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stratossphere · 2 years

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tennessee whiskey. | j.k

johnny’s a little drunk, and when johnny gets drunk, he gets messy. in more ways than one.

warnings: drinking all around, hint of weed and cocaine use, johnny and reader are broken up, slight relationship angst, fluff at the end

word count: 5.6k

taglist (let me know if you want to be added!) @asskickedbygirl

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You were making mistakes tonight. You had realized it as soon as you’d arrived at the bar everyone was holed up in for the night, because the first sighed you’d laid eyes on upon entering was Johnny Knoxville himself up on the bar with no shirt on doing push-ups. You’d been the last one to get there due to the fact that you’d been working until late, and you could tell that they had clearly started the drinking (and probably drugs, by the looks of it) without you.

"Y/n! I was starting to think you weren't even coming anymore!" Ehren was the one to intercept you when you passed a couple making out near the door, and you smiled as you watched him stumble over someone's foot on the way over and almost land at your feet before catching his balance. "Dude. Everyone is like, super trashed."

"I can see that. I don't have anywhere to be tomorrow, so might as well catch up." You said, shrugging and stepping around him to aim in the direction of the bar before motioning for him to follow behind you. You were aiming on avoiding your attention-seeking ex-boyfriend, so you headed for the opposite corner of the bar, where you could see Bam and Pontius with a deck of cards.

"Party's here." Ehren announced you to the both of them as you rounded to their side, drawing Bam's intense concentration as he attempted to set a card on top of the card tower they were actually doing a decent job of building up.

"Well good evening, madame. You are very late to the party." Pontius said, motioning to a stool with Ehren's jacket thrown over it and an empty one beside it. "Seats are open for viewing on what is going to be the world's largest card tower."

"Don't mind if I do." You said, grinning as you sat down next to Bam and watched him gently place his card. He let out a silent cheer to himself when the card tower remained, fist pumping in the air and almost hitting you in the shoulder in the process.

"Card skyscraper, man. 'Tower' doesn't mean jack shit." He corrected Chris, pointing a finger at him before turning to you and motioning to the pile of suspiciously filled pint cups that was sitting next to his elbow. "These are all liquor bombs, if you're interested."

Liquor bombs were just mixing every liquor and beer that they could get their hands on into one glass, and was a sure shot into starting a night that you wouldn't remember. It was a dangerous game, and consuming two pint glasses of it had left Ryan on his ass for a day and a half. You took a glass anyway.

"You better not have done anything gross to these. I'm not in the mood to drink anyone's jizz right now." You sighed, taking a sip out of the glass and immediately coughing when a horrific blackout-inducing blend of liquids burned their way down your throat.

"There's absinthe and a lot of tequila in there." Ehren snickered, motioning to the Absinthe bottle that was on the shelf closest across the bar from him. You winced, shivering as you tried to keep the sip down. Bam snickered at your earlier statement.

"I thought about it. But I thought you'd rather drink someone's jizz the old-fashioned way." When you shot him a sour look at his statement, he motioned over to Johnny, who had stopped his push-up marathon but was now leaning heavily over the bar as he talked to the bartender. "He sure as hell wants you to. He's like, trying to auction himself off to you, dude."

"Ugh. Please don't start." You groaned, taking another large sip of your liquor bomb at the introduction of Johnny as a conversation topic. This happened every time you all got together and Johnny was acting like...Johnny, but you never liked it regardless. "He could be completely naked and three inches from me for all the fucks I give. I'm not interested in...all of that."

"Yeah, but you say that every time. And then all of a sudden he's your shining star all over again." Ehren pointed out critically, leaning back in his seat slightly to get a look at whatever Johnny was doing. You had your back turned so you couldn't see, but you assumed it was something even stupider than what he had started out with.

"Hey. Give her some credit. She's been Knoxville-free for three months. That's your longest streak yet." Chris high-fived you for your not-so-amazing feat, but you took the praise regardless, grinning despite Bam's scoff of disbelief right in your ear.

"Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts." He muttered, wincing when you elbowed him. He was supposed to be your number one supporter, and yet somehow he always seemed to be the one doubting you. "By the way, here's your night's worth."

You looked to him in surprise as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a pack of Menthol smooths out of his pocket and popping it open only to reveal that it was filled with rolled joints. A huge grin quickly spread onto your face, and you snatched the box out of his hand before he had even gotten the chance to shut it again.

"You're the best. I thought I was going to have to rob Steve." You said happily, slipping the pack into your jacket pocket and silently making a mental note to take a smoke break outside in the next few minutes. "Speaking of. Is he here?"

"Uh, yeah. He's somewhere. I think he's in the bathroom getting his sinuses dusted." Pontius motioned to the bathroom behind him, a knowing grin on his face. You knew that was more than likely very true, so you didn't do any further investigating, instead focusing on the card tower.

"So, are you turning this into a skyscraper or what? Because it looks like shit right now." You observed, motioning to the sorry excuse for a card tower on the bar between them. Bam was letting out an irritated groan before you had even finished speaking, and he immediately picked the deck of cards back up.

"We're getting there, asshole! Drink your fucking liquor bomb and shut up." He snapped, kicking your bar stool further away from him in what you assumed was an attempt to keep you from disturbing him in any way as he started to concentrate on laying his next card.

"Yo. Y/n. I got a bet for you." Suddenly, you felt a hand clap down on your shoulder, and you didn't even have to look back to recognize Ryan Dunn's voice. However, you frowned, because bets and any of the Jackass crew never went well together, and Ryan happened to be one of the worst. You turned around to see him standing behind you with a hat you recognized to be Dave’s on his head backwards.

"Is it gonna be bad? Because I'm not even drunk yet, and I'm kind of tired." You asked with a grimace, holding up your barely-touched liquor bomb for proof as he shouldered through you and Bam to grab a stool for himself.

"I bet you can't make Knoxville cry by the end of the night." He announced his bet proudly, and you heard a crowd of snickers from everyone that was sitting around you. For a second you mentally face-palmed because of course it was some dumbass shit like this, but then you just scoffed.

"That is so fucking easy. He's like, the world's sloppiest drunk." You boasted. You couldn't count how many times you’d left the bar together with his face buried in your neck and his tears leaking down onto the collar of your shirt past three in the morning. You then turned back to look over at the bar, and sighed when you saw Johnny still talking loudly to the bartender as he swayed on his feet despite the heavy support of the bar. "Case in point. Look at that fucker."

"Psh. He's not even that drunk. Send him over one of the liquor bombs." Pontius encouraged, motioning to your collection of different ominously colored glasses that you all were harboring on your portion of the bar.

"I don't want to bring it to him." You shook your head, putting your hands up as you verbally stepped out of interacting with Johnny so soon. If you were going to make him cry, he was going to have to come to you. Which really wasn't as difficult as it sounded, considering he usually ended up doing so once he'd had a few good shots in him.

"Well I don't want to talk to him. He's going to be all weird and try to arm wrestle me." Chris scoffed, also stepping back and leaving both Bam and Ehren up for takers. Bam wrinkled his nose, and then Ehren let out a dramatic sigh.

"Fine. I'll do it. But I'm saying that Y/n sent it over so that he gets the idea." He grumbled, reaching over your shoulder to grab a glass that you had specifically avoided when choosing your drink due to the deep green color it possessed. You didn't even want to think about what was inside of that. You didn't exactly want him to say that it was directly from you, but you knew that it was a smart idea in order to lure Johnny in your direction, so you let it slide.

Johnny threw an arm around Ehren's shoulders the second that he was in reaching point, and you, Bam, Ryan, and Pontius all watched as Ehren attempted not to spill the drink upon handing it over to Johnny. You tensed up when Ehren spoke, and then you watched Johnny's eyes search until they found you from across the bar. His eyebrows raised slightly, and when you motioned for him to drink, you watched as he downed the entire thing in one go.

Ehren looked as disturbed as you felt when he looked back at you all, and he muttered something to Johnny before Johnny was getting up on unsteady legs and following him towards you. Bam let out yet another whine.

"Ugh, he didn't say he was bringing him over here. I don't want to do arm wrestling either." He complained, dropping his head onto your shoulder dramatically as if he was the one that was tasked with making Knoxville cry. You really had never met someone who complained as much as Bam did.

"Get off. You have to talk to him before I do. Just for that." You shoved his head away from you, knowing that even that gesture would put Johnny in a drunken bad mood that you really didn't want to deal with.

"Are you guys really arguing over having to interact with Knoxville? Of all people?" Ryan rolled his eyes, clapping both of you on the shoulder as he got up to intercept your inebriated ex. "I'll talk to him, you fucking pussies."

You and Bam both looked at each other with solidarity in the form of a 'I'm not a pussy' pout, but weren't given much time to discuss the topic due to the fact that Johnny was basically stepping on Ehren's heels as he arrived at your portion of the bar.

"You guys are making liquor bombs, and you didn't even invite me over?" He scoffed loudly as he stepped around you, his arm narrowly missing your head as he reached over you to get another glass. Ryan offered Johnny his stool, which he accepted gladly but almost missed when sitting down.

"We're building a card tower. Busy." Ryan supplied, motioning to said card tower, which had received two more cards from Pontius since you’d last looked. Bam put out an arm that gently held Johnny away from the bar, because it was easy to tell that if he got too close, the card tower was going to cease to exist.

"Don't drink too many of those, man. We're going for press tomorrow." Bam chuckled as he watched Johnny swallow down his glass like a man on a mission. If you weren’t so hellbent on keeping yourself out of his direct attention, you would've also voiced your concerns. But you were tasked with making him cry, not making him smart, so you stayed out of it.

"If anyone else is interested in dusting their sinuses, Steve-O's offering in the bathroom." Johnny was clearly not interested in the card tower, and he motioned vaguely towards the direction of the bathrooms as he quoted Pontius exactly on what your friend was spending his night doing. As if on cue, Johnny also sniffed and wiped his nose, and suddenly you made the connection.

"You bumped?" You asked in surprise, not able to help yourself from commenting. Johnny wasn't really one that leaned towards hard drugs hardly ever, and it was actually rare that you had even been able to convince him to smoke weed with you, so you really couldn't contain your shock. His eyes turned to you ridiculously slowly, as if you had just committed a war crime by speaking to him.

"Yeah, Y/n. I'm an adult." In a moment of perfect acting, he was able to completely mimic a sober, stressed out Johnny when he was asked if he was about to go have his fourth cigarette in an hour. You immediately sucked in my cheek and bit down to prevent yourself from answering with just as much snark.

"Y/n, weren't you going to go out and smoke?" Bam asked, not even looking over at you as he placed a card even with Chris' very carefully, but effectively saving you nonetheless. You glanced down at the cigarette box peaking out of your jacket pocket, and let out a soft sigh.

"Yeah, man. Any of you are welcome to join." Except for you, Knoxville. You slid off of your bar stool, silently wishing that smoking weed in public places was normal so that you didn't have to go stand outside of a shady bar in the dark by yourself late at night. You weren’t really in the mood to get catcalled by grimy men who had just finished throwing up in the dumpster down the alley.

Despite your offer, you found yourself making your escape on your own, the clear sight of Johnny's eyes on you as you slid around people to get to the front door. You weren’t sure if everyone was there, but you didn't run into anyone you knew before you had made it outside to the thankfully empty bar front.

Unfortunately for you, just as you were starting to think that you had gotten a break, you promptly realized that you didn't have a lighter. You’d come in the clothes you’d worn to work, and you obviously weren’t lighting up in front of everyone at work.

And then, just as you were getting ready to head back inside and bum a lighter off of someone, thinking that your situation couldn't get any worse, someone busted through the doors and onto the sidewalk a couple feet away from you before you could even move in that same direction. You glanced to the side to see if it was someone who looked like they had a lighter, only to see someone who you knew absolutely had a lighter.

"You said anyone!" Johnny must've seen the disapproving stare on your face when you spotted him, and he immediately fumbled in his pocket before fishing out a lighter and holding it out to you. "Just a couple hits, Y/n/n!"

"Don't call me that." You snatched the lighter out of his hand, pulling one of the joints out of your box and sticking it between your lips. It was kind of sloppily done, which meant that Bam had rolled them himself instead of Ryan, who usually did them for you, but the sentiment was there, so it didn't bother you. Once you had the joint lit, you took a long drag, inhaling until you couldn't anymore and then wincing when you felt the burn rising in your throat.

"Here." Johnny's voice drew your attention back to him, and you looked down at the glass he was holding out to you. It was his liquor bomb, which was almost gone by this point, and the glass looked grimy like his fingers and mouth had been all over it. You shook your head as you cleared my throat a couple times and exhaled a heavy cloud of smoke.

"I'm fine." You muttered, taking a couple steps forward and then sitting down on the curb. "You know, you're gonna crash like fucking hell tomorrow if you keep it up tonight."

Okay. You could only keep your concern to yourself for so long. And everyone else was inside, so it was fine. It's not like you were asking him to tongue you down.

"I know." He didn't really sound like he cared. You could feel his presence from where he had moved to stand right next to you, and there was black converse in the corner of your vision, but you didn't look at him. He cleared his throat. "I'm bleeding."

Sometimes, you really wondered how you had ever seen the appeal of basically becoming the full-time babysitter of the most accident-prone person you had ever met in your entire life. You knew his looks had a certain deciding factor, but not even that could top the stress of bandaging injuries and fixing messes left and right.

"What?" You turned back to look at him in surprise, because obviously you couldn't ignore that, only to see him holding out his scarlet-soaked hand. Your eyes widened considerably, and you shot into standing position. "What the hell? Where is it coming from?"

"I hit my head on the bar." He looked mostly unbothered, his eyes unfocused as he looked for somewhere to wipe his hand off. You stopped him before he could press the palm of his hand to his pants, holding his hand away as you mentally looked for the strength to deal with your piece of shit ex boyfriend.

"Bend down." You sighed, waiting until he had done so before moving to stand on the curb so that you had leverage and could inspect his head. He indeed was bleeding from his scalp, close to his hairline where blood was close to pooling down onto his forehead. It didn't look serious, and he didn't seem to be in any pain, but head injuries always bled a lot, and he needed to be cleaned up. You let out a dramatically irritated sigh. "Finish your drink and come inside so that I can clean off the blood."

You were supposed to be keeping your distance. You had promised yourself when you’d forcibly pushed him out of your apartment three months prior that it would be your last breakup. It would be your last breakup, and there would be no next makeup. But, despite that promise, he always seemed to find a way to weasel his way into your daily life, and you found yourself taking care of him even more than you had when you were dating him. You hated yourself every time you did it, but you couldn't really say no. And you were together more than you were apart due to your friend group, so you didn’t really have an option.

You got a couple of questioning stares when you passed everyone at the bar, and you just shook your head irritably at Bam when you grabbed another liquor bomb on your way towards the bathroom. The blood was now on Johnny's forehead, so it wasn't exactly a secret what you were dragging him away to do, but no one else really seemed to care about that.

The men's bathroom was locked, which you kind of anticipated because you knew exactly who was in there, but you really didn't want to converse with Steve-O in his current state, so you just pulled Johnny right into the open single-stall women's bathroom and locked the door behind the both of you.

"Drink up." You handed him the liquor bomb, leaving him to settle as you turned around to collect paper towels and wet some of them. You were going to enlist a medic to just start following him around so that you didn't need to spend your nights where you were supposed to be having fun patching him up when he inevitably let the liquor hit. You knew giving him more liquor probably wasn't the smartest idea, but it would increase your chances of him leaving you alone, and it would also increase the chances of him crying. Like you said; sloppy drunk.

"You're such a sweetheart, you know that? I miss you." Johnny rambled, and you glanced over momentarily to see him swaying around before giving up and just collapsing down on the closed toilet lid. Your shook your head as you turned towards him with an arsenal of paper towels.

"No, you don't. You're drunk as fuck." You reminded him as you pressed a damp paper towel to his head, your free hand cupping his head just under his ear to keep him from moving around. You could both see and feel him leaning into your touch the way he always did, but you were trying your best to ignore it.

"I don't care. I always miss you." He pouted as he took a smaller sip of his new liquor bomb, wincing as you wiped the blood away from his cut and from his forehead. You fought the urge to scoff, instead settling for just frowning.

"Stop upsetting yourself." You said softly, tilting his head forward slightly so that you could see his cut better. You were hyper aware of the fact that the current position of his head allowed him to look directly down your shirt, and you could tell he was in fact utilizing that advantage. You rolled your eyes but held my tongue on the subject. "You know, doing push-ups on the bar isn't going to get you the attention that you want."

"Why not?" He sounded genuinely surprised by your breaking news. You took a deep breath, knowing that he was sensitive under the influence of alcohol and that you really didn't want him to cry before you had Ryan there to witness your victory.

"Because it's stupid. Nobody gives a fuck about it." Clearly you didn't take a deep enough breath, because your words came out a lot harsher than you intended, and that immediately reflected on his face. You winced. "I meant…you don't need to do push-ups on the bar to get m–everyone's attention. You're welcome to join our card tower party."

"Okay." Johnny's voice had softened considerably, and when you relaxed your hand where you had been holding his head down, his eyes didn't move from the floor. You patted his scalp and forehead dry, making sure that he wasn't bleeding anymore before you gently tilted his chin so that he was forced to look at you.

"Are you going to be okay?" You asked gently, letting yourself break for a moment in an attempt to cure his pouting. His hand drifted up to touch the cut you had just finished cleaning before he nodded hesitantly.

"I'm gonna finish this." He said, mostly to himself as he held up his glass to you like he was showing off how much was left. You coaxed him into getting up so that you could wash his still-bloody hand off in the sink, allowing him to continue to drink as you did so. He watched you in complete silence between drinks.

"Don't do any more coke. Steve laces his with a bunch of other shit that you don't need." You said after a second of silence, your thought prompted by the sound of Steve-O’s laugh echoing through the shared bathroom wall.

"Okay." He said again, nodding obediently as you scrubbed his hand with yours under the lukewarm water from the bathroom sink. If you were together, Johnny would've been pressed up behind you this entire time, but thankfully he was keeping his distance now, standing as far away from you as he could get while still staring at where you were cleaning his hand in the sink with both of yours. You knew he could probably wash his own hand, but whatever.

Finally, once you had gotten him completely cleaned up, dried off, and filled with liquor, the both of you emerged from the bathroom, heading in the direction of where you could see a much-larger card tower before you re-joined the group.

"Did you make him cry yet?" Ryan asked in your ear as Johnny occupied himself with marveling over the card tower, crossing his arms as he narrowed his eyes at you. "Or did you skip straight to fucking?"

"Oh, fuck off. I was sitting out there, and he literally let me get one hit in before he came out with his head bleeding." You complained, wishing that you’d just gone home instead of hauling your ass out to a bar where all of your friends were trashed and you weren’t. "And he almost did. But I've got a finishing move, so just hold your damn horses."

"Finishing move? That's the lamest shit I've ever heard." Bam scoffed, leaning backwards into you so that he could overhear your conversation but not alert Johnny at the same time. You elbowed him, watching as Johnny gulped down the last of his third liquor bomb. Yeah. He was definitely going to become a mess in the next ten minutes.

"Let me work my magic in peace, asshole." You snapped, glancing at Johnny one more time before turning back to Ryan. "Can you go put 'Tennessee Whiskey' on the jukebox? George Jones version."

A long time ago, Johnny had promised you that Tennessee Whiskey was 'your song'. You think it was just mostly because he loved that song, and it reminded him of home, but he made you dance with him every time he heard it. Obviously you didn't do that anymore, but this was different. It was a bet, and he was already drunk. You wouldn't have to dance with him for long.

"Aw, dude. I totally forgot about that." Bam snickered as Ryan disappeared to do your bidding, taking a sip of his beer as he watched Johnny beg Chris to let him put a card on. You nodded, grinning and sitting back down next to him.

"But once you see him crying, you have to pull me out, because I don't want to keep dancing with him. I'm gonna end up sleeping with him if we dance for too long." You ordered, shooting him a warning look. You hadn't smoked much, but the liquor bomb was slowly getting to you, and you knew that your common sense was ebbing away more and more by the minute.

"You know, I don't understand why you don't just throw in the towel and fuck him again. It's not like either of you aren't still cock-in-hand for each other." Bam sighed, shaking his head like Johnny’s and your separation physically pained him. You threw a hand in the air, letting out an indignant noise.

"We've discussed this. He won't nut up and commit, so I kicked his ass to the curb. You don't drag trash back into your house after you've brought it out, Brandon." You said dryly, using his government name to stress the significance of your breakup.

"Jesus. Don't sugarcoat it." Somehow, Johnny had intercepted that part of the conversation, and was suddenly facing the both of you as he blinked sloppily at your harsh symbolism. He looked like shit, and you silently thanked heaven above that he'd plowed through every single one of the liquor bombs that had been on the table, because you really weren’t excited to see the aftermath of what would be if he had another glass. You waved him off.

"Fuck off." You said dismissively, praying that Ryan's jukebox selection would kick in faster so that you wouldn’t have to concern yourself with an argument before you finished the task at hand. He looked like he was going to say something that you definitely wouldn't have liked, but just in time, you heard the beginning of George John's voice. His eyes immediately clicked in recognition, and his glass slammed on the counter.

"You're joking." He said dramatically, reaching out and pulling on your hand. "Y/n." Gasping out your name like a plea for you to let him pull you along towards the wider part of the bar, his eyes were practically begging. You made a face.

"PJ–" You started, pretending like you were going to say no just to fuck with him a little bit so that it didn't seem like someone had picked the song on purpose. He yanked your hand gently and repeatedly.

"Please! Just for a little bit! I’ll never ask you for anything again!" He whined, pulling you hard enough to where you were forced to stand up. You turned back and smirked at Bam before you sighed and gave him the OK to drag you along, immediately being pulled away from the group and towards an open space in the middle of groups of people.

"Do not try anything." You warned as Johnny wrapped his arms low around your waist, a beaming grin on his face as he started to sway you back and forth to the music. George John's version was his favorite, and you could already hear him humming along.

"Shh. Just listen to the music." And before you could even respond, he had his face dropped down into your neck, and there was no longer any space between you as his arms tightened their grip around your waist. You sighed and wrapped your arms around his neck, running your fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair the way you knew he liked. He was now humming gently in your ear, and you could hear the crack in his voice from too many cigarettes as he sang.

God, you were going soft. How could you not? He was wrapped tightly around you, and he was humming the same song that he always hummed when he was showering in the morning. Plus, just as Bam had so eloquently put, you really were still ‘dick-in-hand for him’, and you would’ve been lying to yourself had you said you didn’t still love him. You were trying to force yourself not to, but so far it had been a failed attempt.

"This is still our song." Johnny mumbled, and in a moment of small victory, you realized you could hear the telltale shake in his voice. Yep. Three liquor bombs were definitely triggering the water works. You kept your fingers in his hair, swaying him around and rubbing his shoulder with the hand that was rested over it.

"I know." You said softly, enjoying yourself for a moment as you held Johnny to the soft sounds of George John's voice. To give yourself some credit, you weren’t lying. Even if you two never ended up back together again, you would still picture his face and hear his voice every time you heard this song. He had ingrained it into your brain. He sniffled.

"I miss you." He repeated what he'd said in the bathroom, and this time there was so much emotion in his voice that you were really starting to believe him. “I miss you so goddamn much. I can’t live without you, babydoll.”

You leaned back, forcing his face out of your neck, only to confirm that he was in fact crying. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he looked like a kicked, admittedly drunk puppy. You glanced back at Ryan, who was watching the both of you intently, and tipped your head to the side so that he could get a perfect view of a crying Johnny Knoxville for proof. You saw him laugh, and then promptly realized that Bam, your rescue agent, was nowhere to be seen. Perfect. You were going to have to stay.

"You'll be okay." You consoled, resting your hand on his arm where his hand was still on your hip. His skin was warm despite the chill in the bar, and you silently wondered where exactly his shirt had ended up. He shook his head adamantly.

"No, I won't. I need you." He whined, his face suddenly noticeably closer to yours than it had been a couple of seconds before. You felt your heart ache, and the liquor inside of you screaming to wrap him up in your arms and never let him go again. God fucking damn it.

Liquor always overpowered common sense. It was a well-known fact, and it was something that you had to accept if you planned on drinking. That's why, despite your best intentions, you slid your hand up to his neck and pulled him down, pressing your lips to his as you wiped the tears from his eyes. There had never been a time where you’d danced to 'your song' and hadn't made out, and you weren’t about to spoil a tradition. You knew that everyone else was definitely watching, and that you were going to be facing a heaping pile of liquid regrets in the morning, but at that moment you couldn't find it inside of you to care. You loved him too goddamn much.

“PJ, why don’t I take you back outside so you can get a little fresh air.” You could still hear him sniffling and despite you wiping his eyes, the tears were still coming, so you broke away to motion towards the side door. Johnny shook his head adamantly, his arms tightening around you and his forehead dropping against yours.

“No. Just wanna stay here and dance with you.” He mumbled, pressing another kiss to your lips and then swaying you back and forth with his cheek pressed against yours. “Stay with me, okay sweetheart?”

“Whatever you want, baby. Whatever you want.”

#johnny knoxville #johnny knoxville x reader #johnny knoxville fic #jackass #jackass mtv #jackass imagine #jackass movie #bam margera #ryan dunn #danger ehren #chris pontius #steve o #this is one of my favs that i’ve ever written

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the-uncharted-cookbook · 12 days

Text

Cargo Pilot

Victor Sullivan is a man of passion and taste. The only thing he loves more than stiff drinks, expensive cigars, and beautiful women is telling stories about them. From the very first moment he stepped into my bar, he was chatting up anyone and everyone he could find and sharing tales of his many escapades all around the world, each more climactic than the last.

While hearing about barmaids and brothels was certainly exciting, what captivated me was the sheer breadth of his adventures. Sully has been everywhere and rubbed shoulders with everyone, carving out his living hauling freight around the globe in the Hog Wild, his trusty Grumman Goose G-21 seaplane. Unfortunately, the Hog didn't survive one of Sully's most dangerous expeditions down in the South Pacific, but Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher have since paid him back for crashing his plane with a replacement. I suggested Sully name his new Goose the Whole Hog, to keep with the theme.

The Cargo Pilot was born from a desire to create a cocktail as well traveled as Victor Sullivan himself. It's a riff on the Test Pilot, a drink originally created sometime before 1941 by Donn Beach, the founding father of tiki and a man also famous for his intrepid nature.

CARGO PILOT

Ingredients: 1.25 oz overproof white Jamaican rum (Wray & Nephew) 1 oz aged Demerara rum (El Dorado 12) 0.75 oz lime juice 0.5 oz white grapefruit juice 0.5 oz treasure spice syrup 1 tsp honey syrup 1 dash Angostura bitters 6 drops absinthe Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with pebble ice. Shake and dump directly into a Mai Tai or double Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with fresh mint (slapped to express the oils), a cherry on a pick, and a paper or foam airplane.

The Cargo Pilot calls for two specific types of rum: an unaged overproof white Jamaican rum and an aged Demerara rum. For the Jamaican, I recommend Wray & Nephew but Rum Fire will do in a pinch. For the Demerara, I use El Dorado aged 12 years but Pusser's British Navy Rum, Hamilton 86, or other aged El Dorado rums will serve just as well. The types of rum are deliberately chosen for the flavors they bring so be careful and do research before making substitutions. A white Jamaican rum and a white Puerto Rican or Dominican rum are going to taste vastly different, for example.

Similarly, if you use a pink or ruby red grapefruit juice instead of white grapefruit, you'll wind up with a sweeter drink. It may be worth it to adjust the amount of treasure syrup or honey to account for this.

The recipes for treasure spice syrup and honey syrup can be found here.

#uncharted cocktail #uncharted #victor sullivan #nathan drake #elena fisher #rum #tiki #tiki cocktail #uncharted oc

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alexis-royce · 2 months

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Tsush and I snuck out to GenCon this weekend! Nice things will be named below.

As usual, indies got the bulk of my attention. Two books with lovely creators I got to meet: Will Kirkby was signing copies of Eat the Reich, and it was a pleasure to meet Valentino Sergi; he came all the way from Italy with Last Sabbath and the kindest, most delightful energy.

Probably gonna play these first:

Viva La Queer Bar, a "Descended from the Queen"-style game that I'm gonna play with Tsush to help round out some ideas for Lead into Gold and Gentlemen's Club.

The Librarian's Apprentice. Yeah, The Stacks got me bad,

Primadonna, A Wretched & Alone Game that I'm looking forward to using to journal something NonPlatonic Forms-esque,

Kingdom Death, After so many years passing by the booth the curiosity has overwhelmed me, and with a digital version that is so much cheaper than the hundreds of dollars it's always been, I just gotta. Also, the digital version takes place with a separate horror game going on around you while you play the base game? I dunno, but I'm here for it.

I picked up some tea samples from Tea & Absinthe. Particularly looking forward to checking out the Moon Rabbit tea; it's almost the season for mooncakes, but it'll hopefully tide me over Shoutout to the Naughty Lobstah food truck for the best meal, and GoaterMac's Funhouse for existing. Did not think I would run into him at all, and though I managed to play it cool, it just isn't GenCon without him.

There are some freebies down at the bottom, as well as a couple flyers for the upcoming Fallen London TTRPG from Failbetter and Magpie Games. I took a handful for reccomending; I love it when people do that at my table, and the Magpie vendor gave me the green light. If all is well with the mechanics, there's a solid chance I'll volunteer to run this at GenCon next year. So stay tuned!

Going back to the con for the first time since witching up the ol hormones et al., I kind of assumed I'd have to put up with getting misgendered all weekend. But they print pronouns on the badge itself now, and hand out bright green ribbons with a surprising selection. (Tsush was even able to get a He/They one)! And every single attendee and vendor did right by me, it felt great.

Seeing older geeks at GenCon has always been a thing that brings me joy. And I got a little emotional, more than once, knowing that now I get to grow into an old nerd man one day.

I’m definitely going back next year, and I think I wanna be even more social. Maybe if you’re there, we can hang out, or at least high-five on the way to our various events. 😁

#GenCon #gen con #massive gender euphoria

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hannibalzero · 2 months

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Cut loose and set free

Charthur wip

🦬🦌🦬🦌

I’ve been trying to get into my writing grove again so I’m throwing things to the wall and seeing what sticks. Let me know what you think!

“And just where were you, Mr. Morgan?” Dutch demanded, turning around on The Count with the gang behind him. It reminded Arthur of those Greek myths of the gods of Olympus, the ones Dutch and Hosea had taught him to read. Dutch in front of the mountain pass that led into a dark snowstorm sky, each member of the gang another god in their own right.

Dutch was Zeus, king of the gods. Molly was his queen Hera, Hosea was Hermes, John had to be Ares, Grimshaw was Demeter, and Uncle was Dionysus.

Arthur could almost see the white robes and gold leaf crowns.

What did that make Arthur? Apollo, he supposed.

“Where were you?! Answer me, boy!” Dutch bellowed like the gods of old. A clap of thunder followed his voice, as if nature itself was blessing this moment with its presence. The rain started to fall slowly from the sky.

Swallowing a few times, eyes wide, Arthur found his voice. “I told ya, Dutch! I was working with Hosea on that real estate job.” He proclaimed his innocence. Arthur had told Dutch this was a crazy job, that the law would find them too quickly. Hell, Arthur had even done the leg work by scouting the boat, its route, and what it should be hauling. “I told ya what I thought of the job, ya said it would be fine!”

“Enough! You have the balls to talk to me like that! You should have been there, Arthur! It’s your job as my enforcer! My hunting dog!” Dutch snarled, showing his teeth, which looked more like fangs at the moment. “If you can’t do your job, then you have no place here with us! I’m cutting you loose, Arthur Morgan.” He pointed at Arthur now, casting him out of the only family Arthur had ever known.

Arthur physically flinched, feeling like a little boy again. He wanted to hide away in a closet like he did when he was a boy, when Lyle was drinking. Arthur could remember just last week when Dutch was singing his praises for bringing in two gold bars from a stagecouch job he ran by himself.

What had changed so quickly?

“Dutch! Ya can’t be serious!” Hosea cried out, turning himself and Silver Dollar towards Dutch.

“Quiet!” Dutch roared back to Hosea, shutting the man up and causing him to stop in his tracks. “This gang doesn’t need any more deadweight. Already have more than we need. This ain’t a charity!”

Hands shaking while holding the reins, Arthur hid his eyes with the brim of his hat. “…That how ya really see me, Dutch?” Arthur asked quietly but knew his answer and gave a long, slow sigh. “Alright then.” He gathered his emotions for the time being, pushing them way down until he could understand them.

Arthur looked Dutch in the eye, his eyes a dull blue, almost gray now. “I ask for my tent, chest, and horses…won’t take any money. That fair, Dutch?” Arthur bargained. He didn’t want to start over with absolutely nothing. At least having the items he had since he was a boy would be nice.

Dutch stroked his beard in thought, tilting his head. His gold and ruby rings glittered like lightning in the stormy light. “Yes, think of it as your hope chest.” He held out his arms with a grin. “It’s what young people take when they leave home.” He mocked, pointing with his head to Molly, who was riding in her stagecoach. “At least Molly came to me with a few gold bars.”

Arthur nodded, slipping off Rum’s back and got to work. He retreated to his lean-to, setting his chest beside his beautiful mare. Walking over to the extra horses, he gathered his beloved Brandy, Gin, and Absinthe. “…Y’all be safe,” Arthur called out to the gang as he packed up his supplies and attached leads to the horses.

Javier grabbed Arthur’s hand in a good shake. “Until we meet again brother.” He whispered. Giving Arthur a set of his throwing knives, Javier was a fan of throwing knives so this was special.

Bill practically turned his nose up at Arthur, riding ahead. But tossed Arthur a container of Dapper dan hair pomade.

“Good day, Mr. Morgan.” Dutch turned The Count around and headed up the mountain. The gang slowly followed behind their leader, most looking at Arthur with sad eyes or as if he were a traitor.

“Look at the bright side, cowpoke. Ya were too soft-hearted for real man’s work,” Micah Bell teased.

Arching a brow, Arthur crossed his arms. “Baylock, come.” He ordered.

Baylock was a smart boy; he knew who gave him treats and who burned him with cigarettes to make him run faster. At Arthur’s orders, the horse reared and knocked Micah off before trotting over to Arthur with a happy whinny.

Micah hit the ground with a thud. “Baylock! Baylock, come here!” he demanded, struggling to get up like a turtle on its back.

Arthur undid Micah’s saddle, letting it fall to the ground with its owner. He slipped Baylock a peppermint. “Come on, Baylock, ya join my ladies.” He ordered the horse, who was eager to be with Arthur’s beloved herd. “Have a nice life, Micah.” Arthur climbed onto Rum’s back.

The wagon with the gang’s women rode past. Mary-Beth passed Arthur her old romance novel, the one with pressed flowers in it. “Goodbye, Arthur. Love you,” she whispered, her eyes glistening with tears.

“Until we meet again.” Karen gave Arthur her old compact mirror. “Best man I know,” she whispered to Arthur, giving a sad smile. “I owe ya a drink.”

“You better write to me, Arthur Morgan.” Tilly was actually crying, Arthur couldn’t remember the last time he saw Tilly cry. “You’re my big brother.” She reminded him, giving Arthur her pestle and mortar, which had red flowers on it.

“I will. Love ya all,” Arthur whispered back, holding his new treasures close to his chest before hiding the items in his saddle bags.

Hosea approached now, with sad eyes. His shoulders slumped and looking far older than he should. “You write to me, boy. I’ll work on Dutch. See what’s really going on. John too.” He leaned over and gave Arthur a hug. Arthur held Hosea back, trying not to sniffle. “Be brave for me, son.”

“Love ya, pa. I’ll write you,” Arthur promised before moving back some. “I-If I settle somewhere good… I’ll send for you.” He looked around, giving a sniffle as his facade started to crumble. “I have a few places I will check out.” He gathered himself up a bit more before looking back to Hosea. “I’ll be fine and dandy,” he promised, giving Hosea another hug.

“I know you will, son. Ain’t no doubt you’ll be just fine. I’ll see ya soon.” He hugged Arthur back before moving forward to follow the gang.

Leaving Arthur Morgan at the bottom of the mountain, Zuse the king of the gods returns to his mountain with his court by his side, leaving the rejected god at the base of the mountain far from the gates of Olympus.

Arthur’s home.

He watched the gang go until they were out of sight and disappeared into the white snow caps. Arthur felt his shoulders drop before shaking and hug his head as he sniffled loudly. Arthur cried like he did when he lost Mary…like when he lost...Eliza and Isaac…when he lost his Mama. Big heaving sobs wracked his body, not noticing that Rum had started moving.

Rum was a very smart horse. an appaloosa mare with a white front and a brown bottom. She had to be three years old, but she was the leader of Arthur’s herd. Being a horse, she had no idea what was going on with the humans but Arthur was upset and they didn’t need to be here.

#wips #my wips #my wrtitng #charthur #fanfics #arthur morgan #charles smith #cut loose and set free au

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adventuressclubamericas · 3 months

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If you've been waiting for the last minute to get your tickets for our Mardi Gras-themed after party at Belle Epoque - this is it. Dont miss out on the fun and fellowship, light hors d'oeuvres, live music from the Simon Burke Jazz Trio, and maybe, just maybe, a few suprises to boot! Come say "until next year!" in style - no tickets will be available at the door, so if you want to go, you need to get your tickets today.

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southern-god1 · 2 years

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The Pale Rider

“And I looked and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

Revelations 6:8

The motorcycle rolled toward the bar, the headlight piercing the dark like a searchlight. The radio played an old song from the 1940s, “Dream A Little Dream of Me”, and the rider hummed along. The sleek pale green motorcycle slid to a halt, the music died, and gravel crunched under the rider’s boots as he walked to the door. He strode into the bar and took a seat at the counter, flagging down the bartender.

“Sazerac, with absinthe if you’ve got it, and Peyhcard’s bitters.”

His voice had a distinctive accent, something which drew the attention of the man beside him: a thin but cute local named Eric. Eric tried to look at the stranger without drawing too much attention: he was quite tall, handsome, and pleasingly scruffy. He wore a pair of jeans that showed off his ass and a pair of nice boots.

Taking a sip of his Sazerac, the stranger ‘s intense green eyes flicked over to glance at him through the corner of his eyes, as though feeling Eric’s gaze. He turned to face him, drink in hand.

“See something ya like, ma chere?”

The strangers accent clearly marked him as a New Orleanian, and he smiled. Eric’s palms got sweaty, and he nervously nodded.

“Um…uh, yeah. W-we don’t many people who can speak French in here.”

The stranger chuckled.

“Well now you have. What’s your name, you precious little thing?”

Eric’s cheeks turned beet red.

“I’m Eric, who are you?”

“My name is Rhett, ma chere. Rhett Delacroix, humbly at your service.”

He offered a mock bow, as best he could from the barstool, which made Eric laugh.

“Are you from New Orleans?”

Rhett’s response was sarcastic.

“Your certainly quick on the uptake. What gave me away? The accent? The French? Or my smoldering sex appeal? But yes, I am, my little snow bunny.”

Eric was immediately confused.

“Snow bunny?”

“It’s what we call those of you from up north. Think of it as a term of endearment.”

“What brings you up this way my…swamp gator?”

Rhett laughed aloud, amused by the awkward attempt at making an equivalent phrase.

“Ha-ha! I’m here on business. I know a guy, who knows a guy, who has something I want to buy. But enough about that…I’d like to get to know you better, my cute little snow bunny…can I buy you a drink?”

Cute? Eric beamed inside. Hot guys like Rhett hardly ever looked his way, let alone called him cute or offered to buy him a drink. He agreed.

After a few more drinks, Rhett suggested they go somewhere more private. Eric was too smitten -and slightly drunk- to disagree. Rhett headed toward his motorcycle, only for Eric to frown and complain that there was nowhere for him to sit. Rhett sighed and hopped in Eric’s car. It was a tight fit, and Rhett insisted on driving.

“But you don’t know where I live.”

“I know. We ain’t going where you live.”

“What?”

“Calm down little snow bunny - I told ya, I know a guy. Got me a nice motel room up the road."

Rhett set off driving, quickly changing the radio station from the news to the local country station. He drove until they reached a seedy motel, where Rhett was supposedly staying. He actually wasn’t, but Eric didn’t need to know that. He spied a vacant room, and with a quick, effortless little application of power, had conjured a skeleton key and unlocked it.

“Get on the bed and undress. I’ll be right there…”

Eric eagerly began to strip as Rhett strode into the bathroom. Rhett Delacroix, codename “Pale Rider" gazed at himself in the mirror for a moment, mentally preparing for what was about to happen. Fucking a snow bunny was hardly fun, but maybe this one would be different. He was looking forward to what was going to happen afterward more than the sex, in any case.

By the time he had pissed and washed up, Eric had already undressed and was posing in what he mistakenly assumed was a sexy pose. Rhett smirked and decided to assert himself as the one in charge of this little encounter. He growled out.

“Turn around. Your ass is mine.”

Eric seemed pleased by this dominant turn…that was good, since there was more of that to come. Rhett peeled off his jeans and boxers, tossing his shirt off onto a lamp, but left his boots on. In a flash, he was on top of Eric.

“Now, my little snow bunny…. you’ve never been with a real man before. This’ll probably hurt.”

He grinned and without further ado, began to mercilessly fuck Eric’s tight ass with his 9-inch cock. His scruffy chin rubbed against the back of Eric’s chin, his ear. Eric was clearly in pain, but also clearly enjoying this, moaning in a mix of pain and pleasure. Rhett could sense his little fuckbuddy was already getting close. Damn this boy was pent up…and tight. He grinned and began to fuck harder, getting closer himself. He grinned and began to whisper in Eric’s ear.

“You love this don’t you? You like being used by a real man? Do you wanna feel this way every day? Give yourself up to me. Everything. Your love. Your soul. Your heart. Every. Fucking. Thing. Will you do that, my little snow bunny?”

He punctuated every period with another hard thrust, and he smirked as Eric let out a cry that was halfway between a cry and a yes, and came, staining the sheets with his cum. That was close enough to a yes for Rhett, and he came as well, filling Eric’s tight ass with a load of his hot, salty Southern cum. He immediately pulled out of Eric’s ass. He snapped his fingers and immediately he was clean and fully clothed again. Eric stared in confusion as he turned out, still groaning in the hazy afterglow of sex.

Eric was confused. How was Rhett dressed already. That was so fast.

“L-leaving already?”

“Yes, but don’t worry…we aren’t about to part ways just yet.”

Because Eric could ask what he meant, Rhett’s eyes - so briefly it must have been a trick of the light- flashed a blood red, a stainless white, and a brilliant blue, before returning to their normal color. His hand was doing something complex, rapidly moving. Eric was instantly frozen. He couldn’t move or make a sound. An intense heat began to build up in his chest, rapidly enveloping his entire body. Then he saw the knife in Rhett’s hand, something intricate and bearing strange icons engraved on the blade. Eric frantically screamed, but his screams only bounced around inside his skull.

“Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna kill ya…I’m hardly The Axeman, not like some of my friends who enjoy killing y’all. I think that’s pretty stupid. Waste of a good soul. No no, I’m just gonna extract and bind your soul. Now…just like I said before…this’ll probably hurt.”

With a smirk, Rhett strode around to behind Eric and with a single, obviously practiced motion, slit both of his carotids. Yet no blood flowed out, as it normally would. Eric felt something leave his body, and seemingly hover before Rhett - but he still felt his body, dimly.

Rhett’s eyes flashed again and with a few more hand gestures, Eric’s soul began to compress and thin out, becoming powdery, wrapped up in a white and brown bit of paper. Rhett reached out and let the cigarette fall into his waiting palm. Eric could see all this happening, feel himself hitting the warm palm, being plucked up by two fingers. With a smile, Rhett reached into his back pocket and pulled out an engraved cigarette case and tucked Eric in with several others. These were not just cigarettes -at least not the kind one casually smoked; if he wanted a smoke, he had a pack in his other pocket. No, these were special. Rhett’s more complex spells and magic sometimes required souls, or sacrifices. Quite simply, Yankees weren’t always around when you needed them, and the cleanup after a sacrifice was…just so tedious. By trapping their souls as cigarettes and smoking them into oblivion whenever a soul was needed, he bypassed the need for a direct sacrifice. Now…to deal with the body.

Despite being sealed in the darkness of the cigarette case, Eric still had a connection to his body, however faintly. He still felt the intense heat, still filling every inch of his body. Eric felt himself start to shrink, dimly seeing the hunky New Orleans stud seemingly grow bigger. His body began to feel strange. His tongue shot out, stretching over his head and turning brown, as his hair, stretched over his outstretched tongue, became long and stringy, tipped with little plastic aglets. Within seconds, his face began to flatten out, and his body began to contort, painfully, bones snapping before being remade. Everything grew dark, and he felt Rhett’s strong hands grab him and give a strong tug, yanking some part of him apart.

Rhett reached down and yanked the newly formed pair of boots apart, tearing apart the thin layer of leather still connecting the two new boots. He pulled them on and tied the laces that used to be Eric’s hair, his tongue now the tongue of the boots. He grinned and rubbed his foot into his face, now the sole. He took his first steps and Eric practically exploded in pain and pleasure; almost as though he was being fucked again. Rhett had offered to let him feel like that every day, and the two had agreed to a verbal contract. Rhett was a man of his word. He was especially happy he had tricked the Yankee into signing away his own soul. He strode out of the motel room, and with a snap of his fingers, erased any DNA or fingerprints, locking the door again and evaporating the cum. There was the roar of an engine as his motorcycle rolled up into the parking lot by itself.

Let’s see…DNA, fingerprints, cum…ah yes, the snow bunny’s stupid smart car was the only thing left to destroy. As he strode over to his bike, his eyes flashed as he casually shrank Eric’s smart car down to the size of a toy. He hopped on his bike and made sure to drive over the puny car, the bike tire completely obliterating it as he drove off. Rhett felt Eric vibrating with pleasure as he drove, and grinned. This had been a good night. Another soul cigarette ready for when he needed it, and a new pair of boots. He began to drive south. He had a party to get to; a fellow stud from New Orleans named Alexandre Frost was throwing a party and Rhett would rather hang than miss one of those parties. Maybe he’d call the rest of the team to make a surprise appearance, really make the party memorable. For now, he flicked on the radio and was pleased to hear Elvis. Heartbreak Hotel played softly as the Pale Rider headed south, vanishing into the night.

My first attempt at a story with the Southern Avengers! I decided to focus on Pale Rider, the team magician and occultist. He keeps Yankee souls in cigarettes as a convenient way of having souls ready for sacrificing at any time; though he's not averse to slitting a throat. I was going to include some more Lovecraftian influences, but I felt madness didn't exactly pair well with this story, which focuses on seduction and manipulation. Also a lot less direct domination here.

Frost, refrerenced at the end of the story, is one of the characters used by @idesofrevolution; he's an excellent TFer who helped me make Rhett a bit more authentic as a person from New Orleans; he introduced me to some stuff like "snow bunny" being used rather than Yankee. Go check out his stuff! Also, the Axeman is not a team member of the Southern Avengers, he's a New Orleans serial killer from 1918 who loved jazz. I figured I'd toss in another nod to New Orleans history while I was at it.

Hope y'all like it! I hope to potentially explore more of Rhett and his teammates later on! Comments and feedback are always appreciated.

#inanimate tf #southern avengers #pale rider #story

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licncourt · 1 year

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what do you think the alcoholic beverage/cocktail of choice for vc characters would be

I love these kinds of questions because they're usually my shower thoughts anyway so thank you!

Lestat: fruity little drinks that will make you forget an entire day, the kitschier the better. He would drink hurricanes and hand grenades like a tourist even though he lives in NOLA. Also he probably gets long island iced teas just to act a fool in bars

Louis: snobby wine guy if he's in a good mood, negroni or old fashioned when he's normal, and the darkest, brownest liquor when he's having a Moment. He might enjoy an espresso martini in a foreign city with a disguise on too

Armand: absinthe from the special fountain or anything that includes old timey floral and herbal liquers, especially as digestifs. I just know he's a creme de violette guy, maybe also anisette, you know, the polarizing ones. He'd probably drink malort too tbh.

Daniel: just drugs with a bloody mary to recover. Otherwise shots and boilermakers, no bloody mary needed

Claudia: maybe absinthe as well, but if she could drink, I think she'd be a martini girl mostly, classic or vodka but always dry and never dirty. Dirty martinis are alcohol soup for the weak

Marius: wine that has been in his cellar for so long it's almost vinegar

Nicki: fortified wine from the bottle, what better method to get hammered in a France-honoring way?

Gabrielle: Jack Daniels, straight

#answered #vc #hc tag #human au

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madmarchhare · 6 months

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Company Chapter 9

Here is chapter 9 of the sci-fi story Company. It has been a while hasn't it? Hope you like!!

Table of Contents

The pair regarded the now battered room idly, Wick turning to the young barkeeper, sat unscathed behind his mostly intact bar, shoving the unconscious body of a tough, dark-skinned woman in a boiler suit from the counter before pouring himself a drink, along with two spare glasses.

“Sorry for the mess,” Wick said flatly to the young man swallowing the bite of apple in his mouth, wearing his usual tired expression with a toothy frown.

“…This is actually better than normal after a fight so thanks,” he remarked, filling the glasses with what smelled like port.

“Do I need to pay you for this or?” Wick asked in a disinterested tone of voice as he took another bite out of his apple.

“Just take the cash of the five that started the whole thing and that’ll be it,” he stated flatly, pressing the other two full glasses forward as Cass walked over to the bar now holding a large was of cash she had pilfered already, Wick regarding her with an unsurprised expression. She handed over the money, setting up a chair for herself as she took the glass of port in her clutch, Wick coming over to join her and the bartender.

“Thanks,” Cass thanked, taking a swig of port to wash out the taste of blood and dust, coughingly slightly as it squeezed its way down her bruised chest. “I don’t think I got your name by the way?”

“Cheongmyeong,” he answered in a flat, but slightly irate voice.

“What like the protagonist of ‘The Return of the Blossoming Blade?” Wick asked curiously.

“Yeah, my dad had an unfortunate love of the manhwa, so he decided to name his son after it, the prick,” he grumbled.

“Suits you though,” Cass commented as she took another swig of port. He didn’t grant her a response.

“Just call me Syl or Sylvester, its less annoying,” he grumbled, polishing off the last of his drink. Cass watched him go as she drink further into her glass, wincing minutely as it tapped her bruised nose.

“Hey Syl, have you got any plasters we could use?” she asked, wiping her snout with a finger to see it was still bleeding. He glanced at her surprised for a moment then reached down behind the bar.

“Yeah, but they’re all either pink or some kind of balloon unicorn ones, to try and discourage people from getting wounded in fights,” he explained, laying out a set of three boxes of sticking plasters, along with a silver dish with cotton buds and medical spirits.

“Ah that’s fine, its more to prevent infection than to look cool,” she continued, taking one of the plasters, a light blue one with balloon-unicorns on the front and trying to put it on a gash on Wick’s nose, slightly above the old scar that cut across it, the man pulling away from it with a far from pleased look on his face.

“The fuck are you doing?!” he snapped as she tried to put it on a mocking smile unthinkingly revealing itself on her face.

“We don’t want you to get an infection Wick! Who knows what’s on this planet, especially out in those wetlands,” she finished in a sing-song voice, mischief clear on her face.

“If you want to fuck with me just say it,”

“I wanna fuck with you, cause they clash with your image a lot, it’s funny,” she reiterated with a Cheshire cat smile on her face. He grimaced at her honesty while Sylvester watched perplexed, Cass taking the moment to slap the plaster onto his nose. “There we go! That looks much better!” she snickered to herself as Wick glowered at her, “alright, alright, I’ll stop,” she finished, tending to her own wounds.

Wick turned to Sylvester with an exasperated look, “do you have any normal bandages as well, I want to do my knuckles,” he stated flatly, flexing the back of his hand at the young man.

“Yeah, but you dress yourself. I don’t want to be liable for it,” he stated, grabbing a roll of bandage from behind a bottle of absinth. Wick nodded and set to it, cleaning and bandaging his knuckles, and applying two more, hot-pink, plasters to cuts on his face. The pair finished tending to their own wounds, Syl watching them with blank curiosity. “About a place to hide, what are you looking f-” he began to ask, half-hiding his curiosity in a cloak of disinterest, when the doors were flung open again this time by a pair of UN soldiers, one holding the white SMG they had seen with others, the other a blocky white shotgun, a bandolier of shells attached to his equipment webbing.

“Hands where I can see them!” the first one ordered, a medium height woman armed with the SMG with the Montenegrin flag on her shoulder. She aimed the SMG at the three of them, Wick and Cass slowly and unenthusiastically stepped off from the bar.

“Come forward,” the second soldier, lankier than his partner and distinctly worse kempt, acne and shrapnel scars pockmarked his cheek along with half-shaved five o’clock shadow. He spoke with a light Cornish accent, the UK flag on his shoulder confirming it. “We got reports of a fight down here again,” he began in an authoritative voice, glancing about at the various punched-out bodies on the floor, “well, its obvious there was one but it seems its smoked itself out. Since you’re the last ones standing we’ll ask you,” he continued in a rather flippant voice, unloading his shotgun before resting it over his shoulder.

“I can assert that they didn’t start it,” Syl called out from behind the bar, the woman glancing at him while she still wielded her weapon.

“Are you the owner?” she asked in a harsh, crisp voice.

“Yeah,” he answered then leant on the bar, gesturing between Wick and Cass, “these two were just sat at the bar when Simon came in and punched Wick in the face for no reason,” he explained flatly, the man gesturing for his partner to take down his statement.

“So it was self defence?”

“Yeah,” Wick and Cass answered together.

“What about the rest?” he asked, glancing around the room.

“No clue, they just joined in,” Cass answered, shrugging, Syl nodding when the Montenegrin turned to him. The second soldier looked at the sceptically as he scanned the room, then noticing a man wearing a light grey suit. He cocked his jaw at the sight, seeming to think something over in his head before metaphorically tossing the idea aside, turning back to the trio.

“Well, the matter seems to have resolved itself. You can stay if you need any medical attention, but bar from that, your free to go - Just don’t cause any trouble,” he brusquely ordered, standing aside as his partner lowered her weapon, slinging it over her back.

The pair didn’t respond to him, walking past him to leave, until Wick turned back to look at Syl, “Thanks for the bandages Sylvester, keep yourself safe,” he called in a flat but sincere tone. They left before he could give a proper response, leaving the young man to smile lightly to himself before setting to tidying up while the two soldiers prepared to take the various brawlers to one of the first aid stations, laying them across the floor, making sure there was no broken glass or the like.

Wick and Cass strolled down the street, evening slowly creeping upon them. “One of those grey suited merc’s was there,” Cass suddenly ejaculated as they were walking, keeping her voice low as they rounded a narrow corner, a few dozen people lingering if the finally dulled heat though relief was absent from their faces.

“Yeah,” Wick bluntly agreed, neither stopping as they walked. “The soldiers seemed to notice him, but didn’t say anything. Considering what we know about CLR… They are likely given a free pass as much as that goes, but I can’t be sure about much else,” Wick muttered.

“Do you think they’re in their pocket?” Cass asked nonchalantly, glancing over her shoulder.

“Nah, they’d have just taken us at the gate if they were working with them, save the disruption of a barfight,” Wick answered, feeling rain tap his shoulder as he walked, the dark sky being slowly broken by heavy rain that soon flooded the senses. There was a split between those who dove away from the rain under whatever shelter availed them, or those who danced or languished in the black curtain of rain-expressions of rare joy or passable content occupying their faces.

“Where to go then?” Cass asked, rain water rapping itself on her scales and gliding down, further soaking the collar of her shirt. Wick didn’t answer, mulling something over in his head as they stood under a slight overhang that shielded their backs and not much else. After a moment he leaned forward and set off, Cass regarding him curiously for a moment while she picked at her teeth, still missing a fang after the last fight. She watched him walk then grinned to herself and followed him.

“Where are we going?” she asked in a calm, but anticipating voice.

“Somewhere were we probably shouldn’t go,” Wick answered in a tired but almost pleasant tone.

“My favourite,” Cass grinned back, leaning forward as she smiled evilly to herself, Wick sighing in amusement, a smile momentarily occupying his face. They walked, shadowed by the rain, to the westernmost edge of the city. They saw fewer soldier patrolling through the rain, though they now saw what seemed more like policemen, hired from the refugees and wearing rain poncho’s over their uniforms, done in a similar blue to the soldiers, though wearing kepi style hats with neck flaps rather than helmets. They walked around with dreary but purposeful faces, ardent in their job, as it was likely all they had left.

Eventually, they reached the edge of the sprawling settlement. There were few shacks around, a few still half built on fresh foundations, but it was mostly bare, new yet already worn, dirty and damaged. Hung of the edge of the street, surrounded by chain-link fencing, was a UN building comprising of a small service building adjoined to a mooring for a trio of river patrol boats and what seemed to be a single amphibious infantry-fighting-vehicle. The building itself was only just larger than a shipping container, small glass windows placed evenly along the long face that butted onto the street, the entrance door at the far end, closest to the terminal of the streets’ path. It was painted a deep blue, made of rough plastic that caught scum on its lower skirting, the galvanised steel frame of it poking through at the joints. The fencing sat on the street, blocking off access to the open space near to the building, or the stairs leading down to the moorings, the fence shieling the sides for a short distance until they stopped, part way into the water.

Wick glanced around the site, staying away from the windows, walking near to the corner of the fence, standing on the edge of the pathway before stepping off the side, falling down until he grabbed the edge with his hand. Cass silently leered over the edge with a look of wild amusement on her face before she hopped down to join him. They both shimmied along, clambering across the chain-link fence until they came to its end, just parallel with the start of the decking that made up the slap-dash docks. Wick jumped across the empty bay that sat between the fence and a gangway, the floating path, bobbing with the landing, miraculously silent on the still water. He stepped forward down the gangway, crouched low as he walked past the riverboat next to him, all steel with a gun turret in the bow, two at the rear port and starboard sides, shielded with steel plates and a central cabin, semi-embedded in the hull, not poking out much higher than the crest of the bow.

There were two windows at the rear of the building, now looming silently over them, the dim light of an adjacent room glowing through the thin glass of the leftmost window, near a rear door that lead onto a narrow staircase. The stair ended on a thin cantilever platform that came off from the square concrete stilts that the higher foundation stood on. The pair crept up the stair, light-footed, low, as they came to the door. Wick turned let Cass go forward to begin picking the lock, turning to keep watch around them, making sure the guard didn’t move, the dull buzz of a radio audible through the thin walls.

The tumblers of the lock snapped softly behind him as Cass finished, softly opening the door before going inside with Wick. It was a large room, taking up two thirds of the building, three of the four walls occupied with desks and large filing cabinets along with corkboards covered with broadcast channels, maps, logistics and inventory reports and marker scrawled insults and orders. The final wall, to the right of them as they entered, was split between two doors, one allowing dim orange-yellow light bleed into the large room, half-heartedly illuminating a fraction of the space. There was some stirring from the lit room when they entered, Wick and Cass pulling back from the door slightly as they waited through the sound, but nothing came of it and the door remained shut. As they silently re-entered Cass whispered to Wick.

“Are we taking one of the river boats then?” a slightly giddy tone in her hushed voice as she crept toward on of the walls, seeing a small red cabinet with a Plexi-glass face filled with what it declared were ‘Spare’ keys.

“No,” Wick answered as began to go through one of the desks on the opposite side of the room, knowing a somewhat disappointed look crossed Cass’s face as he said it. “It would draw too much attention, they’d likely send a hunting party after us. Plus, considering that we are the only new people in a while, they’ll suspect it was us and impound my ship… I’d rather not have to deal with that,” Wick explained.

“Fair enough,” Cass sighed as looked away from the keys, “but what are we actually here for then?”

“Maps. We want to find wherever that CLR ship took off from out there, so it’s a good idea to get a map,” Wick answered rifling through draws as loose penicils, staples and miscellaneous files rattled about inside at the movement.

“That’ll help us get around, but how will it help us find the thing, the co-ordinates weren’t exactly pin point,” she finished with a slight hint of regret.

“Simple,” Wick answered, pulling out a few files and maps from a filing cabinet and inspecting them as Cass found a large one showing various Un sites and patrol routes, “we look for where they stay away,” he finished, laying out the maps on a wide desk as the thin end of the room.

The one he had got out was a semi-topographical map, showing the main waterways of the region and their depths along with the varied clusters of solid ground, jungles and others. It was expansive, correlated with Cass’s patrol map it showed a large amount of where UN troops would travel, along with far of sites and outposts. The pair searched over the maps, pulling out a few more as they inspected them, laying them over-top the others until Cass spotted what looked like a blank space for UN inspection. It was deep in the thick, tangled knots of the jungle, miles away from any navigable river, rather oddly considering the previous trends of the water-flow around it, almost as if they were deliberately filled in. It was in a wide area set in the damp crest of a mountain massif a few dozen miles away from it.

“That’s got to be it,” Cass asserted, pressing her claw into the map, the linnened-paper creasing from the pressure. Wick inspected the point silently, not making any motion of agreement before turning her.

“Look for the close maps of this region again, along with local ground patrols, don’t want to get caught out there,” he stated flatly, wordlessly agreeing with Cass’s bet, to the woman’s pride. She set to grab the maps, grabbing a UN map-bag as she did to hold them in.

“You sure we should take these? You were worried about getting caught,” she asked, more for conversation than worry.

“They won’t miss a few maps,” he replied dismissively handing her a few maps as well as a bottle of orange soft drink he had found in a small mini-fridge. They heard a stir from the guard room behind them and snapped around to look before ducking out of the building, creeping low against the right side of the building’s rear as they heard the soldier fling open the door to the main room. He tromped through, smacking the light switch as he walked, Cass and Wick now at the side wall of the building. Wick hopped up and grabbed the side of the building, pulling himself up onto the roof before helping Cass as they then jumped off the roof silently onto the pavement of the main street while the guard called out for what likely were some of his comrades who he suspected had raided the place.

They strode out of view of the building, back down the near empty street, Cass twisting open the bottle in her hands while Wick left his until they found covered alley to duck into. “That was fun,” Cass remarked between drafts of her drink. Wick didn’t respond, simply cocking his head to the side as he drank down half of the bottle in his hand.

“If we leave from the northmost end of this place,” he began, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his pistol, pressing a magazine of .32 ACP into it, “we’ll be able to get onto the jungle without needing a boat, we can just wade through the shallows that the promontory is built on,” he finished, racking the odd slide of the Dreyse before putting his arm ahead of her, his pistol clutched in his hand and firing twice at a large creature, illuminated in two vicious snapshots of muzzle flash, the two bullets felling the bloated, water-rat like creature which slumped dead with a quiet, burbling wheeze.

“Sound good?” Wick asked, not quite fazed by the action.

“…Yeah,” Cass replied, taking a moment to be surprised before it soon lost her attention. Wick unloaded his pistol, making sure to clear the chamber and replace the bullet back into its magazine while Cass glanced back at the unsettling creature. “What even is this?” she asked, nudging its body with the toe of her boot, the wet otter like fur a dull red-brown in colour, akin to the lower roots of an aquatic tree.

“No clue, must be a native predator,” Wick supposed, finishing off the rest of the orange drink as he did.

“Why a predator?” Cass asked, though not disagreeing.

“Who would let themselves be prey with teeth like that?” Wick commented bluntly, referring to the set of eight knife-needle canines decorated the creatures mouth, dirty from algae and rotting flesh.

They set off for the northern extremity of the settlement, the trip requiring another hour and a half through the now night-time camp, the pair weaving through narrow streets rarely lit by irregular and feeble lights as people roamed about in the back night, braving the raining pitch as the sound of hard rain against wood, concrete and the water below drowned out all axillary noise. The northern side soon became sparse like the western, but to a smaller scale, the semi-solid ground being far more built up even at the edge, a number of UN soldiers lingering at watch-points accompanied by pairs of police officers, watching over the semi-emaciated faces of the camp’s residents. The pair continued, aware of the slowly drifting searchlights that whirred overhead, watching the jungle’s edge, gliding menacingly like a white spectre over the opaque waters. The pair lingered by a corner of a wooden shack near the sudden terminal of the wooden promenade, keeping their faces hidden, pretending to be hiding from the burgeoning monsoon as a pair of waterlogged policemen patrolled the street, one walking with a noticeable limp as a wet leg brace glistened from the rain on his left.

When they were out of sight, and the searchlight now moving slowly away from their intended path, the pair moved. The hopped down from the raised street down onto the swamp-land below, their boots sinking into the soft peat below, muddy water pooling around the foot prints. They advanced forward, crouched low while they hurried forward, lukewarm rain falling in a heavy curtain over everything in sight, slowly swelling the waters that surrounded the settlement. The ground shifted under each fleet-footed step the pair made, the facsimile of solid ground made by the layers of twisted plant growth and enraptured soil soft below them. They half-way the swamp-land fell away into shallow water, about knee height, swelled by the rain and moving far apace of its usual. They waded through the water, already soaked through by the rain, keeping low against its surface. There was a path to the shallows, marked on either side by the suddenly calmed waters were it was clear the shelf of soil that the pair walked on suddenly fell away. As they traced the path, now far slower than before to not risk stepping off the path into deeper water or the path collapsing without warning.

But, as they continued, crouched low in the river while they held their pistol high above them, the searchlight suddenly swung round. The pair saw it race towards them, the white-hot eye flashing over the uneven surface of the water and broken jungle’s edge as it came close to them. Cass dropped low, dragging Wick down into the water with her until it covered everything below the nape’s of their necks, Cass gripping her pistol between her teeth while Wick held his just above the water, his face stiff and inexpressive.

The searchlight ran closer and closer, the heavy thrush of the rain and wind almost twisting into the sound of the dead sphere of light as it came for them, drowning out their own noise as the river rushed around the near-submerged heads of the pirate and the free-booter. Then, it swung left, rushing instead to the jungle’s edge followed swiftly by a small patrol boat that had crept unseen behind the light, stopping with it.

Slowly sound returned to accompany the wind and rain rather than the soulless predator of the searchlight as Cass began to hear her own heartbeat. She let out a low breath, glancing to Wick beside her, seeing him inspecting the illuminated scene before signalling for Cass to follow him forward. They stayed low in the water, the disturbed, black-green tumult thrashing against them, threatening hoarsely to drag them under as the pair felt the riverbed underfoot shift with the currents. Eventually they made it to the other side, both glancing over the illuminated jungle someway away from them, lit up a sickly white glow as if the foliage itself was bleached a pale yellow of death. They sped forward into the woodland, not wanting to be out in the open while UN troops were lingering so close by.

They marched through the night as the monsoon thrashed overhead, dashing through the thick canopy overhead and flooding the already water-logged ground of the swamp. When it pressed past midnight the pair stopped, feeling they were far enough away from the troops of the camp, and decided to wait until morning to continue through the thick jungle a task hard enough even without the thick, drowned darkness of night. They clamoured up into a pair of trees that resembled mangroves with their thick meshed roots that stood like stilts over the marshy ground below, halfway on land and shallow water. Cass simply laid down on the branch and fell asleep, leaving Wick to take the first watch, sat in a high branch looming over the ground below like a colossal owl.

The rain and wind ended with daylight, the sun suddenly looming large over the wide space and turning the chill morning air humid, the jungle seeming to come alive with alien yet familiar sounds as fauna hiding from the storm re-emerged out int daylight. Yet, at the same time, there seemed to far, far too little sound for such a habitat. Cass stared out at the space curiously as Wick got up behind her, both having slept in their soaked clothes, the now damp fabric having creased horribly as they dried on them.

“Not dead yet then?” Wick asked flatly, stretching his arms as he asked, looking to Cass with his usual toothy-expression.

“No not yet.” Cass hopped down after she responded, Wick doing the same. As the sunlight began to illuminate the jungle through the thick leafy canopy overhead they were able to take better stock of their surroundings. The ground was thick with water-foliage, from small lily-like plants to winding weeds and algae like growths in addition to great, broad-leafed bushes. They thrived in the low soft ground that frequently dipped down into small slow-moving creeks and pools that connected into wide swamps. High trees pulled up from the drowned plant floor, the ones closer to the water were more like the one the pair slept in, wrapped in smooth black-brown bark. Yet, despite the thriving jungle, it seemed bare, lifeless almost.

This did not do anything to make the pair less wary.

“Check the map,” Wick ordered, taking out his pistol to check it was still functioning as he glanced around for any watching predators. Cass pulled out the maps, along with a compass she had snatched up as well, wary that the magnetic field could be unusual.

“We left the settlement from this side here,” she stated, tapping the map with a claw as Wick looked over her shoulder at the map, “we ran roughly in this direction, but I don’t know how much distance we realistically covered so we are around this area,” she finished gesturing to a wide area of deep green forest that covered the map. She looked at it with a silent frown, Wick looking at it with seeming disinterest as his eyes scanned the creased linen sheet.

“There’s a river to the west, we can follow it northwards and work our way from there,” he suddenly announced, referring to a wide river that ran as a long, wide scar through the terrain, marked as a patrol route, a few sites labelled as UN facilities on the far bank of the river.

“Keep low in the treeline?” Cass asked, an exited smile flashing on her face like she was a child playing a game of tag.

“Yep, I don’t know how frequent the patrols are likely to be, but it’s the best bet of finding our way… At least compared to stumbling around this place until something decides to have us for lunch,” Wick replied, a sardonic tone crackling in his voice as he stretched his arms, flexing his fingers before checking his watch for the time.

They set off, not lingering in the same place for too long. They had to wade a long way through the soft ground, made of silt-heavy soil and dead plant matter, the ground revealing the small alien insects that thrives in the nutrients rich ground, the only animals that showed themselves. It was hot and humid, even before the sun reached its despotic throne of midday, the pair making sure to ration their water as the marched. After about an hour they came to the river, staying a good way into the thick tree cover that crept right up to the waters edge, knotted vines as thick as a man’s wrist tangled round the circuit like roots of the trees. A few irregular shapes lounged in the water, swimming down its course or hiding in glittering masses of reeds, their thin eyes or silent snouts poking above the water. Neither felt inclined to investigate further, particularly due to the rotten, septic corpse that bobbed in one of the small eddies that formed at the broken edge of the river bank. It was an ugly, unnatural creature, with the gangrene and rot hard to distinguish from genuine flesh. It was covered in ratty black fur, half fallen away or eaten by rot or the insects that swarmed the carrion wreck, and featured a hideous long face edified with sharp razor blade like teeth, long and thin laying horizontally in the jaw.

The pair stuck within the brush, set on a small ridge set back from the river’s edge, likely the end off its floodplain the river still swelled up to it from last night’s storm, drifting slowly past its edge, stained green-brown chocked with foliage and broken limbs of trees. After about an hour they heard the sound of breaking water and ducked further into the brush, silently watching the river as the sound approached. After a slow, sweltering moment a pair of river boats, part of the UN’s brown-water navy ran down the river, kicking up great cascades of water as their bows lifted out of the water from water-jet engines. Cass and Wick glanced to each other before both pulled back from the rivers edge, though still close enough that it was still visible, then continued walking. When they reached the turn in the river that marked where they would change course, they noticed a patrol boat moored up by the shallow river line.

Cass shifted forward to look at it, leaving Wick behind before he could tell her to wait. Luckily the boat was empty, not a single soldier left in it, though not looking abandoned. It seemed almost in situ, a game of cards left in play in the centre of the deck on an upturned crate of ammunition next to a crate of drinks. As Wick approached, keeping his pistol in his grip as he came over, carefully scanning the tree-line staring out into the opening in the thick woods that the craft’s bow seemed to point into.

“Anything useful?” He called to her, looking down at the ground.

“Not really, they took all the rifles, so the spare ammunition doesn’t have much use,” she answered, walking over to the sunken cabin to see a gaping hole where something had been yanked from the floor, “and it looks like they’ve taken something to disable the boat.”

“They’ve gone to patrol the jungle,” Wick stated flatly Cass coming out to see him crouched close to the ground, gesturing to it with the barrel of his pistol, “they’ve left tracks in the mud going in, so we’ve got to be wary as we goo further in. Its unlikely that they’ll be going the same way, but its better to be on guard,” Wick stated, watching the tree-line fruitlessly then putting out a hand as Cass grabbed a drink from the crate in the boat. The fruity drink threaded the line between medicine and a soft drink, Wick turning it over and seeing it had rehydration agents in it. He downed the rest quickly before chucking the can into the boat, Cass doing the same, though a grim look on her face from the taste.

It took another day of travel until they began to get close. As they came closer they noticed how some of the larger rivers that came close suddenly, unnaturally ended, the river-beds further on filled-in leaving unnatural lanes of young foliage and dying trees, isolated from much needed water. It was an unnerving dichotomy that began to overtake the area as they made their way slowly closer. New, strange plants began to appear more and more as they approached closer, displacing old and dying natives plant. They were unnatural, being of great proportions or nature, almost impossibly for their own structure as the sound of insects finally began to appear in the air.

The pair soon found that this was in no way a comfort.

Overhead buzzed an oversized, menacing creature resembling some nightmarish wasp, yet the size of a eagle, its carapace a deep black muddled with green, resembling the underside of the tree canopy. The pair shifted away from the thicker brush after that, seeing a few smaller animals as they continued, mostly insectoid. But, even here the space seemed depopulated.

Finally, the pair stumbled into a thin break in the tangled growth of the forest, the light overhead illuminating a waterlogged square of grass, no more suspicious from any angle except when stood within it. The ground was lumpy, but not in a natural way. It suddenly popped up a few inches from the forest floor… like something had been left under the blanket of waterlogged flora. Cass walked up to it first, feeling the shift in height as she stepped onto the firmer section, kicking her heel into the soil to feel for anything underneath, already looking like much of the original growth had died or washed away. As Wick kept watch, she suddenly felt as her foot hit something hard, giving the sensation of cold, wet metal.

“I think I found it!” Cass shouted, kneeling down and tugging at the sodden ground, the root-ridden soil coming up in great clumps, the eight-inch-deep soil soon baring forth black-grey steel resembling a bunker door as Wick came over to help. After about ten minutes, the whole of the door was exposed, revealing an eight-by-four-foot bulkhead door, raised slightly from a concrete plane set deeper into the soil. “Hah, this looks interesting, now we just need to find a way to get into it!” Cass declared with an excited relish.

Wick himself leaned close to the door, inspecting the edge of the door as he kneeled over it, then reaching over it to the raised lip of the door’s face and pulling out a lever set against the lip far from him, then doing the same for its twin close to him. With a clunk and a hiss, the door suddenly shifted, hinging up at its narrow edge like a flip phone as hydraulics pushed it up along a new but tarnished rail.

Cass looked at Wick surprised - her mouth hung slightly agape. “It was a standard type of lock used in some of the older nuclear-shelters – thought I should try it at least,” Wick explained flippantly, his voice revealing some of his own surprise that it worked. It seemed a bit lax in terms of security for how hard they had tried to hide the site so far…

“I have a bad feeling about this…” Wick murmured, looking down into the dank stair well that was slowly being illuminated as the door open wider and light dribbled into the mildew-stained space.

“Has there been anything to feel good about?” Cass quipped light-heartedly, the thin-ice of confidence willingly showing she shared his uncertainty. Wick grimaced, his lips twisting over his bared teeth before he stepped over the lip of the door, his boot landing on one of the concrete steps and beginning his descent, Cass following after him. They descended the stairwell into darkness, the alien sunlight soon floundering in the depths or the tunnel as the pair pulled out torches. The tunnel went down deep, stale air sitting low in the off-white concrete chamber, then coming to a small room, dirty with litter, discarded papers and speckled dried blood that glistened like cheap rubies under the torchlight.

At the end of the room facing the stairs, there was a steel door, a complicated electric combination lock on its face, just above an industrial lock… rendered useless as the door stood slightly ajar, a thin sliver of pale blue light falling through the gap when the two pointed their torches away. Wick crept towards the door, holding his torch above his head with his left hand while he readjusted his grip on his pistol, hung loosely in his right arm. He checked to make sure Cass was ready, the Neidr in question aiming her pistol determinedly at the door, before quickly but quietly pushing the door open. Wick kept behind the door frame as he waited for any noise or sign that anyone was waiting, or had heard them – but he was met with silence.

Wick looked through past the doorframe, seeing a wide corridor with white linoleum floors, an empty checkpoint booth set into the wall to the left, laid in darkness only mitigated by a clinical, almost nuclear blue emergency lighting that filled the whole space. The plexi-glass front of the checkpoint had a number of holes shot into it… Wick stepped into the hall, switching off his torch and putting it away, looking further around the hall, tapping his trigger finger on the side of his pistol as he crept forward. Cass entered after, in a similar stance as she went to the wall by the checkpoint, examining it in the weak light. As Wick came closer to the end of the hall, and the T-junction it split into, looking down one end and seeing an empty hallway, Cass called back to him, “Hey, I think I found a floor-map!” she called, trying to be quiet as she spoke. Wick turned back, quickly making sure the hall was clear before coming back to Cass, the woman in question inspecting an A3 size floor plan of the site, the outline done in black on the white poster, with a small dot to show where the pair were stood. The site seemed much larger than the two had expected, a great mess of right-angle tunnels that went off in an elaborate interweaving pattern, with a few extreme promontories that formed isolated complexes, many sections done in different colours with small labels placed next to rooms or entire sub-complexes, the largest being in green, the other two being far smaller by comparison.

But… there was no legend on the map – not one of these guiding features was explained. Either the map had been defaced, or a separate document was needed. “At least we know how big this place is, at least…” Wick mumbled concernedly. The pair moved on from the map, returning to the junction Wick had looked down. They turned down the left corridor, remembering how the map showed a collection of rooms further down the corridor, down a right turn. The space was wholly illuminated solely by the sickly nuclear blue emergency lights, many having failed as rainwater dribbled down the concrete walls, covered in rashes of hair-line cracks where the weight of the world above was crushing the secret space. As if stamping on a discarded cigarette. Their foot-falls continued, splashing in puddles of stagnant water as they turned the corner. As they walked down the hall to the rooms they had seen, they saw, though hard to make out in the blue light, a light blue stripe suddenly appeared on the concrete walls which continued on as they went further into the subdivision of the complex. Another map could be seen just at the corner of the corridor where the blue stripe had begun, Wick turning on his torch to inspect it. It showed a similar map of the complex as the first, though this time shrunk down in the corner of the poster, the main focus being a blown-up diagram of the subdivision of the complex the pair had come to. It showed what looked like at least twenty offices organized around a space, almost like the cloister of a church – the role of the centre being still unclear, along with the whole area as the map lacked a legend, the same as the map at the entrance.

Wick grimaced at the map as Cass peered around the corner, looking left to see the unassuming steel-faced doors that lined the corridor. She kept her pistol drawn as she approached them, pressing them open with her free hand as she pointed her pistol into the room, feeling the stagnant air lurch from the abandoned room into her face. She stepped into the room confidently, but light-footed, raising the muzzle of her pistol up, pointing it to the roof as she advanced. The room was cold, sat in the dark, the emergency lighting failing to reach into the windowless room, though the dull hum of an air-vent overhead sang in a low baritone through the room. The room was occupied by a few pieces of furniture, namely a desk covered by rotting and stained paper and a cannibalised computer – the screen’s top corner shattered and the rear panel pulled away to show a ravaged array of internals, snapped where something had been pried out. Along with that, a drawing table, covered with the torn corners of what looked like blueprints forming an abandoned collage on its surface and a few other small office effects, and small bed cot set against the wall perpendicular to the door.

The place had a general air that whoever had worked here had been bundled out in a hurry, taking only the essential.

Cass shoved her pistol into her holster and crouched down to inspect one of the documents scattered on the floor, shining her torch onto the off-white paper, attempting to make sense of the text. They were unimportant documents, discarded on the ground, covered with complex equations, electronic diagrams – the latter being much more Cass’s field, up to a point – order requests and general communiques. All that could be gleaned from it was that at least some involvement with something electronic, and that there was a central computer for the site, one that had a flaw that the absentee occupant of the office routinely complained about.

She collected a few of the circuit diagrams, and the note about the computer server, and then stood up, seeing Wick lingering near the doorway, keeping vigil in the hall then shifting as Cass came out and leading her into the next room that he wanted to check. He led Cass down the hallway, to a door that faced down the right turn of the circuit of corridor that surrounded the central room. As Wick tried the door it simply rattled in the frame, knocking against the lock. As Cass moved to pick the lock Wick bashed his shoulder into the door, causing it to fall from the frame, its hinges dragging down two blocks of rotten concrete with them.

Wick stared forward into the space nonchalantly, switching on his torch as he strode in, stepping on the door laid in a shallow puddle of water, trickling in from the roof down a stained pillar thick with algae and pond scum. The office was far worse than the one Cass had inspected, herself stepping into the room after Wick, half of the floor flooded with stagnant water as the roof seemed to collapse at one end, above the bed.

“See if you can find anything useful,” Wick stated as he stepped off the door and walked to the desk near the centre, half sunk in water, algae growing up its legs.

“Right,” Cass stated, looking for any similar papers to the ones she had found in the first office. She spotted a notebook in a low shelf, the bottom of its cover sat just under the water-line, and picked it up, shaking it slightly as water dribbled from its bottom edge. As she peeled apart the pages, staring hard at the bleeding-black letters that seemed to amount to a cross between a ship’s-log and the diary of a teenage girl, Wick called her over. As Cass came over, she saw Wick shining his torch onto a small ID card, the type attached to a lanyard, showing a bust-height photo of an ebony skinned man in a lab coat, next to a set of coloured lines – blue, green, and red - labelled ‘Robotics’, ‘Biotics’ and ‘Medical’ respectively. Cass reached for the card and inspected it closer when Wick handed it to her.

“I think we found the other half of our map,” he remarked sardonically as he stood back up, a smile flashing half-heartedly on his face. “From this, it looks like we are in robotics…” Wick mused, stepping over to the door and peering back out into the hallway, his eyes lingering on a door into the pseudo cloister of the sub-complex. “Why don’t we see if we can find anything about your Lauxes then Cass?” he asked with a slight relish in his voice as he strode over to an entrance of the centre room. He pressed open the door with his right forearm, still gripping his pistol, as he shined a torch into the space.

The centre room was an open space, though not too much larger than the offices themselves, with the appearance of a workshop under the blue emergency lighting. It was filled with workbenches covered with loose tools - calculators, measuring instruments, blow torches etc. – loose notes strewn about them, or stuck onto conspicuously empty whiteboards nearby half-rubbed out notes and diagrams.

What caught the pair’s eyes, however, was a half-assembled robotic creature, discarded on one of the workbenches, half of its scorched panelling pulled away to show a complex set of servos and hydraulics muffling a minute assortment of dead electronics. It resembled a Laux heavily, their eyes – if you could call them that – were of a similar shape and colour, though the face of this one was far more pointed, much more akin to a something like a Doberman than the Lauxes flat faces, an assessment reinforced by the jagged lower jaw the creature was fitted with.

“What even is this?” Cass asked, moving to inspect it, shining her torch onto the exposed internals of the wreck, half of its side blasted off with the frayed edges stained black by soot. Both she and Wick investigated it, looking at the metallic skin – notably made of thin, hollow rectangular tubes that seemed stained with some long-removed content, and also highly malleable, bending hard under a soft press from Cass. Whatever the power source was, and how the lasers in the eyes worked was not clear.

“I suppose this is some relative of the lauxes… though I much prefer them to something like this,” Wick commented as he lifted the head of the failed robot, pressing a finger close onto the blade-like teeth sporting the monster’s mouth. “But why this is a secret that they would be willing to kill over is still a bit beyond me…” he grumbled, a bored expression coming with his exasperated tone.

“Maybe it’s not just because of the Lauxes… maybe it’s because they came from this place?” Cass posited, turning to wick as she leaned over the creature, looking over a few scattered documents, including one talking about lead-bismuth coolant for a fusion reactor. Wick didn’t respond as he scanned the room with his flashlight, cocking his frown on his face as he mulled it over.

“Its as good an idea as any…” he mused back, then glancing at the lanyard for a moment. “… let’s have a look at Bio then. If anything, it looks like robotics was an afterthought compared to how much bigger the other one is,” Wick declared, tucking the lanyard into his trouser pocket, Cass noticing the CLR logo on its back as he did. “You find anything useful in the offices btw?” Wick asked over his shoulder with a tired expression, his face sanguine in the sickly blue light.

“Not really, a journal and a few scrap forms and things. Nothing clear-cut,” Cass answered in a nonchalant tone, folding her arms behind her hooded head. Wick nodded back as the pair left the room, heading to the corridor they had entered the sub-complex from. They felt uneasy in the claustrophobic space, smelling of mildew and rot. The path to bio, which the checked as they passed the map, continued down the first corridor they had begun down.

As they approached that side of the complex, another smell began to overtake that of damp and abandonment. The scent of blood, of animals and raw or rotting meat. A map sat on the wall just before the walls sprouted a deep green paint, like moss on a dying tree. Or gangrene on an open wound. The map was similar to the one from robotics, though this time focusing on the Biotics complex. It showed a winding complex of corridors, far more disorganized than the robotics department, looking like a tangled blackberry bush, rooms attached like fruit to the winding brambled of hallways. Wick looked at Cass with a blank expression, seeming to scan the neidr for a moment as the woman’s face, checking to see if she noticed the change in smell, which, of course, she had.

Wick lurched forward and used the momentum in his first step into the biotics complex, Cass following after, having to walk slightly fast due to her shorter strides, keeping her tail off the floor. As they crept further into biotics, they soon saw a number of large, raking-tears in the concrete, like those of a wild animal.

The pair re-adjusted their grips on their weapons.

As they rounded a corner, the stench of death hit them full in the face. One side of the corridor was lined by what looked like animal cages, with thick plexi-glass fronts, perforated by air holes at shin height. Four fifths of the cages were broken open, the five-inch plexi-glass laying in thick shards across the ground, spattered with dried blood, gnarled and scratched deeply. In those that were still sealed - and really that amounted to just one to the pair’s right - the rotting forms of monsters lay abandoned in death, only just illuminated as they hid in the corner of their cells in resignation, or had their bleeding and broken forms illuminated, displaying their last futile attempts at escape.

On the opposite side of the hallway was a small steel-faced door stood next to a wide shock-proof window. The door had buckled in the frame, becoming sealed in the process, while the window showed massive cracks from where some massive force had tried, yet only just failed to break the three-inch thick plexi-glass. The pair moved to the door, Cass standing by it with her pistol raised as Wick inspected the door. When they were sure it would not budge, they continued down the hallway, to the next office. This one was open, but contained very little of use, documents being torn up and torn into by some wild creature that had then burrowed out of the space through the concrete wall, water and soil still slipping into the room as the concrete seemed to crumble as the pair leered at it.

“I think we should spend as little time here as possible,” Wick stated, not really leaving the decision up for discussion. Not that Cass disagreed.

“On the map there was a larger room further in to this side, that might be the best place to check. It might be something like a main office or server-room,” Cass suggested, knocking aside a chunk of plexi-glass with her foot as she stepped forward.

“Then let’s go there then, you’ve got the route in mind I assume?” Wick agreed, gesturing for Cass to lead on.

“Of course!” she asserted proudly, striding forward as she kept her pistol, vigilant even as she seemed to be acting negligent. It took about twenty minutes to reach the large office. Between where they had entered and it, the complex showed signs of decay and disrepair and more tellingly defacement. Things torn from the walls, unintelligible bar from the empty space they left behind which told of their now lost presence. The empty cages were everywhere, with discarded equipment the only possible hint to the nature of whatever kind of creature had escaped them.

The room itself opposite a blank wall, no cages being located around it, the most notable feature being a small plaque nearly pulled from the wall which read ‘Division head’. The second most interesting being a set of three empty shells casings left on the floor near old splattered blood, an unnatural orange in colour, like an insect. Wick checked Cass’s expression as he approached the door, making sure she was ready, the woman nodding back, checking either end of the hallway as Wick pushed open the door.

The inside was at least twice the size of the other offices, and nearly spotless. The wall opposite wall of the window – covered by a thick black-out curtain – was occupied by a small shelf stuffed with books, flanked by stripped filing cabinets. Not a single personal affect tainted the room, but, unlike the other offices it seemed like none ever had. The room had been scavenged for files far more than the other offices, this space picked clean bar from a small notepad tattooed with hurried diagrams that Wick leafed through. As Cass looked over the complicated books Wick moved over to the desk, about to search through it, though seeing the scavenged computer on his desk and absent drawer. But, his foot caught on something, and stopped himself from falling by slamming a hand against the back wall, glaring at what he now saw to be a thin-spider thread thin trip-wire.

Only now visible as it was contrasted against Wick’s leg. Wick’s eyes darted around for some IED or trap, but none was present. As Wick was looking for a trap, a voice recording suddenly broke the silence in the room, “Professor Francano Garcia Hernandez, Head of the Biotics division for the CLR led combined research project…” the voice intoned, Cass and Wick turning to look at each other in surprise, “Evolution doesn’t have a plan, It makes frequent and catastrophic mistakes,” the recording of Francano spat, his voice bitter, speaking from some deep seated hatred as a projector suddenly began to shine from the wall behind the desk, displaying its image on the wall opposite.

“The examples are numerous, from the arduous respiratory system of amphibians, to the natural flaws in homosapiens bi-pedal skeletal structure, to the point that existing and using the skeleton as it has evolved causes monumental damage to it,” the recording continued, as if delivering a presentation or lecture, while the slide-show on the opposite wall displayed film-grain photographs – seemingly self-taken – interspersed with animal diagrams followed along with the speech. “Evolution is not planned, it has no end solution. It is a rabid, genetic committee that throws out ersatz solutions to immediate problems without any thought into the genetic repercussions that these will cause in the long term… It should of course be said, that these solutions, if taken considering only their ability to solve a problem, are genius. Solutions that can only be solved by the sheer creativity and adaptability of animal and botanic genetics. But, genius without direction and control is useless. It leads to temporary success and long-term disaster. That, is where our role begins,” the voice declared in a self-assured tone, the slideshow snapping onto a new image.

The image that illuminated the opposite wall in a pinkish-grey was something unnatural. Something twisted. The mangled form of a creature that did not, should not exist, that seemed unbound from its own biology. Its throat had multiple teeth like a moray eel, a separated jaw like a snake, hair that seemed to tread the line between feather, fur and scale all at once, its figure of some unnatural quadruped.

“We undertake evolution ourselves. We create the perfect creatures, both for our own ends, but also for the needs of nature and environment,” the voice continued, the slide switching to another creature, one that resembled the one Wick shot in the UN camp, though this time with it’s shape more defined, with half of it splayed open as it was dissected. “What greater goal could there be than to create these perfect organisms? To work the tools of biology and genetics like the great masters of Rome and Greece worked marble? To make perfect sculptures of nature like Bernini? That is the ultimate goal of my work here. And I have put it into practice along with my subordinates. Here in this garden of Eden I have created creatures of such perfection that not even God could create them!” the voice raved as horrible creature after creature flashed against the wall, of every shape and size and every horror that could accompany them.

“That is the purpose of this facility! That is the purpose of-” whatever the raving professor was going to say next is cut off by a thunderous shake and the final failure of the sickly blue light that had hung in the room. The entire complex seemed to shake as the pristine office was suddenly disturbed.

Even as the shaking was going on Wick turned his torch to the wall he had bumped, finding what seemed a secret compartment and popped it open, seeing a recording device and set of recordings on a few USB drives next to an audio system and what seemed like a port that led up to the projector. He grabbed them all and shut the compartment, turning to look at Cass who was creeping her head around the doorframe, checking up and down the now pitch-black labyrinth.

“What do you think that was?” Cass asked, taking a moment to check that a round was in the chamber of her pistol, her eyes spotting the faint glint of brass through the half-racked slide.

“Nothing good,” Wick replied tiredly, rubbing his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to linger around in this place for any more time. Let’s get out,” Wick stated in a monotone voice, glancing up and down the black corridor her stepped out the office, his footsteps silent.

“Oh, that’s not happening,” a voice declared coquettishly behind Wick’s head. Wick spun round, a wild grimace on his face as he saw a trio of people in black suits. He clutched his pistol as he squeezed the trigger to fire at the trio, only for his arm to be grabbed from behind and pulled down, pinned to his back before he could fire. His arm was pressed into his back, and with it his pistol, as the one who had grabbed him pulled back the opposite shoulder. Cass was similarly restrained, being held in an armlock by a thick-armed woman with short-cropped hair. “Well, aren’t you two some convenient nuisances?” the voice again spoke, coming from the central figure of the trio. The pair recognized the voice as the leader of the group that had attacked them on the CLR ship, the effeminate tone distinct in his voice. In addition, the pair noticed how the tone of his voice was also seen in his physiognomy, the man having a rather feminine appearance, with foppish blonde hair and freckles on one side of his face, but still one that could still identify as masculine.

The other two were still secluded in darkness and could not be made out.

“How likely is it that we can just leave here?” Wick asked in a disinterested tone, as if he was a mafioso talking to a cop. The leader’s face split into a manic smile in response, lurching forward toward the pair as he chuckled softly.

“Ah, while it’s true that we didn’t come here for you two loose-ends today, unfortunately, you both are personas non grata as far as our organization is concerned.” The smaller man smiled up at Wick, absent of a single lick of good feeling in his expression, his blue pin-prick eyes looking at the taller man with unrestrained dislike. “So, I would say you leaving is highly unlikely…” their smile faltered and fell from their face as they concluded their taunt, standing back up straight before turning to the two guards behind him. He seemed to about to issue some orders when a sound echoed down the hallway, making him pause, his mouth hanging open as he searched the darkness with his eyes, keeping still. “What was that?” he asked, looking at one of the guards who shrugged back in response, readjusting their grip on their rifle as they looked around, beginning to bring it up to their shoulder.

Before they could make any other reaction, a monster rounded the corner and slammed its mouth over the tensed form of one of the guards, leaving only the waist and legs as a half-hearted fountain of blood, staining its pillow-white jelly-like flesh its leach-like mouth filled with a seeming infinity of cookie-cutter fangs. As it’s shuddering roar echoed down the hall it was pre-empted by the roars of rifle-fire, .308 bullets splitting across the space to slam into and uselessly deflect off the creature’s flesh. As the guards were quickly distracted by the nightmare that had become disinterested in simply stalking them, Wick too his chance. He suddenly leaned forward, letting his legs buckle slightly as he pulled the stunned guard down with him. Them, Wick turned his hand away from his back, pistol still in hand, and pulled the trigger, the .32 calibre bullet boring through the bottom of his chin and out of the back of his head, Wick taking advantage of his new liberty to fire into the arm of the one holding Cass. The latter took advantage of the muscled man’s injury to elbow him in the stomach and throw him off herself before both Cass and Wick turned tail and ran away from the collection CLR’s monsters.

“Don’t let them escape!” the leader ordered, pulling out a weapon that he levied at the monster, a few hidden guards joining him in fending off the monster. The pair sprinted away, running for all they were worth down the twisting passages of the complex, hearing the yells of the monster as well as the orders for them to stop coming from their pursuers, seemingly surrounding them second-by-second. They ran on further and further, just barely eluding the guards.

Then, they came to a collapsed T-junction, the cantilever path filled in with rubble like a blocked rabbit warren. The noises of the guards echoed down from both ends of the hallway as Wick and Cass pressed against each other’s back’s, cornered. Then, before they could be captured, someone swiftly covered their mouths and pulled them through a disguised door, having swung down from the ceiling.

Before either Cass or Wick could make a noise of surprise or questioning, the third figure shushed them with a hiss, Cass able to notice the familiar haircut of the woman. The trio stayed quiet as they stood up in the dark space, Wick levying his pistol at the door as they listed to the muffled sounds of footfalls and rattling equipment coming close to the door and lingering for a few slow minutes, that dragged on like congealed blood.

Then, the sound of retreating footsteps of around five people.

Shortly after that the third figure piped up, “they’re gone, we can relax for now,” she said, stepping away from the pair further into the back of the cramped space.

“Well that’s good, now, what the fuck are here Alice?!” Cass snapped, her voice shifting from a mirthful tone quite quickly as she looked at Alice. She was dress in the same type of suit she had been wearing on the spaceship, the black cloth matching her dark skin and deep red hair, an uninterested expression on her face.

“Helping you, isn’t that obvious?” Alice returned curtly, glancing to Cass over her shoulder.

“And why did you help us?” Cass cut back, looking at Alice with a deeply untrusting gaze.

“Right, yes,” she began, seemingly searching for words before she suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Cass with both shoulders, “I need you to get me the fuck away from these people!” she cried in a pleading voice, a frenzied look on her face, her shaking, crooked smile underneath sat twitching eyes.

Cass could only balk in surprise at the unexpected response, unable to say anything before Alice stormed into a panicked rant, “After we failed to capture you at the ship, they suddenly told I wasn’t allowed to leave, and that I apparently had a massive debt for the cost of the surgery that kept me alive – that wasn’t what I was told! The deal was that I just had to help them find you then I could go! These people are fucking crazy! They’ve killed so many people! I can’t do it anymore! If I don’t run for it now, I’ll end up as their slave forever!” Alice wailed, twisting and bending at odd angles as she ranted Cass flinching back as she saw her fair-weather friend thunder out her fears.

“Why should I help you?! You left me for dead and stole my ship!” Cass yelled back at her furiously.

“And you killed me! I think you got your revenge!” Alice snapped back, making Cass pause for a moment before she responded.

“To be precise Wick was the one who killed you, but I get your point,” Cass replied dismissively, Wick giving her an annoyed glance before he lost interest, keeping an eye on the door.

“Do not argue semantics with me Cass!” Alice snapped, her frantic smile twitching on her face as she glared at him.

“Fine, fine. So, what are you offering to us?” Cass asked, looking down her nose at the woman opposite her, deeply suspicious.

“I help you get out of this fucking nightmare hell-hole, you take me off this fucking planet,” Alice answered flatly.

“…That’s a good offer,” Cass muttered, putting a finger to her chin as she seemed to think for a moment, “Done! Lead the way!” Cass declared, a wide smile on her face as she grabbed and shook Alice’s hand. Wick looked at them from the corner of the room with an annoyed grimace, not bothering to bring up the obvious complaint of Cass inviting someone else onto His ship, taking a moment to check how many shots he had left in his magazine. Alice moved over towards the door, pressing the side of her head to the door, then correcting herself and pressing one of the feline ears newly on her head against it and listening to it. After a second, she pulled back slightly from the door as she lightly touched the handle of the door and twitched it open slipping through it. She held the door slightly ajar as she crouched in the hallway, checking either end, before she gestured for the pair to follow her out.

She led them forward, keeping to the shadows and back-paths of the complex as the shouts of the CLR troops echoed about as they continued their search. Wick eyed her as they walked, curious how she knew about these back-paths, and more so of where they led to, though his wariness was hidden from his face.

But eventually, the trio was led close to the entrance again, both Wick and Cass keeping a few steps behind. “Wait here, I’ll check for anyone then open the door,” she ordered, whispering to them before she crept over towards the entrance room. She glanced around the room, finding it empty, then began punching in a code to open the door.

“What are you doing over here brat?” a voice snapped behind her, making the woman flinch and spin around, hiding the code behind her back.

“Ah, uh, I was just getting something from the tra-” she began before the suited man levied a revolver at her head, silencing her.

“No, you were trying to take advantage of the confusion to try and run.” The man, a short-stocky figure with thinning blonde hair.

“No, no! I wasn’t I-” Alice insisted, her voice pleading as the man cocked the hammer of his revolver.

“Don’t bother. You’re never going to get away from us, not with how much you owe,” the man stated bitterly as he moved his off hand toward what seemed to be a miniature walkie-talkie pinned to his right breast.

Before he could speak into it however, a hand gripped his mouth shut as an arm slipped under his right armpit and forced him arm upwards as the arm slashed forward with a knife through the man’s throat, blood gushing from the severed artery, the man twitching before falling slack.

Alice looked up at Wick, the man wiping the blood off the blade of his knife – a Douk-Douk knife to be specific – before folding it up and tucking it back into his pocket as he turned to Alice. “Well? Open the door, we should get going,” he said unenthused, the pooling blood staining the sole of his shoe.

“… right, sure,” she said, blinking before she turned and finished inputting the code, the door pressing open once again. Wick strode forward out through the door without a word, Cass coming through the door to the entrance room after him and looking at Alice with a smile, grinning at her as she saw the dark-skinned woman look up at Wick stunned.

“He’s quite good, isn’t he?” she chuckled out with a coy smile before hopping up the stairs after him. Alice shook her head and climbed the stairs, not allowing herself to feel relieved just yet.

#original writing #creative writing #writing #sci fi #science fiction #HMAD

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darkesttimelinestuff · 1 year

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Death in the Afternoon

Day 10 of Fictober! Wow! Mulder, Scully, casino, a Death in the Afternoon.

Prompt #16 - "Do you know a way out of here?"

Find me on Ao3

Mulder had convinced Scully to accompany him on a trip to New England. It wasn’t a case, per se, but they’d privately investigate the stacked rocks of the Makiawisug, while also experiencing the amenities and nightlife of Mohegan Sun Casino of Connecticut.

“So, you want to take me to New England, in the fall, to investigate some stacked rocks?” Scully had put it.

“Not just any rocks. It’s said by the Mohegan Indians that the Makiawisug are little creatures, not unlike leprechauns, that are generally kind, but occasionally known to cause mischief. They were the ones who taught the Indians to grow maize. And, when spotted by a human, would point a finger and cause the person to freeze in place. They would take all the person’s belongings.”

“So we’re on the case of a very old robbing.” Scully deadpanned.

“We’re not on a case. We’re on vacation.”

“You have a funny definition of vacation.”

“Well, Mohegan Sun has many award-winning restaurants, some of the best shows, and relaxing spas,” Mulder offered.

“Now you’re talking,” Scully said.

That had been two days ago. Their investigation of the ancient rocks had come up short. No small creatures to cause havoc were found. Mulder was mildly disappointed, but they each enjoyed their couple’s massage that evening.

“Let’s get a drink,” Scully suggested, already tipsy from a combination of the spa’s champagne and the glorious, nearly orgasmic massage.

“You go ahead. I want to change into something nicer,” Mulder said. “I’ll meet you at the bar.”

When Mulder found his way back to Scully, her lively and high-pitched voice carrying through the crowded bar, he was not prepared for the sight: Scully, tossing her hair, batting her lashes at everyone around her, sipping from strangers’ drinks, taking a drag from something that was definitely not a cigarette.

“What the hell happened while I was gone?” Mulder muttered.

“Mulder!” Scully exclaimed excitedly as he approached. “Bye, everyone!” she said. “Foxy’s here and I’m going to get laid!”

“Scully! Shhh!!”

“There are so many people! Do you know a way out of here?” she asked, doe-eyed.

Mulder led her out of the crowd by the elbow and she high-fived several people on her way to the elevators.

“What has gotten into you?” he whispered, calling down the elevator.

“Well,” Scully said, thoughtfully, tapping a finger to her chin, “that delicious spa champagne, a Death in the Afternoon, and definitely a hit or two of pot!” She giggled.

“What? The Hemingway novel?” Mulder spat.

The elevator doors opened. Scully pushed him inside and the doors closed behind her.

“In the afternoon,” she repeated and kissed him, hard.

Her hands were all over his body, his cock reacting instantly to the fondling.

“What’s a ‘death in the afternoon?’” he managed, his mind going hazy with pleasure.

“A drink,” she said, her tongue in his mouth. “Champagne, absinthe. It’s good.” She licked down his neck and under the collar of his shirt, then got down on her knees.

“Get up! What are you…” Mulder said and the elevator doors dinged open on their floor.

An older couple, mouths agape, stood before them.

Mulder helped Scully up and quickly whisked her off to their room.

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noxturnalmoth · 2 years

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Scalpels and Paintbrushes || Chishiya Shuntarô x Reader

- read ‘til the end for notes -

When a freelance artist travels to Japan to rekindle her passion for art and her life, she finds herself in a whole other predicament. Dangerous games, dangerous people, a dangerous world with dangerous rules. She’s alone, fending for herself, until she meets a disoriented medical student that will bring her comfort but might bring more difficulties and heartbreak aswell.

Chapter 9: Fleeting moments

And with this Kuina came back and fake smiles were exchanged, I went to serve myself food and we talked, small talk, just like strangers would.

After that the rest of the day was a blur. I went to my room and cryied harder than I had in months. Of course he had to come back when I was finally fine without him. It's always what happens, old habits die hard and old demons are not easy to kill.

So to the bar it was.

The walk there was okay, I bumped into couples shoving their tongues in each other's throats and militants acting tough. But once arrived in the bar the noise was almost too much to handle. I had to get what I wanted to get and quick.

"Hey, do you have two bottles of...you know what I'm too tired to give a fuck. Give me two bottles of whatever you have that's the strongest."

"I'm on it babe!"

And as soon as I blinked two bottles of absinthe were shoved on the counter.

"Have fun!"

Yeah. I don't know about this one. And I wave to the bartender as I leave the overcrowded bar and make my way into the building. Asking around here and there for directions on how to get to the rooftop I pass by the clothing room to get a vest to cover myself since the swimsuit barely did so.

"Oh, what are you?"

I feel something hard in the pocket of the cardigan, an iPod with its earphones intact? It was matte black and seemed in good condition. And as I clicked on the buttons it lit up.

It had battery.

"Did your previous owner have taste little one?"

And with that I continued to make my way up, absinthe bottles shoved in the deep pockets of the cardigan and clinking as my thighs pushed me up the stairs. My hand was occupied in scrolling as I listened through the downloads with one earphone in.

And once I arrived on the rooftop I sat on the edge, finally finding a song peaceful enough to fit what I wanted.

"Not bad. I'd thank your owner if they were still here. Although I guess I am your owner now huh? Shit, what am I doing talking to myself. You've gone crazy Humpty Stumpty, that's it, Chishiya was the final blow to your poor ole mind."

Absinthe in hand, I put it between my thighs and unscrew the cap. The strong herbal scent of the liquor hitting me in the face, more and more when I bring the bottle to my lips.

"Well, here's to me and still being alive although I'm losing it. I hope you've got your drinks on too Hide, Yumeko. I miss you guys."

And with that I drank, swift and hefty swigs were taken from the bottle as the music in my ears calmed the ringing silence of loneliness and hid the atrocious noisiness of the partying downstairs.

It was crazy how the sky was beautiful since all industrial activity stopped, it was so clear, the air was so clean. But was it worth it if all we had left was hell on Earth?

"Doesn't it burn?"

"It does, but it doesn't mean it's bad."

"It isn't meant to be drank this way you know?"

"I know, it doesn't mean I can't. There's nothing we can't do around here, I don't know if it's such a good thing as everyone makes it to be though."

I give him the bottle. Him, the man in white, the familiar stranger, the old demon I welcome back in my nights. And he drinks. And no other words are uttered as we watch the world in silence.

First Month:

Days passed and Kuina was a great girl, but being around her meant being around Chishiya. But I stayed, I stayed because I didn't want her to be hurt. She could fend for herself but I guess I just couldn't leave her to be alone with him, just in case.

Niragi was still annoying, comming ever so often to hit on me and annoy Shuntarô as I learnt he loves to do.

"So baby, what are you doing tonight? Going for a game?"

"Yes."

"I've been nice to you, c'mon give me something. A sentence that is more than a word, I don't know!"

"You've been hitting on me. I don't want you. You're violent and bat shit insane, that ain't what I want to link myself with."

He rolls his eyes and his fingers twitch around his rifle as he approaches me, and I face him head on.

"You're as violent as I am."

"Not by choice."

"But you could be, let yourself go!"

"Why would I want to, then I'd be nothing more than an animal."

"Did-"

"Did I say you were a wild feral beast? Yeah. You say that shit is human nature but don't you mean you stooped as low as becoming an unruly raging animal? Human nature is being intelligent enough to keep our instincts and unchecked desires out of society. By either taking control of them in a safe environment or erasing them."

And with that I go to the car where the rest of the people going to the same game as me are while he yells after me, finally reaching his boiling point. Once I arrived there, there is only one other person in the car. Shuntarô Chishiya.

"And thus Frankenstein's beast and her master are once again together."

Saying nothing I enter the driver's seat and start the engine, speeding towards our next game, a school

Once arrived there everything looked overrun by nature. It was growing much faster now that human intervention had ceased. And I slowly walked through thepath, admiring the great location and trying to put some distance between Chishiya and I.

Once arrived, we both take the phones given, validating our inscription to the game. Then a chime made itself known.

"Welcome Participents. Game: Eight of Clubs, Aka Manto. The players will all get to the toilets and enclose themselves in a cubicle, there they will have 5 minutes to make a choice. Once the choice has been made, people having chosen the same answer will be put into pairs within the same group. The pairs will be given a list of objects. The objective will be for these pairs to find these objects as fast as possible and stop Aka Manto's chase. The ones that cannot do so and are not already dead will suffer the consequences. You will have one hour."

"So they sai-"

"I understood Chishiya."

His eyebrows lift and I roll my eyes.

Aka Manto, we'd most likely be given the choice between red and blue toilet paper once in the cubicle, each color meaning a different death. Blue meaning suffocation until we become blue and red being stabbed until we are covered in our own blood. So once I entered mine I immediately picked red. Dying suffocating has got to be one of the worst things I could think of, and I'd rather be able to go against a stabbing maniac and have a chance of stealing their weapon.

"Teams are chosen. Red team go to the east wing, Blue team to the west wing. You have 10 minutes until start of the game."

"You've chosen red too?"

"I prefer reserving choking for the bedroom."

"Niragi would be elated."

I glare at him.

"Listen, I know you wanna piss me off but we really need to think of what to give to who and not be stupid in our decisions."

"We should team up."

"What did I say about NOT being stupid about our decisions?"

"We're both very intelligent. We'd get out quickly and easily. If you see people you want to help, go and help them, but together we'd have the most chances."

And with that I sigh. He was right, as much as I hated to admit it. So we paired up. Seeing our list I groaned out loud. We needed to find a daruma, two traditional japanese dolls, red thread, chalk, candles, salt and matches.

A purifying ritual.

"I fucking hate this already."

"You hate a lot of stuff."

"No shit Sherlock. Let's start already, chalk would be easy enough, in a class. Red thread and dolls...a sewing club?"

"Mh. Candles would maybe be in the teachers' lounge, or maybe if there's a drama club. And salt in the mess hall or kitchen."

"Matches and a daruma doll..some sort of janitor's closet?"

"Yeah it could fit. Where do they say the ritual has to be done?"

"Basement of course."

He hums and we get to work first would be the teachers' lounge, I lead the way since I was stronger physically. And we rounded corners after corners, hearing our panicked fellow red team pairs scambling about, until we attained the lounge and separated to check every cabinet present.

"Got them!"

I nodded back and we started to get going to our next location, the janitor's closet on the first floor where we could also get to both the mess hall and the kitchen. But all of a sudden the door opened and a tall figure in red holding a butcher knife entered and we were lucky enough to duck in time.

I signal Chishiya to not move as I look slightly over the table, they wore a mask that most likely impaired their vision but two people leaving would be impossible as it'd cause too much noise. So I duck back down and nod my head at the white haired male to continue to his left and get to the door, probably thinking I'd follow him he did.

"Hey asshole try and get a piece of that!"

And as I uttered those words Chishiya looked at me, almost too fast, and I motionned for him to run. I'd distract the Aka Manto, and he'd get what we need from downstairs. He begrudgingly followed my plan and I started running to the opposite side, if I couldn't outrun him, I'd outsmart him. And if I could do neither, I'd keep him at bay.

I turned corners, climbed stairs up and down yelled in the corridors so that other teams would know to run, but the damned bastard wouldn't leave me alone. So I hatched a plan, I'd go downstairs as planned but I'd kill the fucker. He'd die anyways if he lost the game, so how about I make it easier for him? And so with newfound vigor I sprint to the stairs, making it down the last flight and into the last corridor before the mess hall.

"(y/n)!"

"Chishiya run, now!"

He scrambled in the kitchen from where he was in the mess hall and I heard a loud bang of the doors opening and loud and fast thumps, Aka Manto was here.

"C'mere big guy! You want a fight? I'll give you one!"

I run to him and slide to my knees, kicking his legs from under him and he falls to the ground, groaning. As I roll back he catches my right leg and nicks it pretty bad with his meat cleaver, and as he was about to bring it down to strike again I kicked it our of his hands and quickly got to my feet. Not getting greedy in hitting the opponent I take the cleaver.

"Now we're talking."

Doors opened and two other teams came in, the Aka Manto, feeling disadvantaged tried to go to them first but I put myself in front muttering a "no you don't". The other pairs knew to run away from here fast as I held the cleaver up in front of me.

I'm gonna shish kabob that motherfucker.

He attacks first and he is fast and much heavier than me, I evade once, then twice but the third time he changes up his tactic and kicks my diaphragm. As I am proulsed backwards, my lungs cough up all the air I held. My hand still gripped the knife and it seemed to iritate the guy, he became more agressive, beating my face in thinking he could beat me to unconsciousness then kill me and get on with his day.

So I act as if I was going to punch him with my left hand and he diverts his attention enough for me to lift my arm and bring the cleaver down with enough force that I sliced through his clavicle.

The rest was fairly easy. I turned us around, using the momentum he had as he fell to his right. Once on top of him, I hit his neck enough times to behead the guy. Rolling on my back next to him, in a puddle of blood mind you, I take back my breath. The edges of my vision were black from the beating and I was losing blood but I'd be fine enough for another thirty minutes or so.

So I stood up and with staggered steps made my way to where Chishiya would be by now.

"You were fast, you got to the basement before I did you ass."

"And you look like you've gone to hell and back."

"I'm fine, you should see the other guy. D'you need help with anything?"

"Nah, go rest."

"Fuck off, do we do it in a circle or...?"

"Yeah, and wr-"

"wrap the red thread around and between the dolls tying them together. The salt is for purification purposes, red thread means fate, dolls are the world of the living and the Aka Manto, the candles are ritualistic in nature, the chalk is the border."

"Wow, you know your stuff. Did you read the thing?"

"How could I, I was flirting with death. Nah it's pretty basic spiritual knowledge and connecting the dots by this point."

And so we lit the red thread and our phones chimed, we were free.

"Good job."

"Yeah, you too."

And times and times again Chishiya would be in the same game team as I. So much so that I thought he did it on purpose. It would be totally counterproductive though, why spend months avoiding me to start and be close again? There was no way he'd apologise and reveal what he was hiding.

It didn't take a genius to see that his confession was made of half truths. There was something he didn't tell me, and maybe it was the reason he hovered around me, even in spade missions in which he'd be at a disadvantage.

But who was I to force anything out of him?

So I let it go.

"What are you thinking about? And don't say 'nothing' again or I swear I'll throw you out of the window."

"Just, getting lost in thoughts about the past."

"Yeah I know what your mean, but you do it a lot more when you come back from games with Chi- nOOOOO WAY."

"No Kuina, it's not love."

"Bu-"

"No, I know how he is. I don't want none of that with him anymore."

"What do you mean anymore? Did you have a crush on him? Were you together and you didn't tell me?"

"No to both."

"Were you not truly strangers when I introduced you two?"

"Touché."

"Wow I smell drama. Don't worry, I won't ask if you're worrying about that, but I did feel the tension between you guys. I just thought it was sexual!"

"Wha-"

Second month:

I got used to him lurking around, like some sort of weird guardian angel. Still annoyed me though.

"You know that I know you're here."

"I know that you know that I know."

"Stop being a smartass."

He chuckles and sits besides me. Evenings with him became, against my will, a routine. I'd go drink on the rooftop, occasionally with a cigarette or two, music in my ears and him in my shadow. It'd be silent for most part, my fight having mellowed out; he could fight back and he was Chishiya anyways, he's so stubborn I had become tired of fighting behind Kuina's back unless he truly got on my nerves.

"What are you listening to?"

"What? Why'd you want to know?"

"I'm bored."

"Tell me something new."

I give him the earbud I do not use and that is how the last of our conversation fizzles away as the playlist rolls through and the bottle of booze goes from me to him, from him to me, until no more amber liquid is left.

"It reminds me of our first night drinking together, back at the mall."

I hum.

"Didn't think you'd remember Shuntarô."

"Didn't think you'd want to talk about it."

"My fight is gone, I'm tired emotionally and physically, I don't care anymore Chishiya. I can't spend the rest of my days hating you this much. But I'll never forgive you that's for sure."

"I'm sorry."

"Try when you're not drunk, your eyes are droopy and you're swaying.... but thanks anyways."

"So you don't hate me?"

"I just heavily dislike you. Go sober up Chishiya."

He mumbles and leaves, and I smile, taking a whiff of the cool midnight air. He's always softer when he's drunk.

Third Month:

"Do you do this on purpose?"

"Do what?"

He says chewing on his snack, looking at the road ahead decors flying by as I drive the both of us to yet another game.

"Stick to me like a chewing gum to my soles on a summer day?"

"Maybe."

"You're gonna need to give me a bit more than that Shuntarô."

"You're less boring than the others people around here, it ain't my fault."

"You almost sound like you actually want to be with me."

"Ew, don't credit yourself this much it's disgusting."

"Riiiight, keep following me then. Creep."

Senso-ji Temple was our stop of the evening. Our game first seemed easy enough, Hide and seek, but in a gigantic space, seekers would be human, have human reflexes an thought processes.

I was very wrong.

"LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE YOU GIANT SPIDER FUCK."

Giant robotic spiders.

GIANT ROBOTIC SPIDERS WERE THE SEEKERS.

They had night vision and were unable to get tired, the whole group got killed within minutes.

"CHISHIYA YOU ASS I'M HELPING WITH YOUR PLAN AT LEAST HELP ME BACK."

The objective was to find the 'nest' and destroy it because of course they'd have a nest.

"Okay I see where it is, distract it some more."

"I've been doing it since THE PAST TEN MINUTES YOU DUMBASS"

He chuckles and cuts the signal of his walkie talkie. "It's me and you now you disgusting eight legged freak....please help me God" My thoughts keep bouncing back and forth from confident to scared shitless as this immense metal arachnid closes the distance between us.

I had to think fast.

The giant gongs. I was dying, my breath getting shorter but I had to go faster, get the spider so lazer focused she'd hit the gong. And so that's what I did. Sprinting even faster I was thinking of how I'd kill Chishiya if I ever died because of a giant spider robot, and how I'd make it as painful as possible. My legs pushed by faster and faster, and faster until I slid under the gong and the spider hit it so hard the noise resonated through Tokyo. It was down for maybe a few seconds, letting me catch my breath on the ground, but quickly got back up and when I thought it was the end I saw a huge source of light coming from behind the temple. The spider exploded, some shrapnel cutting me, but the motherfucker had saved be just in time.

"Game clear. Congratulations."

And with a heavy sigh I fall to the ground, something coming to poke my side with its foot.

"Next time, you run." I pant.

And he helps me up, chuckling and muttering a "in your dreams", giving me a pat on the back.

Fourth month:

That night I didn't go outside, my body was aching and I was simply too tired to care, choosing to go listen to music on my bed instead. The game didn't go well, it was a game of heart and it required of me to lie to get people to kill each other. There was a bunch of kids there.

I just killed a bunch of kids.

It raised the bile to my throat. You do what you need to do to survive, but that shit. Killing people that haven't done shit to you? It always feels the worst. It's the type of blood that can't be erased no matter how much you wash and scratch your skin so your own blood hides the one of the innocents.

"There's blood on your bedsheets."

"I know. Don't worry it's mine." I sniff, fat tears rolling down my face out from my closed eyes.

I hear a sharp inhale and scrambling around until a wet cloth is dabbed around my mouth, if you cant scratch yourself with your other hand your body has other tools.

"You can't keep hurting yourself. You drink, you smoke, you do shit like that, you're deflecting your pains. Using addictions and new pains to make you forget the old ones."

"Wow I love to get psychoanalyzed by my ex." Another sharp intake of breath and a pregnant pause.

Until he scrambles again, washing my arms with antiseptic, I tried to not budge but the pain was intense and I was feeling antsy due to slowly loosing blood.

"Do you want to kill yourself (y/n)? 'Cause you're on the right path to do so."

"Sometimes I do yeah. But I'm not worthy yet, so I keep on going."

My arm finally wrapped up, I curl up on my side.

"You're worthy of more than you think."

"You're just saying that."

"You know I always mean what I say, or at least half of it."

"Way to make me feel better."

I feel the bed dip and a hand going through my hair. It had gotten longer in the time I was at The Beach, around Chishiya's length.

"I should cut it."

"No, let me take care of it."

"...okay."

And so he did. Next day he brushed the nest that was my hair, which I frankly wanted to just shave because of how unnecessary it was. I didn't care much for my looks anymore.

But when Chishiya brushed my hair and washed it, it reminded me of that day, months and months ago. A day that I wanted to forget like I wanted to forget him back then. But, one of my reasons for being how I am now.

He was so gentle with me today, as if I were glass. In the mirror I saw nothing but a broken woman and looked at myself with disdain. But he looked, hopeful somehow. And as I looked at his face I sighed.

"Your hair looks like shit. Sit." And he did.

"Your hair looks like tarmac with a piss poor covering of snow on it."

And with that and the slight sound of the iPod, I opened the bleaching kit I found under his sink. Preparing the mixture and gently putting it on Chishiya's hair. The fumes were horendous but his hair was finally back to platinum, so I washed his hair and dried it as gently as I could while I watched his shoulder and face relax from the mirror.

"I missed this." He said as he opened his eyes and looked up at me, a small smile on his lips. I scowl.

"Shut up, I just don't want to be indebted to you."

But all I did was hide the fact that,

I missed this too.

Fifth month:

"JESUS CHISHIYA GET YOUR LEGS TO RUN FASTER."

Another hospital games. Those were fun right? Yeah no, they weren't ever fun. This time it was a club game, once again.

But we had to run, and fast.

We had to find creepy dolls all around the hospital to smash em and get a piece of a code which we all communicated to each other via walkie talkie.

Turns out that when we smash a doll, we get ten minutes in which our position is revealed to the killer, and he was efficient. Probably a merc, but definitely someone that we needed to outsmart since we couldn't out run him. So we brought him to the maze that is the OR floor. Just a bunch of doors leading from one room to the other, to the corridor, to yet another room.

How wrong we were to bring him here.

"I think we lost him." I pant.

"Yeah, good job. Stay here, I saw a doll in the observing room."

"Sure."

I lean on the counter and as I take a breather. The lights turn off.

"Shuntarô, this is too familiar. Shun?"

"The door is locked, fuck. We're trapped."

"Shit, it's starting to smell weird in here."

"DONT INHALE IT- (y/n)? (Y/N)?!"

And as I feel my consciousness slipping, I feel a stinging in my stomach area.

. . . . ..n)

. .

. .../n)

. .

(y/n)

(y/n) please wake up, please.

I feel my body being rocked back and forth as my numbed senses come back to me.

"Chi-"

"Please, don't die on me, not yet. You can't, you need to stay alive."

"Chishiya what the fuck?"

He stops his mumbling, now that my eyes were less hazy I could see it. Streams of tears were running down his cheeks, I was back in my room, on my bed, in Chishiya's arms. And it all came back to me, the hospital, it was like back then, when I lost my arm. So I do what I can and take him in my arm as he collapses of exhaustion.

I set him on my bed and lay next to him. It was the second time it happened, we really shouldn't get separated in hospitals. And as sleeps overtakes me, he holds me.

And that's the last time I see him before he ignores me again.

M.list

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Whew, that man is a rollercoster. Loves me, loves me not. They are dancing around each other and soon enough we'll have some action. Next chapter is the start of canon stuff related to the series so I hope you guys are ready, because I sure am! Also, I hope you like my amputee jokes for mc from last chapter, there will be some more when I feel the context is good enough. Merry Christmas y'all!

#shuntaro chishiya x reader #chishiya shuntaro #shuntarou chishiya #chishiya shuntarou #chishiya #shuntaro chishiya #x fem!reader #x female reader #chishiya alice in borderland #imawa no kuni no alice #arisu alice in borderland #alice in borderland #scalpels and paintbrushes #shuntarou chishiya x reader #imawa no kuni no arisu #chishiya fluff #alice in borderland s2

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