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#this is an & story not a slash story for anyone worried

ninemelodies · 6 months

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portraits in the attic

Donna is in the console room, tucked under the center console and reading a magazine, when a headline about summer swimwear reminds her of a question she meant to ask the Doctor. The alien in question is tinkering away somewhere underneath the grating. Every now and then, she hears the whir of the sonic, followed by some sort of muttered exclamation. The TARDIS won’t translate, so Donna figures it’s either Gallifreyan or he’s cursing up a storm. It might be both.

She puts down her magazine and shifts closer to the hole in the grating he had disappeared down. “Doctor?”

The sonic whirs again, briefly, and then she hears him yell back, “Yes, Donna?”

He sounds muffled and distant, like he’s further away than should be physically possible. But then again, Donna considers, she’s in a spaceship that’s bigger on the inside. And anyway, what’s a little spatial nonsense between friends? It’s certainly not the weirdest thing she’s seen while traveling with the Doctor. When she doesn’t respond immediately, he starts back up with the sonic, so Donna raises her voice to be heard. “Why is there a swimming pool in the library?”

Abruptly, the sonic cuts off, and Donna hears the tail end of a huffled laugh. His shoes squeak on the metal as he walks and then he appears at the bottom of the hole, looking up. He climbs halfway up a ladder she hadn’t noticed, until he can comfortably rest his arms on the grated floor. “Where else would the pool be?”

“In its own room?” Donna asks. “The humidity isn’t good for paper, you know.”

The Doctor waves his hand nonchalantly. “The TARDIS makes sure nothing happens to the books. Besides, all of the books are cataloged and archived in a database, so even if something did happen to the books or the library, they wouldn’t be lost. But if you’re really worried, the humidity is contained and regulated by a thermo-”

Donna cuts him off. “Yeah, yeah, Spaceman. The TARDIS keeps them safe, that’s all you had to say. You don’t have to go all techno on me. You know I can hardly understand you when you start babbling.” The Doctor’s face flickers with something like disapproval, but before he can speak whatever thought just skittered across his mind, Donna asks, “Was it always in the library?”

“No,” the Doctor admits. “It used to have its own room, but I had to jettison it.”

“You can just get rid of rooms?”

“In a pinch, I can eject or destroy pieces of the tardis for a power boost,” the Doctor confirms. “Destroying them allows for more of the TARDIS’s power to be directed elsewhere. Ejecting rooms…” the Doctor tilts his head as he considers how best to explain exactly how launching rooms from the TARDIS is an advantage. “Weeeell,” he drawls, “Since we’re talking about a swimming pool anyway. You know how swimmers will push off from the wall to get a boost?” When Donna nods, he continues. “It works very similar to that. It's Newton's third law at work, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Simply put, the room goes one way, and the TARDIS goes the other." He puts the sides of his hands together with his index fingers extended and then mimes them pushing off each other into opposite directions. “Very handy if you need a boost without attracting attention from scanners. I try not to do it very often because, somehow, I always end up needing the room I got rid of immediately after.”

“Okay…” Donna shifts and draws her legs underneath her so that she is sitting cross-legged. The shift in her position has her leaning forward a bit, closer to the Doctor. “That part makes sense, but wouldn’t it have been better to launch the pool with the rest of the room? Otherwise the TARDIS would’ve had to launch the room and move the pool at the same time, right?”

The Doctor gives her one of his half smiles. It tells her that she’s right, but the way his eyes are focused on something just past her shoulder also tells her that he’s miles away, thinking about something else.

“Oi,” Donna calls. When she doesn’t get a response, she leans forward and gently flicks his forehead. “Hello? Earth to Martian.”

That gets his attention. The Doctor’s eyes snap to her face, and Donna is not surprised at the depth of sadness in them. Most of the time, The Doctor looks more like an excited child than he has any right to, but sometimes, like now, when he starts thinking about the past, Donna can see each and everyone of his 900 plus years layered in his eyes. The sadness drags him down and down, until even Donna feels like she could drown in it. He grabs her wrist while she is distracted and pulls her hand away from his face.

“On Messaline, I told you that I had been a father before.” He lets go of her wrist and she tucks both hands in between her legs. “I was more than that, I was a grandfather, at one point. My granddaughter, her name was Susan. She was my first companion.” The Doctor swallows thickly and looks away from Donna's face. “I taught her how to swim in that pool. She loved that pool. Out of every room in the TARDIS, that was the one she chose for herself.” The Doctor stops, takes a deep shuddering breath and runs a hand through his hair. “Didn’t feel right to just get rid of it.”

Donna watches him carefully, watches as his face smooths out and tears collect in his bottom lashes, so close to spilling over. He looks away and wipes his eyes and Donna pretends not to notice. “Do you do that for all your companions?” When he looks at her, brows furrowed, she expands. “Do you always remember stuff about them like that? Their favorite rooms and stuff?”

And though the Doctor no longer has tears on his face, the sadness in his eyes and in the lines of his face lingers. “Oh, yes.” He whispers. His smile is so soft and tender. It's heartbreaking to see. “Every single one of them. I know you humans have this idea that you’re not important, that you’re such a small part of the universe and of my life that you’re nothing more than a blip or a speck, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I carry each of them with me, all the time, in here.” The Doctor taps his temple with his index finger, before moving his hand down to rest over one of his hearts. “And in here. Every one of them has been more important than they realized.”

“Did you love them?” It might be an odd question, but Donna knows that the Doctor loved Rose, and even Martha, in his own way.

The Doctor tucks his hand into the crook of his elbow and rests his arm on the grating. He leans his head into the palm of his other hand and stares at Donna. “Yes,” he confirms. “All of them. I didn't love all of them the same, of course, but I did, yes.”

When she had asked about the pool, Donna wasn’t expecting it to lead to this. She wasn’t sure why the Doctor was being so willing to answer her questions right now, or why he was revealing so much about his past. Normally, the Doctor kept his most painful memories close to his chest, locked tight and sealed until they absolutely couldn’t be contained anymore. He revealed more in moments of duress and strife than at any other time, yet, here he was, answering Donna truthfully and honestly.

Maybe he had listened when she told him that he talked too much but said too little.

The openness in his eyes was beginning to make her uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure she would like the answers she would get if she continued down this line of questioning. She decided to give him, and herself, a way out. “So what does that make me then? The big, useless, ginger house cat?”

The Doctor shakes his head and sighs. “I keep telling you you’re special, one day you’re going to believe me.”

“In your dreams, Spaceman.”

Before the Doctor can reply, the TARDIS gives a sickening lurch. Donna's hand shoots out to grasp the edge of the console to keep herself from falling forward. The Doctor is not so lucky. He jerks back, slamming his spine into the far edge of the hole he was standing in. He lets out a pained groan and leans forward to rest his forehead against the floor.

Once the TARDIS settles, Donna hesitantly releases her death grip on the console. “Doctor? You ok?”

He gives a brief thumbs up before he lifts his head from the floor. “I think that’s my cue to go finish those repairs. She's a little upset that I've left one of the stabilizers unplugged this long.”

And now that he’s mentioned it, Donna can feel a vague sense of irritation sitting just on the edge of her mind. When she turns her attention to it, the feeling fades into something soft and warm. “She's only upset with you,” She snorts. “She adores me.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes. “She's my ship, you can’t gang up on me like this!” He protests.

“Maybe if you didn’t hit her with a mallet!” Donna shoots back.

“Maybe if she’d behave I -” The TARDIS zaps him in retaliation. The Doctor jerks his hand away from the grating with a yelp and shakes out the remaining tingles. “Alright! I’m going!” He backs down the ladder with a sour look on his face. Just before he disappears from view completely, he looks back up at Donna. “You know that -” He cuts off abruptly, shakes his head and keeps climbing down. He opens his mouth, like he is going to say something, before he shakes his head and keeps climbing down.

Donna watches him walk into the depths of the TARDIS again and figures that’s the end of the conversation, for now, until the Doctor has finished whatever tinkering he was doing. She retrieves her magazine that she abandoned, tucks herself back under the console and lets the humming of the TARDIS and the Doctor’s unintelligible muttering wash over her.

It was a funny old world on the TARDIS, she mused. The Doctor hadn’t been lying, but there wasn’t another place she’d rather be.

#doctor who #donna noble #tenth doctor #10th doctor #donna & ten #this is an & story not a slash story for anyone worried #look if this sucks i don't wanna know BUT if it's good please tell me in extensive detail thanks <3 #i require constant validation and praise #yes i did take the two characters that bicker like a married couple in canon and wrote a soft scene between them #my fics

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halcyone-of-the-sea · 4 months

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PREY

PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader

SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.

WORDCOUNT: 16.8k

WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.

A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.

In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf.

“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”

And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution.

“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France

“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland

“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.

Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse.

Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.

You must never get within the beast’s sights.

—

There’s blood on your hands again.

Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.

Howls.

“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”

It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it.

The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream.

Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder.

You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works.

It never works.

Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds.

Shapeshifter.

Demon spawn.

Werewolf.

“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”

The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide.

The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell.

More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—

“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!”

There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything.

But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.

Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout.

Who had you killed this time?

By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late.

“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”

“Get the dogs on it!”

“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat.

“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass.

The hounds are afraid of you.

They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order.

Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation.

You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh.

The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear.

In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.

Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist.

“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”

You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.

Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at.

“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body. “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”

“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”

A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together.

It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form.

The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face.

Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be.

“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.”

Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone.

Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.

Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you.

And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.

“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.

“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”

A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.

They’re going to make it hurt.

“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes.

“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!”

Death would be better than this.

Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees.

Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now.

“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”

“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die.

It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.

Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.

You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.

Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver.

Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed.

Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.

Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.

“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.

Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off.

He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.

Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you.

There was something…off.

Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting.

Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.

Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.

It could never be easy, could it?

A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness.

—

They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.

Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized.

You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.

The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens.

Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit.

“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle.

Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays.

You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.

Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely.

“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.

After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.

Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest.

“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket.

You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all.

But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood.

Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.”

You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other.

Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around.

But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.

It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.

But the hunch he had was too important to ignore.

Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.

Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane.

Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side.

Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.”

The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.

“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over.

Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head.

“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.”

Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb.

The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death.

The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck.

But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump.

The first thing you do is vomit.

Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly.

It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble.

“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”

A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time.

Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away.

“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”

“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking.

“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.”

“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain.

Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight.

“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.”

A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.

“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot—

“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.”

Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.

Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship.

The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before.

He wastes no time.

“Who bloody bit you?”

You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.

“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.”

Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff.

“When?”

“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped.

To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction.

The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground.

The blood and the bolt.

He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.

Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.

“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.

You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt.

Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back.

Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly.

Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays.

A great gray wolf with blue eyes…

His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second.

The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears.

You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel.

But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form.

He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace.

So why had he talked to you?

Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness.

And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom.

You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.

—

The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves.

Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head.

Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver.

When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”

Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.

Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk.

“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.”

Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds.

Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.

Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?”

You just blink, mouth slightly open.

“Where…am I?”

“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly.

If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare.

Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons.

Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric.

They’d been re-applied recently, too.

“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”

“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”

“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.”

The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing.

The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”

“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.”

Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do.

The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.

When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away.

The furs are warm.

In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi.

Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?

But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area.

Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.

There are runes written on it.

You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.

Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood.

You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther.

Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining.

Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes.

This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely.

Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly.

Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…

Why were you still alive?

Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly.

In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances.

You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear.

“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly.

Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items.

“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.”

You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.”

Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.

Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb.

You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place.

“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat.

“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more.

“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn’t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.

“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.”

“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning.

Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?”

“No,” you huff. “Not really.”

“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.”

“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.

You limp forward and sit in the chair.

Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head.

“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?”

“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”

The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.

Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”

“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.”

Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch.

You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”

“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.”

“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.”

“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.”

“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”

“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”

Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”

“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”

“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.”

A long nothingness ensues.

The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided.

“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.”

Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”

He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps.

“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.

He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.”

And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.

—

The Hunter was a strange beast.

The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences.

Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside.

You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front.

No livestock.

No bodies.

It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.

You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before.

Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination.

Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.

“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”

“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”

“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”

“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”

“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”

“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”

Your face heats.

Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.

However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.

He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.

There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf.

Comparable things, really.

But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope.

A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now.

But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.

“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.”

“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.

Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”

A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”

Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”

You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell.

The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”

A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”

Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant.

He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality.

“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”

“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.

“None,” is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.”

Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process.

When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future.

“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.

Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later.

The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known.

He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”

“Money?” You frown.

“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”

“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”

“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.

“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.

“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at.

Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not.

You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey.

His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.

“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.”

It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.

“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”

For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still.

Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get.

The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips.

“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say.

Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.

Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping.

He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now.

The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’

He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed.

“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”

The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.

—

“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room

The full moon was tomorrow.

“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.

It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.

So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes.

At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take.

“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”

He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.

But…that was his job, wasn’t it?

“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”

“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.

Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.

The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night.

“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you.

“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about.

The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting.

Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.

“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.”

Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off.

The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.

“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound.

“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”

The question makes you double-take.

He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?

Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind.

“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly.

“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”

“I kept sheep.”

He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together.

“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come.

“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.

“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”

There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it.

“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”

The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.

With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face.

You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep.

But his hands had been kind to you.

Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast

“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.”

“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.

The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly.

“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”

“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud.

The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean.

“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them.

Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.

—

Come morning, you already feel wrong.

Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck.

You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question.

It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on.

At noon, he tries to suggest eating.

“Hungry?” Ghost asks.

“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.”

Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?”

Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily.

Whispers dance in the shell of your ears.

I’m here.

“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them.

Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.

Your eyes widen.

“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”

A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more.

“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”

His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.

“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”

“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.”

You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”

A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.

I’m waiting.

Find me.

“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps.

“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”

“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs.

They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity.

Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs.

Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head.

Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real.

Oh, he was real.

His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him.

Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”

He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.

“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”

“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable.

Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”

“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”

“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says.

“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”

When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line.

There is companionship in broken things.

Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river.

Find me.

“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.”

Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.

A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.

A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings.

He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.

But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit.

He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem.

You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better.

But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.

—

A white beast prowls the forest.

It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth.

A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.

Find me.

Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.

I’m waiting.

But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was.

Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.

Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.

Gunpowder.

Leather.

Whiskey.

Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need.

Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth.

A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.

Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come.

You were being summoned.

Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.

This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it.

Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.

Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek.

Like pure white spikes.

In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.

I’ll find you.

If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.

Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.

—

Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago.

He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed.

The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you.

He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb.

Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid.

Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.

“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head.

The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.

Rain would wash away the tracks.

“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?”

It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink.

Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing.

His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing.

Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes.

Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.

Your tracks end here.

From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.

A low snarl sets his hair on end.

Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust.

Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth.

Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery.

His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates.

The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up.

You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again.

…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?

Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand.

A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.

Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.

Ghost watches, and he waits.

He can’t do it.

Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.

“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”

He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.

The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart.

“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”

There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.

“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”

Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.

“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.”

He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.

Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back.

Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.

Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.

The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur.

“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!”

The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.

He can’t get a good shot.

The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva.

Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently.

Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat.

Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down.

Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest.

The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death.

The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark.

Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands.

So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you.

Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground.

You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.

Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene.

Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.

“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”

The eyes that lock on him are not yours.

Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin.

Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.

He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before.

“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”

Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all.

But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can.

Too much.

Brown eyes crease, darting a look down.

“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”

He can see the conflict; the internal fight.

Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls.

“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.”

Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits.

You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment.

The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way.

Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion.

—

Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease.

His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done.

You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands.

Gunpowder.

“What did I—?”

“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”

You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs.

“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though.

“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”

“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”

It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his.

“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”

He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat.

“Better, Little Wolf?”

“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”

“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”

“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”

A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes.

“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.”

The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.

“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”

“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”

It wasn’t like you could protest.

The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.

No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.

“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out.

A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.

Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.”

There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.

TAGS:

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angelltheninth · 1 year

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Little Soldier Boy

Pairing: Neteyam x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff, hurt/comfort, injury, established relationship, teasing, flirting, purring, growling, tail shenanigans, cuddles, size difference, injured!Neteyam, human!Reader

Word count: 1k

Ao3

A/N: Neteyam is a pretty tough guy but sometimes he really needs to think of himself more.

You knew he had a mission today. Not a dangerous one but that didn't stop you from pacing back and forth in your room, waiting to hear how it went. But you knew you were needed here. As one of the few humans that the Na'vi actually got along with, and one of the same age as Neteyam and therefore part of the friend group, you knew that they'd all be more worried if you were out there.

A dead medic is of no use to anyone. Besides you only handled severe cases in times of emergency, and you were still learning.

Still it was getting so late... maybe you should go and check things out in the hideout. Usually Spider would have come back by now, unless... something was really wrong.

You were already scared from imagining terrible scenarios, the knock on your bedroom window made you jump and shriek in alarm. You turned to the source of the sound to see Neteyam smiling and waiving at you. With a pretty bad but on his chest and shoulder.

"Neteyem!" You took a deep breath and held it long enough to open the window and for him to slip inside.

"Hey love, and how's my favorite doctor tonight?" He stood to full height and tilted his head to the side, smiling like he wasn't bleeding on half of his body. You pressed your lips tight together and walked behind him to tug on his tail, "Ow! That hurts!" He jumped around to look at you, growling in defense.

"And the gash on your chest and shoulder don't?!" You pointed to the floor where there were now fresh drops of blood. "Sit down and let me look at you before I decide to break up."

He gasped dramatically putting his good hand over the good side of his chest, "Over a little scratch? And here I was, ready to ask you on a romantic date under the stars." He blew you a little playful kiss.

Neteyam never let you fall when you flew with him. He always had you in front of him, with both his arms secure at your sides. Which meant that he could not do so right now. Not that you doubted he would still keep you safe, even now, you knew he'd give his life for you with no hesitation. It was honestly what scared you the most and drove you to learn faster.

"Not with those cuts you aren't. Why didn't you go back to get them patched up? Your mom's gonna kill you when she finds out, you know that right?" You walked over to get your medical kit and motioned for him to take a seat on your bed. You're gonna have to ask for a bigger one if Neteyam keeps growing at this rate, he's already quite a bit taller then you despite being the same age.

"She won't. I've listened to enough stories about her and dad. She'll understand. I just really wanted to see my mate, my family will understand." He took your hand in his and brought it to his lips before you could start cleaning his wound, "I missed you."

Your heart melted at his show of affection. He always did it, and your heart always reacted the same. It was dumb really, it was just a kiss on the back of your hand yet it made you swoon for him, made you forget your anger.

"I missed you too. What happened anyway? I thought it was a scouting mission today." You focused back on disinfecting his wound. Neteyam hissed when the sharp sting of alcohol hit him.

"It was. We had trouble on the way back. Got in too close to one solder and he got a few lucky slashes in me. They're not that deep though. You should see him." No, you actually didn't want to. You could tell by Neteyam's cocky attitude that he was the victor of the fight.

"You should have went back with the others. There might have been more soldiers around." He rolled his eyes, muscles twitching as you started sowing up the cut.

"I could yeah. And then I wouldn't see you until morning. Gah! Hey, are actually trying to hurt me now?" He hissed in pain, willing himself to hold still for you.

"You big baby." You smiled at him and kissed the area of his shoulder just above the cut.

His eyes widened, a smile pulling on his lips. He let you work, watching you the whole while, his smile never fading. From the corner of your eyes you could see his tail lightly tapping along on the bed, his leg propped up on the edge.

As finished your work in silence, only occasionally interrupted by Neteyam kissing your knuckles he suddenly gasped again, "Shit! Ah, I just remembered, I have one more injury you need to look at." He seemed genuinely alarmed, which in turn made you alarmed. You didn't see any other places he was bleeding from. It wasn't an internal one was it? Just before you went into full panic mode Neteyam laughed and pulled you into him, topping across the bed, "This cut on my lip."

Narrowing your eyes you could indeed see a small cut the corner of his upper lip, "You! You big jerk!" You slapped his good shoulder, trying to squirm away from his embrace but his hold was as strong as ever, "I thought there was something really wrong."

"There is." He cupped your cheek, or rather the side of your whole face, "It hurts because you haven't kissed it yet." He whispered, following it up with a deep purr.

Your face softened from his words, getting a little hotter then moments before. Well he still had his sense of humor, so he probably wasn't gonna die of his injuries if he spend the night here. Although you're gonna have a lot of explaining to do to his mom and dad in the morning. Not to mention the endless barrage of teasing that will follow from his siblings and Spider.

"As a doctor I can't leave any injury untreated, no matter how small." Neteyam purred again, louder this time, not even stopping when he felt your warm, soft lips upon his. "Hm, worse then I thought."

"Then you better keep up the treatment." He locked his arms around your smaller body and dove forward into the second of what was to be many kisses of the night.

#avatar x reader #avatar #avatar imagines #avatar way of water #neteyam #avatar neteyam #neteyam x reader #neteyam x you #x reader #avatar fanfiction #neteyam imagine #neteyam fanfiction #neteyam fluff

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cobaltperun · 3 months

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Lost (18) - State of my head

Tara Carpenter x female Reader

Summary: To anyone on the outside, and to Tara’s friends, you were Tara’s fierce protector, the MMA fighter who’d take anyone on for Tara. The Guard Dog, as Amber called you. You had no idea you’d have to protect her from people who claimed they loved her. It didn’t matter. As long as you and Tara had one another there was nothing you wouldn’t be able to survive.

Story warnings: Scream violence, family issues, trauma, angst, certain sensitive topics

Word count: 3.1k

Story masterlist / First part / Previous part / Next part

-The only way I'm leavin' is dead That's the state of my, state of my, state of my head-

You read about it a few times, just out of curiosity, just to explain the feeling you'd occasionally get when you completely relaxed and everything came easy and naturally when you just entered the flow and you didn't think about anything. Maybe it was the survival instinct kicking you into it, but you just began moving as the knife approached you from the left. It all seemed so slow to you in that moment.

You stepped back, letting Quinn's hand go past your head before you grabbed and twisted her wrist. The knife fell into your hand and you just slashed through her throat. The blood gushed from her throat and you saw life fading from her eyes before she even had the time to properly process what happened.

You lifted her body up just as Bailey raised his gun and began firing. Four shots later he stopped shooting and stepped back, looking horrified as you just tossed Quinn's body to the side.

You turned your attention to Thomas and saw him shaking his head with a smirk on his face. "Come on then, let's leave the families to their own conflict," he backed away toward the doors leading to the room you and Tara were in before all the while motioning for you to follow him.

"Y/N," Tara's worried voice reached you.

You didn't look at her. You didn't take your eyes off Thomas for a single moment. "Don't interfere or come after me. This is my battle," and then you took off, running after the former MMA fighter.

You ran into the room and couldn't see him anywhere. You still ducked, avoiding a high kick from behind just in time and spinning around to try and slam an uppercut into his jaw.

Thomas just barely regained his footing and leaned his head back, avoiding the punch. The abrupt move cost him his balance and you elbowed him on the cheek with your other arm. Taking the opportunity, you pulled him into a clinch and slammed your fist into his face repeatedly. After the fourth punch connected, he managed to put his forearms up to try and guard his face, but you switched to kneeing him in the guts, twice. His knees buckled and you smashed a haymaker into the side of his head.

Thomas stumbled to the side, eventually dropping to his knees as you went after him dropping a kick right on his back. He grunted, scrambling to his feet and avoiding a kick to the side of the head by less than an inch. Gasping for air he ran up the stairs.

You didn't run, feeling no need to rush this when he was already feeling the strikes you landed. You made your way up the stairs when he threw a chair at you. You just caught it and dropped it on top of him when he tried to attack you, probably thinking you'd dodge and leave yourself more open for an attack that could send you down the stairs. The old chair shattered, and the splinters made tiny cuts on his head and shoulders.

When your eyes met his you could see fear within them. Good. You raised your knee up, connecting it with his jaw, he stumbled back, spitting a tooth out and running away once again. He reached some ladder and began climbing up. You followed him and realized he brought you to the roof. For a moment you took your surroundings in. The inside of the theatre wasn't in the greatest condition, but the roof was way worse. There were rusty rebars sticking all over the roof and there was no fence or anything that would keep someone from falling.

You tilted your head to the side when he pulled out the knife.

"Do you want to know why I'm doing this?" he asked as he tried to catch his breath.

"Don't care," you replied evenly, not showing any signs of emotion to him at the moment. You looked at ease as you walked up to him, only to abruptly close the distance between you and land two quick hits to his face. Thomas dropped down, trying to grab your leg and bring you down, but you jumped back, using the same tactic he used in the bodega to gain advantage. You sidestepped him and kicked him guts, even lifting him off the ground for a moment.

He coughed as he came back down and his eyes widened as you grabbed his collar and slammed him into the room, thus knocking the wind out of his lungs. He managed to bring his arms up, shielding his face as you kept punching his forearms to break his guard. Punch after punch landed and finally you made him drop his guard. He took a hit to the face, just barely staying conscious as the back of his head collided with the concrete under him. Desperately, he moved his head to the side, evading the second punch. And in that same desperation he tried to stab you in the throat, but you easily caught his wrist.

He kept pushing though, and while you had the upper hand you still chose to step back from him.

He stumbled to his feet, gasping for air and spitting out blood. Out of the blue, he smirked and rushed at you, you didn't have any time to react in any other way but to try and go for his neck, but the moment he lifted you off the ground and pushed you a couple of feet back you screamed. He let you go and took several steps back, breathing heavily as you gasped for air.

You looked down, seeing a rusty rebar dripping with blood coming out of you, just beneath your chest. It went right through you, and you were barely able to reach the ground with your feet to keep it from messing you up even more.

"You are about to die anyway, and you did give me quite a thrill of battle just now, so let me tell you a secret," Thomas approached and stabbed the knife into the right side of your chest. He left it there as you just stood there, unable to even muster the energy to move due to the rebar piercing through you. "You were supposed to die right after your fight with Anya, but Bailey offered me lots of money to help him, so you got to live for almost another year."

He pressed against the rebar, forcing a blood-curdling scream out of you as you choked on the blood filling your lung.

"I became a bit of a hitman about five years ago, you know. And someone hired me to kill you. Someone who knew all about you and Zack, as well as Susan. Trust me, the fact that you are his half-sister makes this even better, Y/N. You can die knowing you'll be my favorite kill for a long, long time, maybe even for as long as I live," he twisted the rebar and slowly began pulling. "I have to admit though, I've been hired to kill someone's parent before, but I've never been hired by parents to kill their only child. They couldn’t let their reputation be tarnished by their own daughter being caught up in barbaric conflicts," he yanked the broken rebar out of your body and you dropped down on your side, a pool of blood already forming beneath you.

You were on the verge of losing consciousness as you stared at the rebar that was tossed to the side. He knelt down next to you and pulled the knife out of your chest. "Sorry, I have to make this look as Ghostface-like as possible," you weren't even sure where he was stabbing you, but you felt the cold steel entering your body several times before your fingers clenched around the blood-soaked rebar and you stabbed Thomas through the neck. He stumbled back, but he was still holding onto you, so he somehow pulled you to your feet and the two of you stumbled to the right, plummeting from the roof to the pavement below.

With what little consciousness you had left you saw the knife Thomas dropped next to you two. You fell on top of him, just barely cushioning your fall and letting you stay conscious. You grabbed the knife by the blade and just dropped your arm, hoping it would pierce his throat. You were vaguely aware of some resistance, so you pushed your left palm against the butt of the knife and felt a couple of drops of warm liquid hit your face. You dropped to the side, still holding the knife, and thus twisting it in his throat. If he somehow survived rebar to the neck and the fall you were sure this killed him.

You tried to get up, but your body wouldn't move, and the darkness consumed your consciousness.

~X~

Tara sat with Sam on the stairs in front of the mannequins. She killed Ethan, though he managed to stab her in the stomach. And she got shot in the left arm. Sam killed Bailey and was actually pretty much unharmed. Tara was so relieved Sam was okay, even if her own wound was hurting her like hell, but more importantly, something didn't feel right.

"Y/N is taking too long," she stood up, unable to shake off a bad feeling she had. She should have ignored you; she should have gone after you the moment she knew Sam was fine. You'd be fine though. You were much stronger than her or Sam. You'd come back through that door, and you'd be fine and you'd pick her up and hold her because you'd all make it out of this against all odds.

She and Sam raised their heads when Danny ran in with half a dozen police officers and paramedics.

"Tara! Get outside right now, it's Y/N!" her heart nearly stopped when she realized he had blood on his shirt and hands.

Tara ran past him, not caring if her wounds would start bleeding again, she rushed outside and saw an ambulance surrounded by pure chaos. Between all the paramedics she saw blood dripping to the floor of the van.

"The bleeding won't stop! We're losing her!" she had no idea how she didn't collapse right then and there as she stumbled forward and reached the van.

"Stay back, miss!" one of the paramedics warned her.

Tara didn't understand what they were telling her. She couldn’t comprehend what was happening in front of her eyes. This wasn’t true, this was… She watched you, your clothes soaked with blood, she watched the blood dripping down. "Y/N? Baby?" this couldn't be happening. This was a nightmare. She must have fallen asleep and was having the worst nightmare of her life. "Baby, please," she cried out, reaching in to grab your hand.

You were cold and still. You didn't react to her touch.

"Her pulse is getting weaker!" someone yelled and all of a sudden all Tara could hear was intense buzzing, all she could feel was the blood, your blood, sticking to her hands, all she could see was dark red liquid and your unmoving body.

“Y/N!” she cried out, gasping for air, but not caring for a moment as her lungs struggled for oxygen. “Y/N!” you had to wake up, you had to open your eyes, to move, to give her any sign that you were going to be fine. “Don’t! Please wake up!” she began coughing, her body convulsing as she went into shock, just barely clutching onto the ambulance doors, the closest she could get to you. “Please don’t leave me, please, Y/N, please don’t,” she cried and screamed, and tried to shake off whoever was pulling her away from the ambulance, away from you. "Let go of me!" she screamed, breaking free just as the ambulance closed and drove off and Tara just dropped to her knees as some paramedic began checking on her.

It didn’t matter what was happening to her. It didn't matter how she was. They were taking you away from her! She looked to her side when Sam dropped to her knees next to her, Sam was crying. "They found a rusty rebar near her, it went through her."

Too much. It was too much.

Tara just lost consciousness.

~X~

When Tara woke up she was in the hospital, surrounded by Sam, Chad, Mindy, and Danny. She immediately sat up and tried to get up, but Sam stopped her. "Y/N?" she needed to know, her eyes frantically searching their faces for any sign or reaction to your name.

"She's alive!" Sam quickly reassured her, and Tara felt like she could breathe again, even if she began crying from relief.

"I need to go and see her," she tried to get up, but Sam was still holding her down.

"She's in a coma, Tara, she lost too much blood and they don't know if she'll wake up," Sam's voice shook as she said that.

Tara just felt like her whole world fell apart.

Later that day she found out that you were stabbed five times, one of which pierced your right lung, but luckily it didn’t collapse. Worse than that was the rusty rebar going through you, it went in through the small of your back and came out just below your chest. Then the fall from almost thirty feet caused internal bleeding and while you survived the surgery and they didn't find any brain damage, you were in a coma.

~X~

Two days later you were still in a coma, with no signs of waking up any time soon. Tara didn't even have any energy left to cry, she just sat by your side, afraid to leave you even for a second. What if you woke up and she wasn't there? What if something went wrong and she wasn't there.

"Please, wake up," she whispered, she needed you to wake up, to say anything, or even to just look at her. Anything would be fine. She felt cold and alone, and she did the only thing she was used to doing when she felt like that. She reached out for you, she lay down on the bed, curling into your side while taking extra care not to touch any of the wounds you had. She was barely touching you, but just for a moment she felt warm and safe again. It was a fleeting moment of happiness, though.

You didn't touch her. You didn't hold her. You didn't move. You couldn't do any of that and Tara began shaking, the cold seeping into her bones as tears she didn't even know she had left soaked the sleeve of your gown.

Sobs and loud cries wrecked her throat and her whole body, and even when Sam came in to comfort her, frantically trying to make up for the lack of your warmth, Tara still kept crying. Yet, even with her screams you didn't react.

~X~

On the sixth day, only Sam came by, since Chad and Mindy could no longer delay going back home and had to get ready to leave. Tara was still at the hospital 24/7. She would read to you, talk to you, tell you repeatedly how much she missed and how much she loved you, she would just as often apologize to you, for plenty of things. You still didn't wake up.

On the tenth day, not even Sam could come, she had to cover two shifts at work. Tara stayed, she stayed, this time telling you about the future she imagined, the future in which you were awake. She imagined a different life, one without Ghostface in it, a life she was spending with you and Sam and all the people she loved without trauma and fear of letting someone new in. She cried that day, overwhelmed by what could have been and what could be. Overwhelmed because you couldn’t respond, you couldn’t tell her if you wanted that exact future as well, or if you’d rather create that future somewhere else. Even with someone else, as long as you woke up that would be enough for Tara. You still didn’t wake up.

On the twelfth day, Sam tried to get her to leave your side. At least for a little bit. To take a walk, get some fresh air. Tara did walk, she walked around your room. She'd open the windows to keep the air fresh for you when you woke up. Tara knew what Sam wanted to tell her; Tara knew Sam was losing hope that you'd wake up. But Tara wasn’t losing hope. You’d wake up. You’d come back to her, like you always did, and you’d recover and stay by her side for the rest of Tara’s life. You didn't wake up that day either.

On the sixteenth day, Tara once again crawled into the bed next to you. For the first time since the second day. Once again, she felt the same freezing cold, she could barely breathe, she was wheezing and coughing next to you, crying her heart out after holding back the tears for the past six days. She needed her inhaler, but she didn't want to move from you, she needed to feel you next to her more than she needed air. And then her eyes widened, her breathing stopped, and her body stilled completely as the tears fell down her face freely. She felt it. The softest touch on her back. She looked at your face and saw you blinking slowly.

Tara just watched you, going as far as to forget how to breathe. You smiled softly, taking what little oxygen she had left away. You raised your hand, gently tapping her back. She realized you were telling her to breathe. So, she took a breath and continued breathing as she began crying once again, this time too happy to stop her tears.

"I love you, Y/N," she said as softly as she possibly could and pressed a kiss on your cheek.

She felt safe and warm once again, and you, as difficult as it must have been, wrapped an arm around her, pulling her closer.

A/N: One chapter to go! Big thanks to Anon who indirectly gave me a bit of an epiphany for my nickname problem. Thanks to everyone reading and I'll see you next time! Updated: 30.03.2024.

#tara carpenter x reader #tara carpenter x you #tara carpenter x female reader #tara carpenter #scream #jenna ortega x reader

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ideas-4-stories · 3 months

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I have a story idea to tell you~ what if a mercenary smuggled a seastone knife to assassinate either Crocodile or Buggy with and they choose to go after Buggy, because Crocodiles terrifying, except Buggy’s pretty good in a knife fight, so he wins, but he did get stabbed as the opening move. And either, Mihawk and Crocodile don’t even know it happened until Buggys being treated by his crews doctor, when they burst in because someone stabbed Buggy the Clown, on crossguilds own damn island, or, they see the fight and thinks Buggy taking down his would be assassin is so hot they have to question it for a second. Either way Buggy will jokingly tell them it’s been years since anyone actually managed to stab him, and he’d almost forgot how much he hated how it felt. Maybe its also the first time they see him shirtless, and on top of buggy being hot, he’s got scars (because I love angst) and they have some questions and concerns about how he got them. (There is potential for a joke about how not everyone walks around shirtless all the time if they stare, but I think it’d work better in the second scenario, Mihawk is Reacting Correctly To A Stabbing and has his hand held on the wound before he’s really even thinking of it, and getting Buggys shirt off him to use it for the bleeding until the doctor gets there, and Crocodiles not doing much but shouting for people to move faster and watching, and if he had to guess he’d say someone tortured the clone in the past, and he’s learning that now, because someone stabbed his clown and gave him another scar, and Buggys cracking jokes like it’s not a big deal)

Ooooooo, them choosing Buggy as the victim of the attack because Crocodile is more terrifying? It didn’t end well for them, but at least they chose the one that would keep them alive to find out why they were trying to assassinate them. That person’s ass got beaten up, can see Buggy using his acrobatics to help winning the knife fight. Poor Buggy getting stab in the opening move… oh Oh OH!!! Maybe Buggy let them do that so he has a ability to slash the person as well, and scares the shit out of the person? But then again, most people don’t like getting stab so Buggy saying he hates it is understandable.

I like the idea that Mihawk and Crocodile sees Buggy fighting but doesn’t realize that he’s hurt until the doctor comes over to check on the knocked out assassian as the doctor scolds Buggy on being so chill with his injury (Them thinking it’s so hot for Buggy to take down the assiassian is because they think Buggy wouldn't be able to do it, but he did and it quite nice… but then Crocodile and Mihawk finds out he’s hurt and start to freak out to their surprise)

Buggy joking about it, sounds about right for a jester that he is. A joker that's making fun of himself to hide the pain. Poor Buggy having scars… I wonder if he has tried covering them up with tattoos, I have a want for Buggy to have two floral patterns running up his sides, starting from his knees to his waist. Anyway them seeing Buggy shirtless for the first is a bonus because if Buggy sees them staring he might think they are looking at his ugly skin (because angst… you can blame @theeofficialnightmare69 for my growing want for angst)

Mihawk and Crocodile being worried about the scars and try to pry information from Buggy to maybe no prevail or get too much information that makes them very disturbed about Buggy's past and they are filled with more questions then they started with.

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pinejayy · 8 months

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╰┈➤ Scars || Demon Slayer Drabbles/Headcanons

including: the upper moons

summary: @haikiria-san asked for upper moons having their significant other having scars and a story like obanai.

warnings: scar mention,, bad past

Kokushibo

-He would disappointed in the people who mistreated you, like how could someone treat a human being so badly? And to also harm them and treat them like some kind of animal. But you don't need to worry about getting hurt anymore, he will protect you, and if anyone tries to lay a finger on you he'll hurt them and make them suffer. And he also knows that you could be very insecure about your scars on your face and he always tries his best to cheer you up. The Demon doesn't mind if you cover them up or not, he won't push you into showing him your scars. But if you do show him your scars he place gentle kisses along them. And whisper sweet things. "I know you're hurting my love, but from now on I'll protect you."

Kokushibo will gladly hold you close as you vent about your past, and as you're venting he'll run his fingers along your shoulders and place small kisses along your face.

Kokushibo will protect you like there's no tomorrow, he doesn't allow the other Upper Moons near you, and if they dare say anything about your scars he will slash their throats.

Douma

-He would be very interested into your past, you had a tragic back story. He knew human being were terrible creatures but he didn't know that they were capable of hurting someone so badly, to have them locked in a cage and to scar them. When you opened up to him he was shocked that you had so much trust on him and yes you were hesitant at first but you really do care about him and with that being said he will protect you. He won't allow anyone near you, and oh boy! If one of his Cult members were to get near you he'll give them a slow death. Also Douma can't help it but admire your scars, like he says they give you personality and that you look like you're always smiling. "I know I can't change the past, but I will protect you from now on."

Douma's favorited thing to do is run his nails along your scars as your sitting on his lap. "My, what beauty scars my Love, they really do bring you together."

Douma is a prick tbh, but he does care about you. Well in his own way, yes he's very playful but he will do anything to protect you. No one will harm you while you belong to him.

Akaza

-Oh boy! He would be heart broken. How could someone you call family hurt you and lock you in a cage! How could a parent do that to their child and not feel bad for it. He wishes he could save you back then, but he can't change the past. But he can protect you for the future. And he will! Akaza felt really connected when you told him about your past, and when you showed him your scars. He really felt appreciated that you have trust in him. Even with him being an Upper Moon, you still trusted him. With that being said this boy won't let anyone harm you, he will always keep an eye on you. He will always be by your side, he just wants to make you feel safe and loved. And your scars won't change anything, he'll see them as battle scars. “With me by your side no one will hurt you, not a single soul my Dear.”

Akaza would want to be by your side all the time, but that's not possible with him going on missions. So before leaving for a mission he'll give you a big hug and kiss your scars. "I'll be back soon as possible Y/N."

Akaza hates the other Upper Moons especially Douma. So if Douma were to say something about you or your scars he would see red.

Hantengu

-Oh Gezz...This man would be sobbing like crazy when you told him about your past. How could Humans be so terrible, how could they do that to an innocent child! Hantengu just wants to sob as he holds you close, he wants to be there for you. And when you showed him your scars he went crazy. You had so much trust in him! And him from all Demons! But he can’t help but feel anger towards the people who did this to you, if he could he would slaughter them and eat their flesh. But since they are dead he only hopes that they are burning in hell. That’s where they belong. But Hantengu promised you that he will protect you, and he will always be by your side like a lost puppy. "I wish I could make the people who caused you so much pain suffer."

Hantengu would be less of a crying coward around you, he wants to be the one to protect you. And he will protect you, and if you need more protection he won't hesitate to send the clones to protect you. Because wow imagine four Demons protecting you. Now that's a story for a other time.

Hantengu can't help but feel sadness when he sees your scars. He'll hold you and cry softly. "Oh my Love, I'll keep you safe."

Gyokko

-Hyo Hyo Hyo! When you told him about your tragic past he couldn't help but laugh at you. Was this some kind of sick joke of yours? So at first he didn't take you so seriously but when you showed him your scars to prove your point he went pale...paler? So you weren't lying about your past? And if so why did you tell him? Did you really trust him that much and if you did he was touched. I mean of course you would trust him, I mean who wouldn't! But Gyokko would honestly pity you about your past but then again humans are terrible so he isn't surprised that someone could do this. But this doesn't change the way he thinks about you, you're still the same person he fell in love with. But from now on he's going to protect you and keep an eye on you. "Don't worry my precious Art Piece, when you're with me nothing will hurt you."

Gyokko would act like he doesn't really care about your past but deep down he feels bad. Yes he knows how humans can be, but why you? What did you do to deserve this pain?

Gyokko would look at your scars "Hmm...I know it hurts. But it makes you unique."

Gyutaro

-A other reason why he hates humans, how could someone do this to you! Especially if they were your family. How could your family lock you up in a cage and cause damage to your beautiful face. Family are supposed to protect and love each other! But he does feel appropriated when you did open up to him about your past and when you showed him your scars. When he saw your scars he couldn't help but run a shaky finger on your scars. Frowning and shaking his head in disappointment. Gyutaro wishes he could make your family pay for what they did. But as for now he will protect you along with protecting Daki. You two are the only things he cares about in this cruel world. "Y/N, I promise to love and protect you. Nothing will harm you ever again. Not on my watch."

Gyutaro hates whenever anyone goes near you, well besides Daki. She is the only person he can trust. But anyone else is a big no. And if they go near you he'll rip their heads off.

Gyutaro won't care about your scars, and if you're feeling insecure about them he'll kiss them gently and remind you how beautiful and strong you are.

#demon slayer #kny #x reader #reader insert #kokushibo #Douma #akaza #hantengu #Gyokko #gyutaro #Headcanons #drabble

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cerastes · 10 months

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The more we watch crappy high school romcoms or high school wish fulfillment shows where the ostracized-slash-lonely main character is actually a super genius and never misses with the gang, the easier it becomes to appreciate Oregairu, which even without the context of being in part explicitly a parody of the genre is already a good show, but it becomes even better the more you understand what genre it is mercilessly ripping to shreds without coming across as a *anime youtuber voice* deconstruction high on the smell of its own flatulence. To put it in other terms, while it is in fact a parody of the usual High School Loner Genius Romcom/Harem formula, it also actually cares to deliver a good story with its own themes and depth beyond “parody”.

Hachiman’s 4-D chess seemingly works at first, but it’s explicitly shown to be simple stopgap measures that don’t fix anything and may even make things worse in the long term, and throughout the story, it takes actually realizing that he’s burning bridges that he desperately wants and that he’s not some Loner Genius high schooler The Joker that has it all figured out, and only then does he actually start working his ass off to properly solve the problems in front of him through what is a refreshing combination of sheer humane, considerate solutions mixed with his inherent cunning, with the long term in mind. Yukinoshita is the genius hot girl that is good at academics and sports, but she is so utterly incapable of making meaningful connections with people that it doesn’t really help her at all because, well, not just in school but in life, you really need to know how to handle people and work together with them, no matter how intelligent or capable you are, and this weakness overshadows her strengths, completely negating her advantages. Yuigahama is the preppy popular girl that is charismatic and good looking, but pretty naive or even ‘dumb’ sometimes, but then it becomes clear that not only is she incredibly mature emotionally, she WILL be ruthless and assertive when she actually needs to be and isn’t some selfless little goober, but at the same time, she also doesn’t have anywhere or anyone she feels she truly belongs at or with until she meets these two other strays, whose bluntness and sincerity she appreciates greatly.

Then, a third of the story in, we are introduced to Iroha, who represents the cunning younger student that is always this beloved, charming girl who actually is a pretty cunning and even malicious trickster that always gets what she wants... Except, NO ONE falls for it for longer than maybe a few seconds, and then it turns out that she and Hachiman are just really compatible, and they become good friends in that sort of caustic, vitriolic way that is only natural for the two of them, cynic duo that they make.

And needless to say, Hachiman’s sister, Komachi, is immediately, frame one shown to not only have a perfectly believable relationship with Hachiman in that they dunk on each other on sight, but also REALLY wants Hachiman to start dating a girl already and actively tries to get him to grow closer to any of his lady friends. The closest to a siscon joke in Oregairu is when someone reacts to Hachiman’s (grounded and not exaggerated) protectiveness of her by asking “oh, are you a siscon?” to which he replies “what in the fuck are you talking about, no, I’m worried about my sister because she’s my sister, don’t be weird about this”.

Oregairu has this habit of consistently showing you tropes and archetypes you will very clearly recognize from formulaic anime and novels, and then immediately humanizes them, not enough to fully remove them from the context of “you are watching anime or reading a light novel”, and just to remove them from “you know exactly what to expect from This Character”. It’s at that point where the narrative mix-ups, as it were, begin: Is this character going to at all follow the usual role you’d expect from them in a romcom or harem, or is this character going to go off the rails and pleasantly surprise me?

And it always goes off the rail when it matters with Oregairu. It’s always a pleasant surprise with Oregairu.

#oregairu #watching classroom of the mid with a group of pals and man #watching these garbo shows really makes me appreciate Oregairu a LOT more #and it's already one of my top 3 anime ever lmao

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winterspiderpurrs · 4 months

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I want a decently long story of Bucky just stalking Peter from a far and befriending him, just do keep stalking him from close up and convincing Peter that his current girlfriend is toxic just to have Peter. It’s toxic and Steve can see it, upset with Bucky. Gets to the point Bucky is sick of Steve’s nagging and nearly beats him to death. He panics and threatens Steve to keep his mouth shut.

Ends with Peter asleep in Bucky’s arms upset because he thinks MJ is awful. Just where Bucky wants him

I’m sorry for spamming prompts, you’re the only one who delivers such beautiful stories that I need more. Your work is so good

" It doesn't have to be like this Buck"

Steve dodges another punch thrown at him, landing a hit on Bucky's shoulder.

" I know. You just need to keep your mouth shut. It's none of your business."

Steve rolls his eyes, and shoves Bucky after Bucky pushed him back against a wall.

" I'm just worried about you. And Peter and MJ"

Bucky now stands a few feet away from Steve, he wipes at his nose, its bleeding a little.

" There is nothing to worry about. I'm just being a friend to Peter. Helping him out with his girl problem is all."

Sighing, Steve runs his fingers through his hair, trying to smooth it back into place.

" Sure, and implying stuff she is doing? Making Peter doubt her?.... Buck... I've seen your office"

" It's my office in my apartment. Its private you had NO business going in there and snooping at stuff that you don't even understand."

Steve waves his hands around and then point to the door leading to the office.

" No snooping needed. That room is covered in hundreds of photos of Peter. And don't think I didn't notice the surveillance camera of his room. This has got to stop before it gets worse. It's already out of hand."

"What's out of hand is you being in my business. Sure I like Peter. I'll admit it. But I am his friend 1st and that isn't going to stop be being friends with him. You know how often he comes home injuried? Almost everytime he goes on patrol. Stark isn't watching him. Gave him that fancy suit but can't even teach the kid basic aid?"

Bucky starts pacing around.

" Someone needs to look out for him. Sure, it's a bit overboard. But in the past 6 months, I've pulled out 3 bullets that didn't go through on him. "

Bucky sighs and then goes to sit down on the couch. He never planned on anyone finding out about his small[big] obsession with Peter. He was just too good for this world. Peter was comfortable with him, and not even Steve fully lets his guard down arouns him like Peter does.

Peter is affectionate and tactical, god does he love the hugs he gets from him. But MJ wasn't worried about Peter, she can't relate to him, to Peter's need to help everyone. She just wanted attention on her, and what she felt was important. He didn't like how she looked at him. Like she was scared and pissed at him. Constantly complaining, never satisfied. She doesn't see the effort Peter tries to put in. Some things are just more important than date night, like saving the city. She just doesn't understand.

But Bucky does. He knows what self sacrifice is, putting others first. After all these years, he finally wants to be selfish. He wants Peter all to himself. He isn't going to snatch Peter up and hide him away. Peter just needs to come to him willingly. He has already opened the door to the possibility to him. Looking down so Steve can't see his face, he smiles faintly. He got so close a few weeks ago.

Peter and Bucky were at the compound. They just finished a routine training session. They were going to stay the night, so they decided on movies. Started a drinking game to Lord Of The Rings. Sure, they can't truly get drunk, but with enough alcohol they could feel buzzed for a few. It was a good bonding moment. And that's when the topic of slash fiction gets brought up by Peter.

" The what?"

Peter flushes. " Well, like... a lot of people online write up these stories? Like fan responses. Like... a lot of fans think Legolas should get with Aragon in a romantic way"

Bucky stares at Peter for a moment, he looks back at the screen and tilts his head before nodding.

" With seeing the actors... that would be a pretty sight to see."

" Right? Cause like they are... wait what... your okay with that? I thought that well..."

" That I would be uncomfortable? I know the stories have me as good with the ladies. But I've never shied away from a good time with a guy. Course, it was illegal then, but I think it's called being Bi now."

Bucky just shrugs and takes another sip of his beer. He watched Peter's reaction. He knows, based on his research, into Peter that he as well was not straight. But he had never said anything to anyone openly.

Peter's eyes widen as he stares at Bucky, and Bucky can't help but feel the warm that spread throughout his chest when Peter gaze goes to his lips and gives him a once over. Before blushing and giving him a shy smile. " I'm Bi too. "

Bucky shakes his head, shoving the memory back before looking over at Steve.

" I'm not going to start anything with him. If he wants to be more then just friends, Peter will have to make yhe move. I promise you Stevie. I'm not approaching him that way. He will have to come to me"

Steve sighs " Thats all well and good Bucky. But if this happens, I can't protect you from Tony again. Its a line you are crossing, and... I do want you happy. You know that. "

" I know..."

And it was a few days after that, and one room overhaul to hide his... extra surveillance of Peter in another location, when Peter called him. He almost got his gun when he heard the teary voice on the line. Peter asked to come over cause he didn't want to be alone right now.

When Bucky opened the door, his shoulders dropped a little. The look on Peter's face was just so heartbreaking.

" Oh Doll... come here"

Peter stumbles into Bucky's arm and wraps him into a hug. Closing the door, Bucky wraps one of his arms around Peter, before shifting their bodies sonhe could pick Peter up and carry him over to the couch.

" I got ya Pete... don't worry I'll take care of you"

Bucky wasn't assassin for nothing. He always gets his target.

#thanks for the ask!#writing prompt #prompt answered #answered asks #i hope you liked it!#winterspider #peter parker x bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes #winterspiderpurrs

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greenflavoredcyanide · 2 months

Text

I Guess Blood is kind of Hot

Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories:

Gen, Other

Fandom:

Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novels)

Relationships:

Strade (BTD/TNR)/Reader

Additional Tags:

Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Canon-Typical Violence, Nosebleed, Gore, only a little tho, Blood Kink, Sadism, Light Masochism, Kissing, Rough Kissing, Rough Body Play, No Sex, womp womp, Light Bondage

First time posting a fic here! Let me know how I can improve :3

It was a normal afternoon. As normal as an afternoon in this goddamn house could be. You don’t know how long you’ve been here, been kept here, but you’ve gotten used to the “norm” here. On Saturday afternoons, Strade usually had the living room reserved for his shows. He would sit on the couch with a few beers and watch whatever he wanted, it was his tv time. You were allowed to sit with him if you wanted to, but to be quite honest; you didn’t really want to. Not only were the shows he watched boring, but you didn’t really want to be seated next to… him… Even though you got as comfortable as you could get with Strade, he was still your captor. He was still dangerous, mean, and sadistic. He’s still the same man that has shoved blades deep into your skin, slashed you open, used power tools on you, etc… sure, right now he’s not doing any of that, he actually is behaving really normal right now, but you can’t just forget all of that.

You had your own room at this point anyway; it was small but comfortable. You spent most of your free time there. Either that, or in Ren’s room. You really liked Ren’s room, it’s colourful and comfy. He didn’t mind you being in there as long as you didn’t disturb him while he was watching stuff. You didn’t really care for any of the animes he watched, but you would occasionally watch with him when you were really bored. One thing that Ren had that you didn’t was a laptop. Strade doesn’t trust you enough yet to give you your own, you still had to earn that privilege. However, a privilege you did earn was having books and art supplies. You expressed to Strade some of your interests one day after he was done with work. You didn’t really expect him to do anything with that information, but to your surprise he came home with a sketchbook, a notebook, pencils, pens, and some graphic novels. These were your only other sources of entertainment.

You were sitting on your bed, sketchbook open. Doodling some random characters onto the pages, when a feeling of unease washed over you. You felt like something bad was about to happen, you usually do. Maybe it was intuition, maybe it was gut feeling, but you were usually right. You paused your doodling and listened for the TV. It still seemed to be running a program, which means Strade was still occupied. You tried to brush off the feeling, getting back to drawing a character’s hair. With the free time you had, you often spent it making up fictional characters. Some were antagonists, some were protagonists, and some were in between. You had a lot of fun with them, making up silly stories to distract you from the hell you were living in at the moment. You were lost in thought about what personality to give this new one, when your door slams open.

You jumped in your spot, yelping and spinning around on your bed to face the door. Your heart dropped as you examined the intruder; it was Strade. You gulped as you stared at him, looking over his body language. He was tense, hand still resting on the door handle as he stood in the frame. His chest was heaving, eyebrows furrowed, as if he just ran up all the stairs as fast as he could. To anyone else, he would look just plain ol’ frustrated, but you knew what that look in his eye meant; he was sexually frustrated. You felt worry build up in the pit of your stomach, worry for your safety. He came into your room, which means he wants you to help him, which usually does not go well for you. At all.

“Get up, we’re going to the basement.” he announced, staring you down with hungry eyes. You paused your movements for a moment, evaluating your options. You really didn’t want to go down there. You know he hasn’t had any new play things in a while, so he’ll probably go really hard with whatever fucked up plan he had. Your injuries had just started to heal up, you didn’t want them to get replaced so fast… after you failed to move to the door, he spoke up again. “Don’t make me drag you.” you squeeked in response, immediately getting up from your spot. You didn’t want him to get the remote out, or pull you down by your hair again. You hovered close behind him as he led the way down, glancing over at Ren with begging eyes as you walked past him. You both knew what was going to happen, and Ren would rather it be you than him; which is fair, since you’d rather it be him than yourself.

After finally making it to the basement, you hesitantly stood in behind Strade. Usually you’d already be tied down or restricted in some way, but right now you weren’t restrained by anything besides the collar. He stood at the workstation, hovering over a few tools, probably trying to pick which one to use today. You gulped as he finally turned around with rope in his hand. You felt an urge to run hit you, realisation smacking you across the face. You knew this was going to happen, yet you walked right on down here! What were you thinking! You could feel your knees buckle as he approached you. “N-no- wait!” you pleaded as he grabbed you by the hair and shoved you to the ground. “It’ll be quick~” he coos as he ties your hands together behind your back.

You attempted to struggle just a little bit, but he tied them really tight. The friction around your wrists reminded you of the first day you arrived here. You shake the memories out of your head, you’d rather not think about it right now. Before you could even really start to think of something new, Strade threw you down onto your back, your head colliding with the pavement. You groan out in pain at the contact, a ringing starting up in your ears as he pulled your legs and hips towards himself. Swiftly, he pulled out his favourite hunting knife from his back pocket and held it up to your thigh. You couldn’t stop yourself from shrieking in pain as he pushed the blade down into your skin, leaving a deep gnash on your upper thigh. You were surprised at how quickly he got into it. Usually he took it slow, he liked the build up of fear in your eyes as he taunts you; he must be really desperate right now.

Before you could register it, he sliced again, this time lower. He continued to slash at your soft flesh three more times, huffing and getting off to your whimpers and pained noises. You expected him to do more, maybe cut your stomach or chest while he’s at it, but instead he tosses your legs to the sides and stands up. You look up at him through teary eyes, confused. I mean, sure, you were grateful he stopped so early but why? Why was he done? There’s no way that’s all- you were pulled out of thought as he yanked you up by your hair, earning a raw cry of pain from you. You just barely managed to get onto your knees when you felt a blow to your stomach. Falling backward again, you heaved, gasping for air. You didn’t even catch your breath before Strade sent his booted foot into the side of your abdomen, sending you barreling across the floor. Wheezing at the impact, you coughed harshly, a copper taste filling your mouth. Your vision was blurry with tears as you rolled over pathetically, trying to stabilise yourself.

Over the ringing in your ears you could hear Strade laughing. Though, it wasn’t his usual sadistic laugh, it was more breathy; more desperate. You gasped for air as he tugged up your face by your hair once again. “You’d look so lovely with a beaten face, don’t you think?” he chuckled into your ear from behind. His breath was hot against your neck as he moved over your body, positioning himself to straddle your back. He pushed down on it as he held your head tight, causing you to arche in an incredibly uncomfortable way. Desperately, you tried to move your arms only to be greeted with the harsh friction of rope. You wanted to start begging, but before you could he shoved your face down into the cement. Really hard. You heard a crack as pain engulfed the entirety of your face, blood streaming down from your forehead and nose down to your mouth and chin.

He lifted your head back up before quickly slamming it back down again. You couldn’t stop the noises from leaving your mouth, noises of agony. Your voice cracked as you let out a hoarse, loud cry. It gurgled in your throat as you heaved, trying to catch your breath. Strade was laughing again, this time it was his usual demeaning laugh, full of sadism and enjoyment. You could feel him get off of you, letting go of your head briefly so he could move around to your front. Once again grabbing your face, he examined his work. Your face was covered in blood; the skin in between your eyebrows was torn and broken, letting a generous amount of blood drip down. But that wasn’t what caught his attention, no, it was your nose.

It was obviously broken in multiple places, mangled and crushed. Blood streamed out of it like a waterfall, coating your lips and chin, dripping down your neck. Strade couldn’t help the tent growing in his pants at the sight, it was beautiful. The mixture of tears, blood, and spit gathering and your face alone was enough to get his blood own pumping; his face burning red. You stared at him with pleading, glossy eyes, you hoped this is what he wanted. You didn’t want anymore, you were out of energy. Your breathing was heavy as you were recovering from being winded, but his was heavy because he was excited. He couldn’t contain himself, this was so hot to him. He bunched up your shirt in his fist and pulled you in, slamming his lips into yours.

You were caught off guard, a muffled moan escaping you as he smashed his face into yours, he grinded against your leg as he moved his mouth with yours. You wanted to push him away, but your hands were bound together, rope burn making the skin raw and ache in pain. A combination of both your salivas along with your blood mixing in his mouth really got him going. To him, it was a complete bliss; this is exactly what he wanted; what he needed. But to you, it was too much. There were so many sensations happening at once, you were getting over stimulated. You wanted to focus on the kiss, but your attention kept getting grabbed by both the pain of your open cuts and by the throbbing agony on your face. You could feel Strade through his pants as he grinded into you, he loved this; thrived off of this.

He pulled away, the both of you gasping for air. Still holding your head in his hands, he licked his lips, getting your blood off of them. He huffed, staring down at your still bleeding face with lust. Your eyelids fluttered, giving him unintentional bedroom eyes. Strade laughed again before pulling your face closer to his. You were expecting another rough kiss, but instead you were met with his tongue running along your lips. He then licked up your blood, smacking his lips as he lapped it up from your chin down to your neck. He moaned into the base of your neck, his face now covered in your blood. You couldn’t think, your mind clouded with too many thoughts and feelings.

With the combination of Strade licking and sucking at your neck and his rough grinding, you could feel yourself get increasingly more aroused. Even though you were in extreme pain and discomfort, a part of you liked it. You liked the attention he gave you, how you made him feel so much just by simply bleeding. A fucked up part of you wanted to keep bleeding for him, to keep him on you like this. You were pulled back into your senses as the warmth of his mouth lifted from your skin. You let out a soft whine at the loss of contact, to which he chuckled. “Enjoying yourself too?” he mocked. You couldn’t stop yourself from nodding, pleading for him to continue. He hummed in amusement, running his tongue over his lips to collect any remaining blood.

“I’ll humour you, since you were so good for me~”

#btd #strade btd #strade #btd strade #ren hana #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #boyfriend to death #ao3 stuff #fanfiction #archive of our own

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elesketchii · 10 months

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im the marston family enjoyer anon, and i would loooove to read all of your hcs about them!! (so,, whenever you've got the time 👍)

shaking them around inmy head okok. misc marston family hcs slash shenanigans slash character studies?sort of?? because they occupy so much space in my brain

- occasionally, jack will read one of his many adventure novels aloud to his parents. on a stormy night they might sit in front of the lit chimney, as jack dramatically reenacts the tales from his books. it’s in moments like these where they feel like a normal family, all their worries and past traumas washed away

- jack has always liked playing with his mother’s hair, braiding and decorating it with pretty flowers he’d pick especially for her. one day, though, he asks his father if he could try braiding his hair instead. at first john was hesitant, but he ended up giving in because he knew he’d been kindof a deadbeat to his soon for the past 4 years, and he wanted to make amends with him more than anything.

jack soon found that his fathers hair would be tricky to work with, though…compared to abigail’s softer curls, john’s hair was thinner and greasier..(this loser is afraid of water he does Not shower god bless) safe to say jack’s attempt at giving his father a little makeover was unsuccessful. he did, however, give john a flower crown, which he ended up tying around his hatband

- abigail is the big spoon. john would rather die than admit to anyone that he’s a little spoon and abi teases him for it all the time.

- jack loves writing little stories and acting them out with his parents using props and shitty homemade costumes. hes been a theatre kid since before he’d even been to a theatre in person. despite mostly being interested in writing novels, he finds screenwriting an intriguing profession as well, and definitely considered it as a possible future career

- john has had this habit of putting on a tough, manly persona ever since he was little, mostly because that’s the version of him that dutch always wanted to see. when he met abigail, though, something within him shifted. suddenly he can’t keep this act up very easily anymore. he hates admitting it but he feels very vulnerable around abigail, and he absolutely detests himself for that. i like to think it’s why he acted so hostile towards her and jack in the first few chapters of rdr2.

after they leave the gang, though, he realizes that he doesn’t have to put up this act anymore. slowly but surely, he becomes more open with abigail, which came as a surprise to her, not that she complained much. she likes that softer side of him much more, but she knows if she tells him that he won’t take it lightly. she prefers to show him through smaller gestures, though part of her thinks he might be too stupid to get the message that way lol

#god they r so insane #i wanna draw some of these #long post #rdr2 #ele.txt #ask

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cobaltperun · 4 months

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Lost (8) - Collect Call

Tara Carpenter x female Reader

Story warnings: Scream violence, family issues, trauma, angst, certain sensitive topics

Word count: 8.6k

Story masterlist / First part / Previous part / Next part

-Wishing you could keep me closer, I'm a lazy dancer when you move, I move with you-

Woodsboro was a small place, frankly, you were amazed it even had a proper gym, even if it wasn’t as well-equipped as you would prefer. Still, it had a punching bag, plenty of space to do push-ups, you could run, do pull-ups, lift wights, the basics were there, and you easily spent four to five hours in it a day, sometimes more. In fact, you just completed a two-hour work-out and were in the process of taking your gloves off.

Life moves on, no matter how hard you wish to stop it at times. Right now, however, you eagerly accepted the passage of time, after all, the sooner what Amber and Richie did became left in the past the better, especially for Tara.

It's been almost three weeks since Tara was first attacked and for the most part, everything was returning back to normal. The wounds healed, well, aside from Tara's broken leg, that would take some time, but the scars remained, with two being more prominent than others, the stab through Tara's left hand and the slash that went horizontally just beneath the right side of your jawline. Other stabs and gunshots left their own scars, but those were easy to cover with clothes. Thus, you caught Tara's regretful gaze checking your scar out. Not that you blamed her, you glanced at her own scar every now and then. You still caught yourself wondering if there was anything you could have done to keep her safe, to prevent the first attack. The answer was always a definitive ‘no’ but you still wondered.

The Babadook theme rang almost immediately after you put your gloves in your bag and wiped the sweat off your face and hands with your towel, and you eagerly answered. "Hey, Snuggle Bear," you said teasingly before taking a sip from your water bottle. Damn, you missed having these phone calls with Tara while she was with Amber, and from the looks of it she had every intention to make up for the lost calls.

"As if you're not as much of a snuggle bear as I am," she teased back, though there was a bit of nervousness in her tone. You’d leave that for when you met up.

With a broad smile on your face you faked sighing in defeat. "You caught me, only with you though," there was a small pause once you said that.

"Exactly the way it should be," Tara set the boundaries, your boundaries to be precise. Possessive little snuggle bear. Granted, considering what those cuddles and snuggles included you couldn't say you blamed her for being like that. "Anyway, don't forget to pick me up in an hour," you stopped for a moment. Tara didn't have a check-up today. Hell, her next check up wasn’t until next week.

"Huh?" you were trying to think of the reason for picking her up. You didn't make any plans. Not that you minded abruptly spending time with Tara, but you were still a bit confused.

"Y/N," Tara groaned your name and you could hear her head hitting the pillow. "Your results are in. For your heart. Remember?" oh, that was today, well, at least that explained why she sounded a bit nervous before. She was anxious about the results. Damn, you, on the other hand, managed to forget all that. Your heart felt fine, so you kinda stopped being worried.

"Right, I'll come pick you up in an hour," you reassured her and began packing your stuff as you exchanged goodbyes with Tara.

Almost an hour later you parked in front of Tara's house and knocked several times. You could hear shuffling inside the house, and then there was some stumbling until the doors finally opened and a very drunk Christina Carpenter leaned against the doors, a bottle of whatever alcohol she was currently drinking in hand.

"Y-" she hiccuped and you could smell the alcohol even if you were over a dozen of feet away from her, let alone right in front of her. "Y/N, how you doing?" well, at least she could form some kind of sentence, even if her words were slurred.

"Good. Is Tara upstairs," you sure hoped she was because you didn't trust the drunk in front of you to help her down the stairs and Sam was out at the moment, probably covering someone's shift to earn enough to get by.

"Tara?" you felt a vein popping on your forehead. "She's not with you?" your blood would have run cold at that if anyone else said it.

"Please let me in," you did your best to be as gentle and polite as you possibly could. You knew the consequences of confronting Christina well enough. The last time you did it took a month and a rather expensive bottle of whiskey to let you back into her house.

"Hmm? Sure, suuuree," she stumbled to the side, and you quickly went up the stairs before she could try to continue the conversation.

You reached Tara's room and knocked.

"Come in," you heard Tara's voice from the other side of the doors. She sounded frustrated.

"Hey, you okay?" you came in and saw the issue. She was struggling with her jeans.

Tara laughed uneasily and just gave up, falling back on her bed and spreading her arms in defeat. "Shit, am I late?" she asked, a bit out of breath.

You offered her a smile and knelt in front of her to help her. You began pulling the jeans over her cast as she sat up, her breath hitching as you pulled her jeans up to the middle of her thighs. You stood up and put your arms around her waist so you could lift Tara up. That way she could pull her jeans up all the way and finish getting dressed. You smiled slightly when you felt her leaning her forehead on your shoulder, still embarrassed by how often she had to rely on you or Sam for even the simplest tasks. You didn’t think anyone could get as red as she did the first time you helped her take a shower. Not that you were unaffected, you just managed to separate doing something out of need and out of want, and that was a need, not a want for Tara. "Nope, I got here early," you reassured her, leaning to the side to kiss the top of her head, you always knew Tara was touchy, and that she craved physical touch and affection, but it only intensified after the attack. "Ready now?"

Tara nodded as she pulled away, she picked up her handbag and put her arm around your neck as you lifted her up. "Think we can avoid mom?" she asked as you stepped outside her room.

"She's probably still at the doors, so unlikely," you sighed. It wasn't the first time Tara was uncomfortable about her mom seeing the two of you together, but there was something different about the way she worriedly looked away from you. "Did she say something?"

"Just another fight with Sam, well, another Sam just taking it and mom screaming at her," Tara explained and took a deep breath. "Sorry, you're worried about your results and I'm complaining about my family," she apologized making you nudge her lightly with your head.

"Hey, none of that, or do I need to remind you I forgot about the results? Besides, we support each other, right?" you reminded her as you reached the bottom of the stairs.

Tara looked away. "It feels one-sided lately," she whispered so quietly you nearly didn't hear it. You were certain she didn't intend for you to hear it, so you just pulled her a tiny bit closer. You'd eventually have to talk about all the feelings that remained unresolved, but it didn't feel like today was the right day.

Luckily Christina wasn’t at the hall, you guess she went somewhere else to drink, and Tara seemed to relax a bit due to that, but she was still tense, even as you set her down on the passenger seat.

As you drove to the hospital your mind raced in the other direction. You wouldn't say Tara has been difficult ever since what happened, hell, given what she went through, you thought she was handling things better than most people would. However, there were definitely more difficult moments, especially after she learned she would never have full use of her left hand again. She struggled to keep a firm grip on anything smaller than a cup or heavier than half a pound, not to mention reduced mobility and occasional cramps.

Mood swings, while understandable, were abrupt and immediately noticeable, which, you guessed, was to be expected. Something would trigger Tara, and it would be as if a switch got flipped. All Sam and you could do was remain patient with her. Neither of you could say you knew exactly what Tara was thinking, she refused to talk, but there was a pattern you recognized.

Christina screaming at Sam? Mood swing.

Sam being gone for too long? Mood swing.

Anyone mentioning Amber? Being reminded of Amber? Mood swing and a half.

Tara being unable to do something for herself due to her leg? The worst mood swing of them all.

Combination of any of those? Or all of them? Not fun. Currently, you were dealing with a combination of the first and fourth, perhaps the second as well, depending on when Tara last saw Sam.

Sam also told you that being away from you, caused just as big, if not even bigger mood swings, during which it wouldn’t take long to irritate Tara into an angry outburst. You, personally, didn’t deal with angry outbursts, Tara would get annoyed, or alternatively possessive and/or jealous, but you wouldn’t describe it as angry outbursts.

You stopped at the red light, a few more minutes and you'd reach the hospital.

"Y/N," the softness of her voice calmed you down, it let you know she was gradually getting less irritated.

"Yeah?" you allowed yourself a quick look at her, before turning your attention back to the road.

"I've been difficult lately, I'm sorry," that caught you off guard for a moment.

"I'd rather have you expressing everything you're feeling than the opposite. Both Sam and I will be here, no matter what, so be difficult if it helps," the lights switched to green and you drove for a bit before parking the car in the first open parking spot, still a bit away from the hospital. You turned in your seat, looking at Tara with utmost seriousness. "But, if at some point it stops helping, talk to us about that too. Just don't try to deal with it alone, rely on us."

What else could you tell her? This soon after everything happened? You were sure Sam told her something similar at least once a day, you told her as often as you could. There was no way to tell if it was reaching Tara or not. A shaky breath fell from her lips and Tara turned away from you. "We'll be late," so you drove once again, choosing not to push or force the conversation further than she was ready to accept it.

By the time you were inside the hospital, with you sitting across from the doctor and Tara standing on her crutches next to you, you could only see the worry in her eyes. The irritation, the frustrations, it all vanished now that you were waiting to hear the results.

"Good news, miss L/N," you noticed Tara visibly relaxing. "The heart attack was due to extreme circumstances. According to the tests your heart is a textbook example of healthy. You've got a long MMA career ahead of you with these results," oof, that one wasn't going to age well. You couldn't help but chuckle at that. If only the good doctor in front of you knew...

Tara, overwhelmed with relief and happiness flung her arms around you, causing you to quickly get up so she wouldn't hurt her leg. "Oh, thank goodness," she trembled in your arms as she, over the top happy as she currently was kissed your cheek several times. There was no way the corners of your lips didn’t touch a few times with how she was kissing you and you had to resist the urge to kiss her properly. It was getting more difficult though. Every time she looked you in the eyes a bit longer than she used to, every time she pressed up against you more than it was necessary, every time her lips lingered on your cheek, you had to control yourself and hold the need to kiss her back.

You worried it was too early for her to jump into another relationship, especially given what happened with Amber. "Easy, Tara," you laughed and offered a quick apology to the doctor.

"It's all good," he raised his hands. "I get it. Get out though, other patients are waiting," he chuckled and handed you Tara's crutches that had fallen to the floor.

Still, with Tara this happy, and with a movie night scheduled tonight at the twins' place, you figured nothing could cause another mood swing.

Famous last words, as some would say.

~X~

When you brought Tara back to her house and left her in her room once again, she caught herself glancing at the calendar on her phone. It's been three months now. With some trouble, she went over to the desk in her room and pulled out a box. She went back to her bed and got comfortable before opening it. The necklace inside was her favorite piece of jewelry. Simple at first glance with its round pendant, but the details were intricate and required a closer look to be seen. She traced the round patterns and the small sapphire in the middle with her fingertips, smiling as she remembered what you did back then.

~X~

It was in April 2020, it was a Saturday and you, quite easily, convinced Tara to come with you to another town, one, as you said, better equipped to handle what you wanted to do. You said you needed her help, and it wasn't until you were sitting in a confectionery store that you told her what you needed to do.

"So, there's a girl," she immediately froze when you opened with that. "I really care about her, and her birthday is coming up, and I wanted to get her something, I guess, a bit more, uh something. I thought about getting her a necklace, but I don't know anything about all that stuff."

Tara found it difficult to swallow the piece of cake she mistakenly put in her mouth before you spoke up. She still smiled, even if it didn't reach her eyes. "So, you thought I could help you?" she despised how her voice nearly gave her away when she started talking.

You just rubbed the back of your head sheepishly. "I'd appreciate it."

"Do you, uh, do you really care about her?" she couldn't bring herself to ask if you were in love. The way your eyes brightened was enough of an answer without verbal confirmation.

"I do," not a moment of hesitation. Tara felt jealousy consuming her. She felt regret at not saying anything to you. She wanted to yell at you that you weren't being fair, but how could she do that when you looked so happy just thinking about that girl.

How amazing did that girl have to be to get that reaction out of you? She tried to keep her face at least neutral, even as her emotions spiraled out of control, self-doubt consuming her. She dared to hope that maybe, at some point, you might start seeing her as more than just a friend, but now she doubted that would ever happen. It would be too good to be true after all.

"Let's go then," neither one of you was done with the cakes, but she wanted, no, needed to get this over with. She'd help to the best of her abilities, but she wanted to be quick about it.

You blinked a few times, but didn’t say anything. You must have noticed her mood dropping though, because you placed an arm around her shoulders for a brief moment and smiled at her.

You got to the store, and she looked around, wondering if she could really do it. "What did you want me to do, exactly?" she asked.

"Uh, look around and find the one that catches your eye the most? Let's say as if you were choosing something for yourself?" you looked around, completely out of place. Tara guessed you really never had the time to figure something like this out, with all the training and fighting, and now a job as a cook, you simply didn't have time.

So, going as far as to ask for Tara's help, not to mention taking an entire day off from everything, really made her envious of that mysterious girl of yours. How far were you going to go for that girl if you were taking a day off for a gift? What if she likes you back and you start dating? Who was she kidding with that last thought? That girl would have to be crazy not to like you back. It wasn't just jealousy over that, it went further, to how it would affect your friendship when your already limited free time got occupied by another girl.

So, to keep her mind off those possibilities Tara turned to her task. "What's your budget?" she asked absentmindedly.

"I didn't really consider it. Don't look at the price," were you being serious now?

"Y/N, what are you doing?" Tara asked in a hushed whisper, she knew how careful you were with money, yet here you were, acting like you’d spend a small fortune if needed.

"Buying a gift?" you didn't seem affected by the prices in the store. Well, if you weren't going to care, then Tara would do it for you.

"Welcome, is there anything I can help you with?" a woman interrupted the two of you and Tara gave her a tight-lipped smile. She didn't seem to mind as she began showing the two of you different pieces of jewelry.

Tara considered a ring or a bracelet, but her eyes kept going back to one necklace in particular. Simple, golden, necklace with a beautiful circular design on the pendant and a tiny sapphire in the middle of it. You seemed to catch that, and Tara had long since noticed you weren't paying attention to the jewelry as much as her reactions to them.

"Could you maybe try it? You know, to see if it's comfortable?" you sheepishly asked and Tara sighed, that ugly jealousy increasing tenfold. Did you really have to buy that girl one thing that genuinely caught her eye? And to make it even worse it fit her like a glove.

"Thanks," you looked almost mesmerized at the sight of the necklace around her neck.

"Mhm. Lucky girl," she swallowed down those feelings as your eyes met.

"I'm the lucky one," the tiniest bit of raspiness in your voice as you whispered those words sent a shiver down her spine.

With the necklace paid for the two of you went back to Woodsboro. As payback she made you watch The Babadook and Hereditary back to back. You never mentioned the girl again. She asked what her reaction was, you just shrugged. She asked to meet her, you gave vague excuses not to. No matter what she asked, or how she approached the conversation you remained tightlipped about it. You still had that look of absolute adoration in your eyes when you talked about her and Tara just couldn't take it, so she stopped asking.

Eventually, by the middle of November, she couldn't keep it in anymore. Amber really, really disliked you, and telling her about what happened would only make it worse. Mindy would tease her, so she couldn't go to Mindy either. You were obviously not an option, so, she was really left with the worst possible option.

"I don't know what to do, mom," she lamented when she told her mother the story. She was fairly certain half of what she said was already forgotten by the half-drunk woman.

"That's bad," her mom said, looking straight through Tara with her hazy eyes. "Girl's parents are rich, when she sobers up from her rebellious phase, she'll go back to them and all that money will go to her," Tara felt like vomiting as her mother hiccupped and gulped down another glass of wine. "It's not like they have other kids."

Your parents were rich. There was no denying that, but to think that was why her mother was so supportive of her friendship with you. Tara felt sick. She barely kept her breathing under control and as subtly as she could used her inhaler.

"You clung too hard Tara, and she got sick of it. Keep doing that and people will abandon you again," with tears in her eyes Tara ran outside, clutching her inhaler and phone to her chest. It wasn't the first time her mom had said something like that, that she clung too hard and that it was the reason Sam and her dad left her.

She couldn't call you. She couldn't be that clingy. Instead, she ran until her lungs burned, which, admittedly, wasn't too far. Tara gasped for air, trying to calm down and avoid an asthma attack. This wasn't the time or the place, but the cold air made everything more difficult. Almost out of the blue, she began shivering, only now realizing she wasn't exactly dressed for the cold, she was in her pajama shorts and T-shirt and only had slippers on her feet, not to mention she was disoriented, cold, and out of breath.

"Tara, sweetie?" a voice she barely recognized called her name and she abruptly raised her head to see none other than the lady that owned the restaurant you worked in. A middle-aged woman with hair seemingly permanently in a bun and a kind face that made working with customers seem easy. Tara didn't really catch her or her husband's name.

"What are you doing out at this hour and dressed like that?" the woman quickly wrapped Tara in her coat. "Dear Lord, you're freezing," Tara looked down, ashamed of being caught in this state. "Let's go inside," only then did Tara realize she somehow stumbled to the restaurant you worked in.

"N-No, I'm fine," she tried to refuse, her mother's words echoing in her mind.

"Y/N will go crazy if I leave you like this, come on so I don't have to get scolded by my own employee," she guessed she couldn't argue with that. She knew you, if she refused and left, and the woman told you about it, you’d start looking for Tara and then Tara would feel even worse.

The lady took her through the front doors, through the small restaurant with nice wooden tables and into the kitchen where Tara saw you wrapping up the cleaning. The kitchen was still warm and she gave the coat back to your boss. The woman was reluctant to take it, but seeing the look in Tara's eyes as she watched your back made your boss take the coat back.

"Y/N," her voice was barely louder than a whisper, yet somehow you heard her and whipped around almost as if you couldn't believe your own ears.

"Tara?!" your jaw dropped as you saw her. Immediately you dropped what you were doing and pulled her as close to you as possible. Tara didn't know if it was instinct or habit, but whichever it was it took over and she clung to you as if her life depended on it, gripping the back of your uniform and taking all of you in, the warmth of your body, your scent mixed with the smell of the kitchen and all the food you made tonight, the feel of your muscles underneath your clothes, she took it all in. "Shit, you're freezing," you turned to your boss, looking for answers.

“I don’t know, I just saw her outside,” your boss raised her hands while Tara kept shivering in your arms.

“I owe you one,” you turned your attention back to Tara and picked her up by her waist. You went over to your hoodie hanging in the back and gave it to Tara the moment you lowered her back down.

“Sorry, Y/N,” Tara whispered and let go of you just enough to put the hoodie on.

“Hey, it’s okay,” your smile warmed her up as you took your white uniform off, leaving you only in a plain red T-shirt. The moment that was done Tara went right back to hugging you. Just for a bit longer, she told herself, just until the words her mother spoke became less loud. Just until she was certain you didn't mind. Then she let you go, only to feel you pulling her into your side and leading her outside through the back doors.

"Thanks! I'll make up for this tomorrow!" she heard you hollering as you took her straight to your apartment.

By the time the two of you were in your apartment, Tara was calm, for the most part. You set your priorities straight, cranking the heating up to the max and getting Tara to lie down in your bed to warm up quicker. You even tucked her in, wrapping her in your blankets. Only then did you send a message to her mother. Tara frowned at that. As if her mother cared.

"What happened?" you finally sat down on the sofa next to the bed and Tara wasn't sure what to tell you. She didn’t know how to even approach the topic, how to tell you what she was feeling and what caused her to run from home like that.

"Am I too clingy? Does it bother you?" she eventually blurted out before she could change her mind.

Your eyes widened at that. "It could never bother me, Tara," you assured her, your eyes carefully studying her. "Where did you get that idea?"

Tara sat up in your bed, now feeling warm, for more than one reason. "Mom said I clung too hard, and you got sick of it," Tara just admitted it, she wouldn't tell you what made her mother say that, but she figured she should tell you what made her run from her house like that. "Then she said people will keep abandoning me and I got emotional, so I ran. I didn't even realize where I was."

You clenched your fists and Tara could see barely contained anger in your eyes. "Of course, it was your damn mother," you growled, leaning back and glaring at the ceiling. “Why don’t you just come and live with me once you turn eighteen?”

It wasn’t the first time you asked that question and Tara wanted that, she wanted that so damn much, but she knew you were saving money for the future, and that you would have to get a bigger apartment if she started living with you. Even if you started sleeping together, which, given you were just friends, might become a bit weird over time, she wondered how the rest of living together would work. And then there were your fights… Frankly, Tara didn’t know if she had the strength to see your bruises after fights, even if everything else was fine.

“I… I don’t think it would work,” she gave you that same answer and at first you assured her you’d make it work, and she’d just tell you she was fine in her house.

“Tara,” you sighed, and she could see the complaint at the tip of your tongue.

"Especially since you will have less time for me," Tara finally opened up about what had been bothering her since April.

"What?" you suddenly sounded confused, the question of Tara moving in forgotten for the time being.

"The girl? The one you bought that necklace for. You'll have less time when you get together with her," she explained, not sure why you didn't get that. You were usually more than aware of how much time you could spare on what. Even if you told her your friendship wouldn't suffer because of your love life, she honestly couldn't believe that. And she knew she couldn’t see you hugging and kissing that girl, or any other girl, so the more serious the relationship got the less she’d see you. And she dreaded that thought, she hated how it made her feel like maybe there was some truth in what Amber was saying.

"Is that what you've been worried about?" you asked and moved to kneel on the floor next to her.

Tara just nodded, not trusting her voice right now.

You sighed and reached for the nightstand drawer. Tara's eyes widened when she saw the same box you got from that jewelry store. "There's no girl, Tara, the necklace is for you," you opened the box and looked her in the eyes, almost silently begging for permission. When she, too shocked to say or do anything, just kept looking from the necklace to your eyes you took that as enough of a permission to put it around her neck.

It still fit her like it was made for her, and she felt a shiver run down her spine when your fingers brushed against her neck. "What did you say?" her throat was dry all of a sudden.

You smiled sheepishly, pulling your hands away from her neck. "It was meant to be a gift for your eighteenth birthday, and I really don't know shit about jewelry, so the only way I could find something good would be to, you know, trick you into choosing your own gift like eight months in advance," at least you looked embarrassed.

Tara still couldn't believe what was happening, too speechless to even react. So, you took that as a sign to keep talking.

"I'd rather ruin the surprise than let you worry about something like this. For what it's worth, I didn't think you'd think there could ever be a girl that could take your place. Hell, I was scared you'd see right through me," you chuckled a bit and took her hand. "Please say something," you pleaded, and she pulled you into a hug.

"You're crazy, you know? What were you thinking spending all that money on me, hmm?" she felt tears running down her cheeks. You, damn, dumbass she was so hopelessly in love with.

"Yeah, you kinda make it hard to think clearly," you teased, and she jokingly gave you a light smack on the back.

"I love it," she relented, knowing better than to argue with you about this. "Thanks, Y/N," she muttered into your neck wishing she had the courage to just move up and kiss you.

~X~

Tara smiled as she remembered all that. She spent the night, sleeping right next to you, not quite as close as she did over the past few weeks, but back then it didn't matter. It wasn't the first time the two of you slept like that, but it didn't happen that often, especially in your bed. So, back then she cherished the nights that would end like that. A plan formed in her head, she hadn't worn your necklace over the past three months, due to Amber's jealousy, or well, what she thought was jealousy. So, it was about time to correct that.

~X~

When you arrived at Chad and Mindy’s house, you found Sam on the porch, smoking a cigarette.

"Before you ask, I'm trying to quit," Sam said as you reached her and leaned back against the fence. You just raised your hands, understanding it wasn't the easiest task. As long as she didn't smoke anywhere near Tara you honestly didn't mind.

"You know, I don't think I'll ever miss Woodsboro, but you can't deny the sky is beautiful at night," you pointed out as you looked up over your shoulder.

From the corner of your eye, you saw Sam nodding. "Can I ask you something about you and Tara?"

You met her eyes, slightly confused as to why she'd ask you instead of Tara. "Sure."

"Do you know? How she feels?" it was a question that could make or break your relationship with Sam.

"That she loves me? Yeah, I've known since she was sixteen," you admitted. "Her eyes are just so expressive, you know? I can see the way she looks at me. I know the way she clings to me isn't exactly friendly either," the looks, the lingering touches, the apparent need Tara had to just stay as close to you as she physically could ever since she was attacked… You noticed it all. Truth be told, you and Tara had always been touchy with each other. Whether you were carrying her on your back when you were kids, or she just randomly hugged you and wouldn’t let go until she was content throughout your entire friendship, or falling asleep next to each other and eventually watching a movie while cuddling, sure, you guessed some friends did that, but all things considered you couldn’t deny that Tara was in love with you, or that you were in love with her.

Sam clenched her fist. "And you?"

You looked at her as if she suddenly grew another head. "Seriously? That's a question? I love her, Sam."

Sam relaxed at that, at least a bit. "What's stopping you then?"

You looked away from her and back to the night sky. "It was never the right moment. I figured it out a bit before I turned eighteen, but I was about to leave my parents. Then I had to find the balance between MMA, work, and everything else I now needed to handle on my own. I just wouldn't be able to be what she needed in a relationship," not to mention Tara was sixteen at the time, well, sixteen and a half, but you didn’t want to rush her into a relationship until she was ready. Until she knew what she wanted and needed in a partner, you wanted it to work, and it felt like waiting a few years was the best way to make sure it would work, and not fall apart because you were still too young to know what you wanted.

The circumstances were much different now, though. Age kinda wasn’t a factor anymore, not after what the two of you, and especially Tara, went through.

Sam nodded, apparently understanding your reasoning. "And now she went through a traumatic experience, and you want to give her time to heal?" Sam was spot on. Now you were sure you and Tara would work, but between what happened and the way Tara was handling it, you didn't think it was the right time to get together. That being said, you doubted you had it in you to resist if, say, a kiss was about to happen.

"If something happened I think I couldn't fight it, but I'm not going to pursue anything right now," you admitted and the two of you fell into a comfortable silence for a couple of minutes.

"Oh, yeah, Tara is waiting for you in the guest room. Apparently, she has something to ask you," Sam's statement puzzled you. You and Tara already spent plenty of time together today. Couldn't she ask before?

"Thanks, Sam," you got inside and found Chad and Mindy in the living room trying to decide which movie to watch. "Hey," Tara's question could wait a minute or two. You approached the twins and gave them a quick hug. "How are you?"

"Doing better," Mindy shrugged, grinning a bit, even though you could see her subconsciously reaching for her chest where Amber stabbed her, it was a miracle she survived. It was a miracle either of the two of them survived, and you could see that night haunting them in the way their eyes lost that childlike innocence they had before this all happened. Other than Tara the rest of your friends had normal childhoods, parents that were normal, that cared for them, they were never abandoned, and now, completely out of nowhere, a close friend tried to kill them and killed Wes and Liv. They would never be as trusting as they were, and you couldn’t blame them. "You know how it goes, we're all dealing with it one way or another," she said, for once choosing not to be snarky or sarcastic.

You nodded. Hoping the answer was honest because, as much as it hurt to admit, you didn't have it in you to fully be there for anyone else.

"Chad?" he was in a rather special situation, seeing as Liv was his girlfriend. You heard from Tara Liv's parents didn't take it well when he tried to talk to them. He dragged her into that mess, they said. It wasn’t fair, but in their grief and anger and no one left to pay and suffer for their daughter’s death, the only target left was Chad. There was a chance Tara would have been the target of their rage as well, seeing as she did introduce Liv to the rest of the group, but they just never had the chance to take their anger out on Tara.

"Hanging in there. Going back to practice has been helping to get my mind off of things," the only one who visibly took all of this worse than Chad was Tara. For a moment you wondered if Tara would be able to handle it better if she wasn't stuck in one place pretty much all day.

You patted Chad's shoulder. "If you ever want to spar, or train together, you have my number," and you most definitely would train with Chad if he asked.

"I'll keep it in mind Champ," he smiled slightly. "Tara's waiting for you," he gestured upstairs and you nodded, leaving the two to find Tara.

“Second door to the right!” Mindy added as you began climbing up the stairs.

“Thanks!” it was a testament to how rarely you visited their place. If the times you came to pick Tara up were excluded you were fairly sure you could count all the times you spent time in this house on your hands. In all the years you’ve known the twins. As kids you just used to spend time in the park, or at the school playground, afterwards Tara’s house became the usual place to hang out, and by the time you turned eighteen half the time it was just you and Tara anyway.

When you found Tara she was sitting on the bed, with a box in her hands. It looked like a jewelry box? "Hey, what's up?"

Tara blushed slightly. "Uh, could you open this box?" she offered it to you.

You tilted your head in confusion but still took the box. You remained on your feet, in front of Tara, not entirely sure if you'd need to move right away. Things became even more confusing when you opened the box. You recognized the necklace immediately and you looked at Tara, a bit lost at the moment.

"Could you put it on me?" Tara asked, clearing your confusion.

Your heart began beating a bit faster. "Of course," you spoke softly and put the necklace around her neck. You tried not to notice how her lower lip trembled, or how it felt like your fingertips touched fire. It wasn’t like this when you first put it around her neck, and your heart threatened to leap out of your chest when you looked at the necklace around her neck. It felt good to see it there once again after more or less three months now.

"I took it off exactly three months ago. It felt fitting to put it back on today, especially if you put it on me," her eyes held a bit of uncertainty as she placed her hands around your neck.

With anyone else, they'd have to work for it, but with Tara, you just moved, letting her pull your head down. She kissed your cheek and then moved her lips closer to your ear. "You're the only one whose mark I'll ever wear," your eyes widened, brain shortcircuited, body moving on its own as you pulled her closer, heart hammering in your chest as she looked you in the eyes. Was she leaning in or was that you?

"Tara, Y/N, we're ready to start the movie!" Mindy's voice startled both of you and you awkwardly separated from each other the moment Mindy came in. The fuck? Didn't the three of them send you up here? And now they interrupted you? "Come on," she ushered you and then probably connected the dots. "Hey, wait a second, did you two just-" she had the most infuriating shit-eating grin on her face.

"No!" both of you denied even if you could feel the tingling sensation on your lips. It wasn't even an almost kiss, your lips definitely touched for a moment, and judging by Tara absentmindedly touching her lips she felt it too,

"Sure, you didn't," Mindy rolled her eyes. "Make out later, we got a movie to watch."

"We weren't-" Tara began and you could see a very prominent blush on her face. "Why am I even bothering?" she gave up prompting you to chuckle.

"Let's just go and watch the movie," you gave up and picked Tara up. The warning you silently sent Mindy luckily kept her from saying anything, she still had an infuriatingly teasing smirk on her face and it only made Tara hide her face in the crook of your neck.

"T, we all know you're not hiding because you're embarrassed," Mindy just couldn't help herself.

"Dude, let me have this," Tara groaned, making Mindy laugh as she led the two of you to the living room.

Your phone rang just as you and Tara settled in, and you glanced down to see it was your coach. Sighing, you pulled away from Tara and smiled apologetically at her pouting face. "Sorry, I have to take this, don't pause the movie," you stepped outside the house and answered. "How did it go?" you immediately asked, you kinda knew the answer already, you were already perfectly fine with it, you just wanted to hear it.

"You're out Y/N, they agreed to let you have two more fights and then you'll have to retire," you couldn't remember ever hearing him so devastated. You didn't get it, honestly, this was much better than you expected. You thought it would be instant retirement.

"Got it. Well, let's just make those last two fights memorable," you said, you didn't try, he tried, and there was nothing else to do but accept the complementary paycheck and retire without making a fuss.

"Why did you have to go after those two?" he asked again even if you answered that same question when he told you the situation you were in.

"I told you. They hurt the one I love," you'd do it again, and again, and it didn't matter what the cost would be.

"Y/N, come on! The movie's really good!" you heard Chad hollering from the living room.

"Sorry, I have to go, we'll talk tomorrow, okay?" even if you were fine with it, you did wish there was another way, but there wasn't so, that's how it was.

"Yeah, sure. We'll talk," he hung up, sounding even more dejected, before you had the chance to do it and you went back inside. You felt Tara's eyes following your every move, even when Mindy teasingly told her the TV was in the opposite direction. Tara flipped her off, but didn't look away and as you sat back down you saw concern in her eyes.

You smiled, leaning in, and kissing the top of her head before pulling her closer to you. "It's nothing urgent, I'll tell you tonight," she'd sleep at your place tonight. It was a bit of an unspoken deal. If Sam couldn't sleep at Tara's place, then Tara would sleep at your apartment. And since Sam narrowly avoided another fight with her and Tara's mother, they both decided it would be for the best if Sam didn't sleep there for a night or two. Just to let things cool down a bit.

Tara looked you in the eyes with an intensity that made you wonder if she would settle for your answer. Luckily, she nodded and went back to watching the movie.

Three and a half hours later you couldn't avoid telling Tara about what happened anymore. You wanted to delay it a bit longer, let her rest, and not worry her about how you were taking the news because you knew she'd be worrying regardless of what you told her. So, you took your sweet time to get ready for bed, hoping she might fall asleep.

She didn't. Of course, she didn't.

"Y/N," there was a playful warning in her tone, one that told you Tara saw right through you.

"Sorry, sorry," you rubbed the back of your head nervously as you lay down next to her. Tara was on your left side, much like she was in the hospital. And just like in the hospital, you were closer to the doors. Ghostface was gone, but Tara did at one point sleepily mutter to you that she felt safer when she was between you and the wall, safe from both sides.

"So, what was the phone call about?" Tara demanded.

"I'm retiring from MMA," you just dropped it on her and watched as her jaw dropped, as her entire face morphed into pure shock.

"What? Why?" she questioned the moment her brain processed the information you just gave her.

"Apparently, a case can be made that I went looking for a fight, for both times I fought Amber and Richie, especially the one at Amber's house. So, while a lot of people accept the self-defense and/or keeping my loved ones safe as a valid excuse, at least just as many people are saying I could have stayed out of it and/or that I took it too far," you explained the gist of the situation. It was a perfect storm, really. You, a young, new fighter, came along, and defeated a bunch of fan favorites, only to then get caught up in a conflict that left more than half a dozen people dead and just as many heavily injured.

"That makes no sense. What were you supposed to do, let them kill you?" Tara's voice shook with barely restrained fury.

"No one is saying that, but plenty of people are saying I went to Amber's house intending to kill her, which, to be perfectly honest, is true," you couldn't argue against that, you really did plan on killing Amber.

Tara frowned and sat up, looking down as you kept lying there. "We went to save Sam," she argued, even if there really was no point in arguing.

"Tara," you sighed, reaching up to brush a couple of strands of her hair behind her ear. "You and I both know that's the official statement. Yes, saving Sam was important, but if Sam woke me up, or if you had told me it was Amber before we went to sleep I would have done the same thing Sam did."

"I killed Amber," Tara kept arguing, even if she did lift her hand and placed it over your own.

"Valid. I still wanted to do it. I would have done it if I had anything but the gun in my hands," you argued back, still fairly calm about everything.

Tara leaned over you, gripping your shoulders. "Why are you like this? Why are you taking the side of people that are against you?" she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes.

You frowned, choosing the next words carefully. "It's not about sides. It's as simple as acknowledging that I had those intentions. Even if my reason for fighting was justified, and it was, there have to be consequences. Otherwise, you might as well openly give a highly trained group of people a loophole on how to get away with fighting outside the cage, or ring, or whatever," you firmly believed what you were saying. You were fine with this outcome. This was the price to pay to keep Tara safe? Hell, you would have paid a much higher one if it was needed.

"It's not fair," Tara whispered, as she lowered her body down to your own, no longer capable of staying in the position she was in. You were honestly impressed she held out for so long. You just pulled the blanket over your bodies and hugged her. Tara sighed, gently running her fingers through your hair.

"Is the phrase we-" Tara immediately placed a finger over your lips.

"-only use when things don't go our way, I know. You keep repeating that," she huffed, annoyed.

You still kissed the tip of her finger and grinned when she blushed. "It's not so bad. I'm retiring, but I'll have two more fights and I'll get some money to retire quietly. Everyone will end up more or less happy by the end of this deal," you tried to get her to see the brighter side.

Tara, instead, just narrowed her eyes.

"Okay, that's not working. How about this? I get to go to college and work at the same time, while spending plenty of time with you, instead of sacrificing the job in favor of fighting. It's really not that big of a loss Snuggle Bear," you didn't know what else to say to her that could get her to just accept it as it is. It really shouldn't have been this difficult. Tara hated that you fought, before all of this went down, she herself tried to talk you into quitting several times, so all of this, her entire reaction, baffled you.

You understood that she knew how much you loved MMA and you guessed she would be worried about how you'd take all of this, but this was a whole different reaction from what you imagined. And you couldn't put a finger on what was the reason for this shift to save your life.

Though she struggled to do it, Tara moved away from you and tucked herself in the corner. "I wish you didn't pretend you were okay, Y/N. For once be open about your feelings," you didn't have to see her face to know she was crying.

"Tara," you tried, leaning over to wrap an arm around her waist, but she pushed against it. You took a deep breath and sat up. For once you were completely honest about being fine. But that was the point, wasn't it? Because it was for once. So many times, you pretended to be fine, keeping the fact that something was troubling you from Tara and now that she knew you did that for years there was a crack in her trust in you. You got up from the bed and lay down on the sofa to give her as much space as your apartment allowed. It was a long, silent night, with neither of you saying a word or getting any sleep.

#tara carpenter x reader #tara carpenter x you #tara carpenter x female reader #tara carpenter #scream #jenna ortega x reader

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stevetonyweekly · 10 months

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SteveTony Weekly - July 16

Hello, friends! Short list this week because I spent several days re-reading a favorite of mine. Enjoy the list and be sure to leave your authors a comment/kudos!

What do you think of the new banner??

***Recent favorites

~*~

***Enchanted by iam93percentstardust

This night is sparklin', don't you let it go

I'm wonderstruck, blushin' all the way home

I'll spend forever wonderin' if you knew

I was enchanted to meet you

Steve starts making his way back towards the directions of the cars, wanting to greet her, only to stop dead when he realizes who her date is.

Natasha has brought Tony with her.

Tony of the pictures, of the stories, of Steve’s infatuated little heart even though he’s never met him in person.

***once in a lifetime by meidui

“You should be worried that I'll break into your apartment, steal your identity and flee the country with all your money,” Steve says, one arm slung lazily across Tony's chest, playing with the key to his safe. “You shouldn't go around handing out keys to people, you know.”

Tony makes a low, offended noise and grabs Steve’s chin, making him laugh. “Is that what you think I do?”

bake my breath away by earliebirb

Steve develops a crush on one of his bakery's regulars, charming businessman-slash-inventor Tony Stark. He is not stupid enough to think Tony would ever like him back, though.

Besides, Tony is already in a relationship.

As it turns out, Steve might have been wrong about a couple of things.

A Place In My Mind by KandiSheek

The Avengers all swap bodies, with Steve ending up in Ironman's. It's a nightmare for multiple reasons, mostly because Steve has no idea who Ironman actually is, and he'd rather die than be the one to expose his friend's well-kept secret.

What Ironman doesn't know is that Steve has a secret of his own. One of the mushy, romantic kind. And being this close to Ironman, after all these years of desperately wanting it?

It just might be a bigger temptation than he can resist.

Dark Matter by RurouniHime

A mission goes wrong with troubling consequences for Steve. (Based in the world of sabrecmc's Celestial Navigation and its sequel Orbital Mechanics)

an anger that you crush and fuel by starvels (dinosaur)

“I’m mad at you,” Natasha says, gripping Steve’s collar so tight the shirt seams strain.

Steve glances down at her hand, and his arm quivers beside her head. “I know,” he says, voice rough.

Symmetry Breaking by Annie D (scaramouche)

After the Battle of New York, Steve rode off on his motorbike. That's how it went the first time.

This time he rides back, all the way to Stark Tower, where he asks Tony for help.

The God of Solid Life Advice by kehinki

It's 2012. Steve is just informed by Loki that Bucky's alive.

Loki also tells him some other things.

The Hazards of Falling in Love (Rescue Me) by EmmaLostInWonderland

“So that’s your name?” Rogers hasn't looked away from him once. His eyes are a piercing blue, and Tony barely manages to keep from squirming under his gaze.

“Yeah. Or Telecommunications Operator Stark, if we’re getting technical about it.”

“Are we?”

Tony tilts his head slightly. “Depends. Can I call you Steve?”

The man grins. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Tony.”

// Tony Stark doesn't date firemen. But he'll make an exception for Battalion Chief Steve Rogers.

written for BladeoftheNebula as part of the Stony Loves Steve 2023 Gift Exchange

Trying not to lose my sensibility by Girl_Back_There

In the weeks leading up to his heat, Steve rethinks about his relationship with Brock. And his fading friendship with Tony.

i'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone by iam93percentstardust

The real reason Tony wanted to do this movie, the one that he'll never tell anyone about, was because when he’d asked his agent who would be playing Chris, she’d slyly smiled at him and told him that it was Steve Rogers.

“Oh,” he’d squeaked, cleared his throat, and tried again in a more normal octave, but by then it was too late. Natasha had laughed at him and made the call without even waiting for him to agree to the audition.

He’s not quite sure if he should thank her or fire her for that.

Chamber of Reflection by Thahire

A few years after retiring, Steve and Tony get a surprise visit from another Steve. Steve Rogers from Earth 1610 is lost, grappling with the new century he’s been unceremoniously dropped in, with confusing feelings for his new teammate, with himself.

Steve and Tony decide to get involved.

Soft Robotics by isozyme

“I promise this is all non-toxic. The silicone is medical-grade, even.”

Steve makes a choking noise. “I would hope so,” he says, going bright, tomato red as he says it.

Tony makes some cool robots. Steve makes an assumption.

***Celestial Navigation by sabrecmc

Celestial Navigation: 18 year old Omega!Tony finds himself Bonded to Captain Steve Rogers. He isn't happy about it until he is.

#stevetony #stevetony weekly #stony #stony weekly #stevetony fic #stony fic #stevetony fic recs #stony fic recs #steve rogers #tony stark #iron man #captain america #fic #fic recs #fanfiction

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axl-rose-lover-1987 · 8 months

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“Long Night”

Duff Mckagan x reader

Year:1991

Fluff

You jumped out of the cab grabbing your backstage pass when a security guard stopped you. “Do you know the band ma’am?” He asked sternly. “Yes I’m Duffs girlfriend” you said smiling and showing your pass. The man’s face tensed up when you said Duffs name that couldn’t be good you thought. “Alright come with me.” He said. The man lead you inside and backstage to where you could hear a very angry crowd chanting boo and some other rude things about the band. Shit you thought what did Axl do this time. Speak of the devil Axl came walking past with his security team he looked pissed. Like real pissed not normal Axl pissed like he was about to punch anyone who looked at him wrong right now. You decided not to ask him what was going on in fear of having your face punched in. You saw Slash running up behind and decided to ask him instead. “Slash what the hell is going on why is Axl pissed where’s Duff?” You asked Slash. “Long story…” Slash said somewhat outta breath. “Basically we came on late crowd was super rowdy Axl yelled at them then they started throwing shit at us and Duff got hit in the head” “DUFF WHAT” you interrupted now worried about your boyfriend. “He’s fine y/n it was just a bottle but now he can’t play so the show is over and the crowd is pissed and so is Axl.” Slash said. “Ok well where’s Duff?” You said not really caring about anything but him in this moment. “He’s down the hall the paramedics are looking at him” Slash said. “Ok thanks.” You said already starting to jog down the hallway to him. You found the room down the hall Duff was in and sure enough there he was sitting on a couch holding an ice pack on his head while a paramedic was shining a flashlight in his eyes. “Duff babe are you ok” you said running up and hugging him and then placing yourself right next to him on the couch. “Never been better sweetheart” Duff said in a very sarcastic tone. “He doesn’t have a concussion” the paramedic said. You let out a sigh of relief. “He just needs to rest and I assume you’ll be with him tonight so make sure he’s not around super bright lights and take him to the ER if he throws up but other than that he’s fine and I’ll leave you two alone.” The paramedic said getting up to leave to room. “I’m so sorry Duff I got here late and there was traffic and then Slash told me what happened and I was so worried-“ “Babe look at me” Duff said lifting up your chin so you were looking him in the eyes “I’m fine really and all that matters is your here now” Duff said kissing your forehead. You relaxed a little more with that now. You two sat silent for a few mins. Then you stood up and walked away from him and held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up Mckagan.” You said half joking half serious. “ Y/n you can’t be serious” Duff said rolling his eyes and laughing. “I’m serious” you said smiling. “Three” Duff said. “There happy?” Then you walked up to Duff and sat right in his lap “Do you know where you are Duff?” “The jungle y/n” Duff said in a sarcastic tone “cmon babe the guy said I didn’t have a concussion you can relax” Duff said laughing at you. “ I know i know I just love you so much babe” you said kissing him. “ I love you too baby” Duff said. “C’mon” you said standing up. “Let’s go home and rest” you said grabbing Duffs hands and leading him out the door. “Awe i wanted to go home and make out” Duff said in a whiny voice. “ Not tonight blondie ” you said giggling at him. It was going to be a long night trying to get Duff to actually rest but you knew you would still love every moment with him.

#guns n roses #duff mckagan #duff mckagan x reader #gnr fanfiction #fanfic #fluff

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cinebration · 1 year

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Come Back To Me (Jack Russell x Reader) [Epilogue]

The end.

Tagged: @lucy-sky, @faeoftheapocalypse, @theconsultingdoctor10, @starfirette, @bitchyglitterfox, @thefandomqueenbb, @scarlettsoldier, @russell-ed, @xasement, @stand-with-cap, @marvelenthusiast10, @supermarvelgirl15, @eykismyfav, @killeromanoff, @hawkins-2000, @fangurldayandnight, @liv-victoriano, @randomchick546, @g1m2g3, @gingermous, @howlingco, @vynsvision, @jwjeepers, @rellasnowheenim, @yelenas-lova, @ackroxia, @littlenosoul, @allthingsvicf, @emiemiemii, @n3rdybirdee, @kl0k, @damnzelsoul, @theslytherinwriter

Warnings: mention of blood

Gif Source: timothydalton

Talking with Ted did little to ease Jack’s anxiety. His turning over the full moon had been harrowing. Though his systems had remained in place and he hadn’t escaped to hurt anyone, he had woken all three mornings to bruises and slashes along his own skin. The walls were riddled with gouges, the beast desperate to be free.

Reports of ear-splitting howls circulated over all three nights in the area he hid himself.

It wasn’t the lingering smell of blood in his apartment or the fact a death had occurred there a few days before that had triggered such a bad change. It had been the anguish at seeing you attacked, hurt, and worst of all broken in the encounter. The look of cold horror, followed by intense detachment, on your face had chilled Jack to the bone.

Now a week from the incident, he still hadn’t heard from you. Your last words to him repeated endlessly in his ears.

“No more helping.”

Ted offered little in the way of comfort. There was nothing he could say or do to alleviate Jack’s guilt and shame and grief over the incident. Just recounting it had brought tears to Jack’s eyes, followed by a few moments of grappling with his emotions to finish telling the story.

“I’m not worried she’s going to kill me,” he told Ted, answering the creature’s question. “She saved me! She could have killed me. For the bounty, for that guy, for any reason, but she didn’t. I don’t think she will change her mind now.”

Ted growled.

“I have to believe it means something, Ted.” Jack swallowed thickly, fighting the tightening in his throat. “She could have killed me. I wouldn’t have been able to stop her. I wouldn’t have tried. But she didn’t. That has to mean something!”

His friend shrugged, countering.

“She wouldn’t do that, I’m sure of it. In fact, she quit hunting, so she definitely wouldn’t do that.” Ignoring the crack in his voice, Jack paced around the small campfire, following his anxious tracks from a week before. It felt like an eternity ago he had been worrying about what to feed you for dinner. Possibly breakfast, if he dared admit it.

“I’m afraid I won’t see her again,” he admitted, his voice a mournful whisper.

Ted grunted in sympathy.

The thought haunted Jack more than the histories of his past. He didn’t need to explain himself or even talk to you at all, not if you didn’t want him to. He only wanted to see you again, to be seen by you again. Even if it was to say good-bye.

Jack froze, stricken. “What if she goes to my home looking for me?” He spun on his heel, frantic. “I shouldn’t be here. Not that I don’t enjoy your company, my friend, but she won’t know where to find me.”

Ted grunted again, waving him away with a large hand.

Appetite lost, Jack refused to leave his apartment. The chance of missing you, if ever you came to see him, was too great for him to fathom being one moment outside the apartment.

A fire alarm went off two days after he spoke with Ted. He remained huddled in his apartment, hoping it wasn’t serious.

No one noticed his absence.

The fifth day, he forced himself to go into the bathroom and shave his stubbly face. He showered and opened windows to air out the musty smell of his prolonged presence. It smelled too much like the wolf.

It paced restlessly inside him, mourning the loss of its potential mate. It snarled things deep in Jack’s soul, insisting he tear apart the night to find you.

Jack kept a rein on it.

Barely.

Another week later, Jack had not given up hope but had resigned himself to it not happening. He ate dinner without tasting it and wondered if there was a way for him to find you. He could try to track your scent around the city, but he had nothing of yours to inhale deeply.

The seeds of despair sowed themselves in his soul.

Knuckles rapped on his door.

He froze, every nerve singing as he went taut with alertness.

The knuckles rapped again.

Leaping to his feet, heart pounding, he rushed to the door, hope swelling. It took all his restraint not to yank open the door.

You stood opposite the threshold, looking determined but worse for wear. Heart jumping into his throat, Jack could only manage, “You’re here.”

Nodding, you stared down at your feet, hands clenching and unclenching into anxious fists. Jack took a step back to let you into the apartment.

You remained in the hallway.

Fear twisted his heart.

“Do you remember where you found me?” you asked, your voice strained.

“Yes.”

“Could you find it again?”

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. “Yes.”

“Take me there.”

The drive was silent, you sitting behind the wheel, Jack sitting with his window rolled down so he could smell the heady scent of the woods. You parked off the scenic route and followed Jack through the trees, stepping carefully in the near darkness. Detritus crunched underfoot, at times slipping with slime beneath shoes.

Jack desperately wanted to speak, to get you to talk to him, but for once he was at a loss. Each sentence he formed in his mind felt wrong, guaranteed to widen the chasm yawning between you both.

It hurt him more than the silence itself.

After half an hour, he drew to a stop a few feet away from the hunter’s trap. “There it is.”

You stared at the open maw of the pit, refusing to step any nearer. Arms folding over your chest, you clenched your hands into fists against your biceps—whether to stave off the cold or your own emotions, Jack couldn’t be sure.

He fidgeted beside you, stealing surreptitious glances at your closed expression. The urge to ask if he could help nearly overwhelmed him, but he forced himself to remain quiet, afraid it was the wrong thing to ask.

“You could have left me there.”

Your soft voice set his heart racing.

“When you realized I was a hunter, you could have let me die here.”

Jack risked a glance at your face, found you still staring at the pit, a crease slowly forming in your forehead.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you,” you continued, your arms tightening across your chest. “I thought it was such an irony that I was gonna die that way. Having a monster leave me there to die would have been icing on the cake.”

“I couldn’t,” he blurted, stepping into your line of sight. “I could never.”

For a second, you stared through him. Then your gaze lifted and met his, scrutinizing his face with such intensity that Jack felt bare beneath it.

“You really couldn’t, could you?”

“Never,” he repeated. “The wolf—”

Your eyelids twitched.

“—it’s only a few nights of me. I’m human most of the time, and I have systems to protect everyone. What happened at Bloodstone Manor, that was…” He glanced away. “They used the stone. I tried to warn them, but they didn’t listen.”

Your attention dropped down to your feet.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he whispered, pain lining his voice. “But I could never hurt anyone intentionally.”

“You didn’t even fight Jaeger, just went to get the gun away when I gave you the chance.”

“Yes.”

The muscle in your jaw worked. Lifting your head, you looked past him at the pit again and then stepped around him, striding over to the open hole.

You dropped down inside.

Panic seizing his nervous system, Jack rushed to the lip of the trap.

You stood safely at the bottom, carefully avoiding the stakes. Skirting along the walls of the hole, you found the stump of the stake that had impaled you. A flurry of emotions clouded your face until the hard set of your shoulders banished them. You reached down and yanked on the stake, pulling hard and digging your heels into the soft earth.

The stake slid free.

You hefted it in your hands for several heartbeats, then tossed it over the edge of the lip. You glanced up at Jack.

His chest constricted as he met your gaze.

“Can you help me?” you asked.

His heart swelled. “Of course.”

Dropping down into the hole, he worked alongside you to pull out the remaining stakes, tossing them outside the pit and rooting around in the muck for the broken ones at the bottom.

Jack helped you climb out of the hole, followed you up, assisted in gathering up the stakes, hefting most of them in his arms.

You stood at the edge of the hole for a few more minutes, staring down into the darkness at the bottom.

When you faced him, Jack saw something like peace flicker over your features. Brief and fleeting, but there, capable of returning.

You started off toward the car, Jack falling into step beside you. Hope smoldered in his chest, his heart knocking against his ribs with it.

“Platanos maduros,” you said.

“What?”

“You asked me if there was anything I wanted you to cook specifically. I’ve heard platanos maduros are really sweet.” You met his gaze. “Can you make those?”

The stakes nearly tumbled out of his arms. Nodding vigorously, he answered, “Yes, most definitely. I have plantains already.”

“Good. All this work’s made me hungry.”

The bounce returning to his step, Jack beamed with burning hope, as bright in the darkness as the moon.

#Jack Russell x Reader #Jack Russell #Jack Russell imagine #Gael Garcia Bernal x Reader #Gael Garcia Bernal #Gael Garcia Bernal imagine #Gael Garcia-Bernal x Reader #Gael Garcia-Bernal #Gael Garcia-Bernal imagine #Werewolf By Night #Marvel #MCU

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