#maybe a month ago and a man born about... what twenty three years and about a month ago? fuck it! family dinner

[no27-autonation-honda]

congratulations to Mme. Pascale Leclerc, who has surely just experienced both the funniest and most unhinged weekend a mother could ever have. Dear fucking christ, I hope your middlest son brought you a bottle of champagne for yourself, ma'am.

[ebongawk]

pls show us how eddie would ask chrissy to marry him ❤️❤️❤️

The ring was burning a hole in his pocket.

The ring had, in fact, been burning a hole in his pocket for, like three goddamn months now. Because he'd been kinda-sorta-basically flying by the seat of his pants this entire relationship, up to and including his potential proposal, and three years of accidentally tripping and stumbling into all of the right messes with Chrissy made him think he could just buy the goddamn thing and wait for the most opportune moment.

The ring itself was an unanticipated surprise. Eddie had been shopping for a new-to-him amp, and buying those off the belt was a mistake he'd never make again. Rewiring older models with newer technology was basically Henderson's forte, though, so every time he and Chrissy popped back into Hawkins to visit Wayne during their long stints on the road, Eddie had a couple projects that Dustin's eager little mitts made grabby hands at.

(If Eddie found another tech kid on the road, he was pretty sure Dustin would spit and hiss and claw the newbie's eyes out so he would never be able to touch Eddie's projects again. He fucking loved that little shit. Had no clue what he was gonna do when the kid went off to MIT in a few months.)

So, yeah. While Eddie had walked into that pawn shop with a singlemindedness, he'd still perused the aisles like a perfectly respectable patron.

And the ring had been right there. Grinning up at him from the display case a winking in the overhead lights when it caught his eye.

Chrissy was literally right up the street, struggling over which books she wanted to trade in at the used bookshop so she could read some new material. That was the worst part about being on the road – they never got to keep anything. Like, sure, yeah, they had some shit stored at Wayne's, but they couldn't pop into Indiana whenever Chrissy needed to drop off her books so they could fit new shit in the van.

If they could, Chrissy would have a veritable library by now. He'd told himself a year ago that, as soon as they hit a label, Corroded Coffin's first purchase would be Chrissy Cunningham's dream house so she could have shelves of books. The guys were all in begrudging agreement.

"Hey, uh," he'd said, grabbing the attention of the shopkeeper and pointing at the ring. "What's that?"

About six months ago, he and Chrissy had been walking a mall in search of a birthday present for Wayne when a jewelry store grabbed her attention. Eddie had kinda expected her to beeline for the engagement rings – and maybe that was his own underlying fantasy, honestly – but she hadn't. She'd gravitated toward birthstones, pointing out his and hers and Jeff's and Gareth's and Grant's and Wayne's, gushing about which looked best together in her opinion.

"That's a, uh, ring," the cashier said, looking down at the thing. "With, y'know, stones and shit."

"Very fuckin' descriptive, man, thanks," Eddie responded. "How much?"

"For you, kid? Twenty bucks."

"I'll give you fifteen for it and thirty for the amp."

"Deal."

He didn't even get a box. The guy had been 'fresh out', allegedly, so he'd given Eddie a little drawstring bag for it.

Which was fine. Easier to hide. He just had to remember to transfer it around his three pairs of jeans while they were doing laundry.

"Look, that's your birthstone," Chrissy had said that day at the mall. "A garnet. And mine's right there! Aquamarine!" She'd sighed. "If I had been born a day earlier, I would have been an amethyst. But our stones look pretty together, don't they?"

They did, in his humble opinion. And wouldn't you fucking know it, Eddie had found a garnet ring inlaid with two aquamarines on either side at a thrift store in fucking Norton, Kansas when they'd stopped at a motel for a couple days to rest before a show in Kansas City. He'd even had it assessed at a jeweler in Saint Paul a week later just to be sure.

The thing was legit. The jeweler had polished it and everything. From there, it was just actually proposing.

But, as the weeks wore on, Eddie had to wonder if his decision to wait for the right moment might've been a fucking mistake. What was the perfect moment? What if it'd already come and gone and he didn't even know it? What if it never happened and Chrissy got upset and left him before he had a chance? Did she even want to get married? They were still young, and, outside of her shitty high school relationship (that predated her amazing high school relationship with him, thanks so much), Chrissy had never really dated around. What if he popped the question and she laughed in his face?

(She wouldn't. He knew she wouldn't. But, shit, what if, y'know?)

So, yeah. That fucking ring had been sitting in his pocket for, like, ninety-seven days, whispering platitudes and anxieties in equal measure. Building him up and tearing him down at every opportunity, like it found joy in watching him rise higher and fall farther.

Or maybe that was his own stupid brain.

They'd been booked on a mini-tour to open for another band that was just a few steps beyond Corroded Coffin. The money was kinda shit, but last night, at their show in Reno, a few people had been wearing the merch they'd sold weeks prior at a show in Vegas, and that had made Eddie feel like a goddamn superstar. He'd played his fucking heart out, and Chrissy said they sold out at the merch booth before the headliner even took the stage.

He'd even been asked for autographs. What the fuck?

Afterward, he and Chrissy were squeezed together into their motel room's bathtub. It was entirely too small for the both of them, but Chrissy sat between his bent knees, letting the hot water and scented bubbles relax them after what felt like a ridiculously long night. As though he could ever really relax with Chrissy's naked body all wet and pressed against his.

Her head was on his chest, listening to the slow thudding of his heart as the radio played almost imperceptibly in the background. Chrissy had gone so far as to light a few candles, and on the floor next to them was an open bottle of wine they were taking turns sipping.

It had to be somewhere around two in the morning, and Chrissy was probably exhausted. But she knew Eddie was always off-the-walls after a show, so corralling him into a shared bath was to help him wind down.

"You did amazing tonight," she said, her fingertips tapping against his shin where her hand rested. "All of you guys, but you especially. You were electric up there."

"Did you even look at the other guys?"

"Of course! It's hard not to, but I always look at you the most. Promise."

"Pretty sure you're legally required to say that, as I'm the one who makes you co––"

"Eddie."

Laughing, Eddie pressed his lips to her crown. "Thank you, sweetness."

"I'm serious. Like, I think that was the show, you know?"

He knew what she meant. Their discovery show. The one where some talent scout was hiding out in the crowd because he'd heard Corroded Coffin's name making the rounds. The one where they'd be getting a phone call first thing in the morning asking to meet at an agency.

Their we finally fucking made it show.

"Unlikely," Eddie said, wet fingers brushing a few strands of loose hair back over her ear. "But I appreciate the vote of confidence."

Chrissy said nothing for a moment. Then, using some expert maneuvers won over years in dance and cheer, she pivoted, working her lithe little body until she was comfortably situated in his lap. Eddie's arms automatically wrapped around her, sinking lower into the water so she didn't go sliding off his slickened skin and into the faucet.

"You guys are amazing," she said without a hint of irony coloring her tone. Wet hands cupping his jaw, she nudged her nose against his. "You have a contagious stage presence and you play incredibly. There's no way you aren't going to make it. Got it?"

"Yeah?" Eddie asked, eyes on her lips. "You gonna be my little cheerleader the whole way?"

"I've been with you this far, haven't I?" she shot back, wearing that gorgeous grin he loved so much. "I'm not going anywhere, Eddie. You're stuck with me."

"Hey," Eddie said, affronted. "That's my line. Who's stuck with who?"

Wiggling her hips in his lap (which was... yeah, doing things), Chrissy smiled. "I think you're the one who's literally stuck here, love."

Tucking his thumb against her chin, Eddie just chuckled, drawing her in for a kiss that tasted of promise. Of this future she was certain would come to fruition, where they stood hand-in-hand as recognition fell upon the band. Because Chrissy had sacrificed so much for him, for all of them, and Eddie would be damned if he didn't have opportunity to return the favor.

Oh shit, he realized as she chased his lips for another kiss. This is it. This is the fucking moment.

And his pants are on the other side of the goddamn room.

Shit. Shit. Okay. He could make this work.

"Hey, uh." He smiled when she kissed him again, the wet skin of her squirming in his lap again as she made a little huff of disapproval. "Wait, wait, sweetness, hang on."

Chrissy blinked at him. One hundred percent caught off guard because Eddie had never turned down her advances before. (How could he? He had an actual goddess sitting naked in his lap. Who was he to tell her no when she wanted to, y'know, get closer?)

"Did I, um. Did I overstep?"

"No, fuck no, just, uh––" Grabbing Chrissy's long-handled loofa off the tub rim, Eddie set a firm hand on Chrissy's thigh, anchoring both of them as he leaned as far out of the tub as he could to drag his jeans toward them. Sloshing water out of the side and making Chrissy yelp his name as she grabbed his shoulders to hang on.

The handle slipped from his grasp, clattering to the floor with one pant leg right there. Eddie leaned further out, stretching his fingertips as Chrissy squealed. He heard the water splashing, but that just seemed a small price to pay.

Whooping in excitement, he managed to get a small piece of denim between his middle and ring fingers, yanking the jeans across the floor and digging around in the pockets for that fucking bag.

"Eddie! They're gonna get all wet!"

"They'll dry," he responded, finally finding the stupid ring bag in his back pocket. He dropped the jeans uncaringly into the puddle he'd created, resettling Chrissy against him and tangling his hands in her hair as he kissed her question of what he was doing off her lips.

"You know I love you, right?" he asked, a little breathless from the combination of half-crawling out of the tub and the spark from their kiss. Chrissy, wide-eyed and confused, giggled a little when she nodded. "Like, more than anything?"

"Yes, Eddie, I know."

"And I wanna spend, y'know, the rest of my goddamn life with you. You know that, too?"

Chrissy blinked, her smile fading with parted lips as realization seemed to dawn new horizons across her face.

"I-I mean, yeah," she said after he waited a second for her answer. "Eddie, what––"

"I, uh, picked this up a while ago," he admitted, brandishing the tiny bag. "Been waiting for, like, the perfect moment, I guess. But, I dunno. Kinda realized that, maybe all our moments are perfect, y'know?"

He opened the bag, tilting it so the ring fell into his opposite palm. Her eyes widened, jaw falling slack as she gasped.

"I just want to make more moments with you, Chrissy," Eddie said earnestly. "Before and after a quick trip to the altar, I mean."

"Oh, my God," she breathed, trembling fingertip reaching out and gently stroking the gold band. "Are you–– Are you serious?"

"You are the one thing in my life I am one-hundred-percent serious about, sweetness," Eddie replied, softly brushing a thumb against her cheek. She glanced at him, so briefly he almost missed it, but she couldn't take her eyes off the ring. "Marry me?"

"Okay," she said, voice still breathless. Blinking, she shook her head as though she were falling out of a trance, her eyes instantly filling with tears that spilled over her cheeks, mixing with the water of their bath. "I mean, yes, yes, of course, Eddie, oh, my God!"

Throwing her arms around him, Eddie heard more water as it splashed over the side of the tub. It made him laugh, burying his face in her hair and holding her close as she cried into his neck.

"I love you," she sobbed, pulling back and letting him open his fist so she could take the ring. "Oh, my God, and it's our birthstones!" The realization made her cry harder, and Eddie had to help her get the ring on her finger. "You remembered!"

"Of course I did," he chuckled, his own eyes wet with the amount of love he felt for this girl. "I remember everything you say to me."

"We both know that's not true."

"Okay, well, I make an effort, at least!"

She laughed through her sobs, pulling him in and kissing him soundly. Crying, laughing harder, then crying some more between desperately locked lips. Completely soaking his jeans next to the tub, but Eddie couldn't care less.

He had his fiancée in his lap.

"I love you," she gasped between kisses. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"Love you, too, little wife," Eddie grinned. "So much."

Yeah. Perfect fucking moment.

[aphroditeslover11]

If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around

Neil Lewis x Reader

I’m back and this is the cheesiest, fluffiest thing I have ever written!

Neil and you had been friends for as long as either of you could remember, it was tradition that your families would spend a lot of time together around the Christmas season. Your parents had been friends since before you were born, and eventually decided that they wanted to become neighbours. Neil had been born three years before you, but as soon as you were old enough to join in with his games he refused to spend a moment separate from you. It was him that you had always gone to when you were having a problem with homework, granted he wasn’t the smartest but he always tried his best. It had also been him that you had phoned six months ago after going through the break-up from hell. You didn’t really know why you had made that decision, you had moved away from home that year to go to univerisity and he was busy opening a video store in another town with some friends, but for some reason he felt like the only person you could talk to, that would want to listen and understand. 

For you that night had signalled regaining contact with an old friend, becoming close again, for Neil it had been something quite different. He had had feelings for you ever since you were 17, of course he knew it was inappropriate given that he was twenty, so he just stayed away. Now you were twenty yourself, desperate and calling him for help, and all because you had been hurt by some other man. For him, this phonecall had reignited the spark that he had tried so hard to extinguish, burying it under a blanket of indifference and denial to try and move on with his life. His feelings for you had clearly not gone away.

Neil needed a plan, Christmas was on its way and he had a good feeling, perhaps now was the perfect time to really tell you how he felt. He went into Gumshoe Video alone one evening, clearing the entire Christmas shelf into a bag and taking them home to watch any romances he could find - this was the best place to find an idea. He finally stumbled upon love actually, the fourth film he had watched that night, at around 3am. His idea was born.

~

You had gone home for Christmas, your parents were throwing a party for Christmas Eve as they did every year and everybody in the neighbourhood had been invited. For some reason though, Neil was nowhere to be seen. You were disappointed to say the least. It was around nine o’clock  when there was a knock on the back door. Everybody else was half-drunk and doing Christmas karaoke so it was you that went to get it. You opened the door, bracing yourself for the inevitable cold gust, only to find Neil on the other side, wrapped in a big coat with a hat, scarf and gloves. You were about to pull him inside when he moved back, putting a finger to his lips to tell you to keep quiet. He walked off to the side then, seemingly to get something. What the hell was he playing at? He returned moments later with a pile of white sheets of paper, holding them up for you to read. He had such an anxious smile on his face.

Y/N, we have grown up together. Read the first one, he then promptly dropped it, revealing the next one behind.

You were my best friend and I was yours. Next sheet.

We’ve always been partners in crime. I still remember getting bollocked for covering your mum’s car interior in glitter because it was her birthday. He dropped that again.

By this time next year I might be a millionaire.

Maybe I’ll be dating Keira Knightly.

But there is something that I really want for Christmas. He dropped this to reveal the final slide, with a picture he had taken of you laughing at a barbecue last year. Below it was written Will you be mine? He shrugged, opening his arms and inviting your answer.

You ran out into the cold, laughing and smiling in glee. You threw yourself into his embrace as he dropped the slide in the process. You reached up to his face, crashing your lips against his in a warm and comforting kiss. You only broke it to answer his question:

“Yes Neil. Yes, I’ll be yours.”

[badpancakelol]

the one where steve harrington is the monster in the woods

Hawkins has never been one of those towns that you could point to on the map unless you were looking for it. Swaddled between the wide expanse of nothingness on either side, the town is less than a town, really. If anything, and Steve had figured this out when he was only young, only tall enough to slide the hard-covered dictionary from its place on the bookshelf into his little, grubby hands, the town was better suited to one of its other synonyms — a village, maybe. It was a little archaic, yes, young Steven had noticed this, but wasn’t their town always a little bit backwards? 

It was a well known fact that nobody had tried to dispute for years, that Hawkins wasn’t interesting until you turned of age. A long time ago, before Steven’s parents were born, before Loch Nora had been a place for two-to-three story houses, deep pools, and house parties, that age had been eighteen. Steven had been regaled of stories, through thick books and musty paper, about how you were meant to drink, and fuck, and drive, smoke, party, undress, and press soft hands into softer flesh — feel the pleasures of a lesser man — destroy yourself from within. 

Then, there was the accident. And the age had been heightened to twenty-one. 

What if it happens again? They’re only children, really, why are we letting them do this? They shall be condemned. Young Steven had read the words on the paper, had squinted his eyes at the accounts of the courts in swirling text that had been ingrained into him from a young age. His script was loopy and small, quaint on the pieces of paper that his father had handed to him. Young men can write in its proper form, his father had said. And he had always said that, called Steve a young man — as if he was never truly anything but a being who was fully formed and grown, from before his first breath.

It had always rubbed him the wrong way. The way that they would leave him as if he were of age, days to weeks to months, alone and alone and alone. The walls of the house used to have this ugly wallpaper, patterned with golds and blues and whites. It was so terribly ugly, Steven had thought, with paintings of oranges and their yellowing leaves, and the stripes of sky-tones that reminded him of summer. His nanny would dust the walls as if he had dirtied them, tutting with that warmth within her skin, that made him want to be swallowed whole. She would dance around the house like a film, humming in that soft voice, skirts making dainty circles as she twirled and cooked. 

When they had gone through house renovation number one, the wallpaper was the first thing to go. Ugly, unprofessional, childish, beach-y. Steven didn’t know why he missed it. Why he cried at the sight of the workers peeling and scraping the essence of summer from his house. But as soon as he had been spotted within the dust and the rot, he had been pulled from the construction site, ushered away to the small townhouse that they were staying in. 

But, focus, we are not talking about young Steven, or his father, or his house. We are talking about Hawkins. We are talking about how boring, and mundane, and how utterly isolated, and normal, Hawkins is. The people there are ordinary, if not a little bit grating on the psyche if you asked Steve, but wasn’t that the magic of a small town in the middle of nowhere? Everyone knows everybody, every in and every out. Things that they didn’t even tell them in the first place. The best kept secrets are the ones that everyone knows but nobody acknowledges.

If Steve had to give an example of this, it would easily be Eddie Munson. Everybody knew what he dealt. Everybody knew, in a roundabout way, that he didn’t live with his parents, that he could be found in the trailer park, that he was not the most popular of bodies within the town, the village. He should have, could have, easily been busted so many times — dealing to his fellow peers in high school — but why wasn’t he? Everyone was aware. Deeply, intrinsically, as if it were one of the little pieces of knowledge that you were bestowed upon at birth — like how Steve had been branded a young man before he had even the chance to prove himself a boy — people had always just known. 

And, the more he thinks about it, the more it seems a little bit silly. And then a little bit smart. And then a little more smart. Munson doesn’t deal anything harder than weed. Or, if he did, he was smart enough to not let it become knowledge in the public domain known as high school gossip. So, the cops know, and the parents know, and the students know, and those that are not buying from him turn a blind eye, because he has not been the cause of an accident, something like the accident, and, in turn, he has been branded as safe. By parents, by buyers, by the gods-damned law enforcement. 

(This doesn’t mean that he is liked. Steve has seen, had used to almost-enjoy and participate, in the weird hierarchy pissing contest that came with being proclaimed a teenager, social, King. He had seen the way that people would purposefully shove their shoulders into Munson’s unknowing ones, or the way that people would yank on his long curls. 

A small part of Steve thought that it was the same attitude that preteen boys would employ to get a girl’s attention. He had voiced these thoughts to his then-friend, Tommy H. and had been punched — a little too rough — between his shoulder blades in “friendly” warning).

Steve is no exception to the boringness of Hawkins. If he were to describe himself, he might find that he was a little odd, but not enough that he was a pariah, or an anomaly that needed to be taken away and put down. He played his part, just like Munson played his.

He lived in the upper-class part of town — something that used to be a point of pride, but has now turned into one of contention — had average grades, and an average sized friend group (if you didn’t count the kids, of course). He played basketball, no longer the captain after Hargrove had trampled into the village, and was on the swim team. Steve Harrington used to be a party boy, indulging himself on those pleasures that his age should not have allowed him to: alcohol, weed, sex. But these were normal teenaged things, and could be forgiven by parents by the bat of his eyelashes, or a disarmingly apologetic smile. He goes to school, picks up his girlfriend (who he is in love with, he thinks, but who maybe doesn’t love him), has alright attendance, and is loved by those that know him, and those that don’t. This is who he wants to be, and this is who he will continue to portray himself as.

Steve Harrington is normal, and Hawkins, Indiana, is boring, and it will stay that way, if Steve has any say in it.

And so, as any normal teenager does on a Wednesday morning, Steve listens to the radio on his counter as he finishes his piece of buttered toast, and he gets into his car. The maroon colour compliments his skin and his closet in a way that makes him a little more happy than he’d like to admit, but he’s allowed to have this little pleasure, isn’t he? Today, he’s chosen that one deep red-brown sweater that Nancy swears makes him look soft. 

When she had first said it, it had made him happy. To believe that he had the opportunity to be soft again — because a man was all hard edges and empty words, and corporate collars, shoving people into lockers for the hell of it, and shotgunning beers because it seemed so easy, or, maybe, that was just his father. What his father had made a man to be.

(There’s a little part of him that wears the sweater because he’s afraid that Nancy is slipping away. He doesn’t know when it happened — nothing at all had happened over the Christmas break, no arguments, or disagreements, fights, spats, whatever they could be branded. But Steve had seen the way that she cast longing glances in the direction of Jonathan Byers, and the way that she was cancelling dates without telling him. He had tried to ask her what was wrong, to try and atone for some sin that he had not even been aware he was committing. And she had just smiled without teeth, and said he was seeing things, and for a moment it felt like he had never known her at all.

So, there is a little part of Steve that wears the sweater because he knows that Nancy likes how it looks on him, as a last ditch effort to try and, he doesn’t know— seduce her into loving him again. To peacock around as subtly as he can, to say please look at me like how you look at him, please look at me as if you love me. There is something there, Steve realises in a bout of self-awareness, about how time is cyclical, and he is stuck making the same mistakes that his mother had fallen victim to).

As he pulls into the Wheeler driveway, Steve picks at a loose thread near his sweater cuff. Nancy is already waiting by the steps of her house, adorned in that turtleneck-jumper combo that she loves to pull out as the weather starts to cool down. Steve reaches over the centre console to open the door before she gets to it — a wide smile on her face as she settles in, and Steve reverses back onto the road.

“Nice sweater,” she huffs, fingers dainty and sure as they hover over his shoulder.

For a while there, it was if they had created their own language together — a call and response type thing that he had learned to love. Certain phrases were meant to be met with other phrases and words in kind, and certain items, objects, events, could trigger the language to be spoken. It was like playing a little game, trying to figure out the intricacies of their maybe-love.

“Nice sweater,” he retorts, takes one hand off the wheel to hold the fraying edges of her own clothing, tugging at the threads that could so easily be weaved with his.

Steve replies in the language they have adorned and forged together, looking down to the warm colours that she wears, the way that their styles have assimilated to be similar to each others, and isn’t that meant to be what love is? To not know where one ends and the other begins? To be tangled in so deep that you are not yourself anymore, that the pieces you had given had been taken in and fostered until something completely foreign had been born? There is a part of him that wishes that he still had parts of himself left to call his own, that Steve hadn’t went all in on this one moment as a teenager, not of age. But what is he supposed to know? He is just young, and boring, and horribly mundane.

When they reach their destination, Nancy mumbles something about having to find her friend — Barbara. They had been close since the day they were born, she had said, and Steve longed for that kind of connection. To be able to call someone your other half. For a little while, he thought that he would be able to call Tommy H. and Carol that — his thirds, really. But then he had wisened up to the way that they were treating people, the way that they had looked to him for some fucked up kind of approval, as if he was the only thing in-between them and popularity.

(He knows that there is a version of those two that had actually been his friends. A part of them that he had loved and been loved, in turn. But it is so much easier, Steve thinks, if he only thought of them as the sum of things they did wrong).

As he watches Nancy walk towards the school building, Steve crumples up the college letter that he had asked her to look over. There’s no point in him trying, really. His future had been set out for him. Steve Harrington was set to work for his father’s company from the same time he was branded as a young man. There was no leaving Hawkins, or living in a share house, or studying late nights, in the cards for him.

Instead of wallowing in his grief (and, no, he would not admit to it if anyone had asked), Steve gets out of his car, tracing Nancy’s long-left steps to the front of the school. This is his last year of high school — then he will need to get a part-time job, as per his future plan, and then slave away in his corporate body of a corporate shell, until the day he dies in a corporate coffin. Wonderful, right? At least he’s eighteen, now.

The halls of the school are the same as always. A little too loud for Steve’s taste, filled with people trying to impress their peers in ways that they will see as embarrassing in a couple years. Steve nods at those that meet his eye, smile polite enough to still be considered a little bit of a heartthrob, despite his fall from kingship last year. He revels a little in the way that people seem to like him, even if it is just the idea of him that enthrals them. Steve reaches his locker, smells the heavy and crazed scent of one—

“Stevie!”

Eddie Munson.

“Munson.” Steve greets, not unkindly.

“Still on last names, I see. Oh, how you wound me!” Eddie says, puts his hands up to his heart as is he had been shot. “I missed you yesterday at gym.”

They are not friends. Not to Steve’s standards, no, and definitely not to Eddie’s. For all intents and purposes, they have nothing in common. Eddie is owned by the public domain of high school as much as Steve’s front of a King is — that is to say that Eddie is an open book, whereas Steve is closed shut. Munson isn’t afraid too blast his music as loud as he can as he screams through the parking lot, trying to drown out the similar tones coming from Hargrove’s car, just to piss him off. His shirt is branded with something that parents whisper as satanic, but really only alludes to the Dungeons and Dragons club he runs through the school. 

They have a few of the same classes together, what with Eddie retrying his last year of high school after he majorly, and I mean, majorly, fucked up my exams, Harrington. They are not friends, but they know of each other. Steve is nice to him, cordial, really, and Eddie, despite the way that he acts in the cafeteria, is kind back. Occasionally, they’ll share a smoke when lunch gets too loud, or when Steve doesn’t want to deal with everything that happens in gym (no, he is not avoiding Tommy or Billy, he swears).

“Just felt a little sick, I guess.” Steve says, taking out his English text and absolutely not looking at where Nancy and Barbara and Jonathan have all huddled together at the end of the hallway lined with lockers. They are a unit that seems to flow together, and whenever all four of them go somewhere, Steve feels as if he is a broken fourth wheel — as if there is a final part of the puzzle that is decidedly not him.

“Ah,” Eddie says, a little smile on his face as he leans against the wall, “Trouble in paradise?”

Steve closes his locker with probably a little more force than necessary, because they are not friends, and Steve doesn’t really need other people to know about his love life, thank you every much. 

“Something like that,” Steve says, smile tight, and eyes sharp in a way that says step back, think for a second. 

And so Eddie does — hands raised and placating, because he knows that he has crossed their imaginary boundaries and imaginary lines that neither of them had fleshed out or set, themselves. The warning bell rings, and Steve mumbles a see you later, and Eddie hums in confirmation, before they are lost to the sea of students that look nothing, and exactly, like them.

— — —

One of the newer additions to the basketball club, Jason Carver, is a little bit annoying, if Steve was being complete honest. He knew that each of the students were meatheads in their own unique ways, what with their rallying members including the ranks of Billy Hargrove (AKA: Grade A Asshole) and Tommy Hagan (self explanatory), but there’s something about this guy that kinda rubs him the wrong way. Maybe it was his wannabe-Tom-Cruise style smile, or the fact that the girl he was dating — a sweet girl called Chrissy — looked so close to his own face. Steve knows that if he cared enough to actually look into it, he would recall something in the ways of Freud. For now, though, he relents that maybe they might be second cousins. And, well, it’s Hawkins. It wouldn’t be exactly out of the norm for their history.

“He’s just such a shithead, Nance,” Steve says, stretching his arms out over the lunchroom table, head pressed lightly against the metal to avoid imprints.

“More or less than Holloway?” She asks, hand rubbing almost-soothing circles into the textured patter of his knit sweater.

At this, he sits up. “Oh, god, did your boss do something again?”

“When has he ever not done something?” Jonathan huffs, chin resting on his palm.

See, unlike Steve, they had aspirations. In their spare time, Nancy and Jonathan would intern at the local newspaper. Sure, it was mostly running to get coffees, and saying yes, sir to everything that their superiors said, but it was still something right?

Barb speaks, her cheeks rosy in the way Steve knows they get when Nancy hasn’t told her something important. “Again? Nance, I really think you need to tell your mum about how he’s treating you, because it’s not—”

“—Okay, yes I know, Barb.” Nancy sighs. “But how would that look on me? I’m meant to be able to prove myself, not just run to my parents when one slight thing goes wrong!”

“But it’s not just one thing,” Steve says, as he mimics her previous movement, his thumb with the small scar catching in the frayed edges of her wool. “Just last week you were telling me about how you overheard him making those comments about— about people in our year, people in his daughter’s year. That’s not okay—”

“You think I don’t know that, Steve?” She hissed. “I am very much aware that his attitudes towards teenage girls is disgusting, but what the hell am I meant to do?”

Her pointed glare is directed at him, and it feels as if she isn’t even looking at Steve. It is as if she is looking through him, pointing her pointy edges in the way of the soft flesh that he has bore for her. It hurts, just a little bit, but isn’t love meant to? 

“Nance—” Jonathan starts.

“No. I don’t want to talk about this.” She huffs, turns her gaze away from Steve’s eyes. He doesn’t miss the way that she melts, softens, under the concerned face of Jonathan. “No, we’re gonna talk about the upcoming Halloween party.”

Barb nods her head, just slightly, but with the way that she looks to Steve, as if to ask him please help, he knows that the two will stay up late on the phone, or meetup after Nancy and Jonathan have left, to try and figure out a way to help Nancy, to make sure that she’s actually alright. The piece of paper that Nancy slides across their humble cafeteria space is adorned in bright oranges and deep blacks — a crudely drawn ghost printed on the middle of the page, with a stupid pun being uttered from underneath its sheet-costume.

“I don’t know about this,” Barb says, eyes hesitant behind large glasses. “I’m not really a party gal.”

Jonathan scratches at the back of his neck, smile apologetic in the same way that Steve would use to wish away his past to doting parents. “Yeah, I’m not really one to get sheet-faced, Nance. Plus, I was gonna take my brother trick or treating tonight.”

“You have to, or you want to?” Nancy asks. And she has that twinkle in her eye that says I have set my mind to something, and now you are in my way. It used to be something that she would wholly and only direct to Steve, so seeing it pointed towards Jonathan of all people? Well. He’s gonna bottle up those feelings and maybe (never) go over how that makes him feel.

“Want to.” Jonathan says, a small smile on his face. “But I’m sure Steve’ll say yes, right?”

Steve finds that all the eyes of his friends are on him. And the answer should be easy, really, because is there even any other option for him? A good boyfriend would accompany his good girlfriend to her first party. He would do so willingly and lovingly. So why does he feel so hesitant? As if he had seen this film before, was aware of the things that saying yes would hold.

“Come on, Steve,” Nancy says. “Don’t you want to be stupid teenagers for one more night?”

“Of course.” He answers, places a kiss on her cheek. 

“And if Jonathan is taking Will, then that means you’re not babysitting tonight, right? So you’ll come with me to the party?”

It doesn’t take much more convincing than that (externally, at least. Internally, Steve thinks of every possibly outcome and opportunity that he is creating. He was meant to babysit the kids with Jonathan tonight. After Will had been missing, and Steve had learnt about Jane, and the newcomer, Max, had joined, the parents all wanted their kids to be watched over. And who better to do that than Steve Harrington, Hawkins’ Golden Boy? But, no, if Jonathan was hinting at Steve being available, even though he knew that they were looking after the kids together, then surely he wanted Steve to go? Surely this was him hinting that he would be okay with the kids?).

This line of thinking, the questioning, the answering, within his own head, is what leads him to let Nancy choose the costumes, and kiss him on his head, and have him drive to the party. Costumes of characters from that movie that Nancy had liked — Risky Business — are adorned in true Hawkins fashion, ie: every person willing to have a social presence in the student body had raided their parents closets to find something so unlike their own clothes, that it could feasibly be recognised as “dressing up”. 

The party is not unlike the ones that Steve was used to. The bodies in the house are all tightly packed together, and there is an indistinguishable scent of alcohol and sweat and sex. It lingers in the air as if it is its job, sticking to every surface it can. Steve is sure that as soon as he leaves this party, it will be imbedded in his hair, stuck to his flesh like a thin film to be washed away with copious amounts of soap and warm water. Slowly, surely, delicately.

The jacket that he is wearing is thick and dark against his shoulders — sweat building up near his shoulder blades with even the most minute amount of dancing that he’s been doing. There are shouts and chants outside about a new Keg King, but Steve couldn’t care less. That popularity contest and dick measuring bullshit was as beneath him as the dirt lacing his sneakers. The only thing that mattered right now was having fun. Trying to have fun.

“Nance,” Steve tries, “Nancy—”

“No!” She says, dips her cup into the punch. “I said that I wanted to be a stupid teenager, so I’m doing everything that a stupid teenager would do, okay? Aren’t I allowed to just have this?”

Steve places a hand between them on the counter, taps his fingers across it. Because he gets it, really, he does. He gets wanting to lash out and drink and party and do all the bad-child things that weren’t in line with their perfectly set out futures. Nancy Wheeler, straight A student and intern at the local newspaper would not drink. Nancy Wheeler, liked well enough to be seen as cute and quiet, not enough to be seen as popular or rowdy. Nancy Wheeler, who would go to university, and study hard, and get a well paying job, or maybe relent to the asks of Hawkins, and live in a little cul-de-sac, and have a nuclear fucking family. 

Steve gets it. He gets wanting to lash out.

“Okay,” He relents. “Just— be careful, okay? Take it slow, and I’ll stay completely sober. I’ll try and look out for you.”

She just nods her head as she fills her cup (again? Had she not just went to go fill it?), bringing the white rim of the red plastic to her lips. Nancy tilts her head back in glee, an easy smile slipping over her mouth at the no doubt fruity taste of the punch attempting to mask the copious amounts of alcohol that were poured into the bowl. Steve’s had a bad feeling about this since before the day even started.

And that bad feeling doesn’t alleviate, not even a little, when he hears the door open, when he turns, when he catches a glimpse of the next person to walk through the open door.

Jonathan.

The bad feeling isn’t because of the weirdness that’s going on between his friend and his girlfriend, no. Not because he isn’t wearing a costume. Not because he’s showing up late. The bad feeling rises tenfold, and Steve finds himself taking quick and long strides across the floor, dodging people, using his height to shoulder passed others, because Jonathan was meant to be looking after the kids.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Steve asks, eyes a little too wide, breath a little too short. “I thought you were supervising them?”

“Will said he didn’t want me to,” Jonathan says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He shrugs his shoulders as if to say what can you do? As if a single conversation can shirk the month of planning that went into tonight, for the kids. The planning that Steve had so readily skirted, himself, at the lone voice of Nancy, and the promising eyes of Jonathan.

“You know why we were meant to go—”

“—And I think my mum’s being a bit paranoid. Nothing has happened in a year, Steve. What happened with Will, him going missing, it was just,” Jonathan sighs, pushes his shoulders back in that way he always does, “An anomaly. Something weird. Nothing ever happens in Hawkins, right? So what’s one night? Can’t he just have that?”

Aren’t I allowed this? Can’t he have that? It’s as if they are the same conversations, asking for the same things, asking for different things, that he cannot give. As if the gift is something simple, and not something that might, that will, change everything. But, well. Steve doesn’t know that. Not yet.

“Shit, okay.” Steve huffs, mind rattling with endless possibilities of what could happen to the kids, what they could get up to, themselves, when left unattended and uncontactable in the middle of the night, in the middle of Hawkins.

“Steve, nothing is going to happen. Just enjoy tonight. With Nance.” Jonathan says, smile fading as the words exit his mouth. 

Shit. Nancy. 

“I’ll be right back!” Steve calls, turning as he says it, words being swallowed by the crowd. Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to spot her in the sea of costumes? What with how she’s wearing all white, and Halloween usually calls for, well, something a little more dark, a little more scary.

Steve pushes his way through, arms trying to break through pressed bodies. Were there this many people before? Was it always so hot? He pushes the sunglasses up to his hair, not caring for the look, anymore.

“Harrington!” Tommy calls, his freckles more prominent from his flushed face: drunk. “We’ve got a new Keg King!” 

Steve turns away from the leers and the cheers of the basketball team, turns away from Hargrove who seems to be trying to make his way over. Steve really doesn’t have the time to be dealing with him right now — right now, all he wants to do is find Nancy. He told her that he’d take care of her, and then at the first sign of something happening, of another person appearing, of Jonathan, he had just abandoned her to the crowd, to these people that she didn’t really know, to these people that had more experience with parties than her, to these people that she—

“You okay there, Stevie?” Eddie asks, hand cold against Steve’s knuckles. “You look like you’re—”

“—Not now, Munson. Sorry, I’m just—” Steve tries to look over his hair, the frizz of the curls seemingly played up more than how they naturally are. “Have you seen Nancy?”

Eddie’s face seems to furrow in thought, and the cool hand that was so expertly pressed against Steve’s knuckles are removed to his own belt loops. “I think I passed her a couple minutes ago in the kitchen. Are you sure you’re okay—”

“Thank you!” Steve says, turning to his left, where he thinks he can see the counter, where he sees the dim yellow light that indicated change. Where hardwood floors and plush carpets stained with red punch turned to tile, and where he sees the back of Nancy’s figure.

“Jesus, Nance, I’m sorry that I left you like that. I just saw Jonathan and got worried about the kids— hey.”

“Mmmmrr?” Nancy mumbles, hand held tight against her cup, wrist limply flicking in and out of the punch bowl, uselessly trying to fill it up, again.

“You— how much have you had to drink?”

“Steve,” She slurs, a happy smile on her face as she dunks the cup under fully. “Not enough.”

“Hey, no, Nance, I said I’d take care of you, so,” Steve places his hand delicately on her wrist, uses his other one to try and pry the drink from her grasp. “I really think that you should wait a bit before you drink again, okay? Let’s get you some water, and sit down over—”

“I don’t want to drink some water—”

“Nancy, please,” Steve says. “Just, let go of the cup for me?”

“No.”

Steve tugs again, trying to slot his fingers under hers. He’d become all too accustomed to this — to doing this with Tommy. And it had worked with Tommy, with Carol, so why—

“Let go of the, the cup, Steve. I want you,” She enunciates, a little too much effort put into each word to be sober, “To let go, of the goddamned cup—!”

He lets go. The bad feeling presses into his skull, down his spine, like an old friend. Like punch staining white shirts. Like the hundred people who have turned, like the music that has been turned down, like Hargrove, making his way over, like Eddie, watching from the corner, like Jonathan, stuck by the door.

Shit.

“What the fuck, Steve?”

“Okay, Nance, let’s just—” She turns around before he can say anything more, and her figure flits in and out of the bodies of the people who had once hindered his trek to her. Now, they part like the ocean, as if she is some God to be reckoned with. Steve supposes that, right now, she is.

He follows the empty trail that she has left for him, nods politely and acutely to the woman who stands in Kiss makeup nodding her head towards the ajar door — the bathroom with golden yellow light and a large mirror by the sink. He pushes his way in, closing the door softly behind him. No more eyes. No more leering.

“Nancy, it’s not coming off. I think it’s,” Steve sighs, doesn’t try to reason with her as she runs the hand towel under the water again, bringing it up to the large red stain down her front. He’ll get the mess out tomorrow. He just needs to get her home, have her get into a change of clothes, and he’ll deal with the rest in the morning. “C’mon, Nance.”

“I know what I’m doing,” She slurs, leans agains the sink countertop with her left arm. “See? It’s— it’s coming off.”

Steve just sighs, goes to take the towel from her limp hand. “Let’s get you home, yeah Nance? How does sleeping sound?”

“I don’t want to!” She said, lurching forward from her standing position. “I wanted to be a dumb teenager and do all the things that— that I’m not supposed to, so why are you—”

“Nance,” Steve whispered, hand on her shoulder, holding up her weight as she presses onwards.

“—trying to take that away from me? You always just ruin everything. You’re— you’re bullshit! I just wanted one simple thing: to act like we were dumb, and young, and in love—”

“Like we’re in love? Nancy, what do you—”

“Bullshit.” She mumbles, then, louder, as if realising that Steve might not have heard it, she speaks. “You are complete bullshit, Steve Harrington. Bull-shit.”

No. Steve wants to say. Because, he realises, there is some truth to what she is saying. Has he ever been a person, has he ever been a subject that was once and truly owned by himself? Could Steve ever remember a moment where he wasn’t just an amalgamation of parts that he picked up over the years? Which parts had come naturally, and which parts had he so carefully chosen? He’s always felt as if he was slipping, from what he never knew, but maybe it was just normalcy. Maybe he was always a fake— a bullshit version of who used to wear his skin.

Steve Harrington has never been boring and normal in the same way that the people of Hawkins were — he had to be hand crafted to try and fit the moulds that were placed upon him. Carve off parts of himself that he realised were undesirable in the long run, because what was he, if not what people wanted? If not something that people had loved? 

Nancy had been like a lifeline to him — someone who was trying so hard to break the role that was bestowed upon them. I don’t want to be the dutiful older sister who becomes the dutiful wife who doesn’t get to live for herself. I want to see the world, and travel, and learn, and study, and love. And I want to love you. Had it always been a lie? Was everything so predetermined down to a T, that for Nancy Wheeler to be breaking her mould, she first had to break him? Was there ever a future where they end up together — too similar and too different all at once?

She had been a lifeline. And maybe that is where it all started. That Steve had looked to her for the guidance that he was never given, trying so desperately to please her — to try and revel in that calm that exuded out of her body as if it were endless. It was that feeling that he was chasing, that feeling that made him ache for his own bones to be whole, that made him yearn to stay in his body, for his teeth to stay dull, and his height stay the same. 

He feels like he’s losing it. Steve feels as if there are a hundred running words around his head. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. He knew that Nancy was falling out of love with him. He knew it in his bones. Knew it in his shifting form. Why does it hurt, still? Why does it still feel as though she has struck him across the face the way a father does to a child — or is this just another one of those scenarios, Steve asks himself, that are so very abnormal, that he has only known to be true?

Steve’s losing it. He knows he is. He pushes out of the bathroom, stumbles out, really, but the music has been turned back up, and he can feel it in his chest, thump thump thump-ing across the dance floor. He feels as if he is changing right there, in the middle of this stupid fucking house party, where everyone can see him. And if there is one thing that he is good at, if Steve Harrington is only allowed to, able to, be good at one fucking thing in his useless, short-lived life, it is knowing when he is not wanted. Knowing when he has to leave.

So he does. He leaves. Out of the back door — the crowd of people pressing in on his chest, his body, the front door — and into the woods. And it is there that he will change.

(The first thing to go is his sight. 

Or, rather, his eyes.

Steve, in his fading consciousness, tries to lift his hands — hands that are too big for his body, that are sharp and grotesque, and so horribly his, with a scar near his left thumb where he nicked it as a child — towards where his eyes are. Where they should be. He turns his hands so that the long nails are pointing as outward as they can, so that they do not touch what he hopes is still his own face. The pads of his thumbs meet the space in which his eyes had occupied. It is textured and puckered, and when Steve tries to blink — because as a human, as a young man, he should be able to blink — he cannot. The expanse of what should be the woods in front of him are just shades of dark, with only the moon to bare witness to this, to him, to the monstrosity that he is becoming.

Where flesh meets bone, and love meets hurt, Steve morphs. Muscle and ligaments stretching and contorting till they are spread thin against a gangly body that tries — and succeeds — to tower above the height that he was gifted from creation. He feels as his vocal chords hum within his throat, a throat that has contracted and elongated to make space for the bones that sprout from his spine. Hind legs break and bend, making Steve fall over himself into the dirt of the woods, jutting out at odd directions, in a misguided attempt at growing into something new.

Where comfort and beauty used to be found in the form of golden-brown hair, something ugly starts to be birthed. Steve can feel as the thudding of something within his brain gets so insistent that he clutches at his ears to plead it to stop. He can feel as his skull starts to fracture. As his scalp is peeled back from his head, he raises his nails to stop it — pleading in the form of scratching at the warm wetness. Bone and blood make way for rotten wood; two spike-like structures ignoring the helpless cries of the boy that they occupy.

And, god, he can feel it. Steve, in the middle of this transformation, can feel as the bones within his body vibrate against his skin, whispering into his breath, let go, let me in, it won’t hurt, I can make it all okay. There is a part of him — the sensible, boring, part of him, that says he should not listen. That he should go back to the Halloween party, and pretend that he cannot taste his own bile mixing with thick blood, that it does not feel like he is being crushed between the worlds. 

I don’t want to die, Steve thinks. 

The voice within him answers, says: I am not going to kill you).

— — —

Eddie is not having a good night. Like, yeah, there are probably people having an even lesser good night (read: whatever the hell he saw happen with one Nancy Wheeler and one Steve Harrington), especially considering that he has to step over the passed out bodies of other high schooler’s as he traipses out of the back door of the house. His docs were slightly sticky in a way that indicated spilt alcohol, despite his stance on not drinking and dealing. The Halloween party that Tina hosted was meant to be small — only a couple close friends she had said — but it ended up being closer to the entire fucking year group (and then some). He had been bought out almost immediately — familiar faces in the forms of the basketball club, and the band nerds, unfamiliar faces in the forms of people who were usually too shy or too scared to approach him normally — and hadn’t been able to find an opportunity to leave until, well. Until whatever the hell happened with Steve and Wheeler.

See, Eddie was never planning to drink, what with his weirdly strict rules, especially considering his grades, but he still didn’t want to drive his van to the house. This was for a multitude of reasons, with the glaringly obvious one being so that it didn’t get alcohol, or barf, or other bodily fluids splashed across the front, as people drunkenly stumbled down the streets to their homes, or to their one designated driver. Ah, the woes of underage drinking.

That is how he finds himself, leaves sticking to his sticky soles, dirt caking themselves into the tread. It’s not the first time that Eddie has found himself huddled into his own jacket, trying to walk the non-existant path that he had set before him, on the way home. Sometimes it was just easier to walk than to have to pay for your van being keyed by some evangelical lunatics. That doesn’t mean that it makes the walk any easier, though.

The trees are all those horribly gangly and long, old-wood ones. His Uncle Wayne used to talk about how they were “there since the day Hawkins was erected”, but Eddie had been too young to properly take in the cautionary tale, instead snickering at the use of the old man’s use of the word erected. As they loom over him — shadows cast into the almost-mud of the ground — Eddie wishes that he had payed attention.

But he had made this walk all the time! In the daytime, in the afternoon, in the middle of the night. It had never felt comforting, sure, but it had never felt like— like something was watching him. That was absurd, though. It was well known that Hawkins was boring (no matter how hard Eddie had tried to liven it up a little), and most of all, it was safe. The accident was just that — an anomaly of an incident that was recorded in history, and swept away with teachings of how to be a good and proper man, and how to do your times tables. Will Byers was — well. Eddie didn’t know how to excuse that.

But, nobody was here. 

Just him.

Eddie trudges forward. There is something within him that makes him clutch at the multitool that Wayne had gifted him, flicking the knife out. Not the dull letter opener section that had never been used, but the sharp, cerated blade that been bestowed upon him as protection.

(“Protection from what?” Young Eddie had asked. There was nothing to be afraid of, here. Because this is the town that Wayne was in, and this is the town that his mother had grown up in. Before everything had changed.

Wayne had shifted in his seat, the couch springs making that dog-whining noise that made Eddie’s noise scrunch.

“Nothing.” He said, hand warm and heavy on Eddie’s shoulders. “Just making sure, is all.”)

Step, step, breathe. Step, step, breathe. He would twirl the knife in his hands if he were not afraid of dropping it — a situation from a shitty horror slasher appearing forefront in his mind: he drops the blade to the ground as the monster runs up behind him, and as the camera pans to the sky, to his eyes, to its teeth, his fingernails encrusted with dirt, Eddie will grab it in the nick of time, brandishing it valiantly, before swinging his arm in a dull strike—

“Who’s there?”

The words leave his mouth before he can stop them. He no longer feels like the final girl who fumbles for the knife in the leaves, and suddenly feels like the expositional first victim. The sound that he had heard — something that he could only really describe as a gurgle has stopped. 

“You’re just going crazy, Eddie,” He hums to himself, blows his curly fringe from in front of his eyes. “Nothing to worry about at all. No sir-ee.”

He keeps his back to the direction in which he needs to go; the invisible path that he has crafted towards his trailer. Eddie, horror movie connoisseur, knows that he should not stalk towards the noise — had shouted at his small television set too many times to know that it leads to finding the monster, the horror in itself. 

(He finds that maybe there is some truth to the actions. His feet carry him backwards, towards safety, but it feels as if he is walking through sludge, moving ever so slowly, leaning forward, eyes wide, as if trying to gain a view of the thing that made the gurgle).

Back hitting a tree, Eddie turns, for a second, as small of a moment of time that he can spare, before facing forward, again. He cannot look away from the darkness of the woods. He wished that he brought his flashlight. Or drove his van to Tina’s. Or stayed at the fucking Halloween party.

Shifting so that his back is facing open woods, he places a tentative foot back. And then another. And another.

The sound lurches through the expanse of nothing. The wet death-rattle building and building, as if it is getting closer. As if it is running.

“Shit!” Eddie turns on his heel and bolts into the woods. Without a care for which direction his trailer is in — it doesn’t matter if it is behind him, or if it is in front of him, all that matters is that he gets away from the whatever the fuck is making that god awful noise—

He trips. 

Eddie has enough self preservation to move his hand with the knife to the side so that he doesn’t stab himself in the eye, but it is a close thing. He feels all the fumbling heroine-final-girl-first-victim adrenaline rise through him as he feel the leaves shake beneath the weight of the thing that is racing towards him. 

Get the fuck up, Eddie! 

He scrambles and feels his nails catch against the roots of the tree as he pushes himself up — propelling until his palms meet rough bark, and he is pushing himself forward. His lungs feel as though they are on fire. As if they are constricting from inside his self, his body. In, out, in out. In, in, in, in. 

Eddie pumps his legs as fast as he can, tries to think of what he is meant to do in these situations — was it better to go straight? Was he meant to zigzag? Does he make himself tall and raise his arms and snarl right back? Has he condemned himself just by running? Can it smell his fear?

He doesn’t want to die. 

Eddie didn’t really think that he had much to live for, before this, and if you asked him yesterday he would have spouted some dogshit about dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse. But now that he is at the brink of death, the thing (bear? Human? Monster?) almost breathing down his neck, he has a hundred — a million — different things that he wants to do, that he wants to say. 

It roars. Not the pathetic sounding and out of place death-noise that it was making before. An absolutely pissed off I’m-Going-To-Fucking-Kill-You noise. A You-Are-Not-Final-Girl-Material noise. And the noise? It sounds as if it reverberates through the woods, impossible to tell how close, how far away it truly is.

(He does not want to turn around. Because if he turns around and it is there, Eddie knows that he will stop. He will pause in his tracks, because he is kidding himself into thinking that he is being chased by a fucking bear).

Eddie turns. He doesn’t know what made him do it. 

It was like his body had told him you cannot keep running away and had decided for him — not letting his brain rest for even a moment to try and catch up to the thoughts of the heart. Eddie brandishes his knife tightly in front of him, slashing in wide arcs in hopes of— he doesn’t know. Scaring off the beast that is making the forest shake? Yeah. That’ll definitely work.

The air is cold against his clammy hands, and thin against the blade. He keeps his eyes shut, and slashes forwards and outwards, both hands clasped tightly against the handle. It’s obvious when it meets something that is not air. From the drag against what Eddie thinks might be flesh, to the stench of coppery blood that fills the air.

He opens his eyes.

The face that meets his own is not entirely a face. He watches as the blood slowly drips from where a cheek would be if this thing were human. Eddie raises the pocket knife again in his — and the monsters — moment of stupor, and tries to slash again—

Only for the knife to slapped out of his hand. 

It lands with a dull thud against the wet woodland leaves. Too far away for Eddie to reach. He slides back, tries to back away as if he had not just tried to harm this monster that towers above him. He creeps back in the same way that the creature creeps forwards, until his shoulders are hitting the sharp outsides of the tree, and he is sliding to his knees, and closing in on himself.

“You’re not real.” Eddie mumbles. “You’re not— there’s no such thing as fucking monsters. None at all. You’re just— going fucking insane, Eddie. Must’ve just— passed out at Tina’s. Having a bad trip. Sleeping it off at home. Something like that. Right. Right?”

— — —

There’s something about the shape in front of him — the way in which it holds itself and begs — that makes Steve’s brain stall. Long enough for him to get back into the driver’s seat of his own body (was this his own body? This prison of flesh and bone that towered over this person? That had terrified them? Was he always a— a monster, in every possible way? Could he never escape it?), and start to back away. Steve tries to hunch in on himself. Tries to hold his hands — his claws — in front of him. Raised and open, trying to communicate without words, words that are stuck in his throat, I don’t mean any harm. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

“Okay, okay. Yeah, just— stay. Yeah, back away. That’s good— just keep— backing away.” The man mutters. Steve can see the frantic look in his eye, the way his hair falls just above his hunched shoulders, how he’s scrambling backwards and backwards, as if he is trying to crawl into the tree itself. 

“Now you’ve really done it, Eddie. Real fucking monsters—”

Steve’s vocal chords gurgle at the word. Like a low humming in warning that sounds in the back of his throat without meaning to— without him wanting to. At first, it is at the way that he has been described — a terrible being of his own creation, of the hands of others, himself. But, then, it is at the name. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Steve knows Eddie. Maybe there’s a way that he could—

Eddie stops. Dirt encrusted in his fingernails, leaves in his hair, on the forest floor. He stops. And Steve realises that he is not himself. He is not Human Steve Harrington, with eyes and a kind smile, and moles and freckles and golden-brown hair. He is this towering creature that has chased his almost-friend through the fucking woods.

Steve goes to turn — to leave and never come back. Pretend that this was all a nightmare. And maybe it would be. Maybe he would wake up in the morning, and he would pick up Nancy, and he would place a kiss on her cheek, and she would help him with his college application. Maybe he’d wake up earlier — formative years come back to haunt him in the best ways possible — and his mother would card her fingers through his hair, and his father would tell him that he was proud.

(He’s fooling himself. Steve knows it’s not gonna happen).

“Can you… understand me?”

Steve tries to make a noise, then. Something more pleasant and soothing and desperate all at once, that says Yes! Please! Can you hear me? Do you see me? Please, I’m begging you, please, help me!

“Okay! Great. Amazing. You can understand me!” Eddie talks, in such a hushed tone that Steve feels as if he is not meant to hear it. “Fuck, okay? Um.”

Eddie tries to back away again, only to realise that there is nowhere to go. That he will have to shift to the side to get out of the woods. Steve tilts his head forwards, tries to motion towards the side, where Eddie will have to go to get to his home.

“Right! Yes!” He breathes. “I need to… to leave. Can you— will you let me?”

Steve nods. Readily, quickly. He does not want to force him to stay here. He does not want him to look at his figure. This grotesque concoction of things that he has become. 

(He wants Eddie to stay. He wants him to help. He wants him to say that he is not a monster. Because if he leaves, if he goes through the woods and never comes back, what will Steve do with himself?).

“Okay— no leaving right now. Got it. Totally. Great.” Eddie says, hands still behind him, knife still cast away. “What do you want from me?”

Help. Steve wants to say. Reassurance. But his mouth does not seem to work like it normally does, like it is supposed to, and so he crouches down as best his bones will let him, and raises his clawed hands to the ground.

“H…e…l— Help! Okay, okay. You need help.”

Steve nods, neck strained and taught against extra bones in his frame. There is that noise at the back of his neck, and he feels the skin around his teeth attempt a smile.

“How do I help you?” Eddie asks. And Steve can sense the way that he moves closer, instinctually flinches away. “Right, no, that’s okay, yeah. No touching. Got it.” 

He wishes that he didn’t flinch. He wants to say please, please, please hold me, please tell me I am human, I don’t want to be a monster, I just want to be held, I just want to be normal, I just want to be—

“Do you have somewhere you can go?” Eddie whispers, hushed tones so much more calming than when he was slashing forwards. And Steve does have somewhere to go — his empty house, with bouts of land big enough on either side that no neighbours would be peering out to see him. But he needs to get his car. He needs to get his car that he left at the party. Otherwise he will be found out. Otherwise people will connect the dots about Steve leaving early, and without his car, and the man in the woods—

The man in the woods? The man in the woods? 

“Get the hell away from my boy!”

The shot would be accurate if not for the humming beneath his skin screaming at Steve to move. The pellets scatter into the tree-side, making little homes within the bark. 

“Wayne, no, it doesn’t mean any—”

“Eddie, get the hell away from that thing—”

The man — Wayne — fumbles confidently with the gun in his hands. He makes a movement with it that has the sounds of mechanics ringing in Steve’s ears, but if there is one thing that he is not, monster or no fucking monster, is stupid. He knows where he is unwanted, an animal, he knows that he is the thing that instills fear into this man, and he knows, Steve knows that he doesn’t want to hurt someone — the he doesn’t want to hurt Eddie — but what is the use of this knowledge if nobody else is aware? 

The voice that had once guided him is silent. But as Wayne aims towards his body, as Eddie moves to stop him, Steve feels the warmth and hum of appreciation and praise run through his veins, as he turns to flee.

— — — 

As he lets himself down, Steve finds that he is still not himself. He sees in the way that a human is not meant to see: shapes and shades that morph and move as they shift across his vision. Inquisitive, and maybe a little bit afraid, he moves the claws across the features that make up his face. Of course, from the changing that he had experienced — like a second coming of man — he knows that he has no eyes. With long, sallow fingers, he traces his nose — the same — and feels his hairless skin atop his head. It is the same texturised feeling as that of his eyes, something that just screams monster. 

When he pulls against the rotten wood that exudes itself from his soul, it offers the same sensation of his hair being pulled, but somehow deeper. As if the rot has attached itself to his spinal cord, his brain. There is a morbid part of him that thinks back to the books of animals that he read as he was a child: about cats and their tails, and how you shouldn’t hold them from it, lest you want their spine to be pulled out in a yelp, and a sopping pool of offal. 

(Steve feels as though he should be more terrified. That he has been turned into the monster, like a gods-damned werewolf on the night of Halloween, and that he has chunks of time missing. That there is a voice within his own brain that had offered him some type of salvation from the hurt deep within his teeth, that Steve had so readily accepted without thinking of the consequences).

He stops himself from spiralling — catches it on the tail end of the fall, just like those cats — and pulls himself from the edge. He does not have eyes, yes, he knows this, and he has some type of bark that is growing and protruding from his skull like he is a daemon, and they are his horns. Steve’s hands trail across his features, again, more focussed. He presses as softly he can into the holes that held soft eyes, trails passed his father’s nose, and finds—

A lack of face. A lack of jaw.

Steve doubles over himself. Feels as his stretched stomach contracts within his fleshy vessel of a body, as it attempts to blow chunks of something onto the carpet. Hands clawing at his face again, he feels the absence, again and again. Because there is no way that he is— that there is— that there is not— 

Oh god.

If Steve were to describe it to anyone, as he tries to describe it to himself from feel alone, it is as if someone had held a firm hand against his lower jaw, and pulled and pulled and pulled until— pop! There are wisps of his own skin and flesh near the hinges of his face. His upper teeth are bared for the woodland creatures to fear, top lip pulled taught into an impossible snarl that makes Steve keen into the silence. He did not want to be a creature — all he wanted to be was loved.

How do I return? Steve pleads into the silence. Pleads that the voice is still there to tell him what to do. Why do I remember a man in the woods?

You have to figure it out on your own.

The first thing that he thinks is well that’s not fucking helpful, but there is something within his own head that breathes out of him as he thinks the very words. Steve finds that it feels as if he’s just been admonished by his father — or that he’s heard a heavy sigh from his mother. Almost immediately, he tries to back peddle, but all other offers of rapture and guidance from the voice are lulled, and for the first time in the night, Steve is well and utterly alone.

His first idea comes in the forms of reassuring words that are not his own. He is reminded of the girl from the drama class he was mistakenly placed into for a half a term. Her short reddish-brown hair, the snark that nobody else would give him. Steve is reminded of the way that she had approached him when he was huddled up in the storage closet — with none of the remarks to be found, but instead, just soft eyes, and a similarly crouched form in front of him. What can you see? What can you hear? What can you feel? Taste? Smell?

He cannot see anything. And maybe that is the point of this exercise — not the one that the girl had taught him, but the one that the voice is teaching him. That these things, this small moments of calm were only meant for beings that were human. Now that he was stripped of any form of humanity left of him (or had he always been stripped of it? Had those moments with the girl calmed him down, or was he just putting on a front?), he was not allowed to be soothed.

But he can hear the neighbours. He must be home. He must be close. Steve had complained to his then-friends, Tommy, Carol, about how his house was eerily quiet, how he could not hear the people near him. So why could he now? Why could he hear the sounds of Ms Lowe down the street, teetering around the kitchen? Why could he hear the humming of the Sullivan’s pool? 

Steve feels his bones re-breaking. Feels the juts of a body retract into his spine to make it whole again. He feels the sickly pleasing correction of his skull, the way that his jaw unfurls at the same time the bone-wood descends into his scalp. He tastes the slime of whatever was coating his skin to try and ease the sickly transformation — something that smells almost like a mixture of bile and something sweet. As his vision fogs, and Steve hears the sounds of what can only be described as moist peeling, the shades of dark turn to thick objects turn to outlines to lights to colours to vision. And as soon as he realises that he is not towering over the woods, over Eddie, that he is in his own home, that the doors are somehow locked shut, he languidly pulls himself to the bathroom, sits under the warm spray of the shower for as long as he goddamned wants.

It chimes then — and it had always chimed at every hour, scaring the ever living shit out of him as he was a child — the cuckoo clock. 12AM.

He has school tomorrow.

How does Steve have school tomorrow?

Doesn’t the world know to stop turning, to pause, for him? He’s a monster. And not in the way that the word was normally directed at him — not in the way that girls would say when he turned them down, or Tommy’s targets would say as he stood, impassive, disgusted, not at them, but at who he called his friend. When did it start to become real? Was he always a monster, always destined to be a monster, because everyone else thought him so? Maybe his skin was now just changing to catch up to what people truly saw.

But that wouldn’t make any sense. Because at the back of his mind — Steve knew. What the truth was, what the truth is, and how he is just trying to avoid coming to terms with it. What is inscribed on his skin, what has been inked into existence from the day that he had first changed. And yet, it is still different. Back then, it was never like this. Back then, it was as if he could hear and smell and react as he could now, regardless of what skin he bore. So why had this thing become him? Why had he become this thing? 

It doesn’t fucking matter. What matters is that it doesn’t happen again. That nobody knows what he can become. He will go to school, and the world will continue to turn, and Steve will have to pick up his car in the morning. He’ll call Tina and say sorry! I was upset about what happened with Nance and walked home to clear my head. And she will believe him, because there would be no reason for him to lie. 

And everything would be okay. And everything would be normal.

— — —

Breakfast, Steve thinks, is not the most important meal of the day. 

It can be skipped so easily, with ready excuses. I woke up late! I don’t have any bread! Sorry, gotta go! It is the easiest to skip, but it is also the easiest to make. Sure, he’s not a fan of breakfast, but he’s a fan of cooking, and with the little amount of sleep that he got last night, he feels as though he has no excuse not to make himself eggs, and toast, and hash-browns, before school. Maybe he’ll even have time to swing by that fancy cafe that Nancy likes — get her favourite coffee as an apology, an olive branch. He’s already got the car, because, really? Did he really need to wait till morning wait to get it and excuse himself? 

The radio is turned on to some station that his parents like. Normally, it’ll play jazz, a little bit of soul. Things that he couldn’t really imagine his parents liking, in the first place. He always imagined them to like something they would classify as regal — maybe some type of music they could ballroom dance to, or some orchestral string piece that his mother would cry to. Maybe opera, if they were feeling fancy.

Blues and soul were reserved for happy mornings. The radio was usually turned to the station that played all their favourite tunes — some rerun channel that was run through the school as a student project. The frequency was never changed, and on those mornings that were maybe-less-than-happy, the radio would never be turned on in the first place.

Steve flips the egg in the pan, taps a dash of pepper over the perfectly slightly-runny yolk, before turning up the volume of the radio. He juts his hips to the beat, terribly off-time with nobody to see his mistakes, and hums in perfect pitch against the lulling tones of the women. He deposits his egg onto his toast as the song ends, as he goes to sit at his picture-perfect breakfast, in his picture-perfect house, with his picture-perfect—

“A man has been found dead in the woods. Police are suspecting foul play, what with the condition that the body was left…”

Shit.

[theoddcatlady]

My Father Survived The Chair of Truth

I was the only one home when my father called me in for his death bed confession.

He wasn’t very old in the grand scheme of things, only fifty-eight, but after a violent mugging that took place about twenty years ago, his physical health hadn’t always been great. It really took a downhill turn last year. Heart failure. And it just wasn’t getting better.

My sister Amber and I were taking care of him as his health deteriorated. Last week though, Amber was running errands for our grandmother, so yeah. I was alone. When dad called for me I thought he might need a drink or help getting to the bathroom.

Instead, he told me to sit down. He told me I needed to know the truth, the truth about the mugging and about what really happened that night.

After all of this, he’d pass in his sleep a few hours later. I can’t ask for any more details. All I can do is relay this story to you… and find out how much truth there really is to it. Below is the confession, word for word.

~*~

You know, if your mother and I weren’t in the middle of our first separation, it may have never happened. I wouldn’t have been alone in bed that night. Alone in the house, since she took your older sister with her and you were still two months out from being born. That following morning I was found on the streets, all bloodied up, pockets turned out and missing my shoes. They concluded I had been mugged. I let them maintain that conclusion.

I hadn’t even left my house the night before. It was an early night, I was tired from work. I basically passed out on the couch while the TV was on. I don’t remember if anyone broke in, if I woke up before they abducted me.

The next thing I do remember? Waking up strapped to a chair, dressed in white scrubs with electrodes plastered on my now shaved head and sitting with a circle of people in the exact same condition.

I only recognized three of the other people there, and I only knew two of their names. One of my classmates from back when I was in high school was to my right, I barely recognized Magnolia since most of the blonde hair had been shaved right off. A few patches were still plastered to her scalp, whoever had taken the razor to our heads hadn’t been the most meticulous about it. Perhaps because they had a lot to get done before we woke up.

The other two I recognized was Augusta, an older woman who lived down the street from where I grew up, and the homeless man that I usually saw begging for cash in downtown was to my left. I didn’t know his name, I only recognized him because he’d been there every day.

There were eight of us in total. The woman right across from me had smeared lipstick and a cut on her forehead, maybe the razor had slipped during her head shave. Next to her was another woman with long fake fingernails and a natural scowl that was even there when she was unconscious, like she sucked on lemons in her spare time. The most conscious of us was a middle aged guy with a few more bruises than the rest of us, I imagine he put up a fight, he was a big dude. Finally there was this portly, smaller man who didn’t need his head shaved, since he was already bald as an egg.

Magnolia began breathing faster when she came to full consciousness, glancing around wildly and in full panic. “What the fu- where am I!? What’s going on!?” She yanked at the straps, which didn’t so much as budge. “Get these things off me?! Help! Someone help!”

The burly bruised guy shushed her loudly. “Quiet down. Don’t want to alert the wrong people we’re up,” He craned his neck around to look at the room around us, it was quite bare other than the circle of people strapped to heavy duty chairs- dark brick walls, a cement floor with a drain in the center. The only light was in the center of the ceiling, and that thing was set on to bright as it could go. Everyone looked a little washed out, a little pale, sickly.

The one thing I had missed was the speaker, attached to the wall right behind my head. It crackled to life before shrieking with feedback. This definitely got everyone awake, the portly fellow moaning and bitching the loudest while the woman with smeared lipstick being the only one perfectly quiet. Her eyes I remember the most, dark and careful. She was watching everyone in the room.

“Welcome, everyone.”

Once the feedback died down, the male voice coming from it was perfectly calm, smooth. It would’ve almost been soothing if the situation surrounding it wasn’t so bizarre.

“I am the Judge.”

I flexed against the bindings experimentally. There was no coming loose from them. I was stuck there, here for whatever this ‘Judge’ had planned.

“You sit in them now because you have all committed crimes. Crimes ranging from white lies to ones that may result in… capitol punishment.”

The scowling woman’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean, capitol punishment?”

“This is my court room. Where we are, no one will hear you scream. I advise you don’t cry out unless you can’t avoid it.” The Judge didn’t even take note of the interruption. “These are my Chairs of Truth. When we are finished, you will pay for what you’ve done. If you lie or talk your way around the truth, you will be punished. We will start with you, Connie.”

The scowling woman sputtered. “How dare you! I’m not a criminal! Do you know who I am?”

“Yes. Of course I do, Connie Andrews.” The Judge sounded almost… amused. “I know everything about you. Your first question is this: where do you go every Wednesday afternoon?”

“Are you for real?” Connie looked genuinely baffled.

“We are starting with an easy question. One that has minor effect on your life, legally or illegally. Where do you go every Wednesday afternoon?”

Connie looked relieved. “Um… I get my nails done,” Her fingers tapped on the arm of her chair. “What, is that a crime?”

“We’ll come back to that. Frankie? Can I call you Frankie, Frank Smith?”

The burly guy shifted in his chair. “You can,” He decided.

“Frank, during highschool, what was the extracurricular you and your wife participated in?”

“I was a football player, she was a cheerleader.” Frank cleared his throat. “And who are you?”

The Judge quietly chuckled. “I am not important. I am here only to fulfill judgment, officer,” He cleared his throat, “Onto the next. Augusta Armstrong? How many children do you have?”

My neighbor looked terrified, shaking in her chair like a scared Chihuahua. “I have five, they’re the light of my life. Please, please, let me go,” She whimpered.

“If you answer these questions, we can see about that. Charles Nolan?”

“When I get out of here, I’m going to sue you!” The man snapped, lurching in his chair. It didn’t so much as budge, it had been bolted to the floor.

“Charles, what is your occupation? No need for specifics, you like those, I’m aware.”

“Businessman, I work for-”

Charles suddenly breathed in sharply. I had to crane my neck around the homeless guy to see what had happened. I only caught the glimpse of what looked like a sewing needle exiting Charles’ arm and going back into the chair, a pinpoint of blood beading from his skin.

Fuck. I took a better look at the chair, which I’d only assumed was a heavy duty wooden chair. Now I saw there was holes all in it, some small enough for needles to come out and jab, others thin slats that looked large enough for daggers to come out and slice through us.

“When I say something, I advise you listen,” The judge explained patiently. “Harley Scott?”

The homeless man lifted his head up. I’d never heard his name before then. It was strange, finally putting a name to the face I’d seen so often. “Yes?” He said, barely louder than a whisper.

“Harley, what branch of the military were you in, and what was your rank?”

“A-army,” Harley swallowed, “Private.”

“Edward Adkins.”

I flinched when I heard my name.

“What is the date of your wedding anniversary?”

I actually had to think for a second. My mind was running blank.

“What is the date of your wedding anniversary? Don’t make me ask a third time.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I- it’s June 6,” I managed to get out.

I felt genuine relief when he went on to Magnolia, asking what she did for some extra spending cash, and she responded that she was a babysitter. The final question was asked to the woman with smeared lipstick and careful eyes, and it asked where she lived. I don’t remember the exact address, but I know it was in a rough part of town. Part of town I’d never go, anyway.

The Judge sighed, sounding pleased with our cooperation. “Very good, so far, only one punishment had to be doled out,” He said.

“Oh go fuck yourself!” Charles snapped. This did get the needle jabbing back into his arm, right where the wound had just began to scab over.

“These questions are not going to get any easier. In fact, they will be harder. So learn to cooperate and answer truthfully now. It will save you later.”

I expected him to start going around the circle again. Instead, the voice surprised me.

“What is your occupation, Delilah?”

“Unem-” Delilah cut herself off, sighing. “I bet that’s not what you mean. Fine. Sex worker. Prostitute. Hooker. Whatever you want to call it. That what you wanted to hear?”

“Very well. Charles, how did your friend Rosemary Marshall make so much money from your company’s stock?

Charles shifted. “Good luck?” He tried to lie, so poorly though that no one was convinced.

I didn’t expect to hear the crackle of electricity and Charles’ eyes to bug out of his sockets, his teeth clamping so tight as his body jolted with electric current running through his veins. When he finally did manage to scream, he flopped back against his chair, screeching and howling at the top of his lungs. The room beforehand reeked of antiseptic, now I could detect a faint hint of urine. The rest of us sat in mostly dumb silence, the only sounds being Charles gasping for breath and Augusta crying. I certainly didn’t know how to react.

“Charles? Answer the question correctly.”

“I…” Charles swallowed. “I gave her some information… that helped her out. She’s a single mom, she needed the money!”

“Which you took a cut from. About ten thousand dollars, a high price from the single mom you claim you sympathize with. Edward?”

Fuck.

“How did you pass your final exam in algebra, senior year?”

I actually sighed with relief. That wasn’t nearly so bad as I expected, since I was following up on Charles’ question. “My friend helped me cheat.”

“Your friend’s name?”

“Jordan. Jordan Mills. He was a genius, he knew I needed his help. He gave me the answers.”

The Judge paused for a moment before turning on Magnolia. “And you, Magnolia? How did you pass your SATs with such high scores? Remember, I can see the rest of your grades. They’re… barely mediocre.”

“What!? They’re-” Magnolia glanced over at Charles, who still looked like a mess. “… I cheated too,” She grumbled.

“Both of you, such poor students, in the same graduating year,” The Judge tutted his tongue, “Our future generation is looking so promising already. Frankie, what happened to the cocaine from the raid on the Wolfe home?”

“It’s in evidence,” the answer came out so fast I think ‘Frankie’ didn’t even consider it a lie, and for a second I thought it wasn’t a lie either.

Then the knife came out and sliced clean through the meat of his shoulder. To his credit, Frankie just breathed in sharply, gritted his teeth and took it.

“I presume you want to change your answer?” The judge asked as the knife slid back out, blood now staining Frankie’s white scrubs.

“Mm… mmhmm,” Frankie exhaled slowly, his body shaking as his face went white. “M-me and another officer took some. S-sold it to someone we knew was a dealer.”

“Therefore putting it back on the streets that you swore to take it off of?”

“It’s different!” Frankie swallowed, his eyes fluttering shut as his shoulder continued to bleed. “The original punks were dealing to highschoolers, kids! The dealer we sold to, he only sold it to thugs who have already ruined their lives.”

“… An interesting point of view, for sure,” The Judge said. “Now, Augusta? How did you get your eldest to sleep sometimes?”

“Oh, I’d rock him to sleep,” Augusta bobbed her head up and down, “He was always so fussy, and-”

She didn’t even get a chance to finish her lie. Her whole body seized up and she screeched as the electric crackle filled the room. It wasn’t as long a shock as it was for Charles, but Augusta looked far worse for wear, gasping and coughing as she tried to calm down.

“Augusta. Stop lying.”

Augusta wailed before her head flopped forward. “A… little whiskey in his bottle… never really hurt anyone, honest, how could I ever hurt my own children?” She said.

I was blown away. Magnolia cheated on SATs, a police officer dealing drugs, and now one of the nicest neighbors on my block gave her kids alcohol so they’d sleep. Christ.

It didn’t get better. That first round wasn’t always fair, after all, all I had to answer for was a false grade, and Harley admitted he took part of a military hazing in which the poor victim had to streak across the base naked. Meanwhile Connie confessed to cheating with a married man and convincing him to leave his wife for her, only to completely blow him off once the wife took the sap for all he was worth. He couldn’t spoil her if he was broke, after all.

I only lied once, I learned quickly enough after that. It was over something stupid, about driving drunk and getting into an accident, slammed into a tree. Jordan covered for me that time too, said he was the one driving since I was tanked. I’d never been electrocuted before that day and I never wanted to again. I didn’t judge Charles for wetting his pants after that, you lose all control when you get shocked like that and that’s all I’ll say about it.

It’s amazing how often some of them chose to lie, and which ones chose not to. Delilah never once lied, completely blank faced as she told us how she robbed one of her johns of everything in his wallet because he passed out drunk or how she didn’t tell her boyfriend that she tested positive for gonorrhea, although the Judge was kind enough to inform her that it was likely him that infected her and not vice versa. Harley only lied twice, once about that hazing and another time about how he abandoned his pregnant girlfriend without even a note.

Meanwhile, Charles had to be shocked and stabbed nearly ever other question, and Augusta lied literally every time. The elderly woman I’d thought was the kindest soul admitted to so many shitty things, some things I can’t even say. All I can say is I pity those poor children of hers, with such a nightmare mom that would beat them for shattering a glass or literally calling the police on her second youngest when he brought his black girlfriend home. She had claimed the girl was trying to rob them. Actual sociopath.

We’re all devils, you know. Devils with different sins blackening our hands, tearing up our souls. No one is innocent. And the Judge knew every one of those sins, no matter how some of us tried to hide them. I wish I knew how he knew that Frankie beat a suspect to get a confession, only for it to be revealed that suspect was innocent all along. I can’t even imagine how he found out that Magnolia slashed her ex boyfriend’s tires because she was mad at him for dumping her, especially since he dumped her since she was so goddamn controlling he couldn’t even see his friends.

For that final round, we all looked fucked up. Shocked, stabbed with everything from knitting needles to steak knives, being forced to reveal our darkest secrets around people that were acquaintances at best, and most were just strangers.

“It’s time for your final question. You will only have one chance to answer this properly. We will start with Augusta.”

Augusta definitely looked the worst off. Like I said, she lied every question, sometimes even more than once. I was surprised she was still alive.

“Augusta, how did your eldest two children die?”

Augusta shakily inhaled and my heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach.

“Doctors… don’t know… I don’t either… mystery illness took my babies from me when they were just six and four years old… let me go home,” Augusta whined.

The Judge sighed.

“Augusta, that’s not the truth. And I told you, this time you would only get one chance to answer correctly.”

The door on the far end of the room and the Judge finally walked out. We finally saw his face. He was tall, well built, probably at least a little handsome, but by that time my brain felt like watery pudding so all I could do was blankly stare at him. He pushed in front of him a television connected to a VHS player, tapes stacked on top of the screen.

The Judge plucked the first tape up, showing us all the name ‘AUGUSTA’ written in black sharpie on the front. He placed the tape in the VHS player and stepped back.

It was a recording of medical documents, a lot of them. The camera panned over several paragraphs nice and slow so we could get the general gist. And that general gist? Augusta’s children would get sick for no discernible reason, but would recover at the hospital. Once they got sent back home, they’d just get sick again. And one day, they both got just too sick and passed away.

“Munchhausen’s by proxy,” The Judge said, and I saw true pain in his eyes as he stood by the wall, where eight switches were neatly lined up. Each of them had a name beneath them, our names. “What are your final words, Augusta?”

“I…” Augusta shook her head. “No, I loved my children, I really did…”

She paused to take a breath and that’s when the Judge flipped the switch.

Augusta writhed and her eyes went so wide they looked like they were going to fall out of her head. She wailed one last time before her eyes rolled back and then the only movement from her came from the electric current.

The switch was turned off and the Judge looked back at us. Then he raised his hand and had his fingers ready at Delilah’s switch.

“Delilah?”

The woman, the truthful one, finally looked up. “Yes?” She asked.

The Judge stared at her. “Your boyfriend. Calvin McLaughlin. Was his murder premeditated?”

“… Yes.” Delilah bowed her head. “… he had friends in the force. He was getting out of jail for nearly killing me, because none of them believed me. So I just waited for him to get home. I waited for him to get drunk. And I wasn’t going to wait for that first punch, so I took a baseball bat and I smashed his head in.”

There was a deathly quiet pause before the judge lowered his hand from Delilah’s switch. The Judge turned his gaze on Frankie, who went pale.

“How did your wife die, Frankie?” He asked.

Frankie, to his credit, did come off as convincing. “Car accident. She went off the road, killed her instantly,” He said.

The Judge did his best to hide any emotion to us, but I did see that look of murderous intent as he grabbed another VHS that had Frankie’s name written on it. He put it in.

Another recording of another document. An autopsy report, about how a Mrs. Nancy Smith had many injuries that were in different phases of healing. How her ribs had been broken multiple times in the past, and this time one of those rib fragments broke free and punctured her heart. Followed by that were reports, doctor’s reports about Nancy’s many visits to the hospital, all for ‘accidents’.

“Was Nancy that clumsy, Frankie?” The Judge asked quietly. “I highly doubt it. Your last words?”

“You don’t understand!” Frankie blurted out. “No one seems to understand how hard our job is, what we see! It takes a toll! It’s not my fault that Nancy didn’t get it-”

I turned away from this electrical death, and when I heard the electrical chair powered down I looked up to see a froth bubbling from the dead cop’s lips, his dead eyes staring at the now flickering light on the ceiling.

“Connie Andrews?”

Connie slowly looked up at the Judge, her face twisted in rage.

“Where did you get the poison for all of the husbands you killed?”

“Fuck you,” She spat at him, saliva landing on his clean white shirt. The Judge simply wiped it off, picked up another tape that no doubt had her name on it, and put in the VHS player.

This time it wasn’t a document, it was a woman exiting a nail salon and heading into a small drug store that happened to be right next door. It was clear the video was taken from someone’s car. Connie exited the store about ten minutes later with a small bag. A newspaper was raised in front of the camera, revealing the date.

“This was two days before your third husband mysteriously passed in his sleep. Your last words?”

Connie went white as The Judge raised his hand for her switch. “No, wait! Don’t do it! I’ll give you whatever you want! I’ll confess! I’ll tell the truth!” She yelped.

Click. The acrid smell of Connie’s fake fingernails melting was so bad it made my head spin.

Magnolia shook her head wildly as The Judge went to her switch next. “I never hurt anyone! What the hell are you doing?!” She screamed, thrashing about so wildly I thought she might actually tear an arm free.

“What did you tell your boyfriend, Zachary Cullen, to do before he shot and killed himself?” The Judge’s stare.

“That… that wasn’t my fault!” Magnolia shook her head again and again, the strap holding her head in place actually coming loose. “How was that my fault?!”

The Judge held up a finger before pulling a voice recorder from his pocket. “This doesn’t need video,” He said simply before he hit play.

The conversation I heard… I can’t repeat it. It was too terrible. Magnolia telling her boyfriend again and again how worthless he was, how he was such a pathetic waste of space, and how she couldn’t wait for him to kill himself because that was the only good thing he’d ever do for himself.

The recording ended with a gunshot. The Judge cocked his head to the side.

“Your last words?”

“How was that my fault!?” Was all she wrote. Being right next to the person being shocked, it’s… it’s so disgusting. I could smell the burning hair and skin, hear every garbled sound that ripped its way out of her throat as she jolted and contorted in horrifying ways.

Charles moaned loudly as The Judge approached the switch. “Don’t. Don’t ask,” He said, even though he knew what would happen.

“Charles? Last month, early morning. Rushing to work because you were late. Did anything happen on that drive?”

Charles didn’t even speak, he just shook his head.

Another tape was taken off the VHS player, the Judge flashing the front to show off Charles’ name.

This was from a traffic cam. A couple was walking across the street, probably the same age your mother and I were at the time. The collision happened so fast, the car slammed into them and sent the man flying over the hood while the woman was crushed under the car. The car stopped for a moment, just a moment, and I recognized the bald head that poked its way out of the window. Just for a second.

And then he zoomed off, leaving the bodies broken and bleeding in the street.

“Mr. Oscar Long was dead on arrival, but Miss Hannah Garcia? She took longer to die, and she suffered for every minute of it. Do I even need to ask for your last words?”

“It was just an accident!” Charles wailed.

I don’t need to describe what happened next. I’m sure you know by now. Another human being electrocuted to death, executed by the expressionless Judge.

Harley sighed shakily as The Judge looked at him. “And?” was all the Judge said.

“… I know what I did was wrong.” Harley admitted, his head bowed before he raised it and looked at The Judge. “So I will not be confessing today, Judge. I know what I deserve.”

The Judge paused and I caught a glimpse of something. Sympathy. “Being apart of the massacre of a village of innocent people and then covering it up. The act of a cowardly soldier. So, I believe this is the bravest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Just end it already,” Harley said, his eyes closing as he prepared for the shock.

“I won’t make you suffer.”

For a moment, I thought the Judge might have an inkling of mercy in him. Instead, he crossed the room of corpses and grabbed Harley’s head. It was so efficient, the twist of his head, the snap of his neck. Harley was dead in less time than it takes to finish a sentence. Perhaps it was mercy in the Judge’s mind. It was certainly quicker than what the others went through, that was for sure.

The only people left that were still alive in that room were me, Delilah, and The Judge. I was the only one left who had a final question. He went to his switches. I knew what he was going to ask.

“Why did you kill Jordan Mills, Edward?”

I took a deep breath.

“Because I was in love with his girlfriend. And she wouldn’t give me a second look as long as Jordan was alive.”

“And the girlfriend?”

“We’re now married. Have a daughter. We have another kid on the way.”

Delilah stared at me, probably shook that someone else confessed their most dirty secret, their most wicked of sins. The Judge nodded.

“And with that, court is adjourned.” The Judge left the room, coming back a moment later with two needles. He jabbed one into Delilah’s neck, the woman’s eyes flickering as she fell unconscious.

“Why did you do this?” I asked as the Judge walked up to me, tilting my head to the side with the hands he’d just used to murder six people.

“So you never do it again,” The Judge hissed before the needle entered my neck.

The next thing I know I’m lying on the street, cops are all around me, asking if I was okay and what happened. I was back in the clothes I’d fallen asleep with, the only sign that anything that had happened was the bruises on my wrists and the memories.

Oh, I know, you never expected me to have taken a life too. I regret it. Jordan was… kind to me. It was a moment of rage, something not at all planned out. I was just lucky no one ever found the body until it was too decomposed to really tell anything. Everyone assumed he fell off the hiking trail and hit his head on the way down, causing his death.

I paid for it my own way, of course. Ever since that night in the Chair of Truth, I’ve practically been a saint. Paid my taxes, watched my words, donated time and money to help others, and even when your mother finally left me for good, I never held it against her.

Why? Well, it’s hard to do anything wrong when you know someone’s gone through your life with a fine tooth comb. The fact someone is still watching me, no matter what I do, and I feel if I ever slipped up again, I’d wake up in the Chair, and next time I’d not get away so easily.

And I hope, my son, that you learn from my mistakes… that no matter how well you hide your sins, you will be found out, whether in the afterlife or this one.

[mccnbeam]

[ she/her] — the TWENTY-SIX year old is a LADY, how exciting to see them this season! rumors have it they are INTELLIGENT and DETERMINED, but i’ve heard they are ILL-TEMPERED and STUBBORN as well — maybe that’s why they’ve been called the TENACIOUS. I have even heard that SHE IS AT RISK OF LOSING HER FORTUNE —only time will tell.

basics;

name: devika krishnamurti, devi to friends age: 26 title: lady, inherited from her father

history;

devika's mother was the equivalent of "nobility" in southern india, a distant relation of the pandya dynasty. though her pandya blood had been diluted over several generations, she was popular at court because she was a skilled bharatanatyam dancer

devika's father held title and land in england, but had a restless spirit. he studied works such as the mahabharata, the bhagavad gita, the book of the dead, the tablets of gilgamesh, the iliad, and the odyssey. he wanted to see the places these texts came from

while traveling the world, he met devika's mother. they fell in love and married in india

devika was born in india and spent the first few years of her life there, but her family had to return to england after the death of her paternal grandfather

her mother had a hard time adjusting to the move. she missed home and she adapted poorly to england. additionally, the travel was hard on her body, and she soon fell ill

though she eventually recovered, her body seemed permanently weakened. she couldn't dance as much as she used to, and as soon as devika was old enough, she was often taking care of her mother alongside the staff

when devika was 19, she came out to society. in that same season, her brother was born. her mother died in childbirth

it was an unsuccessful season for her due to the grief that seemed to blanket her household. her father was devastated by her mothers' death and was no longer taking care of himself, never mind her new brother nor the estate. she began tending to all three

she never planned to marry. she had accepted she was going to be a spinster, and was content to take care of her brother until he was of age to inherit the estate, and then she would take a portion of their wealth to travel the world just as her father did

currently;

a few months ago, her father died in a carriage accident. shortly before passing, he invested a sizeable portion of their family wealth into what turned out to be a fraudulent venture

devika has enough money to run the estate for the next year. if she doesn't marry before then, her and her brother will be left destitute. she knows she's hardly of the ideal marrying age, and is a bit resigned to the fact she's probably gonna have to marry some gross oldie

personality/likes;

having shouldered an enormous amount of responsibility since she was young, she has a somewhat serious disposition. though she can come off reserved, she has a sharp wit and strong feelings about even the most innocuous of things. when she's grown comfortable enough to open up, she is a loyal friend and very loving

she inherited the passions of her mother and her father. she's read all of the ancient texts in her father's library, and has acquired a few more, by gift, since his passing

she's trained in bharatanatyam and she still dances every night, but never for an audience. she can no longer afford her teacher, but she still goes for lessons when she has time. her teacher has become sort of an aunt figure to her

stressed bisexual<3 has never had a sexual experience with a man, but has had a handful with women. ladies if u wanna get TOPPED hit me up

tldr;

dead mom, dead dad, bankrupt estate, she super needs to marry this season, which she's balancing with taking care of her 7 year old little brother - feel free to ask anything else here or on discord! my tag is mayareplies#2206

[the-woild-is-y-erster]

How does Eel feel about losing his leg?

KISSING YOU DIRECTLY ON THE MOUTH I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO BE ASKED THIS !!!

gird thine loins my love because youse abt to get a doozy >:)

a screaming sound...a fizz of static...

and the smell of something burning. that was all eel remembered before he passed out.

a brown eye and a pale one flew open, a gasp and a hacking noise coming with it.

a panicky feeling set into eel's mind as he realized something was down his throat, and covering his nose and mouth. his vision blurry, he scrabbled at the thing, trying to claw it off his face to breathe.

large hands grasped his shoulders gently, carefully removing his hands from his face and slowly laying him back down; he hadn't even realized he had sat up.

he gasped for air, trying to stay calm as he listened to the people--he had figured out sometime in the last minute that there was more than one pair of frantic footsteps, and voices to match. they seemed familiar, but in his haze of panic he couldn't quite place them.

abruptly the thing was removed from his face and he gagged as a connecting tube came out of his throat, managing not to vomit. he gulped in huge breaths as the same gentle hands that had laid him down before held his, and his vision started to clear.

he rubbed his better eye with the back of his hand, squinting as he panted, looking around. a pale blue wall, white tile, grey speckled ceiling tiles, and people.

there was one sitting by his bed, the one holding his hand, another pacing in the corner, and a third seemingly staring at him from the foot of his bed, holding something.

he looked closer at the person at his bed, brow furrowing as his eyes cleared.

"h-harv?" he rasped, voice hoarse.

the brunet broke into a teary grin and raised their joined hands to his lips. eel looked around, slowly growing more relieved and bewildered at the same time.

"a-and- cowboy? what in the-" the man pacing by the door stopped, and came swiftly over to the bed, that eel now realized was a hospital cot.

"e- captain cattaneo," jack started, correcting himself as he glanced again at the nurse studying eel intently from the foot of his bed.

"kelly, what- what happened? where am i, and why the hell are you here? where are the kids?" the last he said to his partner, who opened his mouth before the nurse cut in. "i hate to interrupt, may i speak to the captain here for a minute?" her voice was determined, but not unkind, a certain lilt to it that told eel she was european, maybe german.

jack cleared his throat and stepped back, but harvey stayed at the bedside, clutching eel's hand like a lifeline.

"captain, can i ask your full name and the year you were born? i just need to ask you a few questions, standard coma patient routine." eel stared at her, incredulous. "sorry ma'am- you says coma?" she nodded, looking expectantly.

he swallowed. "captain ezekiel hayes cattaneo, march seventeenth two thousand one, callsign 'eel', age twenty two as of three months ago." he recited, somewhat monotonously. "listen, i gotta know where-"

"and today's date?" she said again.

his mouth closed with a click.

"june- twelfth?" he hesitated slightly. she said he had been in a coma, right? but how much time had passed?

"today is the fourth of august, captain."

he swallowed, looking down at the railing of the bed, before trailing his gaze down to his- his feet.

"and what is your relation to-" "ma'am, i wasn't raised by my ma very well, but she did teach me it's rude to interrupt, so for that i am deeply sorry," he tried to keep his voice level.

"where the hell is my leg?"

[scmantic]

(Omar Osei) picked up their key from the front desk (six months ago) ago. The (twenty-nine) year old uses (he/him) pronouns and is a (former NFL player) from (Houston, Texas). According to their apartment application, people have told them they look a lot like (Kofi Siriboe), and the character they identify with most is (Shrek from Shrek). Santa Moneda gives you a warm welcome, and we hope you enjoy your stay.

BASICS 

full name: omar kafui osei  hometown: houston, texas  sexuality: bisexual  birthday: december 26  zodiac: capricorn sun, libra moon, leo rising  height: 6’2”  languages spoken: english, spanish, a little bit of twi marital status: single  children: none  traits: organized, loyal, quiet, grumpy, resentful, self-destructive 

HISTORY tw mentions of depression, injury

born in houston, tx, the middle of three children (older sister, younger brother), omar was his dad's favorite

he was the golden boy: good at sports, hardworking, got pretty good grades, made family a priority

he started playing football super young and was immediately good at it, becoming a starting tight end in his freshman year of high school (me, effie, pretending to know even a single thing about football,,, walk with me)

he got a scholarship to play at university of southern california and excelled there, making himself out to be a top draft pick upon graduation

he was drafter to the chicago bears in the second round of the draft and jetted off to chicago to go Do Sports

he had a few really good years, until just under two years ago when he sustained an injury in the middle of a game and fucked up his acl biiiiig time

despite all his attempts at recovery, it was determined that he would not be able to play football again

this sent him on a spiral, naturally, since it was the only life he'd known for SO long and he fell into a deep depression

six months ago, he made a snap decision to just move away from everything, tired of being miserable in his chicago apartment reminded of what he had, so now he's here! he should probably get a job, because now he can just Be Sad in this apartment

PERSONALITY/FUN FACTS

listen, he's still... very sad, going through it, but will he go to therapy? probably not!

soft spoken, always has been even before the injury, truly a man of few words

thinks A LOT, but he's not gonna say it!

grump with a good heart (thus... shrek from shrek)

he's a loyal friend! even if he's hard to befriend, once you've weaseled your way into his heart, you're there forever

will come to your party, but will sit on the couch and stay for maybe an hour before leaving

despite being quiet? he's pretty smooth, a bit flirty but just subtly

type a as far as his apartment, life, routine go; the only sort of control he feels he has is by keeping organized and by keeping a routine

still in physical therapy for his knee, hates it

calm under pressure

very much in his "i'm a failure" era, very bitter his career ended the way it did

WC page found here pinterest found here

[liviavanrouge]

Biship Bloom Birthday vignette

Bishop: Man, getting up early for this, I can't believe it...I'm still so *yawns* sleepy....

Bishop: I wonder who I'm gonna have to deal with this early in the morning, please let it be someone chill at this time

???: How mean!

Livia: Hehe! It's me, Livia Vanranrouge, here as your presenter today!!

Bishop: Oh brother *laughs* hey Liv! Expected you to be more chill in the morning but still at least it's you and not someone like Kalim!

Livia: Ah hey! I'm just as hyper as Kalim maybe even more! That feels offensive towards me, I should tire you out more

Bishop: Haha...p-please don't..why don't we begin the interview now?

Livia: Okay! So, if you were to fly anywhere where would you go!

Bishop: .....The Afterglow Savanna...

Livia: Really?

Bishop: That's where my pops was born and raised, he said it was a great place to live but he left because of his families protest against him being with my momma

Livia: Wait! Your dad's family protested about true love!?

Bishop: Yeah....it nearly went to the point of physical force, so my momma and pops ran away together in the middle of the night

Livia: It's like a love story...

Bishop: Hahaha! I guess it was, but they both loved each other dearly, I'd have ran away too if my family were against who I loved

Bishop: I still visit my pops family though, they don't like me very much but they don't hate me either, so it's pretty calm yet awkward whenever i visit

Livia: Huh, if you visit them why visit the Afterglow Savanna?

Bishop: After my pops ran away his family moved so he didn't find them again, the wedge between my pops and the others grew bigger because of that

Bishop: They reside in the City of Flowers, so I've never been to the Afterglow Savanna at all actually, it's a place I desperately want to visit but I'm afraid to ask my parents to take me there

Livia: Bishop...

Bishop: I don't want any bad memories to rise for them, so I'll save up and when I'm older, I'll pay the place a visit myself..

Bishop: I wonder if I'll find my person to love if I visit there...I wanna settle down like my parents when I can and start a family

Livia: Hehe, that's a big step!

Bishop: I know....I'll be ready though even if it catches me off guard

~~~~

Part 2

Livia: Next question! What class are you good at!

Bishop: Hm....I'd say Physical Training

Livia: Hahaha! I expected that!!

Bishop: *Chuckles* Yeah! You've seen me parkour around the school all the way up to the top tower! The heart attacks I gave everyone two days ago when I climbed to the tippy top and leaped off only to be caught by Yolan and Epel on brooms with a blanket tied between them!!

Bishop: That was the funniest and my most favorite moment from this year! Even though Leona practically grounded me for three months because of it, hahaha!

Livia: Yeah! It was hilarious!

Bishop: I started parkour thanks to my momma, back in her native tribe she'd leap from stone to stone, climb trees, scale cliffs and much more. When I turned six, she took me out for a nature walk and we ended up leaping from stone to stone through a rushing river

Livia: Wow! My Papa would pull a protective move and make me stay behind while my elder siblings do something like that...

Bishop: Probably because you hold a special place in his heart, well you and your siblings all hold a special place no doubt

Livia: This isn't about me!!! Tell me more about your mom!

Bishop: Oh yeah! She would hold my hand as we leaped from stone to stone and taught me how to get out of a rushing river if I were to ever fall into one when alone. It was thanks to her that I'm so nimble and quick footed now

Livia: You are in the track and field club..

Bishop: Haha! YEP! When I heard we had that club I dashed all the way there to join, being with Jack and Deuce is a blast even though we can get competitive seeing who's the fastest! Those two are behind twenty points to five, even though the five times they won is because I wanted them too

Bishop: *Smirks smugly* Don't tell them I said that though~

Livia: *Giggles*

Bishop: I grew up with Epel too, so there are times where he'd come join me when I go parkour, he was terrible at it but managed to keep up, that had my deep respect..

Bishop: The adults who weren't my parents weren't able to keep up you know, so little guy earned my respect and trust, loyalty as well! I was glad to have him as a friend at that time, someone who won't complain about me going too far ahead of them

Bishop: Even so, Epel got better as if he had been practicing, soon enough both me and him were just leaping about, laughing and having fun...those were the times...

Livia: Sounds fun, you two are apples in pie

Bishop: Yep! Wouldn't trade my pal for any other friend!

~~~~

Part 3

Livia: Last question! What is something that made you glad you could use magic?

Bishop: Just everything in general for me to be honest, this is an easy question to answer

Livia: Huh?

Bishop: Both of my parents wield no magic, it came as a surprise when I was able to, thought I inherited the use of it thanks to my grandfather on my mother's side since he could use magic

Bishop: After my magic appeared, I always used it to help my parents with their chores and all of that, my pops would be worried and closely watch me...and when I say closely, I mean hold me close to his chest and watch me do my thing kinda close

Bishop: My parents always tell me to be careful when doing magic, so I do my best to be safe..but there was this one time where my magic went out of control

Livia: What....

Bishop: My pops put his life on the line to save mine, ever since then I reduced the amount of magic I used each time I aided my parents, I hardly used much unless my parents gave me permission

Bishop: I remember once I was playing with a few kids who WANTED to play with me and a wild animal got into Epel's farm, I rushed there and found him about to be attack so I struck it with a lightning spell, chasing the beast away

Bishop: I remember being praised for weeks, getting head pats and nods of acknowledgements

Livia: That's amazing, Bishop!

Bishop: Haha, it was a long while ago but thanks

Livia: Yay! Here's your broom, the orchids, hydrangeas and white gardenia's make for such pretty decoration!

Bishop: White gardenia's are my favorite, heh!

Livia: Awesome let's end this off on a good note then!!

Bishop: Very well then, let's head on outside, gal!

~~~~

Bishop: I hope I graduate from school and become a man my parents will be proud of, but for now I'll continue to be myself! Let's go!!

------

Bishop: *Smiles wide, his eyes closed as he held a hand towards the sun as he flew over the botanical garden, three eagle owls flying around him*

[amoveablejake]

No Pressure

Another entry in the incredible true story.

Every now and then I like to write a piece for the blog which is about what I am particularly enjoying at that time of writing. In fact, those free form pieces that I try and fill with excitement and positivity about the things that I mention are some of my favourite pieces to work on. I was thinking that as this is the start of a new month, it might be fitting to do one of those sorts of round ups today but instead, even though I do love writing them something else was on my mind even more or rather someone else. Logic. It is no secret that I adore the Maryland born rapper but I thought that I would write a little something about why I keep returning to the rapper or I suppose to be more accurate why I never go away. Over the last twenty four hours I once again fell into one of the times where rather than only listening to a few Logic songs throughout the day, I instead listen to all of them, over and over again as the deep dive into his work feels like I am centering myself. A reminder of an intangible thing that Logic's music never fails to provide and that I am oh so thankful for.

One of my favourite things about Logic is that as visible as a man as he is an artist. Ofcourse, he chooses what to share with his legions of fans as should be the case, but the fact that he chooses to share at all does mean a lot. I was watching a video yesterday evening of Logic walking around his house as he pointed out different things he had which were in most cases posters from different films. And the thing is, seeing Logic point out the references to films that he loves and them being the same films that occupy my favourite film lists, that natural connection does make when I listen to his music feel that much stronger. I think I see a lot of myself in Logic or perhaps that should be the other way round, and when I see Logic talking about the things that we like it serves as a valuable reminder to keep be yourself and that being yourself and liking the things that you like can help you get to where you want to be. Because as well as being a creative inspiration Bobby is a real role model and although we have never met, it feels like we have and that there is a connection there and one that I draw a lot from as I take further trips around the sun.

Three years ago when Logic announced that he was retiring I wrote a piece about how happy I was for him that he was calling it a day as it was the right decision for him. Then, when he did return I wrote another piece about how incredibly excited I was that he took to the stage and airwaves once again. And ofcourse, inbetween that I have written many other pieces about his albums and his songs and how much he means to me as an artist. I think today though, the different thing that I wanted to touch on is how much he means to me as a person. As I watching this video last night I was struck by the realisation that I think that it is Logic the man, Bobby Hall, who means more to me than Logic the rapper. It is the role model and seeing someone just be themselves that strike an even stronger cord than when I hear Logic's music which is saying something as he continues to be my artist. As I approach my next birthday, I ofcourse have been reflecting on a few different things and one such thing is that I am going to keep on being me and in large part that is down to a certain musician. Maybe one day we'll meet, just so I can say thank you. And to talk about 'Cowboy Bebop'. Ofcourse.

-Jake, a man days away from his next escapade, 06/08/2023

[squidproquoclarice]

Yeehawgust Day 31: Git Along Little Dogies

August 1890

Rainbow Junction, Nebraska

Bessie understood losing a child, or at least, she did in some sense.  She and Hosea had lost some babies, one of them achingly close to being born, and every time, she’d cried.  With George, there was an actual grave.  One she still thought about, even near twenty years later.  Pieces of her heart and soul carved out and stitched together only with the most deliberate care, leaving the scar all the same.

But even she didn’t fully know what it was like.  What she’d lost had been mostly the dreams, the hopes, the potential.  Arthur…he’d lost a child fully in the world, named and known and to judge from helping raise her sister’s kids years ago, one who’d already very much started to show a clear personality and self at four.  No, technically three.  Arthur had last seen him alive at three.  Dreams and potential, yes, but so much heartbreaking reality as well.

Three months now since he’d come back and said he found them buried, and soon enough he once again smiled and laughed and did all the usual things within their small family, but she saw that emptiness in his eyes when he thought nobody was looking.  Knew that I’m fine facade for the act it was.

Something else there too, something bleak and hard that unsettled her, but if he wouldn’t talk about his boy and the woman who’d borne him, he wasn’t going to talk about whatever happened afterwards.  She knew Arthur so well now after almost thirteen years, learned his moods and tempers and kindnesses, but he’d gone somewhere she couldn’t follow.

He’d always tended to ride off for a while to be by himself, even before he’d been making trips to see Isaac, but now sometimes those trips ended with him coming back drunk or else in the local jail for getting into a bare-knuckle brawl.  Things that would have felt like youthful idiotic high spirits in a man with energy and temper in abundance now felt like something so different. 

Dutch said Arthur just needed work.  Bessie frankly thought Dutch was full of shit on that point, but wouldn’t say so.  She could see he was so impatient for Arthur to just come back to himself.  As usual, trying to nudge things along, make them into the reality he wanted, and he probably meant well by it, but it was like trying to force a man who’d been gutshot onto his horse and demanding he go holler Git along you little dogies at the cattle and round them all up, claiming it was just for his own good.

She found him out in the barn, on the heap of feed sacks they’d put in to start to prepare for winter.  A book opened and placed facedown on his chest, and him instead staring up at the ceiling as if it had something profound written on it.

She took a deep breath, and knew this would probably either help or shatter him completely, but she couldn’t just stand by helplessly and wait.  Or shove more work at him like Dutch.  Or shove more books at him like Hosea.  Or cluck and fuss over him like Susan.

Arthur heard the whimper from the puppy she was carrying and sat up, though he put the book aside.  Still a man who valued reading enough to not carelessly throw a book to the floor and risk damaging it.  Sat there, looking at her and said, “Found another wayward critter, huh?”  An edge of rueful humor to it, the self-deprecation so familiar to her.  

“Yeah, in town.  This one was the runt.  Man was threatening to drown him, if you can believe it.”  True enough.  Though it had been in a weirdly joking way that she knew wasn’t serious, but which she couldn’t find funny all the same.

“I can believe it.  World’s a shitty place, Bessie.  My pa threatened to drown me plenty of times.”  Said with an offhanded humor, but she couldn’t find it funny either.  The puppy snuffled, wiggled, cuddling closer to her.  “Figured maybe you wouldn’t mind a late birthday present.”

His brows knit together in confusion.  “You and Hosea got me that nice shaving kit.”

“Now, Arthur.  I took the poor boy on and we all know who’s best with animals in this family, and don’t think I don’t see you petting everyone’s dogs and cats given half a chance.  So please just play along with me here.”

Also not untrue.  But hopefully he wouldn’t see what lay beneath all that.  The notion she’d had, looking at that poor last remaining puppy, that what Arthur truly needed was someone who needed him, someone to give some love to, someone to give him some happiness back.  Yes, Boadicea did some of that, but people always had a more complicated dynamic with their horses, given the dependency of a working relationship involved.  Dogs and cats?  It could be much simpler.  

He sat back a bit, shoulders easing, and she saw the faint twitch of a smile.  One of those moments he’d managed to forget the pain, to let it recede, and she thanked God for that.  She’d made the right call here.  “You got me there, I suppose.” 

“Besides, it’s been a while since we had a dog.  What, five years?”

“Seven.  We lost Midnight seven years back.”  A gleam of humor entered his eyes.  “It’s fine, we got little Johnny as a pet instead.  Now, he shits where he ought, but he still ain’t gotten the hang of not yapping all the time, though.”

“Arthur.”  She couldn’t help but chuckle all the same.  “Here.  Besides, don’t I owe you for beating me at dominos this winter?  I always said we needed something to mark the occasion should you ever manage it.”

He was smart enough to know some of what she was doing, but thankfully, he seemed to believe it was just her being a soft touch, and both of them knowing he was every bit as much of one when it came to animals.  She handed over the dog, his fur the color of a newly-minted penny, and watched him cradle the puppy close to his chest.  Already half in love, by the look of him, and laughing at the dog’s boundless energy.  “OK, there, Copper.  Yeah, you’re a good boy.”

“Copper?”

“Coloring.  And hell, we got enough lawmen sniffing out our trail at times–might be nice to have a friendly copper around for once.”

Copper seemed to agree, licking Arthur’s face.  She felt a spark of hope at that.

[gredandforgeweatherby]

The Girl One Floor Below

Apartment 3C

Summary: Peter Parker helps a girl move in

WC: 1.3K

warnings: A singular swear word, talk of Gwen's death and its effect on Peter (recurring theme throughout the chapters) Not edited because I wanted to pot it today and written over the course of one day so my crappy writting. Takes place after NWH so spoilers if you haven't seen it.

If you haven't seen it go watch it right now, like literally close tumblr and go watch it. It's life changing.

      Peter Parker was tired.

       He was tired of the project Jameson had made him redo multiple times (4 and counting!), despite the fact that he thought it was perfectly fine. He was tired from his multiversal travel, even though he has been back in his own universe for three months now. And he was tired of being alone.

     Now don't get him wrong, he was totally fine with living alone – he had for several years now. He was fine with maybe not getting out as much as he used to or seeing people outside of his work (willingly). The thing that bugged him was – well, it was a combination of things.

Landing in another universe changed him for the better. Seeing the two others Peter’s living their lives happily, or as happily as they could being a superhero, with someone sparked a bit of hope in his heart. They had time for Spider-Man, and they had time for Peter Parker. He hadn’t. Ever since that night in the clocktower, once he managed to drag himself out of the pit of despair, depression, and guilt that Gwen’s death had catapulted him into, he didn’t make time to be Peter Parker. Just Peter Parker. He left the city on its own for a while, and came back more brutal than before. He was the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, but he’s afraid he lost that title years ago.

Gwen was his one – his soulmate, his person, the one he was destined to spend forever and longer with. That’s what he thought at least. But he was older now, twenty-seven going on twenty-eight, and he no longer believed in that. He believed he was meant to fall in love with Gwen, become enamored by her, and then have her ripped away from him in the most gut wrenching way he could have possibly imagined (if he ever imagined it, which he didn’t), and then spend the rest of his life living with that knowledge. The knowledge that as every year passes, he grows a year older while Gwen is forever nineteen. That he lives with the guilt and pain about what happened that night. He believes he was meant to be alone, that the universe wanted to give him a taste of what a wonderful life he could have had if maybe he had never been bitten, or been so selfish, or maybe hadn’t been born with the name of Peter Benjamin Parker. 

The universe could be a real bitch.

But part of him, a small part of him, had been healed when he saved his younger brother’s MJ, preventing him from living the life he had for almost eight years. Peter had found solace knowing that he prevented the youngest Peter from losing his twin flame, and that helped him heal. That had been the first true step in his healing journey, he realized, as nothing he had done before had really helped. The burning pain he once held in his heart and head had become a dull ache spread across his entire body over the years, but a trip to another universe had helped that ache subside just a bit. And for that, he was thankful.

Nine months out from a quick trip of meeting two other versions of him, he was healing. He was getting better. Peter blamed himself less than he had for Gwen’s death, the dull ache had subsided more, and although he knows it will never be fully gone, he’s glad it can become duller and duller until it’s almost absent. He was taking better care of himself, stopping in to see May more and staying longer for visits. Jameson finally accepted the project that had been causing him a substantial amount of grief since he had come back. (He had to do it over five times before Jameson finally deemed it acceptable, although at that point Peter had gotten tired of his shit and just submitted his first version again and Jameson didn’t even know.) He was trying to leave his apartment a bit more for things that weren’t work or errand related, and began decorating his apartment a bit nicer to hopefully bring some light into his life. He was on his way back from the bugle, and was only a few steps away from the elevator of his apartment building when he took a quick look to his left. 

A few feet from his left was a woman close to the same age as him. She was obviously moving in as she had two moving boxes with her, although she was slightly struggling to get a hold on both of them. Her hair was short; dark brown cut to sit a bit above her shoulder, yet most of it was up in a ponytail, the rest sitting against the base of her neck, lightly damp with sweat. She was wearing a tank top and shorts, as it was now July and the heat was brutal, and he could see small beads of sweat collecting at her hairline. Nonetheless, Peter thought she was beautiful.

Looking at her made his heart race, made him feel nervous like he was back in highschool talking to Gwen again. He noticed his palms beginning to sweat and wiped them on his jeans as he debated going over to talk to her. He had almost decided on no when he had thought back to what the eldest of the Peters had told him.

He was going to make time for Peter Parker.

With that thought, he wiped his palms on his pants once more before going over to her.

“Uh, hi.” He greeted her with a small smile and wave before clearing his throat because he knows he sounds like a prepubescent teenager talking to his crush, and continued. “Hi, I was passing and saw you were moving without any help and was wondering if I could offer some.” He internally cringed at how he was talking to her, he was admittedly out of practice.

She smiled lightly while nodding her head. “That would be great actually. I’ve been struggling with these boxes for a bit, thank you.”

Peter nodded at her in response before picking up one of the boxes. “Lead the way.”

────────────────────────────────────────────

They made their way to the third floor before she stopped, put her box down, pulled out her keys and unlocked her door. She stepped out of the way to let Peter inside first before making her way inside with her last box.

“You can put it anywhere, obviously I’m not very particular about box placement.” She placed her box on the kitchen counter as she voiced this to Peter, and he made his way over to her and put his next to it.

He looked back at the various boxes scattered about the room before speaking. “Did you move all of these up here by yourself?”

Letting out a light laugh she responded. “Yeah, I didn’t have anyone helping me so it has taken me way too long. I was planning on unpacking some tonight but that is not gonna happen now.”

“I could help if you wanted.” Peter offered, part of him hoping she’d say yes, but another part hoping she’d say no.

“Oh no it’s okay. I feel bad I even took up the whole six minutes of your time already so you’re free to go.”

She and Peter walked to the door and he noticed the number emblazoned on the door. “3C, I’m one floor above 4C if you ever need anything. I know it’s always nice to have someone just in case when you’re moving in. I didn’t have that, all I had was this crotchety old woman who hated my guts so..” he trailed off while looking away, really wishing a hole would just swallow him up on the spot for being so awkward. But instead of grimacing or cringing, the woman smiled and thanked him.

“I’m Peter, by the way.” He stuck out his hand.

“I’m Marilyn.” She took his hand and shook it, before saying goodbye and seeing him off.

Marilyn.

Peter never thought a name would ever sound so sweet on his tongue.

series masterlist

[neonlights92]

RUN: Chapter I

Jeon Jungkook hops from bed to bed, sleeping with as many beautiful, rich women as he can possibly find time for.  He’s young and attractive, with a silver tongue that gets him practically anything he wants.  So when his friend and boss, Kim Taehyung, tells him it’s time to settle down, Jungkook takes it pretty badly.  And when he finds out that the woman he’s destined to marry is, in fact, his little sister’s best friend, he is less than impressed.

You have spent your entire life trying to forget the way you feel about Jeon Jungkook.   So when you find out that Jungkook is to be your husband - and that he is anything but pleased about it - your world is thrown into chaos.  How can you survive a loveless marriage with the man you are hopelessly in love with?

WARNINGS: Language, some violence and eventual smut.

A/N: I changed Jungkook’s story slightly from my original story.  Hope you guys like it!!! Enjoy :)

You were in love with Jeon Jungkook. 

You had been in love with him, since the moment you understood what it truly meant to love someone. 

The engagement party was in full swing - people chattered around you happily, congratulating the supposedly happy couple - but all your attention was on him.

You watched him from across the expanse of people wedged between you both.  He leaned against the stone wall, observing, as he always did.  Arms crossed, dark eyes narrowed.  

You knew you probably shouldn’t watch him for long - that if he felt your gaze on him he would add it to the long list of reasons why he’d probably noticed you were in love with him years ago.  But you couldn’t help yourself.  He looked so handsome - so inviting - and you swore at yourself for still holding a candle to someone who didn’t see you as much more than an accomplice to his little sister.

Your best friend Nayeon had been born only a year after Jungkook, but sometimes it felt like he would treat her - and by association you - as a child forever.

“Stop staring,” Nayeon had sidled up beside you, a flute of champagne clutched in her hands, “You’re making it so obvious.”

You rolled your eyes, “You mean twenty three years of following him around like a puppy hasn’t been proof enough?”

She sighed heavily and slipped an arm through your own.  Nayeon had known about your unfortunate feelings for her brother for a long time.  Unfortunate because, really, in what world would your love ever be reciprocated?

Not only had you been relegated to little sister status long ago - but Jungkook was so handsome he could have any woman he wanted. 

It was well known that Jungkook was Bangtan’s resident playboy.  He’d made no effort to settle down in the years since turning a ‘marriage-appropriate’ age, and had done just about the opposite.  Flitting from woman to woman  (and coincidentally bed to bed) with an easy smile and eyes that could warm the hardest of hearts.

Eventually, of course, he would be forced to settle down.  Not only was he an important member of Bangtan - he was in the capo’s inner circle.  Soon Taehyung would choose a wife for him whether he wanted it or not.  Because Jungkook needed to produce heirs - it was what had always been expected of a made man.

“I’ve told you to talk to your father,” Nayeon’s voice was sympathetic, “Our families are such good friends - maybe the two of you could get married.”

You felt your chest pinch at Nayeon’s suggestion.  She was right, she had been telling you this for years.  But you knew that speaking to your father wouldn’t change anything.  Had told her just as much.

“Taehyung will choose his wife Nae, you know this just as well as I do.”

Her eyes softened and you felt yourself grow tired again.  Your feelings for him were exhausting sometimes.

“Talk to Taehyung then.  Your family is well-respected, Y/N.  It wouldn’t be a downgrade.”  

You scoffed, “For Bangtan’s golden boy?  C’mon Nae.  Let’s not start this again.  I’m not in the mood for it.”

Your eyes moved towards Jungkook once more, but they widened slightly when you realised he wasn’t there anymore.  Probably off flirting with some beautiful woman… 

Your heart clenched in jealousy as it always did when you imagined Jungkook with someone else.  

“Looking for me?” 

There it was.  His voice.  

You turned sharply, eyes lifting to connect with his own.  Jungkook’s face was unreadable as he stared down at you - and you wondered for a moment, if he was angry with you.

“What?” The word escaped you, “Uh… No.  No.  Just enjoying the party.”

Nayeon’s arm had slipped out of yours at some point.

His expression was dark and you felt like perhaps he was glaring at you.  Glaring?  Why would he be glaring?  Your chest tightened.

“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

The words sounded venomous, almost.  You felt confused.

“What?”

Jungkook quirked a dark brow, “Playing dumb doesn’t suit you, Y/N.”

Nayeon cleared her throat noisily and stepped between the two of you.  You were grateful for her presence.  Jungkook had never spoken to you like that.  Almost as if… He hated you.

It was so much worse than the way he usually treated you - like a little sister he begrudgingly liked.  What had you done to deserve this treatment?

“What is going on, Jungkook?” Nayeon’s voice held a note of warning.

His gaze snapped up to meet hers and he scowled, “This hasn’t got anything to do with you.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” Nayeon growled back, eyes narrowed harshly, “Y/N is my best friend and you, regrettably, are my brother.”

“Why don’t you ask your best friend, then?” He spat the words out almost viciously, “Ask her why I got called into a meeting with Taehyung, our father and her father, this morning.”

Your heart felt like it was going to fall out of your throat. 

“What?”  Your voice was quiet - little more than a whisper.

Jungkook’s eyes shifted for a moment and he softened - before his face became that impassive mask again.  It was the Jungkook of Bangtan that stood before you.  Not your Jungkook.

Not the Jungkook that used to pull on your hair when it got too long, or the Jungkook that taught you how to swim.  This Jungkook was scary, unpredictable even.

“I suppose I should welcome you to the family,” His voice had lost all of it’s anger - it was just cold now, “Mrs Jeon.”

Your heart stopped.

“I….”

“What are you talking about, Jungkook?” Nayeon interrupted and though you wanted to look at her, your eyes seemed incapable of moving away from Jungkook’s.

He wasn’t glaring at you anymore, thank god, but now his face was just blank - unmoving.  You recognised that look from your own father’s face.  Long ago you’d dubbed it the Bangtan face.  The way coldness seemed to freeze over any warmth.  It frightened you more than any anger could.

“I’m marrying her,” He said, emotionless.  Like a robot, “At the earliest opportunity, apparently.”  His eyes flickered for a moment, and you thought you saw something gentle, in them.  But it was soon replaced by that same, cold indifference.

“Me?” You squeaked, heart thundering in your ears.  

Nayeon was silent.  It was the first time in a long time that something had left her truly speechless, you reckoned.

When Jungkook nodded, once, sharply, your insides twisted.

“I’m sorry,” You felt the tears burning, but you refused to let them fall, “I didn’t… I never asked for this.  I swear, I had no idea.”

The conversation you’d had with Nayeon just moments ago flashed through your mind.  It was so ironic you almost wanted to laugh.

“Your feelings for me have become… Increasingly clear in the last few years.”  Jungkook’s tone wasn’t cruel, but you felt the chill in it, “I suppose your father realised, as did mine.  Taehyung has been wanting to marry me off for years, so he was only happy to accommodate.”

On the last word, you flinched.

Accommodate.  Like you were a burden being handed to him.

“I’m sorry,” You repeated, although you weren’t entirely sure what you were apologising for.  Was it your inability to keep your feelings under check?  Should you really feel sorry for something you couldn’t really control?

“It’s not your fault, Y/N.” Nayeon had seemed to regain some of her sense, “You know how this world works. She didn’t choose this, Jungkook.”

But you could see that he blamed you.

And in some ways you understood.  It was your clear feelings for him that had caused a matrimony that he didn’t want.  Jungkook valued his independence, his freedom.  He’d told Nayeon and yourself time and time again that he would try to delay his getting married as much as he could.  Another twenty years, at least. 

And now he was saddled with you. 

You had taken away that freedom he treasured so dearly, without even meaning to. 

“No I didn’t choose this but I am sorry,” You felt like you might crumble to dust under Jungkook’s stare, “I shouldn’t have made my feelings so clear.”

The words were difficult to say - was it really your fault that you loved him? - but they seemed to do the job.  Jungkook’s shoulders relaxed and his face softened.

“So you didn’t ask for this?”

You shook your head once, rigidly.  

“Then I’m sorry for getting angry,” He said gently, his eyes roving your face carefully.  He was doing that thing he always did - he was trying to read you - the same way he read everyone.

But you were like a book to him, weren’t you?  So open.  So obvious. So easy to read.  He barely needed to try.

Jungkook had never made it as clear as he had right now, that he knew you were in love with him.  You supposed you should be embarrassed - and you were, to a degree.  But some part of you, a much larger part, just felt sorry.

“And I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”�� He added, hands moving towards the pockets of the trousers he was wearing, “But in a month’s time, you will be Mrs Jeon Jungkook.” A month? You felt sick - like you might throw up.

This was all you’d ever dreamed of… But you didn’t want it like this.  Forced and angry.  You wanted love and passion and affection.  Things you knew Jungkook didn’t feel for you.

Things you’d always worried he’d never feel for you.

You were content watching him from a distance but now?  Now he was up close and personal, and you could barely meet his eyes.

Without another word, Jungkook slipped away from you, probably off to find some kind of alcohol to drown himself in.  In one month you would be Mrs Jeon Jungkook…

“Oh Y/N.” Nayeon’s voice caught, and suddenly you realised you had started crying.

The man you loved probably hated you now and in a month you would become his wife.  Any hope of Jungkook reciprocating your feelings for him disappeared.

It was all one big, scary mess.

//

You hadn’t spoken to Jungkook since the night he had told you about your upcoming nuptials.  From the little information Nayeon had been able to gather, he wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of having to marry you.

“He’ll come around,” She told you time and time again.  But you could barely bring yourself to believe her.

It had been years of loving him.  Years of watching him from far away and never being able to call him yours.  Why would that change now?

How could it change when he probably despised you for this wedding?

You couldn’t bring yourself to hope for anything more than civility.  Anything else would break your heart.

Everything about the wedding had been decided for you.  Down to even the dress.  You had tried things on, a mannequin for the women of your family and the Jeon family.  Your mother had tried encouraging you to enjoy yourself, as had Nayeon, but nothing seemed to work.

“I’ll be married in a week,” Your stomach twisted, “And Jungkook hasn’t even looked at me since that night.”

“He’s just getting used to the idea Y/N.” Nayeon tried to convince you but it was as futile and pointless as ever.

“He hates me.”

“No he doesn’t. It’s Jungkook.”

You felt your heart pull uncomfortably. It was Jungkook. You wanted so badly for him to be yours - had spent years and months and hours thinking about it. And yet….

That would never happen.

Nayeon was helping you wrap up the wedding favours. Another thing you’d had no part in choosing. Jungkook’s mother had ordered bracelets for the women and cuffs for the men.

“Don’t you have someone else to do this?” Nayeon fiddled with the baby blue crepe paper, “I’m so bad at this.”

“I asked to do this.” You shrugged, “It was the only thing my mother trusted me with. I wanted to feel somewhat useful.”

“I’m sorry Y/N.”

Any hope of magic for your special day had been obliterated the moment Jungkook had confronted you. He would never accept this marriage as anything other than something he’d been forced into.

And he would probably always blame you for it.

“It’s alright,” You cleared your throat of the thick tears threatening to spill, “I never expected to choose anything for my own wedding anyway.”

“Still.  This is meant to be exciting.” You laughed and it caught in your chest, sounding suspiciously like a sob.

“I’m marrying the love of my life and yet… I’m miserable,” You shook your head, “Only Bangtan could be capable of causing something like this.” Nayeon opened her mouth - maybe to tell you that her brother would come around - when a knock at the door stopped her.

“Yes?” You answered quietly, half expecting it to be your mother with yet another ridiculous demand.

The portal opened and revealed your husband to be - Jeon Jungkook - looking decidedly sheepish as his eyes met your own.

Sheepish?  Jungkook?  It couldn’t be.

“Your maid… Jennie.  She let me in.”

You nodded and felt the questioning gaze of Nayeon flicker between both you and Jungkook.  What was he doing here? You were curious, too.

“Could I… Nayeon…Could I talk to Y/N for a minute?  Alone?”

Nayeon curled her top lip, “You’re not going to be an asshole to her again, are you?”

When Jungkook gave her a look that could freeze hell over Nayeon merely shrugged. Though they’d grown up in Bangtan - and though Jungkook was as dangerous as they come - Nayeon and him still shared a relatively normal sibling dynamic.

They were both stubborn of course, with tempers that could rival even the scariest Bangtan member…. But they loved each other.

And they were fiercely loyal. A Jeon trait, you’d come to learn.

“Just five minutes okay? Then you can continue to be a pain in the ass,” Jungkook glared at his sister as Nayeon stood, eyes narrowed.

“I’ll be just next door Y/N. Scream if he pisses you off.”

She patted your hand, face still scowling at her brother.  He flipped her off before she pulled a face, sliding out of the room with a quiet click of the door.  When you were alone with Jungkook, your heart felt like it was going to crawl out of your mouth.

His eyes were almost warm as he turned to you again.

“Y/N I wanted to… Apologise, for my behaviour at the party earlier this month,” He seemed genuinely sorry, “And for…” He trailed off before clearing his throat again, “And for ignoring you, the last few weeks.  This marriage has been difficult for me to process.”

You nodded, not trusting yourself to speak.

“But I wanted to come here and tell you that… If we’re getting married to one another, then I suppose we should try to get along for the sake of our own sanity.”  He stepped towards you and almost looked like he wanted to touch you, but thought better of it, “But that doesn’t - I don’t…” He paused and you noticed his eyes seemed almost sad, “I know how you feel about me, Y/N.  But I can’t… Promise anything.  I’ll be kind to you like I’ve always been.  And we might grow closer because of this marriage but… That’s all I can offer.” 

You knew what he was saying.

He was happy to be your friend.  Maybe to even warm your bed at night.

But Jungkook would never love you as you loved him.

You nodded, mutely, feeling that if you said a word you might break down in tears.  And you refused to let him see you that way, no matter how much your heart ached.

“I don’t want you to resent me, Y/N.  But I’m not… I’m not a man of commitment.  You understand, don’t you?” You almost laughed in his face.

He wasn’t a man of commitment? Jeon Jungkook spent every day of his life committed to the cause of Bangtan.  He was willing to fight for it.  To die for it.

It wasn’t commitment he didn’t want - it was you.

He didn’t have to lie to try and placate you.  You were a big girl.  Stronger than he took you for.

“You will never love me as I love you.”  You said, voice hollow, “Is that what you’re trying to say Jungkook?”

He winced, “I’m sorry.”

The words hurt you more than if he’d slapped you across the face. He was sorry? 

“Please don’t apologise,” Your chest twinged, “There’s nothing to feel sorry for.” The way he was looking at you made everything a million times worse.  You felt like a glass vase, teetering off the edge, about ready to shatter into a thousand pieces.

After a moment you cleared your throat, “How long?”

He raised a dark brow, “What?” “How long have you known about my… Um… Feelings for you.”

Jungkook shifted, clearly uncomfortable, but you decided you didn’t really care.  If you were going to spend the rest of your life committed to a man that didn’t want you, the least he could do is give you this much.

“Since your sixteenth birthday party.”

The memory seared your heart and your stomach fluttered.  Even thinking of it now, almost ten years later, caused something indescribable to pass through you. 

It had been a summer’s evening - you were born in late August.

Your mother had planned this overly flamboyant affair (she had a flair for the dramatics, clearly) and though you hadn’t wanted to attend, you’d done so anyway, not wanting to upset her after all her hard work.

And of course, she’d invited all the girls from Bangtan’s most powerful families including your arch nemesis at the time - Jihyo. 

Jihyo was as beautiful as she was mean, and though she was a little older than you were she never passed up the opportunity to humiliate you.  Your birthday was no different.

When you’d turned up in that ridiculous excuse of a dress - a frilly, pink puff pastry of a thing - Jihyo had spent all evening making fun of you in corners, and whispering cruel things behind your back.

Nayeon had threatened to bite her nose off but the both of you knew she was untouchable.  Jihyo was the Taehyung’s father’s niece.  She moved around the room like she owned it (and in a way she did) and it wasn’t until she made a comment about the angle of your mouth that Jungkook had stepped towards you and taken your hand.

Of course, Jihyo seethed with anger and jealousy all night. 

All the Bangtan girls wanted just a little of Jungkook’s attention - but he spent all evening treating you like a princess.  He laughed at your jokes, and danced with you, and even tucked your curls behind your ears. 

And you knew it was only because Jihyo was a bully and Nayeon was his little sister so you were too, in a way, but it didn’t really matter.  Because that evening it was like he’d plucked the moon right out of the sky and placed it in your pocket.

That was how special you’d felt.

And that was the Jungkook you fell in love with.

You nodded,  once, sharply and then took a deep, calming breath.

“You don’t have to worry, okay?”  Your voice was shaking but you forced yourself to move past it, “I won’t let my feelings for you get in the way of things.  Ever.  I know what this marriage means to you.”

For a moment - just one moment - it seemed like something close to regret flashed past Jungkook’s eyes.  But it was gone before you were even sure you’d seen it.

“Thank you, Y/N.”  He bowed gently and you tried to smile.

It was only later on, when Nayeon came back with a cup of chamomile to calm your nerves, and a sympathetic smile to stroke your pain, that you finally gave way to the tears that had threatened to spill since Jungkook’s arrival.

This was all a fucking mess.

//

[cazimagines]

Try not to forget me

Synopsis: Anon request: Can we have a reader who slept with Zemo when they were younger, they were basically each other’s first times. Reader was brought to the mission and when Sam mentions Zemo she only limits herself to saying that she knows him assuming she knows him from civil war. At some point, Zemo mentions it to Sam and since he can’t contain himself he has to ask reader to be sure. Maybe some smut, like ‘I don’t remember you being this good’

Word count: 8.5k

Author’s note: Welp it took me a while but it's finally here! I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I am such a sucker for the trope of seeing someone you once dated years after not seeing them again. Like give me all of that. Also I changed a little bit of the request but not much.

Warnings: Gun shots, SMUT (for mature audiences), Fingering, Vaginal sex, Stripping

Masterlist

(Please check out my master list to see what I will be writing next and if requests are open or closed)

Cross-posted to ao3 under the same username

Fingers fumbled with the clasp, the feeling of lips trailing up your thigh, sweet whispers in the air,

‘My princess, my everything’

His kisses on your neck, the desperation in his voice

‘I need you, all of you’

His fingers dug into your hips, his body moving like waves on top of you.

You call out his name to the night, losing yourself in the passion that consumed you.

Your hand tangled in his hair, tugging roughly which elicited a moan from his lips.

His eyes sparkled as he reached his first climax with you, ‘You’ll always be mine’

You woke up still with the taste of his lips upon your mouth. You felt the ghost of him linger on top of you, clinging to that long-ago memory.

But all things fade with time and the cold reality pulled you from the once pleasant dream drenched in sorrow. Sighing you pulled yourself off the made-up bed on the floor, already grabbing a hair tie to pull the bird’s nest of your hair out of your face. You hop over to where your prosthetic leg laid and strapped it onto your thigh.

Grabbing your phone you notice a few miss call from an old friend, calls you must have slept through. Pressing the number you hold it up to your ear as you wander around the apartment preparing for your day.

On the third ring, he picked up.

“Sam?” you ask

“Y/n! I wasn’t sure if I would hear back from you, it’s been a while”

“Yeah, things have been keeping me busy. It’s not like how it was when we were in the army”

You could hear him chuckle down the line, “It’s strange, I would have thought my time in the army would have been the craziest part of my life, but it’s hard to beat all the stories I have of aliens”

“At least you have stories to tell, what do I have? I served for a few years as a new American citizen, almost died a few times till one day I got shot in the leg”

“I don’t know losing your leg is one hell of a story, but speaking of almost losing your life. You remember that time I was able to pull you away from a landmine and you told me, ‘oh Sam thank you so much, I owe you so much’” Sam says down the line in a squeaky voice

“Since when have I ever spoken like that Sam? And why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like where this is going”

“Well that’s because it is time for me to cash in that favour”

That’s how you found yourself arriving at an airport, searching around to find Sam. As you walked around the corner you could make out what seemed to be three figures in the distance. As you got nearer one of them noticed you, and started waving exaggeratingly making you chuckle.

You finally reach him as Sam pulls you into a firm hug. “It’s good to see you again y/n,” he says as you pull away.

“Yes, after all these years of avoiding me” you quip making him laugh

“You know I’d never avoid you! It’s you who has always found an excuse to get out of meeting up with old friends”

“Well I’m here now”

“Speaking of old friends, let me introduce to you this man, 106 years old, dermatologists hate him”

The man Sam referred to now stepped forward, holding out his hand, “Hi, I’m Bucky” he says, smiling slightly as you shake his hand.

“Y/n, you look good for your age”

“He moisturises” Sam buts in making Bucky send him a look, “It’s complicated” he mutters and you nod.

“I met Steve once, I understand,” you tell him, making his eyes light up at the mention of his old friend.

“Super soldier serum, the ability to be almost immortal, another reason as to why we have all gathered here to prevent it”

A shiver ran through your spine as you heard that long ago accent which you had removed from your voice. You focus on the man behind Sam, someone you should have noticed when you first appeared.

It had been over twenty years since you had last seen him yet you could still recognise the way his lips twitched up at the sides but dipped in the middle, the softness of his warm brown eyes, and the slight angular twist his eyebrows had. His hair was more well kept than when you had last seen him. Then he was still going through his rebellious phase, letting his hair grow unkempt but now he had a sense of refinement about him. He knew he was ageing like fine wine and now instead of trying to rebel from the prestigious life he had like when you knew him, he lavished in it, enjoying the money that was of so easy access to him and spent it on all the finer luxuries of life.

“Y/n, this is Zemo. You might remember seeing him on the news, he’s the one who framed Bucky”

You knew him more than that, more than any of them could ever know him. The dream from this morning swarmed your thoughts again, taunting you as if your brain knew what was to come.

Sokovia had been your home country, a place you had longed to forget, leave dead. Zemo, Helmut, was your childhood friend. You couldn’t remember the time when you first met as it felt like he had always been in your life. Everything you two did, you did together. Attending the same schools, going around to each other’s houses, exploring the wildness together. You two were closer than siblings. Your family had nowhere as near the same money as Zemo’s family had, yet that didn’t seem to matter, at least not when you were children. It was no surprise to people when eventually you two started dating. There had been bets on how long it would take for Zemo to gather the courage to ask you out. You and Zemo had been each other’s firsts, first partner, first kiss, first making love, which is where your dream had come from. It was cringy to say it but you felt like you loved him with every inch of your soul, and you knew Zemo was just as dedicated to you.

That’s why the break-up was so messy.

You were the one who called it. You had to. Zemo might have been blind to what it meant to be a Baron at that time but you weren’t. His parents allowed him to have his little indulges, allowed you two to be friends, to date. But at the end of the day, he would always be from the higher class and your family from the lower class. They would of never let you two marry so you had to call off the relationship before you got too deep, to save yourself some pain. You’d hoped that you two could still be friends, though it would have hurt, you still wanted to be around him but that was never meant to be.

At first, he didn’t believe you, he laughed it off as a good joke till he realised you were being serious. Then was the confusion, he wouldn’t let you leave. He needed to know what he did wrong, what could have happened for you to want to break up with him. Then was the obsession. He wouldn’t leave you alone, turning up to your house every day to beg for another chance, following you around trying to pick the relationship back up, threatening any guy that went near you. Then the heartbreak when he finally accepted it was over. He didn’t leave his house for months, you heard rumours he drank himself to sleep most nights, till one time at the dead of the night you found him pounding on your door, shouting to let him in. He was pissed and crying, imploring at you to give him a second chance, begging for you to tell him what he could do to get back with you. He would do anything, give you all his money, abandon his family and run away with you. You helped him back home and told him to leave you alone. And to give it to him he did because then came the anger. You would see him outside and he would pretend he didn’t even know who you were. You’d walk past and accidentally hit shoulders and he shouted at you to watch where you were going. Soon he would be seen with lots of different women, taking them to all the places he took you, dancing at parties. Whenever you looked over to them they were making out and it pained you deeply for what you had to give up. Eventually, you ran away. You couldn’t keep torturing yourself seeing Zemo move on with someone else while you were still suffering on the inside, not just for losing the boy you love but the person who had been your best friend for as long as you could remember.

You left Sokovia to live in America, completely ridding yourself of your whole past identity. There you decided to enlist in the Army which is where you had met Sam, served with him for a few years till you were forced to retire early due to losing your leg. You checked up on Zemo every once in a while, it wasn’t too hard with the Sokovian news constantly obsessing over him. He married the woman he moved onto, the one you always saw making out with him. You suppose he truly must have loved her because it was your birthday when his son was born. While he celebrated the happiest day of his life you spent the day at the bottom of a bottle drinking away the loneliness. You still remember the moment you found out what had happened to Sokovia. You hadn’t been back there in years but it was still your home, where you had all of your fond memories, now all gone.

You didn’t see anything in the news about Zemo after that, he and his family completely vanished so you had to assume the worst. Till you finally saw him on the news. It was hardly like the boy you once knew. The Zemo you knew was kind, empathetic, caring, beautiful in every way he could be yet the man you saw there was a murderer, cold-hearted, reckless. What had happened to the boy you once knew?

You could make guesses, his family was nowhere in sight and you could only imagine how losing the woman you love and your child could hurt you. You hated imagining all the pain Zemo has gone through.

“Yes, I remember seeing him on the news,” you tell Sam. Both you and Zemo stared at each other, your eyes unwavering.

He knew who you were. He knew from the moment you turned around that corner. As he watched you warmly greet Sam and shake hands with Bucky. He watched the person he never thought he would see again stand right in front of him, not even noticing him.

But now you stood there, staring him down. Both of you almost speaking through your eyes. Would the other one bring up the past? Try to acknowledge all that has happened between you or is that dead, left forgotten. Will you two pretend to have never met before, letting years of memories fade.

Zemo was first to speak.

“I see my reputation isn’t too favourable”

“That’s what you get for blowing up the UN,” you say scowling at him as you cross your arms

Zemo opens his mouth to say something but Sam gets here first, “Y/n served in the Army with me so you better be careful with what you say Zemo”

Zemo’s eyes then flicker back to you tilting his head, like he always used to do, in interest.

“Why is he even here?” you ask, finally pulling your eyes away from him to Sam and Bucky

Sam turns to Bucky with a plastered on a fake smile, “Why don’t you explain Bucky”

Bucky sighs as he glances over to you, “As Sam mentioned to you on the call we are trying to track down this group of super-soldiers called the Flag Smashers. We need Zemo here to help us track down where they got the serum and help us so no one else becomes a super-soldier”

“And you trust him?” you scoff, glaring back to Zemo who just smirked at you

“We have no other choice” Bucky mutters, scowling over at Zemo

“I can assure you, I won’t do anything to betray your trust. For once all of our goals are aligned that it would do us no good to go against each other.”

“I’ll hold judgment till later,” you reply bitterly.

Swifty Zemo swings on the heels of his feet, turning around to start walking away, obviously expecting all of you to follow him. Sighing in annoyance you trail after him.

As you had predicted both you and Zemo were pretending to not know each other, perhaps for the sake of the mission or perhaps for the sake of your well beings. You’re not sure if you could cope even acknowledging the past you two had. He’d been the person you had been closest to, someone you shared all your secrets, all your thoughts and feelings with. Someone who you would have taken a bullet for in the blink of an eye and to suddenly lose all of that, it wrecked you. You had finally managed to build yourself up again, to try and move on and then he comes straight back into your life. It’s as if there is some strange omnipotent god up there and it loved to torment every waking moment of your life.

“So all this time you’ve been rich?” Sam asks and you all catch up with Zemo and see him walking towards what you assumed was his private aeroplane.

“I’m a Baron, Sam, my family was royalty till your friends blew up my country”

There was a slight change of tone for when he said ‘my’ not enough for Sam and Bucky to pay attention to it but enough for you to feel the slight twist in your heart as you thought back to the country that used to be yours, long ago.

As you got closer you observed a man standing by the plane, ready to welcome Zemo aboard and you felt your heart stop for a moment. Oeznik. The man had aged since you last saw him, he had fallen to the tolling of time but he still had those warm, caring eyes.

Memories swept over you of your childhood as you observed him. He has always been Zemo’s assistant, hired by Zemo’s parents when they were much younger. You could remember times when you and Zemo would be running down the corridors, not where you were supposed to be and Oeznik would find you two, not telling you off but smiling at you two, saying how Zemo’s parents were looking for him. He would sneak you two Turkish delights even if it was only an hour before dinner. Anywhere you two wanted to go he would drive you there. Whenever you slept over he would prepare your favourite meals, making sure everything was just how you liked in the room you would stay in. He was almost like another father figure to you and Zemo.

And now there he was, greeting Zemo. Zemo kissed him on the cheeks fondly before heading inside. Sam and Bucky both follow up but you take a moment to turn to look at him.

“Oeznik” you whisper

He smiles warmly down at you, placing his hand on the side of your arm. “It’s good to see you again madam”

You nod your head, unable to say anymore without letting your emotions get the better of you so you choose to head inside.

You could feel his eyes on you as you enter. You glance up to him and you know he knows why you took a little longer to get onto the plane. It was that knowing look in his eye, the slight twinkle of amusement but also sadness.

You frown realising you’d have to take a seat opposite Zemo, Sam and Bucky already choosing to sit on the other side, showing their dislike for him. You freeze for just a moment making Zemo gesture to the seat in front of him, smirking as he tilts his head. You huff, not bothering to hide your displeasure, taking the seat in front of him but refusing to even look at him.

A few minutes later Zemo chuckles as Oeznik brings out two drinks, a glass of champagne which he offers to Zemo, and a glass of rum which he offers to you. You’re favourite drink. After all this time he still remembered.

You kindly thanked Oeznik, taking the glass as you avoid the confused eyes of Sam who was wondering why you got a drink and he didn’t and the eyes of Zemo, which held an emotion you couldn’t quite recognise.

“The food is out but I will see if there is some good food in a gallery,” he tells Zemo and starts to turn away but then Zemo speaks.

“If it doesn’t pass the food test, give it to them,” he says, speaking in sokovian and gesturing to Sam and Bucky.

You weren’t prepared for the surge of pain in your heart as you heard Zemo use the language of your people. Though it had been over twenty years since you last heard it, you could still remember it perfectly.

Oeznik laughs, “It’s good to have you back sir,” he says, then nods to you before leaving again. Zemo smiles at Sam and Bucky, enjoying the notion of how they didn’t know what he said, before his eyes swiftly turn back to you, knowing you know exactly what he said.

He takes a swing of his drink before speaking again, “It’s kind of him to remember your go-to drink” he says in Sokovian.

And there it was. The first acknowledgement of the past between you two. Your eyes burn into his head as you realise just what he was doing. It was a test. He spoke in Sokovian for just you to understand, seeing if you were to take the bait and talk back in Sokovian. He wanted to see if you were willing to acknowledge the past between you two as well.

But Sam and Bucky had no idea where you were from. As far as they knew from your accent you were American and you planned to keep that secret. You weren’t going to play in Zemo’s little game, you refused to take your turn. Instead, ignoring what he had said to stare at the ground.

He waits for a few moments before accepting you weren’t going to reply. Sighing he turns to Sam and Bucky.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be locked in a cell” he starts “Oh, that’s right, you do” he then carries on, taunting them. If he can’t mess with you then he’ll mess with them.

“Why don’t you tell us about where you are going” Sam replies, ignoring Zemo’s attempt at taunting.

Zemo then instead turns to the book in his hand, thumbing through it. “Sorry, I was just fascinated by this. I don’t know what to call it but this part seems to be important. Who is Nakajima?” he asks turning to Bucky

Instantly Bucky was out of his seat, his hand around Zemo’s throat pulling him back as he leans in towards his face.

“If you touch that again, I’ll kill you” he whispers

Zemo nods as Bucky lets him go, letting out a slight breath he had been holding in. Bucky glares as Zemo has he takes his seat again.

“I’m sorry. I understand that list of names. People you’ve wronged as the Winter Soldier.”

“But you’re not sorry” you abruptly say, making all eyes turn to you. “Ever since we’ve sat down you’ve been taunting us, trying to stir up trouble. Soon your annoyance will outweigh any use you have for us”

“I’m sorry if I have caused you any offence, Princess, it is never my intention to upset any of you”

But it was. It fucking was. Because he knew just how much pain that nickname brought to your heart. Princess. That’s what he had always referred to you as when you dated. In his eyes, you were a princess, his princess. You clench your jaw, trying to stop the tears that swelled in your eyes. Something Zemo picked up on and himself felt pained seeing your reaction.

“Don’t call her Princess. Her name is y/n” Sam says, glaring at Zemo.

“My apologies, it was my fault to refer to your girl like that”

Instantly both yours and Sam’s eyes widen at his words.

“We’re not, that’s not-” Sam starts to say, fumbling with his words

“We’re just friends” you but in, glaring at Zemo for you knew why he said that.

“Y-yeah” Sam replies, looking between you and Zemo as you stare at each other. Zemo tilts his head slightly, the edge of his lips twitching up.

“I see”

“Now perhaps you could stop taunting us, Zemo, and answer Sam’s original question about where the hell we are going”

If you had blinked you would have missed it but just for a split second, as his last name fell from your lips, you could see him flinch. These days everyone referred to him by his last name, never his first name. And although in the past you had always called him by his first name, you, like them, were using his last name. That hurt more than he thought it would.

“I’m afraid I can’t say just yet, but all will be relieved in due time’

You just groan, rolling your eyes and then choosing to stare out the window trying to forget all about the man that sat in front of you.

Hoping to alleviate the conversation Sam nods to the book Bucky took back from Zemo.

“I’ve seen that book, it’s Steve’s book for when he came out of the ice. I told him about trouble man. He wrote it in that book. Did you hear it? What did you think?”

“I like 40��s music so…” Bucky grumpily replies

“You didn’t like it!?” Sam exclaims leaning forward

“I liked it”

“It’s a masterpiece James. Complete. Comprehensive. It captures the African American experience” Zemo buts in, speaking with his hands as he looks over to Bucky

Sams’s eyes face moves from looking at Bucky, to looking at Zemo then back to Bucky.

“He’s out of line, but he’s right. It’s great. Everybody likes Marvin Gaye”

Inside your head, you scoff at Zemo as he talked as if he was sophisticated with music, ‘like you didn’t listen to Nirvana all the time’ you thought. From that point you ignored what they were saying, sipping your drink as you stare out the window. Today had taken a complete turn from what you ever could have imagined it would have turned out to be. And little did you know it was about to get a whole lot messier.

-

“No fucking way. You can’t make me do that”

“You have to if you want to blend in for the mission” Zemo explains

“She can blend in, in many other ways, she doesn’t have to pretend to be your partner,” Sam says arguing for you

“They will be suspicious of her though and it could risk the whole mission but if she was my partner they wouldn’t be suspicious”

“He’s right y/n” Bucky adds, “I don’t want to be doing this either but if we want to find out where the super-soldier serum has come from we need to”

Zemo nods to Bucky in thanks and then looks to you, the corner of his lip twitching up in amusement that Bucky was backing him up and seeing your anger.

He was deliberately trying to antagonise you. Making you pretend to be his partner for the mission, was his way to get back at you for the pain you caused him when you broke things off. You didn’t think you could cope with having to pretend to be his partner for it, it would just bring up all the pain of what had been lost between you two, what you had to let go of. But they were right. You had to do it for the sake of the mission. If Bucky could pretend to the winter soldier again for the mission the least you could do was this.

“Are you seriously taking his side Bucky, if she doesn’t want to be that then-” Sam starts to argue but you cut him off.

“It’s okay Sam, Bucky’s right I need to do it”

Sam opens his mouth in surprise and then moves over to stand in front of you, placing his hand on your shoulder. “No you don’t y/n, don’t listen to them”

You place your hand over Sam’s hand on your shoulder, rubbing it slightly. “I’ll be okay with it Sam. It’s not like I’d be dating him”

Your eyes flicker to Zemo who had been glaring at Sam now turned his eyes to you, his lips almost twitching into a frown but he stops them.

“I won’t wear that dress though,” you say, your eyes looking down to the short dress Zemo held in his arms.

He opens his mouth to argue against that as well but you stop him, “No Zemo, I won’t be wearing that, that is final”

He bites back his words, smacking his lips together as he nods, “If that is what you wish”

You weren’t ashamed of your prosthetic leg. It was a reminder to you for all you had given to people. But you weren’t about to walk around Madripoor with it being showed off to everyone. And a part of you wasn’t ready for Zemo to see you with it, though you don’t know why.

You hadn’t been to Madripoor before but it didn’t surprise you that Zemo knew the place well. It looked like the shady place you would find him in. As soon as you stepped out of the car Zemo’s arm wrapped around your waist. It fitted like nothing had changed in the time between. Your face instantly turned to him to tell him to let go but he held his finger up to your lips to stop you, “For appearance y/n, you are after all, for this evening, my partner”

Begrudgingly you accept it and don’t try to move his arm away as you walk together. Sam walks up beside you and as you turn to look at him he rolls his eyes. You chuckle at Sam then felt Zemo’s grip on your waist tighten.

As you walk into the bar Zemo takes a seat on the stool. You glance around but all the other seats had been taken. Smirking Zemo pats his lap, “Hop on princess”

You grasp onto his shoulder, pinching it harshly to cause him some pain as you position yourself on his lap, but he just chuckles at your reaction, his hand instantly going to rest on your tigh which was thankfully covered by your trousers.

“Don’t call me princess” you whisper angrily to him

He leans forward, his lips by your ear as you feel his breath, “We have to make it realistic princess, plus I think that would be the sought of a nickname I would give you if we were dating”

He presses a lip to your cheek as he pulls back from you, chuckling as he sees how your cheeks heat up and the glare you grace him with.

“Hello gentlemen and lady,” the barman says finally coming over to you, “I wasn’t expecting the smiling tiger”

“His plans changed, we have a business to do, with Selby,” Zemo says, trying to take over all conversation so no one gave themselves away.

“And she does as well?” he asks, nodding to you

“Anywhere I go she goes with me” Zemo replies, chuckling as he looks at you with a smile on his lips

“Isn’t that right princess?”

You try your best to push back the anger you felt, instead, forcing a smile as you look back at Zemo, “Of course my love” you tell him then leans forward to place a quick peck on his lips.

As your lips lightly brush against his you could hear the slight hitch in his breath and as you lean your head on his chest you wonder if he could feel how fast your heart was beating in your chest.

It’s just for appearances, that’s all you tell yourself but even though it was brief you could still feel the warmth of his lips on yours, that comforting feeling that you hadn’t felt in so long and it was as if all the buried emotions you had come flooding back. Here you were sitting on his lap, kissing him as if nothing had changed and for a moment you wondered if that could be the case. Could you two go back to what time was like before?

But you couldn’t. Not only was it down to the fact that Zemo was a wanted criminal, but he had moved on from you. He fell in love with another, he married her. Any feelings he had for you were long gone and this was just him messing with you, and you didn’t want to let him know the feelings you still had for him after all this time.

The barman seems to accept your display though, choosing to focus on Sam instead as he makes him his ‘usual’ drink.

Zemo orders you and him a drink which you thankfully take from his hand, hoping to drown your feelings away with the alcohol.

A man comes up behind you and instantly Zemo lifted you off your lap, pushing you behind him as he stands up to face the man.

“Got word from on high, you’re not welcomed here,” he tells Zemo,

“Hm” Zemo replies, nodding as he takes the man’s words, “I have no business with the power broker, but if he insists he can either come talk to me...” he finishes, nodding over to Bucky

“Or bring Selby for a chat”

The man leaves as Bucky looks over to Zemo. As Zemo turns around once again his arm wraps around your waist.

“A power broker, really?”

“Every kingdom needs its king. Let’s just pray we stay under his radar”

“Do you know him?” you ask and Zemo looks down at you amused by your question, “Only by reputation”

“In Madripoor he is judge, jury and executioner”

Zemo’s eyes focus now on another man coming towards him. Turning back around to the bar he speaks to Bucky in Russian just as the man places his hand on Zemo’s shoulder. You all turn around to watch as Bucky grabs the man and starts to attack him. You’d seen violence before but it still made you wince knowing how Bucky didn’t want to do this.

After one particular nasty hit without thinking your hand grasps onto his hand, needing something to hold on to. As soon as you realised what you had done you swiftly try to pull your hand back but Zemo holds onto it tight, refusing to let it go. You could feel his gaze turn to you but you choose to ignore his cocky face and instead focus on Bucky.

You stand out of the way as Bucky slams the man onto the table and Zemo leans forward to let Bucky know not to take it too far. That was your ticket though as then you were being shown the way to see Selby.

The meeting itself wasn’t too bad. Zemo held onto your hand as he pulled you over to sit with him. He talked to Selby while you just sat on his lap. Selby didn’t pay any attention to you, which you were thankful for. Things were going smoothly until Sam’s phone ringed.

That’s how you found yourself running along with Bucky, Sam and Zemo avoiding gunfire. As you ran you heard one gunfire and felt your prosthetic leg move slightly as the bullet went straight through it.

Zemo must have seen what happened as well, but not knowing you had a prosthetic leg, he wrapped his arms suddenly around your legs, picking you up bridal style. He ran off to the side, leaving Bucky and Sam behind as he hid you down an alleyway.

“Zemo let go of me!” you hissed, hitting him in the chest as he stopped running. He instead places you on the ground, growling at you not to move as he starts to check all his pockets in his coats. Instead, you do move, getting up off the floor and he looks at you angrily. “I said don’t move! You’ll injure yourself more”

You lean down and jank up slightly the trouser leg, showing the fake metallic leg underneath.

“I’m fine Zemo! It’s fake. Now we need to go and find Sam and Bucky”

But Zemo was frozen, staring down at your leg in shock. Because at that moment was the realisation for him. All this time he had been teasing you, testing the waters of how far he could push you to admit to the past. Messing around with you as if you were two lovesick teenagers again. But you had both changed, and he was refusing to realise that until now. Because he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact you were no longer the woman he once knew. The one person he knew better than himself and he had still half-believed that was the case until now. You had a fake leg, lost in what he assumed was the army which you and Sam had been in. He didn’t know because the truth was you were almost a stranger to him now, and he hated that. He just wanted things to be the way they once were. That’s what he desperately craved but it couldn’t be.

“Okay,” he simply says and nods, finally pulling his gaze away from your leg and up to you. Following your lead, he chases after you to find out where Sam and Bucky had gone.

-

Sam paced around the main room of Sharon’s house. His mind was occupied with so many thoughts it was hard to concentrate but there was one that stuck out like a splinter in a thumb. What the hell was going on between you and Zemo? He wasn’t stupid he could pick up on something, the looks two you gave each other, the tension in the air, the way you reacted when you first saw him. Sam considered himself your best friend, though you two hadn’t seen each other in ages. So it bugged him how this was obviously something big to you, and he didn’t know what it was.

Zemo sat at the table by the side, quietly drinking some whiskey. Both you and Bucky had decided to retire for the night while Sam decided to stay up just so he could find out the truth.

“You look like you are trying to burn a hole through my head by the way you are staring at me Sam” Zemo says, finally looking up from his glass to Sam who was glaring at him.

“Is something the matter?” he asks

“You and y/n. What’s up with that”

Zemo chuckles, looking back down into his glass, “Ah that”

“I’m her best friend, I know everything about her, apart from this apparently”

Zemo’s eyes snapped back to Sam but this time there was no amusement in them, instead a angry glaze as he frowned, “Best friend?” he repeats, standing up and walking over to Sam. “You hardly know her at all”

Sam scoffs as he raises an eyebrow at Zemo attempting to get into his face. “And you do?”

“Yes” Zemo instantly replies, “I know she was born in Novia Grand, Sokovia. Just like me. I know which schools she attended, the same as mine, I know what her favourite meals are, we had them whenever she came round to my house. I know her favourite band, I took her to their first concert. I know everything little thing about her Sam, and you know nothing”

Sam’s eyes widen at Zemo’s confession, realisation dawning on him. “You were childhood friends”

“More than friends Sam, we were lovers. We were the first people we dated, we were each other first kiss, we were each other first time” Zemo claims as if bragging to Sam

“Yet you didn’t know she was in the Army, you didn’t know she had a prosthetic leg did you?” Sam asks and when he sees the slight fall in Zemo’s face he smiles, “You used to know her Zemo, but obviously, you don’t know the person I know now”

-

With a pair of tweezers lent to you from Sharon, you pull your trouser leg up and search around in your prosthetic leg attempting to find the bullet lodged inside and pull it out. You could see the bullet but you couldn’t quite get the right angle to pull it out making you groan in annoyance.

You were about to throw the tweezers across the room in anger when you heard a knock against the door. You were currently sitting in one of Sharon’s guest rooms as lot were staying at Sharon’s place for the night to rest up then go and find the scientist tomorrow morning.

“Y/n?” you hear his voice call out from the other side

You sigh rolling your eyes, “What do you want” you snap

“May I come in? We need to talk”

“I don’t want to talk”

You hear the click of the door and Zemo pushes it open to stare at you in a slight annoyance. His eyes then move down to the tweezers in your hand and your leg. He takes a few steps towards you, his hand out as he closes the door.

“Let me”

You hesitate for a moment but finally, give in and hand him the tweezers. He pulls out a seat beside you and gently puts the tweezers through the hole in your leg.

“How did it happen?” he asks as he concentrates on your leg while at the same time trying to create polite conversation.

“Like most injuries out there. One of the soldiers was on the floor, shot a round of bullets into my leg. The doctor there couldn’t save my leg so I had to get it amputated”

He nods, finally grasping the bullet with the tweezers and started to pull it out. “Serving in the army, it’s admirable. Something very like you. I was in the Sokovian armed forces. EKO scorpion”

You nod as you watch him pull the bullet out and place it to the side. “I remember reading about it in the news”

His eyes, flickering to you, glimmer with amusement. “So you kept track of me?”

Your cheeks heat up in embarrassment as he caught you out. You glance away from his intense stare instead to the table. “Did you really expect that I didn’t? You once were my best friend Zemo. It’s hard to let that go. I saw you got married, had a child. I’m sorry about what happened to them”

It was Zemo’s turn to look away now, feeling the pain in his heart ignite as he thinks back to his previous family. “My son, he was born on your birthday”

“I’m surprised you remember my birthday”

He smiles slightly, finally turning his eyes back to yours, “Of course I do. Every year I’d drink a toast to you. You said that I was your best friend and hard to let go of that. Well, it’s the same both ways y/n. I couldn’t just forget about your existence.”

“I had to leave” you whisper

“I know. I know why you left, and I know why you broke up with me in the first place”

Your eyes flash to his in surprise and widen seeing how they were swarmed with tears. “Because of my family, they never would of let us marry because of your status. Y/n I would have left all of that behind for you, without a second thought”

Shaking your head you reply, “I couldn’t have asked that of you Zemo”

“And that’s one of the reasons why you are so perfect. You always put me before you, now this time I am asking you to finally let yourself choose. If you want me to leave say and I will leave. But if you don’t say I will stay with you, and I won’t let you leave again”

“We’re not who we once were, Helmut” you mutter, finally letting yourself use his first name and with that, he already knew your choice. His hand goes up to cradle the side of your face gently, moving it nearer to him.

“Then let’s discover each other, all over again”

Your eyes fluttered shut as he pushed his lips on you, fitting perfectly against yours as if they were made for you. He poised there, hoping he wasn’t being too forward but his lips smirked as you started to move your lips on him, crashing them on top of his for action, which he kindly gave.

His tongue poked your bottom lip, begging for entrance. One which you allow as you wrap your fingers behind his neck, getting tangled in his hair.

You could hardly believe this is where you were, once again with Zemo, his lips upon yours, desire between your legs. In the last twenty years, you had often dreamt of reuniting with Zemo, experiencing this moment again but you never thought it would happen. But here you were.

His hands travelled down your back, swooping under your butt as you wrapped your leg around his waist. Swiftly he lifts you off the chair and walks you over to the bed, placing you down on it and crawling on top of you.

His lips trail down your cheek, across your jawline and down onto your neck, sucking on that delicate pulse spot. A moan escapes from your lips and he pulls back chuckling. “For so long now I’ve longed to hear you moan for me Princess”

You just groan, your hand pushing his face back into your neck making him laugh but he quickly goes back to making a hickey on it. His fingers trail down to your shirt, slowly lifting it and once again he pulls away to be able to lift the shirt off you.

He holds back for a moment to admire your beauty. His hands move behind your back and swiftly undoes the clasps on your bra, tugging it off. He groans seeing you for all your glory and buries his head in your boobs. ‘Oh how I have missed these’

While his mouth latches onto your breasts, smothering them in kisses as his hands go to undo the buttons on your trousers. He starts to tug them down, with no sense of being gentle but rather a primal urge taking over him. He manages to tug them off you and then his lips move down even further. He trails his tongue from your breasts down your belly, leaving a trail of saliva. As he reaches your underwear, his teeth latch onto it. With a slight groan from his lips, he then pulls them off, sliding them down your legs and flicking them off to the floor along with your other discarded clothes.

He sighs in contentment as he buries his face into the side of your thigh as his fingers trail your prosthetic leg. Leaning forward he places a kiss on it, then trails upwards, littering it in soft kisses. The only softness you’ll be experiencing tonight.

As you feel him get nearer your core you let out a shudder in anticipation, as you shudder you feel his lips suddenly press against your core. He instantly latches into your clit, his tongue dancing on it, twisting it in circular motions. Your hands instantly grasp his hair, holding him close to your core, not letting him go. Not that he ever want to. Sandwiched between your legs is where he belonged.

“If I remember correctly, you always liked this part”

You let out a shocked gasp as suddenly a finger presses against your entrance and then slips inside of you, with ease from how wet you have become. He slides the finger all the way into the end, letting a moan rip out of your throat.

“It seems I do remember correctly”

“Instead of commentating everything why don’t you put that mouth to good use” you groan, pushing his face back into your crotch. His tongue instantly went back to your clit as he started to thrust his finger in and out of you, making sure it brushes against your walls. As you start to let more little moans he thrusts another finger inside, opening slightly to stretch you out.

You could feel the knot in your stomach tightening as he worked his tongue on your clit and his fingers in and out of you at a rapid pace. Then his fingers hit just at that right spot and your walls fluttered around him. You hardly got enough time to choke out a warning before you were gushing all over his fingers. When your climax started to edge away he pulled his face back from your clit, removing his fingers and while holding your eye contact he stuck his tongue out, lapping up your juices on his fingers.

He moans slightly as he licks it up, his eyes fluttering half close, ‘Mine Gott, I forgot just how good you tasted’

“Well let’s see if you are as good with that dick as you were in the past” you tease, pulling his face towards your to encompass in another kiss. As your hands hold his face to yours his fingers feel up the side of your waist, ghosting over your skin creating goosebumps.

You could sense when his fingers started to trail to his trousers though and you pull away from his lips making him whine.

“Strip for me”

He tilts his head smirking as he looks up into your playful eyes. “As you wish my princess,” he says as he climbs off you, standing at the end of the bed. Slowly he tugs off his large coat off, laying it on the side of the bed. Next, he works on his turtleneck, slowly tugging it up to his chest, then over his head. Soon it joins the steady growing pile of discarded clothes. Next, he quickly tugged down his trousers and boxers, his patience starting to wear thin.

As he pulled them down exposing his dick you hummed in approval. “Now isn’t that a sight for sore eyes”

“And you were complaining at me for talking” Zemo murmurs, stepping forward to crawl back onto you but your hold your hand up to stop him. “Put the coat back on”

“I see in our time apart you’ve become more demanding,” he says as he picks up the coat and slides it back onto his naked body. As he finally gets to crawl back on top of you, you grasp the fur collar and pull him closer to your face.

You run your fingers through his hair, making it even messier than it was before. Parts of it fell onto his forehead. His hands move down to hold his dick by your entrance, rubbing it against your folds. For a moment he hesitates, moving his head to rest against your forehead in anticipation.

“You’re still as beautiful as when I last saw you”

With that, he pushes into you, rather quickly because of how desperate he was to feel you around him. As he bottoms out he groans, pushing his face into the crook of the neck as you grasp the back of his head gasping. He stays still for a minute, treasuring the feeling of your walls clasping onto him. Then slowly he pulls mostly out of you, till just his head hung in your, and then thrust back into you.

He started to pick up speed, hearing the increase of your moans against his ear. His grunts and moans start to intertwine with yours as you both chase your pleasure.

“Gott, you are so perfect my princess. You feel so good around me” he’d groan into your ear as his hips thrust repeatedly into your, the sounds echoing on the walls of the room. His fingers sneak down your belly to your core, rubbing against your clit. Instantly your back was arched and your fingers grasped onto the coat.

“God Helmut, I don’t remember you being this good” you moan and with your words he speeds up, pumping inside of you. His head kept brushing up inside that perfect spot inside and with his fingers twisting on your clit you could feel your climax steadily approaching.

“H-Helmut, I’m going to, soon I’m-” you tried to get out between moans but there was no need to as Zemo could feel how close you were for the way your walls clung around him tightly.

“Come for me Princess, let me feel you. I need to feel you again my love, after so long”

And his words were music to your ears as you feel the knot within you snap and your wetness gushing over his dick. Zemo bites down on your neck, trying to be gentle, as he feels your walls grasp you even tiger as he thrusts into you. Not long after he felt his own release coming and as you lay there panting he thrusts in time to his release until he squeezed out every last drop.

He hovers over you for a moment, panting, wanting to remain in your warmth for just a moment longer but eventually he pulls out and collapse beside you.

He wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you into his side, burying his face in your hair.

“Thank you Helmut” you whisper

“No my princess, thank you for forgiving me for everything I’ve ever done to you. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, I don’t deserve your love but I desperately need it. I won’t lose you again my darling”

TAGS: @shrekboobies @arianalilyblack @multiyfandomgirl40 @lieutenantn @neoarchipelago @cable-kenobi @edencherries @faustlyaccused @julyvegan @prestigious-tea @hannahbal-the-fannibal @barneswidow @checkurwindow @babayaga67 @spookycereal-s @mylifeispainandiloveit

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[sirthisisa-wendys]

The General (Part 1): Geto Suguru x Fem!Reader

synopsis: matchmaking day is upon you, and you’re in for more than just a partner. 

wc: 2.1k

tw: none - just a bunch of backstory. (part 2 is going to be much more interesting and Geto WILL appear.)

masterlist

The trees along the grounds of your family’s estate are blooming in full force, once again signaling the coming of the most anticipated day of the year: matchmaking day. Beautiful petals of yellow, red, and pink would decorate the lawn and as a child, you would gather them up and toss them around. You imagined your wedding would be just as majestic as the coming of spring and that matchmaking day would be the happiest day of your life. 

For years, you had watched your older siblings be married off to wonderful and loving partners, their names being called from the crowd of people who gathered in the village square every year. For years, you eagerly waited your turn to meet the love of your life. And last year - the year before you were set to make your debut in the matchmaking pool - you found him. 

The man you wanted to be set up with - Yuko Hashinara - was perfect. 

As the son of a potter, he wasn’t filthy rich, but for a whole six months, you dipped your hands into the kaolin just to get closer to him. Yuko seemed to take a liking to you too, his soft features and green eyes following you around the workshop while you made conversation or giggled over town gossip. He had even touched your hand tenderly once; the white clay smearing over your fingers with care. He hadn’t admitted that he loved you, but today would change all of that. 

“Mother! What should I wear?” All of the formal wear in your closet now seemed too plain for what you planned on being your debut into society as Yuko’s Betrothed. You no longer had the scores of clothing your sisters offered or the keen eye of your eldest brother. It was just you now, and as the youngest, there was a need to show everyone you were just as worthy as your siblings of a perfect match. 

Your mother bustles in hastily, attempting to fix your hair while you rifle through the clothing that’s available to you. “Don’t wear red; only whores wear red. Perhaps the hunter green one will do.” When you pull out the silk garment your mother detailed, your shoulders fall a bit, noting it’s plainness. 

“But will this look attractive for Yuko?” you wonder, trying to see the dress in better lighting. Gold and brown swirls decorate the dress around the neck and hemline but it still looks inelegant. “You know, like I’m supposed to be his wife?” Your mother’s hands still on your hair, and for a second, you wonder if you’ve said something wrong.

“This dress will look beautiful on you, like it did on your grandmother when she was matched with her husband.” Ah, yes. Grandmother. At the mention of the old matriarch, you’re silenced immediately, recalling the love she and your grandfather had upon their union. “We should only hope you are as lucky as she was to find a worthy match.” 

“Yuko is a ‘worthy match’,” you retort, but your mother doesn’t reply, finishing your hairdo and stepping back to admire her handiwork. 

“Now let’s get you dressed; we don’t have a lot of time.” 

_______________________________________________________________________

When you arrive in the square with the other girls of the village, there is an uproar of chatter about who would be matched with who, and whether or not the matchmaker would be fair to some of the older girls who had never been matched with before. 

You’re not overly friendly with any of the others gathered - due to your family’s estate being on the far side of the main village and as such, every trip into town required a long trek - but you’re welcomed nonetheless. As you stand in the cool, spring breeze, your eyes roam around the boys who were gathered on the left side of the square. Your eyes fall upon Yuko, and a sigh escapes your lips, your mind fluttering off to begin fantasies of the rest of your lives together. You would have an extravagant wedding, a lavish reception, and an equally attention-bringing birth of your first born: a son you’d already named in your head. 

But as soon as you get to the day your son would take his first steps, the sound of the matchmaker’s voice echoes across the courtyard. She was short - very short - with small, beady eyes, and white hair that feel in a braid down her back. Her wrinkled skin holds all of the years she performed this ceremony, and you’re sure if you stare long enough that she might even shrink a little.

“We will now begin the matchmaking ceremonies with a prayer…” Your nerves bundle up in your stomach as the old woman begins reciting a prayer to the gods that you completely ignore. Couldn’t she just say all of the names and then pray? What did the gods care about the order of things? 

It isn’t until you hear the soft murmurs of the women around you that you know it’s time to look up and resume your fretting about the pickings, which were sort of slim to begin with. 

“Kashishime Okkostua… and Junte Yakamura.” The first couple of the ceremony had been announced, and you look at the brightened expression of a woman in the sea of female faces, who excitedly approaches her betrothed with arms open wide. The following twenty or so names were read off with similar results; only a few couples do not already know each other, and they approach each other with a timidness you could only describe as painful to watch. 

“Yuko Hashinara and…” Oh, no, the time had already come. You look at the man who wrings his hands nervously, eyes glued to the matchmaker, while you hold your hands similarly, heart pounding beneath your dress wildly. The name of the woman falls from the matchmaker’s lips in slow motion, it seems, but it’s obviously not your name. 

It’s not me. 

It’s not me. 

It’s. 

Not. 

Me. 

Your first thought is to go numb. As you eye the female who emerges from the crowd, your self-preservation instincts take over, analyzing the way she looks while you fix your fallen countenance. She is nothing amazing to look at, you reason, but as they acknowledge each other and depart from the crowd, your heart goes with them, never to return to the hole in your chest. Not even a trade from another other-worldly spirit could bring it back. 

The rest of the day blows by you, and you don’t even hear a single syllable that sounds remotely like your name grace the tongue of the matchmaker. When she sets aside her papers, you and two other women are left standing in the square. 

One of them started crying long ago, her face puffy and red. The other crosses her arms and takes a glance at you, shrugging her shoulders disinterestedly. But you… you’re feeling as numb as a rock. You stare at the sand lining the pathway, unsure of what to say or how to feel other than empty. The matchmaker hobbles down from her perch to where you three are standing and looks all of you over once. When she opens her mouth, all you can hear is:

“... maybe next year.” 

_______________________________________________________________________

Next year. That’s the only thought that bounces around your skull as you make the embarrassing trek back to your residence. Next year. 

But there wouldn’t be a next year. 

The one you wanted was already gone, and--

Your eyes lift slowly to the door of your family’s home. Never in your lifetime had you experienced such a painful moment, but you wouldn’t let anyone see you defeated. Even after your mother opens the door and witnesses your shuffle back into the house, you announce to her and your father stoically: “The matchmaker said next year would be the year,” and walk into your bedroom with nothing else to declare. 

The pillows on your bed muffle the sobs of your broken heartedness, and cover up the absolute humiliation you had suffered in front of the whole town. You wouldn’t speak of this day to anyone, not even your parents. Next year would be your year.

_______________________________________________________________________

Thunder rattles the windows of your house, and you stare at the various trees being stripped of their buds and flower petals in the pending storm though the panel in your bedroom. This is perfect weather for your mood, you note, and settle into the soft cushion beneath you with a sense of satisfaction. The world mirrors your inner turmoil with this storm, and you like the way the darkness swallows up the bright blue sky. 

“Y/n…” A tap on your door signals the arrival of your mother, but you don’t answer, preferring to stare out of the window at the destruction instead. “I’m coming in.” The door is pushed open with ease, and your mother waddles in, holding a bowl of your favorite soup. “I made some soup for you.” You look at the offering with disinterest,  eyes sliding away from the bowl and to the mirror across the room. 

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” you croak. You can’t see your reflection, but you know you look like a wreck. You had snatched out the bobby pins and ribbons in your hair after you cried, then stripped the dress off in haste, throwing it into the corner before dressing in a plain kimono to remain decent. You’re still in that same kimono, even though it’s been almost a day since you’d changed. 

“You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.” The keen observation doesn’t make your stomach growl. Instead, it’s like a stone is sitting in your gut, preventing you from even desiring food.

“I’ll be okay.” Your mother sits the soup down on your bedside table anyways, leaving you in peace just like she found you. A slight hiccup finds its way into your throat, and you want to cry, but you have no tears left at all. Your face is tight and raw, and you want to scrub at it to make it all go away… but you can’t. The matchmaker’s word is as good as a bond, and you can’t break that bond; not even if you tried. 

The sound of the front door rattling initially sounds like some aftereffect of the lightning and thunder rolling across the sky, but you notice that the windows hadn’t shook. The pounding sound echoes again, and you find the strength to slide to the edge of your bed, feet dangling in the air precariously. 

Your father would be there to get it, wouldn’t he? So why are you moving? Before you can question yourself further, you place your feet on the floor and pad to your bedroom door. Perhaps it was Yuko, and something had gone terribly wrong with his new wife. The thought makes you move even faster, your legs propelling you down the hallway and to the foyer, where your father stood with the door open to the rain. As you crane your head around the wall between the foyer and hallway, you see a figure bent over at the knees, catching their breath and mumbling erratically. 

“Can I help you?” your father asks the person, who’s head snaps up, flinging his long, white hair back and showing his startling blue eyes. He’s dressed as an Imperial Warrior in a black and red kimono and hakama with a white sash around his waist, which signifies his rank, but you don’t know what rank white is.

“Sir, I have come a long way,” he begins, panting still. “The Imperial Court is in need of your youngest daughter. I have ord--” Your father scoffs, not even entertaining the man at his feet by listening to his speech. 

“I’m sorry, but my youngest daughter is not a fighter,” he cuts the man off with his hand, but the man continues anyway.

“If you would please grant me entry into your home, I will be able to tell you the entire story. I am sure you will allow me this much upon seeing this.” Suddenly, the man reveals a water damaged envelope with the Imperial seal stamped upon it from his kimono. Your father looks at the document, but does not open it. 

“Come inside, then. I’m sure you’re weary from your travels. I’ll have my wife prepare you some dinner.” As your father lets the man inside, your peer a little closer at the soldier and find his sapphire orbs boring right into your soul. A charming half smile pulls at his lips, but he turns away to follow your father into the kitchen, leaving you alone in the foyer and to wonder who exactly was in your home and why.

[rowanaelinn]

Fire on Fire - chapter four

chapter three // chapter five

Aelin slammed her car door harder than necessary, sighing once she was comfortably sitting in her seat. She buckled her seatbelt and turned her head to the man sitting next to her in the passenger seat. "I'm not going to buckle your seatbelt for you, you're an adult, not a child."

Arobynn just chuckled and did it himself. “Always a delight to deal with you, darling.”

Aelin had to take a deep breath or she would snap. Getting mad at him wouldn’t work, it never did. It would just make him mad at her, and it wasn’t worth it. “Call someone else next time, then.” She said as she started driving. Aelin wished she had drunk a coffee before or taken anything that could help her stay awake. Arobynn lived one hour away from this bar, the night was going to be very long. “I forgot, you have no one else.”

“Be careful how you speak to me, Aelin.” His words were harsh even if they were slurred by the alcohol. Aelin hated the part of herself that was scared at his threat. So she didn’t answer, focused on the road, and put on some music to try to distract herself.

Aelin thought about last night, how bad her night of work was until she danced with Elide. Aelin had always loved to dance, she remembered all the times she forced her parents to sit for an hour so she could show them everything she learned that week at the dance studio.

When she turned eight, Aelin started doing dance competitions and she was good, very good, actually. She went to nationals twice, the first time she ended up in fourth place, not good enough. The second time she was in second place, it was better but still not good enough. Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was born with the need to be the best at everything she did, she didn’t understand why. Maybe it was because her parents had always been first in their own way and Aelin wanted to be like them.

After an injury at fifteen, she had to stop dancing. She still remembered crying in Aedion’s arms for an entire night. If Aelin thought about it, she would realize that’s the moment everything started to go downhill in her life. But she tried to avoid thinking about it, if she didn’t think about the problems, they didn’t exist.

“Why are you dressed like a whore, anyway?” Arobynn broke the silence and Aelin’s heart clenched. She hadn’t been hurt when Rowan made comments on her outfit because as much as she hated him, she knew he respected women and just wanted to hurt her. Arobynn never had an ounce of respect for women, he had proven it multiple times, that’s what made his comment horrible. “Not that I’m complaining in any way.” Aelin’s eyes left the road for two seconds to see him with a disgusting smile on his lips and his eyes fixed on her thighs. It took all her self-control not to vomit right there.

“I was working,” she simply said. She didn’t have to justify herself but Arobynn didn’t like to be ignored.

“You work at a strip club now?” He snorted. “Why do you even want to work? I told you I could pay for everything you need.”

He did, and it had been generous. Too generous from Arobynn to come without a price. “And I told you I could do it on my own.”

“Well, you don’t seem to earn a lot of money wherever you work since I’m still the one paying for your college tuition.” He said with a light tone but Aelin caught what he really meant. You’re only here thanks to me, be grateful.

“How many times do I have to thank you for it?” She asked with a sharp tone. Aelin had never been very good at staying calm. “I told you I would pay you back-”

“Bullshit,” he tapped his foot on the floor of the car, almost screaming. Unusual for him to lose his temper. When Arobynn was mad he favored hurting people with words. It was very rare for him to be physically violent. She jumped in spite of herself. “Do I look like I care about the money?” No, of course not. The money he used to pay for her college was like pocket money for a ten-year-old child, he didn’t see the difference in his bank account before and after paying for it. “I don’t understand why you want to work and live in a shitty apartment when you could be cared for and live in a manor.”

“ Your manor.” She said coldly.

“Yes, mine. How is that a problem?” He was angry, Aelin could see it at the way his hands clenched on his tights, the way his right leg kept fidgeting, or at the way he pronounced every word that came out of his mouth as if they were full of venom.

“You are my professor, Arobynn. I am your fucking student and not only this but I am also your teaching assistant. Do I really need to explain how wrong it is?”

“I am trying to take care of you, Aelin. I would expect you to be nicer.”

“Right now I am the one taking care of you!” She screamed, done with his bullshit. If someone had told Aelin five years ago that her favorite author was like this, she wouldn’t have believed them. “Even if I don’t want to.”

“I’m waiting for the day you crawl for my help, Aelin.”

She didn’t answer, instead, she kept her eyes on the road. She thought about her favorite books and how happy they made her. Maybe she would read one when she gets back home, it was too late to sleep anyway. Twenty minutes later, she parked her car right in front of his house. It was big, too big for a single man.

Aelin looked at her professor as he unbuckled his belt. “Have you graded the papers we gave you last month? Students will need them this week.” She asked but knew the answer. He just smirked at her and winked.

“You know me better than this, sweetheart.”

Aelin sighed and got out of her car, following Arobynn. He wasn’t walking straight and somewhere in the back of her mind she hoped he wouldn’t get hurt. Aelin knew Arobynn wasn’t a good man, he was a real piece of shit. But he had been there for her when she was at her worst, he didn’t do a lot but he had been there. He gave her opportunities she would never have had alone. And even if his interest in her was bad, he believed in her. He read every single one of her stories, gave her advice to become the best writer she could be. He let her access his contacts. If she ever made it on the best-seller list, it would be a little bit thanks to this man.

He opened his door and Aelin didn’t wait before going to his study, not caring about what he did. She quickly found the folder full of papers. She went through all of them and left hers and Lysandra’s on Arobynn’s desk. She couldn’t grade them, even if she wished she could grade Lysandra’s, but Arobynn didn’t want her to play favorites.

She turned but found Arobynn watching her at the entrance of the study. He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, of course, he would start drinking again the minute he got home. He walked towards her and she was struck by the size difference between the two of them. He pinned her with this lover’s gaze. She looked at the face she once found beautiful and swallowed. She wanted to move but couldn’t.

“What would I do without you, sweet Aelin?” He purred, letting one of his knuckles caress her cheek and before he could brush her lips she turned her head to the side. This gave him just more room to lean in and place a kiss on her cheekbone, his lips were soft and warm. Slowly, Aelin pulled back. “Tell me what I have to do for you to let me lay the world at your feet.”

Aelin said nothing as she walked away from him.

-

The moment Aelin entered her bathroom she fell on her knees and threw her guts up in the toilet. She could still feel Arobynn’s hand brushing her thigh in the car, could still feel his eyes on her or his hot breath on her ear.

When she closed her eyes she could remember the first time she saw these grey eyes four years ago and how different it felt to have them on her.

Aelin couldn’t hear the music over her friends’ laugh and her own.

When a waiter passed her she took the opportunity to take another glass of champagne and give him her empty glass. Her head was already spinning in the most delicious way.

"Ten bucks says he goes back with him tonight," Nehemia said, her eyes fixed on Aedion and the handsome blond man he was talking to. They were at a charity event, Aelin had agreed to accompany her parents only if she could bring her friends. Her three friends practically lived at home, so they agreed.

“Ten bucks?” Aelin asked as she took a sip of her drink. “How boring you are. Five hundred says they make out in a cupboard here.”

“You’re the only rich girl here, you know that?” Sam asked as he took her under his arm, forcing her head to rest on his chest. Aelin laughed loudly as she pushed him away, trying not to spill her drink on either of them.

“You are so loud, Aelin,” Lysandra complained but she wasn’t better. If anyone drank as much as Aelin did it was her best friend.

“I think our little Aelin,” Sam said, his voice full of fake seriousness, as he took her head in both hands, Aelin giggled at his fake frown. “Is slightly drunk.” Sam finished, and before Aelin could say anything he bent to kiss her. She lost herself in him, putting her arms around his neck. After a few seconds, they pulled apart but Aelin rested her head in his neck, breathing deeply in his lavender scent. She would kick his ass later for using her soap.

“Fireheart?” Aelin heard her mother call, she turned around but tripped on her long dress. Sam caught her before she could fall and the group of four friends exploded with laughter. They had all had a little too much to drink if they needed so little to laugh.

Aelin hid her glass behind her back, remembering that her parents had forbidden her to drink. They didn’t want their sixteen years old daughter to be seen doing inappropriate things. Sam took the glass discreetly and she knew he would get rid of it as soon as possible. Aelin's parents would never suspect Aelin's perfect boyfriend of helping her disobey her parents.

What her parents didn't know was that her three friends were her partners in crime, especially Sam.

“Aelin, honey.” Her mother said as she stopped in front of her. Sam’s hand rested quietly on her hip, a silent reminder that no matter how the conversation turned out, Aelin was not to get upset.

But Evalin was not alone. "My dear, I'm sure you know Mister Hamel?" She asked, knowing full well that Aelin knew him. She had dozens of copies of all his books all over her room, his writing was just amazing.

Aelin turned her head to admire her idol's face. He was handsome, for a thirty-seven years old man. If Aelin was honest, she had always had a thing for men older than her.

When her eyes met his gray ones, Aelin tensed. Absolutely everything about this man screamed power. From the way he stood to the little smile on his face as he held out his hand for Aelin to place hers in. His hand was warm but not soft, she could feel several scars. He placed a kiss on the back of her hand before saying softly, "It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Galathynius."

The memory of that night made her throw up a second time as she fought against tears. Everything about this memory was painful. She had worked so hard to keep these emotions locked inside of her for years, she couldn’t break now. Not after everything she did to forget.

“You got drunk?” A deep voice asked and Aelin whipped her head toward that voice only to find a shirtless Rowan, arms crossed, watching her from his doorframe. She didn’t secretly marvel at his muscles like she usually did whenever he was shirtless, tonight, another proof of how bad she was feeling. “Is that why you’re so late?” His voice was hard, the same voice he usually used whenever she was around.

“Were you worried?” She asked, sarcastically. She didn’t have the strength to fight now, and yet… She couldn’t help when he was around.

“Your cousin and best friend were worried sick. Are you so selfish that you don’t care?”

“I’ll talk about that with them, then. I don’t need you here.” Her voice was as hard as his, while she usually was more teasing. Aelin saw him frown at her tone but she didn’t give a shit, she needed to be left alone. “But if you want to know, I wasn’t getting drunk, no.”

“Then what were you doing?” He snapped and Aelin didn’t understand him. Why did he want to know that? Shouldn’t he have been happy she wasn’t here? Why did he even come into the bathroom? Aelin supposed he heard her throw up, it’s not like she was a very discreet person. Did he come here just to mock her? “What has put you in such a pathetic state?”

“Get the out,” her voice was weak, trying not to think about one of the worst nights of her life. You look pathetic , Arobynn had told her two years ago. But Aelin couldn’t help it, everything about that night disgusted her. When she looked up at Rowan she thought she saw concern in his eyes but she probably was hallucinating because a second later, his eyes were cold as ice.

He laughed, even if his laugh didn’t have any humor in it. “You know what, Aelin? Keep throwing up all you want. You’re worthless.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

There was a long pause and when Aelin thought he wouldn’t say anything else, he opened his mouth. “I understand why your parents cut you off. Who would want a disappointment like you as their daughter?”

“Don’t ever talk to me again.” She said silently, and when he closed the door, Aelin let the tears run down her face. For the first time in his life, Rowan hurt Aelin.

-----

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