#to me he looks like he's been near-catatonic all night

[luvonmes-blog]

CAN U PLEASE WRITE SMUT FOR CHASE DAVENPORT FROM LAB RATS WHERE HES A SOFT DOM AND HE JUST PRAISES YOU

WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DO YOU KNOW ABT MY OBSESSION WITH CHASE DAVENPORT⁉️⁉️⁉️

anywayyy this is an idea i’ve had for a while ty for letting it come to fruition😛

warnings - angst, smut, softdom!chase

chase was pissed off. pissed at himself for letting this happen and pissed at you for not listening to him.

because of him, you now lay on a lab table in mr. davenports basement, hooked up to a bunch of machines to make sure you were still alive. all because you wouldn’t listen, now here you are injured because of krane . you didn’t look like you and chase hated it. he sat at the computer in the lab, going over some files he and mr. davenport had encrypted, he was looking at any way he could wake you up. you were completely catatonic, only breathing on your own. chase took time every night to clean you up, scrubbing your body down with soapy water, washing your face with all the stuff you showed him, brushing your hair and moisturizing it.

he’s cried and kicked, bent over the lab table you’re resting up begging you to wake up. you never responded.

he now sat up at said computer, dozing off after spending so much time in the lab. he’s just about to fall asleep before he hears a loud gasp behind him. you’re gasping for air, pulling the tubes away from your nose, coughing and sputtering. chase turns around quickly, rushing over to you and sitting you up. he runs up and down your back as you gasp for breath, coughing as fresh air fills your lungs for the first time in weeks. you grip his shirt as you damn near cough your lungs up, finally catching your breath you turn to him.

he stares at you with wide teary eyes, his mouth open in a small ‘o’ as you look at him.

“where am i?” your voice is hoarse after not using it for so long and you clear your throat.

“u-um you’re in-” he stops to stare at you, “you’re in mr. davenports lab.”

“davenport… who’s mr. davenport?” you can hear his breath hitch, more tears well up in his eyes and you can almost see them fall.

“you- you don’t remember us?” his chest heaves as he looks at you and you can see him on the verge of panicking.

“chase,” he doesn’t respond. “chase! i’m just fucking with you, i’m sorry.” he lets out a breath and you swear you can physically see the relief wash across his face.

“don’t do that.” he looks down. “i thought you forgot us.

“i did.”

“what?”

“for a split second when i woke up. i didn’t recognize anything, i didn’t even know my own name. i remembered everything when i saw you, though.” chase sighed and then he collapsed, falling onto his knees and resting his head on your thighs.

“i’m sorry.”

“why?”

“we wouldn’t have been in this if it wasn’t for me, if i didn’t start that fight.”

“it’s fine, chase.”

“no it’s not.” he gripped your legs. “it’s my fault, i’m sorry.”

“chase,” you tugged at the hair on the nape of his neck. “it’s fine. i’m ok.” he stared into you eyes, his own filled with tears and he glanced over you. there were no scars or bruises, you did look and seem ok. he nodded his head at you and wrapped his arms around your body, pulling you into and burying his face into your neck, inhaling your scent. your own arms wrapped around his neck, letting your fingers run through his hair. he pulled back just slightly, enough to look at you and his eyes traced over your face, from the way you eyes sparkled at him to the small pout on your lips. he leaned in ever so slightly, you could feel his breath in your lips, his plush bottom lip rubbing of your own.

“can i?” you nodded at him and his lips were on yours immediately. they were rough on yours, like he was trying to swallow you whole, he parted your lips with his and slipped his tongue into your mouth. you sucked on the muscle and pulled his hair, his eyes rolled back and the smallest groan fell from his lips. “you’re so pretty.” he muttered against your lips. you tugged his shirt over his head quickly. throwing it somewhere across the room and feeling all moved his chest. your hands trailed down his torso to his pants, quickly unbuttoning them and pushing them down just enough.

“want you now, please.” he tried to take off the shirt your were dressed in but you moved his hands down your body, kicking off the shorts and underwear you were wearing. “now.” you emphasized. your lips met again, teeth and tongues clashing. he pressed the tip of his cock against your pussy. rubbing it through your wetness and soaking his cock in it.

“fuck.” he sighed. “you’re so wet, so perfect. you know that? you’re perfect.” you moaned as he pushed into you. henson into you slowly, letting you adjust to his size and getting used to the feeling of your walls around him again.

“i-i’m not perfect.” you spoke as he gave you a tentative thrust.

“yes, fuck, yes you are. so perfect, you’re so smart, so pretty. you’re everything.” he groaned as his head fell into your neck. “everything to me.” he whispered, w not sure if you were meant to hear it but you did, you clenched around him at the words. his thrusts sped up, the sound of clapping skin echoing around the lab.

“chase, so good, ‘s so good.” your words were slurred as your head fell back. chase picked his head up to look at you, your head was thrown back, eyes closed, and mouth parted as you let out soft mewls and moans of his name. he watched as your chest raised and fell with each of your heavy breaths, you looked so beautiful. his hand came up to wrap around your throat and pull you in for a kiss. your lips met gently, less of a kiss and more of just your lips against each others.

“you’re so pretty, so fucking pretty.” his thumb traced circles in your jaw, he held your face to make you look at him and the eye contact sent chills down your spine.

“chase!” you gripped his shoulders, “m’ gonna cum!” your voice raised a pitch and you clenched down around him. your legs shook around his waist as your orgasm washed over you. you cried out as wave after wave crashed down on your body, just watched and admired your form and before he knew it his own orgasm was catching up to him.

“oh, fuck.” he groaned, pulling out quickly and jerking his cock in his fist. rope after rope landed on your stomach and thighs, his orgasm finally subsided and his head fell into your chest. you panted together. both of you basking in your post-orgasmic haze.

——————————

don’t ask me why this took so long to publish cause it honestly shouldn’t have.

[evilhasnever]

xiyao Pacific Rim au?

Hell yes. I have been thinking about this for about 3 years, but never wrote any of it. I just opened a doc and jotted down this snippet for you! Hopefully someday I can turn this into a whole fic.

I give you 500 words of stranded/traumatized Jaeger pilot Lan Xichen in post-apocalyptic Yunping:

~*~

“Meng Yao… what are you doing?"

“The Kaiju won’t wait for us to run,” Meng Yao replies without taking his eyes off his work, “according to my scanner it is only 160 minutes out, unless it changes course.” The scanner in question looks like it was salvaged from parts, but it is beeping in a very believable, alarming manner.  “We cannot evacuate the town in time, and we are unlikely to save ourselves even if we start running very, very fast. We must fight back.” He dives back elbows-deep in the cockpit with feverish focus, ripping and soldering cords like he knows what each of them does. Lan Xichen is once again overtaken by awe and instinctual faith in this small, brilliant human being.

When Lan Xichen had washed ashore near the refugee encampment, banged up and near-catatonic from the loss of his brother, he had never imagined someone with Jaeger training would be hiding in these backwater ruins. His savior was one Meng Yao of Yunping, a wiry young man in ripped overalls, with too many tools hanging off his belt and too-hard eyes in a gentle round face. As it turned out, his clever mind could rival Lan Xichen’s own AI navigator - he’d taken only a few days to assess the damage to his Jaeger and write up a repair plan.

Twin Jade was stretched out on the beach, looking like a sleeping giant half-covered in brine. She was not in a bad state overall, save for the smashed cockpit - but she was down one co-pilot, so Lan Xichen had given up on resurrecting her altogether. Meng Yao had not.

While Lan Xichen consumed himself with worries over Wangji’s fate and his lack of communications, his savior worked day and night to get both pilot and Jaeger back to some semblance of functionality. (Lan Xichen paused to chuckle over the mental comparison of hot soup for himself and scrapyard parts for Twin Jade, both sourced by Meng Yao with unfailing efficiency).

“The repairs are only temporary," Meng Yao's voice brings him back to the present emergency. "But I can essentially jumpstart her for long enough to keep it running in emergency mode for a couple of hours. I’ll need you to do most of the fighting while I keep an eye on the systems.” 

“You want to pilot with me?” Lan Xichen’s eyes widen.

“Well, you can’t pilot by yourself, can you?” Meng Yao chuckled nervously, without looking back from the console. “And even if you could, your leg is broken.” 

“Drifting can be very dangerous if you have never…”

“I have trained before,” Meng Yao interrupts him. “I can pilot, Lan Xichen. I can,” he swears, pushing his bangs out of his eyes frantically. “I know I am asking a lot, but–”

“I trust you,” Lan Xichen says unthinkingly, reaching out to wipe a smear of grease from his cheek. “I only… wish to apologize for what you may see in the drift.”

Meng Yao only laughs, shaking his head. His eyes are avoidant. “Likewise.”

Neither of them paused to doubt whether they'd be compatible. That much was a given.

Lan Xichen enters the repaired cockpit, leaning all of his weight on Meng Yao. He plugs in with slightly-shaking hands.

It is terrifying to let Meng Yao see all of what you are. But he is scared, too. He is, you realize, more afraid than you are. As if his secrets could be any worse than the monstrosity inside yourself. You smile at him with all the warmth you can muster, smiling past the fears in your head. You suddenly want to see him more than anything.

[eoieopda]

Jade, I’m so sad…. Can you write Jin fluff? Maybe what happens after the birthday dinner drabble where Jin tells reader how he feels?

eeeeeeek! i love this idea 🥹 for context, anon is referring to this drabble!

It was quiet in your apartment that morning. That is, neither of you was speaking; which made the tiny, ambient noises seem so much louder by comparison. Things you never would’ve noticed under any other circumstance. Little symphonies.

Rustling - the fabric of his sweatpants gripped in his fist while his knee bounced of its own volition. Whirring - the cogs in his brain grinding over whatever thought was making him so anxious. Crunching - the toast you chewed slowly and thoughtfully while you watched him with one eyebrow quirked.

You finished your toast; he said nothing. You kept your gaze trained on him as you swept crumbs to form a mountain, then folded it up between the confines of your napkin; still, he said nothing. This was the first silence you’d ever encountered that didn’t feel easy, you realized. You often sat together while you paid attention to other things, merely basking in each other’s company, but this wasn’t that.

There was some unidentifiable stress underscoring that morning’s breakfast. For once, he was vibrating on a frequency you couldn’t pick up.

Every move you made was done with an abundance of caution, impossibly slow like the syrup dripping from his unattended fork. One wrong move, and you feared you’d startle him. Instead of minding the bit of pancake dangling - untouched - from the utensil stalled near his mouth, he was staring down at the granite of your kitchen island.

If not for his eyes bouncing subtly back and forth - like he was trying to disarm a bomb, and couldn’t decide which wire to cut - you would’ve thought he’d gone catatonic. Slipped into his screensaver mode, checked out in that adorable, certifiably Seokjin way. Even like this, you couldn’t help but admire how handsome he was.

Perhaps it was wrong - certainly not something a friend-slash-roommate would do - but you often got lost in looking at him. Your eyes would linger a little too long on his proportions, get tired before they could run from one edge of his wide shoulders to the other. You were easily distracted by the veins and taut muscles of his forearms when he did something simple, like hand you a hand-crafted lunch box as you headed out for work.

Put simply, Seokjin was beautiful. Like a living, breathing work of art, walking around your apartment in cartoonishly large, pastel hoodies, and snoring through your movie nights. Your most-prized fixture, one you hoped to keep in every home you ended up in.

You lifted your glass off the counter carefully and raised it to your lips, all without peeling your eyes off of him. There was an odd warmth cascading over you that you didn’t want to acknowledge, so you did the only thing you could think of: you tried to douse it with pear juice.

He chose to speak - shout, more like - at the exact moment you tipped your head back to take a giant swig. Somehow, you must have heard him wrong - there was no way he said what you thought he said.

But if your ears didn’t deceive you and he really just yelled “I love you,” then the response he received to his blurted declaration was a mist of pear juice, spraying over his unsuspecting face.

You sputtered and coughed as your hand flew up to catch the sticky liquid dribbling down your chin.

“Come again?” You choked, because you couldn’t have been correct. That was not the kind of thing your friend-slash-roommate would ever say, no matter how badly you wanted him to.

His eyes were screwed shut for a moment as he wiped his cheekbone free of your mess. When they cracked open again, his scrunched-up nose relaxed, too.

“So, what just happened was that I told you that I loved you, and then you spit on me,” he blinked slowly, like he was struggling to process this turn of events in the same way you were.

“I’m so sorry!” You groaned as you hid your face behind your hands. Your cheeks were undoubtedly beet red; and acknowledging how badly you must have been blushing would absolutely make it all worse.

His unexpected, raucous laughter prompted you to peak through your fingers at him. Beaming, his whole face crinkled to accommodate the bemused grin spreading wildly, “If I knew I was going to be sitting in the splash zone, I would’ve worn a poncho.”

Again, you groaned, sinking so low on your stool that you all but crumpled onto the countertop. Your twinged-pink ear burned against your upper arm as you regarded him sideways, “Would it help at all to know that I love you, too?”

“Hmmm,” he mused as he tapped his chin, “Maybe. Say it one more time, just to be sure.”

You sat up straighter in your seat. Elbow against granite, you propped your chin up on the heel of your hand. It was purposeful when you repeated yourself; a dreamy sigh with an undeniable weight to it, “I love you, too.”

[fruitviking]

He was sitting in the tub with his legs bent to his chest, his arms around them, and his chin resting on his knees. His hair was slick against his head and neck, sticking to his skin. What I could see of his body was pale and exceedingly thin, each vertebrae visible all the way down to where his back disappeared beneath the waterline. 

There were scars, too. New ones. I was not close enough to see the details, what might have left them, but they were more numerous than I remembered. Some were older than others.

I cleared my throat. "Can I help at all?" He did not move. I ventured closer. "Holmes?"

He looked up at me then, wide-eyed and soaking wet. "What did you say?"

I was relieved that he'd actually responded to me; for a moment, I'd thought him catatonic. "I asked if I could help. Is there anything I can do?"

He thought for a moment. "If you could help me with my hair, doctor, and perhaps my back." He spoke slowly, as though he was afraid to ask me for anything in case I took offense. "And then, something to wear? If you wouldn't mind. I would very much appreciate it."

I nodded. "Gladly.” I fetched a comb from a shelf and then went to sit on the edge of the bathtub. Holmes wordlessly handed me the wet sponge, and I began to pass it slowly over his back. 

We did not speak while I helped Holmes get himself clean. This close to him I could better make out the scars. There were deep cuts and scratches, long-healed, in a strange crosshatch across his shoulders. They were haphazard, not in any particular pattern, so I thought perhaps they had not been deliberately inflicted. That was a small reassurance, at least. 

I set the sponge down and very gently laid my hand on Holmes’s shoulder. He jumped at my touch but did not pull away from me. I whispered to him that I was going to wash his hair, and he obligingly shifted position to tilt his head back. His eyes were closed, and I could see the distinct shadows that ringed his eyelids like bruises, all the tiny lines of blood vessels under his near-translucent skin. His pallor was almost disconcerting. As I rubbed soap into his scalp, I let my eyes drift to his chest, which rose and fell with reassuring regularity. My hands stilled. 

“Doctor,” he observed with a soft murmur. “Is everything alright?”

Okay SO there's a lot to unpack here. This is a Holmes who doesn't remember Watson, and a Watson who is not only having to deal with Holmes being alive and not remembering him, but also he's seeing what the last three years have done to him. And it's not pretty.

The fact that Holmes still implicitly trusts Watson without knowing him was so important to me here. He's at his most vulnerable, in the bath, clearly not doing well. This strange doctor has allowed him to sleep under his roof, and stayed at his bedside through the night. Holmes feels safe, for the first time in YEARS. Does he know why? Does he know what Watson really means to him? Not at all. But something wouldn't let him forget Watson’s face.

And Watson? Watson is holding back SO MUCH. He can't afford to break down. Holmes needs him more than ever. He's scared, he's weak, he's exhausted, and Watson has to be absolutely professional. He's DOCTOR Watson, not Watson, and certainly not My Dear Watson. He can't celebrate Holmes’s return because he hasn't returned, not properly, not the way Watson has dreamed about.

Yeah. There's so much going on in the doctor's head here. But still, he carries on, sponging his friend's back, washing his hair. Because Holmes needs him. So nothing else matters.

[lchufflepuffcorn]

Meeting you Pt.5

Seeing things nobody can

(Not my gif, credits go to its owner/creator)

Author's note:

Words: 2484

Warning: Description of a catatonic state, description of past trauma, exposition to the story, past motherhood, past death. Description of depressive mood (feelings only).

Masterlist OGW Masterlist

Serie Masterlist

Part one Part two, Part three, Part four, part five.

Spotify link

Touch- Sleeping At Last

↺͏͏       ◁◁͏͏      ll      ▷▷       ⋮

1943

The silent night weighed on (Y/N)'s shoulders as she prepared herself for her shift at the hospital the next morning. Alice had a bad day with incessant visions, which helped (Y/N) none to keep calm. The man -Jasper- they (Alice) were (was) waiting for made different decisions that made finding him more complicated than it already was. (Y/N) didn't know why they were waiting to meet the man from Alice's vision. The girl said it was because he was not ready yet, but (Y/N) wasn't sure she knew what he was supposed to be ready for. She surely wasn't ready when she met the younger girl. Nor did the woman feel ready to meet the man, especially when Alice would hold back so much information about him. Alice never really talked about the man she saw in her vision. All she had to say to (Y/N) when she'd ask was that it concerned her too, and sometimes he was her mate, sometimes he wasn’t.

It was all very confusing. 

While the girl was curious, she couldn't blame Alice for trying to hold a secret about what she saw. (Y/N) understood the other girl's power. It was all based on one's decision. Should that person change their mind, the vision would change as well. Plus, she trusted Alice with her judgment. Most of the time, anyway. For eighteen years now that they stuck together, and not once had the pixie-like girl deceived her, sometimes her plans were … special. Never dangerous or treacherous, however. 

(Y/N) would then write about her curiosity to Esther and Thade. It was harder now to send letters, though, with the war going on worldwide. 

The war was making it difficult for everybody—Alice and (Y/N) were no exception. While Alice wanted nothing to do with it, (Y/N) had found a job as a nurse for the repatriated men from the fronts. She helped those who would not see the next day's morning light come to peace with it. Those who would never walk again to see the bright side of things, those who couldn't hear anymore, to learn to speak again. She helped those who were in desperate cases. It was a hard job, but it paid something, and Alice couldn't work at a regular job because she always had some difficulties adjusting to the vegetarian diet. Her control around humans was better but not yet perfect. 

(Y/N) was happy that she'd been rich when she was still human and that the woman only had to work a little bit all her immortal life. Now, the money wasn't for her to worry about. Nonetheless, she still had to keep appearances up. Both girls owned a tiny house near the forest of the small town they decided to live in for a while. It was just right for them.

Alice was sitting at the table, looking at (Y/N) rearranging her bag of medical supplies. Both women were soaking in comfortable silence, but the taller girl could sense the everyday need to ask a question in the back of her throat. It was a feeling she was getting used to with Alice around. The girl sighed.

"Ask away," said (Y/N) without turning to face the other girl.

"How do you do it?" (Y/N)'s head cocked lightly on one side; she still wasn't looking at Alice.

She didn't understand the question. ''Do what?''

"With all the blood around..." Continued Alice.

"Ah," said (Y/N), stopping her from organizing. Her hand went up to her hair, which was barely holding together in a loose braid. She replaced a strand of it behind her ear, thinking about her answer. "The blood doesn't bother me; it never really did."

It was the truth.

Mere months after her turning, (Y/N) had no trouble with her thirst, and while she smelled how human blood did, how delicious and sweet it seemed, she never really urged for it to be her meal. It had surprised her creator, Azaria, how controlled and collected she was. Yet, they never found out how it occurred. (Y/N) thought it was because of her condition of death.

Because, like her, Thade was found by Azaria on a battlefield, and he too was quick to find the control not to kill humans on sight -or smell.

(Y/N) was turned a short while after successfully, but not without difficulties delivering her first -and only- child. Azaria, saddened to see her leave the world without meeting her son at least once, bit her and made it look like (Y/N) died from fatigue, fever and blood loss. The girl often thought it was why she could control herself so well. Esther had once said that maybe it was because she wished to meet her son. While it was a possibility, (Y/N) was not convinced.

The seemingly young woman turned back to her bag. She was supposed to work early in the morning. Plus, she'd heard from Mrs. Lowman about a large shipment. (Y/N) was not usually one to fear people, but she didn't like this war any more than she'd enjoyed the first one. A shudder took her by surprise. The woman could still remember the haunted looks of the soldiers she worked with when she was still in England. She could still hear the terrified screams of the brave men that fought the war on the quietest night.

It took a second for the girl to notice the emptiness uncharacteristic of Alice that she now felt. 

But when she did, she turned around just in time to see Alice slouched dangerously close to falling out of her chair. Then, in a wink, she was near the dazed girl, stabilizing her so she wouldn't fall. Alice's blood-red eyes were unfixed, and her face was blank. It always took them both unprepared when Alice's visions came. (Y/N) wasn't panicking anymore, she was used to it, but it was still hard to get used to it, especially when they made her weak.

(Y/N) patted Alice's hair out of her face, not talking while she recovered from the vision. A lingering doubt comes to nudge her in the ribs, installing itself between her bones. But, of course, it wasn't her who felt that. Knowing that Alice disliked having her emotions played with all that much, (Y/N) didn't work on digging into the reasons for its existence. Instead, she voiced her concern for her friend.

"Are you well?" Asked the empath girl to the smaller one. Alice only nodded. She didn't look -or feel, well at all.

A post appeared on (Y/N)'s marble-like face. She wasn't exactly happy with Alice's lack of verbal answers. This was what Alice did whenever the visions weren't to her liking. This time, at least, she hadn't fallen over.

The sun was slowly peeking over the clouds. The birds were starting to sing a good morning too. (Y/N) passed a finger on Alice's cheek again before walking toward the couch they owned, where her medical bag was still waiting, unarranged enough to be up to her taste. The woman sighed, walking toward the small mirror hung next to the entry door. She toyed with her hair for a moment before signing again and turning to Alice.

"Can I ask for your help? It would seem it's impossible to complete this hairstyle without a second pair of hands." The smile Alice flashed her way was so bright that (Y/N) nearly missed how millions of butterflies seemed to fly in her stomach. Happiness, excitement, Alice.

She liked that one version of her better.

While the dark-haired vampire did her hairdo, the other was pinning her caduceus on her collar's left side, then her rank insignia on the right side. She wouldn't wear her cape long enough for it to go against the strict uniform rules. When Alice finished with her hair and placed the little hat over the bun -she'd insisted on doing it too, (Y/N) made sure that the dress wasn't wrinkled before taking her cape and her bag.

"I don't know when I'll be back," she said, "but if anything happens, or if you need to go hunt, go without me." Alice nodded.

It was their ritual before (Y/N) left the house. She would give her the plan for the day. Alice was one to voice her true feelings, but she didn't have to. She always felt nervous about being left alone. It reminded her of what she'd lived through as a human, even if she couldn't recollect it in any way. But, of course, Alice didn't like not knowing this, which was enough for (Y/N) to make her feel better about it.

The nurse smiled and left in the grayish light of early morning, accompanied by birds chirping and the promises of a sunny day she would not see.

It was the worst day yet of the entire decade for (Y/N).

They had received a big shipment, like her neighbour, Mrs. Lowman, had said. And some soldiers hadn't even made it out of the ship that brought the men home. Meaning that it had been even worst on the way back. (Y/N) didn't want to imagine it.

Nurses and doctors were running around, trying to be everywhere and anywhere simultaneously.

People were crying, weeping, and screaming. There was blood in every space that (Y/N) could look at, and people were ordering other people around without considering anybody else's needs. It was a mess.

The vampire had difficulties hearing herself think and reflect on what she was to go through it all. The seconds she'd entered the hospital, earlier in the morning, she hadn't stopped running. Two of her patients had already died while she was with them. Two others had to be sedated due to their violently psychotic state of panic. One other had tried to strangle her when she'd woke him up, and (Y/N) reacted on instinct. Pinning him down on his bed, growling. She'd soon started to whisper gentle words of encouragement when she realized what she'd done.

Sometimes, (Y/N) really hated to feel every emotion at once.

The worst was the grief, really. It was cold and heavy and sticky and debilitating. The woman knew she would never get used to grieving. Blood was everywhere on her, slowly making (Y/N) realize the gravity of the whole thing. 

She'd seen blood before, lots more even, but now she had to make Alice wouldn't smell it on her. Every breath (Y/N) took to calm the emotions floating around was making her throat ache more. She was terribly good at controlling herself. Otherwise, the whole town would have been wiped out already. That was the only thing that kept (Y/N) going about her day. 

She shivered at the thought of the bloody corpse she would leave behind in the frenzy of her thirst. The hot blood in her throat would finally give her the fullness the woman ignored for centuries, no more thirst. She could start with the closest nurses, every other present in the room was too weak to move, and the screams would not be out of place. Yet. Maybe people would start to know something was up, and little by little, all the screaming and crying would quiet down. By then, it would be too late. They'd already be dead.

No, no... (Y/N) thought for herself, taking hold of her mind yet. She swallowed with difficulty before looking around in the sea of people running around. That sort of thought was not usual for her.

"My legs, my legs!"

(Y/N) rushed to the wailing man's side. He'd just woken up from his surgery and missing both his legs. That was her expertise, the lost causes.

"It's alright, sir. I'll take care of you." She said as she reached the man's side. She could feel his panic bubbling inside her stomach her. Burning everything in hot trails. If she'd been human, she was sure she would have thrown up her meal right there and then. She was lucky she wasn't trembling like the poor soldier was. She took another sharp breath to calm him and herself both.

Today ought to be a very long day.

⁂

At the end of the day, (Y/N) bought another uniform. The one she had was utterly ruined now. It was soaked in blood, and the stenches were surely going to resist all of the washing (Y/N) would do. She'd already changed into the new uniform after taking a quick shower in the hospital's communal bathroom. It wasn't the best idea, but it was better than putting Alice in a worse predicament.

(Y/N) would never have forgiven herself if Alice was put in a bad posture because of her.

The town was quiet when she arrived. Usually, (Y/N) would have taken the bus to come home. But as she was already near the limit of her control, she'd ultimately decided not to. Every light was shut inside the small house the nurse shared with her friend. But when she entered the house, Alice quickly ran up to her. She threw herself into the other girl's arms as if she was to disappear.

"It went all blurry suddenly. as if I was in a smog and couldn't see properly." So the shorter vampire was saying.

"It's fine now." She reassured the brunette, forcing a smile to round her cheeks. Alice's eyes met hers, and a smile crept on her face, mirroring Alice's, after a short second. (Y/N)'s hands reached Alice's shoulders tenderly. She really reminds her of Joan by the way she clung to her. 

"You smell like blood." The pixie-sized girl whined; her naturally red eyes were now pitch black.

(Y/N) apologized, laughing a bit. "Let me change. We'll go hunting after." She promised.

The familiar butterflies emerged inside her stomach as Alice agreed with a load of giggles. She was in a happier mood than she was the whole week. That's good. Thought the nurse as she changed into a more sombre dress. She undid her hair, letting them fall on her shoulder and draping her back before braiding them.

Maybe she had a lovelier vision while I was gone…

A letter rested between the wedding ring she held to and the ribbon Esther had given her back ten or so years earlier on her vanity. It was in her name and wasn't opened. However, Alice had the infuriating habit of opening the letters (Y/N) received when she was bored. So, either this one had just arrived, or Alice had been extremely patient. Either way, (Y/N) was pleased.

She'd read it after her hunt. She was starving.

[rageprufrock]

Whittled Down by Another War (pt 1/?)

I just started a new job a few weeks ago, so obviously I am sublimating all of my imposter syndrome into writing a story where Korn dies before the events of KinnPorsche begins.

Korn's death tears through the city like a bullet: the exit wound a gory mess.

The first 72 hours, Kinn doesn't remember sleeping. He calls all his men back to home base, sends the most vulnerable into safe houses deep into the countryside. He has Chan lockdown the compound, the offices, the fallback in the city. Kinn shoves Tankhun—actively dissociating in mute panic—into Kim's arms at the service entrance of the mansion and sends them out of the country.

"What about you?" Kim asks. He's shored up in black jeans and a black muscle tee, wild around the eyes with a gun in the waist of his pants and a knife tucked in his combat boots. "Everyone in this city is going to be going be trying to kill you."

Kinn smiles at him, dizzy—from exhaustion? terror? from grief, because this may be the last time he ever sees Tankhun, this may be the last time he ever sees his baby brother; because after everything, even if this is how they end it, it will be more than Kinn had expected, shivering awake from the worst of his night terrors.

"Everyone's always trying to kill me," he says.

"If you eat it I'm going to be fucking pissed at you," Kim tells him, backing away now, toward his car, where Arm and Pol are flanked on either side of Tankhun in the backseat. "If you die, I'm burning your guitar collection."

It's as close to tenderness as Kim can manage, Kinn thinks, heart heavy and overfull, watching them drive away.

"They'll be your guitars then, you little shit," he says, to the afterimage of the tail lights, disappearing into the gray dawn. He scrubs his hands across his face, and a noise comes out of his throat that has the shape and density of a sob, but that's a hoarse scratch across his voice.

Kinn thinks, now, I'm an orphan. Kinn thinks, now, I'm truly alone.

Chan comes to get him, he says, "Khun Kinn—it's time," and the press of his hand on Kinn's shoulder feels like stones in Kinn's pockets, weighing him down in deep water.

***

It's two weeks before Kinn sleeps in his own bed again, lying down. Four days after that, Kinn shoots his uncle in the head. In the first month, there're dozens of attempts on his life, and six that get close enough to leave a mark. It's three months before he's done burying bodies, another two before he finishes auditing the legacy businesses. Six months after Korn dies, Kinn lets Kim bring Tankhun home.

Kinn's known—vaguely—that they were bouncing around Europe and North America, never staying anywhere too long for their safety. Tankhun left empty-handed, near-catatonic; he comes back with six suitcases of newly acquired clothes and a separate sea shipment of souvenirs he insists that Kinn needs, a phone camera full of photographs and videos of places and people and things he thinks Kinn would like to see.

"This is the musical instrument gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art," Tankhun lectures. "Here are some weird old pianos that look stupid, but that I guess you love."

He does. "I do," he says, and he's staring at the side of Khun's face as he says it: his older brother's darker from the sun, wearing an orange jumpsuit and a rope of turquoise beads criss-crossed across his chest. Kinn's missed him so much it hurt like a gut wound; Khun feels like a little miracle, sitting here on the floor of Kinn's bedroom, showing him pictures of weird old pianos because he knows Kinn will love them.

"You look like absolute garbage," Tankhun tells him.

"Work's been murder," Kinn says, and Khun punches him in the arm for it, which Kinn figures he deserves. Tankhun's back; Tankhun's safe. Kim's alive, and as hostile as ever, suffused with feral cat energy and armed to the teeth, sleeping off the time difference in Kinn's bed still fully dressed, clutching a butterfly knife and drooling into Kinn's pillows.

"If you'd died, I would have killed you myself," Tankhun says, hands folding into his lap, phone screen going black. "Are you eating? Have you slept?"

Kinn laughs; it comes out wet, shaky. "No," he admits.

Khun nods, practical, determined. "Well, we'll feed you, and once Kim wakes up, we'll keep watch and you can drool on those pillows, too."

Kinn wants that so badly his bones hurt, his eyes get hot. "Okay."

"And have you decided?" Tankhun asks, going sharp now and reaching over to cup Kinn's face in his hands. "What you'll do with our father's empire?"

Kinn's never let himself imagine it before. The chasm between what he wants and what he can have has always been the gulf of the Pacific, the depth of the Atlantic. Even as a boy, at barely 14, when his father had said, "This ring, and its responsibility, will be yours now, Kinn," he'd known that what he wanted no longer truly mattered. He'd sharpened his bones intro blades, cut away at himself until he'd been the shape of a perfect weapon.

Two decades later, skin thin, the possibility makes him dizzy.

"I'll need your help," Kinn hears himself say; he sounds strange, far away.

"We'll both help," Khun promises him, close and low. "Let's bury our father—and then let's bury what he built."

From the bed, Kim says, "Fuck, don't volunteer me for shit," raspy and irritable and vibrantly, amazingly alive.

Kinn's laugh kicks out of him like a reflex, and he goes lightheaded with it, and he lets Tankhun strip him out of his disheveled suit, lets Kim shove him under the snowy white covers, still body warm from his little brother, and lets himself—finally, finally—give in, give way, into the consuming arms of sleep.

***

According to Kim, he sleeps for 16 hours, during which time Tankhun does routine wellness checks to ensure he's alive, ask if Kinn needs a bedpan, and does he want anything from Starbucks because they're putting in a mobile order.

"And what the hell were you doing that entire time?" Kinn asks Kim.

He feels simultaneously incredible and incredibly shit, making his way through a liter-size bottle of water and shaking out the numbness of his right arm where he slept on it like the dead. Someone had undressed him and redressed him for shits and giggles at some point during his coma, so he's slumped against his headboard in black boxer briefs and a XXXL green t-shirt that says MOVE I'M GAY on it in white letters.

"Masturbating," Kim says, the same time Tankhun carols out, "He was tenderly threatening to shoot anybody who tried to wake you up and trying to break into your phone."

It turns out Kim had been successful in breaking into Kinn's phone, which is why his inbox—creaking under the weight of an eye-watering 703 unread messages at the time Kinn finally lost consciousness—is down to a merely demoralizing 207.

"What happened to the other 496 messages?" Kinn asks.

"We delegated, you sociopathic control freak," Kim retorts.

Tankhun hands Kinn a frappachino. "Drink this before your blood sugar gets any lower and you start shooting."

Kinn doesn't realize he's hungry until the coffee milkshake hits his system, and then he's ravenous, a bottomless maw. He relocates himself into the family quarter kitchens and sits at the long metal worktable on two overturned plastic milk crates, stacked together, barefoot and still in the green tent of a t-shirt. Kinn eats three mangos, a dozen sticks of pork satay, a bowl of rice with three fried eggs and soy sauce, and drinks another bottle of water while he's at it, the gnawing pain in his stomach fading by degrees.

"Did you not eat at all while we were gone?" Tankhun scolds, cutting up another mango, frying him another egg, adding rice to Kinn's bowl.

Kinn ate while Khun and Kim were gone. He ate and drank and must have slept because of the biological imperative of the thing, but he can't remember any of it, only the high-pitched howl of panic that sang through him the entire time. It had left him numb of pain, immune to suffering, what was left of his heart traveled outside his body and possibly already lost. For the first time in six months, Kinn feels the expansion of his lungs, the throbbing soreness of his left knee, the stiffness of his neck: brought excruciatingly back to sudden, startling life.

"I was waiting for you to cook for me," Kinn says to Khun, bratty, smiling, and ducks away from from a smack, grabbing Kim by the scruff of his shirt and throwing him into the line of fire—absolutely shameless.

They're orbiting stars, the next few days: Khun, Kinn, and Kim locked into one another's gravitational wells. They take turns sleeping. They take turns feeding each other. Tankhun and Kim take turns wrestling Kinn away from his cell phone, his laptop, the landline in the bathroom. It's the longest time Kinn's spent with his brothers since Kim turned 17 and fucked off, since he and Tankhun stood shoulder to shoulder in front of their father to make sure Kim could. It's both terrible and amazing; terrible and amazing to be so loved, terrible and amazing that this is the shape and substance of their lives—terrible that this is how Kinn gets his brothers back; amazing that they've returned to him, that they would peel apples and pull triggers for each other.

"If you hadn't gotten all emotional at Uncle Gun, you could have just left him the whole lot and we could call it done," Khun sighs later.

If Kinn hadn't gotten all emotional at Uncle Gun, Gun would have likely gotten all emotional on Kinn, and where would they be now? Tankhun presiding over a pyre of Kinn's guitars; Kim hunting down the senior ranks of the minor family in Doc Martens and skinny jeans, eyeliner flawless.

"I lost my temper when we couldn't reach contractual terms that didn't include our dead bodies in the river," Kinn says, light. Vegas and Macau are still at large, vanished beyond the border into Myanmar, two unanswered questions—one indistinct, one psychopathic. It's a problem for tomorrow, for all of their tomorrows.

"I'm also not sure our Uncle's management style would have been in alignment with not causing absolute fucking chaos," Kim chimes in. "The Lithuanians still have a kill-on-sight order for Vegas."

The Lithuanians can get in line.

"Oh that means the Russians must want him, too," Tankhun says thoughtfully.

"I think it's generally a fair assumption that everyone who has met and been forced to interact with Vegas wants him dead for some reason or another," Kinn says.

His cousin was an annoying kid who was shaped by the weight of their family legacy and Gun's fists into a necrotic wound of an adult. Vegas is too smart, too dangerous for Kinn to ever truly pity him, but he stands on the opposite shore, recognizes that in ways that are too harrowing to admit even to himself, he and Vegas are phantom echoes. The difference is Vegas thinks he can unfuck himself if they upend the family structure—Kinn knows better; he knows they're both ruined.

"Enough about our cousin—we should talk about Papa's funeral," he sighs.

In the immediate chaos of their father's death, Kinn had been too busy trying to prevent the cataclysmic collapse of the Theerapanyakul empire, smuggle his brothers across borders, and shooting his uncle in the face to see to the appropriate funerary rites. In this, as in so many other things, Kinn's been a disappointment of a son and heir.

So now, six months later, he ignores Kim's suggestions that they throw Korn into the river and has Chan pull him from cold storage. Kinn's seen too many dead bodies in his life, but it's a gut punch all the same, all over again, to see his father's face without its panoply of microexpressions—each one a separate area of study and source of paranoia—in the mute peace of death, Korn looks like the after image of a parent Kinn once imagined having: kind, forgiving, safe. The stroke that killed him was fast and comprehensive. It's probably kinder than he deserved, and Kinn—making calls in the background while Tankhun tries to convince Kim that as the youngest, he's honor-bound to be ordained for the services—is grateful: that his father didn't suffer, that he's capable of gladness for it, that as much of a wreck as he is, as complicated as he feels, that at least this dimension of grief can be clean.

"This is our father," Tankhun insists.

"Exactly why I'm not shaving my fucking hair and eyebrows, you clown," Kim yells back.

Kinn schedules the bathing rites for the next day, and it's only himself, Tankhun, and Kim in attendance. Chan is there, but Kinn's not sure in what capacity. The closest thing Korn had to a friend, toward the end? Watching over Korn's legacy? They put a coin in Korn's mouth and lay him out under a sheet, at the high table, wreath him with flowers, heaps of blooms that fill the room with the smell of their garden at dusk. Kinn's still too tired to think about it—he's so deep in the red on his sleep deficit he's going to die tired—to do anything other than pour jasmine-scented water over his father's unmoving hand and to pray for more kindness that Korn doesn't deserve.

It's typical to hire four monks for the seven days of daily chanting, but their family needs every possible fucking merit, so Kinn gives in to all of his worst impulses and hires 16 for the full seven day cycle. Kinn knows that in some families, there are visitors and happy stories, food and dancing; for the Theerapanyakuls, there's just Khun and Kinn and Kim, getting shitfaced on their father's collection of botanical gins and conspicuously avoiding conversation about how angry they are to mourn this man. It's the worst part of family, that someone so arbitrarily assigned to you can both hurt and love you in such concussive, devastating ways. Millennia from now, once Kinn has worked through the karmic debt of this existence, he hopes he's born into a normal family, where when his father dies, he doesn't have to carry a gun to the fucking cremation—where he can feel something other than a gash in his throat.

They go in age order, up to the casket with their wooden flowers, and so Kim's the last to give his bloom away to the fire as it's lit.

"The ashes will be ready for you tomorrow," the funeral director promises, terrified. Chan had done the security briefing, so Kinn doesn't blame him. "Will you—will you want to keep them at the temple?"

He says this in a way that makes it abundantly clear he can think of no more horrifying outcome than for Kinn to inform him that they would like to keep their father's ashes at the temple.

"We'll take him home," Khun says, somehow still the best socialized of them all. "Thank you for taking care of our father."

They're nearly at the door, nearly back into the waiting shadows of the two dozen guards that Chan had sent along for the ceremony, when Kim says, "Give me a second," and disappears back inside for ten seconds, fifteen.

When they get the ashes back, Korn's remains are mixed with sun bright Ratchaphruek petals, fragrant jasmine, their father's favorite flowers. Kim sticks the urn in the back of a cupboard in their father's study, embarrassed by his brief detour into filial tenderness and working triple time to be an asshole in compensation.

"The king is dead," Tankhun says, late into the night. They're all sitting in the garden in the dew-wet grass, passing around a cigarette and staring at Khun's fancy carps; Elizabeth and Sebastian hovering close as if they can sense their owner's distress. "Long live the king."

Kinn snatches the cigarette away from him. "Don't say that."

"Yeah he prefers emperor," Kim says, which earns him a punch in the kidney. "Fuck."

"You deserved that," Khun tells him, and turns back to Kinn. "Well? What next?"

When he and Khun were boys, and when Kim was a (more) annoying blob that screamed all day, Kinn had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they could escape their fate. Khun could become a famous artist, and they would live in New York, where there were already so many mafias surely Thai organized crime would find no foothold. Kinn could become a famous singer-songwriter, hire his brother as a stylist, and they would travel the world on tour and have no time for calling in debts. They could run away somewhere no one knew them, and then Khun could do whatever he wanted, and Kinn wouldn't have to watch their father turning his brother into a weapon. Once the ring had been on Kinn's finger, he'd stopped imagining the alternatives; he was old enough to know then that the alternative was Kim.

"I don't—I mean, where would we even begin," Kinn says finally.

"Wherever we can, with whatever we have," Kim says, taking the cigarette back. "Unless we've completely misread this situation, and you actually want to keep running the fucking mafia."

Kinn closes his eyes, presses his face into his knees. "I don't know how to do anything else," he admits. I'm scared to hope for anything else, he thinks.

"Kinn, you have an MBA," Khun says. "You majored in accounting."

"I think he means, 'who do we break the news to first,'" Kim says, but he's grinning, savage, bright-eyed. "I vote we start with the Lithuanians."

***

The Lithuanians, once they find out that Kinn has no idea where Vegas is, comprehensively do not care. Their existing partnership is largely limited to coordinating profits off of luxury car thefts—a rounding error on the Theerapanyakul family balance sheet—and they're more than happy to take it off of Kinn's hands. This leads to an existentially bizarre sidebar that Kinn ends up having with the second in command about whether or not this means his cars are now fair game.

"If you have to steal one of ours, steal the purple one," Kinn tells them.

"That one's your fucking lunatic brother's," Boris says. "You think I don't know that rabid little shit will try to chew my throat out?"

Which lunatic brother, Kinn doesn't ask, but only because Khun doesn't drive.

But the Lithuanians are easy, small fry in Thailand, and honestly Boris is probably the closest thing Kinn has to a work friend. It also helps that they both want Vegas dead.

In a sort of grim distillation of Kinn's entire adult life, dealing with the people who want to steal his cars and kill his cousin is actually the least shit part of this entire exercise.

The Theerapanyakul empire goes six generations back, and his father had married into the lineage with a chip on his shoulder and an explosive, obsessive love for Kinn's mother, who Kinn can't be sure ever loved him entirely back. But she'd loved her sons, and it was Rachini who'd put the first gun in Kinn's hands, who'd taught him what it meant to be a Theerapanyakul, and ensured—from as soon as Kinn was old enough to understand—that given a choice between his family and the outside world, he would never hesitate to take the shot. She taught her children the same thing her father taught her, that there's power in controlled violence, that there was a right and a wrong way to be mafia, that they might die young, so to take ruthless, ravenous bites out of life while they could. She'd blow dry Kinn's hair, tender, with the same hands she used to stab someone in the throat. Kinn's keenly aware he was born wrong, raised wrong, that even though her death had felt like an amputation, the phantom pain he feels is both anger and mourning. Their parents had turned all three of them into bullets.

The rot is deep at the heart of the enterprise, so inextricably tied that even at the root of their legitimate businesses, some vein of corruption flows through. The hotels and resorts they own are convenient cash sinks to launder funds from their lower-overhead activities; the shopping centers and hospitals topline PLCs that conceal in their labyrinthine corporate structures holding companies where their casinos funnel cash, where their sideline in brothels and escorts pay dividends, where their import-export hustle dumps free cash flow. They'd gotten out of drugs during their father's generation—too tight a market, too high risk, too low on returns—and dumped their considerable connections into vendor service for the cartels instead. Kinn had combined his expensive MBA, penchant for fucking closeted Chinese nationals out blowing daddy's ill-gotten politburo gains, and struck gold laundering drug money through the brisk tourist trade in vacation hubs like Phuket and Bangkok.

"The Sinaloas will be very angry if we close up shop," Khun meditates.

Kinn pours himself a Pappy on the rocks, because he's fucking earned it, and presses the cool crystal of the tumbler to his forehead. "Let's not—worry about the Sinaloas for now," he says. "Let's start with the easy exits."

Of course, there are no actual easy exits, only less shitty ones. Kinn throws a metaphorical dart ands on the Italians.

"That's going to be a shitshow," Kim says, when Kinn tells him.

"Take Pete," Khun frets. "Take Arm and Pol."

"Pol is absolutely useless," Kinn tells him. "And I want Arm and Pete here in case anything goes sideways and you need actual competent protection—I'll take Chan."

Taking Chan does not ameliorate the broader truth that dealing with the Italians is a shitshow. It starts with snide commentary on gelato and ends in a hail of bullets, Kinn running panicked down the filthy back streets around Thonglor Soi being chased by Sicilian shitbags who are pissed he doesn't want to ferry around their cocaine anymore. It would be absolute poetic justice if he ends up getting shot to death behind a club where he'd once separately facefucked two guys who turned out to be a couple and who'd then started screaming at each other about cheating while Kinn had been trying to put his dick back in his pants.

[imaginedreamwrite]

Break my hurt with higher love 

Ari’s ex, a cheerleading coach at another university has come to visit the university. Ari reassured reader multiple times reader is the only one for him 

But on a Saturday morning ,reader knocks on ari’s door and it opens to Ari’s ex in one of ari’s t shirts with messed up hair and no pants on

“She’s just a friend, we haven’t been together in years. She’s nothing to me.”

“I said can I help you?” She stood in the middle of the door, her hair tangled and messy as if someone’s fingers had been run through it and her shirt, Ari’s shirt, was crumpled.

She was probably naked below the butting up shirt, the one that had lay delicately against her body. It was the only thing obscuring her, likely, post-sex bared state from your view. She was smirking at you, victoriously almost, and cocked her hip, the movement showing you the subtle mark on her hips and the flash of a bruise on her neck that came a little too high.

“Ari,” you exhaled his name, shaking as it rolled off your tongue, “is Ari here?”

“Ari,” she crooned and crossed her arms over her chest, “is sleeping. Who are you?”

The first crack, the first sharp sting had nearly taken your breath away. The first stab and twist of the knife came with her smirk, the bruises and the way she looked at you.

The second and the third came when she told you Ari was sleeping. You knew he didn’t like sleeping in this late, unless he had one hell of a night.

“I’m…” your throat tightened, your eyes continuously staring at the bruises. “I was just returning something of his.”

“I can take it for you,” she held out her hand, and you set his jacket in her palm, the heavy weight transferred from one to the other, “you’re a figure skater aren’t you? I used to coach cheer, its nearly the same.”

It wasn’t anything similar, it was vastly different but you don’t have the heart to argue with her.

“I’ll make sure Ari gets this when he wakes up.” She smirks again, and you feel the acidic sting of tears coming to your eyes. You feel your heart nearing the point of completely crumbling.

“Have a good day, sweetie.” The door slams in your face and you stand there for a few moments, you pause and you ponder.

And then you take a step back, your blood pounding in your ears. You step back and press your hand to your lips, swallowing the first shaking tremble that hits you, the first catatonic realization that Ari hadn’t just missed one of your events, but that he had his ex in his apartment all night.

Your feet carried you away from his apartment and down the stairs, your feet carried you on a path to the sidewalk outside. You stood there in a daze, blindsided by your heart breaking within your chest.

“What the hell happened?” Johnny called from the car, climbing out of the drivers seat. “Y/N, what the hell-“

“Take me home,” you frantically wiped at your eyes, “Johnny please just… oh God-!”

You nearly collapsed, your legs nearly gave out. All you could see was her and him, all you could scent was her all over his place, and every single note was crushing you.

“Let’s get out here, I’m taking you out of here.” Johnny helped you stand, leading you back to his car. “We’ll go hang out with the team and go drinking, or we’ll get ice-cream-“

The door slammed behind you, the door shutting you into his vehicle, and you turned in on yourself, breaking down in the passengers seat.

[chenosias]

Portrait of a Hungry Man With Blood Thirst

There had only been two instances so far in which Osias had been covered in this much blood. The first; when he’d learnt what a blade could do to a person and the second; when he learned what a bullet could do to him. Falling snuggly into the third time; which they say it always comes in threes – was the fateful moment just outside of a wedding venue – when he'd learnt what his lover could do to someone else. 

The ride home was a blur and how’d they’d even made it back without being stopped by someone was a miracle in itself. The mercy of night and well-tinted car windows had granted them enough security to slip past any eyes that might have been looking. And thank fuck for that, Osias thinks privately as he peels wet clothes from his almost catatonic lover in the privacy of the luxurious bathroom. A sickening slap echoes through the tiled room every time a piece of clothing hits the floor. Neither of them flinch or make a face at the sound, even as the blood rushes to seep and coagulate between toes.

The slope of a honeyed shoulder keeps his eyes fixated as the water in the bath turns pink from whatever blood the shower hadn’t managed to rinse off. It’s the kind of pink that he’d seen baths go from throwing in a bath bomb, or salts. It may have made him laugh were it any other day, or were it him in the tub and not Taehyun; but as fingers skim through the ends of sticky hair and turn the water a shade darker, he can only wonder.

What is he thinking about? There’s no way of knowing, propped up behind Taehyun outside of the bath on a wooden stool that hardly held his lanky frame, Osias can’t see Taehyun’s face and is almost compelled to turn the man toward him as if looking into his eyes would be enough to tell him every thought he’d ever had from birth until now. He’s not even sure he wants to know the answers, but secretly, Osias thinks he might already know them. So instead of forcing his lover to face him, he sits in silent contemplation as he watches the way everything that Taehyun touches turns to red. 

We’re so different. Yet we’re the same. He thinks he’s a monster, but he’s only doing what nature compels him to. He’s only listening to the snarling hunger in his stomach that  begs him for it. What, pray tell, is my excuse? 

I kill because I can, because I have two hands. Because God made me this way. 

He made us both this way. That’s why we found each other. 

There’s a moment of mental and physical silence, aside from the gentle slosh of water in the bath. And then an ugly, invasive thought that he’d been keeping at bay for the most part finally pulls itself free from the deep trench he’d thought he’d buried it in.

I wonder if he thinks of killing me like that. I wonder if he’s ever wanted to.

Osias assures himself that he doesn’t mean it maliciously, no, because to die by Taehyun’s hand or mouth was nothing he feared and damn near encouraged. But he’s only human and he can’t help the ever growing throes of wonder about the innate intricacies of it all. 

If it came down to it and Osias had been the one to set him off… what then? Taehyun obviously wouldn’t want to hurt Osias, but what if he was compelled to by nature alone? To what lengths could he control himself, and when did nature take over without warning?

He’d seen it first hand, after all; Taehyun had succumbed to his hunger.

The thought keeps circulating in his mind even as he takes his own shower while Taehyun soaks motionless in the bath. He’s watching Osias scrub himself through the glass, and the both of them are staring at one another as though there was some silent conversation going on. Except, in this scenario, they might have been speaking two different languages neither one of them understood. The steam of the shower enhances the sickeningly sweet smell of blood that would have made the average person cringe and keel over to vomit. To Osias and Taehyun, it may as well have been body wash.

When he finally watches the last bit of blood go down the shower drain, he secures his own towel around himself at a bony hip and, careful of slippery tiles, makes his way to the bath where he hoists Taehyun up into his arms and a fresh towel of his own. Wet lips find an unblemished forehead, a cheekbone, in an offer of tenderness that words might not be able to convey, and their silent conversation continues.

-

Sleep doesn’t come easy for either of them, even with hushed chatter and soft strokes of a spine or thigh. But when it finally finds Osias, he’s taken by the dark nothingness that he welcomes wholly. It was the type of nothingness he enjoyed and had begun to associate with his lover, who eased the terrors that had normally come when sleeping alone. Here, even with a man who’d ripped open a throat beside him; he found comfort. 

The sun is what rouses him at some ungodly hour in the morning, a sliver of warm light from vertical blinds kissing everything golden despite the autumnal chill Osias knows is lingering outside. Taehyun is kissed golden too, turning dark locks of hair into something closer to a brown, tousled halo around his head. He doesn’t want to interrupt the sleeping cherub besides him so he lays very still on his side, despite the call for nicotine in his blood – and just watches.

He watches the rise and fall of a chest, the flutter of eyelids in rem, the twitch of an arm muscle. 

He’s so normal. Dreams and breathes like anyone else. But he’s not like everyone else, Osias thinks, and as if Taehyun had heard him through his dreams, his lover’s brows furrow ever so slightly. 

He’s stronger than me, and he won’t die. 

He won’t die, but I will. 

What will my death do to him? What does my mortality mean to him?

A roughened thumb moves to smooth out what wrinkle had formed between brows, and it causes Taehyun to stir with a grumbled sound. Osias' hands had gotten hard from farm work, but Taehyun never minded. He said it gave him an excuse to use his expensive hand creams on him, had even sat him down one evening and smothered the different creams across his being and asked which one he’d liked best – then proceeded to buy three more bottles of it to keep in the nightstand for when he stayed over. 

“Awake, love?” Osias’ voice is a rasp, it feels unused and foreign in a mouth that hadn’t said much at all since the previous night's events. Which is unusual for him, who talked most people’s ears off if given the chance, especially his poor boyfriends, who'd dealt with his meaningless rants on countless occasions.

Taehyun’s eyes flutter in the way birds wings do before they land, and Osias can’t help but lean forward to plant a kiss over each one as he finally comes into wakefulness. 

“Now I am…” He mumbles, holding Osias by the hand that had come up to hold a supple cheek. 

In the ever-brightening room, they stare at each other, and all Osias can see settling in over Taehyun’s angelic features as he remembers the events of the previous night is guilt. 

“It’s alright, baby. It’s alright. I love you.” He says, but he’s not sure if it is alright, because; 

I will die, and he won’t. What will my death do to him? What does my mortality, now, do to him?

Teary eyed and desperate for some semblance of normalcy, Taehyun’s a tight force against Osias’ collarbone, pressing as near as he possibly can and large hands on the male’s back bring him tighter still, as if Osias could squeeze him into nothing and absorb him there. If he could, he would. They'd never be apart that way. 

The space between them feels far too imposing, a canyon built from a nature neither of them have a control over except in this way. Except in this way, where they hold each other and say I love you through gritted teeth like saying it any softer will force them into recognition of what kind of dynamic they hold.

[silverhallow]

Chapter 45 of When We Were Young:

for those not on ao3

You look like a movie You sound like a song My God this reminds me, of when we were young

19 August 2005

Results day was a nervous day for the entire group. In June everyone finished University whilst Sophie and Peter were finishing their exams and did their best to support all of them, as they knew how important it was for Sophie, Peter, Bea, Roger and Matthew to all get good results.

Sophie would have been a nervous wreck if not for Benedict, he had spent the months leading up the exams and the exam period, sending Sophie little gifts, little things to keep her spirits up and coming home almost every weekend to help calm her down.

He even drove back from Oxford late at night on a Thursday when Sophie had been spiralling all day and Peter had called him very worried about Sophie. She’d had a complete mind blank in class when talking about Prokaryotic DNA in Biology which had been first period and her day only got worse making mistakes in all her classes and she’d been nearly catatonic at lunchtime, by the end of school Peter had found her in the library nearly rocking back and forth muttering to herself.

Peter had managed to get her home but by then he was worried about her, she rarely got anything wrong in class and it rarely sent her in a spiral but today she’d jumped off the cliff and forgotten her parachute so he called Benedict and sent him a photo of Sophie curled up rocking back and forth.

Benedict had jumped straight into the car and driven home to see his girlfriend and coaxed her out of her chaotic state, he remained with her for the whole weekend and made sure she took the weekend off her studies and just relaxed.

Something Richard was very happy and grateful for.

By the time Benedict went back to Oxford on Friday, she felt better and more grounded and was seeing things in perspective.

Thankfully during her exams Benedict had pretty much finished his first year and other than some coursework and one painting, he didn’t really need to be at Uni so he came home for the majority of the time to support Sophie.

The guys in Oxford had already started looking for somewhere new to live, after a year of dealing with Kate and Anthony being very loved up, Benedict and Henry had decided to get their own place, Gen and Lucy were moving in with some friends and Simon was doing the same but his flat was just near where Anthony and Kate had found.

Benedict’s thinking was he and Henry and could just take in turns with swapping with Sophie and Peter who, provided they got into Cambridge had been assigned a three bedroom unisex dorm on campus and both had put down a preference for a female roommate, they’d thought about just applying for a room for the two of them but they thought that would bring about unwanted questions and implications but a male room mate could be threatening to Benedict or Henry so agreed that a female one was the way to go.

Everything was all lined up, they just needed the results.

Kate and Anthony had been helpful with Sophie in her revision, Benedict wasn’t as academic as they were so they’d been able to help her and ask her the questions that she wanted to be tested on and whilst they didn’t understand what she was talking about, at least they were able to enunciate the questions.

When the exams had finished, Anthony had asked their father if they could throw a big party, Sophie and Peter both blew off year 13 Prom in favour of a night with their friends, Roger and Bea had decided to not go either and Anthony and Kate had organised a “Prom” style party at Aubrey Hall.

All the Bridgerton’s had come and even Agatha Danbury, their now former headmistress, came along and brought her grandson Gareth to join in.

Gareth had made friends with Richard Jnr and Gregory almost immediately and the three boys had run around wild most of the afternoon except for when they were roped into dancing.

Richard gave Becky and Edmund a smirk when he saw the way Little Lucy and Gregory were trying to copy Anthony and Kate in a rather exuberant attempt at a waltz and then little Hyacinth dancing and arguing with Gareth.

Simon had danced with Daphne, much to Anthony's annoyance and Colin’s friends Phillip and Michael had been invited. Michael had swooped in and ended up dancing with every female in the room, even flirting with them, and Peter much to Henry’s annoyance. Phillip avoided the dancing for the most part but did end up having a dance with Sophie, whilst Benedict was dancing with little Lucy and she suggested he ask Eloise who he’d been talking to for most of the afternoon.

Whilst Eloise was dancing with Phillip, Colin had asked her friend Penelope for a dance and Sophie just grinned at Benedict who’d asked her what, and she told him to ask her again in a few years time.

It had been a magical afternoon, far better than any school Prom and they’d been able to have all their nearest and dearest with them.

Sophie had never felt happier than she had that day, surrounded by all the people that loved her, that had been with her through thick and thin and loved how everyone in her life was so happy at the moment.

She had her wonderful prince charming by her side, she had her confidence back. She’d learned to take everything with a pinch of salt and try not to take things so personally. Benedict being so laid back and chilled seemed to rub off on her more than it did when they were children.

For old times sake, they’d played a few competitive games of Charades and Pictionary with Kate and Anthony, they lost the Pictionary as one again Benedict was trying to be a perfectionist with his drawing and whilst Sophie was able to guess them better, they just weren’t as quick as Kate and Anthony but when it came to Charades, they completely annihilated them.

It ended up being a 1-1 draw and Michael had suggested a game of Twister to try and determine a winner but as the two couples just blushed and spluttered they decided against it and it was Edmund that suggested an assault course around the garden, playing to both couple’s strengths and weaknesses but requiring them to work together as a team.

They’d rowed across the lake, Anthony and Kate both fell in and swam to the shore but they caught up at the tree where they had to climb it. Benedict was a good climber, Sophie was not so he was having to help her up as they both had to pick and collect an apple from the sturdier of the branches.

The race ended in a draw so the Pall Mall mallets ended up coming out and a couples game was started, Anthony and Kate, Benedict and Sophie, Henry and Peter, Gen and Lucy, Simon paired up with Daphne after she refused to be with Colin who got distracted by food, Colin had huffed and said he’d play with Penelope then, which caused Eloise outrage for choosing her best friend, so she dragged poor Phillip into it and Michael declared that he and Fran would pair up.

Benedict and Sophie ended up winning after Kate and Anthony got into an argument half way around after some unhand tactics from Simon and Colin had landed them in a bush.

They did disappear at some point shortly after their argument only to reemerge with branches in their hair and dirt on their clothes.

As the night drew to a close and everyone disappeared to their rooms, Sophie made the decision to sneak into Benedict’s room, it wasn’t too far away from hers but it just felt like the perfect night after the perfect day.

They’d been talking about their first time together, unbeknownst to Sophie that it would actually be the first time for either of them but it was the most perfect night and Sophie and Benedict had never felt happier or closer to one another.

Though they could have done without being caught in bed by Violet the following morning, it did mean that whenever Sophie stopped with the Bridgerton’s, she no longer expected her to be in her own bed.

Whilst summer wasn’t over yet, today was the most important day of the summer so far, it was going to determine if the conditional offers from Cambridge were to become acceptances.

Benedict had a lot more riding on this than Henry. Peter had applied for Oxford as a back up which required a slightly lower grade than Cambridge but for Sophie, if she didn’t get into Cambridge, it was Glasgow or Edinburgh where she’d be going and the thought of having his girlfriend so far away was almost enough to bring him out in hives.

He had agreed to drive her over to the school that morning as he was actually a little afraid she’d crash the car, she had been shaking most of the day before and throughout the night and there wasn’t much he could do to calm her down.

He knew that it would only stop when she got her results. He had been the same the year before, when he had been waiting for his but there wasn’t as much riding on this.

Scotland and London were really far apart and neither of them were prepared to contemplate what that would mean for them as a couple if they were being separated that far.

Kate and Anthony were coming along, the entire group had agreed to come support Sophie, Peter, Bea and Roger as they were collecting their results.

It was a big moment for their friendship group, things were changing and lives were moving on around them but as they had been there for their GCSEs, they said they’d be there for the A-Levels.

Sophie hadn’t managed food that morning, no matter what she was offered. Benedict and Richard noticed that she was a delicate shade of green. Benedict knew better than to tell her that everything that was going to be okay and that he was sure she’d have smashed it.

Even throughout her exams she’d been determined not to talk about them afterwards. Once they were done she didn’t want to think about them, what she might have done wrong, where she might have lost marks, she didn’t want to think about anything like that and for the entirety of her summer holidays she’d been adamant that she wasn’t talking or thinking about results day but now it was here.

She had no choice.

Her greatest fear was that she’d failed them all, that no University would take her…

She was shaking all the way over to the school, Benedict was just talking to her, telling her about Hyacinth’s latest prank on Gregory and how she’d gotten Lucy involved when they were hanging out last week but Sophie was barely listening.

She was desperately trying not to throw up.

Peter had messaged to confirm the time they were meeting, Bea and Roger had sent very breezy “happy results day” text messages that had very nearly sent her spiralling.

Benedict had messaged both of his cousin’s with very rude messages about upsetting Sophie.

By the time they reached the school Sophie was positively green and shaking like bambi on Ice. something Roger was about to point out but Kate punched him as soon as the word Bambi reached his lips.

“Shall we?” Peter said, taking Benedict’s place holding Sophie up. He wasn’t allowed in the school to support her as it was students only and they had to wait outside for them and both boys knew there was no way that Sophie would make it in to get her results on her own without support.

After 20 minutes of anxious waiting, Bea, Roger, Peter and Sophie had all come back outside with their envelopes in their hands shaking. Peter had a hold of Sophie’s who was now a delicate shade of white.

“Have you…?”

“Not yet… we thought it was best to wait til we got outside before Soph passed out” Bea said sympathetically.

Benedict had gone over to his girlfriend and pulled her into his arms and kissed her head “it’s okay” he said to her and she just shook her head.

“Can… can… someone… I… I can’t…” Sophie said about her results just staring blankly at the brown envelope.

Kate rolled her eyes affectionately and chuckled as she held her hand out for the papers from Peter “give it here…”

“After three?” Bea said, looking around at the group who nodded.

“3…2…1” Anthony said watching over Kate’s shoulder to see Sophie’s results, he knew Benedict was just as nervous as Sophie, a lot was riding on this and he didn’t want to see his brother or Sophie heartbroken if it didn’t go to plan.

She needed A’s. That was it… anything more was a bonus.

The sound of ripping paper echoed through the group and there was silence for a few seconds before Roger was the first to break it with a triumphant yell.

“I did it!!” he cried out.

“Me too!!” Bea yelled as she hugged her cousin.

“Pete?” Henry asked his boyfriend tentatively,

“I…” he stammered and Henry looked over his shoulder “2 As and an A Star!! Well done!!” he cried as he picked him up and swung him around excitedly, kissing him before everyone realised Kate and Anthony hadn’t said anything and Sophie looked like she was about to burst into tears.

“For fuck sake just tell us!” Benedict snapped, the anticipation getting the better of him and triggering his anger.

“Sophia Maria Gunningworth you have achieved…” Kate said, unable to help herself, she had had a suspicion that these would have been Sophie’s results but it was just that little bit sweeter being able to tease Benedict and she looked at Anthony who nodded at her

“3 A STARS!” Anthony and Kate yelled together.

The screaming and jubilation that rang out in the group could have woken the dead.

Everyone had gotten the results they needed to get into Cambridge, things were going in the right direction.

Everyone piled into a big hug around Sophie and Benedict, laughing and cheering at the results.

Cambridge may be a little bit away from Oxford but they were all moving on, relationships were formed and it felt like this was the start of the rest of their lives.

Their friendships had been through a lot, death, bullies, trauma and abuse and they’d all stuck together through thick and thin and now they were moving onto the next adventure together.

Their childhoods were over, they were moving further into adulthood where relationships would get stronger, marriages and babies would eventually happen but as the group laughed and cried with happiness, they all knew one thing.

They would look back on these days with fondness and remember all of the things from When they Were Young as they moved on…

But for now…

They were celebrating, and the next adventures?

Well, those stories have yet to be written.

[kevinbikes]

Been watching the Action Button Review of Boku no Natsuyasumi over the past few nights (it is a 6 hour long video) and the segment I watched last night described an experience that I didn't know other people have. He describes how he experiences memory and how all memories, no matter how significant, occupy the same space in his brain, and that includes the memory of remembering things, which is the same size as the original thing he was remembering.

Toward the end of a long explanation of him exploring one of his childhood home towns 30 years later, he says "I am everywhere I have ever been, all of the time". And that's me. That is my experience.

Link to the video at the very end of this very long post where I'm exploring that concept in my own life.

I am in a department store in Florida during summer vacation at 5 years old and can't find a bathroom and I shit my pants.

I am in the fraternity house basement drawing dicks on my friend's face because he passed out on the couch.

I am in the bathroom in elementary school avoiding my teacher collecting homework because I didn't do my homework because homework is stupid because I already know this stuff

I am at my best friend's house the morning after a sleepover. My mom had called my friend's mom to let her know my grandpa was in the hospital because he had a heart attack and asked if she could look after me for the day. I go along with my friend's family to his cousin's birthday party. We play final fantasy 8 in the basement.

I am watching 9/11 happen on repeat as my dad lays on the couch near catatonic because his entire worldview has been shaken to the core.

I am in a clearing in the woods in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin, looking at the infinite majesty of the universe in October 2009.

I am in that same clearing with friends almost exactly a year later showing them the same sight in October 2010.

I am in that same clearing where those friends have brought their friends in October 2011. These are all distinctly separate experiences.

I am in the apartment of a friend who I met on the first day of college. She and I are a little drunk. She recently broke up with her boyfriend on amicable terms, we were out celebrating his birthday that night. She kisses me. I do not kiss her back. Our friendship was never the same after that night.

I am in my room hanging out with another friend I met on the first day of college. We are getting shitfaced. We decide to run around the city drunk. He gives $50 to a homeless guy. We return at the end of the night. He seems a little down. I ask what's wrong. He hesitates. 'Dude it's not like you're an ax murderer, just get it out' 'I'm gay'. I give him a hug. I let him know that if he needs any support in talking to his (very catholic) parents I'm willing to help out.

I am filming a high school basketball game with a shoulder mounted camera because the school pays students to do this sort of work for archival reasons and I need the cash. The ball goes out of bounds and hits me in the face. I got a concussion.

I am on the swimming team. It's winter break. By all means we should be relaxing at home with our friends and families. Our coach says we're doing 'maggot swimming'. today. As soon as youre done you can go home. We did 500 meters of freestyle. A minute break. Then 475 freestyle and 25 butterfly. A minute break. Then 450 free and 50 butterfly etc until you're doing 500 meters of butterfly. I am the first to finish because I'm the only one decent at butterfly. I stick around to encourage my teammates instead of going home.

I am biking aimlessly around the city of Chicago. I somehow end up at the small local college my mom happened to go to entirely by accident. I find the cemetery she had always told me about as a part of the story where her sorority played mind games on pledges during finals week and how she out played the upperclassmen by having her guy friends follow the car around and spook them in the cemetary.

I am walking to a pizza by the slice place for lunch. A seemingly homeless man is directly outside the pizza place and is asking for some money so he can eat. I say 'I'm not going to give you money because I don't carry cash but I *am* going in here for lunch. Let me buy you a slice or two'. And then when he got his food he assumed I didn't want want to eat with him. I beckoned him over to the table I was sitting at and he's like 'i just got out of prison, it's hard to be out here with no money, everyone ignores you.' I say 'I didn't ignore you'. He brings up the fact that he was stabbed in the hand and shows me his scars. I wince a bit because I imagine the pain of having something, anything, pushed through layers of skin and muscle and sinew and bone. He says that being alone on the streets is far more painful than any of that. That he survived prison, he survived getting stabbed through the hand. That he felt like he wasn't going to survive this. But the fact that I *did* help him gave him a renewed spark of hope. There *are* people that want to help. I hope you're doing alright Michael, wherever you are.

I am biking from Milwaukee to Chicago on the hottest day of the year. I stop by a rural burger king to ask if I could refill my water without paying for a drink. It is 7 am. I have been biking since 4 am. The guy behind the counter genuinely does not know how to answer.

I am in Washington DC in 2002 because my parents figured a lot of people aren't taking vacations there because of 9/11. There are barricades everywhere. Our first stop? The holocaust museum. In hindsight it was quite prescient of them to try to impose on us the dangers of ultranationalism and bigotry at that particular time.

I am at the small lake we used to camp by in the upper peninsula of Michigan fishing with my grandpa and my sister. She casts the line. It hooks my grandpa.

I am hugging Her for a fleeting moment in a best buy in 2013.

I am at a bar in the middle of nowhere celebrating my great uncle's life with much of my extended family following his funeral.

I am having my first kiss while watching Indiana Jones with a girl I barely know. I still get mildly aroused when the theme song plays.

I am in my bed 2 hours ago starting writing this post and not having a clue where it's going yet.

I am in 8th grade science class having a sensory nightmare because I have a headache and my peers are particularly loud today. I yell at the top of my lungs that everyone should shut up.

I am returning from school while my mom is on the phone with the animal shelter we got our dog at. The dog makes so many loud noises while attempting to bite me that the shelter is shocked and tells my mom to bring the dog in.

I am trying to sleep on a beat up leather couch because I couldn't fall asleep on my bed. A cat we had for 3 years actually cuddles with a human for the first time.

I am in the car. 3 years old. We are driving by a girl my age's house. I excitedly point that out to my mom. I do this every time we pass her house for 3 more years.

I am at the Milwaukee Botanical Gardens, locally known as The Tits. This is the place another friend decides to tell me they're gay. And that they had been hate crimed.

I am at a dive bar for a friend's 21st birthday. She tells me she's gay. I also meet her sister who is trans for the first time. This is the first trans person I have knowingly met.

I am at a friend's wedding reception. I write a heartfelt message about my love for their love in the guest book.

I am at the river in the upper peninsula of Michigan near where we camped that feeds into lake superior. We dug a hole so deep and wide on the beach at the shore of the river that the river's flow changed quite a bit down stream from our hole digging spot by the time we returned the following year.

I am at the YMCA with a girl a year younger than me who wants to join the swimming team and she wants some advice on her form. A decade later I realized this was her idea of a date.

I am at my sister's wedding reception. I get put on the spot by the best man during his speech. I literally did not know he was going to ask other people to say stuff before he started talking. I talk about the first time I met my now brother in law and how everyone had made how short he was like a key physical trait of his, so the first thing I ever said to him was 'you're not that short'. I then talk about how my grandma passed away a year earlier and how much of a pillar of support he had been for my sister and the rest of our family at that time, and how I wished grandma could have been there that day.

I am taking finals while I have an exceptionally bad toothache. I have not slept for a week. I somehow get perfect scores on multiple of them before I can go to a dentist.

I am watching the news on April 15th 2013. The Boston marathon bombing had just happened. One of my professors was running that race. No word on if he had survived at the time. (He did)

I am in group therapy for all of the kids in my high school who had divorced or separated parents. An oddly diverse group of teenagers except for the fact that I am the only amab person in the room. I am friends with half of the people in the room and do not trust the other half to keep my secrets. I generally do not share much of what is going on inside my head because it would turn out like this post. I cry far more than anyone else in the room because I can cry for other people but not for myself.

I hanging out with several friends in several different apartments over the course of a night in Chicago. 3 different people offer me a bump of cocaine over the course of the night. I don't know how to respond the first time and freeze up. The second time perhaps overcompensate and explain my family's history of addiction and how I don't even drink much these days because it's hard for me to stop once I start. The third time I just say 'I appreciate the generosity of you asking but I'm good'

I am in California in the summer of 1999. The only time I ever visited my cousins. The only (2) time(s) I have ever been on an airplane. It's the one day all summer that this part of California had a thunderstorm. We play super Mario bros 3 and the legend of zelda on the NES. And beat both of them. We watch star wars a new hope and 1960's The Time Machine. We were originally supposed to go on a hike in the mountains that day.

I am in <redacted> visiting the love of my life in the hospital on valentine's day. I give her a scarf knitted by me to help keep her warm. I reveal that I made a matching one for myself. She smiles. And cries. 'You're too perfect for me' she says. I say I'm not perfect, I'm just a person who does what they can.

I am in a wave pool, half concious because I swallowed some water and am having a hard time breathing. I am pulled from the pool by a lifeguard before I know what's happening.

I am half asleep in a stranger's bed in and apartment I was helping a friend move into. Friend, stranger and I are all sleeping in one bed because it was 3 am by the time we had gotten everything in. I get a good long hug from behind from someone. I to this day do not know which of the two it was who hugged me.

I am helping a different friend move into his first apartment. The building was built in the 1800s. We have gotten a couch stuck in the hallway.

An ex girlfriend shows up to a party I'm hosting uninvited but she's best friends with one of my buddy's girlfriends. I am on general party damage control duty all night so I have to be sober. My ex gets very drunk and requires an escort home at the end of the night. I am forced to be the guy that does it. She tries to hold my hand on the way. I try to set boundaries. It does not work. She not subtly asks me to come upstairs and I turn her down. I walk home alone on a cold winter's night.

I do not experience time quite as linearly as anyone else I know. These are not just memories for me. They are experiences I am having all over again, as though I a physically and temporally there.

I am everywhere I have ever been, all of the time. And I do not know how to turn it off.

https://youtu.be/779coR-XPTw

[questionsnooneasks]

Those Were The Days, a Steven and Joe Story Part 5

Those Were The Days, a Steven and Joe Story

Author's Note: This last bit, while referencing stories from The Mouse House, trust me, this ain't for kids.

CHAPTER 3

Finally everyone was firmly ensconced on the bus  rolling toward the next venue. Steven and Joe were huddled up in their usual place near the middle of the coach that sits over the right middle tire.  Steven found it to be the quietest part of their luxurious tour bus.  He chose it so he could read or write if he wanted to. Invariably Joe would sit with him, even tho he had his own spot just across the aisle. Steven had even had a special curtain made to give him an extra measure of privacy.

Steven was retrieving his white scarf from around Joe's neck.  Steven kept an inventory of all of his clothes but especially his scarves which he made sure he had a match for every outfit he cared to put on. Joe had finally taken off his jacket and had the fur lining toward his front like a mini throw rug.  Steven had given Joe his promised bump - a special one he had made just for them.  Steven had told him about it but he would never give Joe the recipe.  Said he had his reasons.  Joe didn't really care frankly.  He only knew it made him feel really good.  It was one of the things, he thought privately, that Steven did to keep Joe with him, bind them together. Like Steven's damned scarves. He didn't want to think anymore about it right now.  At the moment, He was happily tumbling through space.

Steven was reclining on the window side of the seat.  He had his right leg stretched out with its foot on Joe's lap and his left foot in a portable hot wax bath.  His notoriously strange looking foot was giving him pain.  The bump he had done didn't really help with that.  But even Steven wasn't dumb enough to mix narcotics with his goodies.  It's why he called them Goodies.  They were his adult Candy. A party in a bottle he'd say.

Joe sprawled and reclining and Steven lounging with his foot in Joe's lap were their usual positions when they were travelling.

* * *

Brad, as usual had his guitar in his hands, was quietly practising riffs.  Tom, across the aisle from him, was shadowing him on his bass, while reading a book.  (Hi, Tom Hamilton, MultiTasker. Nice to meetcha)

"Good Job getting the Royal Couple on the bus.  Joey was stabbing his sticks into the floor when I got on.  I would have hated to see what would have happened if I had been 5 minutes longer."

"Thanks man.  Steven was fucking with Joe's head again. Practically catatonic when I walked in to get them."

"Did Steven shove him, you think?"

"Naw, Joe ain't havin it, you know that.  Not EVEN from Steven."

"What was it then?"

"Don't know but he had that same look on his face when he left Steven's room last night.  I had just gotten off the elevator and he was standing there with his back to his own room door, staring with that idiot look on his face.  I had to say goodnight to him twice before he heard me."

"Queenie is probably using him as a guinea pig again.  I know Steven has got something in that bag of his that must be pretty special.  He won't share the stuff with anybody except Joe.  As you know, when he's parachuting he will only jump with Joe, if you know what I mean.  Tried to get myself invited to the party once, although I only meant to party with Joe solo. When Steven saw us together, the tongue lashing The Dragon Lady gave me for thatt I am still smarting from.  Here's a free piece of advice for you:  Don't "EVER" tell Steven a secret about yourself.  Trust me, he will fashion it into a hammer and smack you in the face with it.  That motherfucker is brutal!!"

"My God, What did you tell him??" said Tom laughing.

Brad stopped playing long enough to give him the Italian salute and said "Up yours Blondie! Mind your own fuckin' business!"

Tom laughed harder, and then turned the page of his book.

*****

Joe was on the downward descent of his bump, and was about to make a splash down in the Pacific Ocean.  He was caught up in a very vivid dream: he was living his life as a marine biologist. He wasn't able to pursue this dream in real life as he had not gotten the kind of grades he needed to go to college.  But that was what he loved about dreaming: you could fuck reality all to hell and do what you want.  He was diving in the clean pristine waters of Maui.  There was treasure to be had around this small island near the main.  He was following the lines of a reef that may or may not be the wreckage he was looking for.  Suddenly he looked up and almost swam smack into the golden haired mermaid who was floating there, staring at him with a huge grin on her face.  Joe was stunned.  He had heard of mermaids but also knew they weren't actually real.  And even in the stories he had read, they never approached humans on purpose or with joy.  They usually wanted to kill you by smacking you with their tails or some shit.  But here was this grinning mermaid looking just delighted to see him.  She had a gold coin around her neck.  One that looked very much like it may be from the wreckage he was looking for.  

So as not to cause her alarm, Joe slowly reached his hand out (the hand he wasn't using to tread water) towards her coin.  She looked at him curiously but allowed it.  Joe examined it closely.  It was indeed a coin from the wreckage.  Joe looked at her, desperately wishing he could speak to her.  He did the only thing he knew how to do: he made the human gesture for talking and pointed between the two of them. It took her a few seconds to understand Joe's meaning.  She smiled at him again. Then she took her fishy webbed hands and put them on both of Joe's shoulders and then leaned in close and proceeded to lick Joe's left ear and then his right ear.  Joe was greatly surprised but he didn't swim away.  Then the mermaid did what Joe could only think of as Mermaid Magic.  She took Joe's face in both of her hands and gently bumped her forehead on Joe's.  Suddenly Joe could hear her thoughts because she spoke to him.

"Can you hear me, Human?"

"Yes.  I don't know how but I can."

"Do you have a name Human?

"Yes, it's Joe.  What's your name?"

"You couldn't pronounce it and I don't think there's any equivalent for it in your language."

"Well, what shall I call you?"

"Well, I heard some Human a long time ago say that my father was from a school of Callionymus splendidus. Such an ugly name.  Are they like plankton?? Can I eat them??"

"From what I know, they are not.  They are actually quite beautiful.  Like you."  The mermaid blew a mass of pink bubbles she was so flattered.

"How about I call you Callie."

"Oh I like that Joe.  You may call me Callie."

"Okay Callie.  Thanks for talking to me.  I want to tell you what I'm doing down here.  I'm interested in finding more of that coin around your neck."

"Oh this old thing.  It was very shiny when I first found it.  But that was a long time ago."

"Were there more when you first found it?? Do you think they are still there?"

"Oh sure there are.  But you won't be able to get to them.  They are where ordinary humans cannot go."

Joe was disappointed to hear this.  He didn't have money for special diving equipment that would allow for deeper waters.

Callie swam around Joe closely, touching him with her tail; nudging him forward and back, and at one point while she was behind him she wrapped her frilly webbed hands around Joe's shoulders.

"You are so good looking for a Human, Joe.  Nice and sturdy, lots of solid fleshy meat."

Joe looked at her with alarm and slowly swam back from her a little.

Callie squealed and blew orange bubbles.  "Oh Joe I'm only teasing you.  I have some shark cousins who swim here once in a while.  You are the kind they would love to get their teeth into.  But we Callie's don't eat human flesh no matter what you may have heard.  However, We are used to rough play, kind of like dolphins. And unfortunately too many uninformed humans want to associate with us but get hurt when we play with them.  Some even die.  That's when my cousins show up."

"Oh that's nice to hear...I guess."  Callie was swimming in tighter circles around Joe, spinning him slowly, doing her own fishy dance with him.  Joe was so distracted by Callie's stories and dance he wasn't paying attention to his oxygen levels.  He found he was getting light headed.

"Callie, I need to go up, like right now."

"Oh no Joe, stay and play with me. I'm really enjoying your company."

"I'm enjoying your company too Callie.  But I need oxygen to breathe.  You don't want me to die do you Callie?"

"No Joe.  I wouldn't like that at all. Oh, and you haven't gotten the Golden Treasure you came for.  Do you like me enough to stay a little longer, Joe?"

"Yes Callie I do. I may even love you. But I need oxygen my dear."  Callie smiled and blew red bubbles.

"No worries Joe.  I will see you get to the top.  Plus you came for your treasure and I want you to have that as my present before you go.  And I know the perfect way to make that happen, too."  Callie wrapped her frilly arms around Joe's neck and pressed her generous lips to Joe's, forced his mouth open with her long tongue and proceeded to blow into his lungs, filling him with her own special Mermaid magic air.  Joe went completely still and was sure that he had just died.   But to his amazement he suddenly was wide awake and had no need of oxygen from the air.  Unbelievably, he was breathing water and getting it from that.  He was stunned.  He looked at Callie who was staring at him with such love in her eyes.

"How do you feel Joe?"  

"Callie, I can't even describe it. What did you give me??"

"I'm not going to tell you Joe.  But know that its special magic just from me to you.  I don't give it to just anybody. In fact I have only given it to one other and he's dead.  But the thing that is special about it is that now you can't ever leave me no matter what you do."

"Does that mean I have to stay down here with you..forever?"

"Oh no Joe.  Only as long as you want to be here.  What I meant is that you will always be linked to me, emotionally and spiritually, forever."

"What do you get out of that?  It doesn't seem fair, ya know?"

"Joe, why do you think it's called a "SCHOOL" of fish?  We spend a lot of time thinking.  Good thoughts. And you, my dear, will keep me in lots of good, warm thoughts, for the rest of my life.  I just hope I don't fricasee myself."  Callie laughed blowing more orange bubbles.

She had swam so she was floating on her back, holding Joe over her..and strategically bumping him every so often.  She was now blowing pink and red bubbles.

Once Joe realized what she was doing, he got a little embarrased and started to arch away from her.  "Callie, come on.  We're in..public??"  Joe said looking around and saw nothing but an old grandma sea turtle..who was grinning at them both.

"Oh come now Joe.  Haven't you heard that joke your old timey Human used to tell about why he never drank water.  Who do you think he heard it from?"  Grandma Turtle stamped her foot and blew big orange bubbles too.

Joe had to laugh at that.  His bubbles were more rust colored than orange.

Callie said "But since you want to be such a tadpole about it, how about we go somewhere private and make some nice..big...deep..Purple bubbles.  You will be a changed human when I'm done.  Also, it happens to be right near where your treasure is.  What do you humans call this? A two-fer?" Callie was sensuously rubbing her frilly hand fin between Joe's legs.  She was so blatant about it even Grandma Turtle blew deep pink bubbles. "Besides I want to satisfy myself about something. I know you've heard that rumour about certain "parts" of blue whales??  Well, since whales can't swim as deep as I like to go..."

"Geez Callie let's go before I blow squid ink all over the place."

Callie put Joe on her back and swam like a Bonito to their spot, leaving Grandma on her back from a small stroke.

*****

Steven had finished his writings, closed his books and put them away. Now he was in the mood for some fun.  He wanted to play and who better with than his big live dolly.  His hunky handsome action figure. All day he had the feeling the Joe wanted to tell him something, but Joe couldn't work up the guts to say it.  Well, Steven thought, maybe I'm wrong, or it's not that important. Steven removed his foot off of Joe's lap and put it on the floor to balance himself while he wiped the wax from the other.  The limb was still ugly as sin but it was very soft.  It was the least he could do for her since she was never going to grow up to be a pretty girl, he mused.

Steven turned his head to a sound close by.  It was Joe, talking in his sleep.  Well not actually talking. Grunting and mumbling.  Steven thought, yeah that's more Joe's speed. Why make a sentence when half a syllable will do? Steven smiled fondly at him.  

Joe was only 3 years younger than himself.  But it seemed that when they had met it felt like a vast chasm in time.  By 21, Steven was already a seasoned performer; already had been on stage, in the recording studio, on the radio, on TV, hell he had even been to Woodstock.  Of course nothing he had ever done was as big as Aerosmith.  This band was a life saver for him or else he may have ended up a lounge act like his Daddy.  That's why he was so grateful to the other band members and especially to Joe for the opportunity they had given him to continue in the field he loved.  But when he met them, they were too young even to get into one of his shows.  He still remembers the first time he saw Joe: he was wearing a white apron and a hairnet. He was employed as a man-of-all-work at a burger joint in downtown Sunapee, New Hampshire.  He made the best french fries he had ever tasted in is life.  So good he had to tell him about it when he brought his old band a second order -- which he managed to eat some of before the food fight they were having got out of hand, that is. He remembers what struck him immediately about Joe were his eyes.  He supposed now in hindsight that his eyes only seemed to be these big soulful brown orbs because he was wearing these black framed student specs with tape in the middle.  But they sure were pretty he thought.  And he remembers the next time he saw him very well: Steven was driving through town in his Dad's car on some family business for their Country club, and there was Joe leaving the restaurant carrying a guitar case. He was wearing a denim vest with patches without a shirt and tight blue jeans. And the hairnet was off and there was that gorgeous black mane blowing in the wind.  Steven was staring so hard he almost wrecked the car.  My God, Beautiful and can play the guitar too. I need to see this guy again."  Steven did not consider himself gay exactly, but he certainly would not mind taking a few weeks with this guy exploring the possibility.  A little deep research, if you will.  Well, that had been 15 years ago and the research was still ongoing.  Not yet conclusive.  Of course he hadn't yet told Joe "there was a Riot goin on" as old Sly Stone used to sing.   Steven kinda figured Joe would figure it out eventually.

Joe was making sounds again.  Except this time these were distinctly different. More pleasurable than angry.  Steven's smile got a lot wider.  'Oh Joe, you naughty boy.  You going in to do battle are ya?  Did you bring your saber Baby?' Steven was good and ready for some nice soft games.  Whenever Joe was drunk enough, Steven loved to play Footsie with Joe.  Not the usual game of Footsie most people think of.  No, Steven was always one for the best of everything.  He had learned from a waitress at a favorite chinese restaurant he liked in Boston the Art of Reflexology, the art of massaging feet.  He learned from her (thru many repeated practical demonstrations in her apartment bedroom) that every part of your body is reflected in the feet.  Particularly every organ and errogenous zone.  He loved to wait for Joe to pass out after drinking, get his shoes off, and work on him until he would wake up, look down and up with a red face, and have to hurry to the john.  Steven would nearly split his sides laughing and would laugh all the harder when Joe would ask him what he was laughing about.  Steven would be very magnanimous and then break out some good weed, his famous jasmine & black orchid oil, and then proceed to physically soothe and calm the poor boy down. Joe was always good for a nice long stealth cuddle after that. That's why Steven did it.  Part of his research.

Tonight Steven was thinking that maybe he should give Joe a small peak into the research data.  Joe was clearly in some happy place in his head.  Steven was dying to know how far this went.  He slowly put his hand under Joe's jacket.  God Steven loved that fur lining.  If he didn't know for a fact the Joe would murder him, he would "borrow" it. Steven kept his hand moving lightly along Joe's hip and then upper thigh when his hand ran over what could have been a small iron pipe.  Steven stopped completely stunned now. Joe had a truly impressive hard-on. Steven wondered at that point: "What the hell is Joe dreaming about?"  Steven had seen Joe sport a chubby a few times:  The few Aerosmith girl fans they had were notorious for losing the buttons on their shirts during concerts and nobody in the band was exactly blind.  Joe was only human after all.  But this was a different thing altogether.  This call for attention Joe was making was almost desperate in nature.  An investigation was warranted here.  So, Steven removed Joe's jacket altogether.   This might get a little messy.

After making sure that the lock on the curtain was still fastened, Steven checked to see if Joe was still out of it. He was. Steven carefully undid the top button on Joe's jeans.  Next, he had to decide how best to get the zipper open without waking the man upp.  Steven was expecting to have to tug hard to get it down.  But much to his surprise with just the slightest touch to the pull, it sped down with surprising force all on its own.  Whatever was going on down there, the zipper clearly wanted no part of it. After making a note of that,  Steven continued his research. He observed that Joe sported purple heather bikini briefs. If they were the brand that Steven thought them to be, he knew how expensive they were, about $25 a pair att the very least.  Good Job Joe!!  But Steven could already see why the zipper was making a run for it.  The monster inside the briefs was trying to claw its way out and was about to lay  wayst to Japan!! All Steven could do was stare.  "Wow!! Tony Joe we hardly knew ye!  Joe must put his pants on in a very cold room' Steven thought, just to keep all of that in one place.

Joe moaned  again  just a bit louder. "Keep it down Joe" Steven muttered at Joe's face.  "And you stay right where you are." Steven said to Joe's monster.

"The Right Reverend Tyler is here to perform an exorcism on this demon."  After removing the bracelets from one of his wrists. Steven carefully peeled down the front of the purple garment. The monster sprang out with a vengeance.  'God-dammn, I should have brought a whip and a chair!' he thought.  It actually grew another inch over all as soon as it was free.  Steven thought he could hear it roaring.  Almost as if it heard his thoughts, the monster literally leaned towards him and was waving around with intent.  'Oh so you want to challenge me.  You want to wrestle do ya??'  Steven extended his unbraceleted hand towards it.  He grasped it gently. His first thought of its being a bar of iron was not too far wrong:  Joe was hard, very hard. Steven held it tighter since it seemed up to the task. He started stroking Joe a little rhythmically but it was a little rough going as he didn't want to hurt Joe with a dry palm.  And again as if it had heard his thoughts, a bead of pre-cum put in an appearance on the tip.

'Well thank you Joe' Steven thought and dutifully made use of the bead to ease his way, and the tip had generously provided more. 'Oh this works.  Are you loving this Joe?' Steven said speaking to the monster. "You only wanted petting didn't you? Well I'm only here to help." Steven was making a proper job of it too.  Massaging it all the way down to the base, twisting the head, and tickling the tip.  When Steven took his hand off at one point to flex his fingers some, the monster started wiggling and turning circles slightly like it was looking for something.  When Steven went to grab it, it actually backed away from his hand and when he took it in slightly forcefully, the monster was squirming to get out.

'Oh you want more, do you? Or rather you want something else'  Steven looked at Joe's still sleeping but troubled face. 'You don't know who's doing this for you, but you still want it, is that it?'  My God, you really know how to push a guy's buttons.  Fucking sexy even when your zonked.'  Well Steven still had said he needed more research data and here was someone willing to generously hand it over.    And not necessarily by hand...

'Okay since you're being so accomodating about it' Steven squeezed Joe's cock a bit more firmly at the bottom steadying the tip for himself.  He snaked a tentative tongue down to Joe's tip to assure the monster it was going to get what it wanted.  When Steven looked at it, the bastard was actually winking at him. 'Oh shit! Okay, its game on Motherfuckah!' Steven had previously put a pillow down on the bus floor and now he settled down on it more firmly and got to work on drowning the monster.

Steven had not blown guys very frequently as he very picky about the hygeine of any of his sexual conquests and he knew that men were truly lazy bastards when it came to that sometimes.  But he knew for a fact that Joe was most fastidious to a cat like degree.  Some of that was Steven's fault: When Steven was parachuting, he made sure he was quite clean before he jumped.  He required that of himself and anybody he chose to have around him when he did. And that was almost exclusively Joe.  Frequently he would have Joe join him in a jacuzzi bath before he took the dive.  Joe was adamant about not diving with him, but he made sure he stayed with Steven for the first 15 minutes to be sure he was okay  But Joe discovered he really liked being wet and had become a regular bather.  Steven had even bought him his own custom made bubble bath for his birthday.  Which he was wearing now.

Joe smelled absolutely delicious and tasted even better.  Joe was also a very clean eater. Had been for years. So, between the bathing and the diet, Joe made for a very tasty package. Steven was doing things to Joe's cock that he would not have done with anyone else.  Especially an uncircumsized man like Joe. Steven was in heaven.  He was almost ready to conclude his research with an addendum to his data. "Answer still inconclusive, but with an 85% possibility that positive affirmation on the question may be limited to one specific test subject.  More research absolutely required."

Steven was beating Joe's monster down. Exorcizing that demon by smiting it with broad cross strokes of his tongue.  This was about to become an almost spiritual awakening for Steven and he hoped for Joe too.  Joe was rhythmically bucking into Steven's throat.  Steven didn't know what Joe had been dreaming about but this was clearly part of what his cock wanted in that scenario. Joe was about to come Steven could feel, but Joe was also starting to get loud Steven could hear.  Steven hated to stifle a persons passion, but he was not in the mood to share the experience with everyone right now.  So he placed his hand on Joe's scowley mouth.  He licked the Joe's tip in encouragement and tickled under the head.  'Come on Joe. Release the Kraken!' And Joe did. Steven clamped his mouth shut and held on while Joe let the lava flow.  He let go a volley of five generous bursts, which Steven held in his mouth, the other smaller shots he caught in his hand.  Steven looked up at Joe's face as he removed his hand from his mouth.  Joe hadn't cried out loud after all but Steven could see was about to say something.  Steven quickly got off the floor and got in his seat next to Joe. He wrapped an arm around Joe's neck and then covered Joe's mouth with his own and kissed him deeply.

Steven pulled a few tissues out of the bus overhead dispenser and wiped his hand.  Next, he pulled out a few wet wipes from another dispenser and gently but quickly did as thorough a cleanup on Joe's uncut cock as possible and tucked Joe back into his expensive purple briefs. He then draped Joe's jacket back over his front.

Steven made sure he was in the bathroom when Joe woke up so he could deal with fastening his trousers back up himself.  He would happily answer Joe if he were to ask any questions about it, but he sincerely doubted that Joe would. Joe was still in his same sitting position when Steven returned.

"We're going to arrive at the hotel in about 20 minutes.  You got all the stuff you're going to want to take in with you??" Joe asked.

"Yeah, I didn't buy anything except these fashion mags." Steven answered, flipping through the pages.

"Steven, what was the name of The Little Mermaid in that Disney flick?"

"Oh what, so I'm the Disney guru now??  I thought we went over all of that the other night after the party."

"Oh yeah, we did didn't we?" Joe satt thinking in silence for a few minutes.

"Ariel"

"What?"

"The princess with the tail fin.  Her name was Ariel."

"You sure it wasn't Callie?"

"Yeah I'm sure.  Did that bump fuck with your head Beautiful?"

"Only in a very good way." Joe sat staring with a smile on his face

Steven put his magazine down and cast a very delighted smile at his hot, hunky and handsome...lover.  He could think that outloud to himself.  Though, he had to get around to sharing this thought with Joe to his face one day.  Well, one doesn't want skewed data.  It's gotta be mutual.  For now, Steven would settle for just putting his head on Joe's shoulder.  

Joe moved his head a little to accommodate Steven's new proximity, but other than that he made no move to stop him.  He was still smiling, and was now softly humming the tune "Under The Sea".

"Joe, can I tell you a joke??  You know what the difference between Like and Love is??"

"Steven, everybody knows the answer to that. A Spit or a Swallow."

"No it isn't actually."

"No? Then what is it Smarty Pants?"

"It's finding someone that is willing to split the difference with you."

Joe's eyes widened at the statement.  And got wider the more he thought about it.

Then Joe wrapped an arm around Steven, pulling him closer,  and started to laugh.  Steven looked up into Joe's face and when He realized why Joe was laughing, he was very happy about it and started to laugh too.

[sunsetofdoom]

I keep considering some scene of John finally processing his (deeply repressed, you can just see him pushing it down and away as Bev talks to him in that scene) guilt and grief over killing Joe, looking up with those big brown eyes as he says in a voice full of pain, “I baptized Joe Collie.”

[lemonluvgirl]

8. “I’m not leaving you.” 🥺🫂

sorry for the delay! It got kinda late last night and I had to turn in. But I'm here and I'll try my best for this prompt.

The idea I have for this is a dating everlark au

.

"Peeta? Wake up for a minute." I tell him before I give his heavy body a little shove near his shoulder. It’s barely 7pm but he’s been out like a light for a couple of hours now. 

"Augghhh....." Peeta replies, unintelligible. He's laying face down in bed, one hand dangling off the edge.

"Peeta, roll over and let me check you for fever." I tell him in a more forceful voice.

He moans and makes a half hearted attempt to move but eventually doesn't. He just lays there like a dying animal groaning and feeling extremely sorry for himself.

"I told you to There was a bad flu going around the elementary school. But you just had to paint all the kids' faces at the fall carnival." I chastise him.

He flips over at this and fixes me with a pointed glare, or what would be a glare if his focus wasn't so off because of his fever.

"Katniss! It was for the children!!!" He replies indignantly.

I roll my eyes but say nothing more, since I have him where I need him. I straddle his hips and swiftly maneuver the thermometer inside the corner of his mouth and instruct him to hold still.

He opens his mouth slightly to protest but I slap his chest.

"And no talking until it finishes taking your temperature!" I command and he narrows those adorable blue eyes at me in what most people would call a 'if looks could kill expression', but I know Peeta and I know his eyes. Nothing could ever make those beautiful blues of his actually look deadly.

We wait the required amount of time and then the small device beeps a warning. I pluck the thermometer from his lips and read the results. 

“100.2, looks like you’ll be staying home from work this weekend. I’ll call your boss.” I tell him quietly before moving off his handsome body to start looking for his phone. But his hands dart out to hold me around my waist and keep me planted firmly on top of him. 

“I already called in. Well, I texted my boss actually. But he said its fine. So no need to leave.” Peeta tells me as he winds his arms further around me and up my back pulling me closer to lie down on his chest. 

But I resist and pull back. 

“Peeta! You’re running a fever. I’m not going to have sex with you right now.” I tell him sternly. 

In a very snarky move Peeta rolls his eyes at me and scoffs. 

“I wasn’t trying to seduce you Kantiss. I just wanted some cuddles. I don’t feel well. And you know I always feel better when you’re near.” He tells me in a slightly vulnerable voice. 

I eye him. Studying his expression. 

I can tell he’s being honest but at the same time its not enough to convince me.

I get up quickly and slip away to stand beside the bed. 

“No Peeta, I can’t keep being so close to you. I’ll catch it too and then we’ll both get sick.” I tell him in the most reasonable voice I can project at the moment. He really does look a little sad and pathetic lying there in out bed all red faced and morose. 

But I’m not about to be suckered in by his adorable looks. He’s all germy right now. I need to keep my distance. 

I turn to walk away but his hand tugs on the end of my shirt. 

“Please stay. Just for a little bit?” He asks as he looks up at me with those puppy dog eyes and that pleading expression that just kills me. 

I lift my head up to the heavens in exasperation and close my eyes, willing myself to stay strong. But my mind can’t help but think about what Peeta confessed to me a little over 5 months ago about his childhood and growing up with an emotionally abusive and distant mother. 

He told me one night, after I shared with him how my mother had fallen into a nearly catatonic depression after my father died, that neither he, nor any of his brothers ever got any special treatment from their mother when they were sick. She never soothed their fevers, never dried their tears, never dolled out one teaspoon of cough syrup, never even reheated a can of Campbell’s chicken soup. 

That was always their father’s duty. And after he died when Peeta was 15, and his brothers moved away, no one ever took care of him again. 

So when I look back down again I see the desperation in his gaze, begging someone, anyone, to care, I freeze. 

 Because I know I do. 

I care for Peeta so very much. 

I think I might even be in love with him. 

With a small sigh, I turn around and grasp his hand. I give him a little smile and a nod. 

“Scoot over then.” I instruct and his eyes go wide, like he’s in disbelief that I’m not going to abandon him. 

“You’ll stay then? Until I fall asleep?” He asks in a small voice, full of wonder. 

I shake my head. He gives me a slightly worried, but mostly confused look. 

Then its my turn to roll my eyes. 

“I’ll be here until you fall asleep. Then I’m gonna go out and get you some meds and some ingredients for soup. And when I get back I’m gonna make you some soup. Then I’m gonna stay with you. All night long.” I tell him gently, as I caress his cheek. 

“You will?” He asks in an amazed whisper. It might be the lighting, but I swear his eyes are glistening. 

“I’m not leaving you, Peeta.” I promise him. 

Peeta is speechless and I just wrap him in a hug as we lay together on his bed. 

 For that night, and all the nights after that, I keep my promise. 

[theladyofbloodshed]

STEEL & FLAME - PART TWO

SJM originally planned for Lucien and Nesta to be mates and I'll be damned if the thought doesn't interest me. Part 2 picks up from just prior to the high lord's meeting.

To Lucien’s surprise, he had been invited to a dinner with Rhysand’s inner circle – and an even greater surprise was that Nesta graced them with her presence. Not that she acknowledged his existence. She insulted Morrigan for insinuating they had shared clothing styles then quizzed Amren – Amren – over the glow of her eyes without any sort of fear.

Whilst the room remained terse, the larger Illyrian, Cassian, seemed to enjoy Nesta probing Amren, seemed to be curious by her lack of fear. It churned something deep in Lucien, a primal urge to put himself closer to Nesta but when they were seated opposite each other for dinner, Nesta never deigned to look at him.

He watched her though. Watched how Feyre piled her sister’s plate with food that Nesta only nibbled forkfuls of throughout the entire meal to act busy. Watched how she winced when the noise grew too loud for her ears. Only her declaration at the end of the dinner that she wanted the King of Hybern and all the mortal queens dead brought any spark to her voice.

Lucien had been locked into discussions with the intense shadowsinger whose stare seemed to rattle his metal eye from the scrutiny of it. Like a cat, shadows had swarmed Azriel constantly as they talked, swirling over his feet then up his arm. Though Azriel had seemed decent, Lucien was under no illusions he was kept in Velaris because he was useful to the Night Court. He had ample knowledge on both the Spring and Autumn Courts that they badly needed for meetings – not to mention the friends he had gathered as emissary scattered throughout courts. He’d gladly hand over all that information if it gained Nesta’s favour. He wondered if her new found family spoke to her about him, whether she was told tales about the fox mask he’d been forced to wear or how he’d slept with Ianthe at Tamlin’s deference. It was no wonder she did not want to be anywhere near him.

Lucien had tugged the rope in his room that Feyre had indicated to when he had first arrived. A wraith, more shadow than female, materialised as if she’d stepped through the stone. She inclined a dark head in greeting. Being confined to the House of Wind was proving a hindrance but when he reeled off a list of items he required, the servant, Nuala, nodded and accepted the list – as well as the money he gave for their purchase.

It was a trap. Lucien had been biding his time, listening for movement in the house and Nesta was a creature of habit. When she entered the library the next morning, Lucien was there waiting. At the sight of him, she froze, eyes flaring.

‘Leave.’

‘I was here first,’ he said, cocking his lips into a half-smile.

What was Nesta more repulsed by? The scar? The eye? That he was from the Autumn Court and the son of Beron Vanserra? Or that he had been there during the worst day of her life? Been there and done nothing?

‘Then I will leave,’ she snarled, turning on her heel.

Rashly, he sent a wave of power to slam the double doors shut before she could leave. Nesta snapped back in his direction, ready to strike him down. It was desperation. A chance - all he was asking for was a chance to talk with her, the female herself and not the reputation that preceded her.

‘You barely ate at dinner.’

‘What I eat is none of your concern. I am nothing to you. I will never be anything to you.’

‘So you have told me.’

There was so much of Feyre in that face; the same golden-brown hair, narrow nose, and blue-grey eyes. But Nesta’s eyes seemed… ancient. Imbued with a power that had been carved from the earth. Her frame was narrower than the younger two sisters’, growing smaller with every day that she neglected herself in favour of caring for the catatonic sister.

It had been easy with Jesminda. She had teased him, taunted him – seduced him so thoroughly that he hadn’t wanted anything but her. She’d seen him not as a High Lord’s seventh son, but simply as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. And this female, this pillar of steel and flame, would never choose him. He doubted she loved anyone except Elain. She snarled at every opportunity. Given a blade, she’d be deadly.

But Lucien could not help himself from taking a step towards her. Gesturing to the small table laden with all the foods he could think of that she might like to try that he’d asked Nuala to retrieve. His heart pounded with every step towards her, racing so swift he thought he might vomit on the very expensive, very old carpet.

For a heartbeat, all the fury drained from her face. Those enchanting eyes flickered to the table, to his open hand then back to him. She was beautiful. Ethereal and as dangerous as a goddess from a story, but utterly beautiful. Then the walls built back up.

‘Is it a trick?’ She hedged.

Lucien knew he’d won. If she’d wanted to, Nesta would have fled the room or had a showdown there and then but the allure of sugar had captivated her attention enough to hold her in the spot.

‘Will you stay just for a few minutes, please? I’ll keep my distance. You don’t have to talk to me.’

‘And you will do what? Stare at me while I eat?’ Nesta snorted.

But Nesta did stay. Warily, she perched on the edge of a seat and placed a chocolate croissant on a plate. She said nothing while Lucien poured tea for them both but kept her gaze trained on him like a target. It kept flickering to his scar. Tamlin had vomited at the sight of it. Even the best healer in Spring had not been able to relieve much of the damage. Amarantha had cut his face down to the bone and the skin had flapped open, bleeding heavily. Lucien was used to the whispers about it now – and the eye. Or at least he thought he was, until the Cauldron gifted him a mate who did not seem to like anything except her own company, much less a male with a mauled face.

‘You can ask me about it,’ he said gently, stirring a spoonful of honey into Nesta’s tea.

‘Ask about what?’ She demanded, defence rising.

Lucien tapped the brutal scar running from his brow to his jaw as if Nesta had not noticed it – or as if he had not felt her stare. A slight blush bloomed on her high cheekbones in answer.

‘I thought that fae could heal,’ she murmured.

As morbid as it was, Lucien took the opportunity to explain how his words to Amarantha had resulted in the loss of his eye. Nesta sat with a furrowed brow, breaking off chunks of pastry and nibbling them as he spoke of the severity of his injury. Maybe he hoped to gain some sympathy. There had been females in the past who’d seen it as a badge of bravery and were enticed by it – others had been revolted though. He imagined Nesta would be the latter.

‘Why do you stay here? In this house.’

What to tell her? That he stayed to catch a glimpse of her. That he hoped they both might be awake at night and he’d spot her with her hair unbound reading the library. That he wanted to know why the Cauldron had paired them together. That all he wanted was a chance to know if there were any similarities between them.

‘I can’t fly so my only means of escape are walking down ten thousand stairs or plummeting to my death from the roof.’

It made her laugh. A short, bark of a laugh, but it was still a laugh. ‘I had not known you were also my sister’s prisoner.’

‘Do you think yourself to be a prisoner, my lady?’

Those final two words made Nesta squirm in her seat and Lucien felt the sudden racing of her blood. He risked a glance to the stack of books she kept on the narrow table beside her favoured armchair: all romances; all full of swashbuckling heroes who swept maidens off their feet. My lady, it is, he thought.

‘I cannot leave either. Not this house – or Velaris. I have nowhere to go now. There is no place for me.’

In the mortal world, she wanted to say. Nesta grieved for the life she lost, while her sister grieved for the mortal male who was set to be her husband.

In the weeks he had been in Velaris, the females had few visitors except for a cursory visit from Feyre once a week before she trained on the roof with Cassian. It was rare for Elain to ever leave her room, and if she did, it was under Nesta’s guidance. She would join her sister in the library, staring blankly out of the window while Nesta curled up with a book. Lucien had crept by often, unwilling to break their sanctuary, but unable to resist catching a glimpse of his mate in her natural habitat.

It was not good for either of the sisters; they ought to see the sunshine, to have fresh air and explore the city that was their new home. They would only adjust to fae life by experiencing it.

***

Even a move to the town house closer to the city’s vibrant shops did not soften Nesta. There was little improvement in her general well-being, much to Lucien’s dismay. They had not exchanged a single word since he’d ambushed her with pastries in the library but he’d asked the twin wraiths to ensure baked goods were always available. Lucien’s heart had soared the odd time he had passed Nesta nibbling on a muffin or a biscuit. As long as she ate something, that was far better than nothing.

Certainly, Nesta did more than anyone expected of her; a power lay dormant inside of her, but she was training it under Amren’s watchful eye to ensure the Wall that divided Prythian from the mortal lands was protected. Most days, she would be locked away with the small, ancient one. And if she wasn’t training, she was arguing with the largest Illyrian. Lucien couldn’t help but overhear the bickering that occurred whenever they were in each other’s proximity – and he had to fight the urge to rush to her defence. But Nesta Archeron could handle herself.

‘Maybe if you actually trained, exerted energy, you’d be able to sleep better at night,’ Cassian snapped to Nesta, withholding the butter from her reach.

There were still grey pockets beneath her light eyes in the same shade as her demure gown. Nesta prised the butter dish out of his hand. ‘I have no plans to be a warrior.’

‘Scared?’

‘Of what? An overgrown bat with a big mouth and a worse temper?’

Lucien snorted in the doorway, attracting both of their attention. If Lucien had a silver-tongue, Nesta’s was made of steel. Taking his chance, Lucien settled into the seat beside her for breakfast. She stilled for a moment. The Illyrian warrior caught it too – appraised the space between them, ready to protect. Lucien had no doubts that if Nesta did not like the seating arrangement, she would not care to declare it or leave the room. She remained however, neatly buttering a toasted hot cross bun.

‘Do you also spend your days grunting with a sword?’ Lucien almost balked from her stare. She was so close to him. The rich scent of jasmine and vanilla overwhelming him. She gave him a courtier’s stare, one that assessed him so thoroughly, it was as if he was stark naked.

‘No. I can swing one well enough when necessary, but I prefer a calmer life, my lady.’

A flush crept up Nesta’s neck at the address, but she turned to Cassian with a face of triumph. ‘There you have it. Lucien does not train therefore I will not be training either.’

Had his name ever passed her lips before, Lucien wondered? It was a song and a summons, a gentle caress against his soul.

***

Nesta had departed for the Hewn City with Amren guiding her powers. She had said nothing on the Night Court’s alliance with Eris, despite Lucien admitting his eldest brother was a snake. He wondered if acknowledging his family was filled with vipers was another hurdle in the path towards her.

It was harder and harder to be around Nesta without trying to engage her. He would take her anger, would even take the bickering she exchanged with Cassian rather than the solid wall of ice he received from her the majority of the time. Enough times, Lucien had excused himself to not make her uncomfortable even if it was cleaving his chest in two. The hostility reared its head sometimes, but more often it was cool disdain. In fairness, that icy exterior was not exclusively shown to Lucien, almost everybody received it, even Feyre – only Elain escaped it.

They had gathered in the living room one evening, Nesta, as usual did not even glance his way when he entered as if she’d known it was him and did not deign him worthy of her attention. The conversation swirled around him and Lucien ignored it all. Only focused on the female tucked away in the corner whose eyes suggested she cared not for the information either.

Lucien could not take it any longer. He knew not all of Nesta’s icy wall was due to the bond. Lucien moved towards it, moved through her layers, peeling each one back to find the core of her. She was dealing with her trauma alone, overcoming the bombardment to her heightened senses, trying to carry her sister’s grief on her own shoulders to get Elain through it too, and training with Amren whilst a war brewed that terrified her. Then Lucien met that day in the Cauldron, felt the quaking fear that still rippled through Nesta as she fought against the sentries forcing her into the inky abyss. How that fear never left her - that it always lurked below the surface, reminding her of why she now sat in a fae city with pointed ears.

Nesta leapt up from the chair with a yelp. The conversation skidded to a halt. Quicksilver eyes caught his.

‘What did you do to me?’

The words were as sharp as a blade. Every pair of eyes in the room now weighed on Lucien.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry, Nesta.’

She clutched a hand to her side. ‘It felt like… like you pulled a thread tied to my rib.’ Nesta swallowed, shaking the thought away. ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’

When she stormed from the room, the silence remained until Cassian let out a hearty laugh. ‘You’re a braver male than me, Lucien.’

***

Hybern had infiltrated the city. Twin ravens had cloistered in the darkness at the heart of the library to try and steal Nesta, to take his mate. For days, Lucien fought against every instinct that demanded he seek out Nesta and never leave her. His body was screaming at him to shield her from every invisible threat. Suddenly, the shadows were enemies. The gigantic Illyrian who took delight in riling her was a threat. The blonde female who spoke in sharp, bitter tones to Nesta was another threat. Even the high lord who never viewed Nesta with the same gentleness as Elain was becoming a threat.

Blood pounded in Lucien’s ears at all the perceived threats to Nesta’s well-being. He could barely function around the Night Court when every thought in his mind was Nesta Archeron. To protect, to defend. To make sure she ate, that she slept, that she was safe.

The attack triggered something in Lucien: he was not a warrior. If it came to it, he would fight until his last breath. Lucien would not change the tide in a war with bloodshed. His talents lay elsewhere; he had earned his nickname of clever fox. To aid in this war, Lucien had to leave and had to seek out the mortal queen Elain had seen in her visions. He had to do something. If it stopped Hybern - stopped them seeking Nesta - it was better to be away from her, especially now his instincts were pushed to overdrive. He’d spoken with Azriel on the best place to position himself, armed himself with Illyrian weapons from Cassian’s personal cache and even wore their leathers. Rhysand would winnow him to the human continent so his own magic wouldn’t be drained from the journey.

‘It was time,’ Lucien said quietly, squeezing Feyre in an embrace, ‘For me to do something.’

The High Lady of the Night Court nodded solemnly. ‘Thank you.’

The high lord awaited him by the doors, hand outstretched. But a soft scuffle of footsteps down the stairs paused their action. Heads turned to see Nesta Archeron gracefully descending the stairs, one hand on the rail, the other deftly lifting the skirt of her pewter dress from her path.

‘You’re leaving?’

Her brows had narrowed, eyes flitted to the pommel of the Illyrian blade strapped to his back then to the quiver of arrows. Had nobody told her that he was departing to the continent? Would she fear for his safety? Beg him to stay?

Feyre and Rhys exchanged a private conversation then both slipped into the adjacent room. Nesta stepped down the remaining stairs and walked the short space towards him.

‘To seek the mortal queen trapped on the continent. To see if she can help us.’

Nesta clenched her jaw shut. Lucien did not know her well enough to understand the swirling of emotions in her grey-blue eyes. They stood a pace or two from each other and Lucien fought every urge to hold her hand. How beautiful she was.

She blinked a couple of times then said quietly, ‘I always wanted to go to the continent. The sea crossing, it scared me too much though.’

Lucien nodded in understanding. ‘When this is over, when the war is long forgotten… I can winnow. I can show you it, my lady.’

At the mention of a future together – one where they might walk alongside each other – Nesta’s eyes widened. She swallowed and Lucien tracked the bob of her throat along her pale skin.

‘You will be safe.’

It was a demand. A plea to the Mother. Had the others told her about mate bonds? Had they told her what could happen if a mate lost half of their heart?

If this was the only moment they might have then Lucien savoured it. He took hold of her hand, the skin so soft it was like silk. Her hand trembled. Like a flighty animal, Lucien passed the lightest of touches over her skin with his thumb to soothe her. What could he say? That he barely knew her and yet the moment she had emerged from the Cauldron, his heart had sparked with joy and music in recognition. That he wanted to know her. That a future with her seemed like the only path he could ever take.

‘I will return to you,’ he vowed. ‘There will be bright days again where the sun will shine on us, my lady.’ Lucien bowed his head and placed a chaste kiss on the top of her hand, feeling sparks ignite through his veins as his lips touched her skin.

[calder]

What's that root got to do with your brand of Lore and how is that thing relevant? I'm curious!

ppl have been asking me to explain this so here's surface-level facts off the top of my head

fallout 4 textually says that the art deco faces are from an ancient alien precursor race that can give people magic powers yes really & ties Dunwich to this imagery

tanagra town is a location in 76 that has been raised into the sky by overgrowing roots, with raised precursor architecture at the core

the roots can be seen in lesser examples ripping apart architecture and natural beauty across the map

the moth cult flock to the roots and make altars out of them, especially in places where they have overtaken architecture

the point lookout ug-qualtoth cultists make similar altars.

blackhall manor is basically encased in vines, like the cult manors in 76

the interloper is some kind of unthinkable catatonic failed root body that psychically called a cultist to a precursor chamber and consumed him

the 5 precursor faces in this room might parallel the 5 skulls on the back of the ug-qualtoth spire

the visitor is another failed plant body in a chamber over a communist ghoul castle in the middle of a subterranean radioactive lake of rocket fuel

the enclave studied this root, identifiable by sprawling viscera and "hand"-like growths, and found that scientists who handled it all heard otherworldly voices. this sample is visibly the same plant as the visitor and was acquired at tanagra town

there's an enclave field research lab where a scientist named wolf apparently killed himself and his comrades in a fit that challenged his motor skils because he felt he needed to destroy their research

the strangler heart is a plant-based boss in 76 that is served by plant-infested ghouls, a grafton monster, and mirelurks, and overlaps a lot of strange lore in a way that requires its own post

wastelanders update put a precursor face under crater & there's a huge root/cult site not far away. the raiders mention that the moth cult consider their settlement "holy land" and want it for themselves.

the city of crater is BOMB-01 from van buren. concept art confirms this was intentional. another large piece of debris from it fell in the jungle, and the entire area immediately downriver of it is overrun with strangler vines.

most content updates add a new root site somewhere important

moth cultists seem to kill themselves near Pylon V-13, a busted portal where greebly escaped this timeline. greeble is a character mentioned in the promotional materials for Project V-13, the cancelled Fallout MMO by Interplay. some scientists moved into the pylon to study the portal and were unceremoniously killed and left where they fell.

there's 2 talking spore plants in fo2, iirc

the courier's grave whispers to them. the courier is immune to spore plants.

jackal gang members and mantises both feed human meat to the v22 plants, which ignore ghouls

update: in night of the moth, The Enlightened combat the vines, which directly infest their altars.

The Enlightened have left an offering bowl containing one of every produce item for mothman, except for the strangler pod, which has actually grown up through the bowl, apparently uninvited

The red moth cult were given adamowicz's extended treeminder designs as outfits. it's worth noting that Harold's heart looks a lot like the interloper.

it's my current interpretation that This Thing is some kind of powerfully psychic plant mutant pretending to be one of the absent precursor gods Lorenzo communes with

whatever this thing is, i'm pretty sure it's also "Bob", Harold's name for his tree, which speaks in a voice only he can hear

[licncourt]

You mentioned that you think Louis and Lestat both have reoccurring nightmares. What do those look like for them, during and after, and individually and together? What happens in them, and how do they help each other in the immediate aftermath?

Your sleeping headcanons just reminded me that in interview Louis mentioned having horrific vivid nightmares as a vampire, far worse than anything he experienced when he was alive. What do you think they are?

(In as much detail as possible please because what are favorite characters for if not to torment them)

Since I have both of these asks, this will be my Vampire Nightmares Post! Partially textual and partially hc obviously.

So this is how Louis describes his nightmares in IWTV:

I dreamed of my brother, for instance, that he was near me in some state between life and death, calling to me for help. And often I dreamed of Babette; and often-almost always-there was a great wasteland backdrop to my dreams, that wasteland of night I'd seen when cursed by Babette as I've told you. It was as if all figures walked and talked on the desolate home of my damned soul.

Based off of that, I assume a lot of them contain religious and spiritual motifs. That makes a lot of sense because that's really Louis' biggest fear, Hell/damnation. Both Paul's and Babette's condemnation represent things that disturb him deeply in his faith: his own monstrosity and the beginning of his spiritual downfall. Hell as a concept is definitely a consistent theme.

Outside of that, I'm positive that Lestat's last moments and Claudia's death feature pretty heavily, probably twisted up with that same religious, surreal feeling. I think he'd probably see Swamp Lestat quite a lot because it must have been pretty traumatic, this rotting revenant of his lover essentially back from the dead and coming to harm them (I don't think Lestat intended to kill either of them, but Louis wouldn't have known that).

Maybe in the dreams, Lestat kills Claudia, because I think that would've been Louis' biggest fear. But the guilt would've probably played a role too, maybe Lestat, rotting and burned, coming in his dreams to echo the things Louis thinks about himself (ie, telling he's truly damned/cursed/a monster now, that it's his fault Claudia's a vampire, that's he's weak, etc).

As for Claudia's death, he doesn't see her die, so it must open up a whole hellish rabbit hole of possibilities. Were her last moments painful? Was she awake to see it coming? Did she blame him? Is she in Hell? Maybe he sees different versions of what might have happened: her burning alive and screaming, desperately hiding from the sun, buried under her skirts dying little by little over the course of minutes or hours, etc. And like with Lestat, a burned, mangled version of Claudia coming to tell him it's his fault what happened to her and that she hates him now (or that she always did).

Later on, I also think he'd probably have nightmares about Akasha, specifically what she did to Lestat as well as scenarios where she killed him and Louis couldn't stop her. That alone must have been horrible. They just reunited literally hours before Lestat was taken. The thought that they were almost too late for their second chance must have stuck with him, especially since there wouldn't have been anything he could've done.

As far as what Lestat might do to help him, I think Louis would be the type to want a task or a distraction after the initial wake-up panic. Instead of just sitting catatonic alone and obsessing over the dreams, maybe Lestat gets a book for them to read or a movie that they can watch together. Music could work too, records are good, or Lestat playing the piano. Something that doesn't require a lot of brainpower, but redirects his mind to something pleasant.

I also think he'd be more of a talker, so if that's what he needs, Lestat learns to be a good listener. Just the fact that he wanted to do the interview in the first place makes me think Louis prefers to process difficult emotions by talking about them with someone. He's not really looking for advice or a solution, he just needs to get it off his chest and have someone care about him/his worries and feelings.

Lestat's nightmares are probably a mixed bag. I can't find the quote, but I believe he canonically has nightmares at least about the wolves (and possibly about Magnus, but I could absolutely be mixing up my headcanons with actual lore). So right off the bat, definitely the wolves. Not only was it very formative as really his first near-death experience, but it embodies a lot of his fears about powerlessness and inadequacy.

I also believe he would have nightmares about his childhood/his father. It's (understandably) glossed over in TVL, but we know the Marquis was physically and verbally abusive to Lestat and Gabrielle. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a recurring nightmare for him, with some probably revolving around his father's abuse of his mother and Lestat’s inability to protect her.

I think that, like Louis with Claudia, he may have had some about Nicolas. The nature of his death, his own guilt over it, Nicki's hatred of him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had dream visits from both Claudia and Nicki mocking him or blaming him for their deaths. I'd imagine his dreams of Claudia are a pretty awful reminder of his mistakes and how he emulated his father with his own family. Plus similar dreams to Louis about her death.

Akasha and Magnus are likely a big part of his nightmares too. What a horrible repeated trauma. I can't imagine he wouldn't have nightmares about it, especially with how PTSD-like some of his behavior is afterward. Like the wolves, it plays on his powerlessness and gives it a face. I think these dreams would be the most frequent. Maybe in certain dreams, one of them hurts someone he loves like Louis or Gabrielle and he has to watch them experience the same trauma he did.

I like to imagine that being together helps with these a lot. Vampires don't seem to be able to just "wake up", so they're kind of locked in until the sun sets. A full 8 hours of nightmares once they start. Louis talks about how they'd leave him basically catatonic with how vivid they are (probably vampire senses), so having someone to help them ground would be very important after such immersive dreams.

I think Lestat would have the most trouble grounding because of the nature of his trauma. A lot of nightmares would probably devolve into panic attacks when he wakes up, so he'd need Louis to help him reconnect to reality. This might get complicated because Lestat can explode brains with his mind, so Louis probably talks to him from a safe distance until he's more coherent and then comes over for more hugs or cuddling (he's more of a physical comfort person than Louis who'd rather talk about it).

Because of the two abductions + an abusive childhood + Claudia attacking him at home, he probably has some security issues. He's much stronger than anything that could attack him now, but that doesn't change the emotional toll a lifetime of trauma takes. I can imagine Louis doing things like checking the locks and windows for him or getting one of their coffins out to sleep in if they've been using a bed (it locks from the inside and can be hidden away unlike a traditional bed).

I'm sure there's more to say about this stuff, but that's what came to mind!