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raineandsky · 3 months

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#88

tw: home invasion, knife/stabbing

The superhero doesn’t get much warning that someone’s in their house. They glance into their bedroom, into the mirror propped up at the opposite end, and make eye contact with someone hiding in the shadows on the other side of the doorframe.

There’s a half-second where they both seem a little startled to see each other. Then the intruder leaps out of their hiding spot and makes a haphazard strike, their blown cover making their attack a blatant scramble.

The superhero steps back, just. A blade swings into the space they leave. They feel the waft of cold air breeze over their face, the quiet phew as it cuts the air in front of them.

“Fuck,” escapes the intruder’s lips in a breath, and the superhero has half the mind to glance at who on earth has the gall to break into their house.

A villain. No surprise there, really.

The villain makes another attempt at a stab, which the superhero deftly avoids. Thieving, maybe? The superhero ducks under a second swing, the blade sweeping over their head. But the villain wasn’t looking for anything. They were hiding. They were trying to catch the superhero unawares.

Fucking assassin.

The villain leaps for them again, finally finding their rhythm again after the surprise. The superhero dodges their blade and shoves them back. Their back bumps against the wall with a dull thump.

“Who sent you?” the superhero snaps. The villain replies with an animalistic snarl and another swipe of their knife. The superhero’s too close—the edge of the blade tears a deep crimson streak across their chest.

“None of your fuckin’ business,” the villain retorts coldly. “All you need to know is that I’m here to make sure you get what you deserve.”

Their chest burns. Their breathing is uneven. Shit. “Come on, [Villain],” the superhero says with forced nonchalance. “Humour a guy here. Who was it?”

“No one sent me,” the villain spits. “Your death is for my own gain.”

The villain leaps. The superhero’s mind is distant, thinking about the heat in their chest, and they notice entirely too late. The villain shoves them into the wall this time, the force of it bringing a bright flash of pain with it.

The superhero throws a punch. The villain sweeps out of the way like this is easy. “Your retirement will bring more joy than you could ever know,” the villain teases, already closing the space between them again. “To us, and to your own.”

Bullshit. The superhero heaves a breath that aches in their lungs. They throw a foot out in a vain kick that the villain barely even has to avoid. “You have brought that agency to its knees. The heroes won’t miss you.” A smile splits on their face, unnerving and cold in the low light. “[Hero] won’t miss you.”

The hero? The gash on the superhero’s chest is dribbling. Every breath is like lava is being poured into a crack in their heart. That doesn’t make sense. The hero loves them—everyone loves them, everyone, they do, they have to—

“Me and your little dog have gotten quite friendly recently,” the villain continues into the silence. “They tell me you’re quite the fuckin’ shitbag, [Supervillain].”

The hero. They wouldn’t. The hero, they– they love them. They wouldn’t.

“Liar,” the superhero spits like a curse.

“Yeah?” The villain brushes the knife against the superhero’s throat; a promise, a warning. “They didn’t send me, if that’s your concern. No, they asked me not to bother. I was sent by nothing but the love I feel for the person you’re destroying.”

Did the superhero not turn the heating on on their way in? It’s so cold. A hand sits numbly at their chest. One thought keeps sinking in their mind like tar —no, no, the hero loves them, of course they do, of course, they have to.

A whir of sirens pierces through the superhero like an arrow to the head. They grimace, and the villain turns to glance out the window at blurry reds and blues.

“Shit,” they say shortly. “Shit, you fucker.” They jab their blade disturbingly close to the superhero’s face. “If you survive tonight, consider me a recurring problem. I will stab you as many times as it takes to watch your hold on [Hero] loosen.”

The superhero’s emergency call is in their hand. Did they get that out? Huh. Those sirens must be the police, then.

“I have a lot more people on my side,” the superhero rasps, but when they have the mind to look up, the villain’s already gone.

Their chest is white-hot by now. They have to sit down. Each breath is scorching, short with pain. Agony has crept into their muscles; everything aches with exhaustion.

Well, a promise for a promise. If the superhero survives this, both the hero and the villain are fucking dead.

#creative writing #writblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writing community #heroes and villains #hero x villain #tw home invasion #tw knife #tw stabbing #friends i am going to die #i have to go to a works conference. on the WEEKEND #and ive been in a lil slump after the filming last week so its been nice gettin into the groove again a lil #shame its getting immediately obliterated again by work. rip #id live in a shack in the woods with nothing but a typewriter and this tumblr account if i could

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prince-liest · 8 months

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inspired by a series of convos in the 3zun server and also my own recent camping trip:

please imagine mundane modern au nieyao going camping

meng yao is like twenty-three, freshly graduated from college after having to take a gap year to take care of his ailing mother. nie mingjue is in his thirties, and knows meng yao as the responsible young man who befriended his brother and is probably one of the driving forces preventing nie huaisang from having skipped too many classes to actually earn a degree. he's not technically meng yao's boss, but he works in the same organization and he thinks it's perfectly acceptable to mosey on over to meng yao's actual boss during the interview process and give them a stellar review of what he knows of meng yao's work ethic.

the fact that meng yao eventually (read: very rapidly) gets promoted to work at nie mingjue's right hand is... probably fine. it's not too strange. in fact, they're friends! good friends! good enough friends that when nie huaisang finally puts his foot down and downright refuses to go on the nie annual camping trip, citing that he is a "real" adult now (whatever that means) and that means he doesn't have to spend a week in the woods every year getting bitten by mosquitos and hunting down the nearest wifi connection if he doesn't want to, da-ge, maybe it'd be cute for taking photos if they just went for the weekend - well, then nie mingjue retorts that he doesn't see the point in driving all the way out to yosemite for a single weekend and invites meng yao instead.

meng yao, on the other hand, is thinking: hm. he is pretty sure he has seen this porno. a week out in the woods with his hot older boss who is also his best friend's big brother. you couldn't fit more tropes into it if you tried. maybe if there were debt collectors after him and nie mingjue was a mafia boss.

(there are no debt collectors. meng yao has made certain of it. he has been very financially responsible in the aftermath of his mother's passing.)

nie mingjue is a responsible hiker and at least somewhat aware that he's taking somebody with no experience on a camping trip, largely courtesy of nie huaisang. meng yao ends up dressed mostly in nie huaisang's unused hiking clothes, packing his things in nie huaisang's unused hiking backpack, and sleeping in nie huaisang's unused sleeping bag. he looks up the price of the socks that nie mingjue handed him and then decides not to look up any more for the sake of his emotional wellbeing.

they make it to yosemite. meng yao has looked up all the things to do in yosemite valley, but for some reason they end up driving way farther north through some winding mountain roads that make him wonder if the car is just going to... tip over the side and neither of them will ever be seen again. for some reason there's a random porta-potty around one of the bends that meng yao silently stares at as they pass. it takes several hours to arrive, but there's a surprising amount of gas left over in the car for how much time the trip took.

the camp grounds are a little...

"isn't this a little crowded?" meng yao asks. "why don't we go farther into the woods?"

nie mingjue looks at him like he's the strange one. this is how meng yao learns that you cannot camp just anywhere inside of a national park. apparently it's okay, because most people are respectful of the common spaces. also, there is no shower in this specific camp. nie mingjue brought wet wipes.

these are not the ideal circumstances for fucking in the woods, but meng yao is a trooper and he understands that sometimes reality is a little more complicated than not safe for work media.

it's fine. besides, they get there pretty early in the day, all-considered. and it's spring, so it's still cool enough to go hiking at midday. a waterfall sounds pretty romantic, he thinks, watching nie mingjue work some kind of eldritch magic with tent poles while taking mental notes so that he can prove himself competent should he ever need to set up a tent again in his life.

an hour and a half later, meng yao is soaked through with sweat and half-convinced that he's developed adult-onset asthma. nie mingjue is glistening attractively. for some reason the incline of the 'easy' hike to a nearby waterfall that they're on suddenly turned into a rock climbing challenge in the last quarter mile. the worst part about going down it is knowing that he will have to go back up on the way back. there aren't that many people around, but if nie mingjue is taking him here to fuck him, then meng yao is going to simply have to throw himself into the river rapids and drown. it would be a kinder form of death.

they get to the waterfall. it is spring, so the river is flowing so strongly with icemelt that it's too dangerous to truly swim. meng yao considers at least dipping in, but when he puts his feet in, the water is so cold that he decides that he likes having physical sensation above his ankles, thank you. nie mingjue smiles proudly at him and tells him that nie huaisang usually complains up a storm by this point and that he loves his brother but it's nice to be with a more appreciative partner. something in meng yao's chest squeezes a little bit.

it gets a little tighter when he realizes that he's finished all of his water and nie mingjue crouches down to show him how to use the iodine water tablets on the river water. they make the water taste strange, but meng yao is mostly distracted by the fact that nie mingjue's mouth was just on the lip of the water bottle that he's about to drink from.

he drinks, tilting his head back. his hands are shaky with exhaustion and some of the water spills. it's cool on his chin and throat and he doesn't bother brushing it away - he's so sweaty that it's probably impossible to discern what's sweat and what's water anyway. when he opens his eyes again, nie mingjue is watching him.

they hike back. by the time they arrive at camp, meng yao's legs have entirely turned into jelly and nie mingjue takes pity on him, sitting him down in a camping chair with a beer and going off to pick up dry wood ("why would I buy firewood when deadwood is free?"). he teaches meng yao how to start a campfire, stacking small twigs in increasingly larger sizes until there's enough kindling to set the big logs ablaze. meng yao finds himself shivering in the dark, pressed up against nie mingjue's side and leaning towards the flames. funny, how he thought he would never feel cooled down again just an hour ago. his face burns, and his back is only cold until nie mingjue offers him a blanket.

they absolutely do not fuck that night, nor any other night. but meng yao has fun: he hasn't felt so free to learn and mess up and explore since he was a kid, and the absolute newfound freedom that he experiences when he once asks if they could go look at something off a path and nie mingjue says yes - says, in fact, that the whole point of going off into the woods like this is being able to do and see whatever you want, as long as it's within legal boundaries - means meng yao basically forgets his initial plan entirely.

they nearly get lost on their next hike, missing a turn in the established path and only turning around when they reach what could best be described as a ravine. there are more waterfalls - meng yao didn't know there were this many waterfalls anywhere in the world. they move campgrounds a few times, too. apparently it's quite difficult to get seven straight days booked in a yosemite campground. meng yao sets up the tent the second time. some of the campgrounds have showers, wooden buildings with cool water and moths fluttering around the lights. the most delicious meal meng yao swears he's ever eaten is the cheese-filled sausages nie mingjue roasts over a campfire, combined with cup noodles that they cook using water from the same camping stove tea kettle they use for their tea in the mornings.

eventually, it is time to go home. meng yao hasn't washed his hair in two days and doesn't remember the last time he heard the ping of his phone demanding that he put out yet another fire at work. he'd been asked to keep his phone on and check his email when he can during his vacation, but most of the places they've been don't actually have service.

they drive back through the same mountains as before. the porta potty is still there. meng yao actually points out its strangeness this time, and nie mingjue laughs. meng yao smiles. he's been smiling a lot during this trip. he feels vaguely like a new person. it's fresh air and endorphins, nie mingjue says. good for the soul. meng yao is pretty sure it's nie witchcraft, too.

(or maybe it's endorphins. he certainly gets a hot flood of those when, dropping off meng yao at his doorstep, nie mingjue finally hesitates - and steps close, mumbling, "didn't wanna make you uncomfortable while you were trapped in the woods with me, but..." before kissing him. his hands are so big on meng yao's hips.)

(they do fuck that night. but not before meng yao drags both of them into his shower and scrubs himself from top to bottom. yosemite was great, but he has standards.)

#mdzs #the untamed #nieyao #nie mingjue #meng yao #jin guangyao #my writing #long post #disclaimer: I love camping. i am nie mingjue in this scenario. LMFAO #my last birthday I literally fucked off into the woods on my own for a weekend with my own and it was glorious #I still don't know what that porta potty was doing in the middle of the barren mountainside but whatever it was appreciated #also ik my is normally more of a planner but please imagine in this situation he trusted nmj to have it all taken care of #this turned out mostly kinda sweet camping vibes #and also cured my writing bug so I am satisfied #storytelling post

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