#compulsions than i do. he used to say phrases before going to bed and would take 2 steps across the floor to prevent bad things from

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

#man ive never seen an eating disorder kill someone else besides a parent infecting a child but my nana is really trying #shes like 1000% orthotexic. will not eat anything not filled with vegetables or fat. and my grandpa is 87yo with a heart condition currentl #in the hospital for covid bc thry went to Christmas church and dont believe in being vaccinated and my dad is so frustrated #bc he knows his mom is not gonna give his dad hearty foods. he needs to eat like protein shakes and meat and ice cream. anything thats not #her cooking which sucks on top of being extremely healthy. except its not healthy bc they dont eat a balanced diet #so its my nanas eating disorder killing her husband and shes so fucking frustrating. im like 99% sure she has obsessive compulsive #personally disorder bc she fits to a T and has zero insight. she may have full on 0cd bc talking to my dad he has more obvious 0cd #compulsions than i do. he used to say phrases before going to bed and would take 2 steps across the floor to prevent bad things from #happening. so like im pretty sure my nana is where i get my perfectionism and 0cd. god. i wish i could express how fucked up she is #like my dad said at least he had a stable home to grow up in but like she has zero sympathy for other people. cannot look past herself. wil #not wear a mask bc she doesnt care enough abt other ppl. my dad was like: u would not have survived in that house. which is fair bc i am #barely keeping it together coming from a stable home with two sympathetic parents who i know love me #and like its sad that they're suffering the effects of buying into the fox news bullshit and its killing them #but also. genuinely. i think theyre not very good ppl. theyre the type of people who think they're better bc they're religious. white. and #thin. and theyre not better thsn anyone. their grandchildren cant stand them. well cant stand her at least. papa is just quite so its hard #to say what hes thinking. apparently he was confused last night and saying something about eating dinner on the golf course. which sounds #nicer thsn being in the hospital lol. ugh. he seems not long for this world tbh. may he pass peacefully to b with his 1st wife who died of #brain cancer at age like 20 or something. so it goes. bleh. how many funerals are intended for me in the next 5 years? hopefully none but #that seems improbable with the unspoken drain circling that seems to b going on in this family. old age and like almost 10 years of cancer #defying the stats but for how much longer? #i dunno. its just so weird to watch these things happen and not talk about it directly to the other ppl who see it #i worry that ill come off as too callose or inappropriate bc i have that tendency when something bad is happening but thats everyone else #excuse? idk i just feel like its better to talk abt things #unrelated #ed mention #i tell u this so i can say these things to someone and also bc if i were u. i would like to hear the drama #bc im nosey and i assume other r too ;-]

[mellow-em]

Bittersweet Temptations

CHAPTER 2

[special dt @bluewingedangel <3]

Your neighbors, Nathan and Elena, have been friends with your parents for years. Whether it’d be family gatherings or vacations, they were around; they were family. But when you return home from your final years of college, what will happen when you find that it isn't just them living in the house next door anymore?

_____________________________________

The afternoon sun brought in a relaxing mixture of natural light from the windows, but I wasn’t even remotely focused on it.

My right leg was bouncing hastily under the kitchen table while I prodded my salad with a fork. I tossed a particularly small carrot around in the bowl, swirling it around the sea of other vegetables.

“Are you gonna eat that or play around with it sweetie?” The sound of my mothers voice raced right through one ear and out the other one.

I only sighed in response, and leaned the side of my head on my hand, not bothering to look up at either of my parents that sat across from me.

They urged me to consistently have family meals with them today, in an attempt to dine on the experiences I had away at college. If they’d asked me to do this at any other time, I wouldn’t mind.

But my head was clouded by something else; or should I say by someone else.

Last night refused to escape my line of thinking. Even after it all went down, I went back to bed to try and fall back asleep, but it was absolutely no use.

The cunning quirk of his lips as he smirked back at me was an image that glued itself to the front of my brain. I reeled around in bed until sunrise, unable to silence my thoughts regardless of any persistence. So as of now, I was beyond exhausted.

“y/n? Are you alright?”

I jump faintly in my chair, with my fathers words pulling me away from my cogitation of the man from the pool, “I’m um.. I’m fine, sorry.”

I gave them a toothless smile as reassurance, but by the exchange of looks they both gave each other, they didn’t seem too convinced.

I shifted uncomfortably, and stabbed the carrot I was messing with. I slowly bring it towards my mouth, finally having the compulsion to take a bite.

Until the man’s wink decided to project in front of me, as if I was experiencing the whole ordeal all over again.

I abruptly dropped the fork into the bowl, resulting in a reverberating clash that not only startled my parents, but it startled me back into reality again.

“Jesus y/n, what’s gotten into you?”

I’m asking that same question, mom.

“Nothing, I uh- think I’m just tired,” the excuse flew out of my mouth in a panic, “I’m just.. I’m gonna go shower for the party later.”

I hurriedly sprung from my seat, and scurried up the stairs to the bathroom.

“Well that was smooth, dumbass,” I muttered out in the open, while slamming the door behind me.  

That son of a bitch is driving me crazy, and I haven’t even had a single conversation with him.

I take a few steps into the bathroom, placing both of my hands on opposite sides of the sink, leaning over with my body weight. With my head bowed down to the direction of my feet, I suspired deeply.

This was stupid. The brief interaction was embarrassing, yes, but with how I reacted today during lunch, especially when the party was happening later on today..

I just needed to stop thinking about what happened last night.

Act like it didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen.

____________

Turmoil carried on in the form of muffled conversations, and distinct bass from the speakers on the lower levels of the house. Even being upstairs in my room, the walls weren’t thick enough to block the noise that derived from the party.

Of course, my dad’s annual excuse backfired, and instead of the party being fairly small, it was as big as the rest of the parties we've had in the past. Although I really shouldn’t be surprised, knowing this really has carried on for 10 years at most.

As of now, I could only assume that the booze was already out for everyone, and by the end of the night, I could guarantee that almost half the people here will be drunk. It reassured me though, especially when I’ll probably end up being one of those people.

I could use a little alcohol in my system; to let myself go a little bit.

While fixing the straps of my white sundress, I looked at myself in the mirror, making sure any scraps of exhaustion were not visible on my features. Despite longing for a few hours of rest, I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to get much yet again.

With satisfaction, I back away from my vanity, and start for the door that barricaded me from the chaos.

The exchanges of laughter became much more pronounced as I slowly opened the door, and traveled down the hall. My feet carried me towards the stairs, shaking from the rumble of the speakers seeping through the walls and floors.

It was a blessing that the noise didn’t affect our neighbors enough for them to make complaints; but that was mostly because they were all here.

With each step down the flight, more of the party overtook my vision. Guests were dispersed amongst every room as far as I could see, gathering around each other in hopes of starting conversation over the music. It had been fairly crowded to say the least.

Immediately after I make it to the ground floor, I’m bombarded by my mother.

“Hey honey, Nathan and Elena are outside if you want to say hello to them!” her slightly raising her voice didn't really help much, with us being right next to the speakers. But I nodded letting her know I understood.

Turning away from her, I then faced the crowd of people in front of me. I start to weave my way through, making slight pauses along the way to thank them for coming. Most of the people around me had a slight stench of beer already, making me scrunch my nose; that smell is definitely going to linger afterwards.

Eventually making it to the door, I slide it open and step out, letting the freshness of the outside air fill my senses. I quickly noticed the difference between the outdoors and the impeded aura from inside the house. It felt like I was finally able to breathe.

After shutting the sliding door behind me, I strolled away towards the yard.

I made sure to make a slight detour to the cooler to grab myself a beer though, rashly cracking it open as soon as I got my hands on one. I take a swig while observing the guests around me.

As soon as I saw a familiar head of blonde hair a few yards away, I could feel myself smile widely. I hadn’t seen Nate or Elena in four years, and being back home now is making me realize how much I missed them.

The both of them had moved into the neighborhood about a year after my family, and that was over 15 years ago. Ever since then, they hit it off more than you could imagine.

They had all gotten so close to one another, that they’d have annual dinners together, game nights and tag along on all of our family trips. They would even bring in their ideal vacation spots up to us, which evolved into us traveling to entirely different countries most of the time.

While Elena and my mom went to any beach they could find, and my dad found the bar, Nathan really wanted to drag me along to the historical landmarks and teach me about everything he knew. It made our relationship blossom, and now I considered him my second father.

Plus, because of him I began to develop an endless love for history.

I liked it so much that I made the decision to go to college for it. Nathan’s reaction when I told him before I left was something for the cover of a photo album, and I just knew already that a million questions were going to arise when I got to them.

I stepped down from the deck, and walked towards them with my lips still curled in a smile.

As I made it closer to them though, my gaze became hazy. With my brows contorting, my confused demeanor became more visible with every footstep I made closer to Nate and Elena.

There was another man wrapped into their conversation. He was taller than the other two, especially Elena. I noticed his hair slicked back ruggedly, from above the others’ heads. Though, I still couldn’t get a proper look at his face yet.

I turned my direction slightly to discreetly see who my neighbors were conversing with. My curious nature was overriding my body.

I should have just listened to that universally cliche phrase.

Curiosity did kill the fucking cat, and I wish it would just kill me now.

From here, I had a clear view of his face. He stood there listening to Nate’s banter, with a cigarette wedged between his lips.

The lips I had been staring at the night before, along with the rest of him.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

By this point I would’ve  been repeating my annual habit of staring in place. But  fortunately, I turned on my heal sharply to try and escape.  

“Oh my god y/n?” My breath hitched while Elena's voice rang out towards me.

Well great.

I held that particular breath in as I turned my body once more to face her. My warm smile returned to my face, but a layer of embarrassment and panic riddled beneath the surface.

“Elena, it’s so good to see you,” I went over and wrapped my arms around her carefully, keeping her baby bump in mind, “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too,” she returned the hug, leaning close to my ear, mumbling, “especially when I’ve had to deal with him all alone. I swear sometimes I really question whether the pregnancy hormones are hitting me or him harder.”

I look over at Nate for a quick second, stifling a laugh while I let go of Elena. The two of us continued laughing faintly, certainly gaining the attention of Nate.

“What are you two laughing about? What’d I do this time?” Nate looked genuinely perplexed, which made it funnier.

“Oh nothing, Nate,” Elena and I looked at each other, smirking as she spoke.

Even with Elena and I’s pleasant interaction, that uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach just wouldn’t quit. I just knew he was watching my every move.

Especially, when in the corner of my eye, I watched his travel with me as I went to give Nate his hug.

“It’s good to have you back, Crash.”

Hearing the nickname took me away from my thoughts on the man behind me for a moment, and made my smile lift. 

“It’s been too long, Aku.”

We stayed this way for a few more seconds, until I feel him pat my back. I let my arms fall away from him, and return to my spot in front of them.

I then feel my head slowly turn over to the unknown one of the three; well to me he was unknown. 

“So who’s this?” I cross my arms in front of me, anticipating an answer from one of them.

But silence continued to radiate around us. 

They all stood there, exchanging looks with one another, making me raise one of my brows. While awaiting a response I decided to take a long sip of my beer, feeling the cold liquid slide down my throat. 

That is, before Nate finally spoke up, “Y/n, this is Sam,” he paused, and I could see the hesitation written all over him, “Sam Drake.”

I almost choked on my beer as soon as I heard the last name. I thought for a solid minute that my eyes were going to fall out of their sockets. 

“Is this your-” I pointed between the both of them.

“He’s my older brother.” Nate finishes my sentence, as he scratched at the back of his neck. 

My face fell even more if it was even possible.

Wait.

Nate was in his early forties to begin with, so that would make Sam…

I looked at Sam’s face intensely again, specifically at the wrinkles that were tainted across his face. Now that my brain was functioning properly, unlike last night, I noticed how many there really were. 

Great. Not only was I checking out Nathan’s BROTHER, but the man that was more than twice my age.

Fuck.

#sam drake x reader #sam drake #samuel drake x reader #samuel drake #uncharted fanfiction #sam drake fanfiction #uncharted #naughty dog

[abraxos-the-phantom]

Scum Disciple Deleted

-scenes. Here you go @vodkassassin. Unformatted and mostly unedited save for some awkward phrasing I fixed as I skimmed through it. I have a habit of merely taking out scenes rather than straight deleting them when I don't think they work out so if you see it on the fic shhh I probably just found a better place for it, but for the most part I think these are unused

TLJ + MF; Flashback/Illusion

[Log: File:Save_??-???.?.????.log]

“You know, for a man so keen on maintaining the preference of a dignified cultivator, you are fairly quick to disband such things as you see fit,” Tianlang-jun mused.

Ming Fan threw a dirty look to the former Overlord of the Demonic Realm over his bowl of beef stir fry lily bulbs. It was a specialty in this region, boasting a sweet lily bulb due to the length of time the farmers around the area spent cultivating the plant. In other words, it was delicious and a welcome change to the guilt trip galore that was eating Lou Binghe’s cooking.

Oh to eat that delicious snow congee without feeling the compulsion to throw it all back up-

Well, no use dwelling on such things.

“Most of anything could be considered vulgar when in close proximity to you,” Ming Fan quipped, taking a generous helping of the stir-fry between his chopsticks. “If you had as much sensibility as you had sensuality, I guarantee that people would be more fond of you. Unfortunately, it is too late for me.”

“Hoh? Is that so?” Tianlang-jun’s lips curled in a smirk in spite of the fact that Ming Fan had no interest looking his way, regardless of the other demon happened to do. Some odd five or so years have taught Ming Fan that there were times when the best move for dealing with the other was simply ignoring him.

Ming Fan maintained his bland tone as he briefly paused to speak, “Yes.”

Tianlang-jun shook his head, “Honestly. Are all disciples of Cang Qiong like you, or are you just the special one.”

Said disciple only gave Tianlang-jun a significant dirty look, “You’d have to actually behave yourself to get to know another disciple of Cang Qiong.”

“Eh,” the Heavenly Demon leaned back against his chair with his hands crossed behind his head. “Too boring.”

Ming Fan made a noncommitting sound as he finally ate the last of his order, letting out a satisfied sigh as he leaned back in his seat.

“Ming Fan, a question if you are so gracious enough to grant me such a thing.”

Ming Fan only raised a brow, “You may ask, whether I answer is not on the table.”

“Why?” Tianlang-jun paused as he attempted to think about his question. “Why do you maintain this relationship of ours? It’s not as if you’re on any obligation to maintain basic relations for a political reason, and you hardly ask me anything so you aren’t after my wisdom. With Lou Binghe going in and out Cang Qiong Sect, it’s not as if I can threaten your Sect any more than I could try and fight with my son.”

Ming Fan crossed his arms, humming for a moment tilting his head just enough to convey thoughtfulness he turned to look the demon lord in the eye, “If you were to be confronted with a former enemy of a war without meaning, what would you do?”

Tianlang-jun hummed, “I wouldn’t care.”

“Exactly,” Ming Fan pointed out. “Now what would you do if you discovered you were on the wrong side of that war?”

“…I still wouldn’t care.”

“Would you?” Ming Fan hummed, “Well, that’s your choice.”

“So is that all? You pity me?”

“Not quite,” Ming Fan shrugged, idly arranging the finish plate on the table. “More like my recompense of sorts.”

Tianlang-jun’s expression was unreadable as he stared, quietly adding, “You realize that I’ve killed hundreds of cultivators like you. Your age, younger- older. It didn’t matter, they were obstacles in my path and I removed them.”

“Of that I do not doubt, but these days- the line between righteous and mad is thin,” Ming Fan snorted. “I stand at the meager in-between myself. But what else can I do? I am but a mere mortal, attempting to right his wrongs.”

Ming Fan took a final sip at his tea, “Sometimes, that is all one can do without going well and truly mad.”

Tianlang-jun chuckled, “I suppose that’s true.”

The hours seemed endless after that, a moment in time felt like hundreds upon billions as the two simply- existed.

“So,” Tianlang-jun said after an eternity’s moment. “What are you doing here Little Cultivator?”

Ming Fan blinked, “Is this not one amongst our many meetings?”

The world seem to blur around him like ink amongst a pool of water. Fading into implied images as the sky and trees distorted. The sounds of the earth quieted to a hushed whisper. Ming Fan’s eyes casted around in confusion as the lively village dulled into a dead silence.

“It isn’t,” Tianlang-jun leaned back, smirking. “You’ve spent so long with me that I am now here with you- in limbo. I’m flattered Fan-er.”

Ming Fan narrowed his eyes, scowling, before looking away, “Definitely. Tianlang-jun never called me that to my face.”

Ming Fan twisted away from the…demon for some time to think.

TLJ + MF - Actual Flashback

“You look like you went a round and three more with a golem,” Tianlang-jun tsked at him.

“Are you going to lecture me about coming out while I look like I lost against said golem or are you going to sit your ass down and have some tea like we agreed?” Ming Fan snapped, wincing as he sat.

Tianlang-jun whistled wolfishly. “Why, I never took that War God to be the kinky type.”

“Don’t be so obscene,” Ming Fan rolled his eyes. “He landed me flat on my ass almost a dozen times. Of course sitting down would be a pain.”

“You know there’s this flower that-“

“No.”

“But I hurt just looking at you,” Tianlang-jun whined like a particularly annoying brat. “One tiny little adventure to look for a flower that heals bruises instantly, it’s a Lotus of a blue hue, I hear those people from the far West have been using it for some time.”

“And then Liu Qingge will have me spar against him, again, and this hellish circle will repeat itself. I am only saved by the fact that my cultivation is not as advanced as one of a Peak Lords, otherwise I would be healed by the end of the week and my pain begins anew,” Ming Fan shook his head. “I appreciate your concern, I really do, but no.”

“Aww, well since you’re being so polite about it…” Tianlang-jun sighed and sipped from the tea. “Mn- this is good. Where did you get it?”

“Shang-shishu taught me how to prepare lemon tea before the fruits go out of season, apparently there is a sweetened-cold version of this as well, but he has yet to refine the technicalities of the ingredients. I worry for him, he always seems so busy.”

“He looks like a rodent who accidentally ate a pepper, though I suppose in this case it would be a block of ice what with Mobei-jun being his lover and all.”

“I did wonder how that happened, and worried a brief time. An Ding Peak’s disciples had said that their master would occasionally come home bruised and barely able to walk, they were rearing to go to war with the Northern Demons far before everything else happened.” Ming Fan sighed, “Well, it isn’t any of my business. I’m sure they’re dealing with the situation in their own way.”

“True that, those An Ding Peak children…physically they are weak, but it is always the weaker ones that surprise you the most. Especially when angry,” Tianlang-jun smiled as he mused. “Afterall, hornets don’t seem like much at first glance. That Mobei-jun has his work cut out for him, ah, speaking of. What of those two? Surely the boy is tip-toeing these days.”

“He tends to keep to the bamboo house, and we tend to stay far away from the bamboo house, especially at night.” Ming Fan raised his hand to drink. “That is all I will say of the matter.”

Ming Fan sighed, rubbing a hand against his eyes, “I am getting far too old for this.”

“Oh please, you’re not even a century old.”

“Hm, and yet somehow I am still significantly more mature than you. Have you reached the regression stage of life Tianlang-jun? I must say, I’m rather peeved that it’s a mental deterioration rather than a physical one for you demons.”

“Hoh?” Tianlang-jun leaned forward, smirking. “Wish to test how youthful I can be Little Cultivator?”

Ming Fan raised a hand idly pointing at the silks of Tianlang-jun’s clothes, startling the heavenly demon as he wondered just what the other had found on his clothes.

Then Ming Fan flicked up, hitting the former Demon Lord up the lip and under the nose, causing Tianlang-jun to recoil, sputtering from the unjust attack. The audacity.

“I’m sure you’d at least warm the bed,” He deadpanned, sipping at his tea without a care as Tianlang-jun sputtered indignantly.

NMJ/MF - Original Re-meeting for ch 52; added here for my convenience (cus i don't wanna make another post)

“Gather everyone who can fight!” One voice called. “Sect Leader Nie is being surrounded by a pack of hell hounds! They need help.”

Ming Fan was out and running before anyone could even blink- with only Liu Qingge and Tianlang-jun holding enough time to react by following him.

-

“Shit-“ Mingjue cursed, swinging around Bàxià to hurl one attacking hound over to the side. “Meng Yao- you alright?!”

“Could use-” Meng Yao grimaced as he had to back off to avoid the snapping jaws of another hound. “Some help.”

“Reinforcements should be on the way!” Mei Lin cursed venomously under her breath. “Just where the hell did all these damned dogs come from?!”

“We’re being overrun!” Lang Fengyi yelped as he narrowly avoided claws.

“Fuck-“ Mingjue gathered his energy, willing it to fill him once more. “Get ready to run! I should be able to distract them long enough to-“

“Don’t worry about that.”

The disciples of Nie turned to find a man arrogantly walking through the field, the hounds yipping in fear and running from him, as well as another man clad in white and silver who eyed the hounds back.

Tianlang-jun stood before the disciples of Qinghe Nie with a bright smile, “Relax now, everything will be fine.”

Liu Qingge huffed, drawing his sword, “Says you. We have to make sure he’s not overworking himself remember?”

There was a distant rumbling- an ominous presence that washed over them to the point where all the hounds began to shudder and shake in fear as they too yipped around fearfully.

Descend with great speed. Swift and merciless. Run my enemies. Leave none left alive. May death greet you well.

Formation formed.

Ming Fan dropped his sword with militaristic precision, tilting all the swords generated by his power towards the ground in varying angles.

Heavenly Wrath Formation.

Tianlang-jun looked up in the surprise, “Don’t tell me that’s-“

“It is,” Liu Qingge scowled.

“Who-“ Nie Mingjue began- before all hell broke loose.

Liu Qingge’s expression was thunderous as he swept past rows of demonic hounds, tilting on hand and waiting-

Another man dropped from the sky not a second later, catching Liu Qingge’s robes and righting him before swinging his legs on the man’s waist to get around and jab another hound in the back- Tianlang-jun was swift to join the fray, allowing the shorter cultivator to move around him to get at all the lucky hounds who managed to move away from Ming Fan’s deadly aim fast enough.

While Tianlang-jun added to the deadly partnership with his own flare, it was the pair of Ming Fan and Liu Qingge that showed the obvious years of partnership between them- for the two had years of spars and night hunts to guide their blades where they need be.

Heads flew, limbs joining them as the immortals of Cang Qiong Sect and Tianlang-jun of the Heavenly Demon Line slaughtered the feared and the rowdy- leaving those of Qinghe Nie in awe.

“..Wei…” Meng Yao said, knees beginning to grow weak. “Wei Fan?!”

The man abruptly froze, glancing towards their direction before seeming to move on instinct- the War God sensing the sudden change and using his arm to propel him outward, allowing the man to fly across the air and land his sword true through the skull of the hell hound that was just about to take a chunk from Nie Mingjue’s side.

Ming Fan, not upset as he was, barked at them venomously, “Just what do you think you’re doing?! Fucking move! You’re in a battle field! Fight damn you! Are you not of Qinghe Nie?!”

“Teacher Wei!” Mei Lin cried- openly actually, crying.

“Oh for the love of-“ Ming Fan cursed. “I’ll take your crying and yelling and cursing later, lift your sabres and fight!”

“Xiao-Fan!”

Ming Fan turned, grunting as he launched his sword in the Heavenly Demon’s direction and skewering the hound. “What?!”

“Lower your blood pressure!”

Ming Fan felt his blood pressure rise out of sheer spite. “Fuck you!”

“A-Fan,” Liu Qingge growled. “You just performed one of the most powerful formations while silent. Calm down.”

“I can’t!” Ming Fan caught himself with a scowl. “But I’m not upset!”

“For the love of-“ Liu Qingge turned to Tianlang-jun. “Can you handle the rest?”

“Yeah I got it,” Tianlang-jun batted away a hound with his bare fist. “Just take care of our pissed off little horse first.”

Liu Qingge wasted no time, grabbing the now fuming Ming Fan, his nose beginning to trickle with a line of blood and generally causing the already shocked disciples of Qinghe Nie to panic.

“Hey,” Liu Qingge’s voice was soft as it was firm. “Calm down. Calm. That’s not a request.”

“I’m trying,” Ming Fan hissed. “You try doing this in the middle of battle.”

“Alright back up plan,” Liu Qingge turned to the still shocked Nie Mingjue. “You. Make yourself useful. He needs a distraction.”

“Wha-“

Liu Qingge shoved Ming Fan into Nie Mingjue, the taller man abruptly catching the man by the waist to steady him before something else caused him to loose balance.

Forgot one: Deleted Extra feat. Yang Yixuan + MF; written with it's og formatting since notes preserved my italics somehow

Cold wind swept past the ravine.

Shaking trees and rustling branches provided the background noise for the twittering creatures who lived in the back mountains. Within this quiet land was a surrounding of high elevation mountains spanning all around the mountain side.

There, Ming Fan sat quietly. Watching the creatures bellow- there were no humans for miles save for those few people within the Ancient Sect, and they were hardly just human anymore.

“So, you’ve finally decided to get off your ass.”

Ming Fan stiffened.

Yang Yixuan’s arms were cross across his breast, idly looking down from the view of Qing JIng Peak.

The landscape had changed much since Ming Fan had last come here, it was greener. With the trees far taller than when Ming Fan had last seen them, the older trees cut down by the ravages of war and time- but new ones taking their place. The silence too, was new. With no disciples Cang Qiong Mountain was a far quieter place than it had been during the height of its Sect Years. Some ascended, some peacefully settling into their next life, and some sticking around. Going to and fro the place carrying out errands and enacting a firm hand where the average Cultivator could not handle. The war had put a damper on such things, what with their stance of neutrality, bu it was no less somewhat of a sobering surprise that those of Cang Qiong Mountain had seen what was happening and judged it would be better to remain quiet.

He knew why of course, it was more practical in the long run for a mythical Sect, they were not here to force the future into their own hands- merely to counter the monsters of the yester years. Still. He wondered.

“You’re thinking so loud I could practically here it,” the former head disciple of Bai Zhan peak, the former Peak Lord himself, continued with a raised brow. “You’re normally quick to empty your mind and dump it onto others.”

Ming Fan scoffed softly, “Normal is a poor basis to use to pass judgement at the moment, even a Bai Zhan Peak buffoon like you should realize such.”

“…”

Ming Fan pursed his lip, anger simmering.

Settle.

Settle.

Settle.

“I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” He said softly, allowing his fist to slack from their death-like grip.

“You just lost your brohter,” Yang Yixuan said bluntly. “You were a raving asshole when Liu-shifu dragged you here. Pretty much spat at Luo Binghe’s feet and insulted just about everyone.”

Ming Fan restrained the urge to flinch at every word.

“I’d be more than a little troubled if you didn’t act like that after losing your brother.” Yang Yixuan continued with a shake of his head. “It’s good to know that our illustrous Ming Fan is still a human.”

“Have I not proven that time and time again?”

“Dunno,” Ming Fan turned his head, the Bai Zhan Peak’s former sole disciple’s voice turning uncharacteristically soft. “You were doing a pretty good impression of acting like an immortal before.”

#Scum Disciple's Adventures Into the Unknown World #SDAUW #BTS I guess #Are there actually behind the scenes for writing idk #I'll see if I have time to write one since I do have a lot of notes from when i planned this fic #and maybe some bits of the history referenced in SDAUW #MDZS x SVSSS Fanfic #One that is tbh really out there in terms of concept ngl lol #Scum Disciple BTS

[spacestationdaedalus]

stay with me, my darling

Jon nods. Conversation, right. "Tim said- he asked, if there was anything we wanted to tell our future selves. And the- the Gertrude tape I played for you. I was just...thinking."

"That's not a good sign." Martin replies, and it could have had humor in it, another day, another time. But now it's mostly truth.

or: reminiscing, and hope for the future during the apocalypse

thank you @entitynumber5 for this prompt!! I love it and you to bits

ao3 link here!

...

There are moments, right before the nightmares and right after them, when Martin can sleep. There has to be space to breathe, between the fear and dread. How else will you really know what you've lost, know how afraid you are? Or maybe, even now, the fears are bound by the limits of human physiology, the nature of REM sleep and dreams. It's something Jon can't Know, but even if he could. It doesn't matter.

But there is something he could Know, if he wanted to. With Martin within arms reach in the bed next to him, Knowing if he was awake would be as easy as breathing. Maybe easier, now - a reflex, poised and ready just beneath the surface of his skin, just behind his eyes that don't blink as much as they used to.

He doesn't. He owes it to Martin. That sense of normalcy, however small.

Jon takes a breath, holding the compulsion at bay, locked tight in the back of his throat. He'd already slipped up, forced more than one answer out of Martin since they fled from London. Like hell he'll do it again.

"Are you asleep?"

It's no more than a whisper, ragged and sad sounding even to Jon's own ears. But it might as well be a scream compared to the muted terror outside, the solemn creaking of the boards beneath and around them.

It's quiet for a beat, then Martin shifts. He makes a little noise of coming to awareness - the same one he'd made every morning, when there were still mornings to wake up to. Jon didn't think it was possible to feel nostalgia for something that happened so recently. But the pang, the loss of soft morning sunlight and warm blankets and clumsy, sleep-mused hair and hellos sinks deep into his stomach, and he lowercase-k knows he's wrong.

"J'n?" Oh, but his voice still has that quality to it. When he's just woken up, unguarded, a smile when his eyes find Jon. The sound eases just a bit of the awful tightness in his chest. Not much, though, because Martin doesn't smile as he blinks away the sleep from his eyes. He fumbles for his glasses as he sits up, brow furrowed. Jon can't blame him.

"Is something wrong?" Technically a question, but not phrased like one. Martin’s voice matches Jon’s for pitch, quiet and soft.

Jon looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers. His mouth is dry. He feels guilty, for waking Martin up from the only rest he can get for something so silly . But it's hard to distinguish between shades of guilt these days, carved out of his chest and curled up where his lungs should be.

He almost says nevermind, go back to sleep, but that would be worse, waking him up for nothing. And Jon is nothing if not stubborn. Words are hard, but he gets them out.

"I was- I was thinking about the tape, that I...about what Tim said."

Martin sighs. It's not annoyed, or sad. Maybe fond? Jon isn't sure - you could be sure, you could pluck every thought from his head like grapes from a vine. The thing that only watches trills at the thought, buzzing anticipation and thirst filling his skull and he digs his fingernails into his palm until it hurts, stop stop stop-

"Jon?"

"Hm?" He comes back, with the extra volume and concern Martin adds to his name. Had he really drifted that easily, that far, that quickly?

Martin takes one of his hands, unfurling the fingers that he'd clenched. His nails leave crescent moons in the skin of his palm. Martin delicately runs a finger along them as they fade, and it tickles just enough to be both pleasant and distracting. "I said, the one at your birthday? The tape?"

Jon nods. Conversation, right. "Tim said- he asked, if there was anything we wanted to tell our future selves. And the- the Gertrude tape I played for you. I was just...thinking."

"That's not a good sign." Martin replies, and it could have had humor in it, another day, another time. But now it's mostly truth. "Jon-"

Jon shifts to face him. It's not a sudden movement, but it's lightning quick compared to his syrup-thick movements of the last few so-called-days. "I know, I know it's not- it's not healthy to dwell on it, on… It's just… there's so much I would, would tell myself if I could."

"Even if we couldn't avoid all of it. Maybe it could have been easier."

"Jon…"

"Martin, please ." It's the most emotion he's been able to get out of his voice since he stopped sobbing after the statement that got them here. It hurts. It hurts and he knows it's what he deserves.

Just let me have this , he wants to say, but can't bring himself to. He leans forward instead, just barely. Not for any reason other than his head is tired , but Martin pulls him further, touch gentle but firm. He wraps his arms around him, so easily, so Jon's head is resting on his shoulder, eyelashes brushing like butterflies against the crook of his neck.

"Alright, alright. It's okay."

Martin whispers into his hair, and for all Jon can See, he can’t imagine anything that would take the comfort of it away. They stay like that for a moment, a while. There’s a lot that Jon wants to say, and even though he started the conversation he doesn’t know where to begin. Everything is tangled like overgrown weeds in his mind, like boxes of cords with no purpose that sit in jumbled piles, wrapped around the things he’s trying not to Know and the things he wants to forget and the things that hurt to remember. But then Martin breaks the silence for him.

“For one thing, I wouldn’t…" Martin seems hesitant, like he's not sure he should say what he's about to say. "I wouldn't have let Biscuit into the archives.”

Jon stops. It's quiet for a moment, in a way he forgot it could be. Martin stills next to him, anticipating.

“Wh...what?”

Marin breathes out a small chuckle, almost with a nervous edge to it. “Y’know, the dog I let in? On my first day?”

Jon is something close to comfortable against Martin's shoulder. But he can't stop himself from pulling back far enough to see his face.

"You named the dog?”

“Oh,! No, that was on his nametag. Had a phone number too, that’s - that’s how I got him back to his owner."

I love you I love you I-

That might as well have been a decade ago. Jon can’t stop the quirk of lip, however small, at the ridiculousness of it. “I never knew that.”

Martin cocks his head, hint of a wry smile playing at his lips. "Well, yeah, it’s not like I was going to bring it up to you again. You looked like you were going to fire me on sight for weeks.” His face falls, slightly. “Although, I guess you wouldn’t have been able to, even back then."

Jon sighs, heavy as it's dragged out of his lungs. “I would have, though, if I could. All of you.”

The silence is thick, but not unbreakable. So Jon does just that.

"Maybe we could have ended up at a normal office job."

"What, like a...bank, or something?"

Jon smiles, wider, even though it feels like his face forgot how. Like riding a bike, maybe. "Yes, something… dreadfully boring."

"A boring job does sound pretty appealing."

"At least, them, I wouldn't have had to tell myself to stop pushing the whole, skeptic thing." Jon can't help but recall the conversation, in the storage closet with the man in front of him and what should have been certain death waiting outside. Even that seems so much simpler, now.

Martin makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat. "Maybe I would have told myself to confront you sooner. A-about the statements, I mean. Could have had that whole-"

Martin deepens his voice in what Jon realizes is an imitation "- heart to heart thing sooner."

"I'm not sure if it would have gone over well.” Jon can't help but be honest. Old and new shame bubbles up in his throat, and he has to say something. "Martin, I'm- I'm sorry for the way I acted, back then. I was… god, I was such a prick to you. It wasn't fair, or- or right ."

Martin barely lets him finish before he's saying, "Yeah, you were pretty… prick-ish? I forgive you though. I don't really think about it much anymore, if it means anything.” He breathes out a quiet laugh. “It's kind of funny, actually. In hindsight."

Jon can't stop the look of disbelief. "Really."

Martin smiles. "I mean, yeah? And gosh , you should have heard the things I used to say to Tim and Sasha about you. It wasn't completely one sided."

That catches Jon's attention. "Oh?"

The look on Martin's face isn't quite regret, but it's close. " Any ways-"

"No no, Martin, please , I'd love to know.'' Jon is careful not to phrase it as a question. His voice is quiet, still, but coy. His curiosity is all his own and no one, nothing , else's. He revels in the feeling.

Their hands are entwined on the bed between them. Martin looks down at them as to not meet Jon's eye, but he's smiling, still. "I think I described you as a cactus with twice the spines and half the emotional capacity, once.”

Jon's laugh, soft and brittle as it is, surprises even himself.

Martin looks up at him, encouraged. "Heh- Tim got a kick out of that one."

Tim's laugh, faded like an old photograph in his mind. It hurts to remember, but it would hurt worse to forget. He wish he had that luxury for Sasha. The real Sasha, the stranger who was friends with Tim, friends with him . At least, he hoped she had been. She sounded so lovely.

But, back to Martin. "Yes, well, I can't say you're wrong about that."

Martin sucks in a breath, and Jon freezes under the possibility of upsetting him. But then.

" Oh , Jon- that’s the complete opposite of the truth."

Jon laughs, with less humor. "Martin-"

"No, no, let me finish." Martin takes one of Jon's hands, the burned one, in both of his. "You put up a great front, I'll admit it. But you care so much, even… even though things haven't been easy, or good, or… or fair. You never stopped caring, this whole time. It's obvious now, at least - at least, to me. Even if you don't always say it.”

"You care so, so much and it's - god , it's one of my favorite things about you, Jon."

Something about the way Martin says his name chisels something open in Jon's chest. And not for the first time. Being known, existing to someone else that actually wants him to. There's a reverence to it, the way Martin says it, that Jon knows he doesn't deserve. But he tries to move past that thought and let the sound warm him from the inside out.

Jon whispers Martin's name, quiet and strangled. He hopes it carries the same depth, the same love.

Martin keeps going. "And I - that's why this is so hard for you. I mean - well, of course it's hard, it's pretty fucking terrible, actually - but," Martin sighs. "I know that's why you want to blame yourself for all of this-"

Jon finds his voice, stronger. He's not sure where the sudden energy comes from, but it probably has to do with the knot that's made a home in his ribcage.

"It's not about want , Martin, it's- it's the truth. What else am I supposed to do? I ended the world -"

"Jonah fucking Magnus ended the world, Jon. Not you. He used you."

"I don't really see the difference."

The burst of energy leaves him, water spilling down a drain. This isn't the first time they've talked about this, and it probably won't be the last.

Martin sighs. "I know. But I'll keep telling you, as many times as it takes. Because it's true. And it- it hurts, seeing you like this."

Jon looks at Martin, really looks for the first time in too long. His eyes, tinged grey from his time in the Lonely, dark circles under his eyes, tight lines at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm sorry." He doesn't know what else to say, other than, "I love you."

"No, it's-" Martin shakes his head, just a bit. "I love you, too."

It's quiet for a long moment. Martin lays back down on the bed and gestures for Jon to follow him. Which is easy, for Jon to do. The bed isn't warm, but it isn't cold either, in the strange way that things are and aren't right now. But Martin is warm, Jon can feel, with their legs tangled together and foreheads touching.

Jon won't, can't sleep, but laying next to Martin still feels like rest. In a way.

"Martin." Jon doesn't know why he needs to say Martin's name. It's not like there's anyone else he could be talking to, with less than centimeters between them. But the thing he's about to say is so deeply important to him, and it feels like he needs to.

"I'm… glad," God, his vocabulary always escapes him when he has to speak out loud. Talk about his feelings. "That I got to spend time, with you. Time here."

They haven't left. The cabin still stands, doors and windows, squeaky hinges and leaky faucets intact. But it's not the same, never will be as far as Jon can tell. "The weeks that we had, before- I...I don't think I'm lying when I say it's the first time in a long time that I-"

Felt loved? Felt like a person, again?

"...was happy."

Martin smiles, but it shakes like a leaf in the wind. A tear slips from his eye, dripping slowly over the bridge of his nose.

"Me too."

Jon brushes a kiss, feather light between Martin's eyes, catching the tears and hopefully some, any tiny amount of the sorrow that lives in the lines of his face.

"I could have stayed here forever, like that. With- with you. Just…"

"Living?"

"Yes. Living."

It's not the first time Jon's treated himself to the thought, however far fetched, however foolish. A life, a normal, mundane life in the countryside. Maybe with boring jobs, but not a boring life. Not with Martin here. Not with Martin to wake up next to, to fall asleep with, to walk with to the village. Talking about nothing important but committing every detail to memory. That Martin prefers vanilla over chocolate, that he had a pet goldfish named Larry when he was seven, that he loves dandelions even though they're classified as a weed, who gets to decide what a weed is, anyway, right, Jon?

"The walk to the village is a bit much, but we could manage." Martin's voice is thick. "The shopkeeper already recognizes us."

The mention of a person outside their wooden refuge pulls knowledge unprompted from Jon's mind. He doesn't have the heart to tell Martin she's currently walking through endless identical corridors with identical doors leading nowhere. The lights above her flicker just so, and she swears she sees something out of the corner of her eye, but she turns and there's only off-white walls and beige doors and the sound of footsteps quickening in threatening cadence towards her-

Jon doesn't mean to drift again. But Martin's voice brings him back. Like it always will.

"Plus, we get to see good cows on the way, so it's worth it."

Jon pushes the thoughts away, and smiles. "I suppose you're right." After a breath, he goes on. "Less food to carry from the store if we have a garden."

"Jonathan Sims, a green thumb?"

Jon bristles at the not-quite accusation, but it doesn't quite reach his voice. Too much energy that he doesn't have. "Well, no, not yet. But I always thought it would be nice, to have a garden. I can learn."

"It would be." Martin slips into sincerity so easily. "I'm sure you would grow lovely vegetables."

"And spices, for cooking."

"Of course." Martin sighs, quiet, fond. "A man that can garden and cook, what could I possibly bring to the table?"

"Everything." Jon blurts out without thinking, and stands by it like a beach umbrella buried in the sand. "You're… you're better with your hands, than I am. Like, the door hinge you fixed when we first got here."

"That's not exactly master carpentry, Jon-"

"It doesn't need to be." Jon doesn't give him time to retort. "And your embroidery. It's- it's good, we'll hang it up on the walls and you can teach me how to do it."

Jon already learned embroidery once, technically, from his grandmother. But she had always grown impatient with his impatience, quick to scold him for fidgeting and rushing his stitches. Like it was an exam he was actively failing instead of something you do for fun. It wasn't all bad, not really, but Jon imagines relearning long-forgotten movements under Martin's hand and smile, and it makes him want to buy every spool of thread, every needle he can get his hands on.

"Of course." Martin replies. "We could put up other pictures, too. I've actually- I've, uh, always wanted to get into photography."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Not for any, real reason, I suppose. Just… seems like it would be fun."

I love you I love you I-

"That sounds like a reason to me."

They go on a bit longer, about pets ( at least one cat, and apparently a species of lizard that Martin is particularly fond of) and colors to paint the bedroom ( something bright but lively, a light blue, maybe) and mugs to buy from the second hand store ( Martin collects novelty mugs, and Jon files that away for later ). Jon knows it’s terrible of him, selfish to revel in this while the world suffers under the weight of its own choking fear.

Later, they'll talk again. A few times. Later, aching sorrow becomes burning anger and drive and they leave with the bags Martin's already packed. But for now, Jon holds Martin's face, and Martin wraps his arms around Jon's waist. Pulling him close, like a ship docked in harbor. And it feels safe.

#the magnus archives #tma #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #tma fics #my writing

[moving-blogs-dm-for-new-one]

T*cc* Toby character and story redesign :D

Toby and his family moved across the states after the accident. They were moving to West Virginia, a more rural town surrounded by forest. He didn't want to be there, but he didn't have much of a choice. Really didn't help his mood when his father basically screamed at his mother for the entire three day trip. He was slumped in the back of the car, ticcing uncontrollably, one hour to go on the drive. He winced when his father yelled at him to shut up, sighing and trying to hold his vocal tics, again. Maybe he could make it until they reached the new house.

They reached the house, and he quietly helped unload the car, gently helping his mom climb out. Sighing, he patched her up quietly later in the bathroom, and let her cry on his shoulder, ticcing quietly.

For the next two and a half weeks of summer, Toby pretty much just laid in bed. He didn't have much energy or will to do anything. He would pull out his computer and play some games, but his father broke hit before their trip even began. He pulled out his old ipod from his 14th birthday, and laid back in bed, staring at the ceiling and looping the same playlist on shuffle endlessly to block out his father. Same old, same old.

When school started, he absolutely did not want to be there. His Tourette's was neigh uncontrollable, and he couldn't help but tic through every day. Of course, the other kids in class were horrible to him about it. He was bullied relentlessly, and was beat up on the first day of school, and many days after that. He went home, his mother patched him up, his father mocked him, and he went to lie in bed again. It went on like this for a few weeks. It was August second when his dad broke his mothers nose. They got into a fight and he slammed her head on the counter. Toby was furious, but he quietly patched her up, ignoring his father egging him on.

That night, he had sleep paralysis again for the first time in a month or two, but it was different this time. His eyes opened, and there was a being standing at the end of his bed. He couldn't tell who or what it is. Could have been his father if it wasn't so tall. They stared at each other for around three hours before Toby fell back asleep. He was afraid, yes. But not much bothered him since Lyra died.

He mourned her every day. He never stopped. His mother mourned in silence, afraid, and his father cursed him to move on, but he didn't. He was never one to pray, but he lit candles for her the way she used to, prayed to a god they'd both loved, Dionysus. He cried for her at night. She never left his mind. He missed his sister more than anything in the world. He had a small alter in the back of his closet so his Father wouldn't find it, candles, pictures of her, foods she loved and special items.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Toby began having hallucinations of the creature he saw. It was everywhere. It was in the reflections of mirrors and windows, across the school yard while he was being kicked, at the end of the street when he pulled down his blinds, and behind his eyelids every night when he tried to sleep. He couldn't understand why it was haunting him.

His mother noticed his extreme paranoia, depression, and unrelenting tics/tic attacks, and scheduled him for a meeting with a local psychiatrist. She talked him up for the whole drive, and he smiled and nodded, not wanting to be there but not wanting to further sadden or worry his mother. Her arm was in a sling today. It was bad enough she was driving him.

He met with the psych, sitting down in the office. She asked him how he'd been. He didn't know how to respond, but suddenly felt bitter.

"Fantastic. Obviously that's why mom brought me here."

"I'm sorry, Tobias. I thought I'd let you give your own input." He felt bad for a moment, before wincing at the usage of his full name, getting more frustrated. He hated this already.

"Don't call me that. It's Toby. I'm Toby." He was fighting his vocal tics as he spoke, but his physical tics were getting worse in response, and he saw her flinch and lean a bit further away in his chair. He felt a pang through his heart, immediately angry. But he wouldn't blow up. He wasn't him.

Then he saw the figure behind her.

He didn't even hear what she was saying. He just stared at it. For some reason for as much as he'd been seeing it, he'd never seen it in such clarity, and it was still fuzzing around the edges, almost as if it wasn't fully there. It towered over the back of her chair, slowly leaning down to him.

"Toby," It spoke, and he could barely comprehend its voice. It was garbled, layered, echoed over itself endlessly and buzzed and burned inside his ears. "I want to help you. Let me help you."

He screamed, grabbing a lamp off the side table next to him and whipping it at the creature. He heard the psych scream and froze, whipping his gaze to where she was holding her arms over her face, ceramic and glass sprawled on the floor behind her at the base of the wall. They made eye contact, and he felt sick. He didn't understand. He wanted to say sorry. He suddenly wanted to explain everything. He wanted to say he wasn't him. He wanted his mother. He wanted Lyra.

He passed out.

Toby awoke later in his room, still feeling sick. The lights were out, his room only illuminated by the moonlight casting in through the blinds and the yellow light seeping in from under his doorway. (tw heavy abuse and murder after this) He could hear his parents screaming downstairs. There was a smash, his mother was crying. He jolted upright, tics coming back harshly as he tried to quietly make his way to the top of the stairs, peering down. His father was screaming about him.

"We have to get rid of him, Evelyn," He screamed, furious. "He's a disaster. He's dangerous and annoying and he's a fucking nuisance anyways!! And now I owe that stupid fucking psychiatrist so much goddamn money!! What is wrong with you!!" His mother cowered away from him, shaking, but angry as well.

"We are NOT getting rid of our SON, Greg! He's just scared and sick!" Toby winced at the phrasing of "sick", but continued watching, listening. He felt static pulling at the edges of his vision, but ignored it, honing his eyes in on his father.

"He goes. Tonight, or tomorrow, your choice, Evelyn, but he's fucking going. He's young enough to get thrown at the orphanage." He took a large swig of beer, stumbling slightly, and Toby twitched, hands tightening so much on the railing bars he thought he might splinter them.

"No. He is not." His mother shook, standing up to him, fists clenched. He stopped, and both Toby and his mother held their breath.

"Excuse me?"

"He's not going. No."

The next few minutes were a blur. His mother was hurt, and hurt bad. She was crying, and his father was screaming at her. The living room was trashed. Toby ran down the stairs and his father heard, spinning around and screaming after him as he darted into the garage, heart thumping almost as loud as Greg's thundering footsteps. He found his fathers old hatchets in the back of the garage, his blood pumping in his ears. Everything was hazy and the static crept further into his vision.

"Let me help you."

He spun around, hatchets gripped tight in his hands as he shook and ticced. His father tore into the room, drunk and furious. He saw Toby bearing the hatchets and laughed deliriously.

"Now what are you gonna do with those, boy?" Toby almost blacked out at the name, screaming and sprinting forwards. A mass fight ensued, the two of them struggling against each other to gain headway, Toby's mother screaming in the background. Toby pinned him down. He spat curses and slurs and all kinds of horrible things about him, his mother, his sister, Lyra. He raised the hatchet, and brought it down on his skull. Blood sprayed and his mother distantly screamed in horror, but he didn't stop. Another swing, another, another, another, another. Tears poured down his face, but he didn't feel it, notice, or care. His arms stopped swinging. He looked up. His mother was holding his arms gently, but securely, the creature standing behind her, looming over the both of them. He was towering.

"Toby," She whispered. "That's enough. He's dead, love." He looked down, sniffling and ticcing, and he was.

She helped him up quietly, and he whimpered.

"Are you gonna turn me in?" She stared at him, then shook her head.

"You're my son. I'm not getting rid of you."

She cleaned him up quietly in the bathroom, and held him close as he cried, openly, for the first time in months. He clung to her, whimpering and ticcing and sobbing, and told her everything. She listened quietly, gently soothing him and brushing his hair. Eventually, she shushed him gently, making him look at her.

"We have to go, love. Quickly. You can tell me more once we're gone, okay?" He nodded, sniffling and taking her hand. They gathered their things, climbed into their car. She paused. Got back out. They lit the house together, and watched it burn for a moment. He felt the presence behind him, and saw his mother take his hand.

"Come on honey," She whispered. "Lets go."

They never looked back.

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

Toby: (notes)

- 6'3", 17 years old, tall and broad. Always been heavier set and naturally slightly chubby, and decently strong.

- Has a nerve issue from birth where he can't feel a good 70% of his body, mostly the upper half and patches of the lower.

- Nonbinary (He/they/it), and pansexual. Gender dysphoric. Occasionally tucks and wears bras and other things sometimes.

- Has Tourette's, OCD, BPD, PTSD, Manic, ADHD, depression, s/icidal tendencies, struggles with compulsive sh, and has mild paranoid schizophrenia.

- Sees the Slenderman more than his mother, but she can see it on occasion. It doesn't hurt them. Guides them more or less. Helps Toby target similar individuals to his father.

- Stims a lot by cracking his knuckles, flapping his hands, tapping his foot and cracking his neck. (I also have a list of his tics!!)

- Loves his mother and Lyra so goddamn much

Evelyn: (notes)

- 43 years old, 5'2", small but definitely not frail. Will fuck you up if needed. Doesn't take shit anymore after leaving her husband. Also bisexual queen

- Huge soft spot for kids, and Toby. Loves Toby so much and lets him basically get away with everything (not that he uses this for any harm to her or those who don't deserve it)

- Knows Toby is a serial killer, assists him with some cleanup/travel/medical care/etc. Reminds him to take care of himself/cooks for him/helps drive him around/etc

- Takes up cooking and martial arts as hobbies

- Loves her son so so so much he's so stupid and crazy but she adores him and would do anything for him

- Do NOT fuck with power duo Evelyn and Tobias Rodgers they WILL destroy you

#creepypasta #cp ticci toby #ticci toby #toby rogers #tobias rogers #evelyn rodgers #cp toby #my writing #my universe #cloud talks #tw blood #tw abuse #tw abuse ment #tw murder

[annhellsing]

Vertigo

notes: i have more asmo wares to peddle since people like to sleep on him when he’s legit the hottest. smh. anyway, for us asmo-fuckers, enjoy!!! rating: SUUUUUPER explicit, this is set during one of asmo’s team bonding orgies pairing: asmodeus / gender neutral reader word count: 2,401

The space between fingers, lips and legs-- that is heaven.

He can’t watch you because a pretty woman with ice-blue eyes laid a pink blindfold over his. Asmodeus stares at the warm-black haze when he tries to see through the fabric. But there are other ways to look at things, he can still smell your wild-rose perfume and the feel your hair tickling his cheek.

You’re not quite above him, that’s someone else. Someone distant and forgettable, even as his cock makes them writhe in pleasure. Asmodeus does not know their name, he knows no-one’s name save yours. And he moans it, high and piercing even as others try to move his heart.

He reaches out for you, blind and open-mouthed. Slack-jawed and bound. But he can’t move an inch, he’s tied to the headboard with a length of silk. Of course, he doesn’t remember the fact of whoever did the tying-- he was looking at your smiling mouth.

“You’ve been very naughty,” you said, he can remember that with perfect clarity. You were on top of him, then and your hot teeth worried rosebud-love bites onto his neck. You made him beautiful, though he could never admit to that.

It is his greatest delight to be very, very naughty. But this romp, this tryst is standing-room only. His large, lavish bedroom is densely packed with writhing bodies and heady moans. Mouths accept offerings of all kinds, people either fight for a place next to the avatar of lust or they resign themselves to whatever fun they can have.

You hold a place of honour, so much so that Asmodeus considers this week’s orgy to have been a blind compulsion. He really doesn’t care for the stranger who’s holding his legs apart. Nor for the one who’s cock is trying to tickle his insides. It feels very dull, the spark of electricity he chases so earnestly is exclusive only to you.

“Does it feel good?” a deep voice asks above the din of the lascivious throng. Asmodeus answers to the one he cares for, letting his head fall sideways.

“You feel like sin itself,” he pants as you put your hand to his throat. You give an experimental squeeze and revel in his graceless whine. “More, more--”

The fool between his perfect thighs must mistake his private moans for open conversation. He thrusts more earnestly, but it’s the gentle increase in pressure on his jugular that makes Asmodeus keen.

“You look so pretty,” he hears you, your mouth is flush against his ear. All at once, he is alone with you in a big bed. No one else bothers you, you tie him where you see fit and play with him how you like. And it is enough.

“Love me,” he starts, tripping over words as you loosen your grip so he can speak. “Tell me you love me. Say it. I need to hear it.”

Asmodeus hears you giggle, which makes unholy heat bloom in his lower stomach. Someone who is not you takes his cock in their mouth. He thrusts in an almost pedestrian way for a few moments, until--

“Oh, I will always love you,” you whisper. And he stops dead. He does not try, even in passing, to pretend he’s pleased with lesser people’s attempts at pleasure. “You already know that.”

“But it’s nice to hear you say it,” he replies, his voice is strained and broken. Your hand leaves his neck, moving up his cheek and tracing the sharp line of his jaw.

“You hear it all the time,” you exclaim, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Everyone here loves you,” Asmodeus shakes his head only once before falling still again. 

Your index finger presses against his lower lip. Then, another does beside it. The order is clear, if unspoken-- no more talking, open your mouth. Suck. 

His lips, pink and swollen from your many kisses do as they’re bid. They part and his warm tongue darts over the ends of your fingers. Asmodeus takes them in his mouth without complaint, and he’s grateful for it. He isn’t sure how he would phrase that the only confession with any meaning comes exclusively from you.

He holds your fingers in his mouth, swirling the tip of his tongue over your nail and making you giggle. You sound like music when you laugh. Asmodeus feels you shift, feels you rise to sit beside him. Your warm chest nuzzles against him and he gives a contented hum, though it’s somewhat muffled.

“You seem bored, lover,” you drop your voice so low that it can’t be heard through the lecherous cacophony. He hums again, this time in confirmation. It makes you tut. “Everyone’s working so hard to please you.”

“You think I care about them?” he asks, turning his head away from your fingers so he can speak. To his credit, he’s quiet as you are. “I wish it were you.”

“Who? Who do you wish was me?” you ask, just to be a tease. It makes him whine.

“Everyone, please, I wish--” he stares blankly at the inside of the blindfold, until the imagined outline of your face becomes partially visible. Asmodeus lunges at you, his mouth is smeared with lipstick from nearly three-dozen lovers.

And the only kiss he craves is the one you give.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” you say. You’re not where he thought you were. When he twists, making the man inside him shout in surprise, Asmodeus kisses your cheek instead. “Everyone’s trying so hard to make you happy.”

“But you don’t even have to try,” he insists, “I just want you, why can’t I have you?”

“Asmodeus, you’re being naughty again,” you warn. He shakes his head like he doesn’t care, his fringe falls over his blindfold. You smooth it back and he chases the feeling of your hand.

“Punish me, then,” he says it so quickly that his words run together. “Make everyone else go away and then you can--”

You cut him off with a kiss so searing that it’s nearly painful. He moans into your mouth, against your teeth that sink into his lower lip. You hold his chin, angling it and putting strain on his neck. But, he thinks, if it weren’t for the blindfold he would be looking at you. That makes it worth it.

“Your punishment is going to be waiting patiently until your friends have had their fill of you,” you say. He’s heard you talk like this before, the sound of your voice biting twice as hard as teeth. It makes him shiver. “You invited them here, after all.”

Asmodeus tries pouting, but it’s a rare day in hell that it works. Your heart can be like ice and it is very rarely moved when he’s being difficult.

“But, since I’m not cruel--” Asmodeus perks up at that, turning his head and nuzzling his nose against your cheek. “You’re allowed to pretend that the only one touching you is me.”

The whole evening he’s been passively interested in the romantic attentions of others, but the fantasy that you were behind every act excites him more than he would like to admit. He stiffens and twitches in an anonymous mouth, thrusting forward out of habit when he finds something to strike his fancy. Asmodeus squirms, mouth open to agree. But he’s only able to nod enthusiastically.

You kiss him again, softer this time and he can feel the smile on your face. You must look beautiful, perhaps more beautiful even than him. But the thought of that inspires no jealousy or discomfort, only an aching desire to bask in it.

But his blindfold stays put. Idly, you muse about it aiding in his ability to visualize. You take up the same spot as before, tucked up against his side. You’re in a prime location to whisper salacious things, but for a tense moment you say nothing. Then--

“Well?” you ask, “Entertain me. You invited me here, what are you feeling now that I’ve given you this brand new fantasy?”

“It feels like sunshine,” he sighs, “your mouth is so warm.”

You don’t bother to glance at the head bobbing between his legs, nor at the hips thrusting in and out of him. But you lift an eyebrow and ask,

“And how do I feel inside you, hm?” Asmodeus gasps. He focuses, just for a second, on the sensation that was once so tiresome.

Instead of answering, his toes curl. He begins to move as much as he can in time with the man who bucks into him. Though not one to usually entertain salacious thoughts --preferring to act on them when possible-- Asmodeus is more than enamoured.

If there were more of you, you could take him every which way until he tired. The idea makes him wish he was allowed to touch you. He would put his arms around your waist, bury his head in your neck and beg for more. And all without any idea of what more he could possibly have.

But as it stands, he’s immobile. He shivers and shakes like a leaf on the bed, blind to the truth that there is only one of you. And he would like to stay that way forever.

“Use your words,” you whisper, your voice is more of a growl than before.

“Y-You feel so good,” he tries. Quantifying the volume of sensations in words is impossible. Everything feels perfect when it comes from you.

Another set of hands, your hands reach out and explore his chest. With another two thrusts, you decide you’re done fucking him and detangle yourself. Your open mouth leaves his cock and begins to press sloppy kisses to his hips.

Someone else --no, you, it’s you-- takes up the vacant spot between his spread legs. You line up your cock and sink inside. Asmodeus wonders if he might scream himself hoarse at this rate. 

He’s become the loudest participant by far, shouting in bliss far louder than anyone else.

“That’s it,” you mumble encouragement. Your warm hands explore his bruised, soft chest.

In sharp contrast with the brutal pace of your thrusts, you touch him gently. His abdomen is riddled with lip-prints and bite-marks aplenty, a canvas of red and purple and pink. You have no interest in pressing on bruises when he’s so vulnerable. You don’t want to break him just when he’s starting to behave.

You hum around his cock, swirling your tongue over the head. You take him all with a feverish desire to please, something that nearly draws him out of the fantasy until he’s swept up in another kiss.

Everything else goes a bit blurry, it’s easier to pretend. Asmodeus resolves to enjoy himself, to dream for as long as he can that you can love him in so many ways. You draw him in, careful not to force him to contort too painfully. He’s proven time and time again to be sturdier than he looks, but you’ll take no chances.

“Say it,” you whisper when you pull apart. “Say that you love me, let me hear it.”

“O-oh,” Asmodeus stutters. His cheeks are on fire. He trips on his words not because the frantic thrusting has stopped, but because he can feel your weight move away from him.

He wonders if he’s underwater for a moment, drifting in a rose-tinted ocean of bliss. The metaphor is ridiculous and yet entirely appealing. Your voice is distant, clouded and clipped like you’re speaking to someone else. He hears you tell someone to get off.

This time, it isn’t something stiff and hot that presses inside him. Two fingers, lovely and familiar take their time. And a soft, warm hand picks up his wet cock. He didn’t even notice, truth be told, that the mouth it occupied had abandoned him. He doesn’t miss it.

“Oh! I love you!” he exclaims when he realizes what’s happening. It takes a loose pump of your fist and a curl of your fingers to make him realize. Even with the blindfold, he knows this isn’t a game any more.

You’re kneeling between his legs, stretching him with your middle and index finger. Your other hand moves with its own rhythm, teasing and playful in a familiar way. Even the most private acts hold some measure of sweetness when you’re the one to do them.

Asmodeus devolves to babbles, as he always does when you give him your full attention. His cock, though it has been hard for some time, feels so stiff and warm as to be uncomfortable. After such a long time waiting, he has what he needs.

“I love you, too,” you say. Your voice sounds a little clearer. “You can come, I give you permission.”

He didn’t know he didn’t have it, but to do so for anyone else would’ve been deeply wrong. He isn’t sure when that became acceptable, when his tastes became so entwined with your presence. But now that he has what he wants, a private moment amid chaos with you, every good feeling comes crashing down around him.

There’s a wail of your name, making every other sound in his bedroom seem like a whisper. You curl your fingers, focusing in on that very sensitive spot and pumping his cock through his numbing orgasm.

It takes a while for him to stop twitching. The party winds down slowly after Asmodeus’ electric presence is dulled. You do as he does, for the most part, tuning out participants and friends. 

You prepare to take care of your lover in a different way, untying his legs and arms after slowly pulling down his blindfold. He looks a sight, his mascara reduced to two smears down his cheeks. Every colour of lipstick is mottled over his mouth and neck.

“So pretty,” you whisper as he pushes himself up. Asmodeus wastes no time in pushing himself on top of you.

You hug him, falling back on the bed and letting him get comfortable on your chest. Though he flinches at putting weight on his fresh bruises, he seems very much unwilling to move.

“Was I good?” he asks into your neck. The sound is barely louder than your earlier whispers. For all his hollering, this is something he would rather keep private.

“Mhm,” you reply, turning your head and kissing just above his ear. “You were perfect.”

#asmodeus #asmodeus x reader #asmodeus x mc #obey me! #obey me #shall we date #shrugs this is bad #but i love him so dearly #nsft #anniewrites

[carryonsimoncarryonbaz]

NEW FIC!!!

Written for the Carry On Quarantine event organized by @xivz​ for the prompt of food delivery. My thanks to @fight-surrender​ and @basic-banshee​ for the beta reads and support!!

Baz is a teacher quarantined at home and Simon is doing temp work delivering food for The Girl and the Goat, a local pub. A craving for a burger leads to Baz ordering from the pub, followed by weeks of mutual pining, the slow burn of a developing relationship thwarted by the physical constraints of social distancing, and a refrigerator full of pub food. Movie nights, exasperated friends, lots of texts, way too much food, and multiple awkward encounters. 

Let My Love Open the Door

Baz

I close my laptop and drop my head down onto it. I’m knackered. The metal feels cool against my forehead. I roll my face from side to side, relishing the smooth chill of it against my cheeks. And then I remember.

Fuck, now I have to disinfect the damn thing.

I’m done. Done for the day but also so done with this.

How can I be expected to effectively teach students—Sixth Form students at that—from a computer terminal? I’m almost three weeks into this, but their looming A Levels and GSCE’s are still on schedule for May.

That’s less than two months away. Five weeks and three days, to be exact.

Thank fuck it’s Friday. I’ll at least have two days to prepare next week’s frightfully inadequate lesson plan.

I grab a disinfecting wipe from the canister and methodically wipe down my laptop. I’m not sick—not a cough, not a sniffle—but I’ve bought into this not touching my face directive and I shouldn’t be smearing my germs on random surfaces. For all I know I could be carrying this thing. One of the asymptomatic Typhoid Marys, spreading it far and wide.

Not that there’s anyone to spread it to, seeing as I’m on my own here, but I wipe the laptop down anyway, unnerved by the whole idea of it.

I’ve washed my hands more in the past month than I have in my entire life. I spent the first day at home wiping down every surface, laundering the bedding, mopping the floors. My house went from having a pleasant, woodsy scent to the overwhelming stench of bleach instead.

It gave me such a headache that I had to open the windows and damn near froze. Bloody coldest March we’ve had in years. April’s not proving to be much better.

My mobile buzzes. I should have left it in the bedroom but I’ve become painfully attached to it.

If I’m not planning out curriculum, video conferencing with my class, answering frantic emails from parents, students, the other teachers at my school, or compulsively cleaning and reorganizing my house, then I’m moodily scrolling through Twitter and Instagram and ratcheting up my anxiety.

I should delete my social media.

My mobile buzzes again.

I glance at my watch. It’s six o’clock.

Bound to be Wellbelove.

Wellbelove: are you done yet?

Wellbelove: Baz!!

Wellbelove: you can’t still be doing classwork it’s after 5

Wellbelove: BAAAAZZZZ

Me: Give it a rest, Wellbelove. Some of us are actually working from home.

Wellbelove: I am working, you poncy bastard I’m obviously far more efficient than you.

Me: Look, some of us can’t just post our morning exercise routine and somehow have that count as work.

Wellbelove: Why are we friends again? Can you remind me why I put up with this slander from you?

Me: Because of my sparkling wit and undeniable charm.

Wellbelove: more like your fashion sense and propensity to pick up the bill when we eat out. Neither of which are in evidence at the moment so I may have to rethink my devotion to you

Me: Still, I’m indispensable.

Wellbelove: then buy me dinner. what are we watching tonight?

This all started at the end of that first week, when Agatha couldn’t concentrate on the book she was trying to read and I’d reached the pulling-my-hair-out state of lesson planning. She suggested we watch a film together—FaceTiming while our Netflix accounts played in sync.

We’ve done that almost every night since. Dinner and a movie, separately, from a distance.

We spend almost as much time arguing over what to watch as we do watching, but that’s just how we are. I’ve known Agatha Wellbelove since we were toddlers at the same crèche when our parents were at uni. Same primary school, same secondary school.

We drifted apart during our uni years, with Agatha at Brighton for phys Ed and Oxford to read for English Language and Literature for me.  

It was some bizarre twist of fate that we were both hired to teach at the same secondary school in Chilham. She was the last person I expected to see on my orientation day.

We picked up where we left off, latching onto each other as we navigated our first real world experience after uni.

It’s been three years now and I think the past three weeks have been the longest stretch we’ve gone without seeing each other since we moved here.

She’s self-centered, brutally straight-forward, horribly short-tempered, dreadfully impatient, and devastatingly gorgeous.

A perfect match for me if I wasn’t so irrevocably gay.

And if she wasn’t . . . well, categorically uninterested in me in that way is probably the best way to phrase it.

But she’s my best friend and I know it hasn’t been all that long but fuck, I miss her.

Wellbelove: WHAT ARE WE WATCHING BAZ ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION

She’d be kicking me in the shin by now, if she were here. Maybe I don’t miss her quite that much.

Ugh, it’s my night to choose. I don’t know what I want to watch. Something soothing, not one of those action films or plucky sports dramas she likes so much. I actually like Bend it Like Beckham but not those sappy American ones she’s inflicted on me.

I need something familiar. Comforting.

Me: Pride and Prejudice.

Wellbelove: 2005. Kiera Knightley. I will accept no substitutes.

Me: The 1995 version is superior.

Wellbelove: Colin Firth doesn’t look like that anymore Baz. Let it go.

I start to type “Keira Knightley doesn’t either” but fucking hell she does still look the same.

Wellbelove: and you owe me dinner

Me: 2005 AND dinner? You are greedy and demanding, Wellbelove. I’ll agree to Knightley. Make your own dinner.

Wellbelove: I want a burger I’m ordering out since you’re being a berk and won’t send me food

Fuck. I’m craving a burger now too.

I don’t even want to think about cooking anything. I’m so sick of pasta, even though I’ve tried to make it a different way each time, with my dwindling pantry supplies. And much as I love the curry place down the road I can’t eat it every day.

I used to think I could. I used to say I’d be happy eating tikka masala every day for the rest of my life, but I was mistaken.

And no more chippies. I can’t do another chippy.

Me: Who’s delivering burgers? Please tell me you aren’t getting McDonald’s.

Wellbelove: why would I get McDonald’s when I can get a lamb burger from The Girl and The Goat?

Me: they’re not still open?

Wellbelove: of course they’re still open you stupid git.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to check. Why I assumed the pubs would close down, when they all have kitchens and food service, just like the chippies and fast food places.

Me: why didn’t you bother telling me, you hag?

Wellbelove: You are a grown man Hunter gatherer type you should be able to forage for your own food

I want one of those burgers. We don’t go there all that often but The Girl and The Goat has some of the best burgers in town. Fucking hell, I’m salivating at the thought of it.

Me: Text when you’ve got dinner and we’ll start the movie

Wellbelove: you’re ordering from The Goat aren’t you you hypocrite and not even paying for mine

I close the messenger app to look up The Girl and The Goat online. I scan the menu and then ring them up.

The warm, cheerful voice on the line assures me the order will be delivered to my door within a half hour. I give my mobile number so the driver can text when he arrives.

“Just be looking for the text, love,” the woman’s warm voice continues. “Simon will leave everything at your door, no need to open up until he’s gone. I know how wary people are these days so we’re trying to make it easy.”

A little over a half hour later my mobile buzzes with a message from an unknown number.

Unknown number: Food’s here!

Unknown number: I’ll ring when it’s on your doorstep

The doorbell chimes and I peek at the doorway video display only to startle at the huge grinning face looming on the screen. I push the audio button.

“Yes?”

“Hullo! I’m Simon. I’ve got your order from The Goat. Lamb burger and chips.” He holds up a gloved hand carrying a bag. “I’ll just leave it right here for you.” I get a brief glimpse of a broad back clad in a brown leather jacket as he bends down, before he’s back to grinning at the camera again. “Thanks for ordering from The Goat. We appreciate the business. If you text me back you’ll get a discount for next time!”

“Text you back what?”

He leans in closer and shrugs. “Whatever.”

He’s got brilliant blue eyes. A scattering of freckles dotted across his face.

“Um, right, ok then. Thanks.”

He waves and then he’s out of sight again.

I move to the front window and twitch aside the blinds to watch him get in a blue car with “The Girl and The Goat” displayed across the door in white lettering.

I wait until the car is long gone before opening the door, gloves on, carrying the parcel of food as if it’s radioactive until I reach the kitchen, where I can dispose of the bag and transfer the food to my own dishes.

It’s likely overkill, I know, but I find being wary and methodical helps calm me.

I settle down in front of the television with my meal and my mobile, ready to message Agatha, when I see the text from the unknown number again.

I’d not say no to a discount. I click on it to text back. What exactly does one text to an attractive delivery man?

I shake my head. He’s just the delivery man, it’s irrelevant if he’s attractive or not.

My finger is still hovering over my mobile. I’m having an existential crisis over what to text a delivery man so I can get a discount on a pub meal. These are the depths that I have sunk to with this self-quarantine.

It would help if he were ordinary looking. It really would.

Me to unknown number: Whatever

I hit send before I think too hard about how unoriginal and trite a response that was.

My mobile pings back a moment later.

Unknown number: 15% percent off the next order. Just say Simon said when you call it in! :)

Read the rest at ao3!!!!!!!!!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23590015

#carry on quarantine #carry on #baz pitch #simon snow #snowbaz #quarantine au #my writing #my fic #wayward son #agatha wellbelove #agatha is all of us #food delivery

[phykios]

the marble king, part 7 [read on ao3]

A rare show of contrition, Annabeth conceded that she had been wrong. There were not, in fact, seven rapids to traverse; in total, there had been nine. Unfortunately, Percy could not enjoy this little victory nearly as much as he wished.

Annabeth had been clearly rattled by their encounter several days prior. Once more she retreated into muteness, passing the time by fingering the edges of her shorn hair, a permanent frown delicately carved into her face. He did not like to take pleasure at others’ pain, but he knew that, short of either producing a sign from her mother or tripping and falling into the river, there was not much he could do to make her smile. Hopefully, a real bed on which to sleep in a real inn with an actual roof over their heads would lift her spirits somewhat.

They sailed into a thriving river port city which Annabeth had called Kiova. He rolled the word over and over again in his mouth, wrapping his tongue around the odd sounds. It was a slippery sort of word, he thought, softly repeating it to himself under his breath as though it would fall from his lips entirely if he did not keep it close.

To his great dismay, it seemed as though the people of this city did not speak Italian. Nor did they appear to speak Greek, nor Latin, nor any other language with which Percy was familiar. Though she would not show it, it was plain to anyone who knew her to see that Annabeth was struggling as well. Her conversation with the innkeeper was slow and awkward, stilted, involving a great deal many strange gestures and repeated phrases in both Greek and another several languages he did not comprehend, which clearly made sense neither to Annabeth nor her conversation partner, and Percy was afraid the whole thing would collapse until a bystander, apparently moved to pity, was able to cobble together their shared knowledge of languages in order to rent Percy and Annabeth a room for the night.

She thanked the stranger profusely for his assistance, and he smiled at them, his blue eyes sparkling, something familiar in the curve of his lip.

“It was no trouble,” he said to her, the words colored by his thick, dark voice. “You and your husband--take care.”

He wanted to correct the man. But if he and Annabeth were to share a room, then it would be better for her reputation for her to be a married woman.

When they entered their room, a small, cramped thing with a single lit candle, fairly decent for the amount of money they still possessed, which was not much, she collapsed on their one bed, quite exhausted. “How mortifying,” she groaned, her voice muffled by the thin pillow. “It was like I had forgotten every bit of language I had ever learned. And when he called you my husband!” She huffed, turning over. “It appears as though you were correct; even without my hair, I will never pass for a man. Then what, I ask, was the point of its removal?”

Percy did not say much, distracted by the single bed. He stared at it, equal parts anxious and excited, which was rather silly of him--he had slept close to her several times before, had shared sleeping quarters with her plenty of times, and all of them strictly platonic. Why should this time be any different?

And yet, it was, for reasons he could not name. Perhaps the bed was smaller, and they were so much older. Perhaps it was those terrible, wonderful dreams which plagued him every night, dreams of soft fabrics and softer skin. Perhaps it was just his foolish heart, awakened once more by love.

At his silence, she continued. “Well, it is no matter. It is gone, and I am glad to be rid of it, truly.”

Still, he said nothing.

Perturbed, she looked at him, sitting up on the bed. “What is it? Is something wrong? Is there a monster nearby?”

“No,” he said, quickly, to dissuade her from any fears. “No, nothing of the sort.”

She gazed at him, a queer look in her eye. “What do you think?”

“Of what?” He asked, cautious.

“Of your handiwork.” With a shake of her head, she disturbed her golden crown, some curls falling down her forehead, framing her large, large eyes. “You are not usually one to hide your thoughts, therefore--please, share.”

“Oh.” He was quite certain she would not want to hear his thoughts, yet he sensed that continued silence would be the wrong choice. “You look… well, you look very… comely.” he offered, eyes tracing the line of her neck, and the curves of her ears, so sweet, that had previously been hidden from his gaze. Had he been a more poetic man, he would have the compulsion to dedicate several sonnets to those ears.

Whatever answer she was seeking, it was clear that Percy did not provide.

She scowled, her lips pursed.

“I--”

“Well, I happen to find it very freeing,” she said. She reached up and felt at the ends, for the hundredth time in the last few days, her lips tightening, as though she were unhappy with what she found. “Without all of my hair, I feel as though I could outrace even Atalanta herself.”

Then, she did something he did not expect; she shivered.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Of course,” she sniffed. “I just--I had forgotten--it has been so long since I cut my hair, that I did not realize.”

“Realize what?”

Her fingers once again reached up to play with her short curls--then, midway through her gesture, she caught herself, and brought her hand down again, faintly embarrassed. “Well,” she said, almost shyly, “it can be… quite cold, without so much hair.”

“Indeed?” That was never something he had considered before. Of course, he had spent the vast majority of his life in the warm embrace of the Aegean Sea, where the cold was largely something of a far off myth.

She nodded, drawing her thin shawl tighter around herself. “I will grow used to it with time, I had merely… I had forgotten.”

Though she had not asked him for anything, he made to take the blanket on the bed and hand it to her first, before he remembered. “One moment,” he said, crossing to the corner where he had placed their dwindling amount of supplies, crouching down to rummage through them.

He could not believe he had forgotten this.

Well, on the one hand, he could. It had to have been several months since that day in Athens, since they had ended their little feud. He had seen so much more of the world since then, had traversed farther than anyone he had ever known, save for her.

The color was still as lovely as he remembered, the cool, deep blue of a starless sky. He held the parcel out for her to see, felt the smooth threads between his fingers, spun in a tight, graceful weave. “Here,” he said, pulling out his prize. “This is for you.”

In his search, he had not noticed how she came to stand behind him, peeking over his shoulder, so he was quite surprised when he turned to see her looming over him.

She stared at him, wide-eyed, grey eyes turning silver. Her brows rose up to a point, almost joining together at the wrinkle of her forehead, lips parted in a prolonged, silent gasp. He might have thought she had been turned to stone, were it not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. “This…” she faltered, licking her lips. “For me?”

He nodded.

“How…? When?” she asked, shocked beyond all language.

It appeared he had accomplished yet another feat worthy of the greatest epics; he had rendered Annabeth Fredriksdotter speechless.

Flushing further, he stood. “In Athens,” he admitted. “I--well, I was walking round the old agora, and I saw it, and I thought to myself, well, I imagined that this color would look rather fetching on you, and I had some money to myself, so I… purchased it. For you,” he finished, lamely.

He had nearly forgotten how enthralling it was to be so close to her, to see her stormcloud eyes as they reflected the candlelight, to see every strand of the soft gold of her hair as it ringed her face. He wondered if she should hear how quickly his heart was beating, as it strained to free itself from the confines of his chest and place itself in her hands.

It was like they existed in a glass bubble, a whole world unto themselves, so beautiful. So fragile.

“May I?” she asked, no louder than a puff of wind, and he nodded.

Taking it from his hands, she rubbed her fingers against the thread grain, her eyes taking on that familiar calculating expression. “It is very well-made,” she murmured, rolling it out to its fullest extent.

“I’m told it was for a noble lady,” said Percy, possessed of a sudden coyness he did not know he had. “I received it for a good price, but I had thought it should go to the kind of client for whom it was intended.”

The look she cast him nearly made him want to crawl into a hole and never come out.

Still, she drew it around herself, layering it round her neck and her head, and Percy barely had the time to imagine his hands in its place, before he was struck by the full, glorious image which presented itself to him.

He had been correct in his assumptions; the dark blue fabric looked lovely against her tan skin, but her short curls ringed her face in a halo, like the mosaics of the lords and ladies of St. Sophia, like the depictions of the holiest men and women on the walls of every church.

Percy had never considered himself to be a religious man. He performed the sacred rites and made his offerings to his father and his extended family, but not out of any true sense of theological devotion, and certainly not with the same passion as the Christians or the Ottomans whom he had seen. He did not throw himself to his knees at the thunder and lightning, nor the many miracles he had witnessed in his time, for he had come face to face with the king of the heavens, and had, sadly, found him wanting. He had met and known the gods and goddesses of earth, sea, and sky, and had discovered that they, too, were plagued by the million petty disagreements of mortal living. In some ways, it was a comfort, to know that even those who were all-powerful could be laid low by the simplest of deceptions, that they required great heroes as much as the heroes required them--and perhaps even more. Yet, of course, in other ways, it was quite the disappointment. After the war, after Lukas, after all that he had suffered, it had been difficult not to look at his fellow soldiers, at their prayer ropes and golden images and holy words, without mild distaste.

Looking at Annabeth, though, at the halo of her hair and the dark blue of her shawl, her large eyes, her lips so close, the heat of her body against him… well. Looking at her now, he thought he could teach them a thing or two about devotion.

She felt even closer than before, somehow. Perhaps he had moved towards her. Or perhaps she had. Between them, Thalia’s lightning.

She had kissed him once before, many many years ago, caught in the grip of a volcano, and he would be lying if he claimed he had not thought of it often since then.

Then, she leaned back.

“It seems my siblings were wrong about you,” she teased, her voice half-strained.

“How… how do you mean?” he asked. His head felt as though it were full of air, soft and hazy.

“They all swore up and down that you could never be so thoughtful.” Then she smiled at him, so sweetly, gazing up at him from beneath her honey-colored lashes. “Thank you, Percy.”

His mouth curved upwards in a smile, though he did not think to do so himself. “It was no trouble,” he said, wobbly and weak.

The glass had broken. The moment had passed.

Without further discussion, they prepared themselves for bed. Extinguishing the solitary candle, he laid himself down beside her. The bed was too small for them to be at a respectable distance, unfortunately, and he hoped she would forgive him.

Their room had one small window, shuttered close. Not even a hint of moonlight penetrated the slatted wood. Through the door, he could faintly hear the sounds of the tavern under them, a cascade of footsteps here, a sudden bark of laughter there, the whole of this strange, strange world beneath their feet. Eyes opened, eyes closed, it made no difference. Were it not for the noises of the people below, he would have thought they could be under the very earth itself, once again descending into the darkness of the underworld.

All of twelve years old and sent on a fool’s errand to retrieve Zeus’ weapon, contending with the notion that he might not return, that he might fail and bring war upon the world, that his mother would be lost to him forever, he had braved the halls of Hades with this woman at his side, just as afraid as he.

In the darkness now, as he drifted off to sleep, he nearly jumped back to wakefulness at the brush of her hand against his. He turned his head to her, but he could not make out her features, could not see her eyes to determine if it was conscious or not, if she had reached for him for comfort or if her hand had simply moved of its own accord.

On their first quest together, in the land of the dead, she had slipped her hand into his, desperate for a friendly touch, for assurance that there was someone else alive with her. Swallowing, closing his eyes against the blackness, he laced his fingers with hers, squeezing. I am here, he thought, sending it to her through the pulse of his hand. I am here.

After a moment, she squeezed back.

***

Percy was tired.

No, that did not entirely sum up precisely how tired he felt. Percy was exhausted. He was so exhausted, it was as if he had participated in a week’s worth of war games without any rest. His body ached as though Thalia or Iason had struck him with lightning, a constant, thrumming pulse of pain throughout his whole body. He felt as though he had been emptied of his vital insides, hollowed out and replaced with naught but a deep, deep fatigue.

It was, he knew, due to the endless days of sailing they had undertaken.

He did draw his power from the water, this was true. However, they must have been sailing for at least several months by now, day after day after day, Percy commanding the Empress through the tides, headed against the current, traveling ever North on the windiest road known to mankind. So far from the ocean, not even the Danapris could sustain him for as long as they had been traveling, and he could tell that his strength was wearing thin.

And it was not just him. The Empress wobbled beneath his feet, her hastily made bark splitting along the seams. If they did not stop for a rest, and soon, it was very likely that their canoe would capsize, taking both Percy and Annabeth with her.

Thankfully, Annabeth seemed to understand his exhaustion without him having to explain. “Just a little further,” she assured him. “Miliniska is close--not more than a mile or so.”

Percy could not even reply, so depleted he was.

It certainly did not help that a storm was about to roll in.

The clouds above were black, heavy with rain, the wind buffeting their poor little canoe, tossing it this way and that. The sail was nearly useless at this juncture, Annabeth’s stitches slowly unraveling, the fabric whipping in the growing gale.

Though the river flowed wide and steady, Percy felt as if they were sailing through a lake of mud, a thick, sticky marsh which impeded their progress to the point of death. His eyes burned, the harsh wind stinging; his spine could no longer hold his weight; he panted, open-mouthed, like a dog in the height of summer.

Perhaps he would break alongside his boat. He would not mind so much. Even a week spent unconscious at the bottom of this foreign body of water would most likely do him some good.

But he could not do that to Annabeth. She had trusted him with her safe return, and by all the gods he no longer knew, he would see her home.

“Che cazzo, how much further?” he asked through gritted teeth, letting slip a sailor's curse.

“Not long,” she assured him. “Just a little more.”

“Is it possible,” he gasped, “you could be a little more specific?”

The Empress rocked from side to side.

“Percy!” called Annabeth, grasping the sides of the boat.

“I know!” he shouted back. He squeezed his eyes, poured all of his thought into keeping them afloat.

The waves themselves seemed to fight him, the water striking the sides with such force as to send Annabeth careening from one edge to another.

He could not hold it for much longer.

“Percy!” Annabeth shouted over the roar of waves. “Port bank!”

The ship turned sharply. With a yell, he shot his hands out, splitting the water before them, steering the Empress towards the shore like a shot out of a cannon.

It wasn’t enough.

The canoe tore wildly beneath them, the seam of the tree coming apart with an almighty crack. As he had done in Constantinople, he summoned a great wave from the depths of the river, wrapping it around Annabeth, and hurling her the rest of the way to the river’s edge, onto the sandy shore.

Then the Empress split apart under his feet, dropping Percy into the water.

So drained he was, he could not even enjoy it.

He was in no danger of drowning, of course, but he was in danger of losing all consciousness, a terrible idea even when one was not in the middle of an unfamiliar territory. Who knew what sort of spirits lurked in this river, so far from the ancient sea? The water nymphs of the rapids had recognized him for what he was and had made no attempt to hide their distaste; he did not wish to try himself against further unknowns.

If he did not make it to shore, he would not die, no, but only the Fates knew where he might wash up, and he would be lost. He would be lost, and Annabeth would be alone.

Summoning the last of his strength, the blackness of exhaustion flickering at the corners of his vision like smoke, he reached deep within the core of himself, to that place that pulsed with the pull of the tides, that place which shook apart the very stones. With the last of his muster, the son of the sea god, the former Praetor of the Twelfth Legion, the lost little Hellenos issued but one command to the northern river: Take me to shore.

Then nothing.

***

When he woke, there was solid ground beneath his back.

The sky had cleared, the stormcloud grey giving way to a fiery sunset, a smooth, slow gradient of orange and purple and blue. No longer was the air thick with the scent of rain, but now cleaner, and bright.

And, he realized with a jolt, he was starving.

He groaned, a purposeless noise, yet it would prove to be a useful one all the same.

“Percy!” cried a voice to his right.

A form scuttled over to him, crowding his vision, and he had to blink through the fog of his eyes to realize that it was Annabeth. Her hands patted him up and down, from forehead to neck to chest, and she was babbling a mile a minute, far too quickly for Percy to comprehend. “Oh, thank goodness, you’re awake, I knew that you were not capable of drowning, but you have been asleep for so long, and I was so worried--”

“Ungh,” he said, most intelligently.  

Annabeth hauled him up from the ground, her strong hands clutching at his shoulders, crushing him to her chest. He felt her hitched sob against him, then, just as he was thinking to bring his arms around her, she pulled back, and did something very, very strange.

She kissed him. Chastely, just a press of her lips to his, but desperate, her fingers still digging into the meat of his shoulders.

Had he been more awake, he would have opened his mouth to her in turn. As he was now, he could not even pull forth the strength to deepen the kiss, or even to react to it in a positive manner.

Then, her eyes widening, she dropped him back onto the ground.

“Oh, forgive me!” she cried at his sudden grunt of pain.

“Guh,” was his eloquent response.

“I--I am sorry, I did not--I would never--”

“Urgh,” he said, his lips tingling, the phantom feeling of her mouth on his potent enough to draw him the rest of the way from his unwilling slumber.

There must have been water lodged in his ears. Or he was still sleeping. Or perhaps his brains really had turned to seaweed. Because there was no way, no possible way, that that had just happened. She did not just kiss him. No.

He tried to sit up, only for his head to spin in a sudden vertigo. Curling onto his side, he shut his eyes until the sky above him stopped swirling in such nauseating patterns. “Easy,” said Annabeth, calmly, with the air of someone who has done this many times before. “Do not strain yourself.”

Hissing in effort, for his muscles still felt stretched and thin, far too overworked and overused not to ache, he sat up, raising himself on unsteady arms. “Are you alright?” he asked, casting a quick look up and down her person for any injury.

A respectful distance away, she blinked at him. “You have been asleep for near on a day, and you are concerned for me?”

He--he must have imagined it, the kiss. She did not look on him any differently than she had before. She did not linger at his side, forlorn and desperate. She did not shed any tears for his safe return. So he had to come to the conclusion that he had almost certainly fashioned the whole incident in his memory from thin air.

Then, of course, Percy replied to her question without considering the ramifications of his words. “Yes.”

She was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “Ridiculous,” she said. “Truly ridiculous. Come, phykios. I’ve got a fire going.”

With all her considerable strength, she was able to half-carry, half-drag him closer to her campsite. “You say,” he grunted, doing his best not to wince with each step, “that I have been asleep for a day?”

“Nearly two.”

She deposited him near the small fire, and he shivered as the warmth washed over him, enveloping him in its comforting embrace. It was a meager display, her rumpled bag of supplies propped up against a rock, a few thin, little fish, blackened by smoke and ash resting on a flat stone by the fire. “I apologize,” he said, bringing his arms around himself, rubbing the feeling back into them. “I did not mean to tire myself out so.”

“You apologi--” Cutting herself off, she stalked to the other side of the fire, angrily stoking it with a stray branch. “You apologize, when I am the one who forced you to sail every day, nonstop for over two months, dragging you all over the world on a handful of hazy memories of a road long which has since fallen out of use--”

“Annabeth--”

“You have no reason to apologize, Percy. None at all.” She stood behind the flames, the blue shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. “It is I who must seek forgiveness from you.”

“I do not require--”

“I know that you cannot drown,” she said, watching the smoke rise, “but I--I knew that the road would be long and hard, and still I pushed you, day after day, watching you wear yourself thin on the river, and when you would not awaken, I was afraid that… that I had forced you to give too much.” Taking a shuddering breath, she threw in a bit of fish to the fire. He thought he saw the flames leap a little higher--though his vision was still a little fuzzy, and he may very well have imagined it. “I apologize, Percy. My pride had taken precedence over your health, and in return, you nearly died for my sake. If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me,” her eyes squeezed shut and she turned her face away, “of course I will understand.”

“Of course I forgive you,” said Percy, without hesitation. “There is naught to forgive, Annabeth.”

“You could have died.”

“A little exhaustion is not enough to rid you of me.”

“Percy--”

“Enough,” he said. “You have done nothing which requires any absolution. I promise.”

When she finally turned back, there were tear tracks, clear as day, streaking down the grime of her beautiful face, and he just barely held himself back from confessing that to die for her sake would be the easiest thing in the world for him to do.

“I swore that I would see you safely home, and I shall. Though perhaps I should be insulted,” he teased, “that you think so lowly of me. A mere river, overcome the son of Poseidon? Come now, skjaldmær. You of all people should know better.” This line of banter, how familiar it was to them. His head still spun from earlier, and he longed for the solid ground of their partnership to steady him.

But she would not rise to such taunts, not this time. “I would rather that you stay by my side and we never make it home,” she said, so serious, “than return to my father without you.”

Oh, how her curls moved in the evening breeze, the golden-copper shine of her hair stark against the encroaching night sky, her mouth set in a stern line, the delightful little divot on her forehead when she frowned a whorl of shadow against her skin. He loved all Annabeths equally, but this one, who so casually and easily spoke truth from her heart, he liked this one very much.

“Where are we?” he asked, rather than pursue that line of thought any further. “You said we were approaching Mil--Milani--”

“Miliniska,” she said. “And we are not far; a few hours’ walk at most, by my calculation.” Though she did not seem pleased at this assessment.

“What is it?”

Lips pursed, she sat down heavily upon the stone. He could not see through the smoke, but he imagined her playing with the edges of her blue shawl, the way she did when she was anxious. “I… I am unsure of our next steps.”

“We continue along the river, do we not?”

“I had thought so, yes.”

“Then once we have reached the city of--of--” he cursed as his tongue tripped over the strange sounds, his mouth not at all fit for this slippery, slick language of the North, “Holmgarðr , then we turn West to Svealand. Is this not the way?”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but I do not--I mean, I am uncertain--oh!” She raked her hands over her head, mussing up her wild hair even further. “I do not know where to go from here.”

He frowned. Her words made no sense to him. “But you know everything.” This was no mere romantic declaration; it was a truth that he had carried ever since he was twelve years old. No matter what questions he had about this strange, strange world, Annabeth would have the answer, or she would be able to seek out the answer, precisely because she was Annabeth, and because she did, indeed, know everything there was to be known.

She turned red beneath the dirt on her face. “Would that were true, then perhaps I would not have led us here.”

“How do you mean?” he asked, a cold, sinking pit in his stomach, despite the warmth of the fire.

Sighing, she slumped even further, the point of her chin nearly level with the flames. “There are many river-roads here,” she said, haltingly, though the flood of words could not be stopped, “and--and they get all jumbled up, in my head, you see. When I--when I ran away, my plan was to trace the Dúna to--to--” she screwed up her face, stamping her foot in frustration. “Oh, even now I cannot remember the name in Greek! There are so many names, Percy, in Greek and Norse and this strange, strange language that I cannot speak, and Lukas was the one who spoke them all when I was little, and I fear that I will have brought us to ruin, for I cannot make sense of it all.” She gazed at him, her large eyes glistening once more with tears. “I know not where I am, and all my faculties have deserted me, and I have dragged you here with me, into the unknown, and now our ship is gone, and--and--”

Then she performed the action which Percy had come to fear most: she began to weep again.

“Annabeth,” he said, as gently as he could, “you cannot blame yourself for what happened to the Empress. She would have given out eventually; it was merely our misfortune that it happened to be now.”

Still, her shoulders shook, her head dropped into her hands.

“We can find our way North again,” he promised. “We still have the stars, do we not? And surely we can craft another vessel.” Though it would take them much, much longer, as they no longer had any of the tools which they had left behind at Sigeion.

She did not respond.

“Annabeth, please.” He was not above begging or pleading, if only she would cease her weeping, if only she would smile again. “Please, it will be all right. Annabeth, my lo--”

Percy very nearly slapped a hand over his mouth, for he had almost let slip a sweet little endearment from his lips. However upset she was now, she would certainly not appreciate a declaration of romantic affection at this moment. She was in no position to accept it, and he would not wish to take advantage of her emotional upheaval.

“Oh, Annabeth,” he said, keeping a close watch on his words. “I do not blame you. I do not blame you one iota. Everything will be all right, I swear it.”

He could not reason with her to draw her out of her despair. All he could do now is wait for this to pass, and pass it would.

And pass it did.

Her sobs weakened, eventually, short, painful little things giving way to long stretches of quiet sniffles. Through the flames, he observed her shoulders still, the tension in her hands fading away, her whole form collapsing in on herself as all her sorrow deserted her. For some time, there was no sound but the crackle of flame, the gentle rush of the river, the whispering noises of nature which surrounded them, birds and insects and the breath of the land itself. What a boon, for Percy and Annabeth so exhausted, for there was nothing left but peace. Tranquility. Time for rest, healing, and safety, things the absence of which they had long since felt.

“I apologize,” she said, after a while. Her voice was rough, as though she had swallowed a mouthful of earth. “That was… I did not expect that.”

“Think nothing of it.” All warriors had limits, and all warriors had a point at which they could take no more. There was no shame to be felt in such a release.

Though as she continued to avoid his gaze, he wondered if perhaps she was not ashamed of the act of grief, but at the simple fact that he had been present to bear witness to it, that even though they had traveled together for so long, had endured so much together, there were still parts of her she did not feel comfortable baring to to him. The thought made him profoundly sad. He trusted her with his life--and he always had. At the close of the second Titanomachy, she had leapt in front of a poisoned blade which had been aiming straight for his unprotected flank; after such a debt owed to her, did she think he would still find any part of her shameful?

Then, she surprised him yet again. It was starting to become a pattern, it seemed.

“I know you must be angry with me,” she said, her eyes hidden from view.

It was only with the greatest strength of will that he kept himself from bursting out laughing at the sheer absurdity of such a statement. Percy, angry with her? For showing emotion? “What ever for?”

“For getting us lost.”

“We are not lost,” he chided. “This nearby town, Mal--Miliano--”

“Miliniska,” she said, a weak grin gracing her features.

He shook his head. “Yes, that one, surely someone there will be able to point us in the right direction.”

“And if there is not?”

“Then we put our teachings to use,” he said. “We have been trained for this, have we not?”

“For battle, yes. For wandering around the northern wilderness, less so.”

He waved a hand, carelessly. “I am certain some skills will overlap.”

But she would not stray from her course. “I had thought you would be displeased with me,” she said. “I know you were concerned about the agoge, about your mother, but I convinced you to accompany me instead. Would you not rather be searching for her, instead?”

Annabeth knew firsthand how he adored his mother. Though clearly it had been the right decision, sending her away from Constantinople had been one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life. Hardly a day went by when he did not think of his mortal family. To be parted from them in this manner, so precarious, was a kind of agony he had not known existed. And yet, he could not very well admit to Annabeth that he would rather be here, now could he? “Wherever she is, I know that my mother is safe.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I have faith.” His mother was a resourceful woman, always had been. She had survived for years under the thumb of her hateful first husband; to pack up, flee the city, and then begin anew with a man who truly loved her would be no large undertaking.

“I wish I could believe as you do,” said Annabeth, softly.

Percy would never quite describe himself as a man of faith, but he had his moments. “It is not so difficult if you choose the right people to believe in.” A simple truth, yet Percy had been blessed with such wonderful people in his life, such ample resources. People like his mother and Paul, Chiron and their friends. People like Iason and the Legion.

People like Annabeth.

“I suppose, then, I have a bad habit of choosing the wrong person.” Through the fire, her eyes turned dark, bitter, sad. “Everyone I have ever believed in--my father, Lukas, my mother--they have all of them left me behind.”

He wished he could refute her claim, but he found he could not. He had seen the temple of Athena, cannibalized for Christian men, and the court of Poseidon, a cold, dark ruin.

Still. “Surely not everyone?” he asked.

She lifted her gaze to him, locking eyes from across the blaze. “No,” she said, thoughtfully. “No, I suppose not. Not everyone.” Then she frowned, as though something had suddenly occurred to her. “You said… you named our ship the Empress?”

Oh. He had hoped she had not heard that part. Flushing lightly, he nodded. “I did.”

“I see.” And she blushed in return.

The moment felt big, somehow. Large, like a fork in the road, or the moment before sunrise, where the world held its breath and anything could happen. Endless possibility.

Perhaps now was the proper time. At such a declaration, had he the strength, he would have gone to her at once, taken her in his arms and demonstrated just how deeply his affections ran.

Alas, he did not.

He yawned, hugely.

She huffed a laugh. “You are still tired?” she asked.

Nodding, he rubbed at an eye. “Though I do not see how. I feel as though I could sleep for yet another day.”

“Perhaps you should rest a while longer,” she said.

Roughly scrubbing his hands over his face, he said, “No, no, we should not waste much more time, if we are now relegated to walking.”

“Tomorrow,” she insisted. “The hour is late.”

“I would like to sleep in a real bed for a change.”

“We do not have enough money to rent a room for the night.”

“Then I can pay in manual labor, or--”

So faint, he nearly missed it, the slight tickling in the corner of his mind.

Noting his pause, Annabeth stood up, her hand automatically going for her weapon. “What is it?”

Slowly, he turned towards the woods which bordered the river. “I am not sure,” he said, slowly. “It… it sounds like…”

It was not sound, not as men typically understood it. The voice did not travel through the air, into the ear. Rather, it seemed to emerge from within his mind, a thought that was not his own. The tone, the timbre, sincerity behind the words, it was all so familiar, so comforting. This voice belonged to a simple kind of creature, hardy and tough, and what was more, it belonged to a creature Percy knew.

“It can’t be,” he said.

And yet, it was.

From the forest emerged a horse, a beautiful, brown thing, who trotted over to them without hesitation. Bypassing Annabeth entirely, the horse came to a stop next to Percy, dipping her head--for she was a mare--and with a start, Percy realized that this was the very same horse which had carried them to the safety of Prosphorion Harbor, in the thick of smoke and battle.

“How are you here?” he breathed, one hand coming up to stroke her nose.

“What?” asked Annabeth. “What is she saying?”

In astonishment and wonder, he could not help but smile. “She says she heard your call.”

“What call?”

“And,” said Percy, turning to her, “she says she will take us wherever it is we need to go.”

Her eyes widened, mouth open in shock and delight. “Truly?”

As if to answer Annabeth’s question, the horse nodded in assent.

“Can she take us to the Dúna?”

He relayed the question to the horse, and then translated for Annabeth: “She does not know the name, but if you can direct her to the place, she would be more than happy to carry us there.”

“Oh, oh, magnificent!” Annabeth rushed over, throwing her arms around the horse’s neck. “Oh, you blessed animal!”

The horse--whose previous rider, several months and hundreds of miles past had named her Theophanu, as she had told him--gave a short huff, pressing her head against Annabeth’s.

“We haven’t a moment to lose,” said Annabeth, releasing Theophanu with a pat on her nose. “Let me grab the supplies; you can sleep on the way.”

He had thought to assist her in dismantling the camp, but, truth be told, he was simply too exhausted still, and the thought of sleep was a welcome one. Seated as he was, he felt himself swaying gently, a leaf caught in the wind, succumbing to large, painful yawns as often as his body could produce them.

Theophanu swiveled her gaze to him, large and piercing, and asked him a question.

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

She asked again.

His cheeks flushed. “Of course not.”

The horse looked at him, unconvinced.

“We are only traveling together for the time being,” he said, weakly. “She is not my w--”

“Did you say something?” asked Annabeth, turning towards him.

If possible, Percy flushed even further. “Ah, no! Nothing to report.”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, then shrugged.

Before he knew it, they were all packed up and ready to go, Theophanu loaded down with their meager supplies. “Here, Percy.” Annabeth came round to his side, taking his arm and slinging it over her shoulder, using his own body as leverage to lift him up from the rock where he had nearly made his bed again. “Allow me.”

Together, they clambered onto Theophanu’s back. Annabeth sat before him, clutching the makeshift reins she had cobbled together out of what remaining rope they had left. Overcome with fatigue, his head bent forward until it rested against her shoulder, his nose pressed into the joint of her neck, her short curls brushing against his skin.

So tired was he, he could do barely more than mumble an apology into her shirt.

“It is fine,” she assured him. “Here, put your hands round my waist so you do not fall off.”

Her skin was hot. Or perhaps he was merely cold. He could no longer tell.

Drawing himself closer to her, he draped himself against her back, following her instruction. “Sleep, Percy,” he felt her murmur to him. “I’ve got you.”

Rocked by Theophanu’s gentle movements, the scent and feel of Annabeth all around him, there he fell asleep, a stray lock of her hair inching its way towards his mouth.

When he awoke the next morning, he would swear it was the greatest night’s sleep he had had in quite some time.

***

The nearer to the city they were, the stronger Percy felt.

Certainly, they were much too far from the port, but still Percy swore up and down that he could smell the sea. “I promise you, I can smell it!” Cresting the little mound, he thrust his arms out to the sides, taking in a large, large sniff. “The smell of salt, of fish, wet wood and smoke--” he sighed, full of ardent passion. “Thálatta, thálatta !”

“We still have quite a ways to go, phykios,” Annabeth grumbled, though he could see her fighting down a smile. “Are you certain what you smell is not your own most tender perfume?”

But her taunts could not bring down his mood on this day. After months of travel by river, from one end of the world to another, at last, at long last, they had returned to the sea.

Annabeth had called this city Riga, another strange word, but at least one that he could say without much trouble. They had let Theophanu free a few miles back, choosing to make their way into the city on foot, as Annabeth did not think they could bring her with them to Svealand, and she did not wish to sell their friend to some heartless man who might treat her poorly, despite the fact that Theophanu could, most likely, fetch them quite a handsome price. For services rendered, two weeks of her time and who knew how many miles, she deserved to be set free once more, to roam in peace and contentment, and thus, Percy had sent her off with the blessing of the little Horselord, as she had so fondly called him.

But now, now--the sea was within his grasp once more. The city of Riga rose up in the distance, the castle towers dark against the late afternoon sky, like trees rising above the red slanted roofs.

Even to his untrained eye, the difference in architecture was stark. The towers, thin and spindly and sharp, seemed to be reaching towards the heavens. The tallest had a cross placed on the very top of the spire, and Percy wondered how a man could even reach such heights so as to take care of it. Clearly this tower rested on top of a church, though it was the oddest church Percy had ever seen before. He supposed he had grown too used to the domes of St. Sophia and its ilk, yet to him it was still stranger than the church in Athens which had once been the mighty Parthenon.

By the time they entered the city proper, the sun hung low in the sky, a slight chill in the air. Percy shivered beneath his cloak, marveling at everyone around him who seemed unaffected by the cold. “Nothing like an unseasonable bit of chill, no?” he asked, hoping to spark some conversation after such a long silence.

She raised a brow. “This is not cold.”

“Of course it is,” he scoffed. “It is barely mid-September. Surely the seasons have not yet changed.”

“Oh, Percy,” she said, almost pityingly. “We are in the North, now. To those that live here, the coldest nights of Sigeion would seem the height of the summer heat.”

His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “It can be colder than this?”

With a sad, mockingly sorrowful shake of her head, she pressed on, leading them through the crowded docks.

“Annabeth,” he near-pleaded, jogging lightly to keep apace. “Please. Tell me it does not grow colder than this, I beg of you.”

She put her hand out, stopping him in his tracks. “A moment.”

They had come before a little cargo ship, her captain speaking at length with another man. Annabeth narrowed her eyes, her lips moving slightly as she whispered to herself in that expression Percy had come to recognize as the one she wore when she was concentrating very intensely on any given task, usually a war game strategy of some manner or other, before grabbing a hold of his hand, and dragging him with her as she stepped up to the captain, before engaging in a lively conversation with him.

A conversation that Percy could not follow, naturally. He could pick out a few words here and there, just by virtue of having known Annabeth for so long, things like “farbror” and “pengar” and “Grikkir,” but they flew by so quickly, he could not be sure if he had truly heard them.

A far, far cry from the stilted, unsure exchange she had shared with the gentleman in Kiova, Annabeth was well and truly in her element as she spoke with the captain. The words flew back and forth between them, faster than he thought would be possible with such a liquid, languid tongue. Occasionally, she would refer back towards Percy, and he would straighten his spine, lifting his chin in an attempt to look more dignified. There was not much he could do about the unfortunate length of his hair, nor the travel-worn state of his clothing, but he did his best to take on an air of importance, following Annabeth’s lead as she spoke, most haughtily.

Yet the conversation dragged on. It was several minutes of increasingly heated exchange before Annabeth turned away from the captain, bristling with anger. “Percy,” she said, imperious, “do you think you can sail this vessel?”

He flicked his eyes to the ship. It was small-ish, double-masted, well taken care of. “Most likely.”

“Very good.” She turned back to the captain, sneering, and said, “I trust you’ll help me steal it, then?”

Percy started. “Perhaps it would be best not to discuss this with him present?” It wasn’t that he was not agreeable to a little theft--quite the contrary, he would be happy to assist--but, well, the man was right in front of them.

But Annabeth just scoffed. “He does not speak our language; he cannot understand us.”

True to her word, the captain merely blinked at them, uncomprehending.

Very well. “Your orders?”

“On my mark,” she said. Then, she turned back to the poor man whose livelihood they were about to overturn, and, quite theatrically, burst into tears--great, heavy, cacophonous wails, which drew the attention of every man who surrounded them. So pitiful were her sobs, the good men of the port stepped up to comfort her, to see if there was some boon they could give or act they could perform to ease her sorrow, and so taken were they with her, a feeling with which Percy could certainly empathize, that none noticed as Percy quietly backed away, slipping onto the docked ship.

***

It was very early in the morning, but Percy had not felt so awake in months. Even in such a foreign place as this, the sea filled him full of power, sharpening his senses and lifting his spirits. They were making excellent time, the breath of Notus firmly at their backs, propelling them ever northward, and Percy felt so fine, he could not help but sing. Now, if only it had not been so damned cold. “Hýdōr thélō genésthai, ópōs se chrō̂ta loúsō,” he hummed, a song for a young girl he had heard once upon a time, “ópōs, ópōs, ópōs se chrō̂ta loúsō.”

“I do not know this one,” Annabeth commented, her hands curled around the lip of the wood as she kept a lookout--for what, she would not say--but her face was not turned out to the sea, rather, she looked at him so curiously, her head tilted. “From the Anacreontea?”

Percy shrugged. “I know it not, but heard it from the docks in Constantinople.” A lesser known talent of his, he seemed to have a nearly limitless memory for sea songs. If it were able to be sung on the water, then Percy would remember it perfectly. He could sometimes forget the shade of his mother’s hair, but he could remember these silly little sea songs. “If it is not to your liking, I am certain I could find another. Or, I could cease entirely.”

“No, no, it is very sweet,” she said. “You can sing to your heart’s content.” Then she sighed, wistful. “My father tried to teach me sea songs, once.”

“Oh?” he asked, delicately. The subject of her family was a sensitive one, he knew, but he confessed a deep curiosity for the man who helped make her into who she was. “Songs for when you went a-pillaging the coasts of Gallia and Anglia?”

Her pretty face twisted, the familiar frown she wore whenever she felt he was being particularly stupid. “You are aware that the age of the Vikings has long since passed, yes? Svealand is now as Christian as Constantinople. As it was,” she corrected.

Sensing that they were about to embark on a very sad road, he sought to change the subject before they did. “You mean to tell me,” he said, injecting as much of a teasing lilt as he dared, “you were not once the littlest of the shieldmaidens? You did not sleep on the longboats, with the dogs of war, ready and eager to fight?” He’d seen visions of Annabeth as a little girl, traveling the world with Thalia and Lukas, already such a fierce fighter, and though he knew what kind of pain she had borne, the picture in his head still made him smile, a pretty little girl with golden curls and a fierce gaze, brandishing a knife entirely too big for her. “

“How I wished I could,” she sighed again, near-dreamily, seeming as if she had been struck by Cupid’s arrow. “I used to dream of the great shieldmaidens of yore, of Freydís Eiríksdóttir and Brynhildr Buðladóttir, of fighting alongside them, but alas, it was not meant to be.” The smile slipped from her face, and she grew pensive once more. “My step-mother put a stop to those dreams once she deemed me to be too old to have them.”

“She did not appreciate the honor of shieldmaidens, then?”

Annabeth snorted, entirely unladylike. “Certainly not. She sought to bleed that part of me fully, as leeches to a festering wound, until I was sufficiently empty to be made full of the Christian god. When I was little,” she said, staring out to sea, “she brought me with my brothers on a business trip of sorts. She told my father that she was taking us on a pilgrimage to the great churches of the continent, but when we sailed into Riga, she…” Trailing off, she tightened her hands on the wood of the ship, her gaze hardening. Percy adjusted his grip on the rope, easing them more into the direction of the wind. “She attempted to leave me there,” Annabeth said, each word as heavy as a stone, dropped into the great, black deep. “She thought to consign me to a convent.”

A convent? “Rachel studied at a convent for a time,” Percy said. From what she had told him, it had not seemed so terrible. “I, however, cannot possibly imagine you in such a place.”

“Neither can I--I never actually set foot in it.” A small smile graced her features, then, barely visible in the dim light. If he had not been so attuned to her every move and muscle, he would not have seen it for himself. “As soon as I realized what she had tried to do, I ran. I took off, following the length of the Dúna for a fortnight, until I crashed right into Thalia and Lukas. And, well… you know the rest.” She looked at him, so fondly it made his heart skip a beat.

“You--” he swallowed, his tongue numb, his mind somewhat in pieces. “I remember, after our quest for the Master Bolt, you mentioned you were going to write to your father?”

She looked away. “I did.”

“And?” He prompted. “Did you ever receive a reply?”

“I did not.”

“Oh.”

“Not, I think, for a lack of trying,” she conceded. “You know as well as I how difficult it can be to send a letter. You were very fortunate to have your mother so close by.”

“I was,” he said, for there was no reason to deny it.

“But I suppose if you did not like your mother, that could have been a burden.”

Such a concept was unthinkable, truly. Percy paused for half a second, weighing his words, and then asked, “Would it have been a burden for you to be closer to your father?”

Pursing her lips, she blew out a hearty breath. “To tell you truthfully, I do not know. After… after our little adventure with Atlas, I should very much like to have gone home even for a short while, even just to tell him that I forgave him, and Mary, for all the perceived wrongs of my childhood. But, as you can see,” and she gestured South, “it would have taken far too long.”

She was not incorrect. War had been brewing, and they simply could not have spared their chief strategist for months on end. There had only been a handful of weeks in between that adventure and their journey into the depths of the Labyrinth; without Annabeth, he was certain that particular quest would have gone up in Greek fire.

“Tell me about him,” he said. “Your father. You know so much of mine, and yet I know so little of yours.”

Another small smile lifted her features. “You have forgotten already what I have told you of him?”

“I know he is a scholar of some renown,” said Percy, “and that he must be a singularly clever man in order to attract your mother’s eye.”

“He is,” she nodded. “He is… was… very dedicated to his studies, something which I always admired about him. Unfortunately, it left him little time to tend to his family.”

“Hence how you found yourself in your stepmother’s care.”

“Yes.” She faltered, tapping her fingers on the wood. “I… I do not know if he knew of her plan to send me to the convent. If he approved of her plan.” Her shoulders hunched. “If it was his idea in the first place.”

Percy shook his head, letting go of his ropes, commanding them to stay their current course. He stepped up to her, boldly knocking his shoulder against hers, pleased when she did not stumble or crumble before him. “Now, that cannot be,” he said, “for no man, no matter how wedded to his letters he may be, could consider you to be anything but the finest of warriors. If your father is as clever as you claim, surely he could not have authorized such a mistake.”

She stretched her lips in an attempt to smile, but that was all she could muster at this time, it seemed.

The dawn had yet to break, yet Percy could make out every line and angle of her face, indelibly marked, as they were, in his mind and heart, bathed in some otherworldly light that turned her more radiant than any goddess he had ever romanced.

He swallowed.

“I must confess,” he said, “something that has been weighing on me heavily.”

She turned to him, eyes wide and expectant. Her hair had grown out some since her unfortunate haircut, coming down to dust at the tops of her shoulders, nearly obscuring her gaze, and he had to grip the wood of the ship in order to keep himself from brushing it from her face.

“Why…” he trailed off, distracted by the flecks of silver in her eyes. By the gods, man, pull yourself together. “If you and your father did indeed have such a contentious relationship, why did you want to see him now?”

For a brief moment, he felt she looked… disappointed, almost. But it passed, more quickly than a thought, and he put it aside for the moment. “Despite it all, he is my father. My mother, the agoge, Constantinople--they are all gone, yet still he remains. He may be the only thing I have left in this world,” she said, glumly.

Something in his heart tugged at her words. “Not the only thing, surely,” he jested lamely. “Have I not been sufficient company on this odyssey of ours?”

“You have been,” she said, looking him square in the face, “the greatest companion I could ever have asked for. As long as I live, I shall never forget the thousand kindnesses you have paid me over these last few months.”

She was so close. He could feel her breath, hot against the freezing air, see the upturned tip of her nose. “It was my pleasure,” he mumbled.

There was no sound, save for the wind, the creak of the wood, the beating of his heart, so loudly he was certain she could hear it--or perhaps it was hers, throbbing in return. One, two, three heartbeats in succession, she twitched, he jolted, they moved imperceptibly closer, then--

Annabeth gasped. “Percy, look!” she cried, pulling back.

“Huh?” he blinked, lagging a few seconds behind.

Her outstretched finger pointed upwards towards the heavens, but all he could see was the open, naked wonder on her face, her dropped jaw, her eyes as large as the extravagant pendants of rich nobles, the way her curls seemed to bounce of their volition, charged up in awe and in wonder. Only after he had taken his fill of her visage, a seemingly impossible feat, yet one he accomplished nonetheless, did he follow her finger to the object of her fascination.

And he gasped in turn.

High in the sky, ribbons of light and color swam about, mixing and mingling with the clouds and stars, as if Eos and Iris had joined forces, the rosy-fingered dawn and the golden-winged messenger entwined in a magical dance. “Oh,” he breathed, “oh, how beautiful!”

“I can’t believe it!” she laughed, delighted. “The bridge! Percy, look! The--” Then she said a word which Percy must not have heard correctly.

“The what?”

And then she said that word again.

He frowned. “Bee-vroast?”

“No, the Bifröst.”

“Is that not what I am saying?”

“Most certainly not,” she said. “It is the road between Heaven and Earth, connecting Asgard to Midgard.”

“Asgard?” he asked. “Midgard? What do these things mean?"

She gestured around them. “This. This is Midgard, everything you see before you, the land in the middle. Asgard sits up above us, at the top of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. It is a long, long way, passing through Alfheim , and… well, regardless, it is quite the journey.

“I see,” said Percy. “Similar to how Olympus was perched on top of St. Sophia, yes?”

Annabeth tilted her head, considering. “A little. Though, rather than a staircase or a mountaintop, there is a bridge.”

He looked back at the display--unfortunately, all he could see were hazy, formless colors, stunning, but about as solid as the mist itself, nothing nearly so weighty as a bridge, yet so sublime and unfathomable still. “A bridge?”

She pointed again, leaning in close, so as he could better see the angle of her finger. “There, do you not see the three colors?”

He could, indeed, see three colors: hot reds, cool blues, otherworldly greens, like streams of pure light floating down from on high. “I do.”

“And there,” her face was nearly pressed to his, the heat of her body welcomed only in that it helped to ward off the cold somewhat, “see you not the point where it vanishes?”

He squinted. The lights seemed to disappear beyond the horizon line, trailing off above what surely must have been Ultima Thule. “I… I believe I do, yes.”

“There,” said Annabeth, her face all lit up, “there is the home of the gods of my father’s family: the Aesir.”

“Aesir,” he repeated. Aesir, Asgard, Midgard, so many strange sounds. “Well, then,” he said, taking a step back. “Shall I follow this Bifröst of yours?”

How strange to think that, merely a few months earlier, they had set out from Piraeus, nearly antipodal to where they were now, surely. It seemed near a lifetime ago. Even now, he found that the streets of Constantinople had faded from his memory, somewhat, the towering churches and ancient squares no longer quite so towering in his mind. How he longed to return to that place, that time, before his gods had abandoned him, before his family had vanished into the air, before he realized that he was in love with a woman who despised him, and before he realized that, sooner than he would have liked, he was about to lose her forever.

“Not quite so far,” said Annabeth, taking a step back in turn. “We go to seek my uncle, Randulf.”

“Not your father?” he asked, once more picking up the ropes which had not gone slack.

She shook her head. “My father is but a scholar; on the contrary, my uncle is… well…” Flushing lightly, she bit her lip, looking away. “He is something of a local lord.”

“Really.”

She flushed further. “He does possess certain titles and lands.”

“You really are a princess,” Percy concluded, a smile growing on his face. “And all this time, I thought that you simply detested to be compared to the fairest of the fairer sex.”

Harrumphing, she crossed her arms. “I am not a princess,” she pouted.

Holy Aphrodite, surely she must not have known the effect that she had on him. “Oh, of course,” said Percy, “I had forgotten. Your majesty.”

“Enough.” But, as the lights of the Bifröst gave way to the breaking dawn, he could see a smile on her face, as plain as day. “Be ready, captain, for there are many islands between here and Stadsholmen.”

“Of course, your majesty.”

“Percy!”

***

When she related to him the news, she seemed oddly calm regarding the situation. “It appears,” she had said, “that my uncle has since passed away.”

“My deepest sympathies.” Percy did not have much in the way of an extended mortal family--his mother had been a single child, and his step-father had not spoken much of his own family--but he could imagine the kind of loss she must have felt.

“It seems that his title and holdings were transferred to my cousin, Magnus.” She had had a sort of faraway look on her face, as though she were lost in some kind of waking dream. “He and my father have gone to Birka, to see to his properties.”

Goodness; they had docked the boat from the poor man whom they had thieved in Riga not just this morning, had barely been in Stadsholmen a day, and once again they were setting off. “How far?”

Blinking, she had seemed to physically pull herself together before his very eyes. “Not very,” she had said. “I can find us passage.”

Now they floated serenely on the waters of Lake Mälaren, as she had called it, inching ever closer as the nice captain brought them to the island in the middle of the water. It felt odd not to be in control of the vessel for once, and Percy could not stop himself from fidgeting, his leg bouncing up and down incessantly.

The captain shot him a dirty glare, and Percy looked away. “So,” he said to Annabeth, desperate for something to fill the weighty silence which had descended upon them. “Your cousin, Magnus--what is his character?”

“I wish I could say.” Staring straight ahead, Annabeth focused all her considerable attention on the island which was slowly coming into view, emerging from the mist. “I have not spoken with him since before I ran away.”

“I see.”

“I remember,” she said, softly, “that he loved nature. That when I told him of my plans, he did not go and report them to my father. In that way, I know that he was a stalwart friend, and I cannot imagine that much could have changed him.” Tossing him a glance, he thought he saw her lips turn imperceptibly downwards. “If he has not changed much, I daresay that you will quite enjoy his company.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he asked, awaiting further explanation, yet she did not provide any.

Before very long, they had arrived at the shores of Birka, and Annabeth had given the kind boatman the very last of their coin. They stood at the bottom of a little hill, the dirt path before them winding its way through the tall grass, like a snake, yet Annabeth made no move to go forward.

“I cannot believe I am here,” she breathed. “It has been so long, I… I never thought I would see it again.” What ‘it’ could have been, she did not specify, though he could guess.

Though the house on the hill was now within their grasp, he found that his feet seemed to be as heavy as hers. “Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow,” he said, “and find somewhere to rest for the night.”

But then he observed as Annabeth summoned all her courage, drawing herself up to her full height, squaring her shoulders and narrowing her eyes, a little goddess of war here on Earth, and began the long march up the hill. Percy was powerless to do naught but follow her.

The house was built with dark wood, a deep, nutty brown, an inkblot against the soft blues and greens of the land which surrounded it. As they grew closer and closer, it seemed to multiply in size, as though stories and wings were added to the existing structure before his very eyes, an ever expanding sculpture of rough-hewn wood and grey, slanting roofs.

As Annabeth stepped up to the great, wooden door, and knocked, Percy stepped back a ways. It would not do, he thought, for him to hover over her, not during such a precious moment of reunion.

A handful of heartbeats, then the door opened, with a great, creaking groan. “Ja?” asked the man who popped his head out, a mop of drab, grey hair on his head. “Vem är det?”

“Jag heter Anja Elisabet Fredriksdotter,” Annabeth said, “och jag är här för att träffa min far, Fredrik Randulfsson.”

The man looked her up and down, before retreating into the darkness of the house.

There, on the grass outside of the door, they waited.

Not a minute later, the door opened again, nearly coming off its hinges as another man barreled forth, his wild, grey hair shooting off in all directions, glasses perched delicately on his nose. “Anja!” he gasped, as though he were in pain. “Anja, är det verkligen du?”

Annabeth gave a single sob, then threw herself at the man, who wrapped her up in his arms, squeezing tightly. “Jag är hemma nu, papa,” she wept, muffled by his shirt. “Jag är hemma.”

As one, they crashed to the earth, their knees striking the packed dirt, and despite the chill of the afternoon air, Percy could not help but feel warm at the sight of Annabeth--Anja--as she embraced her father for the first time in fifteen years.

#this one is a doozy #marble king #pjo #percabeth #the rivalry ends here #my fic

[segenassefa]

2: On Consumerism, Fighting Demons, and Societies Inevitable Collapse

Quarantine has been lowkey surreal. My constant complaint of never having enough time to do all the things I want/should be doing has now left me bored in the house, bored in the house, bored with nothing but time to get said things done. However, it is a dual edged sword - with the collapse and subsequent reformation of civil society outside my doors, it leaves me wondering – as well as a lot of other people – in the words of Miss Juicy…what the hell we gone do now?

Nearing the end of the first leg of my university career, I should be thinking about getting ready to transition to the next logical stages of adulthood - saving for an apartment, applying for permanent residency, as well as graduate schools and part time jobs. Yet, I’m worried about if these things will even be a possibility within the next month, six months, or even the next year.

On top of ALL of that, the recent BLM protests and the way that people (read: white people, Latinxs, Black men, homo/transphobes, etc.) have shown their asses the past few months is beyond mortifying - especially regarding the treatment of black women and how our value as individuals as well as a collective to society is really perceived.* This is not to downplay the murder of numerous black men in society, BUT who the fuck is riding for black women aside from other black women? And not just the ones who find attractive, or are racially ambiguous, or the ones you feel as if you get “guilted” into supporting and demanding justice for, I mean each and every black woman. I’m just saying, it gets pretty disheartening to feel like the legwork of the revolution is on the back of one category of people, and that your value to society is measured by the amount of emotional labour you’re ready to do for others, or how fat your ass is (but I digress…).

I feel like most people have used material things as coping mechanisms instead of actually facing their feelings and dealing with the things that bother them. Just think of the number of packages that have arrived on your doorstep the past few months. Breaking the glossy seal of packing tape is similar to therapy, until all the boxes are open, and you start feeling like shit again. And now, more than ever, there’s a lot to be bothered about. Western society has dedicated phrases based on the phenomenon of substituting true self-work with figurative emotional bandages (Phrases like comfort eating and retail therapy come to mind).

It’s nice to think that we – the people entering their adolescent and young adult years – will be the one to change these things, but suddenly it’s 2 am, you have twenty different things in your Amazon cart, (who the fuck needs a metal straw cleaning kit?) and you’re trying to see how far you can stretch and grab your debit card before falling off of the bed.

The conflicting messages pushed by society don’t help all that much either. If you look up “Kondo method” or “decluttering my closet” on YouTube, the numbers of videos that come up is astounding. Pages and pages of sweaty-faced, smiling YouTubers monetizing from this kind of faux “minimalism” only to post haul videos a few days later because “I threw everything out and now I have to rebuild from scratch sksksk!”. Does this not just perpetuate a cycle of buying and throwing and buying? I am....confusion, to say the least. Still I watch them, because I’m a hypocrite, and am also easily amused.

I will be the first to admit I have always had a very unhealthy relationship with money, with self-image, and with measuring my self-worth in proximity with “stuff that stems from a complicated relationship with physical self. Follow along:

Growing up, I was a fat kid. We don’t even have to sugar coat it. Think Terrio, but better eyebrows and more hair. Except I was not killin’ em, just myself. I always envied my friends who were able to go shopping at regular stores – read: Hollister, Abercrombie, Urban Outfitters (yes my friends were white), meanwhile I was condemned to shopping in the women’s department.

So, to compensate, I would buy trinkets – things like nail polish, lip gloss, journals, you get the point. My proximity to worthiness was measured not by the things that I bought, but within the act of buying. Growing up with parents who were also financially frugal also altered my relationship with money and blessed me with crippling buyers’ remorse after every purchase, even on things that are important (read: groceries).  

But as a kid, buying “stuff” was fun for me – it gave me some sort of purpose, and the acquisition of things (even if they weren’t the same things my peers had) made me feel like, to some extent, I could compete on the same playing field. As I got older, and I started to have real expenses, I moved towards second-hand shopping. I would religiously find myself at Goodwill on weekend, after school, or with friends. I could literally feel an endorphin rush when I would find something that I would consider a “good deal”, and it made me feel (again) purposeful, to be spending money, even if I didn’t need whatever I was buying.

I should also add that the people in my immediate family does not believe in thrift stores (“Why am I working for you to wear other people’s clothing?”, I remember my dad asking me one day), so the act of second-hand shopping was also my form of rebellion.

I began to amass a collection of clothing that would put Kylie’s closet to shame. I began buying things for events and situations that were yet to happen, for other people, for when I lose ten pounds. It was a madness.

In freshman year of university, I had an unhealthy relationship with clubbing clothes. Did I have the figure for clubbing clothes? Absolutely not. The funnier part is, I couldn’t even go clubbing because I wasn’t 19 at the time. And yet I had drawers and drawers full of the stuff. Not to mention that clubbing clothes is incredibly similar to summer clothing and living between Minnesota and Canada meant that these things were barely seeing the light of day.

The moral of this was – I could never figure out my relationship with stuff, This quarantine has forced me to try and break down the compulsion behind my behaviour.  I felt like I was spiralling the six weeks that they closed thrift stores, and I knew myself well enough to not try and online shop with the same kind of frequency as that. But the crazy part was, I didn’t die. I didn’t go into withdrawal (ok, I did a little bit, but whatever), and I was able to take the time to go through the things I already owned and find some hidden gems that were routinely buried in the cracks and crevices of my closet. It was like the episode of Family Guy when Peter realizes he has a vestigial twin – alarming and cool at first, but then it’s just alarming and annoying.

Its more embarrassing to realize that some semblance of myself image is tied to the frequency with which I am able to spend money. I would never say that participating in capitalist society gives me some kind of purpose as a black woman because God forbid. Also, considering that a lot of big names companies are actually racist and fatphobic as hell creates a whole new dimension for analyzing the power of my black dollar, sometimes creating another spiral of guilt leading to you guessed it – more spending.

As much as it seems like it, however, this self-reflection was not in vain. In the past month, I’ve cut down my closet from +200 pieces of clothing and shoes to about 40. If you ever want a fun, humbling activity this quarantine, just clean out your closet and be honest with yourself about how often you wear certain things. It was revolting to see the number of shirts, dresses, pants, skirts that I had bought and convinced myself wholeheartedly I was going to wear, only to pull them out of my closet months later with the tags attached *insert Marge Simpson covering her face meme*.

But at the end of the whole ordeal, it felt really good to look at my space and not feel burden or guilt. It was somewhat philanthropic realizing that not only will these clothes make someone else happier (I donated pretty much everything because it’s not always about money), but that my quality of life was not dramatically impacted in owning (or not owning) certain things. The past few weeks, I’ve spent more money on going out and sharing experiences with friends, but still nowhere near the same amount of money I would have spent buying clothes and other material possession.

Youtuber Kelly Stamps has a video on how minimalism “cured” her depression**, and the whole thesis boils down to the idea that owning less things gives you less to compare yourself too, thus making you happier (in a sense) and allowing you to focus the energy and time that would have been centered around maintaining and building your collection of possessions other things.

This still doesn’t break down the root of the issue, but it’s a start. I think when you have traits or patterns that you’ve participated in for so long, it becomes hard to step back and be objective enough to realize that you – yes, you – are part of the problem. I can blame my habits on a lot of things but at the end of the day, it’s important to realize that certain cycles seem never-ending because I actively choose to participate in these kinds of behaviours (accountability is sexy, huh?). While I’m not ready to face all my demons quite yet, it’s easier to do it with a nice wardrobe and a streamlined sense of mind.

Notes

*When I say black women, I mean ALL black women. Not some limited, cis-gendered, heteronormative view of what a woman is. Over here we ride for all those who identify as women.

**She emphasizes that she doesn’t actually means that it cured anything, but rather helped with her anxiety, and in turn, helped with her depression.

Links

That Family Guy Episode

The Kelly Stamps video

#cms #selfhelp? #consumerism

[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 22

Hey so uhhh...it was a good couple of cute chapters, right?  

Ao3

“I love you,” Hiccup whispers under his breath, heart racing as he carefully brushes a lock of hair back from Astrid’s face. It was tangled in her eyelashes and stuck to her lips as she snored, and it only seems decent to set it gently behind her ear.

She’s impossibly more beautiful when she’s asleep, all twitching eyebrows and soft, tired cheeks. He pulls himself closer to her, dropping a cautious kiss on her hair-covered forehead and hoping she doesn’t wake up.

“I love you.” The second time he tries on something he’s never worn before, it’s braver, if not louder.

She snorts in her sleep, burrowing her face into his shoulder, and he laughs under his breath.

The last twelve or so hours have been some of the best of his life.

In the shower, he orbited uselessly around everything she said and knew nothing could make it make sense except talking to her. He didn’t expect her reaction though, given, well, the fact that she’s embarrassingly perfect and he’s definitely not. He never could have expected what it would mean to see her naked and wanting on his desk in a room full of his books.

Hiccup’s sexual encounters can be sorted into two neat sections: those who he would never show his books and those who upon being shown his books would ask him if he’d ever killed anyone.

Last night was so much more than either.

Even though Hiccup has never said ‘I love you’ to anyone but his parents and not even them post age nineteen, he knew he couldn’t say it when the words sublimated in his brain. ‘I love you’ isn’t a thing to be said for the first time around any coital activity, pre or mid or post. Isn’t there usually a present of some kind involved? Or some sort of event? Maybe he’s just imagining an event as a way to keep from blurting it out at her the next time she smiles or scowls or looks at him with that brave worried strength.

“I love you, Astrid,” he mutters against her hair, arms wrapped around her shoulders, sighing when her leg reflexively curls around his hip. He’s still off schedule, after years of night tours and a few days in the hospital with Snotlout. She’s probably lagging too, but either way it led to a night of napping with occasional periods of mutual lucidity.

Yes, there was more sex. Laughing, comfortable sex and sleepy touching that made him feel closer to her than he ever has to anyone, but that’s not what he’s dwelling on now. Mostly, they talked. Not about anything in particular, they just talked and laughed and cuddled and the flicker of ‘I love you’ he’d felt twice in his office fed off of every word and bloomed into a compulsion he doesn’t know what to do with.

He watched her dream, her face twitching without her intentionally rigid expression to contain it and the concept of loving her expanded so wholly that he thought his heart was going to explode. He woke up to her kissing his back and those dangerous thoughts about the future grew hooks and dug in.

“I think I love you,” he whispers against the top of her head, hugging her tighter, “More than think, I think I’m sure I love you.”

She grumbles in her sleep and rolls away from him, pressing her face into the pillow, profile hidden by a cloud of tangled blonde. Her back rises and falls with her breathing, a freckle on her shoulder blade moving just in and out of the shadow the streetlight casts as it peeks through the blinds.

He should let her sleep.

But if he lets her sleep, he’s going to spend the next hour whispering ‘I love you’ at a sleeping person, and at some point that gets creepy, no matter how pure his intentions, so he should probably wake her up.

“Astrid,” he says her name in a sing-song tone, brushing her hair away from her ear and kissing the corner of her jaw. No response. “It’s time to wake up,” he continues, lips against the back of her neck, hand on her ribs.

She groans, pushing up onto her elbows and glaring around the room with sleepy, squinting eyes, “what time is it?”

“A little after four,” he strokes her arm, seemingly unable to stop touching her now that he’s started.

“That’s not time to get up,” she shakes her head, curling back up on her side and facing him.

The truth is as obvious as bold, black text on a page. He loves her. He loves her bedhead and the way she’s cocooning in his sheets, uncovering his foot as she claims more blankets. He loves how she’s scowling at him now, maybe self-conscious even though it’s buried under sleepy irritation.

It is entirely too soon to be thinking like this, but timelines have never stopped him before.

“What?” She asks when he’s apparently stared too long, and maybe he never had a chance to avoid being creepy.

“I…” He sits up, pulling the sheets across his lap and cringing when his stomach growls audibly. “I’m hungry, apparently.”

“We skipped dinner,” she informs him like she was previously aware of the transgression.

“It didn’t seem important at the time,” he raises an eyebrow, and she deflates.

“I’ll get dressed.”

“I hate that idea,” he blurts and she smiles a private, grumpy smile that makes his heart jolt. He loves her. “I’ll figure it out, ok?” He rolls reluctantly out of bed and pulls on a pair of boxers from the clean laundry basket in the corner, grabbing his crutch and standing up.

The fridge is predictably empty. Hiccup shouldn’t be surprised, as Snotlout was a little preoccupied with almost dying and that clearly led to him skipping his usual Sunday grocery errand, but he was hoping for a miracle. He doesn’t think it’d be particularly charming to offer some of Snotlout’s protein drink and everything else in the cupboard is canned and dusty.

When Snotlout first joined the force, there were a few months when he continually got ‘Protect and Serve’ wrong and announced ‘Protect and Provide’ at nearly every opportunity. It wasn’t a hit at the precinct, but it really seemed to work for him with girls, and as much as Hiccup teased him about it, the phrase is sticking in his head now.

Not that Astrid needs protection, she never has, and he knows she doesn’t explicitly need to be provided for, but it feels important. Breakfast feels important, especially because he takes at least half the credit for missing dinner and he has absolutely hit his hospital food limit for the century.

“No luck,” he walks back into his bedroom, feeling more self-conscious from the way Astrid looks at his shoulders than her curious expression when she examines the leg that he retrieved from the bathroom. “I’ll go get breakfast.”

“I can come with you,” she insists through a yawn that turns her tone unconvincing and he leans over to kiss her on the cheek.

“Get some more sleep,” he sits on the edge of the bed to pull his jeans on, “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“That’s a pretty good offer.”

“Text me if you want anything in particular,” he pulls on the first shirt he finds in the clean laundry basket and doesn’t bother with socks. As willing as he is to do this, it’s already taking too long when Astrid is settling back into his bed.

“Can’t,” she sighs, “my phone’s still at my apartment.”

“Right,” he rubs his hands together, “I can stop by your place and grab it really quick, if you want.”

Again, Astrid doesn’t need protection, but she wasn’t looking forward to going back to her apartment. He’s not exactly either, but after the Grimborn revelations of the day before he feels the need to examine it. It’s important to know for sure if the wall outside her courtyard still has some bone deep connection to the past, even if it means encountering another scrubbed clean patch of pavement.

“Are you sure?” She frowns, propped up on one elbow, sheet slipping slightly down her chest.

“Yeah, there’s a bakery a couple blocks from your place that’s probably open now. It used to be a workhouse kitchen and they still bake their bread in the Victorian cast iron oven—“

“Come here,” she pulls him down into a kiss when he listens, hand firm on the back of his neck as her tongue dips into his mouth. And she’s warm and smells like his laundry detergent, her other hand on his hip, fingers slipping through his belt loop.

Her stomach growls and he pulls away with a laugh.

“If I don’t go now, it’s not going to happen,” he brushes his lips across her forehead and tugs the blanket up before he can look down and lose the fragile scraps of his resolve. He loves her, she’s hungry, he wants that to be his problem. “Where are your keys?”

“In my pants pocket,” she holds the blanket to her chest even as her eyes flick down to his lips, “on the floor of your office.”

“Oh my God, I’m going.” He takes a big, purposeful step back, running his hand through his impossible hair, “before I—nope, not going to say it. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Before you what?” She laughs after him as he leaves the room and he bites his lip to keep from answering her. “Come on, that’s not fair.”

“I’ll tell you when I get back, ok?” He says as he plucks her keys out of her jeans pocket.

Maybe he will.

Astrid’s all about complete information, isn’t she?

They exchange one last goodbye as he leaves through the front door and locks it behind him, double checking the doorknob. Just two days ago, he was avoiding coming home, scared that he’d once again be left with a pile of things that someone wasn’t ever coming back to, but now he can barely make himself leave. The apartment feels more like a home with her in it, more than it has since his dad died, and he might be alarmed at how badly he wants her to stay if he hadn’t already thrown emotional caution to the wind.

The hallway is colder when mentally compared with how warm he knows his bedroom is and he almost unlocks the door and abandons the idea of leaving entirely. Maybe the bakery does Uber Eats.

But then Astrid still wouldn’t have her phone, which would be pretty inconvenient for her, considering she’d have no way to tell anyone that a crazy person just admitted his undying love for her after they slept together one time. And that said crazy person has half convinced himself that asking her to move in is a decent idea.

Ruffnut clearly needs an update, given how the fallout might change her fake wedding planning.

“The walk will be good,” he mutters to himself, forcing himself down the stairs and out onto the quiet street.

It rained at some point in the night, the pavement still damp as the first rays of morning sunlight hit it, and Hiccup takes a deep breath, clearing the Astrid infused air from his lungs. The thought that he loves her doesn’t leave with it and he shakes his head, heading towards her apartment.

He knows it’s too early to say, hell, it’s really too early to feel, but most people go on a slew of dates before they have to be a murder suspect with someone. The Berkian criminal justice system is far from perfect, but it is a legendary bonding experience. Not to mention that he doesn’t know where he’d put ‘occasionally finds disemboweled victims of serial killers’ on a dating profile, because it’s not really intentional enough to be a hobby, but it’s a definite obstacle for his free time.

But excuses he’s leaning on to delay the inevitable do nothing to the truth of it.

He loves Astrid. He probably loved her the second she whacked him in the head with a toothbrush, his fear of going to jail for harassment just got in the way of him realizing it. Well, that and the fact he never would have thought he’d have a chance or that she’d look at his books like they’re something special.

Whenever he discovers something true, he always wants to share it as widely as possible, and the impulse threatens to overwhelm him. If she had her phone, he’d probably text her, like that’s not worse than someone blurting it out the first time she gets them naked.

Hiccup takes the next right without really thinking, ducking onto an old shortcut and relaxing when the old alley’s shadow embraces him like a centuries old echo chamber built for more than Grimborn. The city still feels alive, creaky in the early morning but willing to shake off another wave of violence and keep trudging forward. The brick is cool and damp from the rain, smudging rust colored dust onto Hiccup’s fingertips as he trails them along the side of the nearest building.

He doesn’t think about how close he is to the second Grimborn site until he sees Gruffnut standing outside of his bar’s back door and dusting a two-foot-tall copper tank.

“Fuck!” He jumps and Gruffnut jumps too, almost knocking the tank off of the table it’s on, barely managing to catch it with his very much alive hand.

“What is it?” Gruffnut looks around, spinning in a circle trying to check behind his shoulder, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost. And I don’t trust that old Teddy isn’t coming to even the score after I outed him to the police.”

Right. Teddy Roosevelt. Eretson’s face, unamused above a binder of nonsense that Hiccup accidentally dropped months ago in another alley that was just becoming reacquainted with blood. A binder of nonsense that Gruffnut’s creepily identical cousin gave Astrid to give to him.

“You’re Tuffnut,” Hiccup claps his hand over his heart, willing it back into his chest.

“Who else would I be?” He affirms reality a little more when he goes back to cleaning. Gruffnut never cleaned anything, he definitely wouldn’t start after being literally caught dead.

“Is that an antique still?” Hiccup asks, distracted by the copper pot gleaming in the low light.

“It’s still an antique alright,” Tuffnut says, “an antique something, I don’t know, it’s shiny though.”

“No, it’s a still,” he clarifies, wiping dust off of a curl of copper pipe twisting up from the tank like a spout.

“It is still, yes, it’s an inanimate object that I’m not currently lending any animation to.” Tuff nods, giving Hiccup an eerily Snotlout-like look of surprise that Hiccup is managing to function while being so stupid. “Maybe you’re the ghost. Did my sister kill you after you ruined your fake marriage? Because I’ve got my own reasons to get revenge on Ruffnut, buddy, I can’t be your vengeance liaison to the world of the living.”

“That’s—she told you about—never mind,” Hiccup shakes his head, pointing at the copper tank, “this is a still, it’s a piece of equipment used to make alcohol.”

“Make alcohol,” Tuffnut rolls his eyes, “right, if making alcohol is possible, why would anyone buy it at a bar?”

“Well, where does the bar get it?”

“It was all here when I showed up.” He frowns, “but when the bar runs out, where will I get more? Oh right, the store…but where does the store get it?”

“I should get going, Tuff,” Hiccup interrupts the runaway train of thought and Tuffnut nods.

“Right, sure.” Tuffnut nods, “oh, by the way, have you heard from Astrid at all? I haven’t heard anything since I dropped her off at the hospital yesterday.”

“Oh,” Hiccup blushes, rubbing the back of his neck, “yeah, she’s actually umm, at my place, so…”

“Right,” he winks, “and I’m ‘doing my homework so I don’t fail out of grad school’. I get you.”

“Whatever that means,” Hiccup says, waving Tuffnut off with a laugh and one last look over his shoulder to assess whether he’s seeing things or not.

He avoids the alley exit where Gruffnut’s body was found, taking a slightly longer route and skirting condo property, keeping an eye out for cameras. There’s one, but it’s pointing towards the docks instead of down the narrow path heading vaguely towards Astrid’s apartment building, so it doesn’t alter his course.

Winding through still dark alleys is another kind of coming home, truly separate from Grimborn for the first time, but still comforting. Another thing returning to normal after the end of the copy cat killer’s spree makes Hiccup feel like he an breathe again, especially since the new normal includes Astrid.

If he tells her he loves her, she doesn’t have to say it back. He knows it’s ridiculously early, by any standard, he wouldn’t expect it. The fact that she’s impossible to scare off makes him brave. Brave enough to be stupid, probably.

When he finds the street again, he’s looking at the back door to her building, the one he walked her back to the morning after the first murder. The day they saw Dave. If any of the tourists knew about that, it would be swarming with them.

Part of the Houdini phase was about fame. Notoriety. The irony of wanting fame for being the best at disappearing isn’t lost on him, especially now that someone invisible is getting famous for the worst reasons.

The wall outside her courtyard just looks like a wall. It’s old but cleanly built, the bricks rectangular from their mold and entirely, sparkling clean. No chalk writing, no blood stained asphalt. Power-washing removes almost as much history as a new slew of murders does. People more interested in murder than history clear away the rest, paving the road for copycat killers in their wake.

The building’s back door unlocks with the second key he tries and he counts the steps up to Astrid’s floor, glad he separated this pilgrimage from getting her home safe after their midnight tour. He knows that Gobber does his best as a landlord, but the staircase is still badly suffering from a well-intentioned renovation in the mid-nineteen-eighties and Hiccup feels like he’s wading into some bus terminal rejuvenated for the new decade with geometric carpet.

It’s not just the neighborhood, it’s really not a great building. Honestly, it was the condo of the eighteen eighties, just a pile of rectangles cobbled together because people were flocking to an idea of a city without thinking about the consequences. The most remarkable thing about it was the murder committed here, and that doesn’t seem so remarkable anymore.

Astrid’s apartment door doesn’t look like Elizabeth Smith’s.

It looks like a door he approached with a book in the rain with sweaty palms. A door he paced outside thinking about when he was five minutes early for a midnight tour.

A shitty door with a cheap new lock that makes his heart ache.

It’s too soon to say ‘I love you’ but is it too soon to ask her to move in? She gets along with Snotlout and that’s most of the hurdle, isn’t it? Plus, his place is nicer, less soulless even before Astrid infuses soul into it. He wonders what Gobber charges for rent and almost texts him to ask before catching himself and re-committing to the task at hand.

Phone. Breakfast. Astrid.

Astrid. Astrid. Astrid.

He almost knocks, even if it’s just symbolic, but that would be a step back he doesn’t want to take so he slides the most worn key into the knob.

It doesn’t turn.

Maybe there’s a thump inside or maybe that’s just his heart as the air in the hallway suddenly goes still and stale.

The knob turns.

Someone on the other side of the door pulls it open and Hiccup is stuck staring at Mr. Grisly in a familiar top hat and long wool coat, grinning with a face finally thawed from its usual permafrost.

“It took you long enough, Hiccup,” Mr. Grisly produces a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and slaps one ring too tight around Hiccup’s wrist before locking the other half around the doorknob. The motion is not so much practiced as it is nonchalant, someone smacking a fly that just landed too close to their food.

Mr. Grisly takes a step backwards like a circus ringleader in the center ring, twirling a knife like a ceremonial cane. Then he rotates Astrid’s only chair to reveal a blonde woman lashed to it with duct tape. Her hair shines painful, familiar gold as he stands behind her and stabs the knife decisively into her neck, dragging sideways before she can scream.

The chair shields him from the blood.

It doesn’t shield Hiccup.

He coughs, she dies. Quickly, historically, choking without substance as the fabric of the red chair deepens to truly match the fully closed soundproof curtains. He gags. His heart would stop if it slowed because all he can think about is Astrid, warm and alive in that same chair. Of her soft and sleepy an hour ago.

Was there time for Grisly to go back to his place?

He should have told her. He never should have left.

“You had to know it was always going to come to this,” Grisly says, holding the woman’s face up by her hair. She’s not Astrid and relief tastes like bile and someone else’s blood. “Oh, you didn’t?”

“Enlighten me.” Hiccup barely recognizes his own voice, detached and too deep, furious as his fist clenches in the cuff, guilty high throbbing in his throat. It’s not Astrid but it’s someone else and he’s sick with it.

“I’m in the business of making money,” Grisly chuckles, ripping duct tape off of clothes that don’t matter anymore, “subcontracting means my methods are up to my own discretion.” Grisly smiles as his knife bites through fabric and skin, spilling parts of someone across the floor, “dental is...not great.”

“I can see that.”

He can see everything. So much he never wanted to.

His dad wanted him to be a doctor, for a while, but he didn’t even try to lie about that one, not after his cat killed a bird and he threw up at the aftermath. He focuses on the substance of the conversation instead of the gore, falling back on what he does best.

“The developers employ me to clean up the streets and to make their buildings more desirable places to live, so that they can raise the rent.” Grisly’s hands are working, calm and sure of themselves even as he prattles on, “and with tourism on the up and up, they can raise it even more. Shorter leases, higher cost, everyone wins.” He mimics the wounds in the Elizabeth Smith crime scene picture with detached efficiency.

“Not everyone.” Hiccup has always hated taxidermy. Something about presenting what used to be life in a way that glorified its murder is awful, but this is worse, entirely destroying the illusion that death leaves anything pristine.

“Aren’t you curious?” Grisly laughs, full of life, throbbing with the flow of someone else’s blood. “Don’t you wonder why I’m not surprised to see you?”

“You’re never very surprised to see me.” It’s a fact that could meld into realization if he could look away from blood seeping into the carpet. “How did you know to be here?”

Hiccup hates himself for being curious. For the first time, he absolutely, truly, profoundly hates the ever churning gears of his mind, fitting together things they shouldn’t and searching for gaps in the madness with intent to fill them. Was Grisly watching his apartment? Is he still? Or is this just the next notch in this string of luck so impossible that he can’t even call it luck anymore?

“I’ve been waiting for you, Hiccup,” Grisly says the name like he’s talking to an old friend and Hiccup swallows back another gag, “I knew it wouldn’t be long before you had to come see the scene of the carnage. It’s in your nature. I thought you’d bring Astrid with you, of course.”

“What are you talking about?” Hiccup doesn’t know which of his confusions is most pressing. His nature. Astrid. The fact that Grisly has been waiting here. They all swim in useless, buzzing circles around his mind and he chokes back something raw that’s either a sob or a desperate, miserable laugh.

“You know what?” Grisly slashes a vertical and then drops the body ceremoniously on the floor, approximately on top of the historical footprint of the eighteen-eighty-three doorway. “I’ve got time. Perhaps I moved too quickly, maybe if I’d waited, Astrid would have come looking for you and I wouldn’t have needed the substitute.”

Substitute. Astrid.

Grisly sees Hiccup move, reaching for his phone with frantic, shaking fingers, and he’s there instantly, wrenching Hiccup’s arm behind his back hard enough his elbow pops and prying the phone from his hand. Hiccup tries to kick him and stumbles, smearing the still open door. The geometric carpet in the hallway is splattered, adding to the dying arcade ambiance.

He gags again and Grisly lets go, walking around him to waggle a finger in his face like a stern schoolteacher.

“Don’t go ruining my crime scene now, I’d hate to have to fake a weak stomach.”

“Your crime scene,” Hiccup narrows his eyes, funneling shock into rage, “I saw you, you told me that…Astrid…”

“Let me lay this out for you, Hiccup,” he gives the name the teasing intonation it hasn’t had since high school, and the top hat on his head is even more surreal, “in a way you’ll understand.” His smile is alive, crawling and creeping across his cheeks like it’s devouring pale flesh, “you’ve always been the prime suspect for the Grimborn copycat murders.”

Hiccup’s heart pauses for a terrifying millisecond, the freefall giving him just enough quiet to think.

“You framed me.”

“Very good, Hiccup, I knew you wouldn’t break at the first sight of a fresh kill,” he claps, a macabre Willy Wonka who didn’t outgrow murder with the advent of security cameras.

Cameras.

There has to be evidence of this somewhere. His eyes flick to the curtains and his stomach twists at how well they’re shut. But on the street, somewhere, there has to be evidence. Over the last few bloody months, there has to be something.

If his alibi had been with him…

“You weren’t supposed to find the first body,” Grisly starts digging through Astrid’s kitchen cabinets, pulling out a jar of bleach wipes and holding them up triumphantly, “that video I gave to the police was supposed to place you there after the investigation was another useless, lazy victim deep.” He wipes the back of the chair, the rickety stool by the door.

“But Astrid…”

“Focus,” he grabs Hiccup’s chin with bruising fingers, “I’ll take care of her once you’re in custody. This is all a bit of a rush now, you can thank your idiot cousin for the change in schedule.” His lip curls, revealing a canine a little too sharp, “I’ll see if a syringe of air finishes what a bullet couldn’t.”

Hiccup bites his tongue against shouting, every muscle in his body fighting to stay upright as his head swims. Snotlout. Astrid. The hospital that felt like home for a second the scene of another flat lined monitor, blaring in tune with Hiccup’s incoherent thoughts.

“Why are you telling me all of this? I’ll just tell everyone the truth—”

“Who will listen to you?” Grisly is a cat with a mouse in his corner, holding it down by the tail and watching it squirm.

“I don’t know, a jury? Don’t you think it might introduce reasonable doubt for me to tell a detailed account of how you killed someone in front of me and told me that you were framing me for it?” Hiccup has never reacted appropriately to corners, he starts looking for windows before he checks if the door is locked, “if this goes to trial—"

“Trial? Ha!” Grisly shouts a laugh, “this won’t ever go to trial.”

“How—”

He cuts off the question with a sharp flick to Hiccup’s forehead, “the system is broken, it destroys those who refuse to exploit it.”

“Nice Bond villain line, but you won’t get away with this.” Hiccup hears his dad’s absolute confidence in his tone even as his heart is screaming at him to run and regroup, but he forces himself to maintain eye contact.

“Oh, but I already have,” Grisly grins, uncuffing the door and yanking Hiccup around to cuff his other hand. His shoulder sings in pain as Grisly pulls out a police radio and starts speaking into it with a horrible impression of an officer’s anxious, professional tone, “we have a 187 at 324 Harbor Rd. The suspect is in custody. Send an extra clean-up crew, there’s a lot of…evidence to be collected.”

#ripped #httyd fic #tw murder #hiccstrid #modern au #tw blood #serial killer tour guide au

[sunshineandfangs]

Klarosummer - Flower Garland || Cuore Malato

Continuation of yesterday’s Klarosummer - Tent || Viaggio

Umm so, the flower garland part just barely makes it in. Oops. It’s extra long though?

@klarosummerbingo

Caroline stared wide eyed at the (unfairly attractive, were those dimples?) man/vampire/supernatural boogieman before her, skin still tingling from where he had touched her.

Well, you see I’m from the future and your name is kinda infamous. Yeah, no. She didn’t want to die, thanks! Her mind was scrambling to come up with a more reasonable explanation and as each second ticked by she could feel the weight of her silence.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Finally, she figured out how to phrase the truth - sans the more outlandish details i.e. the time travel.

“My father,” she blurted out, her planned words temporarily deserting her. “I lost my mother when I was young, and he couldn’t bear to stay. He took me with him and started telling me all these unbelievable stories. About, about beasts and creatures that walked among us. I-I thought he was crazy!”

His hand was back, this time cradling her jaw with deceptive gentleness. He tilted her head upward, closer to him, bearing her throat.

She swallowed.

“Quite the interesting tale. However,” he paused, his thumb shifting to settle over her pulse, petting little feathery strokes over the skin, feeling how it hammered away. “That does nothing to explain why it is you reacted to my name.”

Caroline licked her lips, changing little as her whole mouth felt dry.

“Just a warning. When I was still an infant a powerful monster attacked my village. Your name had been mentioned then and I was told to stay far, far away.”

The sudden lack of tension in Klaus’ body was startling. She hadn’t realized how intensely he was regarding her until it faded. 

His hand retreated, more playing with her hair than menacingly petting her throat. “I see, so your village was one that I encountered? My apologies.”

It was an oddly genuine sounding remark for all that she could tell he didn’t believe himself in the wrong. But as nice as his sentiment was, that had not been what she meant.

Caroline parted her lips once more to correct him, unknowingly sealing her fate.

“You mistake me. It was not you that came to my village. It was someone named Michele.”   

She didn’t even see them move. Between one blink and the next she and Klaus went from their weird embrace in the middle of the hall to her being pinned against the wall, his hand encircling her throat.

Her head wasn’t pounding so he must have had enough restraint to not slam it into the stone, but she couldn’t really be grateful for that when he was glowering in her face. Sometime in that split second his fangs had descended, black veins crawling across his face.

“Michele,” he repeated, his voice having fallen to a deadly whisper. He said it the same way she did, tinged with a Tuscan accent. “Did you just say the name Mikael?”

Part of her noted the subtle pronunciation change, the name sounding almost English. The rest of her was a bit more concerned with more important matters, like the odds of her survival. With the element of surprise, she could maybe temporarily incapacitate Klaus. He was close, and he wouldn’t be expecting the stake hidden under her skirts.

But-

Her eyes settled on his brother who had been silent until now. He stood at Klaus’ back, having moved when they did.

“She cannot speak if you strangle her, brother.” There was no concern in his voice only ruthless practicality, his eyes dark and scrutinizing as he looked at her.

But, she wouldn’t be able to take out his brother as well. And even if she could where would she go? They were hunters. They would chase her. 

And she refused to be prey.

She refocused her gaze on Klaus, careful to keep his brother in her periphery. Staring him in the eye, she reached up to tug at his wrist, not really trying to fight him more pointing out that he was indeed cutting off a lot of her air flow.

It was surprising when he did indeed loosen his grip, though none of his menace faded.

She took a breath, voice raspy as she carefully spoke, “Yes, that is what my father told me. I do not know much and have no memory of the event myself.”

“And I am supposed to believe,” Klaus started to say, tone mockingly casual and light, “he just left you in peace.”

“I had the impression that he did not care for us at all, in anyway. Once he knew we could not aid him in whatever he was doing we became nonentities to him, not worth expending the effort to kill us all.”

He leaned even closer, the tip of his nose just brushing hers.

“Forgive me if I find your story a tad too convenient.” His blood black eyes shifted. “Sleep,” he commanded.

---

It was her panic that saved her. 

His compulsion was powerful and enough slipped through her mental barriers to send lethargy through her. She allowed her eyelids to flutter shut, her body to go slack as she slumped against him. She even allowed her breathing and heart-rate to alter, their adrenaline boosted speed slowing.

But she kept an iron grasp on her consciousness. Floating in a pseudo-meditative state, she felt as Klaus hefted her weight with ease, slinging her over his shoulder.

There was a rush of wind and force as he blurred somewhere else in the castle. She could only discern that it was colder and darker before he was sitting her down on some type of cot, firm with somewhat scratchy linen.

"Brother, get one of the maids to change her clothes, she may have attempted to smuggle something in.” His footsteps moved away. “And Elijah? Do keep this quiet, no need to worry the others.”

There was silence for several long moments before it was broken by another set of footsteps. They sounded louder and a bit clumsier, the maid most likely.

It was really awkward allowing the maid to change her clothes, and deeply uncomfortable when Caroline was forced to allow her stake and knives to be taken.

Still, she supposed Klaus earned a point for his common decency, permitting a maid to strip her rather than doing it himself. But -1000 for the compulsion, kidnapping, imprisonment, and likely upcoming torture and interrogation. Final score: -999 points. 

A solid F-.  

---

Caroline was unsure how long she was left alone on the cot. But it was long enough to think up a few plans and then grow restless. But eventually, someone returned.

Klaus. 

...Well, actually she couldn’t be sure, but something about the way the air in the room shifted made her think it was him.

Whoever it was seemed relaxed, fiddling with something nearby. 

And then she felt it, a weird tug on the lingering echo of his compulsion. It wanted her to wake. Now.

Adrenaline surged through her and she allowed it to push her from her meditative state, jolting back to “consciousness” with a gasp and a sudden opening of her eyes. Very dramatic.

The presence shifted again, and she darted her eyes to them, as a startled human might.

It was Klaus.

Sprawled in a wooden chair and twirling her hunting knife in his hands, he made an interesting image. Somehow, he managed to pull off looking both relaxed and threatening. And on a little table beside him was her stake along with her pocket knife, several of its attachments poking out.

“You are awake,” he smiled, lips curling, “good.” He gave the knife another little twirl. “I thought about killing you while you slept, tearing through your mind for the answers I wanted.” The knife was placed down, his expression placid as if he were just discussing the weather. “But then I thought, that rather seems like a waste.” He picked up the stake next, twirling it in a supernatural display of dexterity. “Pretty girl,” he gave the stake a flip, weighing it in his hand, and looked at her as he caught it, a smirk on his face, “pretty hunter. You could be very useful to me.”

Caroline watched his little display with a blank expression and wary eyes, sitting up slowly as he peered at her expectantly.

“And why would I help you?”

Another flip and then the stake was flying at her face. She jolted, her hand shooting up on reflex and managing to catch it.

The stake and Klaus were both suddenly mere inches in front of her. His hand encircled her wrist, stroking the sensitive skin. She didn’t fight him as he pinned her hand and stake both to the bed, though her fingers clenched around the wood.

“Well, I could just compel you,” he mused, nonchalantly. “...But I admit that seems rather unsporting. I do believe I would decide to kill you before I ruined you in such a way.”

No matter that Caroline knew she couldn’t be compelled, his casual talk of erasing all that she was set a pit in her stomach. Her throat spasm around her next swallow as his eyes pierced into hers.

Funny enough she almost thought a little better of him when he admitted he’d rather kill her. -998.5 points. 

Well, she certainly couldn’t stay silent after all that.

“You know, for a man that apparently wants my loyalty, you are not doing a very good job convincing me that I should give it to you.” 

Rather than getting angry, he smiled, a bit mocking, but not particularly cruel. He leaned closer, his breath heating her lips.

“You would rather a lie? I thought better of you, sweetheart.”

In a blink he was gone again, his figure reappearing as he stepped through the doorway.

“Come along, love. Feel free to take your weapons if it makes you feel better.”

...

...

What just happened?

---

Suffice it to say, Caroline had not been stupid enough to let Klaus bait her into leaving her weapons behind. That wasn’t to say she didn’t feel a bit dazed by the surreal experience of trailing behind Klaus, the amiable host.

He walked briskly but took time to idly comment on some of the castle decor. He didn’t threaten or otherwise invade her space again nor did he bring up his apparent plans for her. Instead he simply guided her to a bedchamber, declared it was hers and left.

Departing with a polite bow and a, “I do hope you like it.”

---

Klaus fiddled with a glass of wine, contemplating his newest guest as he drank. And though he sensed Elijah slip into the room, he didn’t bother to turn. His brother would give his opinion regardless.

“Are you sure it’s wise to give the girl such free reign?”

Finishing his wine, Klaus set the glass aside, taking a moment to admire its clarity.

“Now, who said anything about ‘free,’ brother? I intend to keep a very careful eye on her.”

“And Mikael?”

“...If he’s found us, it is not the girl that we will need to worry about.” Klaus turned, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared his brother down. “But if she is a spy, then all the more reason to keep her close.”

---

It was almost disappointing that settling into the home of the Originals went about the same as settling into Rizardo’s home. She even managed to get Klaus’ agreement to tell the kind couple that she was leaving. Of course, he wouldn’t let her say where she was staying only that she found someone in a better position to help her, one that she wouldn’t be a burden to. And despite their protests to the contrary she stood firm, thanking them and bidding them farewell. 

---

It was day seven of cohabitation with the Originals (or Klaus and Elijah at least, she hadn’t seen the others) and she was the last thing she expected to be. Bored.

Pretty much all of her favorite past times hadn’t been invented yet and there was only so long she could entertain herself wandering the castle grounds. It was interesting to look at. For the first couple of days. But eventually she ran out of rooms and most of them looked the same besides.

So now she was curled up on a chair (comfort certainly hadn’t seemed to have been invented yet) squinting at pages as she tried to read. It was like learning to speak the language all over again, spellings were different, pages were sprinkled with archaic words and occasionally weird syntax. Everything was written in cramped calligraphy.

Ironically, she had an easier time with Latin, since it was one of the prominent languages used by witches. And thus, one she studied. But it was still slow going. 

At least it ate up time.

“You can read.”

Caroline jumped with a yelp, fumbling and nearly dropping the book. She peered upward catching sight of Klaus leaning over the back of her chair. It struck her then that literacy probably wasn’t common, especially among women. Crap.

She contemplated lying, but instead settled for a half-truth. This hadn’t been the first time Klaus popped in and she didn’t have the energy to maintain a web of lies.

“My father was...dedicated in all his pursuits and he taught me much the same.”

Thankfully, Klaus didn’t do much more than raise an eyebrow and extend his hand.

“May I?”

Shrugging, Caroline handed him the book.

“A Complete Guide to Herbs, Remedies, and Tinctures,” he recited. “A riveting read I am sure.”

“Well, there’s not exactly a slew of other activities.”

He hummed, drifting off toward another shelf and retrieving a different tome. Returning, he held it out to her.

“Perhaps. No need to torture yourself though, try this one.” He tapped the cover with his finger, deposited it in her lap and walked off before she could respond. 

Caroline blinked a few times. Klaus could really give her whiplash with his odd moods. She appreciated the gesture though, and The Song of Roland sounded much more interesting than the herbology guide.

---

Smothering her jaw cracking yawn behind her hand, Caroline made her way toward to the dining room. It had taken her a few days to finish the book, especially with Klaus continuing to show up now and again, but she managed last night. Now, she was stumbling her way toward breakfast, a bit later than usual judging by the light.

Her steps stuttered to a stop as she started to process the noise coming from the room. Neither Klaus nor Elijah often ate meals with her (and thankfully she rarely saw them eat too).

Hungry and still a bit sleepy, she resumed her walk. Whatever it was, she could deal with it after she was fed. So, she blithely ignored the sudden quiet and stares when she entered the room. Taking a seat, Caroline loaded her plate with various breads, grapes and cheeses.

“Well, well I never thought either of you would get a live-in snack.”

Caroline munched on a grape, she was not getting involved. Nope.

Though she did glance over when the eldest looking brother growled something. It wasn’t Italian, maybe something Scandinavian, but it sounded quite scathing. Thankfully, it seemed aimed at Klaus and not her.

She spread some cheese on a bread slice, biting into it as Klaus retorted in the same language igniting a family squabble.

Caroline couldn’t understand a word, but she could get the gist. It was shockingly normal really. Younger siblings pestering older ones. Older siblings lecturing and scolding younger ones. Judging from the numerous glances at least part of it had to do with her too. She nibbled another slice of bread, this one covered in a creamy ricotta and fruit. Surprisingly delicious.

She jumped when Klaus slammed his hand on to the table, partially cracking the wood.

“Enough,” his glare darted over to the brother of Scandinavian insults, “she’s not my pet, Finn.” He glowered at his other brother. “Nor a snack, Kol.” She caught how his eyes flicked to her for a moment, where she sat calmly eating her breakfast. He smirked, some of his anger ebbing away, and he lifted his hand to gesture at her. “The lovely Caroline is a hunter. And now she’s mine, is that not delightful?”

Caroline choked, the sound loud in the resulting silence.

Whoa, there, buddy! She was not his! What the fuck, Klaus?!

And then Kol erupted into laughter. He rocked back in his chair, putting on a show of wiping a tear from his eye. “Good one, Nik! You really had me going there for a second.”

Klaus raised an eyebrow, but returned to sipping his drink. Setting the glass down he calmly regarded his brother.

“Do you think it a jest? I assure you it is not.”

Kol spluttered. “You cannot be serious! Her?” He eyed her skeptically before returning his incredulous gaze to his brother.

Being underestimated was one of Caroline’s greatest advantages. It didn’t stop it from grating though.

“Yes, her.” Klaus’ acknowledgement was a more respectful tilt of his head, which Caroline denied being pleased by. She still had a bone to pick with him after all. She certainly was not his. Not his hunter. Not his pet. Not his anything.

“-nothing wrong with being a woman.”

Caroline realized she had spaced out a little bit, and now the only other female at the table was bickering with Kol. She had apparently taken offense to something Kol had said.

“You are not a human, Bekah. It’s different.”

The smart choice would be allowing the two to quarrel and quietly slip away now that she had finished eating. But she was still rather irritated. Not to mention bored.

“Would you like me to prove it?”

Caroline wiped her hands on a cloth napkin, unfazed by the new silence.

“What?”

She looked up to stare into Kol’s brown eyes, wide and taken aback.

“Would you like me to prove it?” She repeated, a bit more slowly.

He scowled at her slight mockery and sneered at her. “And how do you plan to do that?”

She smiled, angelic. “Why not a spar?”

From the corner of her eyes, she saw Klaus make as if he was going to interrupt. But instead he leaned back in his chair, a quick check saw that he was eyeing her speculatively.

Kol snorted, bringer her attention back to him. “It would not be much of a spar, darling.”

“Well, then you have no reason to refuse, now do you?” She leveled a challenging look in his direction.

“Fine,” he spat. He looked at Klaus. “Don’t blame me though when she gets hurt.”

Klaus swung his eyes between the two of them, Kol’s irritation and her calm resolve. “On your own heads, be it.”

---

Caroline rolled her shoulders, subtly shifting her legs to test the give of her dress. She had chosen a light one this morning with a fairly loose skirt. Doable. Not to mention her dad had taught her to fight in way worse.

Across from her, Kol stood with his arms crossed, looking bored and unimpressed. Around the grounds the rest of the Originals looked on from various vantage points, all but Klaus pretending they were uninterested in the spectacle.

“Well?” Kol grumbled, impatient.

“Well, what?” She chimed back innocently. “I’m ready.”

And she was, having just finished her stretching. Her stance was relaxed and prepared.

He scoffed, blurring toward her, clearly trying to finish it as quickly as possible.

But Caroline was ready for it, turning into the blow and redirecting Kol’s force over and behind her.

He landed with a thud and an ooff in the grass. Highly satisfying.

Caroline pivoted to watch her opponent, hearing feminine peals of laughter from somewhere behind her.

Kol launched upward with a snarled, egged on by both the laughter and unexpected throw. He charged her again. She threw him again.

“Don’t you have any other tricks?” She taunted, Kol once more in the dirt.

She saw a flash of fang as Kol flew at her again, this time faster than she could see. His hand was in her hair wrenching her head to the side.

He expected her to struggle and was thrown slightly off balance when she went limp instead. She let herself fall backward out of his grip, kicking her leg upward to deal a solid blow. Flipping upright, she lashed out again while Kol remained surprised, hitting first his solar plexus and then his throat. The blows staggered him. While more powerful than any other vampires currently alive, they weren’t their millennium old nightmare selves yet.

And following through, Caroline tackled him to the ground, grabbing he stake from the subtle pocket in her skirt. She pinned him to the ground, the wooden point digging into the spot over his heart.

She locked eyes with him, letting him see the truth of her. She wouldn’t back down.

“Dead,” she whispered to him. 

A gamut of emotions flashed through his eyes: shock, anger, a minuscule tinge of fear. But finally, they settled on very begrudging respect.

“I guess you are a hunter after all.”

She waited a beat. Two. Half expecting a surprise attack. But none was forthcoming. Slowly, she relaxed and got off him.

“Good match,” she said respectfully.

His lips thinned, probably wondering if she was mocking him, but she wasn’t. Had he taken her more seriously he would have pressed her to expend much more effort. Or beaten her. She wasn’t so arrogant to think it impossible, even if these versions of the Originals were so young.

Standing quickly, he nodded back, though diminished the gesture with a slight hrmph. 

“Hn, good match.”

He then turned to stalk off.

Caroline glanced around, noting that the rest of his siblings had already left. Probably once they realized Kol wasn’t going to tear her head off. 

Well, all except one.

“I’m impressed, sweetheart.”

Caroline turned to face the presence that had the back of her neck tingling, her arms crossed and looking decidedly unimpressed.

Klaus just grinned at her, an oddly boyish expression.

“Don’t try to be cute with me. I’m still pissed at you!”

He actually looked a bit surprised.

“Have I offended you?”

She scoffed. “Um, yeah! Have you already forgotten what you said earlier? The whole “mine” thing.” She uncrossed her arms to make air quotes before stalking toward him. Jabbing a finger into this chest she emphasized every word. “Listen here, Niklaus. I do not care who or what you are. You do not get to go around declaring that I belong to you. Got it? Because I don’t. I don’t belong to anyone, but myself! Do you understand?”

To his credit, Klaus actually seemed to be taking her words seriously. He lifted one of his own hands, encircling hers to pull her finger away from his chest.

Stroking her knuckles he replied. “I understand your sentiment, and you are correct that I do not own you. You are not my slave. However,” he tugged her arm and, unsettled by his response, she stumbled forward a little. “You are mistaken to believe that you are not mine. I have taken you into my home. Extended my protection to you. Announced that one day I shall have either your loyalty or your death.” He wrapped his other arm around her waist, pressing them even closer. “I assure you, Caroline, in all those ways you are mine.”

He had flustered her, but his words rekindled her anger. 

She shoved him away.

“The only reason I am in your home, under your protection,” she sneered, “is because you knocked me out and forced me to stay. So yes, perhaps I am yours. Your captive. And I promise you that is all I will ever be to you. So, you might as well kill me now.”

Caroline lifted her head to stare him down and then purposefully turned her back on him, walking away without another word.

---

The next few days passed in icy silence. While Caroline didn’t go out of her way to avoid Klaus, that would be weakness, she also didn’t engage him at all. If he addressed her she gave the bare minimum response. 

Instead she spent time with Kol, a more interesting companion than she would have expected. Less unexpected was the joy he took in the frustration she created in Klaus. She even chatted (sniped) with his sister, Rebekah, on occasion.

Which was why she was startled when she encountered Klaus in the library, a room he rarely frequented these days. He was sitting at one of the large center tables, several sheets of paper scattered around him.

Caroline was determined to ignore him as usual, when one of the pages caught her eye. It was a sketch, some bird, a native one perhaps, mid-flight. Casually, she wandered a little closer, curious despite herself, and browsed the shelves nearby.

“Do you like them?”

It was foolish to think he wouldn’t catch on, but she still startled a little.

“They’re pretty I supposed,” she offered coolly, not looking away from the spines of books in front of her.

“Pretty? I suppose I’ll take it,” he said dryly. 

She withheld her snort, a tiny bit amused, not that she would let him know. Her eyes continued to scan over the various book titles, ignoring the faint scratching sounds behind her.

She stilled, processing the noise and his comment.

“Wait a minute, you did these?” She asked as she whirled around, even as she admonished herself for engaging.

“I feel like I should be offended by your tone.” Despite his words, Klaus sounded more teasing than upset.

Caroline’s lips thinned, about to go back to ignoring him.

Suddenly, he was standing, though for once not breaching her personal space.

“Wait, Caroline...”

She quirked an eyebrow as he trailed off, waiting only because he looked so awkward.

“...I find that I have not enjoyed your scorn. How can I acquit myself?”

“You know why you earned my scorn,” was all she replied with.

This time it was Klaus’ face that pinched, evidently he hadn’t changed his mind either.

Caroline ignored her slight disappointment, feeding it to her anger instead, and turned away.

There was a sudden flurry of movement behind her and then a roll of parchment pressed against her hand. She gripped it instinctively as Klaus quickly bent down to murmur in her ear.

“Take it into consideration. If you agree, allow me to escort you tomorrow. There’s a festival in the town square.”

He vanished as soon as he finished speaking, giving her no time to process what he said or confront him.

Caroline looked down at the parchment, rubbing a gentle finger along the edge, contemplating if she was really going to indulge him.

But her curiosity was her weakness and she unfurled it, nearly dropping it as she gasped. Blindly she groped for the chair to sit in, shock and disbelief warring within her.

It was a picture of her, looking poised and fierce in the clearing she had sparred with Kol in.

Along the bottom there was a note.

You are strong, beautiful, and full of light. And I find that the idea of your death brings me no joy.

Caroline, you have grown to revile the monster. Will you allow me to show you the man?

-Klaus

She would be lying if she said she wasn’t flattered, but she couldn’t help but be suspicious as well. Was this just some ploy to make her more docile and receptive to him?

With careful fingers, Caroline brushed the lines of her face, her eyes seeming to shine even in monochrome.

Even if it was a ploy it was still a gorgeous picture.

---

The next day, Caroline found herself dressed in a simple frock, having spent half the night weighing her options. Eventually she had decided on civility at the very least.

So, when a knock sounded through the room, she smoothed down her skirt and opened the door, a neutral expression on her face.

“Hello, Caroline,” he greeted. “...Have you come to a decision?”

“I am a bit curious about this festival.”

Klaus brightened, a small smile on his face.

“Wonderful! There will be art, music, food, culture, and I would be delighted to show it to you.”

He extended his arm to her.

She eyed it, long enough that he faltered and started to lower it. Deciding to take a chance she looped her arm through his, settling her hand on his arm.

Klaus looked pleased, shifting a little to tuck her more securely by his side.

And then they set off.

---

As they exited the castle, Klaus slowed his steps.

“It will take about thirty minutes to walk there on foot.” He gestured toward the stables. “We can take a carriage though if you prefer.”

Caroline appreciated the consideration and could see it was already mostly setup if that was what she wanted. But, after giving it a moment’s thought, she shook her head.

“I think I could use the fresh air, actually.”

“As you wish.”

Though he said nothing else, Caroline could tell she had pleasantly surprised him.

To her surprise their walk didn’t end up filled with awkward or tense silence. They chatted, not about anything important, but little things that allowed Caroline to relax some. The different types of wildlife she could hear. How interesting she found the latest book she was reading. If there was anything in her chambers she would like to change. Perfectly, mundane topics.

And while she still didn’t really trust Klaus and she doubted that he trusted her, she could admit she had grown a bit fond of him, even if he simultaneously frustrated her to no end.

When they finally arrived at the center plaza she was hit with a barrage of sensations.The square was filled to the brim with people, more than she even was aware lived in the area. And every leftover suitable space was packed with stalls selling everything from crafts to food. 

An explosion of color seemed to burst from everywhere as her eyes darted between the different items, people, and the decorative garland of flowers twining around all the surfaces they could. 

Even the scents of the festival were an assault. Not in a bad way either. Various spices and cooking meat sent her stomach grumbling to background waves of chatter and footsteps.

Klaus leaned over. “Where would you like to head first?”

---

Author’s Note: Today’s title is “Heart Sick” in Italian. Fun fact the castle in the picture is apparently on sale. If you have the funds and inclination you too can be like Klaus and live in a Tuscan castle. 

#Klaroline #KlarosummerBingo #Klaroline Fanfiction #Klaroline Drabbles #Klaroline Edits #Klaroline Photosets #Klaroline Aesthetics #My Writing #My Edits

[lairofsentinel]

Same anon as before! As a player, when did you start to love Ifan and did you know about his character before playing the game?

[this went out of control…. This happens with Ifan, always.]

It was funny how I started to play DOS in general. I was looking for games alike Dragon Age in one of those pages, gamesalike.com or something of the like. In the list of “similar games” to DAO, I found Divinity Original Sin 2. I had played Divinity II, Ego draconis like 10 years ago, so I gave it a chance because I had a faint recollection that I enjoyed that game, even though I barely remembered most of the plot XD. I started with DOS1 [because I’m a tidy person], but I was dying of boredom. I managed to finished it, and started DOS2, swearing at my completion-compulsion [it’s super hard for me to leave something midway, I have to finish it properly, always, even when I don’t like it], So I tried DOS2, I was immediately  caught by the graphics, the narrative, the music, the chars. Everything. Everything was so much well done in comparison with DOS1. That’s how I discovered this marvellous and super underrated game.

I didn’t know about Ifan when I started playing DOS2—I barely knew about the game itself. In fact, I didn’t know about anyone with the exception of Arhu, Zandalor, and Jahan, all of them present in DOS1. I was expecting for Wolgraff to appear in DOS2. He was the only companion I wanted to see again from the previous game, a cursed rogue who could not talk and was super sweet with everyone, always talking to you by using scraps of papers.

The introduction of Ifan in the Magister ship didn’t got me. For me, he looked like one of those standard grizzly chars, that know too much about life, had experienced everything, was too wounded and lonely for being close to the player so it was going to be hard to approach. More or less, a veteran of a war that had soured his personality and now he was a “Lone Wolf” with an anger problem looking for revenge. I thought he was the typical cliché character that you can find in a lot of action games. I was convinced of that because Ifan has a design that says that. His appearance screams “macho” [Like Blackwall in DA], and I don’t like that. In short, he had a background which had been told too many times, with an archetype too “typical” and overused.

But then, you find he jokes around silly things, that he doesn’t want to kill elves, that he prefers to cause fear instead of using violence, that he opens his emotions to the player expecting good intentions, he is honest with his emotions and talks a lot about his emotions… he was most of the time breaking every typical concept I was expecting from him due to his design.

When I started to see that Ifan was basically a stray dog, looking for someone to pet him, too affectionate and open, opening to the player with all his vulnerability… I was “ok, what happened here?”. 

How a wounded char like him, would open so much to a stranger? Why to risk his emotional state?. Ifan answers that later in-game: he does want to live, to feel alive [suggesting that his depression after the Deathfog was really something that killed him on the inside]. And feeling alive implies taking risks, not only in adventures, but in his emotional level as well. I was the hell of surprised for his emotional intelligence when his design is screaming the contrary. And that got me. I’m totally into characters that break “standards”. And Ifan is that.

And when he started to blush all the time because he was basically a dog too excited for having the player interested in him, that was soooooo anti-standard. And in a mature way, not a childish one!. I mean, he is not a virginal man who is overwhelmed by a kiss. No. He is overwhelmed because he gets attached too quickly to the player. He is like a happy dog, that doesn’t know what to do with all the sudden emotions he has and doesn’t want to saturate the player, but he does what he can xD. That’s why he kisses in such a doggy way. In the temple, in the head, in the cheek, he nuzzles a lot. It’s like a dog jumping around the player, licking, barking, waving his tail, moving here and there because doesn’t know what to do with their emotions. XD Ifan tries to control them, and then blushes like hell. XD The best description is here, made by Inochell.

And that was exactly the opposite of what I was expecting from a char like him. Ifan’s design suggests a “macho”. But no. He is not like that. He is simply happy, and honest, sometimes  being a bit carried away for what he feels, but never forced on the player. [I deny his in-game bed scene, to me that was a disaster. He biting his partner to the point to make their lips bleed? The weird tastes [what the fuck the taste of Earth, storm and night???]. The fireworks descriptors (? what? That went too cheesy-teen xD), and he is described there as a torturer. And I can’t see it. He may kill because he is a mercenary, and he may look aside if one of his former fellows from the Lone Wolf enjoys torture [because he doesnt care about anything anymore], but he would never torture. He prefers to kill before torturing. There are a lot of phrases he said along the game that suggests this. So, to me, his bed scene was a real mess. Besides, Ifan is way more submissive than that. You’ll see my headcanons in the fic.]

And there is an extra bit I like a lot in him… he is in his middle age, but he is not afraid of living his life intensely. And there is always these descriptors that keep saying that despite his wrinkles, he has a glint of energy and young enthusiasm in his eyes. I can imagine his mindset after the Deathfog, and how devastated he was that he disfigured his own personality: he stopped being a crusader—someone who tries to be the embodiment of the fairness—and became exactly the opposite, a mercenary that may have done some works for the Black Ring even. He was deep in the hole. And when he meets the player, he starts his recovery, or if he was already in the process, it speeds it up. He wants to live and survive, always. And that means not to be afraid to vulnerability. There is a sad part in-game, after Hannag, where he says with a bit of resignation and something else that may be considered hope, that he wants to believe again.

Ok, I rambled like hell.

No, I can’t remember when I totally liked him, but the more he started to break the typical concepts I thought I was going to see in him, the more he got me. Besides, he is kind like hell. I’m totally into kind chars.

#divinity original sin 2 #Ifan Ben-Mezd #ifan ben mezd #fic: About Feathers and Claws #dos2

[notbang]

doors (five of them)

rethaniel appreciation week day 4 → parallels (read on ao3)

1.

The first time she knocks on Nathaniel’s door, she has to believe she’s making him an offer he can’t refuse.

That’s the confidence that brings her to him, all legs and breathy and scantily clad. She’d felt powerless, after the wedding that wasn’t, but she’d taken all that hurt and found a way to wield it like a weapon, and standing on her porch in his running shorts Nathaniel had let her remember what it felt like to have power resting in the palm of her hand.

She thinks he’s interested. He’s not not interested, judging by the inches of him outlined where they’re nestled together, her hips cradling his. His body is warm between her fishnetted thighs where she’s straddled him, and it’s absurd, really, that she wasn’t expecting that—like he should be carved entirely from stone.

If she’s being completely honest with herself (she’s not) it’s not a transaction so much as an excuse—the alarm bells ringing in the background of this particular playing-with-fire endeavour sound suspiciously like the emergency squeal of an elevator. Josh doesn’t know about that night but it’s a special brand of vindictive, implicating the source of her infidelity as her partner in crime. Josh didn’t know about that night and he left her anyway, and it’s almost like retrospective absolution, leading her here.

Nathaniel’s hands are hovering at the back of her, ridiculously large in contrast to their hesitancy and radiating heat. At some point since they settled here her seductive caress of his shoulders turned into a compulsive exploration, the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck prickling against the palms of her hands.

“So what was your point?” he murmurs, clearing his throat, dazed.  

She’s feeling a little dazed herself, trying not to think too much about prior knowledge of what it’s like to kiss him. Trying not to wonder what it might be like to kiss him when he’s given the proper warning, with her limbs curling around his in enticing parentheses, or how he might repurpose his skills to areas elsewhere than her mouth.

Anything you want to me, she says, and sees the lightbulb of inspiration’s erratic shutter in his eyes. She wants, needs to know what anything you want to me entails. Has a few suggestions, if he needs help getting started.

(She doesn’t hear from him until she does, and anything you want to me starts with her shoulder blades digging hard into the wood of his door.)

2.

The second time she’s emboldened by the memory of his face buried against her neck and the arsenal of R-rated evidence she has at her perusal on her phone the entirety of her flight back from Buffalo, the wanting that rises up in her and threatens to boil over and overflow quickly backburnered in her stomach at a tortuous low simmer.

I would love to have sex with you again, she’d blurted out three days ago, the elegance of her articulation infinite as always, and she couldn’t have imagined it, the way his eyes had softened in confirmation that the sentiment was gratifyingly mutual. Three days ago she’d spoken the words aloud and since then the thought of it has taken stubborn root inside of her, spreading through her like a one-track-mind creeper vine.

She goes to his door and she jumps and he catches her, and some secret part of her latches onto that—wants to make it into a metaphor and use it in stubborn supporting argument for everything that’s about to follow.

He’s hard and solid and careful with his weight on her as he stumbles towards the bed and drops them down, and this is healthy, right? Because he wants her and she wants him back and she’s not engaged and he’s not her boss, and this is a cocoon she burrow herself inside of, free of therapy, and workbooks, and friends that still worry that she’s fragile while they’re hiding all the knives.

He pulls back from her and she knows what’s coming—can see the crease of it carved into his brow.

I’m bulletproof, she wants to assure him. Can’t you tell? I can rip myself to shreds and scatter them and still this thing won’t break.

“Just shut up,” she breathes instead, dragging him back down to her, over her, into her, letting herself just feel, and then his fingers are on her, teasing her, prising her open and it’s so much better than her own or heated words on a screen and an old lumpy couch in the lowlight of someone else’s living room.

She pretends not to notice, the way he’s so much gentler than the last time, even in his desperation to inhale her; the way he stops to catalogue each pulse point with his mouth, praising her heartbeat for still thrumming beneath her skin and carving I’m glad you’re home into its every expanse. He’s affectionate and eager and she responds to him in kind, and this is warm, this is good—she thinks she can grow to live in it, this loose, liminal space of the in-between. When Josh left and she fell apart she stopped thinking about the future, but here, tangled in Nathaniel’s grey sheets, his grey shirt, his grey life, the jagged black and white of her can see a case for focusing on the here and now.

“You didn’t answer me,” he mumbles against her shoulder once they’re spent from their second round. “About your trip.”

His fingers are tangled in her hair again, like its appeal to them is inherently magnetic and they cannot be pulled away. She hums and closes her eyes and focuses on the five point star of pressure expanding and contracting across her scalp, lets it regulate her breathing as the tingles radiate outwards.

(She doesn’t plan to stay. Doesn’t plan for any of it. She just never gets around to making the decision to leave, to slow down, to stop before either of them gets hurt.)

3.

He opens the door too quickly, like he was waiting for her; could somehow sense her there.

It’s been two, three weeks at most but she feels like she’s done this a thousand times before, and something inside of her trills in answering anticipation to his smile on agonising autopilot. This time is different, she has to remind herself, and draws her conviction tighter around her like a cape.

“What is it, like a sex thing? Because I’m not sure what else is still on the table for us.”

The laughter bubbles up out of her at that and it only makes it all the more harder, being hit with the deluge of memories of all their teasing turned challenges—her googling the most ridiculous Kama Sutra poses she could find and his ever creative solutions to negating the exigent issue of their height difference, her hamstrings still twingeing from their most recent acts of contortion. She can’t let herself think about the way his leather armchair sticks to her sweaty skin, or the way he makes her laugh then smiles with a hint of surprise every time like he’s never heard the sound before, like no one else around him has ever let him think he’s funny.

I’m happy but it’s not real, is all she can offer him, and she can sense his confusion—see the denial in his eyes that’s protesting you sat right across from me at that table and begged me not to do what you’re doing right now—and the sour taste of it twists in her gut. She’d wanted so desperately to believe that the point of all this was to be happy, too, but there’s so much left for her to sort out for herself separate to fusing to another person before happy can even begin to be a consideration.

She’s had this conversation with him countless times in her head on the way over, but none of it’s playing out the way it’s supposed to. Just speaking the words and tasting kiss and snuggle and cuddle on her tongue weakens her resolve and threatens to have her reaching for him, burying her head in his chest and the blue stripes of his shirt and telling him she’s sorry, that she takes it all back, undo.

Nathaniel takes a step towards her, and it’s like she can’t breathe beneath the weight of how much she wants to let him change her mind.

(I have to go, she repeats to herself like a mantra, blinking back tears as she takes the stairs blindly, two at a time. I have to go I have to go I have to go.)

4.

She hasn’t been to his apartment for the better part of a year—not since she broke it off and ran away, not since Mona came along and occupied her empty space, not since a handshake led to a kiss and a kiss led to an inevitable mistake. Not since that mistake became bigger than the both of them and they let themselves keep making it, let themselves pretend it was an outside force compelling them from inside that supply closet and not something they both consciously chose, until suddenly she couldn’t let herself pretend, not anymore.

He told you he loves you, in not so many words, was how Dr Akopian had phrased it, and she yearns so much for that to be true and something she can let herself deserve.

But then she thinks about how opening doors leads to other things slipping inside, too, to billow outwards and fill up a space. Lets certain other parts of you escape to make room.

If that’s what you want, he’d told her. As if she’s ever had any proper idea of what she wants in all this.

(She doesn’t knock, but the whole way home she thinks of the alternate version of herself in a parallel universe who does, and hopes with all her heart somewhere, someplace, she’s managing to get things right.)

4.

She pounds on his door with such focus and force she imagines herself breaking through it in her urgency, and when he finally answers she collapses against the door frame with an air of something she imagines resembles seductive, as if the slur of her words and heavy lids are entirely by design.

Look, she wants to goad the memory of her frozen, deer-in-headlights former self. Knuckles to wood, rinse and repeat—was that so fucking hard?

Nathaniel lets her in and his shirt is soft beneath her fingers, soft like the way he started looking at her at some point and never quite stopped, soft enough to scare her sometimes. But she’s feeling bruised and broken and raw, and it’s a softness she wants to crawl inside and pull tight around her until every last battered inch of her is covered in its gentle armour; until it seals itself shut over her and the desperation can’t get out. She wants to feel warm and wanted in a way Nathaniel has never denied her, wants to feel bad and brazen and better.

She’s high, but not high enough. She’s drunk, but she wants to be drunk off him, too.

Her senses are dulled but the defensive part of her mind is still whittled razor-sharp, the sting of perceived rejection still burning bright and hot enough to forge the blade. She knows every last button to press, the exact notch between the ribs to dig her fingers into and claw her way inside. You know I still think about you, she tells him, at night when I’m alone in my bed, because it’s what she’d like to believe is true of him, thinking about her. She didn’t pick him, but the idea of him letting her go is sweet and sour to her all at once. Especially when it feels like Greg just threw her overboard and turned his back as she began to buoy away.

Greg hates everything but Nathaniel wants her to be happy, and right now he’s like her very own personification of a butter commercial that she wants inside her and around her and swallowing her whole.

She wants to use him the way she used him to get back at Josh, the way she used him to get her A plus in living C plus, the way she used him for eight months to make a point to herself about how broken she is again and again and again. They way he lets her, every time; the sucker that sees every terrible part of her and never turns away.

He’s turning her away now, though, and how dare you, she thinks. How dare you not join me in this self-destruction when you’re just as messy and terrible as me.

(I thought you wanted me, she sneers to herself as she stumbles down his hallway, lip curling, spurned. I thought you’d always want me, but you’re just like everyone else.)

5.

She can’t be completely sure, the last time she knocks on his door; at which point she stops knocking because it isn’t locked or he’s with her or he gives her a key and the door is no longer just his but her own.

There’s a beginning to the end, though, where she goes to him and it is raining.

He’s fresh out of the shower when he swings the door open to look at her, his hair wet and spiky and stray droplets glistening on his skin where his throat rises up from the damp neckline of his burgundy sweatshirt, and then she’s laughing, because her curls are saturated from the downpour and plastered to her coat and the deep red pile of her sweater underneath. They’ve always been good at this part—the unconscious mirroring, this dance on an unpredictable delay—and a reassuring warmth starts to blossom through her at this suggestion that the page they are on is the same.

“Hi,” she says, giddy, breathless.

“Hi,” he echoes, cautious and confused because he can’t share in her excitement, not yet, not when he’s not privy to the decision she’s made in her head.

She only hesitates a moment and then her keys hit the floor and she tugs him down toward her by his neck, slow enough to give him every opportunity to stop, but then the resistance melts out of him all at once and she’s kissing him and he’s kissing her back, and it’s the first time in such a long time.

He’s kissing her gentle at first, then like she’s his sole source of air and she’d thought long and hard about taking this slow, but her body knows his and they have other plans.

“Rebecca,” he says once they’ve shoved her coat down over her shoulders and she’s fought her way out of the tangled armholes of her sweater to pull his body close to hers, his shower-seared skin hot against the damp-chilled surface of her own. “Not that I’m—” He breaks off on a groan when she sinks her teeth into the sinews of his neck, and she hides her pleased grin in the slope of his collarbones. “Not that I’m complaining, but what is this? What are we doing, here?”

It would be so easy, she thinks, to settle back into that well-worn groove; to shush him with her lips and her fingers and the eager trace of her tongue, to cant her hips forward and lock her thighs until he forgets what he’s asked her, forgets words. She could tell him any number of things, present him with a hundred variations on every unfairness with which she’s come to him before and he’d still give her this, she knows. But they’ve been down so many ill-fated paths already, the both of them burned for their lack of clarity, and he’s so tentative in his hopefulness that it makes her heart squeeze.

She takes his face in her hands, thumbs sweeping his cheeks, reacquainting herself with every last one of its lines.

“It’s been a year,” she tells him, lilting low. “And I don’t know about you, but… I don’t want to waste any more time.”

That sets free a desperate kind of whine in him that has him crushing her in his endless arms, pressing her down into his bed so hard it could make a mould of the two of them, the mattress recasting around them to reset every bittersweet memory they’ve left in it. His hand is unsnapping her bra and she’s squirming to get at the fly of her jeans and all the while he’s nuzzling against her, kissing her chin, sighing his relief into the space below her ear.

“I might need to borrow some clothes,” she breathes, back arching, hips tilting into where he’s slid his hand. “All mine are—oh—all mine are wet.”

“Soaked,” he agrees, his fingers slick against the silk.

He’s reluctant to shift off of her, after, and slides back into the bed to wrap himself around her as if afraid to blink and find her gone.

His nose nudges hers and she can see in his expression that he wants to tell her, the words curling and ready on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t know if it’s appropriate, or he’s allowed, and she’s overcome with so much answering affection that her entire body hums with it, warming her from the inside out.

“Hey,” she begins, and waits until his eyebrows slope upward expectantly to beckon him closer with a crook of her finger, as if there aren’t already mere millimetres between them. She drags his earlobe between her teeth, eliciting a shudder, chuffing softly against the flushed shell of his ear. “There are feelings inside me that are still pertinent to you,” she confesses, seriously, then descends into laughter as he rolls over, growling, taking her with him, trapping the delighted sound of it with his mouth enmeshed with hers.

#crazy ex girlfriend #rebecca x nathaniel #rethanielAW #my fic #this kinda ran outta steam halfway but i was determined to have it finished tonight to fulfil my goal of producing fic for this week #the ending..... was not supposed to quite go like that but y'know #they #i'm done spamming today with content now i promise

[wiggly-blue-shite]

Chapter 34 From the Top!

(Prof H X Ted)

(Hey There's mention of suicide again but it's hella brief. Just like you know)

Ted woke up before Henry. Ted arm was around Henry. Henry slept so peacefully. Wow. Ted tried to resist the urge to play with Henry's hair. He failed. I mean how could he resist?

Ted didn't want to wake Henry up. He felt like he was moving way to much. So Ted just slipped out of bed and left the peaceful Henry there to sleep. Ted picked up his clothes from the ground and put them on quickly.

While Ted had this extra time before Henry wakes up, he could explore the apartment.

Ted opened the door slowly making sure to be as quiet as possible. Ted looked around the empty apartment. Ted spotted a record player. Ohhhh cool!

That's so cool that he has these! Ted flipped through the records that Henry had. Ted didn't recognize most of the shows. Gypsy? The King and I? The Drowsy Chaperone? Yup Ted still has a lot to learn when it comes to musical theatre. Well he had Henry to teach him. Ted smiled.

Ted wanted to put on one of the records but that would wake up Henry for sure.

Ted set the records back where they were. Next to the records were a bunch of playbills? They're called playbills right?

Again a bunch of shows that Ted didn't recognize most of these shows Anne Get Your Gun? Anything Goes? Oliver? Ted felt a little stupid. Ted sat the playbills down. Henry really is way out of his league.

Ted spotted a framed photo on a mantle nearby. Ted stood up and walked to it. It was a picture of a bunch of college aged boys sitting in a corner booth. Ted picked up the photo and scanned it.

There he is! College age Henry Hidgens, with a keyboard of course.

Ted smiled to himself a little. Then it stuck him.

They're... go-o-one...

M-m-m-my ... fa-au-lt

This is them. These are the people who Henry lost. Oh Henry.

Ted wanted to hug Henry, but Henry was asleep. Ted sat down on the couch and studied the picture.

Henry looked so happy, his hair was still brown, the bags under his eyes were gone.

"Theodoreeeee, where areee youuu?" Henry called out from the doorway of the bedroom. Henry looked so good in the morning. Like that's not fair.

"Hey Henry," Ted looked down at the photo.

Henry next to Ted and put his head Ted's shoulder. Henry's adorable.

"Who are these people in the picture with you?" Ted tilted the picture towards Henry so he could see it properly. Ted just wanted Henry to tell him, like officially.

Henry stared at the photo for a moment. It's definitely them.

"Old friends from college." Henry's voice remained steady. Ted knew this was not a great subject for him.

"Are these the..." How should he phrase it? Henry buried his face in Ted's shoulder. They're on the same page. "You don't have to talk about it." Ted didn't want Henry to be uncomfortable. That's the last thing he wants.

"Do you want to know about it?" Henry picked his head up and looked in Ted in the eyes. Wow ted loves him.

I want to know everything about you." Ted kissed Henry's nose. Henry giggled. Henry's adorable.

"Well they were my roommates. Splitting rent 7 ways made it so we could actually afford a little condo. Well Steve did sleep on the couch." Henry chuckled to himself. He had a look in his eye that looked a little sad. Oh Henry.

"Ok wait who's who" Ted wanted to know who Henry was talking about. "I know that's you. Look at how young you are!" Ted would recognize that smile anywhere. His Henry.

"Are you calling me old?" Henry laughed a little. Ted knew that Henry was joking but Ted didn't want Henry to feel bad.

"No" Ted just wanted to make sure Henry knew.

"I'm kidding." Henry kissed Ted cheek. Really adorable. "Yes that is me. The guy sitting to my right is Greg, next to Greg is Mark, then Steve, and Stu. Leighton's the one standing and chad's the one reading." Henry pointed at each of the people in the picture. Ted recognizes those names. What are they from? Greg, Steve, Stu, Mark, Leighton, OHHH and Chad! It's them! It's the working boys!

"Wait are these the people the working boys characters are based off of!" Ted's eyes brightened. Wait that's kind of sad. These people and that story. Wow. Oh god.

"Yeah." Henry sounded a little sad. "They were very important to me." Oh Henry.

"I can tell. You look really happy" Ted loved looking at Henry's smile. There's so much joy in this picture.

"Yeah..." Henry's voice trailed off. Ted wanted to know what happened, maybe he could comfort Henry.

"What happened to them?"

Henry took a second.

"They're dead." Henry sighed, "Car crash, alcohol poisoning, and suicide. In that order." Fuck. That's rough. Suicide. Holy shit. Ted looked at the picture, they look so happy. Ted didn't know them but he couldn't imagine any of them killing themselves.

"I'm so sorry Henry." Ted hugged Henry. Henry hugged him back tightly. Ted knew what it was like to lose someone important to you, but six fucking people holy shit.

"They were the closest friends I've ever had. I've grown to accept it." Henry didn't look sad, but Ted knew that this was a difficult topic for him. They could always talk about it later.

"You don't have to talk about it anymore, if you don't want to." Ted kissed Henry's forehead lightly. Henry smiled a little bit. There really isn't anything Ted wouldn't do for Henry.

"You would have liked them." Henry's smile was practically identical to the one from the picture.

"I'm sure I would've." Ted would get along with anyone for Henry.

Henry kissed Ted. His henry. Ted gets to be in love with Henry. He's really a lucky son of a bitch.

"I love you." Henry's smiled his gorgeous smile.

"I love you too." Ted kissed Henry. Henry was really the man of his dreams wasn't he? "We should eat something." Ted knew Henry wouldn't eat breakfast if he didn't force him to.

"Oh yeah, eating." Henry maybe really smart but seriously he'd starve to death if Ted wasn't here.

"You have to eat." Ted stared Henry down seriously. Henry needs to know this is not a joke.

"If you can manage to cook anything, I will eat it." Henry smiled. Ted literally just need a single egg. Henry must know nothing about cooking.

"Is that a bet?" Ted smirked. Ted's always up for a challenge. Except it wouldn't be a challenge because cooking is easy.

"I don't know is it?" Henry leaned in. If this happens Ted would not get breakfast started and neither of them would eat.

"No no no. We can make out later. I am going to make you food." Ted stood up and walked into the kitchen. Ted didn't really remember what they had left in the kitchen. "I'm going to put on music!" Ted needed music to be able to think. Ted pulled out his phone. Ted compulsively put his theatre playlist on. Then he realized that Henry would love this.

"You have a theatre playlist?" Henry giggled from the couch. Henry's laugh really is adorable.

"You bet your ass I do!" Ted made Henry laugh. This is heaven isn't it.

Actually it's really not heaven because there aren't anymore fucking eggs! How the fuck are there not eggs? Well he has butter and bread and jam. Well he could soak the bread in melted butter then fry it. That's food.

The next song started. Ted could hear Henry lightly laughing from the couch. Well ted loved this song so whatever.

"The name on everybody's lips

Is gonna be Roxie!"

Henry started laughing hysterically. What a dork.

"Hey this is a good song!" Ted knew that henry definitely knew this song and definitely already loved this song.

"You're preaching to the choir!" Henry yelled back.

"They're gonna recognize my eyes

My hair my teeth my boobs my nose!"

Henry burst out laughing again. Ted was really tempted to play this up because Henry's laughter is adorable.

"From just some dumb mechanics wife

I'm gonna be Roxie." Ted did the basic dance moves. Jazz hands and all that jazz. Ha.

It was a little hard to focus on cooking with Henry's adorable laughter.

"They're gonna wait outside in line

To get to see..." Henry sang the back up part. His voice is so much better than Ted's. Wow.

Ted winked at Henry. Henry started giggling again.

"Think of those autographs I'll sign

Good luck to ya!" Ted grabbed the wooden spoon on the counter and used it like a mic. Henry giggled some more.

"Roxie!" Henry called out. Ted couldn't help but smile.

"And I'll appear in a lavalier that goes

All the way down to my waist." Ted swayed his hips in time. Henry kept laughing. This is great.

"Here a ring, there a ring, everywhere a ring-a-ling!" Henry sang out from the couch.

"But always in the best of taste!" Henry sang the last part with Ted. They both started dying of laughter.

Ted didn't know the next part by heart. Henry definitely knew it though.

"Mmm, I'm a star!" Henry stood up in that dramatic way that Ted expected. Ted chuckled a little bit.

"And the audience loves me!

And I love them." Henry pointed at Ted and winked. God he's adorable.

"And they love me for lovin' them

And I love them for lovin' me." Henry walked over dramatically and caressed Ted's cheek dramatically. Ted wanted Henry to finish the part but he couldn't resist.

"And we love each other." Ted put his arm around Henry's waist and pulled him to a kiss. Ted loves him with all of his heart.

"And that's showbiz... kid!" Henry pulled away from this kiss just to say the line. Aww. Ted couldn't stop himself from laughing.

Henry put his arms around Ted's neck and pulled him into another kiss. Ted put his other arm around Henry's waist. Ted loved this. This is all he's ever really wanted. This kind of happiness.

"Oh by the way breakfast is done." Ted chuckled.

"Damn That was fast." Henry looked impressed which is just kind of funny.

"Well it's basically just fancy toast." Ted laughed, he could also call it off-brand French toast. "You have like nothing in your kitchen." Henry laughed. But seriously who doesn't have fucking eggs. Ted will need to go grocery shopping for henry soon.

Ted put the "fancy toast" on plates to make it look slightly better.

They sat down and started eating. Henry was sitting across from Ted. Henry looked like he was enjoying the food.

"You're really good at cooking." Henry sounded impressed. Which is ridiculous because it's French toast without eggs.

"And you're really good at singing and dancing and science." Ted smiled and leaned in. Henry blushed and leaned in over the table. I mean they've both eaten so they're cool to make out.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Mother fucker!

#tedgens #from the top! #fanfic

[enderrealms]

Linking Hands, and Linking Hearts: a Reddie Fanfic

I’ll probably continue this! But right now, I leave this here. Be free!

((This is my version of a fix it fic that takes place after It 2 where they are able to get Eddie to the hospital and he lives and stuff))

~~~

Richie Tozier was a fucking mess all around.

First, he threw up everywhere because of Mike’s god forsaken phone call. He didn’t even know why, at the time. First show in a while that he bombed, to nervous to do or say anything properly. So much for his confident reputation.

Then, he drove all the way down to the shithole town that he grew up in. Which he only realized just then. Just arriving in Derry stirred some memories right up. Some good, some not so much. Nothing too awful yet, except the looming fear and dread everyone felt.

And then he walked into the restaurant to see Eddie Kaspbrak standing right in front of him, and everything flooded back.

“Oh right. I’m gay,” he thought. That wasn’t a new one. He had been in the closet for as long as he could remember, which was even more time now that he had returned to Derry and everything had come back in patches. But when he saw Eddie, everything flew straight back into his mind. Including his huge crush on Eddie that was more love than crush.

Shit.

The dinner had gone well, joking and having fun with the other Losers. His heart skipped a beat whenever Eddie even so much as looked in his direction- fluttering when they arm wrestled, any time he made physical contact with Eddie motherfucking (que shitty “your mom” joke) Kasprak. But: Eddie was married. That was a shocker and a half, and though Richie never thought in a million years that Eddie could return any affection, it still stung.

Of course, when the fortune cookies came out, all hell broke loose.

He didn’t even want to think about that chaos, including the chaos of finding out about the murderous clown monster that they had to kill because they cut their fucking hands 27 years ago. And the sad chaos of finding out about Stan.

Stan. Stanley. Richie’s best friend as a kid (of course Eddie was that too, along with Bill, but Eddie was different, and though it was 27 years ago, and they were way over it, Richie still held some contempt for Bill over the fight they had then. So Stan.

But now Stan was gone, and everyone was devastated. They were all handling it in all sorts of ways, most of them drinking down their pain once they got straight to the hotel, but everyone was dealing with it. Stan would not be forgotten. They would not forget again.

The next day was a nightmare of course, going to the Neibolt shack and fighting the god forsaken clown. And facing It beforehand while in town looking for his weird object thing that he apparently needed. The words stung in his brain. I know your secret. Richie was always scared of clowns. It didn’t help that he was nearly killed by one several times.

And then he got trapped in the deadlights.

He saw things in there, horrible, horrible things. He watched Stan die. He watched them all die. It was horrific, and he’d never forget it again. It felt like ages that he was trapped in the gaze of the deadlights, hovering like 20 feet off the ground. But really, it was only a little bit, because his fucking knight in shining armor Eddie came in and stopped that. Hovering over him with the biggest, cutest grin on his face, so confident that he just beat It.

Richie didn’t want to remember what happened next.

The weird talon-like thing that stabbed Eddie right in the chest. The splatter of Eddie’s blood in him as he stared into the panicked expression of the love of his life. The fear in his eyes. When he was tossed about the room like a ragdoll. He didn’t want to remember, yet he couldn’t forget.

Richie didn’t leave Eddie’s side until it was absolutely necessary. He didn’t do it until he was needed by his friends to kill It once and for all. Then it was right back to Eddie.

Thankfully, he was still muttering little incoherent phrases, meaning he was alive. For then.

After using Richie’s jacket to try to staunch the blood flow, the rest argued about who should carry him, until Richie broke through all of them and said he’d do it. Nobody argued. Bev immediately called 911 as soon as she could. Richie rushed onto the ambulance before they could stop him, and everyone else agreed they’d meet them there.

It was torture to see Eddie be whisked into surgery; to know he was probably in pain, and had a low chance of living. Eddie slumped into a hospital chair, and he waited.

Eventually he was allowed to stay in Eddie’s room, with enough convincing, and that he did. He spent all of his time there, sleeping there, eating (barely) there. The one time he left was to take a shower, and he came straight back afterwards. It had been about 4 or 5 days in the hospital (he lost count), but it felt like an eternity.

That’s where he was now, slumped in an uncomfortable hospital chair (not like he minded much), asleep at night in Eddie’s hospital room.

He had spent the whole day staring at him, his friends coming and leaving. Eddie was their friend too, but they were also sorting out their situations and stuff; where they were going after Eddie wakes up and is out of the hospital. Richie should probably be doing that too, calls from his manager getting incessant, but his only care was Eddie. Only Eddie. It had always been Eddie.

Even when he couldn’t remember; it had been Eddie. When there was something missing from his lame life. Eddie. When he remembered. Eddie. That night at the hotel, knowing Eddie was only a few rooms away. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Eddie was his everything.

~

Eddie’s eyes slowly blinked open, greeted immediately by darkness.

It wasn’t completely pitch black, but it was pretty dim. He could make out a shape slumped in a chair next to him. At first, his chest filled with disappointment as he believed it was his wife. Why was he disappointed? It was his wife. But when he looked closer, he realized that the figure was too slim. Plus, they were asleep. Myra would never sleep in the hospital unless she was the one sick or injured. Upon further inspection, he realized that it was Richie.

Richie.

Richie fucking Tozier. What was Richie doing there? Eddie didn’t even remember why he himself was in…

Oh.

Oh!

Everything came back to Eddie that moment. Everything. The clown. The damned town. Richie hanging in the air, haze trapped directly in the deadlights. Being stabbed by It. He couldn’t recall much of anything after that.

A warm feeling blossomed in his chest when he looked back at Richie, still fast asleep in the chair, which he could only assume was very uncomfortable. Richie was there with him. He was glad. Glad to have a friend there with him. That was it. Right?

He doesn’t think about it more, because he compulsively decides to wake Richie up.

“Rich. Richie.” He whispered into the darkness. Richie gave a jolt, and jumped from his seat.

“What? What happened?” He whipped his head around in confusion. Eddie waved.

“Down here, Rich.” Richie gazed at Eddie, wide eyed. Before Eddie could do or say anything (probably make fun of him) he was enveloped in Richie’s strong embrace.

“Eds, oh my god Eds! I can’t believe you’re awake! The doctors told me you were gonna live, but part of me didn’t believe them and-” he was cut off by Eddie placing a hand over his mouth. Richie gazed back at him.

“Shut up. Also Don’t call me that.” His face contradicted his words. He was happy. He almost didn’t notice how close he was to Richie. Almost. He didn’t realize until Richie pulled fully away, dragging his chair as close as he could to Eddie’s bed.

“How are you feeling, Eds?” Eddie just rolled his eyes at the nickname, and smiled.

“Like shit. Like someone is pressing on my chest and making it hurt.” He sees Richie’s worried expression, and adds, “I’m fine, though.” Richie nodded, and then grinned once again.

“Hey, I know the feeling,” Eddie raised his eyebrow, intrigued. “It really presses on my chest when I’m under your mom-”

Eddie slapped him.

~~~

To be continued?

#reddie #it chapter two #fix it fic #reddie fix it fic #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it chapter two spoilers

[summeryoongki]

Bite [2]

Chapter 2

“What do you mean ‘freak out’? Why would I freak out!? Jazmin, tell me what’s going on!”

The panic in my voice was doubled by the echoing walls and I’m sure anyone behind the many doors lining the hall could hear me.

“[Y/N], calm down. It’s okay, shh.”

She held my hand and tried to comfort me in a soothing voice. The scene reminded me of how a child tries to call to a cat in a comforting tone right before they capture it. I was the cat in this situation. Before Jazmin could continue, a door to my right opened and out stepped a very pretty girl with dark hair and monolid eyes. Something about the way she stared straight into my eyes without any shame both terrified and entranced me and I found that I wasn’t breathing. She spoke and it felt like her voice was warm honey seeping into my skin and making my limbs heavy and languid.

“Hello [Y/N], you’re here to donate your blood for people who can’t survive without it, for Vampyres.”

As her last words left her mouth, her face split into a calculating smile, showing her teeth as she did so as her canines dropped down and elongated into sharp, white points.

“Stop screaming.” Said the pretty girl with fangs.

I hadn’t realized that the annoying shrieking sound that reverberated against the high walls were coming from me until I stopped, obeying her command.

“Breathe.”

My lungs filled with air once, twice, three times as I tried to process what I had just witnessed.

“Stay calm, no one is going to hurt you.”

I took one last deep lungful of air before releasing it slowly with an obedient “okay.”

“My name is Seulgi and I am a Vampyre. Vampyres exist. None of the Vampyres here will harm you. If you agree, today you will be donating your blood to some thirsty people who greatly appreciate your sacrifice and we will also generously compensate you for it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

My voice sounded foreign and strange but I could feel it coming from my own throat. The dazed feeling I had been under lessened once Seulgi turned to Jazmin and nodded her head at my friend who turned to me with a sorry expression on her pretty face. The panic and fear I had felt just a second earlier had smoothed out and I was left with confusion and apprehension.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this before, we all are put under a compulsion to not tell anyone their secret. I was scared at first too, but when I saw Jin, he assured me that he wouldn’t hurt me and that he’d be as gentle as I wanted. Plus, I really couldn’t resist him, I mean, he’s beautiful and charming and tall and his smile is just… Anyways, they’re just like us, not like we are shown in movies and stuff, except they, you know, drink blood to survive. And they pay you! Don’t you really need the money, or else you’ll have to drop out and get a full time job?”

I nodded my head and swallowed, her words still swimming in my head. Drink blood?Vampyres? Compulsion?

“[Y/N], do you trust me?”

I stared deep into her brown eyes, suddenly unsure of my answer, until I remembered how we had vowed to always protect and trust each other when were just kids.

“We’ll always look out for each other, okay?”

“Always.”

“Do you trust me?” she repeated. I knew my answer.

“Always.”

Her face lit up in a smile of recognition for our phrase and she took my hand in hers.

“Always. Okay, Seulgi, I think we’re ready.”

Seulgi spent the next 20 minutes explaining the contract and process to me so I fully understood my options before I signed a binding contract with their company which I found out is named HemCorp. The name made sense since their business was blood. I opted for the one time donation process for now, which she told me could be changed later, if I decided I wanted to sign the year contract. It was all very business-like and professional, which eased my anxiety a little.

“I’ve paired you with two of our clients, Taehyung and Jungkook. They will only take half a pint each, which is collectively the same amount you would donate to the Red Cross. They are both very nice, sweet guys, if you have any concerns or boundaries just let them know and they will totally respect you. Many people experience a Blood Bond between themselves and the Donee, so don’t be surprised if that happens. Oh and one more thing, you can’t tell anyone about the donation process or what we are, okay? Okay. Now that you’ve signed the liability waiver, the confidentiality agreement and the contract, I’ll take you down to meet the boys.”

Jazmin and I followed Seulgi down the chandeliered hallway and to a waiting room with another door where she punched in a security code. A high pitched chime sounded and a tiny green dot lit up and the door unlocked, allowing Seulgi to open it and let us through. As she led us through the maze of halls and rooms, I caught glimpses of people, men and women. It was easy to tell who the Vampyre were and who weren’t. They were the ones who were beyond beautiful, the ones whom you couldn’t help stare at as if their beauty put you in a drugged trance. 

I noticed a muscular blonde boy talking animatedly to another boy who was taller and had a light pink cast to his own blonde hair. I heard the tall one say the others name as we passed.

“.. I can’t hang out today Jackson, but I should be free on Sunday…”

I looked in the doors that were open, curious as to what they held, peeking one room with a fiery haired boy laying down on a couch, hands behind his head and one knee propped up. He winked when he noticed my eyes were on him and I sped up, passing his room.

“I put Tae and Kookie in the room next to Jazmin and Jin. I thought it might make you feel more relaxed if you knew your friend was on the other side.”

“Thank you. That does help, actually.” I exhaled with relief.

Just then the door on the left opened and a tall boy with soft brown hair and a handsome face stepped out and embraced Jazmin with such warmth and gentleness, that I couldn’t help but smile for her. She melted into his embrace and I knew this must be Jin.

“Hello, you must be [Y/N], it’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Jin.”

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you too.” I said, smiling as I shook his outstretched hand.

“Okay! Introductions are over, now we can go in. Have fun!”

Jazmin was clearly eager to be alone with Jin and I laughed at her rushed attitude as she dragged him into the room and closed the door. Seulgi opened the door on the right and flipped the light switch, illuminating the room as we stepped inside. A large bed rested against one wall while a couch and a table sat against the opposite. The furniture had a dark stain finish and the linens on the bed were mostly in a dark red color, and large black planters held exotic tropical plants I couldn't name. A large, furry, white rug paired with the dim lighting gave the room a warm, cozy, sensual feel. It looked like a very expensive hotel suite.

“The boys will be here in a second. The rooms are soundproof for privacy so if you need anything just press this button next to the door and someone will come. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

She left with a genuine smile on her face and I was finally alone, standing in the middle of the room, unsure of what I should do with myself. I moved over to the bed and sat on the soft, plush comforter, but immediately stood up. The bed seemed too casual and sensual. I decided to sit on the couch instead and stiffly awaited the two Vampyre that I would be ‘feeding’ tonight. The clock on the wall ticked slowly, mocking my nerves with every second.

Suddenly, the door clicked open and in walked two very handsome boys, both slightly taller than me. One had warm, golden skin, dark brown hair with honeyed highlights and had thick lashes that framed his dark irises. He wore a loose sweater and black leather pant with boots, just like me. The other looked slightly younger and he had shiny black hair, lighter skin, big innocent eyes, and pink lips. His clothes were more casual, a long black t-shirt, fitted ripped jeans and tan Timberlands. The one with the lighter hair made his way over to me and I stood up to greet him respectfully. He slowly circled me, drinking me in with his eyes before speaking.

“You’re very pretty… Hi, I’m Taehyung, this is Jungkook.”

His voice was deep and soothing, but also had a lightness to it as if he was always laughing. I liked the way it caressed me and it made me want to smile and laugh too. Instead of shaking my outstretched hand, he grabbed me, wrapping his arms around my frame in a warm hug that took me by surprise, but I hesitantly returned it. Jungkook simply walked up to me, shy smile on his face that showed his cute bunny teeth, and gave me a quick bow and a greeting.

“Hi.”

“It’s nice to meet you [Y/N]. Seulgi told us this is your first time. Do you have any questions?” asked Taehyung, genuine concern in his voice.

“NO SEX…I – um- I mean, let’s just keep it professional.” Taehyung smiled and laughed while Jungkook blushed and avoided eye contact with me.

“Okay, whatever you want. You might not be saying that in a few minutes, but, let’s get started shall we?!” Tae moved onto the bed and sat on his knees, patting the covers in-between his legs, indicating for me so sit in front of him.

“Sit with your back against me and Jungkookie will be in front of you while I’m at your neck. It’ll be easier that way.”

I moved onto the bed and sat rigidly between his knees, tense from the awkwardness of it all. Tae grabbed my waist with his large hands and quickly pulled me back, situating me even closer to him, my back flush with his chest and I could feel my cheeks heat with blood at his contact.

“Just relax [Y/N]…” his voice went even deeper than before and it had a honey smoothness to it, just like Seulgi’s had when I first met her. My body relaxed into his and the heady sweetness of his voice flowed into me, soothing my mind and my muscles.

“Good girl.” He purred into my neck. His rumbling voice stroked a small flame into existence inside of me and my body suddenly became deliciously warm. Jungkook made his way over, the bed dipping under his weight as he crawled next to me and straddled one of my legs, reaching for my hand.

“Thank you. We really appreciate this.”

I was surprised by how smooth and manly his voice was despite how young and cute he looked and I smiled at the sincerity I heard within it.

“Y-You’re welcome. I’m glad to help…”

My voice felt weak and broke a little at the start. I was painfully aware of Tae behind me and the way Jungkook was stroking my hand and wrist in slow, tickling motions that made my heart race and my body shiver with anticipation.

I was told the experience was unlike any other, being bitten by one of the Vampyre; slightly painful but mostly pleasurable. I was told it was almost like a drug, a high, where everything could be felt and every sense heightened. It was part of the allure that drew humans to the Vampyre and had them continuously returning for more, an evolutionary advantage that ensured the survival of their species. Even now, that built-in sensor in my head for danger was buzzing, but I ignored that warning, instead reveling in the transic bliss that the two boys seemed to inject me with, with just a touch or a growl of their voice.

“I’ll go first, [Y/N], so we don’t overwhelm you. It’ll sting at first, but soon it will change.” said Tae right next to my ear.

I nodded to let him know I heard and understood because at the moment, I didn’t think my voice would be anything other than a pathetic whisper. His slightly cold fingertips lightly brushed the hair away from the side of my neck and I automatically tilted my head, giving him more room to work with. My heart beat hard and steady inside my chest and my breathing became shallow and fast paced, but he didn’t bite down on my flesh just yet. Instead, his hand teased my cardigan until it slipped past my bare shoulders and fell down my arms, pooling around me and the bed. Jungkook helped me slip out of the soft material, pulling one arm out at a time. I shivered as cool air pricked goose bumps into my skin, one by one.

“You have beautiful skin…”

Tae’s voice trailed and he tapped his fingers up my arms and over my shoulders, squeezing and rubbing a small massage into my muscles before taking my face in his large hands and sharply tilting it in a dominant motion. He laid his warm lips against the smooth patch of skin beneath my ear and I braced myself, expecting to feel a sharp piercing sensation but I was teased yet again, by him gently kissing and sucking small discolored clouds into my flesh. An electric tingle coursed through my body and I feebly moaned as my nipples hardened and strained against the tight corset. A deep chuckle rumbled through Teahyung’s chest and I snapped my eyes open, suddenly aware of the lewd reaction I was having. My cheeks grew hot from embarrassment and even hotter from the hungry, lustful expression on Jungkook’s face as he watched the older boy torture me. His eyes were cloudy and hooded and his mouth hung open slightly as he breathed deeply. But the most interesting thing was the pink tinge that stained the skin around and in the whites of his eyes, even his previously dark brown iris’s now held a burgundy richness to them. Blood Lust.

“Are you ready?” Tae’s whispered question tickled across my skin.

I hesitated for a second, moving my hands to tightly grip his thighs as he awaited my permission.

“…Yes.”

All at once, he snaked an arm around my waist and held my head steady with the other as his teeth scraped and then punctured through my skin and into the carotid artery on the right side of my neck.

At first, the pain is sharp and white hot as one would imagine, but almost immediately it slowly began to morph into a brand new level of pleasure that I had never experienced before. It’s like listening to a beautiful song, or eating a decadent piece of chocolate cake. It feels like when your crush touches you or smiles at you for the first time, and also like the first day of spring after a cold winter. It’s riveting and all-encompassing and completely overwhelming.My breathing became hard and loud as he slowly drew the warm blood from me, drinking me into his body, and I understand why someone would form a Blood Bond with a Vampyre. In the moment of feeding, you share such an intimate act with them. They give you so much pleasure and a heightened sense of awareness that most people couldn’t even imagine, but you also literally become one as your life source nourishes them from the inside out. It’s beautiful, it is addicting.

My skin burns and tingles, I can feel every tiny air current in the room and I can hear my own heart racing, I smell the woodsy and musky scents of each boy, as well as the shampoo that lingers in their hair, I can smell my own arousal that has begun to pool at my core. Small trickles of warm liquid fall down my neck every so often, only to be licked up by Taehyung’s heavenly tongue. Each time his wet, pointed muscles flicks over my sensitive neck, I whimper and squeeze my thighs together, trying to lessen the pressure building inside as much as I can, to no avail. At some point my hand gets lost in his soft hair, tugging sharply as each new wave of euphoria envelops me, and he groans deeply into my neck which only amplifies my arousal.

I am aware of the growing erection pressed against my lower back that twitches every time I pull his hair, but I’m not opposed to it anymore, at this point I would welcome any relief that he could give me. All too soon, Tae stops sucking at the small punctures in my neck and somehow seals them so that I am no longer bleeding freely. His fingers tilt my head to his and I see him lick the last traces of my blood from his lips before he moves in to connect our mouths in a kiss, stopping just before they touch, respectfully waiting for me to decide if I am ready. I don’t hesitate and hungrily press my lips against his.

The kiss is hot and rough, and he almost immediately slips his tongue against mine and the slight taste of metal and salt fills my mouth. We are ravenous with lust, Jungkook forgotten until he impatiently grunts in disapproval.

“Not yet, Taehyung. I’m thirsty.” I can hear the strain in his cracked voice as he tries to control his Blood Lust.

Tae reluctantly pulls away from me and I’m devastated that his tongue is no longer tied with mine, but I concede to Jungkook without hesitation as well. I offer the unmarked side of my neck, but he just gently pushes me back until Tae is cradling my upper body in his lap, a fluffy pillow placed under my head to keep me comfortable.

“I don’t usually go for the neck, I prefer the femoral.”

I rack my brain, trying to remember where the femoral artery is. Jungkook scoots down the bed and removes my shoes and socks faster than I can see, his hands a blur, and then peels off my leather pants to reveal my simple black lace underwear. I try to cross my legs over myself in an attempt to be modest but Jungkook is so strong, too strong, and I can’t fight him when he roughly pulls my knees apart and pins my legs down. His eyes bore into mine while he slowly trails kisses up my left leg, sucking and licking knots of want into my stomach with each star burst that appears on my skin. The sight of it is so erotic and sexy and predatory, I become a panting, moaning mess underneath him. By now his irises are completely blood red and faint black veins appear under the thin, pink skin around his eyes. As he makes his way further up, he stops at the inner part of my upper thigh and moves my leg so it lays flat against the bed and he has clear access to my smooth, soft flesh.

“The scent of your arousal is almost too good to avoid, I’m not sure what I’m hungrier for at the moment…”

But clearly, my blood was more important since he chose to bite down harshly on my inner thigh, close enough to my core to make me whine and whimper in disappointment. Jungkook’s fangs are slightly longer and thicker than Taehyungs are, and they inflict more pain as he clamps down and sucks hard, but that pain fades just as it did before, replaced by an indescribable bliss.

“Fuck…Fuck…” I moan. Tae must find something in my weak voice to be concerned about.

“Are you okay, Love? Do you need a break?”

His hands cradle my face and I peer up at him with watery eyes as he looks down upon me, his bangs falling into his eyes and he looks so beautiful like that, so sexy that it hurts.

“I – I – I need you. I feel like I’m… going to explode…” I pant out, in a strained voice.

Tae smiles and his tongue teases at his lips before he speaks again.

“What do you need from me [Y/N]?”

He knows what I need, I can see it in the hot glint in his eyes as he drinks in my wrecked state, flushed and disheveled below him.

“I – I need you to fuck me, please…” I beg.

The smirk on his lips falters slightly and I notice his eyes shut as pleasure runs up his spine.

“Shit, you sounds so good when you beg. Jungkook, I think it’s time to stop now.” He orders.

But Jungkook has already stopped. Just as Tae speaks, he rips off my underwear and tosses the scraps of lace to the ground and runs a finger lightly across my slick folds and I cry out at how sensitive I am, gripping the bed sheets with one hand and Taehyung with the other.

“You little -!”

Jungkook cuts the older boy off by gripping my hips and yanking me down the bed until my bottom is at the edge and my legs are hanging around his shoulder as he kneels on the ground in front of my wet mound.

“I’ll be that you taste just as good here.” Jungkook purrs.

“I’m sure she does.” Taehyung agrees.

I prop myself up on my elbows, eager to see his red lips and tongue touch me where I ached the most. He eyes me one last time before his face disappears and he dips his tongue into my throbbing opening, shallow fucking me with his mouth, his tongue gliding in and out easily, aided with my natural lubricant.

“OH GOD!”

I throw my head back and my voice reverberates against the walls, and I’m glad they are supposedly soundproof.

“Oh fu—mm, shit…” I don’t know which words to use so I just let them all fall from my lips as his tongue slides up and circles my swollen clit, my legs twitching with every tingle that his tongue elicits.

Taehyung circles to the side of me and pops open the front closures of my corset, freeing my breasts from their confines. He has already taken off his sweater and his hair is ruffled and messy from pulling it over his head and his large erection is easily visible as it strains against the shiny leather of his pants.

I eagerly slide my hands down his smooth stomach and grasp at the bulge, sighing at how rock hard he is. Grabbing onto the edge of his pants, I pull him closer to me on the bed and fumble with the button as Jungkook continues to swirl his tongue right on the tip of my bundle of nerves. Just as I peel down his pants and underwear enough to grip Tae’s dick, Jungkook inserts his middle finger into my swollen core and pumps it back and forth, forcing me to tighten my hold on Tae and cry out.

“Jungkook-ah! That feels so good, don’t stop.”

He grunts in acknowledgement and continues to massage my inner walls. I fall to my back and began working my hand over Tae’s thick shaft, using my thumb to circle the head and smear the oozing pre-cum that beaded at the tip. His eyes close and he bites his lip, moaning as I increase my speed and pressure.

“You’re so good with your hands, I want to see what you can do with your mouth. Open wide for me, Love.”

I do as he says and part my lips, as the tip presses against them, licking the head before letting him enter completely. I bob my head slowly at first, hollowing my cheeks and sucking harshly while swirling my tongue on his sensitive tip, but he soon takes control and cradles me head as he thrusts inside my warm cavern. Jungkook adds another finger and curls them up, stroking me while quickly flicking his pointed tongue just over the top of my clit. High pitched whines vibrate over Tae’s cock and he bucks into my mouth harshly, making me choke slightly.

“I’m sorry, Love. You feel so fucking good on my cock. Can you deep throat me? Can you try that for me?”

I nod slightly and hum on him, loving the way his voice is dirty yet caring, and he slowly moves deeper into my mouth, letting me adjust my throat to the invasion. My gag reflex barely triggers so he moves faster, both hands now gripping my hair and thumbs stroking my face, wiping away the occasional tear that forms in the corner of my eyes. I’m glad he’s in control because I can barely focus from the pleasure that is building up inside of me from Jungkook’s skillful hands and mouth.

“You taste so sweet [Y/N], I want you to come in my mouth.”

My eyes flutter at Jungkook’s dirty words and they bring me even closer to my orgasm. I glance at him momentarily as he returns his mouth to me and I can see one arm is moving furiously but it is not touching me. The thought of him stroking himself while he eats me out is too much and I release Tae to scream as my orgasm overtakes me and I flow right into his mouth like he wanted.

“Jungkook! I’m coming!”

Desperate whimpers echo through the room as my body shudders and quakes, a tingling sensation radiating from my clit throughout my body. My hands shoot to Jungkook’s head and I grip his soft hair, holding on as my climax comes to an end. Jungkook rises from his knees, all his clothes still on except his jeans are unbuttoned and his long, erect cock is out, flat against his stomach. His lips and chin are glossy from my wetness as he beckons Taehyung over to him.

“Hyung, come taste how delicious she is.”

He holds out his still wet fingers and Tae immediately grabs his hand and sucks off my cum, moaning around Jungkook’s digits. He continues to taste while staring into Jungkook’s hooded eyes, the sensuality of his actions increasing with every second that passes. Finally, he lets the other boys fingers slide out of his mouth.

“He’s right, you do taste amazing. I think I want some more.”

Taehyung presses his body into Kookie’s and connects their mouths in an open kiss, tongues sliding against each other and erections brushing together. He licks off all my cum from Jungkook’s face and then grabs the hem of his shirt and swiftly pulls it over his head. All I can do is sit in the bed and watch, completely in awe and aroused by the eroticism of them making out in front of me. Jungkook is more muscularly defined than Taehyung, his abs popping out slightly from his tight stomach. His strong arms grip Tae’s hips as they deepen their kiss, moans slipping from the both of them. My core begins to throb again and a whimper escapes me; I want to join in too.

“I think we are being rude to [Y/N], hyung.”

Jungkook breaks away first and moves toward me, kicking off his shoes and socks along the way.

“That was really sexy, I’ll have to see you guys together more often.” I say, properly speaking for the first time.

“Any time, Love. I think I like you. We’ll have to request you exclusively from now on.” said Taehyung.

Excitement burned at the back of my mind and down my neck at the mention of a next time, yet we weren’t even finished with ‘this time’. Jungkook pushes down his pants, throws them to the floor, and then grabs his leaking cock, stroking it slowly and coating himself in his pre-cum.

“Lie down.” He commands. I obey immediately. The difference between the cute, shy boy and the dominant sex god in front of me is exhilarating.

“Spread your legs for me. I’ll try to go easy on you. For now.”

The silent promise that he would be rough made my walls contract and a shiver ran up my spine. I wanted to see how dominant and rough he could be, so instead of completely opening my legs wide, I open just a little, teasing him with a glance at my sex.

“I said- “ he gripped each knee and slammed them apart, a dark look in his eyes and his fangs extended slightly with agitation. “ -spread your legs.”

“Don’t be a bad girl, now. Or I’ll have to punish you.” At the word ‘punish’, he forced into me without any warning and my back arched from the pleasure and pain.

“AH! Fuck me! Yes!”

His hips drew back and snapped back into me and I moaned loudly again, writhing as I gripped the sheets underneath me.

“Do you like it when I punish you?”

His voice came out as a deep, dangerous growl and oozed sex. He thrusted hard into me again, his hands holding my legs above me for support so that my knees were close to my head.

“Yes! Jungkook, go harder.” I begged.

My face felt hot and sweaty and every part of me ached to be touched, ravished. My hair had fallen from the pins that were holding it up and became a mess around my face, pieces sticking to my forehead and cheeks. I reached up, my abs burning from the strain, and grabbed his hips, both to help support me and to pull him further inside. Jungkook’s hand fell from my legs and landed on the bed on both sides of me and he met me halfway, lips meeting in a hard, open mouthed kiss. His cock thrusted into me slowly but filled me up completely each time, loud slaps sounding in the air when his skin smacked into mine. His tongue tasted sweet and spicy, like cinnamon candy, and my stomach twisted with pleasure when he wrapped it around mine and sucked erotically. High pitched sounds escapes my mouth and I spoke in a breathy voice.

“Mmm, Jungkook, fuck me faster.”

He hissed out a string of curses and pushed me down into the bed, hands at my waist, holding me down as he sped up his rhythm. One hand traveled up my torso until he reached one peaked nipple and began to pinch and twist at my sensitive pink nub. It felt so good to have one nipple stimulated that I began to rub and pinch my other, but Tae slapped my hand away and flicked his wet tongue out and licked it instead.

“Let me play with you, Love.” He moaned around my nipple and began to suck and swirl his muscle around the top, occasionally nibbling on it and gaining a lewd noise from me.

“Tae, that feels good. Don’t stop. Ah! Faster Jungkook, faster…”

My orgasm built up in my lower stomach as they both overstimulate me. Taehyung is pushed out of the way as Jungkook bends down and slips his arms underneath me. I can feel his hot, ragged breath on my neck and I can hear him pant as his hips rock into me at a blinding pace. I find his mouth and our kiss is sloppy and wet, and I explore, tongue sliding over tongue and fang. As soon as I scrape the tip over his sharp point, he jerks his head away, careful not to draw any more blood. He kisses down my cheek and along my jaw, trailing down to the sensitive spot where Taehyung left two bite marks, and sucks harshly at the wound. I try to move slightly away but his hand wraps around my throat and applies just enough pressure to stop me, slightly cutting off my airway in the process, but I like it. His lips find the crook between my neck and shoulder and I sigh in ecstasy.

“Bite me. Please.”

He groans at my request and I can tell he is just as close to release as me because his breathing is faster and higher and his movements become frantic and uneven.

“I – I can’t. I’ve already… taken too much.” 

His voice is gruff and ragged as he denies me, although his teeth are nibbling at my skin as though he really wants too. I wrap my hands tightly around his neck and back and press his face into my neck as hard as I can.

“Fucking. Bite me!”

I clench my walls around him and my nails scrape down his back and I know I’ve broken skin. His head rears back and I see his fangs drop down completely and his eyes roll back behind his eyelids. With a guttural growl, his head whips down and that searing hot pain-pleasure fills me up in all the places that my orgasm could not reach, lighting me up like a bulb.

“I’m – I’m gonna – I’m gonna cum!”

My climax exploded in me like a bomb and I contract and release fast around his cock and drive him over the edge with me, his grunts and moans like music to my ears. Jungkook squeezes his eyes closed and his jaw has gone slack, his chin stained with my red blood. The sight should terrify me or make me sick to my stomach but it doesn’t.

“Fuck! You feel so good, [Y/N]!”

His seed shoots into me, hot and sticky. His thrusts slow drastically but they do not stop as he milks every last drop of pleasure from himself. A warmness spreads through my chest and mixes with the ravenous lust within me.

“I can’t take it anymore, seeing you two like this. I need you too [Y/N].” croaked Taehyung, his hand pumping furiously around his erection as he watches Jungkook slide in and out of me.

Jungkook flips us so that he is laying underneath me and I slide off of him, my body twitching as his tip glides over my sensitive spot again. Even though his turn is over, his hands and eyes never leave me as Tae takes over.

“Let’s pick up where we left off shall we?”

He turns our bodies so Jungkook has a full side view of us as he touches his lips to mine. My arms wrap around his form and pull him closer to me until our fronts are touching and Taehyung grips my back, his mouth sucking its way down my neck and collar bone until he reaches my nipples. I arch my back into his mouth and sigh as his tongue licks over my sensitive buds and occasionally bites down so that I make a sharp whimpering sound.

“I want to hear you, I want you to be so loud that I can still hear your screams tomorrow, okay?”

“Yes, Taehyung.”

“Good girl.”

He continues to kiss down my torso, licking inside of my belly button and I giggle at the slight tickle. I feel Taehyung smile against my navel as he presses a kiss to it before nibbling at my hips bones. My head tilts back at the sudden pleasure that churns in my lower stomach and I emit a low moan and shiver as I tangle my hands in his hair one more time. Hand hands grip my hips and the sharp points of his nails cut into my soft skin. I hiss at the sudden sting but it doesn’t hurt too much so I’m not worried. Tae’s wicked tongue catches the tiny drops of blood that bead at the incision, and he sucks dark purple and blue swirls over them. Sweet kisses trail back up to my mouth and he is licking at my upper lip, while his strong hands grip and knead my butt. A sudden, harsh slap to my left cheek makes me jump and squeal in surprise and he invades my mouth with his, tongue running over my own muscle as he groans and slaps the same cheek again. My skin burns and pricks where his hand print resides but he continues to slap my ass and tease my mouth until I am grinding my hips against his erection and panting with need.

My hand travels south to wrap around his cock and I tease the head with my entrance, running it up and down my slit and dipping it just inside me until Taehyung can’t take it anymore.

“Fuck!” He bites my lip and scrapes his teeth over the surface.

“Turn around and bend over, [Y/N]. Give Jungkook a kiss.”

His voice deepens and he flips me over onto Jungkook and pushes his hand up my back so that I am straddling the boy with my face over his and my ass in the air. We intertwine our hands and exchange light kisses as Tae teases his cock just past my entrance over and over again and it feels so good but I want more, so I push back on him until he slides in further.

“Oh Tae!”

My mouth opens in gasp as he fills me to the brim and rocks his hips against mine, swirling into me and stretching me to fit him.

My upper body drops onto Jungkook and I rest my face in his neck, softly biting on his skin and mewling from Taehyung’s slow, torturous pace inside me. Suddenly, Jungkook’s hand is at my clitoris, matching Tae’s pace and I would’ve collapsed if I wasn’t being held up from behind by my hips. A slight cry floats from me and I kiss Jungkook’s face, his damp hair filtering through my fingers as I smooth it away from his forehead and lay a kiss down right in the middle. I falter and my body shakes as his fingertips grazes faster around my clit and I repeatedly whisper out strangled versions of his name. Just as I am beginning to crumble, Tae drives into me fast and hard, assaulting that spot within me until I’m spilling profanities. He slaps down on my butt so hard that I scream out and growl as he rubs away the sharp burn.

“AH! TAE! FUCK ME HARDER!”

I’m surprised by myself; I have never been this vocal or intense before, but then again, all the sex I’ve ever had could never compare to the amount of mind numbing pleasure that these two boys were giving me.

Taehyung bends over my back and I can feel his words against my ear as he whispers and bites at the lobe.

“Do I feel good inside of you, Love?”

I close my eyes at that word. Somehow, I have grown fond of that word, Love, even though pet names have never interested me. Hearing him croon “Love” to me in that voice; it makes me weak.

“Yes, Teahung, Yes! I love – it so much!”

I startle momentarily, my eyes snapping open at what I had wanted to say instead. You. I love you. Where had that come from? I had caught myself just in time but my pause went unnoticed it seemed. His mouth sucked on the back of my neck, a new erogenous zone I didn’t know I had, and I felt myself bubble up dangerously high to another breathtaking orgasm.

“Fuck! You’re so tight, I can’t hold back anymore [Y/N]”

His pace reaches a speed and strength I have never felt before and Jungkook Increases his pace as well until I am twitching and shaking in between these beautiful Vampyres.

“I’m gonna cum, Tae!”

“Cum for me, Love. Cum with me.” he pants out, his hips erratic and forceful against mine.

 My eyes flutter open and closed and I gaze at Jungkook’s eyes in between my lashes. They are clouded and churning as they bore into mine, full of heat, both warm and scalding at the same time. His free hand reaches up and cups my cheek, thumb smoothing over my lips. He catches my lips in an open mouth kiss and our tongue glide against each other.

That warmth from before grows and expands in my chest, making it hard to breathe and I am falling over the edge into the abyss. One more thrust and one more stroke and I burst and pulse around Tae and he is soon to follow, my high pitched screams melting with his low moans and grunts. I faintly feel him slip out of me, my walls still throbbing, and fall to the bed. Exhaustion overcomes me and I collapse, out of breath, upon Jungkook who strokes my hair and shifts me so I am comfortably laying in between both of the boys. I am hot and sweaty and weak, all my left over energy being spent on thinking about sleep. I feel as if I am being pulled into a darkness and it is difficult to open my eyes but Jungkook insists that I must.

“[Y/N], you can’t sleep yet. Here, drink.”

Something warm, wet, and fleshy presses against my lips but I can only groan out in protest.

“Please” he begs. “You have to, we took too much blood, you’re too weak right now.”

Something in the way his voice is desperate and almost afraid makes me cease my struggle. He presses the object to my lips again and I part my lips as much as I can and a sickly sweet liquid fills my mouth. I try to fight but Tae holds my head fast and the thick, warm liquid running down my throat.

“Shhh, Love. It’s alright…”

His honey voice and Kook’s stroking hand quiet the muffled sounds I am making and my body relaxes into their forms as I drink in what I’m sure is their own blood.

“Okay, I think that’s enough.” Taehyung suggests, and the wrist leaves my mouth.

Soft, caring hands wipe my face and pull the thick fluffy, red covers over our bodies and I am so comfortable and happy that I smile as I drift off. My heavy, slow breathing must fool them into thinking I have completely fallen asleep because they begin to converse in hushed tones.

 “We took too much from her, Jungkook. We lost control. We can’t do that again.” Taehyungs voice vibrates soothingly against my back and his arms are around my waist, cradling me against him.

“I know. I haven’t lost control like that since…. I was turned.” his words were broken and filled with unspoken memories that seemed to haunt him.

“I was scared there for a second, hyung. I thought it happened again. –“ Jungkook’s fingers brushed away the sleepy tears that had bubbled up and ran from my eyes, a weird habit that I had always had.

“- she reminds me of her so much. She even cries in her sleep…” he whispered the last part, almost to himself it seemed.

“Did you bond with her?” asked Taehyung.

“Yes.” Said Jungkook. “Did you?”

There was a long moment of silence and I nearly succumbed to the comfortable darkness when Taehyung finally spoke again.

“…Yes.”

#bts #bts smut #bite smut #taehyung smut #jungkook smut #namjoon #jimin #suga #yoongi #hoseok #jhope #hobi #jin seokjin #rm