don't you forget about me (part six)
(part one)(part two)(part three)(part four)(part five)
Steve allows himself a brief mental breakdown in the shower when he gets home. He lets the water mix with his tears as he curls his arms around himself and wishes with everything he is that they were Eddie’s. There’s nothing he wouldn’t give right now just to be held by him again, just to feel Eddie’s arms around him one more time. All it took was a tiny kiss on the back of his hand for Steve’s skin to remember just how much it missed that feeling. Now Steve’s entire body craves Eddie’s touch, and he shakes in its absence like an addict in withdrawal.
Then he puts himself back together, gets dressed and styles his hair and heads off to work.
They’d defeated Vecna before he could split the world into pieces or whatever his diabolical plan had been. So while Steve’s whole world may have been torn apart, while Steve’s whole world lays bruised and bandaged and amnesic in a hospital bed, the rest of the world carries on none the wiser. The rest of the world still rents VHS tapes and has movie nights and date nights and no fucking clue that they were seconds away from being dragged down into a hell dimension a couple weeks ago, so Family Video is still open for them. Fuck that.
“You’ve gotta handle the customers today because if someone starts asking me stupid questions I can’t promise I won’t snap at them,” Steve tells Robin as he drives them to their shift.
“Aw, but it’s so funny when you snap at them,” Robin quips.
“Robin.” He gives her his best I’m so fucking serious look.
Her humor dries up immediately and she nods solemnly. “Alright, yeah. I got it.”
Steve sighs, pulling into the parking lot. “Thank you.”
He busies himself with cataloging and reshelving and rewinding returns while Robin takes over the customer service part of the job. It’s mindless - mind-numbing - the monotony of the tasks exactly what Steve needs to dull out the thoughts in his brain and distract himself from the way the back of his hand still tingles from Eddie’s kiss.
When the afternoon rush dies down after a few hours and the store is all but empty, Robin sidles up next to him where he’s putting away a stack of fantasy films. “Hey.”
Her voice cuts through his focus and nearly startles Steve out of his skin. “Jesus! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“Sorry.” She grabs half the stack of tapes and starts helping him shelve. “Just wanted to check in with you, we haven’t gotten much of a chance to talk today. How are things going with Eddie?”
“It’s fine. He’s fine,” Steve grumbles, glaring down at the tape in his hands. It’s got a dragon on the cover. He thinks Eddie would probably like it. “He still doesn’t remember me, but he’s starting to see me as a friend now at least, so.” Steve shoves the movie into its spot on the shelf. “That’s something, right?”
Robin raises her eyebrows at the sharp bitterness in his tone and how forcefully he put the tape away. “Okay. Yeah. So I see we’re in the anger stage of grief now,” she comments.
Steve scoffs. If this is a stage of grief, he thinks he’s been going through them in the wrong order, or maybe all at once - a neverending ebb and flow of denial and anger and depression all swirled together into one fucked up cocktail of grief. “I’m not angry,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m just tired- emotionally burnt out, I don’t know. I just miss him and it’s not fair and I’m so fucking sick of feeling like this.”
“Yeah, that’s anger, Steve,” Robin says, infuriatingly blunt. She slides the last tape in her stack into its place and then leans against the shelf. “Did something else happen to set this off, or are you just generally overwhelmed?”
Steve sags against the shelf beside her. “Both. I don’t know. It’s stupid, it’s so fucking stupid. He just- he kissed my hand this morning, that’s it, and it wrecked me.”
“He what?” Robin questions, curiosity widening her eyes.
“He kissed my hand,” Steve repeats. He sighs and adds context, gives her a full recount of the events of that morning.
“Oh my god?!” Robin practically squawks as she backhands Steve’s arm, which is definitely not the comforting words or touch he needs from her right now.
“Ow!” he yelps, rubbing his arm. “What the hell was that for?”
“Dude. He was flirting with you,” she tells him, eyes even wider now like she’s trying to explain to him something obvious.
“What? No.” Steve shakes his head, looking at her like she’s crazy. “He definitely wasn’t.”
“Ughhh,” Robin lets out a long, dramatic groan, dragging her hands down her cheeks and pulling down her eyes. “I cannot do this with you two again. He totally was.” She drops her hands from her face so she can use them to illustrate her point as she starts to lists off, “First of all, he literally called you daddy-”
“As a joke,” Steve interrupts to protest.
“Yeah, a flirtatious one,” Robin retorts. She continues, “Then he said you have a magic touch, and then his heart literally started racing for no reason-”
“Because I was stressing him out!”
“Only after his heart rate went up in the first place, which, as I was saying, was for no reason other than the fact that you were smiling at him and holding his hand-”
“That literally doesn’t-”
“And then, he kissed your hand - pressed his lips to your skin - and told you that you were his good luck charm,” Robin finishes, looking smug like she’s said something novel and not just completely reiterated exactly what Steve had just told her only with more emphasis.
He sighs wearily. “Your point?”
“He likes you, dingus,” she says, whacking his arm again. “Don’t you get it? His mind may not remember still, but his heart is starting to.”
Steve doesn’t know what to do with that. A lump rises in his throat, a rush of jumbled emotions chafing against his already frayed edges. “Don’t say that. You don’t know that.”
“I think you should tell him what you were to each other,” Robin suggests.
“Right, yeah, okay, sure,” Steve scoffs, somewhere between sarcastic and hysterical. “And while we’re at it, I think you should tell Vickie that you like her. Because telling people things like that is so easy, isn’t it?”
Robin gives him a withering stare. “That is not the same thing at all, and you know it.”
“No, yeah, you’re right,” he agrees. “Because I know Eddie, and he would not take that news well. He already gets a little weird whenever I seem to know too much about him - if I tell him I know him biblically too-”
“Ew, don’t tell him like that!”
“Doesn’t matter if I tell him like that; I say we’ve been together for 9 months, he’s going to assume we’ve-”
“God, okay, I get it!”
“See? It would freak him out,” Steve concludes, crossing his arms. “Even if he does…like me again or whatever, he definitely wouldn’t anymore and it would just generally make him uncomfortable. So I can’t tell him. I just have to keep waiting for him to remember on his own, even though it’s fucking killing me,” he says, his voice harsh as he tries to keep it from breaking. “It’s what’s best for Eddie.”
“Steve-” Robin starts, frowning like she’s only just beginning to realize she may have pushed him too far, but whatever it is she was going to say is cut off by the ringing of the bell that announces the front door being open.
“Customers.” Steve points his chin towards the couple who just walked in, a bitter jealousy boiling in his stomach as he watches them walk hand in hand towards the romance aisle. It’s not fucking fair. He shoves himself away from the shelves and mutters, “I’m taking my break.”
He stalks to the breakroom, closes the door, and sinks to the floor with his back against it. The tears in his eyes feel like they’re made of acid, like they would carve tracks into his skin if they were to spill down his cheeks. He wraps his arms around himself again. The thoughts in his head are made of acid too, bitter and burning and cursing everyone who gets to enjoy their lover's touch while he suffers without his.
Steve’s brain feels corroded, corrupted. “He likes you,” Robin’s words echo there too, “his mind may not remember still, but his heart is starting to.” Would Eddie touch him now if he asked? Would he trace his fingers across Steve’s skin, kiss more than just the back of his hand? Steve digs his own fingers into his sides. He feels gross, he feels rotten. It wouldn’t be right to ask that of Eddie without him knowing the truth, to take advantage of him like that. It wouldn’t be the same, anyways. The superficial touch of a boy with the beginnings of a crush is not the tender lover’s caress that Steve craves.
That is if Robin is even right about Eddie redeveloping feelings. Which she probably isn’t.
Steve’s just being stupid and selfish again. He wants to remove his brain from his skull so he can stop thinking, tear his heart from his chest so he can stop feeling; both so burned and decayed he thinks if he held them in his hands they would dissolve and crumble to dust and ash and sludge between his fingers.
Fifteen minutes pass, and Steve forces himself to be fine. He peels himself off the breakroom floor and returns to work, continues the tedious tasks that he hopes will numb him out again.
Robin catches his eye from across the room where she’s sorting a customer’s cash at the register. I’m sorry, her expression says, I didn’t mean to make you upset.
Steve gives a tiny shake of his head and a small smile. It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault, his own expression reassures her. You meant well. I’m not mad at you.
They don’t talk about Eddie again that day. The next time there’s a lull in customers and they’re able to chat again, Steve tells Robin he honestly just needs a distraction right now, and he lets her ramble on about Vickie and band and school and her impending graduation and the movie she watched last night and whatever other random thoughts are bouncing around that hyperactive head of hers. Her voice fills in the cracks in Steve’s brain, keeps it from falling apart completely. She’s always been good at that, and he’s grateful for it.
Then he drops Robin off after work and he drives away alone in silence because all the songs on the radio are love songs, and he drives back to the hospital - back to the source of his grief again and again like some sort of fucking masochist - because Eddie needs him. Because Steve loves him.
~
Eddie cannot help the way his face all but beams the second Steve walks back into his room that evening. “There you are, Stevie! How was work?”
Steve returns the smile, genuine, but there’s a tiredness to it. “It was alright. Bit boring, really, uneventful. How are you doing?”
“I’m good,” Eddie says, adding with a jaunty grin, “All the better now that you’re back.”
It comes out a bit more flirtatious than he intended, but thankfully Steve just laughs it off. “Alright, smoothtalker,” he scoffs through a chuckle as he takes his usual seat by the bed. “It’s nice to see you again too.”
“Oh, the actual doctor came in to talk to me today. Good news, don’t worry,” Eddie tells him, the last bit tacked on quickly before that concerned crease can appear between Steve’s brows. “She says I’m healing up nicely, and I might be able to be discharged soon. A few more days’ observation and then they're gonna see how well I can actually move since, you know, the bats chewed through half the muscles in one of my legs. But, yeah, I could be out of here by the end of next week.”
“That’s great, Eddie!” Steve brightens.
“Yeah.” Eddie smiles. “I can’t wait to be somewhere familiar, feel normal again. Or, well,” he amends, smile falling a little as he realizes, “as normal as I can feel given that I’ll probably be walking with a limp for the rest of my life and be covered in nasty scars all over.”
A strange expression crosses Steve’s face then, something happy and sad and sympathetic all at once, and his voice is soft as he says, “We’ll match.”
Eddie blinks at him. “What?”
“The scars,” Steve clarifies. “The bats got me too, you know. I was lucky, it wasn’t as bad for me as it was for you, but, uh- yeah, we’ll match. See?” He stands and pulls his shirt up a bit.
Eddie’s heart rate immediately kicks up again, blood growing warm, as his eyes snap to Steve’s stomach, to skin and muscle and body hair and- oh. Two giant, jagged red scabs cover Steve’s sides, the edges fading into skin bumpy and pink and white with the beginnings of scarring. The bite on Eddie’s own side twinges in sympathy. “That’s-” He swallows back the word hot, and breathes out instead, “Holy shit.” Without really thinking, he finds himself reaching out to skim his fingers over the ridges of Steve’s scars.
Steve gasps - full body shudders - at the touch, and Eddie instantly pulls his hand back, afraid he’s hurt him. “Sorry,” he mutters.
“No, it’s fine,” Steve manages, though it sounds a bit shaky. “You didn’t hurt me, I just- I wasn’t expecting it.”
Eddie tentatively starts to reach back out; Steve nods. He slowly traces the outline of the wound again, every uneven edge, feeling the evidence of hurt and the evidence of healing and the ripple of each breath Steve takes - breaths that echo in the quiet that falls between them. Eddie doesn’t realize just how intimate this silence has become as he runs his hands across Steve’s skin, until he glances up to find Steve just…watching him. It’s impossible to tell exactly what emotion is behind his eyes, but it’s intense and it’s devastating, and Eddie suddenly feels like he can’t breathe.
“Uh-” A nervous laugh stutters out of him. He rescinds his touch. “Twin scars, huh?” he remarks, cracking a crooked smile and attempting to change this strange, suffocating energy with a joke. “Hell of a matching tattoo. Next time let’s just exchange friendship bracelets like normal people do, yeah?”
Steve huffs, a short burst of laughter that escapes from his chest like it’s been punched out of him. “Since when have you ever done anything like a normal person?” he teases in return as he pulls his shirt back down.
Just like that, blown away by Steve’s playful smile, the weird tension lifts. Eddie grins back. “Alright, fair point.” He adds, “Those are gonna be some pretty metal scars, Stevie.”
“Not as metal as yours,” Steve says warmly, settling back in his chair and kicking one leg over the other. “You’re the one that literally survived death, Ed. It doesn’t get any more metal than that.”
“Now who’s the smoothtalker?” Eddie smirks, and he hopes he isn’t blushing. Steve Harrington calling him metal with so much pride and affection in his voice is doing numbers on his heart. Curse this stupid fucking crush.
Steve eyes divert briefly to the heart monitor, which has not once calmed down since the second he’d lifted up his shirt, and Eddie is so sure that he knows then, that he’s finally made the connection between what’s got Eddie’s heart racing, but he doesn’t say anything, just laughs it off again, smiling like everything’s completely normal as he looks back at Eddie and rolls his eyes and mutters in return, “Shut up.”
“Make me,” Eddie mumbles, not quick enough to bite back the words before they fall from his mouth, only managing to lower his voice enough that maybe Steve didn’t hear him.
“What?”
“TV?” Eddie grabs the remote, pretends like that’s what he’d said in the first place. Real smooth.
“Oh, sure.” Steve shrugs. If he noticed Eddie’s slip, he gives no indication of it.
Eddie turns on the TV and they spend the next hour or so laughing and making fun of the bad acting on the show that’s playing. Easy, normal, platonic. Eddie’s heart rate stabilizes, remaining even so long as he doesn’t look too long at Steve’s smile.
When sleep starts lapping at Eddie’s consciousness, he doesn’t fear it anymore. Silently, he holds out his hand, and Steve takes it, wrapping him in the warmth and protection that allows Eddie to let himself drift off undaunted.
And in his dreams his hands skate across Steve’s skin again.
(part seven)
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Fluent Freshman - Part 24
PREVIOUS
“What do you MEAN Smithy is in the hospital with a stab wound to his stomach?!” Nicky’s own voice is agony for his hangover but honestly, how the fuck else was he supposed to respond when he had asked Andrew where FF was and gotten that as a response.
“Calm down.” Andrew says and he looks tired, looks stressed, and maybe even just…a touch nervous?
Nicky isn’t as good as Neil at reading Andrew Minyard. He doesn’t think anyone will ever be as fluent in the language of Andrew Minyard as Neil Josten but Nicky has picked up some key phrases.
He can see when he’s making a joke that is a step too far. He can see when his cousin wants to kiss Neil but is holding back. He can see when his cousin is stressed.
He can see a guilty curve to Andrew’s spine.
“Andrew, answer me honestly, did you stab my sweet baby freshman?” Nicky asks and he’s not sure if the nausea he feels anymore is from horror or from the sheer number of drinks he had put in his system the night before.
Roland usually cuts him off before he gets this level.
Roland also has a habit of pouring heavier when he’s stressed.
Roland also also tends to make complicated fruity drinks that Nicky likes when he’s stressed.
Andrew’s jaw tenses but it’s Neil who speaks up, “It was an accident. It happened during a fight.” Neil says and Nicky throws his hands up in the air.
“You got into a FIGHT with my sweet baby freshman? Sweet little Smithy? The boy who made brownies that made me feel kinda straight for a dead woman?!” Nicky exclaims and sees Andrew and Neil open their mouths to say something but, “I promised him that if he wanted I’d get him something hard that’d mess his GUTS up but this isn’t what I MEANT.” He lets himself collapse dramatically over the table.
“Nicky, shut up!” Kevin hisses from his spot on the couch.
“When the fuck did Kevin get here?!” Because seriously, how fucked up was Nicky last night that he doesn’t remember Kevin coming on this Columbia trip? Where’d he sit? He couldn’t really remember coming over after Thanksgiving. Had Andrew put Kevin in the trunk? Had Andrew put Nicky in the trunk?
“He came with Wymack.” Neil cut in before Nicky started testing reality. “Wymack is at the hospital since he’s…uh…he’s the…”
“Medical Power of Attorney” Andrew answers.
“Yes! Thank you, the Medical power of attorney for Smith. He needed surgery and Wymack wanted to be nearby in case he had to make any pressing decisions.” Neil explains and yeah that tracks, he knows a little bit about FF’s family and knows that aside from his grandma on his dad’s side the rest can go take a long walk off a short volcano observation platform
“Okay, that explains why Kevin is here….how?! Despite all of the unwarranted advice, Kevin is not a medical professional.” Nicky says before turning to Kevin, “So Kevin, what insane Exy-related reason are you here? Don’t lie and say it’s because you want to sign the get well soon card.” He hisses.
“Fuck you!” Kevin spits, “I need to know how long Smiths is going to be out of commission and what his PT is going to look like. He was supposed to be starting during the spring season.” Kevin growls.
“There it is!” Nicky throws up his hands.
“Nicky, just calm down!” Neil pleads.
“How can I stay calm? Andrew stabbed Smithy! So not only is my favorite freshman in the hospital Andrew’s going to end up back on those god forsaken meds again!” Nicky shouts and buries his face in his hands.
“Smith isn’t going to say that.” Andrew’s voice is calm but Nicky can hear the slight edge.
“Oh yeah?” Nicky asks because he could see FF promising to never mention who stabbed him if Andrew would just spare his life. FF was going to be even MORE of a disaster when it came to his anxiety around Andrew. Nicky wouldn’t be surprised if his friend just straight up dropped out after this. His cousin is safe but he’s absolutely going to lose his friend.
“Because he’s saying Romero Malcolm stabbed him.” Andrew finishes.
Nicky sits up.
“Wait, what?” Nicky asks.
“Last night Romero Malcolm was at Eden’s.” Neil says voice even in a way that lets Nicky know that he’s trying to stay calm, “Smith recognized him, heard he wanted to grab,” Neil swallows thickly, “…grab one of my friends and saw them looking at…” Neil trails off and looks to Andrew who shakes his head, “…around for someone to grab.” Neil seems to decide and Nicky knows when something is being hidden from him but he’s more interested in the story than what Neil is hiding at the moment, “He got Romero’s attention so that he wouldn’t do anything bad in Eden’s and let Roland know to call help. He went out alone into the alley but Romero didn’t follow him.” Neil explains.
“Oh thank god.” Nicky sighs.
“Because he’d alerted Jackson Plank was lying in wait to ambush him.” Neil continues.
“Oh dear god.” Nicky exclaims.
“He uh…” Neil looks to Andrew who shakes his head again, “okay we don’t know exactly HOW Smith managed to do it but he beat Jackson up pretty bad.” Neil explains.
Nicky feels his brain stop working.
He has watched FF trip over his own feet, walk into four different trees, and almost sprain his ankle walking across a flat surface. He knows FF has been watching self-defense videos and had even gotten some pointers from Matt but even Matt had told him his better bet was probably just to yell “WOW WHAT’S THAT OVER THERE?!”, point behind the attacker, and run as fast as humanly possible away from a fight.
Neil is still talking.
Nicky boots back up quickly.
“…a gun. He tackled Romero into Andrew and Andrew’s knife ended up in Smith’s stomach on accident while they were wrestling for the gun. Smith is the one who said he’s going to tell everyone who asks that it was Romero. He even said it to me.” Neil says with an awkward laugh.
“And you believed him.” Andrew says and there’s warmth in his cousin’s eyes as he looks at Neil and teases him.
“And I believed him.” Neil confirms.
“Okay, so you swear to me that you did not INTENTIONALLY stab my BFF?” Nicky asks looking at Andrew seriously.
“BFF, seriously?” Kevin asks.
“Best Freshman Friend.” Nicky answers quickly, “Don’t worry Kevin, you lose out to Matt in all regards for my Best Senior Friend.” He says.
Kevin just flips him off but Nicky turns his attention back to Andrew, “Andrew, I need to hear it.” He says .
“I did not intentionally stab Smith.” Andrew confirms.
Nicky lets the horrified nausea leave him with only his hangover nausea.
“Okay, we can work with that.” Nicky leans back. “Have you heard from that Agent?” he asks looking at Neil.
Neil nods but then looks nervous and shoots a look towards Kevin, “The FBI is sending Browning and a field office agent to talk with us but…Ichirou also contacted me.” He says and Nicky watches as Kevin perks up.
“He did?!” Kevin squawks looking around like he expected the head of the Moriyama family to appear from the shadows.
“He wants to make sure we do our part to keep the Moriyama name out of this. He is going to deal with Romero and Jackson himself.” Neil says looking nervous.
Nicky clenches his eyes shut, “Well you’re not going to mention them right?” he hears Kevin ask.
“Of course not Kevin.” Nicky hears Andrew hiss.
“Good.” Kevin says.
There’s silence in the wake of Neil’s statement.
Nicky takes a deep breath and wishes his head was a little less agonizing. “Why aren’t we at the hospital to see Smithy?” he asks because he has nothing he can do about Ichirou so he may as well put it out of his mind.
There is some grumbling.
“Wymack said that he’ll just make us sit in the waiting room without any updates.” Neil says. “We’re picking up Smith’s grandma from the airport and she’s our ticket to getting an actual update beyond ‘not dead yet’ from Wymack.” He adds.
“What, you really can’t get updates without Wymack?” Nicky asks.
Andrew looks at Nicky and Nicky can’t read a single thing his cousin is thinking.
“What’s Smith’s first name Nicky.” Andrew asks.
“Oh God fucking Dammit.” Nicky’s head hurts too bad for this.
MASTERPOST FOR ALL PARTS OF FLUENT FRESHMAN AU
NEXT
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Blood & Snow
Pt. I
Directory: {Pt. II} {Pt. III} {Pt. IV} {Pt. V} {Pt. VI} {Pt. VII} {AO3}
Welcome to my @hermithorrorweek fic! I spent a while trying to figure out seven different fic concepts based on the prompt, and kept coming up blank, up until I decided to combine them all and write a single fic, with each prompt being the theme for a different chapter. Blood & Snow is the result, and at the time of posting it is not quite complete, but I'm excited to share it with you nonetheless. I'm hoping to post a chapter once per day, but later chapters may be delayed depending on how long it takes me to get them written.
Some of this builds off concepts I played with in some of my earlier Decked Out 2 ficlets, which you can find in my writing tag.
TWs for this chapter include: non-consensual body modification*, unreality*, panic attacks
I. GAME MECHANICS
Game design is simple, really.
Well, no, it’s difficult—but the principles behind it are simple. Make it fun. Make it challenging. Make it rewarding.
Decked Out 2 is a game.
To be more precise, it’s a long-running, deck-building, dungeon-crawling game. It’s competitive. It has rewards—bragging rights, for one. Trophies, for another. If you win, you can get crowns, and buy things to make you more powerful, to make the game more fun. You get frost embers, which are used to build the deck, and—
Clank is Decked Out’s central mechanic. Trigger a shrieker, generate clank. Easy as that. Taking your artefact will also generate clank, because it angers the spirits of the dungeon. That’s another important thing about game design: atmosphere. Design. Having something that feels cohesive. So—no, max clank isn’t quite as dangerous as it should be, but very few mobs would work to replace the vex, because, well, they’re not the spirits of the dungeon, and—
Hazard is generated every thirty-seven seconds, roughly. It used to be thirty, but that lined up with card draws, and the sound cues were hard to keep track of. So. Hazard is generated every thirty-seven seconds, roughly. Hazard makes the dungeon more dangerous to traverse, by closing doors, raising pathways, and otherwise making certain routes more dangerous or downright impossible to cross. People underestimate hazard at first, but quickly find out that hazard kills. When clank maxes out, that turns into hazard too, because max clank wasn’t dangerous enough by itself, because the vexes aren’t doing their damn jobs—
There were two older systems that got replaced. Not a lot of people know that. Focus could be built up, would synergise with other cards, but it was just—it wasn’t working. It got reworked. No one would miss it. Delve was a difficulty setting, but it was dumb, just press a button to choose your difficulty, that works way better, and—
Game design is simple, really.
Decked Out is not a game.
Had it ever been a game? In its first iteration, back in season seven, had it hungered the way it does now? Had it slept, slumbering beneath the earth, soaking in blood that would slowly, slowly bring it to life? When the idea had wormed its way into Tango’s head, a sequel—had that been his own thought? Does it matter if it was?
He’d certainly thought it was. Began drafting up plans, re-evaluating what he’d done in the past and putting better spins on them. Decked Out 2 would be huge, would be the biggest project he’d ever worked on, but it wouldn’t take that long. Surely.
…Thirteen months later, Decked Out 2 opened its doors.
Thirteen months. It had started as a hole, as many things do. A hole, a build, a plan, a citadel—Tango had thrown himself into it like he would with any huge project. And at first it had been—it had been a project. A build, a game. A giant hole filled with promise. A castle built in a week. Just Hermitcraft things. The usual.
When had it started? When he’d dug, and dug, for hours and hours upon end? When he’d carved jagged-looking scars into the landscape and dragged the citadel up from them? When he’d started building level one? When he’d begun assembling the redstone? When the ravagers and wardens began to roam its halls? When did Decked Out come alive?
…Had it always been alive?
Okay, better question: when did—
A frozen shard is placed into the barrel. The door lights up, sounds play. The door opens. The hermit—Joe?—begins to take off their armour and items and set up the game. A difficulty button is pressed. A shulker is placed into its slot. The cards begin to filter through the system. A minecart ride, and a pressure plate—
Decked Out turns on.
The Dungeon watches carefully, hungrily. A shrieker triggers. A hazard door closes. The game is running, the game is alive, the game is always alive—
The Dungeon Master floats, untethered, bodiless, watching, speaking, unheard, unseen. His body stands in the dark, empty, eyes sightless and lungs unbreathing. Why would he need to breathe? Dungeons don’t need to breathe, after all. Games don’t need to breathe. And Decked Out isn’t a game, not really, but it still works on principles of game design, and none of those principles require the game to breathe.
So the Dungeon watches, and the Dungeon Master watches, and Joe runs straight into the blood-stained horns of a ravager, and—
And—
Tango tries to blink. To breathe. A hazard door slams open and closed. The wires are crossed, that’s not—he needs to go—an attempt to step forward dispenses a stack of frost embers into the dungeon. They’re not supposed to do that. That’s a bug, he needs to fix—
He needs his hands—
Stone walls aren’t fingers, but they flex all the same, groaning under the strain—
There’s an itching in his legs. Skulk creeps up the walls. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t—
It’s dark. A warden sniffs. A shrieker howls. Stone becomes sinew becomes skulk becomes shadow becomes smoke becomes a soul. The Dungeon Master wrenches open his sightless eyes, and the Dungeon sees—
(Buildings aren’t meant to have panic attacks. Neither are dungeons. Nor games. But Decked Out is not a game, never really has been, and Tango—)
Joe and Hypno stare in bafflement at the flickering availability metre outside of the dungeon. “Tango, fix your game!” Hypno cries, and—
Ha.
Here’s a better question: when did Tango become Decked Out?
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Okay, this fic comes from a shared idea with @just-sp-in-inginthevoid (tbh I can't remember how we get there right now, but I remember it was fun).
The point was "What could have happened if everyone knew that Sanzu was Mikey's childhood friend, since Kisaki would probably try to kill him too in that case."
But we all know that trying to kill Sanzu is not a good idea, because he has a katana and doesn't hesitate to kill people for Mikey, so... Jokes on you, Kisaki, the Uno reverse fic was born! (each one of us is going to make our own version of it, someday, at some point and without pressures. I'm sure theirs will be great, so if you like the idea, check it once it's done💜)
I swear at the beginning the idea was funny in my head, because Sanzu's katana always makes me laugh for some weird reason. But then I started to think about in what moment would make sense for Kisaki to try this move and... After Valhalla. So Baji is dead and this is not funny at all because Sanzu is going to be broken (I needed him to be unhinged, I'm so sorry >.< )
(link to ao3, in case someone prefers to read it there)
Look at how my tears ricochet.
(Introduction)
Warnings: The introduction it's kinda hilarious because my first thought about this was to make it crack. But then... Well, Sanzu happened. So the rest of this is going to be mostly angst and hurt/no comfort. I'm trying to put a little bit of hope at the end, but not sure if it will make it. MANGA SPOILERS!
Notes: This is going to be a multichapter (yey, my first one!), stay tunned! Also, it will probably have light MuSan in the next chapters, but since the focus is not there, it's easy to pretend it's platonic. I'm thinking about alternating one chapter from Kisaki's POV, one from Sanzu's POV. But no promises there since I'm still on it.
(English is not my first language, so be nice please 🙈)
Kisaki had a plan.
It was a great plan, perfectly crafted. It took him months to figure out the correct path for becoming Mikey's right hand.
A perfectly crafted plan with a lot of steps in it.
So... How on Earth everything went so wrong and so freaking fast?
Well, actually, Kisaki was smart enought to know the answer.
Sanzu.
The quiet vice-captain who was supposed to be an easy target. Muto's shadow seemed so easy to manipulate... But no, the bastard was a wild card.
Wild was only an understandment.
Sanzu was fucking crazy.
The situation was so bizarre, that the boy with glasses even missed Hanagaki's way of ruining his plans. Of course, he couldn't avoid seeing the irony of this fact.
Kisaki hated the hero and his stupid moral compass. But right now? Oh, right now he would have done anything for having the damn crybaby in front of him. Anyone was better than a maniac with a katana.
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