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yannasunflower · 3 years

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dust to dust | chapter two

chapter one | chapter two

ao3

You don't know what makes you save Kuroo Tetsurou's life. All you know is there is no world to save anymore, but damn if you're just stupid enough to try.

Genre: hurt/comfort/romance/angst Rating: Mature, subject to change (gore, violence) Kuroo x fem!Reader Word count: 3.5k

hey everyone! here's chapter two, as promised. this fic is also cross-posted to AO3, where i'm under the same username. linked above as well! next chapter, action picks up, plot picks up, and we get more Kuroo, promise. enjoy, and as always, please reblog, like, and comment <3

Nobody ever told you how absolutely boring a zombie apocalypse could be.

Your ragtag group of survivors have scavenged what entertainment they can - books and gym equipment, even a few board games. People like Suga and Takeda keep busy with the children, teaching them to read and garden and how to survive if mommy and daddy never come back for them.

You open one lazy eye as a gaggle of them stumble after Suga, hanging on to his every word.

You’re not sure how the two men handle placing a long knife in a child’s chubby hand, fingers barely able to grip it,and showing them how to strike right at a nighstalker’s heart, fast and deep. Their giggles float through the air and the sound is almost dreamlike and if you keep your eyes closed, you can pretend this is a movie and when you open them, the credits will roll and you can go home.

Others tend to the elderly, of which there are only three in your group. You try to keep them comfortable and as far from danger as possible. But your body constantly prickles with the knowledge that they aren’t just vulnerable - they are a vulnerability. A hole in the brick wall you are attempting to build around this little community.

The healthy and fit young people patrol and take rotations on the watchtowers. Teenagers help with the lessons. Takeda had been firm about this. Once a kid turned seventeen, they were allowed to join the patrols, but until then, they stayed sequestered away.

It was almost comical, telling a tall, strong, angry Tobio that he had to mind the children. He towers over you, but he had bent to your will after a brief glaring contest. And then a week later, Shoyo had bounded into everyone’s hearts, including his, and the pair were inseparable.

Kiyoko, for her part, had taken one look at Yachi, shivering at Hinata’s side, and adopted her, sweeping her under a protective wing and keeping her there.

For people like you, who have no “bedside manner” as Kiyoko puts it, there are chores and day to day mini emergencies to keep you busy. Somehow, in the months since the world finally decided to fall apart, you have become mediator and negotiator. It’s an unlikely role; you can see your mother’s arched brow if she was still alive to see you now.

You barely have the patience for grocery shopping.

She would have laughed, elbowing your father, who would have made a valiant attempt at a straight face.

These are useless memories but you allow yourself to indulge for a moment. You have nothing better to do. Lunch is cooking, inventory has been completed, the guard rotation is set for the next two weeks. Ukai had waved you off this morning when you finally managed to corner him, complaining about your ceaseless energy and the “mad glint” in your eye. His words.

“That look means trouble for me,” he had growled, pointing an accusing finger at you. “Go to your cell and get some sleep for the love of anything you find holy.” Without another word, the man had leaned against a wall, put his feet up on his desk, and closed his eyes. A clear dismissal. You tried not to huff but you definitely stomped a little bit on the way out.

You don’t know how to tell him that staying in your cell, with your eyes closed, is inviting the living nightmares. You don’t know how to tell anyone, really, that you are just as haunted as this prison, as Daichi’s eyes.

That the only holy thing left in this world is fear and if you succumb to that, you’ll never move again.

You let a sigh tumble out of you. Forcibly, you shove your thoughts in another direction.

It had been a week since you brought home your latest stray. Kuroo had spent the first three days doing little else but sleep and eat. Daichi has taken to walking him around the Pit every day, explaining the way things work, and Suga showed him his pride and joy just yesterday. Kuroo had been suitably impressed by the garden, if the generous second and third helpings Suga thought he was sneaking to him at dinnertime were anything to go by.

The man has filled out nicely. He looks less skeleton, more human after sleep and hot food. You had peeked in on him in the grey of dawn that morning after Daichi not-so-subtly hinted that Kuroo had been asking about you.

He sleeps curled up on his side, hair falling against his cheek. In another world, you would have taken a picture.

Kiyoko tells you that the men like him, that Tanaka has stopped regarding him with all the wariness of a stray cat, and that she’s pretty sure Yachi has a crush on him.

You open your eyes into a blazing afternoon, unsurprised to see the subject of your thoughts stretching in the courtyard, the weak sunlight rippling over his bare arms. His black hair is messy as ever and you are struck all over again by how tall he is.

Tobio got a new babysitter, you think with no small amount of amusement. The gangly teenager needs someone to keep him in line and frankly, you don’t have the time and Hinata is just as likely to suggest some stupid shit for them to get into as he is.

You are still stretched out like a cat on a bench, letting the sun warm you, half-hoping it will lull you into a nap.

It’s boredom, more than anything, that makes you turn your head toward Kuroo.

“If you’d like to get some exercise, we have equipment. I’m sure Noya can show you,” you call.

Kuroo jumps and swivels to look at you, eyes wide and so, so dark. You look away. Something about him is like staring at the sun; too long, and your eyes burn.

“Didn’t see you there,” he admits easily, sauntering over to your bench. You eye his approach, noting that he really must be feeling a lot better. His movements are more fluid now, lean muscles becoming apparent on his shoulders.

Daichi has blessed every woman, and a few men, in the Pit by finding Kuroo a pair of grey joggers and a muscle tank top for everyday wear.

“I don’t do well with sitting still,” he says, leaning over you. His head casts you in shadow, blotting out the sun. “This is something I think you can understand.”

Up close, you can see that the shadows beneath his eyes are retreating gradually. His smile looks less like a grimace today.

You hum, swinging your legs over the bench and sitting up. Blood rushes from your head and you lean back against your palms. Kuroo lowers himself to sit next to you.

“Daichi forces me to limit my rotations on the guard towers and patrols,” you answer. “When we first found this place and cleaned it out, I was working overtime and made myself sick. Him and Kiyoko have been conspirators against me ever since.”

Your fingers thrum against your thigh as you say this. You feel more than see Kuroo’s eyes on them.

“They love you,” he points out, a little unnecessarily.

You snort.

“Love is expensive nowadays and everyone in the Pit is broke.”

“You love them back even more.”

You glare at him but he is just looking at you, tracing the planes of your face. A frown tugs at your lips.

“How are you feeling?”

Kuroo rolls his shoulders experimentally, stretching his arms above his head.

“Better,” he affirms. “More like myself.”

“A nosy busybody who talks like a grandpa?”

“Exactly.”

He is grinning now and you have to fight to keep yourself from returning the expression.

The bruises on his face are yellow now. You estimate it will only take a couple more weeks of regular meals for his face to fill out and his skin to look youthful again. You don’t bother asking him how long he had been alone, what happened to his family. None of that matters now. The apocalypse is a great equalizer.

“I talked to Takeda and Kiyoko this morning,” you begin, leaning your head back and closing your eyes against the sun. “They agreed to give you another week before putting you on guard rotation.”

“I would appreciate that. I want to earn my keep, however I can.”

A ghost of a smile dances across your lips.

“You’re just bored,” you tease. It’s been a long time since you felt sleepy and loose enough to tease anyone.

“You say that now, but newbies get the shittiest schedule possible,” you warn him, unsure why you’re telling him this. “Be prepared. Once you’re back to top form, we’ll discuss sending you on patrols for medicine and expanding that garden of Suga’s.”

There’s silence but it’s comfortable, easy. You let yourself enjoy it for just a few moments before standing, opening your eyes and offering Kuroo a full smile and your hand.

As he shakes it, looking only a little confused, you wonder how much longer he would have survived on his own in the city.

“Welcome to the Pit,” you say before turning on your heel and walking away.

~~~

Nightmares are as plentiful as soil on Suga’s fingers.

A sliver of moonlight is all that keeps you from sinking into the darkness, skin clammy, chest heaving. Your fingers twist into the sheets. A prayer is whispered that you didn’t scream this time. You can’t bear the thought of Kiyoko running again, feet bare, knife in hand and tears glistening on her cheeks. Her utter, pure relief haunted you for a month.

It would be so easy, you think, to never get up again.

Kiyoko would care for you. Daichi would stop by, every day, and update you. Ukai would read to you, probably, or nap in your cell, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

These are the thoughts that force you up, out, stumbling into your worn boots, shrugging a jacket on.

Takeda finds you in the office hours later, hunched over inventory reports in his neat handwriting, hair pulled back. He puts a pot of coffee on and hands you a steaming mug, holding a hand out for the report you’re struggling to understand.

“Winter is coming,” you sigh as you hand it over. He doesn’t ask about the shadows beneath your eyes, doesn’t comment on the fact that it’s barely six-thirty in the morning and you’ve clearly been awake for a number of hours.

A smile quirks at his lips.

“I didn’t know Tanaka managed to get the TV’s up and running,” he jokes. You wave your hand in a vague gesture, taking another sip of the liquid heaven in your hand.

“We need to get winter supplies,” you answer and that sobers him up. He nods, slowly, eyes roving the paper.

“Winter isn’t for over six months,” he reminds you. An eyebrow is raised. A teacher, waiting for an explanation. In moments like these, you see the high school teacher that you’d found barricaded in his office, babbling a stream of students’ names that Daichi had quietly whispered as your group cut them down, reading them off their uniforms.

On Takeda’s worst nights, as you guarded the door to his cell, you’d heard those same names, apologies and nonsensical gibberish streaming from his mouth as he grappled with his dreams and feverish tremors.

You stand, stretching, before stepping in front of a map of the city that Suga had snagged on one of his patrols. It’s huge, taking up an entire wall. Little markers litter the paper, different colors, and you run your finger over the pale blue ones in the northeast corner.

“There’s a limited supply of winter clothes in the city. I don’t want other groups getting to it first - we don’t need that bastard holding it over our heads when we have food and they don’t,” you remind him. Your arms cross behind your back automatically. “With the snows, we’ll need snow boots. The kids need jackets and thermals. We need to completely outfit the prison’s entire water supply system to last through snowstorms. We need hot water before then or half of us are going to be too sick, and the other half will be taking care of them. We need medicine, too.”

You tick off each item on your fingers, pausing to consider if you’ve missed something. You’re probably missing ten somethings and you struggle to see what they are. You need more coffee.

Takeda is twenty-nine, but when you turn to look at him finally, he seems sixty, glasses dangling from his fingers, nose bridge pinched between his knuckles.

He mutters something suspiciously close to a curse under his breath before opening his eyes.

“You’re right,” he admits. “We’re going to need at least seven months to prepare.”

The morning is a whirlwind. You send the youngest children, always the earliest risers, to fetch Daichi and Kiyoko, both much more bright-eyed than they have any right to be. Takeda drags a yawning Ukai into the office moments later and Tanaka slouches after them. Suga pokes his head in to give you a little wave and knowing smirk that everyone else finds nonthreatening before ushering the children to the cafeteria for their breakfast.

You’re positive you’re not imagining the pale pink coating Daichi’s cheeks.

After explaining the situation, everyone sucks in a collective breath.

Tanaka never sits and always faces a door. From his corner of the room, he glowers at the map.

“Well, fuck,” he neatly summarizes. You nod your appreciation for his conciseness.

“We need to get a hold of meat,” Ukai points out. A something you had missed.

You grab a marker and the portable whiteboard Takeda had grabbed a few weeks ago. In neat characters, you begin documenting everything thrown around the table.

“Raising livestock will be another way to keep the little ones busy.”

“We can’t ask people to shower in cold water during winter, that’s cruel.”

“Tanaka, is there any way to get the heating system up and running by then?”

“What about air conditioning? We have to get through the summer to get to winter, and heat is just as likely to kill us.”

“If other groups realize what we’re doing, we could be in trouble.”

A headache is brewing somewhere behind your temples and you bite back a groan. Kiyoko pushes a cool water bottle into your hand and you know she isn’t fooled for one second.

“I think we’re missing someone here,” Kiyoko points out mildly after what feels like an eternity of circular conversation. All eyes turn to her and she’s unruffled, fingers still wrapped around her mug.

“Kuroo could be a huge help to a lot of this,” she continues. “I’m sure he can help Tanaka and Noya with everything on their list, and we need more able-bodied men on the patrols anyway. He can help us with medicine, our food supply, all of it.”

A furtive glance in Tanaka’s direction is not encouraging. He’s glowering, eyes hooded.

“We barely know him,” Tanaka hisses. You have to privately agree.

“We barely know each other,” Ukai shoots back. “We’ve been here, what, three months?”

“He hasn’t even been on a patrol yet and you want him helping us make important decisions that affect everyone, including the kids?”

“That’s unfair, and you know it, Tanaka,” Takeda says patiently, but somehow reproachfully at the same time. “Kuroo has been in no condition to patrol. The man was emaciated.”

Takeda continues, levying everyone at the table with a stern face.

“We all trust each other now because we took the gamble and brought people in and allowed time to prove it. It was always a risk, and it will always be a risk, but we can’t let that stop us. What we’re doing here is more important than just working together to survive.”

It’s a flowery, nice sentiment, to be expected from a literature teacher, and you barely hold back a snort at Ukai’s warning look.

“None of this matters,” you cut in. “Takeda’s right. And so is Kiyoko. He could be a huge help to you specifically, Tanaka, and he’s getting better every day but we have to give him time before he’s physically ready. You saw him when we brought him in – he was skin and bones.”

Tanaka subsides into grumbling acceptance and you take it as a win.

Daichi returns with Kuroo in tow just minutes later, and if Kuroo is at all confused, he doesn’t show it. He folds himself into a chair, all long limbs and wide feet.

The problems are laid out on the table again. You watch as Kuroo absorbs it, eyes narrowed, flicking sometimes to the map on the wall.

“Frankly, I wish we were in an apartment building,” Tanaka reveals after an hour of debating the best way to acquire livestock.

You sigh, rubbing the heel of your hand into your eyes hard enough to see colors. You know it’s not Tanaka’s fault, that he’s saying out loud something you’d privately thought before. That the electrical systems in apartment buildings would be much easier for him to coax into submission.

But you’re tired. Kiyoko is rubbing the old wound on her shoulder again, Ukai’s fingers are tapping a loud rhythm on the table, and Daichi is watching you lose your mind with that same placid smile in place.

“I wish the apocalypse didn’t happen and we all didn’t have nightmares every damn night, but here we are,” you snap. “I wish we were all cozy in furnished apartments right now, too, and I wish we didn’t have to talk about these things.”

You wish the children didn’t have to hold knives, you wish Suga would stop forcing you to eat, you wish you could forget your mother’s laugh, you wish and wish and wish.

Tanaka’s mouth is open and Daichi is sighing, rubbing a hand over his face. Kuroo’s eyes are expressionless and he just looks like he’s waiting, though for what, you can’t even begin to guess.

You find that you don’t have the energy to regret the words, so you barrel on.

“The apartment buildings are stacked with nightstalkers. It would take weeks to clear even one out, and we would lose people. Guaranteed. We lost one person clearing this prison out and that —”

You’re cut off by a strange choking noise in your throat. The memory of Ennoshita is sweet, cloying, poisonous. Takeda looks pale and strained at the mention of it. His last student.

Your voice is pitched low when you manage to blink away traitorous tears. The sound of your chair scraping is loud and grating against your ears as you stand. They all watch you silently. Waiting.

“Ennoshita is buried here,” you say and the surprise on their faces is almost insulting. “So is Ayasaki’s little girl. We have a life here, one we built and fought for. The kids love it here, it’s as safe as it can get, and it’s isolated from the turf wars in the city. You know why we chose this place, you were part of the vote that decided it, Tanaka.”

Deep breath in. Out.

“I know I’m asking for a lot, but it’s necessary, and we’re all up to the task simply because we have to be.”

As far as motivational speeches go, you’re sure this is ranked pretty low. But Daichi straightens and Kuroo’s eyes are gleaming as he stares at you. Kiyoko is almost smiling and you take that into both of your hands and hold on for dear life.

“I have to protect them.”

Everyone in the room opens their mouth at pretty much the same time but Ukai beats them all to the punch with his lazy drawl.

“You’re a moron,” he sneers. “An absolute idiot if you think you’re doing any of this alone. Now run along and get some breakfast before Suga drags you there by your hair.”

~~~

It doesn’t surprise you when Kiyoko finds you later, on the roof, scribbling half-mad ideas into a plain notebook. She always knows where to find you.

“I think you should stay home tomorrow,” she says without preamble. The word home nearly sends you stumbling off the roof.

“Why? Am I dying and I don’t know it?” you ask dryly. The look she levels at you nearly makes your heart stop.

“We agreed to let Kuroo go tomorrow,” she explains, settling into the spot next to you, peering curiously at the notebook in your hand. “But you haven’t been sleeping and we can’t afford to lose you because you’re too tired to stand properly.”

You scowl. Damn the four eyes. Her and Takeda know too much for their own good.

“I’m fine,” you wave a hand dismissively. “I’ll get some rest tonight, promise.”

She let’s the matter go, which is a point for you, but you watch warily as she opens her mouth again.

“Tanaka is looking for you.”

A sigh.

“I should apologize.”

“That’s what he said.”

A laugh, short and barking, escapes you. Kiyoko smiles at the sound.

“We’re all such idiots.”

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq #kuroo x reader #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu x reader #zombie!au #haikyuu zombie!au #this is purely self indulgent #kuroo x you #kuroo angst #my writing #yanna speaks #text #fanfiction

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megan-is-mia · 4 years

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Can i have yandere genderbend poly bruno and giorno with a male reader with smothering promts 1 2 3 6 7 8 please (I'm so jealous of your skills of writing yandere readers that I'm like pleas eteach me your skills)

(Its less skill and more “I wonder what the fuck will stick?” but I appreciate your words regardless. Sorry I couldn’t get all 6 of the lines you wanted into the fic but if you get through the entire thing there’s a bonus...) 3. “I shouldn’t have to repeat myself.” 6. “The collar is for you, not me. You’ve proved you can’t be trusted without it.” 7. “Cruel, terrible people live out there, people who want to hurt you. Is it so bad to be away from them?” (Yandere! Poly! Fem! BruGio x Male S/o) (NSFW AND NON-CON AHEAD) “Hey pretty boy, did you have a good nap?” Giorno cooed as she stroked her still half-asleep boyfriend’s cheek. “You gotta wake up, Bruno’s going to be back from her mission soon and we’re going to spend some quality time together” the blonde said continuing to caress her darling (S/o)’s face until he opened his eyes. f (S/o) had tried to keep his mind blank as fingers trailed across his face in the hopes Giorno would just let him be in peace. However that didn’t seem to be the case and so with great reluctance, the young man’s eyes popped open. “Did you have a good dream?” Giorno said bending down to peck her boyfriend’s face and begin unlocking the chains that kept him in bed. When both anklecuffs and handcuffs were open, only a study collar made of leather around (S/o)’s neck made it clear something was amiss with the pair’s relationship. At the start, the young man had tried everything to get rid of the collar but now... he’d given up that fool’s errand. “I didn’t dream anything” (S/o) lied flatly, unwilling to confess to the blonde what had really been in his mind. He wanted to keep the visions of being free and with people again to himself so he wouldn’t be punished. “Baby, you know I hate it when you lie to me. I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, but I’m feeling nice so I’ll let you amend your words. So... did you have a good dream?” Giorno said squeezing (S/o)’s fingers as she spoke. “I swear I didn’t dream about anything GioGio” (S/o) said in a quiet voice and nervously tugging at the collar around his throat as his eyes darting down before looking back at the young woman with a familiar silent plea. “Love, you know the collar is for you, not me. You’ve proved you can’t be trusted without it. If you hadn’t tried to run away so many times you wouldn’t have to wear it” Giorno said with an exasperated sigh as she led (S/o) downstairs to the entrance area to await Bruno’s arrival. A few minutes later came a faint zipping noise and Bruno stepped through the wall as she always did in the evenings when she got home. Giorno immediately rushed over to kiss her capo hello, (S/o) however, was slower to respond but eventually moved close enough that the black-haired woman was able to pull him into an embrace. “Oh I missed you two, I swear if that mission had dragged another day or two I might have lost my mind” Bruno said warmly, not releasing (S/o) from her hold quite yet. She kept a grip of his waist and half dragged him to the nearby couch before sitting beside him. Giorno scurried around the couch to the other side to sit on (S/o)’s other side efficiently boxing him in. “So what did you do on your mission Bruno?” (S/o) said as silence began to seep into the room. He wanted to keep the mobsters minds’ busy on something that didn’t involve him as it unfortunately often did. Bruno did not answer, only grabbing the young man’s head and forcing him to rest it on her shoulder. In response to the dark-haired woman’s action, Giorno squirmed onto her back and rested her head in (S/o)’s lap. At this point, the young man tried to repeat his question only to be hushed by Bruno who began to hum softly. “Why so curious? You don’t usually ask questions about my or Giorno’s missions...” Bruno finally said her humming only coming to a stop temporarily before starting up once more. Her hand roamed aimlessly for a moment before finding one of (S/o)’s and interlacing their fingers together. “I... I’m bored” (S/o) confessed, not really having a better reason than that. “I have not been allowed out of this house in months! The only way I’ll get information about the outside world is what you’ll tell me about your missions!” the words left the young man’s mouth a bit more aggressively than intended. “How many times do I have to remind you, Bambino? The outside world is a horrible place. Cruel, terrible people live out there, people who want to hurt you. Tell me, is it really so bad to be away from them?” Bruno said sternly sending a shiver up (S/o)’s spine. Even Giorno stared up at the male with a disappointing gaze. “No” (S/o) forced himself to say. “But that doesn’t change the fact you leave me alone in this for hours and hours. I get lonely and bored...” he added pleadingly. Bruno’s eyes softened a little bit at his pleading tone and she let out a low sigh. “You know that it’s your own fault that we have to leave you locked up like a wild animal. But we’re here now, so let’s take your mind off of those thoughts for a while hm?” Bruno said her tone suggestive as her hand squeezed (S/o)’s lightly. The young man tensed up in fear, this was the exact outcome he’d been trying to avoid. But there was nothing he could say or do to stop it. Once the dark-haired woman had made up her mind there was no changing it. Giorno moved into action without a word, sitting on (S/o)’s lap and making out with him as she undid his shirt. Bruno’s hands cupped Giorno’s chest teasing the exposed skin from her boob window. (S/o) forced himself to play along like always, alternating between squeezing Giorno’s sides and Bruno’s thigh before the dark-haired woman forced him to turn on the couch and lay on his back. With this chance of position came the blonde scooting up onto his chest. With one deft pull, both pants and boxers were out of the way on the floor and (S/o)’s cock flopped limply against his stomach which earned a displeased sigh from Bruno. Gracefully the woman removed her suit jacket and lingerie to allow her bountiful bosom to spring free. Somehow with the same kind of grace Giorno removed her skirt and panties before scooting once more so her cunt was almost pressed against (S/o)’s face. Obediently the young man stuck out his tongue and began eating the blonde out. This made it easier to ignore the sensation of Bruno’s boobs wrapped around his cock as her mouth teased his head to fullness. It also made it easier to ignore her lubed finger probing his ass and opening him up. Giorno squeezed her thighs around (S/o)’s head and pressed her cunt even more insistently against his talented tongue until she was cumming without warning. She squirted all over the boy’s face making him cough as some went up his nose. “Sorry~” she chirped licking the young man’s face clean as she discarded of her school jacket and slide back down his chest. Bruno placed a kiss on the blonde’s shoulder as she made her approach. The dark-haired woman pulled her fingers free of (S/o)’s ass before getting rid of her pants and undergarments. As always, she was packing with a strap-on already perched on her nethers. She turned Giorno to face her as she guided the younger woman onto (S/o)’s cock before impaling the young man on her strap on. (S/o) had no choice but to act like he was enjoying this and squeezed Giorno’s boobs from behind. The feeling of riding and being ridden made his head foggy as he thrust up and ground down against the various sensations invading his senses. Bruno thrust relentlessly as she made out with Giorno hungry for satisfaction. The blonde was just as eager groping at the dark-haired woman’s chest happily. However, they did not forget their darling (S/o) forcing him to orgasm before succumbing to ecstasy themselves. Giorno weakly pulled herself off of (S/o)’s cock before twisting to curl up beside him. On the other hand, Bruno simply flopped forward making her strap-on prod at (S/o)’s sensitive insides once more. “I hope that helped to cure your boredom and loneliness a bit...” THE END

—•—•—

BONUS FIC 1. “Hurting you is the last thing I’d do, you know that.” 2. “What do you mean it hurts? If it hurts, it’s because you’re struggling!” 8. “Say you love me. Would that be so hard? I just need you to say you love me.” (Yandere! Poly! Fem! AbbaMis x Male S/o) (NSFW AND NON-CON AHEAD) (S/o) had been on his first successful date in months when the sound of gunfire rang through the air and his date had gone face-first into her plate of spaghetti. The young man barely had a moment to react before the girl’s body had been shoved out of her chair and a new figure sat before him. Only an idiot or a tourist wouldn’t recognize the black-stained lips or unnerving gaze of the right-hand woman of Naple’s capo. The one, the only, Leone Abbacchio. The imposing woman stared into (S/o)’s eyes like she was reading his very soul. The young man had to wonder how he’d must have fucked up to get on the mobster’s radar. (S/o) didn’t have much of a chance to wonder though, since a second figure slipped into the chair next to him with a grunt. He recognized this individual as well, the cheeky grin and poorly concealed pistol strapped to her thigh made it clear this must be Guido Mista, the luckiest gunswoman in Italy. “Oh shit, you’re super cute up close” Guido said leaning into close to (S/o) and making him jerk back with a yelp. She let out a laugh at his discomfort before leaning back in her chair. Hey Abba, don’t you agree? He’s really fucking cute isn’t he?” the gunslinger added winking at the albino and receiving a grunt in answer. “Please don’t hurt me! I don't know anything I shouldn’t!” (S/o) blurted out. In a normal situation he wouldn’t have been so jittery, but seeing your date get shot and then having two mobsters sit next to you definitely didn’t count as normal in his book. “Oh calm down cutie hurting you is the last thing I’d do, you know that” Guido said letting out another peal of raucous laughter as she gazed at (S/o). At this moment the restaurant’s waiter decided to come by and the mobsters ordered food as if there wasn’t a corpse by their feet. “This is your fault you know” Abbacchio said, her tone forcing (S/o) to focus on her words. “We’ve been keeping most of the riff-raff away from you but that one managed to slip through. Hence why she needed to die. Now we are going to have a nice date is that understood? ” the albino finished with a look that made it clear arguing would be pointless. “Y-yes M’am!” (S/o) squeaked out and was rewarded with a tight-lipped grin from the tall woman. The young man tried to ignore the curious stares of the restaurant’s other patrons and focus on eating the food before him. Despite the lasagna on his plate smelling wonderful and tasting even better... (S/o) had lost his appetite. Regardless, he forced himself to shovel down mouthfuls of his meal just to stay occupied. Suddenly he found his chin being grabbed and his body being pulled half-way out of his chair by Abbacchio. (S/o) held his breath as the woman’s black-coated nails lightly dug into his cheeks and she scrutinized his face up close. The young man opened his mouth about to speak when the albino closed the distance between them entirely to kiss him. (S/o)’s heart began to race and he froze up letting Abbacchio do as she pleased with his mouth. When he was finally released, he fell clumsily back into his chair panting. “You had sauce on your face” Abbacchio answered flatly before (S/o) could ask. The young man could only nod like an idiot at this response. His reaction drew yet another cackle of laughter from Guido who then grabbed the male’s shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss of her own. The gunslinger was more aggressive in the kissing department than the other woman, playfully biting (S/o)’s lips before pulling away. Finally, the mobsters’ meals arrived and (S/o) had a brief respite from the women’s attention while they ate. He was itching to make a run for it but something told him he wouldn’t get to far. He’d seen what happened to people who tried to cheat Passione of what was theirs and he had no desire to die. So what was his mistake? He couldn’t think of what he’d done to pique the mob’s attention. Had he slipped up on a payment somewhere? But (S/o) was always careful to pay his rent and protection fees on time— he even had a checklist for it! Maybe he’d talked to someone who’d been making trouble for the mafia? No... that couldn’t be it either! Everyone he interacted with regularly was just as wary of the mob as him. “Oi (N/n)~ It’s time to go” Guido said tapping (S/o) on the shoulder and breaking him out of his thoughts. He felt a cold chill go down his spine as the sound of the nickname fell on his ears. The causal way the gunswoman spoke to him, the fact she knew his name without him telling her it, it all made him feel sick to his stomach. “B-buh-but the bill” (S/o) stuttered out only to have his words waved away by the young woman who wore a devious grin as she took hold of his arm and began half-dragging, half-leading him out of the restaurant. The young man almost tripped on the forgotten corpse of his blind date and felt his stomach churn as Guido hummed to herself. As they exited into the evening air, (S/o) once again felt the itch to run. He forced it down and then forced himself to speak. “If this is about money, I don’t have much. I swear that whatever you think I did or saw it wasn’t me—” (S/o) started before Abbacchio put a finger to his lips for his silence. Obediently the young man shut his trap and began shifting nervously from one foot to the other as the albino moved to unlock a nearby car. (S/o) found himself once more forced into action by Guido who pushed him towards the car and into the backseat. The gunswoman then slid into the passenger seat as Abbacchio started the car and began driving. (S/o) stares down at his hands, quietly praying to whatever deity was listening to get him out of this mess. He also directed a prayer to his blind date’s family and a mental apology towards them for causing their daughter’s early death. By the time the car came to a stop outside a dimly-lit house, the young man had accepted his fate. His head hung low as he was guided into the house, up a flight of stairs, and down a hallway. “My room is cleaner than yours” Abbacchio said, her words directed at Guido as she pulled (S/o) into the aforementioned room and onto her bed. The gunswoman shrugged her agreement as she tossed her hat aside and followed after, flopping onto the bed with a grunt. The albino immediately busied herself with making out with (S/o) and pawing at his clothes hungrily. “Whatever, I still call dibs on his ass” Guido said with a smirk pulling her sweater and bra off in one motion before pressing her bare chest against (S/o)’s back as she nibbled on his neck. The young man managed to tear his mouth away from Abbacchio’s lips only to find his head forced down into the valley between her breasts. “Quit struggling or I’ll have to hurt you” the albino hissed even as she cradled (S/o)’s head in her cleavage and stroked his hair. Meanwhile, Guido’s hands had busied themselves undoing the buttons of the young man’s shirt between squeezes of his stomach and sides. (S/o)’s mind was running a mile a minute. Maybe there was a way he could get out of this mess alive, just maybe if he acted like he wanted this to happen they’d let him go... So after a deep breath, he stuck out his tongue and began to lick. He licked up and down the valley between Abbacchio’s breasts like his life depended on it. He nibbled on her neck and forced his hands to grab at the laces of her dress to tug them loose. All the while trying to ignore Guido’s hand that had dipped into his pants to feel around. His hands were temporarily removed from Abbacchio’s chest as the woman sat up and pulled his unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders as well as letting the top of her dress droop to hang at her waist. It was now that (S/o) was made away that the dress’s cinched front has been the only thing holding the albino’s breasts in place as she grabbed his hands to guide them to her bosom before laying back once more. Clumsily, (S/o) squeezed at the soft mounds in his grip before resuming his nibbling only now with added gentle groping. “God you really are so cute” Guido muttered into (S/o)’s ear as she playfully squeezed his ass before yanking down both his pants and boxers in one go. “Specially this butt of yours” she went on giving his rump another squeeze. The young man let out an unwilling moan at the sensation which brought out a laugh from the gunswoman. “Quit teasing him so much” Abbacchio chided softly her hand wandering down (S/o)’s stomach past his navel to his cock which was already at half-mast despite his reluctance. Her long, clever fingers quickly brought him to full hardness and she placed a waxy kiss on his forehead. She released him to fully remove her dress and undergarments before loosely wrapping her legs around his waist and grinding teasing against him. Guido ceased her assault on (S/o)’s body only long enough to drop her skirt and panties. She then ground herself against the young man letting him feel the gun still strapped to her thigh before pulling away to rifle through the nightstand drawer. “Let’s see... perfect! You really do think of everything Abba” the gunswoman said blowing a kiss at the albino as she scooped up the supplies she needed from the drawer and slammed it shut. She carefully unstrapped the gun from her leg and set it under the bed before slipping on a sizable strap-on in its place. She dropped to her knees and grabbed (S/o)’s thighs to pull his ass towards her face. Her tongue started out to poke playfully at his pucker which drew out a yelp from the young man. “What? Never had your ass eaten before?” Guido asked rhetorically as she repeated the action with more force to slip her tongue inside. She wriggled her tongue like a worm to start loosing (S/o)’s hole up for her strap-on. The gunswoman let one of her hands drift up to tease the boy’s entrance as well with a finger slipping in with little trouble. “Relax, it will hurt more if you keep your muscles all tense” Abbacchio said resuming her stroking of (S/o)’s cock while using the other hand to tilt his chin up so she could kiss him. The young man tried to obey her words even as his legs began to shake. Then almost as if they could read each other’s minds, both women stopped their ministrations. Guido rose to her feet, lined herself up with (S/o)’s hole, and took hold of his hips before slowly sheathing herself in the young man’s ass. Almost immediately (S/o) began to struggle in pain of having something in his ass. He began to whimper out weak pleas for her to stop, to wait, to go slower, anything! “What do you mean it hurts?” Guido said in a low voice, for the first time sounding dangerous. “If it hurts, it’s because you’re struggling! Hold still and relax!” her tone was demanding and (S/o) had no choice but to obey by going limp. The gunswoman sunk the rest of the dildo into his until her tits were once more pressed against his back. “See? Was that so bad?” she said in a return to her playful tone as she made a hicky on (S/o)’s neck as she let him get accustomed to the feeling of fullness in his stomach. Abbacchio’s legs, which had been holding loosely all this time, tightened abruptly smashing her cunt against the head of (S/o)’s cock but failing to sink onto his shaft. “Lemme give you a hand Abba” Guido cooed one of her hands drifting from (S/o)’s hips to Abbacchio’s to help guide the albino so she could impale herself on the young man’s cock. (S/o)’s teeth dug into his bottom lip as the intense dual sensations. From the back he was before skewered on the gunswoman’s strap-on, from the front he was held in a vice-grip by the albino’s cunt. Guido pulling back and thrusting against his prostate broke (S/o) out of his daze. In an effort to get away from her attack he thrust forward but that only made Abbacchio squeeze him tighter in a vicious cycle. Eventually, he let himself just give in to the sensation and worry about the consequences later. “Say you love me” Abbacchio said seeming out of nowhere as her eyes rolled back in pleasure. When (S/o) only stared at her in silence her nails dig into his back. “Would that be so hard? I just need you to say you love me” she hissed out angrily. Bewildered, the young man said the requested phase and was rewarded by kisses and the albino’s hips bouncing against his at an even faster rate. “Don’t forget about me~ Say you love me or you won’t be cumming until the sun rises” Guido purred into (S/o)’s ear as she teased his nipples. Once more he repeated the words requested of him and was given an increased pace in return. Things began to get hazy before the young man finally came, spilling his seed into the albino woman’s depths. He felt her tighten around him again as her own climax rushed over her and she went limp. After that, it was long before the gunswoman’s hips came to a halt as she came from the end of the strap-on in her cunt. All the parties panted heavily as the high slowly ebbed. Guido pulled out and discarded her strap-on onto the floor to worn out to care as she flopped on the bed next to the still entangled pair. Weakly (S/o) pulled out from Abbacchio’s cunt, wincing at the flood of cum that spilled out at his exit. He tried to move off the bed to leave but was pulled down by both women who held tight to his limbs. “Where you think you’re going cutie? Haven’t you heard of pillow talk or cuddles?” Guido said playfully pulling (S/o)’s head against her chest as Abbacchio wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. It was only now that (S/o) really began to regret going out on a date that night... THE END

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vampireblog · 2 years

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The past is never really dead. It’s not even past.

Happy Valentine’s, mortals! Do you like your plague? I do! It’s been a minute since I’ve written. Well, 7 years, but you know a minute in my years. Things got pretty crazy at the end there, huh? Woof. Well, let’s see. What happened? I went to Switzerland. I got clean. Got boring. Grew up. It takes a while to grow up when you never get old. Sorry if I worried you. First there was nothing to say, and then there was nothing more I could say, and then, you know. It was “a whole thing.” As they say. Death. One night at a time. Whachagonnado? Yes, mortal friends, what HAVE you been doing? These last couple years. Man! Thank you! As you know, I fucking love pandemics. And this one is terrific! A thousand bizarre symptoms! No one knows what it’s capable of. Convenient! Somehow it fucks your blood? That’s something we have in common. Malaise. Heart attacks. Strokes. I love it! This is the most relaxed I’ve felt in decades. I honestly don’t think my mental health has ever been better. I started meditating in rehab! I do yoga now. Can you imagine? The marines stationed out here in the desert tell me they’re taught yoga during training now. I tried to picture someone teaching yoga to us Union boys. Mindfulness training for the Virginia battlefields. Being a soldier today is a whole different world. At the bars in 29 Palms they talk about robot dogs. And Mars missions. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s been so long! Let’s catch up! How have you been? Tell me everything! It's a pandemic and we’re reconnecting with old friends we drifted apart from years ago to try to keep each other from succumbing to the death of boredom as we try to stay alive together on the life-raft. Well, not me of course. You’re dead on the life raft with me. But you understand what I’m saying. Me? I’m in great spirits! It’s a party out there. I mean, I don’t party anymore like I used to, but the younger vampires, the ones who’ve never had a proper plague before are out there living their best deaths right now. So yeah what else, I quit everything. After I came back from Switzerland, I sold the drug business which is just as well since dealing with the cartels sucked. Now I basically just invest in tech funds. The Norcal cartels. Between me and you, I can't stand any of those people up there, and they taste like shit, too if you want to know. Maybe it’s all the crazy supplements they think are gonna help them live forever. (Surprise! They won't.) The billionaires are all drinking vampire blood now. Peter Thiel. All those people. Vanity Fair writes, “The Silicon Valley billionaire reportedly sees blood transfusions as the pathway to radical life extension.” Not human blood, friends. He can’t go all the way, of course. Too much risk during daylight. But he’s invested in a bunch of Silicon Vampire startups. Trying to figure out how to get the keys to immortality in the sun. He’s got the Council on board. Collaborating on moonshot research. Hands on the gears of power in the world of the living and the undead. But enough about that asshole. How have you been passing the time, friend? I’ve been gardening. It’s not easy in the desert, but you know landscaping; succulents. I grow mushrooms and host psychedelic healing retreats at my desert compound. Sometimes I partake of the psychonaut participants. That's how they got me clean in Switzerland, you know. Psychedelics man. The real deal. My new look is hair pulled up in a manbun, white linen suit, driving a murdered out matte black 59 Impala with black velvet interior and off-road suspension. The staff at the compound call it the Batmobile. Not my favorite superhero, as you know, but I’ll take it. No doubt, you’ve seen me around. I’m out at night with the top down and the volume up playing ambient music as I roll into view through the dust. That’s me now. The Vampire healer. Immortal zen dealer. Angel of ego death. (Also regular death). Here I am. Stuck in Saṃsara with you. The new group is just arriving for the healing ritual now. Gotta go.

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hopeishappinessff · 6 years

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Holding Onto Hope: Chapter 9

Hope

Things had yet to return to anything close to normal. He believed we were fine and our relationship had grown and was possibly even better than ever, but personally… I knew we were only hanging on by a thread. Sure the incident had already happened and there was nothing I could do to change that, but it would forever linger on the brim of my thoughts. It only took a moment of silence or distraction for the memory of what he did to intrude my mind, so for that… I did everything in my power to keep myself busy in some way so that I wouldn’t dwell on it. He tried to spend every spare hour of his day with me, just to prove that things were the same, but I believed we both knew the truth. He knew he was in scolding hot water with me now and he’d been doing just about everything in his power to make up, what I felt, could never be fixed. I was never out right told who the girl was, but I was nearly positive I’d made the discovery of who she was all on my own. On my way back from the library one night, I happened to cross paths with an unfamiliar group of females huddling on the walkway near my dorm. They were loud, like you’d expect from a group of obviously classless females, but oddly enough the moment I entered the vicinity, the atmosphere became awkwardly silent. I could tell they were watching me closely as I passed by and just seconds after I was only about five feet from them, their conversation sparked once more… and I was just lucky enough to catch bits and pieces of it. One girl in particular seemed to make it a point to raise her voice quite louder than the rest of the group and from the way she spoke and the particular comments she made, I just knew it was her. I wouldn’t confront him about it though. I didn’t want him to admit to me that she was, indeed, one half of the mistake he made. I didn’t even believe I would be able to handle the fact that the same girl who seemed to linger just outside my dorm nearly every night I got off from work, laughing and joking without a care in the world, was the same girl who tainted what’s mine and ruined my relationship. I sit here now, thinking entirely too hard about the nonsense I’d already endured in the short while I’d been at the school and at some points, I must admit, I almost wished Chris would have just stayed back at Syracuse. I didn’t know if he would have been faithful from such a distance and honestly, I didn’t even care. I felt like I’d rather be left in the dark with this sort of stuff because with the truth, usually comes some serious heartache and I wasn’t sure if I was completely cut out to handle the pain. Since Destani had picked up quite a habit of spending more time with Taylor than her schedule even allowed, I was often left to my lonesome in the room with nothing but the four walls surrounding me and the persistent vibrations of my phone, indicating frequent check in calls from Chris. For some reason, he apparently felt the need to call me after each of his classes, between his practices, and he would text me almost every other minute of the day. On this particular day, I was lucky enough to be approached by both Cammie and Angel who graciously invited me to join them for lunch. “Bitch, you are stupid!” Angel laughed, shaking her head at Cammie who consistently flicked her pierced tongue at a guy who stood in the long line in the middle of Starbucks.

“Well, he standing there staring right over here. Must mean he like what he see… why not give him a fucking show?” She stated boldly, leaning forward onto her elbows and raising a brow as she continued to stare over at the now blushing boy. “Anyway, Sy… when you starting that research for History?” Angel asked, sipping from her ice caramel latte. I shrugged, twirling my straw around at the top of my cup as I stared down at it. I was honestly too distracted by my racing thoughts to even bother responding to her, so I simply sat there… silently responding to anything they said to me.

I heard an exasperated sigh from across the table and I quickly raised my head and glanced up at Angel, catching her just as she finished rolling her eyes “Okay, you been acting like shit for the past week now… what is the problem girl? Am I missing something here?”

I slowly shook my head and sighed, leaning forward to capture the tip of my straw between my lips.

“Well what’s going on with these one word… no, one gesture answers? Something’s up with you… I fucking know it.”

I shook my head once more and glanced back up at her “No, I’m fine.” She eyed me for a while, squinting her eyes as if she knew that I was lying. I was relieved when she finally tore her gaze from me and stared off across the café.

“You have been acting kinda frosty lately Sy’Diyah… but of course, I’m not a fucking professional analyst like Ms. Private Investigator over here, so maybe we're just imagining shit.” Cammie said, rolling her eyes toward Angel, who in returned graced her with one of her slender middle fingers. “What the hell ever Cam. Look, all I’m saying is… my girl here has not been acting as chipper as usual. I know something’s up… but I’m not gonna force you to spill the tea. Not now anyway.” Somehow, I managed to squeeze out a tiny giggle, though I literally found no humor in my situation. The thing is, I hadn’t said anything to Angel or Cammie about what happened. We really weren’t that close yet, so I didn’t feel comfortable discussing something so intimate with them. Deciding to completely blow off her statement, I turned my attention to my caramel frappe and blatantly tuned out the remainder of their conversation. Tuning in to every other noise erupting into the hectic atmosphere of the café, I listened in randomly as the front door chimed welcoming a few new warm bodies into the quant building. A few giggles could be heard clearly from the person who’d marched through the door, along with a few other feminine voices. Nonchalantly raising my head, I gazed toward the entrance and caught the profile of a girl, who had me instinctively rolling my eyes. She pranced toward the front counter with her two accountancies, chomping sloppily on the gum in her mouth. I stared at her, not even attempting to tear my gaze from her general direction. Her entire demeanor screamed how much of an attention whore she was… her pants fit tight, snuggling her lower half like a fresh coat of paint and they rode her hips dangerously low so that with the slightest bend forward, her butt crack would be fully exposed. The white crop top that covered her chest stopped just above her belly button, revealing a glistening piercing. Even her shoes called for attention at their daunting height. She stopped at the counter, leaning onto it so the scrawny white boy standing behind it could get a full show of her cleavage. His clear blue eyes widened as she leaned in and smiled at him, biting down on the corner of her bottom lip flirtatiously. For a moment, I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering… is that what she did to reel Chris in? Is that really all she had to do?

“Earth to Sy’Diyah.” Blinking rapidly and quickly turning my head to the right, I glared at Angel as she leaned closer to me with her elbows on the table and her burning orbs glued to me.

“Girl, you okay? You clocked out for bout five minutes… had me sitting here talking to my damn self.” I chuckled nervously and glanced over at the girl at the counter, deciding to simply ignore her presence for the remainder of my time there in the cafe “Yeah… yeah, I’m okay.”

“You sure, I mean… you were really just… gone for a minute.” Nodding my head, I swiftly licked my lips and quietly pushed my plush chair back away from the table.

“Yeah. But umm… I think I’m gonna head back up to my room now. Thank you guys for coming here with me.” I muttered, gathering my few scattered belongings from the table and stuffing them down into my bag. I could feel eyes boring into me and I was quite sure that both Angel and Cammie were eyeing me, wondering what was going on. They weren’t the only wondering orbs though… I could feel her piercing glare as I stepped away from the table and although my mind told me to face forward and exit the café without so much as a second thought about turning around, my body reacted quite different. Before I could stop myself, I glanced back… nearly tripping as that girl stared at me, smirking triumphantly.

Chris

My body was physically present in my Economics class, but my mind… my mind was somewhere totally different. I couldn’t concentrate on anything besides my thoughts. On my way to class, I damn near tripped from the top of a flight of stairs because I was just that distracted. Deep down inside, I knew everything wasn’t normal between Hope and I and I knew only time would tell whether or not we could ever be back on track. I tried to live everyday like nothing had ever happened. I tried to make it seem like I never did wrong and caused our relationship to fall to shit for one night of pleasure. I knew it literally fucked her up to have to deal with my actions since I’d started at this school. I’d originally planned for my transition to be smooth and exciting for the both of us, but that was completely fucked the moment I so stupidly decided to show my ass at that fucking party, knowing full and damn well all the temptation that would be in attendance. Slumping further into my seat after succumbing to my distracting thoughts, I stared down at the pen I tapped lightly against the small wooden desk. The professor walked back and forth along the carpeted space in the front of the class, going on and on about some theory and application shit that I had absolutely no clue about. I’d barely tuned in to a word she’d said since I stepped foot in this room and the usual hour and fifteen minutes of pure boredom and hell I endured every Tuesday and Thursday quickly passed me by as I allowed my train of thought to take over.

“Now to make this entire process simple for all of us, I’ll just count you all off until I reach the number five, start over, and continue until you’ve all been placed evenly into a group.” Her monotone voice rang through the large environment, but I paid her no mind. I simply continued to thump the pen against the desk, even as everyone around me stood and hustled their way to random locations around the room. My stare never wavered from my desk. Not even after four anonymous bodies surrounded me, making themselves comfortable in the desks on each side of me. I assumed the warm bodies belonged to my group, so I remained distracted by the rhythm of my pen and didn’t bother to try to stop the thoughts from racing through my head. I could hear them all introducing themselves to one another and they soon sparked a conversation regarding our assigned topic. After at least ten minutes of nonstop chatter amongst my group members, I started to pinpoint only about three active voices… two females and one guy. If I’d tuned in correctly when the professor said something about dividing the group up, I could have sworn she said there would be five members in each group. With myself being the fourth member, that left one other person in our group. Leisurely raising my gaze from my tapping pen, I allowed my eyes to slowly rove from left to right. Of all things to catch my attention in the midst of my curiosity, it just had to be the quiet nature of the fourth member of the group. Allowing my eyes to finally land on the light skinned girl directly to the right of me, I realized it was her who left a void of silence in the group discussion. I stared at her as she stared back, a look of worry and concern present on her face.

“Um… are you okay?” She asked quietly after clearing her throat and using her right hand to brush a few loose strands of hair behind her left ear. I eyed her actions carefully, though they were simple and far from drastic enough for me to stare as hard as I did. I realized the intensity of my creepy ass stare became too unbearable for her once she quickly dropped her head, licked her lips, and nervously glanced back up at me.

“You seem a little out of it and… and I just wanted to make sure you were alright.” She confessed. I stared at her a bit longer, not able to tear my gaze from the side of her perfectly composed facial structure. She looked familiar to me… so familiar. I wanted to ask her what her name was, but my mind wouldn’t allow me to even form a legit sentence.

“Tawny, are you okay with just exchanging numbers and we could possibly meet up sometime within the next few days to discuss the project?” My eyes raced to the left, landing on a dirty blonde broad sitting two people away from Tawny. Without a second thought, I looked back at the beauty to my right. Tawny. I’d met the girl somewhere before, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on when and where. She looked over at the girl, then back at me as if it were I who asked the question. With a sigh, I tore my gaze from her and made it my business to focus on my previously tapping pen.

“Uh, yeah… yeah that’s fine.” She mumbled. After exchanging numbers, the blonde girl asked me the same question, just after inquiring about my name. I mumbled my identity to her without raising my head and pulled my phone from the depths of the front pocket of my jeans. Once I’d programmed each of their numbers into my phone, I followed their lead as they each stood and dispersed toward the door of the moderate sized classroom. I kept my gaze intent and glued to Tawny, who walked a few paces ahead of me. She seemed to time her walk, just enough to ensure that she wouldn’t trip, as if she was well aware that I was behind her watching like a hawk. We parted ways just outside the sliding glass doors in the front of the building, but not before I could shift my gaze in Tawny’s direction one last time. Through my peripheral, I watched as she slowly sauntered off toward the student parking lot on the east side of the building. I forced myself to tear my gaze from her retreating body out of fear that someone would simply catch me eyeing her curiously as she walked away. Since the incident that’d taken place less than two weeks ago, my level of paranoia had steadily risen. I was constantly on the lookout for anyone who may have even the slightest association with Hope or even Destani for that matter. At this point, I haven’t had the slightest urge to even glance at any other female. And even though the thought flashed in the back of my mind as I looked ahead while I walked, I couldn’t stop myself from glancing back at her just once more before she finally rounded the corner into the parking lot. -- Carefully, I pushed the door shut behind me and readjusted the hood over the top of my head. She slid back into her bed on her stomach, moving her iPod up beside her book as she lightly grazed her finger over the circular touch pad on the device to turn up the level of the music. I watched her vigilantly as she concentrated on her reading, nearly forgetting that I was even in the room. Quietly moving forward toward her bed, I reached for the hot pink cushioned moon chair sitting against her wall and pulled it out at an angle from her bed. I didn’t want to disturb her while she read, so I chose to simply sit back and watch. After a few moments of eyeing her as she flipped page after page through her book, a serene look gracing her features, she paused and released a deep sigh. She then turned her head in my direction, but didn’t look directly at me.

“I can’t concentrate with you staring at me like that Chris.” She muttered. I didn’t stop though. Nor did I respond or acknowledge the fact that she’d just pointed out my obvious gawking without even looking me in the eye. I continued to stare at her and without warning, she slid her hand beneath her book and eased it shut. Sitting up from her lying position, she pulled the buds of her earphones from her ears and looked at me. I watched her as she watched me and after seconds of playing the staring game, I released a sigh and ran an exhausted limb over my face. She looked just as tired as I felt and I could only imagine how she was actually feeling. We’d both been withholding so much for the past few days and I was almost positive if we put our thoughts out on the table, it would only benefit our suffering relationship. However, not having the slightest idea how spark the topic, I remained quiet and still in the chair as she breathed deeply and evenly, keeping her darkening orbs glued to me. With a swipe of her tongue over her perfectly pink lips, she ran a hand through her beautiful curls.

“Do you wanna watch TV or something?” She asked, picking up the universal remote on her nightstand just beside her bed. I slowly shook my head and glanced at the blank television screen. I didn’t really wanna do anything besides sit there. Lowering the remote back down onto her nightstand, she sighed and shut her eyes momentarily. I eyed her as she breathed slowly and tilted her head just slightly to the side then pried her eyes open and stared at me.

“What’s on your mind?” I mumbled tiredly.

“Everything,” She whispered, releasing a small contorted chuckle through her nose, “Everything… and nothing.”

She rested her head back against the wall her bed sat against and after a few seconds of thought, she maneuvered her body down into a lying position on her side. With a muffled sigh, I pressed my hands down against the edges of the chair and pushed myself up onto my feet. Slowly easing toward the bed, I kept my eyes focused on her and with each step I took, I found myself imagining what it would be like to hold her without a care in the world. I wanted to be able to press her head against my chest and glide the tips of my fingers through her hair like I always did when I knew something was bothering her. I knew I couldn’t though. Not with the amount of resentment she felt for me at this point. The level of disregarded tension between the two of us was so thick that I felt like I could reach out and touch it. Hesitantly, I kicked my all white J’s off my feet and looked at her, inadvertently asking for her approval before easing my way down onto her bed. She watched me through squinted eyes as I slid back on her bed until my back was pressed against the wall. We didn’t speak for the longest and I wasn’t really content with simply sitting in her presence, not saying a word to her. I had no choice though. I had to accept what she was giving me or take nothing at all. She was giving me the smallest opportunity to make it right with her and all I wanted to do was play by her rules just so I wouldn’t fuck up again. I was determined to make it right with her and the moment we were back to where we needed to be, I would vow to never hurt her again.

#chrisbrown #chrisbrownff #chrisbrownfanfic #jasminesanders #chrisbrownfanfiction #jasminesandersff #teambreezy #teambreezyff #fanfiction #fanfic

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luucarii · 6 years

Text

Parallel Lines

Fandom: Danganronpa V3

Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi, Akamatsu Kaede/Amami Rantaro (implied), Oma Kokichi/Amami Rantaro (unrequited), Akamatsu Kaede/Saihara Shuichi (unrequited(

Rating: T

THE SCUM’S WISH AU IS OFFICIAL NOW. IM OBSESSED.

Read on Ao3

“Ah, are you okay?”

Shuichi didn’t realize he was on the floor until Rantaro spoke. He looked up and met the green haired boy who was sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. Shuichi held back a scowl. He spent weeks doing his best to avoid any contact with him, and just by chance the two happened to bump into each other in the hallway — somehow hard enough for them to both fall backward.

Shuichi didn’t respond as he picked himself up, reaching for his bag. With too many eyes watching him, he was almost obliged to help Rantaro to his feet. Just before Shuichi could reluctantly outstretch his hand, Rantaro was already being pulled to his feet by another boy. A boy Shuichi had seen a few times in the hallways but never cared enough to listen for his name. He was shorter than Rantaro and had purple hair curled in an almost unkept way.

“Are you alright, Rantaro?” The boy asked and Shuichi scoffed inwardly at the friendly concern in his tone. No doubt he was another one of Rantaro’s fans. The thought made Shuichi want to roll his eyes immediately and walk away but the way the boy acted around him seemed different than what Shuichi saw of Rantaro’s fangirls.

“Thank you Kokichi.” Rantaro gave one of his infamous smiles as he watched the purple haired boy, Kokichi, pick up the remainder of his school supplies that had slipped out of his bag. Kokichi seemed to eye Rantaro with a sparkle of longing, the same look Shuichi knew all too well. Shuichi knew it because it was the same way he’d look at Kaede whenever they talked — which was rarely now that she was busy with piano lessons and spending the rest of her free time with Rantaro.

Rantaro flung his bag over his shoulder, thanked Kokichi one last time and gave an apologetic smile to Shuichi before excusing himself, merging back into the crowd of students. Kokichi seemed to linger in his spot, his hands resting in his pockets. Behind him, Shuichi caught his attention.

“Hey.”

Kokichi looked back and in a moment, they met eyes for the first time.

“Do you…know who he likes?” The question came off unnatural but Shuichi had to ask.

Kokichi’s plain expression did not change. “Yeah. I do.”

The two found themselves meeting after school on the patio of one of the science classes, overlooking the school gate. They watched silently as Kaede and Rantaro walked together as they left school grounds. Kaede was giggling and Rantaro was smiling, Shuichi imagined him telling some cheesy joke that Kaede would no doubt find humor in. She was easily amused, one of the many things Shuichi loved about her. Kokichi sighed, eyes narrowing at Kaede before his attention shifted to Rantaro and the somewhat hostile gaze softened.

“Rantaro used to tutor me back in middle school. He transferred out before the end of junior high. I never thought I’d see him again.” Kokichi explained aloud, eyes shifting over to blink at Shuichi who was too busy observing Kaede to seem to care.

“I don’t see the appeal of someone like him. I mean, sure he’s cute but he looks like the same playboy you see in romance manga.” Shuichi sighed and buried his head in his arms, ignoring Kokichi’s defensive remarks toward Rantaro.

“Kaede and I grew up together.” Shuichi mumbled, “but I bet all she sees me as is a brother.”

Kokichi snickered to himself but said nothing. Shuichi hated admitting it but he felt a sort of tie to Kokichi, both as victims of unrequited love. Though, with only knowing very little of him, Shuichi knew he’d rather not associate with him. His sort of childish attitude and over infatuation for Rantaro annoyed him more than anything.

Yet somehow, throughout the warming months of April, May and June, the two grew closer. It seemed natural for the two who had one main thing in common to meet up. Shuichi learned to deal with Kokichi’s occasional antics and Kokichi tried his best to get it through Shuichi’s head that Rantaro wasn’t as bad as he made him out to be.

It was near the end of June when it happened, the catalyst. The sky was gray, harsh rain pouring out and slamming against the window of Kokichi’s dorm room. Shuichi found himself succumbing to boredom and aimlessly stretching his body out on Kokichi’s bed.

“Your hair’s still wet, get away from my sheets.” Kokichi grumbled, all his focus centered on the video game he was playing. Shuichi couldn’t find any interest in it, just another boring platformer, though he wasn’t too fond of video games to begin with.

“I just want school to end. And never see half the kids in our school again.”

“Including Kaede?” Kokichi couldn’t help but tease him with that comment, chuckling softly to himself, “you’re willing to give her up so soon?”

Shuichi looked up, eyes narrowing onto Kokichi, “never.”

At that, Kokichi scoffed but kept quiet. He concentrated on button mashing and barely heard Shuichi when he spoke again.

“But...”

“But?”

Shuichi couldn’t fumble with the words, mostly because he didn’t have any to say at the moment. He started the thought without any intention of finishing it. He stared at Kokichi for a few seconds and found himself shifting closer to him. Closer, closer, until his arms settled around his neck, and his head rested on Kokichi’s shoulder. He felt Kokichi stiffen slightly under him and his attention on the game vanished.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting this.”

Shuichi chuckled, “really? I couldn’t tell.”

Kokichi paused the game, shifting his head to the side enough to meet eyes with Shuichi. They were bright blue, nothing compared to Rantaro’s green but he empathized with the longing in his eyes. Shuichi blinked at him for a second before looking away and finding his nose buried in the fabric of his sweater.

“Are you upset, Shuichi?”

Shuichi sighed. It was rare that Kokichi would say his name but he felt a sort of calmness from it. He closed his eyes, voice coming out as near a whisper.

“Aren’t you, Kokichi?”

The silence was his answer and they sat together for a little while longer, basking in the tranquility of it all. Of course he was upset. They both were. It was the only thing either of them could possibly feel though in that moment. Nothing but that feeling, that shroud of loneliness and heartache. It wasn’t as if they hated the other’s company, but God they wished they had the one they truly wanted.

When Kokichi had turned around and softly pushed Shuichi to the ground with one arm, they both had the same thought in their heads. It was a stupid idea, but it was worth a shot, right? Shuichi looked up, unable to see anything but Kokichi’s thin lips curling into a somewhat grin.

“Why don’t you pretend I’m Kaede?”

Already Shuichi was doubting him and if it wasn’t for the fact Kokichi had him pinned to the floor, his knee shoved in the small space between his legs, Shuichi would have quickly slipped out from under Kokichi and went back to his corner of the room, most likely pretending Kokichi had never said what he did.

“That’s ridiculous. You’re a guy, Kokichi, I can’t just suddenly pretend you’re—“ Shuichi’s voice died down to a choked gasp as he watched Kokichi’s head dip down to the crease between his cheek and neck. It was a gentle kiss, just to test the waters, but Kokichi quickly found himself giving the skin a lap with his tongue. Shuichi shivered but he couldn’t find the voice to say anything. He couldn’t tell whether or not he liked it but it didn’t take him long to reassure the situation in his mind.

Kokichi doesn’t see me like that. Whether I see him as Kokichi or not, it doesn’t matter.

Shuichi shut his eyes for just a second, besides hearing Kokichi’s faint breathing atop him, listened in to the pounding rain from outside. Kokichi’s hand slipped loosely into his, keeping him steady.

“It doesn’t matter,” He murmured aloud, leaning his head to one side as another kiss grazed his neck, “I’m just a replacement anyway.”

Kokichi seemed to nod at his words and withdrew, blinking down at Shuichi for just a second before leaning down, lips aiming for Shuichi’s. The blue haired boy turned his head a bit to the side. Kokichi pulled away, head lazily lolling to one side as his eyes rolled.

“What, having second thoughts?”

“You’re the one that wanted to do this, Kokichi.” Shuichi turned his head and found himself staring into purple eyes, completely disinterested in the situation. “Like I mentioned before, you’re a guy. You can’t expect me to just close my eyes and pretend you’ve swapped gender, hair color and personality.”

“Too cruel,” Kokichi rolled his eyes, “I think I find myself pretty attractive.”

“Yeah, that’s why Rantaro’s all over you.”

“You’ve got no right to talk.”

The rain somehow fell harder, the sky darkening. They stared at each other, not in the mood for anymore quips. Shuichi waited, slowly growing impatient but he wouldn’t bring himself to speak and ruin the moment. Kokichi opened his mouth, hesitated for a moment and then spoke.

“Close your eyes.” He whispered and Shuichi was about to argue before Kokichi cut him off, “just try it.”

Shuichi obliged, albeit after a sigh, He felt nothing at first, but knew Kokichi was still on top of him, his body heat sending shivers down Shuichi’s spine. At once, he felt a hand cup his cheek and slowly trace up to his forehead. Shuichi searched his mind, amidst all the old memories of Kaede. The touch was soft, fingertips cold but they were thin, dainty, like Kaede’s. His heart began to pound, faster and faster. The world felt distant, Kokichi nothing but a fading memory as the feeling of her palm warmed his skin with each touch. His world shattered when he felt a soft kiss at his forehead, warming every nerve of his body with the heat of pure affection. It was all he ever wanted.

Her lips left his forehead and soon found their way pressed against his own. Shuichi couldn’t manage a single noise of surprise, she sucked his breath away. He felt the blush rushing to his cheeks and his heart bubbled up in his chest.

It was electric.

Shuichi opened his eyes slowly as Kokichi broke away, his eyes narrowed, focused sorely on Shuichi.

“That was my first kiss.” Shuichi muttered, chuckling inwardly at the way Kokichi raised an eyebrow.

“You’re kidding.”

“Really.”

Shuichi tightened his grip on Kokichi’s hand, forcing his attention onto him. Kokichi seemed to smirk quietly to himself, blinking at Shuichi as if he knew what he was going to say.

“One more time.”

Shuichi shut his eyes once more, just before his lips would have met Kokichi’s. There was a moment of hesitation, and Shuichi nearly opened his eyes to check what was wrong before he felt something wet lap at his upper lip. Kokichi kissed him suddenly, the action of both his tongue and his aggressiveness catching Shuichi off guard enough for him to let out a gasp. Shuichi felt Kokichi’s grip on his hand tighten and he relaxed, letting Kokichi take control — he seemed to have more experience anyway. Throughout all this, besides his mind wondering toward Kaede, Shuichi couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing his job as Kokichi’s replacement well enough. Would he kiss Rantaro like this? Would he hold his hand and claim him so easily with simple swipes of his tongue?

Shuichi shook the thought away and when he did, Kokichi had broken away from him again. He must have needed air, or gotten tired of kissing since his attention was once again focused on Shuichi’s neck while his hands slipped down to unbutton the first few buttons of his uniform. Shuichi’s eyes tightened close and reassured himself in his mind. Those are Kaede’s hands.

Her hands went lower and Shuichi felt like crying. So much pent up emotion spilling out into a few tears at the creases of his eyes. It was Kaede kissing softly at his neck. It was Kaede running a thin finger down his abdomen, tracing tiny circles in his skin. It was Kaede who had grabbed his—

Shuichi’s hands went up to his mouth, quickly muffling the cry he felt spilling out. He needed to stay quiet. It would ruin the whole thing if Kokichi heard him. To Kokichi, Shuichi was Rantaro and that was what he needed to continue thinking. Shuichi couldn’t speak, couldn’t make a noise, couldn’t say her name no matter how desperately he wanted to.

Concentrate.

Just as Shuichi had held in another strangled noise, his lips met Kaede’s again and inwardly he sighed. Both their eyes were closed. They couldn’t see each other. It was just him and Kaede. Nothing else, no one else. He needed to do all he could. Just to remember her. Her smile, her laugh, her eyes, her voice, her everything.

When Shuichi opened his eyes, he panted softly, feeling a few tears slide down the side of his face. He blinked up at Kokichi who was looking over at Shuichi’s side. Beside him was Shuichi’s phone, buzzing and lighting up with a text message. Shuichi looked over, face flushing as he realized Kaede herself had texted him. A simple: thanks for letting me borrow your notes yesterday. Shuichi stiffened slightly, eyes shifting away from his phone and back up to Kokichi.

“Do you want to stop?” Kokichi asked and Shuichi didn’t respond immediately. “I think you’ve had enough for today, but is this something you want to keep doing?”

Shuichi didn’t have an answer. He couldn’t begin to even think of one.

They stopped talking soon after. Kokichi wasn’t sure if it was the actions itself or maybe just Shuichi’s feelings for Kaede overwhelming him, but he held no ill will toward Shuichi. He simply continued on with his daily life, acting as if what happened on that rainy June day was nothing more than a fleeting memory, nothing of great importance.

It was only after Shuichi found himself rejecting a girl who had claimed she liked him that he found himself visiting Kokichi’s dorm room, surprising him with his presence. Shuichi said nothing at first when Kokichi opened the door, simply stood there, his eyes unsure of whether to look him directly in the eye or not.

“I didn’t think you’d come back.”

When Shuichi didn’t respond, Kokichi moved a hand up to cup the side of his cheek, fingers twirling his blue hair softly. Kokichi invited him in, and they quickly found themselves pressed against each other. A quick kiss, soft, gentle, a means of saying I missed you but not toward each other directly but the other person they associated them with. When they broke, Shuichi found himself sitting at the edge of Kokichi’s bed while the purple haired boy sat on the floor, looking up at him intently.

“Do you want to say we’re dating?”

Shuichi narrowed his eyes and grumbled, “are you sure you won’t fall in love with me? Your standards seem pretty low anyway.”

Kokichi giggled, “oh please, you’re not my type.”

Shuichi smiled at the remark, “you’re not mine either.”

Shuichi stuck out his hand, lifting his pinky in the air and watched Kokichi mimic his actions. That day, in the hazy humidity of summer, they made a pact. That neither of them would fall in love with the other. If one happened to make it with the one they wanted, the relationship would end.

“Simply put,” Kokichi murmured, a smile creasing his lips, “you can have everything but my feelings.”

“And you can have everything but mine.”

#aarisfics #danganronpa v3 #shuichi saihara #kaede akamatsu #amami rantarou #kokichi ouma #oumasai #THIS IS AU IS MY LIFE NOW

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anactualcaseofthetruth · 7 years

Photo

Call Me A Safe Bet, I’m Betting I’m Not - Chapter 3

(AO3 Link- Chapter Three)

“Even though scientists are still quite baffled after multiple millennia of medical and technological advances of exactly how the soulmarks work, there has been enough research and study that we now know when and how to expect them… There has yet to be one soulmate coupling occur before the female has experienced a menstrual cycle and the male to begin producing sperm. In short, soulmarks have never appeared before entering puberty…

There are many, many more cases in which two people have insisted they are soulmates only to not mark with one another. All in all, only about 3% of couplings are correct in predicting they are soulmates before marks form.”

***

Betty Cooper is four years old when she meets Jughead Jones. She knows he is her soulmate, he’s not so sure.

Chapter Three

“It is rare, but it has been reported that there are people who believe they know who their soulmate is before they are old enough to receive soulmarks. The same ritual must be followed with the female initiating an intimate touch to the male for the connection to be made… However, these reports are almost impossible to prove, seeing as all it takes is the mark to form for the couple to say they had known all along.

There are many, many more cases in which two people have insisted they were soulmates only to not mark with one another. All in all, only about 3% of couplings are correct in predicting they are soulmates before marks form.”

From The Annual Study and Comprehension of Couplings, 2012

Betty has never truly been grounded before, but as she’s learning lately, there is a first time for everything.

Coming home in the early morning covered in dirt and scrapes with a broken phone is not something Alice Cooper can ignore, no matter what inner turmoil her daughter is going through. So Betty finds herself grounded for the first time ever, which sucks, but she’s also liking the no contact with the outside world idea.

She’s not allowed to see anyone, not allowed on her laptop or to get a new phone until her punishment is lifted, and her dad asked Fred to keep his ladder chained up so the boys couldn’t attempt to make contact. Evidently, her parents were more aware of Jughead’s comings and goings than she gave them credit for, and she’s not sure if she’s pleased they let him sneak in so often before, or if she’s mad that he can’t sneak in now.

The first few days were solitary, filled with chores—another punishment—merely for breaking her phone.

“You’re very lucky it was still under warranty and we covered both you and Polly with insurance, Elizabeth, or else your consequences would have been much worse,” her mother had said while handing her a list of things she wanted clean and organized over the next few days.

The list included the attic, basement, garage, all three bathrooms, an order to scrub every hardwood or linoleum floor, and to wipe down the fridge top to bottom.

At the time Betty wondered what her punishment would have been had her phone not been covered by insurance if this wasn’t a lot… but she took it in stride and finished the cleaning during the first three days of her grounding so she could just be lazy for the rest of the duration.

It sounded like a good idea at the time, but on day two of doing nothing Betty finds herself losing her mind just a little. She silently thanks her mother for keeping her so busy as a child because, apparently, she isn’t cut out for this sitting around stuff. Sure, doing nothing with someone else was fun, but on her own? Not so much.

Then, because fate works in mysterious ways, just as Betty is about to succumb to the utter boredom and resort to a nap, Polly bursts into the house like a gale force wind, tears streaming down her face, unable to get a word out between sobs.

In short, Betty learns that Polly thought she found her soulmate, spent time getting to know him, being very careful about touching him, and when she finally got the guts to initiate it nothing happened.

Her big sister was completely heartbroken over Jason Blossom and their parents were furious at her for even thinking ‘that Blossom boy’ could be her soulmate, and angry that she kept it from them. Betty found herself in the middle of a warzone being pulled in both directions.

“Did you know about this, Elizabeth? Your sister’s ridiculous crush?”

“Can you believe them, Betty? My heart is broken and all they care about is the Cooper name!”

Suddenly Betty has a newfound appreciation for Archie—all of this tugging was giving her a headache, but she has to admit, spending time with Polly is nice despite them now both being grounded.

“I’m sorry I ever teased you about Jughead, Betty,” Polly whispers as Betty brushes her hair out at the vanity in her big sister’s room.

Betty forces a smile in the mirror but even she can tell it doesn’t reach her eyes. “It’s okay, Polly, we were kids, you haven’t done it in a long time. So, do you want a French braid, I think I can do a fishtail? Maybe—”

“Betty,” Polly turns and takes her hand. “I mean it, I’m sorry, I thought you were so silly for believing it, for continuing to believe it as you got older. You’ve taken a lot over the years with people doubting you, I’m sorry I was one of them.”

Betty nods. “It’s okay, Polls, you didn’t mean anything by it. I was just a little kid, I told myself you were just jealous and—”

“I was,” Polly interrupts. “I still am. What you and Jughead have, I want it, I wanted it with Jason. He did too, you should have seen his face, Betty, when nothing happened. It’s not fair.”

“It’s not. We should be able to be with whoever we want,” Betty agrees and clears her throat. “Everyone who has a mark says it’s this big gift, but what if you’re in love with someone who probably won’t get a mark? Or what if the person you mark with still isn’t good for you? Just because you have a mark doesn’t mean you should be together, right?”

“Betty,” Polly chides, looking her up and down. “What’s gotten into you? Are you worried about Jughead? Did something happen?”

“That’s just it, nothing’s happened,” Betty informs her. “I haven’t gotten my period yet, we haven’t marked, his parents aren’t helping the matter, and—” she stops and takes a breath. “It’s just a lot, all at once, and it’s hard.”

“Oh, Betty, you’ll be fine. Don’t worry, you and Jughead, you’re special, I know it,” Polly assures her with a hug and then turns back in the chair. “Let’s do French braids, okay?”

“Okay, just let me go to the bathroom first,” Betty says and goes into her and Polly’s shared bathroom. She immediately turns on the hot water and puts her shaking palms under the spray, wincing at the burn.

The crescent moon scabs are an angry yellow and deep. She didn’t even know she was doing it in the woods until she saw the red rivers running down her knuckles, and now, when stress hits, she isn’t able to stop.

It is a release, something she can control, a pain she creates and manipulates herself. She remembers getting home and receiving her punishment, then going to the bathroom to clean herself up to find her fingers were curled in on themselves and that the pain she was causing herself somehow prevented her from fully breaking down. When her fingernails slice through her palms it curbs the need to fight back against everything.

In controlling her own pain, she simply took her mother’s punishment in stride and nodded as she was told how many rules she broke, how many things she had done wrong. She does it at night when she thinks of Jughead and how she has been breaking his heart, and it’s stopped her from completely falling apart. She does it to punish herself for pulling Jughead into all of this at five years old because she swore she felt something so special. She does it for him, because he doesn’t deserve anything that is happening to him, and the world is too cruel, especially to him.

And now, she does it for Polly because she knows her sister is hurting, and there is nothing she can do to stop it, or help her with, and she should be able to do more.

Finally, Betty turns off the water and pulls out the first-aid materials she’s been using for days now to hide her habit: Neosporin, gauze, and wraps. She told her parents it was from falling in the woods, she scraped her palms bad, but she was fine, it was just a few scratches. They accepted her explanation with no qualms.

She isn’t wearing bandages all the time, but she couldn’t very well get blood in her sister’s hair, now could she?

Later, Betty finds herself falling into bed after spending hours with Polly doing each other’s hair, doing and redoing pedicures until they were just right, and playing around with make-up and risqué things in her sister’s closet their mother doesn’t, and can never, know about.

It was fun—she hadn’t realized that she has been so wrapped up in Jughead and their drama that she’s been having tunnel vision. Betty still sees her sister every day, of course. They eat dinner together and did their homework together during the school year, even go running together in the mornings, but it’s different when they are on their own left to their own devices.

Betty lets her hair out of the multiple braids Polly put it up in and shakes out her now incredibly wavy tresses before taking off the gauze on her palms and applying more Neosporin from the tube she now keeps in her bedside table for easy access.

She’s in short-shorts and an old t-shirt of Jughead’s from more than a year ago. It’s getting too small for her, but it’s so soft and she loves the thought of wearing something that was once his, that his body was inside too. It brings her comfort, like he’s wrapped around her, and even with everything going on between them that feeling holds.

Betty sighs and reaches for her diary once the gooey cream has mostly dried on her palms, but before she can read over her last entry—about Jughead, of course—there is a rapping on her window. It’s so soft she wonders if she imagined it, but it continues again after a moment in a funny pattern.

After making sure her door is shut and locked, Betty opens the curtains to find nothing on the other side of the glass. With scrunched eyebrows she opens the window and just as she goes to look out a hand reaches for hers, making her let out a quick yelp.

“Shhh, sorry, it’s me,” Jughead whispers, his other hand over her mouth.

When he lets go she lightly punches him in the shoulder. “Dammit, Jughead! Don’t do that!”

“I’m sorry,” he instantly apologizes and she notes his plaid pajama pants and old t-shirt as well. He’s either sleeping over Archie’s or he snuck out of his house to come see her, but is it sneaking if his dad isn’t home or cares where he goes?

She wants to curl her fingers into her scabs and feel that release, a pain she can control because Jughead is in so much he can’t, but she stops herself. She can’t, not with him here.

“I had to make sure you weren’t your mom, I’ve been waiting out here for almost an hour,” he tells her.

“Well, you probably would have scared the hell out of her too! How did you know it was me?”

“I know your hands,” he answers simply with a shrug while fixing his beanie.

“That’s weird, but I could probably say the same so I’ll leave it alone,” Betty says more to herself than to him and he smirks a little. “How did you get up here? My dad asked Fred to chain up his ladder,” she says and moves aside so he can climb in through the window.

“Yeah, I heard the riot act from him all about it,” Jughead confirms while closing the window behind him. “And it’s a complicated scenario involving me standing on Archie’s shoulders as he stands on your porch and then climbing around the overhanging to get to your window. I’m supposed to text Archie when I’m coming back so if I break my neck at least I have a witness since I’ll have to jump.”

“You didn’t—you shouldn’t have risked getting in trouble for me, Jug,” she says with her arms wrapped around herself and shuffles awkwardly from foot to foot.

Jughead had finally, finally, been so honest with her the last time they saw each other and even though she loves him, she doesn’t know what to say to him anymore, doesn’t know how to make him feel better. It’s just words, and she’s learning they don’t mean anything, not when it comes to this. Her promises and declarations don’t hold the weight they once did.

“I know, I should be respecting your parent’s wishes, and Fred’s, I guess, but you weren’t returning my calls or messages, so—”

“My phone broke,” she interrupts. “I—I was running home and tripped and my phone took the brunt of it. Coming home from a fake sleepover combined with that got me put in Cooper jail.”

“I figured your parents took your phone since I knew you were in trouble after Fred asked me to stop stealing his ladder,” he responds and takes a step towards her, and she makes a conscious effort to not step backwards. “Betty, I’m so sorry—”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Juggie, don’t worry,” she whispers and stretches her fingers to stop herself from making a fist.

“No, I do,” he insists and takes another step, however this time Betty can’t help but move away. “Betty…” he trails off and his voice cracks.

“I’m sorry, Jug, I—it’s not you, it’s me.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asks like he’s trying to laugh, but looks like he’s about to cry.

“No, no,” she assures him. “But we’re not… we’re not even together, Jug.”

“Betty… I’ve been going through a lot and you’ve been there for me every day, and I know I don’t make that easy on either of us. I never want you to think you’re anything less than the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s hazy, but I remember what I said, and I’m so fucking happy it was me that found you in that puddle, Betty.”

“I’m happy it was you too, Jug,” she agrees while blinking away tears. “But that night, it might have taken you drinking to finally say those things, but you do feel them. It just made me realize that all I’ve been doing, especially recently, is hurting you and I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“Betty, you’re not,” he stops and she sees he’s making fists of his own. She wonders if he needs something to feel control over too, because his life is much more chaotic than hers. “I’m sorry that I never—I never bothered to notice the effect all of this has on you. My doubts are hard on you. I just—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupts. “I’m the one that announced we were soulmates when I was four—”

“And I’m thankful for it every day,” he tells her. “I want it to be true, I want it more than I want almost anything. It just feels like the powers that be are pulling us apart no matter how hard we hold on. My life… my life is a mess, Betty, and you keep trying to jump in and save it, and all I can see is you getting so caught up in it that one day you hope you never had anything to do with me.”

“That will never happen, Jug, never,” she swears and this time moves towards him. “Your life might be a mess, but I’m a big part of why and I’m the one that’s sorry. I’ve just made everything that much harder for you.”

“No, no,” Jughead says forcefully and shakes his head. “You haven’t, I have. I’m letting everything get to me, and I’ve hurt you because of it,” he admits and lets out a long breath. “That night I said—I said that I feel like I’m going to lose you before I ever even have a chance to really have you and… that’s what I’ve been feeling for about a year now. We’re too young for us to really be together, but we’re also getting to the age where the marks matter now because it’s either going to happen or it won’t. We’re running out of time, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine not being with you but I can’t fathom having you and losing you either.”

“There’s nothing we can do, Jug,” she tells him solemnly and bites her lip. “I can tell you how I feel about you until I’m blue in the face, but it doesn’t matter, not really. Because of everything you need a mark to be with me, and I’m finally accepting that—”

“No,” Jughead cuts in. “I want one, I want it more than anything, but I—I need you, Betty, just you, not a mark or-” he stops and scrubs a hand down his face. “That’s a lie, not completely, but—” he just looks at her and she struggles to keep the tears at bay. “I don’t want to need a mark to be with you, Betts, but… every day I’ll wonder ‘is today is the day I’m going to lose you?’ and it’s going to drive me crazy.”

“It’s not one-sided, Jug, I can’t imagine not being with you either and I think that’s why it hurts so much for me. It’s like you don’t believe in me or my feelings for you. I’m in love with you, and I don’t think at our age we even really know what that means yet, but I know I feel it for you. I know that I think of you more than I do for myself, I put you first in everything, and it hurts that you can’t even tell me you love me too, not in the way I can say it to you so easily,” she confesses and tries to swallow the knot in her throat.

“But I do, I do love—”

“Please don’t,” Betty pleads, now unable to stop teardrops from spilling over. “Don’t say it because you think I need to hear it or you’re losing me. I don’t want to hear it that way.”

“Betty,” he begs as he goes to touch her but she side-steps him again. “I hate that I’m hurting you like this, please just let me—”

“Oh, Jughead Jones,” Betty stops him and sniffles, somehow smiling at him through her grief. “Don’t you know you have the power to hurt me more than anyone?”

Slowly, he nods and wipes his nose with the back of his arm. “I do, I know I do because it’s the same with you,” he tells her and she sees his chest shudder as he breathes.

Betty wants to wrap her arms around him, to hold him through the pain, but she’s slowly finding that it won’t help. It only slaps a band-aid over his hurt, one that rips off when she’s no longer around and increases the pain ten-fold. She looks to the floor before squeezing her eyes shut at the realization, and now knows what she has to do.

“I hate that I’m able to pull you into my head like this. I don’t—I don’t want to take that feeling away from you, the feeling that we are supposed to be together, just because I’m scared. You’ve always believed it, Betty, whole-heartedly, please don’t let my fear change that,” he insists and she can see the sincerity in his eyes, hear the hope in his voice. “You just told me a couple days ago you remembered everything about that day, how you felt, how I smelled, and you had so much conviction in your voice even at four years old, I swear to God,” he remembers in a chuckle. “You had that same conviction a couple days ago, don’t let that go. I’m sorry for everything I’m putting you through.”

“I can say the same to you,” she murmurs. “I know how low your chances are, Jughead, but I’ve always felt this possession of you, if that’s the right word, that you’re mine and now I’m finally seeing that you don’t feel that for me.”

“I know you believe that, I want you too. I am yours, but there’s this voice in the back of my head, and it sounds like my dad, and it just keeps telling me that—” he stops and clears his throat. “How the hell could someone like me end up with you? I’m doing all these things to feel like I deserve you—”

“You do,” Betty says and can’t stop herself before she’s grabbing onto fists of his t-shirt as if he’s going to disappear.

“But I still feel miles behind,” he finishes and brings his hands up to cup her fists and then kisses them softly. “I—” he rests his forehead on hers and lets out a deep breath, relishing in her touch. “I don’t know what to say to make this better.”

“It’s not on you, Jug, it’s on me,” she tells him and he looks up at her questioningly. “We’re waiting on me, you know? So all we can do is wait.”

“What do we do in the mean time?”

Betty drops her hands from his chest, but he keeps a hold on them so they aren’t disconnected. “I don’t,” she stops and closes her eyes, thinking of what to say. “We’ve been doing things my way, holding on to what I said when I was four, maybe we should try things your way.”

“What… what does that mean?” he asks, tightening his hold on her and she hides a wince at the pressure on her cuts.

“Distance, I guess,” she answers quietly. “Not—we don’t not hang out. We’ll just wait and not pretend anymore.”

“Betty, no, please don’t do this,” he pleads and can’t help but cup her face and bring her close. “You’ve never wavered in what you believed about us—”

“That was when I thought you believed it too,” she hiccups, tasting tears on her lips and finds she’s crying.

“I do, I do believe—fuck,” he swears and rests his forehead on hers once more.

Betty fights the urge to close her eyes and just enjoy being this close. She watches as tears start to rain down his cheeks too and tightens her fists at his sides, unable to stop herself. “I don’t want you to think I don’t love you, Juggie,” she whispers.

He simply shakes his head against hers before burying his face in her neck. With closed fists she wraps her arms around him, hoping he doesn’t notice the awkward hold.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he repeats over and over, and she has a flashback to when the police were taking him away from her at ten years old and she was saying the exact same words.

“This is my fault, okay? Not yours, please don’t beat yourself up. I—you were right, you can’t just decide that someone is your soulmate, I mean that’s what the marks are for right? I might’ve ruined us just because I felt so much for you, even then, right when we first met.”

Jughead shudders against her neck and she feels his hands shaking as he holds her. “I don’t want it to be like this.”

“I’m still here, Juggie. I’m not going anywhere, and I still think of you as mine,” she tells him with her lips moving along his skin. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m still yours too, but you were right. We’re too young to be together and until we have, or don’t have, marks, I guess we’re in limbo.”

He finally pulls away just far enough to look her in the eye and she wants to wipe his tear tracks away, but knows her palms are bleeding. “Do you want me to leave or—”

“No, no, you can stay,” she cuts him off. “I just have to use the bathroom, then you can hang out for a while? Unless you want to leave.”

“No, I—I want to hold you,” he admits. “Is that okay?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t do… that,” she whispers painfully. “But we can talk until we get tired,” she offers and slowly Jughead nods, his face the picture of pain.

Before she does something stupid, she pretends she doesn’t notice and goes to the bathroom. Once the door is shut, Betty lets out one sob before falling to the floor to gain control of herself. It might feel like her heart is being ripped out of her chest, but this is for the best, it has to be. If they don’t mark, distance is what will help now, so they can get used to being not them anymore.

She knows how Jughead feels about her even though he’s never said it. She’s never minded that he can’t say the words, especially since until a couple days ago she didn’t have the guts either, but—it was what she needed to hear right then. Betty wants him to have some kind of epiphany and try to beat down the bathroom door, tell her that all he needs is her, and then hold her all night long.

But—she asked for this too. She told him not to say the words. She agreed that distance was best, she knows that without a mark, even though they love each other, Jughead will lose his mind waiting for her to mark with someone else, and what kind of relationship, or life for that matter, would that be? It wouldn’t be fair of her to ask him to live like that.

Even though her chest feels tight and it’s like her lungs can’t get enough air, she battles through. Betty hiccups and stands on wobbly legs to go take care of her hands in the sink.

She’s not going to dwell of the if’s or maybe’s right now. She is going to listen to her own advice and just wait with Jughead by her side. It’s all they can do.

When she comes out Jughead is sitting on her window seat, his beanie being wrung out in his hands, something she knows he does when he’s frustrated. “You can, I mean, we can sit on my bed, Jug,” she tells him while sitting down on it herself.

“I just didn’t want to overstep bounds, or whatever,” he mumbles and sits at the very end of it.

“Is it going to upset you if I ask about your dad?” she questions rather than pull at that thread again.

“No, you can ask me anything, Betts, you know that.”

“Well, what’s going on with your dad? Is he out of jail?”

“Yes, he’s out. He only spent that one night. He’s in some mindset of turning his life around again? He asked Fred to take me in for a week or two so he could clean himself up, and the trailer, to try and entice Jellybean to come home. I think he knows my mom is lost to him, but Jellybean is still reachable. She doesn’t have much against him except for acknowledging that he’s not around as much as he should be, as much as Billy already is.”

“And your mom and Billy?”

“I don’t have anything bad to say about him except for the fact that he tore my family apart. But it was coming with or without him, I guess. At least this way I know my mom and Jellybean are safe, until he gives me a reason not to think so anyways. He’s not horrible, he’s just…” he trails off and adjusts himself to get more comfortable.

“He’s not your dad,” she finishes for him, wishing that the heavy tension they’d never had before goes away.

“Yeah, and I do remember my mom and dad being happy. Jellybean doesn’t, so in a way it’s easier for her, and I’m fine with that. I don’t completely trust him, or my mom for that matter, but she has been going to AA and making a point to spend time with Jellybean, and she’s still trying to reach out to me and be there for me, so,” he stops and shrugs awkwardly. “It’s an impasse I can live with for now.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Betty mentions and plays with her blanket to cover her hands. “So, tell me about the outside world, does Archie have a new crush yet this week?”

Jughead smiles at her in the way that makes her belly flip. “It wouldn’t be our Archie if he didn’t.”

“Alright, tell me all about her.”

“Well, all I know is what she looks like,” Jughead starts and the two burst out laughing, but it didn’t quite meet either of their eyes.

***

“One of the newer theories behind soulmarks and why they exist is preferential reproduction. There are many studies in the early stages that are examining the most common difference between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ children, and that is genetics…

What exactly does it mean to be an ‘unnatural’ child? Does having parents with soulmarks mean their children are meant to be or are physically superior? If so, what does that mean for the children of an unnatural coupling?

These are the questions scientists focusing on genetics are trying to answer.”

From Genetics and the Interrelationship of Soulmate Markings, 2008

“Honestly, Elizabeth,” is the first thing Betty hears when she wakes up, and to be honest, it’s a bit of a rude awakening.

Her eyes open to find her mother unfastening her curtains, letting the harsh sunlight in and she squints with a groan. “Is something wrong?” she asks innocently, wiping the drool off her chin.

“Yes, something is wrong,” Alice states, complete with hands on her hips. “My perfectly healthy and able daughter is sleeping in until noon in the middle of summer!”

Betty tries not to groan again at the word ‘perfect’. If only her mother knew just how her messed up mind worked, or didn’t for that matter. “It is summer, Mom, that means relaxing and by extension, sleeping,” Betty replies before burrowing back into her pillow, hoping her mother doesn’t notice that it’s outfitted with one of Jughead’s t-shirts—a way she can smell him and be with him without hurting him specifically.

“If you were sitting out by a pool I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you, or if this was the first time, but this is becoming a pattern, Betty, and I don’t like where it’s heading,” her mom tells her, her voice softer now. “Don’t think I haven’t noted a certain boy’s absence around here, our fridge has never been this full. You really should warn me if you two fight, we’d save money on groceries.”

A smile reaches Betty’s face for the first time in what feels like weeks, and it probably is. “We can always donate to the food bank,” she offers cheerfully, but it isn’t up to par with her usual up-beat attitude, is so off the mark that now her mother comes and sits on her bed, abandoning her ‘no nonsense’ stance.

“Betty, sweetie, what’s going on. Have you gotten your period?” she asks while pushing blonde hair away from her daughter’s forehead.

“No, no, I wish,” Betty answers and leans into her mother’s touch. “Or maybe I don’t, I don’t know anymore, Mom,” she adds on in a whisper.

“I know you’re getting to an age where it’s not easy to talk to your mother, mine certainly didn’t know anything I was going through, and I think if I had talked to her I could have avoided a lot of mistakes,” Alice insists.

“What if you made the mistake when you were four?” Betty asks brokenly, looking at the floor.

Alice’s eyes widen before she situates her arms around Betty, the hold protective. “What’s going on, baby?”

“Mom, do you remember the day I met Jughead?”

Alice chuckles. “How can I forget? Everything after that day became all about him. It was all ‘Mom, Jughead does this’ and ‘Polly, Jughead said that’, your poor sister was so jealous. I don’t think she had seen her own shadow until you met the boy.”

Betty smiles at that too. “I have a tendency to obsess, huh?”

“You get it from me, hon,” Alice reminds her and kisses her head.

“Did you every worry I was putting all my eggs in one basket? Or after you learned about Jughead’s parents—”

“Betty, I knew from the beginning Jughead’s parents weren’t soulmates,” her mom admits. “You forget I went to high school with both FP and Gladys, and this isn’t a big town.”

“But didn’t you worry about me?” Betty repeats.

“You have no idea how many nights your father and I sat up worrying about you, about how to handle your situation, but in the end we realized that no matter what we did, if we forbade you from seeing him or were vocal about the impossibilities, you’d just do what you wanted anyways. You’re like me in that way too,” Alice says and squeezes her shoulders. “You’re a smart girl, Betty, and strong, and you were so sure from that very first day, honestly we were waiting for you to dance around singing ‘I told you so’ any day now.”

“That was my plan,” Betty confesses, earning a laugh from her mother.

“So what changed? If you don’t have your period… did Jughead mark with someone else?”

“No, no, Mom, no,” Betty shakes her head. “I just—I always believed in us because I thought I was right, undoubtedly, but,” she stops and sniffles.

“What?”

“Jug, he’s going through so much—there’s everything with his parents and now just his mom, it’s tearing him apart,” she says quietly. “And I thought I was helping, I thought I was being someone he could rely on, but all Jughead has been doing for a while now is distancing himself from me, protecting himself for when…” she trails off.

“You don’t mark with him,” Alice finishes with a knowing, motherly tone.

“I’ve just been hurting him this entire time too, Mom, and when I found out I—I,” she stops to even out her breathing. “I told him we should try things his way and take time, and I just, I feel so,” she starts tearing up and tries to hide it from her mom.

“Did I ever tell you about when your dad and I got our marks?” Alice asks, keeping Betty close.

“No.”

“It was senior year,” her mom starts and smiles to herself. “We were in study hall, and he was this guy on the football team I thought was a dumb Neanderthal,” she goes on and Betty laughs, surprising herself. “He was always loud in the halls and annoying during lunch hour, wasn’t involved in many extracurriculars, and I thought this guy is such a doof.”

“A doof? What even is that?”

“I don’t know, I made it up, but we had the same study hall,” she continues and Betty shakes her head. “One day something hits me in the back of my head and I thought I was just imagining things, but then it happened again. So I turn, and there he is wadding up pieces of paper and throwing them at me. They weren’t whole pages, just smaller pieces of one, but still annoying nonetheless,” her mom sighs. “And I turn in my chair, all huffy and big hair, and I scold him. I told him to act his age and not his shoe size and I even called him a doof then too.”

“Really? What did he say?”

Alice smiles down at her, all warm and affectionate. “He asked me for a pen.”

“What?”

“He lost his and wanted to do his homework, which is what he told me rather than respond to my outburst,” Alice tells her.

“And?”

“And I gave him one,” Alice says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“So, how did you mark?”

“Well, study hall was our last class of the day, and as we were leaving the room he stopped me, and handed me back a pen, but it wasn’t the one I let him borrow,” Alice says with a pointed expression.

“And I’m sure you let him know that,” Betty insists.

“You bet I did,” Alice agrees. “So I ripped the pen from his hand and went on this tirade about respect and being an adult and I felt so liberated when I was yelling at him, it really should have hit me before it did.”

“What?”

“Well, I was standing there just laying into him and he was looking at me with this dumb smile on his face. I wanted to smack it off of him because I was being very serious.”

“Of course you were,” Betty teases.

“Finally, I said ‘what are you smiling at?’-well I think I yelled it, and he grabbed my hand and turned my wrist up and showed me my own soulmark, one that just formed on him too.”

Betty turns over her mom’s wrist and looks at her parent’s mark. It’s thin, but long, and stretches about four inches down their main vein with a point at the end. They say it’s a pen, and now she knows why, but she always thought it looked more like a needle, sharp and pointy. It’s their mark though, so it’s their interpretation that matters.

“What did you guys do after that?”

“He asked me to go to Homecoming with him,” Alice says in a contented sigh. “I said yes, this time with a dumb look on my face. We actually won Homecoming King and Queen, but only because the word got out about our soulmarks and we were one of the first in our class to get them.”

“And that’s it? Happily ever after?”

“Well, they say that, but it was hard. I went from thinking nothing of this guy to finding out he’s my soulmate. It’s a lot for a young girl to handle. Suddenly we were spending all our time together, and I love him, I do, but getting a mark does not mean love at first sight. Relationships are hard work, but love is worth fighting for, and marks are a special thing, the bond is definitely…”

“Hard to explain?”

“Yes,” Alice says with a nod. “But I didn’t choose your father, fate chose for us, and I wouldn’t change a thing about my life, not how I met your father, not our life together, and definitely not you or Polly.”

“But?”

“But I envy you, Betty,” Alice admits and Betty pulls away to look her in the eye better. “You… you got to know the person you love before you fell in love with them, and you did it without a mark holding you together. I’ve watched you and Jughead grow up, I’ve watched him look at you like you’re the sun, and I’ve witnessed you do everything can to keep him whole. And even without a mark now, even though you guys are going through all of this, he’s still the first person you’d call if something happened, good or bad, and you’re still the girl he puts on a pedestal and would do anything for.”

Betty rolls her lips together, not knowing what to say.

“You two are special without a mark, Betty, and that’s rare. I understand both you and Jughead are hurting in different ways, but at some point you have to decide whether what you have is worth more than a mark, or if that is all that will, or won’t, define you.”

“You know I’m only thirteen, right? I feel like that advice is too mature for me.”

“Sweetie, you called your uncle obnoxious when you were two, you’ve been far too mature for most of your life.”

“I did not do that!” Betty insists.

“You did and I was damn proud. Your father’s brother is such a—”

“If you say doof, I swear Mom, I am never letting you proofread another paper of mine,” Betty threatens.

“What I was going to say was more R-rated, but that will do. Anyways, let’s get you out of this room, huh? You’ve been off grounding for well over a week now. Oh, we can see how angry your sister still is at me, see if she wants to go out too? Maybe we can get our hair cut, do a little shopping, dinner?”

Betty didn’t feel like leaving her bed, had so much to think about, a lot of decisions to make, but sees the happiness in her mom’s eyes that she is letting her in and asking for her advice, that she can’t say no.

“Sure, Mom, whatever you want.”

She wakes with a start and tries to keep her heaves quiet, but she’s been through this before, she knows what’s coming.

While trying to be as quiet as possible, Betty tip-toes around Kevin’s living room, hops over his sleeping body, and heads for the bathroom in his furnished basement so she won’t disturb him or his dad.

Betty sits on the floor, hugs her knees to her chest and rocks back and forth, trying to control her breathing, wishing the tears would stop, hoping that the pit in her stomach would close, but knows willing for things to happen is childish.

It’s been happening for over a week now—panic attacks. At least, that is what Google says they are, WebMD too, and she knows better than to use those to self-diagnose but also knows it’s true. She just can’t bring herself to tell anyone about them. The one person she wants to is probably the cause of them, or their situation is, rather.

It first began with a dream of Jughead marking with someone else, a scenario she knows is unlikely, but if she’s hoping for him to mark with her she’s not about to discredit the possibility of him marking with someone else.

That night she woke, unable to stop herself from crying and digging into her palms, a fear in her gut like no other, and it was like her lungs forgot how to work. It took over an hour for her to finally unclench, and she’d lost so much blood she worried. Then, after a quick Google about how much blood one can lose before needing to seek medical assistance, she figured she was safe, probably.

Still, Betty knew the blood wouldn’t come out of her pastel pink sheets and threw them away in Archie’s garbage bin just so her mom wouldn’t find them and ask questions. Of course that meant she had to use her own money to buy another set, but it was better than explaining the missing sheets to her mom.

For several days, Betty had tried to get out of a previously planned sleepover with Kevin, but he’d plead total abandonment on her part, and she felt too guilty to back out.

So here she is, in his basement bathroom, palms bleeding, trying so hard to breathe through the pain in her chest, and a heaviness in her heart she can’t kick.

All she wants is to call Jughead, knowing that without a second thought he’d be on his bike traveling across town to Kevin’s, not even caring that he was sneaking into the sheriff’s house just to comfort her. Betty lets out a watery laugh as she thinks that he’d do the same if she just wanted a hug for no reason.

She thinks of his black hair, somehow never matted down even though he’s rarely without his beanie. She remembers the time she looked into his eyes for so long, trying to decide if they were blue or green, and honestly couldn’t figure it out. She recalls getting the call that her grandmother had died and how she immediately ran for Archie’s knowing Jughead was there, and how he held her for hours while she cried, then continued to until she fell asleep, which is when he carried her home and put her in bed.

Betty laughs to herself, because of course even though everything with Jughead is what is causing this choking grief and pain, it’s thoughts of him that pull her off the edge.

In a moment of weakness she manages to unclench enough so she can call him, even if it is almost four in the morning.

After a few rings it goes to voicemail, and her own voice comes through, “Hi! You’ve reached Forsy—” she starts only for Jughead to interrupt,“Betty!” and she can be heard giggling in the background. “Just leave a message,” he says before it cuts off and beeps.

Betty hits the end button and calls again and again with no answer, but listens to his voicemail until her heart slows and her lungs start to work again. The weight stays in her stomach, as she knows it will, but usually it dissipates after she’s slept some, if she can get back to sleep, that is.

With no supplies to attend to her palms, Betty simply runs them under water and dabs them until the bleeding slows before figuring she’s cleaned-up enough to make her way back to the living room to try and at least rest if she can’t sleep, maybe catch up on some late-night TV.

When she opens the door, however, she finds Kevin on the other side and yelps. “Kev! Don’t do that!”

“What? Pee in the middle of the night? You had to too,” he reminds her and simply walks by without another word, and Betty figures she’s in the clear because he doesn’t seem to know how long she was in there or the real reason why.

She scurries upstairs to reclaim the couch before he comes out and turns on the TV before settling back into the cushions.

Kevin returns only moments later and all but collapses back onto his blow-up mattress, she actually worries he might pop it if he keeps plopping like so.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks after snuggling into his blankets once more. Kevin’s a big snuggler, but not with just anybody. Usually she sleeps with him because of it, but didn’t want to have to untangle herself if something like this happened, so she’s happy she chose the couch.

“I’m kind of going through his insomnia phase, I hope I grow out of it,” she answers and turns onto her side to face him.

“Hey, if I can grow out of tucking every shirt into my jeans and still wearing a belt phase, you can grow out of this,” he offers and she shakes her head at him. “Did you have fun tonight?”

“Of course,” she tells him immediately. “I know I tried to get out it, but it isn’t because of you, Kev. I just feel like I’m drowning under all my own issues and don’t want to get more people involved than I have to. You have enough to deal with on your own, you know? Not that I’m not here for you if you need anything, you know I am.”

“I know you are, B, but there’s only so much talking can do to a point. My mom died, it sucks and my dad’s going to be heartbroken forever, but it is what it is. I honestly get sick of talking about it because it just reminds me, and him, that she’s gone,” he says with a far-off look on his face.

“How is he doing? Is being back to work helping?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he tells her. “He worries about leaving me home, but I like the silence. Actually, I don’t because I’m used to my mom always doing something, but I like that he’s trying to get back to our normal. Besides, I have you and Moose is… Moose,” he sighs.

“I know it’s hard. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own drama I forget everyone else has problems too, it seems. I’m sorry I’ve been so selfish recently.”

“I’m not a baby, Betty, I don’t need constant attention,” Kevin replies and they both laugh. “You’ve been there for me, you have, don’t think you haven’t. You’re the only person I feel like hasn’t been hovering and constantly asking me if I’m okay. You let me come to you, and I appreciate that. You’re my best friend.”

“You’re my best friend too, Kev,” Betty assures him and smiles in a very Cooper way. “And thank God you’re gay or else I wouldn’t be able to have sleepovers with you,” she teases.

“I know, your mom cut those off with Jughead and Archie at, like, ten years old.”

“I know, I wish I could have squeezed a few more years out of those,” she mutters. “Not that I’ve even done anything with Jughead still to this day, it’s too much for him.”

“How is he dealing with his parents? It’s the talk of the town.”

“Oh God, don’t let him know that, he’ll just crawl further into himself,” she pleads and stretches her hands out wide under her blanket to stop herself from squeezing, and makes a half-pained face in the darkness at the pull. “It’s hard, but he’s dealing. His mom is doing well, Jellybean is adjusting, but Jug’s making it as easy on her as possible. He bikes over to Billy’s at least once a day and has some kind of meal with her, makes sure everything is okay over there. He’s not very trusting of him yet, but it’s understandable.”

“And his dad?”

“Last I heard Jug was still staying at Archie’s, it’s week three of them being roomies. Archie’s room reeks of BO and teenage boy, but Jug is just hoping his dad is still working on himself. I hope FP is really trying. I know it would make Jughead so happy, if he’s just using this time to drink or sleep around or something, it’s going to break his heart,” she says and almost catches herself on her words, because she’s helping break his heart too.

“You’re still… not with Jug, then?”

“I’m not-not with him, I’m just—I couldn’t take him faking it anymore, Kev, so we’re just not doing that anymore. He doesn’t believe, I don’t think he has for a while, and I finally see that. I’m not going to make him pretend with me like he does with his family, I won’t let him.”

“You know he loves you though, right? You can tell just by how the boy looks at you. I hope a boy looks at me like that one day,” he sighs.

“I know it, I feel it, but he’s never said it. And it hurts that he won’t even let himself say it, but it’s something I’m trying to accept. He tried to say it that night, but I wouldn’t let him. It felt like I was asking him to say it, you know? I didn’t want to hear it that way.”

“You’re sure you still want to go to the Scare-A-Thon at the Drive-In tomorrow night? Or, I guess, tonight now,” he asks.

“Kev, you asked me a million times yesterday, of course I’m going. We’ve gone every year we we’ve been allowed to, I’m not going to miss it because of this. I told you, I’m not avoiding Jughead, we’re just not those kids anymore. We’ve hung out, alone and in a group setting, it’s awkward at first, but we get over it. It’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Betty, you do remember how you are during scary movies, right?”

“I’m fine, you all exaggerate too much,” Betty huffs to herself.

“You’re horrible!” Kevin chuckles and falls onto his back. “You spend two-thirds of the night in Jughead’s lap with your head under a blanket. What are you going to do this year if you’re not those kids anymore?”

“Use your shoulder,” Betty tells him easily. “Because you love me so much.”

“I can’t promise I won’t get annoyed,” he warns.

“Did you invite Moose to come with us?”

“Yeah, but he’s going with Reggie and the guys,” he answers. “He doesn’t… he says he doesn’t know what he wants. He likes me, but he likes girls too—”

“Being bi is a thing, he knows that, right?” she interrupts.

“Yes, but labels scare him. I’m literally the only openly gay person in school, in all the grades, and I’m only so open because it’s so obvious and I don’t care what people think. I worried about my dad, but—my mom always knew, and before she died she made my dad I talk about it, you know, so he’s adjusting to accepting his only son is gay, and his is the only opinion I care about.”

“I’m glad he’s cool with it, with you, I’d be upset if he wasn’t. I’d have a vendetta, it would turn into this big thing, it’s just easier if he is the cool Dad,” Betty tells him.

“Thanks for being there for me,” Kevin laughs. “Moose has problems accepting who he is, what he wants, and I can’t be mad that I came to my own conclusions earlier, you know? So, I get it. The whole marks things is just harder with the same gender. There are still stats and studies on it, but there are just so many more for hetero couples. Some say the more feminine one of the two has to initiate, others say it doesn’t matter who does it, there’s a new one about how if you’re not ‘out’ it can be harder, and it’s just—what the fuck? It’s not like being gay is entirely new, it shouldn’t be this hard.”

“I know, it sucks, but there is literally no real medical explanation for them, most of the info out there is theories, or just patterns, really. There is definitely more of a formula for heteros and it’s still hard, I can’t imagine having something else to make it even more difficult.”

“Either way, as far as we know, we’re both producing sperm, and we’ve touched all kinds of ways and still nothin’ so, who knows?” Kevin says with a shrug.

“I hate how I’ve basically been in a relationship since I was four and you still have done more than me,” Betty grumbles.

“It’s not a competition, B, boys just tend to find their dicks before girls understand what a clitoris is,” Kevin tells her and she hopes he can’t see how red she turns.

“But I’ve never even had a hickey,” she whines, making him laugh.

“Alright, that’s a little sad, but look at you, Betty Cooper, you’re beautiful and you’re still growing. I’m sure there will be a time that you have marks everywhere, in more ways than one,” Kevin states with a wink.

“Thanks, Kev, just for making me laugh,” Betty says and notices some of the heaviness has lifted. That tends to help too, focusing on something else, but it’s hard to do when she’s alone. “My mom wants me home by noon, but maybe you can come over before we head out to the Drive-In? You can help me get ready?”

“Yes, I love dressing you!” Kevin exclaims and Betty rolls her eyes, which he obviously sees because he adds on, “I know, I know, you have full veto power, don’t worry, I know the rules.”

“Good,” she says in a yawn and settles back down onto the couch. “Here, Friends is on, that should help us fall asleep, you think?”

“Um, I don’t think so? I’m not passing on time to stare at Joey Tribiani,” Kevin replies in a ‘duh’ tone and Betty laughs again.

She needs to remind herself more often that she does have a life outside of Jughead, and it’s not a bad one, it’s not even an empty one, but it sure is a lot duller compared to when he is around.

When she gets home at noon, Betty is already planning on taking a nap before Kevin is due over later, because she’s freakin’ exhausted.

But when Sheriff Keller drops her off and she sees Jughead half-asleep on her front porch she sees the zzz’s slipping away.

“Are you okay?” he instantly asks her, stumbling down the steps to meet her halfway.

“Yeah, are you okay?” she responds in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“Betty, you called me thirteen times last night,” Jughead reminds her and she nods while inwardly scolding herself for being stupid, then forgetting about it. “My phone was in Archie’s living room, we were upstairs. I tried calling you, but I know your phone is on Do Not Disturb most mornings, usually my number is one that can get through, but I guess that’s changed too. So I came over, but Polly said you slept over Kevin’s, and that you’d be home soon.”

“I’m sorry, Jug, I didn’t mean to worry you, I’m fine,” she lies and smiles at him, it’s completely fake, but she hopes he can’t tell. “It was—Kevin and I were playing around,” she tells him while sidestepping him to get up her steps.

“I know we’re not us anymore, whatever we were before, but I didn’t think we were lying to each other,” Jughead says to her back and she turns once she reaches the top. “I called Kevin, you must have already been on your way over here with his dad. He had no idea what I was talking about when I asked why you called so many times.”

“Jug, just leave it alone,” she pleads.

He climbs the steps too, stopping one before the top so they are eye-to-eye. “Why? You wouldn’t leave how I felt alone, it’s the reason things are like this, why should I do the same for you?”

“You think this is the same thing?”

“I don’t think it’s all that different. It has to do with me, has to do with your feelings, and you’re keeping it from me,” he explains.

“I didn’t leave how you felt alone because it was tearing you apart, Jug. You gave up on us a long time ago, so don’t put this on me. All I asked us to do was stop pretending, because once I realized that is what you were doing, it was—” she can’t say the words ‘breaking her heart’ to him, she knows he wouldn’t take it well. “I couldn’t be with you only when you needed saving, I want all the time. You can’t do that until we mark, or don’t mark, so until then what I do is my business, okay?”

“And it’s my business when you call me thirteen fucking times! Obviously you needed something, you needed me, so just let me help now. What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Betty tells him, her tone flat. “You can’t do anything. I’m trying to do things on my own, because as I’m learning you won’t always be there,” she says before turning and going for her door, not wanting to look at him because she knows that was a bit below the belt, so to speak.

“This is bullshit, you know that?” he says and she stops at the front door. “I didn’t—I didn’t ask for any of this. I finally told you how I really felt, and I feel like I’m being punished. It’s like I’m already losing the best thing that ever happened to me,” he goes on and follows her.

“I’m right here, Jug,” she assures him softly, but is unable to look in his eyes.

“Are you? Because it feels like your miles away.”

“It’s not fun, is it?” she asks, sniffling a little. “Trying so hard, but the person you’re reaching out for is just slipping away.”

Jughead nods and stares at his shoes. “I deserve that.”

“No, you don’t deserve any of this, Juggie,” Betty whispers and steps closer to him, wanting to feel his body heat if she won’t let herself actually touch him. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be mean to you, this whole situation is just impossible,” she apologizes.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” he agrees quietly. “I miss you, I—I’ve never gone more than twenty-four hours without seeing you before you got grounded, not unless you were on vacation or when I was in the detention center.”

“I miss you too,” she hiccups, trying to swallow the knot in her throat.

“Betty, don’t cry, I’m sorry,” he whispers and cups her face, and she can’t help but lean into his hold for just a moment.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she murmurs before pulling away to wipe her face.

“Limbo is a shitty place to reside,” Jughead states, respecting her face.

“That it is,” she agrees in watery laugh.

“I wouldn’t want to be in it with anyone other than you, but that’s how I am with most things, so I don’t know how big of an impact that can really have,” he admits.

“It means more than you know,” Betty tells him.

“Are you okay though? I know something happened for you to call me thirteen times,” he mutters.

“I’m fine, Juggie, I promise,” she lies once more and put her brave face on.

“I’m holding you to that, you’ve never broken a promise to me before,” he reminds her.

Betty just nods. “I, uh, my mom wants me home for a while before the Drive-In tonight. So I’ll see you in a couple hours?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jughead tells her before smiling in that way that makes her feel like gravity isn’t real.

Jughead Jones, defying gravity, who knew he had it in him? Betty did, she always had.

…

“How much do you want to bet Betty almost pees her pants?” she hears Archie say to Jughead as she and Kevin approach his dad’s truck.

“Will not, I’m evolved, Archibald,” Betty states while tossing blankets into the bed, directly on Jughead.

“Oh, yeah, you’re so evolved, that’s why you always so no to scary movies when we suggest them on a regular basis, even the crappy black and white ones Jug wants,” Archie responds.

“They are not crappy, you just have no taste,” Jughead remarks from underneath the blankets he, apparently, has no interest in moving.

“I’m with Archie on this one,” Kevin says and hops into the bed of Archie’s dad’s truck.

“Hey!”

“B, you get scared at the mere thought of Chuckie,” he reminds her.

“Well, that doll is freakin’ creepy! Evil red-headed dolls are my kryptonite, okay? We all have them, like how Seth Rogen is Jug’s,” she insists while getting into the bed herself and removing the blankets from Jughead’s top half.

“Thanks,” he says and just smiles up at her, she tries not to let it get to her, but fails. “And don’t worry, there will be no evil red-headed creatures running around, except Archie, that is,” he adds on and Archie throws a wayward kick his way. “Ow, fuck off.”

“Where’s your dad? He take off already?” Betty asks Archie while arranging blankets so they are all comfortable and no one is complaining about their ass in two hours.

“Yeah, he’s over with some guys from the construction crew. He took the keys to the truck though, so there is no getting in there, just FYI.”

“Is your mom still in Chicago?”

“Yeah, my grandma is doing better, but she wants to stay with her for a while longer just to make sure. I’m supposed to go visit before the summer is over and my mom will come home with me,” Archie tells her. “Now, is it just the four of us?” he asks.

“I invited Ethel,” Betty offers.

“I invited Moose, but he said no, so,” Kevin answers with a shrug.

“He’s a jerk, dude, no worries,” Archie tries to help and sends a smile his way.

Betty shakes her head because Archie is completely oblivious to Kevin’s long-lasting crush on him, but at least Kevin knows to put no real stock in it. Archie is way too into girls to notice, but Kevin doesn’t mind pining from afar, and using Betty’s window from time to time.

She looks over at Jug, who is staring at her, and smiles in a knowing way, so she knows she’s thinking the same thing. She grins and looks down so she won’t laugh.

“So what is playing tonight?” Kevin asks while doing his usual plop down in the back of the truck. “The kid movies ended at sundown, so was the adult movie list posted yet?”

“Yeah, Jug looked, I don’t know why they try to keep it a secret every year, it’s not like it’s a big deal.”

“But Chuckie isn’t on it, right?” Betty questions just to make sure.

“It’s not, I promise,” Jughead swears with a hand over his heart. “We usually only make it through three before your parents make us leave, so we’ll be seeing the original Dracula, Poltergeist, and Scream, if they let us stay for a fourth, The Amityville Horror too. I can’t wait until they don’t care how long we stay so we can finish the whole marathon. It’s a dream of mine.”

“Way to aim high, bud,” Kevin mentions and Jughead responds with a full finger point and wink.

“Hey guys!” Ethel appears with a smile and blanket of her own. “Thanks for inviting me!”

“No problem, hop on up,” Archie tells her, and even takes her hand to help.

Ethel blushes, but of course, Archie doesn’t notice. “Hey Ethel!” Betty greets. “Thanks for coming, I need more girls to help me with these guys.”

“I don’t think they are so bad,” Ethel insists.

“Yeah, thanks Ethel, way to be rude, B,” Kevin mutters grumpily and frowns.

“Oh, bite me,” Betty responds with a cheerful smile.

“Let me pick the spot and you’re on,” Kevin responds.

“Ew, why you do need to pick the spot? Where would you pick?” she asks with a grimace.

“If you’re not gonna let me, I’m not gonna say,” he says very nonchalant and she honestly has so many questions, but doesn’t know if she wants the answers.

“You are a very strange boy,” she settles on and he smiles as if it’s a compliment.

“Alright everyone, ante up, you know the drill,” Archie starts and holds out his hands.

Everyone reaches into their pockets for the obligatory ten dollars so they can get a smorgasbord to tide them over for most of the movie. Before the third one they usually all go get some kind of dessert since it’s not something that can sit out for a couple hours.

“Any special requests?” he asks and hops down with Jughead in tow.

“Don’t forget my ch—”

“Cherry licorice, the kind that pulls apart, I know, Betts,” Jughead cuts her off with a wink. “Anyone else?”

“Extra, extra butter in one of the tubs of popcorn!” Kevin calls after them and they wave him off.

“I love scary movies,” Ethel states as they fade away into the abyss of cars and people. “I always jump at the scares, so don’t worry if I do, I’m not really scared,” she goes on.

“Oh, no one will be paying attention to you, Ethel, don’t worry. Betty here can’t take satirical scary movies, you know when they say they are scary, but it’s really a big joke. She jumps at that shit,” Kevin tells her.

“I do not! I’m not that bad!” Betty insists before sitting down between Kevin and the wall of the bed of the truck.

“You are, but why are you sitting there? Shouldn’t you leave room for J—” Betty elbows him and he nods in realization. “I’m going to end up knocking you out by the end of the night, just so you know what you’re in for,” he warns.

“As long as you don’t bite me when I’m unconscious.”

“No promises.”

Betty shakes her head at him before turning away to try and be oblivious to Jughead’s impending return, maybe then she can ignore the hurt that will surely be splashed across his face before he hides it. They always sit together, always, not just at the drive-in, but in general. Tucked under Jughead’s arm is always where she feels safe no matter what is going on around them.

She remembers telling him that once. It was late at night, Jughead had snuck her out of the house rather than sneaking in himself. They went to the park at the end of the street and laid at the landing at the top of the slides looking at the stars. She thinks they were eleven, maybe twelve, but recalls feeling invincible. It felt like the real world couldn’t touch them, and never would.

There is little Betty never told Jughead throughout the years. She’d shared every dream, desire, and fear. Now, she wonders if he had done the same, or if he’d kept more secrets than just not believing they were meant to be.

Just.

She laughs to herself. Just. As if lying about just that is so small.

“Betty, are you okay?” Kevin asks and she blinks up at him in confusion. “You just started laughing Joker-style, it’s kinda creeping Ethel out.”

“Is not, you’re the one who jumped,” Ethel responds, defensive.

Betty can’t help but laugh some more. “Yeah, sorry just thought of something funny,” she answers and the whole truck shakes as Jughead and Archie hop back in.

Betty avoids Jughead’s face in favor of staring out at multiple cars parked around them. She sees Polly in a Volvo with tinted windows and a head of red hair in the driver seat. She crinkles her eyebrows, but files it away for later.

“Betty,” a voice pulls her back.

“Huh?”

Jughead responds by holding out her licorice.

“Oh, thanks,” she mumbles and leans back to get comfortable in her position.

“Movie is starting in a minute,” Jughead says to the whole group before taking up residence laid out in front of them, his head on one of the few pillows they brought.

Betty sucks her lip in between her teeth and tries not to think about how soft his hair definitely is underneath his beanie. Her fingers twitch at the thought of threading her hands through the silky strands. She’d told him that night at the park that his hair was a soft spot for her, that whenever he took off his beanie, his security blanket, she felt a sense of pride and accomplishment because it meant he felt safe enough to do so.

She starts banging her head back against the truck lightly in frustration. It never occurred to her then that the turmoil going on within him was driving a wedge between them. Betty always knew Jughead worried about it, but after learning the full extent, how big it had built up inside him over the years, she wonders how she could have been so naïve.

Without a second thought she shared everything with him, not thinking that he wasn’t doing the same with her. She speculates if there is a whole side to the boy she loves that she doesn’t know.

The idea makes her heart race in a way that isn’t good.

Betty starts breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, a trick her grandmother told her was calming, but doesn’t know if that’s real or just a grandma thing, but always worked for her nonetheless.

Suddenly her chest feels tight and it she’s thankful they are watching a scary movie because everyone just thinks she’s nervous about the film.

Betty closes her eyes and asks herself just how hers Jughead Jones really is.

The heaviness starts to set in her chest and her breathing picks up to compensate.

“Are you seriously this scared twenty minutes in?” Kevin suddenly questions making her jump.

“Hu—what?” she asks but her voice is more of a rasp.

“You’re hyperventilating, Betty,” Kevin states and everyone’s eyes are on her.

Jughead gets up on an elbow to get a good look, his beanie slowly falling down his head from the movement and he doesn’t make a move to fix it, is more concerned about her.

“Bathroom,” Betty whispers as she jumps out of the truck and takes off running, her hands already curling in on themselves to try and control some of the pain she’s experiencing.

She bypasses the dated structure in favor for the privacy behind it—where the older kids come to make out later in the night, but for now it’s deserted. She leans against the cold stone, her body bent in half with fists on her knees, willing her brain to just fucking work correctly for a couple more hours. She can fall to pieces later, right now she needs to be a Cooper, and Cooper’s don’t do this kind of thing in public, Coopers are always cool and collected.

“Betty!” she hears and whines to herself. “Be—Betty,” Jughead skids on the rocks as he comes to a stop at the side of the building. “Betty, are you okay, look at me,” he insists and squats down in front of her.

Her eyes slam shut because his face will be her undoing, and she knows it. Instead, she shakes her head while continuing the breathing technique she’s believed in for most of her life.

“Betty, please,” he pleads, his voice cracking, and her nails dig in so hard it makes her wince in pain. “Are you—Betty, stop, you’re bleeding,” he says and the dam breaks.

She collapses down into his arms, her hands caught between them, probably getting blood on at least one of them, but she just wants to feel that safety once more time if it’s most likely going to be the last time.

He said so himself, once she marks with someone else he’s gone.

“It—It’s okay, Betty, I’m right here,” he says in her ear, holding her tight and rocking her back and forth. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The words make her cry harder and he swears under his breath. He kisses the underside of her ear and the touch causes more hyperventilation because it’s so innocent and sweet, something their relationship isn’t anymore.

“Fuck, Betty, I’m making things worse. Tell me what to do,” he begs while pulling away, but she emits some kind of animalistic dying sound and throws herself at him to keep the contact.

He seems to understand and retightens his hold, this time falling down onto his butt and pulling her into his lap to keep her close.

“I love you, Betty,” he murmurs after a few silent moments, the only noises around them are her cries and as she tries too hard to catch her breath, her chest begins to hurt. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it before. I’m sorry if I’ve ever made you feel like I don’t, or doubt it. I’m so in love with you, Betty Cooper, that all this shit is causing me to lose my mind, and it looks like you’re feeling the same way.”

She wants to laugh, but can only concentrate on the rumble of his chest and feel of her body pressed against his, and is hanging on to his every word.

Betty feels her ponytail fall, probably from Jughead’s pull, but it was already halfway down on it’s own. His fingers start to lightly massage the back of her neck and head.

“I hate this, I hate that I can’t—I don’t know what to do. I haven’t known what to do for a long time,” he goes on, his tone defeated, and Betty can only heave against him. “No matter what’s going on, Betts, I’m still yours, I have been since I was five, and I always will be. I told you that you ruined me that night I was drunk, and that’s so fucking true. There’s no loving after you, Betty, none.”

She doesn’t know how long she cried into his chest, isn’t sure when exactly she stopped, but she did, and neither of them have said a word since. Her hands are still clenched, her nails nestled into the crevices in her skin just so. The pain is dull, but searing, and her fingers ache from holding the position so long.

All Betty does know is that she wants to stay like this for the rest of the night.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” he asks suddenly, his voice cutting through the silence and making her jump.

With a steady breath she separates just enough to shake her head and look at his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jughead tells her and pushes some hair behind her ear. “How long as this been going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“I let it slide earlier when you lied to me, Betty, and I did it because I knew if I called you on it we would have just gotten into a fight. I’m not letting that happen again. How long has this been happening to you?” he repeats.

Betty looks down at her hands, she still hasn’t unclenched, and doesn’t want to. The pain is a constant, keeps her centered. “Not long, two weeks maybe, a little less,” she murmurs.

“Do you know what it is?”

“A panic attack. I—I did a little research. This one was the worst.”

“And when you called me last night… you were having a panic attack?”

Betty nods, her lip between her teeth, and feels tears form in her eyes. Why can’t she stop crying? “I’m sorry I lied, I—didn’t want you to know. I knew you’d blame yourself.”

Jughead simply responds by pressing a hard kiss to her temple.

“It’s not you, Jug. It’s my brain. It’s never worked right. I mean, I declared we were soulmates when we were four. That should have been our first clue.”

“Stop,” Jughead orders. “Nothing is wrong with you, there is definitely nothing wrong with your brain. If anything, something is wrong with the world around you, and you… you see things how they should be. It’s the world that’s fucked, Betty, please believe that.”

She simply nods, not knowing what to say.

“Let me see,” he whispers and reaches for hands.

Betty’s first instinct is to hide them, but it just makes her grip loosen and the loss of pressure disturbs the wounds.

Her fingernails are caked in blood and for the first time, as Jughead unfolds her fingers she sees what she’s doing to herself. The crescent shapes are deep and an angry red, the sight makes her start to shake.

“What’s wrong with me?” she sniffles.

“Oh, baby, nothing,” Jughead assures her readily and gathers her hands in his, then brings them to his lips to kiss. “We’re going to figure this out, okay?” he promises, his lips against the skin of her palms and she shivers. “Tell me you believe me, but only if you trust it.”

Betty nods slowly. “I do, I promise, for real this time.”

Jughead kisses her hands again, then absent-mindedly squeezes them and she winces. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“I—I felt like I deserved it,” she starts after a moment and he looks at her questioningly. “The pain, after everything I’d done. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting you, I was walking around with blinders on. I thought if we believed hard enough, if we both committed to it, to us, I couldn’t be wrong. When you told me you weren’t sure anymore something inside me cracked. The pain seemed minimal compared to what I’d done to you.”

“Betty…”

“And it was something I could control. Everything around me is up to someone, or something, else. My parents want me a certain way, my sister another, to our friends I’m the perfect girl next door, you said so yourself, I do so much to be everything everyone else wants me to be, to please everyone else. This is something dependent on me. I decide to do it, to stop it, to hide it, to keep it mine. But I guess, I guess it’s controlling me now too, huh?”

Jughead takes in a deep breath before standing up and leaning both hands on the building behind them.

Betty stands too, and reaches for his arm even though her hands are still a disaster, but before she can touch him he punches cement. She gasps, but he just throws another hit, and then she grabs onto his elbow. “Jug! Jughead stop, please,” she pleads. “Juggie.” She uses the tips of her fingers to turn his chin so he’s looking at her. There are tears in his eyes and she doesn’t hesitate before putting arms around his neck.

“Hurting each other isn’t enough anymore? Now we have to hurt ourselves too?” he says against her neck with a shudder.

“I guess we’d rather do that than keep hurting each other,” she whispers.

“Love is fucked up.”

“We finally agree on something,” Betty attempts to joke.

Jughead pulls away and rests their foreheads together. “Can I walk you home?”

“In the middle of the Scare-A-Thon?”

“Fuck the movies, Betty, I just want to be with you. I feel like I haven’t spent any real time with you in weeks and it’s driving me insane,” he admits.

“I know the feeling, but you know it’s like a thirty-minute walk, at least, right?” she asks.

“So?”

Betty nods. “Okay, I just… should take care of my hands and stuff.”

“Yeah, me too,” he agrees and holds up his scraped knuckles.

“Can we just not worry about the future tonight? Can we just be thirteen?” she asks.

“Can I be fourteen?” he questions with a knowing smile.

“Okay, smartass, get to the bathroom and text Archie so they don’t come looking for us. And tell him that if Kevin eats all my licorice—” she stops when he fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Here, you be me, text him and threaten our friends, I gotta pee. I’ll meet you back out here,” he says with a peck to her lips and disappears to go around to the front of the building.

She stands there with a goofy look on her face before snapping out of it because she feels a small sense of peace return to her, and it’s all because of Jughead, but would it really have happened with anyone else?

They end up in his old treehouse since a now elderly couple lives there, and obviously don’t use it.

It resembles the night she was thinking of earlier. They are both laid out on the floor, their heads meeting in the middle to share a pillow they grabbed from Archie’s.

They talk about his dad, how he worries it’s been a week longer than he said, and how Jughead wonders if he’s worth coming back for. Betty turns onto her side to look him in the eye, even if upside down, to assure him he’s worth more than coming back, he’s worth changing your life for.

She tells him about Polly, how heartbroken she is, and she reveals that she saw her with Jason at the Drive-In. Betty worries about Polly getting even more hurt, but respects her sister going after what she wants and making her own decisions instead of waiting for a mark. Life is too short.

Jughead waits until later in the night to ask about her palms, wants to know exactly what is going through her mind when she feels the need to do it. She speaks of the release it brings, even if she is ashamed, and Jughead kisses her forehead and reminds her that he’ll never judge or hold anything against her. He just wants her to be okay, to not hurt herself.

Betty promises to call him if she catches herself doing it, or at least as she is cleaning herself up.

Eventually, the talking stops and Betty just runs her fingers through his hair as he massages the back of her head and she feels better than she has in weeks.

It turns out they aren’t good at staying away from each other, but Betty can’t find it in her to be upset about it. Maybe it means if they don’t mark, that eventually, even without that to hold them together, they’ll still find their way to one another, that maybe it will just take them longer.

…

In the morning, when Betty wakes up there’s a smile on her face, but it’s followed by a wince when she feels a pain in her stomach and achy in her thighs.

Betty groans and rolls over, because of course after a night that ended wonderfully she has to wake up not feeling well.

Betty turns to get more comfortable, and that is when she feels a wetness between her legs.

Instantly she jumps out of bed and is in the bathroom pulling her pants down before the door is even closed behind her.

The red staining her underwear says it all. She finally got her period. She shudders as she looks at herself in the mirror.

Limbo’s over and done with, now reality is ready and waiting.

To be continued....

Notes: Thoughts? Let me know! Reviews are my muse! They help me continue very much so, and after a crappy week they are very much appreciated. Thank you to @jandjsalmon again for helping with this chapter and beta-ing, and of course making the aesthetic for this chapter as well.

#bughead #jughead jones #betty cooper #riverdale #fanfiction

45 notes · View notes

clubpenguinheadcanons · 7 years

Note

How about a scenario to unravel: A situation where Ace disappears (with team reactions?). Is it mission gone wrong? Kidnap? Something more sinister at play? Who knows! Knock yourself out however you wish (or not that is ok to don't dress

Thanks Anon for loving my work, here’s a little something for you! Sorry it took so long! Yadda yadda undercut.

Word Count: 5,810

Blood/injury/death mention.

Ace doesn’t know what feels worse, their splitting headache, the searing pain on their side, or the frigid wet cold that they feel all over. Well, at least they have a blanket on to keep warm. Ace snuggled up to it, forgetting about the day that was laid out before them. Well, until someone started calling their name.

“Agent, wake up…” The voice was a bit deep and angry.

“Five-five more minutes…” Ace mumbled. They don’t know why they can’t move their arms or feet, and honestly, they don’t care. They just want to sleep the pain away. They turned away from the voice, hoping that it will leave them alone.

“Oh for Pete’s sakes! Wake up!” The voice tore the blanket off of Ace, making the penguin shiver from the cold.

“Who do you think you are-” Ace turned around and saw that the voice was in fact, Herbert. Standing tall with a scowl on his face and a tattered, and a bit bloody blanket in his paws. That was when everything fell back into place in Ace’s mind. That they were sent on a scouting mission, they were seen and chased, and now…captured. Of course, they lost their phone and jacket in this whole mess as well. Ace frowned.

“Who do you think I am? My Agent, such mean things to say to the hero that took your cold, bloody fowl body in and dressed your wounds and gave you a blanket! You should be glad that I have some compassion and I just didn’t leave you to die outside in this insufferable weather!” Herbert threw the blanket back at Ace, smirking that it hit the penguin in their face.

“Oh, I am so sorry Herbert! My great savior and hero!” Ace’s voice was dripping with sarcasm. They hate being captured, but at least they were alone in this. They’ll be fine, they just got to find out what Herbert is planning to do and find a way to escape. “So, why did the compassionate Herbert tie me up if he is so kind?” Ace tried to put the blanket on them, yet with their flippers tied, that is something hard to do, so it just fell to the ground. Giving a glare at the blanket was all that Ace could do, hoping that they had some mind powers to move it.

“For goodness sakes, you are even more pathetic than the last time I remember.” Herbert walked up to the penguin and wrapped the blanket around them. Wouldn’t want their enemy to die of hyperthermia. The freaking penguin is shaking like a leaf and seems to be a bit blue around the feathers. “As you must know, just because I won’t let you die, doesn’t mean I won’t keep you captured here.”

“Oh, so what will you do? Brag about your intelligence? Oh! Oh! I know! You will tell me about your tragic backstory yet again! Or how “The Great and Powerful Herbert” captured one of the Elite Penguin Fools’ best agents! Oh please, Herbert, don’t be so cruel, I’d rather succumb to my wounds than to be bored to death.” Ace looked down at their wound that was bandaged up, they forget, how did they get that anyways? They remember being chased, and falling down, then the pain. Did Herbert do that to them? They looked up at the polar bear, seeing red on his paws. Well, whatever that can be seen with his paws made into fists.

“You’re testing my patience Agent. I am this close to letting you go outside in this snowstorm and wait until you turn into a popsicle.” Herbert gritted his teeth as one hand pointed to the outside and the other rested at the bridge of his snout. Oh, how much he loathes this Agent. Their sarcasm and fight being the two things that annoy him the most. Sure, the penguin is a fun thing to trick, yet somehow, in the end, that penguin gets the upper hand. If it was luck that fuels this agent, Herbert is just waiting for it to run out.

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. But really, what are you planning to do with me?” Ace would rather not get the boot to the outside. They remember the snow storm being terrible when they left for their mission, getting worse with every passing moment, by now the storm must be too dangerous to even think about going out.

“Um…well…” Herbert paused and think. What was he going to do? He had no plans to think of at this moment, all of his resources for the winter are being used to grow his own vegetables and to survive, rather than take over this pathetic little island. He looked back at the agent and smirked. “I’m going to interrogate you! I shall beat answers out of you and make you quiver in fear!” Yeah! That’s what he’ll do! “Right Klutzy?” He looked down at his small friend.

“Click, clickity.” Klutzy grabbed a flashlight and handed it to Herbert.

“You’ll never get anything out of me Herbert.” Ace squinted as Herbert shines the light into their eyes. Goodness, that hurts their head. Maybe they got a concussion as well? Welp, that’s a shame.

“Oh shut up, I will get inside your little bird brained mind and get all of your secrets about the EPF!” Herbert glared at Ace, maybe that will get them to talk? Who knows, in fact, Herbert doesn’t even want to try to beat some info out of Ace, he could just get it by hacking into the EPF mainframe or something else. But maybe they have something that isn’t on the computers? “So why did you even try to stalk me?” Eh, a good place to start.

“You really think I will talk Herbert? I know nothing and won’t say anything.” Ace sighed. Is he really going for this? Whatever, he’ll just get bored and move on, hopefully.

Ace really wish it was that simple. Herbert tried for hours upon hours to make them talk. Going on from asking the same question, to threatening to stick Ace outside into the cold. Yet whenever Ace told him to do it, he refused. Saying that he is not giving his hostage a chance to escape or whatever.

“Come on Agent, answer the question. Why were you stalking me?!” Herbert lifted Ace up, hoping that being a bit manhandled would scare them.

“If your method of torture is boredom, I would say, it’s working, yet, I still won’t tell you why.” With that Ace was dropped down from Herbert’s grip onto the ground. Ace couldn’t help but yawn. They were going at it for what? A few hours now? It surely must be night time.

“AAARGGHH, THAT DOES IT, I’M DONE PLAYING THESE GAMES!” Herbert threw a punch to the cave wall, giving it a nice crack. Thankfully Herbert couldn’t see the flash of fear in Ace’s face as he did that. The polar bear took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll get some food, then go to bed.” That was when Herbert and Klutzy took their leave. Letting Ace be all alone.

“Oh thank puffles, I thought he would never leave!” Ace mumbled to themselves. Time to find a way to escape. Ace tried to move their flippers free, yet it was no use, Herbert tied them too tight. Ace tried to stand up, yet they couldn’t even move their feet that much to make a clean getaway. So instead Ace tried to roll around, hoping that it would loosen the rope. Which didn’t do much but take the blanket off. Ace rolled back onto the blanket as Herbert came back in. Seeing Ace just lying down on the floor. He sighed.

“You know, I made you some food as well. If you want some, just sit up if you can.” Herbert walked over the penguin. Seeing the penguin sit up and look up at him.

“So, how am I going to eat? Are you going to feed me?” Ace really hope it’s not that.

“Nah, I won’t stoop myself that low.” Herbert put a bowl of soup and a cup of water down.

“Well, aren’t you so nice.” Ace rolled themselves onto their stomach. Ah, so they are just gonna need to use their face. This is great, just great. Well, Ace tried to eat the soup and drink the water, well most of what they could get from it. After Ace was done, Herbert took the bowl and cup and started laughing.

“You know Agent, if you give me some access codes, I will let you free.” Maybe being humiliated like that will open them up?

“Okay Herbert, you win.” Ace sat themselves up. “The access codes for the EPF mainframe is, pi, i, -i, and horizontal 8.” Ace couldn’t help but crack up as Herbert’s face went from awe to confusion to pure anger. If Ace died right then and there, to them it would be worth it.

“YOU, JUST YOU LITTLE!” Herbert shook with rage. Alright, he’s done, nope, he needs to rest. Tomorrow that penguin will tell him some info! They just have to. “Good night you brat!” Herbert walked out of the room, leaving Ace all alone again.

“Nighty, night, P-bear!” Ace stifled a yawn as they laid down on the blanket. Hopefully, the others are alright and aren’t too worried about Ace. They just don’t want anyone to get lost in this storm because of them. With that, Ace rested their eyes and fell asleep. Hoping that the storm subsides. **********************************************************************Trying to search in this storm at night was a bad idea. G gritted his beak as he tried to look around, to try to see the agents in front of him. This is terrible, they can’t even see a lousy ten feet out! He felt guilt, heck, he felt more than guilt at this moment, he felt that he was the sole reason as to why Ace was gone. Letting that penguin go out in a storm like this?! What was he thinking? Apparently, something had to make sense, since Dot approved of letting them go out in this weather as well. But still, this doesn’t take the burden off of him in the slightest. G snapped out of it as his name was called out.

“G! I can’t see in this weather! The storm is too much!” Rookie called out.

“I know Rookie, I think we have to cancel this search party for tonight.” G sighed. He doesn’t want to cancel the search party, but they have to. This weather was too much for the group.

“Why? Jet can’t try to fly out?” Dot quipped up. She really needs to find Ace, she feels terrible that she and G allowed them to go out in this storm. Heck, Ace even asked them if they were sure about it since the storm was going on when Ace was informed about their mission! Just, this is just great. If The Director doesn’t chew their heads off, then the guilt will from this mess up.

“Negative Dot, this weather is too much for me to fly out.” Jet looked around and frowned.

“Are you sure you can’t try?” Dot just, she really needs to get something going, she just can’t leave an agent missing on the field.

“Dot, I would love to flip this island upside down to find Ace, I really would, but I rather not be putting myself in danger, which will cause for two missing agents.” Jet just couldn’t help but to spat that lasts part out at her. Sure, Ace going MIA is terrible, but in this weather? Who knows how long Ace could survive this, and Jet really would love to flip this whole place down to find them, yet he can’t. Which just makes it even worse. Since now not only are they down an agent, but they can’t do a single thing about it. Hopefully the storm subsides in the morning, but for now, it’s best for them all the retreat.

“He’s right…we shouldn’t be putting any more agents in a position that can put them in danger.” G added.

“Then, what should we do?” Dot looked at the three guys. This feeling of helplessness sinking into her, a feeling she hates.

“Well…what would Ace want us to do?…” Rookie mumbled. He just, he woke up to hear that Ace was missing and scrambled to HQ as soon as he could. He wants to find Ace, yet in this weather, this late? He didn’t even think he would be able to get this far out without freezing. He pulled himself closer to Jet, grabbing one of his flippers and letting it wrap around him. Hoping that would keep him a bit warm, as well to comfort his worries.

“…they would want us to turn back and return when the storm stops…” Jet mumbled.

The rest of the group looked at each other. Should they just go?

“Fine, tomorrow once the storm lightens up, we’ll go and search for Ace. For now, we’ll go back to bed. Everyone come back to HQ at around 8 am or earlier. The weather report says the storm will be gone by then.” Dot announced.

With a group of nods and okays, the group left. **********************************************************************Quickly enough to return in the morning. This time, not only do they have the regular group, but a few more agents and PH as well. Hoping the puffles could find something. G waddled around with Rookie, hoping that the two of them could find something that would shine a light where Ace was gone. The silence though was killing him. He just doesn’t know what to say. “So…um, I am so sorry that we woke you and Jet up last night about Ace being missing…eheh. I hope we didn’t cause too much trouble for you guys.”

“It’s fine G, we were going to find out that Ace was gone sooner or later…might as well have been then.” Rookie looked down. He hates this feeling he has. Just, one of their Waddle Squad buddies being gone. Especially finding out they went missing during that storm? “Do you think, that Ace will be alright? They know basic survival, but do you think they’ll be fine?”

“I…I don’t know Rookie. Hopefully, they’ll be fine, but with this weather, who knows.” G really wants to assure Rookie that all will be alright, heck, he even wants to tell himself that. Yet he knows that he can’t since setting high hopes will only get them hurt in the end. “If anything, Herbert could’ve gotten to…” G stopped as he saw Rookie run up ahead of him. “Rookie? Where are you going?! Rookie!” G chased him and came to a quick stop right behind the green agent. “O-oh no…”

A trail of blood led down to a river was what they found. Rookie stood in front of it in shock. Just seeing this all was too much for him. He just wants to go home, he just wants to go home and to get a call from Ace that they should hang out today, and that whatever was happening now was just a bad dream. Yet this wasn’t make believe, this was a true nightmare, one that was as true as Operation Black Out. Did Ace feel this way when he and the others went missing? It has to be, this feeling of regret and worries bottled up inside of him felt too much to hold. Yet he has to stay strong, the green agent turned to G, his face as solemn as ever. “I-I think we need PH and the others over here now…”

G nodded and got them over there, leading into an investigation throughout the river. Underwater puffles swimming through, hoping to find a body if one was deposited into there. “Did you guys find anything?” G asked as the puffles finished their investigation.

“They found something, not a body, but something alright.” PH replied to G. These types of investigations always bring down the mood of everyone, including PH. The idea of an agent going missing and might be, that, is something that no one wants to imagine. She handed G a jacket that was soaked, as well with some blood stains. “Was this theirs?”

“…” G held the jacket. They remember Ace coming in with it when they got the mission. It was theirs alright, and now they don’t have it. “Yes, this was their jacket PH. Do you think they drowned?”

“I have no idea, we found nobody, they could’ve had that slip off of them as they went who knows where, or it fell off of them as they were eaten by some sea vermin.” PH looked away. “We sent some puffles out to sniff out the area, but they lost the scent before we could find another clue G. If we were to start looking from around here, it might take us a long time.”

“So, you’re saying we should stop looking?” G looked at her in disbelief. Stop looking for one of their own? This early? That’s ridiculous! That’s, that’s. Tragic and might need to be done.

“Well…I say we try for another day or so, if anything, they could’ve been captured by Herbert if they didn’t drown. But by the looks of it…” PH looked away.

“I understand…thank you PH, I’ll contact The Director.” G waddled back, holding the jacket close to him. He just, he just can’t believe this is happening. One of his agents, gone, no trace of them at all. If Jet and Dot don’t find a clue, this investigation might have to go into missing penguins, and then, it might just become a cold case. G shuddered at the thought of that. One of his agents, one of the few that was so close with everyone on the team, just being gone? No, this isn’t happening, it isn’t real. Ace is fine! They’re smart, they can survive! G waddled to Rookie, holding the jacket towards them.

“Did they find Ace!?” Rookie looked and saw that there was nobody, living or, well, unconscious? He looked down to see Ace’s jacket. “That’s their jacket! So they must be close right?!” Rookie took it from G without hesitation, feeling how soaked it is. Going through the pockets, hoping to find something that will give them a lead.

“No, they didn’t Rookie. In fact, we might just be searching for another day or so before it goes into missing penguins.”

“But?! We can find Ace! They’re here! They have to be somewhere around here! They even, they even!” Rookie took out Ace’s phone, one that is soaked and broken They can’t even call Ace, they knew they couldn’t before, but now they know why. “G…Ace isn’t fine…are they?” Rookie looked up at G, just, feeling broken.

“Probably not…” G held up his flippers, he knows that Rookie is just, heck, they all are overwhelmed and out of it by this. Rookie hugged G, a bit too tight for the blue penguin, but with what’s going on, it doesn’t matter to him that much. G gently patted the back of the agent.

“They’re probably, probably dead or something by now, and we can’t even find them.” Tears streamed down Rookie’s face. He just, he just can’t believe it. Ace is really gone. He should’ve joined Ace in that mission, he should’ve talked to them before about it or something. He knew he didn’t know until now, but still, he wishes that he did.

“Hey, hey, Ace isn’t dead, they might be alive still! We just have to find them.” Jetpack noises filled the air. G looked up. Seeing Dot and Jet coming back from their search. Hopefully, they found something.

“Oh my goodness! Jet!” Rookie lets go of G as he ran over to the red penguin, latching onto him as he cried into his shoulder.

“…Did you guys find Ace?…” Jet could only ask that question. If Rookie was this upset, then there must be a reason. One that he can’t fathom to hear. “No! Even worse! We found a blood trail, and, and there is nothing else! Just their jacket with their phone! Did you guys find anything?” The green penguin looked between Jet and Dot, hoping that they found something.

“Negative Rookie. We searched everywhere in the sky, and found nothing.” Dot sighed. This is looking bleak, in fact, it seems that Ace is truly gone from their sights. Unless some miracle happens, like Herbert contacting them and announcing their newly held hostage. Yet knowing Herbert, he wouldn’t even dare to step outside in this cold, much less the snow storm that happened last night.

“So what are our orders for now?” Jet looked at Dot and G, hoping that maybe they have something to say.

“Well, we will look until tonight, or until another storm picks up and we will do another search tomorrow morning as well.” G announced.

Dot nodded. She didn’t have anything else to add. Sure, they will be doing some other missions here and there, but right now. This is their number one priority, making sure that one of their agents come back safely. Safe and sound, like they all should when they return from a mission. Dot hopes that Ace is okay. **********************************************************************Ace isn’t okay, in fact, they wish they were dead. It has been a whole day of Herbert trying to get information out of them, yet again. This time, Herbert decided to take the “torture by boredom” quite literally. Oh how much Ace hates their sassy beak sometimes.

“And that was when I discovered, I was in fact, a vegetarian. Any questions that you may have Agent?” Herbert looked down at Ace and smiled. Oh, how much fun he’s been having! To have someone to listen to your life story! Even if it does bore them to death, it’s a way for him to hope he can get some valuable information!

“Yes, I do have one question, Herbert. Can you just please put me out of my misery now? I know you hate me, but doing this? I feel like we are violating some sort of war crime.” Ace was so tired of this, just so very tired. They were just looking around all day trying to find something to break free with and found it. That object is a very sharp end of an anchor that Herbert somehow got. The only problem is that Ace has to wait until Herbert leaves the room, which he hasn’t done at all, well for an extended period of time.

“Oh! So rude of you Agent! Has anyone ever taught you some manners? Or must I tell you the story of how I learned to be an upstanding polar bear?”

“I think you would need to hear that story again as well Herbert since you slouch all the time.” They quipped up. Despite feeling half brain dead, they still got the sass.

“YOU-” Before Herbert could continue any further, a clock bell rang, signaling that it was time for Herbert to hit the hay. “Don’t think this isn’t over yet! Tomorrow Agent, I will get you to talk!”

“Mmhmm and polar bears all over the world will fly to Club Penguin to have the biggest shindig! Good night!” Ace watched as Klutzy and Herbert took their leave. Letting Ace be all alone in the small room. Ace waited for what felt like hours, they just need to make sure that Herbert is asleep and not in some in-between state that he could be easily awakened from. After that, Ace slowly propelled themselves towards the anchor. Trying to get the rope entangled to the sharp edge, hoping that it will rip the rope apart. Which it did, as well as cutting them up a little. Oh well, they’re free now at least! After being freed loose from their entrapment, Ace grabbed the rope and a grappling hook that they saw scattered about before. Tying the two together, hoping this will come in handy. As Ace waddled out of the room, they grabbed the blanket that they have been using these past few days as well. Sure, it’s too small and flimsy to really protect them from the cold, but it’s better than nothing. Ace walked into the room that Herbert was sleeping in, him laying on some cushioned chair. Well, now they can search around for any plans that Herbert was thinking of doing. As quietly as they could, Ace began looking around, not realizing a small crab that was still awake.

“Clickity click click.” Klutzy clicked. Letting their presence be known.

“Oh, um, hi Klutzy. Uhh, go back to sleep little buddy, old pal?” Ace whispered to the little crustacean. Crud, oh crud, this is bad, real bad. Without any real forethought, Ace grabbed whatever blueprints they could and ran out of the cave as fast as they could. Not realizing that one of the blueprints was on a board, making it fall off and clatter onto the floor, waking Herbert.

“What the?…” Herbert looked to see his plans were gone, and that Klutzy was clicking about how their hostage is getting away. “WHAT?! YOU FOWL THING!” Herbert jumped out of his chair and began to chase Agent outside. “COME BACK HERE YOU FOOL!” Herbert bellowed out as he ditched using his two legs, and instead began to stampede on all fours.

“Oh, crud! Oh no, oh no…” Ace panted out as they tried their best to get away from Herbert. Forgetting that typically polar bears will use all of their fours to chase their prey. Whether it was for eating or to toy with, it doesn’t matter to them, Ace is now his prey. Ace tried to weave through the trees, yet in this nightly snow storm, it was so hard to see, much less to move in. Ace stopped as they were on a ledge of some sort of cliff. Standing there dumbfounded at what to do. They couldn’t jump? Could they? It was that or Herbert will get them, and in this cold, it was hard to even think about getting lost in this weather, yet, Ace just can’t stand being captured. “Oh, you little fool, just give me my plans back and I will make sure that I won’t hurt you, much.” Herbert stood back on his two legs, panting. What he didn’t expect was for Ace to jump. “You idiot!” Herbert tried to grab Ace, but instead, all he did was swipe them on their side as they went tumbling down. Herbert looked at his claw, now red from the action he had done. He sighed as he watched the penguin tumble further away from him. He could either chase them and get lost in this cold weather, or just call it a lost and head back. He looked back at their hideout and back to where Ace probably fell down to. “Good luck Agent! Hopefully, the other Elite Penguin Fools won’t find your body frozen to death!” With that comment, he headed back. It’s out of his control now.

Ace didn’t know what possessed them to jump, but they did and now they regret it so much. Falling and falling into who knows where, as Ace’s body stopped falling, they could only just lay there for a moment. Trying to collect their thoughts with what just happened. Trying to remember what they still have after that tumble. They still have the blueprints and the blanket, yet the grappling hook was gone. As Ace tried to pull themselves up, they felt excruciating pain in their right flipper. Looking at it, Ace realized that it was broken, and goodness, now everything hurts. Have they been swiped at again by Herbert? Probably, Ace remembers seeing some red as they were falling down. Ace decided it would be best to lay down for a while, just enough of time to collect their thoughts. Yet, what if they pass out? They would be outside in this cold weather, and that isn’t good. With fear of the weather being too much, Ace got up and tried their best to keep waddling on. Whatever they have to do is to find their way home, they just can’t stay here in this weather.

“I’m such an idiot…” Ace shivered. What a fool! What an idiot! They are just going to die here and then the others are going to see what a silly and stupid penguin Ace was. No, no, they’ll be fine, just gotta keep moving. Ace stopped for a moment as they looked up to the sky, seeing that it was still night. Yet they see smoke coming up, meaning that they are close to civilization. Ace began to run towards the smoke, hoping that, someone is there to help them. What Ace didn’t realize, was that they were running straight into a river. Plummeting into the cold water, it took Ace all of their might to get out of it. Throwing themselves onto dry land, Ace felt all of their energy just being sapped away from them. Their body trembling, trying to keep themselves warm from this frigid weather. They couldn’t help but let all of the frustrations of being captured, escaping and this pain to be let out through a scream for help. Just the pain of it all was too much for them to bare. They don’t care if they will attract Herbert or whatever enemy, they would rather have someone than to be alone like this.

“Ace?! Is that you?” Dot ran towards the source of the noise. She just came out here to search for Ace, and now she heard a scream for help? Maybe it’s them! It has to be! “Oh my goodness, Ace! It really is you! Thank puffles!” She ran towards her friend who seems to be soaked to the bone. Trying to get them to lay on their back, they shouldn’t be moving or anything. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just my right flipper is broken, I just want to go inside Dot, I can stand Dot.” Ace tried to stand up by themselves, yet their body didn’t feel like cooperating, and instead, they just fell back. Thankfully, Dot was able to grab them before they fell, gently putting them on the ground.

“Ace, just relax, we’ll get some help, you shouldn’t be moving.” Dot wrapped her jacket around the penguin. How long were they even out here for? She pulled out her phone and called the others. Hopefully, they’ll come soon. “But Dot, I can, I can…” Ace felt nothing more but pure exhaustion. With this whole night of them trying to survive, and the comfort of being found. Ace just let their tired body win this, and promptly pass out. **********************************************************************“Ace, wakey wakey…” A voice called out to Ace. Giving them a good poke to the head.

“Rookie, let them rest.” Another voice scolded the other.

“Sorry Jet…” Rookie apologized.

Ace couldn’t help but open their eyes, they have already been interrupted from their sleep. As they looked around, they noticed that the others were in the room with them. Sitting around in some solemn silence. Well except Rookie, who was right in their face poking them. Rookie’s eyes went wide as they saw that Ace woke up.

“Ace! You’re awake now!” Rookie gave the penguin a big hug, yet still being careful not to hurt their broken flipper.

“Yeah, guess so…” Ace at first froze from the sudden hug but then sunk into the embrace. “…how long was I out?” They looked at the others, seeing that some of them got up from their seats.

“About a few hours, give or take. You freaked Dot out by your sudden pass out.” Jet added.

“Well, who wouldn’t be? One minute this penguin was telling me they’re fine and they can walk, the next, they weren’t responsive!” Dot waddled up to Ace and joined in on the hug. Then the others did, making it one big group hug. After a while, they all pulled apart. Just being so relieved that Ace was found.

“So what happened Ace?” G asked. Part for his own curiosity and the rest being for HQ, they are all going to be doing a lot of paperwork this week.

“Oh, well at first I found Herbert, but he saw me, so I was chased, I think I fell or something, so I got knocked out, and woke up in his lair captured.” Ace motioned to their bandaged up wound on their side. “Apparently Herbert bandaged me up and kept me as a hostage for those two days.”

“At least you weren’t outside in the cold then.” Jet added. Sure, being captured sucks, but it’s better than freezing to death.

“Yeah, better than that.” Ace continued. “Then last night I escaped, was chased again, this time though I lost Herbert, well he stopped chasing me I believe, and fell into the river that Dot was by and here we are now.”

“Why didn’t you just stay with Herbert if the weather was so bad out?” Rookie asked.

“I rather not stay in his clutches for long, as well that escaping in this weather made it easier for me to lose him.” Ace answered.

The group looked at each other and nodded in agreement. Sure, it wasn’t the most ideal escape, but it’s better than staying in Herbert’s clutches for too long.

“Also, you had some blueprints…” G held them up, now dried up from being in the river. “I’m guessing you got these from Herbert?”

“Yeah, I thought that before I left, I would do a quick search around and grab what I can.” Ace began to go under their covers, sleepiness coming back to them. “Why? Did I get something useless?”

“No, in fact, you got some of his plans that he probably would’ve used after the winter months. Good job Agent!” G smirked. Even from this whole mess, they were able to come out on top of this.

“We should probably be going…” Jet announced. Looking at the clock on the wall.

“Okay then, see you guys tomorrow at HQ then!” Ace joked as they watched the others leave.

“Good one Ace, get some rest, and we’ll try to see you tomorrow.” Dot waved goodbye.

As the door shut closed, Ace sighed. Now they are alone and safe. Ace tried to make themselves as comfortable as they could be with a broken flipper and looked outside of their hospital window. Seeing that a new storm rages on. Ace closed their eyes, finally getting some well-deserved rest from this whole ordeal that has finally ended.

#club penguin #gary the gadget guy #herbert p. bear #rookie #jet pack guy #dot the disguise gal #club penguin headcanons #jpg #agent #ace #the agent #blood mention #death mention #short fic #long response #here ya go!

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rosiebarryart · 4 years

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Splendid isolation: how I stopped time by sitting in a forest for 24 hours

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/24/wilderness-solo-splendid-isolation-stopped-time-sitting-in-a-forest-24-hours

My life seemed to be getting busier, faster: I felt constantly short of time – so I stepped outside it for a day and a night and did nothing.

By Mark O’Connell

Fri 24 Jan 2020 06.00 GMTLast modified on Tue 28 Jan 2020 09.56 GMT

It was early summer, and I was on the verge of turning 40. I found myself entertaining a recurring daydream of escaping from time. I would be hustling my son out the door to get him to school, or walking briskly to work on the day of a deadline, or castigating myself for being online when I should have been methodically and efficiently putting words on paper, and I would have this vision of myself as a character in a video game discovering a secret level. This vision was informed by the platform games I loved as a child – Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog and so on – in which the character you controlled moved across the screen from left to right through a scrolling landscape, encountering obstacles and adversaries as you progressed to the end of the level. In this daydream, I would see myself pushing against a wall or lowering myself down the yawning mouth of a pipe, and thereby discovering this secret level, this hidden chamber where I could exist for a time outside of time, where the clock was not forever running down to zero.

My relationship with time had always been characterised by a certain baleful anxiety, but as I approached the start of the decade in which I would have no choice but to think of myself as middle-aged, this anxiety intensified. I was always in the middle of some calculation or quantification with respect to time, and such thoughts were always predicated on an understanding of it as a precious and limited resource. What time was it right now? How much time was left for me to do the thing I was doing, and when would I have to stop doing it to do the next thing?

This resource being as limited as it was, should I not be doing something better with it, something more urgent or interesting or authentic? At some point in my late 30s, I recognised the paradoxical source of this anxiety: that every single thing in life took much longer than I expected it to, except for life itself, which went much faster, and would be over before I knew where I was.

Much of this had to do with being a parent. Having two young children had radically altered my relationship with the days and hours of my life. Almost every moment was accounted for in a way that it had never been before. But it was also the sheer velocity of change, the state of growth and flux in which my children existed, and the constant small adjustments that were necessary to accommodate these changes. I would realise that my son no longer mispronounced a particular word in that adorable way he once had, or that his baby sister had stopped doing that thing of nodding very seriously and emphatically when she heard a song she liked – that she was, in fact, no longer a baby at all – and that those eras had now passed for good, along with countless others that would pass unnoticed and unremembered, and I would feel sad and remorseful about not having lived more fully in those moments, not having stopped or at least slowed the flow of time. And when I felt this way, I would succumb to the daydream of the video game, the secret level, the escape from time itself.

My son turned six around then, itself a significant milestone in that he was, for the first time, at an age I myself could dimly remember being. And with this new phase of parenthood, I began to think how strange it was, given how precious those early years now seemed to me, that I spent so little time thinking about my own childhood, the lost civilisation on which my adult self now stood. The motion of the video game unfurled rightward, and I had no choice but to follow its motion towards the future, towards the completion of the game itself.

And then one day, about a week and a half before I turned 40, I found myself alone in a forest in Devon, where I discovered this secret level of my daydreams.

Here is how I did it: I came to a clearing in a forest by a riverbank in Dartmoor national park, far enough from any trail that it seemed unlikely I would encounter anyone while I was there. I gathered some loose branches and stones and arranged them in a circle of about 10 metres in diameter, and then I walked into the circle and did not leave it until the same time the following day.

The short version of this story is that nothing happened in that time: that I did nothing and witnessed nothing, experienced only the passage of the hours and minutes, and the languid dynamics of my own boredom. The long version isn’t exactly The Iliad, either, but in that version something could be said to have happened. Because by the time I walked out of that circle the following afternoon, I’d had an entirely unexpected and intensely cathartic encounter with the passage of time, and with my own mortality.

This is a practice commonly referred to as a “wilderness solo”. The basic principle is that you go out into nature, the wilder and more remote the better, and confine yourself to one very small area for a set period – a day, two days, three days, sometimes longer. During this period, you forego anything that might come between yourself and your own solitude. No phone. No books or other reading material. You don’t build a fire, because building a fire is a way to keep yourself busy, watching the dance of its flames a primitive entertainment. Most participants choose not to bring food, because when you have got nothing to do for a day and a night, the prospect of eating a sandwich can easily become an all-encompassing preoccupation, undermining the entire project of unmediated communion with nature. After that period of immersion, you step outside of your circle, and you re-enter the world.

Until fairly recently, I was not a person who had a lot of time for nature. I wished it well in all its dealings, and was glad to take its side in any quarrel with the forces arrayed against it, but my regard for it was essentially abstract, and I would just as soon have left it to its own devices. Nature was something I encountered as scenery, an experience to be consumed before getting back in the car and continuing on my way. But about the middle of 2016, amid the endlessly unfurling horrors of that year’s news, I became increasingly preoccupied with how this darkening political reality seemed to foreshadow a near future defined by a permanent state of climate emergency. And these things felt connected in some way that resisted easy definition: the speed and efficiency with which technology was gutting democracy and alienating us from the reality of human suffering, and the increasing extremity of our estrangement from the natural world. I was thinking all the time about climate change, about the future my children would be forced to live in, about what we had done and were continuing to do to the world. But at some point it dawned on me that I didn’t know the first thing about that world. What I knew was the great indoors in which I lived my life: the insides of buildings, the insides of books, the interlocking interiors of the internet and my own mind. When I talked about nature, I didn’t know what I meant. In a way that was somehow both vague and urgent, I felt that it was time to go outside.

I came across an organisation called Way of Nature UK that arranged group wilderness retreats, and I signed up for a trip. This was how, in the spring of 2017, I ended up spending a week with a group of about 20 other people in a remote wilderness reserve called Alladale in the Scottish Highlands, towards the end of which everyone went off to various locations and did a solo. How did I feel about sitting by a river for 24 hours and doing absolutely nothing, aside from looking at grass and clouds and water and so on? I felt slightly intimidated. I felt uncomfortable. I felt, above all, reflexively cynical, in the way that I was reflexively cynical about pretty much anything that felt new-agey or hippyish or otherwise overly earnest to me. But over the course of that week, and in particular the 24 hours I spent alone by the river, that brittle carapace of cynicism began to give way. What affected me most deeply about that time alone in nature was the aspect of it I had initially been most daunted by. The experience of the solo is the experience of time itself, in its rawest and most unmediated form.

When I stepped into that ad-hoc ceremonial circle in Devon last summer, it had been over a year since I had performed the ritual, and I found myself craving the solitude and immersion it provided.

Andres Roberts, Way of Nature’s co-founder, picked me up that morning outside my hotel in Bristol, near where he lives. I had got to know him pretty well on the two previous trips I had done with him, and my new enthusiasm for spending time alone in nature had been informed by his quietly ecstatic way of talking about the wilderness. As we drove south along the M5 through intermittent downpours of rain, he spoke about his work, and the ideas underpinning it. If there was a single word that encapsulated the value he was trying to incubate, that word was “slowness”. There was an extraordinary transformative power, he insisted, in the practice of sitting and doing nothing, and thereby slowing your mind and body to a meditative rhythm in nature.

One of Roberts’s major themes was the idea that our particular civilisation, at our particular time, was unusual in not having as part of its cultural repertoire some ritual whereby during periods of change or upheaval people went out alone into nature. When he talked about the practice of the wilderness solo, he talked about it in such terms – as a ritual whereby you stepped out of the flux of the world, in order to gain some perspective on the flux, and your place within it.

A word he used a lot in talking about his work, and in describing the experience and value of the nature solo, was “re-enchantment”. He was of the opinion that most people, most of the time, lived life in a state of disenchantment. What he wanted to do, above all, was to help people strip away the layers of hard rationalism that accrued around the adult mind, so that they could return to a more childlike engagement with the world. And in reaching this state, he said, this place of re-enchantment, we could come to see ourselves not as separate from and in control of nature, but as part of it.

It was harder than anticipated, finding a solo spot. We had settled on Dartmoor for its proximity to Bristol and its relatively humane weather outlook, but it was not a place with which Roberrts was particularly familiar. We followed at first a northward trail, planning to cross a footbridge into deeper forest on the far side of the river, but when we eventually found it, the gate to the footbridge was firmly padlocked.

Further along the trail we met a man out for a walk with his dog. Early 70s, bearded, wax jacketed, he wore the dog’s lead draped athwart himself shoulder to hip in the manner of a mayoral sash. Roberts asked him whether there was a bridge we could cross further on. He shook his head and courteously informed us, in a Devonshire accent as soft and mulchy as the ground beneath our feet, that we were on land privately owned by one of his neighbours, and that the more densely forested territory across the river was private, too, and that we technically required a permit to walk this trail.

We turned and strolled back with him toward the road, and as he chatted to us about the cottage he and his wife had recently renovated, and their troubles with the local conservation society who disapproved of their alterations to the property, I was struck by how easily the concept of private land ownership could be made to feel absurd. It seemed perfectly rational in towns and cities, in housing estates and apartment buildings, for people to own their little portions of the world. But here, on the flourishing banks of a torrential river, the thought that this place was the sole property of some mere person – that that person could own the deeds to a river bank or a forest – seemed deeply and disorientingly counterintuitive, in a way that threatened to undermine the whole spirit of our enterprise. It felt impossible, as I put it to Roberts after we parted company with the man, to pursue the kind of immersive experience of a place we were after when you worried you might be trespassing.

“Yes,” he said. “Although this is England. Literally half of the land in this country is owned by less than 1% of the population. A handful of aristocrats and corporations.”

He reassured me, though, that we would find a suitable place for my solo, on commonly owned land where I wouldn’t have to worry about some local squire coming along and telling me I had no business having an immersive experience with his privately owned nature.

We found another trail, running northward along the River Dart. Roberts lowered his voice to not much more than a whisper, eventually stopping talking altogether, and slowed his pace so that I was walking well ahead of him. I understood this deliberate minimisation of his own presence to mean that we had entered a kind of buffer zone between the outside world and the solo space. This was one of the great charms of how he worked; without his having seemed to do anything very specific, you were made to understand that some ritual was underway, that you were somehow in the midst of the sacred.

The point of being here is to be here. An hour or two into my time in the forest, I wrote these words in my notebook, and drew a box around them to emphasise their authority and self-sufficiency. And then I stopped writing words in my notebook altogether, because writing words is my work, and I was wary of taking an utilitarian approach to the solo. The point of being there, after all, was to be there. (The cynical reader might argue that the point of being there was to write about being there – an argument the cynical writer will, on balance, concede, if only to avoid getting bogged down in the ontological complexities of the whole relationship between experiencing things and writing about them.)

And what did I do, while I was being there, in the forest, by the river? Nothing, more or less. The first half hour or so, there was a certain amount of housekeeping to attend to. I had to find exactly the right spot: not too damp; flat enough to pitch a tent once night began to fall; sheltered from the elements, but not so sheltered as to obscure the view of the river and the far bank. I had to mark out the circle, of course. I had to gather flat stones and sticks and bits of branches, and arrange them around a beech tree I had chosen as the central feature of my location. It could, I suppose, have been an oak tree, or an elm, or some other type of lofty deciduous of which I, being no Robert MacFarlane, had no prior knowledge.

But once all that was out of the way, I had to confront that fact of having nothing to do. In theory, I should have greeted this experience with open arms. I had, in fact, been looking forward to it for weeks – to having no tasks to attend to, no places to go, no obligations to meet. Here I was with nothing to do but inhabit the spaciousness of every passing moment, to bathe at leisure in the pooled flow of time itself. In theory, it was the dream. In practice, if I could have taken out my phone and gone on Twitter I surely would have. (Thankfully, this possibility was foreclosed to me by the fact of having no mobile coverage. In any case, I’d stowed my phone in my backpack in order to stop myself violating the spirit of the wilderness solo by spending the whole time looking through photos of my children, or opening up the New Yorker app and immersing myself not in nature, but in back issues of a magazine I never had the time to read, for reasons gestured at above.)

When you’re actually in it, the reality of the solo is, at least at first, one of total boredom. I cannot stress enough how little there is to do when you have confined yourself to the inside of a small circle of stones and sticks in a forest. But it is an instructive kind of boredom, insofar as boredom is the raw and unmediated experience of time. It is considered best practice not to have a watch, and to turn off your phone and keep it somewhere in the bottom of a bag so as to avoid the temptation to constantly check how long you’ve been out and how long you have left. And as you become untethered from your accustomed orientation in time – from always knowing what time it is, how long you have to do the thing you’re doing, when you have to stop doing it to do the next thing – you begin to glimpse a new perspective on the anxiety that arises from that orientation. Because this anxiety, which amounts to a sort of cost-benefit analysis of every passing moment, is a quintessentially modern predicament.

As weirdly counterintuitive as it feels to acknowledge, human beings are not naturally predisposed to think of life in terms of seconds and hours, of how they might be optimised. The development of mechanical clocks during the middle ages and, later, the advent of widespread precision timekeeping that facilitated the industrial revolution, fundamentally changed the way in which the human animal related to the world. Time became both an abstraction and a commodity, a raw material to be bought and sold, saved or squandered.

The mass adoption of this new conception of time, abstract and removed from the organic context of nature, was central to the rise of capitalism, and to the accelerating mechanisation of life. “Beginning in the 14th century,” as the American cultural critic Neil Postman put it, “the clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded.” To sit by a river for a day and a night is to experience the reinstatement, if only temporarily, of that authority.

What did I do, sitting in that forest? I drank a lot of water, because I had brought a lot of water, and drinking it was, if only in the most basic of senses, something to do. And because I drank a lot of water, I took a great many resulting pisses around the far side of the tree, and this too presented something to do, however minor. I would occasionally treat myself to a bit of a stand, or even a little stroll around my circle, but mostly I was content to sit propped against my backpack with my legs spread before me on the soft carpet of leaves. I spent a lot of time looking at those leaves: holding them up to the light, observing the delicate webbings, the desiccated veins, crumbling them slowly between my fingers. This, I admit, was only slightly more interesting than doing nothing at all.

The tree, in time, became a central object of my attention. I can’t say how long I spent standing in front of its trunk, staring at its covering of bright green moss, its gnarled protuberances of bark, but it must have been at least an hour. The moss was leafy, and felt both delicate and spongily resilient beneath my hand, and the longer I stared at it, the more I came to feel that I was gazing downward from a great height at a forest, that the moss was a canopy of leaves and the bark the ground beneath. The surface of the tree was its own ecosystem, expansive and intricate, and when I looked closely enough I saw that there were tiny insects everywhere, spiders and other many-legged creatures, whom I imagined living out their days aware of no other world than that little vastness, that forest within a forest.

My own incapacity to give this tree a name seemed suddenly strange to me, and slightly sad. In the ordinary run of things, if I were curious enough about what kind of tree I was looking at, I would have just gone on Google, or downloaded one of those tree-recognising apps, but this option was not available to me. Then it occurred to me that there was something about the not knowing that was somehow right. Not having a human name to give the tree, a category in which to put it, made the tree more real and present to me than it otherwise would have, or so I allowed myself to believe.

At some point it came to my attention that I was no longer bored, and that I had not been bored for some time. This is not to say that I was in a state of high mental stimulation, but that the hours of inactivity had induced in me a kind of meditative stupor, whereby I was receptive to the information of the environment – to the ceaseless clamour of the river, the chattering of the birds overhead, the urgent whisperings of the leaves in the breeze, the modulations of temperature and light – but uninclined to think much about this information, or anything else. I had, I realised, become attuned to the frequencies of the forest. I had found the secret level.

This is a thing that has happened to me whenever I have been alone in nature for an extended period: there occurs, some hours in, a subtle but profound modulation in consciousness whereby I come to experience myself as part of the place I am in, as an organism among organisms. This is a state of mind in which I can watch a small spider crawl along my arm for many minutes, feeling a kind of sentimental fellowship with this busy, delicate creature, whom in the normal run of things I would not hesitate to brush off in irritation or disgust.

In these moments, I find myself thinking of the place itself as somehow conscious of my presence. To be alone in a forest, and to be thinking of the forest as somehow aware of you: I will acknowledge that this sounds like the very substance of nightmare, but, in fact, it is a strangely beautiful and quietly moving experience, and I think it must be what people mean when they talk about intuiting the presence of God.

The word that comes to mind is immanence – a term I learned as a philosophy undergraduate and which I did not remotely understand until I began to have these experiences of being alone in nature. In his 1836 essay Nature, American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson identifies precisely this sublime phenomenon. “The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister,” he writes, “is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.” It’s a phenomenon that he views as both an apprehension of the divine and a return to the child’s perception of the world. “In the woods,” he writes, “a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child.”

I am struck now by how strongly these lines of Emerson – these ideas of casting off years, of attaining the spirit of early childhood – resonate with the strangest and most unsettling and, in the end, most wonderful aspect of my experience in the woods. While I was there, I didn’t spend much time thinking about reaching 40, and whatever lay beyond. What I thought about was the distant past of my own childhood, which I spent in the countryside, in a house beside a small wood with a little stream running through it: a tamely arcadian surrounding which provided the setting for countless imagined adventures, battles and voyages. Something about sitting alone among the trees, looking at the river, put me in mind of that period of my life. The fact of having all this time now, and nothing to do with it; the slow process by which intense boredom had given way to a kind of absent-minded and playful immersion: these were things I associated with my own childhood. I remembered what Andres Roberts had said about re-enchantment, about time in nature as a means of returning to a more childlike engagement with the world.

And then for a long time I thought about my son, of how he existed in a thin space between reality and fantasy. I thought of how attached he was to his favourite toy, a small brown rabbit he carried everywhere with him, clutched in the crook of an arm, of how real and alive that rabbit was to him. This was in my mind because the previous evening, as I had unpacked at my hotel, I saw that my wife had slipped among my camping things a stuffed rabbit I myself had been deeply attached to when I was small. She had found it on a recent visit to my parents’ house, where it had been lying around for years in my childhood bedroom. That rabbit, with its floppy long limbs and its black button eyes and its faded blue dungarees, had been as real to me, as invested with surplus love, as my son’s stuffed rabbit now was to him. I thought of how soon – a year from now, or maybe less – my son’s rabbit would stop being real to him, how soon his world would lose the magic he himself had breathed into it.

And I thought with a pang of how I was always hurrying him – to get dressed, to get out the door for school, to finish his dinner, to get ready for bed – and of how heedlessly I was inflicting upon him my own anxious awareness of time as an oppressive force. How before he knew where he was, his own childhood would have receded into the past, and he too would be out of the secret level of childhood and into the laterally scrolling world of adulthood.

As the sun was going down in Dartmoor, I put up my tent and, in the dwindling light of the forest, rummaged in my backpack for my head-mounted torch. Inside the backpack, my hand encountered again the familiar softness of the stuffed rabbit. I held the toy a moment, smiled again at this touching and witty gesture of my wife’s, and then decided to take a photo of it to send to her when I had mobile coverage the following day. I propped the rabbit against the outer lining of the tent and turned away to rummage again in my bag for my phone, and when I turned back I was overcome by a shock of recognition. I was seeing the rabbit not as I had seen it a moment before, as an intriguing relic of the submerged civilisation of my childhood, but as I had seen it as a small boy.

The rabbit was entirely alive to me in that moment. It was as though all the love I had invested in this object in those days was still contained within it, within him, and the experience of its sudden animation was overwhelming. I was looking at the rabbit, and the rabbit was looking at me, and it was seeing me, and I was both myself and the child I had once been. Whatever complex of emotions I was feeling was neither sentimental nor nostalgic in character, but powerfully existential. I felt simultaneously closer to myself as a child than I had in all the years of adulthood, and yet that sudden closeness came as an experience of loss, of immeasurable distance. It was as though time had folded in on itself, and the present was touching the past. There I was, as close to 40 as made no difference, alone in a forest on a moonless night and weeping with cathartic abandon at the sight of a threadbare stuffed animal. I was mourning my childhood, and the mourning felt long overdue.

I woke early, and lay still for a time listening to water dropping from the branches and leaves onto the outer layer of my tent. I had slept more soundly than I had expected, given the hard ground beneath me and the mummifying strictures of the sleeping bag. The absolute darkness and solitude had aroused neither loneliness nor unease. I had felt strangely at home with the sounds and silences of the forest at night.

Until very recently, the idea of spending a rainy morning alone in a forest would have been a profoundly unattractive one, but I found myself relishing the prospect of these last hours. The restlessness I had experienced the previous day, in that last stretch of the solo, was entirely absent now, the question of what to do with myself for several hours having come to seem nowhere near as pressing. The idea of such a question felt, in fact, somehow absurd. I went to the edge of my circle and sat down, and looked at the river.

You would have thought that I’d have been more or less done with looking at the river by now, but in fact I was eager to get stuck into it again after the long night-time hours of not looking at the river. In terms of the diversions that were presently available to me, looking at the river was the hottest ticket in town. And so I sat there at the edge of my little circle on the riverbank and binge-watched the river. There is, it turns out, a lot going on at any one time in a river, especially if you’ve got nothing else to be looking at.

There were birds coming and going all the time, skimming low over the water and landing on the banks. There was the occasional ambiguous shape flitting on the periphery of my vision that may well have been some kind of leaping fish. I attended in particular to a bit of river directly in front of me where the water plunged low into a sort of miniature waterfall, immediately after which it appeared to run backward into itself, a phenomenon I couldn’t begin to try to account for, but for which the most likely culprit seemed to be gravity. I stared at this spectacle for so long that a kind of optical illusion began to assert itself, whereby when I glanced up at the opposite bank, the long grass and drooping ferns seemed themselves to be engaged in sympathetic movements, swirling impossibly before my eyes. It could have been the effect of hours of meditative inactivity, or it could just have been hunger, but there was something mildly trippy about the experience.

Around noon, I heard a gently insistent bird call coming from a little way upriver. I turned toward it, and saw Roberts standing not far off with his back against a tree trunk, making an owl sound with his hands cupped to his mouth. I gathered my things, and we walked in silence out of the forest, him keeping several paces behind me. This seemed both entirely deliberate and entirely natural, and its effect was to preserve a measure of my solitude as I gradually emerged from the circle, out of the secret level and back into time.

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