#you know the tiny monster living in the back of your head telling that everyone secretly doesn't like u and just tolerates u? yeah.

[yukinyaminyato]

day no. ? of immense anxiety: start

[satoruxx]

normally toji prides himself on being the perfect guard dog—not that he would ever tell you that. but you never have to worry about guys coming up to you when your hulking monster of a boyfriend remains at your side, continuously glaring down his nose at everyone he sees.

this usually works pretty well.

on adults.

but now, as you and him wait in line at the counter of the grocery store, he can only let out a huff of irritation as he watches the little brat in front of you both stare over his mother’s shoulder—big wide eyes locked on you.

at first you don’t really notice, too busy blabbering about something silly as you look around the store. but when you finally lock eyes with the child, you notice the way he seems to go shy, pressing his cheek deeper into his mom’s shoulder. his eyes flick away from your face for just a second, before timidly looking back. as soon as he does, you break into the sweetest, most giddy smile.

(toji would move mountains for a glimpse of that smile—and yet here this kid is just getting it without a shred of work.)

you tilt your head, raising a hand to gently wave at the boy, who flushes further under your attention, but lifts his cheek a little more. chubby fingers come up to meekly wave back, and you hold back a silent coo of affection, eyes filled with honey-like sweetness. with every little giggle and silly face you make at the boy, he seems to get more and more comfortable—toji watches you melt.

the unlucky little brat then quickly peeks at the giant man looming beside you, and toji can’t resist. his face pulls into a evil smile, teeth on full display as he wiggles his fingers sinisterly. the expression has its desired effect—the kid recoils, eyes going wide before burying his face into his mother’s neck. in a few minutes, the boy and his mom are heading out the store and you and toji start loading the groceries onto the belt.

“i saw that, you know?”

toji glances up, seeing your semi disapproving frown, and he cocks his head in faux innocence. “saw what?”

“you’re mean,” you shake your head, crossing your arms. “scaring little kids like that. quite literally the object of their nightmares.”

“ah, he’ll be alright,” toji grunts, taking the bags from the cashier in one hand and reaching for your palm with the other. “it’ll build his character.”

you snort. “he’ll have trauma.”

“like i said,” he grins, a canine display. “character.”

you roll your eyes as he tugs you out of the store—your grip on him unwilling to falter.

toji lives just like this, successful in scaring off any other person who considers giving you attention, whether that’s an adult or a little kid. and despite your exasperated complaints to at least lay off the children (they’re harmless), toji has known for a long time that he can be nothing but selfish when it comes to you.

so forgive him, if he quickly turns to this evil little tactic to scare away kids—it’s all he can really do. besides, it always works.

until now.

you’re sitting under a tree at a small park, working on some dumb assignment for one of your lectures. toji lays on his back next to you, arm draped over his eyes in a momentary respite from the normal danger of his life—eerily content.

the peace is broken by the rustling of tiny footsteps in the grass.

“here you go.”

toji pulls his arm away to peer at the owner of the voice. a boy stands there, hair tousled as he waits in front of you with his arm outstretched—in between his chubby fingers is a singular dandelion.

your eyes widen, cheeks splitting into a wide smile as you coo out your affection. “aw for me?”

the boy nods mutely, cheeks flushed as he thrusts the flower further into your view. you delicately pluck it from his hands, inhaling the fragrance with a grateful smile. “well thank you. it’s beautiful.”

he shyly kicks at a spot of grass, lips pulling up into a giddy smile under your sweet praise. “just like you,” he mumbles under his breath and you squeal softly, giggling at how adorable this kid truly is.

toji sits up before you can say anything else, lips pulled into a displeased frown as he crosses his bulky arms across his chest. “hey.” his voice comes out low and tense, even as he stares down his nose at the boy. “what are you doing?”

you turn to look at your boyfriend, at the exaggerated sneer that normally works wonders in scaring kids away, and you hold back an exasperated sigh. “toji—“

“who are you?” the boy frowns, sass appearing out of thin air as he looks toji up and down like he’s nothing but dirt under his colorful sneakers. you gape at him, eyes darting back and forth between the two as a smile threatens to make its way into your face. toji’s lips part in surprise, a tingle of heat crawling up his neck as he hears your hushed gasp of held back laughter.

“her boyfriend,” he grunts back, eyes narrowed in a way that’s oddly similar to the expression on the kid’s face.

“no way!” the boy huffs, pouting indignantly. his cheeks flush as he glares at toji—unfazed.

“uh, yes way.” toji realizes how petty he sounds, but he’s adamant—unwilling to stand down in anything that involves you.

the boy crosses his arms, mirroring toji’s pose. he rolls his eyes emphatically, lip curling as he sneers down his nose.

“isn’t she too pretty for you?” he asks bluntly. you smother another disbelieving gasp, and toji suddenly feels an unfamiliar thrill rush through his veins—this kid had guts.

“what do you know, brat?” there’s a smirk evident in toji’s voice now, and he uncrosses his arms to lean back on his palms, eyes shining with feral mirth.

“i have eyes,” the boy snaps back, putting both hands on his hips to appear more intimidating—it doesn’t work, he just looks cuter. “i can see her.”

“well quit it,” toji huffs in return. “not yours to look at.”

the kid narrows his eyes. “you’re mean!”

“and you’re nosy!”

“how am i nosy?”

“you’re comin’ over here and givin’ my girl flowers!”

“she deserves flowers!”

“of course she does! from me, you little brat!”

“you suck, old man!”

“what did you just call me?!”

a shout from across the park disrupts the heated bickering, and you all turn to see an older woman waving the boy over. he looks down at you, a sweet smile washing over his face as he tilts his head innocently. “that’s my mom. i have to go home now.”

“heh, sure thing. get home safe, okay?” you shoot toji an amused glance as you speak, and he sends a displeased glare back as he stubbornly crosses his arms again.

the boy nods, beaming at you. “okay! see you later!” he chirps. but just as he’s about to leave he turns back, eyes fixated on toji. “i hope your boyfriend learns how to be nice!”

and then he runs off.

you snort out another laugh, which only gets louder when you catch a glimpse of the way toji is practically sulking in the corner—scowling at the kid’s back with narrowed eyes.

the whole thing is so unbelievably endearing, and you can’t stop grinning as you pack up your things and stand up.

“let’s go home, toji.” you hold your palm out for him, and you’re rewarded with a pointed glance—he takes your hand anyway. even as you both exit the park, toji has an unamused pout on his face, glaring ahead.

you can’t resist.

“don’t tell me you actually feel threatened now,” you giggle, grabbing his bicep and pressing close. toji glances at you from the corner of his eyes, unamused—which only seems to make you laugh harder. “oh come on! he was so cute!”

“little brat,” he grumbles in return. “couldn’t take a hint.”

“you’re mad because the eight year old kid at the park didn’t want to believe you were my boyfriend?”

“the fuck do you think? of course i am. what do i look like if not your fucking boyfriend?”

you chortle, practically falling on him with the weight of your amusement. he sighs, disgruntled.

“it’s not funny, kid.” toji rolls his eyes at you—internally, he’s trying not to grin.

“it’s so funny, toji.” you straighten up, smiling at him with stars in your eyes. “you’re ridiculous and it’s so cute.”

he scoffs, giving you a sidelong glance before reaching up to tug at your cheek. “i’m definitely not the cute one.” he murmurs offhandedly before internally smirking at the way you seem to be caught off guard by his statement.

“whatever,” you mumble, holding his arm as you both continue walking home in relative silence. from the corner of your eye you can see toji’s expression as he mutely stares ahead, deep in thought. you decide not to disturb him, content on just feeling his warmth bleeding into your palm—always at your side.

toji replays the incident in his head multiple times as you head home. the bickering, the sass, and the unfiltered adoration that little brat seemed to have for you.

something clicks.

as you’re pushing open the door of your apartment, you hear toji quietly chuckle from behind you, and you turn to look at him over you shoulder. “what?”

he shakes his head slowly, eyes shut even as an uncharacteristically soft smile tugs at his lips. “just thinking…”

“about what?” you ask curiously.

toji grins at you, cocking his head fondly. “when we have a kid, i want the little brat to be just like that.”

[iarchmybaculaa]

18+!

Tags/warnings⚠️: Alcohol consumption, club setting, misunderstandings, angst if you squint, long haired Jungkook, Reader is a brat, angry Jungkook, unprotected sex (please do not practice that irl), rough sex, spitting!, breeding kink

Word count: 3.6k

🎧 : Sticky Rice-Lil Gnar, Reminder-The Weeknd, Party Monster- The Weeknd

For my loves: Tasara & @hobicakess 🩷

Beta’d by Shaq🫶🏾

A/N: I randomly found an edit in my gallery that inspired this whole thing. HEAVILY unedited bc I’m extremely sleep deprived rn so pls be nice!

Fic takes place about 4 years before "All mine" ! Enjoy?

Being married to Jungkook has single-handedly disproved every doubtful remark you've heard from everyone trying to convince you that it would be ill-advised to get married so young.

Contrary to what you've been told, the spark between has not died. In fact, you think that you find something new to love about Jungkook every day.

His love has never once not been intentional and gentle. You've never experienced being with someone who is so in tune with your body, with your mind, with your soul. Jungkook sees loving you as a competition; his only rival being his past selves.

There is no adventure that Jungkook would want to experience without you. There’s no bridge he wants to cross without holding your hand; no dance he wants to do without you beside him….or rather bent over in front of him as you are now.

The low lights of club Euphoria had switched to a dangerously deep shade of red, casting a sinful glow on your already ridiculously seductive face. Your eyes were low, whether it was from the few drinks you'd had earlier or the thick cloud of hookah smoke that floated around the club, Jungkook didn't know.

What he did know however, was that he had the most beautiful woman in the world throwing her ass back against him, in a dress so tiny that your cheeks were becoming more and more exposed as he thrust his hips forward to meet yours.

You move in sync with the music, your bodies in perfect harmony as the people around you become a blur. In that moment, it's just you and Jungkook. You and your husband.

You feel the cool air travel further up your legs as you dance. You reach behind you to pull your dress down, more out of habit than anything. You hear Jungkook groan as your hand ‘accidentally’ presses against his crotch, and you can't suppress the small giggle that escapes you.

It's a low sound, so realistically, Jungkook can't hear it that well over the near deafening music…But he sees the way your body shakes a bit. You shake the same way when you laugh at your own jokes or Jungkook's clumsiness; and he knows you well enough that he can practically hear the sound in his head.

Fuck he's in love with you.

He's so lucky to have you. He can't wait to live the rest of his life with you, to have a family with you, to take you home and fu-

His train of thought is cut off by the harsh vibration of his phone in the pocket of his slacks. He grabs your waist to stop your movements, and you stand upright. You raise a questioning brow at him.

“It's Namjoon hyung” he mouths, pointing to the phone at his ear.

You roll your eyes and shake your head. Namjoon had been on a work trip to London for the past few ( painfully long) weeks, and he still refuses to acknowledge the time difference. You two have grown to accept it, even if it means that he calls Jungkook at the most ridiculous (sometimes inconvenient) times.

The crackle of the receiver lets Jungkook know that Namjoon is talking, but he can’t make out a word he’s saying. Jungkook quickly realizes that he couldn't possibly have this conversation inside the club, so he gestures towards the door.

“I'm going to take this outside,” he says with his lips pressed up to your ear. “Do you want to come with me? Or will you be okay ‘till I get back?”

“I'm a big girl!” You pout up at him, pushing his glasses further up his nose with your pointer finger . “I’ll be fine, go take your call! Tell Joon I said hi.”

He nods and plants a quick kiss on the crook of your neck. He strokes the side of your face with his thumb and promises to be right back, before he turns on his heels. You watch as his head disappears into the crowd, leaving you standing alone and regrettably bored.

With Jungkook gone, you have nothing else to do since you two had come alone. You think standing around in a club like someone with a lost shadow would be incredibly lame. So you do what any unoccupied, married person in a club would do, you make your way to the bar to get a drink…or two.

By the time Jungkook gets back you're just a little tipsy.

You're not a stranger to alcohol per se, but unlike Jungkook who's been around enough liquor to know what blends would be good for you (strong enough to make you feel good, but not enough to make you lose your inhibitions); you don't know much (not enough if you ask him). You think of calling him, but your phone is in your purse… perched on jungkook’s shoulder.

So you do the most logical thing you can think of, and you order the prettiest sounding drink on the menu. Who can blame you?

You’re just a girl.

~

Two cups of Serendipity later, you're back in Jungkook's arms feeling absolutely giddy and incorrigibly horny.

The lights in the club are a dark blue now, and the music is even louder. Jungkook looks exactly the way he did when he left.

Sexy as all fuck.

Long hair tucked behind his hair on one side? Check.

Denim shirt? Check.

Tattoos? Double check.

Damn.

MINE! MINE! MINE!

You're not sure where he put his glasses, but you make a mental note to ask him before you leave. You do not need a repeat of the Geum putdwaeji Sikdang* incident. You know from experience that Jungkook and contacts don’t mix; and it would take over three weeks for them to get replaced…Not a fun time.

And right now? All you want to have is fun.

Jungkook’s mouth is moving, but your brain is moving too fast (or too slow) to read his lips and you can’t hear him. But his hands pull you toward him by the waist and you lean into his touch.

Your back is turned to his front as you move slowly against him the second you hear “she’s saying baby saenggakaji ma” float over the speakers.

Jungkook moves in sync with you as he always does, but his hands remain at your waist, almost rigid. His touch is shy and..Timid? His hands don’t trail up towards your breast, or towards your belly button. You find it odd, and downright ridiculous.

You grab his hands to take them upwards, and you’re instantly confused. There’s ink on both his hands? You pause.

When did Jungkook get a sleeve on both hands?

His lips brush faintly against your ear, and you’re suddenly hyper aware of the absence of the cool metal of the rings that should be in his lip.

You don’t hear a thing except the erratic beating of your heart.

Then the inconceivable happens.

Jungkook stands in front of you, arms folded across his chest and eyes glaring at you through his glasses. The lights above you start flashing, and they bounce off his shiny, silver lip rings.

But if Jungkook is in front of you…who the fuck is behind you?!

You think you might faint.

As confused as you might have been about the situation, you knew two things for sure:

1. You needed to get as far away from not- Jungkook as possible

2. You're screwed.

Not-Jungkook seems to realize your mistake, and moves his hands from your waist so can step away from him; you rip yourself away from him as if his touch burns.

You open your mouth to say something to Real- Jungkook, but your brain goes blank.

You're too dunk for this.

Jungkook gives you a quick once- over to make sure that you're unharmed, before taking a gentle hold of your wrist. He tucks you behind him as he gives Non- Jungkook a piece of his mind.

The ringing in your ears has become so loud can't even hear the music anymore, much less their argument. Your brain feels like it's been doused in water, and you feel an unwarranted giggle making it's way up your throat. You swallow it down.

Now's not the time.

From what you can see, Real Jungkook and Not-Jungkook are having a very spirited conversation. Real Jungkook seems to be holding his composure quite well, until Not-Jungkook says something that causes his jaw to tick and his hands to form fists at his sides.

But instead of throwing a punch, Jungkook takes a deep breath and walks away, pulling you behind him.

Not- Jungkook waves at you.

You don't wave back.

Jungkook is silent as he leads you out of the club and towards your car. You say nothing as he opens the passenger door and watches as you sit inside.

“Do your feet hurt?” He asks

You shake your head at him. Still, he couches on his knees and unbuckles your heels, giving your calves a brief massage before he straps you into your seat. He closes your door and grabs a bottle of water from the back seat. He hands it to you as he settles behind the steering wheel.

“Drink.” He commands. His voice isn't necessarily angry but you can hear something bubbling beneath the surface. The restraint he's exercising is audible in his voice, and for some strange reason…it excites you.

He pulls out of the parking lot slowly, careful not to accelerate too fast so your water doesn't spill.

The fog around your brain is almost completely lifted by the time you've finished the bottle. Jungkook glances at you for a moment, and releases a satisfied hum when he sees the crumpled plastic in your lap.

He doesn't smile though.

His jaw is tense and his body is rigid in his seat. He isn't touching you and you don't like it.

“Jungkook,” you say, reaching over to touch his thigh

“Are you sure?”

You look at him confused. “Am I sure about what?’

“Are you sure I'm Jungkook?”

There it is.

You have the audacity to scoff at him.

“ Of course I'm sure it's you Jungkook. Don't be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?! You were literally grinding your ass all over some random dude you thought was me but I'm being ridiculous?!”

Your cheeks heat up with embarrassment. You know that Jungkook has all right to be upset, fuck you're upset at yourself for making such a terrible mistake. Jungkook has all right to reprimand you, but your mouth just won't cooperate with your brain. All the brat inside you heard, was Jungkook rubbing in something that you were already very embarrassed and flustered about and it just didn't seem fair.

If you thought about it…This was all Jungkook's fault really!

“ Well it's not my fault that you look like every other Korean dude with a perm!!”

The car comes to an abrupt stop as Jungkook slams the breaks.

“Excuse me?”

You roll your eyes and cross your arms at your chest. Jungkook’s eyes flick down to where your tits are bulging, but only for a moment of course.

“Stuttering is your thing Jungkook. You heard me.”

“You’ve actually lost your fucking mind.” Jungkook marvels at you, completely in disbelief at your misplaced attitude.

“I should have bent you over my lap and spanked your ass raw in that fucking club for everyone to see… But I let you off so easy, because I knew you made the mistake because you were drunk; and this is the thanks I get?”

“No.” You quip, “I’m not thanking you in any way.”

The tension between you is as thick as it was during the first 3 months of you two flirting with each other. You were both in college, desperately holding on to the title of “study partners ” even though you kept finding yourselves in compromising positions.

You were both playing a timeless game of cat and mouse. A metaphorical tug of war. Jungkook would push and you would pull; now it appeared that you were having a rematch.

He sucks the pierced side of his lip into his mouth.

You want him so bad.

Jungkook’s eye twitches.

“You’re asking for it, you know that?” He asks, face so close to yours that you can practically taste him on your tongue.

“Give it to me then.” You challenge.

Jungkook leans forwards, and you close your eyes in anticipation of a kiss.

But Jungkook doesn’t kiss you. Instead, he sinks his teeth deep into your neck, though not hard enough to break skin.

You moan at the sting, reveling in the way his soft tongue soothes his claim.

He pulls away and runs his thumb over your lip, eyes darkening.

“Did he kiss you?” He grits out.

You frantically shake your head no.

It's then that you realize just how bad this could have truly been for you. Jungkook was right. You were getting off easy.

Jungkook pries your mouth open.

“Tongue out.” he says.

You loll your tongue out and look up at him expectantly for what you know is coming. Jungkook looks directly into your eyes as he spits into your waiting mouth. You swallow without being told to; it's almost like a reflex.

Jungkook is pleased.

“Who does that taste like, baby?”

“Tastes like you,” you reply.

Jungkook hums.

He grabs your hand and brings it over to his lap. Your breath hitches when you feel the telltale rigidness of a boner in his jeans. Your heart skips a beat as you realize how painfully hard he is.

You need him.

“What does that feel like, baby? Hm? Does that feel like me? Or are you not sure?”

You whine as he rolls his hips up into your palm. “It feels like you Jungkook, I want it.”

Jungkook’s face contorts into one of mock contemplation.

You hate when he gets like this, when he pretends to consider giving you what you want when you both know it's not going to happen.

"You want to know what I think?" he muses rhetorically.

"I think I've let you get away with a little too much lately. I've always told you that your mouth is going to get you in trouble, but I've never made good on that promise, have I?" He chuckles darkly. "Maybe it's time I change that, hm?”

Your heart thumps loudly in your chest and you feel a shiver of anticipation zoom down your spine.

“Unzip me.”

Your body is in autopilot as you undo his zipper and lean forward to take him inside your mouth.

He pulls you backwards by your braids, and brings his hand around your throat.

“You're gonna take me in your mouth and you're going to keep it there until we get home.” He growls out at you

“No licking, no sucking, no moving. By the time we get home I'll be tattooed so deep in your fucking brain that you'll never mistake someone else for me ever again.” he bites out.

But in true Jungkook fashion he brushes his lips gently against yours, then he shoves his dick down your throat .

The ride home is filled with the obscene noises of you trying not to choke on Jungkook's cock.

Your eyes are watering and your nose burns from how hard you've been breathing through it. Your chest feels hollow and your jaw aches, but you're too fucked out to care.

Jungkook's cargo pants are thoroughly soaked from the way your saliva has dripped all over him. You're sure it's beginning to get uncomfortable for him to sit like this: cock hard and throbbing and in your warm, wet mouth. Yet, he sits perfectly still; unmoving.

His breaths come out in slow, controlled gasps, and it becomes exceedingly clear to you that It's taking as much effort from Jungkook not to snap his hips upwards and fuck your throat; as it is for you to not give him an actual blowjob.

The realization is absolutely riveting.

When Jungkook pulls into the driveway of your flat, he lifts your chin up , and his dick slides out of your mouth with a wet plop.

You both try to catch your breath, chests heaving and hearts thumping. Jungkook tucks himself back into his pants, and takes a deep breath before he gets out of the car.

Like the gentleman he is, he walks over to the passenger side of the car and holds your door open for you. But when you don't make any efforts to get up, he bends down and looks expectantly at you.

You pout at him and point to your feet.

You're barefoot. Of course.

Jungkook rolls his eyes, grabs you by the waist, and tosses you over his shoulder. You squirm a bit, and Jungkook promptly delivers a warning slap to your ass which settles you completely.

He opens the front door and kicks it shut behind him, waiting until he hears the security alarm activate before he moves towards your bedroom.

He tosses you on the bed and flicks the light on. Your chin is slicked with spit, you tits are spilling out of your dress, and the curly hair in your braids are sticky to the thin sheen of sweat on your face.

You look a mess.

A hot, beautiful mess that Jungkook made. His pride swells, along with another part of him.

Jungkook turns his back to you as he takes his shirt off.

“You know I love you right?,” he asks, putting his glasses on the nightstand. He tosses his shirt onto the ground and walks over to the bed. “You know that there's nothing in the world that could ever make me stop loving you?” He asks, now face to face with you as he strokes your chin.

‘I do,” you reply, your voice comes out more of a whine than you actually want it to.

“That's great baby, because this is going to feel like I fucking hate you.”

***

You both cry out when Jungkook finally slips inside you.

You've come to accept that no matter how many times you've taken him, how many times you will take him you'll never not be taken aback by the way his cock stretches you.

The lights are on, and so you can see Jungkook in all his glory. You can see way his biceps bulge and the way his abs tense. You the way his face contorts as your pussy practically suffocates him.

“ You like what you see baby?” He taunts, “had to make sure that you can actually see who's fucking you hm? Wouldn’t want you to make another mistake now would we?”

He spits the word out as if it pains him to say, and translates that pain into a vicious snap of his hips that has you lurching forward, clawing at his chest.

His thrusts are all the same. Carefully calculated and deliciously hard. His tips brush against your gspot with every fluid movement of his hips, and all you can do is whine and beg.

At one point Jungkook slows down to a torturous pace. Pulling out of you the moment he's just shy of your gspot. You can't handle being teased, you won't. You decide to up the ante.

“Jungkook,” you moan out, eyes rolling to the back of your head as he grinds into you “please make me cum daddy”

Jungkook freezes and his hips stutter.

You've never called him that before.

For a moment you regret letting it slip out of your mouth. That's until you see the crazed look that comes into Jungkook's brown eyes.

He wraps his hand around your throat and starts pistoning his hips into you.

“Daddy huh?” He grits out as your juices start leaking down your thighs and unto the skin of his stomach “ is that what you want baby? Wanna make me a dad? Hm? Maybe that way people will keep their fucking hands off you huh?”

“Jungkook please!” You scream, tears pooling in your eyes from how desperately you want the sweet release you've been denied.

“You gonna let me put a baby in you princess? Gonna let me stake my claim on you for everyone to see?” He demands as he stills to a stop inside you.

“Fuck, Jungkook yes! Please I'll do anything you want just please!” You cry

Jungkook finally drives his cock upwards, it's curved head hitting your gspot at the perfect angle. Your orgasm rips through your body so violently that you sink your fingernails so deep into Jungkook's bicep that you break skin.

You cum in spurts, coating him in a thick sheen of your arousal. Jungkook cums with you, no longer being able to resist the pleasure that your body was bringing him.

Jungkook's cum spills out of him in a long, steady stream. You feel the warmth as it seeps inside you, and you clench around him reflexively, determined to keep all of it inside.

“You wanna have my babies so fucking bad.” Jungkook mumbles into your hair, voice hoarse and laced with fatigue.

And do, you mean to say, , though it never actually comes out of your mouth.

Instead, you hug jungkook to your chest, legs wrapped securely around his waist as sleep consumes you.

Fin.

[hunnylagoon]

The Killing Moon

PT2 The Colour Wars

Ellie Williams x Reader

It’s the perfect night for mystery and horror. The night itself is filled with monsters.

Premise: Summer camp feels a little different. Could it be newfound feelings for your friend or creatures beyond the imagination stalking you? Either way, it’s time to win the Colour Wars.

Warnings: Raunchy humour / mentions of cryptids / creepy?

PART ONE: Camp Spirit

Hope everything is alright with you because I'm so stressed that I may be spiralling into insanity at any moment. I understand that I'm an adult now but I too need someone to scream my frustration to until my lungs burn and I'm light-headed. "Hey, I'm having like super bad cramps and my flow is super heavy so I can't play this game."

I look at the girl in front of me, she's around fourteen if I had to guess and has two blonde French braids. We were in the middle of the first game of colour wars -the treasure hunt- and this girl was sporting a blue shirt, I didn't know her face nor was she on my team and I hadn't even noticed that she had been tagging along with my group for ten minutes. "Who are you?"

"Laila."

"Why are you here?" I ask but Laila only answers me with a shrug and a sneer "Never mind, I'm not your counsellor and I don't care, go to the nurses."

"Can I go to the nurses too?" Olive peeps up behind me "I think I have a scrape on my knee.":

"Don't we all?" I look back at her "We gotta win this game, we're so close," We were, mostly because every time the blue team gathered treasure I would send out feral kids to ambush them and bring it back to me "We're gonna have all the treasure we can carry." The objective was simple; The directors hid treasure (Cheap jewelry, hats, clothes from the old theatre program, etc.) across campgrounds and we had to source it out, whichever team came back to the sports field with more treasure won.

"We've been out here for hours," Morgan groaned, you'd think that these girls had been sent to war with the way they complained.

"It's only been forty-six minutes."

Olive took a seat on a rock, Leah doing the same, it didn't take long for each girl to have firmly planted themselves on the ground and refuse to get up. Valentina grabbed a stick and began to scratch drawings into the muddy ground.

"C'mon guys, there's like fifteen minutes left, and I know for a fact that there is still treasure to be found." I know how ridiculous I must've looked at that moment, I had been wearing a purple 'royal cape' that was pilling onto my T-shirt and a cheap dollar store crown that kept slipping off my head.

"I'm so bored," Chloe drew out.

"Because you're being boring!" I exasperate. Never had I ever had a cabin that was so apathetic and unenthusiastic, they were a stark contrast to last year when everyone had sunshine running through their veins and mud smeared across their faces; those pitch black summer nights live in my bones.

"This isn't fun, can we play something else?" 

"No," I take a deep breath out, composing myself "You are at summer camp to be outdoors, you're developing important social, cognitive and emotional skills."

I'm met with blank stares from each and every girl sitting below me "I don't know what that means," Leslie said.

"It means we're going through puberty," Kim tells her.

"No," My eyes go wide "No, it means that you're figuring out who you are."

"Am I gonna get my period soon?" Valentina drops the stick from her tiny hands. 

"Maybe- I don't know," I thew my hands out. 

"What's a period?"

"It's where you bleed until you don't have any blood left and then you die," Kim says this so matter-of-factly like she has a degree in healthcare and has been teaching the health unit in PE for a decade.

"WHAT?" Chloe jumps up from her spot on the ground, looking around to see if she's already bleeding out.

"We're gonna die and you didn't tell us?" Leslie looks even more terrified than she did on the night of the camp legend.

Every girl was beginning to panic, fear was clear across their small faces. It's moments like these where I wish I was alone, maybe solo camping or back in my bedroom from high school, somewhere where only the moon knows how I rot and the sun knows how I yearn.

"Guys, calm down, a period isn't a bad thing and it won't hurt you," This was my attempt to soothe the ten-year-old girls who were contemplating how they would spend their last days on earth. The plastic crown slips off my head and I reach down to grab it and readjust it.

"Then why is it called a period if it doesn't end your life?" Kim asks, crossing her arms.

"I don't know but it doesn't end your life-

"Can we just go back to the soccer field until this game is over?" Tamar chimes in, looking like she rather be staring at cardboard boxes. 

"Fine!" I finally gave in, gathering all of the treasure that once sat at my feet into my arms. The amount of treasure was almost overflowing, I had stolen a bunch from some kids in Dean's cabin who were too scared to argue with me. 

"Am I going to die?" Leslie scurries up beside me and I look down at her, behind the thick lenses of her classes, she is holding back tears.

"Not for a very long time," I can hardly bend my neck to look at her with the amount of shit I'm hauling, the girls being little to no help with this. The girls trail behind me and I have to turn my entire body to look at them "If anyone runs off this time, I'm feeding them to the snatchers."

Suddenly they want to listen. The woods aren't scary in the day, just at night when they begin to whisper. As of now, I know the quickest way to every part of camp despite the identical trees so thick that you can hardly see the sky when you're beneath them. 

Leslie holds onto the bottom of my red Colour Wars T-shirt since my hands are full, Valentina holds onto Leslie's hand and all of a sudden I've become a mother hen with little chicks following me around. 

"If magic isn't real then why were people so scared of witches," Valentina asks me while she kicks a rock across matted fallen leaves and dirt. 

"Maybe magic is real," I say "To burn a witch is to admit magic exists."

"How do I become a witch?" Chloe appears out of what seems to be thin air on my other side, I can't see her since my pile of goodies is up to my chin and I'm afraid that if I move all of it will come tumbling down.

"Practice magic," That was my guess, I didn't know squat about witchcraft.

"How do I do that?"

"A real witch will figure it out herself," I say. When you've worked with kids for five years, you get to a certain point where you run out of creative answers. During my first year working here, I was sixteen and a CIT, terribly afraid to mess up because I hadn't lived yet. With each passing year that I've come back, I get more and more comfortable, returning to familiar faces and the smell of petrichor.

Chloe nods excessively like I've just said something extremely profound, I can see the gears turning in her head like she's already thinking of spells to cast. 

It takes a little less than five minutes until we're out of the woods, we emerge by the crafts cabin, the soccer field is in clear sight. The soccer field is built over a little mound, slightly elevated from the ground and on top I can see two piles of knick knacks and a pretty big sum of campers and counsellors alike waiting on the top. 

From the looks of it Tommy and Joel have already begun to count their respective teams mound of treasure, Tommy being on the amazing red team and Joel representing the awful/disgusting/foul/boring/untalented blue team. That might've been a stretch but there were no friends in the Colour Wars.

In what seems to be the blink of an eye a hoard of kids runs past me and my girls, nearly knocking me off my feet. I didn't even process that some boys with too much energy had stolen plyed my well earned (stolen) treasure from my arms leaving me with nothing but my cape and crown until Liza, a girl from the Grizzly cabin snatched the cape right off my back and none other than Ellie herself grabbing the crown off my head.

They were booking it to the soccer field "Go get our shit back!" I yelled ushering my girls to go after the kids who were at least three years older than them. Only two of them actually listened; despite how hard they were trying, Leslie and Chloe's stumpy legs couldn't take them very far, leaving me to be the only one in pursuit.

I summoned back all of my memory from playing rugby in highschool and jumped on Ellie's back, I didn't take her down but she stumbled. I was so desperate to not turn up empty handed. By the time I made contact with her, she had already thrown the crown ahead for Liza to catch. They ran up the soccer field, dumping the double stolen treasure into their hula hoop. Even visually they were in the lead now, thanks to my expert piracy skills and theirs too, I guess.

"I hate you," I slid off Ellie's back, my sneakers hitting the dusty ground. "My girls earned that fair and square."

She looks me up and down, bathing in my anger like some kind of prize "I know you stole it."

"How?"

"Because I know you."

"Oh yeah?" I cross my arms, taking a step closer to my friend "Do you know how I'm gonna kick your ass later?"

She grins "I look forward to it." Ellie leaves me with this while she walks up to the soccer field to revel with her team in their newfound victory.

"What does 'kick your ass' mean?" Olive padded up behind me along with the rest of the girls, except for Leslie who was bent over, one hand on her knee to support her while she clung to her inhaler for dear life. "Are you gonna beat Ellie up?"

"I think she means 'kiss her ass'." Kim said, turning her head to look at Olive "Like they're gonna have sex later."

"What's sex?" Chloe furrowed her eyebrows.

"Kim you need to stop talking," I tell them, hands on my hips, nothing but frustration etched into the forefront of my brain. I glance back at Ellie as Maria rings the bell to signal that the game was over. Softly, with hands gentle as rain, I will wrap my hands around her neck and strangle her.

"Listen up!" I announced to the eight girls in my cabin. To absolutely no surprise, blue won the treasure hunt, now we were setting up for a water balloon fight in the allotted section of woods that Joel taped off in bright pink flagging tape. "I physically and mentally cannot handle another loss, I will be very disappointed in each and every one of you if we don't win-

"That's not true," Daniel cuts me off "The point of today is to have fun, winning doesn't matter, just do your best." The both of us are standing tall on a rock while the campers sit around and stare up at the two of us like we had been mighty gods preparing to throw wine and bread at their little feet.

I eye Daniel from the side and look back to everyone "None of your hard work is going to matter unless you win so do you want to be a whiney loser like Daniel or be cool like me and win the colour wars?"

Everyone fell quiet for a moment as if a curse of silence fell upon us until Kim not-so-sublty yelled "Daniel's a pussy!" I was beyond the point where I cared about the girls cussing, the only thing on my mind was showing my very dear friend, Ellie how awful her team is and rub my win in her beautiful face.

"That's what I like to hear!" I smile "Now let's go win this!"

My girls erupt in cheers and Daniel almost shamefully steps off the rock. I had finally made a breakthrough with my cabin after slightly snapping at them after Maria announced that the red team lost. Maybe the treasure hunt wasn't my thing, but water balloon wars? I had won that every single year, even when I was still a camper. 

The objective was easy, be the last team with players, once you get hit you're out. Friendly fire is strictly against the rules as well as headshots, they had to be hit in the torso, once you get wet, you're out and have to leave the allotted zone to watch. 

We played in a patch of forest that was less dense than the rest, making it easier to run around. 

"Three!" Maria shouted, "Two!" She's standing in the middle of the zone, so everyone can hear her though no one can see her since the two teams are on opposite ends to make it fair. "One!" She blows her whistle and kids are already dunking their hands into buckets of icy-cold water balloons and setting off to the enemy end.

The CITs were responsible for keeping a consistent flow of water balloons and buckets spread evenly in the zone, I remember when I was a CIT and had to miss out on capture the flag to pick up every bit of balloon that at splattered across the ground. 

I had a balloon in each hand, making my way around the perimeter discreetly. I lock eyes with a younger boy in a blue shirt, he immediately turns to run, not fast enough though "Come back here ankle biter!" I yell, decking a water balloon at him, it hits him right in his back.

There was a boy in Sawyers's cabin, one of the wild ones with animal teeth that ran off of energy drinks and the huff of Sharpies. He tried to throw a balloon at me but it missed me by a landslide, his second attempt wasn't much better.

I however nailed him in the chest "You're out buddy!" I smiled, and he met this by giving me the middle finger. "Whatever carrot top, tell Sawyer I send word!"

I was way too good at this game. Every year I thought I could take on the other team single-handedly and every year I'm proven right when I'm the last one standing. After a prompt reminder from Joel that this was supposed to be fun for the campers and I was treating it like World War Three, I had to cool down a little bit.

We played this game straight after lunch so everyone was either hopped up with energy or sluggish from eating too much, alternatively, there was Ashlynn. She was wandering around, a black bleach-stained hoodie thrown over the top of the shirt for whatever team she was on.

Ashlynn had a can of Diet Coke in hand, where did she get it? I'm not too sure, my guess is that she stashed them under her bunk. "Hey," She sits on a log beneath the tree I was hiding behind. "You're way better at this than you should be, you know you're playing against children, right?"

"I didn't come here to fuck around," There weren't a whole lot of people left in the game, I just took out Abby and the only counsellor left on the blue team was Ellie, maybe Ashlynn but she didn't pose a threat in any way shape or form. 

"Do you have any nic on you?" She looked up at me, taking a sip from her diet coke, her shaggy bleached hair was one more dye away from being fried.

"No?" I furrow my eyebrows "I don't usually bring nicotine to a summer camp full of children."

Ashlynn almost looks like she's hungover but then again she usually seems that way "I brought a couple joints and I'm like ninety percent sure two got stolen."

My eyes widen "You brought joints? Ash, you're getting fired if Maria finds out."

She shrugs "I don't mind, I either smoke weed here or I smoke weed in my backyard." 

"Okay but if it actually got stolen then it's probably some little shit that has it, they're gonna say that you gave it to them and that's a whole case."

"It's legalized though."

"Yeah, not for children." I was taken away from the game until I saw the smallest bit of a blue shirt beneath Ashlynn's sweater, I didn't hesitate to drop a balloon on her. She doesn't seem to mind and from this reaction, I'm beginning to think she's the one who smoked those missing joints. 

I come out from behind the tree empty-handed and plant a kiss on her forehead as an apology for getting soaking wet "Love you, Ash, hope you find your weed." I tell her before jogging off. Ashlynn doesn't get up to join everyone else outside of the boundary, she just stays on the log and drinks her diet coke.

Dina is still in the game on my team as well as a few campers, I hear her voice yelling at children somewhere off in the distance. Sadly, the girls in my cabin were picked off almost immediately, I swear I will avenge their little souls.

"You're soaking Conner, get out of here," Dina scolded a kid on the blue team "You gotta play by the rules, so beat it shrimp."

"Nuh-uh," He said. Lord knows I hated this kid, last summer when I went to the bathroom during dinner Conner stole my food and denied it even though he was the only one in the mess hall with two plates, he then kicked me in the shins and waddled away.

"You gotta go, baby hippo," I tell him, his round cheeks are bright red from running and he's short-breathed. He shakes his head and with a final stern look from both Dina and I, he leaves. "Nice, who's left?"

"One camper on our team and just Ellie over there," She tells me "Like best case scenario, just go over there and seduce Ellie."

I raise an eyebrow "Nah, I'm winning with brute strength and incredible strategy."

"I'm guessing that going for the little kids first is your definition of incredible strategy?"

"Yup," I say, walking to a bucket to grab another balloon "Get ready, this could go south."

"God forbid we tragically lose our lives in a water balloon war," Sarcasm drips from her tone even though she grabs another balloon.

"I know, that would be awful," I say with full seriousness.

Dina is struck with a water balloon out of nowhere "Shit," She mutters, looking at her now dripping shirt. I don't think I've ever reacted so quickly to anything in my life, I throw a balloon at Ellie and it barely hits her, but it still does.

"Look, you're wet," I smile, brighter than I had this whole summer "You're wet, you lost!" I'm almost jumping around, I'm so unreasonably happy at such a stupid thing. "I won!" I yell trying to capture the attention of the CITs so my win could go on record. 

"Fuck yeah!" Dina gives me a high five then looks at Ellie "You lost!"

"You lost," I say in a sing-song voice "Red team wins," I grab Dina's hand and raise to the sky like she's just won a wrestling match "We win, you're all wet!"

"You're wet too, D," Ellie says.

"Yeah, but you lost!" Dina wraps me in a hug around my torso, pinning my arms down and shaking me back and forth.

"Ew, get off," I can't help myself from laughing "But seriously I won, put that on record."

"Wow they have their worst player guarding the flag," I say, we were nearing dinner now and everyone was getting tired out, not me though, I had a war to win. Capture the Flag was the last game and that game is my shit, I know I said that about every other game but I really mean it this time. 

"I always forget that you're way too into this," Ellie says, she's unmoving in front of the blue team flag, pole stuck into the ground. 

"Ellie, you need to let me win," I say "Or I will do unspeakable things to you."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" She teases.

"Whichever you want," I almost surprised myself by saying this but it just slipped from my mouth like wax off the wings of Icarus. Behind me, I feel a harsh slap on my back and swiftly turn around to see a pudgy kid with a huge smile on his face. 

"You have to go to jail," Conner says and if he wasn't a child who stood at 4'3 I probably would've hit him.

"Yeah, I know, Conner," I glance at Ellie who is biting back a laugh and gives an obnoxious little wave as Conner drags me by the hand towards the jail. He waddles along, clinging to two of my fingers, his hands are greasy and slippery, whatever reason, I'm not sure I want to know.

He takes me to a rope circle laid out on the ground, there's already a handful of people on my team in it. Conner drops me off there, sticking his tongue out before scurrying away as fast as he could (Which wasn't very fast). There's one blue team guard, I recognized him from Jesse's cabin. 

I'm far too bitter for someone playing a harmless camp game, I hold a grudge easier than I hold someone's hand. "Why are you here?" A boy from Miles cabin asks.

"Because I got tagged, Emmet," I say, agitated. "Why are you here? Because you can't outrun an eight-year-old?"

His smile drops "Yeah," He looks down at his shoes, kicking some dirt. 

"How are we supposed to get out and win this?" Another boy asks.

"Jesus," I mutter "How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen and you've never played Capture the Flag?"

He nods his head "I mostly play COD and Fortnite."

"Oh my god," I run my hands down my face, fighting the urge to gag "Someone from our team who isn't tagged has to tag us, they can only tag one person at a time and we get a free walk back to our side if we're tagged, to win the game you need to capture the other teams flag- you know what, I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory."

"So who's going to tag us?"

"Probably no one because a kid with Fortnite skills isn't really worth saving" I answer and he falls quiet. Harsh? yes. Necessary? No, but I was annoyed.

"Hey, Crawford," A voice says, she's standing a few yards back with one of her friends giggling.

"Oh, hey," The guy guarding us, coughs, deepening his voice "What's up."

"I can't believe you're actually playing this game," The girl sniggers.

"Nah, I'm just waiting for Lucas," He lies.

"Find him later, come hang out," She smiles at him.

Crawford looks from us to her, and with little to no hesitation, he goes with the girls. Once I see their figures retreat beyond the trees, I look around to see if there are any more people on the blue team around before stepping out of the rope circle.

"I thought you said we had to get tagged by someone else before we could leave," The boy says, looking around nervously as if he was buying pot in an alley.

"Are you a narc?" I ask.

"No?"

"Then we're good to go," I say, ushering my team out of the circle. The sun has just begun to set, casting an orange hue over everything and making it look like it had been touched by Midas. While the rest of my team runs back to our side where they are safe from being tagged, I have something else on my mind, Ellie Williams. 

I began to retrace my steps back to where Ellie waited with the flag and where I'm sure a bunch of overeager kids were patrolling to protect the priceless flag from the claws of the evil red team.  Ellie was never into these games until I was, the second I had the urge to win something, she was compelled to beat me.

Someone hadn't been looking where they were sprinting when they crashed into me at full speed, they would've knocked me down if they weren't the same height as an Oompa Loompa. She let out an 'Oof' while she fell to the ground "Chloe?"

"Hi," She looks up at me, and quickly the posse rolls around. All of the girls in my cabin, even Tamar and Morgan were actively participating.

Leslie ran up to me and hugged me around my legs "Hi, girls," I said with furrowed eyebrows. The past two weeks I had struggled to even get them to collectively go to breakfast without putting up a fight because they didn't want to. "How's the game going?"

"We know where the flag is!" Valentina peeps up, she has mud smeared under her eyes like war paint. 

"Yeah, but Ellie's there and I'm scared of her," Leah mentions.

"Well, we're all together now so we can strategize," A smile cracks onto my face.

"We should put a scorpion in her hair," Kim has a wild grin on her tanned face, her honey-blonde hair is tangled into a rat nest, with a couple of leaves in there.

"No, good idea though, we'll save that one for later," I point at Kim "I was thinking that I could distract Ellie while half of you keep the other guards away and the other half grabs the flag and makes a break for it."

Kim nods enthusiastically, Tamar doesn't seem thrilled by the idea but she doesn't object to it so I take her silence as a win. This is the exact moment I put on my invisible captain hat, giving each of my girls a specific role with the promise I would sneak them candy on Saturday if they pulled this off. 

With each passing minute, the sky got darker and darker, I wanted to finish this game until Joel and Tommy made the counsellors walk around with headlamps on to keep an eye on everyone. "Hi, El."

"What do you want?" She's been standing in the same spot for a little over an hour, her vexation was shining through in her tone. 

"To be done with this game," I say, prepping myself for the little heist "This is really dragging on and- I saw Crawford run off with some girls from your cabin."

"Who the hell is Crawford?" She furrows her eyebrows.

"One of Jesse's boys, I know it's an unfortunate name."

"Who did he leave with?"

"Uh," I rack my brain for their names "Cindy and the rude one."

She nods, immediately knowing who I was talking about from my vague description "So, when are you gonna run past me and steal the flag?"

"What?" I acted like her question was incredulous "Why would you think that's what I'm trying to do?" I'm so bad at acting, I'm behaving like one of those wasted middle-aged men who get pulled over on the freeway and pretend that they're stone-cold sober by making a bunch of hand gestures while they talk.

"You're awful at acting," She says, crossing her arms, I watch the veins tense in her forearm below her tattoo sleeve.

"Fuck," I muttered "Fine, I give up," I plop myself on the ground, my spine against the trunk of a tree, I look up at Ellie "Okay, I'm officially over these games."

She raises an eyebrow and I can tell that she doesn't believe me. "First of all, you're sitting in mud. Second of all, eleven years of bloodshed and you're giving up out of nowhere?"

"It's not out of nowhere, I'm just getting older," I say the second half a little quieter "I'm in college I need to stop acting immature."

We both fall silent, she doesn't know what to say to this. Ellie usually wasn't the best at comforting me in whichever situation, I remember back when I was fourteen and a wreck because my first dog died and all she could do was give me a hug and ask if I wanted water. 

"You’re not immature," Ellie says, unsure of what to do.

"Alrighty," I press my lips together in a thin line, equally diffident. "I'm just bored of this, it's gotten kind of repetitive."

"Then what do you wanna do?" She asks, in this light she's dimly illuminated by the setting sun. She looks like a sculpture carved from honey.

"Keep looking at me like that and I'll do whatever you want," I smile.

"Are you trying to flirt with me?"

"Is it working?"

"Not entirely," She says, behind her, there's a snap and just before she turns around I call her attention back to me. I saw Valentina, Chloe, and Olive emerging from behind trees, just seconds away from victory.

"Okay," I chuckle "Help me up?"

Ellie regards me for a second before taking my hand stretched wide. The second her hand clasps in mine I pull her down with all of my might and believe me when I say this is no easy feat, Ellie was sturdy. Luckily I caught her off guard and managed to pin her beneath me, I straddle over her torso, gesturing for the girls to run.

"Go!" I whisper-shout so others on the blue team can't hear me. Ellie grabs me by the waist and uses momentum to flip me over, now I'm the one with my back in the mud and she sits overtop of me. 

She had been so close that our lips brushed, and I had felt my heart stop, I almost didn't want to move just to see what would happen next but in utter panic, I reached next to me, a handful of mud and smeared it down Ellie's face. "You're so gross," She squeezes her eyes shut, leans back and begins to scoop mud off her face, I use this as my opportunity to wriggle out from beneath her.

It takes me a minute to get off my knees and onto my feet, by this point, almost the entirety of my legs are covered in mud, leaves, sticks, and probably bugs. I try to take off but my sneakers betray me and I fall face-first into the mud.

Of course, Ellie sees this and she's laughing so hard she needs to support herself, one forearm against a tree while her other is clutching her stomach. I scoop up more mud, almost squirming in distaste from the sensation of it caked beneath my nails but I still throw it at Ellie with perfect accuracy. 

She tenses up when I do this. Once again I struggle to my feet but this time I am victorious, I stay frozen in place for a moment to be sure I won't face plant again. When I'm sure that I won't fall, I bend down to throw another mud pie at Ellie for good measure than I'm off to see if my girls completed the mission.

When I finally got back to my side I saw my team already celebrating "Woohoo!" I yell and the crowd immediately falls quiet, regarding my current state. I probably look like a creature who's just crawled out of a stagnant swamp. 

"Why does she look like that?" Ashlynn whispers to Bowie who doesn't respond and from his red eyes alone, I know the reason why.

"C'mon girls," I smile "Bring it in!" I open my arms for my cabin to come in for a hug but they just back away from me with wrinkled noses. 

Tommy looks at me "Why are you dirty?" I knew he was getting sassy when he propped his hands on his hips "What happened in the ten-minute gap since I last saw you that has made you so filthy?" It wasn't malice in his voice but genuine curiosity, Tommy was a fun-loving guy for the most part.

I shrugged "I wouldn't know, mate, you tell me." His eyebrows furrowed as his confusion delved even deeper. He looked into my soul from across the clearing. Eventually, Ellie makes her way to join me, she's a little better off than I am though she's still grimy.

"Oh, great, you too," Tommy says, gesturing to his niece. 

Joel lets out a deep sigh "You two better shower before dinner."

I let the hot water run over my body, dripping down and consuming me whole. Ellie and I are the only ones in the showers, we're separated by nothing more than a divider though the steam is so heavy I wouldn't have been able to see her regardless. 

Since we were sent to grab a change of clothes and clean off Ellie had been almost silent, she wasn't even teasing me back or making a punchline when I had thrown out an obvious setup. 

After thoroughly washing the grime off of my body I turned the shower off, walking over the laminated bench where Ellie and I had out put our clothing only to find them missing. For a minute I thought I was crazy and had misplaced them but after awkwardly pattering around the shower house, I realised they were gone.

"Hey, Ellie," I say on the other side of her shower stall "Someone stole our clothes."

"You're hilarious," She deadpanned, not an ounce of amusement in her tone.

"Yeah, I know but I'm not joking."

I hear the water turn off in her stall, she pokes her head out and looks at the bench "Where did you put them?"

"I didn't put them anywhere," I say, in an attempt to sound convincing. "Someone took our shit," All that was left behind we're Ellie's Converse, knocked onto the ground and my carabiner with keys, a flashlight, and my shark keychain. 

"Fuck," Ellie mutters and looks around for a moment before her eyes land on me and she quickly averts her gaze, "Can you turn around?"

"It's nothing I haven't seen before."

"I hate you."

"I hate you too." I tell her though I do turn around "What's the plan here?"

"I'm looking."

"I already did, dumbass."

"Thoroughly." She adds.

I stare at empty shower stalls and white tile walls while Ellie checks every single spot that I already have. I can hear only her and the plop of dribbles of water splattering against the cold ground. The steam is still heavy and easy on my sharp lungs.

"I can't find them," Ellie says at last. "But I did find some clothes that look like they could've belonged to Adam Sandler.”

"Yeah, no shit," I turn around and see her standing there completely nude, she moves quickly out of my eye line and into a stall "You've changed in front of me a million times, what's different now?" I say, nonchalantly, walking past her.

"Maybe I don't want you to see me buck naked."

"I think I just heard something," I stop in my tracks.

 "not really the time-

"Why do you always think I'm fucking with you?" I ask, furrowed eyebrows.

"Because-

"Shh," I hush her trying to listen for the sound. I walked toward the entrance of the shower house there was a large wall in front of the door so no one could open the door to peek in, they had to go around the wall and properly enter, the same way most locker rooms were set up. I'm about ten yards away from the entrance when I see a figure poke their head out, just a quarter of its face, I can see their amber eye. They spot me in almost a split second and jet out in a blur, I hear the door open and crashing shut, their feet scrambling away. Just like that, I felt my blood run cold. 

"Fuck!" I yell, scuttling back towards the stalls "Ellie, there's fucking someone in here!" My heart is beating faster than I think it ever has before and I almost feel sick with the thought that someone was in here the entire time Ellie and I had been vulnerable and unaware. 

"What?" She steps out of the stall and looks around before she sees me. I'm on the floor, my knees to my chest and eyes wide. "You saw someone?"

"Yes!" I say throwing a hand out to gesture to the divider "They were hiding behind there and fucking watching us!"

"Shit," She says, walking towards the wall and looking behind it, she freezes too. Ellie turns towards me and the doubt on her face is gone "We need to find some clothes and get out of here."

"What?" I say "Did you see something?"

Ellie begins to open every single locker, tossing articles of clothing that people left behind on the ground. She wasn't exaggerating earlier when she said she found clothes that could've belonged to Adam Sandler. No wonder they were left behind.

"What was it?" I press again.

"Just some mud tracks, they were probably ours," She dismisses. "Now get dressed."

This doesn't ease me in the slightest, I'm so on edge that I haven't made a joke about Ellie and I casually being naked in front of each other. How ridiculous the pair of us looked didn't aid me in calming down; Ellie was wearing a black T-shirt about three sizes too large that read 'Ask me about my IBS' with a caricature of a man-eating cheese beneath it, this was paired with blue basketball shorts that had two white stripes running down the side. "How's your IBS?" I tease.

"It's a constant battle." At least she had her shoes, I had to wear flip-flops that hardly fit, so small I almost thought they belonged to a Barbie. While Ellie was moderately comfortable, I was not, I had to wear skinny jeans that were crudely cut into Bermuda shorts, matched with none other than an American flag tank top, how patriotic. 

"I'm almost thinking it would be better to go out in nothing," I say, looking at myself in the mirror. I glance over at Ellie, I know she's trying to play it off but I can tell she's shaken.  "You look so stupid."

"Damn," She says "I was just trying to show my support for those with IBS," Ellie jokes, trying to ease the tension.

The both of us are procrastinating on leaving the perceived safety of the shower house. I feel dread emanating from the woods, we will no longer be surrounded by four walls and engulfed by bright light. As we walk towards the entrance I reach for Ellie's hand, intertwining our fingers. "So we're going straight to the mess hall?"

"Yup," She says, giving my hand a little squeeze, it's her way of saying 'I got you'. I wonder if she can sense the panic pulsing through me or distress pumping in my veins. At the door I saw the tracks Ellie was staring at, they hadn't been ours. We walked in with muddy sneakers, these were barefoot prints, and whoever they belonged to had walked in many circles. I'm sick to my stomach once again, fighting the natural urge to vomit until I cry and my parents come to comfort me.

I click my flashlight on, but nothing lays ahead but forest and a beaten path. We stepped out into the darkness, it wasn't a far walk to the mess hall where everyone was gathered but that didn't stop my heart from racing like a rabbit moments away from getting snagged by a terrifying beast. 

My heartbeat slowed the further we walked, so far we hadn't been kidnapped by a pervert. I take a deep breath, trying to push overtly dark thoughts to the back of my mind, next to me Ellie is calm as a marble statue bathed beneath moonlight.

Each breeze makes me shudder despite the humid weather. Suddenly, regarding my current situation, the summer camp doesn't feel like home anymore. It feels like those abandoned houses up the road that my parents had carefully trained me to stay away from. The rustle of leaves is reminiscent of the laugh that belonged to creepy men who used to watch children at the park who didn't belong to them. 

I'm no longer met with the fresh scent of pine but something ancient, something rotted like it's been sitting in the back of the fridge for a decade. It reeks of shit to the point where I'm gagging on nothing like little hands of wind pushing on the back of my throat. 

My hand grows sweaty clasped to Ellie's though she shows no indication of being bothered by this. I hear a rustle somewhere around, whether it's in the trees or the bushes I'm unsure, instinctivly, I freeze. I look around, the gleam from my flashlight gliding across the flora, searching for something that likely isn't there.

"It's okay," Ellie says, her voice tender as a lullaby  "We're fine," She pulls gently on my hand to keep us going but I'm stuck in place. My flashlight is frozen on the body of a rabbit, Its white fur soaked through with red. I break my hand free from Ellie's grip and clasp it over my dry lips to choke down a cry. The entire skin of the rabbit's torso had been torn off on one side from the spine to the stomach, you could see its brown organs, the still beating heart, and everything that made it function was pooling out of it. If it hadn't been for its little head, beady eyes full of fear and perked-up ears, I wouldn't have known it was a rabbit at all. Whatever mauled it did a messy job that it hadn't quite finished like a dull axe to the back of the head. 

Behind the trees, I hear slurping, something wet and hungry. It wretches on what I assume to either be its newest feast or its saliva. It devours every last breath it has, the breathing is shallow and gruff like it's eating so fast it's choking on its meal, though it takes the time to slurp and swallow the remnants of whatever it's chowing down on. I see a pair of golden eyes glint behind a shrub in the cast of my light.

I reach for Ellie's hand again and run like I've never run before. She quickly takes the lead, so fast that she's nearly dragging me along. We don't speak but we understand each other clearly, we need to move. 

Trailing us, I hear heavy steps beating against the dirt pathway. I don't even need to look back to know that it's following u, its heavy, wet breathing is clue enough. I'm starting to feel a burning in my lungs, saliva builds in my mouth and I spit it down onto the pathway, heaving with every quick-paced step.

One of my too-tight pink flip-flops catches a rock stuck in the path and sends me tumbling to the ground. For just a moment I see a pitch-black figure wearing tattered clothing with amber eyes that glow light street lamps gaining on us; I could've sworn it had human hands and feet but I wasn't in my right mind, it's still enough to send adrenaline coursing through my veins. Without even stopping, Ellie pulls me back up and I kick off my other sandal, running barefoot on the trail.

My feet hammer against the dirt, rocks, and pebbles. I can feel the souls of my feet getting sliced and torn though I don't slow down, the sight of the mess hall in the distance makes me run even faster. 

"Hey!" Ellie yells, trying to capture the attention of someone in the mess hall. Her grip on my hand doesn't loosen, in fact, it gets tighter as she pulls me along. I don't know if whatever was chasing us is still there but I'm too mortified to check. 

I wave with my hand clutching my carabiner but it does nothing to garner any kind of attention within the mess hall. Our feet moving faster than we could form thoughts we ran towards the entrance. 

Ellie pulls the door wide open and pushes me in before slamming the door shut behind us. The very second my heaving body hits the floor, everyone's attention falls on us.

"Woah," Miles regards us with confusion before it morphs into a smile on his face "Did you guys just have sex?" He takes a bite of his sandwich, he looks like he got into Ashlynn's stash.

"Why do you look like Adam Sandler and Hilary Duff?" Dina furrowed her eyebrows next to Jesse, he looked like he was trying to work together some type of conclusion for why we were breathing so deeply and why my feet were bleeding. 

I look at Ellie and she meets my gaze, she no longer looks calm. There's a sense of dread written clearly across her features, that thing didn't seem animal, it didn't seem human either and I wasn't sure which was worse, the echo or the answer.  

A/N: Not much to say today but thanks for reading! Love you all.

TAGLIST: @wherearthepilots-blog @diddiqueen my tags are being so weird I’m so sorry if you weren’t tagged

[saturna625]

I wanna think about storm chaser!reader and tf141????? (yes, I used to live in tornado valley. I know some of this is unrealistic but I'll make it real enough)

Like maybe Johnny, who watches these absolutely wild YouTubers who chase these massive storms ("Gaz, honestly, take a look at these fuckin' clouds! All spinny an' shit!") And maybe you're the weather predictor, who coaches from the passenger seat as the truck weaves through corn fields, unaware of tf141 within the comment section.

TF141, of course, meaning Twister Force 141, a bit of a nickname for their little weather research team.

Maybe they get so invested that Price pulls a couple strings, and gets satellite view, so the boys can watch both you and the weather live.

Maybe you get a little too close to the tornado, as the county sirens blare in the background, and your audio shorts out. Maybe the boys are on the edges of their seats, seeing you speed headfirst into a storm that is building quicker than your ten dollar weather app can process.

You're too deep in a quick growing storm. None of your tech is working, and you're strapping yourself into your seat, looking over at your best friend who's driving. You don't even know if the camera's still rolling. The wind howls outside, screams so loud you can't even hear yourself yell.

Maybe you hear a gruff voice through your staticky radio, as you see, well, what used to be a barn, crash down in front of you, before disappearing into the murk and dust.

"Throw it into reverse, you muppets!"

Your friend slams on his breaks, and kicks the truck into reverse. You fly backwards as the cameras on your dashboard blink red and green. You're driving blind, and the monster is only growing. A stop sign takes your side mirror clean off, and embeds itself into a tree.

Your friend cuts to the left, turning yall around, and throws it into forward as you build speed, trying to outrun it.

With dawning horror, the team puts together a shoddy storm projection. You won't outrun it.

You, however, have decided to ditch the harness. The haunting sound of a twister, groaning as it builds, lunching towards you. It pulls the roof off a house. A tree flies towards you, and your buddy swerves to avoid it, as you scramble into the back seat.

Soap is so used to watching amateurs outrun tiny squalls, little touchdowns of dust and air, but this thing was processing as E-4.

And you were no amateur.

You call to your buddy to cut left, and drive under the overpass. You're not stopping there. Everyone knows that overpasses are the worst place to be.

You think, somewhere in the dust and wind and debris, that you see a truck pulling a trailer of barrels, but it had overturned. You hoped it's owners were lucky enough to get somewhere safe.

It gets sucked into the storm, and disappears. The sky is swirling black above you, a nightmarish mixture of ink and debris. The truck skids on the pavement, your friend juts off road, as foreign voices coached you out of the storm.

But they were wrong. They're telling him to keep driving forward.

You see the wind shift, in the rolling, whipping grass. The pressure drops, and your ears pop. You stop your commentators explanation to gaze open-mouthed at the sky above you.

"There's.... There's gonna be another one!" You shout at your friend, who seems to pale at your words. "That's good! It'll take the pressure away from that mother over there–" you point. Rain pelts the windshield, but he can make out the shift in the clouds. "They'll fight it out and dissipate! We'll just- I can't fucking see- stop!" You shout, as a house crashes down directly in front of you, but it's too late.

The nose of the truck goes through where the roof had been, burying itself near the chimney. You fly forward and hit the seat in front of you. You think your head knocks against some camera equipment, and the wind howls again, before it all goes dark.

When you come to, you're able to hear the sirens again. The scratchy panic of the radio fills in the rest of the sound, different groups of chasers trying to figure out what the hell they're doing. You no longer hear that European group, though. Maybe you thought it up.

What you didn't know was that, ten miles away, hunkered in the safety of a low level parking garage, the boys cramped around the screen as they watch you pull yourself out of the car. In the unfocused lense, they can tell that you might bruise pretty rough. But in the background, they see the second twister come into view. It's half a mile off, battling out the Mother, as you called it, before suddenly, they both draw back up into the sky, dancing around one another, and then they're gone.

The tornado sirens go out shortly after that, and they hear rain, and thunder, and you– whooping and cheering, and scrambling to find an intact camera.

You thank the audience as your friend joins you at your side. He's probably going to quit after this, you can tell by the look on his face. He was never one for weather anyways.

But it didn't matter. You were usually the driver anyhow.

Simon looks at Price, who looks down at Soap, sketching out the projections, and Gaz, writing all the data down in his uber fancy composition notebook. The livestream ends.

And who knows, there's a ton of storm chasers in town this season. Maybe someone had some people to spare.

(pt2?)

[hallecarey1]

His Touch | Bucky Barnes

Summary: As Bucky is suffering because he can't reassure you that he is returning home, you were suffering because you didn't know if Bucky would come home to you. After returning, he shows that you will never lose him, and you connect in a way that proves nothing eases suffering like human touch.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Swearing and Smut (18+)

Author's note: This was my first attempt at writing smut, and to be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Flashes of Bucky's bloody corpse flooded your mind while you did nothing but sit and worry about him. The thought of Steve or Fury knocking on your door to inform you that Bucky died during the mission had kept you pacing in front of it restlessly.

Despite Fury's warning that the mission would be challenging, you were confident that Bucky would return home a few days later. But when the days grew into weeks and there were no updates, you began to worry that he would never return to you. 

Bucky knows he needs to return to you because you've told him several times in the middle of the night, with tears running down your cheeks and his arms around your waist, that you simply can't live without him. It was his promise to you just before boarding the Quinjet two weeks ago.

There hasn't been any word from anyone regarding his whereabouts, and the fact that he's been missing for two weeks brings back flashbacks of Bucky at Hydra. You were horrified as the thought of Bucky being kidnapped by Hydra struck yet another emotional nerve. You drank from the whisky bottle, hoping that the burn of the alcohol down your throat would ease your thoughts and stop the memories of your captivity with the Soldat. 

When you entered Bucky's room, you had changed into clean pajamas, your damp hair clinging to the shirt. Bucky's scent hit you as his red henley draped over your tiny frame, evoking a sense of protection and comfort. You crawled into his bed and grabbed a book to keep yourself occupied until you got an update on Bucky. 

You yawn as you lie in bed, taking in the soft pillow and comfortable mattress. You felt the full impact of tiredness from the many days and nights you had not slept as you turned a new page in your book. Bucky's scent drifting from his bed and shirt, as well as the warmth of his bed, lulled you to sleep.

Within hours of you falling asleep, the compound's elevator opened to reveal a bloodied and bruised Bucky. Bucky dashed to his room after Dr.Cho patched up his wounds so he could finally sleep and hold you in his arms. 

He stumbled onto the floor, which he shared with Steve and Sam, and carefully opened the door to his room with the goal not to wake you up. As he entered his room and saw you curled into a ball with his red henley draped over your tiny frame and his dog tags around your neck, he couldn't control his arousal. He approached you and removed the book from your sleeping figure, which he placed on the bedside table.

The spark of desire he felt when he saw you wearing his henley and dog tags sprang from a need to show everyone that you were his, as well as a possessive desire to keep outsiders and newcomers from touching what was his. Bucky was kindling that deep longing in him, but he controlled it because, no matter how much he wanted to stake his claim on you, he just needed to feel you. Feeling your touch reassures him that he is not an unlovable monster.

Your deep sleep is disturbed by a cool touch on your head and the sensation of lips brushing on your cheek. When you open your eyes, you see Bucky hovering over you, his stubbled face smiling, and his metal hand running through your hair.

"Bucky?" you question sleepily as you rub your eyes, your awoken state making it difficult to tell whether Bucky is real or a hallucination.

"Hi, doll. I’m sorry for being late." He apologizes and leans in close, kissing you on both cheeks, nose, and forehead before softly pulling away with a kiss on your lips.

As you look into each other's eyes, he lightly caresses the softness of your cheek with his cold fingers. You put one hand on Bucky's cheek and the other securely in his dark hair, luring him into a passionate kiss."I thought you left me," you muttered against his lips, a faint whimper escaping your lips. Because he had been missing for so long, you were terrified.

Because Steve had known him for a long time and appeared completely calm and confident in Bucky's safety, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents labeled you an attention seeker when they saw you freaking out about the possibility of Bucky being captured and taken by Hydra again, believing you were overreacting and being dramatic.

It made your blood boil. It didn't matter that Steve had known Bucky for longer than you had; what was meant to be important was that Bucky had been sent on a mission and had not communicated with anyone, despite the fact that he was supposed to return to the base two weeks ago.

Yes, Steve had known Bucky for much longer than you, but you had spent three years in HYDRA together. You built a bond during your stay there. You connected in ways no one could fathom, a bond that kept you both alive while retaining your humanity. 

Bucky, even as the Winter Soldier, never hurt you and made sure no one else touched what was his. Similarly, when they brainwashed you and changed you into the Phoenix, you became assassins who protected one another no matter what happened on the mission.

"I'd never leave you," he says as he presses his lips to yours and kisses you passionately. It wasn't his intention to inform you, but there was a brief moment during his mission when he was afraid he wouldn't see you again.

Flashback: 

This mission had been particularly difficult for him. Everything was going according to plan as he removed Hydra agents from left to right until he felt a searing prick in his neck and everything went black. During that time, the agents bound him to a chair and tortured him in the hopes of eliciting information from him. When he realized the promise he made to you would be broken, he was filled with fear and sorrow. He was convinced he would never see you again. But it wasn't until a hydra doctor appeared, clutching a red book with a black star on the cover, that everything became clear.

Bucky's face lit up with a little grin when he noticed the red book. The Winter Soldier was the deadliest murdering machine ever devised. He would gladly offer him to them if they wanted him. Everything seemed to be going according to plan until the trigger words were said. The Winter Soldier was vehemently opposed to cooperating. The gaze he fired at them horrified them. He was simply there to protect you, and when he learned you weren't there, all hell broke loose. He destroyed the Hydra base in less than five minutes and followed the trail in his mind that led to you. Once the Winter Soldier had gotten the Quinjet in the sky, he relinquished control. 

Present Time: 

When he felt your cold fingers caress his cheekbones, he smiled against your lips and breathed heavily as he pulled away from the kiss. As Bucky drags your body down the bed, you squeal in surprise, and a mischievous gleam appears in his cerulean eyes as he slides his body between your legs.

You're still laughing as he kisses you more, but it fades quickly when his hands squeeze your hips and drag your body lower so he's laying on top of you. His hand on your hip went gently upward, going under his shirt and resting firmly on your lower back. He pushed your body closer to his, groans escaping you both from the sensation of his bulge pressing against your covered core. 

As the kiss intensifies, the friction of his thick erection against your core causes a wet patch on your underwear. You release a gasp when the coldness of his metal hand reaches the heated flesh above your underwear, his lips caressing your neck as he sneaks his hand under your shorts and rubs your clad core.

The ache between your thighs pushes you to clench your thighs around Bucky's hand, and his hungry eyes meeting yours only adds to the heat blazing in your core. When his fingers graze your clit, you groan as your panties are dragged against your throbbing clit, begging to feel his touch and remove the barrier that keeps you from feeling completely satisfied.

As he slips his hand under your pantyhose and brushes his metal fingers against the soft, shaved skin on your mound, you shiver. "Please, I need you," you gasped, tilting your head back as he pressed his lips against yours, moaning as he rubbed your clit with his wet, juice-soaked fingers.

"I got you, baby," he said softly in your ear, gasping as he pushed a finger inside your tight pussy. His palm brushed your clit as he curled his fingers. Bucky lifted his head, his gaze fixed on yours. He watched as your lips opened and your face distorted in delight. "Are you ready for another pretty girl?"

You exhale, feeling his smirk on your neck as he softly pushes another finger inside your tight pussy. "I missed you so much. Please fuck me. I need you." As his palm presses harder against your clit, you sob.

Bucky was hovering over you, breathing heavily, as you reached up and grabbed the front of his shirt, drawing him in closer. With slow, open-mouth kisses over your neck, he nipped at your collarbone. "Not yet, no. I need to taste you," he says, slipping his hand out of your shorts and withdrawing his lips away from your neck. He puts his wet fingers in his mouth and groans softly at the taste of you, peering right into your eyes

"You taste so good, baby," he says, adjusting his Henley to rest against your ribcage, leaving sloppy kisses from your underboob to your navel. A pleased feeling spreads throughout your body as Bucky's actions continue downward. 

While you hold his gaze, Bucky's lips slide down to your pussy, tugging your underwear aside as he leaves a gentle kiss on your clit, you gasp your hand reaching down to run your fingers through his hair. 

He kisses your thigh and bites the delicate flesh before hooking his thumbs into your underwear waistband and dragging them down your smooth legs before resting on his knees. "Spread your legs for me, baby." His low, velvety voice sent shivers down your spine, and you sheepishly agreed. 

"Shit, doll. So wet for me." He let out a choked grunt before palming his large erection through his tactical pants, forcing you to whine. When he gripped your thighs strongly, your shaking hands gripped the sheets tightly, his eyes fixed on yours as he swiped a finger over your wet folds, making your breathing increase. 

"Bucky," you moaned as his tongue flattened against your core, his warm tongue gliding across your virgin sex. You let out a loud groan as his tongue slid between your folds and circled the tip of his tongue around your clit.

"Tastes so fuckin' good." Bucky sighs, pulling your lips apart with his thumb and finger. You tugged harder on Bucky's hair as you felt his warm tongue plunge into your cunt, the sensation of Bucky moaning into your cunt had your toes curling. 

Bringing his hand up your body, he grasped your breast, softly twisting your nipple. Your lips parted and your eyelids closed as you felt the coldness of his hand. You buck up into his mouth as he sucks the sensitive bundle of nerves between his lips that has you spewing his name out between gasps, your head dropping back onto the pillow. "Bucky." You moan, sensing your approach.

Bucky pulled away just as you were going to cum. His lips had met yours as your hand moved over his suit, unbuckling and unstrapping it. He hurls his vest across the room, leaving him bare-chested. As you smooth over the scarred skin on his shoulder, you press a soft kiss to it and the ones around it, making him tremble above you.

"I want to feel you cum around my cock," he murmured, unbuckling his belt and tossing it on the ground, his pants and boxers landing on top. Your attention shifted from the planes of his strong chest to the trail of dark hair at his navel, which led to his big and erect cock. As you moved your hand down his chest to his cock, you could see beads of pre-cum seeping from his tip. “Doll.” His hips jerked up as you wrapped your hand around his thick cock.

Adding a pleasing pressure as you jerked him off, Bucky's hand removed yours swiping his thumb over the pre-cum seeping from his tip. “You look so hot when you wear my clothes.” He praised, running his thumb over your bottom lip before slipping it into your mouth. You complied, sucking his pre-cum off his thumb, Bucky groaned as he felt you moaning around his digit.

"That was so hot, baby." Pulling his thumb out, dragging your bottom lip down, saliva coating it. He intertwined his cold metal hand with yours and placed it next to your head.“I love you,олукa.” He looked you in the eyes and caressed your cheek with his warm palm, causing your eyelids to close for a fraction of a second before opening and gazing into his cobalt eyes.

"I love you, too, Bucky." Your love for him was visible in your eyes, and when he looked into them, all he saw was happiness and love. Bucky hovers over you, lines his tip up to your entrance, then softly and carefully pushes himself into you, inch by inch, until he's completely sheathed. When your tight walls stretched around his thick member, you winced into the kiss as it burned.

His warm hand went under your thigh and grasped it as he thrust his hips forward, kissing your collarbone with his lips. Bucky growled as you tighten your grip on him as he thrust toward you. "Bucky. " You whimpered, your free hand grasping the hair on the back of his neck.

Bucky reached down and rubbed his fingers hard across your sensitive clit. You could feel the tension in your gut loosening as you rested your forehead against his and locked your gaze with his. "I'm gonna cum, Bucky." Bucky drove into you faster and harder, and you moaned, your eyes shutting.

"Come on, baby," he moaned, slamming himself into you at a rapid rate, his metal hand encircling your throat. "Cum on my dick, doll." Bucky's grasp on your throat intensified, causing you to cry out. The cold from his metal fingers around your throat snapped the coil in your stomach, core tightening from the satisfaction of your release.

Bucky reached his own peak as your walls tightened around him. "Fuck, doll," he mumbled into your ear as he released into you. A shiver goes through his body as he continues to thrust into you, working both of you through your high.

"Fuck, baby," he whispers as he pulls his cock out of you.  He reaches down to your delicate cunt with two fingers, seeing his cum drip out, and pushes it back into you. He placed his fingers soaked in his cum and your release into your mouth, and you could feel your legs trembling from your previous climax. 

"As hot as that was, I think we should get cleaned up and get ready for bed." Bucky chuckles as he pulls you to the end of the bed. Bucky enters the bathroom and returns with a wet washcloth. He opens your legs and begins wiping up the cum dripping between your legs, but you gasp as the wet towel brushes across your sensitive core.

"I'm sorry, baby. Did I go too rough?" Bucky stares at you with sadness in his eyes as he tosses the wet washcloth into the dirty laundry hamper.

“No. You did everything perfectly, just a little sensitive." You wrap your arms over his shoulders and run your fingers through his hair. Bucky leans towards you, sighing as your fingers run through his hair.

"How about you take a shower while I get dressed and change the bed sheets?" You suggest to Bucky, knowing he had a difficult mission.

“A shower sounds great.” Bucky nods

“Ok. Go take a shower; when you're done, everything will be ready for bed." You kiss his forehead before watching him walk into the bathroom.

You put on a clean pair of underwear, shorts, and one of Bucky's t-shirts before removing the bed sheets and comforter and replacing them with new ones on the bed. Just as you finish placing the comforter on the bed, the bathroom door opens to see Bucky in only his boxers.

Before you both crawl into bed, you exchange an affectionate smile.Bucky sat with his back against the headboard, looking for anything to watch on TV, and you sat next to him, drawing the blanket up to your chin and resting your head on his chest before he laid his arm over your shoulders.

"I thought I'd lost you." you trembled.

"You'll never lose me, baby," he whispered as he glanced at you, but Bucky observed tears pouring down your cheeks as he connected his sight to yours. Bucky moved you to sit on his lap. "Shh, baby. It's okay, I'm here." Bucky cupped his hands around your face, brushing away tears with his thumbs. 

You buried your face in his neck as sobs took over your body, Bucky tightening his arms around you, doing his best to console you. "I was afraid I'd never see you again," you say as you pull him closer.

Bucky drew you away and wiped your tears with his head against yours. "I'm so sorry to have scared you, sweetheart. I discovered an abandoned cabin to stay in, but I couldn't communicate with anyone."He said this as you drew back to assess him for injuries.

"I love you so much, Bucky," Your eyes flood up with emotions as you convey your feelings for him. "I love you, too, baby." leaning forward to give you a gentle kiss on the lips.

"Til the end of the line, doll." He kissed the top of your head. You wrapped your arms around him and rested your head on his chest. While fiddling with your hair, he kissed your head. You raise your hand up to your mouth, intertwined with his metal one, and kiss his hand softly.

“We need that touch from the one we love, almost as much as we need air to breathe. But I never understood the importance of touch, until the day I met Bucky Barnes. He saved me. In every way that a person can be saved.”

Translation: голубка - Dove

[rose-tea-and-strawberries]

Imagine Leona after his overblot, never taking off his gloves even when he plays magift/spell-drive life he used to, yet still seeing everyone flinch from his hands. Imagine him being thrust back to when he was young, where the whispers of the staff curled around him like he wishes his mother’s arms would have, feeling like a monster for something he doesn’t understand, didn’t ask for, didn’t want to have. Imagine him, who already saw his hands as a symbol of destruction and evil and cruelty, being shown yet again that people will only ever fear his touch.

Except, imagine that the Prefect is there. Imagine the prefect is hearing these whispers, sees the flinches, and is angry. The Prefect was there- magicless and terrified- in the middle of a sandstorm, fighting to survive and fighting to make sure her friends survive, who felt what King’s Roar does when it touches your skin, who has a matching scar with Ruggie from the battle against Leona’s blot. How can these nobodies, who have never known the sting of sand down to the molecular level act like this? How dare they, who had only seen Leona’s grumpy tsundere type of care and not the scars from the fight, now act like they understand the dangers of King’s Roar?

Imagine the Prefect, caught in this righteous anger, storming up to Leona.

Imagine Leona bracing himself for another emotional wound, knowing that from anyone- he deserves the scorn and hatred and fear that you may spew at him. He knows it will crush him in a way that no others could replicate, save maybe for the tiny cub that he pretends to not love.

Imagine the prefect stopping in front of him and grabbing his hand, taking off the gloves and placing the bare hand on their throat.

Imagine the whole school stopping.

Imagine Leona’s heart stopping.

Imagine the shaking in his hands, the weakness in his knees, the tear welling up in his inner child’s eyes when you say, for all the world to hear, “these hands aren’t evil. Leona isn’t evil. King’s Roar isn’t evil. I was there when these hands were used, when they were turned against me as weapons, but I trust them, I trust Leona.”

Imagine Leona, for the first time since his unique magic showed up, feeling someone trust him and his hands completely, without any covering or barrier or safety net. For the first time since King’s Roar ruined his life, he felt the warmth of another person on his bare hand.

Imagine Leona being able to tell his younger self that someday, he will find the most stubborn, annoying, foolhearty, beautiful, selfless, kind, amazing herbivore who will give him their lives to hold in his bare hands without flinching.

Imagine Leona being able to tell his younger self that someday, someone will love all of him, including his hands.

(My first time writing something, usually I just gush and reblog to @/scared-reader-electric-boogaloo, so let me know if this sucks or oversteps a line!)

AAAAAAAHHHHHH

ASDFGHJKLYTRTTREARSAW

THIS IS SO FREAKIN GOOD HOLY GUACAMOLE IF YOU HAVE A BLOG PLEASE SEND THE @ TO ME BECAUSE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS SO *CHEF'S KISS*

I've seen the trope of character A puts the hand of character B around their throat as a show of trust in a fanfic in two other fandoms I've been in and that is literally my kryptonite because it literally put's the whole "I trust you with my life" thing in a whole new context

(I've also had this WIP/blurb of Fem!Yuu/Reader doing something similar with Rook by having him shoot an arrow at an apple on her head from a distance (probably whilst blindfolded as well) and when he releases the super sharp, pointed metal arrow, she just stares right in front of her, completely straight-faced and unblinking, without even a hint of fear - kind of like this scene from The Addams Family Musical mixed with that scene in Divergent where Four throws knives at Tris)

But you know what's great about this trope being pulled of with Leona? Since he's a lion beastman - an apex predator built for hunting prey - he has enhanced hearing which means that he can hear Yuu's heartbeat and can literally have solid proof that Yuu isn't scared since their heartrate hasn't increased a bit.

And also, he loves his herbivore so much. Who needs a kingdom or a throne when he has the world?

[cuntry-r0ckst4r]

Claustrophobic

summary- in which you Ethan, Benny, and Sarah all get stuck in one confined space.

tw- claustrophobia, cursing, tbh not really bad.

It's really not that much about the relationship, you can just ignore those parts if you just want one big fluffy group(ish) fic. Sorry this like really sucks, I'm not proud of this at all omg.

established relationship (Ethan x reader)

The nerd hunt. It was a shock to no one that your boyfriend and his friends were geeks, but what was a shock was when they wanted to go hunting for some weird monster geek shit. The only ones that complained were you and Erica. The only difference is you went, she stayed home. Probably going to a party instead. You just wanted to go to have more time with Ethan and hang out with him.

"So where are we even going to?" You ask while getting in the back of Benny's grandma's car. Ethan had gotten in after you.

"I don't know exactly the place's name but it's-" Ethan had started before he was interrupted by an excited Rory.

"To an underground cave!" Rory had exclaimed, "we're going to look if there’s gonna be any mummies in there!"

While Benny and Ethan rolled their eyes, you and Sarah just laughed at the pure excitement from Rory.

"Well I'm going to tell you ahead of time, there is a low chance of finding any mummies in a cave?" you inform him while laughing.

Benny starts the car and has to give it a second before starting your drive there. About 20 minutes into the drive Ethan held your hand, he was definitely nervous about it, hyping himself up the 20 minutes that had passed.

After about an hour of driving we arrived at the cave, that was when I realized exactly how this was going to be. It was a small entrance, meaning it was a tight tunnel.

"Is now a bad time to mention I'm severely claustrophobic?" you asked the general audience of the car while chuckling.

"seriously? we live in a place where vampires, witches, and just monsters are like most common... and you're scared of tight spaces?" Benny says annoyed.

All you could do was roll your eyes at him as Sarah, Ethan, and Rory get out of the car. Ethan helps you out of the car aswell.

Once you all have been walking in the caves for a while, you realize that these halls are actually huge. Until you all see an elevator. An old, tiny, elevator. It was the only other way to go than from where you had come in from, which you wouldn't even remember how to leave.

You all go in on the tiny elevator, once the elevator started shaking you could feel your body going off. You were sweating, clinging onto Ethan's arm, nauseous, shaking, and there was so much weight on your chest that you couldn't breath.

"I can't do this, i told you i cant do enclosed spaces, especially you etha-" you start to yell.

The elevator stops. The doors didn't open. Now you really start panicking. A million words in your head at once, several conversations happening at one time in your mind just to overwhelm you. You wanted to sob, scream, cuss out everyone in the elevator. Except that wouldn't help anything. So you check your phone to see if you have service, of course you don't. You're more than 20 feet underground. Then Benny starts banging on the walls of the elevator.

"If you're a nerd, act like one. That won't help." You yell at benny.

You try to pry open the doors, didn't work. Rory was smashing the open button, but still it wasn't opening.

That's when you had this idea, "hey vampires, what if you took us up to the top of the elevator and got us out of the hole thats already open! Because ya know, super strength, ability to fly, can't die if you fall and what not are good ways to help us out in this kind of situation." You explained as calmly as you could while you still feel like you couldn't breath from the amount of pressure on your chest.

Sarah and Ethan look at you, agreeing with you that we should do that. Meanwhile Rory hadn't payed attention to a single thing you had said just now.

Except they were able to do it successfully, it's also quite safe to say that you were all running out the way you all came out. You and Ethan running hand in hand out.

Once you all made it out of the cave, you and Ethan were the first ones out and you two stood next to the entrance to the cave. Not wanting to block the exit/entrance.

"Are you okay? How are you feeling?" Ethan asks you, trying to catch his breath.

"It's okay, I'm okay." You tell him, hugging him and putting your face into his neck.

He hugs you back. He had tried to help when you started freaking out about the elevator but then it stopped and you all had to figure out what to do to get out. All he did was hold your hand the whole time.

Except it was enough to help you both think straight.

"ugh get a room." Benny said groaning as he saw you two, he and the others were walking slow out of the cave finally.

i do NOT give permission to copy or publish my work onto any other sites, dm me to translate any of it. otherwise there is no given consent for translation of @s3xiel4ss .

hey thats my masterlist!

Finished Writing: Fri May 24, 12:28 AM.

Count: 846 words, 4491 characters, 69 sentences.

[eclipsedrgn]

They're Monsters!

Pair: Bayverse!Donnie x reader

Summary: The Turtles infiltrated Police Headquarters and get caught. One police officer insulted them and that's not going by (Y/N) that easily.

Being Donnie's girlfriend, the Turtles figured you'd be calm and collected like him. But in reality, your like Raph in a tiny, human body. So when times like this happens, they have no idea what kind of (Y/n) they're gonna get.

"Are you freaking kidding me?!" You hissed at Donnie as you go around from your hiding spot, Mikey running the other way to tell Raph what he heard.

You knew the Turtles were starting to struggle not being accepted, especially since they're growing up and hatred being stuck in the sewers.

Raph was getting more hotheaded as ever around his brothers, Mikey was starting to get annoying, though the orher two brothers were calmer you can still tell they wanna be above ground.

Leo and Donnie looked at you, Leo sighs "We can explain"

"No, no. Its the lying for me" You said. "Leo, your gonna lose their trust. Especially Raph's"

"They don't need to know every decision I make-"

"But a big change like this?" You sighs. "Forget it, forget I said anything"

You walked away towards the homemade pizza box couch and collapsed. Sighing, you take out your phone and scrolled through Instagram.

Leo was practicing his katas when Raph came out of his gym, he walked slowly towards the leader, ready to let out steam.

"Pop quiz" Raph says jumping onto the platform. "What are the three most important traits of a ninja?"

Leo gave him a small grin as he continues his kata, "Speed. Stealth-"

"And honour. Where's the honour in keeping secrets from your brothers?" Raph accused.

"I don't know what your talking about?"

"Oh now your adding lying on the list" Raph accused.

You walk over to the two, pushing them apart by their plastrons. "Enough"

"But-"

You raised a finger as Raph silence, a clear annoyed look on his face.

"This isn't fair Leonardo. Lying to your brothers about a life changing event. What is with you?" You sternly spoke.

If you two are referring to what Donnie told me about the purple ooze, it's called compartmentalization of information," Leo replies closing up on Raph's face.

"If there's even a chance that ooze can make us human-"

"We're turtles, whether you like it or not," Leo says in aggravation.

"It's not about what I like, it's about what people up there are willing to accept!" Raph gestures to outside.

"True acceptance only comes from within," Leo recites.

"Don't give me that fortune cookie muck" Raph glares.

You backed from the two, shaking your head as you turned and walked away. Donnie rushes after you, worried about your reacting to all of this.

"You have to believe me when I say this isn't the outcome I wanted" Donnie said.

You shake your head, "Why didn't you tell me, or consult me? Why Leo?"

"I... I get guess I got too excited" he sighs. "This is something I thought everyone would want. To be normal and living above grouns. You know? To be a normal couple"

"Honey" you coo, reaching out for his hand. "I'm so sorry"

"It's fine-"

"It's not. Donnie, you should have told me this is how you felt. I should've took it into consideration. I shouldn't have gotten mad" you said.

"I'm sorry, I-" his device on left wrist beeped, Donnie paused to take a look and gave you a sincere look. "I'm sorry honey, there's a break in-"

"Say no more" you smiled. "Go be a hero"

"Leo. Leo, an alarm just tripped at the Hayden Planetarium. We have to get uptown" Donnie reports rushing towards the blue and red clad.

"Gear up, Donnie" Leo commands. "You two stay here"

"You're benching me?" Raph yells out as the two left.

"What did I do?!" Mikey asks.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

Raph had a plan. He had a plan to infiltrate the Police Headquarters with Mikey to get the last of the ooze they got in custody. He called April and Casey down to the lair with a plan in mind, the problem is how to get (Y/n) into the plan without getting much trouble.

He approaches you slowly, as you sat at Donnie's surveillance room watching as your boyfriend and the leader in blue arrive at the museum.

"Hey (Y/n), do you have a minute?" Raph asked.

You turned the chair around, "Sure. What's up Raph?"

"I know Leo and I got into an argument about the ooze-"

"Let me guess you wanna go into police headquarters to find it and use it for yourself?" You said crossing your arms.

"I-I wouldn't say it like that" Raph replied shyly.

"The blue prints are printed. Do not tell Donnie" you said with a smirk. "I'll be reckon. Watch from the outside"

"Thanks" Raph sighs and turns to walk away, but paused. "Why are you helping me?"

"I... I guess I never considered how Donnie really felt. He never told me about his desire to be normal and when he did... I guess I wanna make it up to him" you said.

"You're a good girlfriend (Y/n). Don't forget it" he smiles.

(Y/n) gathered the blue prints and pens, as the rest gathered around the dinner table. April and Casey arrived and sat next to each other, (Y/n) sat next to Mikey who dug into the pizza.

Raph clears his throat as everyone looked up at him, "We need to break into Police Headquarters"

A pause.

A really long, awkward pause.

"So, you want us to break into Police Headquarters?" April repeats.

"Uh, yeah" Raph states obviously. "Donnie said he needs more of the purple ooze to track Bebop and Rocksteady. And you said the cops would've logged it into their evidence control room by now"

"Okay, and Leo is good with this plan?" April questions skeptically.

(Y/n) clears her throat. "Actually, Raph is in charge of this one. Right Mikes?"

"U-Uh right" Mikey says unsure.

Raph places the blueprint down the table. "So, we can take the elevator shafts and vents. We need you three to stay on the ground-"

"Whoa I can't just walk into Police Headquarters" Casey refused.

"What are you? Chicken?" Raph teased.

"Hey!" Casey stood, closing up to Raph. "Who are you calling chicken, turtle?"

(Y/n) chuckles, her temper rising carefully. She reaches out pulling Casey down back his seat. "Listen, do you want to get Beebop and Rocksteady or not?"

Another pause, Casey says. "So we're breaking into Police Headquarters"

"We got one last boondoggle. We need to find someone to sneak you guys in past security checkpoint" Raph says looking at Mikey is disgust as the youngest turtle made a pizza sandwich with pizza. "Only plan I got so far may be a tad less appetizing"

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

After convincing Vern to break into the police, everyone got to their spot. (Y/n) sat across the headquarters, looking through the binoculars. Her heart jump out of her chest as she sees the two mutant turtles breakthrough the ceiling. She tossed the binoculars and rushed into the headquarters, seconds before Leo and Donnie arrive.

"Raph, what're you doing with that?" Leo accuses.

"Honey?!" Donnie exclaims seeing his lover.

"Freeze! Don't move! Don't move!" An officer shouts, gun pointed.

Raph's eyes widen repeating, "No, no, no, no, no, no!"

"Freeze right there!"

"Don't move! We'll shoot!"

Raph and Mikey looked at each other as they slowly kneel, (Y/n) rushes towards the two as the officer raises his gun shooting. Pain filled (Y/n)'s right shoulder as she places herself in front of the youngest turtle.

"Don't shoot them" (Y/n) pleads, she winces her shoulder bleeds out.

"Move girl!" An officer shouts.

"No!" (Y/n) shouts. "You don't understand!-"

BANG!

(Y/n) didn't know how quickly it happened. A shot was fired and she placed her body between Raph and Mikey, no matter how small she still blocked them. She felt a huge pain on her chest, she struggled to breathe, she barely registered her body hitting the ground as the four yell out for her.

She saw the color purple as her eyes dropped close.

[sunnysunsins]

Since recently everything here has been taken over by dipshits who lack media literacy, i will come back here to say - RWBY is a good show. It is good. It has good story and good writing and good characters. Does it have stumbles and limitations? Of course, like everything else ever created. Is it the real reason yall are dedicating your lives to religiously following and picking apart every detail to find something, anything, to hate on and make it your whole personality? Nah.

Yall are just pissy your hc wasn't canon. And i'm only half-joking.

Yall are just stuck in the expectation of "cute girls in school fighting monsters and baddies", which it hasn't been for almost a decade. Let Beacon fucking die already, it was the most boring part of the story anyway. If you like it so much, watch.. idk, high guardian spice. Or maybe my hero academia, it has godawful writing too with your favorite Adam-like and Ironwood-like archetypes you adore so much.

And if you didn't click off already in hissy rage, and want to challenge me on the writing point:

Yall are complaining about pacing, characterization lacking, skipped development, insert some other reason, how "show went to shit after volume 3". Well, newsflash, look back at volume 1. REALLY look at it, without your nostalgia boner.

How, in what actually can fit into 3.5 full-length episodes, it skips a whole semester with only a few moments shown in like 3-8 minutes. Notice how Ruby and Pyrrha interacted like 2 times in 3 volumes total. Ruby and Penny? Yeah, they barely interacted too. Ren hasn't talked to rwby girls at all aside from ensemble scenes.

Too many characters in later volumes? Honey, 1-3 had SO many pointless grunts and you ate them up. The whole Vytal festival was filled with them.

Can you tell me the plot of volume 2 from the top of your head? Yeah, me neither. If i think maybe i can remember there was a mecha fight, a dance and a train, but beyond that what was the point of that entire volume again?

Your favorite, pedestalled, volume 3, most of which is fighty-fighty filler and the only stuff you actually remember when jizzing your pants about it is last 3 episodes.

Most character interactions and development happened after Beacon arc. Most actual plot and bigger story happened after it too. Yall are stuck circlejerking to *filler*, setup, which only purpose was to show the status quo to later destroy it and start to show the real picture.

Do you know why v4 and 5 feel so empty and missing something? Sure, juggling multiple plots gave it's pacing issues too, but it felt empty because there were no side characters to fill out the world and make it feel alive. V5 cast was so tiny it felt like nobody interacted at all. Because there were none of those "extras" yall hate on so much. The extras make the world feel real. Which is why Atlas feels alive when Mistral wasn't.

The most complaints about later volumes are chucked down to lack of media literacy and nuanced reading of situations and characters. Translated for your easier understanding: the writing was too nuanced for your "cute girls go fighty fighty brrr" brain to comprehend. Sometimes things require you to put the situation into character perspectives. Sometimes their decisions are made under stress + personality + influence of events and interactions. But i guess yall don't want to think, yall just want to watch "girl go brrr killy killy monster"

I can continue writing down all these other points, but i'm hungry and should get up so i won't. Bottom text: RWBY is a good show with good story and good writing and good characters. It has struggles and fumbles like every other piece of media. But for some reason, because it's indie, it's held to a much higher standard and everyone feels entitled to pick apart every detail of it to make themselves feel justified for feeling sad over their dead headcanons, even though they'd never do the same picking for big production popular series with much *much* worse writing than even the worst of RWBY's fumbles.

If you made it this far and are a member of rwde, congratulations, you still have a reasonable bone or few. Most others i guess clicked off at first point and blocked me after sending me some kinda death threat, idk, i haven't posted this yet after all.

So yeah, feel free to leave your takes and death threats below, i'll happily discuss further later

[brewstersbru]

A little riz ficlet i started last week and finished today (pok feels 💚)

Your name is Riz.

Riz knows Kristen didn’t mean it, knows she was just being funny, trying to ease his nerves before his first big game on the Owlbears. But he can’t stop hearing his mother’s voice in his head, digging, nudging him to buck up and fight against it.

He regrets snapping at her, but not as much as he should, probably. He’s not certain he would’ve even said anything if his mom hadn’t had that conversation with him.

And now Kristen’s getting expelled, but not really, and instead they have to go through a harrowing trial of standardized testing coupled with fighting monsters where it only ends if all of them die or they kill all the monsters.

No one has ever killed all the monsters before, and Riz isn’t arrogant enough to actually believe they’ll be the first. Not with the weight of Junior year on their shoulders. It’ll be nice to see his dad again, outside of the tiny little hologram on his watch, or when he talks to the air around his grave- never knowing for sure but believing that he’s there, listening.

But dying hurts. Riz still gets nightmares about that first time he did it, and it doesn’t help that the video of it happening is still up for everyone to see. The views keep climbing, no matter how time marches on people still search it up. It makes him a little nauseous to think about.  

There’s a lot on Riz’s mind tonight- not that there hasn’t always been- but for some reason he can’t tune it out right now, can’t push it down with work or school or trying to solve a mystery. His mind is just running, turning over and over itself, churning through the complicated web of problems he’s found himself caught in.

There’s just so much that needs fixing, that needs to be worked on and chipped away at and he can’t do anything about it. Just has to stare at the ceiling of the living room in Mordrid Manor, trying to will himself to sleep while his friends snore beside him. Well- Adiane isn’t really sleeping, but after finally dropping the mental weight of her finances, she’s been falling deeper into her trances to regain her energy.

It feels almost like his heart is about to jump right out of his chest, like it’s squirming around, trying to wedge itself up his throat and out of his mouth. Riz would never tell anyone this but he’s terrified that he’s still that same futile little thing he was in the palimpsest. Scratching at thick walls until his hands bleed, littered with shards of the effort, but in that righteous violence, ultimately having done nothing of real use.

How many times does he have to bleed for it to mean something? How many times does he have to die before his friends can stay with him? Before people and gods and monsters stop trying to pry them away from his bloody, clenched fingers. He worked for this, he dug deep and rent himself in six equal pieces for the hope of staying together. How much more could the universe possibly expect from him? When is it enough?

There’s a soft beep from his wristwatch- which, unlike all of his other gadgets, he never takes off, not even when sleeping- and Riz takes the opportunity to get away from staring at the same crack in the ceiling he’s been looking at for the past hour. He stands and picks his way through a maze of limbs and drool to the kitchen.

With some semblance of privacy, he checks the watch. What could his dad- Agent Gukgak- need from him at this time of night? Does time work the same way up there? Is he ok? Is it possible for him not to be?

A small hologram of his father appears above the watch, disheveled, as if he just got back to the office. As soon as he appears, he steps back for a moment and quickly catalogues his son’s state. After about a minute, he heaves a deep sigh.

“You’re ok.” It’s not a question. Riz nods, slowly.

“I am, sure. But what about you, Agent Gukgak- sir? What’s wrong? Why’d you call?”  He tries to keep his voice quiet, and moves towards the front door, hoping to get outside so he and Agent Gukgak can have a serious business conversation without him sounding like a teenager at a sleepover. He is a teenager at a sleepover, but that’s beside the point.

Agent Gukgak tilts his head at him. “Kiddo, I didn’t call for me, I called for you. Your heartbeat spiked about a half hour ago and hasn’t returned to baseline since. I called as soon as I could get back.”

Riz, having just made it outside- the door creaked just slightly, but he’s not worried about any of the others having heard; they sleep like logs- stumbles a bit as he tries to settle himself on the porch steps.

It’s late, so he can be forgiven for lacking his usual tact as he stutters, “Wha- huh? This thing can track my heartbeat?” Like that was the most important part of what Agent Gukgak had said.

Agent Gukgak smiles at him, wry. “Course it can, and your blood sugar, iron levels, as well as body temperature. You should talk to your mom about iron pills, actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I know you haven’t been to the doctor for a while, but we’ve been detecting low iron in your blood for a while. And don’t even get me started on your eating habits, you’re just like your mother, waiting until you’re near ready to faint to give your body anything substantial.” His tone starts warm, but quickly devolves into something more scolding. Riz allows the conversation to derail a little bit.

“It’s not that I do it consciously, I just forget. There’s a lot of work to do and it’s hard to schedule out non-school-mandated mealtimes for myself. I’ll make a note about the iron though.” Riz thinks they’re both overtly aware of the fact that he doesn’t move to jot anything down. Iron pills have got to be expensive, and if he’s made it this far without, he doesn’t see a reason to ask for them now. Agent Gukgak sighs.

“Riz- it’s- I-“ He pauses, takes a second to collect himself. “I often find myself wishing, when we talk, that I was able to come down there and live with you and your mother. At least until we sent you off to college.” There’s a wistfulness to his gaze that Riz can’t find it within himself to watch, he knows what’s at the end of this train of thought and it’s never pretty. ‘What ifs’ and ‘could have beens’ are only as good as a wish, because they’re never rooted in reality. Always washed with rose and drowned in nostalgia.

Riz cuts in, “You’ve been doing good work where you can. And- and I think I turned out pretty okay. All things considered.” It feels a little strange to be defending his father to himself, but Agent Gukgak just shakes his head.

“More than ‘pretty okay’, kiddo. You’re the best thing I’ve ever done, not just in your work, but in who you are. I see the way you care for your friends, the way you help your mother, the way you meet every problem head on with a plan and a backup plan, just in case. I just wish the world had been kinder. Wish I coulda been there to make it be, when it couldn’t get there on its own.”

And then, for some, mortifying reason, Riz bursts into tears. It’s not loud or messy or even really all that different than what he usually looks like. At a distance, you probably wouldn’t even be able to tell. But there are tears streaming steadily down his face and every so often he has to sniff and blink his eyes to catch up with the stream. He swipes an arm roughly across his eyes to try and stem the flow, or better, stop it completely.

“I’m sorry, Agent-“

“Dad. Just call me dad kiddo. Please. Or Pok, just- not ‘Agent Gukgak’.” Pok’s own expression has crumpled, brows furrowing at the sight of his son so obviously distraught with no way to physically comfort him.

Riz nods, “Sorry, dad, I don’t-“ He sniffs, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s just Kristen’s being expelled unless we do this last stand thing tomorrow where we’re probably gonna die at the end, and I saw my name in Kipperlilly’s file but I haven’t had time to figure out why it’s there, and Fig skipped class again, which, I know isn’t going to fail her probably but it makes me nervous because what if she starts skipping every day again? Also our vice principal might be crazy and evil and I haven’t had any time at all to look into that-“

He cuts himself off with a gasping, cut-off sob, burying his face in his arm in his overwhelm but keeping his wrist level so Pok remains visible.

It’s hard to see through the rivers of tears that are spouting from his tear ducts, but Riz thinks he sees his father tugging at his hair, pacing as he watches this unfold. Huh, they kind of are the same.

“You’re seventeen. Seventeen, you shouldn’t- I can’t-“ He seems at a loss for words, baffled by the injustice of it all. Riz has stopped trying to fight the waves of tears, instead letting them wash over them, swiping at his cheeks every couple of seconds to keep them dry.

Pok paces for a few more minutes, fiddling with different parts of his outfit until he’s gathered his thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Riz.” Is what he settles on, moving close to the image capture of the hologram so that, if Riz were to tilt his head forward, it could almost be as if they were touching foreheads. Pok continues, closing his eyes.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there and I’m sorry that you have so much to deal with right now. I wish I could do more, but all I can give you is advice. What you’ve got on your plate right now, every piece of this hellish puzzle, both is and is not a war. There’s you, and there’s the problem, and a lot of times it seems like the problem is so much bigger than you are, so much more than you’re equipped to handle. Like you’re a man at the base of a mountain with a shovel, hoping to dig a hole through it. But once you start thinking that, the moment you let yourself become less than, that’s when you start losing. You either gotta grow to match the size of it or cut it into little pieces you know you can handle, and I’ve never met anyone who could do the first of those.”

Pok takes a deep breath, then his lips quirk into a rueful smile.

“Also, it’s a lot easier to do things when you eat, and you let other people help you.” He emphasizes the last parts with a heavy look directly into Riz’s eyes. Like he knows exactly how he’s been doing things thus far and is telling him to change it up, for his own sake.

Riz sniffles, nodding. If he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the warmth of his father’s skin through the hologram. Or the illusion of it.

“I can do that.” Riz takes a deep breath. “I can do that.”

Pok smiles. “I know you can, kid. Just take it slow. Don’t lose yourself in it.” He speaks as if he’s learned from experience. The realization of how little he truly knows his father hits Riz like a bucket of ice water. A shiver works its way up his spine.

For a moment, he considers asking. Thinks about spending the night on this porch, effectively on the phone with his dad, talking and learning things he’s wanted to know for as long as he’s been visiting Pok’s grave. Then, Pok clears his throat, expression pinched with regret.

“Sorry, kid I-“

Then he remembers that life isn’t fair, and the world moves on, whether you’re ready for it or not. Riz blinks away his tears.

“Yeah- no- I know. You’ve got badass angel things to do. I’m good. Thanks for calling.”

Pok gets a look on his face, equal parts proud and devastated. His eyebrows furrow into poignant resignation.

“I’ll try to do it more. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

And then he’s gone, and all Riz has is the cool fingers of the wind, grasping over his shoulders in an icy embrace. He puffs a breath into the air and watches it fizzle from fog to nothing.

It’s dark. It’s going to be dark for another eight hours at least.

Riz is going to die tomorrow, probably. He’ll be fine, but he doesn’t want to.

He really doesn’t want to.  

[abbythewritor]

'Fairness." One Piece x Saitama reader. 0

"Just a Normal girl looking for an everyday life. At least, if you call sailing across the seas with idiots with useless dreams a simple task, then you might wanna see a doctor. Seriously."

Warnings: Blood, gore, mentions of Luekimia, and heaps amount of blood and strength. It might be a little cursing, but not bad, and maybe some flirting in there, but it's mostly clean.

Other things:

-You didn't get bald due to your powers; you got bald to an extreme illness.

-You part of the straw hat crew, but others are interested in you and your power.

-Everyone that is a male is taller than you.

-Monsters from the OPM world will appear in One Piece, and I'll make some new monsters you will fight.

-I hope you enjoy my book and enjoy the prologue. :)

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The world is crazy....and boring.

Every human on this earth has advanced opportunities to grow, become successful, and be someone or something better.

Humans can go to college, date, be an actor, actresses, heck, even garbage men.

Some people, in many most eyes, are viewed as heroes, police officers, firefighters, heck, even people who are just doing a small amount of good.

When we look at the earth thoroughly and see the truth about life, anything and anyone has to start simple before they can become something more significant.

Heck, when life proceeds, and as human lives grow, excitement rolls up, the feeling of achieving something or living off of adventure.

That's what I wanted as a kid, to become firm, to have a life full of excitement, adrenaline, heck, even adventure.

But that all blew over one day when I discovered I had leukemia.

My family was devastated, as my excitement and dreams were gone in one instant.

You see, I grew up in a world where people can have incredible powers, who all fight all kinds of monsters, creatures, and even aliens that invade our earth. I was so inspired by them during my Kemo treatment that I acted like I was one of them, living in excitement and adventure; I wanted to grow and become something better.

But, at that time, I was getting worse; my hair was all gone, my bones were brittle, and the doc said I had little time to live.

Until one day, a man visited me...a tall, bald man, his suit a bright yellow color, his cap blowing like a guardian angel.

He protected me and my room from a monster, a monster giant his size.

His eyes were filled with boredom, anger as his eyes met mine, noticing I was just like him. He also noticed the stupid wires connected to me, especially a breathing tube, which caused his heart to grow weak.

The way the man looked back at the monster, killing it with a single punch, I felt surprised and scared?

His hand was near mine as he dropped some type of metal circle, which fell to the floor where his eyes met.

I sensed that something was bothering him, knowing he may have lost someone he cared about.

Without hesitation, I grasped the man's hand, which made him look at me.

He could sense my worry as my tiny feet stood on the bed, heading closer to him as he kneeled. "Mister, I'm sorry," I said as he kneeled down to me blankly. "Why are you sorry? I should be sorry for wrecking your room." My head shook. "It's just a room; you lost someone, didn't you?" His head tilted. "What do you mean-Oh." He realized what you were discussing as his hands picked up a metal ball. "He seemed important...did that monster kill him?" His eyes looked to you again, not knowing what to say as he hated to tell little ones lousy news. But, again, a hero doesn't lie, as this kind of stuff strikes the man in the heart."You're a smart one, Kid, and yes...his name was Genos; you pretty brave when that monster came; what's your name?" "Y/n. Y/n L/n, what's your name, Mister?" He smiled slightly. "Saitama, you have a nice name; we have unique styles; your hair is fabulous today, Y/n." He patted your head as you giggled with the feeling of his rubber gloves. "I don't have hair, neither do you, Mister Saitama; how did you lose your hair?" "Hmm.." He looked up to his head, then back to you, "A monster ate it." Your eyes widened. "No way, really? Was the monster you just beat up the one that ate your hair?!" Saitama chuckled slightly as his head shook. "No, let's just say the monster was friendly. Did the same thing happen to you-" He paused when your face turned sad as you looked at your hands. "Have you heard of the disease called leukemia?" His heart broke while nodding. "Yeah, it's a type of cancer...is that...how you lost your hair?" Looking up at Saitama, tears glossed over your orbs as you nodded. "It happened a year ago, just before my parents passed away. We're so poor we didn't know how my treatment would go, but after the monsters killed them, I was handed to an orphanage, and they took me here to get treated. Funny huh? Seeing a little girl going through the worse sickness in the world, alone, without family? I just wanted to be an ordinary girl with a life full of excitement and adventure. Instead, I'm hooked up to these stupid wires. Ugly, huh?" "No." You looked at him as he sat on the end of your bed. "I understand the feeling of wanting excitement and adventure, but having those in life doesn't make you a better person; excitement is what comes through you. Those wires, you being in here, still alive, excite me, and you're so brave. I mean, you just experienced something exciting; I kicked a monster's ass-" He paused what he just said as he slapped a hand over his mouth, as you giggled at his words. "Bad word, Saitama! No cursing allowed!" His hands went up with defense. "I did not say anything; you heard things Y/n. "That's a lie! You just sinned again!" "Oh no, what so ever will I do? Will though lord of this earth send me to damnation?" Standing on the bed, you smirk. "I, an Angel of God, she'll give you a chance to repent, and you will be sent to heaven like Genos is right now!" Getting up, Saitama kneeled and bowed his head.

"Oh gorgeous angel of heaven, please forgive my stupid, bald-headed self and accept my hands as I repent of the sins I committed." Heart warm and eyes sparkling, you grasped his hands easily as he looked up to your beautiful, bright smile. "You are forgiven, Hero!" Smiling, he stood up. "I'm glad; I didn't want to lose my best friend." Your eyes widened while your head tilted. "Best friend?! But, Mister, we just met-" "So? Let's call it an Instant connection-" *Boom!* An explosion was shown in the distance of your knocked-over wall, the floor rumbling from the impact as he looked at you quickly but calmly. "Duty calls, say, if I defeat this monster, ice cream is on me, okay?" His heart warmed from your excited face. "Really?!" "Of course, but in case I don't come back, here." Taking off his cape, he dropped it over your shoulders, which made your eyebrows furrow. "But, you need this-" His hand went up as destruction was still heard in the distance. "It's just a piece of clothing in my eyes; you seem to need it more than I do because what I see...." Walking closer to you, he gave one last head rub as he gave you a soft yet warm smile. "Is a hero...."

"A hero that deserves fairness in the world."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[mxaether]

MITCH MARNER -VS- TORONTO MEDIA/TORONTO FANS/HIMSELF/EVERYONE (a playlist for when you love a thing so much, and it bites you)

track list and selected lyrics for each under the cut ❤️

1. I Want You So Bad I Can't Breathe - OK GO i want you, yeah, i want you/ i want you, yeah, i want you bad/ so bad i can't think straight/ so bad all my bones shake / so bad i can't breathe 2. Careful What You Wish For (the doctor said to) - Jack Harris something is missing/this predisposition/i feel like i'm living inside of my head 3. Who Made You A Monster? - Hael tricking the world to trust you/but everything that you say/is some kind of sordid lie/who taught you how to lie so well? 4. GOSSIP - Maneskin, Tom Morello welcome to the city of lies/where everything's got a price/gonna be your favourite place -- so sip the gossip, drink till you choke/sip the gossip, burn down your throat 5. Don't Be Nice - Watsky false modesty is a guilty habit/some people simply have it/but the fact is i would not have spent a decade doing this/if i did not believe i was at least a tiny bit ridiculously filthy at it 6. JEKYLL & HIDE - Bishop Briggs sweet and then you're sour/changes by the hour/never know which one i'll taste 7. End of It - Friday Pilots Club it's cruel you know/the way they've been treating you lately/get you real messed up on the daily 8. Nowhere Kid - Des Rocs inside of a maze you hide away/where nobody cares who you are/caught in a lie you can't escape 9. All For Us - Labrinth, Zendaya guess you figured my two times two/always equates to one/dreamers are selfish -- i'm taking it all for us, all/doing it all for love 10. Cruel Devotion - Night Club do you want me? tell me true/on my knees and now i'm begging you/loving you is such a cruel devotion 11. Who Are You, Really? - Mikky Ekko i have nothing left to prove/cause i have nothing left to lose/see me bare my teeth for you/who, who are you? 12. Heartbreak Feels So Good - Fall Out Boy is there a word for a bad miracle?/nobody said the road was endless/nobody said the climb was friendless 13. Some People - Dan Mangan cause it's too easy to be righteous when you eat what you've been fed/some people don't question what they've read/some people should 14. SELF-SABOTAGE - Waterparks i'll self sabotage/if you like when we talk i'll dislocate my jaw/what the fuck is wrong with me 15. Matches - Huxlxy bring me the ashes/set me alight/i'd rather burn than say goodbye 16. SICK - Chandler Leighton never let anyone see your guard down/too proud, just stop, keep my frozen/iced out, i'm six feet underground 17. Black Wave - K. Flay shaking in my own cage/what do i believe? i believe/waiting on a black wave/living under bad days 18. Middle Finger - Bohnes you show me love and then spit in my face/making your money off all of my pain 19. still feel. - half-alive when i'm furthest from myself/feeling closer to the stars/i've been invaded by the dark/trying to recognize myself when i feel i've been replaced 20. Rather Die - Barns Courtney i came to kill 'em, now i'm/wipin' the spit from my eyes/i take a beating but i/i'll never give up 21. Lake Effect Kid - Fall Out Boy oh i've got the skyline in my veins, forget your night time/sumer love on a gurney with a squeaky wheel/and joke us, joke us til Lakeshore Drive comes back into focus/i just wanna come back to life 22. Stronger - Kanye West n-now-now that, that don't kill me/can only make my stronger -- do anybody make real shit anymore?/bow in the presence of greatness/cause right now thou hast forsaken us 23. Bulletproof - La Roux, GAMPER & DADONI i won't let you turn around/and tell me now i'm much too proud/all you do is fill me up with doubt/this time, baby, i'll be bulletproof 24. What Do You Want - Nico Vega you can go ahead and hate me/for bringing in news, but you could still choose/ain't going to be a party/but you turn it all down, down, down/say, what do you want?/what do you want from me? 25. I'm Gonna Win - Rob Cantor you've seen me before, you'll see me again 26. Hero - Martin Harrix, JVKE

a thousand voices whisper noise/they plan my fall from grace/whoa-oh, i know/you say you want a hero, you don’t

[joanofexys]

you said you were thinking about Florian a lot so please tell me your thoughts about Florian <3

Florian!!! Okay his relationships have been rotating around in my brain so much lately

I meantioned in another post that Florian falls in love so easily, he's just a tiny bit in love with everyone, and it will not leave me alone. so warning for cringe oc x canon posting ig

Florian and Jean and Florian and Kevin are the biggest ones for me at the moment but other dynamics that have given me brainrot include Flor and Neil, Flor and Andrew, and Flor and Jeremy

Florian has a level of love for Jean that is so impossible to erase that it is forever etched onto his heart (Jean's handwriting is tattooed on the left side of his chest). They're so unbelievably tender. Gentle with each other when no one else had been. They're barely there touches and kisses when no one was watching and silent "I love you"s they could never choke out out of fear of being heard.

that love doesn't go away after the nest. Flor does not move on. He is so terrible at it. And he is still head over heels in love with Jean.

It becomes meetings in empty hallways before games, gentle kisses, and words Florian can finally get past his lips. He knows things will never be the same between him and Jean. But they're still soft as they've always been. Flor still cups Jean's face in his hands. This time with tears in his eyes. "I know it's what you deserve, but I don't know if I can let you go."

That's in part where the Flor and Jeremy brainrot comes in. He's so good for the both of them tbh. But focusing on just him and Florian they have an incredibly interesting dynamic. Jeremy doesn't have the privilege of already knowing Flor. He gets all the attitude and anger and apathy. He has to earn Flor's sweetness. But he does. Idk I just think they're neat.

Florian and Kevin are so, very different. They're hotel rooms and bruising kisses and neverending heartbreak. Flor will never get what he wants from Kevin. He knows Kevin loves him, it's not in the way he wants. But he'll take what he can get. The bridge of Free Now is so them. They share so much of their pain. Florian feels that they understand each other in a way that no one else ever will due to their injuries. And Flor is bitter in a lot of ways but that will always get shoved aside the second he's actually with Kevin. And for a fun little addition: Kevin's handwriting is tattooed on Flor's collarbone

Flor and Neil also fall into none of those. Not as soft as Florian and Jean, with none of the past and heartache of Flor and Kevin. They click in a way I wasn't expecting when I made Florian's character. Neil's handwriting is tattooed on Florian's ribs. Which is actually the first tattoo I knew Flor had and inspired the idea of him getting tattoos in the handwriting of the people he loves most. They exist together very naturally. Matching snark, but delivered with a fondness that lets the other know they could never mean it. I'm not sure if they're platonic or romantic or what but they're sure in each other's lives for forever.

Andrew is someone Florian defers to easily. He's steady, as he is for so many people, and once Flor has even a bit of his trust he doesn't hesitate to lean on him. It's a hand tangled in Florian's hair when he's had a couple drinks and needs Andrew to ground him, or yanking on the back of Flor's shirt to keep him from walking away even when he thinks the conversation is over. He's not one of the monsters. But he's Andrew's. They have their fair share in common but have come to deal with it completely differently. Yet it still manages to give them common ground. There are things, mostly triggers, that only Andrew really gets. Moments where Andrew can be the only one sitting on the couch waiting for Flor to steady his breathing, to look up and meet his eyes and say his name. Voice cracking over two syllables. I'm ngl Florian and Andrew honestly compete with Flor and Jean on what dynamic drives me more insane. And it makes me so mad cause I can't word any of it properly

I hope you enjoy me talking abt oc x canon cause it's scary and embarrassing and i'm gonna pretend i didn't say any of this

[ell0ra-br3kk3r-writes]

The Phoenix and the Crow

part eleven

pairing: (hinted) kaz brekker x fem!reader

genre: netural

el's thoughts: this was the hardest part to write... and the shortest haha but it's here and done so there ya go. please remember to comment and reblog :)

masterlist

The wind made Y/N’s hair dance wildly around her as she leaned her hip against the side of the ship. She had heard all about the uprising privateer’s flying ship but had never got the chance to be abroad. Her eyes closed as she relaxed at the feeling of the cold wind around her. She felt free and untethered while in the air, the same feeling she had felt the first time she rode her horse across the palace grounds. 

She circled around to look across the deck of the ship, mentally doing a head count of everyone on board. Nina stood beside Inej listening to whatever the suli spoke of with much interest. Jesper and Wylan were glued to each other's sides while they looked out at the water, pointing every once in a while to a fish they saw. Toyla stood at the wheel while Zoya paced the quarter-deck before waving her hands every so often to push the ship a bit faster. Kaz sat on the steps up to the quarter-deck with his leg stretched out in front of him, they made eye contact for a moment before Y/N smiled gently and looked away.

“Catch me!” The small voice was heard over the strong autumn winds that blew around them as the young child threw themselves into Y/N’s arms. She laughed and spun her brother around the best a ten-year-old could do to a six-year-old. 

“Oooh a stowaway on my ship?” She bounced him onto her hip to keep him up. He shook his head fervently as peels of laughter fell from his small pink lips. “You know what I do to stowaways?” She spoke in a loud voice making it deeper to fit the character she acted out. The little boy laughed louder, “No! No! Please!” 

“I’m sorry, young man, but it must be done!” She giggled as she tossed him into the giant pile of leaves their father gathered that morning. They both laughed louder as she threw herself down next to him.

The familiar clicking of a cane sounded from behind her and dragged her out of her memory. She didn’t need to turn around to feel him stand behind her. 

“You look better.” His voice was clipped but still seemed kind. Kind enough when coming from the bastard of the barrel that is. 

She scoffed, “What did I look bad before?”

Kaz shrugged, and the corner of his lips quirked upward. “You look healthy.”

She turned bashful now knowing the fact that he noticed her lack of strength the last few days. “I feel better… Must’ve been the hallucination, honestly.” 

“What did your toxin trip reveal to you?” He leaned closer on his cane, hardly noticeable but her sharp eyes caught it—the curiosity in his eyes. The same tiny spark of hope that she felt in her chest reflected in his eyes. But before she could give in and tell him what she saw in the hallucinations the Darkling’s voice echoed in her mind again. And instead of sharing and being open, taking the same step he did, the words that tumbled out of her mouth were the words that had been repeated to her all throughout her years at the Little Palace. 

“Hope is dangerous. Clouds your judgment.”

She didn’t tell him what she saw, how could she? She hardly knows this man despite the fact that her brain thought otherwise. She knows more about him than he knows of her. She’s pieced together some of his past and her heart ached for him. Life wasn’t fair and it was obvious in both of their lives. 

Y/N turned to look up at him as he leaned on the railing beside her. The need to tell him had come back and only grew stronger when she noticed the same curiosity across his face. “The Darkling. That’s who I saw.” It wouldn’t hurt to share some of it. “Reminding me of everything I could never have despite my childish wishes and dreams.” 

“From where we stood it looked like he reminded you just how powerful you are as well.”

She shook her head, “He reminded me of the monster he made me.”

“The Phoenix is hardly viewed as a monster. From what I’ve heard you’re just as much a Saint as the sun summoner. The most powerful inferni to walk the earth.” Kaz didn’t look at her as he spoke, only kept his eyes trained on the sea below them, his voice was almost teasing.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be known as powerful because of my gift or- or because of the Darkling, or because of fear. I… I want to be powerful because I moved forward despite the odds. If people were to fear me, I want them to fear the name I built for myself.” She squeezed the rail under her hand. “I envy you for that reason… if I were to speak honestly.”

This caused him to look down at her, confusion swam in his eyes.

“You created a name for yourself, a name that brings people to their knees.” The pair smirked at the memory of the Dime Lions’ gambling den. “Literally.” 

A warm feeling grew in Y/N’s chest at the easiness of the conversation. There was nothing strange or awkward about talking to him, she felt like she could tell him anything even though she knew it was best not to. She wondered if he felt the same ease of the conversation or if it was all just in her head, but from the look in his eyes and his relaxed shoulders, it was safe to assume he felt it. 

“It’s fake.” A dark look flashed over Kaz’s face as the words fell from his lips. “My name, it’s fake.”

Y/N only nodded, moving so her back was against the handrail. “Kaz is a fake name?”

“Brekker.” His eyes met her’s for a moment before looking away. “Brekker is a fake name.”

She hummed, “We all do things for reasons only we know.” Twisting her fingers around each other, she sighed. “There are plenty of things I’ve done that if I had taken the time to actually think it through… I wouldn’t have made those choices, but in the end I’m standing here today and I wouldn’t be if I hadn’t made thoes choices. So, I wouldn’t change anything.”

“I wouldn’t-” Kaz was interrupted by Toyla shouting that they made it. Inej, Nina and Zoya all walked to one side, waiting for Y/N. 

The inferni gave Kaz a tight smile, “Well, I’m off.” She pulled her shoulders back as she walked to where the other girls stood waiting. 

Kaz watched in astonishment as the girl with whom he had just carried an intimate conversation with slipped back into the formal behavior that came with being a soldier. It was as if she had put back on a stoic and formal front, slipping back into her all too familiar mask. It was as if Y/N had only allowed herself a short break from such a pretense for those few private moments with him.

~*~*~*~

taglist:@rachelcarroll1819 @xcharlottemikaelsonx @khaleesihavilliard @simrah1012 @foulkryptonitepeanut @astridyoo15 @queenofshinigamis @peakyispunk @jahayla-parker @maliciousbrekker @brekkershadowsinger @winstonthecow22 @lee-says-things @bunneex @writingmysanity @sleepynightchild @madnessinwrighting @romanticvampire

[see-arcane]

More thoughts about @ibrithir-was-here's Blood of My Blood AU. Shredding my heart about it

Picturing Quincey thinking back on the sparse scenes in which Dracula must have actually acted like a parent. All the revelations of the present wouldn't hurt as much if the Count was always a monster to the boy. It couldn't have been a constant stream of fear when in his Father's presence. Worry, yes, but also love. And the assumption of love returned and shared with everyone in the castle. A happy image waiting to be torn to pieces.

There had to be Moments.

Father showing him how to follow the blue lights and discover real treasure, like in his adventure books. Quincey didn't care about the value as much as the magic, the finding of (gasp!) Buried Treasure. He'd cherished the couple little coins Dracula let him take more than any golden heap piled in the castle.

Father being in a good mood when little toddlerpire Quincey tried to sneak up on him along the ceiling while his back was turned, only to play-pounce in turn, making the boy yelp at the sudden blazing eyes in his face. "I know everything here, child. You must do better to take me by surprise." A sharp smile. "Just ask your mother." And Quincey did. This somehow transmuted into something of a Lesson in which Father showed Quincey and Mama how to race along the walls and mountainside without effort or sound. Mama had smiled. For her son.

Father peacocking during history lessons as Quincey sat rapt. Tell another, Father! Just one more! He even showed Quincey how to hold different blades in a fight. A sword. A dagger. ...A kukri. Bonus sour aftertaste points if Papa is roped in for the latter, his smile straining as the Count let him 'borrow' the weapon for proper demonstration. A suit of armor was beheaded, picture of false catharsis. Quincey was delighted--and fed an unsubtle hint that Violence is Cool and Normal and Right in this family--before Jonathan had to hand the blade back. Smiling. For his son.

Father hearing the boy tell him upon some special occasion, a holiday, a birthday or deathday, or a pure whim of genuine warmth: "I love you, Father."

Father telling him in turn, sounding nothing less than honest, "And I you, pet." A hand on his head. Never his shoulder; no matter how he grew, always he stroked the boy's head. Perpetual child. Perpetual pet. Good boy. "We would not be a family without you."

Out of an endless sea of lies, Quincey knows now that this much was a truth.

Worse thought: Father himself believed that what he had to give to Quincey, to his true parents, was love. That Purgatory of abuse and horror and ownership was and remains the most he has to give. To force upon the Harkers, the family he put in invisible chains.

Quincey thinks of the child he was, who knew only love, with parents all smiling for him, with an ignorant faith that he lived a fairy tale.

And he thinks, hating himself, that for all that he must acknowledge reality, must fight back against Father the Count's evil, must Do Right and Be a Good Man, a tiny selfish corner of him envies that oblivious child. The boy who was happy and loving and loved because he knew nothing else.

A boy who had three parents where he only has two.