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maddiwrites · 3 years

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Gut Feeling

Pairing: John B Routledge x Routledge!Reader (Sibling Dynamic)

Summary: (Requested) As your older brother, John B tends to decide what he thinks is best for the two of you. Disregarding your concerns about Ward Cameron, John B decides it would be best for the two of you to accept Ward’s offer to be your guardian. Later, John B learns that he should he really trust his sister’s instincts.

Note: I linked the request in the summary. I’ll be honest I don’t think I did your request justice but I tried really hard to put my head where yours was at! Hopefully you like it! Let me know!!

Word Count: 3.8k

You and you brother are closer than most siblings. You think it’s because of how you were raised. Your mom abandoned you at a young age and your dad was inevitably neglectful from working back and forth between two jobs and spending most of his free time researching the Royal Merchant. That left you and John B to mostly fend for yourselves. With John B being a year older, you looked up to him as your best friend and protector.

Due to the spike in conflict between you, the Pogues, and the Kooks, and now the square groupers coming for blood because of your dad’s compass, you’re constantly seeking comfort in your brother’s side, feeling unsafe whenever you’re not around him. It wasn’t always this way. But now that you know your dad most likely didn’t disappear on his own, and people are looking for you and your brother for the compass, you felt scared and alone. The police won’t help because they think you’re nothing but a couple of trouble makers living on the Cut. Now you’re spending the summer fearing every day for you life.

It didn’t help that John B found himself in a scuffle with Topper and his girlfriend. Fighting with a couple of teenage Kooks should be the least of your problems, yet here you are, sitting on the edge of John B’s hospital bed.

Sarah’s here too and you wonder how deep her connection is with your brother. From what you know, they’ve only started hanging out a couple of days ago. And she’s still in a relationship with Topper, the kid who almost killed your brother.

“John B,” You say sheepishly, feeling weird and shy with Sarah being in the room. Like you feel forgotten. “We should go before DCS finds us here.”

John B nods. “Okay, grab my stuff in the closet over there.”

You nod and turn to grab his clothes that the nurses stuffed in a transparent plastic bag.

“Wait, maybe you should...” Sarah tries stopping John B out of concern for his well being. He was just diagnosed with a severe concussion and a broken wrist. She didn’t know how well he would do on his feet.

“Hold on there, sport,” Ward Cameron walks in with his hands tucked into his pocket and a smirk on his lips.

“Mr. Cameron...” John B says apprehensively and glances between him and Sarah. “What are you doing here?”

Ward explains that Sarah told him everything - how John B landed in the hospital because he was defending Sarah. How he was wrong for firing John B when he was honest with him from the get-go.

“I’d like to make up for it if you let me,” Ward says, peaking your interest. “I talked to Sheriff Peterkin...and I’ve offered to be your legal guardian if you’ll have me.”

You swallow nervously and turn to John B for some insight as to what he was thinking. Something unsettling rolled in the pit of your stomach. Your instinct has always been to never trust a Kook. They only look out for themselves. It’s just how it goes on this island. Therefore, you can’t help but question Ward’s intention. Why would he take in two more kids when he already had three.

John B looks between Sarah and Ward, but not you, and smiles at the offer. “Yeah, sure. Uh, sounds good.”

“John -”

“Okay,” Ward claps and cuts you off. “Then it’s settled. Welcome to the family.”

Sarah smiles excitedly down at your brother who offers the same grin. You feel Ward’s eyes on the side of your head as you look at the ground, suddenly feeling anxious about your new situation. Something didn’t feel right. You had a gut feeling. And usually, your gut is never wrong.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ward sets the two of you up in a room on the first floor. Until his second guest room is ready, you were asked to share a room with John B for the time being. Of course, you had no problem doing this. In fact, you wanted this, afraid of what might happen if you and John B were ever separated. You already felt a wall slipping in between you two. And that wall was Sarah Cameron. You didn’t want to thicken that separation even further.

It sounds crazy, but that’s just how scared you were.

“I don’t know about this, John B,” You say softly as the two of you unpack most of what you were able to bring from the Chateau.

“Why? It’s a roof over our head, in Figure Eight, no less. The guy may be an arrogant douche, but he’s not evil,” John B says. He didn’t understand why you were so hesitant to move in when the other alternative is to keep running from DCS.

“I don’t know. I just have a feeling...” You trail off when you come across a picture of you, John B, and your dad in a frame you tucked into your luggage. You focus on your dad’s smile and wonder what he would think of this - living on Figure Eight, pretending to be a Kook. “Just don’t leave me alone with him.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Little did you know, Ward was eavesdropping right outside the room. He was about to check up on the both of you when he heard you talking.

He clenches his teeth together and curses to himself. He didn’t like that you were apprehensive about his intentions - wondering just how far you were willing to divulge into your gut feeling.

He pulls out his phone and texts the people working for him that are responsible for getting your room together, asking them to speed up the process for a bigger pay. Getting the two of you apart would be better for him, thinks.

After he sends the message, he walks into the room and greets the two fo you. He notices your small side step closer to John B, hiding half your body behind his back. You were shy, he notes, which makes him feel a little better about the situation. But how long until you convince John B or your other friends about him?

“Good news,” Ward says, looking at you. “Just got word from the interior designers. They think they can have your room ready by the weekend.”

“Oh,” You say and glance up at your brother. “That’s okay. I don’t mind staying in here.”

“Oh come on. What teenager doesn’t want their own room?” Ward says. When you open your mouth to defend yourself, he cuts you off, deciding to use the guilty trip instead. “I think you’ll like it. These people spend a lot of time and effort into making it perfect. Rose and Sarah even helped.”

Of course that did it for you. You didn’t want to come off as ungrateful or rude by saying you still didn’t want the room. After all, so many people were involved in getting it perfect for you. And it’s probably going to be the best room you’ve ever had.

“Okay...” You say quietly.

“Great,” Ward claps his hands, feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders. The quicker he can keep you two apart, the better. “I’ll leave you two to unpacking. Dinner should be ready soon.”

When he walks out of the room, John B turns to look at you and says, “See? Harmless.”

Ward hears this and smirks to himself as he walks down the hallway.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

First night in your new room and it’s exactly how you expected it to be. Huge, beautiful, and filled with an abundance of new clothes and high tech furniture. In any other home, you’d be basking in the new luxuries presented to you, but right now, it felt like you were laying on a stack of needles.

You couldn’t sleep, constantly feeling like you were being watched. You kept looking at the ceiling, checking every corner for cameras or microphones. You flinch with each creak in the hardwood floor, even though it was probably only Sarah and Wheezie walking down the hall to use the bathroom.

Your heart was pounding in your chest and you began to sweat. Something didn’t feel right. You didn’t care if anyone in this house called you crazy. You knew something was wrong.

So you pick up your pillow and quietly open your door. You check the dark hallway for any sign of late night stragglers, then quickly tip toe downstairs to your brother’s room.

You tap on the door almost silently before opening it a crack. John B picks his head up, squinting at the light peaking into his room.

“Johnny...” You whisper.

“What?” His voice is groggy with sleep.

“I can’t sleep.”

John B grunts and rolls over to the opposite side of the bed and pats his hand on the open mattress next to him. “Get in.”

You quickly close the door behind you and hide yourself under his covers. A shy blush rushes up to your cheeks in embarrassment, hating how dependent you felt on your brother. “Thank you.”

“Just don’t hog all the covers this time,” John B smirks in his pillow, making you kick him playfully in the thigh. “Ow!”

“Shh!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later that week, you, the Pogues, and Sarah found the gold in a hidden well tucked under the Crain house. Excitement and glee overwhelmed you. You finally felt like you were getting somewhere and finishing what your dad started.

On your way home - home being Figure Eight - Ward walks out to greet the three of you after overhearing some of your conversation. Immediately the three you stop talking and pretend like you didn’t just make the biggest discovery of your life.

“Hey,” Ward greets them. “Where have you guys been?” He didn’t expect you guys to tell him, but he wanted to see just how far he was able to push you. The plan was to get you to trust him, well, maybe not you. He figured you were too far confident in your decision not to trust him. John B’s visions, however, may be a little clouded still.

He listened to Sarah and John B lie about spending the day on the beach and visiting Kie at the Wreck. He observed the way you wouldn’t make eye contact with him and how you hid yourself behind Sarah and John B. You still didn’t trust him. And that put him on edge.

“You know, I was thinking about taking the boat out early tomorrow morning. Why don’t you join me? My buddy brought home a thirty pound striper just the other day.”

“Tomorrow?” John B scratches his head awkwardly. Tomorrow, the six of you were supposed to pull out the rest of the gold. “I don't know...”

“Oh come on. What else you have going on?” Ward smirks. “I’m sure Sarah and Y/N can survive a couple hours without you.”

“Um...” You say quietly. You don’t know how your feel about Ward taking John B out with nothing but open water surrounding them.

“We’ll celebrate your freedom from DCS,” Ward says, again using the guilt trip, reminding John B of what Ward did for them.

John B sighs, knowing he did owe Ward everything. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”

“Okay. It’s settled then,” Ward smiles, feeling a sense of accomplishment that his neck plan was in motion. “I won’t hold you up any longer. Go on and do whatever you kids do.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The next morning, you wake up to John B’s alarm on the nightstand.The clock reads 3:15 A.M. and you heart immediately races with anxiety. You squeeze the covers around you in your fists and sit up as soon as John B does.

“Johnny -”

“You’ll be fine, Y/N,” John B sighs. You don’t know if he sounds tired or annoyed, but it makes you cower into yourself.

“What if I came with you?” You whisper.

“He didn’t ask you. He asked me,” John B says, somewhat enjoying the idea of being alone with Ward. It would give him a chance to really bond with his girlfriend’s father. To be more than just an employee to him. “Why are you so afraid of him?”

“There’s just something about him...” You trail off. “I don’t trust him. And I don’t like that we’re going to be apart.”

“You’re going to have to learn to live without me by your side 24/7 eventually. I can’t baby you all the time.”

“Baby me?” You repeat with a glare. The pit in your stomach grows with swirling nausea.

“Yeah. I get that I’m your older brother and all and I’m supposed to protect you, but you have to learn to take of yourself too.”

“I can take care of myself,” You say, but you don’t know who you’re trying to convince. Him or you.

“Then you should be fine without me today,” John B says before walking out the door to use the bathroom. “Now, go back to sleep. I’ll catch up with you guys later. If anything happens, just call me or the Pogues.”

You drop your head onto your pillow and let out a big huff of disappointment. Nonetheless, you shut your eyes and try to get a few more hours of sleep knowing you need to be well rested before pulling up hundred pounds of gold later tonight.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When you woke up, Sarah was gone. She had to take Wheezie to her surfing lesson because Rose had a couple of her friends over for brunch served with expensive champagne and fruit cocktails.

You hid yourself away in your room for most of the day, only letting yourself out when your stomach began to grumble and the sound of gossip disintegrated into nothing as the ladies left one by one.

You were constantly checking your phone, making sure John B never tried to call you with horrible news. You tried taking deep breaths throughout the day, telling yourself there was nothing to worry about. If John B felt safe, you should too, right?

Around 1 P.M., Rose walked into the kitchen after taking what sounded like a long phone call upstairs. You could tell something was wrong. She looked stressed, but you figured it was due to a lost pearl earring or dinner plans getting canceled.

When you met her gaze, you offered a smile and quietly continued to bite on your toast. She grinned back, although her’s felt force. You didn’t want to pry, only for the sole fact that you didn’t think you could feign interest in whatever the hell was bothering her today.

“Everything okay?” You eventually ask her.

“Yes,” She says. “That was Sarah. Her sister forgot a towel for her lessons. Do you mind going upstairs to grab one for me while I find my keys? They’re in the closet. Last door at the end of the hallway.”

You nod, not wanting to set the already high strung lady off even more.

You follow her directions to the end of the hall to the linen closet that was bigger than your regular closet back at the Chateau. You look around for the beach towels next to the bath towels, but seem to come up empty. No way Rose would let one of her white stainless fluffy towels out in the sunlight.

“Which towels were you -” You freeze when the door behind you shuts and you hear the sound of a lock being turned. You swivel on your heels and twist on the door knob but it barely moves. Your heart races in your chest and you bang your fists against the wooden door. “Hey! Hey!”

“Sorry, dear,” You hear Rose say on the other side. She doesn’t sound as tense, more like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders.

“What are you doing? Let me out!”

“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” Rose says. “You and your brother have left us with no other choice.”

Your blood turns to ice from your head down to your toes, going numb with all thoughts and movements, thinking about John B still alone with Ward somewhere out in the middle of the ocean.

“What are you talking about?” Your voice isn’t as loud, lost somewhere in the shock and disbelief. “Where’s John B?”

“You’ll see him soon. Probably with your father too I suppose.”

You brows furrow together in confusion as you listen to her six inch heels trail off down the hall and stairs. Your disbelief turns into fear and ice turns into boiling blood. You pound you fists against the door, twist and pull at the door knob, and scream at the top of your lungs for her to let you out.

You think about her words. John B and your dad. Could it be your dad has been alive all this time? Or did she mean something so completely opposite that it threatened both you and your brother?

You slap the door one last time, feeling exhausted and burned out. You fall against one of the shelves and cry into your hands, barely able to come up for another breath as sobs wrack through your entire body.

You don’t know how long you sit there. Without a window or your phone for that matter - you think you left it back downstairs - you can’t tell the time of day. For all you know, it’s about midnight and John B is dead alongside your father.

Your head falls back with a heavy sigh. That’s when you look up and see a square cut out in the ceiling. An attic.

You move quickly, pushing all the towels and bed sheets off the shelves. Heaving yourself up, using the shelves and the wall, you move the square ceiling tile to the side and use the open edges to pull yourself up.

The attic is about twenty degrees hotter and thick with humid. You hike over the luxurious items they consider “storage” to get to the single window. The sun is still up but slowly moving closer to the water.

The window is stuck with paint and takes a couple tries to push it up. The fresh breeze hits your face immediately, sending goosebumps up your arms and neck. You push your head out the window. About 8 feet below is a balcony outside the master bedroom. Its a big jump with a high chance you’ll break your ankle, but anything is better than waiting to see what Ward and Rose plan to do to you.

You pull yourself over the window sill and dangle by your arms. Taking a deep breath, you drop to the balcony with a thump that sends a shock up your legs from your ankle.

“Shit,” You curse to yourself.

“What was that?” You hear Ward’s voice from the other side of the french doors that lead to his bedroom.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” You mumble, already pulling yourself over the balcony, the only way to get away.

You look down before letting go of the ledge, falling straight down on the lawn, this time rolling your right ankle at an awkward angle.

“Motherfu-”

“Y/N?” Ward looks down from the balcony with wide eyes when he sees you curled into yourself on the ground below him.

With big eyes, you run far away from the house as fast as you can. A small limp in your foot slows you down, but you refuse to look back and see if anyone is following you.

You don’t know where you’re going, only that you need to find John B wherever he might be.

You run through the woodsy area, hoping to use the trees as camouflage. Fallen branches scratch at your legs, your ankle is aching, and your muscles are on fire. You can barely see your through your teary eyes. You’re crying but you don’t know why - was it the wind? Anxiety? Fear? Grief?

You know you’re getting closer to the Cut when Ms. Lana’s street comes to view on your right. You think about running up to her front door, asking for help. She’s always looked out for you and you have a sick thought that she might know more about this because of her husband.

Lost in your own thoughts, you don’t realize someone’s coming up behind you until two hands grab at your shoulders to turn you around.

A straggled scream rips through your throat and you immediately claw at the hands that touch you. Your first thought is that it’s Ward and he’s caught up to you. You don't know what his plans are for you, but Rose didn’t make them sound promising.

“Hey, Y/N, hey. It’s me! It’s me!”

You look up at the voice you know so well that instantly helps you calm down. John B, damp and smelling like the marsh, is arms length from you, watching you with big eyes and a heaving chest as he tries catching his own breath.

“John B?” You say.

“Yeah. It’s me. You’re okay. It’s me.” When John B sees you physically relax, he pulls you in to a tight hug and you can hear his heart thumping against his ribcage.

The second he learned what Ward did to your father, he tried getting away. And when he did, he immediately thought of you. What was going to happen to you - what if Ward gets to you first? He was on his way to Figure Eight when he saw you.

When you physically calm down, John B pulls away and says, “You were right. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. Ward - he killed Dad. He’s gone. I’m sorry.”

You cry harder for your dad, for John B, for your future. Just when you thought life was looking better, it came crumbling down.

“I’m gonna fix this. I swear to you. I’m not going to let him get away with this,” John B says, bending down to look you in the eyes. “And I’m not going to let anyone hurt you ever again. Okay? Look at me.” You force yourself to look at him and notice he’s on the verge of tears himself. “I’m going to take care of this.”

“How?” Your voice cracks.

John B has an idea in his head, but he knows you’ll never allow him to go through with it if you knew. “Do you trust me?”

You swallow the lump in your throat and reluctantly nod. “Yeah.”

“Good. We’re gonna go back to the Chateau, okay? Are you hurt? Are you able to walk there with me?” You nod. “Good,” He says. “Okay.”

“John B are you sure about this?” You ask apprehensively.

“I failed as your older brother once. I’m not going to do it again. Okay?”

You reluctantly nod. “Okay.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

#john b #john b routledge imagine #john b routledge #outer banks fic #outer banks imagine #outer banks #obx #obx fic #obx imagine

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saltymiraculer · 4 years

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Ceremonial Kisses (Part 2 of 3)

Ahhhhh, thank you for all the support I’ve gotten on this fic! It is with great pleasure I present to you *trumpet noise* Part 2 of Ceremonial Kisses!

I apologize for the huge wait, and I’m really sorry about my update schedule in general.

Also, you might notice that around the middle of this chapter, the writing gets a little bit choppy, and I’m super sorry about that! My apartment just decided to evict anyone with a cat, and I’m under a lot of stress right now. Thankfully, it gets smoother towards the end!

Happy reading!

Part 1 | Part 3

-🌸-

After ten minutes of gorging themselves on the Chinese equivalents of Kit-Kats and Lays chips, they pulled up to a hotel.

“Whaf, wewen’t we goih to da cashale?“ Nino asked, his mouth stuffed with cookies. Marinette shot him a disgusted look. He swallowed and took a swig of soda. “Wait, weren’t we going to the castle?“

Marinette had been thinking the same thing. This couldn’t be an ancient Chinese palace–it looked like a hotel!

“My instructions have changed. I was informed you would be staying at the Overseas Suites instead.“ The driver (she still didn’t know his name) said, pulling up to the front of the hotel.

As soon as they stepped out, they remembered that time zones existed.

It was 5:00 PM there.

They were going to be up all night.

The driver handed Marinette a gold-embossed business card with a phone number written on it.

“Call me whenever you need a lift, miss Marinette.“ He stepped back into the car and drove off.

Marinette shrugged and stuffed the card in her pocket. “Well, that was weird. Let’s go inside now, it’s freezing.”

As soon as they walked inside, Bustier scurried up to them.

“Where were you? You had me worried sick!“

Before anyone could say anything, the chauffeur from earlier appeared.

“I am Marinette’s uncle, ma’am. I heard she was going to be staying in China for a week and I just had to see her. The school was informed that I would be picking her and her friends up.“

“Oh–well–you still should have told me where you were going!“

“But shouldn’t you have already known?“ Marinette asked sweetly. “I mean, you were informed of it, weren’t you?“

Ha. She had her there!

“W-well, yes, technically, I was…but it’s time to go to your rooms! Off you go, everybody!“

“Oh, wait, I’m sharing a room with Marinette, right?“ Alya asked.

“Yeah, I think so.“

“Shit. Guys, I’ve got to share a room with Adrien. Say your prayers, ‘cause I don’t know if I’ll make it out alive.“

Oh, right. I guess it’s time to explain.

Adrien had stayed with his “high road” approach, but not in the way that she had expected. He started treating Lila to lunch, buying her jewelry, asking her to school dances, the whole shebang.

But it was all so forced that nobody believed any of it, and one day, all the ‘affection’ had just stopped.

Lila milked it for all it was worth, blaming Marinette and Nino and Alya, and the president of some far-off African country, and Adrien...

Something changed.

His face was more gaunt and his cheeks were more hollow, and he barely ever talked to anyone, just shrugged them off and turned away.

He was, to put it frankly, terrifying.

Which was not good for Nino at all.

“Oh, I’m sorry, class, but Ivan will be sharing a room with Nino. Adrien and Nathaniel will be roommates.“

All three of them heaved a sigh.

“Okay, so I’m sleeping tonight, that’s a plus.“ Nino joked. “What are we doing for dinner?“

“Um, I think Bustier said there was food already in the rooms. There are kitchenettes and, like, boxes of pasta and stuff. The trip was sponsored by–“ Marinette suddenly froze. She was contemplating how to finish her sentence when Alya finished it for her.

“–By your family, right?“

“Yeah. It feels so weird to say that, like–me? A princess? I’d probably trip over my own dress.“

“I know what you mean, girl. Now, let’s go get some food.“

After scurrying back up to their respective rooms and scarfing down some fettuccine, they fell asleep almost immediately, despite it being only about 3:00 in Paris.

Which, in hindsight, was probably why they woke up at two in the morning and started eating Cheerios with chocolate milk.

“Marinette, it’s so early!“ Alya said, stretching her arms towards the ceiling. “What should we do until it’s time for the first tour?“

“Wanna play Uno?“

And play Uno they did, a six-round monstrosity that lasted five hours and many draw-four cards.

There was a knock on the door and they both whipped around. “Girls, are you awake yet?“ a muffled voice asked. “You have to be down in the lobby in ten minutes!”

Alya and Marinette looked at each other. “Shit!” they yelled, jumping up and grabbing clothes out of drawers. They took the elevator down to the lobby after getting dressed, only to face something that made them wish they hadn’t.

Lila.

“And since the princess was so touched by what I did for her, she told me that she’d grant me any favor!“

“So…what was the favor?“ Mylene asked, inching closer.

“I asked her to bring our class on this trip, of course! Because I love my friends–unlike some people.“ She tilted her head in Marinette and Alya’s direction.

“When did you get here? Were you eavesdropping on our conversation?“ Kim shouted.

A few of them turned pink and tried to turn away.

“No, but I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of other horrible things about ourselves from you guys on this trip.“ Marinette said.

“Oh, get over yourselves! Lila’s the one who got us here, and she can kick you out just as easily. Right, Lila?“

“Of course! Marinette, I really want to be friends, but after the way you’ve treated everyone, it’s only fair I had to do what I did!“

“Oh? And what exactly did you do?“ Alya challenged, putting her hands on her hips. Alix smirked and nudged Kim with her elbow.

“Let’s just say…some of the tours might not be for you.“ Sabrina interjected, swiping something on a familiar white tablet. Marinette’s eyes widened. “Did you steal Bustier’s tablet just so you could take us off the tours? You risked suspension for that?!”

“Well, Mari-nette, you should be surprised to know that some people are willing to take risks for their friends.“ Kim snapped over his shoulder, earning many a nod from Lila’s entourage.

“Kids!“ Bustier yelled, startling them all. “What are you doing with my tablet?“

“Um–uh_Marinette stole it and threw it to us!“ Lila replied nervously.

Everyone turned to Marinette. “Marinette, I expect better from you! You just earned yourself a week of detention when we get back to Paris.“ She whisked the tablet out of Sabrina’s arms before Marinette could protest, and turned around, taking a deep breath.

When she faced the class again, she had a smile back on her face.

“Okay! Today, we will be touring a replica of one of the ancient Chinese palaces. Please behave yourselves.“

She started walking out, and the class followed her, Alya and Marinette tagging behind. Nino joined them soon after.

“So, that was weird.“

“No kidding.“

Once they had stepped off the bus in front of the palace, everyone stopped. Of course, they had all done a bit of googling about the places they would visit, but seeing everything live and in person was taking it to a whole new level.

“Whoa,“ they whispered. Even Lila, who wanted nothing more than to break something, was dumbfounded by this wonder of architectural beauty.

Miss Bustier was the one to break the silence. Clearing her throat, she said “Well, shall we head inside?”

As they shuffled inside, Marinette secretly wished she had about eight more eyes so she could take in everything she was seeing. But she had to be on high alert, Lila and her crew were sure to pull something nasty.

“Ah, and this,“ Bustier gasped. “This is one of the things I was looking most forward to seeing.

“As you all know, the princess will be coronated soon, and this is exactly why I wanted to take you here. This is a replica of an ancient Chinese coronation hall, isn’t it breathtaking?“

Lila snapped out of her trance and elbowed Kim, whispering something in her ear that made both of them snicker.

“Hey, Marinette!“ he yelled, running up to her. “What are you doing?“ Marinette watched in horror as he pushed a porcelain vase off of a pedestal, backing away immediately so she was the only one in the area.

Everything seemed to go in slow-motion after that.

Everyone in the room turning to them.

Lila’s grin turning up towards her ears in an almost Grinch-like fashion.

Marinette diving to catch the delicate artifact and balancing it in one hand just before it smashed on the floor.

Security appearing to lecture them.

“Now, miss, what you did was punishable by law,“ one of them said. “And by nature I’ll have to ask you and your whole gang to leave, if you don’t want the royal family to press charges.“

“The-the royal family?“ Lila squeaked. Marinette sighed and stood up.

“I’m sorry, sir,“ she said, hanging her head.

“Wait just a second!“ Someone in the crowd yelled. “That guy in the red hoodie pushed it–I saw it with my own two eyes! The girl saved the vase!“

“Yeah, why don’t you go check the security cameras? I’m sure the girl was the one who stopped it from breaking!“

“No, no, I’m quite sure I saw Marinette push the vase.“ Bustier interrupted. “She’s quite the troublemaker, and it wouldn’t be inconceivable for that to happen.“

“I’m terribly sorry, miss, but only once we review the security footage can we make a decision.“

They left with a promise to return as soon as they were done, and everyone started at Marinette.

Nino was the first to speak.

“Alright, who’s gonna fess up? Marinette didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, Alya didn’t do it. So who did?“

Marinette saw the look on Lila’s face. There was no wriggling out of this one.

“Kim did it! I saw…he tried to warn Marinette about a huge bug, but she had this evil look on her face and moved out of the way…and Kim accidentally pushed the vase.“

“What?! That never happened.“ Nino said, crossing his arms.

“Yeah, I was there the whole time, and there weren’t any bugs.“ Alya said, leaning against a wall. “Give it up, Lila. The security guys’ll be back in a minute.“

“Actually, we’re already here.“ said a deep voice. “The boy’ll need to come with us.“

“Oh, please don’t!“ Bustier cried. “He’s only a kid, he didn’t know any better!“

-🌸-

“I’m sorry, miss, but the security footage suggests otherwise. Though, if you pay a fine, all charges will be dropped.“

“What’s the amount?“ She asked nervously, pulling out her checkbook and hoping euros would translate into whatever the Chinese currency was.

“794.71 yuan.”

“Do you take euros?“ Caline asked weakly. Nino glared at her, and several of her students looked dumbfounded.

“You didn’t bring Chinese money…on a trip to China?! Even Kim brought some!“

Kim suddenly looked scared. “I don’t have to give up my money, do I?”

She sighed. “No, you don’t. If anything, Marinette should be the one paying. How much is that in euros?“

“100, I believe. We do take euros, if you’ll follow me.“ She sighed and shrugged.

“Kids, please don’t push anything else over. I’ll be right back.“

-🌸-

As soon as Bustier hurried away after leading them outside, everyone glared at Marinette except Alya and Nino. Lila still didn’t understand why they had left her, Alya had just stormed up to her one day and yelled, but that was besides the point.

“Marinette, how could you blame this all on Kim? Now Miss Bustier has to pay eight hundred euros!“ Lila cried, earning Marinette a few glares.

She smirked inwardly. Now, if only she could have gotten Marinette arrested…

“Eight hundred yuan, Lila. It’s only a hundred euros, and besides, it would have cost much more if Marinette hadn’t caught the vase.“ Nino said, crossing his arms.

“Yeah, but she’s gonna call my mom. Do you know how long she’s gonna ground me for? Thirty years!“

“Marinette, what is wrong with you?“ Alix accused. “You seriously need an attitude adjustment. And I think I know just what we need to adjust.“ She whispered something into Lila’s ear and smirked.

“But hey, all disagreements aside, do you want a drink?“ Lila asked, shoving Marinette backwards. She stumbled a bit, and Nino and Alya tried to stop her, but she fell back into a large fountain and emerged a second later, sopping wet.

Her hair had come out of the bun, her makeup was running, and her clothes were soaked through.

Everything was going according to plan. “Oh, Marinette, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…I was only trying to squish a mosquito!”

“Mosquito?“ Marinette seethed through gritted teeth. Her expression was terrifying.

Lila backed away, as did most of the class. “This was one-of-a-kind, Lila. You ruined it. Chloé should know!“

Everyone turned to Chloé for an answer to the nonexistent question. “I didn’t get her that shirt on purpose! My mom did!” She yelled, ducking into a bathroom. Lila shrugged.

“Marinette!“ Bustier screamed, appearing at just the right time. “What are you doing?!”

Lila interrupted Marinette before she could even speak. “Marinette was trying to push me into the fountain, but I dodged.“ She glanced to the side, where Nino was helping Marinette dry off with handfuls of paper towels. She frowned, then looked over at Alya.

Bad idea.

“Miss Bustier, I have a question. Why would Marinette, one of the most non-violent people we know, try to push Lila into a fountain? Especially after she was just proven innocent? Do you really think that she would compromise her innocence like that?“

Miss Bustier looked alarmed. Lila gritted her teeth–she would have to lay low for a while if she wanted anyone to believe that Marinette would do anything wrong.

They're such idiots, she thought to herself. I’ve got practically the whole class under my thumb.

“Lila? Are you coming? We’re going back to the hotel so nothing else gets damaged.“ She shot a pointed look at Marinette, who was dripping all over the floor.

“O-of course, Miss!“

They caught a bus back to their resort, and Lila was delighted to see that Nino’s efforts had come to no avail trying to distance Marinette from the older men who approached her from behind.

-🌸-

“Marinette, I can’t believe that little liar.“ Alya said, seething. “She must be getting cocky. Like a game of ‘catch me if you can.’ She’ll have to lay off you for a few days if she wants anything to be believable, though.“

Marinette was toweling off her hair, deep in thought.

“This isn’t like her. Normally, she would stop after the vase and lay off for the rest of the day, maybe badmouth me a little at dinner, but know when to quit.“

“Well, I think you should just bop her in the head with your yo-yo.“ Alya added.

“Agreed!“ Trixx squeaked.

“I don’t normally condone using the Miraculous for selfish purposes, but I’ll let this one slide. You know what to do, Marinette! Get those spots on!“

“Guys,“ Marinette sighed, tossing the towel onto her bed. “That’s not the point. I just want a peaceful few days before I have to deal with her again. Is that too much to ask?“

“Not at all, Marinette!“ Tikki said, nuzzling her cheek. “Just know that I’m always here if you need me!“

“Thanks,“ she whispered.

Two Glorious, Lila-free days later...

“So, Marinette, it’s your free day!” Tikki chirped, patting Marinette’s face. “What do you want to do?”

“Sleep,“ she grumbled.

“No, silly! I mean after you visit your family!“

Marinette bolted upright. “What?!”

“You didn’t remember? You’re supposed to meet your biological parents today for brunch at 10.“

“And what time is it now?“ She asked, jumping out of bed to see if Alya was awake.

“5:30.“

“So I only have four hours to get ready?! That’s not nearly enough!“

“Marinette...? Why are you up so early...?“ Alya mumbled sleepily.

“I’m meeting my family!“ she squawked.

Alya sat up and put on her glasses. “Oh. Want me to help you get ready?“ she asked, walking over to the kitchenette for a glass of water.

“That would be great. Now, can you hurry up!?“

Alya took a long sip. “Calm down, Marinette. Do you want them to think you’re nervous all the time? You don’t want that in a princess. Take a deep breath.“ Marinette glared. Taking a deep breath, she focused on how tranquil she would be.

Her mom would probably be there. Wait–mom–not really her mom, but who she...used to think her mom was? Agh, now she was nervous again!

“So, Marinette, what do you want to wear? Something more traditional, or something that’s a little more...you?“ Alya asked, setting her empty cup down on the counter.

“I don’t want to offend them by just wearing, like, a nice blouse and jeans...but I don’t want to overdress. What do I do?“

Alya munched on a bagel thoughtfully. “Do you still have that qipao dress from a few months ago? The pretty pink one with cherry blossoms on it?“

Marinette nodded and pulled a blur of pink fabric out of her suitcase. She shut the bathroom door, and when she came out a second later, she thought that maybe she actually had a chance to make a good first impression.

On her mom.

Hoo boy.

-🌸-

When Marinette stepped out of the bathroom, Alya immediately started squealing. “Marinette, you look perfect!”

The outfit was simple, no more than a short-sleeved, a-line dress if not for the neckline, which resembled a traditional qipao, adorned with tiny embroidered flowers.

Marinette twirled around. “You like it? I was thinking of wearing those light pink heels. What do you think?”

“Do it.“

🌸 at brunch because op sucks 🌸

“Good morning, miss. Where are you headed today?“

Marinette glanced down at the little card in her hands. “The east dining room, please.”

The man at the desk raised his eyebrows so high they were in danger of disappearing into his curly grey hair. “Right this way, your Royal Highness.” he said, pointing her towards an entryway with a significantly fancier arch than the rest.

She walked down a seemingly endless hallway, wondering when she would get to eat, when the narrow room exploded into a dining room larger than her house.

“Ah, hello…Marinette.“ a peaceful voice greeted her. “I’ve been waiting for you!“

“Hi.“ was all she managed to squeak out. The lady in front of her was stunningly beautiful, with black hair that fell in a curtain down to her waist, wearing nearly the same dress as her, but in what looked like red silk.

“Sit, please!“ she said eagerly. “I’d love to get to know you.“

Marinette awkwardly positioned herself in ont of the high-backed chairs.“Okay.“

The lady sat on the chair opposite from her. “My name is Fei. I’m so sorry to have just...left you with my cousin for years, but I really do hope you can forgive me. This is all a bit hectic–trust me, I know–but I believe that if we can get along, this will go smoothly. What do you say?”

Fei had a warm smile, but there was a nervous undertone to her words. She had felt that way before, and a new feeling coursed through her body. Marinette moved forwards forwards and hugged her. “I’d like that.”

She seemed surprised at first, but hugged her back immediately but then let go almost as fast. “Look, I’m just ecsatic, about this, but if it’s uncomfortable calling me ‘mom’, or anything else, I need you to know that it’s okay. You can call me Fei, you can call me mom, you can call me māmā, anything you want. Okay?”

“Thank you.“ Marinette said, looking down. “It’s nice to know I have you. I think it’ll take a while for me to…adjust, but I’m so happy to know that you’re okay with that. Now, can we stop being so serious and eat?“

She beamed. “That sounds great, Marinette!”

After a few minutes of slightly awkward eating, Marinette cleared her throat. “So, other than the whole coronation thing, are there any other princess-y things I’ll have to do while I’m here?”

Fei choked on her water. “Actually…” she coughed. “I’m glad you asked. See, this is only day three of your 10-day trip. We need to get outfits, jewelry, speeches, everything prepared, and I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it all in time.”

Marinette was soeechless. This was unexpected.

“But that’s not all. I have to intruduce you to my mother, my husband, the whole royal family. “ She was sounding increasingly stressed with each sentence. “Everything has to be taken into account.“

“Hey, it’ll be okay!“ Marinette assured. “Things happen. They’ll sort themselves out. I promise.“

“I know. I have to be calm and levelheaded, or else my mom will take over. If that happens, you’ll end up naked at your coronation, or worse, if my husband takes responsibility, he’ll give it to my mom three days later. Do you know what I mean?“

Marinette nodded. “I know, but sometimes things will just happen. But other times, you have to work for them, you know? As long as you don’t give up on it, it will work out. I promise.”

“Hah–usually I’m the one giving the pep talks. Thank you, Marinette, I-I really needed that. How about you go and…meet up with some of your friends? No use in talking to a boring old lady any longer. Go on!“ she said, motioning towards the door.

Marinette turned back and smiled. “Um...bye, I guess!” she murmured, waving.

-🌸-

“So, Alya, when’s Mari getting back from breakfast with her peeps?” Nino asked as they walked down the street.

“I don’t know. I’ll text. If she replies, she’s free. If she doesn’t, she’s still the–“

“Hey guys, what’d I miss?“ Marinette asked, appearing in front of them. he screamed. “Where did you come from?“

“Brunch.“

“Marinette? You’re already done? We were about to go check out some of the tourist shops.“ Alya remarked, scrolling through something on her phone. Nino rolled his eyes.

“We were going to text you, but since you’re already here, what do you want to do?“ he questioned. Marinette fidgeted with her dress.

“Actually, that sounds fun. Which ones were you thinking?“

“Um, there’s actually one right there.“ Nino said, pointing around her to a shop with neon signs covering the whole window. “It looks fun.“

“So let’s go!“

They walked into the shop, the door jingling cheerfully behind them, and immediately things started catching their eyes. “Oh. My. God. Nino, are you seeing these?” Alya blurted. “They have Carapace merch. We’re world famous!”

Marinette was examining a bracelet with plastic rhinestones on it. “This looks like the bracelet from yesterday’s museum. Isn’t it pretty?” She dug through the bin. “Oh, they have other replicas, too? Awesome.”

Nino walked around, perusing the shelves, not really finding anything that sparked his interest. He picked up a trinket here and there, maybe checked a price tag, but wasn’t very interested. But then he saw it.

“An authentic OctoInk ‘I ain’t callin’ you a truther’ t-shirt? The printing block had an extra line, and only 47 of these were made!“

“Dude.“ Alya and Marinette whispered simultaneously.

“Um, how much is this shirt?“ Nino asked innocently, showing it to the girl at the register. She looked up uninterestedly, blowing a bubble with her gum.

“8 yuan.“ She scoffed. “Like that thing would sell for any more.“

“Hey, this is a nearly one-of-a-kind piece that–mmph!“

“Don’t tell her it’s supposed to be expensive!“ Alya hissed in his ear. “That’s the opposite of what you do!“

Wayzz poked him from his pocket. “She is not wrong, Nino. Purchase the shirt for eight yuan, if it makes you so happy.”

“I’ll take it.“ he said. Marinette put her bracelet on the register with an ‘eh, what the heck?‘ sort of expression. Alya placed a tiny glass turtle on the counter, and Nino felt a flush spreading over his face.

Alya smiled.

-🌸-

“So, Marinette, why did you get that bracelet?“ Alya asked once they had left the shop. “It looks pretty real, but you have way nicer jewelry at home. Like the necklace you wore this morning?“

“Yeah, but this one looks like the one from the museum. I know it seems silly, but it feels special.“ she said, twisting it around her wrist.

“Nah, I get it. And speaking of special, here comes a special little liar.“

Marinette’s head straightened immediately. “Aw, shit. And here I was thinking this would be a nice day.“

“Oh, hello, Marinette!“ Lila purred, snaking into the space between Nino and her. “I love your bracelet. It looks expensive…“ and with that, she sauntered away, all other interactive possibilities completely wasted.

“Well, that went better than I’d hoped.“ Nino chuckled.

“Ooh, Nino, there’s an art gallery! Want to check it out?“

“Sure thing, babe!“ He turned to Marinette. “Wanna come?“

“You can go without me, I’m going to get a bite to eat.“

“But–didn’t you just get back from–never mind.“ They walked into the gallery, chatting about who-knows-what.

Marinette spun around, and immediately someone on a blue bike yelled a split second before they knocked her over.

“Aaaack, my bike!” A male voice yelled. Marinette tried to open her eyes and stood up. A pale boy with bangs that hung over his eyes stared at her. “Sorry, I guess…”

Marinette stared back. “Okay?” she whispered. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a free day after all.

Just as she was about to ask for his name, her stomach growled like an angry Godzilla.

He chuckled.

“You wanna grab a bite? I know a place.“

“Sure. What’s your name?“

“Jianyu.“

“Marinette.“

He opened the door to a little sandwich restaurant and walked in, but let it swing shut behind him in Marinette’s face. Rude. Once they were seated and Marinette was starting to get a little annoyed at him–it was like he didn’t even notice her–he decided it was time to order.

Jianyu snapped at one of the waitresses to get her attention and whistled to get her to come over. She walked over with a pained expression on her face, then plastered on a smile.

“How may I help you today?“

“I’ll have pork dumplings and a Pepsi, the lady’ll have the chicken salad.“

“Actually, I was going to get–“ Marinette started.

“Sorry, sweetheart.“ he said, shoving the waitress away and turning back to her. “But why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself while she’s gone?“

I know that when I’m crowned princess, I’ll kick your scrawny ass, she thought. But she didn’t say that–in fact, she didn’t say anything, just got up from her chair and knocked Jianyu’s water glass down his front.

She swept out of the store before she could hear his cursing.

Yeah, that date was over.

And–being Marinette–as soon as she stormed out of the restaurant, she slammed into a cute girl with her wavy black hair in a ponytail, wearing leggings and a red hoodie.

“Oh, no, are you alright?“ she gasped, checking Marinette over for injuries.

“I’m fine.“ Marinette grumbled. She wasn’t in the mood to meet anyone else she bumped into, not if they were going to be like him.

“You don’t sound fine. I’m Chuntao.“

“Oh–um, I’m Marinette. Little tip, don’t go in there unless you like being catcalled.“

Chuntao frowned. “Hm. I think my brother told me he was going there for lunch–I wouldn’t put it past him to do that.“ She walked in and came out a second later, dragging Jianyu out by the ear.

“What do you have to say for yourself?“

“Marinette!“ he shouted. “I didn’t do anything! Back me up!“

“You called me ‘sweetheart’.“

“Mom’s gonna kick your ass,“ Chuntao growled, letting go of Jianyu’s ear. He scampered away, and she turned back to Marinette, rubbing her temples.

“I’m so sorry for him, but you seem like a really cool person. Can I get your number?“

“Y-yeah, totally!“ Marinette swapped phones with Chuntao, slightly dazed. She handed her phone back and waved.

“Thanks, Marinette! Text me later!“ She yelled, jogging away.

“See you…”

“So, who was that?“ Alya asked, appearing at her shoulder.

“Waugh! Alya! You know…maybe we should sit down first.“

-🌸-

“So…what if I’m gay?“

Alya and Nino simultaneously choked on their drinks.

Alya dabbed at her face with a napkin. “Marinette, darling, may I know the circumstances that have led you to entertain this line of inquiry? Because what the fuck?”

“Tell me all about her.” Nino said, resting his chin in his hands.

“Well, she saved me from a really sucky dude,“

“Hm. So she’s already a nice person.“ Alya remarked.

“And she’s super pretty,“

“So are you, honestly. But that’s off-topic.“

“And I haven’t had a real crush on a boy, like, ever,“

“And you went out with Kagami a few months ago, too. That settles it, Marinette! You are most definitely likely probably gay!“ Nino announced, raising his virgin Piña Colada in a toast.

Alya clinked her Shirley Temple against Marinette’s glass. “So, Marinette, it’s your free day. Only 48 hours until the coronation. How are you feeling?”

“Honestly, I d–“

“Hands in the air!“ an amplified voice screamed. “You’re under arrest!“

Tags: @professionalfangirl1738 @kuroko26 @k-poplunardreams @smolplantmum @heaven428 @briareris @dnsakina @purplesundaze @bloodydragon000 @mimika-28 @strawberrycheesecakebar @k-laconia-bug1@kristycocopop @abrx2002 @wannajointhecrabcult @mochegato @lozzybowe @ozwaltwashere @flufflepuffle296 @fandom-trapped-03 @nanakeid @hetalia-lover-is-here @futursworld @pale-lady-dreamer @susiej1118 @lostinthewrongfandom @fantasyfandommaiden @aestheticnpoetic @feliciakainzofspades @schrodingers25 @echpr

#ml salt #ml salt fic #marinette dupain cheng #marinette deserves better #alya sugar #nino sugar #lila salt #lila bashing #ish #adrien salt #adrien bashing #again ish #marinette the princess of china #chuntao song #miraculous salt #miraculous ladybug #class salt #the kwamis just kinda dont exist in this chapter #~gone~

488 notes · View notes

augment-techs · 3 years

Note

I DON'T KNOW HOW THE WRITING PROMPT MEME WORKS REALLY

but it's WAYYYY too CUTE to not do. Sooooo how about I toss ya some numbers! ^^

Hand holding: 12 and 10! 33,

Hugs: 2, 18, 27

Hope it isn't too much!!! ^^

Kim was emotionally fluctuating between feeling sorry for Tommy, and trying not to go into shock whenever she walked into a room and found her older, alternate universe, badass-self kissing an older, Coinless General Bulk. Watching them seemed more perfect than she might have dared hope for whatever fate was allotted to the Ranger Slayer. When they'd first dropped into their Command Center and explanations had been given, Alpha had allowed Bulk to lead his Kimberly to the medical bay, and Kim had followed after them in case they got lost. Bulk was incredibly good with the damaged woman that could probably beat him into the ground at any moment. Kimberly hadn't even huffed when he'd offered her a piggy-back ride and then insisted on bandaging up her hand that'd been cut open when she'd gone after Tommy and he'd had to defend himself with Saba. He'd sterilized the wound, wrapped it tight but not without sympathy and hadn't bothered untangling their fingers or letting go when they'd wandered back into the room Zordon occupied so they could all talk and argue and occupy themselves with searching the data banks for ways out and locating their other friends for hours. The kissing was on the extreme end of their affections, though. In the days that followed, Kim didn't see them lock lips as often, as they usually found themselves training or cooking or reading with just one hand, as the other one was invariably found more often holding onto the other; like two magnets that would always find themselves connected if given enough time. It was, admittedly, adorable as anything she could have imagined, but still a surprise she couldn't help but balk at. Tommy underwent the same amount of shock with the random displays of affection that he often stumbled into with Kim, but he had more pressing issues: when he left to walk into a room with one of the Coinless universe alters, he always had to keep his movements to a minimum, hands far away from his pockets, and eyes to the ground. With the older Trini, Zack, and Bulk, it wasn't so bad; with the Omega Rangers out in space and their history with this smaller Tommy helping them before Drakkon shattered the Morphin Grid, they were more willing to acknowledge that the evil despot and the teen weren't the same. With those Coinless who had never been Rangers--Rocky and Aisha in leather and combat armor with battle scars, had looked very shocked when they'd met their younger selves in Ranger gear, Adam being given the oddest looks from the elders--it was much harder, because they hadn't even spoken to Tommy. And they'd all been dumped through a hole in space and time that the Eltarians and Zedd had caused when Zelya had gotten away from the moon, so everyone was still reeling--especially with them being separated into three groups around Angel Grove. Perhaps they'd make up their minds when the stragglers from Drakkon's universe arrived at the Command Center... * * "He's very strong, and very sure, but he's no Drakkon." "No offense, Skull, but how--" "Could I know that?" The spy--spy, spy, actual double agent who had to relay messages and blend into the background and not die a horrible painful death at the slightest misstep, how the fucking hell--smiled with benevolent pragmatism. Rocky nodded, mouth tightening into a line as Aisha stood her own ground in their questioning. They would have loved not to have come to such an awkward position with having to use Skull to calm down their worries, put them to bed, and smother them to death, but they couldn't find solace and reassurance in Zack and Trini's words and it didn't seem fair to keep putting the kids in defense positions just because they could calm the fuck down. Skull flicked his hand open and made a motion for Tommy to come closer to him, which he did with only a slight hesitation. He wasn't wearing his suit, but Skull had been the only person so far from the other dimension who hadn't looked at him and gone fully rigid, so he had a good sporting chance of not being injured here. When he was only a

step or two from walking directly into Skull, the man offered up his open palm, harmless and dangerous at the same time, and Tommy blinked, unsure and afraid, before deciding it was better to get everything that was going to happen one way or another out of the way. He lifted up his own hand and laid it flat in Skull's. There was dirt under his pointer finger and he only had a single twitch of a moment to be embarrassed before the much bigger fingers circled his wrist and wound around his knuckles, brought his hand upwards, as if he was little more than an infant fresh from a tub, or a sun warmed kitten. Tommy felt a coil behind his belly bunch up all of his nerves at once when Skull's fingers slotted between his own in a possessive kind of way that sparked familiar-unfamiliar thoughts--those all fading away when the man kept their palms together and brought his head down, breathing out like a gust of a train through a mountain pass, and inhaling at Tommy's wrist. Nose tip to his skin raising all the goosebumps Tommy thought he even had. He's pretty sure his ponytail sparked at the end when he jerked a little back. Which swiftly brought him to absolute internal humiliation that showed across his face like a goddamn Muppet. Just because he'd seen that Skull let the Coinless drink his blood right from his finger and they all ate it in bread and stuff after he'd let a tube from his arm pour into the batter of whatever he made them, didn't necessarily mean the man would bite him. ...He hoped. Then, as if that hadn't been the weirdest thing, Skull lifted his head to grin at him, but didn't let go of his hand as the man addressed Rocky, Aisha, and all the other adults--and Tommy was too confused to ask him to let go, so... there was that, "He doesn't smell like he's rotting from the inside; like he needs to be wearing five layers of Axe Body Spray. And he isn't getting all put-upon and squirrely with me holding onto him. And, if you'll humor me a moment?" He was looking at Tommy directly at the last bit, but didn't let the teen answer before he found himself being wrapped in arms that had way more muscle than Skull had any right to have in any universe holy hell--and Tommy was suddenly in a bear hug, feet off the ground and spun around twice as much as he had ever been even at five years old; three times around and around, before he was planted on the couch like a sack of flour right next to Kim (his Kim, who looked utterly stunned and far too amused). The giggle that left his mouth when he smiled at her smiling at him should not have come into existence, and if he hadn't been red before, he was practically blazing as he brought his hands up to cover his mouth. Skull's hand patted him on the head as he ducked his head as much as possible at the sounds of snickering and the other adults choking on their own reactions. He definitely felt like a kitten. "See? Totally harmless to us. Now let them take us to the Juice Bar and feed us; I'm hungry and Ernie's alive here to make me that banana-marshmallow smoothie I haven't had in over a decade." * "I...played the right politics." It would have been so fucking nice if Billy would stop asking Skull questions about the past and present the Coinless had to live through. He didn't mean to make the adults with faces he knew and worried over angry or tired, but Adam was getting very, very annoyed with how he always seemed to find the core root of things that made Skull look... All the emotion left Skull's face at that word, every single time. Politics, like a euphemism for something else entirely. (And it was.) Adam remembered, because he was there when Zack and Trini, Aisha and Bulk, Rocky and the others weren't; inside the fortress Drakkon ran and imbibed in terrorizing whenever he got especially bored. The monster loved to play games with his sentries, with his prisoners, but rarely with his staff, because it took time and effort to train up new ones. But the sentries were his favorite, because they had to prove their loyalty each and every day. Some in

little ways, some in big ways. And Drakkon remembered Skull. Zack and Trini hoped he wouldn't, and Skull, when he was giving help and clues and time that he could to them, made it seem as if he never even crossed Drakkon's mind from being a punk that wore a spiked collar back in high school to becoming one of the higher-functioning members of the red sentries. Oh, being a spy made him so good at pretending nothing was wrong, how to be cool under pressure, how to avoid danger on all sides with one way out or none at all; how to think ahead, think like his opponent, pull facts and plans out of instinct and thin air (because what other choice was there, after all). That was why he was the best; probably why, too, he was revived from death by the universe and multiverse reshaping itself with the Grid's renewal. Politics translated so well to Games in Drakkon's palace. (It was amazing how often the horrible bastard made the sentries fight or fuck each other in his presence; the threat of his being displeased getting them through most of the time, and out the door when he was finished with himself to go vomit or find a shower or smoke so many cigarettes. As far as Adam knew, Skull was one of the very rare few who were made to fight or pleasure Drakkon himself. Skull and Adam and one yellow sentry that died before Kim returned to their world. If Kim was ever made to do as they were, she didn't tell or didn't remember, and Adam was thankful for that. And thankful for Skull. When he fought other sentries, he injured with care to avoid it being permanent or knocked out the other in a show of force that Drakkon appreciated that didn't lead to brain damage but made a good show. When he was made to fuck the others, he carried necessary aids to protect them from hating themselves or leaving much of a trace behind--condoms made from animal skin by Finster-5 he bribed out of the little freak; lubricant so there wouldn't be blood or bruising; an aptitude for pleasing other people as thoroughly and as quickly as he could while being on top and leading them through it with hands calloused but still soft. When he had to use his mouth on Drakkon or submit to the tyrant--often in front of others and while being degraded with his real name being used like words from a djinn or an immortal snake--he did so efficiently and made it seem as though he wasn't being forced at all. Adam hated Drakkon more than anyone those times he had to be there and watched Skull pull his armor back on and resume his place in line among the other sentries like nothing had happened. He hadn't known him before the world came crashing down, but before he'd traded his loyalty for the hope that his family might survive--what a stupid hope that had been--he'd heard that the man had cried over Billy Cranston's gave for a week after his death and been good.) But this small, wide-eyed Billy Crantson, alive and well and looking at Skull with so much awe and respect that Adam could spot it from a mile away if he was goddamn blind, didn't need to hear that. Did not need the thought in his head like a rotting wound festering with so many white little maggots. So Adam continued sipping his coffee (pumpkin spice; which was so fucking good after years of straight, bitter instant black) and remained in his usual place beside Skull in the daytime, watching him go through the motions in this time out of joint from their own. Gladder still to be in the Juice Bar, watching the teens enjoy themselves, play at their video games, ramble on about tests they had to take in school; watch the Coinless eat their food and drink their smoothies, enjoy watching their young reflections practice gymnastics or martial arts. When Billy excused himself to talk to the Stone Canyon Trio about some notes they'd asked for from Ms. Appleby's class, eyes still sparkling with information given and listening to Skull like he would have listened to him even if he knew everything out of his mouth could have been a lie; nobody saw Adam wrap an arm around Skull's waist and squeeze

him from the side. It was just as well.

#wasn't sure who you wanted it written for since you didn't request specific names or pairings so I just kind of winged it #ask fill #prompt fill #boom! comics power rangers #shattered grid #mmpr #ggpr #eugene skull skullovitch #farkas bulk bulkmeier #kimberley hart #tommy oliver #adam park #rocky desantos #aisha campbell #billy cranston #implied/referenced dubcon #tomberly #world of the coinless #coinless Bulk x ranger slayer Kim

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prose-for-hire · 4 years

Text

Hurry up and take your top off

Pairing: Cordelia Chase x reader

Request: Gooooood eveeeening! I would like to request a piece with cordelia? Like she goes shopping with the reader, who hates shopping and when they have to share a changing room feelings spill? As fluffy and kissy as possible pleaaaase

Requested by: Anon

Cordelia was in her element when she was shopping. It was something she enjoyed so when she asked you to come along, you couldn’t help being ecstatic at the thought of a whole day of just you and her. Not only that, but it was a daytrip to LA. She insisted on showing you everywhere that was worth going. Although apparently, every shop she walked past was worth going into in her opinion. You groaned and rolled your eyes, but you still trailed after her. You wanted to spend time with her, you would even brave the demon also known as the ‘mall’ for her. Sacrificing yourself to its evil will.

The sharp eyed shop-workers. The blinding fluorescent lighting. The horror of trying on clothes. You would vanquish it all to spend time with her.

“Cordy, do we have to go in this one – we already went into the other store in the chain an hour ago!” You complain, but it’s only ever half-heartedly with her.

“This one’s bigger, and it has a full-length mirror in the changing room” She rolled her eyes, smiling because she knew you would come with her despite her insisting you could wait outside. She took you by the hand, pulling you with her as she all but skipped towards the rows of beautiful shoes.

“There’s a mall in Sunnydale, you know. It’s smaller and easier to get to” You mutter quietly, you loved spending time with her but shopping made you a little tired and sometimes grouchy. She still liked your company despite this though. You were a better friend to her than the girls she had hung around in high school and even gave her more credit than the other Scoobies. You spent a lot of time together and yet you still missed each other when you had to leave.

“Yeah, like I’m going to stick around the Hellmouth when I could be here, basking in the not-hell of this shoe store” She said, checking the sizing of some of the shoes before turning back to you and showing you her find. You couldn’t help smiling despite yourself, it was really cute how excited she got about this kind of stuff.

You followed her through a maze of brightly coloured stores, peacocking themselves so that you and Cordy might be attracted to the on-trend displays and fun colour schemes. The dizzying scent of perfumes mingling with the lingering smell of greasy fast food. She smiled at you a lot, giving you tips about sales and where the best quality clothes could be found. Cordelia had been doing a lot of shopping, even buying you a little gift here and there, insisting an accessory was made for you.

She finally agreed to take a break, asking you where you would like to go. You chose this cute little frozen yoghurt place you knew Cordy would approve of.

You chatted, Cordelia insisting she was going to move to LA as soon as she got the money together and was ready to leave. She couldn’t bring herself to uproot her life yet, wanting to spend time with you. She was nervous to ask if you would come with her, thinking you had too much going on in Sunnydale. Truth was, you had been nervous to ask if she would mind if you moved with her. But you said it today, stumbling over your words as you mentioned you had been considering moving out here for a while. Her eyes lit up, mouth quirking into a genuine smile that lit up her entire face.

After your break and your revelation about wanting to go to LA too, you were now in one of Cordelia’s favourite stores. A little clothing store, with the aim to get you some totally cool clothes that would compliment the outfits she was wearing. So that you could match. Your heart was beating too fast and too excitedly to complain, she wanted to pair outfits with you. She also explained you would have to update your wardrobe if you wanted to be taken seriously as a real citizen of LA. You both took your clothes to the changing rooms, but they were all full except one.

The friendly woman working the changing room offered you both to go in together to save you from waiting. There was a little heat rising in your cheeks as you looked at Cordelia apprehensively. As if the proximity may send your head and heart spinning into a dizzying frenzy.

“Oh come on, it won’t hurt” She said, her own cheeks a little pink but she acted as if her own heart wasn’t beating rapidly, in a perfect rhythm with yours, as she invited you into the changing room with her.

“Cordy-” you started to protest and then stopped. You trusted her and she clearly trusted you, why were you complaining?

“Hurry up and take your top off, y/n! You’re gonna look really cute in these” She held up the pile of clothes she had picked out for you. You turned around, as did she while you changed. When you both turned back your faces were close together, so close you could feel her warm breath on your face.

Cramped was an understatement, but it meant you were encased in her smell. Her smile. Her scrutinising eye. But with you, there was always an understanding. A softness you had never seen her present in front of anyone except you. You couldn’t help gazing, perhaps too long at her face rather than the outfit she had been showing off.

“What? Is there frozen yoghurt?” She asked, moving her thumb across the corner of her mouth, checking to see if she had been walking around with yoghurt on her face. She turned to the mirror, no. No frozen yoghurt. But she did notice, through the reflection, that you still couldn’t help staring. Her lips, they were beautiful and you couldn’t stop yourself imagining how it would feel to kiss them. Have those luscious, soft lips grazing against yours.

She tinged pink, looking at your face in the mirror still. She had been thinking the same, looking at your lips through the reflection in the mirror. Imagining them pressed to her mouth sweetly, promise of love and affection plumping her lips like gloss.

She turned slowly, eyes now connecting with yours, before flickering to your mouth. You leaned in, willing this to be a sign and not your own mind playing tricks on you. She wanted you too. It was a chaste kiss that you pressed to her lips, both of your eyes closed. But she abruptly pulled from you, leaving you dizzy but for a different reason. Dread started to envelope you where the possibility of her love had before.

“Y/n… we shouldn’t”

“Why?” you ask, suddenly worried that you had misread everything. Imagined the way her eyes flickered to your lips, the way she always had a smile for you in the room, the way she stuck up for you in front of everyone, even if you weren’t always in the right.

“I mean, duh! Because I really like you!” she hissed, as if you knew this already and you were making her say it, she softened at your wide-eyes, “I’m actually… in love… and it’s scary” she admitted, allowing you in beneath the surface. She wanted to let you in. Become close with you. She was scared.

“In love? W-with me?” You stuttered, unable to believe it. You could only hope that she felt the same until this point. Your eyes wide, telling her everything she needed to know. This wasn’t just a kiss to you. You loved her too.

Your lips tentatively pressed against hers again, she kissed back, slow and sweet. This one longer, full of meaning that you had both been trying to say but now you didn’t need to.

Her hand tangled in your hair, the other cupping your face. She tasted like cherry flavoured frozen yoghurt and chapstick. It was perfect, her soft sighs showing she felt as you did. You slid your hand up her arm, rubbing your thumb over her smooth skin. Eventually you had to move from the kiss, eyes glistening and breathless. She smiled widely, before turning back to her own reflection in the mirror.

“Yeah, this one. I like this one” she confirmed, as you nodded a silent agreement, you would have agreed with anything now. You couldn’t stop grinning at her reflection as she checked her new dress out as if nothing had happened.

But you both knew it had, especially when she took your hand in hers and kept it clasped tightly to yours as you carried on throughout the rest of your day together. It was bliss.

#Cordelia chase x reader #Cordelia Chase #Cordy #Cordelia chase x you #Cordelia chase imagine #Cordy x reader #btvs #ats #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #buffy the vampire slayer imagines #btvs x reader #btvs imagine #gender neutral reader #gender neutral #gender not mentioned #although youre allowed in the changing room with her #Cordy x shopping

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clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 10: The Cellar

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Nadya, Adrian, and Kamilah head to the Awakening Ball: the most exclusive event in American vampire society. For the first time Nadya finds herself in the company of others like herself – others who know.

[READ IT ON AO3]

“Adrian. Stop.”

“You remembered your second glasses just in case?”

“Yes.”

“Adrian. I mean it.”

“And this time I know better. No chocolate fountain.”

“Please — Kamilah, make him stop.”

“What? I’m just —”

Having had enough, Kamilah reaches out and cuffs Adrian around the ear without so much as a twitch in her eye. “You’re just acting like a bloody hen. No more. Nadya’s a grown woman fully capable of taking care of herself. She doesn’t need you hovering over her this entire weekend.”

Nadya flushes scarlet but mouths a ‘Thanks’ that Kamilah doesn’t acknowledge. Adrian steps back and clears his throat.

“I’m sorry. I simply…” While he struggles to find the words Nadya can’t help but feel bad for him. He really was only being a friend… right?

“Lily always had to do this kind of stuff, too.” She reminds him with a half-smile. He flinches slightly and looks into her eyes — there’s a pain there she hadn’t noticed before.

“I know.”

Oh. He feels responsible in some way — she understands, now. And god if it doesn’t make her a little weepy. But at the risk of Kamilah bringing up her lunch she just tucks her arm in with Adrian’s and squeezes against the cold like his presence is enough to warm her.

“Thanks. But I got it. Okay?”

He pauses before smiling back. “Okay.”

Whether or not he intended it to be that way his fussing has helped in one respect; it’s taken Nadya’s mind off of the rest of the gathering travelers on the station platform. The humans are easy to pick out: they’re the ones wearing coats and frocks and other things to keep them warm against the way winter lingers on spring nights. The vampires are otherwise unaffected by the cold and chat among themselves while their breaths send fog up into the air.

There are far more people — undead and otherwise — waiting for the train to Upstate New York than Nadya would have believed. She looks around and tries to place some of the faces; wondering if she’s passed any of them on the subway or at a bodega or just on the street. People living normal days and normal lives except they’re actually a part of this dark, hidden world she’s brought herself into.

“Wait a sec — I thought the only vampires in New York were part of your Clans.”

Kamilah nods. “Yes, that is true. However the Awakening Ball has attracted many different guests over the decades. Those who used to live here now spread across the world, not to mention friends of Marcel’s through the centuries.”

“Are any here members of your Clans?”

Kamilah inclines her head towards a small group standing in close quarters. All young and dressed in clothes that could pay a year of Nadya’s old rent; each face more beautiful than the last. “Lacroix will no doubt be making a fashionably late entrance, but the same is not to be said for her Clan.”

“A few of mine are over there.” Adrian gestures to three young men smartly dressed. Upon closer inspection Nadya can’t tell the difference between them.

“Seriously, you’ve Turned triplets?”

“Vietnam was a hard time for many,” is the only answer he gives — opens up a whole world of questions Nadya doesn’t feel comfortable asking.

Finally the station announcer comes on the speaker overhead; announces the train’s arrival and the usual safety measures. Nadya’s dreams of sleek modernity are quickly dashed as an old steam-powered locomotive chugs and chokes its way along the track. It’s a beautiful piece of machinery to be sure but she had been hoping for something along the lines of Amtrak luxury and not… well.

As the train pulls to an ear-splitting stop the groups on the platform begin to divide. Coats and their owners heading towards the dark, oil-black cars with rust along the edges at the back and the pretty vampires to the painted and well-maintained front cars.

She looks up to Adrian to find his face fallen. “Damn. I forgot about the cars.”

“How could you not? You’ve never brought a mortal before.” Kamilah gestures to the humans at the back. “Tradition dictates the human guests be seated separately from us.”

It makes Nadya grimace. “Why?” But the shrug she gets in response doesn’t really answer a thing. “Well, I mean, do I have to?” She hates how whiny, petulant she sounds. But the surprise of it sort of catches her on the bad end.

Adrian picks up their suitcases by the handles. “I’ll join you in coach.”

“Adrian —” Kamilah starts, a protest on her lips, but he’s having none of it.

“We can’t leave her on her own!”

“If we don’t get going we’re gonna be the ones left,” Nadya takes her bag herself and ushers them forward, “it’s whatever, let it go.”

Before Adrian can protest further she urges Kamilah to push him towards the classier cars where the line of vampires boarding dwindles. A shadow passes over the woman’s face, something Nadya wants to ask about when she meets up with them later, then she feels the chill of Kamilah’s hand in hers.

“Good luck.” She whispers, and nudges Nadya onward.

There’s no tickets for the conductor to check; he simply lets her board. The seats may not be luxury but they aren’t assigned so Nadya, the last to step on, awkwardly tucks her suitcase between her legs and shuffles to an aisle seat. The man she sits beside huffs at the intrusion and turns away from her bodily.

Didn’t matter the destination; train passengers would be train passengers.

The whistle’s cry carries on the wind and the train lurches forward. Too bad it forgets Nadya’s stomach back on the platform.

Half an hour in she settles in properly; moves to grab her phone and earbuds to settle in with her playlist, when she notices a weight around her wrist that hadn’t been there before. Nadya holds her arm up to the dim overhead light to see a sterling silver bracelet hanging loosely on her wrist. Links polished; it’s a thing of beauty down to the compass-like charm swaying with the motion of the locomotive.

Then there’s a tap on her shoulder that startles Nadya to the present — to the same conductor from before who looks between her and her bracelet with grim confusion.

“I’ll have to ask you to come with me, madam.”

His voice rings clear over the soft conversation of the rest of the car. Heads turn their way and some even stand in their seats to watch them. Nadya wants to sink into the ugly upholstery and die.

“Uh… w-why?”

“Please, if you will? And bring your things.”

She’s never worked harder to avoid eye contact in her life — wishes she knew someone, anyone who would speak up for her. “I — I don’t understand. I belong here, I promise.”

The conductor just isn’t having it. “I think you’ll find that isn’t the case. Now. Madam.” He’s not asking anymore. With embarrassment and shame burning in her cheeks Nadya stands and grabs her bag. Her seatmate doesn’t hide his grin of victory and quickly sticks up his boots on the emptied seat.

Nadya follows the conductor as he hastily leads her forward from car to car. Trips over her bag a few times and tries not to catch herself on any protruding limbs as they keep going and going and going. “Uhm, please — if you’ll just let me explain — or tell me where we’re going!” But the conductor might as well be a mime for all he says.

They stop in a bay between cars; different than the last few by a long shot. Though a glass pane she sees velvet booth-style seats and lush carpeting instead of plain walkways. A woman in a server’s uniform expertly balances a tray and three bottles of champagne against the train’s motion.

Before Nadya can ask the conductor slides open the door with a gold latch and gestures for her to enter.

“Oh — but that’s vampires only.” She pushes up her glasses.

“I’m aware, madam,” he gestures again, practically pushes her inside, “vampires and guests of importance. Claimed humans included.”

The door shuts behind her. The car residents either don’t notice or don’t care about her arrival, and she flounders in panic before catching sight of a familiar pantsuit standing at a bar.

“K-Kamilah!” She rushes forward, ducks wildly to avoid being decapitated by a tray full of what look like wine glasses of blood, where Kamilah awaits her with a satisfied smile. “I—I was sitting and then… then I don’t know! The man, he —”

A slender finger presses against her lips; silences Nadya’s breathless attempts at explaining herself. The chill of their entwined fingers sends shivers down her spine and Kamilah holds up her wrist and the bracelet with a coy smile.

“He was doing his job, Nadya. Now stop fretting.” She nods mutely. In return Kamilah brushes her hair out of her eyes.

“You, erm, that bracelet…”

The vampire lets it go, lets her keep the charm. “Adrian, bless his soul, has never been one to plan ahead. I imagine it’s why he needed an assistant in the first place. Come, grab the bottle.” Kamilah requests one more empty glass from the bartender and takes the three in her hand. Nadya grabs the bottle and hurries to follow. “Claimed mortals — that is to say ones with a Clan brand or some affiliate sigil — are allowed to sit where they please.”

“So that’s your Clan symbol?”

“Yes.”

“And you carry that bracelet around everywhere?”

She stops abruptly in front of the entrance to the next car up. Keeps her back turned to Nadya and she has to strain to hear her response over the conversations around them.

“No. I don’t.”

When Adrian looks up to see them both his face lights up. He helps Nadya put her case in an overhead bin and all together they toast to the trip with the wine Kamilah pours. Nadya braces herself but the sweet taste catches her by surprise. Judging by the twinkle in the brown eyes across from her… it’s not a coincidence.

How is this my life? Seriously and truly, with the utmost sincerity, how. is. this. my. life? Probably not the smartest or more eloquent reaction to the sight of the large castle estate but Nadya’s not taking it back for anything in the entire world.

“What do you think?” Adrian leans in and matches her smile tooth for tooth.

“I can’t believe he freakin’ brought it here from France.”

“There was a lot about the Old World they wanted to bring with them. Everyone kept telling Marcel he couldn’t, so naturally…”

“He did?”

Together they laugh through the front gardens and into the castle itself. Stewards and maids all dressed in the same era-appropriate fashion take bags, direct queries, and bring all the guests into a queue where they receive their apartment numbers and key cards to go with them.

Nadya turns hers over with interest. “Is it weird I was expecting old antique keys or something?” But Adrian is equally puzzled.

“Seeing as I was, too, not at all.”

Kamilah rejoins them soon after — having taken off to catch up with some monk or priest or other at the station — and Nadya’s momentarily left speechless by the flushed smile she’s pretty sure she’s only ever dreamed of.

Adrian hands her key card off. “He wasn’t at the last Ball, was he?”

“No,” Kamilah laughs — Nadya’s pretty sure she’s landed in heaven, “I haven’t seen Kusumi in centuries. It was happenstance that he was on the West Coast at this time of year. We have quite a bit to catch up on but there’s always tonight for that.”

The vampires walk around like they have this place memorized down to the cellar. Nadya follows hastily; tries to both take in everything around her and not get left behind. “Wait — the Ball’s tonight?”

“No — but La Soirée is.”

She doesn’t know if either vampire had to pull any strings to get her roomed with them or if it was one of those things that came with the perks of Kamilah’s bracelet; and while her good old-fashioned lower-middle class upbringing guilts her into wishing she could foot some of the cost she knows that’s just not possible.

There’s two bedrooms joined by a small communal living space in their guest apartment. Before anyone even says a word Kamilah grabs both her and Adrian’s cases and places them in one room; leaving Nadya to take the other. She’s not exactly bothered by it but the idea of sharing a bedroom with Kamilah — however temporary — does make her heart race.

While Kamilah busies herself with the careful removal of her dress from its box Adrian hunts down a glass decanter and two tumblers. Based on the dark red and viscous contents Nadya does not want to try some. Instead makes herself comfortable with her shoes kicked off and legs folded crossed on Adrian’s bed.

“So… what’s La Soirée?”

“It’s the party before the party.” Adrian hands Kamilah her glass and they both take grateful drinks. “It’s not an official thing; Marcel doesn’t host it. But a couple decades back someone decided to gather up everyone who was already at the estate and mingle.”

The word makes Kamilah snort. She wipes a drop of blood from the corner of her lips. “Such a tame description.”

“I’m just trying to explain it.”

“Not well.”

Nadya clears her throat and makes them both remember her presence. “Don’t give me the PG version. Out with it.”

With her hands on her hips Kamilah rounds to face her. “La Soirée is, for all intents and purposes, an orgy for the vampire guests. For many of us it’s a time to rekindle old friendships and business partnerships with those we haven’t seen in many years. That, and the excitement of the newly Turned tends to go to their heads and they need a place to release tensions in order to keep calm at the following Ball.”

“But,” cuts in Adrian, “there’s also a party for the mortal guests. Marcel’s cellar was decorated for it specifically.”

Only Nadya’s not really listening to him. She’s still trying to process vampire orgy because it’s not something one hears every day. And there’s a lot to unpack in a statement like that — especially when you know the vampires who would be at said vampire orgy quite well.

The mental image that flashes through her mind makes Nadya shiver bodily.

“What was that about?”

Nadya looks to Adrian with utter terror in her eyes. “You’re going to this thing… isn’t the Baron gonna be there? Or—eugh—Lester?”

She’s pretty sure she watches Adrian’s entire immortal life flash before his eyes.

“No,” Kamilah answers for him, “or rather I should say their presence is likely but their participation is less so. Signing up for such an affair doesn’t automatically mean you have to participate… or be participated with.”

So that explains why she’s pulling lingerie out of her bag. Nadya didn’t really take her as someone who would get into that kind of thing but maybe she’s only refusing to process the thought of her crush in an orgy. A vampire orgy.

God, if Lily were here she’d be losing it.

Finally, once the initial shock wears off, Nadya reaches across the bed and pats Adrian on the shoulder. “Well I think this’ll be good for you, at least.”

“Try telling him that…” mutters Kamilah under her breath. Adrian, meanwhile, blanches.

“And that’s supposed to mean what exactly?”

“You’re going, right? Kamilah, tell him he’s going.”

“I’m inclined to agree with Nadya on this one. It would be good for you to… loosen up.”

Adrian stands. Makes like he’s just going for another drink but he’s starting to do his business-pacing and Nadya can practically see the different emotions he’s trying to respond with. “Firstly — none of your business. None. Neither of you! Secondly — no, I don’t even know what to say secondly.”

He leaves the room before either of them can say anything else. Surely he doesn’t mean to slam the door but combined with his vampire speed that’s definitely how it comes across. Kamilah just chuckles to herself. Nadya, however; well she does feel a little bad.

She finds him sitting in one of the ornate high-backed living room chairs. Sipping another tumbler-full, his fingers drumming against his leg. Maybe even the hint of a blush. He looks up when the door opens but doesn’t stop Nadya from taking the seat across.

“I don’t want to discuss it. I wasn’t planning on attending La Soirée.”

She shrugs. “Okay.”

“Frankly I’m surprised you’re so—so accepting of this.”

“What,” she pretends to be offended, “because I’m a mere mortal?”

The look Adrian gives her is at the very least amused. “More like because you’re surprisingly okay with Kamilah going.”

Nadya freezes in place. Her quip; gone. Any laughter; poof. She’s pretty sure she had a good line about Adrian being ‘wound tight’ but that’s nothing more than a fleeting dream because — “Why would I have a problem with that?”

There’s a lot to say in the way he stares at her. No words; Adrian doesn’t need words. Unfortunately one of the downsides of getting to know someone almost intimately well is that they tend to get similarly close with you.

But he’s not wrong. That’s the worst part. He’s not wrong at all. And when she really thinks about Kamilah being involved in all that there’s nothing but unease in her stomach. It only took five seconds of being in Kamilah’s presence to know she was practically a goddess walking the earth. Living with her? Seeing her fresh from sleep or just after a swim in the moonlight? She’s more than her beauty and Nadya’s seen it.

Seen it. Never said anything about it.

When she comes back to herself Adrian’s carding his hand through her hair. The one secret thing she missed about Lily that she only half regrets telling him. He means well but it just makes her miss her best friend more.

“For what it’s worth I’ve known Kamilah for a long time — so I know how hard it is for her to open up to people. And… why she’s the way she is.” Whatever that is he doesn’t say. Nadya knows better than to ask by now. Maybe one day she’ll know them both well enough to not have to ask. To simply be a confidante regardless. “And she’s taken a liking to you in her own special way.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Don’t give up hope, that’s what he won’t say. Don’t stop trying. It’s nice having the blessing of someone who knows Kamilah as well as Adrian but doesn’t help her much in the long run.

As she’d packed without a nighttime party in mind — the more they tell her, too, the more she’s pretty sure it’s more a rave than a casual chit-chat over drinks — it takes Nadya longer to scramble up something to wear. But as with all things Lily’s voice echoes right in the back of her mind that a little bit of eyeliner makes a world of difference.

“Nadya? Are you almost ready?” Adrian’s knuckles tap on her closed door and the knob turns.

“Yup! Coming!” He enters just as she blinks in her last contact. For a moment he’s silent; it makes the internal panic grow inside her until she’s got both hands on her cheeks. I’m wearing a bra, right? Right.

“W-What? Why’re you looking at me like that?”

Then he smiles. “I think the last time I saw you without your glasses was your first day. Someone you’re trying to impress?”

She rolls her eyes and pushes past him. Doesn’t know what Kamilah must have said to convince Adrian to join her at La Soirée but he’s obviously going; all of his suits are made to fit but she’s never seen the sleek black number he’s constantly adjusting at the moment. Without a tie the collar of his silk shirt is open two buttons down and damn, son would be Lily’s phrase and she would be very very right.

Nadya looks around for Kamilah but the vampire is nowhere to be found. She untucks her hair from behind her ears with a huff.

“She went down without us. She said you were taking too long.” Adrian teases. She gives a quick pat to check for her room key as they leave the apartment towards the stairs. “Since you don’t know your way around I was going to show you the way to the cellars before meeting up with her.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

The feeling of being escorted to a party by a chaperon aside, Nadya tries not to psych herself out as they descend further into the castle’s depths. Adrian nods his head at fellow vampires — all dressed in some form of seductive, sultry clothes — and points out the humans they’re following. She doesn’t feel so out of place at some but the way everyone chats and talks together makes her feel very out of the loop.

He stops in front of a closed door, the final stairwell on the other side. The distant thud of bass music can be heard beyond. “This is your stop.”

She swallows. “Are you sure I should go to this thing? I’m totally fine with Netflix and room service upstairs.”

But Adrian’s having none of it and gently pushes her forward with a hand on her lower back. “Go make friends. It’ll make tomorrow easier on you, I promise. Or, when in doubt, just get smashed and use the hangover as an excuse to not remember anyone’s name.”

“Adrian Rai —”

When she turns, however, he’s gone. Vanished in a blur of motion.

A couple descends down the stairs together in sync and out of sheer habit Nadya steps aside to let them enter first.

“You comin’, gorgeous?” asks one in a thick Scottish brogue. His arm is wrapped around his partner’s hip and their cheekbones shimmer with rainbow highlight. Beyond that they look like they could be going out for a night at the opera.

Nadya swallows and nods; follows as they hold out the door for her.

The Scot’s partner flashes her a wink and a grin. “First Awakening Ball, pet?”

“How could you tell?”

“I’ve a knack for it. Trust me — this is the most fun you’ll have all weekend.”

“Aye,” the Scot nods enthusiastically — the music starts to grow louder around them, “the Ball itself is fun and all but Marcel’s a stickler for tradition. Can’t grind up against a fellow in a hoop skirt.”

“Trust me; he speaks from experience.”

They introduce themselves as Brandon and his Scottish partner Greer just before they enter the Cellar; tell her to stick with them since they were fresh meat at “the Y2K party that henceforth shall not be spoken of” and they know what it’s like to not fit in with the rest.

The music floods Nadya’s senses but she can’t pinpoint an exact source or DJ amid the flashing lights and various noises of revelry. It’s definitely a rave; they had that on-point. But the temporary nature of it all shows in the bottles on the walls gathering dust and the old-world feel of the concrete floor. It looks less like something planned and more like someone just happened to have a killer playlist and party supplies and wanted to try something out.

Brandon pulls one of the bottles from the wall and suddenly Greer has three wine glasses in hand. They coax her to drink cheerfully — “this thing isn’t nearly half as fun sober” says Greer — but meet her glass for glass. And they’re not wrong. The party gets significantly more enjoyable once the wine sets in and she feels more fluid.

They dance a little — mostly the boys up on one another exchanging sloppy kisses that make Nadya wonder what stage the vampire orgy is at right then — and when the most human of human songs comes on Nadya can’t help but get into the groove.

“Two hops this time! Right foot let’s stomp YEAH! Left foot let’s stomp YEAH! Cha-cha real smooth.”

Red-faced with delight, Nadya is pulled down beside Brandon with a laugh while Greer magically appears at his partner’s side with a silver tray full of canapes. He feeds Brandon from hand to mouth; Nadya watching shamelessly as he sucks the seasoning from the man’s fingers with erotic delight. When he offers her one as well she throws caution to the wind and takes it between her teeth — strictly platonically.

“So how’d a little sugarplum like you end up on the invite list? Who holds your pretty pink leash?” Brandon asks; makes Nadya choke on her next sip of sweet wine.

“P-Pardon?”

Greer rolls his eyes. “Who’re you here with; is what he’s asking. Fucking slut.” It’s an insult he says with the same affection as one might compliment a spouse.

“Oh, right. I’m here with my boss.”

“Your kinky boss?”

“No, just my boss.” But that does make her wonder; make her look around at the other party-goers enjoying themselves. “Is that, uh, the sex thing; is that the whole theme of this? Everyone here is a… sex pet?”

She’s not judging them in the slightest but it does make things a little more complicated. Not that she’s sure Adrian wouldn’t keep her at his side even if it was a thing they had to pretend. But it wasn’t exactly what she signed up for.

Brandon pats her leg, practically falls over on the couch to do so. “No no, sweetheart. Ignore him — he took a few pills before we came downstairs. Some are for sure but there are a thousand and one reasons and lifestyles people have that give them cause to be here. If you say you’re just here as a work thing then hey — enjoy the amenities.”

“What about, uhm…” She gestures between them with her glass.

“We’re here with Bran’s sister.”

“She’s my twin, though it’s a bit harder to tell these days since she was Turned when we were nineteen.”

Does she look surprised? She’s trying her best not to look surprised. “Huh. That’s, well, erm…”

“Weird, yeah, but I’m not really into the immortality thing so she brings us along to fun stuff like this and I’m covered for forgetting anniversaries.” They laugh and exchange a sweeter kiss than the others. Greer mumbles something that sounds an awful lot like “no you’re not” but she pretends not to hear.

The night seems endless. They drink, they laugh, they get up and dance and find more drinks in hand once they recover. She tries her best not to think of a world outside of the cellar walls; not of what Kamilah and Adrian might be getting up to, not of how Lily might be doing, and not of the dark things that haunt the streets.

Her new friends make it easier — every time they see Nadya’s eyes go distant they pull her towards some new thing or person that she simply must learn about.

It feels late in her bones but when she manages to ask the time over her clumsy tongue to someone with a watch the fact takes her by surprise: 15:37 isn’t an acceptable time to be this drunk at all.

The woman seems bemused at Nadya’s panic and pats her shoulder, offers her a glass of water that soothes the needles of wine left in her throat. “We’re running on the midnight hours here, remember?”

But the spell has been broken and it’s all Nadya’s fault. Or that’s how she thinks — how she struggles any thoughts at all. The cellar’s next hour is spent emptying in packs of threes and fours; of people kissing cheeks (and lips if they miss) with promises to see one another that night.

A Frenchly-dressed maid at the bottom of the stairwell hands out aspirins and bottles of water like after-party favors.

Greer’s not made any effort to return to sobriety but Brandon doesn’t mind. Gets aspirin onto his partner’s tongue through kisses and wipes the sweat from his brow with a shimmery hand.

“You take these—” he makes sure to close Nadya’s fist around five little miracle pills, “—and make sure you get your pert little arse upstairs and straight to bed. I won’t abide not seeing your lovely smile at the Ball. Am I clear?”

Nadya pockets the tablets and takes a long drink from her water. “Crystal.”

“Sure you don’t want us to take you back up to your room?”

“Na-dy-a’s ro—om!” Greer giggles like it’s the best joke he’s ever heard.

“I appreciate it but I’m good. He doesn’t look like he’ll make it much farther anyway.” She kisses their cheeks and steals another bottle for the trip without shame.

What must have once been a beautiful and sun-lit hall now hangs shaded and in gloom. The heavy drapes are secured with golden clasps; steadfast soldiers in the vampire’s war against the daylight. She debates peeking through one but doubts the headache brewing in her temples would appreciate it very much.

Nadya’s not lost. Can’t be lost if you don’t know where you’re going. But when will she get the chance to explore a place like this again? She won’t go anywhere closed off — and there’s nothing wrong with taking the long way back.

Most of the ornamental double doors are closed. Some are roped off with velvet the same color as the drapes. But it’s enough to look at the splendor. Every third hallway she comes across Nadya remembers to take an aspirin.

Upon closer inspection she notices some rooms have plaques beside them. Gold plating on wood dark and shiny with lacquer. She doesn’t recognize any of the names; the Dupont Conservatory, the Augustine Chapel.

Up a flight of stairs there’s only one door without a velvet barricade. Briefly Nadya catches her reflection in the golden tint of the Banner Westbrook Memorial Library plaque and hastily rubs away a smear of something purple and shimmery from the corner of her lips.

“Take that as a sign,” she tells her reflection, and when she nods it agrees that it’s time for her to get on to bed.

A turn of her heel and three steps back towards the stairwell later she hears a voice.

“My queen…”

Since her life became a horror movie Nadya promised herself one thing: should anything remotely horror movie-like occur she would refuse to play into it and bolt for safety. That’s what the damsels in those kinds of movies never do. And that’s how they end up dead, gotten, or whatever terrible fate awaited them.

So she knows she should run.

She knows there’s safety just beyond; up the stairs and behind the apartment door. She’s certainly freaked out enough to keep it all in mind.

“It isn’t like you to meddle in the affairs of mortals.”

“Think not of it as meddling; but rather securing an investment for the long-term.”

Again the voice comes from nowhere and this time it’s got a friend. A friend that sounds an awful lot like Kamilah — which means she really needs to book it. But something stops the logic and reason from willing her body to move; to act. Keeps her there like a statue.

When the voice speaks this time Nadya swears it’s coming from two places at once. Both behind the closed library door and deep inside her mind.

“I have been forced to act on the notions of unfit monarchs before. What makes a King; power, subjects? I’ll tell you…”

With a shaky breath and a hot tear rolling down her cheek Nadya turns to look at the doors. Hears the voice as if the speaker stands right there, invisible but real. She wants to scream, to run, to lunge forward and rip the doors open. She just doesn’t know why.

“Only one thing makes a King: his conviction. The rest will follow. As you, my Queen, my Soldier, my subjects — will follow.”

Then a bang. A gunshot without the bullet, the smell of burning powder in the air. Nadya’s feet carry her away from the doors, away from the ringing in her ears, away from the voice that echoes a hollow laughter through the shadowy halls.

#bloodbound #playchoices fanfiction #playchoices #adrian raines #kamilah sayeed #kamilah x mc #mc: nadya al jamil #oblv: bound by destiny #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

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snickerl · 5 years

Text

Of Monsters and Men, and a Woman.

- I think I smell smoke. -

I wished we had seen a dialogue like this in season 11.

Many thanks to the more than helpful @chekcough and @unremarkable-house for volunteering as beta-readers and their valuable input.

Tagging @today-in-fic

“Oh, isn't this nice? A family reunion."

A cold, familiar voice suddenly filled the air and made Mulder and Scully look in the direction it was coming from. A figure appeared slowly from the shadows a weapon trained at them, showing them a smug smile.

"Spender," Mulder spat.

They had been trying to find an exit out of the huge, run-down and abandoned factory complex where they had found Jackson hiding from his pursuers. Initially, the boy hadn't been willing to let his birth parents interfere, insisting he could look out for himself, but eventually, he had called for Scully through the communication channel he had used before. He was still a teenager, only seventeen years old, traumatized and alone after the assassination of his adoptive parents. Of course, Scully and Mulder had rushed to their son's side, armed and more than ready to protect him from whoever wanted to harm him.

They hadn't expected their old foe to show up at the scene, though. Not after the enemies had been presenting themselves as Purlieu lately. But the agents should have known better, should have anticipated that this man was pulling the strings in the background and would make his appearance somewhere along the road. So, here he was: Carl Gerhard Busch, C.G.B. Spender, Cancer Man, the Cigarette Smoking Man...good God, if there was one person they could name as the evil incarnate, it would be him.

Spender's voice was sugar-sweet but full of dishonesty as always. "Hello, Fox. Dana. I see you have reunited with your offspring after having cut the ties so harshly when he was a baby. Congratulations. I'm happy for you." A disdainful sneer was spreading on his face, proof of his feeling of superiority. He pulled a trademark cigarette out of his pocket with his free hand, put it to his mouth, fished for a lighter in the same pocket, lit it, took a slow, deep draw, then calmly watched how the smoke was leaving his mouth. "The three of us haven't seen each other in a while." His eyes fell on Scully. He scrutinized her from head to toe, unable to conceal that he liked what he saw. "Dana, you look fabulous. What a great pleasure to see you again after all we've been through together."

Scully took a few steps backward, wrapping her arms around herself. "I can't say that I'm sharing the sentiment. If I had been given a choice, I wouldn't have gone through anything with you," she snapped.

Spender only smiled at the unfriendly retort as if he hadn't expected anything else from her. He hadn't been lying though, he was enjoying this immensely. He had been looking forward to this particular moment for a very long time and he was going to savor every minute of it.

"Why so rude, Agent Scully? I remember fondly the nice little road trip we took some years ago, the three days and nights we spent together, the gourmet dinner at a deluxe restaurant prepared by a renowned chef. I will certainly never forget how stunning you looked in the dress I gave you. The black one with those little straps and low neckline." His eyes fell on her chest. "I sincerely hope you let Agent Mulder see you in that dress."

"I burned it," Scully hissed. The knot deep within her tightened. Of course, she remembered the trip, but not with the same glee as the Smoking Man. She felt shame and embarrassment, even guilt when she thought of how naïve and imprudent she had been to follow him without telling Mulder. Not only had it left her with nothing but a blank CD-ROM and empty promises but also with a cracked partnership. It had taken them a while to repair their relationship, until Mulder was able to forgive her and Scully to forgive herself.

"What a pity. It was such an expensive dress. And it suited you so well. You were a feast for the eyes for everyone in the restaurant that night, Dana."

Spender let the words roll off his tongue with a delightful smile on his lips. Unabashedly, he ogled Scully's body, his eyes wandering slowly from her slender waist, across her chest, and up to her face. He looked into her eyes probingly before starting to walk around her, giving her the once over. When he took a luxurious draw on his cigarette, his eyes resting on her backside, Mulder had enough.

"Cut the crap, you sick bastard! What do you want?"

Spender kept his eyes on Scully for another beat, then turned around in exaggerated casualness, tsking and looking at Mulder with disapproval.

"Fox, that's not the way you should speak to your father."

A sour laugh escaped Mulder's throat. He shook his head and threw a side glance at Jackson. The boy had no idea of what was going on in front of him but watched the adults intently. His biological parents had a history with this threatening old man, but not a friendly one. The way they had been addressed by their first names instead of their customary way of calling each other by their last names had sounded like a mockery, not like a sign of familiarity or friendship.

Spender had his weapon pointed alternately at each of them and enjoyed his position of advantage. Scully had positioned herself in the line of fire in movements so small they were barely perceptible, sheltering Jackson off the weapon's potential trajectory. This, thankfully, had gone unnoticed by Spender but not by the boy, and it made him feel protected and cared for but also anxious. This man meant business, that much was clear.

"If you came here to satisfy your sick need of feeling more powerful than us, go ahead. Make fun of us, remember all the moments you held our lives in your hands, but leave our son out of it. Let him go." Scully's voice was strong and full of determination. If she was apprehensive, she did a hell of a job not showing it.

"Aaaw, mama bear is protecting her cub,” the Smoking Man snarled. “How sweet. You should have stood by your son during his childhood instead of giving him to two ignorant and completely overstrained people who'd never had the ability to protect him. Did you really believe it would be that easy to hide him?" He fell silent as if giving her time to answer, watching as Scully exchanged an anxious look with Mulder, he then chuckled. "I always knew where he was. I knew of his broken arm at the age of five, I attended his Little League games, watched him celebrate his first home run, and I know his childhood sweetheart's name was Chelsea."

"What the fuck?" Jackson cried out, shocked by what he was hearing. He had no idea who this man was and why he had such an interest in him. Before he could say any more, Scully took a few steps forward until the man's weapon almost touched her chest, shielding Jackson even more. Her back and shoulders were straightened and her chin was up, but her face had lost its color. She was pale and her voice was a bit shaky now.

"Ever heard of the Constitution, Spender? The 14th Amendment and the Right to Privacy?"

Her question was met by a laugh. Spender put his cigarette to his lips, drew with relish, then let the butt fall to the ground and stepped on it. The grinding noise of the sole of his shoe stubbing out the smoking butt on the floor reverberated through the place, grotesquely amplified by the high concrete walls surrounding them.

"Is that really meant to be a serious question, Agent Scully? You know as well as I do that the Constitution is nothing more but the democratic fig leaf for governmental institutions to pretend they let legitimacy and righteousness guide them. You and Agent Mulder also haven't always played by the book as far as I remember, so spare me your moral indignation."

"What is your interest in our son?” Scully asked. “Have you been afraid of losing your power over us, is that why you spied on his childhood? To use him as leverage over us after all?"

The Smoking Man shook his head and grinned. "Agent Scully, I've never lost my power over you. Have you forgotten the little something in your neck?"

Jackson didn't understand what this meant and why it was knocking the wind out of his birth mother. The man's words were clearly meant to provoke her, and it was working. She gasped and touched a spot at the back of her neck right at the bottom of her hairline. Jackson didn't know what that 'little something' was and what it had to do with anything, what he saw were Scully's trembling fingertips rubbing a spot on her neck as if it itched. The man definitely had succeeded in rendering her speechless.

Not so Mulder. He looked like he was regurgitating a dustball when he spoke and his voice sounded like a rabid dog's growl. "You son-of-a-bitch!"

"You have something to say, Agent Mulder? Fox?"

"Scully asked you a question. What's your interest in Jackson? Why are you here?"

Spender only hummed, pulled another cigarette out of his jacket and lit it. The package was empty now. He crumpled it up and let it fall to the ground next to the butt he had thrown there already. Jackson had to think of his mama who had taught him never to litter. Despite the tenseness of the situation and the much worse things this man was clearly capable of, this childish act of disrespect made the boy's blood rise. His birth parents were scared by this guy who was playing a game of cat-and-mouse with them, that much was obvious, and Jackson asked himself if they remembered that he had a biological advantage he could use to chase this unbearable chain smoker away.

"I told you at the very beginning that I was looking forward to a family reunion. Have you not listened? A father wants to see his son once in a while," Spender supplied.

"Bill Mulder was my father, you have never been a father to me."

"Well...son...genetics don't lie. A biological fact is a biological fact. You may call Bill Mulder whatever you want, all you got from him was his name. But that's another story. Anyway, I wasn't talking about you and me, Fox."

As the last words were leaving his mouth, Spender turned away from Mulder and laid his eyes on Jackson. The boy froze, every muscle of his body strained. Mulder and Scully looked at each other with slack expressions on their faces. The already strung up atmosphere was tensing up even more.

"Who were you talking about then?" Mulder hissed.

Of course, there were not that many other possibilities of who he could have been talking about. Although Mulder, Scully, and Jackson were anticipating an answer, they were also fearing it. It seemed like time was standing still. Somewhere in the factory there had to be a broken pipe because the constant dripping of water could be heard. It echoed through the deserted place, which was cold, dirty, and scarcely lit. The way the Smoking Man's face was illuminated whenever he drew on his cigarette reminded Jackson of his first slumber party when his papa told creepy stories and scared them holding a flashlight under his chin. This man was also creepy, but not in a playful manner like his papa. This man was dangerous and Jackson felt unease running up his spine as the man fixed his cold eyes on him, saying nothing, simply staring at him.

When Spender finally chose to answer, all three of them seemed to hold their breaths. Looking noticeably at Jackson and in a tone of voice more suitable for ordering a glass of Chardonnay in a fancy restaurant than wrecking the life three people had just begun to re-establish together, he said, "well, Fox, if you can't put two and two together yourself, it shall be my pleasure to break this to you: when I said I was looking forward to seeing my son, I was talking about this young lad here."

Boom! The bomb had exploded and nobody had thought of taking cover.

Scully's head flew around. Her hand had left her neck and clutched at her chest instead. She bore her eyes into Spender’s as if she wanted to read his mind, backing away from him at the same time. Mulder's brows were drawn together, his glance darting between Scully and Spender looking for answers in their faces. Jackson was just standing there like a pillar of salt. This guy, this horrible smoker, had just suggested he was his father, now being the third person claiming this particular family bond with him.

How had his life become such a mess? A few months ago, everything had still been fine. He had some peculiar abilities, granted, but he knew how to handle them...most of the time. He had a mama and a papa who loved him dearly, he had a home, he had friends. His life was in order. And then the broad-shouldered men in black suits had shown up, sitting for hours in armed dark limousines across the street, observing him, and an alarm inside his head had gotten off. Then the visions had started, visions of spaceships, of a worldwide pandemic, an apocalypse, and of a woman with red hair. All of this had brought him here, to an old, chain-smoking moron who was telling him he was his father. What a freak show his life had become.

“Bullshit!” Mulder grunted eventually, pulling Jackson out of his dark thoughts. “After all these years, you think we’d fall for your dirty tricks, Spender?" Scully's hand was still pressed to her chest. Slowly moving further away from the Smoking Man she whispered, now unable to conceal her apprehension, "what exactly are you implying?"

"I'm not implying anything, just stating the biological facts. Aren't facts something you've always been so keen on finding, Doctor Scully? And the fact is that I am William's...uh, sorry, young man...Jackson's father. He is my son, not Agent Mulder's."

Hearing him speak it out loud only made things worse. All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. Mulder, Scully, and Jackson could barely breathe. The mere idea was earth-shattering. It turned their world upside down, a world that had just begun to reset since the three of them had been reunited. Jackson looked helplessly at who he believed to be his birth father - Mulder - the man who had hugged him so fiercely while whispering in his ear, "I've been looking for you forever", and "I held you when you were a baby".

Mulder was thunderstruck himself, hit to the core, struggling to process the words the old man had just spoken. It was Scully who rediscovered her voice first. "I've never heard such nonsense," she grunted, parts of her self-confidence regained. "If it wasn't so damn sickening, I'd laugh. Wouldn't I know if we had intercourse?" Mulder's face contorted into a pained grimace at that. He winced unmistakably, earning himself the Smoking Man's pitiful smile. Then Spender turned toward Scully again, the corners of his mouth curving up in a smug smile while answering her in a too-sweet voice, "how would you know? You were sedated."

Mulder groaned again, but Scully remained composed, stoic almost. "You mistreated me while I was unconscious."

It came out like a statement, not a question. Jackson was impressed by how calm she sounded. No, impressed was the wrong word. Confused. How could she make such an outrageous allegation and remain so cool? Unlike her, Mulder was not able to keep his composure. The words were growing from the deep of his throat, raw and desperate. "If you harmed her, you’ll pay for it. I will make sure you do, even if it's the last thing that I do."

"I didn't harm her, I gave her what she longed for the most. What you couldn't give her, Fox."

"What do you mean?"

"Hadn't you donated sperm for Agent Scully to get pregnant just a few months earlier, and hadn't the procedure failed? Well, I was more successful," Spender said with twisted satisfaction.

Scully threw Mulder a worried glance and wrapped her arms around her waist once again. She swallowed uncomfortably before she spoke. "You impregnated me? You?" This time, it was a question. An unsettling, agonizing, disgusting question.

"Not the way you may think, Dana. With science. I got you pregnant with science. I had the best doctors care for you and perform the transfer of the ova we had gotten from you, inseminated with sperm I had provided. You would have been thrilled to be a part of a scientific experiment of this immeasurable value, had I been able to tell you then."

The man was speaking in a manner so calm and unfazed he really had to believe that what he was saying was totally normal, whereas, in fact, it was totally crazy. The words 'sedation', 'insemination', and 'experiment' were swirling around in Jackson's head and it made him wonder what kind of trouble he had ended up in. This crazy shit, which had started with the men in the black suits following his every step, seemed to get weirder every day.

"Those weren't doctors, those were rapists. You are a rapist. You hadn't gotten my ova, you'd taken it from me against my will. That was medical rape, twice, and no scientific experiment. Highly unethical and a violation of my right to physical integrity. I can't remember signing a declaration of consent."

Again, the restraint with which she was talking was remarkable. Mulder, who could hardly contain himself, who looked like he wanted to put his hands around Spender’s neck and press until the last bit of air left his lungs, was puzzled by her cool demeanor. Hadn't she just been told that their baby wasn't theirs but hers and…? He couldn't even bring himself to think the unthinkable. The mere thought of it made him want to gag. It would mean Jackson wasn't his son, but his half-brother. It would mean Scully hadn't conceived, carried, given birth to and nursed his son, but that Cancer Man's. He felt a tingling sensation at the back of his throat.

Spender clicked his tongue. "A declaration of consent...you amuse me, Agent Scully. You of all people should know I act on behalf of a circle of people who don't let formalities bind them. Your consent is irrelevant. We are working toward a larger goal, a goal you know fairly well."

"Creating a superior race and ruling the world," Scully spat out indignantly.

"Creating a human-alien hybrid, achieving what herds of scientists have tried but failed so far. William was our first success."

The world started to spin around Jackson. What had this caricature of a human being just called him? A human-alien hybrid? He had understood by now that this kid they were talking about all the time, William, was him. He was Jackson Van De Kamp formerly known as William, the Alien. How on earth had he been drawn into this crazy shit?

"He isn't yours, he is ours. Mulder's and mine. He is not one of your lab rats. He is our son, and we made him."

She sounded so sure and Jackson wanted to believe her so badly. He didn't want to have anything to do with this unhinged, nicotine-addicted lunatic. He didn't want to be special, let alone superior. He wanted normalcy, he wanted to be just a normal boy. Kids his age shouldn't have to deal with crap like this. He wondered how his birth parents had managed to get themselves into this fucked-up mess and if his adoption had anything to do with it. His birth mother, Dana, had talked about bringing him to safety when she had spoken to what she had believed was his dead body in the morgue.

The Smoking Man was standing in front of her, towering over her. His legs apart and his chin up, he was looking down on her with a self-satisfied expression. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly before he spoke. "Dana, how can you be so sure?" The way he called her by her first name again, his voice a mix of superficial friendliness and subtle wickedness, made Jackson's blood run cold. He didn't know this man who was inhaling one cigarette after another, but he radiated malice with every fiber of his being. The way he conversed, how he played with his birth parents, how he gloated when he was shooting his poisoned arrows at them. But what was clearly meant as a fatal wound bounced right off of her this time.

"Do you really believe I was so naïve as to accept my pregnancy as a God-given miracle?” she asked, her lips curving into a slight smile. Spender's expression froze. “I knew my medical condition, that I was barren, a situation you were not entirely blameless in. Of course, I asked myself how I had been able to conceive. Emily's short life and what had been done to me during my abduction was ample proof of what you and your kind were able and willing to do. I needed to know my baby was normal and healthy, so I sought proof of what I felt so strongly - that my baby was Mulder's.” She looked at Mulder, throwing him a reassuring glance before she turned back to Spender and continued. “I’m a scientist, and scientists conduct scientific tests to get proof. That's exactly what I did. As soon as William was born, I had a DNA paternity test done. Three times. I supervised all three procedures myself to be a hundred percent sure the results were reliable. They were, and they showed a match between Mulder and William. There is no doubt whatsoever that they are father and son."

The Smoking Man's once self-assured outer appearance was cracking even more. He nervously fingered the lighter in his hand and his right eyelid twitched when he spoke. "That's impossible! I watched over your insemination. I was told the transfer of the fertilized eggs had been a success. And you were diagnosed as pregnant shortly thereafter, weren't you? So it had to have been successful."

"The transfer might have been successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean the eggs made it into the uterine wall, especially if there already was an egg attached to it, an egg that had gotten there naturally. I did the math, believe me. I calculated the possibility of ovulation, natural conception and implantation back and forth, it's highly plausible that I was already pregnant when you took me on your little trip. Unbeknownst to me, and obviously also unbeknownst to you and your so-called doctors. They neglected to test for pregnancy before they performed the transfer, which is, by the way, a standard procedure in every fertility clinic."

Spender's cool appearance was now falling to pieces before their eyes. He looked like a deflating balloon. He hadn't seen this coming. Just a few minutes ago, he had felt so superior, but this woman was making him dizzy with her scientific narrative. "I...I don't believe this," he stammered.

"I was pregnant with Mulder’s child," Scully continued coolly. "A real scientist rules out everything that has the potential to ruin an experiment, but your doctors weren't thorough enough. Too bad for you.”

She waited, letting her words take effect. After what seemed an eternity to all the people listening to her, she went on.

“You were wrong all these years believing William was your genetic offspring. You may have a biological connection to Mulder, but that's all there is. You don't belong to this family, it's just the three of us: Jackson, Mulder, and me. Now get your sorry ass out of here before I put a bullet through your head for all the times you abused me and the ones I Ioved."

Spender swallowed all of it, every word, and he had difficulties getting them down. But he was a vicious man used to dealing in vicious circles, he wasn't knocked down easily. He wouldn't have survived all these years among reckless men, had he not had the capacity to take a blow. He strolled over to Scully slowly placing one foot in front of the other, his eyes never leaving her. He drew a circle around her so small he was almost touching her, lighting yet another cigarette he procured out of a new pack.

"I am the one with a weapon in my hand, Agent Scully. You are aware that I could shoot you before you even pulled yours out of the holster." His firearm trained at her, he circled her once more until he came to a halt in front her, eyeing her intensely. "Give me your gun!” He demanded harshly now, holding out his hand, palm up.

Jackson was amazed by how fast the man had recovered. His ice-cold eyes, bereft of any sign of emotion, bore into his birth mother. She held her ground for a moment but then obeyed and handed him her gun. Then he turned to Mulder who reluctantly pulled his weapon out of his hip holster and let it dangle on his outstretched index finger in front of the man's face. The smoker unhooked it with a satisfied grin and put it away. He was in possession of three firearms now, he held all the power despite the momentary crack in his façade a few minutes ago. "Do you still feel like threatening me, Agent Scully?" he asked, mocking his now defenseless opponents.

"One day, you will pay for what you've done, Spender. One day, justice will be served and you will rot in hell where you belong," Scully spat at him, her chin up.

Jackson admired her for her bravery, for how she stood up to that man who was holding all the aces. The boy hummed a low-key Hallelujah, so silent only Mulder, who was standing right behind him, could hear it. He acknowledged it in return with a muffled snorting only audible for Jackson. Father and son in shared admiration for this tiny woman's greatness.

Scully had impressed Spender too, but he wouldn't let anyone know. He made sure to thread enough irony into his voice replying, "ah, Dana, let me compliment you on your bravado and your optimism, but for men like me, there will always be a way out. I'm not so sure about you though. It seems to me your current position is quite precarious." He lifted his gun, pointed it at her forehead, and released the safety catch. The metallic click was so loud, amplified by the surroundings, it made Mulder's and Jackson's eardrums vibrate.

Mulder's right hand tingled. Not many people knew he still carried a second weapon at his ankle. If only he could reach down there, he might be able to get it out before Spender realized what was happening. He bent forward and groaned, holding his stomach with both hands as if he was about to throw up. When his ankle was within reach, he slowly stretched his right hand out, continuing the gagging sounds to keep up the illusion. He was almost there, could already feel the hard steel under the fabric of his pants leg, when the sound of a weapon falling to the ground echoed through the factory hall.

Mulder looked up, expecting to see Spender's gun still aimed at Scully's head, but what he saw was Spender's face twisted in horror. He was holding up his empty hands and was gasping for air like a fish out of the water. Mulder had never seen this man in anything but a smug pose, arrogant and overbearing, but this was fear, mortal fear.

Mulder rose completely and caught Scully's sideways glance. By the look of the confused lines on her forehead, she was as clueless as he was about what was going on. They both watched as Spender stumbled a few steps backward and tripped over his own feet transfixed by something behind them. His mouth opened but no words came out, only a choked scream. Scully and Mulder looked wildly around for the source of his terror but saw nothing. The building was completely empty save for them and quiet but for the whimpers of the now weak, powerless man.

Mulder looked over at his son and noticed that he was the only one who seemed to be in control. And then realization dawned him. Jackson was pulling one of his tricks. He was creating an alternate reality for Spender, maybe one of his gruesome monsters. Mulder couldn't tell, he couldn’t see what Spender saw, and neither could Scully, given the puzzled look on her face.

In the end, it didn't matter what the smoker saw, the only thing that mattered was that he got on all fours and started crawling away, whining like a baby. Watching him coil in mortal fear was striking a chord within Mulder that surprised him. He never imagined he could rejoice in the suffering of another human being, not even a man he loathed from the bottom of his heart, but all he could feel was satisfaction. It would have been easy to reach for his weapon now and bring this to an end for good, to make Spender pay with his life for all he had done to them, but Mulder couldn't bring himself to do it. He just watched as their enemy of twenty-five years got awkwardly to his feet, his tail between his legs, and started running without turning back to them once again.

When the Smoking Man was gone, Scully turned around to look at Mulder and Jackson. "What the hell was that?" she asked, still unable to understand why he had fled. "One minute he’s threatening to shoot us, and the next he can't get out of here fast enough."

"Jackson?" Mulder only said, throwing his son a challenging look.

"He must have seen something that scared him a bit," Jackson replied looking at the space between his feet.

"A bit? He was terrified!" Scully said.

There had to be something really interesting on the floor because Jackson wouldn't look up to meet his birth parents' eyes. "Yeah, well..."

"You created a false reality for him, right? Like you did for us when we were at your parents' house."

Jackson answered Mulder's question with a shrug of his shoulders. He had used his powers more than once for the wrong reasons, to tease people or scare them just for fun, and had been berated for it repeatedly. This had seemed like a good moment to use them, but he wasn't quite sure if it would be appreciated or not. "Someone had to do something. I couldn't stand this asshole and his self-satisfied grin any longer," he offered as an explanation.

"Why didn't we see it?" Scully asked.

"I didn't make you see it, only him."

"You can decide who sees what you create and who doesn't?"

Jackson nodded. "You were the only one who saw me as Peter Wong in front of the hospital."

Scully's heart ached a little thinking back to that moment. She had been longing for contact to her son for so long, and then he had been standing in front of her, talking to her, touching her, and she hadn't known it had been him. She had felt a strange connection to this man who had bumped into her, who had been so compassionate about the broken snow globe and who had smiled at her when she told him she liked this particular windmill she was holding in her hands.

"Did you bump into me on purpose?"

"Sure."

"Why?"

"I was curious about you after what you'd said to me in the morgue."

More heartache. Unknowing of what he was doing to her, Jackson continued. "You sounded so sad and so...honest. And I also had to make sure you'd gotten my message about the windmill. The snow globe in your hands showed me you had."

"So our meeting at the gas station wasn't a coincidence either."

"Of course not. I had something else to say to you."

If filled her with joy that despite her giving him away as a baby, he had wanted to establish contact. Even if without revealing his identity.

"The Malcolm X quote," Scully supplied.

"Right. I hoped you'd draw the right conclusions and realize it was me you'd talked to."

"Mulder recognized the quote and we both realized at the same time it must have been you. My heart almost burst when I saw myself talking to my son, my living son, on the surveillance tape."

"Surveillance tape?"

"The gas station had a CCTV system," Mulder explained. "On the surveillance tape, you were being you and not some pickup artist."

"Yeah, well, my mind is just so strong. I can manipulate people's perceptions but not a machine."

"Still, it's a powerful talent you've got there," Scully noted.

"A talent?" Jackson chuckled. "I see it more as a curse. It makes me an outsider. People think I'm a freak. Which I probably am. It has come in handy a few times lately though."

Scully took a step toward him. She would have liked to embrace him, pull him to her chest, just like Mulder had done at the motel when the two had first met, but instead, she only put her hands on his shoulders to make him look at her. "Listen, Jackson, you are not a freak. And none of this is your fault. You are who you are because you are our son, and from now on, Mulder and I will care for you. We will protect you. You are not alone."

As much as Mulder enjoyed watching mother and son talk to each other, he also got increasingly nervous. What if Spender had a backup? What if he knew and simply forgot for a moment about Jackson's ability to create alternate realities and realized he had been fooled once he had run far enough and cooled down his nerves? They had to get out of this building and off the premises as quickly as possible.

"Guys, let's get in the car and out of here. Spender doesn't work alone, and I don't want to be here when one of his cronies shows up to finish what he hasn't been able to do."

"You're right, Mulder. Come on, Jackson. We'll get somewhere safe," Scully said, nudging the boy forward with her hand on his shoulder.

They ran outside through the same steel door the Smoking Man had fled through and jumped into Scully's SUV. Mulder took the seat behind the steering wheel, Scully the passenger seat. Jackson climbed into the back. "Buckle up, Jackson," Scully tossed over her left shoulder in full maternal mode, "we will have to take some unexpected turns if someone follows us."

But no one followed them. It was a quiet ride, each of them taking their time to process what had happened and what had been said in the factory building. It was Jackson who finally broke the silence.

"You really are my parents, right? Both of you." His eyes met Mulder's in the rearview mirror, Scully turned around in the passenger seat and looked at him. It took him a moment until he was able to meet her intensive gaze, but then the direct connection enabled him to clarify. "What this man said was bullshit. That I am a product of a scientific experiment, that he...uh...that he made you pregnant with me against your will."

"He tried, but he failed," she said, maintaining their eye-contact without blinking. "I am absolutely certain that you are our son, Jackson. Mulder's and mine. You are not an experiment. You were conceived in an act of love." Scully glanced briefly at Mulder after having put so much emphasis on the word 'love' that her voice trembled. He kept his eyes on the street but nodded and smiled. "Not in a laboratory," she concluded.

"But..." Jackson left the rest unsaid. He threw his hands in the air and let himself fall back against the backrest.

"But what?" Scully probed.

"Why am I like this? So...creepy?"

Scully unbuckled her seat belt and climbed across the middle console into the back to join Jackson. She didn't want to talk to him about this any longer twisting her neck. She needed to be able to look him in the eye. She would have wanted to take his hands in hers and squeeze them to assure him but didn't dare. "You are not creepy," she said, laying her hand gently on his lower arm instead, hoping he wouldn't pull it back. He didn't. Not instantly anyway, but after a short moment. She berated herself inwardly for invading his personal space against her better judgment. Had she known that he didn't mind her touching him as much as she thought and that his awkwardness around her was caused by not knowing how to interact with a woman he felt so close (she was his mother, for God's sake) and yet so distant rather than resenting her, it wouldn't have hurt quite that much.

"You haven't seen what else I can do, Dana. Uh, you mind me calling you Dana?" Jackson asked, suddenly uncertain.

"Oh, uhm...no, not at all. Dana is fine."

"I mean since he," Jackson tilted his head in Mulder's direction, "calls you Scully."

"Well, that's a thing between us going back to the time we started out as co-workers. People outside of work usually call me Dana. Friends and family anyway. So Dana is perfectly fine."

It was a start, wasn't it? Scully didn't dare to hope that one day Jackson would call her something more affectionate, like 'mother' or maybe even 'mom'. She had been a mother to two children and had never been addressed as such by either of them. It was a wound which had never healed.

Unaware of Scully's inner struggles, Jackson resumed, "great! So, Dana, you haven't seen me do these other things I'm capable of. Like make people explode, for one. You were freaked out, weren't you?" the boy asked looking at Mulder who was observing them in the rear view mirror more than he should, given the fact that he was running at more than 80 miles per hour. "I was glad you made me duck!" he joked from the front, but the joke never made it to the back. Scully and Jackson were too much involved in their conversation to appreciate his effort.

"Whatever it is that you are capable of, Jackson, it doesn't make you a freak. Most certainly not in our eyes." Scully did her best to assure him of Mulder's and her determination. He needed to know that this time they would stand by him come what may. "You are our son, our flesh and blood, and we love you. Even if you might think otherwise because you were given up for adoption."

"But why am I like this? If you are my biological parents, and I wasn’t created by this chain-smoking moron, why am I not normal like you? You seem like pretty normal people to me. You are not some aliens or hybrids or whatever this guy was saying I was. You may be a little crazy, but still, you're normal, everyday people."

Scully sighed. "As you might have guessed, we have a history with this man, this chain-smoking moron. He's been using us to his own ends, mistreated us, harmed us time and again. I was abducted as a young woman and had become involved in a sinister, abhorrent plan of a group of ruthless men. Unethical tests were performed on me and my DNA had been tampered with. And the same happened to Mulder, only a few years later. He had been experimented on, manipulated, and mistreated so much that he almost died."

Scully saw no use in telling Jackson that Mulder had indeed been dead and buried, and that his coming back to the living had been nothing but short of a miracle. What the boy was hearing had to be disturbing enough, giving him more disconcerting details wasn't helpful, so she continued with the facts he needed to know to get the picture.

"What I'm trying to explain to you is that our genomes have been manipulated, and I take it that's the reason you are who you are. You're a combination of both of us. It's for everyone to see in your looks. You have Mulder's hair and his height, and you have my eyes and my freckles on your nose. Your abilities...well, they are likely a result of what they have done to our genetic material. I don't have any other explanation."

"Wow," was all Jackson said, "you aren't as normal as I thought."

"A lot of people would call us crazy as well. And a bit spooky. At least when it comes to me," Mulder tried for another joke but failed again. Neither Scully nor Jackson laughed.

"You already had powers as a baby, Jackson. You had spun the mobile above your crib once in a crying fit, and you had made a piece of rock hover above your face. And when I had realized that there were people out there holding an interest in you, the man you just met being one of them, I thought the only way to protect you was to hide you in another family far away from us."

"You gave me away to protect me, not to get rid of me." He didn't need to pose this as a question, he had understood.

"Yes," Scully breathed. "It was the only way to get you out of reach of these people."

"Well, your plan obviously didn't work out. The things he told you about me, they were all true. It creeps me out to imagine this maniac has been watching me all the time."

Jackson thought back to his childhood, to some of the events the Smoking Man might have been present at: his first day of school, when he scored the decisive penalty which had secured the championship for his soccer team, prom night and his first kiss... A cold shudder ran down his spine.

“Spender might have watched you, but so have we," Scully said, only now taking the time since she had climbed into the back to buckle herself up.

"You have?" Jackson asked incredulously.

"We have?" Mulder echoed, looking flummoxed. Scully had never told Mulder that for all these years someone had been holding a hand over their William, someone who hated the Cigarette Smoking Man just as much as they did. She had feared that had Mulder known there was indeed a way to their son despite the closed adoption, that one day he would have tried to track him down.

"When I gave you up, I asked a friend to keep an eye on you because I knew that if we did, we would lead them right to you. His name is Jeffrey, and he helped me find you when you started communicating with me through the visions. I demanded he breaks the promise to never disclose your whereabouts to me."

Mulder took a sharp intake of breath. His molars were grinding when he asked, "you hired Jeffrey Spender to protect our son?"

"I didn't hire him. He..." Scully was struggling for words. "Mulder, you were gone, I was all alone in this and I didn't know what to do. He had come to me, had tried to protect William from you-know-who by secretly injecting him with magnetite. Jeffrey Spender was the only ally I had."

He'd been injected with what? Magnetite? For protection? Jackson remembered how the results of his blood work had always made his doctors frown. This story was getting crazier by the minute. But there was something else that had piqued his interest even more. "Spender? This guy's name is Jeffrey Spender? Haven't you called the smoking asshole Spender, too?" Jackson asked.

"Yes. Jeffrey is his son and my half-brother," Mulder explained. This new information cleared something up Mulder had racked his brain over for some time. "Now I understand why he called me when you were in the hospital after your seizure, Scully. I didn't know what to make of his warning on my voicebox that someone was coming after us."

"This man's son helped you protect me? He's worked against his own father?"

"This man is also my biological father. It speaks for itself that both his sons loathe him that much, doesn't it? It speaks for how profoundly evil he is."

Jackson let that sink in for a moment. He couldn't imagine a life where there was so much hatred, so much mistrust, and fighting against each other. He had been brought up by people who loved and cared for each other, he had always felt safe and protected, at least until these strange men in black suits had first shown up. He didn't know his birth parents very well yet, but Dana had spoken of love, both in the morgue and just now, and Mulder acted like he cared about her very much. They were good people, driven by love, not by hate. They made him feel cared for. Since the assassination of the Van De Kamps, he had felt alone and entirely on his own, but it seemed he had belonged to someone all the time. Maybe he had been wrong, maybe Dana and Mulder, his birth parents, were able to protect him after all. He could at least give it a try, couldn't he? "Where are we going?" he asked.

"We have a house out in the countryside," Mulder answered from the front. "It's secluded and well protected. We should go there, get a hot drink and some food and decide in the comfort of a warm, safe place what to do next. We'll be there in about an hour."

"Good idea, Mulder. Let's go home," Dana agreed.

Jackson turned his head away from Scully on the word 'home' and looked out of the window to hide his happy smile. His limbs felt light all of sudden as if a lead weight had been lifted off his body. He was glad that the rest of the trip was silent, that neither of them tried to engage him in a conversation. Mulder focused on driving them to their place as fast as possible, pushing the speed limit, and Dana leaned her head against the headrest. Surprisingly, she was asleep in a matter of minutes.

"She always falls asleep in the car," Mulder said when he caught Jackson's puzzled look at her sleeping form. "The motion lulls her to sleep."

Jackson only nodded. For the rest of the ride, he watched the dark scenery passing by outside with a feeling of warmth spreading through his body. The feeling replaced the cold fear he had been so used to during the past months, and it was more than welcome.

#xf fanfic #msr #Jackson aka William #Scully's baby was no experiment #Mulder is William's dad #season 11

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brightaely · 6 years

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Death Of A Serial Killer - Chapter 1

Genre: angst, thriller, mystery

Pairing: You x Everyone (not all of them would be romantic but all of them would be important to the story)

Summary: 1965 - there’s reports of a dangerous serial killer going around the small town you live in. And while the rest of the town is trembling with fear and doing everything they can to protect themselves from the brutal murderer you, as a journalist in the local newspaper dedicate yourself on learning as much as you can about the dangerous man which slowly leads you closer to him. 1966 - you wake up in a mental asylum with all of your past memories gone. There, while trying to recover your memories you become close to a group of boys who will help you uncover the secrets of the hospital and maybe even the ones of your past.

Word count: 8k

A/N: Almost every character in this story suffers with at least one type of mental illness and I just want to clarify that I do not mean to be in any way disrespectful to any readers who might suffer from the same problems. I have made sure to educate myself as well as I can on all of those conditions and tried to write the characters in a way that is respectful and realistic. So make sure to let me know if you ever think that the way I express a certain disorder is not accurate and I’ll make sure to change it and try my best to get even more educated on the topic.

~September, 1965~

The Killer

I used to be scared of the night. The darkness and silence that came with it had always made me uneasy and sort of uncomfortable. But recently, I’ve started to learn to find comfort in the shadows of the night. It provides not just a great mood that is eerie enough to fit well with my story, but it also provides me with a great sense of protection and many, many perfect opportunities to strike… I walked down the dark alley with a bottle of whiskey in my hand (an item which had become a necessity in all of my…”adventures”), so to every bypasser (of which there were very few at such a late hour of the night) I would look like a completely regular disgusting old drunk. What they wouldn’t know though was that I have a knife in my pocket, the dry blood from last time still splattered all over the cold steel of the blade.

The house that I’m headed towards tonight is a way too familiar one. One that I thought I would never go back to. It was a house of my past screams, horrors, and fears. And it’ll soon be the house of my grandfather’s death.

When I first made my list of victims I promised myself that I won’t kill for any reason other than getting revenge. And I am sticking to that. My past is full of people who had used me, hurt me and destroyed me. People who had taken advantage of me and people who broke me. Every day I repeat the list to myself, some days even remembering to add a new name or two. The father who forgot me, the man who stole my innocence, the woman who told me I had no future, the person who covered me with scars, the friend who stole from me, the person who got me in jail, the woman who broke my heart...And of course - tonight’s target - the grandfather who tortured me…

So far, I had managed to check off two people from the list. First one was my father - the man was an alcoholic, never took care of me when I was little and going into adulthood he seemed to just completely forget about me and my brother, too busy with the demons that were flying around in his head and the shadows that he had managed to surround himself with, to realize that his kids had turned into adults. Both of us left him of course, too eager to start going down our own paths to have enough time to deal with him. But after I dropped out of college, after I went to jail for two years and after the girl which I thought was the love of my life broke my heart, I came back. Came back to this town of memories, pain, and suffering - this town that I hated with my entire being - and decided to fix it. But most importantly I decided to get revenge. On everyone. And my father was lucky enough to be first on my list...The second person was the friend who stole from me. There’s not much I have to say about him. I won’t even tell you his name because that would be quite frankly speaking - a waste of time. I will tell you though that everything he stole from me I got back. I got it back even if that took stabbing the son of a bitch in the chest.

Now though was my grandfather’s turn...The person whose death I awaited most eagerly out of everyone on my list. In 95% of my memories of him, my grandfather is present as a monster. A creature that is way less than a human, his monster-like actions way worse than anything a normal human can do. I almost chuckle to myself at that. I suppose it’s ironic...and hypocritical to call his actions monster-like and evil, considering that I’m not doing anything much better and humane. But the things he had done to me are bad enough that they can justify (at least to a certain extent) what I’m going to do to him tonight.

As a walk up the street, the old house almost in view now, the memories come rushing back in my head.

This happened just about a year after my mother died. Our father was refusing to take care of us, losing a piece of himself every day and focusing mostly on his addictions. Me and my brother were alone...We needed help and my brother was way too young to work and find us a house. So in desperation, we decided to move in with our grandfather. The man seemed mostly normal last time he had seen him. He was still little less than a stranger to us though. And foolishly, we decided to just move in with him, because we knew he lived in the same town as us. That was when it all started.

He was fairly normal the first few days except for the moments when he decided to just isolate himself off for pretty much no reason, but me and my brother just assumed that it was because he was still grieving our mother’s death. After a week or two passed though, he got worse. Instead of isolating himself, the man would get angry - sometimes for no apparent reason - and hurt us. He would throw empty glass bottles at us, beat us with belts and keeps us locked in our rooms for days with almost no food and water. I remember how every time my brother tried to protect me from him, my grandfather would grab him by the throat and shove him against the wall, choking him until he was close to passing out and then letting him drop to the floor - gasps and choking sounds filling the room as my brother was once again able to fill his lungs with air. The man was a monster. Even though we were children both me and my brother realized that he had a problem. He found joy in hurting us! I can specifically remember his disgusting smile and his low, terrifying laugh as he looked at the purple bruises on my brother’s neck in satisfaction. The bruises that he had caused.

I feel anger boiling inside of me at the memories as I stop in front of the door to the house. This was it. Time to escape the memories of the things he had done to me and get revenge. Time to kill the madman so he won’t ever hurt anyone again.

I knocked on the door and almost immediately he opened it, appearing in front of me like a nightmare that came to life. We looked at each other for a few moments, examining the marks that time had left onto us, and I couldn’t help but notice how old, helpless and broken he seemed now. It made me happy. “Hello.” I finally broke the silence, trying to look as normal as possible. Trying to not make him think even for a second that tonight is going to be his last night on earth. Because I knew that he must’ve heard about my previous murders - they were all over the news. I wondered if he suspected that it was me who killed both of those people. I wonder if he suspected that he will soon be the third one.

“What are you doing here…?” He asked and his expression turned to one of anger and madness. An expression that I was used to. But an expression that I had learned to not be scared of.

I smiled at him, not even trying to hide the flames of insanity that I knew sparked in my eyes.

“I came to visit you!” I said, my smile growing into a grin as I walk inside intrusively pushing the old man out of the way and turning around to face him. I’m taller than him now. Stronger. And he doesn’t show his fear, but I can feel it.

“Didn’t you miss me, grandpa?” I ask sarcastically, pretending to be hurt as a low chuckle escapes me. His confused reaction is just truly priceless.

“W-w-why are you here?!” He asks again and I can see the fear grow in his eyes. At that moment, I knew that he had pieced it together. He might be a monster but he’s not a stupid person.

I reached behind him and locked the door before looking down at his terrified face. Weak, alone and insane. Such a sad, sad way to die.

“What is it, grandpa?” I raised an eyebrow at him, “Am I scaring you?”

“Get out of my house…” He mumbled quietly.

“But why?” I asked, grinning widely as I took a step closer to him, “I missed you SO MUCH!”

“Get out of my house!” He exclaimed, louder this time. “Or I’ll…”

But before he could say another word I shoved him against the wall roughly, my fingers wrapped around his throat. The way he did to my brother.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that grandpa…” I said, my voice turning low and serious, the teasing tone now completely gone. “I have something very important that I need to do and I’m sure you know what it is…”

I tilted my head to the side, watching the old man cough and choke as my grip on his throat tightened with each second, his eyes filling up with tears. It was extremely satisfying to watch.

I groaned angrily, slamming his head into the wall before dropping him to the floor and looking at him with a crazed expression.

“YOU KNOW WHY I’M HERE DON’T YOU?!” I chuckled darkly. “You knew I was gonna come for you...”

“Please…” He looked up at me and I could see tears rolling down his cheeks. It was pathetic. He could at least try and die like a man.

I shook my head, pulling the knife from my back pocket and kneeled down next to him.

“No...Not after what you did to me...Not after what you did to him…I can’t let you live…”

His scared, sad sob echoed through the room before I sunk the knife into his chest. I smiled at his scream and stabbed him again. Then again. And again. I didn’t stop until I was sure he was dead. His helpless screams and pleas for help stopped and his lifeless eyes stared up at me.

Relief. That’s what I felt as I walked out of the old house, putting the knife back in my pocket. Relief that he was gone. Relief that he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Relief that I got revenge for the things he did to us. And relief that yet another murder went as planned…

Y/N (The Journalist)

You sighed in frustration, putting your pencil behind your ear. You just couldn’t piece it together. Nothing made any sense. 3 murders. None of which seemed to have any kind of obvious connections except for the fact that all three victims were male, all of them had been murdered on a Sunday and all of them were proven to have died from a stab wound. To you, that was more than enough evidence to prove that they were killed by the same person, but to the police it meant nothing. At least that’s what they told you. And it frustrated you because you knew that they weren’t telling you the whole truth. In their attempts to not cause panic, the police were hiding all the important information that you wanted and needed to know.

You were a journalist, and your duty as such was to provide information to the people - no matter how hard, dark, twisted or scary - it was important to you that they knew the truth. So because of that, you were willing to put yourself through a lot to provide your readers with the right facts, and since the police were refusing to collaborate you had started an investigation on your own.

Right now your findings were spread out in front of you on your desk and you stared down at them as you tried to come up with a solution to your problem. There must be some kind of connections between the victims, you were sure of it...But you didn’t know what it was...And unfortunately, you couldn’t know because you weren’t the police and you didn’t have access to as much information about people as they did.

You sighed again. This investigation was going to be an adventure. And - you knew - very dangerous. No one knew who or what this person was, why he was killing all those people and how dangerous he was exactly, and for all you knew there was a very big possibility that once you started your search they will track you down and kill you for being too nosy. But you were ready to take the risk and there was no one to stop you….

You’ve been living by yourself for more than three years now. You rarely talked to your family and since they lived so far away they didn’t exactly know what you did for a living because you never really bothered them with that. And since your job was the most important thing to you right now you weren’t in a relationship either, so you were completely and absolutely alone with no one to stop you from going into one of the most dangerous investigation a lonely girl can go into. But you were reckless, curious, hungry for answers and passionate about your job. And even though you were scared, you weren’t going to let that stop you. Instead, you pushed away all the scary and unsettling what-ifs and focused on the facts, focused on your plan…

You weren’t exactly sure what your plan was yet. And to be completely honest you really are the type of person who loves abandoning your plans and improvising at the spot, so you never make your plans too detailed, because you knew that they would end up being worthless anyways. This time though, you knew that you can’t do without a plan, that would be a very, very stupid thing to do.

What you planned to do was interview as many people from the town as possible, see what they know about the victims and ask about their theories about who the killer is. In your three years of being a journalist you had learned that sometimes ordinary citizens know a lot more than you would think, so you must take the time to listen to them because even though some of them were closed off our eccentric or crazy, almost everything they say has a truth to it. And if you wanted to get to the bottom of those murders you needed to listen and connect the dots to find the truth.

And the first person you were going to interview was known as the nosiest lady in town. You couldn’t take a step outside of your house without her knowing about it. She knew absolutely everything - whether you were in a relationship or not, whether you were healthy, sick, broke or alone she always knew. Mrs. Gray was her name. And the old woman who gave the impression of being innocent and sweet, but anyone who knows her personally can say that she is the complete opposite. She was a sad, sad, lonely woman whose only happiness came from gossiping. Maybe that’s why no one ever complained about her even though everyone knew the things she did - they just didn’t want to ruin her completely. But you knew that she would give you a lot of answers. You knew that she was going to tell you the truth (or at least her version of it) because Ms. Gray loved gossiping and gossiping is never fun if you don’t have anyone to gossip with…

~March, 1966~

Y/N

Gone. All gone. Every single memory. Every single one lost somewhere deep inside the darkness of your subconsciousness. And it wasn’t like you couldn’t remember your name or the names of the seven continents and capitals of big cities. Those were things that you somehow remembered. the basics. The how-tos. But nothing more. And it was the weirdest feeling because it made you feel like a robot who was unable to feel anything until now. All your memories were facts that are close to useless and all your emotions - fear, sadness, and confusion.

Communicating with people was strange too. You had only been awake for two days. One of them you had spent mostly sleeping and the other you had spent laying in your bed and trying to recover as much as you can. Trying to fill the painful emptiness in your head. Nurses were coming in and out of your white, dimly lit room and you wished they would tell you more, but they never did. All of them saying the same thing - not yet, just try to recover for now, you’ll talk to the doctor when you’re ready. And all you wanted was to know the truth.

You knew that the hospital wasn’t a nice place. You would hear screams echo down the hallways every now and again. They were filled with pain and insanity. And they scared you, but what scared you most was that when you thought about it you were one of them. This was a mental asylum and you were yet another person who was struggling.

And that was just the emotional pain. Then there was also the physical one. You would get headaches, constantly, ever since you had woken up. No one knew why they happened - maybe it was the fact that you had been in a coma for months, or maybe it was because you were skinny because they’ve only fed you enough to keep you alive, or probably it was because you were too overwhelmed with information and trying too hard to recover your memories.

There was also this scar on the side of your head. A barely healed wound that still stung a bit when you touched it. It was a part of your past, you knew. And every time you saw it you couldn’t help yourself but imagine different scenarios about how you got it. You were always the hero in those scenarios. Always the one rescuing people, always the one sacrificing herself for them. You hoped that you really were that heroic in your past even though you knew it was probably untrue. It was a nice thought though, and probably one of the only positive things of having amnesia - you could reinvent your past and rebuild yourself as a human.

A nurse came in interrupting you from your thoughts and you were thankful for the distraction - sitting alone in a small, locked room can drive you crazy (even though you probably already were). She filled up your glass of water and handed you a small wrapped sandwich, the exact same as yesterday. You opened it and started eating silently, looking up at the nurse who was cleaning the room. She did that yesterday too and you wondered if she did the exact same thing while you were still unconscious too.

The nurse was a nice woman. At least she seemed like one. You never really got the chance to talk to her about anything other than your health and your room. But she always greeted you with a smile and tried to have small talk with you and make sure that you’re fine.

“So how are you today, love?” She asked sweetly and gave you a smile as she sat in the chair by your bed.

You nodded, smiling back at her weakly, “I’m good... Better than yesterday at least!”

She nodded in understanding. “Recovery is hard...Especially after what had happened to you…”

You gave her a hopeful look. For a second the nurse really sounded like she was about to give you more details on what exactly was wrong with you.

“Anyways…” But she didn’t…

She gave you a glass of water and a handful of pills, same as the ones you had taken yesterday.

“Now take your pills and come with me. You’re going to speak to the doctor today...He might...Answer some of your questions…”

You swallowed the pills and smiled widely, “Really?!”

“Yes.” She nodded. You noticed that she looked tired.

Standing up with the nurse’s help you made your way to the door, carefully taking each step. You were still very weak and you were scared that you would collapse every second.

The nurse opened the door for you and started to lead you down the hallway to the doctor’s office. The first thing you noticed was how white everything was - from the wall of your room to the walls of the hallways and the doors to the other rooms. It made you feel like you were in a dream and just for a moment none of what was happening felt real.

The door to the doctor's office was the only brown one you had seen so far. A small sign with bold letters that was hanging from the door informed you that Dr. Carlin was the person you were waiting to see. The nurse instructed you to sit down on one of the old wooden chairs in front of the doctor's office and wait for him to call you before she left to check on one of her other patients, her quiet footsteps echoing down the white hallway.

You waited in silence then, thinking about what was going to happen after the doctor called you in. Would you see your family? Did you have a family? Was there anyone on Earth who cared about you? You couldn't know. But you hoped that they did. You hoped that the doctor would be able to answer at least some of your questions. And at the same time - you were terrified that the answers he will give you might not be the ones you wanted…

The chair next to you creaked, snapping you out of your thoughts. You looked up. The boy sitting in it wasn't much der than you. He had dark brown hair and a face that seemed to be in a permanent expression of worry. The boy was bouncing his leg up and down and chewing on his lip while staring at the wall in front of him. You knew you were in a mental asylum and everything - your nurse had made sure that you're aware of that - but seeing this boy sitting next to you made you wonder if you were actually crazy. If there was another reason why you were here other than your amnesia. And if there was another reason about why you were here, and you were actually crazy - were you the same amount of crazy as everyone else here? As the boy? As all the people whose screams of agony and terror you hear each night before falling asleep? You shuddered at the thought...It was an uncomfortable thought, but still - not scary.

You turned to the boy again, examining him curiously. He didn't seem to pay any attention to you. Instead, he looked down at his lap and started fidgeting with his fingers anxiously.

“Are you...okay?” You asked uncertainty. You knew it was a stupid thing to ask - you didn't know what the boy was struggling with or why he was acting like this, but you wanted to ask - if only just to end the frustrating silence in the room.

He looked up at you as if finally realizing that you're there and then focused back on the wall in front of him, shaking his head.

“Not really…That's why I'm waiting in front of the doctor's office.”

The boy paused for a second then sighed.

“He's the only person who knows how to help me...And I'm scared...Oh, I'm so fucking scared this time!”

His eyes started filling up with tears and he ran a hand through his hair.

Shit. You didn't expect that kind of reaction. What do I do?

The guy turned to you suddenly, sniffling as he wiped away his tears.

“Can you keep a secret?”

You nodded slowly, silently.

He leaned closer to you, looking around before whispering, “I think that there's a group of people out to kill me...They all say that I'm lying! Everyone! But I am certain that what I'm telling you is absolutely true! They've tried to kill me several times before but never succeeded. This time though…” He groaned and shook his head, “God...This time...They might actually get me! And Dr. Carlin…” He sat up, pointing to the brown door or his office. “Dr. Carlin is the only one who can save me from them…The. Only. On-”

“Hoseok!” The door opened and the doctor's voice interrupted the boy’s passionate story. Hoseok looked up at the doctor wide-eyed. “Just relax okay? I'll talk to our new patient here and then we can discuss your problem, alright?”

Hoseok nodded, looking back down at his lap and mumbling a quiet “yes” as the doctor turned his attention to you.

“Come on in…” He gave you a small smile and gestured for you to walk in and sit down in his office. As you did so Dr. Carlin walked in after you and closed the door, sitting down on the other side of his desk.

He was old - that was the first thing you noticed about the doctor. Definitely not less than 60 and with eyes that were intelligent, friendly and comforting.

The Doctor looked down at a paper on his desk and then back up at you.

“So...We'll start by doing a small exam. I'll ask you a few questions and you answer the ones you know and just tell me the ones you don't...sounds good?”

You shook your head.

“I...I t-t-thought you were going to tell me about my past...And about...Why I'm here…” You stuttered. “And about who I am...And…”

“Shh…” Dr. Carlin interrupted you, nodding. “I will tell you all of that...or at least everything we know...But first I need you to answer some questions so I know exactly how bad your...case is..”

“I…” You paused, then sighed and nodded. “Okay…”

“Good…” The doctor nodded.

37 questions later, you realized that the only things you could remember about yourself were your name and your age.

Y/N. 22 years old. Those were the only two things you could recall. Everything else was just a complete blur in your mind.

“So?” you looked up at Dr. Carlin as he examined your answers.

He sighed and looked up at you.

“Time for the truth I guess…” He chuckled awkwardly. “To be completely honest...We don't know much more about you either.”

You were about to question that but he just held up a hand, telling you to be quiet.

“Three months ago we found you in front of our door, unconscious and with an open wound in your head. No one knew what to do and whether you were going to survive or not, but we still had no choice but to at least try and save you. So we took you in and we closed up the wound. You remained in a coma for a very long time...But you're here now...And you're alive…The problem is that neither you nor us know exactly who you are and where you come from…”

You were confused and scared. And the several simple questions that you had about yourself suddenly became a lot more - all of them so much more complicated.

You decided to remain silent and take it all in. Listen to what else the doctor had to say. And then decide what to do. Everything was terrifying...and confusing.

“So…” Dr. Carlin sighed. “Our plan is...To keep you here at least for another half a year. Help you recover. Both mentally and physically. And at the same time, we're going to start an investigation that will help us find out who you are exactly and where you come from. And of course you are a legal adult so even though this is my recommendation, I am in no position to force you into doing anything, so if you are not happy with this plan of action we can always work out a-”

“An investigation?!” You cut him off sharply, shaking your head. “But why? With all my respect Doctor - I'm not a lost person! I'm right here! Standing in front of you!”

“Yes!” The doctor interrupted you calmly. “There is no denying the fact that you're here standing in front of me, but...Who are you? You know nothing about yourself but your name. And to everyone else - even to yourself - you're a lost person. A nobody. Think of your family. They might be out there somewhere...Looking for you...And being worried sick…”

“But why an investigation!” You nearly yelled, standing up from your chair and trying not to let the panic overcome you. You're a no one...Was the only thought going through your head at that time...A goddamn nobody...You didn't let it show through. You were trying to stay calm. “What if….What if I get my memories back?! Huh?!”

The doctor looked up at you silently for a moment and you knew what he was gonna say even before he said it.

“Actually...There is a very large possibility that you will never return your memories…”

You teared up, sitting back down in your chair and looking down at your lap, shaking your head in shock.

“W-what…?”, you mumbled in disbelief.

The doctor continued.

“We've rarely seen cases like yours. Amnesia is very, very rarely caused by an injury, and from what we've seen about cases like yours - people with the kind of amnesia you have rarely get to recover their memories. Or at least we're not advanced enough yet to know how to treat it. I'm any case...I’m very sorry...But I'm afraid that you might not recover…”

Your hands were trembling as he talked and you started breathing heavily, struggling to keep yourself together. It just got you exactly how lost and alone you are. Your family - if you even had one - was probably far from here or maybe didn't even know you existed. You had no one. Absolutely no one.

The doctor kept talking but it was white noise to you. The words coming out of his mouth were meaningless. Meaningless! You were going to be stuck in here forever and even if you somehow managed to recover and get out you didn't know what you were going to do or where you were going to go…

“Y/N are you listening to me?” Dr. Carlin’s voice was so calm compared to your thoughts - it made you realize how quiet the room was compared to your head.

You shook your head and sniffled, looking up at him.

“I'm sorry I just...Got distracted...What were you saying?”

He sighed and nodded.

“It's okay. I understand that this is a lot to process. And stress is completely normal after such news had just been announced to you...So I completely understand…But what I was saying is that this is exactly the reason why we need to start an investigation. Your memories about your past might be gone Y/N, but with the help of the police and people who knew you we would be able to piece most of your past together” the doctor nodded reassuringly. “I promise you that…”

You just nodded silently, only half comprehending his words. You had nothing to say. There was nothing to say.

“And...While you recover and the investigation starts,” he continued. “You try to enjoy your stay here as much as you can. I mean...It's not a vacation but I'm sure you'll make some friends...and meet many new people…”

You almost rolled your eyes and chuckled at that. The doctor sounded like a school counselor. But instead, you just nodded again, standing up quietly.

“Thank you doctor….I really appreciate your help.”

“You're welcome…” He nodded too and gestured to the door. “You're free to leave now…”

You gave the doctor a small, polite smile and headed for the door.

He isn't a bad man, you thought. You could see that. It was obvious that he just wanted to help. He was just the unfortunate soul whose job was to deliver bad news to people. At least he's good at that, you thought to yourself as you closed the brown door behind you, too good…

Lost, alone, forgotten. The frustrating thoughts continued to haunt you as you started walking down the hallway back to your room. Lost, alone, forgotten. It felt like someone took away the first half of your life. You didn't know who you are or what things you've been through. So to a certain degree, it felt like someone took away a very large part of your identity too. Lost, alone, forgotten...You're a nobody Y/N….A nobody. Lost, alone, forgotten. It was completely ridiculous but you could still feel a small bubble of hope in your chest. I can remember my name and my age, right?, you were telling yourself, there must be at least a small possibility that I'll recover at least part of my memories. Still though, the tsunami of bad thoughts continued to hit your mind and you felt hopeless again. Your knees felt weak, your eyes filling up with tears once again as a quiet soft escaped you blending in perfectly with the whines and the moans and the screams and the groans coming from the patients whose rooms you were walking by. Lost, alone, forgotten. You couldn't even think anymore. You allowed the bad thoughts and the panic to overtake you completely and it was getting to you. Before you realized it everything was spinning and you didn't even feel like you were standing in the completely white hallway of the hospital anymore, but instead, you were somewhere deep in your thoughts. Drowning. Suffocating in them. And before you realized what was happening you stumbled to the ground. Everything was black again. And you were laying on the ground - even more helpless than you were before.

“Is she dead?”

“No, you idiot! She's just unconscious. She must've fainted…”

“God...People look fucking weird when they're unconscious. It's like they're dead but then...not really.”

“Jin can you just shut the fuck up?!”

The voices woke you up. They sounded distant as if you were underwater and they were talking above you. And they were talking about you, you realized as two arms shook your shoulders gently.

“Come on princess, wake up.” One of the voices said way clearer now.

You opened your eyes, rubbing your head softly. You must've hit your head pretty badly when you fainted because it hurt like hell. A soft groan of pain escaped you and boys that were standing in front of you looked down at you surprised that you had woken up.

“Oh good! We were just getting worried that you weren't going to wake up for awhile,” the guy who was holding your arms said. “How are you feeling now?”

“I...have a really bad headache...but other than that I'm fine...I guess…”

The guy nodded and helped you stand up carefully. You could feel that he was genuinely nice and wanted to help but the guy behind him, on the other hand, kept giving you looks that made you uncomfortable. He seemed annoyed by you and something in his eyes showed that almost despised you for some reason.

“I'm Namjoon,” the taller guy said, smiling as he let go of you and you dusted off your clothes.

“And this is Jin,” Namjoon pointed to the other boy who gave you a small nod of acknowledgment. “And you are…?”

You were silent for a moment. In all honesty - you didn't really know who you are. He was simply asking for your name though.

“Oh…I’m Y/N..”, you mumbled softly.

“Ah! You must be new!” Namjoon gave you another smile. “I haven't seen you around before...“

“Yeah...I…” You didn't know what to say. And you didn't feel like explaining everything. “I just got here...A few days ago…”

Namjoon stared at you for a second, silently. You were almost completely sure that he was suspecting you of lying but that could've just been you being paranoid.

“Oh cool!” He finally said, smiling

Jin, the other boy who was silent for almost the entire time leaned forward and whispered something in Namjoon’s ear, both of their expressions suddenly turning into ones of worry and concern.

“...Okay…” Namjoon nodded, before turning back to you, his smile kind of forced this time. “I'll see you around then Y/N...Do you need help with anything else before we leave?”

“I…” You were gonna say no. But then it occurred to you that now you were allowed to walk around the hospital so didn't have to necessarily go back to your room. “I was actually wondering where the showers are?”

Namjoon gave you another smile and nodded happily.

“Yes! Of course!” He said. “Just down this hallway and then to the right by the staircase. You should be able to find them fairly easily.”

You nodded and smiled back politely. “Thank you…”

“Of course. No problem!” Namjoon said, “Goodbye for now though…And please be careful, princess...This place is darker than you would think.”

You nodded in understanding and with that the two boys continued down the hallway hurriedly, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

Was Namjoon just trying to scare you or did he really mean it when he said that this place is darker than you thought? From what you’ve seen of him so far he didn’t seem like the type to do such a thing, so you thought it was very likely that he was saying the truth...The thought of the asylum having a hidden dark side wasn’t even that far-fetched to you - this place was the home of many people’s fears, terrors and simply just terrifying thoughts and you knew that there are mental hospitals who have freaky ways of dealing with their patients’ problems. An ice cold shiver ran down your spine at that thought. It was extremely terrifying and (you hoped) probably untrue, but just the plain thought of it made your heart race.

Down the hallway you went, passing white door after white door, following Namjoon’s directions to the showers. You noticed that this part of the hospital was a lot brighter and slightly cleaner than the part your room was in. This part of the hospital was actually kind of nice. It reminded you more of a school hallway than one of a mental asylum.

As you walked by you heard the sound of someone humming to themselves softly coming from one of the rooms. The melody was strangely familiar and comforting and you couldn’t help but feel drawn to the soft hum. You followed the sound - the door to the room that it was coming from was slightly ajar - and the closer you got to it the more you realized that this couldn’t possibly be the first time you’ve heard this. The familiarity of the song and its possible connection with your past excited you so you pushed the door open quietly. What was inside the brightly lit room was even more interesting…

There were maybe tens or hundreds of paint bottles, pastels and pencils scattered across the room. Empty and half-filled canvases hanging from the walls and windows. And a skinny boy in the center of it, holding a paintbrush and staring into the almost finished painting that was in front of him in deep thought. It was an art studio you realized. Seeing something so beautiful in a place so empty of color and so dark almost took your breath away.

The paintings were all around the room. They were mainly landscapes but you could see several portraits too - every single one of them almost glowing with bright, carefully chosen colors. You wanted to get closer to them, to admire them and to tell the boy how beautiful they were. And without realizing it you had quietly entered the large room, looking around in wonder.

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?!” The tall boy turned to you suddenly, anger flashing in his eyes.

He took a few steps towards you, gesturing for you to get loud, “This is not an art museum! And neither is it a gallery! So I would very much appreciate it if you get. THE FUCK. OUT!”

He was getting more annoyed by the second and yelling at you by the end, pushing you backward until you were out the door.

“AND DON’T COME BACK, OKAY?!” Before you could even react he shut the door in front of your face, the loud sound echoing down the hallway.

You knew that what you did wasn’t right but at the same time you felt like the boy was overreacting. Or maybe he wasn’t...What you did really was intrusive...But you couldn’t help yourself! You wanted to see the paintings up close.

A loud gasp and the sound of shattered glass interrupted your thinking. You turned around towards the source of the sound to a boy that looked way younger than anyone you’ve seen today. He was sitting by a pool of water and a pile of shattered glass and you assumed that he must’ve been holding a glass.

The boy was breathing sharply, leaning down to put his hands on his knees and mumbling something to himself that to you was incomprehensive.

Taking a few steps forward carefully and slowly, you placed a hand on his shoulder looking down at him, “It’s okay...I-I’m here...I’ll help you…”

You didn’t know what to say or do. The boy seemed to be having a panic attack and you were worried that he was going to faint as his breathing was getting more chaotic by the minute and you could see his arms and legs start to shake.

“What is-?” Someone pushed you away softly, kneeling in front of the boy and looking up at him. The other guy wasn’t a doctor or a nurse - he was dressed the way every other patient was - but he seemed to know what he was doing.

“Jungkookie…” He was talking softly to the boy whose breathing was slowly going back to normal, “Jungkook look at me. It’s okay. Just take deep breaths...In and out...That’s it…”

“Jiminnie…” The other boy mumbled weakly. “The glass...I dropped it..I..” “Don’t worry about the glass…Just breathe...Slowly…”

While the short looking boy was talking to the one whose name you realized was Jungkook, a third guy tapped your shoulder, making you turn to him startled. He has been there the entire time, you realized, but because of how chaotic everything was you didn’t notice him.

“What the hell happened?” He said angrily. “You were here right? Was it you who did something to him? Did you yell at him? You shouldn’t yell at him that’s-”

“No!” You interrupted him quickly. “No that wasn’t me! I was just...In the room...With the paintings...And the painter guy-”

“Taehyung.” The boy said, anger still evident in his voice. “Did he yell at him?”

“No!” You thought about it for a second. “At least not directly at him…”

“What is that supposed to mean?” The boy who was still kneeling in front of Jungkook asked. He looked up at him. “Jungkookie...Was it Taehyung who scared you? Or was it because you dropped the glass? Or...”

“Taehyung was yelling at me to get out...I think that might have caused it…” You mumbled uncertainly.

Both boys sighed as the short one stood up.

“You…” The one standing in front of you said, trying to remain calm, “Must either be very new...Or very damn stupid.”

The shorter boy pushed him aside before he could say anything else and gave him an angry look.

“What...Yoongi is trying to say...Is that Taehyung doesn’t like company…” He explained. “Especially if it’s from strangers...And especially if it is while he’s painting…”

“I understand that you’re new…” He continued, giving you a measuring look. “At least I haven’t seen you around before...But please...Keep in mind that all of us here are struggling with things that should be respected. Including Jungkook and Taehyung.”

“So next time try to be more careful, alright?” Yoongi added.

You sighed and nodded. “I’m sorry..I just...Didn’t know…”

Yoongi nodded too, “Well now you do.”

The two boys helped the younger one up carefully before continuing down the hallway to wherever they were going.

“Okay, Jungkookie…” You heard one of them mumble, “Let’s go check on Hoseok now...I haven’t seen him since he visited the doctor this morning…”

And as you continued down the hallway to the showers you made sure to remind yourself that this was a mental asylum, and as the boy said - you had to try and understand what those people were going through. Even though, you could probably never understand many of them because amnesia wasn’t in any way similar to what the people here were struggling with, you had to at least try because - you knew - the patients here, the doctors and the nurses would probably be the only people you would interact with for a while...This thought made you miss the people from your past even more. The people who you weren’t even sure even existed…

The Patient

I stared up at the ceiling, deep in thought, a small smile appearing on my face at the thought of her. She hadn’t changed at all. Her eyes were still the exact same round, curious and innocent eyes that I remember. That surprised me because I know from experience that people’s eyes change after they go through what she has gone through - they become dark and sad and empty. And even though I knew that she probably didn’t remember any of it - I was almost absolutely sure that she felt it. She must feel it somewhere deep inside of her - all the pain and suffering and...love that she experienced.

A soft chill ran through my body as I remembered the last time I saw her. Three months ago - completely broken, almost dying and praying to me that I end her suffering instead of trying to save her. She had completely given up. And it was all my fault...All of it because of me….

I hated that I couldn’t tell her the truth about her past. That I couldn’t tell her who I really am. That I couldn’t just go up to her and hug her and tell her how much I love her and how sorry I am for what happened. It was destroying me on the inside that I had to pretend to be completely oblivious to who she was. To pretend that I haven’t dreamed of her coming back for the past three months. And to pretend that I wasn’t relieved to see her alive and well.

I will tell her though, I promised myself, one day when the time is right and she is ready and recovered. But...At the same time, I still thought that I shouldn’t tell her. Ever. That she would be better off living without me. Without what we had. Without all the horrible memories that she has. Without all the pain that I caused her…

Anyways she would be fine...I knew that for sure. She is a strong girl - one who knows how to take care of herself. And even though she wouldn’t know it - she would always have me by her side. No matter what.

I yawned softly, reaching over to turn off my nightlight. I closed my eyes and as I started drifting off to sleep the thought of seeing her tomorrow brought a small smile to my face.

#bts #bts angst #bts smut #bts thriller #bts mystery #bts fluff #bts imagines #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #min yoongi #kim seokjin #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #kim namjoon

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