

No sooner did she finish her thought, then The Stranger’s leg suddenly buckled half-way through his fourth step.  Having been waiting for it, Mae was able to dart forward and catch him before he hit the ground, pulling one of his arms around her shoulders as she helped him up.

“Nearly:  since you were almost able to walk on it the whole five steps, I’m willing to reduce my diagnosis to a severe sprain unless I see signs of a fracture after a few days rest.  Either way, you’re still going to be on bedrest for a couple weeks.  Let’s get you inside and see to treating that leg.”

He seemed to be making some sort of pained grumbling, the sound muffled to a rumble in his chest as she helped him up the three steps onto the farmhouse front porch, pulling him to lean on her the most whenever he’d normally be placing weight on his left.  Just before the door, Mae stopped him once again, getting out from under his arm and letting him lean against the wall for stability.

“Hold on, let me just…” Mae muttered, starting to shrug off her bloodstained flannel, then leaning down to undo the ties on her boots.

“I keep whatever clothes got gorey on my run in this basket right here,” she explained, nudging a lidded wicker basket with her hip as she was untying the last boot, conscious of the fact The Stranger was watching her.  “If you don’t mind, you can toss yours in there, too--I’ll go down to the river and clean ‘em once we’re done here.  Doing it that way helps keep the house a little cleaner.”

For the first time since meeting him, he didn’t complain or even question what she said, already shrugging off the military duffel bag strapped onto his back, unzipping the tactical jacket to reveal a well-fit turtleneck, and untying the scarf from around his face.  Finally, she could see more than jet black hair and eyes that seemed far more grey than blue now that they were out of the sun.  Sadly, seeing the whole of his expression didn’t help to figure out what was going on in his head--he just seemed...indifferent.  She’d have to keep watching his eyes for answers, it seemed.

He held out the clothes and bag to Mae as she straightened, reaching out to take the bundle from him.  However, he held fast, catching her attention as he met her gaze.

“I’ll clean mine myself--that way I know it's done right.”

Mae’s eyebrows rose slightly, but she didn’t protest, giving him a small nod.  “All right then.”

Looks like I’ll be hauling river water over later.

Once he had her agreement, he relinquished the clothes, which Mae tucked away into the basket for later, with her boots placed next to the basket.

Of course, there was gore on their jeans, too, but Mae wasn’t about to strip in front of him, or ask him to take his pants off.  She’d just sit him down in a kitchen chair instead of the couch while she took care of his leg, and find something for him to change into in her to-be-scrapped clothes so he could claim the couch without getting gore all over it.

“I’ll deal with that later,” she said with a sigh, coming even with The Stranger again and feeling him put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself as she opened the door, sparing him a brief glance.

Oh...he’s shorter than me!

Once inside, Mae guided him towards the dining table on their left, getting the hint when every time she tried to pull his arm around her shoulder again to support him, he whacked the hand away.  Instead he only reached out for her shoulder when he needed stability, doing a stubborn hop the thankfully short distance to the dining table, Mae pulling out a dining chair for The Stranger to sit in.

The first level of the farm house was an almost entirely open space, with the only wall separated rooms being the stairwell to the second floor, and the doorless foyer on its right that led to the back door.  As a result, the kitchen, living room, and dining room took their own sections of one giant right angle shaped room.  The kitchen took up the upright edge, the dining room had the corner, and the living room took the bottom edge.

“I’m suddenly even happier I found more wrappings today.  I’ll be right back with the stuff for this,” Mae said once he was sitting, already doing a mental inventory of what she had and what he might need as she turned to make a run upstairs.

The top of the stairs revealed a T hallway, with the entrance to the master bedroom--her room--on the left, a door to the bathroom on the far end of the right, and down the middle hall were two doors on the right that led into a smaller guest bedroom and an office she had mostly turned into a storage room.

Painkillers were a must, for the ribs and his leg, so that was the first thing she went for, going into her bedroom and prying up one of the loose floorboards for one of her ‘valuables’ stashes, looking through its contents until she found what she wanted.  NSAIDs--not acetaminophen--since they would help reduce any kind of inflammation.  She made sure her board was back in place, then made her way to the bathroom, where she kept some of her more easily found medical supplies under the sink, to get the bandages and tape.  The last stop was the storage room for her scrap clothes stash--specifically the ones she hadn’t cut up for the odd project yet, hoping she had a pair of pants somewhere in there he could wear--even if he had to roll up the pant legs.

Once she had her best pants candidate and her supplies, Mae made her way back downstairs.  The Stranger was still sitting where she left him, head doing a slow turn as he studied every inch of his surroundings.  His gaze returned to Mae once she came down the stairs, eyebrows raising slightly at the sight of the pair of pants dangling off her arm.

“What, you think I’m letting you bedrest on my couch with those jeans?  Hell no, I don’t want to have to clean it up,” Mae said in response, tossing the pants onto the tabletop before setting the bottle of NSAIDs next to his hand that was resting on the table.  “Those are your painkillers.  Go easy on them, I don’t need to tell you how hard it is to find those.”

The Stranger picked up the bottle and turned it over in his hands carefully as Mae drew up a chair opposite him, carefully reaching down and pulling his leg up as gently as she could to rest it in her lap.  She ignored his look and slightly uncomfortable shift in his seat, starting to undo his shoelaces and rolling his pant leg partially up before she started to carefully ease his boot off.  He stiffened beneath her grip, and she glanced up with a quick, mumbled, “Sorry,” before she continued easing his boot off.

Once his pant leg was rolled up to his knee, and his boot and sock was off, she finally started wrapping up his leg, trying to stay gentle while wrapping his leg tightly and securely--properly.

For a while, they sat in silence, Mae patiently wrapping up his injured leg while The Stranger studied her, slowly turning the pill bottle over in his hand.

“Why are you so hell bent on helping me?  What do you want from me?” he finally said, breaking the silence.

“What, are you worried about being in debt to me or something?” Mae asked, glancing up at him with raised brows.  His expression didn’t change, sharp eyes still watching her every movement, probing for some hidden motive, looking for a sign of ill intent.  “Don’t be.  The most I’d ask from you would be a little human interaction.  If I decide that’s my price, you don’t think that’s going to kill you, do you Mr. The Stranger?”

“Tch,” was his only reply as he looked away, out the windows that lined the front of the house, gaze fixated over the hayfield and the barn outside.  A few more beats of silence passed, and as Mae neared the end of her wrapping, he spoke again.  “Levi.”

Mae paused, processing the sharp but quiet word that had cut through the silence before she reached for the tape to finish up.  “Levi…” she said slowly, feeling out the name as it fell from her lips.  “Levi...Thank God, because it was getting really weird calling you The Stranger in my head.”

With his leg taped up, Mae scooted the chair back and wrapped up the leftover bandages as she got to her feet.  “I’ll let you try those on while I head outside, I’ll be back in a moment--gotta get my stuff and all that,” Mae finished in a murmured response, placing the wrapping on the table and nodding towards the pants still sitting on the table before she headed out the front door.

Once outside, Mae made her way back to the truck, throwing open the truck’s back door and grabbing the gasoline canisters first, carrying them back to the farmhouse.  She stopped in front of the lattice covered foundation, pulling back a panel to reveal her gas stash; only a few canisters at the moment, but at least the stash was getting two more today.

No...One.  I need to fill up the truck today.  Almost forgot.

After stashing the two full canisters, grabbing a lighter one, and placing the lattice back in its place, Mae went back to the truck to fill the tank.  Once that was done, she pulled her bow and backpack out of the truck, folding the bow up and picking up the empty canister to stash it again for later.

It’s been long enough for him to get pants on, right?  Even with the sprain?

Mae hesitantly made her way back up to the stairs, knocking lightly on the front door.  “Just making sure you’re decent before I walk in,” she called, listening for some kind of confirmation on the other side of the door.

There were a few moments that she assumed Levi--she couldn’t begin to explain how inwardly giddy it made her to finally have a name--was finishing getting decent again.  After those few moments she stood on the porch waiting at the front door, she finally heard Levi’s voice call out, “You’re clear.”

Mae came back inside to the sight of Levi standing on one foot, gory pants in one hand and held out towards her, the loans almost fitting nicely on him--he had rolled the pant legs up some, but she wasn’t going to comment on it.

“Knocking to come into my own house...that’s a first,” she quipped as she took the dirty pants from him, partially poking briefly out the door to toss them into her wicker basket before she came back inside and continued.  “There’s a guest bedroom upstairs, but I’d stay off that leg as much as possible for the first few days, so for now, I dub thee sole ruler of the couch until such a time you can upgrade to a bed by passing the trial of stairs.”

Levi stared at her for a solid minute, and to be honest, she almost broke into another babble of nonsense in an attempt to break the silence and get him to stop looking at her like that before he finally said, “If I’m going to be here for a few days, you have to stop talking like that.”

Mae blushed and shrugged.  “The conversation is pretty one-sided right now, I think I’m trying to fill the empty air with twice the words.”

“Don’t.  You don’t have to, so don’t try.”

“Fair enough,” Mae murmured, stepping aside as Levi hopped his way over to the cream couch settled directly in front of a living room centerpiece fireplace, a small coffee table between the couch and fireplace, a cushioned rocking chair on one side of the couch, and a recliner on the other.  It was a cozy spot, at least, nothing too terrible--it wasn’t like she was restricting him to the dining table while he recovered.

“I’ve got some things to pass the time while you’re on bedrest--I’ve got a few books, I’m sure if I look I can find cards or some kind of game somewhere...I’m sure I can find something to keep your hands busy, anyway,” she said, setting her bow on the dining room table for the moment as Levi eased down onto the couch facing the windows, letting his injured leg stretch out across the couch and putting a few pillows below it to elevate it.  They still needed the I in RICE, but Mae hadn’t figured out a way to make ice and keep it from melting without power, so ice unfortunately wasn’t an option.

Levi ignored her ramblings about finding something for him to do in his spare time, instead keeping his gazed fixated on that goddamn hayfield outside.  Mae was starting to get a bit jealous that it seemed to be claiming so much attention from her first human interaction in months.

“Are you using the hay?”

Mae blinked, thrown off by the question as she glanced out the windows towards the field in front of the farmhouse.  “Not really.  It’s pretty much decorative for the country painting I’m never going to attempt.  Why?”

“What do you want for it?”

Another one of their increasingly common silences passed.

“...You want the hay?”

Levi slowed down what he was saying when he saw her staring at him like he’d grown another head, speaking like he was talking to a child.  “What do you want for the hay?”

“Nothing.  I don’t have a use for it...I’m not losing anything if you take it.  Have at it.”

Now it was Levi’s turn to stare at her blankly.  Apparently he hadn’t been expecting that answer.  “There’s got to be something you want for it.”

Mae shrugged.  “I mean, if you’re looking at it as a constant supply, I suppose that means I get to see a non-hostile living being regularly.  Take the time to at least have something of a passing conversation, and I’ll consider us even.”

And now she was getting that probing look, his eyes sharp as the steel their color emulated, trying to pierce through her and get inside her head, his arm laying on the back of the couch, one of his fingers tapping thoughtfully and softly against the couch.

“No one still alive is this giving.  This trusting.  What’s your angle?”

Mae let out an admittedly frustrated sigh, coming around to stand directly in front of Levi, smack between Levi and his view of the field.  “I already have everything I need.  Everything but human contact--that’s what I need most now.  To me, I am getting something I desperately need in return, even if you don’t think so.”  Mae held his gaze, folding her arms over her chest.  “So that’s my price.  You don’t have to be a friend or anything, maybe we end up not being able to stand each other, I don’t know...I just want someone I can see every now and then, someone I can talk to that might actually say a few words back.  Even if it’s just a few minutes of passing conversation, I’ll consider that payment enough.”

While Levi didn’t answer or necessarily agree to anything, since he didn’t ask any more questions, Mae assumed that was the end of the conversation.  Dropping her folded arms, she shrugged her hiking backpack off her shoulders, turning to head back upstairs.

“Get some rest.  I won’t be making dinner until after my post-run chores, so there’ll be plenty of time to kill until then.”

Next Chapter --->

Tags:  @humanitys-hottestsoldier​ @arthurmorgan-wiki​

[sprinklesandsugarcubes]

Crimson Passage; Prologue

Rating: NSFW/Mature

Warnings: Angst, Emotional Manipulation, Bloodshed/Slight Gore

Note: Remember, this is a repost of old work before I start continuing. If you have any concerns, please message me. 

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She lay there on the forest floor.

It had been quiet for some time, the kind of silent stillness that the wilderness assumes when a predator much more daunting than most wanders into its midst. It was late, easily after midnight though not yet near dawn, leaving the pale beams of moonlight to filter through the trees from high up in the night sky. And, it was with that light that the girl's form became dimly visible to the eye, left behind in a disregarded heap, prone and vulnerable amongst a cushion of leaves and grasses, deep within the woods of Mystic Falls. Her hair was darker in the lack of light; the long tresses of coffee and copper colored strands were tangled with the remains of leaves and matted with blood. Her eyelids fluttered at the edge of unconsciousness, thick ebony lashes brushing lightly against the fair skin of her cheeks. The quiet and the shadows of night mixed together, pressing down and around her to form an eerie atmosphere, until it was finally broken by a sound.

A startled, choking gasp.

The girl shot upright from where she lay, her chest heaving and lips parted as she inhaled through a gasping shriek that left her choking violently on the intake. Her head spun sickeningly, the dizziness causing her vision to blur, and she collapsed forward onto her hands in a half-sitting, half-lying position. Quiet cries of confusion escaped her as she blinked rapidly, blearily catching sight of her surroundings and the dense brush that surrounded her.

Just how exactly had she gotten in the woods?

She couldn't…she couldn't remember.

Desperately, she grappled for the last thing she could remember, but only blackness awaited her with each of her tries. Her hands shook as she lifted them before her, the stain of dirt and blood leaving her to furrow her brow in question. She looked from them to her front, biting back another gasp at the overwhelming dark stain waiting for her there, the crimson color spreading across the tattered ivory material. It had dripped from her neckline down her chest, between her breasts that were nearly bared by the rip in her flowy top, all the way down to her navel. She became consciously aware of the sticky, viscous liquid that bloomed across the fair skin of her chest and neck, her eyes widening as the knowledge she couldn't quite place began to seep back into her frazzled mind. She had been attacked, she knew, by a vampire. Its fangs had buried deep within her neck, piercing her artery, and they had been a messy eater judging by the amount that was smeared across her body and clothes.

Her heart should have been thundering in her chest, pounding through the fear and panic that her realization brought about.

Only…it wasn't.

Instead, it thudded in what she knew to be an abnormally slow, yet partially constant rhythm.

Her stomach lurched dangerously.

Again, her head felt like it was spinning, a heavy weight on her shoulders she could hardly bear to keep. She tipped forward into the muck, dry heaving against an onslaught of shuffling memories that attacked her mind all at once, leaving her nearly writhing on the ground and her head aching.

The small box in her hands was cold to the touch, and despite what she knew to be true, she couldn't begin to believe what she was seeing. The vials were small, they held maybe six ounces of fluid in each, but it wasn't them that took her by surprise.

It was what they contained.

She glanced up, her silvery gray eyes wide as they connected with ocean blues. His own were crinkled slightly at the edges, a faint amusement flickering within their depths to match his smirk as he witnessed her reaction to his gift.

She stuttered through her question; why?

"Because, love. You are my first real…friend, that I've had in centuries. I refuse to part with you."

The beaming smile that spread across her lips was involuntary, and without another thought, she carefully stored the precious containers that held the glass vials, filled to the top each with a dark red substance, into the miniature fridge she kept in her room. The next moment she was in his arms, wrapped up in a tight hug that he returned much more quickly than he had the very first time she had done it.

"Every day Amelia, I mean it."

"I promise, Nik."

~.~.~

"What the hell are you doing Damon?!"

She struggled where the raven-haired vampire had trapped her, the cool wood paneling of his bathroom sliding door pressing tightly into her bare back. She had only the fluffy towel wrapped around her body, not that it mattered considering he had seen all she had to offer only a few hours before. She frowned at him in confusion, at first thinking it to be a game of sorts, maybe round two…

But it wasn't.

He gripped her wrists tightly, pressing them into the door on either side of her head, and it was the expression of sorrowful, guilty determination that made her freeze in her movements.

An icy finger of dread traced its way down her spine.

"No." Her whisper was more of a plea, begging him not to do what she suspected he might.

He squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head forward onto her shoulder, breaking her gaze with the icy blues that she had grown to love over the months she had known him. Panicked breaths lifted her chest rapidly; her heart beat out a frantic pattern in both of their ears as the blood rushed in her veins. He let out a groan and she used the distraction wisely, managing to break free of his hold just long enough to reach for the vervain charm bracelet that rested on the counter only a few feet away.

Her fingers brushed the cool silver.

And he swiped the piece of jewelry from her grasp, ignoring her outraged shriek. Once more he cornered her, the vanity counter cutting into the small of her back as he nearly bent her backwards over it.

"I'm sorry Ames, you don't know how sorry I am." He murmured, shaking his head.

Her shout echoed off the tiles and stone, almost making him wince. "Then don't DO this Damon!"

The towel was long forgotten, her bare chest pressing into his own as he stood there in only a pair of dark jeans. His smattering of chest hair tickled her breasts, and even with her mounting fear, she could feel the desire for him pool low in her stomach. Hot, ready. His nostrils flared, a low moan rumbling through his chest and throat, though he shook his head to clear it almost immediately after.

"I have to."

"Why!" She gasped out, tears of betrayal and hurt clouding her vision. "Why would you do this to me? It was right, I know it was right! And say what you want, I know you felt it too, otherwise…"

They both fell silent at her declaration, each of their minds flashing back to the erotic exchange of blood on both their parts.

It wasn't something done on a whim.

"I just…have to bellissimo. You have to trust me." He muttered, trying to push away the feeling her words left behind.

She glared at him fiercely, refusing to break even as a few brave but traitorous tears leaked from the corners of her silvery gray eyes. "Why should I when you-"

Damon cut her off with a searing kiss, his lips sliding over her own as he reached up to tangle the fingers of one hand into her long hair, while the other cupped her jaw and smoothed his thumb over her cheekbone. She let out a startled gasp, giving him plenty of opportunity to delve into the depths of her mouth, the sweetness of her taste spreading out over his tongue. He groaned low in his throat, the sound equally matched with her own moan of pleasure, and he let out a hiss of surprise when she bit down on his bottom lip, sinking her teeth into the sensitive flesh.

He pulled back, a small smirk masking his emotions, and as she opened her mouth to speak again, her eyes glittering at him mischievously, he gripped her face tightly between his hands and murmured the words that would most probably damn him to hell. His pupils dilated, leaving her enthralled and susceptible to the compulsion he exercised.

"This…this never happened Amelia. You came over to hang out and we ended up wrestling in the kitchen. We did not have sex. We did not exchange blood. You used my shower to clean up. You will get dressed and come out, and then we'll spend the rest of the day watching your ridiculous choices in movies."

Her brow furrowed, making his breath hitch in anxiety.

She had always been harder to compel than any other he had ever met. But, after a moment, she parroted his words back to him. He sighed, a feeling of both relief and regret mixing to leave him almost nauseous.

Blinking her eyes open and closed a few times to clear her hazy vision, she stared at what was just herself in the mirror, then laughed quietly at their antics.

Only Damon would provoke a food fight in his own kitchen.

~.~.~

She groaned.

Her muscles were stiff, the soreness making any movement much harder than she expected as she reached out blindly, and a dull pain throbbed at the base of her skull. Something dry and rough crackled beneath her as she attempted to sit up, and she sighed in relief when her eyes didn't open to blinding light, but soothing darkness instead.

The feeling didn't last for long.

Her mouth was dry and as she rolled her lips, the snug tie of a gag around her mouth became apparent. Her eyes widened in shock, blinking rapidly, and she immediately lifted her hands to remove the offending object.

Only to find her hands tied in front of her.

Her mind raced.

She didn't understand, one moment she had been arguing over the choice of pizza or pasta for dinner with Elena, and now she was tied up and gagged in the forest?! She commanded herself to think, to remember, and the vague notion of the doorbell ringing came to her mind.

Yes!

The doorbell had rung and she had asked her younger sister, by all of eight minutes- Elena would complain, to answer the door as she finished up taking out the trash. The cool autumn breeze had brought a smile to her face as she inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent of crisp fall air and pine, but the scared voice of Elena echoing out from within the kitchen made her pause and frown, her peace interrupted.

"Please! We can talk about this just don't hurt-"

A blur of a figure stopped her abruptly, and just as a sharp pain bloomed out across the base of her skull prompting her vision to darken, her silvery gray eyes met with a pair of nearly emotionless forest greens.

Son of a bitch…

"Stefan!"

A dark chuckle resonated from the shadows, curling up her spine and leaving goosebumps behind in its wake.

"What's up buttercup?"

Snapping her head to the right, she caught sight of him just in time to see him emerge from a dense grouping of trees on the side of the small clearing she sat in. He graced her with a taunting smirk as he tipped his head, crouching down in front of her to push the hair away that had fallen in front of her eyes. She nearly snapped at him, her lip curled up in a snarl as she glared.

"What am I doing here Stefan?"

He grinned boyishly, settling down next to her as he pretended to remain oblivious to her struggling with her binds.

"You, sweet Amelia, are…well, sadly I think you're just going to be collateral damage. But here nor there, you're here because Damon needs to make a choice."

She frowned. "A choice?"

He nodded enthusiastically, scooting a bit closer as he explained.

"See, Damon is struggling. On one hand, there's you. Sweet Amelia Gilbert, twin of the doppelgänger yet looks nothing like any of them. You're a sweet release from the constant reminder of Katherine's manipulation, compassionate yet sassy, and you love him with your whole heart, despite his shortcomings. Now, on the other hand, there's Elena-"

The warmth in my blood at Damon's name cooled suddenly, and my hands stilled as my twin sister's name left the youngest Salvatore's lips.

"-she's the kryptonite to his Superman, if you know what I mean. Despite having such a good thing with you, and the fact that you're now blood bonded, he still-"

She shook her head quickly, her eyes snapping to his. "Blood bonded? I'm not bonded to him Stefan, we haven't even had sex yet, much less made that exchange!"

The green-eyed vampire's boyish grin turned darkly sinister, his eyes glinting with a malicious glee and amusement as he watched every minute expression that crossed her face.

"Oh, but you are," He insisted, flashing his teeth in a sneer. "You just don't remember."

"No."

She had meant to sound strong, confident as she denied his claim, but it came out as a meek whisper instead. She wanted to believe that Damon would never do such a thing; he wouldn't have sex with her, exchange blood with her during the act and create a lasting bond, and then force her to forget it. But even in her sureness, there was a niggling voice of doubt.

There had been little blocks of time, slipping through her fingers lately.

And she couldn't remember why.

She swallowed, glancing up to catch his eyes with hers, just barely missing a faint amount of sympathy in the green depths that he masked quickly.

"So, I'm forcing him to make a choice. It's not fair, to you or Elena. I won't let him play the two of you as Katherine did to-"

"Please, spare me your halfway emotionless Saint Stefan act!" She snarled, lunging at him, pulling at the rope that wrapped around her wrists. "This has nothing to do with saving Elena and I from the pain that you and Damon experienced with Katherine. This is revenge, plain and simple. You've lost Elena, Damon has me, and you're pissed off."

A low growl tore through his throat, the black veins of his vampire visage slithering out beneath his eyes that were turning blood red around the green irises. She steeled her spine when his lip curled up over sharp fangs, glinting in the moonlight threateningly.

She refused to cringe back in fright.

"I'm going to enjoy ripping into your throat and-"

The sharp ring of his cell phone cut him off mid-sentence, making him snarl in irritation before he grinned down at the name that reflected back at him. He swiped the call open to connect, bringing the slim device to his ear before he spoke.

"Hello, brother."

She watched him as he took a few steps away from her, tracking the movements of her once friend. It stung to know that he had taken her for his warped plan of revenge, though his motives were something that she continued to put off thinking about.

It wasn't something she wanted to believe possible.

But there had been looks…things murmured that she had taken notice of and desperately tried to write off. Sure, they weren't public about their almost-relationship (except to Stefan it seemed), but certainly, he wouldn't screw her over.

For her sister no less.

Stefan's large hand sealed around her upper arm in a bruising grip, and she let out a sharp yelp as he yanked her nearly off her feet when lifting her up from the ground. She could hear the faint sound of Damon's snarl through the speaker of the cell phone in Stefan's other hand, but pushed it to the side as she fought against the hold on her arm.

"Let me go, Stefan!" She screeched, twisting this way and that.

Blinding hot pain shot through her wrist suddenly, following the sickening sound of bone snapping, and her scream bounced off the surrounding trees before echoing through the forest beyond.

"Amelia!"

She gasped through her cries, cradling her newly broken wrist to her chest as she glared up with tear-filled eyes at her captor.

He simply grinned back impishly.

"Amelia!" Damon called again, his voice a bit higher with the panic he was trying to hide. "Ames, are you okay? Answer me, piccolo. I need to know you're alright."

She sucked in a ragged breath, nodding even though he couldn't see as she choked out her words. "It's j-just my wrist Day, he…he broke my wrist."

Damon snarled viciously.

Stefan chuckled through the threatening sound.

And Amelia shuddered, fear finally working its way into her blood.

Damon cooed at the small sob that escaped her lips he could just barely hear, soothing away her worry in the best way possible he could as he slammed the front door behind him.

"Shh-sh piccolo. Everything is fine, everything will be fine. I'm coming to get you, and then I'm going to shove a bottle of bourbon up Stefan's ass."

A watery laugh bubbled in her throat, and she sniffed passed the tears. "Don't waste good bourbon on that Day, use the rum instead."

He chuckled with her, though the sound was strained.

"That's cute." Stefan's snide tone interrupted the couple. "But that's not quite how this works."

Damon's laughter was low and gravelly this time, filled with a dark promise of pain and vengeance once he got his hands and fangs on his little brother. "That is exactly how this works Stefanie, let me tell you-"

"No, you let me tell you!" Stefan barked angrily, gripping Amelia's hair so tightly, another yelp of protest escaped her. "You don't just get to come here and run the show! This is MY time Damon, MY game-"

Damon breathed heavily, already pacing toward the trees at the edge of the Boarding House's property line.

"You have to make a choice."

He froze.

"You see, earlier today, when I took sweet little Amelia from her home…she wasn't the only one I took."

His breath came in pants. The slow pace of his undead heart quickened in a way that made it feel as if the organ would beat its way right out of his chest.

"That's right…I took Elena."

He could count with the fingers of one hand the amount of times he had truly feared the outcome of a situation.

Amelia being nearly drained by the tomb vampires, he had been able to counter with feeding her his blood. The same went for the sacrifice of Elena, even though she had been overwhelmingly angry with him afterwards, but hey…she was still breathing. Losing his brother had been heartbreaking, something he kept hidden from just about everyone (except Amelia of course, she had seen right through him), but he knew Klaus wanted him alive. The plan to kill Klaus which backfired and ended in Mikael's death, and Amelia's ferocious glare, had been a debacle…but there was no fear.

"Elena, Amelia, Elena."

This…this was fear.

"Which will it be, brother? Who will you save?"

Amelia stared up at green-eyed vampire in pure shock. It dimly registered with her that not only had she been taken in Stefan's insane plot to get back at Damon, but her sister had as well. But the only thing that she could focus on, that reverberated through her mind, was that Stefan was forcing his older brother to choose between herself and her sister.

One of her closest friends (at one time, she supposed not now) was making her almost-boyfriend (and apparent lover, though she refused to let herself believe still), choose whose life to save.

Hers…or Elena's.

And all she could hear from Damon, was his panicked mutterings and heavy breathing.

"Damon…" She breathed, a whimper escaping her throat unbidden.

On the other end of the line, he clenched his eyes closed, swallowing thickly. "Ames…"

"Tick, tock brother…tick, tock."

~.~.~

It had been half an hour.

Her muscles were so stiff from the fear and adrenaline dousing her system, combined with her cramped and bound position on the forest floor, she didn't want to even think about moving. Her cheeks were stained with tears, the mascara leaving behind smudged tracks that stood out against her skin in the moonlight. Her lip was raw from being bitten and sucked on through her nerves, and small crescent-shaped cuts littered her palms where her nails had sunk into her own skin while she clenched her fists.

Damon wasn't coming.

The first five minutes she had been supremely confident, trading snarky banter with Stefan even though her foot bounced in anxiety. The five minutes after that, her heart rate had sped up in her chest, pounding through her ribcage as the first stirrings of doubt did their best to creep in, even as she steadily pushed them away. The next five minutes…her hands began to tremble a bit, her eyes glazed over with a faint sheen of tears, and she bit down on her lip in an attempt to hold herself together.

Fifteen minutes, and no Damon.

He was just brainstorming, she told herself, making a few calls so that someone else could get to Elena while he rescued her.

Ric…yes, he would call Ric, and everything would be fine. Hell, she could almost bet that he would call Niklaus in an attempt to save her. Without Elena there were no more hybrids, after all.

The fourth set of five minutes had Stefan beginning to pace in agitation, throwing intense and penetrating looks her way almost every fifteen seconds. The five after that, her tears overflowed from where they had been hovering at the brim of her eyes, tracing down her cheeks in slow but steady trails of salt water. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach, the quiet murmur of doubt in her mind turning into a frantic scream.

Now she stood, gazing back at the forest green eyes directly in front of her, a mess to behold and her heart consumed with anger and the sense of treachery.

How…how could he?

She had nearly died for him many a time, had given herself over with Stefan to Nik in order to save his life, and when she needed him most…he chose Elena.

Her sister.

"I'm sorry Amelia."

She could almost believe him; underneath the plastic sorrow in his voice, there was a true hesitancy lurking there.

"I would have been content to destroy the charade, for you to see the truth that he hid from you so easily."

That stung. 

She never thought she would have been deceived so completely, and with little to no hint of the offender's true intentions at that.

"But I'm just…so hungry."

Amelia didn't even have time to react to his words, much less be afraid.

He swooped down on her instantly, pulling her hair back and yanking her neck to the side so roughly, the bones there squeaked in protest. Her scream was sharp and blood-curdling as his fangs ripped through her delicate skin, plunging into the artery that lay beneath almost clumsily. Stefan growled against her skin, pulling at her hair in an attempt to force her into baring her neck fully to him. 

She screamed as loudly as she could, the shrill sound echoing for miles, even though she knew it would do her little good. She fumbled to fight against him, pounding into his solid chest with her fists, but the movement was already weak. Between the amount of blood he was consuming and the amount he spilled in waste, that dripped and seeped down her skin and clothes, her strength was steadily waning.

This was it.

She was going to die, at the hands of her once-friend, and because the man she loved obviously loved her own sister more.

There was so much she hadn't done.

So many she wished to speak to, just one more time.

But she would get none of it…this was her ending event.

She didn't even feel it when Stefan pulled his fangs from her neck carelessly, her limp weight cradled in his arms and against his chest. Black spots and dots clouded her vision, an array of swirling colors hidden beneath them. Her heart stuttered in its beat within her chest, her lungs strained to bring in the necessary oxygen. Numbness…that was the best way to describe how she felt. Even her fury and hurt had ebbed, overtaken with the blissful obliviousness of darkness that unwound its silky fingers, tugging at her ankles to pull her under.

"It'll be better this way 'Melia…trust me."

She barely heard Stefan's voice above the rushing sound in her ears; she certainly didn't hear that he had used the nickname he had chosen just for her.

She definitely didn't remember the small vial of red liquid she had swallowed that morning, just as she had done every single day for months before.

With a quick twist of two powerful wrists; a sharp snap echoed in the inky blackness, a neck snapped and a heartbeat silenced.

Amelia Elizabeth Gilbert, was no more.

She cried.

She screamed.

She retched violently, her entire body shuddering with the action.

There were still blank spots in her memory, things she knew that she should know but didn't, and the pain throbbing through her temples and to the base of her skull was excruciating. Her mind had gifted her with the small bit of information she needed though, heartbreaking and agonizing as it may be.

Damon had sex with her, exchanged blood with her, told her he loved her…and compelled her to forget every second of it.

Stefan's claims had proved themselves to be true.

She had been taken from the warmth of her own kitchen, leaving behind uncooked pasta on the stove, and hauled out into the forest of Mystic Falls. Bound and tied, forced to listen as the younger Salvatore vampire destroyed all that she believed to be true, then gave an ultimatum in trade for her life.

Damon had sacrificed her, choosing Elena to save instead.

And even though he had planned on letting her go, Stefan had nearly drained her of her blood supply and, judging by the soreness in her neck, snapped her neck instead.

She was dead.

Well…as dead as a baby vampire could be anyway.

[vertigovaines]

The Doctor & The Punisher || Part One

summary: frank is experiencing side effects from the experimental drug vaines gave him. he’s not too pleased about it. but vaines is too smart to just be a sitting duck

trigger warnings: mentions of murder, violence, gore, weapons, etc. drugs, needles, and very vague science >>

featuring: @dogcfwar

FRANK: Frank knew Karen had a point. He knew Murdock, despite his many faults, was worth trusting when he told him about Vaines’ former ‘patients,’ how they had been fine at the beginning and found themselves hooked, desperate to get their next hit, the effects of Vydrate waning as the days went on. Frank’s serum was different. As time went on, he didn’t feel less powerful, didn’t feel as if the strength was draining slowly from his cells. Instead, it felt like they were growing, like he was twisting and turning inside out, and if he didn’t stop it soon, he’d grow too big for his own body.

Signing up to this shit hadn’t been a mistake, though. For all the dark, nagging uncertainty it brought, Frank knew he was better at what he did. He knew he was faster, stronger, smarter. He was himself only magnified, just like Vaines said -- but his hands still shook. His thoughts ran wild. He hadn’t slept in a week. And yeah, Karen was right. He needed to be there for this kid, needed to do the right thing.

When the hired thugs went for their shift change, Frank took advantage of the moment of weakness, choking them out and leaving them deposited in a pile outside the back entrance to Vortex. Vaines’ guards wouldn’t pose an issue to him, but that didn’t mean Frank wanted any interruptions, or someone informing Vaines he was there before he made his appearance. He walked down the hall, a little louder than he would’ve liked (this new Frank didn’t do subtlety the best, but neither had the old one) until he got to the door he knew the good doctor would be behind. Frank rapped the door with his knuckles, then stepped back, clasping his hands together as he waited.

VAINES: He had set up a lab within Vortex itself before Fish Mooney's untimely demise. And despite her protege's dislike of him, he saw no reason to discontinue its use. He made sure the guards were paid handsomely to keep his work protected and his presence a secret. It was useful, to have two labs to work from, and this basement room was far bigger than his other location.

Besides, given Frank Castle's past tendencies and the man's disposition towards him, Vaines thought it prudent to have certain security measures in place. He did not expect the decoy lab to work for very long, and he was proven right when he heard a knock on the door. Clients did not come to this location, and the guards knew better than to disturb him. He flicked on his security monitor and saw the men, slumped over by the back entrance. So the time had come, there was no doubt about it.

Vaines, however, was not frightened of the boogeyman at his door. He was always prepared, and Frank Castle would learn that soon enough. Vaines simply pressed a blue button by the door, and then the red one to open it. "Mr. Castle," he said, opening the door wide. "What can I do for you? Come back for another hit already?"

FRANK: A part of Frank had wondered whether Vaines would open the door or not, whether they would have to do this the difficult way. True to form, however, the man's arrogance had the door slide open, had him greeting Frank like they were business associates instead of what was really going down here. Frank was nothing but a lab rat to the man standing in front of him, just like Vaines was nothing but a means to an end, a way to get the results he was desperate for. After Fish Mooney went down, even more criminals were scrambling, trying to pick up the pieces. Frank had taken them all out, had made the city better, but his mission was far from over. Maybe it never would be.

"Shut the hell up," Frank muttered, purposefully knocking his shoulder against Vaines' on the way in, despite the fact that the door was opened wide enough to get a forklift through it. "Thought you said I wouldn't need another one? I'd be able to withstand it, or some shit?" That wasn't why Frank was here. He'd felt adrenaline before, he'd felt euphoria. He didn't get hooked. He maintained his focus -- that's what stopped him from becoming the psychopath the DA wanted him to be.

No, he was here for something else. He was here to kill this man, and he could do it right now, easily, but he wouldn't. Not yet. He needed a few answers, needed to secure his future, because goddamnit, the future actually mattered now where it hadn't before, not half as much. "I feel like I'm gonna crawl out of my fuckin' skin, Vaines," he said, looking over at him. "My goddamn hands, they're-" He cut himself off, holding his hands out to demonstrate how they shook. "Was that expected, huh? Just another screwed up side effect? What else is this shit gonna do, huh?" Frank got what he wanted, he knew there would be drawbacks, but he needed the truth. He could ask nicely, but he wasn't giving Vaines that satisfaction.

VAINES: "Impeccable manners as ever, Mr. Castle," Vaines quipped. His voice was cheerful, jovial even. He glanced at his watch. Yes, there was plenty of time to observe his experiment still. It was all about timing. So much of science was simply a matter of waiting for the right moment, the perfect opportunity, the exact right second. Vaines had plenty of patience, and he was masterful at seizing his opportunities.

"I also said I didn't know what the side effects could be," he said, saying the words slowly, like he was speaking to a very slow child. "The results are unpredictable. We are in uncharted waters, Mr. Castle, you knew that going in. Perhaps the effects will be permanent. Perhaps you'll crave more power. There's any number of reasons why you might be knocking on my doorstep tonight, but I assume whining about the side effects isn't one of them," he said, sneering a little.

He chuckled lightly, and casually stepped away, keeping the table between them. "Interesting," he noted, glancing over Frank's fingers. "I could prescribe something to counteract the shaking, but with your body chemistry changed, there's no telling how effective it might be. But it's only a small tremor, Mr. Castle," he said in a low voice. "You haven't lost your nerve have you?"

FRANK: Frank bit down on his automatic response - though fuck off would’ve been really goddamn satisfying - as he pushed past Vaines into the room. One door in, one door out. No windows, no areas of note that could mean some kind of escape route that wasn’t immediately visible. If Frank shot Vaines down in here, he doubted he would be found for hours, maybe even days, depending on how long it took his loyal customers to start feeling their withdrawal symptoms.

Vaines started speaking, and a muscle twitched in Frank’s jaw. “I was a marine. We don’t lose nerve,” Frank replied. For all that he was now, for all he had changed, that much was true. “It’s not just the tremor, Vaines. I’ve changed. I kill and I … I feel it for hours after. Adrenaline’s one thing, but this? This is something else.” Sometimes Frank sat down on Karen’s couch and felt as if his heart was going to bust out of his chest, like he was going into a coronary right there on the damn cushion. “I got stabbed in the neck the other night. Bled out, had to be litres, but it healed. I’m still here. You know what you did, so don’t give me this bullshit about not being able to control side effects, alright? You had to plan for this. You want to keep your lab rat alive, right?”

Both of them were profiting off this, but Frank knew it could only end one way. The second Vaines stopped speaking again, Frank took the gun from its holster, aiming it squarely between the man’s eyes. “Let’s make this really fuckin’ clear, alright?” Frank said, voice even, hand steady on the trigger -- this was the time it never shook, never had. “You ain’t in control here, Vaines. You never were. I asked for your shit, you didn’t pull me into it. So you’re gonna do what I ask, or you’re not. Piss me off, your precious brain is splattered against that wall. We understand each other?”

VAINES: "I'm sorry, do marines also whine about their hands shaking?" Vaines asked, a smug look on his face. He tutted under his breath. "What did you expect, Mr. Castle?" he asked, checking his watch again. He picked up a pen and scribbled down a few observations on his notepad before looking back up. "I didn't realize I would have to give you a history lesson," he said, smirking at the man.

"The original super-soldier serum was designed to enhance and amplify everything," he said slowly. "According to its creator, Dr. Abraham Erskine, the man, the test subject, was the most critical ingredient of the serum. He described it as 'good becomes great, bad becomes worse,'" Vaines said, in a choppy, dramatic German accent. "A bit poetic for my taste, but he wasn't wrong," he drawled. His eyes met Frank's, and they were shining with glee, with pride. "My serum does the same thing, only better. More effectively. Anything you're feeling, Mr. Castle, is not something I created in you, not something the serum put inside you. It's something that was already there, and now has been unleashed. I've unlocked your full potential, body and mind. You should be thanking me," he said.

But he was smart enough to know that would never happen. When Frank pulled the gun out, he was hardly surprised, just sighed and made another note on his pad. "Case in point, Mr. Castle," he murmured, glancing up at him. "You've always been a man who uses brute force to achieve his goals. You kill without compunction, without hesitation, so of course you think the best way to get me to do what you want is to wave a gun in my face. Has any of this really surprised you?" he asked, scoffing lightly. He set the pen down and folded his hands in front of him, smiling serenely.

"Tell me. What is it you expect me to do? I told you in the beginning there was no going back once we started. No backing out." He shrugged, spreading his arms wide. "So what if you feel your kills for hours? So what if your hand shakes and you heal better than ever before? Surely, given your profession, that's a bonus for you. Unless of course... There's some other reason you're feeling, shall we say, uneasy about the changes. Is there something you're not telling me, Mr. Castle?" he asked pointedly. "I can't help you without information, after all."

FRANK: Vaines started talking. As per usual, he started talking and he didn’t fucking stop. He just kept going, as if he was a lecturer in front of a class and Frank was the dumbass in the back row, not understanding a word he was saying -- a waste of time, a waste of resources, a waste of energy. Frank knew the opposite was the truth, that for all Vaines was talking to him like he was an idiot Frank had more than provided for him, and maybe that was what was pissing him off the most. Because yeah, Vaines did what Frank asked. He did exactly what Frank asked, even if he was irritating while he did it, even if he did have a small number of days left on this earth after this was over, after Frank was sure he was stabilised. But things had changed, since their first meeting in Vortex. Things would change even more before the year was out.

“Thanking you?” Frank repeated, the gun still firmly pointed at Vaines’ head, though his finger didn’t move on the trigger. “You should be thanking me. You want to peddle this shit out, you want to get other buyers, you think, what? You think they’ll be like me? Nah. You know that.” Frank knew himself he was the ideal candidate for this shit, even if his head left a little to be desired. “I don’t kill without hesitation,” Frank said, voice low. “I kill because there are people that will rape, murder, steal if I don’t. This -- this is my job, it ain’t my life.” Vaines’ eyes, then, seemed to cut through him, the same piercing intensity of the colour in that goddamn vial. Frank’s grip on the gun wavered, thoughts of Karen, of Amy, of the kid that hadn’t even been born coming through his mind. “I need to live,” he said finally. “I need to live, and if this shit is killing me, Vaines, you’re gonna tell me right now, you’re gonna fix it, and then I’m gonna kill you. We had a deal, asshole. That surprise you?”

VAINES: "Well, I certainly not going to tell you to shoot me, now am I?" Vaines said, a little wearily. He was growing tired of this game. But he figured he should determine whether this aggression and paranoia was normal for Frank, or an amplification from the serum. For posterity, so the next subject would be even more perfect. Because it was hard to deny how perfect Frank Castle was. How readily he took to the serum, how quickly it effected his mind and his body.

"That's true," he admitted finally. "But I'm sure I would manage. Science always finds a way," he quipped. It was the sort of thing his former colleagues would've put on a motivational poster, probably with a kitten in a lab coat. Vaines though, needed no such insipid reminders. He was confident in his own abilities, and he didn't need a man like Frank Castle to use them. "And I have given you the means to live your life very well, Mr. Castle," Vaines said, spreading his arms wide. "I fail to see the problem here."

There it was. The little waver, the hesitation, the need in Frank's eyes. "Of course I'm not surprised," Vaines replied, rolling his eyes. He sighed lightly, and checked his watch again. "A little disappointed, yes. As you said, you were a rather excellent test subject. But there are many rats in this city, and so many, many people looking for strength. Though none quite as predictable as you," he said, a smirk toying on his lips. "I always knew it would come to this. I had hoped you were telling the truth about not being compromised -- after a man who lives only to kill doesn't feel that... need to live, does he? A man who's life is killing, well, he isn't afraid to die."

Vaines laughed and stepped around the table, walking towards his door. He stood to one side, glancing at his watch once more. Any minute now. "It's a shame you aren't that man, Frank," he said, leaning against the wall and shrugging. "Luckily, I know exactly what kind of man you really are. I know you, Frank," he said, grin splitting his face. "And that's why I know, you won't be killing me tonight. Not unless, of course..." He glanced at the door as footsteps thundered down the hall. "You want to kill them, too."

The door burst open, and the first officers streamed inside. The boys in blue had arrived, just in the nick of time. It helped of course, that Vaines had alerted them the second Frank Castle arrived, warning them a few days earlier that the wanted man might make an appearance. And Vaines, at least, always kept to his word.

When he felt like it anyway.

FRANK: Vaines was good at putting on a show. If Frank didn’t believe wholeheartedly in the fact that the man was too arrogant for his own good, he might have thought that it was a front, a way to bluff Frank into thinking he had more firepower than he did -- but despite the wide gestures and the sweeping statements, he still had a tell. Everyone did, in the end. Frank wasn’t a spy, far from it, but he wasn’t an idiot, either. Vaines looked down at his watch for what had to be the third time in the past ten minutes, and Frank stayed silent, just tilted his head slightly as the other man continued to speak. He didn’t even get the chance to argue that Vaines had no idea what kind of man he was, because he could hear something above them. Footsteps, though it was clear from the way they were moving they were attempting for silence. Amateurs, then. No private army, or guns for hire. No, this was something else -- something that Vaines knew Frank wouldn’t be able to mow down with his bare hands, nevermind the guns on his belt.

“What the fuck did you do?” Frank said, cocking one of the guns, holding it so that he was exactly a beat away from blowing the little shit’s brains out over his precious laboratory -- but a beat wasn’t enough.

“Frank Castle!” an authoritative voice called out (at least, Frank guessed he was going for authoritative. It would be more believable if it didn’t waver). “NYPD! Put the gun on the floor, now!”

Frank’s lip twitched, and he didn’t drop his gaze from Vaines.

“I said, surrender, Castle! Now!”

He could see in the test tubes in front of him, and the dull monitors, that there were at least fifteen cops surrounding him, and from the sounds of it, there were more coming. If it was a year earlier, Frank would’ve pulled the trigger anyway. He would’ve taken Vaines out even if it meant he was shot dead at the same time. But now -- now he knew what Vaines was trying to accomplish here. He’d read Frank’s poker face, and called him on his bluff.

Frank let out a grunt, but bent over slowly, dropping the gun to the ground. The cops behind him let out a collective breath of relief.

“Hands up! Feet apart! Do not move, Castle!”

“I ain’t going anywhere, calm your tits,” Frank said, as one of the cops stood up. Her hands were shaking as she cuffed him, but when she read him his rights, her voice was perfectly smooth.

“Francis Castle, you are under arrest for murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, aggravated assault, arson, perjury, conspiracy-”

“You son of a bitch,” Frank snapped, because it had been building and building and building and he couldn’t take it anymore, didn’t know how Vaines had wrangled it that Frank was the one getting taken away in cuffs -- but then again, Vaines had to be richer than God now, right, in money and in secrets? Two more cops stepped forward to grab him, but they found themselves taken an inch off their feet when Frank stepped up to Vaines.

Another two ran forward, and another two, and another, until eight were pulling him off him, and even at that it was a stretch to say they were succeeding. “I’ve been in jail before, Vaines,” Frank said, low. “You know how long it took me to get out. I’ll do the same this time.”

“Castle, pl-”

Frank spat on the ground in front of Vaines. “I’ll put my knife in your throat. I’m the last thing you’re ever gonna see, you piece of shit. Hope you enjoy your time as a dead man walking, Vaines.”

[anhed-nia]

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

When my concerned parents faced the early and unpleasant realization that they were raising a ravenous little horror hound, it meant that they had to somehow split the difference between their strict curbing of my potentially mid-warping viewing habits, and their principled encouragement of unfettered reading. That must be how I came into possession of a copy of Thomas Harris' harrowing police procedural The Silence of the Lambs at the tender age of 10, even as the film adaptation was being touted by many viewers as The Scariest Movie of All Time. I carried that book around like the Bible well into my teenage years, reading and re-reading it with even greater fervor after my parents finally decided that the film was sophisticated enough for me to watch without it turning me into some kind of animal-torturing arsonist. (Said screening was chaperoned and accompanied by an academic post-viewing family discussion, of course) The decision seemed to make sense; after all, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS had swept the Oscars the year it was released, scooping up wins for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. This is not to say that my intellectual and art-appreciating family regarded the Academy as the ultimate arbiters of taste and achievement. I mention these accolades more to point out that, as my parents had surely noticed, the film holds a certain power over viewers on both sides of the high-low cultural divide, a spell that has hardly weakened in its twenty-seven years of life.

As a child, I certainly responded to the same things that piqued the general public: Anthony Hopkins' iconic performance as Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, his ambiguous romance with purehearted FBI trainee Clarice Starling, and the controversial perversity of serial killer Buffalo Bill. Though the story shares the influence of real-life ghoul Ed Gein with classic shockers like PSYCHO and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, the impact of SILENCE is more akin to that of DRACULA. Much of the enduring discussion about the film revolves around the tantalizing chemistry between the preternaturally elegant Dr. Lecter and the virginal Starling; the rest is somewhat unfortunately focused on Ted Levine's eccentric performance as the (pseudo-) transsexual murderer at large, which has come under some understandable scrutiny. However, it would be unjust to reduce Jonathan Demme's movie to a gothic romance, or a gory shocker, or a campy cult item with ironic eroticism and a great soundtrack. There simply have to be better reasons for a movie to stick around this long, lingering in the minds of stuffy critics and the hoi polloi alike.

In preparing my statements about what makes THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS stand out, I learned something very shocking: It began its life as the directorial project of Gene Hackman. Hackman eventually dropped out when the script produced by (Oscar-winner) Ted Tally turned out to be too violent. Prospective Starlings like Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan were similarly disgusted, so Demme got stuck with a less likely candidate in (Oscar-winner) Jodie Foster. Personally, I find (Oscar-winner) Demme himself to be an unlikely candidate. The director cut his teeth on exploitation movies under Roger Corman, and by the time of SILENCE, had distinguished himself as a hipster extraordinaire, directing classic performance videos for the Talking Heads and Spaulding Gray, as well as chic comedies speckled with cameos from the likes of John Waters, and underground music firebrands from New York's new wave scene. Time would prove that Demme and his frequent collaborator, cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, were perfect choices for this grim project, which only supports the idea that there is something more happening with SILENCE OF THE LAMBS than its gruesome violence and epic sexual tension.

In light of these more famous elements, one might expect an adaptation of Thomas Harris' grim and seductive novel to be grandiose, expressionistic, swathed in a dense physical and emotional mist, rumbling with its own pomp and circumstance. An orphan from the hills of West Virginia, Clarice Starling is a tragic hero from the start, guarding her broken heart against a world of condescending and hostile men. Her mentor Jack Crawford seems to distinguish himself from the herd by assigning her the ambitious task of interviewing notorious serial killer Hannibal Lecter for the FBI's files--but in fact, Crawford is counting on Starling's feminine charms and naivety, secretly using her to manipulate Lecter into profiling a killer at large, Buffalo Bill. In spite of this nasty revelation, Starling sticks with it, suffering Lecter's high-minded insults and penetrative analysis of her character, and eventually earning his admiration. She proves herself not only brave and determined, but a detective of unparalleled wit and instinct, single-handedly taking down the polymorphously perverse Buffalo Bill in his moth-filled subterranean lair, rescuing a high-profile victim where the entire rest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have failed.

This all seems to portend a bigger, louder movie than what has been committed to film. However, the book has a certain organic grit to it, something honest, downbeat and tragically real, which Demme and Fujimoto grasp instinctively. The film provides a dry, frank view of the life of Clarice Starling: the toil of academia, the drudgery of physical conditioning, the undermining attitudes of her mostly-male peers. Shot in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Starling's world is bleak and desolate, but earnestly so, without the pageantry of the film noir and Universal horror movies with which it is so easily compared. Demme's education under B-movie king Corman shows here, and makes for a much more compelling iteration of the story than we might have from someone less accustomed to economy. While SILENCE has developed a reputation for its brutality, the film is not remotely so gore-drenched as many traumatized viewers would have you believe. That said, it may be the film's generally stark and desicated look, its workaday-ness, and its endless (wonderful) dialogic exchanges that throw into relief its comparatively minimal violence, which usually appears not in scenes of assault, but in crime scene photos or autopsy scenes.

The blanched, dreary look of the film also offsets the emotional plight of Clarice Starling. She is afforded no real romance, external or internal. The petite and clear-eyed orphan is visibly used to, and exhausted by, the constant need to look out for herself, and SILENCE will see her shuffled from one humiliating personal trial to the next. She is led into a perilous situation by a mentor who pretends to respect her abilities, but who really counts on her to fall short of discovering his scam; She is trapped in roomfuls of macho cops who scarcely acknowledge her; She has to negotiate the sexual attention of evidence technicians and bureaucrats; She even has semen flung at her by a particularly rambunctious neighbor of Lecter's. (And how often do you see that in any movie? As gross as it is, it has a way of reinforcing the extreme adult-ness of Demme's often dry, methodical movie) And then of course, there is Lecter himself, who turns Starling's personal vulnerability into a form of currency with which she can buy the scant clues that lead her to her quarry. Instead of eroticizing the anomalous femininity that Starling brings to the traditionally masculine world of law enforcement, Demme constantly reminds you of her fear, her embarrassment, her alienation. One can also imagine the temptation to Ripley-fy the character, presenting her as a fully-formed badass not to be fucked with. Instead, by eschewing both these femme and fatale modes, Demme describes Clarice Starling as three-dimensional human being whose heroism is extremely hard-won. While the character is undeniably one of the great Strong Female Protagonists, Jodie Foster's performance somehow defies the cinematic semiotics of gender altogether, giving us a person whose most important qualities are purely psychological. Tak Fujimoto drives the point home by frequently filling the screen with closeups of her face, focusing us on what she thinks and says, taking the proverbial heat off her body. Even as Lecter probes her for painful biographical information, Starling's sexuality remains entirely private--still a rare thing in any movie with a lady lead.

I don't mean to suggest that THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is principally successful because of its plucky girl detective--that contributes to its greatness, but not in the feminist fashion that I seem to be angling for. I am reviewing this movie presently because I recently found myself looking back on my own history with it, comparing my feelings with those of popular audiences, and thinking, "What is The Silence of the Lambs really about?" It can't be so beloved *only* due to the sexy slow burn between Anthony Hopkins' Count Dracula and Jodie Foster's Mina Harker. It can't be *just* a matter of the exotic insanity of the gender-bending madman sewing together the flesh of his victims and dancing provocatively to "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus (a sadly mysterious musician who Demme certainly knew from his involvement in the New York underground). All of these characters, and their respective dynamics, contribute to the important thrill of this movie, but not in the way that most people seem to think.

Rather like the director's earlier work with iconoclastic punk icons and indie auteurs, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is about authenticity. Hannibal Lecter, the unparalleled genius whose culinary expertise is part of his murderous MO, is a serial killer because he has such refined taste and decorum that he cannot live peaceably among other people. He favors victims whom he perceives as tacky, pretentious and impertinent--Starling knows that he would never harm her because, as she famously remarks, "He would consider it rude." Lecter is fascinated, not by her youthful beauty as Crawford had hoped, but by her sincerity. Starling is brilliantly intelligent in her own right, as she proves through her police work, but she doesn't have an ironic bone in her body. She is the most unpretentious individual alive, and nothing could be more interesting to Lecter, who preys upon people who are untrue to others and to themselves. Meanwhile, we have Buffalo Bill, who is attempting to change his sex by crafting a full-body "woman suit"--but, as Lecter insists, the killer is not a "true transsexual" whose legitimate identity is that of the opposite sex. Buffalo Bill is someone who was reared by his abusive parents to hate himself so much, that he is compelled to escape his natural identity; becoming a woman is less important as a matter of self-actualization, than as a means of becoming an entirely different person, *any* different person. He has been so radically alienated from his own essence by this self-loathing, that he is incapable of authenticity of any kind.

That, I really think, is the secret power of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: the at-once satanic and profoundly innocent declaration, "to thine own self be true". I would really love to get into a deeper dive on this movie at some point, to discuss what I think must have been the very best and very last time that Anthony Hopkins gave us a fearless and unpredictable (and in this case, somewhat hilarious) performance; to insist that Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill and Brooke Smith as his would-be victim actually give the best performances in the whole movie; to talk about the problem of the Ubiquitous Daddy Figure (of whom there are no fewer than THREE in this movie) in so many narratives about powerful women; to simply analyze the movie's sly psychological techniques, like fully humanizing Brooke Smith *just* by showing her singing a few bars of a beloved pop song in closeup, immediately before her fate takes a disastrous turn. (I would probably not take such an opportunity to investigate accusations of homophobia and transphobia, which requires a smarter and more directly experienced voice than my own) There is really a lot to say about why SILENCE is so powerful, without even threatening to address its most famous features. Unfortunately, I don't have the gumption or the madness to commit all that to Letterboxd at the moment, so I'll have to be satisfied with my primary conclusion: That the film's simplicity and gritty naturalism mirror its commitment to spiritual purity, honesty, and self-knowledge at all costs. Even at the high cost of wearing a muzzle, any time they let you out of your cage.

[createandconstruct]

Things that Go Bump in the Night

Are sometimes things that also squeal...

(From 019 of @raptorlily​‘s autumn prompt list: here. And Just a warning for minor descriptions of gore and injuries)

Ao3

Spooky Tunes for the read

"Betty. Stay here."

The swishing ponytail indicates the series of no's before they start leaving her mouth. Back and forth, back and forth, until her voice stutters the refusal.

"Jug, no, I-I-I-" Her eyes address his own - he realizes her neck is no longer swiveling to and fro. The irises are wide, blown with the sliver of light from the car's front console. He has a hand on the passenger door, a foot breaking into the damp night air, but he takes a moment to reach across the middle to grab her hand. It’s dark, but not the blinding kind, he can see that her eyes are flooding with tears.

Betty's nose twitches twice. Its movement shakes a tear from her right eye. It's light and can only skim slowly down her cheek, every centimeter down seems to line in time with the clicking of the car’s blinker. Usually, he'd take the role of wiping it away but the risk of moving from the already open door keeps him stagnant. Getting the door open was only half a victory, he still needs to go through it. Shutting it would bring them back to square one and that’s the last place he wants to be. 

He really doesn't want her trying to leave the car again.

"Let me handle it, Betts," he orders, though really pleads, because this is Betty. Not matter what, if she wants to she'll bolt from her seat and follow after him.

Although to his luck (and dismay) only a whimper replies and he finds Betty's eyes devoid of any reflective stars as she turns from the glowing digital clock and presses her cheek into the seat. The single tear dips into the leather and vanishes. "Hey, I know it sucks," and it does suck, it really does, he wishes he could turn back time instead of just running fingers through her hair - not to mention, if he's honest with himself, he doesn't want to go out and inspect the damage.

Jughead lets his hand skim Betty’s cheek before pulling it back to his side. "These things happen, okay?" He offers the reassurance with, what he hopes is, a managed a smile. Not that it matters much when it's followed by a sudden rap of wind that has her jumping from her reprieve and him cursing as it nearly shuts the car door on his foot. A huff escapes him as he juts out his knee to push it back open. He turns to Betty one last time.

"Keep the car running; I'll be right back." He moves to go once her wobbling chin gives a nod and, just in case, he pulls the beanie from his scalp and places it into her half-clenched hands. After all, he's doing this so only one of them gets blood on their hands. The hat might as well be a piece of himself as he can feel her nails wringing safely into the fabric instead of her own flesh even he turns away from the grateful quiver of her lips. The feeling that he did something right follows him as a final burst of warmth before he takes the first step into the bitter October night.

Empty.

It’s the only word he can find to describe such a night.

As he rounds the visibly dented hood of the car he thinks that the word may not pertain to this specific night but rather the feeling every man has when they stand in the middle of an endless road without a sign of life or light. With only the monstrous void of trees to greet them. Jughead crosses diagonally across the street with that same void right on his heels and closing in from the front as moves away from the safety of the lone flashing yellow high beam. Rationally he knows, the only sound to be heard is the groaning of the car engine and the scratch of gravel at his feet, and yet... there's something primal crawling along his spine. And for it, he has no words.

But the farther up his back it climbs... And the further from the blinking light he moves... Empty, is no longer the word his brain wants to use… Not when he finds the smeared trail of red just as the tip of his boot kisses its edges and squeaks with the slick friction.

“Oh fu- come on, seriously?” His demand to the universe goes unanswered as he backs away and drags the bottom of his boot once, twice, and then once more, to rid the shiny liquid from its rubber traction. The misstep is his own fault, he came out expecting some unpleasant residue across the road, he should’ve been watching his feet instead of the evening atmosphere.

He decides to chalk this up to the theme of shitshow that’s been repeating all night instead of some universal trickster at work.  

First Veronica’s pumpkin lights fit and now blood is forever stuck in the lining of his shoe.

With his eyes to the ground and irritation pressing down his brow he proceeds along the trail of blood to the tree strewn edge of the road. Each foot now hesitant with the possibility of stepping into something worse, something thicker, something bodily and internal like-

Jughead freezes. And it’s not just a distinct pause, his body jolts back and forgets how to function. He’s yet to reach the end of the bloodied trail but with a few steps closer his ears have picked up a faint and sickening sound.

He knows his body is rooted to this Riverdale outskirts road. He knows the small noises breaking into the night air can only be one thing... but curse his mind and sentimental memory but somehow that’s all forgotten. Right now, he only knows how similar this sounds to the small hiccupping squeaks Jellybean once made when she was six and split her bone at the wrist.

There’s a shift of wind that blows a cold stroke across his face and it gives him focus away from the drying in his throat and the upward pumping of his stomach. He’s never heard a dying animal before. He’s never heard anything dying before. He’s hardly prepared for it because now it means he has to do something about it.

He’d gotten out of the car to move a dead deer off the road. Now, he realizes - as he wipes the sweat of his palms over the pockets of his pants - that Bambi might need him to finish the job. 

He spares a glance over his shoulder to the flashing headlight across the road. He owes the universe one thanks despite this theme of bad luck. Betty’s still sitting safely unaware in the car.

He steals one more breath of damp night air that strokes along his throat like a shock of cold water after peppermint to ready himself to take care of this like he promised. Any more dawdling and Betty will come out to him and the blood, and the squeaks, and the whatever remains that we're still piecing together this soon to be roadkill.

She doesn’t need to know her driving didn’t kill it in one blow.

With careful steps Jughead closes in on the squeaks that lie just beneath the deepest shadow in the off-road grass. Every press against the ground follows the pitiful sounds. 

Step, squeak… step, squeak… step, squeak…

He’s so close now that the noise is comparable to high toned whimpers, with sad little breathes of pain in between. A note of observation that only circles him back to Jelly and her withering form with the far-off shouts as his father clambered towards them. 

For a moment it makes him wish he wasn’t doing this alone but that’s not a thought he can hark on for long. It's gone in a second along with the wind in his lungs. Another thought is seeping into him and it sends his mind careening back to the second thing that crossed his mind when he started thinking anything about this night.

Not empty.

As his boots flatten the mush of dried grass and crinkled leaves and his eyes adjust over the shadowed mass lying an arm’s length away, he tries and fails to keep his mind from fitting uncomfortable pieces together.

To stop from thinking why these cries aren’t similar to Jelly’s, but why they’re identical.

“-lease…”

Why the form at his feet no longer has the shape of what he swears he saw through the dashboard window.

“Help me.”

Why it’s reaching out with arms and hands and the face of-

A gasping choke clicks out from his jaw in a disbelieving question.

“A..Archie?”

His best friend.

Pitched up gurgles froth from the pleading mouth at Jughead’s feet. Thick streams of liquid and substance - he almost needs turn his head away as it travels over the slope of blood stained lips.

“Please, it hurts… help me, please…”

He wants to, he wants to, his heart his screaming and his hands are shaking, begging to reach forward and cradle his friend. Crumble together the broken pieces of flesh that are strewn haphazardly over the unforgiving ground. His throat tugs open in his mouth trying to let out a scream along with the vomit burning in his stomach.

But the uncertainty. The questions littering his mind. They’re pulling him back. They’re climbing up and prickling his spine, keeping him in a state of sweat and shakes and fear because this can’t be Archie.

Archie was at the party.

Archie is at the party. Waiting with Veronica waiting for them to come back.

Archie’s at the party at his house miles away from this backstreet road and mangled bloody mass sitting on his couch exactly how Jughead and Betty left him when they ran out the door to buy blinking string pumpkin lights.

Exactly how he was when they were on route back to the party when their car swerved down this blacktop void and hit something.

If Jughead is anything tonight it’s that he’s certain they hit something. Maybe it wasn’t a deer, but he knows, it wasn’t a fucking human being.

It wasn't Archie Andrews.

And another irrational and creatively stupid part of his mind whispers from the endless abyss of horror movies with certainty that the thing that froze in the beams of their headlights and flung with limbs and body wriggling across their hood until it crumbled in a broken heap on this side of the road - maybe it wasn’t an animal either.

A steady thud increases inside Jughead’s chest. His senses seem to heighten. The whistling brush of the wind upon every leaf, the distant tick tick of the car headlight from across the street, the slow and heavy slither that scratches against rocks and twigs as this thing, this thief still wearing Archie’s face pulls itself desperately towards the edge of his toes. It looks at him with trust and an eagerness Jughead can’t place as it reaches a deformed and twice bent arm out to make a plea for his hand.

Jughead can’t even take a step back. He can only watch as Archie whispers around bubbles of pain and blood for help. He wonders if his eyes are falling out of his head, if there’s some force pulling them into the empty black he’s finding in the eyes of this illusion of his best friend. 

If someone is pulling a string in his arm to bring it up and slowly towards the open outstretched hand of his trembling friend.

“Please, Jug, please.”

His fingers have straightened, the end of his nail is nearly brushing against the red tip of the exposed bone coming for him.

 A far away voice - that may be himself - ponders how the pleading sounds like more than one. Like Archie but something unworldly. Something sinister. Something dripping with an alluring feature that sounded like the soft and warm voice of-

“Jughead!”

His body jolts awake like he’s been thrown from sleep into the sudden break of a moving car. The stretching hand a spec away from his own recoils and flings upwards to cover its owner’s face just as a long metal stick swings by to collide with it.

As the weapon meets the exposed bone of the arm the entire body flings back with a scream and Jughead flings himself away from the spot he had somehow been spirited away at.

“Jesus Christ Betty!” He hisses and blinks his eyes from the flopping and whimpering form of Archie Andrews to Betty Cooper as she stands tall with knuckles tight around a now bloodied wrench in her hands. 

At his curse she flings a look across the darkness to him.

“It was a deer,” she decides to say, eyes like two full moons and face beginning to tighten along her jaw. “We hit a deer, Jug.”

He takes a step forward to reach out, grab her shoulder, and pull her towards him before shooting a look to the figure, Betty brings the wrench out in front of both of them and grabs the sleeve of his shirt in a strangling grip.  

“Archie called asking where we were…” she adds and Jughead isn’t sure what that will mean for them because as Betty brings his world back to sense Archie is no longer whimpering in pain at their feet.

Either his hearing has morphed or the whimpers have changed. Jughead swears he hears a high-pitched snarl - something that comes before a witch’s shriek. It perforates the air bringing his spine to a coil like a snake and rattle a song of danger into his head. 

He takes a step back, or Betty pulls him back, moving them closer to the car, but this withering form, as it crawls towards them inch by inch he feels that close distance grow instead of shrink. With his back turned perhaps the void has swallowed the car and spit into the other side of reality, keeping them trapped in this twilight zone of no escape.

But he can't look away now. 

He can't check to make sure the car is running or that Betty is behind him. The piece of him seeking sense, the logic lodged in his gut, it tells him to trust that reality has not completely bent. That everything behind him is as expected because with the low shriek bleeding into a murmuring of animal like garble what other choice does he have.

There’s a clicking of an unhinged jaw, jumbled speech overflowing with drool and a long slobbering tongue that can’t fit into a mouth, this is no longer a hurt animal desperate to hurt back. No. This a monster ready for a hunt.

The sudden pitch of a drawn-out screech bellows across the night like a howl and Archie is gone. Despite what his eyes and ears had found, Jughead knew, his best friend was never there to begin with. Only a trap he couldn’t see through, and now that he can, his mind cannot catch up.

The neck of not Archie is a shadowed writhing thing that juts up to bring into view what Jughead’s brain can only define as eyes - many many many eyes - to meet his. They move together following the center largest one from his face to his inspect his body up and down before moving to do the same to Betty by his side. 

It’s satisfied. A long thin, abscess of teeth and tongue opens under the dancing and gleeful eyes.

Jughead can't think but his feet certainly can and with that they're fleeing before his mouth can open and follow Betty’s with a scream. Some part of him fumbles an arm out to clasp around her wrist and pull her with him before she’s stuck in their pursuer’s path.

The song and dance of straightening limbs comes from behind them as Jughead barely takes the first lunge into a sprint. No longer meeting the creature in the eyes, turning their backs and running away with loose quivering limbs - it doesn't take the second howl that shoots across his shoulder, bringing an earthquake into his ear for Jughead to know fear, the first was enough - they're prey now.

Betty scrambles along to catch up with his pace, tripping over his legs as they stretch across the empty black top to the flashing yellow car light on the other side.

Another sound breaks from behind them. No longer a howl.

Jughead nearly whips his head around but stops halfway as he catches Betty's face. She's looking back with a expression that shows he doesn't have to (doesn't want to).

The sounds are now hungry slobbering snarls. A wet mouth open for its meal.

Jughead throws an arm messily around Betty's waist, pulling her entire weight against him as he throws himself the finally feet to practically slam against the door.

Animal pants and pounding feet are coming for them.  

A hail of muttering slips his lips.

“Get in the car! Get in car! Getinthecargetinthecar!”

Jughead tears the handle back to pull the door open, pushing Betty inside before she can protest. The inching shadow of death is closing in and he pushes her across the leather seat away from its grip. Only then does he try to follow his own command, pushing his body of disconnected pieces all pumping with fear and flee to work himself through the door.

Apparently, he's not efficient enough. If not for Betty’s grip locked around his wrist he'd surely be pulled half way across the street by now. Instead, his arm pops from his socket as it fights to stay with Betty in the car while the rest of him finds the grip around his ankle too compelling of a force to let down.

His body falls from his halfway climb into the front seat and his head takes a major blow against the ground. It has him blinking away stars and trying to remember what's forcing his body into a cardiac arrest.

A clicking jaw of too many teeth penetrating his ears has his eyes focusing to the sight at his heel and his slight head injury is forgotten.

Half of Archie is wrapped around his foot. 

Half being his hair, jacket, pieces of remaining skin, and a somewhat recognizable grin. 

The other half is still stuttering to morph from the nightmare he knew that it was. 

A thing of extra skin and fur, that belonged in a film or another world, that's staring down at him with a look of glee because it knows the last thing Jughead will see is the face of his dearest friend before his flesh is ripped from his head and his guts are sucked from his middle.

This is it, he thinks, this is how I die.

“Get the fuck-!”

A snap of Betty’s hand flies by his chin. He doesn't blink but somehow misses the movement because one second the creature from hell is smiling with the teeth of his brother, preparing to snap its long-broken jaw around his leg to rip him apart and eat him alive…

“-Off him!”

And in the next the center bulbous eye of the beast is breaching open with thick blood like liquid as the wrench in Betty’s hands digs deep into its socket. The grotesque image of tearing flesh and the sound of screaming from the devil’s throat is enough to give Jughead’s body to catch up. He yanks his foot away and crawls backwards with hands and feet only to freeze again as the monster flings about to dig the metal blade from its now completely inhuman face.

Luckily, Betty catches Jughead in his falter and finishes the job, pulling him up the threshold and into the car. He at least has enough sense to slam the door shut after she does.

“Bet-”

The harsh rev of an engine comes to life as her foot slams against the gas. She flashes him a manic look after she's pressed the door lock three times in succession.

“I kept it running like you said.”

And then they're blowing backwards. The car screaming from the wheels as Betty guns it in reverse. His hand shoots to steady himself on the plush ceiling and his other flops helplessly over her’s that’s gripping his beanie wrapped around the center shift. Their travel backwards extends long enough for him to draw blood in his cheek to distract from the searing pain resonating in his shoulder and dig his fingers around Betty’s knuckles so he can skim her palm. 

The moment of acceleration ends. Betty brings them into a half break, which nearly throws him from his seat, and the next thing he feels is his hand following her own forward as she shifts to drive.

Through the window, ahead, in the stream of their single yellow headlight, the scrambling form of their hunter works to do everything but remove itself from their path.

Jughead doesn't  think anything besides tucking his pulsing and popped out arm against his side just before Betty lifts her knee to crash her foot against the gas.

They surge down the road for the seconds it takes to return to their starting place…

And for the head of the wailing, wriggling, shrieking monster to disappear under their hood.

The car flings them forward, up, and back. The distinct sounds that began the night come in to repeat.

A bump, a thump, and--

A squeal.

Only this time, they keep driving.

.

.

.

Later, when he’s dragged to the couch, Archie’s hands pressing warm and firm against his swelling shoulder and Betty shivering at his side with 300 pumpkin lights tangled in her bloodied hands along with his own, he’ll find himself for the second time that night questioning sanity as for the first time he finds himself grateful to listen to the sound of Veronica’s hysterical and unnecessary screams. 

[builder051]

88 pleeeease! Also just stopping by to say that your blog is fantastic and your writing never fails to make my day :)

Thanks so much, anon.  You’re sweet!

Hello, Criminal Minds!  I don’t write for Spencer as often as I do for my other fandom characters because I just don’t feel like I have a ton to add that hasn’t been done a million times already.  This one’ll be no different; workaholic/sick Spencer is totally a common trope, but hey, here goes…

I also don’t have a fantastic case idea at the moment, so may apologies for the blurriness.  This will be set somewhat mid-series with the “dream team” in place (Hotch, Rossi, JJ, Emily, Garcia, Morgan, Reid).  And I realize now that I’ve written this that I tend to have people barfing in trash cans in most of my CM stories…Again, sorry, but I think that is a bit of a unique thing that doesn’t get used quite so often…

___

He knows early on that it’s not going to be a good day.  Spencer rolls to the edge of his bed to silence the alarm clock that’s threatening to bore a hole in his skull with its unwelcomely loud chiming.  His body feels heavier than usual as he reaches through the cold November air and slides the switch on top of the plastic clock.

He quickly sheds his pajamas and slouches to the bathroom to splash water on his face and take a brush to his hair.  Though he’s still squinting with sleepiness, Spencer gives his reflection a good once-over.  He doesn’t care much for the countenance that stares back, so he drops his eyes to the cracked laminate countertop.  He’s pale, with dark circles under his eyes.  His hair looks especially dark in contrast to his skin, and it falls around his chin, drawing attention to collarbones that are a little too prominent, and, as the eye runs further down, ribs that probably shouldn’t be so visible.

He should probably eat a little better.  But Spencer rarely has time for sustenance besides over-sweetened coffee and occasional takeout.  This morning, for example, he should grab something like a granola bar or a piece of toast on his way out the door.  But the longer he stands there, the more it looks like there’ll only be time to grab his briefcase and sprint out the door.

Spencer’s 3 minutes early for the start of his shift, but for him that means he’s right on time.  Caffeine is the first order of business, and he pours himself a Styrofoam cup of steaming liquid before he even sits down at his desk.  The headache that’s becoming routine starts pounding as he dumps multiple packets of sweetener into his beverage.

There’s a new manila folder on top of Spencer’s neatly ordered desk.  He flops into his chair, careful not to spill his precious coffee, and immediately flips open the packet of photos to take a look.

They show three women, all artificially blonde, all middle-aged, and all dead.  Dumped in some kind of swamp grass.  Stab wounds and bloodied clothing making them look like leftover Halloween decorations of the worst possible kind.

A chill wracks Spencer’s shoulders.  He’s not normally bothered by gore; he wouldn’t be able to do his job if he was.  He holds his coffee close to his face and inhales the warm vapor coming off the top.  Spencer takes a small sip, hoping the uncomfortable flip his stomach produces in response is just a fluke he can forget about.

“Hey, pretty boy,” Morgan calls across the bullpen when he arrives a few minutes later.  “Getting a head start?”

“Hm?”  Spencer looks up from the photo absorbing his attention.  Despite all the staring, he can’t seem to take in the details.  And apparently it’s the same case with Morgan’s words.

“Haven’t drunk all the coffee, have you?” Morgan asks, swinging by Spencer’s desk on the way to his own.

“No, I’m…this is my first cup,” Spencer replies.  He clears his throat to rid his voice of the sleepy, gunked-up tone it carries.

“You ok?” Morgan poses, piercing Spencer’s gaze with his own.

“Oh, yeah.”  Spencer takes a sip of coffee while he brews up an excuse.  “Just, didn’t sleep very well last night.”  It’s a lie.  For once, he did sleep through the night.  But it seems to have hardly made a difference because he’s still exhausted.  Plus headachy, and cold, and lacking interest in consuming anything, even coffee.  His symptoms seems to be compounding under his nose.  But admitting he feels sick is about the last thing Spencer wants to do today.

“Well, get going on that coffee, then,” Morgan says with a sympathetic chuckle.  He nods at the case file on Spencer’s desk.  “I think you’re gonnaneed it.”

Half an hour later, the agents are in the briefing room.  Garcia walks them through the basics of the situation: three women dead over three days, and each kill more violent than the last.  Spencer slumps over the conference table, his elbow on the hard wood and his chin resting in his hand.  The blown up images on the projection screen seem to be vibrating before his eyes.  Spencer isn’t sure if it’s something happening with the technology or if the tremor in his fingers is working its way through his whole body.  He blinks hard, but nothing happens.  Except for the drip that decides to tickle the end of his nose.

“Wheels up in twenty,” Hotch is suddenly saying.  Spencer’s sure there was a good amount before that, but he’s completely missed it.  Everyone shuffles their papers and heads back to the bullpen to collect their things.  Spencer stays bent forward for a moment, bringing his fists to his eyes in an attempt to collect himself.  His hands are cold and his face is warm.  An ache in his low back is beginning to skulk up toward his shoulders, leaving the greater part of his body feeling tender and sore.

“Hey Spence?”  A soft hand comes down on the back of Spencer’s chair, then on his shoulder.  “What’s going on?” JJ asks.

“I’m…I’m ok,” Spencer says, his voice choked with the sour taste in his throat.  His palms are growing sweaty, and he unclenches them to press them flat to the table.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Spencer weakly insists.  But then the dim room tips slightly to one side, and he has to drop his clammy forehead to the hard surface in front of him.

“Hey, breathe, ok?” JJ instructs.  She strokes Spencer’s arm and leans toward him.  He can see the ends of her long blonde hair dancing on the wood grain of the table in the low light.

Even her dainty touch is oppressive, and Spencer shrugs JJ’s hand away.  “Alright, it’s ok,” she intones.  “Is it a headache?  I can tell you’re nauseous.” Though she doesn’t touch him again, Spencer can sense her fingers hovering over the exposed skin on the back of his neck.  “You’re really warm…”

“I’m fine,” Spencer chokes out.  His throat is closing up around the urge to vomit.  “Just need to…go get my bag.”

“No, no, if you’re feeling this bad, I know you don’t want to go hop on a jet…”

“I can work.”  Mucousy and acidic saliva is getting harder to swallow back down.  He gags involuntarily and sends a fine spray of coffee-tinged spit onto the conference table.

“Ok, it’s ok,” JJ soothes.  Her footsteps hurriedly pad around the table, then back with the addition of a rustling trash bag.  “Here you go.”  She holds it while Spencer shifts 45 degrees and starts dry heaving.

Nothing comes up.  The few sips of coffee he’s consumed are already too far through his system, so it’s all empty air and a few ropes of saliva that fall into the bin.

“You’re alright,” JJ whispers.  She one-handedly pulls out the chair beside Spencer’s and sits, still propping the trash can up on his knees.

A figure appears in the doorway of the dark conference room.  “Is everything ok?” Hotch’s voice asks.  He flips on the light, and Spencer immediately screws his eyes shut against the sudden brightness.

“Just…not feeling so good,” JJ relays as Spencer frantically fights a retch and tries to find words to downplay the obvious.

“I’m fine,” he forces out, sitting back upright and wiping his sleeve over his mouth.  Lightheadedness threatens to down him, but Spencer fights it with white knuckles clamped over the edge of the table before him.

“No, you’re not,” Hotch says.  “You’re sick.  You didn’t need to come in this morning.”

“I can…I just…can still…work,” Spencer pants, knowing he’s fighting a losing battle.

“I’m sure you can work,” Hotch states.  “It’s just not the smart thing to do right now.”  He takes the trash can from JJ’s grip and nods toward the door. She smoothly takes her leave, trailing her hand sweetly over the back of Spencer’s head on her way out.

“Feel better, ok?” she says.

Spencer nods dizzily and wraps his arms around his torso for warmth and to protect his sloshing stomach.

“Reid,” Hotch says.  “Your dedication is impressive.  But you need to take care of yourself first.”

Spencer sighs.

“You can work from here with Garcia.”

Spencer’s alight with the opportunity.

“But, tomorrow.  Or the next day,” Hotch clarifies.  “For now, you need to be at home.”

[thisdaynews]

Mayor Pete: Portrait of the B.S. Artist as a Young Man

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/mayor-pete-portrait-of-the-b-s-artist-as-a-young-man/

Mayor Pete: Portrait of the B.S. Artist as a Young Man

The very traits that usually impress—his fluency in political language, the go-getter’s resume, intense ambition carried in the vessel of a calm, well-mannered persona—increasingly are being greeted with skepticism and even derision. Notably, this is coming from his peers.

“Buttigieg hate is tightly concentrated among the young,” a writer at the Atlantic observed. “Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left,” read a headline in POLITICO Magazine. “Swing Voter Really Relates to Buttigieg’s Complete Lack of Conviction,” said the headline in The Onion. The satirical site has been vicious toward him for months, in ways that evoke the wisecracking cool kids at the back of the class mocking the preening overachiever in the front row.

The Buttigieg backlash, by my lights, flows from origins that are less ideological than psychological. I noticed it some time ago with some—certainly not all—younger journalistic colleagues in particular. He torques them in ways that seem personal.

They are well-acquainted with the Buttigieg type. They find his patter and polish annoying. They regard his career to date—Harvard, Oxford, McKinsey, the mayoralty—as a facile exercise in box-checking: A Portrait of the Bullshit Artist as a Young Man.

Above all, they wonder why the artifice and calculation that seems obvious to them is them is somehow lost on others.

These Buttigieg skeptics in my experience typically overlook another possibility: His admirers aren’t oblivious to fact that he’s partly B.S.-ing. It just doesn’t much bother them. I’ll go a step further: Viewed in the right light, his teacher’s-pet glibness and implacable careerism are desirable traits.

The essence of modern American politics in recent years is contempt. The decades-long erosion of respect for nearly all institutions—the federal government, business, academia, the media—was what tilled the soil for Donald Trump’s election. His insults of adversaries, his gleeful shattering of familiar norms and precedents, are the living expression of the contempt Trump backers feel toward an established order they believe is not remotely on the level.

The opposite of contempt is a deferential faith that, on balance, the established orderison the level. Its most prestigious prizes are worth the effort, worth the ass-kissing along the way. B.S. ultimately is a form of respect. The fact that Buttigieg has spent a lifetime standing on his toes to pluck these apples—president of the Institute of Politics at Harvard, a Rhodes Scholarship, and now a shot at becoming the youngest person ever to reach the White House—is the living expression of that faith.

It’s not just young people who have ambivalent feelings—a stew of admiration, disdain, envy—toward his precocity and candlepower. Sure he’s smart, but probably no smarter than Ken Jennings; no one is asking the Jeopardy champion to run for president. The question is: To what end are intelligence and ambition harnessed?

“The words are great, but he has no soul,” said one senior Democrat whose name would be familiar to any POLITICO reader. “All head and no heart,” said an operative who helped make Bill Clinton—another young man in a hurry, for whom smoothness sometimes came off as slickness—president a generation ago.

The questions about Buttigieg’s B.S. quotient, however, are the same ones that might go to any politician, or arguably to successful professionals in any field in which words, argument, the management of image (as opposed to measurable statistics like runs batted in or ordnance dropped on target) are coin of the realm.

Buttigieg was born in 1982. I was born a couple weeks before the JFK assassination in 1963. Thinking about his birthday, it dawned on me that I was about the age he is now—after years as a reporter that included a long stint covering the Clinton White House—when I began to realize that almost everyone in Washington is a semi-fraud.

There’s a big difference, of course, between whether the emphasis is more on “semi” or on “fraud.” The point is that most people in the political arena are wearing an impressive uniform of some sort—senator, White House aide, news anchor—that from a distance disguises infirmities and insecurities. Up close these are plainly visible.

It was initially a shock to learn that the presidential chief of staff who I initially had found so imposing was made fun of behind his back by his own staff for being substantively over his head, or insecure about losing influence, or unduly vain about media coverage. When I became an editor, after years of being a reporter, I was startled to learn that some well-known Washington journalists were not fully on the level—they might be good at filling up a notebook with news, for instance, but the actual stories that appeared under their bylines were heavily rewritten.

At some point—usually at an age older than those young political activists who find Buttigieg insincere and presumptuous—one learns to shrug at these contradictions, or even genuinely to appreciate them. The fact that Buttigieg in his 20s was probably wagging his tail at landing a job at McKinsey—another validation that he is one of the smart kids—and this achievement now is a source of embarrassment in a party that has turned anti-corporate is kind of funny. But it is hardly an outrage. He served in Afghanistan; does it matter that he was well aware the military tour would be good for his political career? Just because someone may be slightly unctuous in his or her ladder-climbing doesn’t mean they have no genuine convictions, or their achievements aren’t impressive.

Activists on the left are surely correct that Buttigieg does not represent the disruptive spirit of the age, nor is he an especially plausible vessel for the kind of foundation-shaking change they seek. Looked at through the prism of temperament and character, as distinct from his policy positions, he may be the most conservative candidate in the 2020 race, Trump included.

Buttigieg surely would be too conservative for his party and the moment alike—too establishment, too cautious, too Clintonesque—were it not for two things. The first wave of coverage that greeted his early presidential campaign tended to emphasize the potential of his campaigneven thoughhe is young and gay. It’s clear over time that both these are essential elements. Imagine tweaking those parts of the bio. A 48-year-old straight former mayor of a small city would hardly be quickening pulses on the 2020 presidential campaign trail.

Two radical developments made it safe for someone like Buttigieg to be conventional in most respects. One of the developments—the legal and cultural embrace of gay marriage—is now so accepted that it’s hard even to recall that twenty years ago it was unthinkable, and even a decade ago it was a bridge too far for Barack Obama. The other radical development—Trump and his presidency—is even more consequential. If Trump hadn’t shredded the concept of plausibility, turning“I can’t imagine something like that happening”into an obsolete phrase, few people would find Buttigieg plausible in 2020.

But Trump did shred the old standards, and Buttigieg is plausible. What’s more, as he makes the turn from “mid-30s” to “late 30s,” it’s a little easier to ask: How young is he really?

He is one year younger than Al Gore was when he first ran for president, in 1988, and just a few years younger than Dan Quayle was when he was elected vice president that year, or when Theodore Roosevelt was when he was elected vice president in 1900, and ascended to the presidency less than a year later. Or, in a 2020 context, he is eight yearsolderthan Joe Biden was when he first became senator, and the same age that Amy Klobuchar was when she was elected top prosecutor for Hennepin County, Minnesota—a jurisdiction with more than eleven times the population of South Bend.

Too young, too impatient, too nakedly ambitious? Maybe for some voters, maybe not for others. But on Mayor Pete’s birthday, admirers and skeptics are both right on one count: We’ve seen his type before.

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