#to be bleeding out on the pavement literally or metaphorically and not be able to afford the ambulance

[limewatt]

jesus fucking christ learning anything about american healthcare makes me so sad and angry. what a fundamental failure to provide a vital service to a populace.

[anika-ann]

Grease and Pearls - Pt.3

Dreams Meet Reality

Type: One-shot turned three-shot (because does anyone really want a 17k in one go?)

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader (main), Tony/Reader, Tony/Pepper

Word count: 3400 or 5100 (yeah, you read it right, see A/N)

Summary: An uptown girl met a downtown guy with a heart of gold. Oh, and he was handsome too. It inevitably leads to their relationship developping… but is there any chance for them at all?

For @cxptain​​ ’s challenge. Prompt: Uptown Girl by Billy Joel

Warnings: swearing (a lot), attempt at angst, ghosting, communication par excellence

A/N: We had fluff and smut. What are we missing? That’s right. Heads up, people! There is an alternate ending to my original one, the one sentence where it breaks is in italics. I hope that makes sense ;) Pick whichever or read both :D Enjoy!

Story Masterlist

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It was bound to happen – you knew as much – but deep in your heart, you had hoped it wouldn’t. You had hoped it would last longer. You had hoped that perhaps a miracle would occur and in some mysterious way, you would be able to convince your parents that marrying you to Anthony was a terrible idea.

You should have known better than that.

The very day you had fell asleep in Steve’s arms after making love – and God, you could still feel him, his touches on your skin, his mouth, everywhere, even in the most intimate places, a pleasant, almost ceremonial ache lingering exactly there, a memory of fire in your belly and your heart – you got caught.

Your parents had been waiting at Potts’ house as you reached it around eleven in the evening, a smiling mess, a sight to behold, and any illusion about the future you had been painting in your mind shattered.

Pepper had tried to take part of the blame, but your parents always believed that you were the faulty daughter in your household and such ways stretched outside your house.

Your father was furious. Your mother was deeply disappointed and even faked a few tears – or perhaps she shed them for real, mourning her reputation, one the family would fight tooth and nail to retain.    

You had literally fallen on your knees and begged when they found a drawing from a street artist, a souvenir of one of your trips to downtown which you had only craved to explore-- and by some miracle indeed, you were allowed to keep it and not to have it torn to shreds right in front of your eyes. Pepper’s teary gaze told you she knew you were making up things up as you went and that the drawing, the one that captured beauty you weren’t sure you possessed, meant much more.

You couldn’t even hope to earn forgiveness, so you only asked for it half-heartedly.

What you did earn was a damn chaperon.

In your age! In this day and age!

Her name was Maria and she was truly efficient and strict to a fault. Nevertheless, she respected your privacy and whenever you were to meet Pepper, she would stand just outside the door and wait if you asked for a confidential conversation… which was always, you didn’t need some goddamned stranger spying on you. What the hell.

But truly, all things considered, you had lucked out; as your parents didn’t fault Pepper for your actions, you were still allowed to meet with her at least and to talk her in private.

However, the marriage plans were sped up.

And naturally, you couldn’t even hope to set your foot anywhere near downtown. You hadn’t seen Steve for two weeks, you hadn’t even found his number in the phone book to explain yourself and you missed him.

Your heart seemed to fail in its basic function; when you were lying in your bed at night, wide awake, it longed after ocean blue eyes with a drop of green, strong hands holding you close, and it wouldn’t stop pounding wildly in your chest. In the morning, your heart appeared to be beating so slowly you had to place your palm over the area to make sure it was still there, that it still had enough strength to keep you upright all day ahead.

And it ached 24 hours a day. For you, for Steve, who must have been clueless on why you never showed up to your set date or any time after. You were hurting and your parents watched you suffer along with your sister, frowning at you and scolding you to stop acting like a five-year old who had a toy taken away.

They could never understand. Was that a curse or a blessing?

Pepper was the only person you could trust, only person you could talk to about your true sorrows and her patience never seemed to wear thin despite her own turmoil – after all, if your marriage was to be sped up… her hopes were being crushed as well.

“Pepper… I don’t want to marry Tony. God, I can’t marry him,” you whispered, a cup of tea in your hands, your palms and fingers curled around the warm ceramics, hoping for it to take away some of the ever-present cold your body radiated these days.

Your friend smiled at you sadly, an honest and heart-breaking lift of the corners of her lips.

“I know, honey.”

You chuckled bitterly at the irony. Here you were, stealing her dreamed man, on she loved, while yearning after another, after the one you loved. You looked up at the ceiling, blinking away the tears gathering in your eyes – again and again, barely a day without their presence. They were always there, ready for the dam to broke so they could run down your cheeks.

When you spoke again, you could barely force the words out of your tight throat.

“I… I truly love Steve. I dreamed tonight, about having a little boy,” you whispered, the image still vivid behind your now closed eyelids. He was so damn pretty, your sweet little boy. “Blond hair, pretty blue eyes full of mischief and such innocent smile with a front tooth missing and I was expecting with another--… I want that. I want to have Steve’s children one day and I want Steve. I need him. It feels like I can’t breathe without him.”

Tender hands reached for your shoulders and pulled you into an embrace, soft and careful, yet very unladylike, not proper for anyone to see in public – at least not here, not in uptown. God, you hated it here. You despised it now, truly. And if that made you an ungrateful brat, then so be it.

“Oh sweety, I know exactly how you feel. I’m so sorry,” Pepper replied in the same manner, comfortingly stroking your arm. She sounded on the verge of tears as well. “But you know what your family is like, they would never accept Steve. As much as it hurts you and me… I’m not sure you really have a choice.”

You swallowed against the lump formed in your throat and shakily breathed in.  

“Don’t I?”

You thought of your chaperon and wondered… just how heartless could she be?

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It was three weeks after his girl’s last surprise visit that had somehow resulted in her and Steve tangled in his sheets when he lost his faith in her and whatever the two of them had had completely.

Three weeks without as much as a glimpse of her or a word, two weeks of not going to bed without few bottles of beer to keep him company, Steve walked into the shop and instantly knew something was wrong.

The usually loud environment full of chatter and teasing was suspiciously quiet.

“Hey guys,” he called out, trying to sound casual. “What gives?”

“Nothing-“ Thor responded swiftly – and way too quickly. Steve rolled his eyes.

“I’m blond but ain’t that stupid. Who pissed in everyone’s cereal? Buck?”

Steve’s best friend looked up from his work, shorty meeting his eyes. The regretful gaze spoke volumes on its own, but the brunet still sighed, tossing the rag in his hands on the nearest hood.

Steve suddenly wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear the news whatever it was. Dread filled his stomach, a feeling that had his gut twist uncomfortably. The blue-grey irises of his friend hid behind his eyelids.

“I… I’ve been in town this morning, Steve,” he explained slowly, cursing under his breath when he took in Steve’s perfectly confused expression, awaiting a metaphorical punch. “Fuck, Steve—I-eh, I saw Carter with Stark and they were-“ The coil in Steve’s stomach tightened to the point of him thinking he might throw up. “-shit, I’m sorry, Steve, they were at jeweller’s, probably picking up a ring.”

A ring.

Right.

Because she was getting married. To Stark. He knew that—he had been, in fact, informed that it might happen at some point.

But no-- like a fool, he had painted an image in his head, stupid and naïve and even found himself thinking about his ma’s engagement ring – once or twice since he had met his stunning uptown girl –, one he had inherited and was planning to give a woman who would take his heart.

Funny how his mind had been purposely leaving out the fact that the very same woman he had given his heart to was the one who could stomp on it and let it bleed on the pavement.

Fuck, he was a complete idiot, wasn’t he?

Steve swallowed against his suddenly dry throat, nodding few times in acknowledgement of the information, lips in a tight line, one corner lifted in an ironic smile as his blood boiled.

“Well… we knew it was comin’, didn’t we?” he remarked and shook his head with a scoff.

God, he was so fucking stupid-

“Steve-“

He waved Bucky off, stalking towards his own station. He dropped his bag, always stashed with clean clothes just in case, to the ground by the counter, hand blindly reaching out. He grabbed the wrench on the top unmistakably, his fingers curling firmly around the metal.

One swift movement, one jerk of his bulging arm and the wrench was sent flying, hitting the momentarily empty chain with an ominous clang that could only hope to echo the mad rage he felt, sizzling in his veins, eating him up from the inside.

“Fuck him!” he roared, the ferocity of his voice startling even his mates who were familiar with his occasional temper.

His breathing turned heavy as he reached for another tool, flinging it the same way, this time hitting the wall, much to his irritation.

Jesus fucking shit-- he was so fucking mad – at her, at himself, at Stark, Stark who thought he could just take and take, greedy asshole, just like all of those uptown snobs that thought they owned the fucking world!  

“Fuck Stark and all of those privileged assholes! I hope they rot in- Fucking! Hell!”

Two more objects Steve didn’t bother to look at flied through the air and hit the chains, the harmless violence not providing him with half the satisfaction he hoped in.

By the time the boss stalked into the shop the check on what was going on – and to yell at his employees to stop fucking around – Steve had been long gone, taking the SHILED bike and driving away until all he could feel was the wind swishing around his head, loud enough to drown out his noisy thoughts.

“Rogers came in sick, we sent him home,” Pietro supplied helpfully, the deadpan expression on Fury’s face telling him that he had none of that shit.

Yet, the bossman sighed and headed back to his office.

“Good, wouldn’t want him to puke all over my fuckin’ garage.”

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She showed up in the shop on week four. Steve was just coming back from a short bathroom break, quickly taking a U-turn when he got a glimpse of her in the overhead door to the garage, wearing black and red elegant dress.

He leaned his back against the separating wall, closing his eyes at the painful jab to his stomach.

Logically, there was no reason for him to be so devastated. He fucked girls before—he liked girls before. So why did he have to be such a missy when it came to her? She was pretty, sure, but there were plenty of cute gals. Steve really tried not to think about the L word they had exchanged, because deep down it had dawned to him a while ago; he was so fucked up because he was in love and then he was dumped by a lady who normally wouldn’t look at him twice, which was something that his brain had been bullheadedly refusing to accept.

“Sorry, he ain’t in today,” Odinson drawled, traces of hostility in his voice.

“Oh,” she sounded surprised and he could picture the gentle confused frown, the slight pout to her lips—shit, those lips tasted like cherry-- "Uhm, do you know when he will be in?”

“Why do ya’ need to know?”

Steve was certain that her frown deepened at Bucky’s words.

“Well, uhm, I need to talk to him, it’s important. Should I come here in few days or-“

“Don’t think he’ll be ‘round here any time soon.”

“Is he alright?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice and it took all of Steve’s willpower not to bang his head against the wall.

Why, just why was she doing this to him? Why would she care?

Now he knew that was cruel to her – he believed that once, she had truly been interested in him – but he told himself multiple times that her looks were deceiving, that she only had been looking for a distraction from her uptight uptown world. Maybe if he told himself enough times, he would start to believe it.

“Ain’t none of your business, princess,” Thor retorted and Steve just knew she winced at the harsh tone, a soft gasp escaping her mouth, that sweet mouth he had  kissed over three weeks ago, sweet, innocent and sinful, the music of her short breaths filling his poor excuse of a loft, keeping him fucking going.

“Nice ring, by the way,” Bucky said nonchalantly.

Steve gulped at that. Yeah, he bet it was; but there was no way Bucky was being polite. The venom dripping from his words was a message on its own.

And she picked up on it, naturally. His –not his anymore, not that she had ever truly been – brilliant beautiful girl.

“Oh. Thank- thank you,” she whispered and Steve had to strain his ears like a creep, catching the crack in her voice; he almost ran out hearing it, ready to comfort her, because God, he couldn’t imagine her crying, salt tears rolling down her rosy cheeks - few had when they had made love, but she had been smiling too.

He was sure that seeing her cry without that smile… it would feel the world was ending. Her eyes were made for shining with happiness, her lips made for laughter-

“The fuck-?“

Steve’s head snapped straight when he heard his boss leaving his office, catching him chilling by the wall, very much not working and instead trying not to break and kiss the woman he loved stupid – no matter how stupid that made him. She was engaged. Promised to another, a much classier man… or at least much richer, Steve didn’t imagine his character being worth a damn penny.

On instinct, Steve put a finger over his own lips, wordlessly begging Fury not to rat him out. The man rolled his good eye – the one that hadn’t been hit by hot oil years ago – and crossed his arms on his chest.

“And—uhm, I see. Tell—please tell him I stopped by if he- and that I am sorry for not coming here for so long. He can leave a message with Mrs.Maximoff if he--- tell him I really need to-- that I would like to talk to him,” her voice trembled a bit as she stuttered, but it was clear she had been aiming for a firmer voice and missed by miles.

“Don’t see why he should want to know, princess, but sure, whatever.”

Fury gave Steve another annoyed look and stalked into everyone’s sight. For a second, Steve panicked – was his boss about to tell on him? – but the bulky man only walked in, a professional greeting on his lips.

“Good afternoon, madam. What can we do for you today?”

“Oh, good afternoon, sir-“

“My name is Nicolas Fury, I own the SHIELD Car Repairs. May I be of service?” he continued pleasantly, a businessman in his heart. And actor in his soul, apparently, because Steve was sure he figured out what was going on from the few words he had heard and from Steve’s cowardice and was now putting up a face.

“Mr.Fury, thank you for your readiness, however I was only just leaving. Your staff was most helpful,” she said, polite and respectful, almost a hint of a kind smile in her tone as if she hadn’t sounded on verge of tears only a moment ago. As if the guys hadn’t been jerks to her, standing up for him and his… ugh, his hurt feelings.

“Very well then. Have a pleasant day. Should I walk you out?”

“I actually already offered to walk Ms. Carter out if that’s alright with ya’,” Pietro quickly stepped in, a voice that hadn’t spoken since she had arrived.

“Thank you for choosing SHIELD Car Repairs, Ms.Carter,” Fury’s voice echoed through the shop, complete silence following for what felt like an eternity.

Steve gulped, knowing all too well Fury was waiting for him to come out of his hiding spot.

And sure enough – the boss’ eye found him the moment he returned. “Mr.Fury-“

“For fuck’s sake, Rogers, don’t pull shit like ‘dat in my shop. And all of ya’ – less chatting, less big-mouthing customers and for fuck’s sake, don’t go jerk into the bathroom now just because a girl in skirt showed up. Get your head in the game… and don’t drop anything on your fucking toes, accidents on a workplace are shit to deal with.”

Steve nodded with fervour, going back to his station, even when he couldn’t say that his head was in the game. No, his head was miles away, with beautiful pouty lips, the sweetest smile and a body to write sonnets for.

When Pietro came back, he didn’t say a word, but Steve could feel him burning a hole in his head with how much he stared.

That night, Steve switched from beer to whiskey, just once, hoping to drown out the sorrow that consumed him at simply hearing her voice.

Two months later, two months of Steve avoiding Maximoff’s diner like a plague and dodging Pietro Maximoff’s attempts to have a minute alone with him, a Good Samaritan left a newspaper on Steve’s doorstep. Steve, utterly confused and bone-tired from the long day at work, lifted it and started flicking through the pages absentmindedly as he went inside of his apartment.

And there, right among the obituaries, were marriage announcements, one single photo from a wedding.

She was stunning in her dress, the fabric appearing as delicate and soft as her skin when Steve had felt it under his rough fingers the day she had asked him to make love to her. A smile, crooked and melancholic, played on Steve’s lips at the memory, her breathless moans echoing in his ears.

In the photo posed a beautiful bride with her husband; and yet, Steve couldn’t make himself think she looked as pretty as she had been when sitting on his bed, misplaced, breath-taking and tempting, as pretty as she had been in the moments of ecstasy he had brought her with his loving; for the first time and for the last time at once.

He abandoned the paper on the counter and poured himself a glass of whiskey, bringing it up, hesitating an inch from his lips.

Eyeing the amber liquid, stirring it in the glass, he recalled a movie he had been to with Buck a long time ago. He had never seen people do it in real life, they certainly hadn’t done that at his ma’s funeral, but it would feel symbolic perhaps; the action of pouring a drink into a freshly dug grave was as outside his reality as the foolish idea of a relationship with her, after all.

Taking the newspaper to his hand once more, straightening the picture, he let himself feast his eyes on her. She was radiant, like sun, like the damn sunflowers on her dress the day he had met her.

Shaking his head, he threw the paper to the trash, picture up. Pouring half the whiskey on it, he buried the bittersweet memory of his untouchable uptown girl;downing the rest, he ignored the burn in his eyes and focused on the one in his throat.

As much as he hated himself for it, his last thought before he fell asleep that night was of her, a minute of wonder if she had ever truly been as affected as he was, at least for a moment; he lulled himself to sleep hoping that perhaps she had.

He dreamed of reaching out to Mrs.Maximoff as she had asked the guys to tell him to do. He dreamed of her being there the next time he came in, with an inviting and yet sad smile, a big-ass diamond on her finger… her cherry-flavoured kiss of goodbye lingering on his lips when he opened his eyes to a new day.

He took the trash out that very morning, adding a half-finished sketch he torn away from his book.

It was the last time he saw her.

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Thank you for reading! Scroll to the end of the fic for notes. ….Or? ;)

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That night, Steve switched from beer to whiskey, just once, hoping to drown out the sorrow that consumed him at simply hearing her voice.

In the night of week four turning to week five, Steve’s eyes snapped open to the darkness of his apartment. Momentarily confused, not remembering a nightmare or anything that would cause him to wake up so abruptly, he groaned when he reached for the alarm clock on his nightstand only to find out it was half past one.

He woke up for no fucking reason barely two hours after he went to bed.  

Furious knocks on his door made him jolt, his irritation only growing.

Not without a reason then – some fucker was-- ugh. People were fucking assholes. He was not getting up from his bed for sure.

“Fuck off,” Steve muttered, lying back down face first, determined to ignore-

His door rattled with the force of the next series of knocks and he growled, scrambling to his feet, shuffling to the door and wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“C’min’, comin’, Jesus, fuck.”

Unlocking and opening the door for a slit, Steve stared at the face of his night visitor, absolutely baffled.

“The fuck, Pietro? Do ya’ know wad time ‘zit?”

“No. Do ya’?” the blond retorted, his voice dripping sarcasm and Steve really wanted to shut the door to his face. It was too early – or late – for Steve to deal with that bullshit. “Pack your bags, Rogers, Natasha has a free room.”

Steve briefly wondered when the fuck the world stopped making any goddamn sense, but opened the door fully for his clearly delusional friend. For all Steve knew, Pietro could be having a stroke, he’d better hear him out.

“Huh?” he hummed, his palms massaging his bloodshot eyes. “Da’ fuck are ya’ talkin’ ‘bout?”

“Natasha? My cousin? Remember her?”

Why the hell was Pietro acting as if it was completely normal to stop by a guy’s loft to talk about his cousin, one Steve hadn’t even met?

Steve sighed, humouring the other man. “Yeah? Married some… general or somethin’? What’s ‘dat-”  

“Colonel, yeah. She’s the one who lives in Baltimore. She got a room for ya’,” Pietro repeated, still not making an ounce of sense.

“The fuck’d I do in Baltimore?” Steve asked tiredly, earning a look that told him that it was fucking obvious. Which it wasn’t really, not to him.

…was this a fever dream?

“Open your own shop, dumbass, or find a spot in some. Make money for that pretty gal of yours and that little cute as fuck babies you’ll make.”

Steve’s heart dropped to his stomach at the mention of you, fully prepared to rip Pietro a new one to wake him in the middle of the night to fuck with him—but  he caught a movement to Pietro’s right from a corner of his eye and his heart leaped right back, suddenly sprinting.

This was most definitely a fever dream. Steve felt his jaw drop, his eyes fixing on the vision in front of him as he entirely tuned out Pietro’s next words.

“She must like you real big if she’s willin’ to sell her family nick-nack to look at your ugly mug every day. And skip town and shit…”

And a vision his beautiful uptown girl was, a mirage his mind must have come up, because there was no way she was standing there, sheepish as always, but instead of her dress, wearing a pair of jeans and a simple red blouse, a denim jacket unbuttoned, hanging loosely over her shoulders. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, threw over her left shoulder.  

And shit, she talked too, which made it appear this was in fact real.

“Good evening, Steve. I am sorry to wake you,” she whispered, leaving him stare at her blankly, dumbstruck, breath stuck in his chest.

“I’ll drive ya’, Dr.Strange’s car needs a test ride. Fury’s payin’ for the gas, by the way, the ol’ bastard,” Pietro continued as Steve managed to only watch the woman he had been missing for the past weeks lower her gaze, her teeth anxiously biting on her lower lip, fingers toying with the edges of her jacket. Hers? “I’ll be back by tomorrow afternoon, even have an hour or two to spare. That’s if you start packin’ now, bud.”

The mention of packing snapped Steve from his trance, all the emotions hitting him like a damn truck. Anger, longing, more confusion, restlessness as his girl was standing only few feet away from him and he couldn’t take it anymore.

He took a hesitant step towards her, ignoring the smirking man clearing his path.

“What—what are ya’ doin’ here?” Steve asked incredulously, his inner turmoil reflecting in his voice. She hadn’t showed up for weeks and now-- what exactly was she doing here? “You- you’re engaged-”

Gulping, she looked up, her eyes glistening with unshed tears; yet, a hint of a smile spread on her lips as she shifted her weight from one foot to another. For the first time, Steve also noticed her shoes, a simple pair of sneakers looking bizarre on her feet.

“To a man who loves my best friend and vice versa, my best friend who has been covering for me whenever we were together before it blew to our faces,” she explained, not daring to raise her voice above whisper. Steve still didn’t understand – not fully, unable to comprehend what was happing on his doorstep. Pietro talking about his cousin, about driving, Fury paying for gas, the woman he still loved standing there as if ready to skip town- “She was too covering for me when I talked to Mrs. Maximoff when she helped me to plan this. Pietro said you would want this as well— but- but if you don’t, I will leave you alone. I-“

The day Steve had met the strange girl from uptown, Bucky hadn’t failed to mention Pietro was the fast one, clearly implying Steve was the slow one.

Bucky should have fucking seen Steve now when she hesitated, unsure of his feelings – he had never acted so fast in his whole damn life.

He crossed the distance in one long stride and his hands shot up to her, grabbing her by her shoulders unceremonially. Before she could react, he pulled her body against his with all he got, claiming her mouth like there was no tomorrow.

He swallowed her yelp of surprise, followed by her happy laugh, feeling tears springing from her eyes, causing him to halt just as she finally started kissing him back.

“But your family-“ he blurted out, interrupted by her shaking her head wildly, hair flying.

“Mr. Ross has an eye on my sister. He is from a good family, of good name, generations of lawyers. My family will do splendidly,” she said with a smile playing on her lips, sweet and watery as tears still rolled down her face – happy ones, Steve believed. He felt the same delight bursting in him, switching from a broody cynic back to the fool in love in no time. “And we might too. We will have each other and I have learned enough to teach—or-- or I can be a waitress if I can’t find another job, it doesn’t matter, just so you are not the only one to-“

God, he loved her. She was so adorable and sweet and was talking about being his and going from basically a modern princess to a damn waitress, because she was willing to be with him whatever the fucking cost, apparently--

And was there really anything else he could do?

He grabbed the back of her neck to connect their mouths again, a hungry open-mouthed kiss, his hand fisting in her hair, because holy fuck, how was this happening, she was here and she was his-

“Alright, alright, smoochin’ later, packin’ your friggin’ bags now, Rogers,” Pietro cleared his throat loudly, sounding only as annoyed as amused. “I have a long drive ahead.”

Later, bags hazardously full and piled up in the trunk and on the backseat next to them, Steve couldn’t stop smiling and yet he felt a pang of guilt, ruminating over everything she was giving up.

She was resting her head on his shoulder, their interlaced fingers in his lap and Steve revelled at the absence of an overpriced engagement ring on her hand, the one from his ma’s securely in one of his bags to take place on her finger one day. She was walking the fine line between the real world and the dreamland, breathing softly to the crook of his neck and she seemed content. For now.

He sighed and pressed what could be the hundredth kiss to her hair that night.

“Doll?” he whispered softly, the question burning on his tongue, the only one he could hope to actually have answered now and not after they would try and started a life together.

“Mm?” she hummed softly, nuzzling into him further, her lips brushing the exposed skin on his throat.

“Why me? You could have any of those-“ snobs “-high-class… uptown guys.”

The smile he felt against his skin had him melt into the seat as he chased away all the grim thoughts about what the future might bring, her regretting her decision and blaming him for her ruined life on top of that list.

“Because I love you, Steve, and you are worth ten of them. My amazing downtown guy,” she emphasized, filling Steve’s chest with the most delicious warmth, his heart swelling, feeling so full it might burst.

He knew she wasn’t just saying that – she meant it. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t’ have been in his arms right now, heading to damn Baltimore with nothing but her bags, little money and few pieces of jewellery.

“I love ya’ too,” he whispered, this time pressing a kiss to her nose, drawing an exhausted giggle from her lips. Yep, his heart was about to burst before they even reached their destination. “Love ya’ so much. My sweet, sweet uptown girl.”

“Not so uptown anymore...”

Steve chuckled as rather than regret, her voice was filled with relief. “I’m willin’ to put up with ‘dat as long as ya’ stay mine.”

She squeezed his hand, tilting her head up, blinking up at him sleepily and softly pressing her lips to his.

“I think that can be arranged.”

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S.R. masterlist

cxptain’s challenge (check it out, prompts are still available - and who doesn’t like the 80′s?)

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Tags:

@wxstedhexrt, @comicshoplife, @elysianecho, @scentedsongrebel, @orions-nebula, @pies-writes-and-more​, @kayteewritessteve​, @murdermornings, @rinkashirikitateku, @queen-kass-the-writer

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….yes, in the first ending, there might have been a chance of our uptown girl planning an escape and Steve aka heartbroken dummy blew it. But hey, maybe not, perhaps she only wanted to say goodbye like he dreamed of… who knows. 

Aaaaanyway.

You are my hero if you finished reading this fic! Thank you so much for finding time to do that, this one truly was a beast – at least when I consider that it WAS supposed to be a one shot. 

Any feedback is appreciated, as always – good, bad (if constructive), coherent or incoherent, or ‘just’ a like if you enjoyed and don’t feel like putting feelings into words. Thanks again for reading!

[heartsofminds]

Blood Stained Guilt

Description: The one where Shawn’s a serial killer. 

Warning: Contains blood, violence, mentions of murder, and some sexual situations. 

A/N: This piece of writing is not meant to glorify serial killers or anything pertaining to violent or manipulative people. Please read at your own digression. Enjoy 9.4k of serial killer Shawn. 

i.

He swears to God the first time is an accident. He had no bad intentions. There was no bloodlust or plan or even genuine interest in doing what he did.

This semester in university is truly kicking his ass, and he’s under so much pressure. He feels hopeless. He imagines that the backflow of metaphorical water is constantly running from his nose to his lungs; making it hard to breathe or to think or to even exist.

He’s constantly at war with himself; fighting to stay awake and fighting to figure his life out before graduation in June.

He’s always been mild mannered. He doesn’t like drawing attention to himself and he especially doesn’t like being mean. Shawn is the kind of guy to apologize for existing if he felt someone was bothered by his quiddity.

He thinks too much. He feels too much. But he doesn’t speak up for himself enough.

His newfound confidence streak started in a bar, with too much alcohol rushing through his veins. Some dick (a really drunk guy, but Shawn’s too enraged to care) purposely spilled his beer on Shawn’s jacket and he doesn’t know what made his subconscious flip.

He catches the guy defenseless in the alley behind the shitty building honing pretty girls and drunk men. Shawn can taste the lime slice from his tequila shot in his mouth still, and he focuses on the flavor as he punches and kicks and berates the poor, helpless, nonetheless drunk man.

He’s never been good at knowing just exactly how far is too far, and he ignores the splitting pain in his knuckles and legs. His brain sends him signals to stop himself; to keep himself out of trouble and from bad karma, but he can’t. His arms move to their own avail and his feet follow suit.

He wishes he cared enough to make himself stop, but he can’t. He can’t be damned enough to give a fuck. He can’t be damned enough to think about what he’s doing or how the outcome will prevail.

When Shawn’s exhausted and his body gives the sensation of three thousand pounds of concrete holding him down, he looks at the damage he had done.

The man doesn’t move. He doesn’t groan or gasp for air. He lies motionless on the ground with his body twisted in a more than unnatural way. His blonde hair has magenta streaks from what Shawn can only piece together as blood and his face is so swollen he can’t tell the difference between the man’s mouth and his nose. The teenage boy sees a pinkish gray substance on the pavement and crouches closer to investigate.

He knows what he’s seeing is brain matter when he sees the intricate ridges, and he knows he fucked up bad when he turns the man over to see a gaping gash on his head with his skull busted and showing.

Shawn beat the poor bastard’s brains out - literally.

He wants to puke and he can’t tell if it’s from his guilt or the alcohol he consumed that night. He figures he can’t leave evidence behind and cups his hand over his mouth. He runs through the alleyway back to his car and pukes on the pleather seats.

When he pours rubbing alcohol over the clothes he was wearing and sets fire to them in his bathtub, he puts together the events of the night.

He puts his hand in the flames of the pile of burning clothes he’s created, and when he doesn’t feel anything, he wonders how horrible he truly is.

Shawn killed a man tonight, and he doesn’t even feel bad.

ii.

The second time, he’s convinced that it was just a coincidence.

He tried walking instead of driving or taking the bus to "preserve energy" or some kind of bullshit his ecology professor was always talking about, and to be totally truthful, he thinks that he would’ve been better off driving instead. At least then he wouldn’t feel so shitty about the night afterwards.  

He curses himself for taking a shortcut instead of using the crosswalks downtown like he was su-fucking-pposed to. Yet here he is, in the middle of a fucking park at 11 PM with the Toronto wind making him freeze to death.

He contemplates calling an Uber, even pulling his phone out of his back pocket and opening the app, but the sound of high heels tapping the cobblestone covered ground catch his attention.

Shawn whips his head up to take a peek.

Her boobs and ass are glorious, he thinks, even if they’re both potentially fake and she would actually be pretty to him if it wasn’t for the poor circumstances she worked under. She looks unsettlingly familiar, and it shakes Shawn’s bones to the core.

"Hey, babe. Lookin’ for a good time?” she asks him from where she’s standing.

Shawn starts to walk faster, speeding up so he doesn’t feel obligated to reply.

"C’mon, pretty boy. Loosen up. Have some fun with me,” she says with more thirst in her tone.

She gets closer and he wishes she would leave him the fuck alone. He starts to walk faster and takes a shortcut through the empty park.

He thinks he lost her, but he’s proven wrong when he hears her heels click on the cobblestone sidewalks. He knows that he’s not gonna get rid of her ass or boobs or obnoxiously tall heels anytime soon.

Shawn stops in his tracks. He doesn’t have time to deny her. He doesn’t care to, anyway.

She’s only offering a good time and he figures getting his dick sucked wouldn’t be so horrible. He hasn’t gotten much of anything lately, and he’s tired of his friend’s pushing him towards any every girl that shows a sliver of interest in him.

He smirks and shrugs while moving to stand in front of her. Even with six inch heels, Shawn towers over the blonde girl. He notes that she doesn’t look a day over nineteen years old.

His fingers lightly stroke her collarbones. “Don’t tempt me, baby.”

She bites her lip, red lipstick making her lips stand out and the blue of her eyes cloudy. “I mean it,” she whispers.

Shawn pulls her in for a sloppy kiss; one with no emotion or thinking behind it. It’s all an angry flash of tongue and lips and teeth. He bites down on her bottom lip as he tries to pull away from her. The action causes her lips to bleed a little, and Shawn kisses her again; tongue licking up the blood he drew.

She giggles and moves with him towards the park bench. No one in their right mind would be out at this time, and the dark night sky that surrounds them makes them look like shadows. If it wasn’t for the soft glow of the park street lights, Shawn’s sure he wouldn’t be able to tell what color dress she had on.

The blonde drops to her knees, unbuckling his belt and hungrily pulling his boxers down with his jeans. Shawn’s as hard as a fucking rock and in the back of his mind, he feels like a creep.

He tries to ignore the wet kisses she gives to his thighs and his lower stomach. He prides himself on being able to block things out as they happen.

His fingers start to twitch. His leg starts to bounce up and down and the girl giggles against his leg.

“Don’t be nervous. I’ll take good care of you.”

She puts him in her mouth and Shawn grips her hair to keep his active mind and nerves in check. She’s quite good at what she’s doing, and he can’t deny that he is feeling some sort of satisfaction from it.

He thinks about the last time he was close to even kissing anyone and he’s taken back to his first year in college. He’s disappointed in himself for how long its been.

She chokes on him and the gurgled sound she makes has Shawn’s head spinning in circles. His vision goes blurry and he starts to sweat. His hands shake uncontrollably and he hears what sounds like half a million voices talking at once. He can’t decipher what any of them are saying and his head starts to pound.

He’s about to bust in the blonde’s mouth, but something in him snaps.

He pulls her plump lips off of his cock and she smile weakly; mouth messy and hair tangled from her previous actions.  

“Aww, we were getting to my favorite part, “ she whines, voice filled with flirtation. She opens her mouth again, trying to find the phallus object filling it before he interrupted.

Shawn yanks her hair and she’s pulled away from his lap. She giggles again and her laugh runs circles in his eardrums, echoing louder than a crowd at a Coldplay concert.

His fingers run across the back of her neck, thumbs gently massaging it.

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t,” he mumbles to himself.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and Shawn’s mind flips.

His vision goes black. His brain screams frenzied thoughts at him. His lips are bitten so hard he thinks that he might rip them off his own damn face with his teeth.

Shawn’s large hands wrap around the unaware blonde’s neck and his fingers meet in the middle to squeeze. He feels the striated marks of her windpipe through her skin. He can feel it crack as he pushes down as hard as he can.

The blonde gasps for air and puts her small, manicured hand on top of his; fighting for control and for her life. It only motivates Shawn to press harder.

Her eyes start to turn red and he only lets go briefly because the image shocks him.

"Shawn, it’s me,” she says with such rasp anyone would think she was a man.

Shawn ignores her and keeps pressing down. Her pulse starts to weaken and he feels the groove where her windpipe and esophagus are intertwined. It isn’t until she slides down onto the cobblestones when Shawn realizes who exactly he killed.

He had killed Madeline Krebs; the girl down the block his mom used to babysit. No wonder she knew his name.

As Shawn drags her body to the creek a mile away from the park and throws her in, he vaguely remembers drawing competitions hosted by his mother in their kitchen as they waited for Maddie’s parents. He remembers playing house with her as the mom and him as the dad. His little sister was always the extra asset like the baby or the dog.

He was only a few years older than her, and it’s crazy how they crossed paths again in their adult lives.

Shawn figures it’s even crazier to think that he’s the cause of her demise.

When he finally arrives to his apartment, he puts his keys on his coffee table; a place where he’s sure he will never forget them.

He determines he shouldn’t walk anymore.

iii.

The fifth time, Shawn knows he has a problem.

It’s uncommon for people to black out like he does. It’s not normal for people to have permanently purple knuckles and a shadow of guilt lurking behind them at all times. It’s not pragmatic to think that he won’t get caught soon and he knows that he’s running out of time.  

Time is a bizarre concept, he thinks, because he can’t remember what his life was like before he started having these “accidents” and “coincidences”.

He traces it back to his childhood and blames it on his peculiar fascination with death.

He always wondered what his funeral would be like. He always watched in awe during crime documentaries and was especially useful in Scholastic Bowl for naming off famous crime lords and serial killers. He knows every word of every Forensic Files episode by heart and it’s so fucking strange.

He doesn’t really know what makes him snap the way he does. He would love to have some reason, some explanation for why he’s so fucked up and some excuse to point the finger at something else, but he can’t.

It makes him sick just thinking about it.

He doesn’t see people anymore. He doesn’t see a husband or a wife or a son or a daughter. He doesn’t care that the people he kills are friends and nieces and nephews.

He doesn’t give a fuck and sometimes, Shawn really does try to feel bad.

He constantly fiddles with his phone, debating on whether or not to turn himself in.

He knows that it would be one easy call. He knows that he’d have a quick trial and rot in a jail cell or get beaten to death by some violent inmates, but he decides that it’s what he deserves. He’s a fucking monster, and he knows it.

He’s a disappointment, he thinks. How would his parents feel if they knew how fucked their son was?

What would his little sister tell her friends when they came over and saw pictures of him on the wall? What would his other relatives think when his family shows up at family reunions without him? What would his friends say when their group diminishes by one person?

“Shawn? Do you want hot chocolate?” his mother asks, and it brings him out of his internalized battle with himself.

He shakes his head to dislodge the ideas of motives and killing and blame out of his brain before he answers.

"Uhh, yeah. Sure. Thanks,” he says and shifts his weight around in his seat.

He fiddles with his hands and bounces his leg as he hears the sound of a ceramic mug scrape the cabinet it was pulled from. He grows more and more anxious as his father turns the pages of the newspaper he was reading.

Shawn knows one of the articles is about him. His crimes have been on the news and he’s almost been discovered.

“The fucking bastard killed another one? Jesus Christ,” his dad comments, putting the paper down and rubbing his temples. “That poor family.”

His mother shakes her head, putting the mug in front of her son and moving to put her hands on her husband’s shoulders.

It’s ironic, he thinks, how the “fucking bastard” the city of Toronto hates so much is right in front of them, and they don’t even know it.

He likes to think that it’s funny, but the prickly feeling of culpability eats away at his heart and it sets flames to all his other organs and when it hits his skin, he’s in absolute shambles. Sometimes he gets so hot he feels as if he’s right outside of hell’s door.  

Shawn’s parents converse about the weather and their plans for the weekend. They don’t notice as their son starts to fall apart. His resolve is uneasy. His heart starts racing and his knuckles start rapping on the table. His leg bounces up and down so fast, that anyone looking at him would think he had drank an entire case of Red Bull.

He lets out a cough and he wheezes. It feels like a ton of bricks are on his chest and his throat starts to close. It reminds him of the time he ate a walnut in second grade and found out he was allergic.

“Shawn, baby? Are you alright?” his mom asks with a face full of concern.

She walks around the kitchen table and takes his hands in hers. They shake so violently it looks as if he’s attempting to wave. Shawn’s face heats up in panic and he feels like he doesn’t have control of his body.

"Hey, hey! Breathe. Deep breath in, deep breath out. C’mon. You can do it,” his mother says in an attempt to calm him, but he truly can’t redirect his breathing at all.

He’s so freaked out, that he doesn’t realize that he’s in an ambulance until he feels the prick of an IV needle on the top of his hand. The puncture site feels tight as his veins are flooded with chlordiazepoxide.

He’s able to breathe again and the words of, "stress induced anxiety attack" describe the horrific chain of events that had just taken place.

Shawn can’t hear anything anyone is saying to him. He can see their mouths moving, but no sound comes out to accompany his eardrums.

He sits in the emergency room with his sweat soaked t-shirt. He can see the bottom of scrubs and tennis shoes from underneath the thin curtain. He decides that it’s a weak attempt at closing him off to the hustle and bustle of the ER.

The mint green curtain slides back to reveal a tall man wearing royal blue scrubs and a stark white lab coat.

“Hello, Mr. Mendes. I’m Doctor Ameren. I introduced myself earlier, but I don’t think you remember meeting me”, the burly middle aged man with a lab coat speaks. He has a graying beard and some crows feet near his eyes. His appearance makes Shawn calm in a weird way.

He figures it’s because he looks like his Uncle James.

“Hi,” Shawn chokes out, vocal chords tight and dry due to his panic.

The doctor lets out a slight chuckle. “Scared your folks a whole bunch. They told the nurse you’ve never had any problems with anxiety before today, so I’m gonna order an EKG to monitor your heart and make sure your anxiety was just anxiety,” he takes a pause to write some things down, “And some blood work to be absolutely positive.”

Shawn gulps, his head shaking in term with the words exiting the older man’s mouth.

Dr. Ameren leaves the makeshift room and closes the curtains behind him. Nurses flood the room soon after and some interns help with his EKG and blood work.

He doesn’t say much during the whole thing, just sits and stares absently at the tiles in the floor. His knuckles ball themselves up in an attempt to hide the cuts and bruises. His biggest fear right now is getting outed and he figures it’s the last thing he needs after having a panic attack to that magnitude.

His mother and father sit with him as they wait for his test results. She goes on and on about his panic attack and is insistent that it had something to do with his heart.

She starts to blame her side of the family for having bad heart health until she’s interrupted by Dr. Ameren making his way back into the area with lab results in hand.

“Alrighty, Mendes. Looks like you’re okay. It’s just- Hey!” he stops as he looks to Shawn’s father. “Manny? Is that you?” he asks, coming closer to pat the elder Mendes man on the back.

“Ian? You’re a doctor now?” his father questions, returning the action and giving an amused laugh.

Shawn and his mother lock eyes.

“What the hell just happened?” Shawn says and his mom swats at his arm to reprimand him for his use of language. If only she knew what else her son does that needs a punishment.

Dr. Ameren rushes over to shake her hand. “Oh, you must be Karen! Manny talked about you when we were in college. Said you went to a different school so that’s why I didn’t believe he had a lady. I’m Ian, by the way.”

Manny laughs. “Yeah, she’s real. She’s amazing, too. Gave me two beautiful kids although I’d say they definitely get their good qualities from their mother.”

The two men laugh and go on and on and on about things they’ve missed during lost time.

Shawn’s dad tells about his business that he’s started from the ground up with his uncle and his extended family living in Portugal. Dr. Ameren tells him of the international work clinic he partakes in every year and how he goes to see the New York Yankees every year and that Manny should , “Hit me up if you ever want to go! New York is amazing and baseball is phenomenal even if it isn’t your thing.”

Shawn gets lost in the minutia of it all. He feels as if he’s floating outside of his body; unaware of everything occurring directly to him, but aware of his surroundings. His sense of hearing comes back in full swing and although his mind is eons away, he can hear every word his parents and Dr. Ameren say to each other.

He can hear the squeak of gurneys and the sound of the metal hooks attached to the curtains scraping the rod holding onto them. He can hear the scribble of pens on prescription pads and the beep of pagers. He hears the click of some woman’s heels and he’s taken back to that god awful night in the park.

He starts to fall into panic again, but he regulates his breathing better this time. Shawn’s able to maneuver himself out of his thoughts and settles for scratching the scabs on his knuckles. Blood starts to drip onto the light wash denim of his jeans.

“Shawn’s in school to be a doctor! Isn’t that amazing?” his mother says and he jumps at the sudden mention of his name.

Dr. Ameren turns to look at the brunette boy. “Oh really? That’s amazing, kid! You have the demeanor for it.”

Shawn gives his mom the stink eye. She knows how he hates when she brags on him.

“Yeah. I’m gonna be graduating in June and I’ll be headed to med school in the fall,” he replies. He figures if the attention is on him, he might as well make himself seem like the poster child of parent bred success.

The fakeness of the persona he puts on starts to burn holes through his consciousness.

"Ah, you seem like a smart boy. The medical world will be lucky to have you.”

Shawn gives a tight lipped smile. Dr. Ameren scribbles down instructions on a doctor’s note and rips it out of the pad of paper.

“Here’s my address, phone number, and email if you have any questions. Feel free to stop by anytime. Any family of Manny’s is family of mine.”

Ian Ameren gives off such a radiant smile, Shawn doesn’t know how or if anyone could ever dislike him.  

His parents chat with the dark haired doctor some more about meeting for dinner soon and taking a trip to New York some time in the summer. He hears Dr. Ameren suggest seeing a therapist to sort out his feelings and to prevent anxiety attacks like this one, but Shawn doesn’t take him seriously. He just politely smiles and pretends to acknowledge the help that’s being offered.

He sits up as Dr. Ameren signs his discharge papers. The man shakes his hand and clasps his father’s shoulder one last time before giving his mother a friendly side hug. Shawn slides off the examination table and makes a beeline for the hospital exit.

Upon closing the door to the backseat of his father’s door shut, Shawn’s mom turns around with concern etched on her face. He’s too exhausted to face the thousand questions roaming around in her mind.

Before she can speak, he gives her the simple, "I’m fine. It’s just stress."

His mother opens her mouth to bombard him with more thoughts and concerns, but his father holds up his hand to hault her voice from ever projecting.

She settles for an, "Okay. Let’s get you home," and rolls her eyes at her husband's dominance.

His father puts the car and reverse to back out of his parking space before putting it in drive; blurs of snow covered streets and chimney smoke making Shawn’s eyes hurt from the view.  

He leans his head against the glass and closes his eyes. Something in his stomach twists and slithers up a horrible idea to his brain that ultimately decides for him that this is what he was born to do.

So that’s how Shawn finds himself in his Jeep across the street from Doctor Ameren’s house that same night. It’s fucking freezing, he thinks, and he almost feels guilty for having this impulse.

Shawn knows that Ian Ameren has no family. He knows that he has no partner or pets from the two and a half hours he’s spent parked outside of the man’s house.

Shawn feels his conscience picking him apart for wanting to rid this man of his heartbeat.

"You’re so fucking pathetic. You can’t control yourself at all,” his brain says to his heart, but his heart’s primal desire to kill and demolish and destroy remains prominent in his plan for the night.

"Fuck this," he speaks to himself and punches his steering wheel as hard as he can. Punching things has become a habit of his in the past couple of months. It gets him into more trouble than what he likes to admit.

He unlocks his doors and makes his way up to the house. The snow crunches underneath his boots and while he should feel sick to his stomach for what he is about to do, all Shawn can think about is how much he fucking hates the sound of crunchy snow.

He rings the doorbell and nervously pushes his hands in his coat pockets after he does so. Shawn rocks on his heels in anticipation. Seriously, why was he doing this and why was he decently okay with it? Doctor Ameren approaches the door in his night clothes, Shawn presumes, and his eyes twinkle with joy seeing the young boy on his doorstep.

“Ah, Shawn Mendes! I wasn’t expecting you at all. Come in before you freeze, kiddo!” he says, and moves out of the way, allowing Shawn entrance into his home.

He nods his head timidly before entering and closing the front door behind him.

Shawn drinks in his surroundings and wonders if this is what all doctors’ houses look like.

Everything is spick and span. It doesn’t look like anyone resides here, let alone even steps foot inside. All the furniture is sleek and looks as if it had come straight out of an IKEA store display. Books cover almost every surface and there are multiple diplomas on the wall closest to the TV in the living room.

The older man takes a seat on the couch and directs his hand towards a matching chair directly across from where he’s sitting.

"Sit,” he instructs and Shawn complies.

Shawn looks down to avoid eye contact. While doing so, he takes notice of the stack of books on the coffee table.

Gray’s Anatomy, Practical Management of Pain, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - the guy was a total medicine junkie.

Shawn’s there for three hours, eighteen minutes, and thirty seven seconds before his legs start to shake and his lungs start to give out. It’s another panic attack, and this time, he knows that it’ll end in blood and chaos.

Dr. Ameren continues to talk about his days as a college athlete. He tells him about playing soccer with his father and how they were the dream team on the field. Shawn pulls at his shirt collar. He runs his hands up and down his thighs and his palms are so sweaty that the blue fibers of his jeans stick to them.

“Even though I had good ball control, they moved me from forward to winger because your dad had so much speed and goddamn. That man could fly. He scored seven goals in the championship game one year,” he pauses to take a sip of the kombucha in his hand.

Shawn starts to hyperventilate. Dr. Ameren puts his drink down on the coffee table.

“Whoa, kid. Are you okay? Can you breathe?”

He shakes his head in a negative manner and falls to his knees on the floor.

“Hey, buddy. Take it easy!” the older man encourages, but the words do nothing but make Shawn’s face even hotter and his knuckles clench tighter.

"No, no, no," Shawn mumbles to himself to numb his urge to kill this man.

Ian Ameren is a good guy, really. He donates twenty percent of his yearly earnings to medical associations overseas, he FaceTimes his mother regularly, and he always makes sure to bring back his nieces and nephews cool memorabilia from the places he visits.

Shawn doesn’t want to kill him, but the carnal desire of his nature is to eliminate him. It’s simply a challenge through bloodshed.

It’s too deep within himself to resist.

The doctor assists him up to his feet and helps him sit down on his couch. When he goes to his kitchen to get a glass of water for the young boy, he doesn’t realize that this will be the last thing he ever does.

The last thing Ian Ameren will ever do is help someone which is ironic, because helping people is his job.

“God, fuck! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Shawn says and Dr. Ameren raises his eyebrows in a questioning manner.

His eyes widen at the site of Shawn’s fist and the look in his eyes portray the fear of the unknown of his fate. Shawn’s not sure what happens but the man is on the floor and bleeding.

Shawn picks up the baseball bat that leans against the wall with a New York Yankees poster on it. Blood splatters everywhere in a plethora of reds and pinks and deep purples. Shawn can’t focus and he has to sit down to take a breath. The bat hangs in his left hand and the drops of blood dripping their way to the floor look horrific.

The fifth time turns into the sixth, and Shawn has another cold body to add to his memories.  

He scrubs his hands so raw that he can’t tell if the blood on them is his or Ian Ameren’s.

iv.

By his thirteenth “accident”, the police are close to busting him.

Shawn can’t take the heat and he certainly can’t face the music. Even though there’s tons of mystery behind his identity, there’s no fucking exhilaration behind getting called ‘The Letal Liquidator’. His friends joke about how accurately Shawn fits the description of the killer.

He figures he has no choice and he’d rather die than be caught. He would hate all the publicity and the hatred. He certainly deserves it, but he doesn’t necessarily want it.  

Shawn broke the lease on his apartment and went off the grid. He’s disconnected his phone and burned all his credit cards. He’s transferred his money to numerous banks across the country and even changed the license plates on his Jeep.

Shawn can’t handle the pressure. It’s a chore, he thinks, to walk around his own fucking country covered up with his head down low to keep anyone from recognizing him. He needs to get away, and he simply doesn’t know how.

He’s careful about leaving behind evidence. He burns all his clothes and always purchases new ones afterwards. He always wears shoes a size too big whenever he goes out because he watched a CSI: Miami episode where they busted a guy because of his footprints, so he’s careful to never make that mistake.

He doesn’t spit or scratch or have sex with any of his victims. He doesn’t leave fingerprints behind and he always covers his face and his license plates late at night when he knows his mind gets a little fuzzy. He’s become accustomed to always being five steps ahead.

Shawn even keeps a gun in his glove compartment in case things ever go too far South but they never do and sometimes, he’s tempted to put it to even better use.

On those days, he drives to a special cliff and parks his car to look out over the forest and he thinks how great it is to find beauty in something other than cold corpses.

Sometimes the thought crosses his mind of just being done. It would just be so easy and he genuinely and quite honestly believes that the world would be better off that way.

The women of Toronto wouldn’t shake when they walk home during the night; fearful of a predator lurking in the shadows.

Parents would let their teenagers out past city curfew and not get nervous when one of their texts goes unanswered for more than thirty minutes.

Police officers wouldn’t have to hold their breath every time the radio came on and news reporters’ stomachs wouldn’t drop so easily at the thought of being in the same place as someone’s body; right where their soul up and left.

Shawn thinks dying is easy.

He determined that as a fact a long time ago. Dying is giving up, and it’s just so fucking easy to do.

It’s so easy to stop screaming. It’s so easy to stop running. It’s so easy to stop begging for your life because you know it’s over. It’s easy to die because you know that it’s the end and sometimes he thinks that killing is what makes dying so beautiful.

He likes feeling like he’s in control. He likes feeling like the master chess player toying with people’s lives. He likes to think that he can twist the knife because whatever he does, he’s in control. He gets to choose, and that’s what Shawn likes about killing.

He smiles as he grabs the small pistol from his glove compartment and puts the barrel in his mouth. His fingers softly tap the trigger.

Part of him hopes that it’ll be enough to make it go off and that it’ll be a close to instantaneous death. He’s determined a long time ago that instantaneous isn’t really instant, but it’s a hell of a lot better than drawn out agony.

The gun doesn’t go off from his feather light taps and he’s halfway disappointed and halfway relieved at the same time.

He isn’t done living yet.

Tears roll down his face because he feels like such a fucking coward. Here he is, all high and mighty, murdering people left and right, without a care in the world, while he can’t even fucking bite the bullet for himself.

"You bitch. You bitch. You bitch!" His brain is on fire.

He punches his steering wheel and the horn sounds. It startles him and takes the attention of his sore knuckles away from his mind.

He’s so fucking sad and angry and inhuman that he doesn’t give a single fuck about what happens. He stopped caring months ago. Shawn considers going out in public and getting caught.

He considers tipping off the police to his whereabouts, but the little voice in the back of his head isn’t ready for this game to be over. Shawn’s ready for it to be over, so he takes his passport with him and drives to Seattle from Toronto.

He pays for a month in a motel with cash and goes job hunting. Shawn is absolutely done, but his brain still flirts with the idea of resuming what he had left incomplete.

v.

Shawn’s been good. He’s been doing great. The seasons change. His hair grows a little longer and he stops picking at his torn up knuckles. Shallow scars replace the scabs that once lived on the junction between his nimble fingers and his palms.

He had finally told his parents where he was; even made up some bullshit lie about dropping out and how he didn’t want to disappoint them. He cringed when he heard his mother cry over the phone, but he assured her by saying he was taking classes at a community college.

She sounded a little relieved, but he doesn’t mention the fact that he’s a barista at a coffee shop or that he was on the run from the Toronto Police Department.

Shawn’s been good, though. He hasn’t had any more slip ups; hasn’t had any more accidents. He thinks it means that he’s finally learned self control.

At least, he knows thinking is worse than knowing and he knows he can’t control his neurotic brain and fiery instincts when he sees her.

She comes in every Tuesday and Friday, dressed in sweaters and boots and always carrying her laptop with her. She’s polite, always saying her “please” and “thank you’s” as if she’ll combust if she doesn’t. The girl orders a medium caramel latte without a straw because she’s “Trying to save the environment, of course. Climate change and waste are gonna take us out soon.”

Shawn tries to fight it. He tries to think of other things while she’s talking but he can never veer his brain towards happy, shallow thoughts.

She orders her drink and as he types it into the register, he thinks about the dark red of her blood on his pale hands. When she says “thank you” he thinks about the perfectly circular alveoli her lungs would have when they’re filleted open. As she sits in a booth and puts her headphones on to work on her papers, Shawn tries to imagine how white and strong her bones probably are.

Months go by and he gets closer to her. He learns that her favorite color is yellow and that she attends the University of Washington. He learns that her major is in chemical engineering. He learns that her favorite artists are John Mayer and Ed Sheeran and that COIN is her favorite band. He knows that she lives alone in a studio apartment on the second floor five minutes away from her school.

Shawn learns a lot about this girl, and the warm, gentle part of his heart feels horrible for even thinking about making her his fourteenth body.

He wanders to the hardware shop on a day when he doesn’t have to work. His legs take him to the alise that has the padlocks and rope and he constantly multiplies and adds numbers together in his head to get the lowest cost. He can’t use his debit card because then he’ll get traced, so he settles for things he can buy easily with cash.

The older man ringing him up eyes him up and down, drinking in his appearance to see if he should be worried about the young man’s purchases.

“What are ya? A serial killer?” the man jokes, putting the items into a plastic bag.

Shawn’s spit catches in his throat and he has to swallow insanely hard to keep from choking. He suspects choking at the man’s suggestion would make him seem more suspicious than what he already is.

“No, sir,” he dumbly gasps. “Just helping my dad move some stuff this weekend. Nothing crazy going on ‘round here. I promise.”

The man cracks a smile, gray mustache and beard making him less daunting. “You have a good day. Better not see your face on the news, son.”

He hands Shawn the bag and the younger boy smiles before thanking him. He runs out to his Jeep and starts it up as his thoughts eat away at his resolve.

He has no choice. He has to do it now.

Shawn can only vaguely remember seeing the cabin a few times as a kid, but he’s been told that he has an amazing memory so he somehow knows exactly where it’s located. He had spent a few of his summers as a young boy here with his parents and his friends and their parents. Washington was cool to them because it wasn’t in Canada, and any kind of travel outside of the country was super exciting back then.

It doesn’t take a whole lot to impress eight year olds.

Once they became preteens, they were too cool for trips with their moms and dads, so the tradition died and Shawn hadn’t been back ever since.

He puts his car in park outside one of the cabins. The wood is green from Washington’s heavy rainfall and years of neglect from being abandoned. The windows are boarded up and the parking lot that used to exist is covered in what seems like three tons of leaves. Ivy grows up the side of the door and the patio creaks with every step Shawn takes to reach the entrance.

As he opens the door, it creaks and wails. He would get oil to silence it if he actually cared enough.

There’s no cell reception and no cell phone towers. There’s no houses inhabited by people for miles and the road the campsite is on leads to a dead end.

It’s the perfect place for Shawn to plan his next kill, but where’s the fun in no spontaneity?

His brain sifts through the catalogue of easy targets. He sees tens of hundreds of faces and hair colors and tattoos and piercings. He wants to throw up when his brain stops on one in specific. His mind circles her in a red marker and highlights it in a million different colors.

“No, no, no. Absolutely not,” he speaks out loud, hoping his thoughts will diminish with his refusal.

He has an internal argument with himself and it’s something that hasn’t happened in close to a year.

His stomach turns. He feels hot and cold at the same time. His head spins and before he knows it, vomit conjures in his mouth and flows out onto a pile of leaves until he’s dry heaving and can barely breathe.

His mind won’t let him concentrate on anything else. He drives to his motel room and takes a shower, scrubbing at his skin in hopes of rubbing off the dirty thoughts he posses. All it leaves him with is pink water flowing down the drain and raw skin that stings every time he moves.

His wounds starts to scab and they crack and bleed whenever he makes a sudden movement. Shawn likes to think it’s punishment for doing what he’s done and thinking the way he does.

Sometimes he thinks of it as a game to make himself feel better.

So when he finds himself outside of her apartment building at 2 AM, he thinks of it in the most simple way.  He thinks of it as hide and seek or cat and mouse and the innocence behind her eyes when she spots him breaks his heart.

“Shawn? Is something wrong? Are you okay?” she asks, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

She’s clad in some plaid pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt. Shawn doesn’t answer. He forces her inside and tells her to put some shoes on.

“What the fuck, dude? It’s the middle of the night and I have a 9 AM tomorrow,” she stops to yawn, “Go home.”

He puts the pocket knife he has with him to her throat.

“Put some fucking shoes on and don’t make a sound,” he instructs, voice a different kind of deep that terrifies her.

She’s grown up on TV shows like Forensic Files and Law & Order and Criminal Minds. She’s been one of the viewers that screamed at the television when the soon to be victim stood helpless. She always called them dumb and stupid and idiotic, but now that it’s her - now that she’s the one standing in her living room with a knife to her throat and a seemingly nice boy behind it - she’s at a loss of movement.

She can feel her heartbeat pick up and travel from her chest to her stomach. Her eyes feel as if they’re going to bulge out of her skull. Her mouth is dry and her joints are locked.

She figures that this is how she’s going to die. This is who she’s going to spend her last hours with and this is who’s to blame for her slaying.

In this moment, Shawn realizes that he’s the predator and she’s the prey. She can’t run away. She can’t escape. She can’t call for help. She’s a sitting duck waiting for her demise.

He’s surprised she does what he says. He’s even more surprised at how complacent she is and how fucking easy it was to lure her in.

He keeps the knife to her throat as they walk down the stairs to the parking lot. He pushes her into his Jeep and blindfolds her. As he steps on the gas to get to the cabin, he realizes that he’s created his own personal hell.

At least now he’ll have some company.

vi.

He’s kept her there for a week so far.

Every morning when she wakes up, her brain hopes for a change of scenery. It hopes that she’s waking from a terrible dream and it hopes that she wakes up in her own bed or in the bed of someone else, but not here. Certainly not in the dusty room with no windows or doors.

It’s so dark in the room, she’s not even sure if her body’s sleeping schedule is on track. She could be falling asleep at any time during the day and she wouldn’t even know. She can never hear the sound of cicadas or birds or even people, and she’s thankful that she can’t.

She knows she would drive herself fucking crazy if she could. She’s tied up on the floor with rope digging into her wrists and ankles. She can’t walk around. She can’t scream for help. She can’t even scratch her fucking face.

She’s never hated anyone before, but she hates Shawn. She hates how he slithered in. She hates how clever and cunning and deranged he is. He had been getting information on her for months and she didn’t even know it. Most of all, she hates how he had taken her away; absolutely shredding the metaphorical paper of everything she is and was.

She knows that she will never be the same.

Shawn hasn’t done much of anything since she’s been his captive. He only speaks in short sentences. He comes in the room twice a day and the door he comes in is barricaded and locked.

She couldn’t even escape if she tried.

He stares at her a lot, she noticed. His eyes look at her with a million different thoughts and when they do, she thinks about her grandmother. Her grandmother had told her that people whose eyes dart around and zero in on things are often very intelligent, and her grandma wasn’t wrong at all.

She figures Shawn is intelligent because he had created this whole scheme. He had taken her here. He had locked her up. He had distanced himself so she would be easier to kill. She knows Shawn’s intelligent but she also knows that intelligence has nothing to do with a person’s heart. Judging by the way his hands shake and his leg bounces up and down; judging by the way he never looks her in the eyes or touches her, she knows that his heart is long gone.

It’s almost calculated and cold; like he had done it many times before.

She’s always been a smart girl, he noticed. She’s compliant and doesn’t fuss. She hadn’t tried to run away because she knows that she won’t get far. She’s far from clueless, and that’s what he hates about her.

While he hasn’t spoken to her in a conversing manner, she hasn’t spoken to him at all and her eyes look deep into his empty soul; questioning him without actually talking and it makes him die a little more inside.

He wonders how many heartbreaking looks he can take before his heart shatters completely.

She knows that this wasn’t always him; that he wasn’t always like this. Before he had taken her and before the hatred started to set in, she would have considered them friends. They had spent nine months getting to know each other. She knows that he’s from Toronto. She knows that he had dreams of being a doctor, but dropped out because he couldn’t afford the tuition anymore. She knows that he played soccer for his college and she knows that he loves John Mayer.

Shawn is not what he seems at all, and she wonders how true any of the things he told her were. Certainly, they weren’t because kidnappers aren’t relatable people. They aren’t kind hearted and they don’t have souls as deep as the ocean.

He wasn’t always a kidnapper (or murderer, she’s pretty sure he’s killed some people, too) and she wasn’t always a victim.

But it’s too late to get heartfelt and emotional. It’s too late to have sympathy for him.

Despite all those things, she thinks he’s strange and evil and down right horrible; no matter how good of a person he was before this.

She often has vivid dreams of her killing him or him killing her. She figures either or wouldn’t be bad considering she would get to escape this hellhole.

During the day when she’s haunted by the ideas of captivity and isolation, she distracts herself by wondering if her succulents are still alive.

She knows she won’t be for long.

vii.

He says a compound sentence for the first time in three weeks and his voice cracks. If it were concrete, he’s sure a car would have hit it and the driver would have screamed some obscenity to themselves.

But it isn’t a car. It isn’t a crack in the sidewalk. It isn’t his imagination. This is real life. This is reality.

He clears his throat and her absent eyes look at him. “I’ve killed thirteen people,” he says.

She furrows her eyebrows. “Am I supposed to be surprised?”

Shawn’s taken aback at her words. He wasn’t expecting her to speak. He wasn’t expecting her to respond of have thoughts or emotions. 

His other victims sure didn’t. Then again, he either crushed their windpipes or bashed their brains. Of course dead people can’t have conversations.

“Didn’t think you had it in you to speak to me still,” he admits, pulling a chair from the corner of the room to sit down in front of her. 

She’s sat on her knees with her wrists behind her back. He ankles are locked and it’s quite absurd how the positions of power a depicted by the imagery Shawn’s created by sitting down.

“Didn’t think you had it in you to do this,” she responds.

Shawn shakes his head. “Watch that mouth of yours. Wouldn’t wanna carve it out.”

He gives her a weak smile and she frowns back to show her disdain with him.

“I’d rather you kill me than tell shitty jokes.” Her heart beats faster at her statement. She isn’t ready to die and part of her is terrified at what he might do.

“I won’t yet. There’s a game I still wanna play with you.” Shawn scoots the chair closer to her. He puts his face directly in her line of vision. She can’t look elsewhere and she’s forced to stare into his hazel eyes.

They’re the same hazel eyes that took her order every Tuesday and Friday for the past nine months. They’re the same hazel eyes that told her goodnight when he walked her home to her apartment after a late night cram session at the coffee shop. They’re the same hazel eyes that told her dumb knock-knock jokes and complimented her on her brilliance.

They’re also the same hazel eyes that appeared more greedy than usual on that fateful night. They’re the eyes that are busy and stagnant all in the same and there’s nothing that terrifies her more. She never knows what he’s thinking.

Shawn doesn’t want to kill her. He doesn’t want to rip her limb from limb. He doesn’t want the responsibility of cleaning up her blood or disposing of her body.

In all reality, he wishes he had never done it. He wishes he would have walked away when she told him to go home. He wishes he would have developed better self restraint.

“Fuck you,” she spits, eyes never leaving his boot clad feet. She’s scared that if she looks up his hazel eyes will burn holes through her before his hands inevitably rip real ones in her body.

She half expects him to shout and half expects him to take action. But instead, he whispers. His lips move and it’s almost as if the words aren’t coming out.  

She has to stop breathing to hear what he says.

He looks up at her to see her response and his stomach sinks when he doesn’t see her thinking of one.

He gives off a sadistic chuckle. “Fucking kill me then.”

She swallows hard. She doesn’t respond. It’s not like she can find the words to anyway.

“Say something! Say something, scream at me - fucking try to kill me!” he yells, pure anger dripping off his words.

She simply shakes her head and laughs with pity deep in her chest. Tears start to cascade down her face and she doesn’t know why.

"Kill me! Just kill me, please!" he screams, nimble fingers pulling at the roots of his hair.

She starts to choke on her tears and sobs break their way through her chest. She figures that she’s crying because she’s being tempted. She’s fucking ridiculous, she thinks, because she’s having a meltdown like a fucking toddler.

"I want to! I want to, but I can’t," she screeches, pulling at the rope that binds her hands and feet together.

Tears run down both their faces and he reaches down into his boot and grabs a small knife.

Shawn takes two steps towards her.

Her breath catches in her throat.

He grabs her wrists and she expects him to plunge the blade deep; ripping every single vein and artery she has.

But he doesn’t.

He saws away at the dirty rope stained with blood and dirt and tears. Her arms are numb because she hasn’t moved them properly in close to forty days.

Shawn drops to his knees and cuts away at the bondage of her ankles. She’s free and the disbelief her mind gives off sends her into a fit of rage.

There’s so much anger and emotion and pity and disgust that she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

"I hate you! Fuck, I fucking hate you!” she screams at the top of her lungs, “Fuck you! I hate you!”

She feels extremely stupid because there aren’t any words that can define how she feels and how utterly angry she is.

Shawn sits back down in the chair, eyes still gazing at the floor.

"Kill me," he repeats.

He pulls at her arms and yanks her up. He sits back down in the chair and he’s glad his calculations were correct. She’s short enough that her arms reach his face.  

Shawn holds out the pistol from his Jeep and tells her everything. He tells her where she’s at and where the keys to the cabin and his car are. He tells her that the choice is up to her, and that she gets to choose.

"No. No, no, no. I - I can’t," she stutters.

"Kill me or we both die," he speaks chillingly. He forces the gun into her small hands, making sure the chamber is facing him and not her.

Her hands shake violently. As much as she’s thought about it, she can’t actually go through with it.

Shawn puts the chamber in his mouth, hand still holding her’s firmly on the pistol.

"No, Shawn. Stop! Please!" she begs.

He gives her hand a gentle squeeze before pulling her finger up to the trigger. Before she can move it away, he pushes her finger down.

She hears a loud pop and she’s sure that she’s never seen so much blood before. She throws the gun across the room and can’t bring herself look down at the floor.

The maroon leaking from his skull seeps its way to her feet.

She hears voices outside the room and her name being called. The door is kicked in and a swarm of police officers crowd the area.

They tell her that she’s safe and that he tipped off the police an hour earlier. They tell her he had this planned. They tell her that she did the right thing and they tell her that her parents are waiting for her at the hospital.

As she exits the room with the officers, she looks back to see the dark red splattered across the floor. She wonders how her killing him is any different than him killing other people.

A female officer notices her staring at the scene and pats her shoulder. “Self defense, honey.” she says.

She nods. She understands entirely.

The color maroon makes her feel guilty whenever she sees it.

[fates-theysband]

Chronophobia

Rating: T

Ship: Aeren Chapman/Tim Stoker (vaguely alluded to; this is more of a narrative oc profile)

Warnings: mentions of decapitation and vivisection, vaguely described gore, blood, head trauma, canon-typical thanatophobia triggers, more than canon-typical swearing (not in that order)

i literally am not capable of just writing a fic, it all has to be vaguely epistolary bs like “craigslist missed connection” and “basically a script for an episode of tma”. Jon’s dialogue is in bold, to make up for the fact that there’s not a single dialogue tag in this whole mess

--

"Statement of Avery Chapman, regarding the bizarre events preceding the death of their twin sibling Aeren Chapman. Statement taken direct from subject, twenty-third June two thousand and sixteen. Statement begins."

"Look, this isn't going to cast me in a great light to start off with, but I lied to get in the door. I mean, can you blame me? If I had let me in, and I’d heard the truth, I would've been like, 'We don't have time for pranksters, come back when you have an actual statement to give.' Because, I mean, come on. What I'm about to tell you sounds like bullshit. The truth is, I'm not Avery Chapman, and my statement has nothing to do with any events from before Aeren died. So, let me give you a more accurate version of what you just said."

"Statement of Aeren Chapman, regarding the bizarre events following their own untimely death. There, now it's on the record. Let's get into it.”

"My entire life, I could hear a ticking clock. Not literally. But I was always thinking about the time. How long would it take to do this? How much time until that? Will I be able to do everything I want or need before time runs out? Nobody really understood, of course. From the day I was old enough to even communicate that kind of feeling, all I ever heard was, 'Don't worry, you're young! You have all the time in the world!' And it was the same, right up until the end. I mean, guess that's not really fair to my folks. They tried to get me help, usually in the form of allergy meds that kind of had anti-anxiety properties in low lighting if you were really trying to see 'em. I've never been a cheap drunk and since my grandpappy on my mom’s side was, every psych I went to see was too scared of the Ghost of Addictions Past to give me anything that worked. So instead, I lived with the clock. And I got really good at pretending it wasn't there. Sometimes I could even enjoy the moment."

"That changed when I got older, of course. I'm from the US, if you couldn't tell from the...everything about me, and you probably can at least guess how it is over there. Go, go, go, until you drop dead if necessary, to appease the almighty money line. And unlike with school, with work you don't exactly get summers off. So that ticking clock came back full force. I remember, one time, my roommates and I were going to get carry-out and watch a movie, and I had work in the morning. One of my roommates, Jace, went out to pick up the food, and I guess he got stuck in traffic or something, because he didn't get back for an hour and all I could think was 'that's one less hour I have to actually relax before I have to get up and go back to work tomorrow', and I was on edge the entire rest of the night. Couldn't enjoy the movie, was short with Jace and Holly every time they tried to make conversation...just being a real irritable asshole."

"That was pretty close to when it happened, actually. Maybe a few weeks or so. I guess that would explain a lot. It doesn't matter what happened to me the night I died. All you really need to know is that it was violent, gruesome, and traumatic. For some reason, it didn't even register to me that I was dying until I realized I could hear the ticking, for real this time. With every single step it got louder and louder, matching pace with my feet staggering down the pavement as my body was basically falling apart below me, until I finally rounded a corner and collapsed. And then the ticking stopped, and I looked up."

"I could see a skeleton sitting in front of me, but...not the way a corpse would be sitting. Not the way I was sitting. They were sitting criss-cross applesauce, and for how old and dusty the bones looked I was shocked to see that they were dressed pretty young for, you know, a skeleton. Big skirt, peace sign shirt, hippie headband, that kind of thing. Could've died in the seventies, could have died last year. I didn't get to really figure that out before they motioned to the things laid out in front of them. Game tokens. Not an exhaustive amount of them, but I could see a chess piece, a die, and a deck of cards. All bone, because apparently every single psychopomp’s a corny bastard. I tried to decline. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I was sick of the clock and I couldn't see an upside to going back to it. They laughed at me. Not out loud, but they made the motions. Then they urged me to pick a token again. Asshole."

"By the way, turns out Death knows Yahtzee. I wouldn't say I expected to win. I wasn't even sure I hoped to win. All I wanted was an end to the not knowing. I figured something out that night, Archivist. It’s not death humans are afraid of, it’s uncertainty. If we knew for sure exactly what happened after we died, I don’t think anyone would be afraid to die.”

“Guess this goes without saying, but I won. Didn’t even cheat, just got a few really good rolls. I didn’t really know what to expect; I figured my insides would knit themselves back together and I’d rejoin the world of the living instead of playing Yahtzee with a hippie skeleton in a dark alley on a street that was normally a hell of a lot busier. That I’d go back to the miserable job and the crappy apartment and the ticking clock. But that isn’t what happened. If it was I would’ve taken this whole experience to my permanent grave. I mean, someone’s insides got knitted back together that night. But they weren’t mine. I watched the flesh fall off my bones as the skeleton in the long skirt became more and more alive, until a flesh-and-blood girl who couldn’t have been older than me stood up and left the alley. I think she said something to me as she was leaving. I want to say it was ‘forgive me’, but I’m thinking it was ‘better you than me’. For some reason I wasn’t scared or sad or anything but relieved. It sounds fucked up, I know, but have you ever lived a life where you had nothing to look forward to? At least with this I could see a way out.”

“I won’t bore you describing the interim. You look like a smart guy, you’re probably familiar with what the Grim Reaper does. What matters is how I got all the meat back. And why I’m wearing this massive coat and knit cap in June.” “You see, most people in the few years I did this were partial to the chance games, or low-skill board games. Roulette was a big one. So was blackjack. Someone got smart and tried Candyland once. But only one person ever picked chess.”

“He was maybe mid-thirties. Wasn’t really sure what had happened to him but he was covered in blood and terrified. I’d say ‘scared to death’ but that seems gauche. I don’t understand chess beyond the basic object of the game and what the different pieces can do, but even I could tell this guy was either terrible at chess or not in the right mental place to be making strategic decisions in a game for his life. Or both. Both is always an option."

“I could have wiped the floor with him, even with my lack of skill. He pretty much put his king in check by himself, all I did was avoid his clumsy attempts to capture my pieces. Here’s where you probably think I’m about to say ‘this is where I got sloppy’ or some shit like that. No. I knew exactly what I was doing and I meant to do it.” 

“I’d say it was agonizingly long, but really, any amount of time is agonizingly long when the action is ‘playing chess in complete silence under a bridge somewhere in London’. But after the most frustrating game of my life, my clueless savior checkmated me. I told him I was sorry as I left. I don't know if he heard me over the screaming."

"Just like that, it was over. Quick trip to a library told me it had been about three years since I won the most important game of Yahtzee ever, and that same quick trip found me an extended family member in the area who didn't ask too many questions. Weird, really. Always thought my dad was an only child. But that's beside the point. Since becoming flesh again a few months ago, I haven't heard the ticking clock, metaphorically or literally. I suffered the agony of death and the indignity of reaping, and came out the same as I've ever been.”

“Or so I thought. Here’s the thing: whatever chose me that night didn’t like that ending for me. The dying are supposed to try to cheat Death. It’s in their nature. If they win by successfully cheating, more power to them. But Death is impartial. Death isn’t supposed to cheat. And Death certainly isn’t supposed to get clever and throw the game. Which brings me to the main reason I'm here, I guess. Give me a moment."

[There is a sound of a heavy coat hitting the floor]

"I normally don't wear tank tops, but in this case it's kind of important that I show as much as I can. Check this out."

[There is a sound of something unzipping]

"They unzip into shorts. Best sixteen pounds I ever spent. Would've just worn shorts, but with how big this coat is I would've looked like a flasher. And now, off with the hat. Don't freak out."

"Good god, what happened to you!?"

"I literally JUST said not to freak out, dude. Impressive you managed to keep it together up until the bleeding head wound though. A lesser man might have said that when he saw the sutures."

"None of this stuff actually happened to me, of course. Not in the sense that I was ever actually physically vivisected or beheaded or whacked in the head hard enough to crack my skull. These just happen to me. I wake up with them, for the most part. And...well, I'll spare you the gruesome stuff, but they're not stitched up neatly when I get them. Thank god Cousin Jesse's a passable seamstress, because hospitals tend to lose their shit when you bring in a patient who's still up walking around with several fatal wounds and no detectable pulse. Not something I want to deal with twice."

"So that's the whole story, I guess. I broke the rules, and now I'm suffering the consequences. The wounds go away, after a while. At first I thought it was mercy, but now I know it's because if some of them didn't disappear there eventually wouldn't be enough left of me to keep punishing. And, I'm not exactly an expert, but I think I'm supposed to suffer the damage from every single gruesome, unimaginably painful death that's ever happened to a human being before I'll be free. That's a lot of deaths. Good thing I have all the time in the world, I guess."

"Statement ends."

“Awesome. Is that all you need from me?”

“I believe so.”

“Great. Let me just get all my coverups back on...”

“Don’t forget your...trouser legs.”

“Of course not.”

[There is a sound of something zipping.]

“Uh, if I don’t see him on my way out, can you tell that hot guy with the undercut who showed me the way to your office that I’m sorry I ran into him? I turned the corner too fast and damn near hip-checked the poor guy into a wall. Not a great first impression.”

“I suppose so.”

“Thanks a bunch. I’d ask you to give him my number, too, buuuut right now I only have a home phone. Oh well. Later, skater.”

[Click.]

[intergalacticrp]

NAME :// GIA JOHNSON ORIGIN :// DIGIMON AGE :// TWENTY-ONE JOB :// MESSENGER FC :// MAISIE WILLIAMS

And now you've grown up           With this notion that you were to blame                     And you seem so strong sometimes                               But I know that you still feel the same

BIOGRAPHY ://

ever since gia was a child, she was lonely. always waiting for someone, always searching for someone to show her the love that she so desperately needed. she knew that there was someone out there for her - not the parents that abandoned her, no, of course not. but there had to be someone. there had to be. every day she just kept waiting and waiting. seasons rolled by, then years. but she made due as a child on the streets. she figured things out the best she could. and she never gave up hope. when she was old enough she started wandering, travelling, journeying in the hopes of finding the someone that she has always been waiting for. but the person that she found was not the person that she had always hoped for. instead of a loving friend, partner, or parental figure, gia found myrick tisane.

days of suffering and torment began then, and gia began to forget. she began to forget her hopes and dreams, began to forget that she was once full of hope and life. began to forget that she'd been waiting for someone, waiting for a better life, waiting for things to get better. the hope was beaten out of her. the love was beaten out of her. her dreams of freedom and happiness were beaten out of her. but there was always something that myrick could never take away from her, and it was the part of her that he hated the most. he could never deprive her of her fire and the fight within her. it was this fire that earned her the scar she hates the most : a clear x on the back of her left hand. gifted to her by the man who called himself her boss, though she never felt like this was a job she'd chosen for herself. gifted to her because no matter how demure she may pretend to be, the fight within her was always revealed in her eyes.

she met warwick yun-hwang when she was only ten years old. groomed since she was six - or, at least that's the age she'd been told she was - she was off on one of her very first solo jobs. it was only by chance that she found him lying in an alleyway, bleeding sluggishly from a wound that he couldn't patch up for lack of supplies. it had been open for so long that she could smell the infection, sickly sweet and rotten as she approached him. logic says she should have left him there. heart says she should have given him a quick mercy killing. but she didn't do either of those things. instead she ventured into his hideaway with him, without protest since he and with skills learned from years of patching herself up every time an injury occurred, she did the same to him.

nursing him back to health was the hard part. nursing him back to health involved staying in one place. it involved conversation and caring and having someone care about you in return. that was not something that she was meant to be able to handle, not something that she remembered. certainly not something that she wanted. but maybe, just maybe, it was something that she needed.

warwick started doing odds jobs with the gang that gia ran with. and she didn't want him there. didn't want him involved with all that being affiliated involved. didn't want him to get hurt again. but there is a safety in numbers, in payments, in keeping him fed and clothes. so she didn't put up a fight. it helped that he wasn't terribly involved, that he rarely met face to face with myrick, the worst of gia's fears. and it definitely helped that when she was ready to run, he was more than willing to go with her. he didn't have the draw that she had, hadn't even met kari more than once, but that didn't matter to him. she didn't ask for his reasons and he didn't offer them, but gia likes to think that warwick left myrick because gia was leaving. she likes to think that he was always the one warwick was loyal to. and if she really thinks on it, she finds that she truly believes it.

though warwick was her first friend, kari was her best friend. a fresh face with a heart of gold, gia almost couldn't bring herself to steal from her when she saw her passing by. but it was too easy, so she did it anyway. slipped something right from her pocket just as she'd taught herself years ago. but she couldn't go through with it. this was the first time that gia ever gave back something that she stole. and the fresh face, kari, almost certainly knew what was going on. but she'd accepted her things back with a smile and good grace, started a conversation the kind of which gia had never had before. something friendly, simple, kind. gia should not have let herself be drawn to this fresh face but she was, she really was. and she found herself seeking kari out time and time again. she kept it casual, little meetings here and there like they'd just happened to run into each other, like they juts happened to frequent the same areas. and somehow, impossibly, gia started to think of kari as a friend.

it took almost six months for gia to give in and tell kari the truth. after that it took less than six weeks for kari to convince gia that she could find a life outside of the only home she'd ever known. because having a home didn't mean scars carved into the back of a hand, it didn't mean a slap to the face whenever a word was spoken out of turn. it didn't mean sleeping on the streets when something was done wrong. home could be a kind smile, a soft voice, and a safe place to go to sleep. home could be a sanctuary.

AESTHETIC ://

laying a blue blanket over a field of clovers. mistakes. so many mistakes. whole sticks of cinnamon. a handful of fresh picked flowers. something precious falls from your grasp. crushed velvet. layers of dust, metaphorical and literal. pink petals against the pavement. coffee, long since gone cold. being a model for your best friend's photography. dots of sunlight collected in your palms. watching the sunset.

MISC ://

knows every single thing there is to know about egyptian mythology, and that is not an exaggeration. ask her to give you a random fact and she can certainly provide. ask her a question and she knows that there are 500 answers, but she can and will give you every single one of them. she's been lowkey obsessed with it since she was very small, and in more recent years it has proven to be the best form of escape she has available.

has an x shaped scar on her left hand. she doesn't like to talk about it and only a few people know the origin story of it. the first person to know was the one who gave it to her: myrick tisane, for the fact that she continued to glare at him in defiance. the next was warwick yun-hwang, a friend who she trusted to know. the final person to know is kari yagami, the closest friend that gia has ever had.

kari was the one to convince her to get out of the life that she had with myrick. growing up in this life meant that by the time she realized that what she did as a member of the gang wasn't exactly legal, she no longer knew how to get out of it. it was kari that gave her a reason to leave, and warwick that gave her the push she needed to do it.

due to her unsavory past, gia has a lot of skills that she doesn't use so much now. that doesn't stop her from keeping them polished though. the fact that myrick is still alive somewhere means that she is unwilling to leave anything to chance. she takes regular self defense classes to make sure her skill set is up to date. she also spends a lot of time in various training rooms, often working something out with someone who's already there so she can have a sparring partner.

CONNECTION ://

kari yagami : the best friend she's ever had.

warwick yun-hwang : former coworker and friend.

myrick tisane : ex boss. avoid at all costs.

AVAILABILITY :// OPEN || TAKEN BY KAELYN