#vine’s hoard

[petrichor-han]

the debt of existence; choi yeonjun

PAIRING | ghost!yeonjun x gn!human!reader

CAST | choi yeonjun, kang taehyun, seo changbin (mentioned)

WC | 18.2k

GENRE | angst, (slight) fluff, horror, ghost!au, non-idol!au

WARNINGS | mentions of death & dying, explicit language, mc had abusive parents, flashbacks to said abuse (physical and verbal), smoking, ghosts/spirits, childhood/unresolved trauma, mentions of hoarding, mentions of murder & suicide, descriptions of a crime/murder scene, gore/blood

SYNOPSIS | you remember your childhood home as a landmine, filled with metaphoric bombs just waiting to go off at any possible second—there was a reason you never came back home to visit after you moved out at the ripe age of eighteen. years later, your parents are dead and gone, and you realize that you have inherited that very same house—complete with the spirit that has haunted it since before you were born. 

A/N | hello everyone!! this is my addition to the monster beside me collab hosted by @decembermoonskz​!! super late, the collab was unofficially dissolved ages ago, and not my proudest work, but i wanted to finish this fic anyways since i was mostly done with it before my hiatus lol. slightly inspired by the webtoon my boo by jeongseo. please reblog and leave feedback/comments, it would be much appreciated!! 🫶

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MASTERLIST | THE MONSTER BESIDE ME

JULY 

The end of July is always slightly uncomfortable, you think. It’s the midst of summer, but perhaps that contributes to its unease, to the realization that everything in life is fleeting and temporary, but it is not a sad thing to think of, as it just is. That is how it always is and how it always will be. July is a reminder that everything comes to an end, even things that seem everlasting, like the pesky mosquitos that suckle at your plush flesh in the warm muggy evenings and the flashing memories of childhood that you can’t seem to forget when you eat a cheap cherry flavored ice pop. 

Or, that’s what you think a relatively normal childhood would seem like. Not that you would really know. 

Your childhood summers were a dull thing to look back on, and most of what you could gather from your scattered memories, presumably locked away because of how much you hated it, was an image of you sitting in your one joy from your bleak youth: the large bay window that overlooked the front yard of your house. The yard could have been beautiful, you’d always thought as much. It was a large, pretty space with endless room for growth. You often daydreamed about the fresh vegetables, the pretty flowers, the vines and greenery of your dreams that could have flourished there if given the chance. Your parents didn’t seem to share the same daydream, instead doing the bare minimum to upkeep their lawn. The grass was not dead nor was it suffering, but it was nowhere close to being soft and supple like your neighbors’ lawns, that much you could tell though you were never allowed to tread upon it. This was another thing that your beloved bay window was good for: looking at the neighbors. 

It wasn’t a creepy thing. You were a child. Your neighbors had children too, and they seemed to have a much more colorful childhood than you did. During these endless summer hours when it seemed like the sun would never set, you watched them with one small hand pressed to your window, your breath fogging up the already condensated glass, small pearls of water forming from the mugginess, forlornly watching the other children play amongst themselves. Whether it was dress-up or tag, or simply rolling around in the soft green grass of their pretty lawns, you wished that just once you would be allowed to go there with them. It seemed like a separate world to you, as if your window panes were a television and you were watching a show about a happy childhood. You felt like a stranger looking in. You were a stranger looking in. 

Once, and just once, you were invited to come down and play with them. You remembered it. That summer was a particularly harsh one, in terms of temperature, and your parents’ creaky old house had no relief provided. The most that you could do was sit by your window and hope that a breeze would come through. This was the only time you were allowed to open your window. Unfortunately for you, though your window was cracked open, there wasn’t the slightest bit of wind. The blazing sun seemed to shrivel up everything in sight, heat waves visible in the air. It made you feel drowsy as you slumped against the wall, pushing your window open more and more even though you weren’t allowed to do so. You kept thinking that maybe if you pushed it open just a little more a small breeze would come through and tousle your sweaty hair… maybe it would send a nice breath of relief through your clothes. 

“Hey!” 

You jolted out of your daydreaming, your half-slumber. 

“Do you want to come play with us?” 

You look out of your window, heart catching in your throat. A few kids that you recognize from the neighborhood stand right outside your front gate, one of them even daring to lean against the old, chipping, white wood. The one that shouted at you is holding a soccer ball in her hands, the white patches more gray now than anything, a sign of a well-used, well-loved toy. She turns it over in her hands as she stares up at you, eyes twinkling with playfulness. You’re panicking now, just slightly; you’d never been asked to play with them before and you don’t want to mess it up. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she says doubtfully, the corners of her lips now slightly downturned in a frown, as if she were worried about hurting your feelings. “We like to invite new kids sometimes. But you don’t have to come.” 

“I want to!” you find yourself shouting back, though your heart pounds loudly in your ears with adrenaline. You swear you can feel your own blood coursing through your veins in your arms and legs, your ears burning with excitement. “Are you sure it’s okay if I come?” Even though they were the ones that invited you, you still find yourself worrying that they don’t want you there, and you play with your fingers as you lower your gaze, half-expecting them to laugh and say that they didn’t want you there after all. 

“Of course,” the same girl says matter-of-factly, and you like her right away with her no-nonsense aura. She seems to be the leader of this small group, and you want so badly for her to like you, for her to take you under her wing. You lick your chapped lips as she gives you a small smile, motioning for you to come down. “What’s your name?” she asks, and just as you part your lips to give her a response, your heart soaring through the thick, humid summer air, you find yourself being pulled backwards roughly, your sticky t-shirt pulled up against your throat as you choke and gag at the harshness. Your small fingers scrabble at the fabric that’s pulled up against your neck, and you are thrust aside onto the wooden floor. You can feel the skin of your left elbow dragging against the bare floor, skinning it effectively, and you cry out, cradling your sore joint. 

“They can’t come out to play,” your mother says roughly, before slamming the window shut and turning back to you, her eyes blazing. “What the hell were you doing? You know you’re not allowed to leave the house when we’re not home. Do you want to get kidnapped?” She’s still in her work uniform, beads of sweat appearing on her moist forehead; clearly, she had had a rough day at work. 

You feel yourself curling into a ball involuntarily, afraid of your mother’s rough tone. Your elbow stings and you just want her to leave so that you can look at the damage. “I’m sorry,” you say, your voice hardly above a whisper. “I was wrong.” 

“No shit,” she scoffs, and she runs a hand through her hair, eyes shut as she sighs, annoyance clear in her tone. “Don’t let me catch you doing that again. This is what’s best for you, and you’re making me look like the bad guy. It’s for your own safety.” 

“I won’t do it again,” you promise, guilt pooling in your stomach. You don’t dare to stand up, for you know that she could very well physically kick you down again. With the look on her face, it wouldn’t be far-fetched. And you do feel horrible–she’s right, after all, you think. They don’t give you many rules to follow, and you’ve read stories where people are hurt by their parents daily. They have never broken your bones or hurt you when you didn’t deserve it. Your skinned elbow was your fault. 

You think that your mother might give you a good spanking anyways, even though you were sorry, but instead she just looks at you with her upper lip curled in exasperation, eyes narrowed at you as if you were a bug that were squirming around on her floors, and leaves your room, slamming it shut behind her so hard that you can hear the hinges groan. The tell-tale click of a key slipping into your lock tells you that you won’t be allowed out for a while. You swallow hard and pick yourself up off the floor, tears burning the backs of your eyes as you try to hold them back. Your elbow is bleeding, and you don’t have any bandages so you press a piece of tissue to it even though it stings to have any contact. You sit yourself back on the edge of your bay window and stare at a new crack on the left side of the glass, something that would always remind you of that bleak July day when your mother once again dashed your hopes of having friends in the neighborhood—all in the name of your supposed “safety.”

You can see that same crack from the front gate, which is where you currently stand. You fumble with the old skeleton key in the pocket of your jacket, feeling the humidity make the material stick uncomfortably to your skin. Your fingers smell like old metal and rust when you retract them from your pocket, and it makes you feel slightly ill as you back away from the house. 

Not yet. 

Instead, you walk back to your car that’s parked on the side of the road, reach into your other pocket that holds your car keys, and unlock your door. You can still feel the cool air that had been blowing; you’d left the car running when you went for a quick look at your childhood home. You slide into your seat and close the door behind you, sighing as you grip the steering wheel tightly with both hands and press your sticky forehead against the top of it. You feel like you’re melting into the vinyl seats, like your skin is stuck to it like a pest to flypaper, and you shift uncomfortably as you look up, eyes darting between the empty road in front of you and the house that holds some of your most repressed memories. You thought that you had the confidence to waltz in there and clear it out as soon as you got the call from the bank, but seeing it now made your blood curdle. Clearly, there were some unresolved issues that you didn’t even know you were dealing with, and they were preventing you from going inside and just taking a look around the damn place. 

You shift the gear and back up out of your subpar parallel parking job on the uneven, cracked road. Your GPS says that the coffee shop you’re due to meet Taehyun at is fifteen minutes away. That’s fifteen minutes to clear your damn mind and convince him to give up his next few weekends to do you a huge favor. As you drive away from the old house, it feels like a weight has been lifted off your chest. 

You can do this. 

An old pop song from the past decade erupts from your speakers, and you reach over to turn it down even though the nostalgia rush gives you waves of calmness, in a way you hardly remembered. The singer’s voice—you don’t remember the name of the one hit wonder—is warbly and slightly out of tune, but it’s just because of your shitty old car and its apparent inability to play songs in the right key. You tap your fingers against the steering wheel as you slow to a stop in front of a light, the bright red glare stopping you dead in your tracks. 

The unfortunate thing is that you remember this road all too well. Years of driving down the same old street in your beat up family car with your parents spitting insults at each other had carved every crack, every pebble of this paved road deep into the grooves of your brain. You don’t think you could ever forget it; you could probably drive through it with your eyes closed. 

The light turns green, and the distant sounds of your mother’s sobs and your father’s cursing dissipates as your tires grind against the old asphalt, stalling for just a moment before advancing. 

The rest of the drive is more relaxing, less familiar. When you were a kid your parents didn’t ever stop by these coffeehouses, telling you that all they did was guzzle money that could be used on better things, and the teenagers that both worked and frequented there were bad influences anyways. You, being a naive child, agreed even though you didn’t really know what the hell they were saying. And you had to pretend that you didn’t want to go inside those cozy looking cafe’s, with fires blooming inside that fogged up the windows in the most delicious way possible. Instead, you followed your mother’s lead as she tugged on your arm, leaving behind the physical warmth that you so craved in place of emotional warmth from her. 

You think of this as you mutter curses to yourself under your breath just like your father used to, trying to find a parking spot. Some jackass in an old silver car has parked over the line, and you roll your eyes as you realize it’s your jackass; as Taehyun steps out of the car and winces as he looks at the crooked parking job. He spots you and waves before climbing back inside and backing out sharply, nearly hitting you in the process, and re-parks—not nearly a perfect job, but much better than before. This also allows you to take up the second spot that Taehyun had taken over before, and you rub your eyes tiredly as you finally unbuckle your seatbelt. 

Cicadas chirp loudly at you, and a distant hoot echoes in your ears as you stare into the thicket of trees on the other side of the coffeehouse. “Rough morning?” Taehyun asks as you step out of your car. 

“Sort of. Kind of. Maybe. Not really?” You lean against the trunk of your car after walking around, pursing your lips as the sun-warmed surface bites at your exposed legs. Your shorts ride up your ass and you can’t help but think about how annoying summers in your hometown can be, sensory wise. 

“I mean, you look tired. That’s all.” Taehyun shrugs as you shake off your denim jacket and toss it in the backseat of your car, the mugginess finally getting to you. 

“What a nice thing to say to a friend,” you say sarcastically, locking your doors. “You look like shit too.” 

“I actually was up all night, so you’re not wrong,” Taehyun admits, jerking his head towards the coffeehouse, and the two of you start walking towards it. It’s much different than your distant memory of the cozy atmosphere during a childhood winter. In the summer it looks like a cool solace, shielded by old trees with decades of memories and gentle indie guitar music that can be heard from the outside as you get closer to the entrance. It’s charming, you think, as you run your fingers along the raw wood railing, the old stairs creaking as the combined weight of you and Taehyun makes it groan. “I always think I’m gonna break these damn things,” Taehyun says, as you successfully make it to the front entrance. 

“They’re always that creaky?” 

“Always. But they’ve never failed anyone yet, so I guess we have to trust them.” He opens the door for you, and a small golden bell above the door is triggered and it jingles as you walk inside. A rush of cool air seems to quench your thirst as it washes over your uncomfortably warm body, and you sigh with relief as the scent of iced coffee and fruity mixtures pleasantly enters your senses. You realize that it seems to double as a bookstore, as multiple shelves are crammed with both old and new books, lining the walls of the shop. 

“I’ve never been here before. What’re you getting?” you ask, squinting at the menu while you fan yourself with your wallet. 

“I always just get an iced Americano. You know me,” Taehyun says. The young couple in front of you finishes ordering and moves out of the way, and you let Taehyun go first so that you can scan the menu at least one more time before you’re put on the spot. 

The teenager behind the counter has two big buns twisted messily atop her head, and a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks and nose bridge make her look younger than she probably is. A pen on each side secures her buns, and she takes one out, making the left bun flop down. “What can I do for you today?” she asks, and even though she isn’t annoyed her voice carries a tone that makes you squirm uncomfortably, as if you’d interrupted her. Her hair-accessory-slash-pen is twirled between her fingers as she looks at you. 

You blink at her stupidly before saying the first thing on the menu, and she asks if you want it iced or plain, and you wonder if having a plain drink was always an option before blurting out iced. She writes it down, smacks her gum loudly, and you move aside to let the elderly person behind you order next. 

“What did you get?” Taehyun asks, as his name is called and his iced americano is slid across the counter. He picks it up and takes a sip. 

“Something with iced tea, I don’t even know.” You glumly stare at the other teenager that’s busy making drinks, and your name is called just a few moments later. You pick up something with iced tea and honey and sparkling water (you think) and sit down with Taehyun at a slightly sticky table full of pastry crumbs. He sweeps them away with a brown napkin made of eco-friendly materials, and you sip at your drink, which surprisingly isn’t that bad, as he sits down across from you. 

“So why are you back in town? Didn’t you just get a job offer from that city a few hours away?” Taehyun asks nonchalantly. 

You grit your teeth; you didn’t expect him to get to the topic right away. But then again, it’s Taehyun. He’s always been more straightforward and blunt than most people, and you couldn’t say that you didn’t appreciate that about him. In fact, it was something that you did like about him. You use your paper straw to push around at the ice cubes in your drink, looking down at the shocked wood that your table was made up of. “It’s kind of a long story.” 

“I have time.” 

“Well my parents died, and they left their old house to me. So now I have to clean it out and either sell it or keep it.” 

“That wasn’t a very long story.” 

You manage a laugh, but you don’t really mean it or find any of this funny. “I know. It was just hard to say.” 

Taehyun sips at his coffee. “Well, that must be rough. I’m sorry.” 

“No need to be sorry. But if you really want to make me feel better, help me clean it out. They had so much shit crammed in that house that we never needed.” You smile at Taehyun’s eye-roll. 

“And that’s why you asked me to hang out.” 

“‘Course it is. You know me and my ulterior motives.” You use air quotes around this, and Taehyun has known you long enough to understand that this was something your late father insinuated about you a lot. He laughs, a pity laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. You pretend not to notice that your joke made him uncomfortable, and pull out a book on the shelf closest to you. If you still had time to read, you think you might have taken it home, but you don’t, so you put it back and play with your paper straw some more before looking back at Taehyun. “You don’t have to, by the way. I can do it myself.” 

“No, I’ll help. Besides, I think you need my help if it’s as bad as you always said it was.” He finishes his coffee and stands up. “What are we waiting for? Let’s just go now and get some of it over with.” 

Again, you feel slight unease at his eagerness to get on with the tasks at hand, but you push your drink aside and shrug. “Okay, why not?” you ask, though something in your brain is nagging at you to leave it to another day. You stand up, taking your half-finished drink in hand and tossing it in the garbage, feeling only a little guilty about it, and follow Taehyun out to the parking lot. “Want me to send you the address?” you ask, pulling out your phone, but he shakes his head. 

“Nah. I know it already.” It’s a nod back to the day he helped you move out while both your parents were at work, the day you turned eighteen. It’s a bittersweet memory, and you push it back into the void of your mind as you manage a smile towards your dear childhood friend, and then walk back around to your own car, sandals smacking against the uneven asphalt. 

You sidle back into your car seat, adjusting the air conditioning so that it blasts your sweaty face and neck, and exhale loudly as you start pulling out of the parking lot, spotting the old, beat-up, silver car that he got from his dad back in high school. You follow his lead even though you recognize the way back as soon as you get back onto the main road, away from the forbidden coffeehouse of your childhood, and you want to pretend like you’re completely oblivious to the familiarity. But instead, you let your thoughts guide you, and the weight of resurfacing memories rests heavily on your chest, tempting you to reach up with one hand and place it over your heart, squeezing gently at the fabric of your shirt as if that would relieve the tension. 

Taehyun has taken the parking spot that you had earlier, in the street in front of the old house rather than the driveway, which you reluctantly pull into. The sloping pavement makes your old car groan as you park it and step out, keys jingling in your hands as you switch it out for the singular rusty key you’d received in the mail a few days before; the only way to get into the old house. Your parents hadn’t bothered with modernizing it any, and since it had been built well over a century ago, its age was definitely showing, especially now that your parents were gone and the minimal upkeep that they did had diminished completely. You stared at the bland front lawn with distaste, the complete lack of any landscaping still leaving a bitter flavor on your tongue as you remembered the vibrant gardens of your neighbors in your youth. Though plain, it was now completely overgrown with weeds, the grass growing dark green and lush from the frequent rain, which only added to the muggy climate. You felt your skin crawl, already imagining all of the insects that probably called that jungle of a lawn their home, and you reached down to slap a pesky mosquito off of your ankle as Taehyun’s footsteps approached, crunching the loose gravel scattered across the driveway. “How long has it been?” he asked carefully, though you wouldn’t have really cared if he’d been blunt about this as well. 

“I got the key a month ago. I don’t know how long it's been since they actually died. Or if they’d lived like this even before they passed. All I know is that my mom died first and my dad died a little bit after.” You frown before brushing past Taehyun and using the key to open the separate garage, where your parents never kept any cars but rather an assortment of gardening and outdoor supplies that they never used, a hoard of untouched second-hand objects that you could use to tackle the mess outside. You puttered around until you found an old lawnmower, small enough that you were fairly confident you’d be able to use it even though you had little to no experience using one, and a few other gardening tools that you handed to Taehyun, which he immediately sighed at but ultimately knelt down and started pulling weeds using said tools. 

You trudged through the grass, feeling the long blades tickle your shins, as you pushed the lawnmower across it. It had turned on after a few tries, and was now eating up grass faster than a herd of hungry goats, though you had to continuously empty the bag inside to keep it from clogging. The scent of freshly cut grass reached your nostrils and it was gratifying in a way, to know that after all these years the front yard would finally look decent. It might not be fancy, but decently kept was good enough for you. 

Taehyun stared up at the sky after he finished pulling the last weed from his side of the lawn and squinted at the bright sun that was beating down on the two of you. “Any chance your folks left refreshments inside the house?” he asked jokingly, and you laughed aloud, haughtily. 

“It’ll be lucky if there’s no rotting food still left in there,” you said, turning off the lawnmower and stepping back to admire your work. It wasn’t the prettiest job ever, but the lawn was mowed, and the difference was clear. Already, the house looked better, even with the chipping paint and anciently styled structure. “But it wouldn’t hurt to check.” 

Taehyun trailed behind you as you approached the front door, a queer feeling passing through your body as you felt an old familiarity drape over you like a blanket. You slipped the key into the hole and unlocked the heavy front door, the chipping white paint flaking off as it swung open, creaking all the way. You made a mental note to repaint the door when you could. 

Pocketing the key, you stepped up into the house that housed your sadness for so many years, and immediately you felt guilt pooling in your stomach. It was clear that in your parents’ later years they hadn’t been able to clean very well, and a thick layer of dust covered nearly everything in the first few rooms you walked through, apart from frequently used items and the floor, which looked grimy and in need of a deep scrubbing session. There were piles of trash that had never been taken out, and boxes and boxes of more useless items that they seemingly never used. You wouldn’t call them hoarders, but rather collectors—they never gave up something once they got their hands on it, thinking it’d come in handy one day. 

Now that you thought about it, maybe they were hoarders. You ignore that thought and immediately think to just clear out everything cluttered and clean the furniture as much as possible to stage it for possible buyers. You have no qualms or doubts about selling the house; you had no good memories associated with it, no positive nostalgia. And you had your own place and made enough money that you could get your own house if you so pleased—which you didn’t want to do just yet—without the bad memories. 

“Wow,” Taehyun says, whistling at the mess. “We really have our work cut out for us, don’t we?” 

“Just thinking about it is making my head hurt,” you grumble. “I’m checking out the basement for a second, do you mind scoping out the kitchen?” 

Taehyun salutes you, a cheesy smile on his face as he turns to walk back to the kitchen, which is much closer to the front door, and you take it upon yourself to undo the chain on the door down to the basement and clomp down the old wooden stairs. It’s not a scary basement, especially in the daylight. It was mostly another place for your parents to stash old knickknacks and such, a storage room if anything. Windows lined the very tops of the walls, letting in just enough sunlight to warm the room and light it up so that it didn’t feel like something out of a horror movie. Though, you had to admit that it was creepy being down there alone—but you had that odd feeling upstairs, too. 

You exhale loudly, plumes of dust flying up from the nearest box, and you sneeze as you pick up a box that looks to be full of books. “Jesus Christ,” you mutter, rubbing your teary eyes, “I need some god damn air.” 

“So do I,” a nasally voice proclaimed, and you nearly jump out of your skin as you look around and spot a figure of a man in the corner. 

“Taehyun!” you shout, throat straining, dropping the box. The corners split open and books spill out onto the floor as you rush for the stairs, collapsing against Taehyun as the two of you collide. 

“Is everything okay?” he asks, concerned, gripping you tightly. His gaze falls upon the split box. “Did you hurt yourself when you dropped the box?” He examines your hands, your arms. 

“Don’t you see him?” you whisper, and Taehyun’s big eyes seem to widen even more, if that’s even possible. 

“See who?” he whispers back. 

“There. In the corner.” Your voice is cracking, eyes welling up with tears both from the dust and the fear. “You don’t see him?” 

“There’s no one there…” Taehyun says. His lips suddenly feel extremely dry, and his tongue darts out to wet them. “Maybe—maybe this was too much all at once. I think we should go.” 

You wipe your eyes with your bare arm and nod, letting him lead you up the stairs. 

“Wait! Don’t go!” the voice says again, and you look behind you, terrified, to see the man coming after you both. He moves oddly, his limbs jerking in unnatural ways as if he were not used to walking. You shriek, rush in front of Taehyun and drag him up the stairs, out of the basement, past the kitchen, out the front door and through the front yard. You don’t stop until you’re both hunched over in the driveway, sides aching and chests heaving. 

The front door had slammed behind you both even though neither of you touched it, and you make eye contact with Taehyun. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to use words to let you know that he’s saying he’s never coming back to the house. 

You wish that you could say the same, but instead your eyes say that you have to come back—just not any time soon. 

The sun is setting when you and Taehyun leave the old house, and every time you blink you think you see the tall man out of the corner of your eye. It’s like he’s following you, and you can’t shake him off your trail. The only time you feel safe is when you’re out in the daytime, when his supposed presence is suppressed by crowds of other people. 

But you can’t always stay safe. And so your last few July nights are filled with nightmares, the kinds that leave you sweating buckets into your sheets, the kinds that make you wake up with tears in your eyes. 

There is nothing you can do about it—except go back and see him again. 

AUGUST

Taehyun had taken up a summer job on the opposite side of town, and though he promised to keep in touch, you hadn’t really heard from him much. When he did message you, it was about mundane things, more often than not he talked about said summer job, in which he did nothing but keep the landscape of an old retirement home in shape. This reminded you of the work that the two of you had done on your own house, but the one time that you tried to bring it up to him he hung up on you and didn’t call you back until the next day. “It just freaked me out, okay?” he said exasperatedly, “just hire someone to clean out the house.” 

You scoffed at that for two reasons: one, you didn’t have nearly enough money for that, and two, you had a terrible nagging feeling that these nightmares wouldn’t subside unless you got to the root of the problem. Which of course, was the house and whatever it was that resided in it. 

You never really considered yourself particularly gutsy or brave, but the lack of sleep was starting to get to you, and though that job offer that Taehyun had mentioned offered to let you work remotely until the end of the year, you knew that the sooner you got this shit over with, the sooner you could move on with your damn life. So you hauled your ass to the hardware store and picked up a bucket of white paint that you were almost sure matched the shade of the front door, though it was almost impossible to tell for sure with how weathered and damaged it was, and the cheapest cleaning supplies that would still get the job done. 

But as soon as you approached the gates once more, you felt the familiar drop in your stomach. It was not the biggest house, as your parents were not wealthy, but the aura that it emanated made it seem equivalent to a castle with unscalable walls. The house had two stories, with a triangular roof that came to a main point right in the middle. You recognized the window at the left as your old bedroom window, and swallowed past the lump in your throat. All of the windows were dirty and fogged up with grime, especially the ones on the bottom floor, which were covered in handprints from the outside, presumably from people trying to look in now that it was vacant. 

The late summer sun was already beating down on you as you walked the short distance from the driveway to the front porch, weighed down by the cleaning supplies and paint. Though the weather was not the most agreeable, you could not call the experience unpleasant as you swept the floor of the porch and scrubbed at the windows, finally finishing with a fresh coat of paint on the door. You sat down on the slightly damp wood of the first step down, hugging your knees to your chest and picking at the drying paint on your skin. The lawnmower was still out on the lawn, and the grass was already growing back, though it was not remotely close to the length it had been when you first arrived. You reached down to pick at a few weeds that were growing taller than the grass, rolling over the rough stalks in your fingers as you breathed in the damp summer air. The day has been almost too peaceful, and you know that this will change as soon as you open the front door and step back inside. You know that the reason you saw him was because of what happened inside the house, not outside. 

“I don’t know what the fuck to do!” you shout at your phone. Your hands are pulling at your hair, scraping at your scalp frantically as you breathe heavily, your lungs feeling like they’ve shrunk and are unable to take in as much air as you need. As the last syllable rings in your ears, the silence from the other end of your call seems to be louder than your screams. You stare at the small screen laying atop the desk of your hotel room, shaking uncontrollably. 

“We know what this is coming from,” your therapist says gently. They ignore your outburst, which you are sure you’ll get complaints about. 

“What?” you ask, voice quieter now. 

“It’s because of the house. It’s because of your parents. It was just like what your friend said. It was too much all at once.” 

“What, so just because I couldn’t deal with being in a fucking house for ten minutes I imagined a ghost?” you snap, unfurling yourself from your previous position. Your bare feet brushed against the wooden floor, sending chills through your whole body as you thought about it. A ghost. 

“You’re still blaming yourself. It isn’t your fault that your trauma is resurfacing, you know,” your therapist says matter-of-factly. “Maybe this is a good thing. Next time you go back, why don’t you try talking to the ‘ghost’? They might have some perspective on what’s going on.” 

“So your solution is for me to accept that I’m fucking crazy. And now I have to talk to this ghost, that you don’t even believe is really a ghost, because again, I’m fucking crazy and this is all in my head. You’re saying that I’m a psycho and this is all a culmination of trauma, and my parents, and a bunch of other bullshit.” You rub at your aching temples. You’re mad now, you’ve forgotten about your fear. Anger has replaced it wholly, a misdirection, a distraction from the truth that you don’t want to accept. 

“You’re not crazy. But I do think that this ‘ghost’ is what you just said: a culmination of all of those things. It’s a ‘physical’ picture of your trauma.” 

“So what, now I’m a schizophrenic?” 

Your therapist laughs a little, drily. “No, you’re not. Schizophrenia isn’t something to joke about or be taken lightly. This is a trauma response. It’s very different.” 

You don’t reply, mostly because you’re pissed off at your therapist for insinuating that this is all in your head, because you know what you saw. And now that you’d had a few days to really think about it, you knew that it was real, even though Taehyun couldn’t see it, and your therapist is insisting that it’s some bullshit trauma response. 

The ghost in your house is real. You knew him all those years ago, and he still knows you now. 

The once-cold drink in your hand is now warming quickly from the sunlight reflecting off of the glass bottle. It’s only half-drunk, but you already don’t really want it any more, mostly because of the unease in your stomach at the thought of having to clean out the inside of the house now. You only started on the outside to procrastinate; they had let you know that repainting and such was not on your end of the deal. That would be taken care of by professionals. And now that you stare at your subpar paint job on the front door, you completely understand why. It looks cheap and messy, even though you did everything right. 

You’re staring at the door, trying to work up the courage to open it, when your phone begins to vibrate in your pocket, the sudden movement making you jolt. Plucking the device from said pocket, you immediately pick up the call, seeing Taehyun’s name flash across the screen. 

“Hello?” you ask drily, thumping the bottom of your warming drink against the stair you’re sitting on, the mindless clanks mimicking an old song you used to like. 

“Where are you?” he asks, “I’m at your hotel.” 

Uncomfortably, you gnaw at your bottom lip as you quickly scan the area. A slight breeze whips through your sticky clothes, and you clear your throat awkwardly before replying. “Uh… went out for lunch,” you said dully, “remember that Thai place we liked back in high school?” 

“Christ, you’re really bad at lying. Don’t you remember when it closed down four years ago?” You can hear Taehyun shuffle around and sigh deeply. “You’re back at the house again, aren’t you?” 

“Fine, I am,” you snap. “What else was I supposed to do?” 

“I don’t know, maybe hire someone like I said? I bet there’s a bunch of idiots here that peaked in high school that would love to do it. It’s not like people like Seo Changbin have much to do after their football career crashed and died before they even got to college.” 

“Why the hell are you so bitter all of a sudden? And Changbin was one of the nice ones, you ass. You know he’s happy now, fuck football for destroying his shoulder.” 

“It’s not good for you to be back there!” he says, exasperated. “Forget Changbin, that’s not the point.” 

You sigh loudly. “I… I know. But there’s something about this place that makes me feel like I have to figure some shit out—like, here. In the house.” 

“Have you talked to your therapist lately? It’s your unresolved trauma on the phone.” 

“And that’s why I have to resolve it now!” you exclaim, “Look, I’m going to be careful, okay? I’ll take it slow and if some more freaky shit happens I’ll leave. But you have to help me pay for a professional then, you owe me after I helped you score that date last year.” 

“First of all, they ended up fucking me over, big time. Second of all, I feel like a date isn’t equivalent to money. But thirdly—fine. Just… let me know if you need anything, okay?” You feel a lump in your throat arise at the sudden empathy in his voice, and how it softened at the end of his statement. As much as you were annoyed with him, you knew that Taehyun only wanted you to be safe, and he out of all people knew just how much of a toll this process would take on you. 

“I will. Now get back to work, your lunch break ended twenty minutes ago,” you tease. 

“Ha ha,” he says drily, over pronouncing the words with a bitter tongue. “Call me when you get back to the hotel.” 

You roll your eyes to yourself and hang up after confirming that you would, in fact, make sure to call him when you get back, and then you turn your attention back to the project standing in front of you. You know that it’s time to go back inside, and you have a new burst of energy thanks to Taehyun doubting you. Maybe that burst of energy is mostly from pettiness, but it’s there nonetheless, and you plan to make use of it. 

You take out the key—that nasty old key—and slip it into the lock. The door opens much quicker than it did last time; there wasn’t enough time for it to stiffen as it did when it had been left alone for some time, and the door opens. It’s a little underwhelming, surprisingly. You weren’t quite sure what you were expecting—something big and dramatic? Something straight out of a horror film? But instead, it looks almost welcoming. You think that if you hadn’t had such horrible memories associated with that same front hall, you would find it warm and inviting. The air inside is stuffy and musty, but the sunlight that streams in through the open front door illuminates the dust rising from the ground in a way that makes it look like the air is full of glitter, and it takes your breath away as you stare at the golden flecks dancing in the slight breeze. 

Looking around, you realize that your work might be easier than you previously thought. Though the entire house was grimy, and there were definitely boxes all over the place, most of their salvageable furniture and belongings had already been cleared out and donated—you having told the people in charge that you didn’t give a fuck what happened to any of it. It wasn’t like you wanted a floral patterned couch with an indent from where your father used to sit his lazy ass while he screamed his head off at you. 

You decided that starting with the boxes of miscellaneous stuff would be your best bet—once you cleared those out, it would be much easier to clean the floors, without the hassle of moving dirty cardboard around all over the clean floors. For a moment you hesitate, but then realize that your clothes are already covered in paint and sweat—and honestly, more than a few stains from your lunch too—so you sit down on the floor, trying to pretend like you didn’t hear the sticky sound that it made as it stuck to your pants. You reach for the nearest box, and find that it’s full of nothing but old magazines, which you scoff at and immediately push into an empty corner, dubbing it the “trash” pile. You were already quite certain that most of if not all the boxes would be making their way to that very same corner from the looks of it. 

It’s almost nice once you get into a routine. You rifle through a box, pulling out perhaps one or two trinkets you could donate, an old shirt here and there that isn’t in bad shape, and you even find a pristine lamp in one box, still covered in the plastic that it came in. 

You aren’t even halfway through the boxes when you grunt to yourself as you drag a particularly large and heavy box out from underneath what used to be your dinner table, falling flat on your ass as you lose your grip and fly backwards. “Ow,” you mutter to yourself, as you relent and open the box right there, giving up on trying to get it completely out from under the table. Much to your surprise—it’s a box full of old records, and a majority of the weight seemed to come from the record player that was right on top of all the stacked vinyls. You cringe a little, hoping that none of them are damaged, and you exhale loudly as you set the record player on top of the table and fumble with the cord for a moment before plugging it in and watching it start to spin, without any music playing. You wipe the sweat from your forehead with a dust-covered forearm before wiping your hands on your filthy pants and starting to flip through the plentiful choices you have in front of you on the floor. You can see lots of your parents’ old favorites—when they weren’t being absolute shit parents to you, they would let you look through the box, and then list their favorites. You would always pick one of their favorites, just to make them happy. And most of the time it would, for a little while. 

This time, you can’t help but select one of your mom’s favorites, and you silently slide the old vinyl out of its protective paper cover before carefully setting it down on the player, the needle silently spinning for just a moment before the song starts to play. It’s warped now—from so many uses or carelessness, you don’t know—but it’s that same song, and you can’t help but sink into a chair and just watch that black record go round and round in a circle as the lyrics you know by heart start to weave their way into your ears. 

“That was her favorite one.” 

No. You can feel it—that very same presence that was there on the day that you and Taehyun first explored the house—it’s cold, and it makes your throat dry up, and you feel stuck to the chair you’re sitting in. 

“You used to play it all the time.” 

“Who are you?” you whisper, shielding your face from said presence, even though its voice is coming from behind you. 

“You really don’t remember me then, do you?” The voice is mournful now—or maybe mournful isn’t the right word. It’s almost whiny. 

“Obviously not,” you hiss, starting to get annoyed for some reason. 

“Can you look at me then?” his energy matches yours, exasperation clear in his nasally tone. 

The fear has all but dissolved from your body now that you have braved an attempt at a conversation with this thing, so you turn your upper body around to face it straight-on, and there’s no hiding the shock that spreads across your face as you stare down the presence—no, the ghost—that you know all too well. 

“I knew you’d remember me if you saw me,” he said, “I haven’t forgotten you, though.” 

You hold a grimy hand to your forehead, breathing heavily as you think about it some more. Of course you knew this idiot—he was one of the only solaces in your entire childhood, apart from Taehyun, though he came into it at a much later time. Now that you think about it, this ghost was the only thing that came to mind when you tried to come up with any sort of happy memory before the age of fourteen or so. 

“Yeonjun, I…” you trail off. Saying his name alone was too foreign on your lips; the way it rolled off your tongue left a bitter taste in your mouth. You couldn’t finish what you wanted to say, because to be quite honest, you weren’t sure at all what you were going to say. Sorry I forgot about you for like a decade, even though you were the only friend I had for forever. How’ve you been? How was it hanging with my parents as they withered away and died? 

There was probably a way you could have sugar coated all of that, but you didn’t think about it too much as he just shrugged and looked off to the side. “Time passes differently for me, remember? I know it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you—even more so since we last talked, but I’m used to being alone, so it’s okay.” 

You feel even worse after he says that, and he only makes it worse as he corrects himself. “Oh, wait. You don’t remember, right. Well you see, I’m pretty sure that ghosts, especially ones that have been dead for a while, process time differently than humans—” 

“How did they die?” you blurt out, interrupting his rambling. 

Yeonjun freezes, hands stopping their visual explanation along with the vocal part. You watch his fingers twitch before he lowers them, and he kicks at the floor and sighs, loudly. “Come on. It’s been like ten years, and that’s the first thing you say to me?” 

“What am I supposed to say?” you ask, feeling guilty but defensive all at once. “What the fuck am I supposed to say to a ghost? A real, literal fucking ghost.” 

“I don’t know, man! I’m not like—stupid. You could ask me how I’ve been, what the hell I’ve been up to all this time, literally anything about me instead of your fucking parents!” He’s yelling now, his voice bouncing off the dirty walls, and you crumple up, limbs folding in, head tucked close to your chest, as he shouts. But he lowers his voice after that, and runs a hand through his hair, which looks no different than it did all those years ago. “I mean, fuck, dude. You were the only thing I had. And then you left. And now you’re back and—and you don’t even remember me. You don’t remember shit.” 

“I’m sorry.” It’s a shit apology, but Yeonjun seems to accept it as he chuckles bitterly. 

“I am too. But… I know it’s not your fault and—and I’m really happy that you got out of here when you did. I’m even glad that you had that guy with you when you first came back, I know that he was important to you back then.” 

“You mean Taehyun?” 

“Yeah. I remember the day you met him, and you were so excited that you had a real, live human friend for once.” Yeonjun shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans and sighs. “I think that was when we slowly stopped… talking.” 

Of course, you don’t remember that much yet. You hardly remember Yeonjun himself—you just know that he’s important. For whatever reason. But you slowly nod as if you remember, but it doesn’t fool him and one side of his lips twist up in a bitter sort of smirk. 

“You don’t have to pretend like you remember, okay? Maybe it’ll come back to you. Or maybe it won’t, but either way, it’s fine. I’m just glad you didn’t yell at me and run this time.” 

“Sorry,” you say again. “I was really scared last time.” 

“You’re not scared now?” 

“No, I remember you now. Not—not a lot—but I know that you were important to me, so… I guess you can’t be too bad.” 

Yeonjun finally cracks a smile. “Damn straight,” he says, and the subtle twitch of his pursed upper lip sends a line of fire down your spine as you remember something so distant yet so tangible—and you can’t help but sigh with nostalgia. 

“Really? Iris again?” 

Your fingers fumble with the paper slip that your mother’s favorite record hides within as you jump at the sound of Yeonjun’s voice. “Yeonjun!” you scold, “I almost dropped it!” 

Yeonjun chuckles and floats down to the floor, so close to touching the beige carpet that his semi-translucent shirt nearly drags across it. If it wasn’t for his inability to collide with solid objects, he would have been laying belly-down on the floor across from you to maintain eye contact, seeing as how short you were when you knelt down to rifle through the box of records beneath the coffee table. “Come on, sugar,” he drawls, “it’s your sixth birthday. You should be able to choose what song you wanna hear.” 

Your little fingers tighten around the record, now half-slipped out of the case. “I don’t know…” you say doubtfully, hesitancy laced throughout your voice. “I’m never allowed to choose the music, you know that.” 

“It’s your special day!” he exclaims, floating upwards and spreading his arms out, as if he were taking in the sunshine on a lovely summer afternoon. “If not now, then when?” 

There’s something about Yeonjun that makes you want to listen to him. Not in the way that you feel with your parents—no, they’re demanding in a way that makes your stomach hurt when you’re around them, even if you’ve done everything right—but in an entirely new way. You know that he doesn’t have any malicious intent. Yeonjun just likes having fun with you, and there’s so little fun to be found around the house. And after all, he’s right. 

It is your birthday. 

So you set your mother’s favorite record aside, placing it carefully on top of the coffee table so that no one steps on it accidentally, and your stubby little kid fingers gingerly flip through the rest of the records before you settle on your favorite. 

It’s one of the newest ones in the box, with undented corners that are still sharp enough to cut you if you aren’t too careful, and no fingerprints all over the shiny cover. Your aunt bought it for you and told you to only listen to it when your parents weren’t around, so that you didn’t get on their nerves. It’s loud and punk-y and it makes you feel like a real big kid. It’s the music that you hear all of the older kids in your neighborhood talk about when they walk down your street and their loud voices carry in the wind up to your open window. 

There’s a rush in your head, and you swear you can hear the blood gushing through your veins with anticipation as your hands shake when you place the record carefully onto the machine. It starts spinning, and you drop the needle in just the correct place. 

Funky instrumentals and the loud, clear voice of one of your favorite singers travels through your ears as you clap in delight, and Yeonjun starts dancing in a silly sort of way to make you laugh. “See?” he said over the music, “isn’t this nice?” 

But before you could reply, you felt all of the happiness melt out of your body and disappear into the ground beneath you as you felt a large hand on your shoulder. Yeonjun’s eyes travel from where they met with yours, to the intimidatingly large figure that’s behind you. 

“Why don’t we take that out now,” says your father, in a voice that is terrifyingly calm. 

You don’t want to even look back at him for a second, so you quickly turn off the machine and pick up the record, trying to quickly put it back so that your mother’s favorite music can be put back on and it’ll be like nothing ever happened—but your father snatches the record from your hands before you can finish putting it back in the case, and you watch with shock as he snaps it in half with his hands. Little black plastic flecks fly through the air as he drops the halves onto the floor and uses his foot to crush them even further beyond fixing. 

“That’ll be you next time,” he says quietly, before walking away and disappearing down the dark hall to his room. 

You sit there in silence with Yeonjun as the first verse of Iris starts playing yet again. 

Well, maybe you didn’t sigh with nostalgia. Maybe it was something more like rumination—something that left a bitter taste on your tongue. Either way, you remembered something about Yeonjun, and that alone made you crack a weak smile as Iris continued to warble in the background of your reunion. 

— 

It’s mid-August before you try to ask Yeonjun about your parents again. You don’t really know why you want to know so bad—it’s a bit morbid, really—but you feel a pull in your chest that won’t go away. It’s similar to the pull that brought you back to the house and back to Yeonjun in the first place, and that is why you decide to ask him just once more as you’re scrubbing the kitchen floor. 

You’re on your hands and knees, working away at the sticky, dusty floor, and you already know that the knees of your jeans are completely soaked through from the way the denim is sticking to your skin. You’re using a sponge—one that was once a bright yellow, and is now an odd gray—to rinse away the sticky residue that clings to the linoleum. “You missed a spot there,” Yeonjun says, pointing to an uncleaned spot next to the refrigerator, and you roll your eyes and huff as you sit back on your ankles, wiping away the sweat from your brow with one soapy arm. 

“I know you can’t technically help, but you’re really getting on my nerves,” you say, tossing the grimy sponge into the bucket of soapy water. 

“I’m keeping you company!” he exclaims, “would you rather be alone?” 

“No,” you say, sulking. 

There’s a silence that settles between the two of you then, just for a moment. The only sound is the faint popping of bubbles in your bucket that sits beside you, until you take a deep breath and decide to just go for it. “Yeonjun,” you start, “if it’s okay… could you tell me what happened to my parents?” 

Yeonjun stills. You watch his eyes lower and his mouth twitch before he sighs aloud. “Are you sure you want to know?” he asks, “I thought you didn’t care about what happened to them.” 

“I don’t care about them,” you say quickly, “but… I just want to know.” 

Yeonjun settles right above the counter, floating just an inch or so above the grimy granite, and crosses his legs, leaning back as if he could use the cabinets as a backrest. “Well,” he says, “I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure it was the smoking that was the final straw.” 

The small white and blue box of cigarettes sits in front of you on the coffee table. It’s about half-empty, half of the cancer sticks inside smoked away and settled in your parents’ lungs. You know that smoking is bad for you—you’d known ever since the second grade when there was a whole presentation about it at school, and a few of the kids had figured out that that bitter smell of tobacco was, in fact, coming from you. Thus, you endured a year and a half of kids teasing you about smoking, and when you protested and said that it was your parents that smoked and not you, it really only got worse—because for some reason, the kids found it comedic that you came from somewhat of a broken home. And worse, for some reason, even though this was completely, one hundred percent your parents’ fault, you still felt an urge to defend them. You lost count of how many times you pretended that your mom packed you your lunches, just like all the other kids’ moms did, when you were the one that had woken up before the sun had risen just to put together a sandwich and write a little note. “Have a great day, I love you!” the little pink post-it said, signed “Mom” with a flourish. You tried to mimic the way your mother’s handwriting looped and curved, how there were two little loops inside the ‘o’ because she always half-assed her cursive, and it ended up somewhere between print and script. Or, how you pretended that your father was to take you to the zoo the weekend after Shin Ryujin bragged that her whole family went on a trip to the aquarium. 

None of it was ever true. And as you stared at that little box, all dented from being carried around in your mother’s purse, in your father’s pocket, you felt a rush of hatred towards it, more hate and negativity than your little self had ever felt before. 

You snatched up the box, almost crushing—no, for sure crushing the cigarettes left inside—and you shoved it underneath the couch, huffing as you balled your hands into fists. 

“What are you doing?” Yeonjun hissed, “they’re gonna go crazy looking for those!” 

“Let them!” you whisper-shout, “I hate cigarettes! I hate how they smell, I hate how people think I use them, and I hate how my parents like them more than they like me!” You run past Yeonjun and towards the staircase, bare feet thumping against the stairs softly as your mother briskly walks past those same stairs, wondering aloud where her cigarettes were. 

“Where the hell are they?” you hear her shout, and you feel guilt tug at your heart as you squeeze your pillow to your chest. Her footsteps approach, less than a minute after you closed the door behind you, and you side-eye Yeonjun as he stares back at you helplessly. “Did you touch my cigarettes?” she asks as soon as she swings open the door, with such force that the doorknob slams into the wall and leaves a mark in the white paint. 

You’ve always been bad at lying, and this is why your mother grabs you by the hair and tosses you across the room, screaming that she just needed one to get through the rest of the day, and now she was fucked, absolutely fucked, all because of you. 

And all that Yeonjun did was watch, unable to help you fight back. 

It wasn’t like you wanted to anyways. You lay there on the floor where you landed once you were thrown, with silent tears trickling down your cheeks as your mother screamed at you, flecks of saliva spilling from her angry lips. 

“So… when did you start smoking?” 

“Shut up. I know you’re judging me.” You breathe out a cloud of smoke and rub at your tired eyes with your fingers that still smell like cleaning supplies. 

“It’s literally what killed your mom,” he said defensively, “I just told you that.” 

“Then let it kill me too.” 

Yeonjun doesn’t reply, and you can feel his eyes on you as you sit on the stairs that lead up to the hell-house that you know you have to finish cleaning, puffing away at the one thing that’s never let you down before. 

When you look back to ask Yeonjun why no one bothered to check on your dad after your mom passed, you drop the half-smoked cigarette. 

He’s gone. 

SEPTEMBER

September brings a slight chill in the air, an ever-so subtle reminder that summer is now over—technically, not officially. You thought that by finishing the ground floor before summer ended, you’d be off the hook for the colder months, but once you managed to break down the door to the basement again and find the hidden handle that led to the attic you realized you were kinda-sorta fucked. There was no way you’d finish this any time soon. 

After the day that Yeonjun disappeared on you, he’d only appeared every now and then, his voice weaker and more mature now, losing that childish Peter Pan-esque edge that you now realize he’d always harbored. It was like he’d sobered up, realized the weight of what was happening, almost. But he was still Yeonjun after all—which you now understood was a good thing, after recalling more and more fond memories with him. 

He’d guided you around and into all of the boxes that were stuffed against the wall in your living room and the kitchen, pushed up against the sides of the hallway, hidden away underneath both the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and you realized that even though you’d said you wished he would stop annoying you, the company was actually quite nice. When Yeonjun wasn’t making fun of you or berating you for smoking, he was good at holding a conversation. It was almost like you hadn’t been apart for over ten years, almost like he was a real, live person—your friend, that wasn’t a dead guy that inhabited your childhood home. Multiple times you caught yourself thinking that you should introduce him to Taehyun, that the two of them would get along quite well, before remembering what happened when they actually “met” that first and last time. It was bittersweet, remembering that Yeonjun couldn’t be seen by most other people, and even if they could, in fact, see him, there was a very limited number of things you could do with him, seeing as how he couldn’t leave the house or make physical contact with anyone or anything. 

And once the ground floor was cleared out, sparkling like it was almost new, he was the one who showed you which kitchen drawer the key to the basement was kept in, almost identical to the key to the front door. You finally got around to getting a key ring for the two, even putting two charms on the ring alongside the old keys—one, a shitty little beaded trinket that you remembered making back in elementary school, and two, a little plastic ghost that you found at the dollar store. The day that you got it you showed it to Yeonjun, shaking it in front of his face as he glared at you. “It reminds me of you!” you said playfully as he sulked. 

“I don’t look like that,” he insisted, “they’ve got it all wrong! What lame ass ghost looks like that?” 

But you named it Yeonjun anyways, much to his distaste, and he eventually, begrudgingly, accepted it. 

It’s a warmer day when you finally return to begin clearing out the basement, and you aren’t quite sure what to expect. Yeonjun had told you that it was pretty much the same situation as the ground floor, but a lot of them were opened and just filled with junk that was all garbage-worthy, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to get through even though there were plenty of them. You show up to the house whistling a tune that you can’t quite place, swinging your keys in one hand and carrying a bucket of cleaning supplies in the other. 

“I was wondering when you’d show up.” 

“Stop trying to scare me.” You glare at Yeonjun’s head that’s poking through the front door—now repainted once again, properly this time. 

“Just trying to have a little fun,” he says, lips curling up into a smile. You can’t help but smile too as you roll your eyes—you’d missed his silly side. It had disappeared a little after he saw you smoking. “Are you starting the basement today?” he asks, floating beside you as you shut the door behind you and walk down the hall to the basement door. 

“Yep,” you sigh, “and according to you… I have a lot to get through.” 

“I’ll be keeping you company, don’t worry doll,” he says, saluting at you. 

“If only you could help clean too,” you say drily, inserting the key into the large, golden lock and twisting. The door creaks open on its own once you take out the key, and you fumble around for the lightswitch, which you remember is right outside the door so that you can’t control the lights once you’re down there. 

The lights switch on, yellow and flickering, and a faint buzzing fills your ears, the effort of working apparently a bit much for the old wiring. “Ready?” he asks, following your gaze, looking down the long, steep staircase. 

“I guess so,” you reply, unease creeping into your mind. 

To be quite fair—you didn’t know anyone that would enjoy a creepy basement, especially one in an old house like yours—even during the day. The bare wooden stairs are slippery with dust, and you make sure to hold on tightly to the railing for safety even though that too is filthy. Cobwebs and little piles of dirt and miscellaneous crumbs gather in the corners of each individual stair, and you keep an eye out for spiders or other little creatures that might be roaming the area, thinking that it was abandoned by humans and therefore the perfect home for them. The old wood creaks loudly, and you worry that it might actually give underneath your weight, but each stair holds, and you finally make it down to the nightmare-inducing basement. If not nightmare-inducing for all of the horrible memories that were starting to come back to you, then simply because of the sheer filth. Yeonjun had failed to warn you of just how thick the layers of dust and grime were. 

“When was the last time anyone was down here?” you ask, coughing as you stir up particles by simply walking over to the nearest pile of boxes. You wave your hand in front of you, desperately trying to fan away anything that was threatening to invade your lungs. 

“I was here just yesterday!” he protested, before wrinkling his nose and backtracking. “Oh, you mean someone living…” You nod awkwardly, placing the bucket of cleaning supplies on the floor as you start to open up the closest box, which you realize quickly is just full of old shopping receipts. “Man… it’s been years, then. They stopped coming down here once they realized there was no more room to hoard shit. Everything here is at least a few years old, so beware of food.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you at the last part, and you chuckle, taking it as a joke until you find a box of canned goods so old that several of the containers have exploded, leaking rancid juice all over the box and even onto the floor. It’s long since dried up, but it’s still sticky to the touch, and you gagged at the stench. 

“I don’t even know what this originally was,” you complain, tossing the entire box into a large, heavy-duty garbage bag, “those idiots ripped off all the labels.” 

“Maybe… beans?” Yeonjun guesses, though it’s unclear. 

“Whatever, I’d prefer to live in ignorant bliss,” you declared, moving to the next box. This one, unlike most of the others, is taped shut, and you have to use the basement key to rip it open, having forgotten a pocket knife or any other tool that you could use to cut through something, especially something as tough as old duct tape. “Oh, Christ…” you mutter under your breath, as you pull out the trinket inside and hold it to the flickering ceiling light, “Jun, come here. Do you remember this?” 

“How could I forget? You talked to it like it was real even though I was right here,” he grouched, after floating over curiously and realizing what you were holding. 

“It has a name,” you sing, waving the little doll around. 

Yeonjun stays silent, floating beside another wall of boxes. His expression looks almost pained. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask, lowering the doll. 

“You do remember why you named it what you did, right?” he asks. His voice is strained. 

You sit down on the floor, ignoring the filth, and stare at the doll in your hands. It’s threadbare, grayed, and smelly now. It was all of those things back then too, but once you say its name you understand why Yeonjun is so upset. 

“That isn’t even a clever insult.” You wipe your eyes and stare up at Yeonjun, whose arms are crossed as he stares down at you. You’re sitting on your bedroom floor, crying to yourself about the assholes at school that just won’t shut the fuck up about the way you smell—hence your new nickname, Smoky. “It’s actually laughable how stupid it is,” he scoffs, and a particularly loud sniffle from you prompts him to settle down closer to the floor so that he can look you in the eye. “Come on, it’s not that bad.” 

“It could be anything,” you exclaim, “it’s just the fact that they use a name at all to call me out and stuff—it makes me feel singled out. It makes me feel like shit.” 

“Don’t—don’t say that word,” Yeonjun says softly, “come on—want to play some music? Or we could—” 

“No,” you interrupt, standing up and turning away from him. “I just want to be alone.” 

You hear Yeonjun sigh. It’s deep, and long, and you can tell you’ve hurt his feelings. You feel guilt pooling in your stomach as he tells you he’d be around if you changed your mind—he was only trying to help, after all. But you can’t help it. You really just want to be alone. You climb into your bed and curl up into a little ball on top of your covers, staring at your old gray stuffed cat sitting next to your pillow. 

His name is Smoky, too. 

You slowly reach out to pick him up, and then you’re holding him close to your chest and sobbing. It’s stupid, and you feel like a goddamn idiot. It’s just a word, it’s just something that people are using to get under your skin, and you’re letting them. It sounded silly when you explained it to Yeonjun, and it sounds silly when you repeat it in your head. But it doesn’t sound silly when it counts—when someone yells it out at you when you’re walking down the hallway, or when you have to work with someone in class. And that is something that you can’t make sense of, and you know Yeonjun will never understand. 

You’re shaken from your pity party when your door slams open—the door knob hits the wall in the same place it always does, further chipping away at the paint. “Are you really in bed right now?” your mother asks sharply, and you sit up immediately, wiping away your tears. She stands there in the dark hallway, one hand curled around the door knob and the other resting on her hip in a judgemental stance. “I asked you to clean the kitchen this morning.” Just like it always is when it comes to her anger, it’s quiet at first. 

“I forgot,” you say drily, not in the mood to do any sort of cleaning—or be screamed at by your mother. But you instantly regret your tone when you see a fire alight in her eyes at this opportunity to punish you. “I’m sorry,” you blurt out, “I’ll do it now.” 

“No,” she says, “you’re going to clear out the basement instead, and you can stay there tonight while you think about what sort of idiot would sass their mother. You really think that’s something we’re gonna allow? Do you like being punished or something?” 

“No,” you say meekly. You start to stand up, but it’s too slow for your mother, and she grabs you roughly by your shirt and starts pulling you down the hall. All you can hear is the sound of her heels clicking against the floor and your blood pumping in your ears. You almost trip over your own feet as you’re pulled down the stairs, and your ankle rolls as your mother sharply turns a corner. You grit your teeth instead of crying out. 

Your mother is breathing heavily as she fumbles with the lock for a moment before pulling open the door roughly, and she jerks her head, motioning towards it. “Go.” 

For some reason, that’s worse than if she were the one to push you. 

You step forward shakily, but with your bad ankle, you can’t catch yourself, and you tumble down the first half of the stairs, landing with a thud. You’re facing the wall, but you watch the light leave the room as your mother slams the door. 

“Are you okay?” Yeonjun’s alarmed voice asks, and you suck in a deep, shaky breath as you push yourself up into a sitting position, shaking. 

“What do you think?” you ask. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, but you just shake your head. 

“It’s not your fault.” 

The door opens once more, and you look up to the light, seeing your mother. Since the light is coming from behind her, her entire front is in the shadows, and you can’t read her facial expression. She’s holding something in her hand. You watch silently as she holds it up, looking at it for a moment before throwing it down at you. It lands in front of you, and she slams the door again. This time, you hear the lock click before she walks away. 

You can’t see anything, but you grope around for whatever it was she threw down. Your fingers brush against something soft and fuzzy, and you know what it is as soon as you pull it to your chest. Little Smoky, still damp from your tears. 

Smoky never sees the light of day again. 

“Poor guy,” is all you say as you stare at the limp cat in your hands. He smells like everything else in the basement now, reeking of mildew and rot. You wonder how you forgot about him, but then you feel guilty as you remember how you somehow forgot about a whole person—a whole ghost—and you slowly set him down. 

“So you remember,” Yeonjun confirms. 

“I’m remembering a lot these days,” you say honestly. “It’s—it’s shit that I haven’t thought about in years. A bunch of repressed memories.” 

“Is it hard?” he asks, “remembering, I mean.” 

“Most of it… yeah, I guess you could say it’s hard. It just reminds me of how miserable I was before I had my own life.” You smile, a little sadly. “But… that also makes me much more grateful for my happiness now, you know? I never thought I could be happy, and I proved myself wrong. It’s a good feeling.” 

“Yeah?” Yeonjun asks, looking up at the horizontal windows that line the tops of your basement walls. “Can you tell me what it’s like out there now?” His voice sounds a little distant, foggy. “What’s changed?” 

“That Thai place I told you about closed down,” you said, “and now that old store that used to sell handmade baby clothes is a Starbucks. There’s a new shopping mall, but everything there sucks and is way too overpriced.” 

But that doesn’t satisfy Yeonjun, and you know it. 

“The people—the people are still the same, Jun. Really. That’s partially why it was so hard to come back here and see everyone. It’s like I went back in time ten years. It’s like I’m still stuck here.” You swallow hard. “But really. I promise that nothing has really changed since you last saw it. Towns like these never do.” 

Yeonjun seems to shake off whatever far-away thought had overtaken him and clears his throat. “Right, yeah. Thanks.” He hides his face from you as he turns to examine another stack of boxes. “There’s a shit ton of coupons in here.” 

Your heart thumps painfully as you watch your friend try to hide his grief from you, and you feel bad for not thinking about what you said more. While working through your own feelings, you forgot to consider how Yeonjun felt, after all these years alone. 

“Really?” you ask, your voice wobbling as you start to cry for him. “Let me come see.” 

— 

Unlike the basement, you were never allowed in the attic. 

The attic was not a place you were forced into as a punishment. 

Because the attic is gorgeous, you realize. 

It’s by far the cleanest room in the house, though still covered in a thick layer of dust. However, it’s easy to sweep away and collect in a dustpan since there’s no sticky residue that it clings to, unlike the multiple layers of grease and other substances that had accumulated on the basement floor after years of neglect. 

Cleaning the windows first was a smart choice, allowing natural sunlight to peek through the panes of bubbled glass, casting wavy shadows on the hardwood floor. Indeed, it’s especially beautiful in the late afternoon sunset, when the rays are bright and warm and golden, the entire room looking like it was doused in honey and maple syrup and everything sweet and thick. It’s then that you don’t mind spending long hours there at the house, forgetting all of the bad that went on behind closed doors. For in the attic, in that sweet sugary autumn light, it’s almost like you can imagine a different childhood in that house, one that was happy and sweet—one that you wanted to savor on your tongue, instead of swallow past as soon as possible. 

Yeonjun flutters in and out of the room, making passive snarky remarks as you pull out vintage photo albums and memories that you hardly recognize. Really, you hardly even recognize them as something that your parents would want to keep around, not finding it to match the personalities that you knew so unfortunately well. They never wanted to make memories with you, not good ones anyways.

As you dig through old photo frames and trinkets, you realize there’s a surprising amount that you find intriguing, that you want to keep for your own. Naturally, you throw out all of the actual belongings, not caring about your mother’s high school yearbook or your dad’s old collection of Kangol hats. 

“What’s that?” Yeonjun asks, appearing next to you as you use your thumb to rub dust off of an old vase, revealing intricate hand-painted patterns beneath the layers of dust. 

“Something that belonged to my mom, I think,” you say, admiring it before setting it aside in a box, which is growing quite full of things that you want to keep. Yeonjun’s gaze falls on the box, and his expression hardens a little. “What?” you ask, frowning. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

“I wish I could come with you,” he says, finally, after a few moments of awkward, expectant silence. You feel a lump form in your throat as Yeonjun stares down at the box of things, his expression conflicted. “I—I know I can’t, but… I’m really going to miss you, when you’re done here,” he whispers, a crestfallen look on his face. 

Your voice feels thick with emotion as you speak, but it comes out sounding almost monotonous. “I wish you could come with me too,” you say, even though you’re not sure how you would fare in life with a ghost tagging around constantly. Even if it’s Yeonjun. 

He smiles, a little bitterly—you can tell that he’s jealous of your life, of the fact that you get to live and breathe and walk around. “No, you don’t,” he replies, sighing. “And I get it. Really, it wouldn’t be right… to hold you back like that.” 

“You wouldn’t be holding me back,” you say, immediately, even though you know it’s not true—it was your initial thought. 

“Be honest, okay? I’m not going to be offended. And even if I was, it’s not like I can do anything about it,” he says, chuckling now, his good-natured attitude returning. 

“You’re already haunting my house,” you say, managing a small chuckle. 

“Hey, it wasn’t always your house!” he retorts, laughing, but then both of your smiles fade, slowly. You’d assumed, of course, that Yeonjun had lived here before you and your parents moved in, but you never really thought about how or why he died here. You’d never asked either, thinking it was probably rude to ask a ghost how they died. 

“But, uh… it’s yours now, of course. And it was yours for much longer than it was mine.” 

“Was it?” you ask, furrowing your brow at him. 

Yeonjun shifts uncomfortably, looking away. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” you say quickly, feeling guilty, “but… I guess, I do wonder.” You bite your tongue, hoping that wasn’t the wrong thing to say. But Yeonjun just sighs, and then looks up at you with a small, understanding smile. 

“Remember what I said about not needing to hold back?” he asks, smiling crookedly. You again manage a small smile. 

He bites his lower lip, running his tongue over it as he thinks. “I don’t know much,” he begins, slowly, “so I hope you’re not expecting details… but I do remember living here with my dad, long before you and your family moved in. I don’t remember how or when I died, but I remember a few things about what I was like as a person. That’s mostly it.” 

“What were you like?” you ask, leaning back against a stack of boxes and looking at him, a soft smile on your face. You can’t help it—he does look pretty in this light, translucent and almost silvery in the waning sunlight. 

“Like this,” he says, grinning, “just as handsome and perfect.” 

You roll your eyes, and for a moment you fully believe that he’s a solid, real person and you can reach over and playfully shove him to make him stop being annoying. Your muscles twitch as you almost move to do it. “Really,” you say, smiling, “what were you like?” 

His smile fades slightly, and he clears his throat. “Well… actually, I wasn’t as great. I was kind of a jerk, in school and everything. I had a lot of friends that were just as horrible as me, and we would go around and act like we owned the world.” He wrinkles his nose at the memory, displeased. “It’s really embarrassing to admit now…” 

“So you were one of those people,” you say, unable to hold back your smug smile. “I knew it. You gave off that energy.” 

Yeonjun groans. “Take that back. Please. I swear, I’ve changed.” 

You again resist the urge to nudge him playfully. “I’m just messing with you. You’re nothing like that now,” you say, chuckling. 

A cool breeze drifts over your bare arms, and you shiver, looking over at the open window. Night has fallen by now, and the warm syrupy light is completely gone. The room is only lit by a small lamp in the corner of the attic, with darkness creeping in every corner and crevice. Yeonjun looks truly silvery and translucent now in the moonlight, his features beautiful and sharp in the cool air. 

“I should probably go,” you say, after a little while. 

Yeonjun’s face doesn’t change for a moment, like he’s frozen in time, but then he just nods, so slightly that it barely looks like he moved. 

Without any further acknowledgement, you stand up, dusting off the seat of your pants, and leave Yeonjun amongst the last few boxes in the attic that you couldn’t fit into your car. As you lock your doors and sigh, feeling the weariness settling in your bones from the long day of work, you pull out your phone as a queer feeling overcomes you. Though you’ve never felt the urge to before, you’re suddenly incredibly curious about Yeonjun’s past. 

Is it an invasion of privacy? Perhaps. But like he said—he was already dead. 

Quickly typing out a search of his name and the general area, you’re surprised when dozens of articles flood in, all dating back to the early 2000s. And then, you see it. The words flash before your eyes in stark contrast, the images only adding to the disturbances, with flashes of red in a dilapidated, neglected house. 

FATHER KILLS SON. MURDER-SUICIDE. DEVASTATING LOSS TO THE COMMUNITY. WE MOURN THE LOSS OF CHOI YEONJUN, 18-YEAR OLD STAR FOOTBALL PLAYER WITH A FULL-RIDE TO AN IVY LEAGUE.

Your phone clatters to the floor of your car, slipping between the seats and leaving you in complete darkness. For a moment, you sit there in stunned silence before cursing under your breath and shoving your hand between the seats, feeling for the smooth screen of your phone. 

You find it quickly, and see a flash of an image before exiting out of your search. An incredibly dirty and dingy room, which you now recognize to be your bedroom, with a blood stained mattress and other dark questionable stains on the once-white sheets and on the floors below. 

OCTOBER 

Eight. Eight times. 

That’s how many times you’ve returned to the house since you found out how Yeonjun died, each time riddled with anxiety about having to face him and pretending like you don’t know the truth. Like you don’t have the answer that he’s been searching for all of these years. 

But each time, he failed to appear. You finished cleaning the attic with no company, and it ended up being a much lengthier process than you originally assumed—mostly because you found your father’s birth certificate shoved into a random folder with pages and pages of expired coupons, and you nearly threw the entire thing away without realizing, which resulted in you feeling the need to go through all of the trash again, just to make sure. 

Naturally, there were no other important documents in the trash that you’d already collected—and it ended up being a massive waste of your time. But it sent a wave of relief through your tired body, letting you know that nothing important had gotten tossed by accident. 

After clearing out the attic, you thought that Yeonjun might come back—if not to talk to you and be your friend, then perhaps to see the progress on the house he inhabits? Yet, nothing happened. Nothing as you finished sweeping the floors, nothing as you moved the last few boxes out of the attic and either into your car or the garbage, and nothing when you stand by the front door for a moment, your hand hesitating before opening it and leaving—hoping that he would come to say goodbye. 

It wasn’t the end—you still had your own bedroom to clean out. It was what you’d been dreading; both because it was a cesspool of bad memories in your own life, and also because of what you found out about Yeonjun’s past, and what had happened to him in that room specifically. It still sent a chill down your spine to think about the room, which was painted with dark red and other dark stains—a horrifying reminder of the crime that was committed there. You try your hardest to recall if you ever saw any stains or any signs of the disturbing event, but your mind comes up blank. 

You know that the only solution, the only way to ease your mind, is to go back to the house and finally finish what you started. Just as it were so back in July, after you were plagued with nightmares upon your first visit back home, after so many years. 

On a crisp autumn day in mid October, you return to the house, knowing that this would be one of, if not the last time. Just before you drove over, you’d been chewing your nails nervously as you spoke to Taehyun over the phone—you needed some last minute encouragement. 

“Summer’s over, you know. What about that job offer again?” Taehyun asks, his voice muffled over the phone—he was driving to work, and on the way he passed under a tunnel which always made his service choppy. 

“I got an extension, until the end of the year. They actually came to me about it, because they’re having a fresh start at the company come the new year,” you explain, as you pack up your cleaning supplies, preparing to head over to the house. “They said a lot of applicants dropped because of the sudden change in timeframe, but it worked out perfectly for me. Now I have until November to wrap everything up.” 

“Not December?” 

“Well, my lease for my new apartment in the city starts in December…” you trail off, realizing this leaves you with the rest of October and November, to finish cleaning, take photos, and actually put the house up for sale. The cleaning was just the first step—and you were lagging. 

“… Right.” 

You could hear the doubt in Taehyun’s voice, so clear that it made you squirm with shame. He was probably thinking that you should have hired someone—probably someone like god damn Seo Changbin—to just do the dirty work for you, instead of making yourself suffer through it. 

“I only have one room left to clear out before I can officially put the house up for sale,” you say defensively, picking up on Taehyun’s attitude. 

“I believe in you. You know that, right?” he asks gently, his tone different now—more pity, you think. 

“I know,” you say, trying not to be awkward. 

“It’s not easy. You’re doing a great job,” he says, softly. His voice crackles towards the end of the sentence, his service beginning to cut out more. “Hey, I’ll call you after my shift, alright? Let me know how cleaning the last room goes.” Through his spotty service and choppy voice, you can sense hesitation. You know he remembers Yeonjun too, but you haven’t mentioned him since the first day. Like your therapist, he probably assumed it was some sort of trauma response after all. 

“Alright. Have fun with the elderly,” you say, cracking a smile. 

“You know I won’t. That one old man keeps yelling at me because of the length of the individual blades of grass. He should just be happy I didn’t accidentally run anyone over,” he scoffs, before chuckling softly. 

“They really should have hired someone more qualified. And more empathetic,” you tease, hanging up as you hear Taehyun start to protest. Smiling as you pack up the last few things you need, you head out to your car, the cool autumn breeze whistling through the crisp branches, loosening colorful leaves that fall down like raindrops around you. You shove the box of cleaning supplies into your trunk and slam it shut, sliding into the driver’s seat and starting your car. Loud, grungy music plays over the radio, one of your old favorites that makes your heart almost ache with nostalgia, despite the less-than-depressing lyrics and tune. 

Which leaves you here—picking up the box of cleaning supplies and balancing it on your hip as you use one hand to grapple for the trunk, slamming it shut securely as you set the box down, breathing a heavy sigh. Luckily, it’s cooled down since July, and you no longer find yourself soaked in your own sweat from completing the smallest tasks—something that was purely impossible during the heat waves that torture your area during the summer months. 

Picking up the box again, you readjust your grip to make it easier to carry as you make your way down the small path. The lawn is freshly trimmed, thanks to Taehyun, who was willing to do the lawn work all summer as long as it meant he didn’t have to actually step foot inside the house, and as long as he could speed home afterwards—this was what told you he hadn’t forgotten about the incident with Yeonjun, upon their first and presumably last meeting. 

You're able to slot the big skeleton key into the brand new lock on the door and let yourself in, closing the door behind you with your foot. You trudge up the stairs step by step, making sure not to trip over your own feet and go tumbling back down. 

Finally, you reach your bedroom. You know that if you hesitate any longer you’ll never bring yourself to do it, so you just reach out and turn the doorknob, opening the time capsule of a room and entering, just as you did every day in your youth. 

Putting down the box of cleaning supplies, which had been getting steadily heavier in your arms the longer you held it, you take a deep breath, smelling the dust—there was hardly a hint of your old perfume, or your old laundry detergent—it was like a ghost inhabited this room. 

Perhaps it did—you think of Yeonjun again. 

“Yeonjun?” you speak softly, though you haven’t seen him since late September. For some reason it feels different this time as you call out for him—it feels like he really might appear. 

“You’re back. I thought you were done.” 

Yeonjun slowly passes through the door of your bedroom. He looks faint—or maybe that’s just the terrible lighting in the room from the singular flickering lightbulb, paired with the crappy natural lighting due to the setting sun. 

“You thought I’d leave without finishing the job? Am I someone that abandons things that are half-done?” you ask, trying to make your tone light and playful. Yeonjun looks up at you wearily, not returning the favor. 

“No… But it’s been so long. I thought it might be another ten years before I see you again,” he says softly. He drifts closer to you, slowly, as if it pained him to go any faster. 

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” you say, your brow furrowing. “I wouldn’t leave… not without saying goodbye.” 

“Is that what you’re here to do?” His expression darkens slightly, and he turns away, crossing his arms. “Are you done here?” 

You hesitate, your hand twitching as you almost reach out to him to try and comfort him—almost. “After I clean out this room…” you begin, but trail off, not wanting to finish the sentence. 

“You don’t have to sugarcoat things. I always knew this was coming, that you’d leave again—it was the plan from the start,” he says, harshly. “I’m not a baby either. I can take it. I know more than you think.” He flinches a little, as if he’s said something he regrets. 

More than you think? You walk around him so that you’re standing in front of him, facing him. “You’re not just talking about me cleaning the house,” you say, softly, knowingly. “How did you find out? When did you find out?” 

Yeonjun looks away, sighing. His eyes are dark and mournful when he looks back at you, his brow furrowing and his puffy lips turning down into a frown. “In one of the old newspapers in the attic… I was purposely looking through them after you laid them out that one day and left without throwing them away. I made the headline—and the front page, naturally,” he says, almost bitterly. “I didn’t want you to find out that I found out.” 

“Why? Did you think I’d be mad or something?” you ask, confused. “Is that why you disappeared?” Anger starts bubbling up in your stomach—you’re not mad that he found out about his own death, you’re mad that he disappeared on you when you have so little time left together in the first place. Didn’t he know that you were both running on limited time? Did he not say that himself? 

“I’m not ready to say goodbye to you!” he shouts, finally. This is the loudest you’ve heard him speak in a while, and it seems to take a toll on him as he folds over, breathing heavily. He looks back up at you after a moment, his eyes narrowed but sad in a way too. “You’re the only friend I’ve had since I’ve died. So you’re the only friend that I really remember, as the person—as the ghost that I am now.” His voice breaks. “It’s time for me to go, anyways. It’s not like we could have spent much more time together anyways.” 

“What do you mean, it’s time for you to go?” you ask, your lips tightening into a thin line as you feel your heart drop into your stomach. “You said—you said you didn’t know how all that moving on bullshit worked.” 

“I didn’t before, but now… I just feel it. I’m not supposed to be here any more,” he says, pleading with you. “Please don’t be mad at me.” 

“I’m not mad,” you say quickly, your voice harder than you intended it to be. Recollecting yourself, you clear your throat, only for it to be clogged again with tears and mucus as you thickly say, “I’m just not ready to say goodbye to you either.” 

Yeonjun manages a watery smile, and you lean forward to hug him, your arms simply cutting through his ghostly appearance. He smiles sadly down at you again, his fingers ghosting over the top of your head as he mimics stroking your hair soothingly. 

“I’ve never wished for anything more,” you say, fighting to keep your tears back. You don’t want to cry in front of Yeonjun, not when he’s already crying hard enough that you can see shiny trails of tears down his pale, translucent face. 

“What are you wishing for?” he asks in a choked voice. 

“You know,” you say, laughing bitterly as you fail to hold back your tears, warm salty droplets pouring down your cheeks. “Don’t be an idiot.” 

Yeonjun scoffs, looking away and crossing his arms before he looks back at you to smile through his tears once again. “And you know me. An idiot, through and through,” he says, roughly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. 

For a brief moment, the two of you stand there and stare at each other in silence—Yeonjun as he remembers watching you grow up, and you as you recall all of the bearable memories with your best and only friend from your youth. There’s plenty of parallels between the two of you, as much as you hate to think about it—in a way, you almost represent what Yeonjun could have had, if he’d escaped his father like you’d escaped your parents. In the same vein, he almost represents the worst thing that could have happened to you, had you not gotten out when you did. As you two look into each other’s eyes, your lips still and unmoving as you communicate through language that’s deeper than speech, more intimate and knowing than any other form of communication known to man, you feel a sudden warmth. Your heart thumps in your chest, and you feel like this is it—the end of this torture, this fucking nightmare of a life. It’s like a weight is lifted off your shoulders as Yeonjun gazes softly into your eyes, fueling that warm and fuzzy feeling in your stomach. 

It’s going to be okay. He’s going to be okay. 

“I’ve always wanted to leave this house. I remember now,” he says softly. “But now, for the first time… I almost don’t want to.” 

Wiping your tears, you choke out a laugh. Yeonjun looks down at you with a tender expression, one that radiates pure adoration, as he leans down to press his lips to your forehead. 

You squeeze your eyes shut as more tears pour down your cheeks, not wanting to see the picture before you while being unable to feel it, but for a moment it feels real. You can feel the slight chapped skin brush against your forehead, the weight and warmth of his hand on the top of your head, before it all disappears. 

And when you open your eyes again, Yeonjun is gone, and you’re standing alone in the bedroom you two unknowingly shared for as long as either of you could remember. 

For the first time, you are completely alone in the house you were supposed to call home, and all you can do is sit down on the hardwood floor (ignoring the faint red stains by your bed that you’d never noticed before) and breathe in deeply, finally feeling at peace. 

NOVEMBER

Clenching your jaw, you try to reach further, your arm burning as you try to sweep the last few inches of snow off of your windshield. 

The first snow had surprised the town in the middle of the night. It had been unusually warm this year, the heat wave carrying on well past summer. Though it was nearly tradition at this point for the children of your hometown to trick-or-treat the day before or after Halloween due to the expectant snowstorm the week of the holiday, this year the children had been able to run free, without even the need for a thick winter jacket on top of their costumes. 

November had proven to be quite warm as well, but then the weather switched up on you like it was the plan all along, and now you were brushing snow off of your car with a dead tree branch, struggling to reach the top few inches of your windshield because the stick you chose was just a little too short. 

Giving up after a few more minutes of bending and stretching and cramping up your arm, you toss the stick aside and massage your aching muscles before getting into your car, grumbling to yourself. At least you hadn’t left your windows open overnight, like Taehyun had reportedly done—especially because your car is stuffed to the brim with all of your belongings. Finally, you’re heading off to the city to settle into your new place before you start your new job. 

But first, you’re meeting Taehyun for coffee. 

Driving down the same familiar roads, you feel new memories playing in the place of your old ones. Instead of remembering the way your parents would argue in the car and give you a headache, you remember the times you and Taehyun drove down this road together, loudly singing your favorite songs and not caring who heard. You can’t help but smile at the memory—you’ll have to remember to ask if he ever wanted to take a road trip together, when the weather is warm again and summer comes back around. 

The creaky stairs groan under your weight as you hop up the old wood, but they still don’t collapse, even with their loud protesting. 

There, Taehyun sits at a window seat with his iced Americano, scrolling aimlessly on his phone as he waits for you. He doesn’t see you until you stop in front of the table, smiling down at him as you unwrap your scarf from around your face. Your cheeks and nose are still a little flushed and raw from the cold, despite this. 

“How’s the car?” you ask, sitting down as you remove your gloves and place them atop your folded scarf, on the table beside you. 

“She’s fine, but a bit damp. And so’s the seat of my pants,” he grimaces, reaching down to feel the slightly wet seat of his jeans. “How’s the house?” 

“Sold,” you say, crossing your arms and grinning proudly. “There were a surprising amount of offers. I guess horror fanatics don’t mind the possibility of ghostly roommates.” 

Taehyun laughs, but then he rests his face in his palm as he props his elbow up on the table, looking into your eyes. “If anyone’s into it, horror fanatics would be… but was there really a ghost? I thought it stopped appearing after that first day.” 

Outside, snow starts to fall again, the beginning of winter making itself known. The already thick blanket of white covering the landscape starts to grow even more opaque and blinding as thick snowflakes swirl down from the ash-gray sky and join the millions before them, transforming the landscape that was a healthy green field of flowers just a few months before. 

“It’s a long story,” you say, your eyes twinkling. 

“I have time,” Taehyun replies, smiling. 

The little plastic ghost on your keychain rattles softly as you put the rest of your things down to settle in, and you smile softly at the namesake of your other best friend. 

“His name was Yeonjun,” you begin. 

DIVIDER CREDIT | @firefly-graphics

© petrichor-han 2024, all rights reserved  ​

[uncannyoceanz]

what type of bitch every creepypasta is💀

What type of bitch every creepypastas is💀😭

Jeff the killer - the type of bitch who will act like he’s cool but is suddenly scared when you pull out a lighter.

Slenderman - the type of bitch who acts like a mom

Ben drowned - the type of bitch who purposely annoys everyone

Sally - the type of bitch who pretends to be innocent but she’s really a little trouble maker

Puppeteer - the type of bitch who will manipulate you and than gaslight you.

Eyeless Jack - the type of bitch who would use you as a dummy for medical practice lmao

Jason the Toymaker - the type of bitch who hoards all of his belongings 

Laughing Jack - the type of bitch who makes really shitty jokes that only a few think are actually funny

Laughing Jill - the type of bitch who gives off horse girl vibes.

Nathan the nobody - the type of bitch that has way to bad anger issues

Nina the killer - the type of bitch that acts like a pick me.

Lazari - the type of bitch you would have to push off a building just to get her to move

Jane the killer - the type of bitch who makes every argument about Jeff

Ticci-Toby - the type of bitch who will cause an accident and then say “wasn’t me.” Then blame it on one of his close friends.

Masky - the type of bitch who needs to chill tf out on smoking and alcohol 

Hoodie - the type of bitch who seems really straight but he’s really gay with Masky.

Candy Pop - the type of bitch that has mood swings worse than a woman on her period.

Vine the DollMaker - the type of bitch that sits like L and will threaten you with scissors 

Lulu - the type of bitch who is really shy

Suicide Sadie - the type of bitch who will start an argument with you and then beat the shit out of you

Kagekao - the type of bitch who gives everyone ‘cutesy’ nicknames…

Trenderman - the type of bitch who will hold a whole ass photoshoot at the mansion 

Offenderman - the type of bitch who is literally, canonically, a rapist.

Splendorman - the type of bitch who isn’t actually a bitch and is just really fucking wholesome and sweet 

Nurse Ann - the type of bitch who has resting bitch face.

Papa grande - the type of bitch who acts and sounds like Caine from TADC 

Smile dog - the type of bitch who will bite you….cause why tf not?

Dr. Smiley - the type of bitch who will just randomly start manically laughing outta no where.

Hobo heart - the type of bitch who will literally steal your heart

Asylum Nancy  - the type of bitch who is way too fucking happy and hyper up all the damn time

Stripes - the type of bitch who will have a full on mental breakdown because they saw something adorable or saw a fit, beautiful woman and got jealous 

Sadiya - the type of redneck, cowgirl, western bitch.

Clockwork - the type of bitch who will punch you when she laughs

Zero - the type of bitch who always fucking brags about how cool she is.

homicidal liu since @my-jukebox reminded me!: The type of bitch that has his inner emo alpha wolf side.

[fanaticsnail]

El Tango de Mihawk (Dance Series)

As promised, although arriving much sooner than anticipated and only half beta-read (apologies, but over-eagerness wins again). Warnings: dancing, flirting, danger, peril, kissing, touching, pining, prior relationship hinted, enemies to lovers.

Word Count: 5,223

Masterlist here.

Song Suggestions: Tango de Roxanne, La Cumparsita.

Arm hanging loosely within the crook of the young marine’s elbow, you took in the incredibly intricately decorated large, circular room. It was not difficult to feign wonderment; your eyes widening, a gasp falling from your parted lips and a coy cock of your head as your eyes danced around the room.

It seemed almost too easy for you to swipe an invitation at the bequest of the marine to attend as his date. As soon as your mischievous, scheming eyes fell to the advertisement plastered to the notice board; you knew the opportunity for finery-theft was too great to pass up. Feigning a stumble, you fell within the open arms of the marine who blushed at your praises of heroism. Fingertips dancing over his cheeks, a small flutter of your eyelashes, and spoken words of: “how could I ever repay such a valiant sailor?” had him baited and hooked as your prey for the evening.

He was old enough to know better, but ill-seasoned in the art of feminine flirtation and suggestion. Just how you liked your prey: pretty, dangerous and ill-prepared to handle your advances.

After purchasing your evening dress and lace adorned masquerade mask for you, you knew this night was to hold much more thrill than the average night of petty theft. You were simply itching for the loot the evening would have in store for you.

White and red roses hung loosely like vines cascading down the white pillars, candles thrust within the arrangement and lit with flamed wick to create a romantic atmosphere. The fragrances whispering upwards to your senses was of the tart bubbly champagne, the softness from the florals and the subtle perfume you dropped on your neck, chest and wrists. Oh, how you adored the rich. You adored them even more when you claimed their wealthy treasures as your own, adding to your hoard of finery with objects that shimmered and glowed.

The first item of the night was the ribbons of pearls clasped on the neck of the wife of a seasoned marine captain. You managed to obtain an introduction, feigning innocence in attempting to rise the rank of your date for the evening. Charisma, charm and innocence was the part you played; always the coy flatterer and encourager. Once you felt the clasp of the brass hook behind the woman’s neck within your fingers, it was immediately unhooked and fell within your skilled and feather-light hand with neither care nor acknowledgement from their prior owner.

As the music began, you twirled with a smirk; placing the beaded sea-gems within the crevices of your cleavage to fall slowly between the mounds of your breasts. Once established within their home for the evening, you allowed the marine in the attempt to sway his body with yours. This appeared to be the first time this particular nameless gentleman has ever graced a dance floor, his fluster adamant in his movement.

The orchestral arrangement of pieces thus far was mainly waltzing and an odd foxtrot falling within the air to paint it with their artistry. Your body had been trained by your mother for years to gather the confidence and skill necessary to surpass her abilities to steal and burgle your way up to the higher class; dance falling as a necessity to obtain such a goal.

Rings, bangles, necklaces, tie-clips, a small wad of berry; child’s-play to follow after the first item with similar ease. You even managed to snag a small switch-blade on the belt of one of the marines, much to your delight. The only hinderance halting your less-subtle advances on fine material was a small feeling that your maneuvers were not as discrete as you would like it. You felt eyes. Eyes watching, waiting in the wings and ready to pounce. As you spied a large diamond ring, you halted your advance as the burning eyes scorched your fingertips.

Seeking their origin, you would subtly gaze from the corner of your eyes to search them out; never locating their source. You would huff your chest, readjust your mask and plaster a false smile on your face to gaze in feigned awe up into the eyes of your date in lieu of your prize.

Feigning a small lip bite and praising his dance moves, you finally managed to trace your fingers atop his gold marine pin of honour, effortlessly removing it without the notice of your date; rolling it against your inner palm before stooping to lay your hand against the brush of your hip to fall the small object within the open back of your dress. The opening was high enough to be tasteful, but low enough to gain ease of access with one of your many hidden pockets.

You had three major points you had managed to place upon your person for ease of concealing your many finds: your bag attached to your left hip, the crevices of your breasts down into your cleavage, and a small bag above your hidden daggered holster on your right thigh.

Every good thief has their specialty weapons. Your father used a blow-dart with toxins to paralyse their victims, your mother used a sword: both options you would prefer to steer clear of for agility and the thrill of the chase. Toxins were too easy, swords were too bulky: throwing knives were a perfect fit for you.

After the completion of one dance with the marine, he bowed lowly to you and offered to retrieve refreshments on behalf of you both. You bit your lip, a large sigh falling in thanks with more slow and deliberate eyelash kisses in thanks and encouragement had that similar light blushed pink once again gracing his cheekbones and upper ears. After he turned to walk away, you felt your character slipping in joy of the ease the role took to you; a smirk tickling the corners of your lips.

“Too easy,” you whispered in a light sigh, rolling your shoulders back and rotating your neck to relieve the tension. At the lull of your neck, you felt the familiar sensation of being watched. The hairs on the back of your neck prickling to attention at the unwanted gaze, with the skin elevating behind them in subtle bumps. Slowly dragging your feet around the floor, your toes raking deliberately against the polished marble, you attempted to find the owner to the unwanted attention you seemed to snare.

You raked your sights around the room, first falling to the orchestral ensemble as they once again made to equip their instruments to begin their melody; before your sights fell onto the silver-haired Vice-Admiral, Garp. He was engaged in deep conversation with another higher up amongst the marines. Your mind was screaming: “Danger, Danger. Do not approach,” yet as soon as your eyes dropped to his platinum and gold-plated pocket watch; your mind was immediately persuaded to halt all warnings eclipsed by desire to obtain the item.

Eyes glazed, you began your approach from the rounded dance floor to only feel the inner arch of both of your elbows clasped within the talon-like grip of unfamiliar and unwelcome hands. Your breath hitched, back arched outwards as the familiar and dangerous oaken-fragrance of the person behind you overwhelmed your senses before his voice cut through the silence.

“One wrong move, vixen,” he uttered in a low tone, “and I’ll reveal you to the masses.”

“Dracule Mihawk,” you whispered in a small hiss, your lips curled into a small grimaced snarl, “why are you here?”

“I could ask the same of you, little thief,” you felt his signature taunting smirk rise up within his bored tone, prompting your scowl to deepen further atop your brow. He tugged at your arms, your body responding by laying your back flush against his bare torso, his lips falling to tickle his wine-scented breath against the outer shell of your ear.

“I see you have come chaperoned this time,” he whispered into your ear, your eyes darkening beneath your ornamental mask concealing the upper half of your face, “how very clever of you.”

A small growl fled from your lips as you continued to hold your sights forward, lulling your head to the side to reveal more of your neck to him.

“I’ve learnt from my prior mistakes, warlord,” your scowl turned into a small smirk, unwrapping your right arm from his tight grip by circling it around itself; raising your arm behind your head to trace the outer neck of the broody swordsman behind you, dragging it slowly downwards.

“So it should seem,” his voice taunted you, allowing your small gesture to fall against his skin; your fingertips dancing in a small brush down towards his collar and torso.

He twirled you to face him, your hips swaying against his guidance as the silent hall gathered to couple up for the next musical interlude. Your gaze met with his honey-coloured eyes, his finely manicured facial hair rising against his lips as his smirk broadened to meet your face.

“Here is what’s to happen,” he uttered darkly, his smirk dropping as an air of dominant superiority fell in its stead, “you are going to return all of these items to these fine people,” you huffed out an exasperated breath, “and you are going to leave.”

“And should I refuse?” you challenged him, angling your chin upwards in defiance. His lip curled upwards into a frustrated snarl.

“I will have no choice to reveal you,” he informed you, arching his face down in a stoop towards your own. You hummed at him, tilting your head and swaying it innocently.

“Reveal what, exactly?” your coy smile returning to your lips, batting your eyelashes up at him with a small air of confidence, “I have done nothing wrong, and I have a formal invitation at the hands of my young chaperone.”

The warlord’s hand clasped firmly against your lefthand hip, grasping a handful of your flesh alongside the satchel containing some of your hoard. A small whimper fled from your lips at the unwithheld gesture, eyes immediately fleeing from his hunted and accusatory gaze to search the room for your date; praying he wasn’t watching the interaction.

Mihawk chuckled, leaning down further into you; yourself feeling small under his dominance as your back again arched away from him. The musicians began their open-stringed tuning of their instruments before the lectern was tapped by the conductor with their long, steel rod.

“As uncooperative and stubborn as always, I see,” he smirked down at you as the conductor began to tap the introductory beat against the wooden frame, “then I shall simply have to rid you of the items myself.”

You twirled from his grasp, your back arched as you stooped low with your hips swayed to the sultry arrangement; “you may certainly try, swordsman.”

It had been years since the Mihawk had first laid his eyes on you, and you had blossomed beautifully under the guidance of your parents. You had just reached the cusps of adulthood, your abilities as a thief had only began to be explored in the field where he first saw your flirtatious advance of some decrepit and disgusting marine with his travelling hands making you uncomfortable.

Of course he felt hooked to free you from the cusps of the uncomfortable exchange; and the price he paid for such a valiant feat be the relinquishment of his berry clasped within his leather-bound wallet. Only one small kiss was paid against his cheek in the exchange for it, without his knowledge of being parted from the object in the first place.

Your youthful and innocent eyes were what snared him then, but your sultry and tempting expression is what captured his attention now. Challenge rose within the chasms of the broody warlord’s chest, a small rotation of his shoulders rid him of his inhibitions, as he raked his feet along the ground to engage you in this dangerous dance of flirtatious conquest.

His hand reached for yours, outstretched and demanding rather than requesting your own. You smirked before tracing the palm of his hand with a dance of your fingertips to claim it; his hand firmly wrapping his digits around your own with haste and confidence in response.

This was not the Mihawk you remember. The valiant saviour, the all-too willing to draw his blade, the desire and eagerness to win your heart and hand was long since fled from his demeanour: an overly confident, arrogant and almost bored gentleman now rose within the shell of such a man. A dangerous man. A man who was purchased by the World Government in the stead of leading a life of piracy.

Twirling your body within his own and falling back to press chest to chest, your senses were once again filled with his signature cologne; a scent he had not changed in all the time fallen between you. The oaken undertones, the smoky and oceanic middle and the almost sweet floral hint enchanting you as he held you so tenderly pressed against himself as he engaged you in dance.

His curled, raven locks shorter than they once were, his moustache and beard grown and shaped into a fine art piece atop his face; and he had you cornered as a predator would his meek prey. His guiding hand found the small of your back, cradling your body firmly against his as he swept you throughout the circular hall to the seductive and tantalising music. His hand travelled once again to your left hip, thumbs tracing the outside of the material flush against your thigh.

“My, my,” he commented with his smirk once again gracing his lips, “so many fine additions to your hoard today,” his hand dipped against the leather satchel, expertly unhooking the clasp from your hidden girdle and falling the bag to your knees, “it may even cover the berry you took from me all those years ago.”

Your lips formed into a small pout as he gathered the satchel within his open right palm, twirling you to place the bag on an empty table framing the dance floor before turning you both to the centre of the room again.

“But that was such a long time ago,” your breathy gasp was laced with a slight sarcastic whine as you allowed him to continue leading you through this dance with danger, “surely the amount of berry has been recovered by now.”

“No, no, little thief,” he cooed at you his left hand falling to your right thigh and drawing your knee over his left hip; raking his broad fingers against your exposed flesh to draw closer to the concealed blades, “in fact, the interest gathered alone from your theft has left me in complete ruin.”

“You will not take my arms,” you firmly stated, Mihawk twirling you to the rhythmic swell of the melody.

“I will take as much as I desire for your ill-cooperation, vixen,” he taunted you, fingers tracing lower to fall to your thigh as his breath tickled your neck in a seductive taunt.

Eyes widening, Dracule Mihawk teased the circular daggers from your holster one by one and expertly threw them silently to imbed within the rose-covered pillars within the room.

You breathed out an air of irritation, your snarl once again rising as you warned him; “then you will also take my fury, alongside my revenge.”

“I am simply quivering in anticipation, vixen,” he chuckled darkly, lips trailing over your jugular as he toyed his index finger against the outer ring of your final throwing blade. Your eyes fluttered shut against his adventurous touches, arching your back to press your torso into his own as he breathed in the subtle florals of your perfume.

His mind became foggy from the thrill of the hunt, you falling so easily into the role of prey to his pursuit. The vixen and the hawk: both as dangerous to one another without having one truly triumph in their battle of victor. He was now winning, and he was relishing in such a victory.

Your prized daggers, now effortlessly disarmed from your body, now became a part of the scenery surrounding the dance floor. Your breath haltered in your throat; now not having a failsafe method to protecting yourself, you felt you had no choice but to allow Mihawk to continue prying your treasures from your body.

Annoyance fell to your face, committing the landing points to memory regarding your blades as Mihawk dropped your thigh back to fall your feet to the floor. Both of his hands now raked slowly from your shoulder blades down to fall to your hips; his right hand locating your bag on the righthand side above your holster.

“Clever again, vixen,” he praised you in a small, sarcastic purr, “you thought I wouldn’t frisk your dominant side again in my search.”

“Truthfully, Lord Dracule,” your addressal caught his attention, his yellow eyes snapping back to your own, “I did not prepare myself adequately to receive such attention from your travelling hands.”

His hands faulted in his retrieval of your secondary pouch slightly; just a whisper of hesitancy before he continued on his journey of ridding you from your lifted wares.

Necklaces, rings, bangles; everything the wealth of the evening you could’ve brought home to add to your hoard was now collected from you within the sultry dance Mihawk was guiding you through. The swell of the music in addition to the dangerous aura he engulfed you within had you set on a slight disadvantage. You needed something to even the odds, something to bring the control back to you as you held it for the majority of the evening.

His eyes fell to your cleavage, noticing the glimmer of a pearl beneath your brassier. Floating his eyes beneath his dangerous, dark eyelashes, back towards your own; he made to reach his hand down into your chest to retrieve the fine item. You immediately broke from his embrace as you spun away from his direct withdrawal of the object from your breasts.

Stalking and calculated in his approach, he circled himself behind your back; drawing your left hand to thrust delicately and horizontally within the air. He trailed the ghost of his lips along your forearm, your eyes flittering shut under his flirtatious advance.

“I will not leave here with less than what I arrived with,” you whispered your warning to him, his lips now falling to your outer neck.

“Then by all means,” he flicked your hair to fall over your other shoulder as he continued to circle your body, “retrieve your daggers and be on your way,” trailing his lips down and firmly clasping your right hand within his own and turning your wrist to face the inner, soft flesh to the chandelier above, “if, that is, you can find them.”

He drew his lips down to press a tender kiss against your inner wrist as the character you adorned for the night began to truly slip away; the smirk beneath his moustache rising more of a hateful blush to your cheeks as he continued his flirtatious tirade of insults with his words and actions. You wanted to stab him with something sharp, something that hurt for the embarrassment he was pulling to best you. Having no such blade upon your person would make that feat all the more challenging, but truly delicious should you pull it off with success.

He again drew you to himself and danced you around the floor in slow and calculated strides, his smirk not once falling from his controlled face; relishing in the knowledge that he had bested you truly. His eyes once again were drawn to your cleavage, the ribbon of finely beaded pearls once again within his sights as he decided this time to dive his face within your breasts in lieu of his hands.

Shock would be the first emotion to fall against your face, your innocent character behind the masquerade mask the only thing keeping you firmly held within this dangerous game of cat and mouse; or hawk to a vixen. As his lips fished out the pearled end of the long piece of ribboned ornate string, your hands instinctively fell to the back of his neck to hold him in place.

But what was that your fingertips brushed? Was is a solid bayonet clasp holding a priceless metallic necklace against the chest of the warlord; a warlord currently distracted by his own task within your breasts? Why yes, it appears it was.

Stampeded by the will to not leave this arena of seductive taunting empty handed; you ushered any inhibitions away from your mind as you convinced yourself to once again thief from the warlord in front of you.

Immediately, your fingertips expertly pried the clasp open with ease; you holding the chain in place beneath your palms and feigning freight beneath the swordsman’s ministrations, as his teeth reclaimed the lengthy necklace shamelessly from within your breasts. He unlaced one hand from behind you to collect the necklace from his mouth, his eyes holding his gaze as piercing as the hunter’s arrow against your own.

You danced your eyes between the two of his, glancing down briefly to meet with his lips as he completely withdrew the necklace from his slacked jaw. Sensing a slight shift in your emotions, his eyes narrowed to seek out the source for the shift.

“What are you playing at, little thief?” he asked you with an air of dangerous caution, “you’re staring at me like you’ve won, whereas I am clearly the victor in our little charade.”

Immediately, you dropped your right hand from the back of his neck to fall onto his cheek; caressing his bearded skin within your palm as the other held fast to the clasp around his neck.

“You have won this round, my lord,” you confirmed with him, ushering his face closer to your own, “now allow me to present a reward for your victory.”

You drew him truly downwards, cradling his face within your right hand as your parted lips captured his own. Where once was an innocent kiss parted onto his cheek in your youth, this amorous exchange felt like opening a tabbed chapter of a long-since neglected novel. Mihawk’s breath was stolen from his lungs as you held his lips fastened in a dance of passion against your own; your own heart beginning to swell as he reciprocated the tryst of your lips.

As he leant further into the kiss, his shoulders stooping as his hands wove around your shoulders to dip you in a low arch perpendicular to the floor. You almost felt bad for the way the chain around his neck fell so easily into your hand beneath him. The gold cross, now clasped firmly within your left palm, was to be your prize for the evening. Your hoard of trinkets worthless against the excitement this item brought to you.

The musical decrescendo began to dip, informing the two of you, and the other dancers on the circular floor, that the melody had come to its conclusion. Unbreaking the kiss, Mihawk rose you from your dip and nudged your chin with his own; his tongue darting out to brush with your own briefly before retuning behind his lips as briefly as they opened.

Not truly desiring the moment to end; you rewove your left hand, which now clasped Mihawk’s neck-chain and cross within it, behind his neck to hold him firmly to yourself. Your lips opened to pry more of himself against you, his gasped breath again claimed by your unwithheld ministrations. Eyes closed, you tilted your head and drew your torso completely flush with his as you stood on your toes to bring yourself fully flush with his chest.

The warmth radiating from his open shirt, the heat pouring from his skin was enough to hold your attention captive entirely. Mihawk again arched your back to chase your lips with his, unbreaking and unwavering in intensity before he closed the exchange of romance by withdrawing his lips from their proximity against your own.

“My, my,” he teased with his hawk-eyes half-hooded as he gazed at you, “what a reward that was for my efforts, vixen.”

You sighed against his teasing, your heart almost breaking for what you were about to depart from the ballroom with; but not enough to halt your strategic withdrawal.

“I will take my leave then, warlord,” you curtseyed low, the cross within your palm concealed by the gathering of your dress out to the side as you dipped in respect; a curt bow of his own with his feathered hat falling to your view.

“Until next time, little thief,” he rose from his bow as you did from your curtsey, “enjoy wallowing in your own pity as I relish in my victory. May you win the next round.”

You bit your tongue, opting to not give yourself away from his taunts while fighting the blush his voice drew out of you. Desperately hoping to never see him again to keep his golden cross all to yourself; while hopelessly longing for another chance to best him and greet him with an embrace had your heart racing, judgement clouded and eyes glazed.

“May our next meeting arrive sooner than the time parted between our first meeting and our now,” you offered him a warm smile, “I do miss your charming face and your way with words, Mihawk.”

“Flatterer,” he purred at you, before clicking his boot heels together in a curt tap while turning to rejoin the gathering of warlords and representatives of the world government.

Opting to not seek out your blades, nor locate your chaperone for the evening; you immediately danced yourself away to withdraw to the shadows of the event. Raising your right hand up to fix your mask in place, you located the nearest exit from the venue: a large arched doorway with glass panel windows on a white frame. The roses hung low from the tall arch, ivy and baby’s breath sporadically placed in lieu of the candles.

This was not the large entrance you originally entered through with your young chaperone, but the ally entrance to the finely and meticulously maintained labyrinth of green hedge-ends.

You paused, turning one last time towards the dance floor to seek out the warlord with your sights. Upon your eyes tracing the floor to meet your sights with his form, you were immediately met with the piercing yellow-eyes you were craving; he, too, seeking you out to set his eyes on yours once more before your departure.

Lips parted, a small quivered tremble in apprehension and pity fell to your face as the valuable metal remained secured within your left hand. You raked your eyes over his neck to the place his cross was once hanging, noticing how truly beautiful you found his statuesque physique.

Unfortunately for you, his brows furrowed at your sights dancing on his skin; his chin dipping, his jaw hanging slack as soon as he found vacant space instead of his inestimable necklace. Your breath hitched in your throat, eyes widening as he snapped his sights back to your face.

Anger. Pure and unadulterated fury fell to his face, prompting you to shy backwards through the archway while holding his burning gaze.

The first time you bested him with your thievery, he only noticed what was taken from him as he made to purchase a pastry from a nearby bakery on his journey retuning to the inn he’d purchased for the night; finding vacant space where his wallet once was. He was angry and upset then, he was enraged and his fury burned brighter now you remained behind to witness it.

Seeing no other option, you scurried immediately to your feet as you stampeded towards the entrance of the labyrinth; the moon the only illumination for the dark emerald and navy hues of the circular leaves. Tunnelling through corner to corner of the confusing muddle of gravel, dirt and shrubs; you continued to swiftly barrel through the winding road to seek out the true exit to the maze.

Not a sound was uttered, the music far from your ears within the large ball-room not travelling far enough to grant you the pleasure of its company. Your breath picked up in hitch as you panted against the hasty retreat, your body propelling to the centre of the maze; well lit with domed fire pillars with an ornate marble table at the centre.

Five openings surrounded the table: one you just exited from, alongside three options to trap you in your doom and one to throw you into your victorious freedom. Your head bobbed frantically between the options as you debated which path to fall your feet towards. Finally choosing for the path closest to the north; your steps were halted as a knife was thrown to whistle past your eyeline and imbed itself within the cement, torched pillar beside you.

“As you have learnt from your mistakes, vixen,” his voice relayed in an agitated tone under the cover of darkness, “I, too, have learnt from mine.”

“M-Mihawk,” your voice wavered in your throat as another blade cut through the air beside your head to imbed itself lower in the pillar.

“You stole from me once,” he taunted from the shadows, “made me out to be a fool,” another blade whispered it’s sharpened edge against your cheek, not quite making contact but enough as a warning, “I despise looking to be anything less than what I am.”

“And what are you, Lord Dracule Mihawk?” your own agitation drawing itself to your brow.

“I,” he began, stepping into the light of the central area in slow and steady strides, “am the consequence you have brought upon yourself this evening.”

His feathered hat atop his head danced within the whispered wind, his eyes hidden beneath it as you stepped back to fall your lower back against the marble top of the circular table.

“And what such consequence must I prepare myself for?” you asked him with a pointed tone, “turning me over to the World Government would be low, even for you.”

He hummed a small shadow of a chuckle within his throat, tilting his head up to grace your vision with his yellow-eyes; wild with a sadistic joy above his smirking mouth.

“Turn you over?” He approached your body, raising his left hand to caress your cheek while his right sought out the blade clutched within the palm of your left hand, “such a simple solution for a complex vixen. I hardly see that as a fitting consequence for your crime.”

You swallowed a dry breath, your body screaming as you were finally captured within the talons of the mighty warlord of the sea. His fingertips brushed a stray hair behind your ear, the pad of his index finger toying at the ribbon clasping your masquerade mask close to your right eye.

“I am going to work you hard to settle your debt, little thief,” he informed you in a low whisper, his fingers trailing to the bow unifying your mask against your face, tugging on it to fall the laced object from your eyes, “from this day and all to follow, you are mine.”

[mikkomacko]

i need a blurb of reader & the boys having a sleepover at her & nicos house. gossiping, snacking, watching tv i need the fluff!!!

i love love love how you write each character so much!!!

smooches x

It was like a scene out of a movie. The entire living room was turned into one large bed, air mattresses covering every inch of the carpeted floor.

Thick blankets, fluffy pillows, random stuffies you’d collected over the years strewn about in a way that looked messily placed. Soft fairy lights were strung up on the ceiling and around the mantel the tv hangs above.

The rest of the house was dark, save for the light that led to the dining room table where a feast of snacks welcomed everyone. You had everything; popcorn with Jacks favorite Parmesan cheese topping salt. Twizzlers and red vines because Luke and Mercer disagreed on which licorice was the best. Some kind of Italian soda and cannolis that Johnny loves, the ones with chocolate shavings on the ends. Mini Reese’s cups, the unwrapped ones, for Holtz because he likes them bite sized but he hates the foil wrapper.

And even though Nico would heavily frown, you’d ordered pizzas, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s for all the boys.

They all looked like kids on Christmas morning as they dropped their overnight bags by the door, kicking off their shoes and scrambling into the dining room. You did a head count, made sure all of them were accounted for before shutting the front door and turning the alarm system on.

“No freaking way!”

You followed after them, biting your lip to keep your excitement at bay as they all gathered around the table to find gifts at their respective chairs.

Fluffy slipper socks, red and black plaid pajama pants, and white t-shirts with red Devils horns. You’d even personalized them, adding in small fancy letters on the sleeve each of their nicknames amongst the group.

“We match!” Jack exclaims, having already stripped of his shirt and tugged on his pajamas. You proudly show off your own set that you’re already wearing, smile beaming as the boys all chatter over each other and scramble to get their pj’s on.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Mercer laughs, shirt half on as he grabs a bag of Twizzlers. He ducks by you, pressing a kiss in thanks to the side of your head before moving back to the living room.

One by one they all change and gather their snacks, following after Mercer into the living room. Johnny is the last to go, eyes moony and warm when he stacks a pile of cannolis on his plate.

“Cara,” he sighs, dramatically holding his hand over his heart. “Nico better hold onto you before I go out and buy a diamond ring.”

You and him both snicker, collecting your own snacks and following the others. They’ve all taken over the air mattresses, sprawled out with their food in their matching pajamas. That leaves the couch for you and Johnny, both snuggling under under the king sized comforter you’d taken from yours and Nico’s bed earlier.

“Alright what are we watching?”

Jack is flipping through Netflix, browsing the movies and you’re about to suggest a cartoon when your phone dings with a text from Nico.

Why is my doorbell cam showing hoards of boys at my house?

Giggling to yourself, you text back.

When the boss is away, the children will play

“Ooh boss likes that one!”

You look at the tv, see the square lighting up around Sex and the City the movie, and you realize Luke is talking about you, not Nico. Your cheeks warm.

“It’s a chick flick but it’s fun.” You comment, and that must be enough because a chorus of agreements rings out just as Nico texts back.

I only agreed to Alex coming over.

The boys all shush each other, Mercer climbing up to dim the lights before slipping back into the recliner.

I guess you’ll just have to come home and kick them out yourself….

Tonight is the one night a year that the original four Devs pull an all-nighter at the cafe. Something to do with plans and contracts for the upcoming year and instead of spreading it out weekly, they make themselves miserable for one whole night.

But you hate staying home alone so Nico agreed you could let Holtzy sleep over. But you couldn’t say no to Johnny either and then slowly but surely all the boys wanted to sleepover and what were you supposed to do? They want to hang out, watch out for you while Nico is gone for the night.

Before Nico can respond you double text, telling him the movie is starting and you’ll talk to him in a bit. Then you put it on silent and settle under the blankets, intently focused on the film.

You and the boys get through the first film and the first season of the show before you decide you need a break. Mostly because Luke and Jack are arguing over whether Big is actually hot or not, but you eventually swap the HDMI to the switch and pull up Mario Kart.

The game turns into a tournament, one you get knocked out of too quickly. So you slump onto the losers couch, Holtzy following you when he loses in the next round. And it’s not until he’s curling up into your side, thighs pressed together and your head resting on top of his that you realize how exhausted you are.

Slipping out your phone, you see it’s almost 3 am and that you’ve got a stack of unanswered texts from Nico.

What movie are you watching?

Ok I know it has to be over by now

Baby please I’m bored

Jonas makes really bad espresso shots and my tummy hurts

I want to be at the sleepover

They better not be in my bed btw

Fine, I’ll see you in the morning. Love you baby ♥️

Sleepily, you smile and text back.

Goodnight Nico, miss and love u

~~~~

Nico comes home in the early hours of the morning, sun barely rising in the sky. He’s exhausted and grumpy, just wants to curl up in his bed with you and sleep forever when he stops in his tracks.

All six of you are still in the living room, the Mario kart title screen on the large tv. Luke is half on a mattress, mouth open and hands clutching a controller to his chest. Johnny is next to him, his own controller laying on his stomach as he snores.

Jack and Mercer are both star-fished on the mattresses, Jack buried under almost all the blankets to the point that all Nico can see is his face.

He finds you next, lying on the large couch under the blankets from your bed. Alex is by your feet, his hand stretched out like at one point you had been holding it but now you’re just squeezing a pillow to your chest.

You look cute. Lips parted and hair messy, pajamas matching the boys and he can’t even be annoyed by the fact that you’ve deconstructed his bed and brought it down here. He just peels off his shoes and clothes until he’s in just his boxers, pushing his hair out of his face as he navigates the mattresses and limbs to get to you.

He pries the pillow from your hands, dropping it to the floor and slipping under the blankets next to you. It’s a tight fit, but even in your sleep you fit yourself into his chest.

Pressing a kiss to your head, Nico closes his eyes and settles into the cushions. He’s on the precipice of sleep when Alex’s hand finds his and Nico huffs, wrapping his fingers around the younger boys and squeezing just once.

He’ll have to remember to tell Alex never to mention this again. But that can wait until later.

[nico-the-newt]

Enemies to Lovers - Ellie Williams x reader

summary: you and Ellie had hated each other the moment you stepped foot in Jackson. Others disagree.

warnings: swearing, Ellie's a bit of a dick, mentions guns

You could honestly say that you had no idea how it happened. One moment you were scanning through the old, abandoned supermarket with Jesse for supplies, laughing at something stupid he had said. And suddenly, in an instance, you found yourself being ambushed by a hoard of runners.

Patrol had started off as it usually did when you were grouped with Dina, Jesse and Ellie. The four of you were walking down the old, dirt road to the abandoned supermarket that Maria had assigned you to patrol. As usual, Jesse and Dina were being coupley and affectionate - arms wrapped around each other, hands linked, noses bumping, as you and Ellie grumpily walked beside them, shooting each other looks and making snide remarks. The pair of you had had a strained relationship since your arrival in Jackson two years before. You thought she was rude and cocky. She thought you were obnoxious and demanding. In fact, the pair of you despised each other so much you weren’t even aware that you were very similar - personality-wise.

You still cursed Jesse for forcing you on patrol with Ellie. He and Dina had some sort of weird idea that you and Ellie secretly liked each other, enemies to lovers, as Dina put it. You had laughed in their faces.

“Not if she was the last person in the world,” you had scoffed, but that did not change their minds in the slightest.

When you finally arrived at the old building, you were extremely tired and grumpy. Ellie had spent the first ten minutes of the walk complaining about how late you had been that morning (she had arrived twenty minutes early to patrol just to give you a hard time), which sparked an argument that lasted for the rest of the trip. You could tell Dina and Jesse were completely  over the pair of you and it secretly made you pleased to prove them wrong.

“Jeez, look at this place,” Ellie sighed in admiration when you entered the supermarket. You couldn’t deny that you shared her admiration. There was something so beautiful about the place being covered in vines and sunlight streaming in through a big hole in the roof, lighting up the entire store. You wouldn’t let that be known though.

“‘Jeez, look at this place’” you imitated in an annoying voice that sounded nothing like Ellie.

“Hey, what’s your fucking problem, man!” Ellie exclaimed, storming towards you.

“You are-!”

“Okay!” Dina called, coming between you and Ellie before the shoving and arguing began again. “This place is pretty big - why don’t we pair up and split off. Ellie and I’ll look on this side, you guys look on that side.”

Ellie shot a scowl at you, which you gladly returned, but you followed Dina’s orders nonetheless and trailed off after Jesse.

“You and Ellie need to chill,” he said, after a period of companionable silence.

“Ellie needs to stop being an asshole,” you grumbled, causing Jesse to let out a laugh.

“You’re just as much of an asshole as she is,” he chuckled, shaking his head  in amusement and slipping a bottle of disinfectant he had found into his bag.

“No one is as big of an asshole as Ellie is,” you said pointedly. “Except maybe you~”

“Oof, low blow,” Jesse grinned, placing a hand over his chest in mocked hurt. “However will I get over that one?"

“Please, you’ll get over it,” you had laughed, finally starting to feel at ease for the first time that day. Unfortunately, the feeling had left as soon as it came due to a loud crash coming from the loading dock behind you.

“The fuck was that?” You muttered, instantly grabbing your gun and pointing it in the direction of the loading dock.

“Dunno,” Jesse hissed, drawing his gun too. When there was no other noise after a few minutes, you both slowly started edging your way towards where the original sound had come from. You practically hear your heart beating out of your chest. A cold bead of sweat dripped down the back of your neck and you almost found yourself holding your breath. However, the anticipation was all for nothing, as when you had poked your head around the corner, there was nothing there but old, dusty boxes and a rusty hand truck.

“Nothing,” you shrugged, a frown crossing your brow. “Weird.”

You stepped back towards Jesse, unaware of the runner that had been coming up behind you until its hands were grasping your shoulders and it was trying to bite your neck off. You didn’t even have enough time to be scared as several gunshots went off and caused our ears to ring like crazy and your vision to fog over.

“Come on!”

Jesse grabbed your arm and dragged you away from the area and back into reality. It was only when you could hear again and actually heard the screams and groans, along with the sound of rabid footsteps behind you, that you finally found control of your legs once more and began to run. Jesse and you crashed through a door and into a small office at the back of the store. Jesse pressed his body up against the door and you quickly copied, as there was nothing to barricade the door with. This is how I die. We’re gonna die. You couldn’t stop these morbid thoughts from bouncing around in your brain as you used all your body weight and strength to push against the door, despite the fact that the strength of the infected easily overpowered you and the door had begun to come off its hinges. You were certain they were about to break the door down completely, and was preparing for the worst, when you suddenly heard a series of gunshots outside, followed by some grunt and yells, and finally, silence. The pressure you had been fighting off against the door had stopped, though you and Jesse remained pressed against it for a few minutes - neither of you sure if it was actually safe. It was only when you heard Dina anxiously yell for the both of you that you realised it was over and cautiously moved back from the door - just in time for her to practically kick the door down and throw herself at Jesse when she realised you were both still alive. You closed your eyes and leaned back against the desk to catch your breath, completely oblivious to Ellie’s presence looming towards you at speed. It was only when she practically shoved you over and cupped your face to see you for herself that your eyes flew open and you stared at her, confused but not disliking the feeling of her hands on your face.

“You fucking idiot!” She exclaimed, letting go of your face and wrapping you in a hug. You were surprised at the contact but didn’t care and hugged her back, simply grateful to be alive and not bitten. And that Ellie was hugging you

“It’s okay. It’s over,” you sighed, rubbing her back comfortingly and raising your middle finger towards Jesse and Dina when you saw them smirking at the pair of you.

“Enemies to lovers,” Dina mouthed with a smug smile.

Part 2 can be found here:

[tiyoin]

i'm curious about yuu 👀 and their friendship before twisted wonderland. does he genuinely have feelings for the reader or is he just playing with the people that likes them?

oh it’s definitely both BXJAHAHDJ

yuu just wants to watch the world burn, but they’re also forcing reader into a ‘tough love situation’

yuu really wants to see reader succeed!! while they don’t mind reader’s hovering since they’re besties for now they do want them to spread their wings.

but here’s the thing. in this ‘series’ yuu is more… controlling, then the canonical yuu. mainly because of the ‘introvert extrovert’ roles they’re categorized into when they’re in public.

while reader is more out going with the right people, yuu is… yuu, effortless charm and that hidden script reader wants so. badly.

also yuu has a crush on reader 🤭 that’s just how the cookie crumbles ya know 🤭 it’s always been there in their old world, but now that they’re in this world yuu can have them all for themselves… in a romantically sense anyways.

but here’s the thing, when reader starts to spread her wings and make connections, they’re not going to always be around yuu anymore. opting to strengthen maybe 1 or 2 friendships they’re able to get and spend time helping those friendships flourish.

it goes from 100 to 45 real quick for yuu and it’s head-spinning for them. and you know what. yuu doesn’t like the mug on that guy. he’s getting a little too close to you, so you gotta be careful okay!

did you hear that ‘[insert character] has a really weird / toxic trait you don’t vibe with at all and yuu knows that and purposefully tells you???’ oh, yuu just heard it from the grape vine… let’s get food now!!

yuu is a devious little shit in this 😈

because if you have $100, are you gonna show the world? OFC NOT!! you’ll keep it to yourself and spend it how you want. but there will also be signs…

so yuu is basically lowkey hoarding reader, but also letting them grow enough that it helps reader… but they’re also lowkey stunting that growth to keep reader.

OH MY GOD IMAGINE YUU SMIRKING AT [insert guy that clearly like them] when reader allows yuu to physically guide them through the hallways. giving them a ‘wish this was you, huh’ face

reader quite literally SHADOWING yuu in social situations while the other characters are gripping the table in anger thinking: that should be me

reader allowing yuu’s leg and shoulder to touch theirs as they’re sitting down. and yet… when the boy(s?) try to do it reader jerks away like they have the plague 😔

reader whispering something into yuu’s ear which causes them to burst out into howling laughter, everyone urging reader to say it out loud or for yuu to share. but then y’all both give each other, the look, then you speak (!!) ‘can’t, it’s a super secret☺️’

…brotha what🧍🏻

yuu’s honest reaction to the chaos they’re spreading:

yuu is going to be very devious in this series

run reader!! run!!

[bellaofthevalley]

Stellaron Hunters: Singing Dove

Content warning: yandere themes, polyamorous relationship, reader is gender-neutral.

It starts with a chase. 

It always starts with a chase. 

You run through the cold, deep snow. Dried leaves and twigs hiding under the snowy blanket crunch beneath your boots, and the little cracking noises they cause makes you want to cry painful, heaving sobs that shake through your frame. 

The moon hangs high in the sky, your singular source of light. You are so deep within this frozen wasteland, not even Belebog's lights show on the horizon. 

A perfect place for them to hunt you. But hunt truly is too kind of a word; a prey has at least a singular, sliver chance of survival. You are merely a toy between their clutches, ever so often placed in a new playground for their amusement, but at the end- 

You will be back with them. It is, after all, part of the script. Always, always, always- 

You stumble and fall on your hands and knees with a painful gasp, foot catching within viney branches that dig into your boots and pants. You'd been running so much, for so long, you hadn't even realised just how out of breath your poor lungs were. 

In, and out. In, and out. In, and out.

You take in one, last big breath before finally looking back to get your foot out of the vines and hopefully, with the mercy of Qlipoth the Preservation and any Aeon that will listen, escape from this hellhole- 

Only to meet two red piercing eyes staring at you from such darkness, not even the moon could disperse it. Peering, watching, waiting. 

"No!" The frightened scream tears itself out of your throat, and your lack of breath and aching foot are forgotten entirely. In the distance, among the flying crows and skittering spiders, you heard the tinkling laugh of a woman.

Everything is dangerous. Everything is dangerous. Everything is dangerous-

He tells you everything is dangerous as he sharpens a sword, cracks going through its cold blade like broken glass. His voice is low, but his eyes are staring straight at you. Gazing, scrutinizing, waiting. 

How many days, weeks, and months have you spent with them now? With him? You know his past by now, something he'd confided in you in the lonely, dead hours of the night, where you craved interaction even from someone like him. When he would crave interaction from you, would seek you out and hoard your time with the excuse that Kafka demanded he needed you to heal him and soothe his mara-struck mind with your singing, nimble fingers unwillingly going through his hair. 

Everything is dangerous, Bǎo bèi. You will stay here with us.

She tells you everything is dangerous without telling you. You are on her lap, so shamefully naked and exposed yet she lounges against the tub as if the world is her oyster to pick, hands on your waist and nails slightly dragging against your skin until there are raised goosebumps trailing up your body. 

It might as well be her world to rule. 

You will not leave, my darling. She says with the softest laugh, burying her pretty face in your tender throat and kissing your skin. Her perfume still clings to her skin, leaving your mind hazy and muddled- all thoughts of your burning homeland they took you from washing away until all you can think of is her, her, her. She's a devil and a devil hunter; she is a spider that has spun into a web you can see neither the start nor end of, demands your songs as if you, your songs and voice all belong to her. 

Everything is dangerous, my lovely. You will not leave, not now nor ever.

You run and run, boots so torn every twig and rock digs into your delicate skin. You are crying, too, stumbling against trees and branches. The noise that comes out of your throat is half-sob, half-prayer. Mercy, oh Aeon, grant me mercy. 

You speed past the forest. It does not matter where you are, only that you leave. There are so many snapping noises, but all of it is from your running so you- you are sure you are safe- 

No more trees, and the lights from Belebog now shine like the very stars of hope. So close now, and freedom tastes so unbelievably sweet on your tongue. You reach a hand out- 

And fall down again, staring up at the star-less sky with wide eyes and a frantic heart. 

No twig or branch made you fall. 

Spider webs did. 

The moon is so beautiful.

"The moon is so beautiful, isn't it, my darling?" 

Kafka looks down on you, kneeling down by your side. Her pretty eyes gleam in the encroaching darkness, mouth stretched into a small smile that is anything but kind. 

Yet her touch is so very gentle when she cups your face, wipes away the lone tear trickling down your cheek. She is even gentler when she leans down to kiss the corner of your lips, this time tasting your second tear. 

It makes her sigh, so awfully fond. The spider web clings to your body, crawling up your limbs. You are unaware of Blade slowly coming out of the woods, your focus entirely on Kafka. 

"You tried your very best," she croons, voice low and soft. Her smile widens, thumb swiping across your chapped lips, smoothing out the furrowed lines between your brows. "But it wasn't enough, was it? It will never be enough, either. But, oh, how beautiful you looked as you ran and ran, so fully convinced you even had a small chance of success… like a frightened rabbit. Isn't that right, Bladie?" 

Blade's silence is unsurprising, and you are glad for it as you finally descend into sobs, turning your head away from her even as her hand chases your face. All of it… was just an illusion? All of it? 

"Carry them, Bladie." Kafka orders, chuckling. She plays with your hair for a few seconds, humming before she kisses you, kisses under your lashes, one last time and gets up. "Carry them home, where they belong." 

 It ends with you back in their arms. 

It always ends with you back in their arms. 

Masterlist.

[the-kr8tor]

Idk why I hadn't thought of this before but uh, this my 2nd request:3

Bitter Orange for Hobie with💧who thinks he escaped alive with R (from wherever it's up to you but i can suggest like after getting some supplys or being stuck somewhere for a while because it was infested with zombies) and got back to their base safely but little did he know, they didn't tell him that they got bit ;3

I'd like to add to the request I just made (Bitter Orange Hobie w 💧) and uh, this can be optional ig? but can they be best friends who've been pinning over each other but now Hobie never got a chance to confess his feelings n stuff and maybe they do it in those last moments?

Thank you for requesting this heart wrenching fic lmaoo hope u like it!! ❤️

Pairing: Hobie Brown x gn! Reader

Word count: 1k

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, Zombie apocalypse AU, Zombie AU, CW blood, CW injury, TW death. Angst.

Katy's one year celebration 🎉

Hobie comes back to you after three days, he's drenched in sweat and grime. But it's all worth it for the two bags full of supplies that you two need. They're at least a month worth of survival, a month without needing to go out and put yourselves in danger. He could've brought you with him if not for your raging fever and cough, he had to go alone. A part of him was glad that he went alone, he was stuck in a warehouse for an entire day while waiting for the hoard to pass by. You would've hated waiting in the dark and damp place especially with your sickness.

You said you were fine to be left behind, that it was just a simple cold that you can fight with the leftover meds. But when he opens the unlocked door that he specifically told you to barricade, the rotting smell of flesh and decay greets him instead of your smile. It tells him that shouldn't have left. It tells him that his greatest fear has come true.

The bags he painstakingly heaved from the city to the cabin in the woods where you two had been surviving in for months now drops like a death knell on the dilapidated floors. It was home for you and Hobie, he still remembers the day you found it. His heart hammered in his chest when he turned around only to find you gone. And then your scream turned him into the fastest man alive, only to find you jumping for joy in front of the old hunter’s cabin.

He knows exactly why he was so afraid that day, even though it was just a second of you not by his side— he has never been without you. Through the years, way before the world ended, you've been by his side. Always latching on to him, always smiling at him. Or was it the other way around? Was it him latching onto you like paint on a wall? Or was it him who always smiled at you? Nevertheless, he loves you, he loves you even when the world ended. He loves you enough to drag himself across town to come get you while the world around him was burning and crumbling.

But he shouldn't have left, he shouldn't have stayed a day more to find you that bottle of shampoo you have always been on the lookout for. It was a surprise, a happy one this time, none of the walking dead jumping at you from a corner. He would do anything to see you smile again, just like when you found the cabin. You've been trying hard to stay positive for him, but he knows, and you knew that it was all to reassure him. He takes care of you and you take care of him, he wouldn't like it any other way.

Grief already clings to him like a vine snaking along a tree. It grips him tighter with every step he takes. Hobie's hand shakes as he reaches towards your shared bedroom door. He hoped that the smell would be gone by then, but it only persisted as he got closer and closer to the last place he saw you.

He should've told you he loves you.

Your milky white eyes are the first things he sees. He grips the door for balance, chest heaving, heart plummeting to his stomach.

You growl at him, skin no longer bearing life, skin shrunken around your nail beds, claws reaching towards him in a rush.

Hobie freezes and awaits your teeth tearing into his flesh, he'd join you, would that be so bad?

Yet, death doesn't come for him. Chains rattle behind you as you growl and desperately try to tear him apart. Hobie, now realizing what you've done to yourself, cries at the sight of your ankles bound on the bed. Your deathbed. You died alone and sick, you died without him by your side, you died crying for him. But it still crossed in your hazy mind to tie yourself down so when he comes home he doesn't face the same fate you had.

His sobs echo among your inhuman groans, tears streaming down his cheeks as you relentlessly try to grab him even in your bound state. Hobie refuses to look at you any longer, refusing to remember you like this. His eyes flick down at your feet. There's medicine scattered along the floor and bedside table. And there's still water left in your glass. A bloody bandage is still tightly wrapped around your thigh. A testament that you fought to stay human until he gets home, that you tried to cure yourself even though you knew it would be futile.

“Why didn't you tell me?” He asks in a broken voice, a voice he doesn't recognize as his own. “I could've stayed for you.” He knows that you didn't stop him because you didn't want him to see you slowly ebb away into a husk. That your death will break him apart right in front of you while he refuses to let you go. That his sorrowful face would be the last thing you ever saw. “I could've been here for you.”

You spared the both of you pain and suffering.

Hobie doesn't know what to do now, you're dead and gone. And there's no one left.

“I should've—” he inhales, slipping down from the wall to the floor. “I love you. I hope you knew that.”

You continue to slash at the air, chains rattling, bed frame pulling you away from him. Hobie sees a resemblance of you behind your foggy eyes, he can't help but think if you're still in there, that you're still fighting inside. He thinks you knew he loved you, he thinks that you might've felt the same after all those years with him. But that's all from his mind, all he wants now is to hear your voice again.

He just stays there on the floor, grief sinking him further down, eating him alive with every guttural growl you yell.

He shouldn't have left.

[officialabortive]

Dragon!kirishima is like a thieving raccoon in the dead of night.

Dragons are notoriously curious creatures. So when he comes to discover a log cabin sat not too far off from his den, he has to investigate

Kirishima makes his approach after sundown. Any other night, he would be asleep right now, but he's just too antsy to be able to get any rest.

Starting off with exploring an oddly organized array of plants, he trampled over some carrot stems and squash vines, confused at how different berry bushes were all growing in a perfect line. How is that even possib- oh wow!

The red headed dragon is quick to snatch the... well he dosen't know what it is, but it's so incredibly shiny. Whatever it is, it obviously belongs in his hoard. And he can always further indulge in his need to further look around some other time. For now, this beautiful thing is coming back to his den

[twinksrepository]

A protective kiss

Rating: PG

Pairing: Dante X F!Reader

CW: Nightmare, threats

Word count: .5 K roughly

A/N: You have a nightmare, good thing Dante is right there to provide comfort.

Your feet pound against the rough strew ground, dodging around chunks of brick and metal that have fallen in the deserted street as your heart beats against the inside of your ribs with enough force to be painful. 

Panting as you look over your shoulder to see a hoard of demons hot on your heels, only to trip and scream as the ground swallows you whole before the scene is replaced with an overgrown courtyard. 

Looking around in confusion at the change while your heart keeps hammering in your chest and a sense of dread slowly overtakes your mind. Blinking as a vine moves closer to you, almost as if it's a snake moving through the grass. Flicking and twisting right in front of you as the bud at the end opens in a brilliant splash of red and orange colors, only for it to emit a head spliting wail that has your hands flying to cover your ears as you try to scramble away. 

Only to turn and watch as what looks like a bird with several mouths flies at you with its beaks all pointed in your direction as if planning to run you through. “Abomination!” An eerie screaming echoes around a space that reminds you of the roman coliseum as the bird monster flies closer. “You don't deserve to live!” More screams of abomination from around you as you realize you're about to be impaled by the thing. 

Only to sit up screaming in bed with tears running down your face and sweat running along your body. Looking around in panic as you don't immediately recognize where you are. 

“Babe!” Flinching at the hand landing on your shoulder before the relief floods through your system at the familiar voice and visage. Dante’s face is painted with a look of concern as his hand rubs along your back, turning to drop your body against his and starting to sob in his arms. “You're alright, you're alright.” Whispering against your hair. 

“Goddamn.” Sobbing with mucus trailing down your face as you focus on trying to breathe and getting your heart to slow down aware of the fluid starting to drip onto his chest. 

“Just some bad dreams.” Smoothing his wide palms along your back as Dante adjusts you pulling you more against his body. He’s more concerned with comforting you then about any kind of mess you’re making.  

“It was worse than that. it felt like I was gonna die because of some monster.” Sobbing harder against him with your eyes squeezed shut as more tears fall along your cheeks.

“Hey now.” A hint of mocking in his tone as one of his hands cups your jaw and forces you to look upwards. “When it comes to monsters you've got your very own handsome devil hunter to keep you safe.” Brushing his lips against your forehead before planting a kiss on your temple. “I'll protect you, Babe.” 

“Even when my face is covered in snot?” Your voice cracks as you ask it like a small child instead of the adult you are.

“Even then.” Chuckling at you as you try to wipe your face a little more, it will be a while before you can fall asleep again but the reassurance is nice.

[piratefishmama]

just me on my demodragons bullshit again, lets just. spin reality for a second. and assume the duffers can open a last season with anything but a slow paced crawl to a massive finale.

We open on a dark street, the highstreet perhaps close to ground zero, the road lined with empty stores, glass windows shattered, dark vines crawling up the walls, theres sirens in the background, far off but close enough to tell you they're coming from somewhere in town, the lights flicker.

Suddenly, from a side street, skids Steve Harrington's BMW, going as fast as that car can manage around a tight bend.

Inside the car is a small hoard of children and one very stressed driver, all yelling, the only legible thing anyone can make out is Steve Harrngton screaming "I'M GOING AS FAST AS I CAN" as he rights the car, hurtling them down that long stretch.

We're in the car now, and the kids are yelling, "GO FASTER" outside Mike's window, a demodog appears out of the dark, snapping at the window before it disappears into the darkness again.

Will from the middle, he's kneeling on the seats, eyes on the back window "IT'S COMING BACK AROUND!!" there's an otherworldly screech coming from outside, another demodog takes a snap at Dustin's window to the right side before vanishing into the dark like the other. We can't see the outside of the car, just the inside, the inside containing, Dustin, Mike, Will, and Steve.

"FUCK, FUCK, HOLD ON TIGHT!!" He swerves to the right, we see outside of Dustins window a set of talons filling the space the car was in moments before, wing beats filling what little void of sound there is between screaming.

The car swerves left, talons again, this time fill the view outside of Mikes window "IT'S RIGHT ON TOP OF US" someone yells.

the talons tear into the roof of the BMW, all the kids scream.

Title sequence.

[giorno-plays-piano]

Metamorph

Part I

Pairing: art teacher!Aemond Targaryen x reader (Horror AU)

Warnings: dark!Aemond, obsessive behavior, murder, horror, yandere, kidnapping, misanthropy, general creepy stuff.

Words: 1.5k

Summary: Drawn to the artworks of one of the most esteemed artists in the city, you wish to learn from him and find out what inspires him to create his masterpieces. You have no idea how much his secrets will cost you.

P.S. Unhinged Aemond, my dear Ewan nation! No physical harm done to the heroine, though.

___________

"Are you ready?" He asks you calmly, but you can see his impatience, the way he restlessly looks at you and back at the door leading to one of the smaller studios he always keeps locked at all times. Aemond can't wait to show you something, some other paintings of his he prefers to hide from others, and you feel both intrigued and disturbed by what you will find.

He is a genius, no doubt. One of the best artists of the century, the critics say, and while your city literally consists of art studios and galleries, people speak of Aemond Targaryen with a weird reverence, and his name is constantly on the ear.

His drawings caught your attention the moment you saw them online, mindlessly looking through your feed. It was hard to explain what exactly made you stop and look at them - even after months of attending his course you still couldn't quite put your finger on it - but you saved the pictures, printed them out, and then was staring at them hanging from the wall for days like you had been hypnotized. The ones you stumbled upon first depicted all sorts of buildings, always only in black and white, overgrown with... something. Flowers, vines, some greenery that looked like flesh and bones, painted in vivid red, of course. It was sort of scary... but also sort of not. It was a work of art, not some background picture from a cheap horror movie. The architecture he chose, they way he drew it as if he was recording his own perception onto the paper, each stroke written with his style, perhaps his very soul embedded in it... It was impossible to describe it with words. One had to see it to understand.

So, you had visited a gallery where his works had been exhibited, and since then you were fully supportive of city's infatuation with Aemond Targaryen. There was no way you could stay indifferent to his art, especially considering your own desperate attempts to get better at drawing.

How could he be so expressive while mostly using just black, white and red paint? Most of the time, he wasn't even painting but drawing, making sketches, that sort of thing. And yet you were obsessively saving and printing all of his artworks you were able to spot online. Some you hang on the walls of your apartment, some - the ones that made you held your breath - you kept in a drawer like you were a dragon guarding your treasure chest. One time when your mom accidentally spotted them you literally wanted to fall through the floor. It was... too intimate for sharing with anyone. Despite the paintings and drawings showcased openly in the galleries for everyone to see, they felt like they were your great secret, your own hoard, too precious to even talk about it, less let people see printed artworks you kept hidden in the bottom drawer of your cabinet.

Who was he, the man who brought these breathtaking paintings to life, you had often wondered. How had he done it? How did he make the red paint so vivid, so expressive and yet not vulgar? How could he lay strokes with such precision, but not the same way most artists did? How did he build his compositions that they felt real and surreal at the same time? What sort of magic was that? Everyone around joked he must have sold his soul to the Devil.

When you saw Aemond for the first time, you thought the same thing because he scared the Hell out of you. First, he wore an eyepatch and had a long, ugly scar crossing half of his face. An incident from his childhood, someone whispered to you. Someone had stabbed him in the eye.

This felt disturbing and surreal, too. Stabbed a child in the eye? What the Hell? Wasn't he from some wealthy, upper-class sort of family?

Perhaps, it was one of the reasons why Aemond seemed so sullen and chilly, his only presence making the temperature in the room drop a couple degrees. Despite his obvious attractiveness, it felt like he was an alligator waiting in front of a crowd of stupid bunnies who came to admire his teeth. Didn't help he was dressed in all black, and both his skin and hair were alarmingly white like he wasn't really a human being.

A stupid suggestion, really.

He'd been through some serious shit, someone kept murmuring you in the ear as you stared at the artist, open-mouthed and frozen in place. His dad was really wealthy, but rumors had it he didn't really care about him or his siblings, and his mother was constantly on antidepressants. Then the incident with the eye-stabbing happened, but it was still shrouded in mystery even with journalists trying to dig up the truth for years. After he grew up, Aemond went to study business and started working under his grandfather. Rumours had it he made some crazy money but started hating his life, ended up having serious issues with drinking, and at one point, he suddenly left everything and disappeared.

Whatever happened then was a mystery, too, and the artists never spoke about it in any of his interviews expect for saying that drawing has saved him. Although nothing suggests he is a former alcoholic and had once been homeless thanks to the immaculate way he dresses, you thought there was something in his face that made you wonder if he actually got better. Aemond seemed... very hostile.

But he'a an artist, too, and you've found all of them weird in one way or the other.

Of course, despite the fact that you've been drawing for years, you've never thought yourself an artist. No, no, you just enjoy it as a hobby, and you're nowhere near people like Aemond Targaryen.

But when you heard he opened a drawing course for the general public, you were so frantic about getting in you swore to yourself, regardless how much it costs, you would get in. Even if you wouldn't be eating for the next few years.

Seriously, it was Aemond freaking Targaryen you were talking about. A literal King! He had been the talk of a month even in the capital thanks to his recent dragon paintings collection that was sold in an auction for a ridiculous sum of money. So what if he's scary and had this chilling-to-the-bone stare? Most successful people you knew seemed at least a little frightening. Besides, if anything, you could just drop out of class.

But if you were brave enough to apply, you could have a chance to actually see him at work.

How did his studio look? What sort of routine did he have? What kind of paint and pencils did he use? How had he gotten that amazing crimson color you were trying to replicate for months without any success? What did he use for inspiration?

Clearly, you just couldn't let this opportunity slip away. You had to try to get in.

Surprisingly, the course wasn't even that expensive, sold at nearly the same price as most other art courses as if Aemond was just like any other artist in the city. The problem laid in his way of choosing the students: he requested to see the artworks of applicants to determine whether he'd take them or not.

It nearly put a stop to the whole thing because you were terrified of him seeing your drawings. What would he think about an amateur like you? How could you even dream about coming to him instead of improving your technique first with some other, way less known artists? He was Aemond Targaryen, for God's sake.

But you knew he might never take other students again. He might even move to the capital that would give him much more than your city ever could. What if he just disappeared? It could have been your only chance to see him work.

When he accepted you along with 9 other students out of more than two hundred participants, you thought you were dreaming. How? Why would he? You were far from professional. Goodness, you weren't even planning on becoming a true artist, and it felt like you were cheating on people who did. So, how could he take you, knowing that?

Not that you were going to drop out before the start of the course. Over your dead body. You literally spent the entire week shopping for new materials even though you knew he would give you suggestions later. But how could you show him your pencils and brushes that looked like your dog chewed, ate, and then threw them back up? You'd rather jump from the roof.

___________

Alas, on the first day of the course, you stood there among other students, holding your breath as you watched the door of the studio open. Aemond Targaryen was going to teach you his art.

Part II

Tags: @heavenly1927 @yazzzmints @devils-blackrose @lost-and-founds @kennafild

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: In the Garden of the Wyrm

The castle at Lillyford has sat foreboding and overgrown for generations, the lair of a serpentine dragon who's laid claim to it's sprawling gardens and the river it overlooks. None so far have been brave or strong enough to oust the beast, but perhaps you and your foolish friends are lucky enough to make up the difference.

Hooks:

Most people know well enough to avoid the land surrounding the verdant castle, not only because of the dragon but because of the strange and hostile plant life that's said to thrive in its corrupting presence. A low level party in the region may be contracted to help uproot an invasive patch of poisonous blooms or predatory vines, a teaser for what's to come once they set their sights on the dragon's own garden.

The river traders have had enough. For decades they paid tribute to the dragon to avoid it plundering their barges and still had to deal with it plucking cargo and deckhands into the water whenever it got bored. They're willing to pay, and pay well, for a group of hunters to go in and gut the beast, and will even use their influence to support whoever does it taking ownership of the keep.

Alternatively, have the party enter the scene a few weeks after the hunters failed to kill the dragon, having given up their employers before they were eaten sending the dragon marauding through the waterways looking for revenge. All water traffic throughout the region has stopped as the traders and ferryfolk have gone into hiding, throwing the local economy into chaos.

Someone very important is sick and the hard to find cure just so happens to be a plant known to have been growing in the Lillyford gardens before the dragon arrived. While a frontal assault is out of the question, they could sneak in to pluck it from among the dragon's hoarded horticulture. Surely it won't notice a single missing specimen, right? ..... Right?

The Fortress was once known far and wide for its gardens, cultivated by generations of lords and ladies who traced their lineage back to a questing knight, who earned their station by presenting their liege with a flower obtained from the realm beyond the sunrise.  The seeds of that flower became the first planted in the castle’s garden, and began a collection of exotic blooms that the family expanded on throughout the decades. 

All wonders attract admirers, and among the lovers, herbalists, poets, and perfumers, the one who most admired the gardens of Lillyford was a dragon by the name of Pyrithi, who one day emerged from the river and presented himself at the castle gate, demanding that the owner of Lillyford surrender the keep and all its contents to him. When the owner and their men fought back, Pyrithi unleashed a foul breath which sickened their lungs and corroded their armour. Pyrithi did the same to the door of the keep, and threatened worse to those still inside, using the fallen and debilitated protectors as hostages.  

Since that day none but the dragon have set foot in Lillyford, who has supplemented the original gardens with several species of poisonous and/or maneating plants. Should some brave heroes manage to slay the wyrm, they will not only have the thanks of the now-exiled nobles of Lillyford, but also the fame granted to those who protected the keep’s heroic legacy. 

Art

[anthurak]

So here’s a little detail I’m more and more finding particularly interesting:

So far the Ever After has proven to not actually be all that dangerous to Team RWBY, at least not directly.

We’ve had the vines, which are really much more of a massive annoyance than an actual threat.

The mouse hoard was, let’s be honest, more hilariously adorable than an actual threat. And was handled pretty quickly once Ruby showed up with Little.

The Jabberwalker on the other hand, did seem genuinely threatening. But at the same time, Weiss, Blake and Yang were also able to drive it off without much difficulty. Heck, it seems like Yang on her own was able to handle it fairly well even with just one arm.

And now most recently we’ve got the Toy Soldiers, who I think it is pretty clear do not pose much of any kind of genuine threat to our heroines.

I mean, just look at their reaction to Yang squaring up for an actual fight.

Now, where I think this all gets particularly interesting is when we consider what the girls spend the whole episode discussing: That they seem to be in a fairy tale, specifically a fairy tale told to children.

To whit, all these things might not be all that threatening to Team RWBY...

...but what about to an actual very young girl like Alyx presumably was?

If we replace our four 17-19 year-old young adults with just one maybe 8-year-old girl, suddenly all, or at least most, of those things we’ve seen start being actually dangerous and threatening.

I’m start to think that this might be one of the big ‘twist’ on an established story-telling trope that Volume 9 will be exploring: Team RWBY has been dropped into a fairy tale.

Specifically they’ve been dropped into the protagonist role of a story specifically meant for a young child. And also might not be designed to handle FOUR older, more mature and more experienced, but also MASSIVELY angst-ridden protagonists dealing with WAY more personal issues who can also actually fight.

Basically, if this is a story Team RWBY is caught up in, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see them send it way off the rails XD

[ahedderick]

Thorny

When my father started requiring serious amounts of eldercare my kids were in the highschool phase of sports and activities, and the schedule for my husband and me got pretty tight. We ended up letting some things slide around our own farm, and we are now in catch-up mode. For example, the area to the right of those two close trees was basically one gigantic, solid thorn bush, anywhere from 4 to 8 feet tall. There were paths winding through it, but. Yeah. It was a lot. Because it was left unmowed by the tractor and brushhog for a few years. If Nutmeg Goat had fifty close friends, we would not have this problem. We'd have different problems, though.

I've spent over a year trying to manually clear this (and MUCH more up the hill to the right) a little at a time. Once cleared, we will be able to maintain most of it with the tractor. Today, though, my husband and I were planning on doing some herbicide spray in the worst spots and around the fenceline. I took the backpack sprayer (wearing a backpack of liquid is a very odd sensation) and went over some steep, inaccessible areas. He planned to get the bigger sprayer that attaches to the tractor and spray around the edges of a truly immense tangle of thorns and vines.

Well. He hadn't used the big sprayer for quite a while. We had to drag it (so heavy) out of the back of a shed. Remove the brushhog from the tractor hitch, and attach the sprayer*, and then . .

He spent the better part of an hour carefully tracing electric lines from the tractor to the sprayer, trying to figure out where the problem was. There ended up being a tiny little fuse inside a tiny little compartment that was blown. He actually HAD, among the hoard of tools and things he inherited from his father, another tiny little fuse. By the time he actually had the thing all hooked up and working it was NOON. And the "morning" task was still undone. It will get done, true, but this kind of frustration and hullaballoo is just typical of trying to get any darned thing done.

'* NONE of that was easy or painless, btw. I'm just glossing over the difficulties, pinched fingers, and salty oaths.

(the same scene as above, while I was working on it. With Baxter's help.)

[zika-the-certified-idiot]

Update:

I actually made a lil OC Duo for Lethal!

One was seen in the previous post, that one really big Bracken, but the other..

The BEEG Bracken is named ' Grabsy, ' likely having gotten their hands on some questionable chemicals that eventually led to the phenomenon of gigantism!

They reside deep in a lab's facility, and due to their size, find it much harder to chase prey as normal due to the running threat of doorframes, so utilizing the huge vines on their back, they can hide on ceilings and under jumps, otherwise waiting by doors and the like to ambush their prey more abruptly.

The other OC, is Dupe! A mimic who resides in the same facility as Grabsy. They're the type of mimic who you'll hear honking a clown horn in the deepest bowels of the facility. He's a more playful and mischievous sort, and otherwise is a normal mimic.

As a result of this mimic's existence, Grabsy has gotten into the habit of hoarding loud objects to try and prevent Dupe from getting them instead, as this bracken just wants to exist.

Though, unfortunately for them, Dupe knows where their favorite room is - despite their protests - tending to drop by and pester the bracken out of sheer boredom. Of course Grabsy is like a cat that wants nothing to do with this repeated visitor, but is yet to crush his head in one claw.

Despite their relations, both seem to at least somewhat care for each other's wellbeing, though Grabsy is usually the one trying to keep Dupe from doing dumb shit lol.

But yeah! Enough writing for now - Here they are!