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2kmps · 26 days

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PERSIMMON & INK ; PT ONE OF TWO

yakuza!getō suguru x tattoo artist!reader| 1/2 | wc; 12.9k

story summary; you're a tattoo artist hidden amidst the bustle of shinjuku city and renown with tourists. due to a misstep of your shady employee, you're visited one night at closing by an eerily beautiful man in a disheveled suit and no tie requesting an intricate back piece done traditionally. the undertaking slowly begins to unthread your life piece-by-piece the closer you get to him until there is no way out.

story warnings; dark content, yakuza au!, details about tattooing, traditional tattooing (tebori), money laundering, injuries to mc, implied death of oc, manipulation, power imbalance, a bunch of cultish shit, mc doesn't fuck around and is a hardass + sort of a bully to their employee, sex w/ injury, getō smokes, mc dogging on foreigners, implied stalking, prose + detail heavy, explicit sexual content, heavily implied homicide, graphic details of violence + wounds.

read the warnings! + mdni! events within this story are not indicative of my personal viewpoints.

thank you @ceruleansol for your earlier proofreading efforts! appreciative, as always!

a/n: this is part one of two. i strongly implore that you reblog & interact with this post! it helps out authors tremendously when you do!

A silvery peal called out to the little shop stifled in past-midnight silence. During regular business hours, it was a good sound to hear; it meant that your next client had parked their feet through the threshold behind a closed door and jittered a bell hanging by a red string. In this case, you hadn't been fast enough to flick off the neon signage anchored into the building outside, nor set the deadbolt to signal the shop had retired for the night.

You were still hard at work wiping down your workspace, the last appointment of the night having taken several hours longer than intended with a squeamish foreigner who couldn't bite his knuckles long enough for you to finish linework on his ankle.

"It's past midnight. Come back some other time," you said, inflectionless, unwilling to be deterred in your task. It didn't occur to you to even give this newcomer the time of day by looking at them. "I have all my information online. Email for appointment bookings."

"Oh, really? That's too bad," replied the stranger, voice traceless of the frustration you were accustomed to when turning people away at odd hours. "I was told this would be a better time to come by for a consultation."

That made you jolt upright, swiveling toward the man standing inside your shop. Strangely, you hadn't anticipated the way he sounded when he spoke—affable, syrupy, and an elegant, fluid stroke on glazed canvas—to be so different from how he looked—tall, lean, refined with a sort of edge to him that'd intrigue anyone in a room he walked into.

Apart from his appearance, something you couldn't be sure was real with him bathed in the faint neon-red glow from flickering bulbs filtering in through the windows, you were drawn to the somewhat disheveled suit he wore. It looked like something a salaryman uniformed himself in while sitting on his ass for twelve hours in one of Tokyo's skyscrapers.

He doesn't have a tie. That stood out to you at this late hour.

"I didn't tell you that." You suspected who did and let your voice rise above the pitch of the checkered wall clock and drone of an oscillating ceiling fan directly above you. "Kōji! Get out here!"

From the depths of your little shop, tucked away in the furthest corner behind a door painted the same morose gray as the walls flanking it, there was a great ruckus—a chair tipping over, a body smashing to the floor, and feet fumbling over and over again until a weaselly fellow skittered out into the parlor.

"Ye-yeah? What's up? Time to—"

"Get this guy scheduled for a consultation for next month." Nothing prepared you for the way Kōji's color sank out of his cheeks and neck when you turned toward him. You pushed onward boldly, "I'm booked out for the next few weeks. Since you told him he could come by whenever, take responsibility and get him out."

Kōji's eyes were so much bigger, the whites of them showing, knuckles turning stark when his hand grasped your forearm, and he hinged forward at his waist, bowing so low you thought he'd fall forward.

"Thank you so much for your patience." Kōji sprung back up, feet popping into the air as he whisked you away into the back office, still repeatedly dipping his head to this man. "Please, give us a couple of minutes, and we'll be right with you."

"No worries." The suit guy smiled at you, catching your gaze before the gray door was pulled shut in your face. "Take your time."

Inside the dinky space, surrounded by unsteady towers of boxes brimming with all the things your second-floor apartment couldn't handle without making the walls burst at the seams, Kōji still had a hold on you. This time, however, both his hands gripped your arms, hot and clammy on your bare skin.

"You can't tell him to leave." Kōji hesitated to take any stance against you, any tone that could be implicated as threatening or domineering. Even through his quivering breaths, he tried to sound firm.

You looked at him incredulously, neck craning back in hopes it got the message across. It was easy enough to sweep away his hands. "The fuck, I can. It's my shop. Tell him to get out."

Kōji let his posture sag, whittling deep into himself as his fingers came together to pick at minuscule slithers of skin that left raw spots around his nails. He shook his head. "Not someone like him."

"Kōji—"

He was trying hard not to stick the underside of a fingernail between his teeth. A couple months ago, he had told you he wanted to kick the habit because he couldn't stand looking at his hands. This job and his natural disposition worked against him—long hours pouring over finances and bookkeeping, tucked away in a tiny room with a humming desk fan and no windows, would be enough to drive anyone's anxiety through the roof.

It wasn't ideal for him, you knew that, and suggested that he move his workstation around the shop or to the front-end counter as long as he didn't disturb the flow you kept going with clients. Worse than the isolation was his aversion to handling any potential customer interaction.

That's what made this so odd to you, so strange that he simply reiterated time and time again, "We can't kick him out," anytime you'd try to get anything else in word wise.

You had to back up, put some pressure against the new pulse in your temples. Kōji let his gaze flutter around the room, never steadying on your face for long enough for you to get a better read on him. His hair and neck were soaked with sweat. Beads of it dripped from his brow onto his shoes, leaving glistening, branching paths behind that never quite dried before more took their place.

It came to you then, just as a guess but one with enough certainty that dread wound itself against your spine and made you fidget.

"Is that—is he part of a gang?"

Kōji did a lot of work to keep his eyes off of you, still, lips thin and wet with sweat that he lapped away.

No confirmation was a confirmation—you launched yourself at him, wringing fistfuls of his stiff button-up until it was tight against him. You felt the heat of his body through the fabric wrapped around your hands.

He was shorter than the man in the parlor, but still taller than you. His feet stayed planted on the floor as you brought his face down to your height. "Did you fucking tell the yakuza about my shop, Kōji?! Is he here because of you?!"

"No, no! Not me! Not me!" Kōji wailed, crumbling beneath your bulbous stare. "Not on purpose! I swear! I swear! It was an accident. I was at lunch with… some friends, and I mentioned that I was working here. I guess word got around!"

"So, you're having lunch with criminals now?!" You wanted to wring his neck. It was physically impossible to bring yourself any closer to him without tasting the salty drops on his skin. "Are you insane?!"

Since the start of Kōji's employment years ago, you knew that he was a leery character, and having him on board to handle the more mundane, unsavory parts of running a business wasn't your best call to judgment. Still, he was efficiently organized in a way that made sense. He was fast and dedicated enough in doing things right that you stopped asking yourself questions about what antics he did on the side.

Up until now, he had never brought anything from the outside in to disrupt your status quo, the fine-tuned, well-oiled gears that kept your business running and clientele coming around like revolving doors. This was an entirely different ordeal, though, and you didn't know how to handle it.

You let Kōji whimper around your fists for a while longer, releasing him only once you were ready for a deep breath.

"I don't care." you said, taking a wide step away from him as your fingers scouted through all of the pockets on your person. There was one stick of gum left in your hoodie that went straight into your mouth. "I don't care. Stop being a fucking wuss and fix your mistake. Get him out of my shop."

Kōji gasped, scuttling closer to you just as his skinny, knobby knees bent inward and trembled. The weight of his body nearly toppled you when he went down to the floor, hands on your clothes. "No, no. Please. If you—if you turn him away, he'll tell the others, and who knows what'll happen to… us."

The selfish little imp actually meant himself.

It killed you to acknowledge that he wasn't wrong. You knew as much about the movements and customs of crime syndicates in Japan as anyone else, probably even less than the regular citizen, but they were still criminals with tight fists on the economy and underground.

All it would take is one bad remark and everything you had worked for would be razed to the ground.

"Who is he?" You pushed him off by the shoulders. "Who is that guy?"

You didn't like his silence, how his face warped, and his eyes fell to the white tips of your shoes. "Kōji."

Slowly, he answered, "He's the kingpin of the Uzumaki-kai."

"Goddamnit."

He stayed sniveling on the floor while you scrambled around the back office, turning over boxes and water-stained folders for particular papers you needed to go forward. Once you had them, you blotted the tip of an ink pen on your tongue, ripping a piece of white printer paper out from the tray and beginning a frantic scrawl that you weren't even sure was discernible.

You weren't in that room with Kōji for more than twenty minutes, reemerging into the parlor to find him—Getō Suguru, boss of the Uzumaki-kai—still waiting for you exactly where you'd left him. Only now, the smile he greeted you with was smug, shoulders lax against the door with one foot hiked up on it.

He had heard the entire thing, all of your shouts and Kōji's perilous pleas. The walls weren't as thick as you wished they were.

"You should find a different artist who specializes in the kind of work you want." you said, spreading your array of papers out on the front counter. The pen dotted your tongue once more before touching them, a messy signature left behind on black condemning lines.

"I've looked at your portfolio online." He had come closer, eyes set on the motions of your pen flying across paper. "It's the best I've seen in Tokyo."

There was something in his words that rang sweet and untrue. With Tokyo being one of the foremost tourist magnets in the world, attracting domestic business and foreign intrigue, competition amongst tattoo shops during peak seasons was staggering. You were part of the cluster of shops preferring to bring in international clientele because they were lured with anything quick and easy and cheap.

Simply put, they were your revolving door. Kōji monitored your shop's social media presence well, eyeballing analytics, trends, and patterns in the algorithm, so you stayed a persistent pest on the front page most days. Whatever moves he pulled worked, filled the books until you were writing in last second, twenty-minute appointments against the seams in your spiral bound to keep tabs.

You'd see anywhere from eight to twelve clients on the worst of days, most of them coming from overseas to tour the city or countryside. Every one of them chose premade designs from a catalog you kept nearby, all work you had committed to muscle memory and knew so well you could do the line work without a stencil and let your mind float somewhere else.

These foreigners wanted memorability, everlasting art imbued with stories from their exotic balmy summertime getaway where they stayed in air-conditioned hotels and shops and harassed the locals because it gave them a swell of adrenaline, a sense of adventure from the belief that they were in possession of more culture now than they had been before.

They tried to talk to you about those things because when they'd first see you, stepping under the chiming little bell, there was a brightness in their eyes of knowing you weren't someone who belonged—just like them. After so many years in the business, you were conversationally fluent in several languages but pretended not to be for all of two or three.

"I'll do it, but—" You pulled yourself from that reverie, pen flipping through your fingers for him to take. "You have to sign a bunch of waivers and there are conditions."

Getō had waited for you in well-tempered silence for several minutes and maintained that even now with a neutral expression. "Can you explain them to me?"

"The waivers are pretty standard," you said, shifting your weight against the counter. "The first three are making sure you understand the risk of scarring, infection, colors bleeding together. Fourth one is a liability waiver."

When you reached the final piece of paper buried beneath all the rest, the one you had handwritten and hastily signed, his eyes were gleaming with intrigue.

"What's this?"

There wasn't much to it, really, just a single paragraph on a bleach-white background, one blank line below your signature with enough room for a timestamp after it.

You made sure it was in his hand before you spoke again. "This is a rigid waiver agreeing that if I do your tattoo, you can't tell anyone you're associated with about this shop.

Getō wore an aloof smile. "What are you implying? I never said—"

"Stop trying to make me sound fucking stupid." You winced after the fact, not intending for it to have come out so aggressive. "Either sign it or leave, please. If anyone finds out you came here, it could ruin my business."

All but the ticking wall clock, a jarring neon against a backdrop of dark walls, and the ceiling fan with its monotonous beat from spinning blades had kept your shop from catapulting into silence.

You hadn't realized it until now, not until Getō had taken many long moments to examine the papers you'd given him and wordlessly signed them, that your chest was starting to ache from how hard your heart rammed your ribs.

You couldn't believe this was happening.

A snare formed in your throat once he finished printing the date and time on your special waiver, pen aside, papers stacked together as he tapped them on the countertop so they were neat.

He held them out to you, still with a beguiling smile that betrayed everything he represented. "Could I get copies? I'd like them for myself too."

You smeared sweaty palms down the back of your sweatpants, flexing out your fingers over and over until you felt sure enough that you could handle those papers without trembling. This must've been how Kōji felt when he had walked in earlier.

"I'll be back." Your bow was stiff and slight, probably an affront, but he let you go, turning to find a home on one of your low couches in the corner and started perusing the pages of your catalog displayed crookedly on an acrylic table in front of him.

It was all you could do to not slam the office door behind you, to intentionally scare the soul straight out of Koji's ass for putting you in this hard spot. If he weren't such an integral part of keeping this place afloat, you'd have fired him ages—years ago.

"I need copies," was everything you needed to say to make Kōji rifle through his arsenal of ridiculous expressions. He shrank under your stare, sliding deeper into his seat behind his desk. "You still need to be back here at eleven."

"Yes, I know." he mumbled, handing you fresh copies after stapling them together. You let the warmth sit on your hands for a while. "Do you want me to leave?"

Truthfully, you didn't want to be alone with Getō. You wanted to yell at Kōji a little more.

"Yeah. Get out of here."

And he ran.

A part of you hoped that Getō would've gotten bored with how long this entire process had been just to sign some flimsy agreements and listen to you pitch a fit at your employee. You prayed that the fleeting glance Kōji had made to the corner of the room was to check, not to confirm.

You stepped out into your workspace, boldly expecting to see it bathed in nothingness and shadows—but he was still there.

Getō let the tip of his shoe, a pointy closed-toe, jerk with the sounds of your wall clock. His leg was crossed, your catalog still splayed across his thigh as he looked at your preset designs, work made to appease the masses and feed into their fiction of Japan. You had half the hope that he'd be turned off by them and change his mind.

"What you're offering here and what's on your website are completely different."

This guy was observant.

You didn't like that.

"I get a lot of travelers." It crossed your mind to rip the book out of his hands. "They're the ones who make up the bulk of my business. My website hosts my professional work. It's what I prefer to do."

He didn't look up, continuing to leaf through the pages with long, lithe fingers. "So, you cater to foreigners, then?"

"My shop is small. It's just me and Kōji here. This place has to stay running somehow." You weren't sure why you were explaining yourself to him. "If that's something that bothers you, I can shred these papers, and you can find another artist."

Getō let his smile return, closing the catalog to drop it back onto the table. As though to challenge your stubbornness, he took the copies from you and skimmed them one more time.

"Thank you." He moved those aside too, now wholly focused on you. "Do you have time tonight to hear out my ideas?"

You were facing the wall clock now; it was almost two in the morning. If he wanted something more complex, it would take hours to work up a sketch for him. And that was being so bold to believe he'd like it on the first try.

"Got a deposit?" you asked. "Nonrefundable, of course."

He paid you what you wanted right then and there, to your complete astonishment. The price you had given him was astronomical, an act of spontaneity that you decided you'd pose to him as a joke if he got mad or guarded with severity.

No questions.

No doubt.

Just the warm clip of folded yen from his pocket that he didn't even look over. The yakuza were historically a stingy bunch, but he didn't even do a second sweep, didn't try to double back on you, and didn't seem to care.

"Let me get my stuff." You left the cash off to the side on the acrylic table. It was your equivalent of a cat showing its belly good-naturedly.

The money was still there when you returned with a tablet stuck under the sweat of your armpit and two mugs of tea, an act of hospitality you didn't often invoke mostly because you didn't care. These were dire circumstances, though, and you couldn't put it out of your mind (or nerves) that you were walking on thin ice laden with eggshells.

"It isn't anything fancy." You put your things down before handing him his mug. "It's from some random box I grabbed at the store."

Getō gave his thanks and took it from you, first sips coming as soon as he could bring his lips to it. He made no mention about the flavor or quality, didn't look at it with any amount of suspicion. It simply rested there against his palms while he waited patiently.

He was defeating every stereotype of yakuza that you had adopted from the movies and media. If it weren't for Kōji being a scummy little rat who liked hanging around trash in his off time and believing all of his reactions from a while ago, you'd be convinced that Getō wasn't affiliated at all.

A businessman with questionable practices, maybe, but not a greater part of the underbelly of society.

"It's a sort of complicated idea." He rearranged his legs so they were spread wide, back sinking into the worn green leather. Another sip. "Tell me if I should slow down."

True to his word, the tattoo he wanted was ambitious, terrifyingly ambitious, and something better left to a specialized skill set, not someone who bounced around between commercialized brand characters and bastardized interpretations of The Great Wave by Hokusai.

"I'd like the dragon to be white." Getō was partway through his explanation, now sitting forward on the edge of the couch, an elbow pointed down on a thigh to cradle his cheek. He was invested. "The eyes, hm, yellow or gold. You can choose what'd go best for the inside of its mouth. I want the head of it in the top left—"

"Hold on." You sighed, managing a lukewarm drink from your tea. "So, to go about the white, there are a couple of options: we leave that space empty, so it'll be your skin tone. Most people get dragons that are red or green or black. It'd be better to try that if you—"

"It has to be white." He looked at you the same, but his words were razored in a way so slight yet unmistakable. "What else can be done?"

"Well"—the leather creaked against your back the deeper you dug into it—"I could do white ink. I could get it opaque, but the problem with it is that it fades drastically; you'd need it retouched every couple of years."

"I see." His smile was wider. "I like that idea. Let's go with that."

You frowned. "You do know that white ink is expensive, right? So the price is going to jack up, and there's more pain involved since I'll have to apply more pressure."

"That's fine with me."

More specifics for the work he wanted flooded in: He wanted to start with his back, covering every bit of surface from his neck down to his tailbone. Afterward, he would branch out to both arms and finish the design over his breasts. It certainly aligned with artistry you've seen done by yakuza tattooists; the entire point of them was to be seen by those who mattered, easily concealed to those who didn't.

Most of the real estate was going to the white dragon with gold eyes first, the rest of it going to freestyle characters from fiction such as kuchisake-onna and religious iconography that he pursued with quite a bit of insistence.

You sketched until four in the morning, arranging characters and wispy, dreamy clouds. Long whiskers floated away from the dragon's snout, while the teeth you gave it were more comically blunt and human-like rather than jagged and threatening, a detail he seemed particularly delighted to see.

"What's with the Buddhist symbols?" You had to bring out your laptop to research those, settling on a few he gave a nod to. "Are you some kind of priest? This is a pretty specific scene you're giving me."

"It came to me in a dream." he said.

What a weirdo. Your fingers ached and cramped by the time you finished the draft, stylus leaving deep impressions in your skin that you were sure had knocked bone a few times.

From up close, you weren't too partial to how it looked like an amalgam of things surrounding all of the labor you put into specifics of the dragon, but when you moved it away, it came together like some hazy dreamscape.

"I should tell you why I chose you in the first place," was what he said when you spun the tablet around for him.

You had the device facing you again, pen notched through your fingers to apply some simple colors to the design. "I thought it was because you were enamored with me and my online portfolio."

Getō stared at you, humoring your joke with a smile even though you didn't see it. He stayed slouched over his thighs, fist moving to the side of his head to keep him upright.

"I'm looking for this to be done traditionally."

The tablet flattened on your lap, stylus rolling off of it onto the floor. You couldn't believe you didn't think of this. If he really was part of a crime syndicate, of course he would want all of the work done traditionally.

"That's going to bring in a whole host of problems." You let your thumb hover dangerously close to the trash bin button in the top right of the screen. "First of all, the overall cost of this is going up by twice what I've already quoted you."

"No worries." Getō shrugged his shoulders. "I've done my research."

But you weren't done. "Healing time will be reduced, but some of my clients have told me it's more painful than a machine."

"I'm not 'some' of those clients." he rejoined.

You were suddenly wishing your tea wasn't cold so you could disappear into it for a while. The tablet ran hot on your thighs, dragging your eyes back down to the drawing, thoughts flitting through what it'd mean for business, expenses in versus expenses out, and how committing to this would solidify you as a yakuza artist.

It would be inescapable and follow your reputation into the ground if Getō ever spread word about it.

"This back piece is going to take me a really long time to do for you. A machine cuts that time in half." Maybe you could beg him to change his mind.

He wouldn't budge. "Yes, I'm well aware."

"So"—fine then, you'd give him something to reconsider—"you know for the sake of longevity that traditional isn't going to be the best? Machines are able to apply more force into the skin and move faster. Because you'll be relying on me instead of a machine, your line work will start to bleed within a few years and your color is going to fade pretty significantly, too."

If he was dissuaded, Getō never let on because he grinned. "You were the right choice, after all."

That ended the discussion and your night. Your eyes felt dry in their sockets, rolling them towards the wall where you read a big black number “5” on its clear plastic face. Getō didn't share that same urgency. He hadn't even checked a watch or a phone the entire time he was with you.

"Remember," you said, your tone daring, "you signed an agreement to not tell anyone about this place. I expect you to keep your word."

"Of course. I wouldn't consider breaking it in my wildest dreams." Effortless and gentle, he said this to you with fondness that felt oddly misplaced. "After all, we prefer choosing our artists. And, now, you're mine. I'll see you soon."

You locked the door after him without saying anything, losing track of his body through the window as he went somewhere under the shadows cast by taller buildings close by.

This time, you made sure to flip off the neon signage that had been glowing outside all night long.

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The Uzumaki-kai had started out under a different name in the forties, one seemingly redacted from all publications shortly after the change. It had a tumultuous history with frequent power shifts and internal disputes that had left it nearly eradicated by the seventies until Yorimitsu Asahi climbed to the peak of the hierarchy. Within ten years, membership tripled, revenue increased into the billions, and nearly all records of their exploits had dropped off the edge.

Kōji had hit a dead end in his research for you, an attempt to give you some peace of mind in what you were dealing with. The idea was to hit the ground running, so when Getō came back around, you'd have some vague notion of what to expect. But all you were able to do was skim the surface of an, allegedly, power-hungry and morally depraved bunch of men and women.

The most recent details of their movements dated back two years ago, whereas the more credible sources haven't reported anything for nearly seven. In the earlier articles by a journalist gone undercover, they had a significant hand in the economy, mainly through casinos, prostitution, and ties to religious institutions.

You had to let out a groan because Kōji hit a wall—again. All of the latest news you could find were just sensationalist reprints about how they were actively scouting people, or giving charity to orphans, and where the yakuza ranked in the world amongst other crime syndicates.

"Hey." Getō was standing in front of you, just on the other side of your counter. "Ready to get this started?"

Snapping shut your laptop had been an instinctual response. A flush of adrenaline in your veins was chased away by the cold creep of fear reaching up your spine. This wasn't the same as mom catching you watching porn or a teacher hovering close enough to see you cheat.

This was the chill of knowing you were digging into things you shouldn't be.

"Wel—welcome back." You didn't mean it but bowed your head low anyway. "I never got a chance to schedule you in. It'll take me a while to set up, if you'd want to come back another day."

Getō had his hands in his pockets, posture relaxed just like the last time, and looked around the small square footage of your shop. It was big enough to arrange a few compact pieces of furniture in the corner, give breathing space for a couple of bodies in the middle while you worked on them, and the front-end counter where you sat.

You made use of decorative shelving to display all the things that customers wanted to see: bottles of ink, strange art, little trinkets to give the place some interest so you wouldn't have to be. Everything else was shoved into the back office to clog up Kōji's space or upstairs in your apartment where you could fit it.

"No." Getō took a walk over to one of the shelves, a collection of inks you had arranged by color family. "I'd like to start today. I can wait for you to set up."

"Okay." You licked your lips. "Yup. That's fine. Kōji!"

With Kōji's help, what would've taken you close to an hour to prepare for Getō was whittled down to about thirty minutes. Just one look and the smarmy guy took on a more diminutive attitude, convincing you that if you were to walk away and come back, he'd probably be spit-shining the tops of Getō's shoes.

At least he wasn't sweating all over the floor again. You could watch the fragile flattery without completely twisting in disgust.

"One thing you didn't do last time was confirm that you were happy with the sketch." You had Kōji fetch your tablet and bring it up to show him. "Also, I refuse to start unless you have payment upfront. That was something else we didn't discuss."

"Th–that's a joke." Kōji sputtered.

You looked straight at Getō. "You're yakuza asking me for an extremely elaborate piece done traditionally with a lot of white ink. I have a right to want to protect my time and resources."

"I agree. The sketch is perfect." Getō said, fluid strides bringing him less than a couple of feet away. "Do you prefer cash or card?"

You were seeing him in the daylight, not awash in flickering neon or shrinking away into shadows, and he was absolutely breathtaking. It made you think how easy it'd be to lure someone into the Uzumaki-kai by his looks alone.

Payment had been seamless enough, a quick transaction that Kōji verified before scuttling out of the shop for the evening. You were left with this man, this dangerous, handsome man, to undress in front of you, casually peeling layers of his suit away until the first slithers of pale skin sent your gaze to the instrument in your fingers.

Getō only removed his jacket and button-up since his back piece alone would take months to complete, a damning thing to realize once you thought about it.

This just felt too real.

This was really happening, and all you wanted to do was blame Kōji for putting you in this position.

"So, what you're going to do is lie down." You slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and gestured to the massage table behind him. A white sheet had been placed over the black leather underneath. "If you need extra padding, let me know. Since we're building this entire piece around the white dragon, that's what I'm focusing on for now."

He leaned his weight against the table, hands back in his pockets. You tried keeping your eyes off his chest, off of his defined pectorals and abdomen, away from the thickness of his arms. The knowing smile inching onto his lips proved that you had failed.

"I'm going to be using a projector to position the image on your back, draw it out with a marker, and start with the needles." You could finally show him the thing in your hand. It was a long glazed stick with a metal ferrule attaching a row of sterile needles at the tip. "You'll feel me stretch your skin and start poking. It makes a weird sound because of how it needs to be angled, how it goes into the skin."

You took a breath, and he actually laughed.

"That was a mouthful." He hinged forward, bringing his face closer to the rod. "Not quite as 'traditional' as I thought it would be."

"There are modern adaptations to everything. It used to be bamboo, this is made from persimmon." you said, lowering the instrument onto a silver tray next to all the others of varying sizes. "What makes it traditional is the technique applied. I guarantee your buddies aren't going to back-alley places in Japan and having someone stab their backs with unsterilized needles tied to a piece of wood."

His dark eyes followed your path to the projector, watching you flip the switch and cast an image of the dragon on the table. "You never know. Some of them just don't know any better. They don't always have the best show of judgment. They need guidance."

You had something to say to that but thought better of all your organs and didn't. "Cool. Get on the table so we can start."

The landscape of his back was as defined and lovely as the front of him. You waited until the white dragon was scaled down to the appropriate size and positioned over him to touch his skin, letting your fingertips soak up all his warmth.

"We'll see how far I get today," you were saying, dragging a narrow marker tip across the broad sprawl of him. "It's going to take me longer than it usually does, and I don't really go longer than eight-hour appointments."

"There's plenty of time." This guy had infinite patience, it seemed.

And when the time came for the first prods with your needles, you paused to ask, "Need a break? Want some background noise?"

"I'm talking to you," he said, pulling a few straggling pieces of ebony hair over his shoulder. "That’s enough for me." It sounded ridiculous when he said it and worse when it replayed in your head. "What made you want to practice traditionally?"

You were already in several jabs, wiping down between them to keep a visual of what you were doing. "My mentor is one of the best traditional artists in Japan. I learned everything from him. He used to work in Osaka, I'm not sure about now. I lost contact with him years ago."

"That's too bad." he said. "Have you thought about looking for him?"

The last thing you were interested in was talking about finding people with yakuza, so after a few more pokes along the middle of his back, dipping into that pretty region that made his waist look so waspy, you decided to flip the script.

"What about you? Did you just dream about joining a gang, or…?"

He shifted his cheek to his arms, looking along his nose at your hunched shoulders. "Would you believe me if I gave you an answer?"

You dabbed his skin. "Probably not."

There wasn't much of a lull in conversation before he was onto the next topic, steering away from the niceties onto the real things he wanted to ask. You had been around the block a time or two; you knew the look people got when they had certain questions stewing inside their heads.

The only thing that ever stopped them was the devastatingly desperate aversion to kicking up dust and drama in public, and probably because they weren't yakuza.

Getō was the opposite in this scenario, so you lost.

"Where are you from?" There it was.

You sucked in a breath. "Gifu prefecture."

"That's not what I meant." He was still observing you with all the self-possession of a saint, but also unflinching obstinance that you couldn't get out of by hijacking the conversation again. "You weren't born in Japan, were you? Isn't it pretty bold of you to play off foreigners' lack of awareness for profit?"

As you swiped at the traces of ink and blood that coalesced into a single ugly bead, you noticed he hadn't winced once the entire time you pushed ink.

Would he if you stabbed him a little harder?

"That's a long story." Stab. Stab. Stab. His expression remained beautiful and pristine. "I don't feel like answering it."

He smiled. "Hm."

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The game of twenty questions spilled over from one session into the next, weeks apart, yet Getō always remembered where you both left off like he was troubling himself to commit all the contents of a crumpled-up list to memory. Sometimes, between a peaceful interlude that rendered conversation bare, the flawless terrain of his back stretched between your fingers as your needles sunk deep, you'd think to yourself that had he been any other man—you'd be impressed by the effort.

Unlike other scenarios that leaned in your favor, boorish foreign men left unanswered when they'd talk about your body—where were you hiding tattoos? Under your clothes? Can we see? They'd laugh with one another because they almost always traveled in groups. Questions morphed into ugliness when they translated silence to incompetence; quips turned lewd and derogatory, but you no longer existed to them because you couldn't talk back.

That luxury of feigning ignorance wasn't packaged with Getō, having had lured that nugget of trivia out of you by the end of his first session. He never said those things about you, never let his inquisitiveness or eyes roam like you already had him. It was disgusting how being beneath his stare made you feel so vulnerable, stripped down to nothing but your underwear without that ever happening, without him ever having touched you.

You told yourself you'd be relieved the second this piece was finally finished, and he'd be gone from your shop for good.

"How long have you been a tattoo artist?"

But, still, for now, this little game with him continued, and he led the way.

"About ten years." No one had asked you that before, so it took you a few seconds for you to respond. Even then, you weren't entirely certain that was right. "Yeah, probably about ten years."

"Hm." Getō was in the habit of making that sound to quite a few of your answers. "You don't look it."

You jolted upright in your chair, fingers lifting away from his back just as you gave your tongue a reproachful click. All it would take would be one hard open-palm slap right against the sorest spot on his back to put him in a world of hurt and permanently fuck up the ink under his skin. You'd absolutely have your throat slit or neck snapped at the gallows, but it would be well worth the risk at this moment.

"What the hell is that—"

Getō's mellifluous laughter made your anger whittle to heat behind the ears before any words even made it out of his mouth. He tried keeping his back still. "Haha, sorry, that came out wrong. I meant: you look too young to have been doing this for ten years."

Good recovery. Smooth man.

You weren't nearly as amicable. "Aren't you too old to be playing pretend with a bunch of other guys?"

He let air out hard through his nostrils, lips pulling his smile wide enough for you to see the wet glisten on his white teeth.

"Fair enough."

Time crept along like that for the pair of you, multiple sessions coming and going with inconsequential banter that was always more upsetting to you than it ever was to him. Somewhere along the way, you had been convinced that Getō was unflappable—impossible to rouse to anger, regardless of the times your clap-backs had taken a personal edge, aiming to bury deeper than any of your needles could reach.

It was enough when he'd frown, his pretty mouth pressed firm and drawn down. Oddly, when he'd look at you like that, it was reminiscent of something wholly unsettling, pulled from some deep recess in your memory that you couldn't quite put a finger on until it happened again one evening.

You had taken things a bit too far, reminding yourself that it was better to keep your distance from him. All it would take was one wrong comment on one bad day for this rapport to come crashing down on you with every bit of the same force as a tsunami, ruining everything you had built.

Getō had decided he needed a break, something uncharacteristic in the months you had spent with him as your client, and got up from the table. He couldn't go far without covering his back, so he stayed wedged between the inside and outside, trapped in the door and setting off the delicate, jangling bell overhead more times than you were comfortable with.

He had looked at you before walking away, though, that frown marring his visage, weighing down his beauty with cavernous shadows around his mouth. You acted like Kōji in that moment, feeble and pathetic, withering into a smaller version of yourself so maybe he'd show mercy.

Between those tense minutes, until he returned to the massage table, you figured out what made his disapproval so familiar.

It was like burdening the weight of a disappointed parent, like knowing you had failed another test in school, and your teacher was delivering results with that same sort of dissatisfaction while peeking over their glasses at you.

You felt like you were being reprimanded in the way only someone with influence on your life could have.

It really rubbed you the wrong way.

"Sorry." It was a hard word for you to say. Getō was on his stomach again, cheek pressed atop his arms so he could look at you. "Sometimes, I get carried away. Guess that's what I get for spending all my time with Kōji."

Cue a loud sneeze from the back office.

His placid smile was a relief to see. "You should get out more often and see other guys."

There was no disputing that fact. Besides your mainly male clientele, Kōji was the only man you were in any regular contact with. Life had a way of keeping people apart, widening the gaps of time from months into years, wearing away at those delicate threads of friendship until they were all but frayed and irreplaceable.

It was simply the natural progression of adulthood, and it was boring and terribly lonely. Tattooing made your life easier, numbed you to becoming just another downtrodden drunk hunched over a glass full of glowing gold, lusting after the bare minimum of affection from anyone.

This job kept your head above water, just enough so you could forget all of that and spend your time exactly how you wanted to—

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

His question hit you full throttle, stealing the breath from your lungs as though he had landed a fist into your gut. It was just a few nonchalant words, an easy way to keep the conversation flowing, yet it had set your heart aflutter. You heard the rhythm of it ricocheting in your skull. It was suddenly so much harder to hold his skin taut, fingertips slipping inside the nitrile gloves you wore.

"A boyfriend?" A word that sat heavy on your tongue, unfamiliar, flustering you. "I don't have the time for that."

Getō shifted on the bed, something he usually didn't do without warning you beforehand. You let him get situated, taking that moment to also change your gloves beneath the table after patting them dry on your thighs. The skin around your fingertips had swelled and indented from moisture, further augmenting agitation.

He was gazing ahead now, narrow chin cradled in a slot made by his fingers. You couldn't tell what he was looking at since you kept so much stuff mounted on the walls to detract attention from you. It could've been anything.

You did think his vision aligned with your catalog of preset designs, though, leaving you just a little more self-conscious than his question had already made you.

When he did say something, his smile didn't quite reach how despondent he sounded, "It seems like no one has the time anymore. We've all lost our way."

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Getō came by astonishingly early one day with the earthiness of a good brew wafting all around him. The shop had been open less than an hour, giving you just enough time to unlock the entrance and flip on all the signage before he walked in.

The little bell signaled him, both your eyes and nose lured by the cheery sound of it as well as the scent. You had expected to see Kōji at first; it wasn't unlike him to show up before his scheduled shift. Years of cubicle servitude had a way of battering people into automated drones. Workers like him might as well have been walking on conveyor belts their entire lives—going somewhere without actually getting anywhere.

Kōji also only survived off of his thirty-two-ounce thermos sloshing with coffee. Sometimes he'd share with you so you wouldn't need to deplete the shop's supply or climb two flights of stairs to your apartment to make some, but more often than not, he was halfway through that gigantic flask by midafternoon.

So to see that it was Getō taking languid strides up to your counter with two coffee cups, palms wrapped around slithers of cardboard to keep his skin from blistering, you had to correct a grimace.

"Getō." You used his name tentatively, always sparingly. It tasted unwelcome on your tongue, like the smoky bitterness of charred meat or the tang of vomit that burned through your nostrils and made your mouth salivate. "I didn't have you down for today. I have other clients coming in later."

"I'm sure they don't mind rescheduling." He smiled as usual, but the finality behind his words sent quakes down your spine. "I don't know how you take your coffee, so I just asked for cream and sugar. I'm more partial to tea, but sometimes it just doesn't give the kick I'm looking for."

You meticulously avoided his fingers as he handed over one of the cups. The lid was marked with your initials, an act of thoughtfulness you would've been moved by had he—once again—been anyone else.

For Getō, he simply watched you with a tired, satiated smile as though the very notion of buying you coffee was worthy of some ovation. For you, seeing those black lines smear and spear outward across the white lid as dainty wisps of steam escaped wherever they could felt damning.

"How is it?" he asked, lips caressing the lifted rim of his own beverage. "You can be honest."

He sipped at the same time as you, pacing himself so your cups tilted simultaneously, eyes locked on tight, evaluating your slightest flinch. A hot trickle reached your tongue and crawled down your throat, feeling as though it were blooming out into your lungs and veins. It was known by him as well, like sharing the same experience, tipping the same cup and tasting those faint traces of one another, emulating warmth against your lips and in your mouth, lessening whatever uneasy longing he had started to spur inside of you.

You didn't know if the shudder that rattled down along your back came from the penetrating depths of his dark eyes or the bitter drink sinking into your cheeks, making you pucker.

Time forwarded for you again after that. The wall clock continued its eternal rotation, bustling bodies passed your shop, and you had lost those few seconds as though trapped in a dream.

"Did I add too much sugar?" Getō acted the same, perfectly pleasant smile seeming more like a fastened feature to you these days. "You sort of winced."

You set the cup down, ducking away from the front counter to collect your things out of the back office.

"It was actually too bitter for me."

Kōji came through the threshold about an hour later with some semblance of urgency, nearly knocking the door wide enough for it to slam into the wall. All of the color bled out of his cheeks, leaving his face a ghostly hue once he realized he was on the receiving end of Getō's stare. You were hunkered over his back, hands at work with the long stick and needles.

"If you break something, it's coming out of your paycheck." you drawled, so thoroughly enveloped by the black tracks left behind from your ink that you didn't notice Kōji's uneasiness turn into dewy skin and a beading forehead.

"I—can I talk to you in the back for a second?" Kōji hung onto every word, testing the sound of them while gauging Getō's quiet expressions. "There's—you need to see something."

"Kōji, seriously?" You didn't think you needed to point out Getō, or the fact that you were pulling ink from a glob on your glove. "Just tell me later, dude."

His face stretched as though wounded. "It's important. I swear. I wouldn't be asking if—"

"Is there a reason why you can't say it in front of me?" Getō had his nose pointed at Kōji, arm turned red beneath his cheek as he simpered. "Nothing's stopping you from telling us both right here, right now."

The scrawny man melted into himself, fingers fiddling together in a brave attempt to keep his teeth off of his nails and open sores on his cuticles. Whatever thing he had wanted to say was abandoned in that moment, stifled in his throat by a few words from the man on your massage table.

Your fingers halted, hovering over Getō's back as you took in the tone of his remarks to your employee, contemplating with a frown to threaten to throw him out.

"Don't talk to him like that." The leather underneath you groaned as you sat up straight on your stool. "This is my shop. You're not going to disrespect my employ—Kōji!"

He had already rushed away behind the somber gray door into the back office.

"Kōji!" You swiveled away from Getō, instrument an afterthought on the silver tray at your side. Seconds later, you swung back around. "You need to leave."

Getō, who had watched the entire thing from his arms, suddenly lifted his head and shoulders up, face weighed by surprise.

"What?" His eyes were wide. "Come again?"

You didn't falter. "Get the hell out of my shop. We're done for today."

His confusion mellowed into something undefinable, an expression you couldn't read with eyes that tracked across your face as though trying to catch a bluff. Nothing familiar remained in his gaze, the cold snare he held you in for several seconds, the depths of him black as coal and empty. For those few beats, until he looked away, you had held your breath without realizing it and heard blood gushing in your ears.

"You live in the apartment above here, right? On the second floor?" Getō still had his back to you, fingers fussing with the buttons on the front of his white shirt. "You should be careful."

Every ounce of courage you had gathered just moments before was suddenly sucked dry, stolen from your bones and spine, making your posture crumble on the stool. Dread wrapped around you like freezing, creeping tendrils that made the fine hairs on your neck stick out, put a knot in your throat that might as well have been his fist.

"How—how do you know that, Getō?" You were halfway out of your seat, fingers resting against cool metal and close to your arsenal of needles mounted to persimmon dowels. "Are you watching me?"

"Mm, not quite." He turned around while finishing the last buttons, expression void of that easygoing smile and mirthful glint in his eye that you had come to rely on from him. Without it, it was like you were freefalling into the unknown without a net to catch your back. "You should fire that assistant of yours soon."

"Kōji?" You had thought that same thing many times, but hearing it from someone else was an insult. "He's been here for years. He does his job. Who do you think you are to come in here, harass my employee, and tell me to fire him? This is my shop. Before you're anyone, you're a client who I have every right to refund and turn the fuck away."

"I suppose that's true." Getō said, rounding the table, coming into such close proximity to you that you could smell faint remnants of coffee on his clothes and breath, saw the late morning glow filtering in through the windows give his eyes a golden glint. "It's only a suggestion, but you should take it. I don't want to see you take the fall for things he meddles in."

You frowned. "What does that mean?"

He showed you one of his good-tempered smiles instead of answering, an easy way to stop the conversation before it could snowball into something else, dragging you deeper into his world more than what you already are.

There was a part of you convinced that he wanted to submerge you into that gross underbelly with him all the way, steal you below the surface, take you away from everything you'd ever known. But when the light would return to his eyes, just like now, and he looked upon you with such fondness, trying to smother your inquiries with lips pressed thin and tight so as to seal all his secrets behind them, you weren't so sure what his intentions were.

Some of his weight was suddenly on your shoulder, collected in the palm of his hand cradling the roundness of it. His fingertips pushed into the fabric, pressed divots into your skin and burned where he squeezed.

"Take care of yourself." Getō said, surprising you one last time by using that same hand, the very peaks of his knuckles to skim your cheek on his way past. "I'll see you soon."

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Firing Kōji was never an option, no matter what he involved himself with after work. There would be no business for you to spin signage for in the mornings, a studio to keep tidy, leather chairs to polish and preserve, and no stuttering neon light to bask under in the late hours of silence before returning upstairs to your bed.

Long ago, you had decided it made more sense to simply not see what didn't involve you directly, what didn't benefit you, because it was easier than acknowledging that the person you'd chosen to run everything in the background probably wasn't ideal. You'd known for years that his dealings outside your shop erred on the wrong side of the law, most likely, but it didn't matter as long as you didn't have to know exactly what it was.

As long as no one found him out, traced his employment to your tattoo shop, and turned your revolving door of clientele into thin, dwindling trickles, you'd force yourself to forgive him for whatever misdeeds he committed. He came into work on time every single day with his coffee flask and messenger bag, made no complaints about his workload and worn-in swivel chair that sometimes squealed when it turned, and didn't try to usurp the business from you.

He was the perfect employee and still was, even weeks following the incident with Getō. Every attempt you had made since then to get information out of him about that day was thwarted, distracted by numbers, stock invoices, client bookings, and asking if you wanted yakisoba from the little old lady down the road for lunch.

Kōji had decided you were untrustworthy now, a fact you were well aware of and unsure of how to handle. Less because he was your only employee—and, regrettably, the closest confidant you had in your life at all—but more that the entire ordeal left you uneasy and bothered.

He was doing something he shouldn't be, and Getō already knew about it and where you lived. Things weren't adding up, and you were the only one left in the dark.

One Sunday afternoon off left you with plenty of time to mull it over while packing around armfuls of groceries. A mid-autumn breeze was fabricated by cars passing through the city, throwing your hair in disarray, catching crisp bursts of air under your collar to leave you colder than you had been seconds ago. Your body was lulled into a relaxed state from the wind rocking your body left and right, pulled by the invisible force of it.

Your eyes stuck to the crosswalk sign, waiting for it to turn green, for the cluster of scuttering bodies to trot their way across and clear the area so they weren't stranded there until the next rotation. Their idle chatter hardly registered to you while you stood there next to them—colors of clothing, small domes of umbrellas, the drone of passing car engines felt so far away and surreal to you.

Everything seemed to vanish except your heartbeat when the light finally changed, eyes drifting down toward something that had an inexplicable pull on you, first as a slither of all black that grew tall and eventually into the shape of a body. You felt like you were searching through a sea of pines for that one glimpse at something that had caught your attention.

It was then that you realized what had you so engrossed was the unfaltering stare of another. You nearly collided with a man in a beige coat two feet ahead of you when you saw that it was Getō standing at the other end of the crosswalk.

Why is he here? Is he following me? You didn't give yourself the time to ruminate before ducking low behind a group of teenagers eagerly discussing their new idol obsession. A couple of the girls were in gyaru fashion, something you'd expect on a day trip to Harajuku, not on the west side of Tokyo near Shinjuku.

They paid little mind to you lingering entirely too close to them, using the shelf of a boy's shoulder to hazard a peek out at the scene until you had reached the end of the crosswalk with them. They dispersed in all different directions, sharing casual partings before you could think of where to go next, legs suddenly snared to the concrete when Getō called out from nearby.

"Hey, what a coincidence to see you here."

"Is it, really?" You tried remembering where you were in Shinjuku.

The red-light district, Kabukichō, the typical yakuza stomping grounds, wasn't far from here. It was one of those things that was easy to forget once the novelty of living in the area wore away, but it always meant something to someone else. That group of kids flashed in your mind briefly. It might've been their first time exploring a place like Shinjuku by themselves.

Getō came closer with his hands buried deep in his pants, the other half of a black sweatsuit that was too large for his frame. You tried to keep your eyes moving around a thinning crowd, steeped in uncertainty of how different interacting with him on the streets would be to piercing his back with needles.

"Are you heading home?" He saw your discomfort before the bags on your arms, his tone softening in the same way you expected it would for a frightened animal. "Do you need help carrying—"

"Hey, Suguru!" Another man showed himself through the intermix of bountiful bodies, his shape hidden beneath similarly slouchy, loose folds of clothing. His voice carried a similar pitch as the other, albeit inelegant and insouciant, with a head that was fully white and eyes so terrifyingly blue you guessed he had to be mixed with something.

For those few seconds you spared him a glance, you were set awash in a sensation of familiarity—a distant type of it. The same sort you'd expect to have while watching a movie with the appearance of an actor that startled you because you knew you had seen him from somewhere, but you couldn't place just exactly where.

If it hadn't been for his petulant seeming disposition on arrival and slothful bearings that ruined his posture and any semblance of class based on his bizarre, exotic beauty—you would have thought he was a model or someone of status, at the very least. His voice was annoying, however, and somewhat nasally as he complained about being left behind when Getō had noticed you skulking from afar.

Getō handled him benignly, almost disinterestedly, despite all of the speaking that coalesced into something even you stopped caring about. You made up your mind to use the distraction as a way to get out of this brush in public, spun on rubber soles, and almost began away until Getō broke apart from him and took the straps on one of your bags.

"Hold on"—he didn't let go despite how your features purposefully deformed from his nearness, a brazen attempt to look ugly to him—"you're a long way from home. Let me carry a few bags to help you out. Gojō, I'll see you around."

"Whaaaaat?! Seriously?" complained the other, making a whale of a noise that didn't match his relaxed stance. His bones seemed to collapse into the heaps of fabric he had stuck his arms through that day.

You tried putting opposite pressure on your bag to reclaim it from Getō, though he got what he wanted in the end. "I don't want to trouble you. I can carry these myself."

"It's no trouble." Getō insisted, still with obscene patience that overwhelmed your dogged determination to avoid causing an awkward shift between the two men.

As it was natural in Japan, jumpers and coats and pretty umbrellas wove through your motley bunch without being too distracted by the scene. They all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be, however truly inconsequential their destination was. It would've demanded too much of their concentration and willpower to look at everyone who made a ruckus in the streets of Shinjuku, but maybe they paid a little more attention because Getō and Gojō were beautiful, and you were like the hapless protagonist in a drama.

In that moment, however, you felt equal parts unfortunate that Getō bunched his long fluid strides to shorter ones to mime the pace of yours as he walked away from Gojō alongside you, all but two of your bags on his arms, and equal parts secretly enthralled by the experience and that you had been chosen over whatever former objective the two men shared.

"What was the point of us coming to Shinjuku if you're just leaving me here?! You suck!" Gojō's voice was carried by the false autumnal breeze whirled up by cars and gas exhausts, loud and strange because the urgency behind it had dropped off long ago. Now, it just sounded like he was calling after you both in casual parting like someone would from their doorstep down the road.

On that same fake wind, somewhere farther away but still close enough to see the uneven tips of Gojō’s white hair fluttering out away from his scalp, you could've sworn you heard the shape of your name—the pronunciation of it unmistakable—with all the same inflection Getō uttered when using it with you, weaponizing it so your ears would perk and be forced to hear him.

"I'm not doing any more of your tattoo until next week. I hope you know that." You had walked most of the way with him back to the studio. Seas of somber, dark concrete crosswalks with white lines and faceless beings in sometimes nice clothes had shrunk from a hearty basin of converging intersections to a gentle downstream trickle of interweaving streets that housed residences and hidden businesses. "Sunday is my only day off. I don't make exceptions for anyone."

Getō stayed with you the entire time, his movements a little more sluggish than you were used to seeing since you didn't have the same leg reach as him. He could probably open up his arms and touch buildings on either side of the street with the blunt nails on his long fingers.

You wondered, briefly, to your shame, if he could wrap himself around you twice if you were to do it first.

"I know," he said, an affable smile in his eyes and curved onto his lips. The look of him grew even brighter when he noticed you were staring, your face blemished by creases and lines and uneasy, fluttering eyeballs that conveyed your distrust and intrigue all at once. "What? You don't believe me? My back is still healing from the last session. I think you went deeper with the needles than previous times. It's taking longer."

You probably did bury ink deeper into the pretty flesh on his back because he upset your employee—your only employee, your safeguard to a successful business.

"Remember, you signed a waiver about infection. If there's too much redness and swelling, you should get it looked at." It wasn't often any interest to you to give unsolicited advice outside the shop, but Getō was your special exception. "I'm not going to touch your back again until that's completely ruled out. Besides, the dragon is done, so now we're just adding all your weird folklore and buddhist iconography."

"Hard to believe we've made it all these months." he said, now standing with you outside the building you rented for your studio and second-floor apartment. Despite the nylon straps on his arms digging cavernous divots into his black sleeves, he didn't act as though he were carrying around bags of lead like you felt you with yours. "I couldn't have chosen a better artist. I wasn't lying when I said your online portfolio was one of the best I'd seen in Tokyo, by the way."

What he said still sounded so sweetly untrue, but you unlocked the old door with a grimy brass key and let him inside to take his shoes off in the entryway and climb the stairs behind you to the second floor.

"I never have guests, so I don't really have anything for you. Coffee? Tea? Water? I may have some orange juice left." Every inch of tiny countertop and kitchen floor was swallowed by plastic totes and your bodies. It didn't occur to you at that moment to try putting some things away first to make more room, so you stumbled through the mess for your one-cup coffee machine that doubled as your tea kettle. "Sorry for the mess, I guess. I spend most of my time working, so I don't get the chance to clean up very often."

Getō betrayed no emotion, didn't seem afflicted in the slightest by the state of your apartment, and kept the curl of his smile fastened all the time. "Tea is fine. I'll just take whatever is easiest for you."

Minutes later, he politely sipped from the rim of your favorite mug, one hip implanted into the edge of the counter, staved off from helping you unload your groceries because you told him it'd be weird for a yakuza boss to do that. He still tried to take some boxes of stuff and stick them in your cabinets when you weren't looking, though.

��Did you tell that guy about me?” The sound of your voice, sudden and suspicious, was enough to startle Getō into a wide-eyed stare. He asked you what you meant, so you told him, “That guy back at the intersection you were with. Who was he? He knew my name. I saw him. Is he one of your gang friends?”

The alarm sank out of his expression, tension in his shoulders along with it. Despite the severity of your questions, he barely seemed to register them seriously and resumed stacking things on shelves to clear the countertops.

“Getō.” you pressed.

“No.” He closed the cabinet once he finished and came to you, undaunted by the obstacles spaced out on the floor. “I didn't tell him about you. I've kept my word. He's an annoying shit who likes snooping around my business.”

“Then, how did he…”

You receded into your thoughts, now trying harder than before to recall who that man was. His identity was tilted there on the edge of your memory, one word or phrase or image away from awestruck revelation. When it finally happened, seconds later, Getō was in front of you, heavy hands on your upper arms as though keeping you upright, and face bright with intrigue.

“Wait. Wait. Wait!” You cried out. “Gojō as in financial Gojō? As in one of the richest families in Japan, Gojō? Gold spoon baby Gojō?”

Getō gave a jubilant laugh as though delighted by you figuring it out on your own. His hands rose higher on your arms, capping your shoulders in warm weight that felt as refreshing as it did unusual. You couldn't remember the last time someone had touched you like that.

“He's my best friend—my only one. I'm not surprised he was able to figure out I was getting work done at your shop.” He said lightly, but doing nothing to assuage your doubt. “I know you don't believe it, but he's good to know if you need help. I'll give you his number so you—”

“I don't want it.” you said with feeble resolve. “It’s already a pain in the ass enough to have yakuza hanging around all the time. I don't need some trust fund baby to know where I live, too.”

Your heart wasn't in those words, finding that all you could concentrate on was the space of his palms encapsulating your shoulders, deft fingers leaving marks in your clothes as though trying to feel your skin through fabric. He didn't allow himself to roam you, but the taut muscles in his hands revealed a sort of composed restraint that was close to snapping.

He said your name once; a low, raspy sound in his throat that seemed so much like him yet unlike anything you had heard leave his mouth before. His eyes were darkened by his lashes, mesmerizing you in some dreamlike haze that only intensified when he stooped his head to kiss you.

His lips found rhythm with yours; slow, at first, to test the feeling and how much either of you actually wanted this. You responded with quiet sounds, a sigh and a moan, followed by the spread of your arms reaching around his neck to bring him closer, feel him more.

Getō backed your body against the countertop and leaned forward on his hands behind you to press down harder into the kiss. The blunt edges of your fingernails dove through black downy hairs on the back of his neck, trailing further down the ridges of his spine, molding to the ridges of his vertebrae that pushed up below the surface of his skin.

Goose flesh marked him all over, breath stuttering in your mouth like he was stifling pleasurable sounds of his own. You expected more self-control from a man of his status, yet there he was melting into you and sucking the air from your lungs while tasting your tongue with the roughness of his.

There was an ache between your legs, unabated heat which you had forgotten could be stimulated by another person. You weren't ashamed to take care of yourself when the need arose, although even those instances were far and few between and lacked this same urgency—this need to have another person wrapped up in you, touching you, devouring you.

You thought about how bad of an idea this was, how Kōji would react if he knew how weak your willpower truly was. It made sense to expect someone like Getō to exert his influence over you like this, for him to give into his every impulse without fear of consequence because there simply was none for him. He was above needing to restrain his inhibitions if that's what he wanted in the end.

“I can make you feel good.” He said apart from your lips, now pressed into the underside of your jaw after stretching out the neckline of your shirt. “Tell me what you want. I'll do it. I've wanted you since the beginning.”

What would happen if you told him to strip off your pants and get on his knees? Would the kingpin of the Uzumaki-kai obey someone lesser and bow and swallow the nectar from your body? Would he laugh at your brazen attempt, call you a wretch and drag you away for trying to make a mockery of him?

“Just… touch me.” Those words were not your own.

“Where?” Getō’s hands left the countertop to pile underneath your shirt, hands a light caress against the skin on your lower back. The heat of them made you flinch. “Here? Tell me where you want me.”

Something about this was too surreal, stirred unease in your chest and hundreds of quivering butterflies in your gut. It had come on as suddenly and dimmed the lust in your groin, lifted the fog from your eyes and cotton in your brain. It left you pliant in his arms, yet far away in mind as you searched those deeper recesses of yourself for an answer.

Getō noticed the disconnect and passionless kiss, your lips barely taking shape against his, and lifted his hands off of you.

“What's wrong?” He asked.

“I—” Something about you. “I don't know. This is just unprofessional. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it.”

There was still darkness in his eyes, emotions shimmering through them despite an effortless smile he secured on his face. It was an eerie mask this time around, but your vulnerability and reddened, bruised neck kept you from saying anything on it.

“I should be the one apologizing.” Getō said with that unshakable calmness of his. “I didn't have the intention to push myself on you. I just thought…” He tilted his head a little left, tempting you to lean with him. “I thought we wanted the same thing.”

You couldn't answer that truthfully because then this would never end and he'd wind up in your bed. Had he been any other man, you'd have stripped him down to nothing and let him ravage you as he said he would.

But, you couldn't because he was your client.

You couldn't because of who he was.

You couldn't because he liked to keep his secrets close to his chest, and while you had your neck exposed—warm, sucking lips at your jaw and on the small swells in your throat when you'd swallow—you realized you couldn't trust him not to sink his teeth in and rip out gore and stringy sinew and let you bleed out on the floor.

He knew that distrust, had probably seen in everyone he’d ever known, yet he kept that smile which had grown stiff.

“It's not a good idea, Getō.” Because there's something off about you. You're a wolf masquerading as a shepherd. “Of all people, you should know that.”

Getō said nothing else as he was led downstairs and let out into the brisk evening air. Briefly, you worried he would feel the chill through this baggy sweatshirt and had to think better of fetching him a scarf for the trip back to wherever he belonged.

You stayed behind the door near the stairs, leaning through it far enough for him to reach out and stroke your face with the peaks of his knuckles. It was a fleeting touch, perhaps an attempt to not overstep as he had before.

And then, just before he pulled away, he said something familiar, “I'll see you soon.”

━◦○◦━◦○◦━━◦○◦━◦○◦━━◦○◦━◦○◦━

a/n: so i started this project late last year, i think. i put it aside after i started working on my original android x reader oneshot (which is posted and y'all should read it *hint**hint*) but i'm picking this back up to finish it.

originally, i was going to post this in its entirety once it was finished (est. 20k-22k), but decided just to get this out of my face and do the other half separately. if y'all wanna see the second half and conclusion to this please reblog and interact with this!! if i don't really gauge any interest in it, i don't really see the point in putting my time into finishing it.

the second half has the sex scene and all the drama and stuff.

anyway, deuces!

2K notes · View notes

andypantsx3 · 3 months

Text

READY OR KNOT | 2 | TODOROKI SHOUTO x READER

SUMMARY: Todoroki Shouto is so unsettlingly beautiful, you’re certain he has to be an omega. That is, until a chance encounter with a pushy alpha reveals you were incredibly mistaken—and the surprises don’t stop there. Shouto's suddenly mystifying behavior adds another layer of complexity to an already confusing inter-agency investigation. It would be so much easier to figure things out—and suppress your growing feelings—if only Shouto would stop being so strangely attentive to you... TAGS/WARNINGS: pro hero au, fem + afab reader, omegaverse, alpha shouto, beta reader, misunderstandings, courting behavior, slightly case fic-y, undertones of sexual violence (not between main pairing), aged-up characters, eventual smut, 18+ minors please dni! LENGTH: 4.9k, 2nd of 7 chapters

It turned out it was not so easy to forget what had happened with Shouto. Especially when Monday morning rolled around, and with it, some very pressing questions about the party.

Mina found you first thing in the morning, already up to your eyeballs in the case file at your desk. A frown marred her pretty mouth as she rounded the corner into the case analyst area. She neatly dodged your deskmate’s ginormous stack of paperwork, nearly as tall as she was, eyes homing in on you like dark little missiles.

“I heard about what happened with Suzuki,” she said, looking you over with uncharacteristic concern. Her eyebrows were drawn, her features pinched. It was an expression that didn’t overtake her cheerful visage all too often. “Are you okay?”

You blinked up at her, the name escaping you for a moment, until you matched it up with the support alpha from the party on Friday. Your lips downturned in reflexive distaste.

“I’m fine. You must have heard that Shouto scared him off,” you answered. “All he really managed to do was imply some stuff.”

Mina’s eyebrow twitched, like she had more questions on that, but she dutifully adhered to the matter at hand first. “I did hear that and we are going to be discussing that in a second. But that doesn’t mean you’d still be okay with everything that did happen. I’ve got a meeting with HR about Suzuki this afternoon, and I’m thinking of firing him.”

You jolted, a quick pang of guilt striking through you. Firing him. That seemed a very intense option.

You thought Suzuki was an asshole, sure, and you remembered all too well the horror that had overtaken you as he’d reached for his belt. But you also knew he had been drunk out of his mind—drunk enough that he thought you were an omega of all things, somehow perceiving things that weren’t even there.

You’d thought about it a lot this weekend, running over the events in your mind, and while the whole incident left a sour taste in your mouth, you thought Suzuki probably had been close to alcohol poisoning considering how strongly he smelled of Tetsutetsu’s horrible drink. He wasn’t exactly sound of mind, the lines a little blurry.

You’d never waylaid anyone like that while intoxicated, but you had done and said your fair share of things you regretted when you’d sobered up. You didn’t know what to think.

You looked up at Mina, finding her watching you consideringly. “No?” she asked.

You scrubbed a hand over your face, unclear what the right thing was. “I saw him and he was like, really not all there, Mina. I think he should be punished for sure, but what if you gave him a warning that if this happens at all again, he’s gone?”

One of Mina’s eyebrows arched. “Shouto said he was holding you against the wall even after you said no.”

You could feel your nostrils flare in anger at the memory, the feeling of that hand against the wet patch on your shoulder, unbudging.

“He did, but he also thought I was an omega, Mina,” you said. “I think he was close to alcohol poisoning, actually. He hasn’t caused any other trouble like this, has he?”

Mina shook that head of wild pink curls. “No, he’s been a model employee thus far. But I still don’t like it. That’s not what the Pink Riot agency is.”

A sigh filled your lungs. The support of Mina and Kirishima was enough for now. “I don’t like it either. But he was drunk, and nothing did actually happen, thanks to Shouto. Give him a warning that any other tiny slip up means firing, and I will be satisfied.”

Mina looked hesitant, dark eyes searching over your face, but eventually she sighed, shrugging her shoulders. “Fine. Once and only because you’ll need an accurate record from support in your investigation and it will be harder to get if he’s gone. But he will be fired if I hear even a whiff of a rumor again.” She paused. “And you’ll have to talk to Eiji, because he’s going to like this even less than I do.”

That wrung a smile out of you.

Kirishima was a good alpha and seemed to think of the agency almost like his pack. As easygoing as he was, he guarded his people resolutely, like a farm dog patrolling a chicken coop. You could almost imagine him standing at attention, head forward and tail pointed like an arrow.

As heartwarming as that image was, that didn’t mean you wanted to be the one to tell him though. You shook your head, throwing out your hands. “Oh no. Your alpha, your problem. The one privilege of my secondary gender is I’m not part of this shit.”

Mina clucked, sighing. “He is my problem.”

You laughed, knowing very well she’d know how to solve it. But her expression shifted, suddenly looking sly, and you realized she was about to saddle you with another problem.

“You’ll have to tell Shouto then,” she said, her voice deceptively light.

You blinked, eyebrows raising. Shouto…? “Why the heck would I need to tell Shouto?”

A grin slowly crept over Mina’s mouth, and she leaned in conspiratorially, looking altogether too pleased. Her hot pink nails settled on the edge of your desk, tapping delightedly. “Because he’s your assigned supervising hero. And you’ll be seeing him again in just a few minutes.”

A sudden flurry of butterflies erupted in your stomach, your mind flashing through the feeling of Shouto over you, tall and strong and warm, pressing you carefully to the wall. You could all but feel the whisper of those pretty eyelashes on your skin, feel his careful exhale, the brush of his mouth against your throat.

Your ears prickled with heat, and you could feel your face go slack in shock. He would be here—? In front of you again?

“He’s—what?” you garbled out, trying to dispel the phantom feeling of Shouto against you.

Mina looked downright smug. “He asked to be assigned right after I spoke to him at the party on Friday. Interesting, don’t you think?”

Heat licked at your cheeks. “Is it,” you managed tightly. “That’s… nice of him.”

“Very,” Mina agreed. “Especially since I heard about what happened after Suzuki left.”

You hated her.

“I’m a beta,” you reminded her, not liking the implication.

Mina’s dark eyes rolled. “Eiji liked me even when he thought I might present as a beta.”

“That’s different,” you told her, floored that you’d sidetracked into this so quickly. “I’m actually a beta. Also what the hell are we even talking about. This is a work case.”

Mina flapped a hand at you. “I’m sure you’ll both work it very hard, very thoroughly,” she said with no small amount of relish.

You seized the case file in question, holding it up between you like a shield, flapping it at her in turn. The manila folder flopped stiffly, the pages making a sort of wobbly sound. “Why are you like this,” you hissed.

Mina’s eyes glittered, and she opened her mouth to respond, when the soft tread of a boot in the hall made her perk up. Her grin went unholy. “Speak of the devil,” she said.

Shouto certainly did not look like the devil, as he rounded the corner. The fluorescent lighting made a sort of soft halo off the glossy strands of his distinct two-toned hair, and his features were just as angelic as you remembered—finely-wrought and almost deliberately formed, as though he were sculpture from the hands of a master. He was almost too beautiful to look at this early in the morning, and you felt your breath draw up short in your lungs.

He blinked when he saw you, those heterochromatic eyes widening nearly imperceptibly as he approached.

“Morning, Shouto-kun,” she purred. You hated her.

“Good morning,” he said, his tone low and soft. Your fingers tightened on the file folder, bracing yourself against the loveliness of the sound.

A flush rose to your cheeks as you did so, and Shouto’s eyes followed you curiously. Beneath the high collar of his hero uniform, you could just glimpse a flash of his scent patches, neatly placed as usual. You wondered absently what he would smell like if you peeled them back and leaned in close. As a beta, your nose was not as good as the other genders, but if you got in close enough, and if Shouto’s scent was strong enough, you’d probably be able to tell.

He looked like he’d smell delicious.

A cackle from Mina alerted you to the horrifying fact that you’d just been staring at Shouto as he approached, mouth open and expression vacant.

“Uh… good morning,” you managed.

The corner of Shouto’s mouth quirked up, and something beneath your skin tingled in response.

“I hope you are well,” he murmured.

You could see Mina’s eyes darting back and forth between the two of you with barely suppressed glee, and a sudden bolt of shame went through you.

Just because it was super obvious how hot you found Shouto didn’t mean he felt the same. He was a fucking pro hero for crying out loud. Rescuing people was what he did—the save on Friday did not have to mean anything.

Plus, knowing for sure that he was an alpha had closed the window on your little celebrity crush. Out of the hundreds of couples you’d met in your lifetime, you’d only ever met one alpha-beta pairing—both tradition and biology seemed to win out in almost all mated pairs, alphas and omegas unable to help their inherent attraction to one another.

And with that in mind, it was actually super disrespectful of you to even think about this impending partnership in any terms less-than-professional.

You rallied yourself, inclining your head respectfully to Shouto, gesturing with the case file in your hands.

“Yep, I’m good. I’m grateful for the save and I’m sure I’ll be even more grateful for your help on this case.” You turned to your boss, routing her back on track. “Mina, what information have you shared and what do I need to get him up to speed on?”

Mina’s pout was so defined it could be seen from space. You ignored her, raising your eyebrows.

“I only put the call out to other agency heads for a supervising out-of-agency hero. Just that it’s an omega assault case possibly involving a pro, and your name as the lead investigator.”

Your gaze returned to Shouto. He was still watching you intently.

“How much time do you have before you’re needed back at your agency?” you asked him. “Do you want to grab a conference room and I’ll get you up to speed? I’m sure Mina has a lot to do just now.”

He nodded, his hair falling into his eyes in a way that should not have wrung the oxygen out of the atmosphere, but did. “I am on patrol after lunch, but I’ve asked that my schedule be cleared until then.”

Perfect. Plenty of time. You stood, hefting the case file with you, clearly dismissing Mina, who looked put out.

“Great, I’ll show you to the conference room then,” you said. Out of the corner of your eye, you caught Mina flashing you a pink finger, and you could easily guess which one. You stuck out your tongue at her as you passed Shouto so he couldn’t see, not above pettiness.

You gestured Shouto into one of the smaller rooms across the floor with especially good soundproofing, holding the door open for him. You sucked in a breath as he brushed past you, trying not to admire how tall and broad he was, the way those shoulders spanned the breadth of the doorway.

Shouto took a seat and you spread the case file out before him, trying not to look down at him as he glanced up at you. His fingers twitched on the conference table, like he was holding them in place. You carefully retreated to a safer distance, hoping you hadn’t annoyed him.

“Okay so the basic brief is as Mina said. There have been multiple reports of a suspected pro harassing omegas late at night in Bunkyo. Initially they were identified as a masked male wearing scent patches, roughly five foot ten, always wearing some dark jacket. But the suspected hero element came into play late last week when they attempted to strap quirk suppressors on their target. The omega in question had a vapor quirk so she was able to dissolve and escape before he did.”

Shouto’s eyes tracked you as you spoke, solemn and attentive.

“So far the suspect has not shown any signs of a quirk himself, and without any scent ID it’s hard to know what secondary gender to look for. Our best option is to work the possible-pro-hero angle and rule out who we can, since that’s all the identifiable detail we have on this guy at this time.”

Shouto nodded, propping an elbow on the table. You tried to ignore how even that small gesture made him look like a center spread in Heroes Illustrated.

“I’d like to read the individual reports and hear your plan once I have,” Shouto said.

You perked up, pleased with the terms he was speaking in. A good case analyst always had at least a sketch of a plan—what order to speak to specific people in, which angles had highest priority of investigation, and how the labor could be divided and work double-checked.

Most heroes were people of action and hated having to be corralled into approaching cases like some sort of assignment, instead of busting in and blowing things apart. But it was the best way to make sure all avenues were investigated thoroughly and that work was peer-reviewed in case someone missed something.

Shouto’s phraseology told you he was familiar with approaching cases like this, meaning he probably listened to the Todoroki agency analysts. You’d never worked closely enough with him before to know, only trading high-level information back and forth on a couple of joint cases, presenting findings in a meeting room stuffed full of Pink Riot and Todoroki agency heroes.

You found yourself smiling faintly.

“I’ll get you some coffee while you read. Everything is in chronological order in the file and I’ve tabulated some notes,” you said. “How do you take yours?”

Shouto’s gaze slid over you, careful and assessing. He paused. “I’ve been told I should not share that information.”

Your eyebrows went up. “Your… coffee order?”

Shouto nodded seriously. “Bakugou says it’s disgusting and embarrassing.”

Bakugou—pro hero Dynamight, that was—was Kirishima’s best friend, a loud alpha of an explosive manner and incendiary opinions who often showed up unprompted at the agency to stomp around and mean mug, all the while hiding that he was attempting to press leftovers on Kiri and Mina. You laughed, curious what Bakugou had browbeaten another pro over.

“Your secret will be safe with me,” you said coaxingly.

Shouto blinked, mouth quirking slightly again. He looked like he genuinely liked the idea of that, and your stomach fluttered in response.

Of course then he opened his mouth and provided a rundown of the inhumanly numerous sugars and syrups he liked, such that it constituted more of a soft drink than a coffee order. You tried to keep your eyebrows from creeping up into your hairline, smothering a laugh.

That was so unexpectedly cute. Especially for an alpha.

“One coma-inducing order of sugar with a splash of coffee, coming right up,” you saluted him.

He did something with his face that was a cross between a tiny smile and a pout, and you threw yourself out the door before you dissolved into a puddle of goop.

You went down to the cafe that operated out of the ground floor of the Pink Riot building, a favorite lunch spot of most of the heroes for how enormous their sandwiches were. The order took a fair few minutes, as it took the barista a good while to pump in the zillions of requested syrups, his eyebrows raised nearly to the moon as you recited them.

When you returned to the conference room, Shouto was already well into the case file. He glanced up as you entered, those heterochromatic eyes pinning you with an unexpected intensity. You started, wondering if you’d done something wrong.

But then his mouth slid into another tiny smile, and he looked so genuinely pleased to see you—or the coffee cup—you found yourself helplessly smiling back.

After depositing his cup next to him, you fetched your laptop and emailed Shouto’s agency the case files while he read. You wrote up the preliminary notes you’d been able to pull together on the case—a list of three agency heroes whose exact whereabouts had been accounted for during one or more of the incidents, who were therefore not on your list of possibilities.

Shouto was staring at you when you shook yourself out of work mode an hour later, quiet and intent. You startled, jumping in your seat.

“Oh my god—I’m sorry—did you say something? I didn’t mean to ignore you,” you said.

Shouto shook his head, another smile quirking that perfect mouth. That expression was growing familiar. “I have just finished,” he said.

A sense of relief washed over you. “Okay great. Did anything stick out to you that you think I’ve missed so far?”

“No,” he murmured. “Your work is very thorough. I would like to hear your plan.”

His tone was low, almost appreciative, and you tried not to let it go to your head.

“Okay, then we’ll begin with the active duty and equipment logs,” you told him. “I’m already through all of the duty logs available, but I still need the one from Thursday when the last incident happened—it’s supposed to be ready this afternoon. That will rule out a few heroes, and the equipment logs can tell us more about who had what out during the time of the attacks—I think we start with the heroes who had suppressors on them then.”

Shouto nodded, looking like he was following along. “You want to narrow the pool before you speak to anyone in case you arouse suspicion.”

You nodded, pleased he understood. “Yes.”

That blue and gray gaze nearly pinned you to your seat. “That is smart.”

A sudden wash of heat licked up your spine, pooling in your limbs. You struggled to keep your face neutral, your ears burning. “Th—thanks.”

“Who have you ruled out so far?” he asked.

You turned your screen to him, showing the notes you’d drawn up. “Kiri’s clear—no shock there—Tetsutetsu, and Tetsu’s sidekick who was with him on a cleanup during the first incident. I’m hoping Thursday’s log will clear at least one or two more.”

Shouto inclined his head in agreement. “And your interview plan?”

You smiled, and scrolled down to your notes on that, pleased at how he was letting you lead the investigation. He listened intently as you walked him through an outline, double-checking that everything worked with his schedule.

As you talked, he offered a few suggestions of his own, but he mostly seemed content to follow your outline—completely unlike even the most agreeable of the Pink Riot agency alphas. In fact it was so contradictory to everything you’d experienced thus far that you found your gaze darting to his scent patches over and over again, as if assessing whether they were really covering up an alpha scent.

But no—you had felt the pull of his Order under your skin on Friday. You, a beta, naturally resistant to Orders in the way omegas weren’t. And you’d gone so boneless against him, too, affected by his proximity in the most embarrassing way. Shouto was definitely an alpha, with that kind of pull—and probably a preternaturally strong one at that.

But he was also just—your eyes drifted to his coma-inducing coffee cup—kind of a strange one, too.

The two of you discussed the case for a few more minutes—until your stomach growled, loud enough to interrupt your planning, and the corner of Shouto’s lips lifted again.

“Would you like to finish up over lunch?” he asked, saving you the embarrassment of excusing yourself.

You grinned. “I think my stomach already answered for me,” you agreed.

Shouto helped you reorganize the paper files and lingered over you as you locked them into your desk cabinet, waiting for you patiently. Then he let you lead him downstairs to the cafe. You were conscientious of not standing too close to him in the elevator, all too aware of him in that tiny, enclosed space.

When you made it down to the ground floor, Shouto surprised you by steering you over to one of the tables, bidding you to sit.

“What do you enjoy here?” he asked, looking down at you expectantly. “I would like to get it for you.”

You shook your head. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I should be treating you for the save. How about you tell me what you want?”

Those heterochromatic eyes blinked down at you, and a tiny crease appeared between Shouto’s eyebrows. His mouth turned down. Against the subtlety of his expressions thus far, the look appeared almost distressed. “I insist,” he said, something strange in his tone.

“Shouto, really, I—-”

“I insist,” Shouto said, a little more firmly. There was the flicker of something strange under your skin again, like the tiny molecules of your body shifting in response to him.

You froze, startled, and your mouth opened for you before you realized what you were doing. “I—a pesto sandwich—”

You clamped your mouth shut, mystified.

But Shouto looked pleased. He smiled, wider than you had seen so far, a devastatingly handsome quarter-moon sliver that sent your pulse pounding in your ears. You watched him turn and walk off, something you might have said was almost smug in his step, had you known him better.

You sank into one of the seats, befuddled by what had just happened.

Shouto returned a few minutes later with water and an order number, placing the bottle in front of you like an offering. You regrouped, thanking him, then raised your eyebrows as he leaned forward, looking serious.

“I have been wanting to ask. Where does the alpha who harassed you work?” he asked, his tone dropping low. A strip of afternoon sunlight caught in his hair, dancing like flickering flames in the strands of scarlet, liming them in an orange glow.

He was beautiful in the sun, and it took you a minute to reroute your brain from his face to his question.

“Suzuki’s in support,” you said. “But Mina’s disciplining him, and I don’t have to see him often. I do expect he’ll behave after this. But why do you ask?”

Shouto frowned, leaning in closer. “Support maintains the equipment logs.”

It was the same at the Pink Riot agency too. “I—well, yes, but—”

“I should like to be there when you go to support,” Shouto said, catching your eye. His expression shifted into something solemn, his mouth a flat line.

You waved your hand dismissively. “I appreciate it, but don’t worry. He’s not gonna do anything, it’s literally just logs—”

“I must insist,” Shouto said again, his tone soft but unmistakably firm. His fingers flexed tightly where they rested on the edge of the table, the knuckle of his index turning white.

Despite yourself, his concern warmed you, that hot, tingly feeling heating your ears again.

“I really would be okay,” you said. “But if it means something—I’ll wait until tomorrow when you get here?”

Shouto nodded. “I would like that very much.”

A smile teased at your mouth. Now that was stereotypical alpha behavior, much as you appreciated his concern. Suzuki wasn’t going to jump you over a log file in a workplace—especially not after Mina had taken him to task. Shouto’s concern was unnecessary, but so very typical of an alpha. It felt familiar, like Kirishima’s brand of protectiveness over his tight knit agency, you thought. Harmless and well-intentioned.

A tray being placed on your table cut off any response you might have given, and your eyes blew wide as you registered the amount of food on it. Your mouth dropped open when a second tray was placed alongside the first one, the cafe worker smiling down at Shouto before she left, clearly recognizing him.

Shouto looked down at the food, his features arranged in minute shock.

“I do not remember ordering this…” he said, glancing at his receipt slip. You watched as his eyebrows furrowed slightly, that crease appearing between them again as his eyes flickered over the order. Then he cut himself off, those long eyelashes fluttering. “I… apologize.”

Apologize? Meaning, he had ordered this?

“You bought all this?” you asked, floored.

Shouto gave a tight nod. “It… would seem so.”

Your gaze picked over the trays again. They were piled high with at least six sandwiches, several pastries, a takeout container of soup, four different kinds of cookies, two fruit cups, and a handful of the granola bars they kept by the register. It was a literal mountain of food, and you sort of doubted even a pro hero could put that much away in one sitting.

“If you were so hungry we could have come down so much earlier,” you insisted, but Shouto’s embarrassed expression only deepened.

“It is… not for me,” he said slowly. It looked like it pained him to admit it.

You blinked, drawing back in your seat. “It’s…..me?”

Shouto nodded seriously.

A shocked laugh leapt out of you, bright and pleased. “Shouto, I was hungry but this is like, eleven meals!”

“You will have leftovers, then,” Shouto replied, sounding embarrassed. The tips of his ears were red where they peeked through his mop of multicolored hair.

You were so suddenly, utterly charmed by him, a splash of warmth pooling in your stomach, flooding through your limbs. You had absolutely no idea what had possessed him to do this, but it was undeniably sweet. Coupled with the easy way he’d let you take the lead on the investigation, and the way he’d moved to protect you on Friday night—it all painted a portrait of a very good, very kind sort of person.

You’d really lucked into a good partnership. You were grateful.

“Thank you, Shouto,” you said sincerely. A hint of a flush colored his high cheekbones, and he nodded.

You decided not to press him anymore, setting aside your speculation for when he’d gone. Instead, you unearthed your requested sandwich from the mound of food, and selecting a pastry at random. Shouto watched you as you bit into your food, a strange sort of intensity in his gaze.

Eventually, however, he took his own food, and the two of you chatted as you ate, moving on from the case to discuss his patrol, your shared friends, and a slew of other silly topics. You found him just as easy to talk to outside of case work—he had the same straightforward way of approaching life as he did his casework, his outlook consummately honest and thoughtful.

You regretted it when Shouto eventually had to excuse himself for patrol, but not before disappearing and reappearing with a takeout containers and a bag for all the things he’d ordered you, which he carefully but insistently packed away, before putting in front of you with a meaningful look.

You laughed again, taking the bag from him as you got up to make your way back upstairs as well.

“Thank you for lunch,” you told him, trying to convey how sincerely grateful you were. “I’m looking forward to our partnership.” You stuck out your hand to him, smiling up at him.

Shouto’s expression didn’t change much, but his mismatched gaze grew warmer where it rested on you. “As am I,” he said, tone soft.

Long fingers curled around yours, and for a moment you felt that same, weak-kneed desire to collapse against him as you had on Friday. It took an inordinate amount of focus to pump his hand in a handshake, and even more willpower to let him go.

You waved him off, and watched him go, feeling a strange sense of emptiness as that broad back disappeared through the door. In just a few short hours, it seemed, Todoroki Shouto had dug himself a comfortable little spot in your heart—far deeper than a case partner should have.

You ruminated on this as you made your way back upstairs, mind running over the events of the last few days. You couldn’t figure out why Shouto was having a weirder effect on you than any other alpha, even accounting for his unearthly good looks, nor why he seemed to be equally lost today—ordering a zillion things without even realizing he’d done so.

As you made your way back to your desk and cracked open the case file again, you resolved to solve this mystery as well. You were good at getting to the bottom of things—and Todoroki Shouto would be no exception.

#todoroki x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #shouto x reader #shouto x you #shouto todoroki x reader #todoroki x you #bnha x reader #andie's writing #character: todoroki shouto #tw: a/b/o

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sailorgundam308 · 6 months

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Karlach isn't a good girl

Listen, LISTEN. I love her, okay? Now that's out of the way. I see many people reducing her personality to the "big friendly labrador dog" thing. And while it's cute and all that, I disagree. Let me get into why I think Karlach isn't the goodie nice girl she puts a lot of effort to be. She has just returned to Faerun when we meet her in game, and she IS trying her bestest to start anew, to be the best version of herself now that she is free. But it doesn't mean she was always like that, or that her past has not changed her. I think it did - quite a lot, in fact.

Let's start with Gortash. She worked for this fucker. Granted, she might not have known he was such an evil bastard at the time, but she was his bodyguard. And by bodyguard, it is implied that she was his bully, his enforcer and debt collector - you know, the kind that breaks knees and kills people. When she meets an old friend in the city, that friend asks her if she is still in "the business of intimidation", and offers her to come see weapons. Even though Karlach, in her mind, might have been convincing herself that doing such a job was to help someone she respected, she still did it. And that is FINE. She was a young orphan, a tiefling in a place where tieflings are discriminated against harshly, poor and without much perspective. Of course a guy coming over offering her a well paid job that she excelled in would seem like winning a lottery. Still, she was a pretty shady violent person doing it. Now, the Hells. Avernus. She was sold to Zariel quite young still, and went through all sorts of torture and other perks enslavement gets you. For 10 years. She was scared shitless while there, especially in the beginning - she says so herself (to Halsin). All the carnage she inflicted was not (very) voluntary. She HAD to, or she would be the one getting killed. But she enjoyed it - or grew to. She likes violence, the adrenaline of it, the rush of excitement. The thrill of it, she says, is second only to sex.

Continuing on. Avernus, as well as the other layers of the Nine Hells, is not like the Material Plane. The place itself influences you. It means that being in Avernus for any time changes/corrupts/influences who you are. The longer you stay there, the deeper it gets. It did so to Zariel who was a literal angel. Avernus (and it's Archdevil's personality) insidiously get in your body and heart. It is just the way it goes, lore-wise, in DnD. If a fucking SOLAR wasn't immune to it, Karlach - young and lost - certainly wouldn't be either. Even more so because she was near Zariel all the time. I strongly believe Karlach was getting more and more exactly like Zariel - who herself is a fierce berserker warrior who charges head first into battle. Zariel is KNOWN to be this crazy strong, insane, fearless and (in her mind) righteous demon-smiting war machine. Sounds similar to a nice red tiefling we know, doesn't it? Now, did Zariel chose Karlach beause she was already like this, or did Karlach took after Zariel while she fought with her? Hard to tell. In any case, Karlach's 10 years in the Hells did change her. Needless to say, Avernus doesn't change you for the better. It doesn't mean that Karlach became "evil" - she is obviously far from it. But she is chaotic, violent and bloodthirsty. She is also selfish. There are several situations where this personality trait of her comes up.

It may sound kinda wild considering how she offers to help everyone and even sacrifice herself (since she's already dying anyway) - when we meet her. But that's the thing: she is being as selfless as she can now because she has been very selfish for a very long time (proof she has a conscience). Perhaps, she is terrified of what she was becoming and is trying to make amends, to revert whatever evil was growing in her.

She mentions herself that she did not help the tieflings of Elturel when their city was pulled down into Avernus. She did not get out of her way to help them. Instead, she thought that if "she was living that nightmare, they'd have to live it too". She would not put her neck on the line to help another - which, not so coincidentally, is typical behavior in the Hells (again, proof that Avernus was indeed getting to her). The Hag's Vicious Mockery targeted specifically at Karlach mentions how she is willing to "sell everyone's soul's if it means she can save hers". We do not know exactly what it refers to - soul coins, throwing others under the bus, ignoring people in need - but it reinforces the idea that Karlach was not the nicest person for at least 12+ years. Granted, the devils around her were much worse - but they are DEVILS in HELL. So.

Generally, in game we notice that her effort to survive and stay alive has pushed her selfishness to grow. But it still is selfishness. Another example is how she disapproves (together with Astarion), if you say to healer Nettie that you "swear to drink the Wyvern poison". She wouldn't drink it. She'd rather kill Nettie (that gets hostile).

Another hint at her grey-ish personality is when she talks to/about Wyll after he is punished by Mizora for not having killed Karlach. She mentions that she would NOT have done the same in his place. That he was better than her. Again, she would not put her skin on the line like that. She would and has turned a blind eye to situations and persons if it meant it would guarantee her survival or avoid injury. (Mind you, I 100% belive she would do this sacrifice if she was in love with someone, though.)

She will ask to, and will use Soul Coins even though she knows it's morally a sus choice to do so. If you play as her she will repeat to herself "I won't use them, they are people's souls - and I am GOOD." like she is trying to convince herself. Because she would fucking use them to smash some big fuckers in a blink - and feel awesome while doing it. Even as her, she keeps insisting "But... maybe I can use them... JUST when I really need them." Additionally, when she talks to the bugbear merchant in Moonrise Towers and he offers her soul coins, she doesn't really feel guilty for the stories of the souls in them. She even says at some point "they are already doomed, so why not use them anyway", justifying that she will only kill evil bastards with them. In any case, the morality of her choice is debatable. It makes clear that Karlach is not "lawful good" by any stretch.

Let me reiterate that just because I am saying all this about Karlach, doesn't mean I dislike her. I think she is abso-fucking-lutely the best character in the game. But I hate to see her personality "flattened" to nice happy go lucky gal. I think she has a grey-tinged personality - she has good and bad aspects to herself; she has character flaws too.

But I also think that she is trying her damn hardest to be the best she can be right then. The opposite of what she's been. Maybe it is because she has so little time left, that she needs to be the absolute best version of herself while she can. Perhaps she is trying to be what she would have been if her parents did not die - because they seemed like great loving parents. And I think Karlach didn't turn into a broken evil maniac because of them, the way they raised her while they were alive. But she lost her mom at 6, her father around 13-15. After that, it was struggling on the streets, Gortash and Zariel - betrayal, violence, carnage, war and loneliness. It is too naive to think a person would not change after all this, that Karlach would not carry more scars than those she shows on her body. To her credit, she turned much MUCH better than anyone would have. She WILL kill with a grin on her face, seek violence, blood and even revel in it - she learned to relish it and now it's part of who she is. She is selfish, she will look out for herself and has no qualms about killing or throwing people she doesn't care for under the bus (if she sees justification for it). BUT she knows what evil is, and doesn't let shit happen to people who don't deserve it. She will side with those who suffer prejudice and fight against what she sees as injustice - but even she has a limit to how far she'd go.

If you raid the Emerald Grove, she will leave the party. To me, this screams of her trying to right her past wrongs. She left the Elturians to their fate once before, so she MUST save them now that she has another chance - and that it won't cost her her life. I love her being 1/3 brutal killing machine (and fucking LOVING it), 1/3 ptsd, fear and overcompensating trauma under a smile, and 1/3 just trying her best, really, and being lovely for it. Phew. That was a long rant. I guess I just wanted to organize my thoughts about it a bit :V

#baldur's gate 3 #karlach #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #spoilers #opinion #karlach is not evil #but shes not a well of pure heartedness and good either

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rdr2gifs · 3 months

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''the morning light, when it comes to me, it was there but I could not see''

Arthur’s life was profoundly shaped by his self-hatred, lack of self-worth and disbelief in the existence of kindness in a seemingly dark and cruel world.

I strongly disagree with the statement that Arthur only became a ‘’better’’ man after being diagnosed with tb. His struggle with his true/inner self is apparent as early as chapter one. ‘’You are not who you think you are, sir… which is lucky’’

He has lived a rough life, raised by criminals and surrounded by violence ever since he was born. It was installed in him early that his value lied within being a violent enforcer and he has lived this life since, knowing nothing else. As a highly aware person, Arthur's actions weight heavy on his soul. He accepts that his actions have consequences. He knows that a person who has caused so much suffering is not meant to have happiness in life. His way of life has caused him to believe that he is not worthy of love or redemption. He doesn’t want to believe that a person like him could be capable of any good. (a thing to note here is that imo, Arthur’s actions near his death weren’t attempts at redemption but rather a strong desire to do right and possibly be his true self.) This is why he keeps living as he does as it’s the only thing he’s ever known, it’s the thing that brings him profit, praise from the person he looks up to and he is already damned so he might as well continue living this life anyway.

The internal problem Arthur faces is that this violent, cruel way of life doesn’t align with what I’d call his true self/ideals. He is torn between the harsh reality he has known and an unconscious yearning for righteousness/love. To be able to carry on with his actions he must enforce certain ideals within himself, such as: I am bad, ugly, nasty, ignorant, mean etc. He also decides to see the dark side of reality, telling himself that the world is a grim dark place and this is just as things were meant to be. This is why he feels so uncomfortable being complimented for his good deeds, because a bad rotten person like him should not be able to do good. It breaks the image he has built for himself and he doesn’t want that happening. This can be seen a lot during the ‘’Money Lending and Other Sins’’ missions where he is unusually mean (even for his standards) to each of the debtors. Imo, he acts this way because he must truly convince himself of being a terrible man to be able to carry out a job which revolts him so badly. In the last debt collecting mission with J. John Weathers, it can be seen in his face/expressions how much he is struggling to put on a tough, uncaring, heartless act. He needs to maintain a ruthless persona to survive in the world he knows. He must convince himself of his own cruelty.

''Forgive me, but that's the problem. You don't know you.''

Contrary to Arthur’s beliefs, he is a naturally kind-hearted person who is unconsciously drawn towards kindness. And yes, even before he was diagnosed with tb. This can be seen in the people he respects the most and, in his willingness to help strangers (notice how he often does unnecessary acts of service for total strangers such as: carrying their things, holding out hands etc. even though they had already troubled him). Despite the life he has lived, Arthur does not enjoy violence, he does not enjoy hurting people. He doesn’t want to dominate over others. He thinks mostly about others and not about himself. This fact alone is very telling of his character.

He writes about Charles, a man who he truly respects: ‘’He’s a better man than me. He does not need to think to be good. It comes naturally to him, like right is deep within as opposed to this conflict between GOOD↔EVIL that rages within me.’’ A man who is not struggling with his inner self would not have written this. To me this clearly implies an inner desire to be a better man. He writes about his mentors: ‘’I love Dutch like a father, but in many ways, I love Hosea even more. He’s kind and fair and like a human being. Dutch is something else.’’ Clearly showing a preference for Hosea who is of a more gentle nature and shows genuine kindness. Unsurprisingly, these are the people who see through his dumb/though act and encourage him to drop it.

When he comes across Brother Dorkins for the first time, he writes: ‘’(he)was one of those innocent people who make you feel better about human beings and about yourself a little. Must be odd to see all that goodness in the world. Place always seemed dark and brutal to me.’’ Expressing how he does not see goodness in the world, implying lack of good examples/kindness/good experiences in his life. Yet, the monk leaves an impression and imo, this encounter (seeing genuine goodness) disrupts Arthur’s perception of what the world truly is. ‘’Just as evil begat evil your whole life long, so good may begat good’’ (what strengthens my belief in this, is the following, symbolic scene of Arthur realising the consequences of his actions right after picking up a crucifix. He was aware of them before sure, but is unable to truly ignore them now having seen it right in front of his eyes). If only Arthur was presented with more examples of goodness in his life.

''You have it in you... I can tell!''

His desire to do as much good as possible after realising he won’t live long is instant. This would not be the mindset of someone who did not already possess kindness in his heart. ‘’Know glory and forget about shame.’’ Arthur’s shame and self-loathing caused by his previous actions were what was holding him back from allowing kindness into his life. Knowing that he has limited time left has not made him into someone he wasn’t before. The diagnosis was a catalyst, allowing him to embrace that love/goodness truly does exist and accelerate the process of chipping away from the persona he has made for himself. This was a newfound understanding for him as in the past he was rejecting any notion of kindess. In himself and perhaps the whole existence of it. ‘’You keep hidden all that matters, even from yourself.’’

After being diagnosed, he writes: ‘’What kind of a man have I been? What kind of a man am I? What world is this we live in? A land of fury or a place of love? Am I being prepared for eternal damnation? Am I past any kind of saving? Is that all fairytales? Man ain’t got much good in him. I ain’t got no good in me… I don’t think and yet I see goodness. I see it. If not in me, in good folk. In Abigail and her love for Jack. In that silly monk. In Downes, I guess. Begging not for himself but for the poor, even though he was near starving himself. Maybe I don’t want salvation. Part of me has always longed for death.’’ This entry perfectly shows how deep Arthur’s self-loathing goes and just how much it has damaged him. As his journal allows a look into his true feelings, he truly does not see a single good thing about himself. He knew for a long time that the way he lives is detestable but he could not let go of it. Not because he didn’t want to, but because it’s all that he has ever known. He didn’t believe in anything else. This sudden acceptance of goodness has allowed him to see clearly, which was obscured from him before, and for the first time, enabled him to act free of past regrets for what is right.

⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪

Arthur’s redemption is not about becoming a good man. It is about finding the strength to change and recognise your true self despite a lifetime of self-loathing and breaking free from destructive beliefs of the past.

In Arthurian legends a stag is a symbol of the unending quest of spiritual knowledge/enligtenment

#this is my own personal interpretation of arthur's redemption #i could expand so much more on this #the orange quotes are by blind man cassidy #please don’t even interact if you think arthur was just a killer incapable of goodness before he was diagnosed #the ironic thing is that so many people could see behind arthur’s front but he was blind to it #arthur morgan #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #this analysis is based purely on high-honor choices #i don't care if your arthur shoots up entire towns this analysis does not take individual open-world gameplay decisions into account #i did almost cry thinking about this #text post

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cinnbar-bun · 3 months

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The Heartless Giant Pt. 2

Pairing: Crocodile x GN! Royal! Reader

Rating: SFW

Word Count: ~3.2k

A/n: the second part of my contribution the Storyteller AU!

Summary: After a blowout with your brothers, you fulfill your promise to the “giant”. Perhaps there’s more to him than meets the eye.

Notes: GN!Reader, Prisoner!Crocodile (for my Impel Down Croc lovers), implied age gap, Reader is an adult but age is not specified, violence, bad siblings, protective Crocodile, "falling for my father's enemy" teehee

Part 1 here! AO3 link here!

Taglist: @gingernut1314

You ascended up the many levels of the dungeon silently, careful to not allow yourself to be caught going back to your room. You glanced around the hallways and sprinted back to your room, happy to finally be back in the warmth of your private space. Just as you were about to go back to sleep, you heard many voices mumbling and arguing in hushed whispers in the room next to you.

“-do you know what he’ll do?”

“We’re toast. We’ll die.”

“Sh-shut up! Maybe we can go back tomorrow and-”

“Are you crazy?!”

You frowned as you recognized the panicked voices of your older brothers. You removed yourself from your bed and knocked on the door. They gasped and stayed silent, refusing to make a move or even let a sound out. You rolled your eyes and knocked again.

“It’s me, (Y/n). Open the door.”

Within an instant, the door flung open and you were immediately wrapped in the many arms of your three brothers.

“Oh my god- oh my… yer alive!”

“What the hell?”

“Don’t do that again!”

You were taken aback by their worry, removing their hands off of you as you walked into the room and shut the door behind you.

“We need to talk,” you stated, crossing your arms.

Your brothers awkwardly stood around you, regretful and apologetic for their behavior.

“Listen, we’re-”

“I can’t you believe you guys,” you cut the first off. “You guys used me as bait and left me to die alone.”

They clamp their mouths shut at your stern and blunt statement. There was nothing to argue there. They were cowardly and left you. It was only a miracle that the man in the cell held some mercy for you and spared you when he did.

All of you knew that he chose not to kill you tonight. Your third brother held his bandaged hand and winced. You four were lucky to be left alive and in one piece.

“Okay, we admit that,” the second begins. “We were just… playing around.”

“Playing around? Slamming me against the bars? Throwing rocks at him? Are you daft?” You raise your voice at them. The anger and betrayal you felt was bubbling to the surface now. “The fact that he was the one to protect me should tell you everything about this situation!”

“Oh, you’re defending the beast now?” The third matched your tone. “Do you think he really felt bad for you?”

“Considering how you fools were acting, I can only imagine what he felt!” You yell back. “You were close to getting us all killed!”

“He’s a criminal! A stupid ogre! Why are you considering his feelings when he tried to kill us all back then?” The first shouted over you.

“Because at least he learned!” You rage. The volume of your voice catches your brothers off-guard as they freeze in place, their eyes wide and shocked. You clench your fist and shake with an anger you have never felt so strongly until now. “At least he protected me! At least he didn’t throw me to the bars and try to use me as bait or a meat shield! At least he talked to me after and didn’t ignore my cries!”

“Ya think that monster has learned? Ya weren’t there. Ya weren’t there for what he did and what he’s done to us. Father had to have the whole army to even make a scratch on that man. He’s not human. He not’s man. He’s a damn beast,” the second spat.

“You say that, but he was the only one with any humanity in him tonight. What would you have done if he really killed me? Would you tell father the truth about what you did, or would you lie?”

Your brothers remained silent as their eyes flicked between the floor and themselves. The righteous fury within you began to dim as you recognized how low your brothers could sink.

“You won’t even deny it?” You weakly ask. “You wouldn’t admit what you did? You wouldn’t even save me?”

“W-we can try next time-”

“When is next time? When I am dead? When it is too late?” Your eyes begin to water as your voice breaks. The eldest looks down until he steps forward and attempts to embrace you. You shake your head and push him away, refusing to look at them. “No… no, don’t do that. Don’t bother.”

“Listen, we are trying,” he says. “We messed up, badly. We know you probably can never forgive us, but we do love you. We love you a lot… we just got caught up in the heat of the moment.”

“If I can’t even rely on you to defend me in a situation like that, then how do you expect me to trust you?”

The room turned silent, your brothers refusing to look at you as they fidgeted with their fingers or tugged on their pajamas. You huffed and turned away.

“Consider this conversation over. Don’t ever ask another thing from me again,” you spat, retreating back to your room. The heavy aching in your heart finally peaked, and you silently cried into your pillows as your brothers were quietly murmuring their arguments. How could you ever trust them again, knowing what they did to incite the man below? Knowing they would gladly and easily throw you away for their cruel jokes, knowing they would lie to cover up their mistakes?

You wished you could go back in time, back to the day the man nearly pillaged your kingdom. Back to that day to meet him, to understand what it was your brothers thought and felt. Maybe, just maybe, you could have done something for him in order to get him to stop.

But you could not. You know you never could. You could never undo the past. And even if you could, the valuable knowledge you gained from your traveling was a better use of your skills and time. Was that man really worth risking everything for?

Your mind conjured images of him. Those dark eyes… the gold hook… the way the cold metal of that hook felt against your neck as his large hand grasped you like a predator.

He could have killed you.

Could have ended your life before you could even register it.

The thought terrifies you, sends shivers down your body, before you remember how he was careful to never let the sharp tip hurt you. For what reason, you didn’t know. You were the child of the man who imprisoned him in that cell, he would easily have a number of reasons to kill you.

But instead, he held you, protected you, threatened them off. Why?

You sighed and try to brush the man out of your mind. You didn’t need to let your brain conjure up more thoughts and worries right now. You would repay the favor to him when you awoke later, at the very least. It brought you some semblance of comfort after the awful fight you had with your brothers.

—————

It was almost noon when you rose from your bed. Very uncharacteristic of your usual behavior, seeing as you were the one who was often the most prompt and presentable of your siblings. When you went downstairs to eat, you found your brothers at the table. You refused to greet them as you sat in your usual spot, placing your food on your plate.

“Hey, (Y/n),” the second began, whispering to not get the attention of the servants around you. You ignored him, biting into your food as they tried to get your attention.

“Just leave it…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake-” they hissed under their breath until the large doors to the room swung open, revealing your father. He strode over gracefully, taking a seat at the head of the table.

“Father,” you greeted, and your brothers awkwardly followed after. Your father tilted his head back in acknowledgement while he had his lunch served to him.

“I admit, I was surprised to see you four up this late,” he begins, taking a sip of the drink a maid just poured for him. “Might I inquire what you all were doing?”

“Reading,” you answer quickly.

“Training,” the first brother replies.

“Polishing my weaponry,” the second says.

“Writing,” the third states, carelessly showing off his bandaged hand. Your father raises a brow.

“Why is your hand wrapped?” The third brother sits up straight, stiff as a board.

“Oh, from, uh, you know, training.”

“You just said you were writing,” your father humorlessly corrects.

“The pen is mightier than the sword!” Your brother laughs, trying to continue the lie.

Your father nods, not believing a word but not wanting to continue with this conversation.

“Be as it may, I’m happy you are all here right now,” the king says.

You glance at your brothers and notice they look rather disheveled. The first has bloodshot eyes, nodding along while frequently yawning. The second is refusing to look at anywhere but his plate, picking his food he hardly made a dent in. The third, meanwhile, is nervously fidgeting around.

You huff, remembering that you’re still angry with them and continue to eat. Your father tries to continue the conversation, but it’s a blur for you until you leave.

You begin to walk out of the dining room while your brothers jog up to you.

“(Y/n), please wait-” they begin, and you shake your head.

“No, I’m not talking about this further,” you reply harshly. “Just stop pestering me!”

“Come on, we really do feel terrible and-”

“And? I feel terrible, too!” You glare at them and slam your door shut in front of them.

Let me just give him his blanket…

You remembered the promise you made last night and quickly open your large closet. Inside are various blankets, some of which have not been used in a long time.

“I don’t think they’d notice if these were gone…” you mumble as you grab one and fold it in your arms. It’s rather large for you, but considering how big the man in the cell is, it’d probably not be enough. You can’t take more now, though, that would be too suspicious.

You peer out the door and notice the coast is clear, save for a few random maids. Finally, you can see the man again. You do your best to walk normally, not wanting to draw further to attention to yourself. There’s a guard patrolling the area in front of the cellars, and you run up to him.

“Good afternoon. One of the maids thought they someone suspicious outside. If you could please handle the matter, I would be grateful,” you ask politely. The guard is surprised but nods and gets up to scour the area. You sigh in relief that there wouldn’t be anymore distractions and run down the stairs of the dungeons, all the way to the lowest level.

Like last time, the cold air of the dungeon immediately prickles your skin.

“You’d think I learn,” you comment until you slow down your steps as you approach the giant.

His back is toward the bars and he doesn’t flinch as he hears your footsteps.

“Excuse me,” you begin, finding the previous courage you had melting away as you realize just what you were doing. “I came back as promised.”

At the sound of your voice, he cranes his neck up and sits upright. You hear a small chuckle until he ushers you over with a finger.

“So, you really came back, huh?” He snarkily asked.

“I did. I made a promise and I intended to keep it.”

“You do understand what that looks like, right?” His voice returns to its normal, drab tone as he runs a hand through his hair.

“I don’t care. You… you did me a favor, and it is my duty to repay it,” you reply sternly. The chains clank and rustle as the man stands up, showcasing his large frame. He slowly turns around to face you, and those dark eyes of his bore into yours.

There is no light in them despite the smirk on his face. They are empty, hollow, and lifeless eyes.

“How sweet of you, your highness,” he says in a saccharine tone.

“You’re mocking me,” you cut to the chase.

“Oh, am I? Perhaps, your highness. I don’t get many visitors here, let alone such a pretty relic of the royal family,” he mocks. “You can’t really blame me for not knowing how to talk to you properly. I’m afraid manners are something I haven’t learned.”

“You can express your appreciation more sincerely next time,” you huff as you hold out the blanket to him, careful to keep your arms stretched in order to create some distance between you and him.

He snickers at your apprehensive behavior and makes sure to use his golden hook to grab the blanket from you. He is careful to not touch your hand with the weapon as he brings it inside his cell.

“My, my, what a lovely blanket. Cashmere?” He jokes. You take a step back and watch as drapes the blanket across his shoulders, making his shadow cover even more of you. “I appreciate it, your highness. Was that polite enough for you?”

“It was a start,” you admit, not liking the way he made everything sound so sarcastic and insincere.

“You may go now,” he dismisses you.

A part of you is eager to run away, but the more you watch him stretch his limbs and roll his shoulders, the more curious you get.

“Why did you not kill me yesterday?” You ask.

“This again? I’m starting to think you are begging for death,” he replies.

“No, you just… you saved me, yet it’s obvious you despise me.”

“Despise you? Now why would you accuse me of such a thing?”

“Nothing you say is ever serious. You’re obviously toying with me.”

“Toy with you? No, no, no, I’m not toying with you-” in an instant, he reaches forward and tilts your chin up with his hook. You gasp as you’re pulled closer to him against the bars and he gazes down with a strange emotion in his eyes that you cannot pinpoint. “This is toying with you. Your highness, I don’t hate you. I could never.”

“And why is that?” You quietly ask, your eyes glancing down to his hook every few seconds.

“You’re far too intelligent, far too competent for the ones I really despise,” he coos. “I may seem like a lowly prisoner now, but once upon a time, I was a pirate with a taste for the finer things in life. I know worth when I see it.”

Your eyes widen and you feel your face heat up from his words. You shove yourself off his hook and step back. “What gives you the right to say such a thing?”

“What? Never had a man tell you the truth? Never had anyone appreciate you correctly?”

“That’s none of your concern!” You yell, embarrassed that you were enjoying his praise.

“Oh, I think I hit the nail on the head, didn’t I?”

“Just, ugh-!” You growl in frustration.

“Poor, little, royal- they don’t really care you, do they? The way those ignorant fools ran away with their tails between their legs, I’m sure they didn’t care what it cost, so long as they escaped.”

“That’s not true, they’re just-”

“Tell me, your highness, do they always leave you behind?” You bite your lip and shake your head.

“N-no, not always, it’s just-”

“They always make you do the work, don’t they?” He continued.

“Well…”

“And they never are really thankful for you, are they? You’re just like a little toy they can discard whenever they choose. Let me tell you something,” he leans closer to you. “You’re too good for them. And they know that, so they keep trying to get you to lower yourself.”

Your taken aback by his rather frank assessment of your relationship with your brothers.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don’t need them. You can do much better. Have some pride, will you? I hate seeing wasted potential,” his face contorts into one of disgust. “Especially for a bunch of imbeciles like that? Is that who you’re trying to impress?”

He wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter, and you sigh.

“Those are my brothers. I can’t do anything about that.”

“You can and you should. Fools like them are a dime a dozen. The fact you’re even entertaining the notion you must keep them around is sickening. The men I met yesterday are the ones who are supposed to run this kingdom before you?”

Your hands drop to your sides as he spells it out for you.

“I despise them,” he smiles, but there is nothing humorous about what he says or feels about the situation. “Idiots like that disgust me. I hate the weak, the talentless, the ineffective, more than anything.” His words are laced with venom, every sentence making you freeze. “Do you understand now what I mean? Weakness like what they showed yesterday- that is sin.”

“I’m not strong, either,” you reject.

“Physically, you’re not. But you have something they don’t. You have a brain in there. You have commitment. That’s infinitely more important than being a brute or a coward.” He blows a few strands of his loose hair from out of his face. “Use your brain and stop depending on them.”

He turns around and waves his right hand.

“Well, I’ve said enough. You don’t need to take my word for it, after all, I’m just a beat down prisoner.”

Your face softens as you watch him take a seat, facing the wall again. You hesitate for a moment before you step closer.

“What is your name?” You ask curiously.

“Hm? Why would you ask for the name of a ‘monster’ like me? Something like that is better left out of your mouth.”

“Answer me.”

“Sorry, your highness, I am a business man at heart. I don’t talk without some kind of deal.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Heh, your eagerness is rather endearing, so I’ll be easy on you this time,” he chuckles. “Give me a cigar. Not a cheap one, mind you. I want something your father would be happy to light.”

“A cigar? That’s it?”

“I’m a simple man, your highness. I miss the comfort of such simple pleasures.”

“A cigar, for your name?”

“That is all. Now go, you’ve wasted enough time down here. Don’t want your dear old dad to get suspicious of you, do you?”

“N-no, I don’t.”

“Good. Run along, your highness.”

You don’t need any more reminders as you turn your heel and run up the stairs as quick as you can. Your heart is pounding hard and fast in your chest, and despite the icy chill in this dungeon, your face still feels rather warm.

Just a cigar, huh?

#one piece x reader #one piece #one piece oneshots #x reader #reader insert #sir crocodile x reader #crocodile x reader #sir crocodile #crocodile #crocodile one piece #heartless giant #the heartless giant

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furiousgoldfish · 7 months

Text

Ways abusive parents try to separate you from your human rights:

They threaten to call the police on you if you don't obey them

They threaten you with jail-time and insist that the police will take you away for disobedience

They actually call the police, or emergency services, to create consequences for disobedience

They threaten to 'give you away' to groups of people they deem 'worse' than themselves

They threaten that you'll be kidnapped and sold if you don't obey them

They threaten for you to be put in a home

They threaten you with inhumane living conditions in a home (you won't have you room, you won't have anything, they'll beat you up ever day, etc)

They threaten to institutionalize you if you don't do as they say

They threaten to put you in a mental hospital/psych ward/asylum

They threaten you with court, institutions and government

They convince you that every institution, social service, law enforcement, or any other organized group of people is on their side, and against you, and would fight on their side and enforce their rule over you

They act as if disobeying them is against the law/religion

They insist that nobody will ever want to hire you or pay you a salary

They imply or outright say that it's a waste of space if you were renting out a place or had a place of your own, you do not have the right to occupy your own space in their eyes

They take away your necessities if you disobey them (food, ability to use the bathroom, clothing)

They destroy your property as a form of revenge, and insist it never belonged to you and that they had every right to destroy it

They make sure you're not exposed to educational materials that would inform you that you have a right to safety, food, shelter, and protection from violence and threats

They fight very hard to convince you that what they're doing to you is NOT abuse (saying things like 'you don't even KNOW what abuse is, or 'I'll show you abuse'), and they make sure you're not exposed to any resources or education that would help you recognize abuse

Punishments for standing up for yourself or any attempts to reach justice or point out how unfair, inescapable, hypocritical and painful your situation is

Not allowing you to speak, punishing you for talking back, convincing you that you have no voice and you have no right to defend yourself in any measure

Exposing you to media or real-life situations where children are abused just as badly, or worse than you are, this is a part of grooming they do to convince you that child abuse is normal, acceptable behaviour and not abuse at all

Suggesting that they could do all this to you, and even outright threatening it, implying strongly they know they can get away with it, since others can

Convince you that everyone else has it worse, and repeat how lucky you actually are to have them

They list all of the things that would be happening to you if they weren't so kind to you (you'd be starving on the street, be kidnapped/sold/tortured, die from lack of resources, be abandoned, not survive in any possible way)

Convince you that you're not, in fact, a human being and thus have no business expecting human rights (brainwashing, calling you animal names, calling you demon/satan/monster)

Accuse you repeatedly of being a financial burden, shame you for costing money, demand credit/favours/services/labour/obedience in return for giving you survival resources like food and clothing and school supplies

Neglect to inform you that government is giving them a tax-break for every kid they're supporting and that the society is built so that children would be financially taken care of and do not need to earn their food, shelter or basic necessities

Scare you into believing that every other authority figure (teachers, boss, police, judge, authorities) would treat you even worse and would demand even a higher degree of obedience and submission from you, threaten you with how badly the interaction would go for you if you were to stand up to any other authority figure

Insist that if you were to act with this level of spite, refusal, rejection or disrespect to any other person, they would simply snap and kill you (implied death threat – you're lucky that I'm not ending your life right now)

Act like they own you, to the degree that they feel they have every right to end your life and would not be arrested or blamed if they were to kill you, since you're just their property

Add more if you have lived through other experiences that left you feeling like you had no protection, no rights in the eyes of the law, and no way to recognize your humans rights are being violated. Even one single item on this list means your human rights were kept from you.

#abusive parents #toxic parents #child abuse #human rights violations #traumatic childhood #death threats #threatening behaviour #psychological abuse #it's not enough that the child is tiny and physically helpless #the child also needs to feel like the entire world is set against them #and that they have no rights to safey or happiness #fucking disgusting gross behaviour #their power trips are repulsive and disgusting and they should be shamed for it forever #convincing small children they're a burden on society and have no rights to live or be safe #horrendous awful depraved monstrous sadistic abominable demonic repulsive criminal behaviour #prison for eternity

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canyourfavesurvivecastledracula · 3 months

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You answered Patrick Trougton's Second Doctor and I 100% agree he's probably the best shot, but do you think there are any incarnations of the Doctor who wouldn't survive Castle Dracula?

The First Doctor is the most likely, and would probably have his heart give out a la Tenth Planet during the escape attempt (being the least equipped for free climbing and general stress), and I think being forced to regenerate counts as 'not surviving' even if he'd then be able to get away.

The Fourth Doctor did well when he faced Vampires, but I also think he has the particular best ability to get on Dracula's nerves which probably isn't helping him; the Seventh Doctor definitely came on overcomplicated manipulative scheme that experiences a serious backfire/complication halfway through, which might make the lack of a companion an issue; the Eighth Doctor is the most likely to get hypnotized (and probably some amnesia lbr) although he's ; but I don't know if any of these would be enough to get over their general Doctor-iness winning the day.

Also to take into account is the fact that Faction Paradox implies the Doctor is in fact a Great Vampire (I promise this is a theory that makes sense but I admit recognizing the words 'Faction Paradox' is already a sign you're in too deep) but I do not think this actually changes anything re: ability to survive or be killed by Dracula.

The Faction Paradox does WHAT

Nope never mind never mind nope don't wanna know Faction Paradox can stay over in their oxbow reality. I used up my capacity for unhinged on Moby Dick. (hashtag: just Balazar things)

See the First Doctor brings combines the youthful energy of a wide eyed solicitor with the insane grandpa approach of a corn-addled dutch polymath. I think he'd be okay so long as he hadn't been Time Destructed earlier that week. He would say things like "you're not Count Dracula, look at that ridiculous mustache!" (Recall he did meet Count Dracula inside the human psyche that one time). He'd make him so mad. Old Man Violence aaaaaaand loving it (hoo hoo hee hee ha ha!)

I want to say the Doctor will have the hardest time while he's in his celery phase, but what I might actually mean is that he's got so much practice at exactly this. The Fifth Doctor is so good at being imprisoned places. Clinging to the sides of things while missing a third of his blood is practically his speciality. And he does have that "You're not gonna STOP ME NOW" drive that served our baby lawyer so we'll.

By the time he graduates up to spoons he's objectively scarier than Dracula. He might not survive, but if he doesn't it's a part of some massive Thanatos Gambit he's pulling that doesn't end well for anyone.

I don't have a good read on the cooler Baker Doctor about this question, but I think Dracula would want him dead so badly. SO badly. He makes everyone so mad. Would he be able to pull it off? I think... I think he gets drinked if he's Davison (who wouldn't take a little sippy sip out of golden retriever guy) and partially turned if he's Baker (and anyone can see immediately that that was a mistake).

Mmmmmmmmm oh the McGann Doctor. I think that might be our winner. If we stick to the TV continuity all he knows how to do is die. My understanding of the audios is that that only gets worse somehow. But I still feel strongly that if you stick your teeth into Paul McGann you're going to bite off more than you can chew.

Ah lets put it to a vote. It's Doctor Who, I am sure people have OPINIONS. We only get twelve options so I am going to exclude Patrick Troughton as answered here and Tom Baker as answered by canon. Oh and I guess I'll drop McCoy as an outlier who should not have been counted.

#doctor who #Michael Jayston and Jo Martin ommitted for space and narrative distinction #aliens #tricksters and weirdos #spacemen

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bestworstcase · 9 days

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Grimm behavior reassessment thought: y'know that sister training session called on account of Rather Tanky Ursa? Could Ruby & Yang have avoided that fight if they'd known to treat the big lug like careful hikers would an 'ordinary' bear encounter? There were a few 'pause & rear/roar' moments on its part which I guess *could* be read as 'hey stop that' or 'my turf, leave'.

yang’s character short has always interested me bc the ursa was there the whole time they were sparring.

like. yang throws a punch, ruby panic-flies into the bushes and then passes out:

on this screenshot i’ve marked ruby’s approximate path in red and circled the clump of bushes the ursa emerges from (using the logs laid around the perimeter as markers):

note the very dense foliage around the grimm; he’s completely hidden. yang gets concerned when ruby doesn’t respond, startles when she hears a twig snap in the area circled in yellow, this is what she sees:

and then he stands up:

which. ok. he’s a really big guy. there is no way he crept up on them and got that close before making a noticeable sound, and most grimm behave like pursuit predators besides—they wander around in the open and give chase when they come across prey. (although there are exceptions: the pack of apathy at brunswick drag the lamp around a corner and go dark to lie in wait, for example.)

the point is, he’s there, but yang can’t see him until his eyes illuminate because he’s lying down in the bushes. his markings are also ‘off’ and only begin to glow as he stands up.

we’ve seen grimm Do That a couple times:

and we’ve also seen in v8 that just because there don’t seem to be any grimm nearby doesn’t mean they aren’t there:

<- same thing happens in the mine. dozens of centinels pop out of the ground when the geist signals for them to screen his retreat deeper into the mine. which suggests that grimm may spend a lot of time… not hunting. unseen, hidden just under the surface or in the densest thickets, crevices, whatever. and no one knows because when grimm aren’t on the hunt they don’t attack unless provoked.

the big guy was just There! taking a nap! and he didn’t aggro until yang got spooked by ruby’s silence.

he also doesn’t seem to be all that interested in attacking after his initial charge and swipe; he knocks yang across the clearing and then turns away, until yang shoots him again:

i do think it’s really interesting that WOR: grimm implies that grimm are most strongly drawn by violence, not negativity per se: “what is perhaps even more unsettling is the basis of their attraction,” and the accompanying image is

a person killing another person with a rock.

i think—much more so than real animals—grimm are kind of emotional mirrors, in that they reflect the energy they’re shown. one thing that stands out to me about both salem and cinder is that while there is obviously an element of magic or kinship or both behind their influence over the grimm, from both of them we see these occasional moments of tenderness toward the grimm; cinder’s very gentle and soothing “shh, this is your home now” when she calms the wyvern, and the way salem softens when she caresses the goliath’s face in the v6 stinger:

and i wonder if there isn’t a meaningful correlation there. the two characters in the story who demonstrably have the ability to communicate and work with grimm are also the two characters who, in private moments when no one else is around to see, choose to be gentle with these creatures. is salem able to command grimm the way she does by magical compulsion or is she their leader, as raven put it, whom they follow because she’s kind to them and protects them.

#the ursa in the jaundice arc does something similar…#it swats cardin’s mace away and tosses him around a little but it’s not rly #attacking. it’s more investigatory behavior. like it’s curious #until jaune attacks it and attacks back #mirroring!

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yourheart-inmyhands · 7 months

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HIIIII I LOVE YOUR POSTS SO MUCH IF YOU DIDNT NOTICED I WAS ONE OF YOUR FOLLOWERS WHO LIKE YOUR POSTS THE EARLIEST ANYWAYS I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT AND AMAZING DAY I HOPE YOU FEEL HAPPY AND JOYFULL! STAY SAFE :DDDD

Oh and btw i love love LOVED the last post you made :3 wasnt able to like it early since i was at school but can i please req a Zoro reader with a yan Yelan , Beidou , Alhaitham (all hail the ham XD) and Neuvillete (idk how to spell his name😒🙄) ANYWAYS PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME REMEMBER TO EAT REST AND DRINK WATER <<<333

Plus points if reader is in luffys pirate crew , has 3 swords and stronger than Beidou and Yelan 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

YOUR THE BEST POOKS EHEHHEHEHE<<<<333 :D :3

(stan chuu 🥰🥰🥰😱😱😱)

LOVE YOU POOKS 🥰🥰🥰😍😍😍😍

i didn't wanna answer this one cause it's so cute and i wanted to keep it in my inbox foreverrrrr but i really appreciate the compliments ;v; <33 also i won't lie, Zoro is not one of my favorites from One Piece (i like greasy/deranged men) but i love his character, i was also binging some episodes while writing this and also this is pre-timeskip zoro cause that's where i'm at currently and brainrot be real but i hope you enjoy :D <3

Warning: this post contains yandere-themes, including delusional behaviors, implied being held against will, mentions of violence, and other potential topics. Please read at your own risk!

Yandere!Yelan would be stressed out, not only do you wield three swords and seem to always get yourself in trouble, but you’re always getting lost. She’s at least glad that you can take care of yourself if the need arises but your obsession with being Teyvat’s Greatest Swordsman is a little out of control. She prefers that you don’t go out without her because she knows you’ll get lost, but if you should otherwise she’ll be sure to send out someone to follow you, keeping her informed of your location and every move.

Yelan smiled to herself as you trained in the backyard. While your bizarre workout routine often had her a bit worried, she admired your dedication to her work. There was a lot about you she loved, but your dedication to your goals was what drew her in, reminding her of herself sometimes. She had to keep you on a tight leash though, your lack of direction often leaving you in places you shouldn’t end up in. She never minded though, it was just another of your adorable quirks, something she found keeping her on her toes. Yelan loved you and all your strange, unique quirks.

Yandere!Beidou would find you very admirable, chasing so strongly after your ambitions as she had. While killing a Leviathan and becoming Teyvat’s Greatest Swordsman are two different life goals, she thinks you're an amazing individual for chasing your dreams so wholeheartedly.

Beidou smiled down at you from the top deck, watching as you polished your blades. While she didn’t understand the need for three swords, she knew you enjoyed it and so she never questioned it. She was grateful you didn’t put up a fight when it came to traveling on the Crux with her, not that you ever seemed to know where they were headed. It just made it easier for her to keep an eye on you, with your habit of wandering off and getting lost just to end up in a fight that she later patches you up from. She loved you and all your quirks but sometimes she wondered how you came to be this way, it wasn’t something you seemed keen to talk about.

Yandere!Alhaitham would find a beloved like this both a blessing and a curse. He loves your passion for swordfighting, often fighting with you for a bit of practice. While you certainly outmatch him with just one sword alone, he uses his intellect to spar with you, learning your moves and putting you into positions where you have to adapt and overcome. He finds the exercise to be an enjoyable break from his work, allowing him to keep his physical skills as sharp as his mental ones. He refuses to let you go anywhere by himself though, worried you’ll get lost and run into trouble, again.

Alhaitham smirked as he blocked another attack from you, having memorized every attack you’ve ever used against him. It was times like this that he enjoyed most with you, a proper challenge between brains and brawn. While your workout routine was intense, his mind was equally as polished, leaving the duels between the two of you relatively intense. On afternoons where you weren’t dueling, it was common to go into town, with Alhaitham usually picking up books or other things at stores while dragging you along with him. Even if he knew you were going to nap the whole time he was gone, he still didn’t trust you to not fight something or get lost while he was gone. So instead he took you to every store with him, keeping a tight watch over you and oftentimes tying a ribbon gently around your wrists that connected to his belt.

Yandere!Neuvillette has no choice but to keep you locked up inside while he’s gone simply because he knows otherwise you’ll get lost and he’ll be seeing you in the courtroom for yet another fight you got into. He doesn’t mind it though, knowing that at home you only do a few things, train, polish your swords, and nap. And while he admires your dream to be Teyvat’s Greatest Swordsman, he thinks you should settle for the strength you currently possess and simply stay here in Fontaine with him.

Unlocking the door and stepping in after a long day in court, Neuvillette isn’t surprised to see you napping in the livingroom. He will admit that the first few times he saw you napping, simply sitting on the floor up against a wall with all three swords nearby, he thought it was strange, insisting that you sleep in the bedroom or at least on the couch. Now though, he understands that it’s simply the way you are, quietly approaching and smirking as your eyes flicker open, looking up at the man. “Your senses are as sharp as ever I see.” Neuvillette offers you a hand, gently pulling you to your feet as you stretch, asking about his day. He enjoys the quiet life he has and he prefers to try and force you to comply than let you roam free, after all he’s doing this for the betterment of society. You’re simply too dangerous.

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bird-inacage · 7 months

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Only Friends: Why Ray's reaction speaks volumes about his feelings for Sand, rather than his feelings for Mew

It's natural to think Ray reacted so strongly in the fight with Boston because of his residual feelings and loyalty to Mew. But let's be clear, this revelation doesn't adversely affect Mew in any immediate way if you read this as Ray being upset on Mew's behalf.

Boston's bombshell is instead targeted to hurt Ray specifically. An attempt to make Ray look like a villain and Sand to feel like a victim of Ray's 'deception'. Sand being the unwarranted collateral of this fight.

Why is Ray angry?

So let's break down all the reasons Ray is angry in the first place.

This wasn't Boston's story to tell. He saw and recorded the kiss without their knowledge or consent. He frames it like a 'dirty secret' that Ray intentionally hid from Sand. But it's Ray's right to choose when and if he felt it necessary to share this with Sand, depending on the progression of their relationship.

What Boston is claiming is only partly true. Yes they did kiss. But no, Ray did not 'take Mew's virginity'. Nothing further happened and Boston is embellishing, which implies more gravitas to a 'history' which doesn't exist.

Sand is being fed this information without full context. He doesn't have the benefit of understanding Ray's past (namely his breakdown), the nature of his friendship with Mew. Without it, Ray is going to look categorically bad, especially through the lens of his affectionate behaviour with Sand that day.

The revelation could ruin what potential future there may have been between Ray and Sand, if Sand is driven away. Ray's newfound happiness dashed in an instant.

The initial part of his Ray's reaction is defensive - the shock, the betrayal regarding such an invasion of privacy. Ray's first punch is thrown after "keep track?" The audacity and complete lack of justification felt as to why Boston would even do such a thing. Ray's second attempt to enact violence is when Boston says, "are you going to be two-timing?" I saw the following through his response: 'It's one thing to hurt me. I'm your friend. I know what you're like. But why on earth are you dragging Sand into this? How dare you.'

Attacking Ray's Weak Spot

We can't change our pasts. Whether it was one kiss or years of unrequited feelings - ultimately, nothing became of it. Ray can't erase the fact he did once love Mew (and probably always will in some capacity because of what Mew did for him). But if Ray were to eventually fall in love with Sand, then his romantic feelings for Mew would become past tense. So whatever he felt then would have no bearing on his here and now. Ray shouldn't be made to feel ashamed.

The progress Ray made with Sand this episode has essentially been unravelled through this one act. It's been hugely difficult for Ray to even consider loving anyone other than Mew. He only just started to display inklings of welcoming the idea. We should all be afforded the opportunity to move on. For Boston to use Mew (someone who means so much to Ray symbolically) as ammunition to hurt Sand (someone new he's grown to care about), is pitting his past and future against each other. And it's not fair to do so. Your past doesn't negate what you may do in future. Similarly the future doesn't discredit the past. Both are important for different reasons.

Ray has every right to value both Mew and Sand, because his feelings for each of them will be entirely different in their own right. But what Boston has tried to spin here is a comparison game. 'Ray loves Mew. He's always loved Mew.' The further insinuation being: 'Ray will never find you as important Sand. You're lesser than. You'll never compare in Ray's eyes'. It's simply not Boston's place to say that. How would he know? It's possible that one day Sand could match Ray's love for Mew, surpass it even. But Ray isn't to know that yet.

There's also a palpable air of derision in how Boston delivers this. He makes Ray's feelings out to be a slightly pathetic, sad little obsession, by wording it as "Ray's whole ass is owned by Mew". Reducing Ray's incredibly complex feelings for someone who saved his life to a more superficial pining. The nuances of which Sand won't be aware of.

Hurting Ray by hurting Sand

Not only is Boston trying to tarnish Ray's character by accusing him of misleading and lying to Sand - but in doing so he's humiliating Sand for not being aware of this. If he can tell that Sand has feelings for Ray, he knew this information would hurt an innocent third party. All 'disguised' under a feat of righteousness.

I'm sure Ray is more than aware of how Sand treats him. Sand has been nothing but kind and accommodating where he's concerned. Willing to bend to his will and soften to his demands. Sand absolutely does not deserve to be dragged into any unnecessary drama, (drama which involves a notable part of Ray's history). So Ray is forced to feel somewhat responsible, based purely on the fact that this very 'drama' concerns him.

It's because Ray cares about Sand's feelings, cares about Sand's opinion of him, cares about what Sand feels towards him, and is also concerned by Sand being caught in this crossfire - that Ray is so clearly flustered. No matter what he's done, Sand shouldn't have to suffer along by association. That's not fair on Sand. It's his past in question. It's his best friend doing the damage. And it's because of him that Sand is now getting hurt too.

He can't outright deny it, because part of what Boston is saying is true. (Trying to vehemently defend yourself can sometimes come across even more as an admission of guilt). He can't apologise to Sand, because he hasn't figured out who Sand is to him yet. (If Ray doesn't deem him as a boyfriend at present, then he can't be sorry for liking someone else). The kiss with Mew also relates closely to an absolute rock bottom period of his life, which he probably wasn't ready to share with Sand just yet.

Ray has been made out to be a liar and a cheat and he's just praying that Sand can give him the benefit of the doubt. There's absolutely no way he can possibly explain all the intricacies to Sand in such an instant, but he's allowing Sand to ask him should he wish to. It's the least he can do. But Sand is going through his own internal battle now, and both need time to process what this has led them to realise about how they feel about each other.

#only friends #only friends the series #ofts #only friends meta #ray x sand #sand x ray #raysan #sanray #khaofirst #firstkhao #khaotung thanawat #first kanaphan #im still stuck here guys #im still processing this goddamn episode #im not prepared for tommorrow

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diejager · 1 year

Text

Run, Rabbit Run! Pt.2

Cw: implied smut, DARK, yandere, murder, blood and gore, Ghostface is a menace, betrayal, canon typical violence. Wc: 1.4k

Note: pt 3??

He loved the look of fear on your face, the dread that sunk into your skin, and the slight shaking in your hand. Your face drained, seeming so frozen that he thought you stopped breathing and died, heart seizing frightfully; but he knew that expression when your brain calculated the risks for fight or flight. On this occasion, it was flight.

You bolted, legs swinging you over a window and through the tall grass (or corn, was it a corn field? It didn't matter to Ghostface). In your instantaneous act of terror, you chose a random direction, unaware that you were leading him to a corner. He followed behind you, neither too close nor too far, just at the right distance to have your heart beat frightfully and not hear his breathing.

He loved it, running after you as he did before, one step behind you and so close to having his hands wrapped around your pretty neck. He wondered if you'd let him in again, to bite your neck and shoulder with red kisses, to take you apart in his arms, and to let him talk to you about the things he did - only this time, he wouldn't shy from sharing the gruesome stories he painted for the world to see.

He turned sharply at the corner, determined to cut you off before you left the walls of this weirdly shaped maze. He flashed his knife, the one he intended to gut you with, and jumped at you. You caught the glint of his knife too late, gasping for air when his body tackled you, rolling on the floor. You groaned in pain, cheek laying on the rough, dirt ground of the farm. Ghostface's body was warm and heavy, and strong, he straddled you and cooed.

"Missed ya, doll," he didn't have a distorted voice, he had no use for a voice box in the Entity's world. He couldn't be fought, he couldn't be stopped, and he couldn't be killed. "Didja miss me?"

His voice was familiar, too familiar to be normal. The drawl in his words and the soft, yet raspy tone of it reminded you of home: Pennsylvania. You knew he started there, killing off the people you knew before ultimately choosing you and failing to kill you. It was the cataclysmic event of your life, it festered fear and paranoia of everyone you knew and met.

His gloved - they were also warm - fingers played with your sides, moving upward to knead the flesh of your shoulders and pinch your nape. You flinched at every touch, even the softer, appreciative ones from the killer made you jump. He threaded through your locks, locking with the base of your hair and pulling your head back. You yelped at the harsh motion, feeling your hair being pulled from its seams with the force of his grip.

"I asked you a question, (Name)," he hissed in your ear, his mask kissing your cheek. "It's impolite to ignore your boyfriend."

You gasped, his use of words sent chills down your arched back. It couldn't be, could it? The thought of Ghostface and Jed being the same person made your heart drop. Tears blurred your sight, threatening to spill the second you connected the dots he placed for you.

Jed was a tease, but he was loving and caring, he looked at you like you were the only thing that mattered in his world. Although he found interest in the murders since the start of your move, his words made the twisted truth into a dark fantasy that people got hooked on. That never stopped him from loving you, spending the night in your bed, comforting you when your paranoia and nightmares hit you so strongly that you crashed. He was the light in your life, a pillar of reassurance and comfort.

Unlike the reaper, renamed Ghostface by Jed, was a cold, calculated killer that found pleasure in blood. He murdered as he loved, mixing both in a perverted need. He stabbed with passion, he killed with devotion, and he drew stories up with fascination. Ghostface was the killer you ran from, he was your demon as you were his obsession.

"N-no- no-," you cried, nails digging into the ground. You felt frustrated, angry, and betrayed. Were you being lied to by the killer or was he telling the truth? You wanted to ignore him, block out his familiar voice and the words he kept singing to you. "You're not-"

"Not Jed, hmm?" you could hear the mocking pitch in his voice, his head tilted forward, letting his nose touch your cheek. "That's mean, doll. I thought we had something going on. Really, I really thought we had something, didn't you?"

"Shut up!"

Your enraged outburst earned a scoff from him, he crawled off your body and moved you to face him just as you were planning on pushing off the ground and running. He cocked his head left, straddling you once more with his hand mockingly waving his knife. The threat hung on a thin string, and Ghostface had an unpredictable pattern of instantaneous and planning acts. If he wished to gut you where you laid, he would, but if he wanted to watch you run, he'd let you go with a cackle echoing in the eternal sunset.

You wished you could move, hit him, dig your fingers into his clothes until you got to his skin and claw him bloody, you wanted to hurt him as he hurt you, but your hands were pinned beneath his knees.

"What? Can't run now, can ya?" he chuckled, voice light with perverted mirth. "You had me running all 'round since Pennsylvania. Home's real far now, isn't it?"

Your teary eyes glared at him, lips pulled in a toothy sneer, you hated him. (Did you really hate him? He was Jed, wasn't he? If his words were truthful then you felt torn in two.) Dirt smeared your face and your hair formed a messy halo around your head like the angel Ghostface spent years hunting.

His thumb brushed the smudged brown on the apple of your cheek, but you turned to bite him, teeth clicking when they didn't bite any skin. He clicked his tongue, quickly taking his hand away from your volatile mouth. He knew you were a biter, he remembered you biting into his shoulder when he got rough, begging for him to bite back. You were a little minx when you were comfortable.

Though you were adorable, denial wasn't something he appreciated from you, that glint of doubt in your eyes almost felt insulting. You were so attentive, eyes following his every movement, he liked the attention. You followed his hand, reaching for his mask, eyes widening when he tilted the ghostly face up and peered down at you with hazel hues.

You gaped like a fish out of water, shocked into silence. New tears brimmed the corners of your eyes, rolling down your temple in quiet submission. Your breath stuck in your throat, body trembling beneath him.

"Da-Danny?" you whispered, voice so quiet he almost missed your words. God, he loved the stutter in your words, a nervous little wreck he mended as Jed.

"Good eyes, but look closer, babe. I know you can do it," he lowered his head, breath mixing with your panicked ones. Panic looked good on you as fear and dread did, he wanted to eat you alive. "C'mon, (Name)."

"You-you're Jed too?"

He rolled his head back, chuckling at your meekness, you made yourself smaller, wanting to hide from him. The bubbly personality he grew up knowing turned into an introverted and paranoid survivor. He was drunk on the knowledge of the change he brought, changing you into the person you were, he broke your cocoon and clipped your beautiful wings. He wanted you to himself before, and now still.

"Bing! Bing! Congrats, babe! I knew you were smart, " he chuckled, fingers digging into your neck. He watched you gasp for air, struggling to free yourself from his hold. "Oh, don't worry, we'll see each other again."

He raised his knife over his head, the sharp edge gleaming gold with the setting sun. A crazed glint crossed his eyes, flashing darkly in his beautiful face (you always found Danny pretty, the dark-haired introvert was handsome, and Jed's hazel eyes reminded you of Danny. Your liking of Jed probably stemmed from your little crush on the dark boy from your neighborhood) when he finally swung his trusty weapon.

"We'll have eternity together, doll."

#ghostface x reader #ghostface dbd #danny johnson #dbd ghostface #dead by daylight #ghostface #ghostface x male reader #ghostface x female reader #dbd killer #dbd fanfic #dbd x reader #dbd x male reader #Dbd x female reader #x reader #yandere #yandere ghostface #yandere dbd #dead by daylight x reader #dead by daylight ghostface

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thehmn · 1 year

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Warning, racial violence/bodily harm strongly implied in the trailer.

youtube

The script was written by Anna Neye who also plays the main character, the free black woman Anna Haagaard, seen here with her slaves.

Among them is her best friend Petrine (woman in blue dress) whom she also owns. Anna is in a relationship with the colony’s leader Peter von Scholten and living a life most black people could only dream of so when a slave revolt starts she’s torn between her emotional and political interests.

The story is about the last Danish slaves on the Virgin Islands and takes place during a really interesting time where more and more black people became free but it only highlighted the horrors still taking place. The revolt that followed is unusual because Peter Von Scholten chose not to try to prevent it or fight back and instead declared them all free without asking the king.

I’m captivated by this trailer. Anna Neye describes the movie as an absurdist comedy which the trailer captures perfectly. The clash between bouncy music, pastel colors and violence is very much on purpose. Even Anna herself is best known from comedy. In the into the Danish king says “Peter von Scholten, you have created a true paradise” and when we later see the revolt starting the king can be heard saying “Long live Denmark! Hurra! Hurra!”

It’s the first Danish movie I’ve been excited to see in a very long time. The English title is Empire.

#viften #empire #history #denmark #black history #Youtube

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kurokoros · 1 year

Text

into open flames | (s.h.)

Rated: M (future smut)

Words: 16K

Pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

Summary: There’s a storm raging, winds howling and snow beating against the cabin walls. Outside a monster shrieks his name in an awful and warbled voice that sounds like you. And it shouldn’t be awkward, Steve thinks. It’s not the first time he’s seen you naked.

You and Steve are almost something. Almost lovers. And it feels almost like hell; almost romantic.

OR: A blackout snowstorm and a monster force you and Steve to take shelter in Hopper’s old cabin. From there, everything starts slotting into place.

AN: Yes, there will be a part two. Yes, it will be smut. It’s in progress and should be ready to post within a week. Reblogs are appreciated--nay, strongly encouraged.

Warnings: horror elements (the monster is modeled after the official illustration of the “bagman” from dnd). minor violence. reader implied to be shorter than steve. reader is a hopper but there’s no mention of blood relation. cop!steve but it’s for monster hunting reasons. S3 and S4 never happened in this universe alteration, but upside down shenanigans have still been happening post-S2

Chapters: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

The rhythm you’ve set stutters suddenly. A low, breathy version of his name rolls off your tongue, sticky and sweet like honey. Your hands are soft as they roam down his chest, feather-light touches that have his hips lurching off the mattress. It’s all hot and wet. His teeth scrape the side of your throat, a litany of sweet nothings mumbled into your sweat-slicked skin.

“Steve.” Your breath is hot against his ear, his name a sigh that has his fingers squeezing your hips a little too hard.

The stutter becomes a full stop.

“Steve,” you say again. No longer saccharine. There’s a wobble to the way you say his name this time, higher-pitched and sharp with what he immediately recognizes as panic. You’ve said his name like that before. On a rundown bus in the middle of a junkyard, with hellish monsters circling beneath the low-hanging fog, ready to rip you both apart.

You’re sitting up, then. Pulled away from his incessant mouth. And when Steve’s eyes snap open, you’re already staring down at him. Petrified. Your eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them, your pupils constricted into pinpricks.

“Steve,” you repeat, louder as a thick, squirming vine slinks further around your neck.

Neither you nor Steve move. In his chest, his heart ceases to beat as the fleshy tendril winds completely around your throat, wrapping tighter and tighter without constricting. Slime spirts between the coils. Gray-tinged sludge drips down your collarbone and chest. A sticky, wet sound breaks through the stillness. Your hands shake where they’re pressed against his chest, and in the back of his mind he registers the bite of your fingernails digging into his skin.

Like it’s the only thing you know how to say, his name is whispered into the space between you and him, so quiet that he doesn’t hear it so much as recognize the shape of it on your lips. It’s a plea. You’re begging for him to do something. Begging for him to protect you. But the horrified glint in your eyes keeps him pinned and unable to breathe as a gnarled hand reaches out of the black emptiness behind you. Long, boney fingers cover the upper half of your face. Claws scrape against the side of your head. A sick caress. All Steve can see is the tremble of your lips, still mouthing his name. And he can’t move. Can’t do anything at all.

The vine constricts, and you’re ripped away from him. The weight of you leaves his hips as you’re dragged backwards off the bed. Plunged into the darkness. And then you scream. One loud, petrified wail of his name that curdles his blood.

His eyes snap open.

A sharp, gasping breath tears from his throat, like he’s come up for air after being held under water. His ears ring with the shrillness of your screams. Steve lurches halfway off the bed, already kicking off the covers before he sees the moonlight filtering in through the window and reality slams into him.

A nightmare. It was a nightmare.

It doesn’t calm the frantic beating of his heart. Doesn’t stop him from twisting towards your side of the bed. Doesn’t stop the breath from being slammed out of his lungs when he sees you aren’t there. The spot where you slept beside him is bare. Empty. Still warm with the remnants of body heat. But the sheets are rumpled. The thick, lilac comforter is bunched lower on the bed, kicked off in a hurry.

The nightmare doesn’t stop.

Another terrified cry of his name splits through the silence.

He lunges for the bedroom door, stumbling as he bashes his knee against the corner of your old dresser. The door is already cracked open part way. It bangs against the wall as Steve shoves through. The screaming doesn’t stop, muffled from outside. There’s a body on the floor. Mike Wheeler. Sprawled out and snoring. And Steve nearly trips over the lanky teen as he races for the backdoor and rips it open.

There’s no one outside. Wildly, his eyes dart around the open space beyond the porch. Twenty odd feet separating the trailer from the bank of Lake Tippecanoe. The cold slams into his lungs. It’s quiet. Unnaturally still. The silence makes his ears ring louder.

“Steve!”

It punches through his chest. Far off across the lake.

His hand clenches around the aging railing in front of him with every intention of throwing himself into the thick layer of snow below.

“Steve?”

The sound of his name, closer this time, makes him flinch. It’s not from the woods though. It’s not a shrill scream that sends his heart lurching into his throat.

His head snaps around, eyes wild.

And there you are, tucked into the open space of the doorway, your arms wrapped around yourself and your lips downturned in a confused little frown. Sock-clad feet shuffle against the porch as you take a step towards him, careful to avoid any remnants of snow still sticking to the floorboards in patchy clumps.

“What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.” You smother a yawn with one hand, squinting at him. You shiver in response to your own words, your bare legs rubbing together in a weak attempt to chase away the chilly air.

The porch creaks under your weight, sharp and real compared to the agonized screams further off in the distance. Silence is all that rings from the trees now. The screams silenced. And Steve wonders if there were any screams at all. Wonders if it was another nightmare bleeding through into waking hours. Those have happened before. On bad nights.

They usually involve you.

It takes a long moment for your words to reach through his scrambled thoughts and pull him back out. “You weren’t in bed,” is what he manages to choke out, throat tight. Like that’s explanation enough for why he’s standing on the back porch of your dad’s old trailer in the middle of the night, chasing echoes and ghosts.

But you don’t question it. Instead, you send him a sad, understanding look that makes his chest ache. “Bathroom,” you tell him.

There’s an apologetic note in the gentle murmur of your voice, and he hates it. Hates that you can’t get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night just because he might panic when he realizes you aren’t there. It’s not fair to you, but you’ve never once complained about how clingy he can be, how sometimes he hovers too closely.

Truthfully, you need that closeness, too. Something to stave off the rampant paranoia threatening to eat you alive. Keeping Steve close helps, makes you feel safe in a way no one else can. And Steve? Steve can’t sleep at night if you’re not there next to him. After the second time Hawkins went to shit, he couldn’t sleep in that big house anymore, not by himself. There were too many dark hallways, too many places for monsters to hide around corners. The silence was the worst. Every bump and creak kept him awake until exhaustion pulled him under. And when he did sleep it was never comfortably.

It wasn’t until after you both graduated that you and Steve started sharing a bed more often than not. Naturally, Hopper wasn’t happy about it, but after seeing the two of you rested for the first time in months, he kept his overprotective father speech to himself.

The far away, panicky look in Steve’s eyes makes your frown deepen. You know him too well not to recognize the jittery way he keeps glancing across the lake. More than just momentary fear at waking up without you curled up beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Steve says. “Nothing—I just… I just needed some fresh air. That’s all.”

It’s a lie and you both know it. He waits for you to call him out on it, but you don’t, and he wonders if there’s something in his expression that’s telling you not to press. Either way, you don’t ask. Steve doesn’t tell. And you cross the short amount of space between the two of you with near silent steps.

Only half-awake and still soft with sleep, you cuddle up against his side when he lifts an arm in offering. Both of your arms wind around him, your head tucked into the crook of his shoulder, and you let him pull you flush against his chest. Steve’s arm slides around your shoulders. A large palm smooths down your back all the way to your hip before coming back up. His lips burn where they press to your temple. You sigh, breaths coming out in warm puffs against his collarbone.

The tips of your fingers peek out from the sleeve of the too big sweatshirt you’re wearing, emerald green with Hawkins Basketball printed across the front, and your skin is cold where your fingers brush against his side above the waist of his sleep pants. A content sigh has your hand sneaking out further, thumb absentmindedly stroking a puckered scar. The first faint brush of your skin against the mark makes him flinch, but your touch is gentle, soothing in a way that makes him relax.

Under the guise of keeping you warm, Steve pulls you closer to his chest. If you could crawl between his ribs and lie there, he’d let you. Selfishly, he just wants you pressed against him. Needs to know that you’re okay. That you’re real. And he likes the way you fit against him, he decides, as your fingers curl around his hip with familiar ease, slotting into place where you belong.

For a moment, neither of you speak. Steve is still far away, gazing out over the water like he’s looking for something that simply isn’t there. The gates are still open. Contained, but open. The monsters that do slip through occasionally aren’t the same threats as when he was seventeen. Knowing that doesn’t stop him from being terrified that something could still happen to you, or the kids.

As you let him stew in peace, your bleary gaze follows his to where Lake Tippecanoe is frozen over and dusted with a thick layer of snow. Once the silence has dragged on too long, you shift your head on his chest, eyes on the side of his face.

“Bad dream?”

Idly, you rub your chilly fingers against his side. One of your hands slides around to rest on his stomach. Your pinky ghosts against the hem of his sleep pants, teasing the trail of hairs that disappear there, and his stomach tightens with the memory of what he was dreaming about earlier, before it all bled into something horrific. If he thinks about it long enough, he can still imagine the weight of you on his hips, taste the sweetness of you on his tongue, see the terror in your eyes before clawed fingers wrapped around your head.

Steve clears his throat when your nose bumps against the curve of his jaw. “No.”

“Liar,” you call him this time, but you don’t ask if he wants to talk about it. He never does. Not when they’re about you.

His breath comes out in a puff of fog as he huffs. There’s no point in arguing with you. Not when you’re right. Instead, he squeezes your bicep. It’s not quite a reassurance, but it’s close enough.

In lieu of thinking any harder about the nightmare that dragged him outside into the freezing night, he asks, “Did I wake up the kids?”

He hopes not. They all have nightmares of their own to deal with, they don’t need his keeping them awake as well. At the very least, he’s glad that he didn’t wake up screaming tonight. That’s happened before more times than he’s proud to admit. The worst one was right after graduation. The screaming woke Hopper, who burst into your bedroom with a loaded shotgun. Steve hadn’t stopped thrashing until his voice became hoarse and he dissolved into sobs. It was your fingers running through his hair that calmed him down, his head cradled to your chest as you whispered to him, nonsensical reassurances that might as well have been a lullaby. Selfishly, he doesn’t want any of those kids to see him like that. Like this. Pale and washed-out. Dark circles underneath his eyes. Hair disheveled. A wild and panicked look in his eyes.

It might scare them. Or worse, make them pity him—empathize, you’d always correct him. They’d empathize, because they care. But even five years gone, Steve’s still not used to being cared for—being taken care of.

Like you can hear his thoughts, you squeeze him a little tighter around his middle. “Just Will,” you tell him. And then, because you can picture the guilt in his eyes without needing to look, you add, “But I think he was already awake. I mean, it can’t be easy to fall asleep when Dustin snores like a bear.”

The casual jab startles him into a laugh. “Jesus, I know. You remember that one night at the cabin? The kids wanted that sleepover, and your dad and Joyce were on that date, and you let the kids pick the movies—”

“Me? That was not—”

“—and,” Steve continues loudly, hand dropping to poke your side for cutting him off, “they picked up those horror movies from downtown. Dustin fell asleep halfway through Halloween. Man, I thought we were gonna be, like, Texas chainsaw massacred or something.”

You giggle, and it’s enough to loosen the tightness in his chest. For now, at least.

The pair of you lapse into silence after that. Just for a moment. Just long enough for Steve’s shoulders to relax, for your hands to wander a little more than they should.

“Cold?” he asks when you shiver.

With a confirmatory hum, you step out of his embrace. Quick as you leave his side, the freezing air takes your place. The cold January night hits him all at once. For the first time, Steve notices the goosebumps prickling at his skin. A sharp inhale stings like he’s been kicked in the chest. You take a short, shuffling step backwards, while Steve stays rooted in place, frozen to the floor. The porch is an unforgiving chill against his bare feet.

Idly, he glances down at your own feet, enveloped in your purple socks. They’re the thick kind, wooly and soft, and he’d never understood how you could wear them to bed at night until the one time you didn’t, making him jolt each time your cold toes bumped against his calves beneath the blankets.

When he doesn’t follow, you frown at him again, lips pursed in a little pout. Both of your hands wrap around one of his, your fingers lacing through his seamlessly. Your chest presses against the length of his arm when you sidle up to him. So close, you have to tilt your head back to peer up at him through your lashes. “Come warm me up?”

The low murmur of your voice unsticks his feet from the floorboards. Your pout slips into a sleepy smile that brushes against his shoulder in a sweet kiss.

Steve’s lips twitch upwards at the edges. He lets you pull him back into the trailer wordlessly. With one hand, you fumble with the door, closing and locking it behind you as Steve’s eyes sweep around the cramped, but cozy living room.

The kids—nearly adults themselves now—are all sprawled out along the furniture and floor. Will is curled up on the couch, asleep now. Or pretending to be, at least. Mike is on the floor beside him, undisturbed where Steve nearly tripped over him earlier. Dustin and Lucas have claimed a chair each, Lucas with his limbs folded up awkwardly and Dustin with his head tilted back, snoring obnoxiously just like you said. Steve cranes his head to look down the hallway towards El’s bedroom. The door is open wide enough for him to see the shapes of both El and Max under the covers.

With the door locked and the kids all asleep, Steve lets you tug him down the hallway towards your bedroom. The floor creaks under your steps. The moaning floorboards cause the hairs on the back of his neck to rise, but your thumb rubs soothingly over the bumps of his knuckles, placating his already frayed nerves.

As soon as you step into the bedroom, you turn on your heel. Both of his hands are grasped in your smaller ones. Naturally, your fingers come to slot between his, and the smile you give him is sweet, sleepy and just a little bit sad. He follows as you walk backwards towards the bed, trusting him to catch you if you trip. You lead him to his side of the bed—his side, because he does have a side, and the domesticity of it makes his pulse jump—and settle onto the mattress, shifting across to the side furthest from the window.

Steve follows you down.

As he drags up the covers, you shrug out of your sweatshirt, dropping it to the floor beside the bed so you can slip into it again in the morning. By now, you know well just how clingy Steve can be in his sleep. Some nights, he likes to press right up against your back, radiating heat like a damn furnace until you’re itching to shrug off a layer or two of clothes, even in the middle of winter. Tonight, you’re wearing something dark and silky that leaves your arms and shoulders bare, and he can see the soft swell of your chest from the faint moonlight streaking in through the curtains.

The mattress is old. There’s a spring that digs into his hip when he sleeps on his side. And it’s too small for the two of you to be anything but pressed against each other. You wait for him to settle onto his stomach before rolling onto your side and curling up against him. You don’t hold him, but your sock-clad toes rub against his calves through his pants and your fingers draw shapes along the curve of his ribcage, fleeting and barely there.

The door is left cracked open.

There’s light filtering in through the curtains when Steve wakes up again. You’re gone, again, but the covers are folded up neatly, and that’s enough to quell the panic that instantly wells in his chest.

He isn’t used to waking up without you. Most mornings, you’re still curled up beside him, sleeping in until he nudges you awake before he leaves. Forever a night owl. Guiltily, he knows that it’s partly because he keeps you awake most nights. You’ve never mentioned it, and Steve would be hard-pressed to say anything himself, but he knows that his nightmares take as much a toll on you as they do on him. You’re the one thing that can quell the overwhelming fear that threatens to suffocate him, able to pull his head back above water when he’s sure he’s going to drown in it.

Through the cracked open door, he can hear you humming. Something low and indistinct, but vaguely familiar, though he can’t place why.

For several minutes, he just lies there, lightly dozing to the sound of you humming and the closing of cabinet doors as you busy yourself with something in the cramped kitchen. It won’t be long until the kids start waking up and grumbling about breakfast.

A glance at his digital clock has Steve realizing it’s a little after eight. The alarm should have gone off at seven.

With a groan, he pushes himself up, joints cracking from being in the same position for too long. He rolls his shoulders, his back popping as he sits up. Unsteadily, he rises to his feet, one hand running through his sleep rumpled hair as he casts a glance around the room.

He lands on the clock again.

Steve doesn’t have to look at a mirror to know he’s a mess this morning. Just from the sticky feeling of his eyelids, he can tell he didn’t manage to sleep much last night, even after he was sure you were secured beside him, your hair tickling his arm and the rhythmic puffs of your breath sweeping over his skin. He has to clean up before work. Usually, it’s the first thing he does after rolling out of bed. Showering. Letting the hiss of the water and the fog of steam drown out everything else for just a little while longer.

Your humming is overtaken by the hiss of something sizzling in a pan.

His feet are moving towards the door without a second thought towards the shower.

You’ve got his sweatshirt on again.

It’s an absentminded realization as Steve wanders out into the main living space. The kids are all starting to wake, grumbling and groaning and already beginning to bicker about something. Down the hall, he can see the girls rolling out of bed, awoken by the boys or the smell of what you’re cooking. You don’t pay them any attention, swaying gently from side to side as you stand in front of the stove, humming quietly to yourself.

With your back to Steve and a pan sizzling in front of you, you don’t notice him lingering in the hallway, leaning sideways against the wall with a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. For a moment, he just watches you with that overtly fond look in his eyes that the kids like to tease him about, gaze roving down your figure slowly. Your hair is draped over one of your shoulders, sleep-mused and messy, and your legs are still bare, the dark fabric of your shorts barely peeking out from beneath the sweatshirt you’re being swallowed up in. And Steve tries not to stare at your legs for too long. Tries even harder not to think about why the “Harrington” stretched across your shoulders has something possessive and hot curling in his stomach.

You glance up from the stove when Lucas and Mike break into snorts of laughter. The two of them are taking turns tickling the bottom of Dustin’s foot so that he kicks and snores louder in his sleep. Will is sitting up on the couch, smiling as he watches the others, but there are dark circles under his eyes, like he didn’t sleep much at all. Max and El amble out into the living room, El with too much pep for so early in the morning and Max with frizzy hair and a slight scowl. They plop down on either side of Will, content to watch the show.

Kids distracted, Steve pushes away from the wall.

“Want me to take over?” he asks, coming up behind you, his chin dipped down to speak directly into your ear. One of his hands slides around to rest on your waist. Pure muscle memory.

Immediately, you lean into his touch. There’s a small stack of pancakes on a plate to your left, a mixing bowl still filled with batter to your right.

“Not unless you’re planning on being late for work,” you say, flipping the pancake in the pan. You shoot him a look, barely smothering a smirk as you tack on, “again. Callahan’s gonna be up your ass all week if he has to come drag you out of here himself one more time.”

He squeezes your waist. Snorts. Phil Callahan has been up his ass since Steve started training at the academy after he graduated from high school. Clearly, he still hasn’t forgotten about all of those house parties he had to break up when Steve was still in school. Or maybe he’s just bitter because Hopper actually respects Steve half the time. Either way, he takes pride in giving Steve a hard time about anything and everything. Especially you.

Steve’s pretty sure he hasn’t gone a week without being told that cozying up to the chief’s daughter isn’t going to get him promoted, but he’s gotten damn good at rolling his eyes and firing back.

“Can you blame me? I learned from your old man.” With a roll of your eyes, you bump your hip into Steve’s, and he gives your side another squeeze in response. “You didn’t have to let me sleep in,” he murmurs, just loud enough for you to hear.

You glance up at him. “You needed it.” Simple as that. If it came down to it, you probably would have let him sleep through the morning, came up with some excuse for when Callahan inevitably came looking for him. You’re too good to him like that.

“Thank you.” He presses a quick kiss to the crown of your head, crowding you against the counter, but you don’t mind. Another pancake is deposited on the pile, and Steve’s breath is hot against your ear as he says, “Let me help?”

His lips brush against the curve of your jaw as you hum, pretending to think about it. “You can start the eggs,” you concede, biting back a smile when you feel him grin.

Steve kisses your cheek. Reluctantly, he disentangles himself from you, grabbing a skillet from the cabinet and the cartoon of eggs sitting off to the side. He joins you back at the stove quickly, cooking the eggs while you keep flipping pancakes, making enough to feed the bottomless pits lounging in the living room.

The kitchen is small. Most days, it’s barely big enough for one person to move comfortably between the stove and fridge. With two people it’s near impossible to move at all. Consequently, the two of you are pressed together from shoulder to hip, the softness of your sweatshirt rubbing against Steve’s bare arm each time you shift. It makes it harder to cook, but neither of you complain about the distinct lack of space.

“Your dad coming back today?” Steve asks as he starts scrambling the eggs.

You shake your head. “He and Joyce called early this morning. They’re stuck in Indianapolis through the weekend because of the weather, so Will’s going to be spending the night again. Joyce doesn’t want him home alone at all, much less during a blizzard.” Your nose wrinkles at the thought. “Can’t say I blame her.”

He can’t blame Joyce either, but it still makes him groan to hear. “And that means the rest of the little shits are going to be staying here, too,” he grumbles, scrambling the eggs a little aggressively.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” you say. “You love it when they’re all here.”

You got him there. He does like having a full house. It keeps him from being lonely and paranoid over every little sound at night. But he’d much rather it be just you and him, instead of six nosy high schoolers butting into his business and giggling and pretending to gag about Steve making googly-eyes at you when you aren’t looking.

“Of course, I like when they’re here. They don’t keep me up with that damn radio all night when they’re in the same room. I just don’t see why they can’t hang out in the Wheeler’s basement anymore. Isn’t that supposed to be their cave, or whatever?

You snort as you flip the last pancake. “Whatever you have to tell yourself.” He pokes your side and you nearly smack him with the spatula when you jolt. “Steven!” you admonish, but you’re giggling.

“Eww.” Steve looks up to find Mike staring at him from the other side of the counter, his brows pinched and his nose wrinkled in a look of disgust. “Can you two not be gross already? We haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, Wheeler,” Steve snaps back, reaching into the cabinet above your head to grab a stack of plates. “You shitheads ready to eat, or what?”

It doesn’t take long for everyone to settle down with their breakfast. Steve’s question had set all of them off, making the too small kitchen an even more cramped flurry of motion as the kids dished up their own plates, muttering thanks before scurrying back to the living room to eat.

They’re all spread out comfortably now. Max and Lucas are sitting at the small dining table, whispering to each other and giggling. Dustin is louder, his hands moving wildly where he’s sitting on the couch explaining something to El, who looks confused, but continues to watch Dustin in apt fascination anyway, so captivated that she’s letting her eggs and pancakes go cold. Mike keeps interjecting from where he’s leaning against the arm of the chair Will is sitting in, just picking at his eggs somewhat disinterestedly, unfocused on the chatter going on around him as the rest of the teens start arguing about if they’re going to the arcade or the video store downtown today.

Steve frowns, brows furrowing in concern, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it when you knock your foot against the side of his leg, drawing his attention back to you immediately. You’re twirling a piece of pancake on your fork, letting it soak up syrup while your legs swing idly back and forth from your place on the counter.

“How’s work been going?” you eventually ask him, lips twitching when he snags some eggs. The plate is on the counter next to you, covered in whatever the kids didn’t take, and you’ve both been picking food off of it leisurely. “You regretting that offer yet?”

He shakes his head, angling away from the kids so he can face you. “Owens says we’re all clear. There haven’t been any flareups since, what? That big, nasty slug thing back in June? None of the gates have been active so far this year.”

Neither of you point out that it’s only January.

Steve pops a piece of egg into his mouth. When he looks at you again, you’re frowning down at the plate, watching the pancakes get soggier.

“Are you going to check on them today?”

“I’m supposed to.”

“I don’t like you being out there alone,” you tell him, finally looking up. “You should wait until dad gets back from Indianapolis.”

You don’t have to explain why; he knows. They’ve made it a rule not to go poking around at the gates by themselves, but with Hopper out of town, he doesn’t have much of a choice. He’d skip it, if you asked him to, but you won’t. It’s not that you think he can’t handle it. That he’s not capable of checking the gates himself. Privately, you’d confessed to him one night that you’d probably lose your mind if anything happened to him. And, fuck, Steve understands.

He wouldn’t be able to handle losing you.

“I’ll be fine, honey.” The endearment slips out without him meaning to say it, but neither of you pay it any notice. “What are you going to do without me and these brats bothering you all day?”

Sock-clad toes bump into his leg again. “I’m going to stop by the cabin, actually,” you tell him casually. “There are some boxes dad and Joyce need for the wedding, and I figured I’d get them ready for when they come back.”

“Which boxes?” A piece of pancake is popped into his mouth, a pair of questioning eyes trained on the side of your face. Predictably, his shoulders are tense, one corner of his mouth quirked downward slightly at the edge. “I can swing by and pick them up on my way back from work and—”

“No,” you cut him off, firm but gentle. You knew he’d be on-edge today. A little over-protective. He always is the day following the nightmares bad enough that he refuses to talk about them. But you understand. After the living hell you’ve both been through, how could you not. “No, you don’t have to. I can do it myself.”

The look he sends you is skeptical, so you reach out and wrap your fingers around his upper arm, squeezing his bicep reassuringly. When he still doesn’t look entirely convinced, you sigh. Your fork clinks against the nearly empty plate by your hip as you set it down, shifting on the countertop to face him.

“It’s not going to take that long,” you promise. “Half-hour. Tops.”

One of Steve’s big hands finds your leg, squeezing just above your knee. And if his fingers dip inward, brushing against the soft skin of your thigh, neither of you mention it.

He turns suddenly. Your knee presses against his side as he shifts to face you, hand leaving your leg to press against the counter next to your hip. He doesn’t try to slip himself into the space between your dangling legs, but he does lean in close.

“At least take the kids with you?” It’s less a suggestion than it is an attempt at bargaining. The timbre of his voice deepens, pitched low and close to your ear. The heat of his breath washes over your neck, that too big sweatshirt starting to slip down towards your shoulder.

“What? And listen to them bitch about it the entire time? I don’t think so.” That gets you a crooked smile. “I’m going to drop them off at the arcade. Then, I’m going to pick up those boxes. And then,” you stress, brushing away the lock of hair falling into his face, “I’m going to go steal you for lunch. How does that sound?”

There’s a part of him that wants to argue. Because weren’t you the one just saying you don’t like him being out there alone? But he bites his tongue instead. He knows how capable you are. And the cabin isn’t close to any of the gates he’s been keeping an eye on for Owens.

“All right. All right. Fine. You win. I’ll leave you to it.” He slumps sideways against the counter, back facing the kids. The pretty, triumphant smile you send him makes him feel just a little bit better about giving in so easily. “The chief and Joyce still planning on fixing the place up?” he asks, changing the subject. “Last I saw it, it wasn't looking too hot.”

An understatement, really. Last he saw the cabin, it looked one bad day from collapsing entirely. And that was before a monster from another dimension came crashing through the ceiling. That ceiling has been patched since, if only to keep out the weather and wild animals, but it certainly wasn’t a pretty job.

“Yeah. I keep telling him he’s just gonna have to tear it all apart because they need more bedrooms and another bathroom and it’s gonna be a pain in the ass, but yeah,” you finish. “They want to renovate. Something about it being remote, but not too far out of town. Joyce seems to like it, too.”

“Yeah? What do you think?”

“I think it’s… quaint,” is what you finally decide on, struggling to find a better word.

Steve’s lips twitch in amusement. “Quaint?” he teases.

You shove him away by the shoulder. “Go get ready for work.”

Everyone in the living room sees the way Steve’s hand lingers against your waist before he pulls away. The fabric of his sweatshirt bunching under his fingers as he tugs you a little too close, his head dipped down to whisper in your ear and make you giggle. The kids see it, but none of them say anything. Instead, they watch with snorts and dramatic rolls of their eyes. They do that often, when you and Steve act domestic like this. Almost something, but not quite.

You’ve seen it in the way Mike will roll his eyes when Steve’s flirting is blatant. How Max and El giggled at the way you slipped your fingers between Steve’s and lead him down the short hallway to your old bedroom last night. How all six of them are shooting you and Steve unsubtle glances, like they’re waiting for one of you to make a move.

Dating isn’t the word you’d use to describe your relationship with Steve. It’s too blasé, too casual for the way his lips wander across your shoulders while you sleep, for the way you run your fingers through the hairs at the nape of his neck. As far as anyone else in Hawkins is concerned, you’re Steve’s and he’s yours, but that hasn’t nudged either of you towards putting a label on whatever it is you’re doing. Sleeping together, sure. But there’s still that gap neither of you are quite willing to fill just yet.

Almost lovers, in a way.

What you have now is easy. The sex is good, when you have it.

And Steve is afraid to fuck it all up, just like he’s done with everything else in his life. He’d rather have you like this, halfway, than lose you completely.

Steve could put a ring on your finger tonight and no one would bat an eye except to tell him it took him long enough. And he thinks you’d say yes. If he asked, you’d say yes. But he won’t, and you don’t. And it’s a little bit like limbo, this in-between state you’ve fallen into. Or a waltz, but neither of you can get the rhythm quite right. Always just out of sync. Just off-beat. Pulled in too close, or not pulled in enough. Limbo. It feels a little bit like hell; almost romantic.

Almost lovers.

And Steve still lets his hands linger too long; and you still let him walk away.

Steve keeps his gun in the top drawer of the nightstand.

There’s a part of him that hates it. Keeping a Glock in the bedroom he shares with you most nights. In a house where kids who aren’t quite kids anymore practically live half the time. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, so he tries to tell himself it’s for the monsters. Just in case they come back. And he tries even harder to pretend that he doesn’t keep a gun in case the government ever decides they’re all too much of a liability. It’s always there, just in reach in case he needs it. A precaution.

He still keeps that nail bat in the trunk of his car.

You keep a shotgun in the back of the closet. Buried beneath the black dress you wore to Barbara Holland’s funeral in late November, 1984.

He’s just finishing the last button on his uniform shirt when there’s a quiet knock at the door. It’s open. Cracked slightly. Enough for him to hear the muffled chatter from the living room. The sound of your voice, even if he can’t make out the words.

“Steve?” someone that isn’t you calls out, hesitating before they peek around the door. It’s Will, chewing at his bottom lip as he toes the door open wider, just enough to squeeze through into the bedroom before he nudges it back to its previous position. He keeps his head down, eyes on the floor, that pensive and slightly haunted look still plastered across his face. It hasn’t really left him since the fall of 1983.

“What’s up, kiddo?” Steve asks, far nicer than he’d ask any of the other little shits in the other room. By now, he’s used to the kids coming to him for things. Sometimes serious. Mostly not. Will has done this before. Still a little shy about asking Steve for advice, or asking if he could pick something up on his way home from work, even if Will knows Steve will always say yes.

Steve spares Will a glance before turning his attention to the plain, black tie laid out on the bed, considering it. The sight of it makes him grimace. He’s never liked it as a piece of his uniform. He’s never really liked ties at all. They feel too formal. What he does like is the way you always give that tie a little tug when he wears it, a teasing glint in your eyes and a secretive grin on your lips.

He decides he wants to keep that smile to himself and leaves the tie where it is.

Will chews on the inside of his cheek for a minute, watching Steve. “Did you hear it, too?” he finally blurts.

“Hear what?” Steve asks absentmindedly, yanking open the nightstand drawer on his side in search of his gun. He releases the magazine, checking the bullets inside, and nearly spills them onto the floor when Will speaks up again.

“The screaming.”

Steve freezes, staring down at the gun in his hand. White-knuckled grip. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth, and it simultaneously takes too long and too fast for the words to process. When they do, it makes him feel sick.

Will shuffles his feet, shifting his weight from one leg to the other as he awkwardly stares at Steve’s back. “Last night, I heard it coming from outside,” he continues, quieter than before, wringing his hands a little nervously. “And then you ran out onto the back porch, so…”

The implication is obvious by the way Will trails off, but Steve still croaks out, “So?” Biding his time just a little longer as he struggles to wrap his head around it. He knew Will woke up last night. You told him that. But Steve didn’t think it was from the screaming—didn’t think that was anything but in his own head, because none of the other kids woke up from it, and you would have told him if you heard it. It was just a dream. A nightmare. It was all in his head.

“So… you must have heard it, too,” Will finishes the thought when Steve doesn’t. He stops playing with his fingers and lifts his gaze from the floor to Steve’s tense shoulders.

There’s a part of Steve that wants to play dumb. To tell Will he didn’t hear anything at all. But Steve isn’t stupid, or oblivious, or anything else people have called him in the past. He can hear the hope in Will’s voice. Hesitant, but there. The subtle relief that he isn’t crazy, or hearing things.

Steve doesn’t have the stomach to ruin that.

“Yeah.” Steve snaps the magazine back into the Glock. He tucks the gun into the holster attached to his belt, finally turning around. “It was just a fox, Will,” he says. “I saw it down by the lake.”

Will doesn’t look entirely convinced.

“It was just a fox,” Steve tells Will again, firmer. Trying just as hard to convince himself of the same thing.

The way Will stares at Steve is slightly unnerving. His eyebrows are knitted together, and there’s a look in his eyes like he knows Steve is lying. Steve clenches his teeth so hard that his jaw starts to hurt, forcing himself to keep a neutral expression.

Finally, Will’s shoulders droop, the tension bleeding from his ridged stance. “Yeah. Okay.” He still doesn’t look completely convinced, but any skepticism he still has is outweighed by sheer relief. “It just…” He shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Will waves him off. “It’s nothing. Never mind,” he repeats. He offers Steve a subdued smile before turning around and pulling the door open again.

Steve sighs, suddenly exasperated. “Jesus,” he mutters. “Look, kid, if something’s wrong, you can talk to me.”

That’s enough to make Will pause before leaving the room. He looks over his shoulder, less troubled now, but there’s a puzzled look on his face instead. “I know. I guess… it just sounded like your name,” he explains, then clarifies. “The fox. It sounded like it was screaming your name. That’s what woke me up.”

Ice floods Steve’s veins as he stares at Will, who’s already trudging back down the hallway, satisfied with Steve’s answer or at least content to drop it for now. Steve has half a mind to chase after him, demanding answers that he knows Will doesn’t have, but before Steve can act on that impulse, someone starts pounding on the front door.

The sudden knocking makes him flinch. “Shit,” he hisses, nerves still fried from last night. Steve runs a hand through his hair, disheveling it only slightly.

You’re already at the front door when he rushes out of the bedroom, cursing under his breath and making sure his gun is still secured in its holster. You’re leaning against the wall, smile tight as you humor whoever is at the door. He recognizes the subtle irritation in your expression, but when the floor creaks under Steve’s feet, you glance at him, smile slipping into something genuine. The kids all watch as Steve comes up behind you, exchanging glances and nudging each other like they know something he doesn’t.

It’s Callahan, standing on the porch with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face because he gets to chew Steve out for being late, which Steve should have expected considering it’s a little after nine and he was supposed to be at the station nearly half an hour ago. But the older officer isn’t alone.

Frankie fucking Cooper is leaning against the side of the trailer with one arm bent and braced against the wall over his head. Steve realizes why the kids were snickering when he sees Frankie’s eyes drop to your bare legs none-too-subtly, eyeing you up the way he always does when he thinks Steve isn’t around to see it—and sometimes when Steve is, just to piss him off.

The other man’s eyes snap away from your legs comically fast when Steve presses himself up against your back. His arm slips against the side of the trailer, making him stumble and straighten awkwardly.

Now, Steve never had an issue with Frankie when they were in school. He graduated two years before Steve, so they were never close, but they played baseball together, and basketball, and it was at one of Frankie’s shitty house parties freshman year that Steve first started getting to know you. In a way, Steve has always been a little grateful for that night, even if he ended up sprinting down the street away from the cops at one in the morning and the hangover left him sick for an entire day afterwards.

Working with Frankie has soured Steve’s opinion of the other man just a little bit, and the way he’s staring at you makes it easy for Steve to slip an arm around your waist. Protective, or maybe just jealous, even though he has no reason to be. You’re wearing Steve’s high school sweatshirt. His name is printed across your back. You spent the night curled up against him. Frankie knows it, too, judging by the way he clears his throat and has the decency to look a little sheepish about getting caught.

“Callahan,” Steve greets, leaning into you a little more than he usually would. He reaches up, bracing a hand against the doorframe as you shift, resting your weight against his chest. An old, petty part of himself rises up as he pointedly ignores Frankie.

One of the kids snorts. Steve has half a mind to give them the finger, but manages to restrain himself in the presence of his coworkers, even if the little shits deserve it.

“Harrington,” Callahan greets in return, trying not to look incredibly amused by everything happening. “You’re late.”

“Alarm is broken,” he lies easily. You snort, quiet enough for neither of the officers to hear you, but Steve still squeezes your waist a little tighter. Not that that it matters. Neither Callahan nor Frankie looks like they believe him. In fact, he’s pretty sure he knows what Frankie is thinking when the man briefly glances down at your bare legs. They don’t bother to question him though. “I was just about to head out.”

Callahan rolls his eyes and scratches at his mustache. “Yeah. Sure you were, kid. Hurry up and say goodbye, or we’ll have to report this to the chief when he gets back.”

This time, you do laugh. A quiet giggle that draws three pairs of eyes directly to you. Steve presses his lips against the side of your head to hide his smile. Callahan looks confused for a second, then annoyed when he realizes why that’s funny.

Steve slides out from behind you, keeping his hand on your waist for longer than necessary. He’s only halfway out the door when he turns around to look at you.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” he promises, keeping his voice low for only you to hear. He’s sure the kids are still watching, and Callahan and Frankie are definitely still watching. Honestly, Steve really doesn’t care if they are. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone.”

“You’re one to talk.” You smooth your hand down the front of his uniform, plucking at one of the buttons, and he almost regrets not wearing that damn tie, but the pretty smile you send him makes up for it. “I’ll stop by around lunchtime. Pick something up from the diner after I’m done at the cabin.”

“Be safe,” you tell him, a demand more than anything else.

“Yes, ma’am,” he teases. That hand on his chest shoves him backwards, sending him stumbling out of the trailer, where he nearly crashes into Frankie, laughing. You pretend to look annoyed, unable to hide the twitch of your lips; Steve wants to kiss the smile off your mouth, but he can’t.

The kids all call out goodbyes from inside the trailer, some of them more colorful than appropriate, which he hears Frankie try not to laugh about behind him.

You linger on the porch as Steve follows Callahan down the steps to the cruiser parked in the gravel.

“You’re getting pretty domestic there, Harrington,” Callahan says as Steve pops open the driver’s side door of Hopper’s truck. The older officer leans against his cruiser and gives Steve a look over the top. Steve likes the insinuation even less than he does when it comes from Dustin. “Still gunning for that promotion, huh? What would the chief say if he saw you like that?”

With his daughter, is what Callahan doesn’t tack on, but Steve hears it anyway.

“Probably to mind your own damn business,” Steve tells him.

Callahan makes Steve pick up donuts on the way into town for being late. Or for telling him to fuck off. Either way, Steve doesn’t end up strolling into the station until half-past nine, arms piled with boxes from the bakery a few blocks down from the station. The girl behind the counter smiled at Steve when he walked in, immediately clocking his uniform and asking if he wanted the usual. Hawkins PD breaks less stereotypes than they do, that’s for sure. Though, Steve doesn’t mind too much about the extra stop. There’s an extra box of donuts in the backseat of Hopper’s truck, hidden under an emergency blanket. Something to bring home tonight.

Home.

He tries not to think too long about that, but can’t quite keep the thought from swirling around in his head as he shoves open the doors with an armful of baked goods.

There’s a stupid smile on his face when he finally drops the donuts off in the break door, but no one else manages to heckle him for it before Flo peeks her head in and calls his name.

Despite the routine nature of Flo gesturing for him to follow her, wanting to talk in private, there’s something about the look on her face that makes a foreboding feeling sink into the pit of his stomach. He chalks it up to the lack of sleep and his nightmare. It rattled him last night, and he had to leave you this morning. That’s going to make the day hard to get through.

Steve follows Flo out of the room, ignoring the look that Callahan and Powell share and the way Frankie snickers, like they’re still in school and Steve is being called to the principal’s office and scolded for something. He barely resists the urge to roll his eyes, not wanting Flo to catch him and chew him out for it.

She doesn’t lead him far, just a few steps out of the breakroom, away from any prying ears. Steve shuts the door behind himself, leaning against the wall with narrowed eyes. “Something wrong?”

The look Flo sends him is nothing short of exasperated, her lips pursed in the same way she does whenever Hopper asks too many questions instead of just shutting up and listening. Instead of answering she looks him up and down, scrutinizing him. “You’re late,” she tells him. “Hop is a bad influence on you.”

“Yeah. Probably,” he agrees. He crosses his arms. Flo wouldn’t bring him out here just to berate him for not being on time, so he tries again. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve received some strange calls this morning,” she explains, mouth still pressed into a thin line. “According to chief Hopper’s notes, they fall under your authority when he isn’t available.”

The tone of her voice lets Steve know she doesn’t agree with that. He can’t say he blames her. Steve is barely twenty-two. He’s one of the newest officers working for Hawkins PD and plenty of his colleagues don’t understand why Hopper defers to him so readily over officers that have more experience and a better track record. Flo had been the one to receive all of those noise complaints about the Harrington house when Steve was still in school, and while not unkind, she’s never let him forget it.

But aside from Hopper, Steve is the only one in the force who knows about everything that’s actually happened in this shitty little town over the last several years. And with Hopper away, there are no other options besides Steve when it comes to handling anything out of the ordinary. Nancy and Jonathan are both away for school. The kids are too young to be dealing with any this crap. And Steve tries his damn hardest to keep you out of things, even if he knows you can handle yourself just fine.

It makes him a little sick, thinking about anything happening to that trailer down by the lake and all those people in it that he cares about. Crowded and run down, but home.

Steve realizes he’s been quiet for too long when Flo looks at him expectantly. He clears his throat. “What kind of calls?” he asks, wondering what could be so strange about them that they’d fall under the category of things Steve needs to handle in Hopper’s place.

Briefly, his thoughts flash to missing people and murder dressed up as suicide before he forcibly shoves them down.

“Noises,” she says plainly. “Coming from the woods.”

“Noises?” he repeats. Skepticism all but drips from his tongue, and he’s aware of how much he sounds like Hopper in this moment. “Someone called about noises in the woods?”

Flo sighs. “The Mulligan boys have been calling all morning.”

She says Mulligan boys with a hint of distaste, and Steve can’t really blame her. There are at least five of them living down by Kerley, all with the same angular features and lanky build. They’re troublemakers, ever more than Steve used to be. It wouldn’t be the first time Steve’s dealt with calls involving them. Fireworks at midnight. Brawls. Public Intoxication. What’s unusual is that they’re the ones calling.

There must be a look on his face, because Flo continues, “they told me they heard something screaming out in the woods down by Kerley before the sun was even up this morning. Thought it was a fox. Or a mountain lion.”

“A mountain—there are no mountain lions in Indiana,” Steve blurts, needing to latch onto something other than screaming down by Kerley. The Byers don’t live near that road anymore. Neither does Steve, most of the time. But his nightmare is still fresh, and he’s never quite been able to scrub his mind of everything that was lurking in the woods there when he was still in high school.

“A bobcat, then,” Flo corrects, exasperated. “Or coyotes. I don’t know what those boys thought they were looking for.”

“They called because they think they heard an animal?” Steve asks, more to clarify than anything else. There’s still a tinge of skepticism clinging to the words. Or maybe he’s just being condescending. More likely, it’s false bravado. If he clings to cynicism and a barbed tongue, maybe nothing will happen. Hawkins is practically surrounded by miles of forest. Of course, there are animals wandering around in the woods. If he tells himself that enough times, maybe he'll start to believe it. “Thought that was the DNR’s problem, not ours.”

And Steve thinks about the black bear in his backyard that wasn’t a black bear at all, and it makes that churning feeling in his stomach just a little bit worse.

Flo doesn’t keep him waiting for an explanation. “They called because they said it wasn’t an animal,” she tells him, and Steve’s heart lurches. “Damn fools went looking for whatever it was to shut it up. They said they saw an eight-foot-tall wild man walking through the trees.”

As quickly as his heart leapt into his throat, he makes himself swallow it, forcing it to sinks back down to where it belongs. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face. It’s hits a little too close to home. A monster in the woods. The screaming he woke up to. The screaming that Will heard, too. Not just a nightmare rattling around in Steve’s head. Not a fox.

But he’s not sure how to navigate this without Flo thinking he’s crazy, so he lets his eyes roll, even as Flo sends him a disapproving look. “A wild man.” This time, he definitely sounds condescending. And he lays it on thick. It’s not the first time someone’s seen a “wild man” in Indiana, but none of those sightings have turned out to be much more than stories by drunks and potheads. Right now, he really hopes that’s all it is. “Did they say if they’d been drinking, too? I haven’t seen Tommy Mulligan sober since the tenth-grade.”

“Harrington,” Flo starts, and he already knows she’s going to tell him to just deal with it so they stop calling while she’s trying to read her book, or finish her crosswords, or whatever it is she does to pass the time on slow days.

“I’ll go check it out after I finish something for the chief,” he says. He needs to check around the lab first. Just in case. “If they call back, tell them it’ll be an hour or two. Okay?”

“Thank you.”

Steve starts walking backwards towards the front of the building. “I’ll radio when I’m headed to the Mulligan place. Have Callahan or Cooper meet me there.”

The clock on the wall catches his attention, and he winces when he sees it’s after nine-thirty. “Shit,” he hisses under his breath. Even if he finishes his rounds for Hopper early, there’s no way he’ll be back in time to meet you for lunch.

“Flo,” he starts, but she’s already waving him off.

“If she stops by, I’ll let her know there was an emergency call. I’ll tell her to wait in her dad’s office until you come back. Now get out of here.”

Steve doesn’t bother to tell her thanks.

The car sits idling on the side of the road for almost ten minutes before you finally work up the nerve to kill the engine.

A strange, foreboding feeling settled into the pit of your stomach after you dropped the kids off at the arcade. All six of them piled out of the car—Steve’s BMW, still well-loved, even if the kids have to squish to fit into the back now that they aren’t in middle school anymore, which is technically illegal, but between being one of Hopper’s daughters and Steve’s something every cop in town is willing to look the other way when they recognize the car—bickering about something that you didn’t bother paying attention to as you mentally filed through which boxes you needed to dig through. It wasn’t until you took the right off Denfield, the car creeping down that lone, dead-end road, that you felt ice starting to creep into your veins and churn in your stomach. It’s been a while since you’ve been out this far, this secluded from the rest of Hawkins. The trailer by Lake Tippecanoe is private. So is the Byers’ temporary house. But the cabin is a ten-minute walk through the woods this time of year.

There’s a part of you that almost wishes you had listened to Steve and brought the kids with. If only to fill the silence. The woods make you jumpy these days. Most things do, if you’re being honest. The only time you feel completely safe anymore is at home with Steve, or the kids, or your dad. You used to find comfort in being alone, but now the paranoia threatens to eat you alive when no one else is around. It would make you feel ashamed if you didn’t know Steve felt the same way.

It’s a gray day. The sky overcast; the threat of a storm looming overhead. A genuine blizzard, according to your dad. The worst of it always comes in January, and this year is proving to be no different. It’s only noon, but the lack of sun makes it feel like dusk.

You chalk the strange feeling up to how dark it is and throw open the car door. It takes another second until you can bring yourself to leave the warmth of the car, familiar and safe.

Instantly, the wind makes you wish you hadn’t.

You changed before you left: jeans, a thick sweater and a pair of even thicker socks, boots meant for hiking, and a too-big jacket you think might be Steve’s, but it was shoved to your side of the closet, so you took it anyway. If you try hard enough, you can almost pick up the faintest trace of his cologne clinging to the collar as you bury your nose into the warm fabric, blocking out the chill. The wind still makes you shiver. You curl your fingers into your sleeves, suddenly wishing you hadn’t forgotten your gloves on the counter as you were leaving. You didn’t notice they weren’t crammed into your pocket until you were dropping the kids off at the arcade, and by then you didn’t want to make the extra trip. Luckily, the cabin isn’t too far into the woods.

The snow is thick already. Deep enough that it reaches nearly to your knees. The idea of getting more makes your nose wrinkle, so you try not to think about it for too long. There’s nothing you can do about the snow. Truthfully, you won’t mind the excuse to stay inside, curl up somewhere with a book and something warm to drink. Or stay in bed with Steve for longer than either of you should. For now, though, you keep curses locked behind your teeth as you almost lose your footing.

There’s no path through the snow anymore. It’s been too long since anyone has been to the cabin, so the snow isn’t packed down in places like it was last year. It’ll make the boxes hard to move. Belatedly, you think you should have taken Steve’s advice and brought the kids with, but the whining wouldn’t have been worth it.

The walk from Steve’s car to the cabin is uneventful. There are animals skittering through the trees, small mammals that are moving too fast for you to keep an eye on, and the constant chatter calms you.

You’re careful as you step over the trip wire running along the tree line, still in place after all these years. A precaution, your dad calls it, even though there’s nothing in that cabin aside from storage items that have been forgotten for years. Nothing worth stealing, at the very least.

The cabin looks worse than the last time you saw it, even from the outside. The shingles are starting to fall. Parts of the wall look like they’re finally starting to rot, giving in after years of not being properly taken care of. Paint won’t be able to fix it. You’ll have to tear the walls down when you fix the place up. If you can even convince your dad to tear the place apart. At least the windows are still intact. If snow or animals were getting inside, you’d just have more problems to worry about.

The porch practically groans under you as you reach the steps.

Your fingers are starting to feel numb by the time you fish the key out of your pocket. The lock sticks when you try to turn it, but finally gives as you shove your weight against the door, forcing it open.

The wood floors creak under your boots as you walk deeper into the cabin. Dust coats the room in a fine layer. The floors. The furniture. It tickles you nose and makes your face scrunch with a sneeze that doesn’t quite come. There’s still some debris on the floor. Broken glass and splintered wood from when that monster came crashing through the roof. Hopper patched the ceiling, but didn’t sweep the floor. Instead, he just left the cabin to rot. Frozen in time in the months it’s been left unoccupied. It isn’t nearly as bad as it had been before El lived here back in 1984, but even a brief glance around the room tells you it needs a deep cleaning come spring.

It takes some effort to slide the chair and rug out of the way so you can pry open the hatch in the floor. The dusty, moth-bitten chair makes you grimace as you touch it, so you shove it aside as quickly as you can. The rug is kicked aside and shoved into a sad heap. It’s stained with something dark. Blood, maybe. Or some kind of thick, otherworldly ooze that makes your stomach twist sickly.

The box you’re looking for is buried in the storage space beneath the floor. Tucked between a box labeled “Nam” and a stained one with “43” scrawled across the side. The box you finally drag out is well kept. Plastic instead of cardboard. And when you pop the lid to make sure it’s the right one, you can’t help the gentle smile that curves your lips when you see the photo album tucked neatly on top. You’ll have to look through it later, after the kids have gone to sleep.

There’s a second box that you have to drag out, wincing as porcelain rattles inside. Old silverware clangs noisily as you deposit the box on the floor beside the storage hole. A quick peek inside shows that none of the dishes have broken. They’re fancy. All tucked into a pretty case. Sterling silver and the kind of plates that are too delicate to use in almost any situation, but you heard your dad mention them to Joyce in passing once, and thought you’d surprise them by getting them all cleaned up before the wedding.

Maybe you’ll be able to get El and Will to help you clean them up.

Both boxes are shoved to the side as you close up the storage space again, making sure the cover is sealed tight, just in case.

As you stand, you dust off your hands, lips pursing as you glance at the pair of boxes. You won’t be able to carry both at once without struggling. And the last thing you want is to haul those dishes through the woods only to drop them all halfway to the car. Resigned to taking two trips there and back, you grab the one with the dishes first.

Again, they rattle as you pick it up, huffing at the weight. And, again, you wonder if maybe you should have brought the kids with you for help. Lucas, at least, is sweet enough that he probably would have offered to help even without you asking. Mike and Dustin wouldn’t have been nearly as agreeable, though. And if you brought one with you, you’d have to deal with the other five as well. After everything that’s happened, the party rarely lets one person go off without the others. Lucas going with you wouldn’t have changed that.

You leave the door unlocked behind you after you jiggle it shut, unable to grab the key with the box in your arms and unwilling to put it down. It shouldn’t matter. You’ll have to come back anyway, and the chances of anyone else slipping into the cabin in the ten minutes you’ll be gone is slim, if not impossible. The cabin is well hidden, and there shouldn’t be anyone wandering around this part of the woods anyway.

It's difficult to get a firm grip on the heavy box in your arms, and your pace is slower than you’d like it to be, but you make it back into the woods without tripping the wire. Even in the faint light, your path is simple enough to follow. The matted down snow makes it easier to move, your steps more stable as you walk back to the road. The crunch of snow and the chattering of animals slip into a comfortable background noise.

It happens suddenly.

All at once, the forest goes silent. The chatter of birds and rodents stops abruptly. Every hair on your body seems to stand on end as you freeze mid-step, clutching the box tighter. There’s an unnatural stillness in the air, one you can’t quite explain. It feels wrong.

There was something Benny used to tell you when you worked at the diner—before everything. He was friends with hunters, and they used to come in, tell their stories. And they all said the same thing. The woods are never supposed to be silent. Quiet, yes, but never silent.

Still frozen, you strain to listen for anything, but there’s nothing but the faint howl of the wind and the crunching of snow under your boots when you shift your weight.

A strange sound comes from further into the trees to your left, quiet and muffled, almost like crying. Immediately, you want to run, instinct driving you to move, but your feet won’t unstick from where they’ve sunken into the snow. The noise whispers through the trees again. A whimper. Childlike and frightened. Your first thought is of Will all those years ago. A child lost in the woods. Scared. Freezing in the cold. Alone.

And you don’t think about it as you take a step off the path you’ve made. The porcelain plates clatter together, rattling in the otherwise still air.

Another whimper.

“Hello?” you call out automatically, voice a little bit shaky.

Another step.

The snow crunches under your feet. You don’t call out again, struggling to listen for those quiet cries, and you make it a dozen steps into the covered brush before you freeze up again. The whimpering is just as quiet as when you first heard it, so soft that it’s hard to pick up beneath the wind. Soft enough that you didn’t notice it right away.

The whimpers aren’t changing. Not in pitch. Not in length. Not in the time between them. It’s the same sound over and over, like a tape on loop, or one that’s gotten stuck and keeps repeating the same word, broken.

Again, that whimpering sound filters through the trees, right in front of you.

The wrongness of it is what makes you take a shuffling step back the way you came. Your pulse jumps. Ice fills your stomach, churning sickly. You don’t notice your breath quickening until it clouds the air in front of you, labored and heavy.

Slowly, you turn to the right, back towards the path you came from.

And then you feel it. The heaviness that comes with being watched.

Your head snaps up.

A pair of milky, silver eyes are already staring back at you. Beneath the waning light, they glow, large and set deep behind thick, matted hair, grizzled and stringy. Long, spindly fingers wrap around the trunk of a large oak tree. Claws the size of your fingers dig into the bark, leaving deep lacerations behind.

The air is slammed from your lungs. You don’t move. You don’t breathe. Those eyes lock onto yours, unblinking and so, so large, and it’s like you’ve been doused in freezing water. All at once, the pieces of you begin to shut down and lock up. The seconds bleed together, blurring and seeming to drag on forever.

It—whatever it is—is hunched over, half-hidden behind the tree and trying to make itself look smaller. Limbs are tucked against a grayish, naked torso. Pale and veiny. Built similar to the Demogorgon from years ago. Like you, it doesn’t move, so still you’d think it was some kind of sick hallucination if you believed your mind could ever conjure something so horrific.

Then, the creature cocks its head to the side, slowly. In your own voice, just like you did minutes ago, it calls out, “Hello?”

Time slams back into motion. Your weight shifts suddenly. Gravity rocks your heel back to the ground. Snow crunches beneath your boot. A twig snaps. The creature’s limbs unfurl as it stands, arms and legs unnatural and long, claws dragging against the top of the snow as it rises to a height much taller than you. Still hunched over, its back curved dramatically, with its spine bulging through that mottled, gray skin. Wiry, stiff spines protrude from each vertebra.

“Hello?” it calls out again, taking a step out from behind the tree.

The wind whistles through the trees, blowing your hair forward into your face. The stringy locks covering the creature's face shift with the gust. A maw of needle-like, crooked teeth. Its jaw cracks open. It screams for you, a horrific wail, drawn out unnervingly. “Steeeeve?”

The cardboard box you’re carrying crashes to the ground. Inside, porcelain plates shatter into pieces. The sound of broken glass echoes through the empty trees, splintering the silence. Before the monster can take another step, you whirl around and bolt.

Searching the forest behind the Mulligan property ended up being nothing more than a waste of time. Steve searched the woods with Callahan and Frankie Cooper for hours, trudging through knee-deep snow and trying not to freeze his ass off because Tommy fucking Mulligan thought he saw a monster in the woods. And Steve had believed it, too. Between his already frayed nerves and his own experiences with monsters, Steve would have been a fool not to take the claim seriously.

Fat lot of good that did him.

There wasn’t anything behind the Mulligan house. Not footprints. Not fleshy, rotting portals in trees, or oozing slime. No wild men. Just a half-eaten deer carcass and the smell of coyote piss. Tommy Mulligan hadn’t sobered by the time Steve reached the farm off Kerley. Technically, he hadn’t even stopped drinking. But he still insisted that he’d seen something lurking near the tree line. Too tall to be a man.

Callahan thought it was teenagers fucking around. Steve thought it was just the damn coyotes. Frankie nudged Steve in the ribs and suggested it might be a black bear, and Steve had to swallow down the acrid taste of vomit that welled up in the back of his throat.

When Steve finally gets back to the station, the sun is already starting to set. It’s low in the sky, and the already overcast day is only getting darker as the storm clouds start to roll in from the West. Snow has been falling for over an hour now, wispy flakes dusting the ground and growing thicker by the minute. There’s a solid inch or two of fresh snow in the parking lot, just enough to make the ground slick.

It’ll be a pain in the ass to deal with tomorrow, for sure.

He shoves open the front door with more force than he means to, cold and irritated and hungry—because dammit he missed lunch with you to stumble through the woods with Callahan on a wild goose chase. Of all things, that’s the worst part. Steve has gone out on bogus calls before, ones that waste his time and amount to nothing, but it’s one of the first times he hasn’t been able to meet you for lunch when you’ve promised to stop by. He always makes time for you, when he can.

Steve shakes off the snow clinging to his hair as he steps into the station. Automatically, he’s sweeping the room with his eyes, looking for you in the nearly empty room. You’re not sitting at his desk, like you do sometimes while you wait, leaving him little notes on sticky pads for him to find later. And your coat isn’t hanging from the rack. He can’t see down the hall into Hopper’s office, but somehow, he already knows you aren’t there.

Disappointment sits heavy in his chest, but Steve can’t blame you for going home already. You must have stopped by hours ago and gotten sick of waiting for him to come back from the call out at the Mulligan place. Sometimes, when you have the day off, you’ve lingered longer waiting for him to come back, but over five hours is a lot to ask.

“She’s not here, Casanova.”

The voice makes him flinch. Steve’s head snaps sideways to the desk where Flo is usually sat taking calls. Flo isn’t there though. Instead, it’s the lanky brunette that’s going to be taking Flo’s position as secretary come spring when the older woman is set to retire. She’s lounging back in her seat, feet kicked up on the desk as she chews bubblegum, looking bored out of her mind. Robin, he remembers. A year or two younger than Steve. She graduated from Hawkins High a few years back, went off to Berkeley, if he remembers right. She’s just a temp right now, working for winter and summer break while she’s in town visiting family.

It takes a second longer for her words to register. “What?”

Robin rolls her eyes. Her gum pops loudly. Steve has only been in the building for a matter of minutes and she already seems exasperated with his mere presence. “Your girlfriend,” she clarifies, speaking slowly and enunciating obnoxiously, “isn’t here. She’s not hiding under your desk or whatever it is you’re thinking.” There’s an implication there that she only catches after one of Steve’s eyebrows lifts towards his hairline, and her expression twists from boredom to one of utter disgust. “Oh, gross. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.”

Any other day, he might have laughed at the look on her face, but there’s something about what Robin says that trips him up before he can.

“What do you mean she’s not here?” he asks, a little redundantly. He guessed as much when he walked in. That’s not the problem. It’s the fact that she thought she needed to tell him that doesn’t sit right with him. Robin doesn’t come in until after three, when Flo leaves for the day. Usually, you’re gone by then anyway. Though, you’ve met Robin a few times when you’ve stopped during the afternoons, or dropped something off on those late nights when Steve works the midnight shift.

His question is rewarded with another eyeroll. This time, she even sighs heavily, like answering him is a chore. “What do you think it means, dumbass? She didn’t stop by today.” The disinterest in her expression shifts into an odd mix of amusement and sympathy. “You’re not having some kind of lover’s quarrel, are you?”

But Steve isn’t listening, still caught on, “she didn’t stop by?”

“Nope,” Robin pops the ‘p’. “And she always stops by, according to Florence—unless she can’t stop by, in which case you always make sure to mention it to someone—so whatever it is you did, you might want to hurry up and think of an apology.” Robin leans her chin on her palms, brows furrowing as she starts to ramble. “We’re talking grade-A groveling. Flowers. Dinner. The whole shebang. Because wow, you will not be doing any better than what you have now, Harrington.”

She doesn’t seem to notice that Steve still isn’t listening, or that he hasn’t moved at all since she started talking. Steve is frozen in front of her desk, eyes wide and a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Car trouble. It must have been car trouble. Or the kids whined until you gave in and hung out with them at the arcade all day. They’ve done that before. And you’re always a sucker for it, even worse than he is. You’d do anything for those kids, after all. You probably lost track of time, either with the kids or at the cabin. You’ve done that before, too. Sometimes, you get so wrapped up in what you’re doing that you don’t even realize how much time has passed. It’s one of those little things he loves about you.

It’s not until she changes the subject that his brain catches up with the conversation. “Also, you need to tell your children to stop calling the station.” She’s stopped grinning at him in that smug way. Instead, she just looks irritated. “We don’t need a bunch of teenagers asking for you and whining about needing a ride home on the emergency line, which is, you know, for emergency situations only. Also, aren’t they like seventeen or something? Why do they even need rides anymore? Why are you friends with so many children?” The rapid-fire questions only make him more confused. And Robin still doesn’t stop talking. “I had to tell them we’d send an officer to their houses to tell their parents to get them to knock it off. Seriously, Harrington, that shit cannot—hello! I’m talking to you!”

Steve isn’t listening anymore. He’s already halfway to his desk across the room before he even realizes he was moving. And then the radio the kids gifted him one year for Christmas is being yanked out of where he stashed it in one of the drawers this morning. It crackles to life as he turns it on.

“Hey! Dumbasses!” he snaps into the receiver, holding down the button so they can hear him. “What did I tell you about calling the station for stupid things when I’m at work, huh? You little shits are gonna get me fired one day.”

He takes his thumb off of the speaker button and waits for all of them to start chiming in with their excuses, and then frowns when they don’t.

Eventually, the radio does crackle, the signal somewhat weak with the distance. “Steve?” one of the kids asks. Only one of them. They aren’t all talking over each other, for once, and that only makes him feel sicker. And they sound scared, quiet and timid. More than Steve’s heard in a long time.

“Will?” he asks after a second, concern thick in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

The radio crackles with silence again. “Is…” Will starts, then stops. “Is she with you?” He doesn’t bother clarifying who, but Steve knows. “She dropped us off at the arcade before lunch and told us she’d pick us up in a few hours, but she hasn’t come back yet. We thought maybe she just stayed late with you after you guys got lunch, but…”

“She didn’t pick you up?” Steve repeats, strained, voice tight.

More silence. “No. Did… is she not with you?” Will’s voice is slightly higher than usual with the beginning note of panic.

Steve wets his lips. “She didn’t stop by earlier.”

“Oh.”

Steve’s hands are starting to shake. Will doesn’t say anything else, and Steve doesn’t want the kids to panic, so he forces himself to say something even mildly reassuring. “Shit. Look, she—she probably just lost track of time at the cabin? Right? You’ve been there. Place is a damn mess and Hopper can’t organize anything for shit. I’ll just go pick her up and we’ll be back before it gets dark. Okay? There’s some cash in the top drawer of the nightstand. Order a couple of pizzas or something for when we get back. I’ll stop and grab some movies on the way home, or something.”

“It’s supposed to storm soon,” Will reminds him.

“Yeah,” Steve manages to croak out. “Yeah, I know. Look, we’ll, we’ll be back in an hour tops. Okay? Just—just stay out of trouble until we get back.”

When Steve takes the right off Denfield, he immediately spots a lone car pulled to the side of the road. It’s his car. The red BMW is stopped close to the dead end, pulled partway into the ditch even though there’s never any traffic on this road. Steve pulls the truck up behind the car, cutting the engine and throwing open the door without a second thought.

There’s snow starting to pile up on the car. The windshield and roof are blanketed in a thick layer, evidence of just how long you’ve been here.

It’s starting to get even darker now. The last of the sunset is bleeding out, and the snow is getting thicker and harder to see through as it comes down faster. The world begins to white out, and he has to squint to see through the flurry. Steve fumbles for the flashlight attached to his belt, clicking it on and shining it through the windows of the BMW, though he already knows you aren’t there. If you ended up stranded out here, you probably would have gone back to the cabin.

When he confirms you aren’t huddled in the backseat, he steps away from the car and shifts his focus to the forest on his right. Slowly, he scans the ground for footprints in the snow. They’re there. Faint. Half-filled with fresh snow that just keeps coming down. But there. He knows the way to the cabin even if they weren’t there, but there’s something about seeing the tracks that make the knot in his chest loosen ever so slightly.

You were here, at least. And it seems like he was right. You made it to the cabin and just lost track of time, like you always do. Probably found some old photo album and got lost flipping through the pages. You’re sentimental like that sometimes. He just wishes you would have called, but you must have left the radio in his car, and you wouldn’t have been able to reach anyone with the phone inside anyway. Last he saw, it was smashed to pieces on the floor.

Following the tracks you’ve left behind isn’t hard. They’re the only ones in this part of the woods. He isn’t sure if the land is private property or if it’s owned by the state, but he’s never seen anyone else out here. There aren’t even deer tracks, which Steve might consider odd any other day, but tonight he barely notices, just keeps following your footprints like they’re a lifeline leading him right back to you.

The beam of his flashlight illuminates the darkness, reflecting off the snow and casting dark shadows against the trees as he walks. They flicker and shift with each step he takes, shadow puppets stalking him. He blames the ice in his veins on the dropping temperature, and keeps his head down so he doesn’t start looking for figures in the dark that aren’t really there.

Steve hasn’t been walking for long when he finds a strange spot in the snow. Where your footprints before were consistent and moving in one direction, each step you took clearly visible in the snow, there’s a spot midway between the road and the cabin, maybe five minutes in, where the footsteps start to overlap. He shines his flashlight further down the nearly invisible path between the trees, his brows furrowing.

There’s a second set of tracks coming back from the cabin.

They’re overlapping the original tracks, deeper and fresher than the ones that he’s been following. And they’re human.

The panic that bursts through his chest is wild and raw. It tries to climb up and out of his mouth, but sticks halfway as his throat closes up. He can’t breathe. That second set of tracks—your footprints—suffocates him. Because you came back. You were coming back. Maybe hours ago, now, because the tracks are filling in with snow just like the rest. And then they just stop.

It’s instinct that keeps him from shutting down completely as his nightmare from last night slams back into him. You were dragged away from him. Swallowed up in a vast nothingness. And there was nothing he could but watch. He’s been dealing with the strange, supernatural occurrences in Hawkins since he was a teenager, and he’s been working with the PD for nearly as long. Steve knows he needs to keep a level-head, for your sake, and the whisper of your voice telling him to be safe rings loudly in his ears.

Desperately, Steve sweeps his flashlight across the snow-covered ground. His hand is shaking again. He freezes when he sees more footprints, the tracks veering off the path to the left. They don’t go far. Only a dozen feet before Steve sees something in the snow, partly obscured by the snow. At first, he thinks it might be you.

It’s not, but it doesn’t loosen the tightness around his throat.

There’s a box on the ground. The cardboard is damp and broken open on one corner. Ceramic shards spill from the hole. Smashed plates, he realizes after a moment. Nausea hits as he immediately realizes where they came from. Out here, there’s only one place they could come from.

“Fuck,” he hisses between his teeth, passing his flashlight to the other hand and reaching for the gun attached to his belt. If you dropped the box like that, it means something grabbed you, or you ran before it could. Neither option is reassuring.

There’s no blood in the snow. A quick scan of the immediate area tells him that much. And he can see where your tracks veer off again, deeper into the woods, away from the road and the cabin. They’re spaced further apart than the others, and his teeth clench so hard that his jaw starts to hurt, because he knows that means you started running.

He doesn’t realize how quiet the forest is until someone starts screaming.

High-pitched shrieks echo between the trees, long and loud, and it’s in horror that he makes out the mangled sound of his own name. Like last night, the sound of your terrified cries smashes through his ribcage and rips at the soft tissue of his insides. Eviscerate him. Hollow out his chest until he can’t breathe.

And then he’s running.

The screams don’t stop. Choked sobs. Wordless cries. His name, mostly. Loud and unceasing. Absolutely gut-wrenching. Like you’re being eaten alive. Each wail rips through the woods, muffled and carried away by the wind, but Steve doesn’t stop chasing your voice as he stumbles through the snow, narrowly avoiding trees and thick brush.

The flashlight beam cuts between the trees wildly as he follows the sound of your screams, but something isn’t right. He can’t make out what direction they’re coming from. They keep swirling around, echoing through his head as if they’re coming from all sides at once. It’s disorienting. Steve spins in a circle, starting to feel sick as he calls out your name and prays that you’ll answer him—tell him where you are so he can find you.

Instead, the screams cut off abruptly.

In an instant, Steve feels the crushing weight of reality begin to collapse around him. Dread rolls down his spine. Silence rings loudly in his ears. So much louder than your screams. So much worse. In an instant, Steve prays to whatever deity is out there that you’ll start screaming again, prays that the sound of it will haunt him for the rest of his life.

In the stillness of the forest, the only sound is the wind howling between the trees. Even that seems far off, growing faint.

“Hello?”

All of his limbs lock up. Steve’s flashlight flickers.

The greeting is hesitant. Shaky, with a distinct crack midway through the lone word. And it’s so, so close. Breathed from the space right behind him, into open air. The shock of it makes his stomach flip and sends a shiver running along his spine, and it takes an agonizing second for the sound to slot into place.

It’s your voice.

“Steve?” you whisper again. Quieter. Closer.

Steve whips around to face the other direction. Milky eyes glint under the beam from his flashlight, like a cat in the darkness, surrounded by dark, scraggly locks of matted hair.

A gray, hulking shape lunges from between a pair of trees, and Steve shouts as it hurtles towards him, closing the distance before he can click off the safety and get a shot off. Instead, he throws himself to the side, tumbling down into the snow, but not before something sharp catches his arm. Claws slice through his jacket and uniform shirt. It hurts, he registers, somewhere in the very back of his mind, but it’s shoved to the side before he can latch onto the pain.

Despite the thick layer of snow on the ground, the breath is still slammed from his lungs as he hits the ground. The thing starts screaming at him. His name. Your voice. Just like a moment ago. Just like this morning. His nightmare and whatever was in the woods. Whatever Will could hear, too.

The screeches rise and rise in pitch until they make his ears ring, losing form until it’s not even his name anymore. Just noise.

He scrambles backwards through the snow, but can’t find his flashlight as he fumbles for it blindly, unable to see the creature. The flashlight is still on, lighting up the immediate area between flickers. Something moves at the edge of the beam, where light melts into the darkness.

Those pale eyes are glowing in the darkness. Steve gets a look at long, inhuman arms and legs and gray flesh pulled too taut over a spindly, skinny frame. It doesn’t have a face. Not one that he can see behind that matted hair or fur.

It shies away from the light, shrinking back between the trees, but it’s too tall to hide between them properly. Those empty, unblinking eyes watch Steve roll to his feet and raise his gun. His hands shake. It takes a second for him to unlock the safety.

The thing cocks its head to one side, one distorted hand curling around a thin tree trunk. Claws scrape the bark. Steve’s right arm throbs. Beneath his coat, his skin feels wet. His fingers are stiff as they shift to the trigger.

“Steve!”

The shriek comes from his left. His eyes flick in that direction for a split second.

A mistake.

The monster screams at him, low and garbled. It lurches out from between the trees, lunging. Steve stumbles backwards in the snow. Not fast enough. A burning feeling laces up his arm. Milky eyes bore into his. The stink of rot chokes his nose and throat. His foot catches, sending him hurtling towards the ground. The gun in his hand goes off. The shot echoing through the air. It’s the last thing he hears before his head slams into something hard.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #stranger things #steve harrington #st fic #stranger things fic #fic: into open flames

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