#imagine how tightly built the system is around them for them to apologize for them
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Love Me Now [Stolitz Week Day 3 - Realization]
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“I’m glad they’re getting along.”
“I don’t know if they’re getting along so much as they just like going shopping for goth clothes, but I sure am glad there’s no casualties involved.” Blitz leans against Stolas contently as they watch their daughters, cuddled up against each other in front of the computer browsing through a wide variety of black clothes and disturbing little statues.
“I don’t think it matters very much.”
“Eh, you’re probably right,” Blitz concedes and tilts his head back to look at Stolas. He smiles and without a moment’s hesitation Stolas leans down to kiss him tenderly.
Stolas couldn’t be happier. He has a loving partner in his arms, his daughter has finally found a real friend, Stella is off somewhere in another corner of hell with some duke that Stolas didn’t even care to remember the name of… It’s all so… Perfect. And it isn’t even the kind of perfection that makes him nervous, questioning where the caveat might be. It’s the kind of perfection that a beautiful painting has. Sure, you could go in with a magnifying glass and find all the little imperfect brush strokes, but why would you do that if you could simply admire how perfect the entire painting is?
“I love you,” Stolas says, the words coming easy to him after months of saying them and even longer thinking them. They’re simple but honest.
“I love you, too,” Blitz replies, just as easily.
“Would you like to leave them alone for a bit?” Stolas whispers the words directly into Blitz’ ear and places a kiss on it right after, knowing how much he loves that.
Blitz hums. “Hm… Doesn’t that sound lovely…”
“Let’s go,” Stolas coos and pulls him backwards out of the room.
They go upstairs and play their perfect little game that they’ve worked out to the smallest detail by now. Blitz demands Stolas to get on his knees, Stolas whines and complains and resists for a bit before Blitz forces him down and ties his wrists together tightly. Stolas apologizes to his “Master” and gets whipped a few times, though not without Blitz regularly checking in on his pain levels.
And then Blitz begins with what Stolas admires most. Masterful Shibari work, tying him up in a complex system of knots, perfectly secure and comfortable, but strong enough to finally suspend him from the ceiling. Blitz gags and blindfolds him and there it is - that sensation that Stolas could drown himself in. That sensation of being fully at Blitz’ mercy and trusting him fully with it.
He supposes it’s what every good relationship is built on - trust. But to him the height of trust is just what they’re doing here. Trusting each other with physical pain and restriction. Trusting each other to never abuse that vulnerability. It’s what made him learn to love Blitz so much. That he would never go a single step further than what Stolas could handle.
When they’re finished, Stolas feels every inch of his body and also none of it. He feels emptied out but also so incredibly fulfilled. He cools down in Blitz’ arms, feeling happy and secure and so, so loved.
“I love you,” he sighs happily.
“I love you, too,” Blitz replies, “You know, around this time last year, I would’ve never thought this would be possible.”
Stolas snickers. “Around this time last year, I would have never imagined being in love with you.”
Blitz freezes a little at that. “What?”
Stolas looks at him, a little confused. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Did you just say that a year ago you weren’t in love with me yet? Or did you just mean you weren’t properly in love with me yet, you just had kind of a little crush?”
Stolas frowns. “No? I said I couldn’t have imagined being in love with you, I was purely having sex with you.”
“For real?!”
“Why, yes, I took quite some time to get behind the idea of us together and then some time to properly realize my feelings, it was a whole long journey.”
Blitz stares at him in confusion. “You can’t be serious!”
“Why?!”
“Because I was like deep in shit and practically in love with you from, like, the day of the Harvest Moon Festival.”
Stolas blinks. “Really?”
Blitz’ face lights up in just the most gorgeous shade of pink. “Well, yes.”
A smile stretches across his face. “You were in love with me first!”
“But, but, but! You were always so much more obviously invested!”
“I was horny.”
“You have to be kidding me,” Blitz groans, his face shining ever more pink.
“I’m sorry, I’m telling the truth. I was forward, yes, but I wasn’t in love with you yet.”
“This is incredibly embarrassing,” Blitz mumbles.
Stolas smiles at him before placing an affectionate little kiss on his forehead. “It’s adorable.”
There’s some more unintelligible angry mumbling, but Blitz still snuggles closer to him and Stolas caresses his head gently and they lie there, on the bed, together in absolute harmony.
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Sneak Peek at “The Last Hero of Eternia” Chapter 5
I’ve still got a bit of work to do on Chapter 5, but I wanted to share a sneak peak with you all. Hope you enjoy!
~~~~~
“Hey, Catra,” Entrapta said. “Mind going to the engine room and helping Hordak? He hasn’t been feeling too well after the attack. I think he could really use some help, but I’m too busy here.”
Catra stared at her for a moment. Help Hordak? She’d been avoiding him for the past several months. Things hadn’t ended well between them, before Horde Prime’s arrival.
“Catra?” Entrapta said.
“Uh, sure,” Catra said. “Yeah.” She glanced one more time at Adora, who had again taken to staring off to space, and then left the cockpit.
The walk through the corridor was quiet. The thrumming of the engine grew more pronounced as she continued aft. The floor, while still smooth, metallic, and cool under her soles, vibrated more significantly as she continued on. Near the engine room she crossed the smaller room, to her right, where she’d stayed the first time she’d been on this ship. After Adora and the others had rescued her from Horde Prime. It was that room where she had started, finally, to heal. It was that room where, for the first time in years, she and Adora had spent the night together, sleeping in the same bed.
Despite all the anger she’d felt, how betrayed she’d felt for so long over Adora abandoning their home, abandoning her - it was the first time in years she had actually felt some contentment.
When she refitted the ship, Entrapta had repurposed the room into equipment and tooling storage, and opened the wall between it and the engine room next door. She’d been a bit disappointed to find that out, even though a much more comfortable, if much cozier, room had been built for her and Adora to share, partitioned from the large dormitory located closer to the fore of the ship.
She continued past the room, and the memories it contained, to the engine room. The door opened, and inside she could see Hordak sitting at a control panel. It was a very unusual sight for her. She had never before seen Hordak sitting when he worked. Only when he had been on his throne. His back was to her.
“Um, hi,” she said. He did not look up. “Uh, Entrapta says you need some help?”
He stopped what he was doing and turned his head slightly to the side. She couldn’t see his eyes.
“The second fusible link in the thrust matrix has failed and needs replaced.”
“O - okay,” she said. “And...um...where-?”
“Other end of the room, on the wall. Three cylinders. One of them isn’t glowing. Twist it to remove it, and get a replacement from the storage room.”
“Yeah, okay, on it.” She headed to the far end of the room, and just as he’d described, there were three cylinders, the diameter and length of each about the same as her torso, with metal caps on the end and a transparent glass-like material in the center. The two on the outside were glowing yellow, but the one in the middle was blinking, as if it were attempting to illuminate but failing.
She reached up, took hold of it with both hands, and attempted to twist it to the right. It wouldn’t budge. She tried a little harder, her hands squeaking against the transparent material, but it didn’t move.
“Other direction,” came Hordak’s voice, a growl that projected over the deep thrumming of the ship’s engine.
Right, she thought, rolling her eyes. You seem waaaay too busy to do this yourself. She took hold of it again and tried twisting it to the left. At first it didn’t move, but then she felt something click. It then turned easily - and almost immediately slipped out of its mounting. She caught it before it could fall, surprise at just how heavy it was. “G-got it,” she said. She set it gently down on the floor, wedging it next to some pipes so it wouldn’t roll away. She walked back toward Hordak. “And, um, where’s-?”
“That way,” Hordak said, pointing at the wall just past where he was seated.
“Yeah.” She walked past him, opened the door to the storage room, and remembered that this was the room she’d been reminiscing about just a few minutes ago. It smelled differently than she remembered - like chemicals, and metal. None of the scent of her or Adora remained, not that it was surprising.
“Fusible link,” she muttered. “Where would Entrapta hide you?”
Of course, nothing was labeled. She assumed Entrapta had some kind of system of organization that made sense to her, much like her castle at Dryl, where to anyone else it was practically indecipherable.
It took her a good twenty minutes before she finally opened the correct cabinet and found two of the cylinders, standing upright, on an upper shelf. Of course. She looked around for something to stand on, found a white, metallic cube, and pushed it in front of the cabinet. She stood on it, reached up and grabbed one of the two cylinders, pulled the cylinder to her chest, and hugged it tightly as she could while she tried to step back down without breaking an ankle or her neck.
Back in the Engineering room she crossed behind a still-sitting and still-ignoring-her Hordak, made her way to the far end of the room, and gingerly set the cylinder in place of the old one. She had to twist and wiggle it several times until she found the proper orientation for it to slide into place. She twisted it to the right, and after a quarter-turn felt it click into place. It immediately lit up yellow, matching the two cylinders to either side almost perfectly.
“That’s done,” Catra said, rubbing her hands together as she returned to Hordak.
He did not look at her when he spoke. “Are you simply going to leave the failed cylinder on the floor like so much garbage?”
“I - guess not?” Catra said. “Uh, where-?”
“Reclamation room,” Hordak said. “Other side of the corridor.”
She grimaced at the creature whom she had once served, and twice betrayed, before heading back to retrieve the dead cylinder. As she carried it out of the room she wondered why Hordak couldn’t be bothered to do this physical work. He had his exo suit, which she knew gave him incredible physical strength. Or was he just intentionally being an ass?
Not that she could blame him for that, of course, but it didn’t mean she had to like it.
The room that was apparently the “Reclamation room” was mostly empty, with just a few containers holding what looked like broken components, stripped bolts, and at least one small pile of tiny food wrappers. She hauled the cylinder to the corner, laid it down, and left the room.
She started heading back to the engine room but stopped. Hordak was already on her nerves. She hadn’t been a fan of him joining them on their “road trip”, and even though that wasn’t what this was, it had so far proven to be every bit as awkward as she’d expected it to be.
She shook her head and sighed. “Be the bigger person,” her therapist had said. “It can be hard, sometimes feeling like the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but it will be worth it in the end.”
Then, of course, she remembered something else. She’d made a goal to herself to make amends with everyone she’d hurt. And while Hordak had done plenty of hurting to her, she had also hurt him. If she was serious about healing, about being a better person, she needed to do it completely.
Sighing, she opened the engine room door and walked up to Hordak.
“I have nothing else for you to do,” Hordak said, still not looking away from the holographic display in front of him. After a hesitation, “Thank you...for replacing the fusible link.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Catra said. She hovered there a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “Listen, Hordak…”
“I am far too busy to ‘chat’,” he said.
“Yeah, I get that, but...I just gotta say something, then I’ll leave you alone. I - I’m sorry. For...a lot of things. For betraying you. For...what I did to Entrapta. For lying to you. I was-”
“I don’t need your apologies,” Hordak interrupted. He turned toward her, giving her what she could best describe as a sidelong glance with one of his red, glowing, pupil-less eyes. “Nor have I any desire for them. What’s done is done, and dwelling on it is pointless.”
That statement gave her a little hope...that is, until the next one dashed it.
“You proved to be disloyal, disrespectful, and an opportunist with no regard for your duties or your obligations. You lusted for power - my power, and then Horde Prime’s power, and only by the grace of your…friends’... actions were you protected from the consequences of that.”
His chair turned so he was facing her fully. “I tolerate your presence for Entrapta’s sake. For the sake of She-Ra, who saved my life when she could simply have obliterated me when she obliterated Horde Prime. But do not mistake my tolerance for acceptance. Or forgiveness.” He turned back to his display. “Now leave me be.”
Catra stood there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened. Of course, she’d known this could be a possibility. Her therapist had warned her it could be a possibility. But now, having just lived through it, after having put so much work into getting better, into being better…
She turned on a heel and left the engine room without a word. Her feet slapped a steady beat on the deck as she practically marched toward the front of the ship. When she reached the door to her and Adora’s cabin, though, she stopped. She turned to stare at it. The door was blank, with no markings, just like every other door on the ship. When they’d first talked about taking this ship on their “road trip”, she’d imagined herself scratching caricatures of herself and Adora into it, much like those she’d scratched into their old bunk back when they were cadets in the Horde. A caricature she’d destroyed out of anger when Adora first abandoned the Horde...abandoned Catra…
Part of her had hoped they would find it somewhere in the rubble of the old Horde headquarters when she and Adora had been leading the cleanup there. Unsurprisingly, it was either long gone, or someone else had scooped it up with all the rest of the debris and sent it to be recycled.
Whatever happened to that, she had Adora again. For the moment, though, that just didn’t give her the comfort she wanted it to. She opened the door and stood before the bed inside as the door hissed shut behind her. The room was spartan; only a bed and the trunk they’d hastily packed were there. The blank wall opposite the door could be made transparent so they could see outside the ship, but now it was solid, smooth, dreary gray.
They would have probably taken more time to decorate the room before they went on their actual “road trip”. Decorated with what, she wasn’t sure, but anything would be better than the drab gray, featureless walls that right now echoed what she was feeling inside.
She sat down on the bed, legs curled up to her chest. She buried her face in her knees and, after all the hardships of the past few days, finally let herself break down and cry.
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Trials Without Error #3
:D :D :D I have been having literal conniptions over this fic for the past few days but!! we are there :DD Huge thanks to @gumnut-logic for all the encouragement on this one :DD How :D excited :D am :D I :D about :D finishing :D ?! :D
John’s POV following a failed rescue. Covers the same events in [1] and [2], but as before you don’t need to read them to read this part and the order literally does not matter
This has been really fun to explore different perspectives on the same events :D Be well!!
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His suit clung to him, secure against the ravages of space. There was no filtration system connecting him to the environment outside, no way for the smell of burning flesh to penetrate the boundary between skin and nothing.
Nothing. That was what he could do for most of the passengers.
There were those who had been flung into space alongside the venting atmosphere, their deaths short but not fast enough.
There were those that he hadn’t reached in time, their blackened forms twisted in agony.
There was the compartment where he found the atmosphere thick with smoke but undamaged by fire, bodies strewn around the room and synthesised poison in their blood.
There were those he never saw as the fire reached the secondary oxygen tanks before he did.
Eight minutes and forty-three seconds.
They had never stood a chance.
In his dreams, he turned off the radio but still the screams haunted him.
Charged to witness his failures over and over again.
Folded into the nightmare were flashes of other rescues. The face of a little girl in the touring station’s window he’d last seen at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The mayday cry of a doomed pilot in the Arctic intertwined with that of the tour operator. The proximity alarm as Five hurtled into a field of meteors mixing with the fire alarms ringing uselessly over his comms.
The sound wouldn’t stop, only growing more and more insistent no matter how he fought for control in his head.
He could feel it now, his body was waking up, the soft sheets beneath him, the light scratch of Velcro rubbing against his chest. The sounds faded into the familiar beeps and gentle whirring of Thunderbird Five. The ghosts of yesterday remained fresh even while the vivid images of the dream world faded to grey.
John wrenched his eyes open with a gasp. Hauling himself from the bed, he scrambled to get out of the small bedroom, refusing to look down into the endless dark.
“Lights.”
The bathroom was the only space in the gravity ring with a solid floor, and as he braced himself against the door, he could almost imagine he was back on Earth.
He caught sight of himself in the small mirror and flinched. Dark smudges set deep within pallid skin stared back at him as he tried to slough off the remnants of the long night.
He needed routine, a quiet stability around which he could structure his life for the foreseeable future. Breakfast. Exercise. Systems check. Maintenance. Hope like hell the day was a quiet one.
John stumbled from the bathroom towards the galley. His ears pricked up as he got closer, the familiar sound of the comms closing off audibly in the next section.
He hadn’t heard the chime of an incoming call, but someone must have just missed him. He quickly checked the comm-mail. No message which meant it wasn’t urgent.
He jabbed at the door lock again. This time the galley doors opened with their familiar swoosh and he made his way inside.
He stared blankly at the food storage unit.
Virgil. It must have been Virgil.
John’s eyes roamed over the offerings, trying to imagine eating without them turning to ash in his mouth.
After yesterday, he didn’t have much of an appetite.
The stench of rocket fuel and third degree burns filled his nostrils again and he was trapped, as though acknowledging the day caused it to start over in his mind.
He gripped the handles tightly, trying to breathe through his mouth and regain control over the day.
Routine would be going out the window, he could see that now. This was a problem that demanded attention and he knew what he needed for that.
Abruptly, he pushed away from the food storage unit and left the galley. The more the memories pressed against him, the more he wanted to escape. He didn’t want to see anymore, didn’t want to feel. He broke out into a run, his feet picking out the familiar route to the observatory.
The doors swished open as he put the call through, collapsing on the bench as it connected.
He needed a distraction, he needed a listening ear. He needed a brother.
He could see Virgil, working busily away and barely glancing up as he answered the call.
“Hey, Virgil.” He was too exhausted to hide how heavily the day before was weighing on him.
His brother started, eyes locking on his immediately. He blinked.
“John?”
John hadn’t expected the sudden tears that sprang to his eyes at the sound of his brother’s voice, a calm and steady harbour against the storm.
“Who else?” A laugh stifled the sob that threatened to burst from his chest. He knew he had nothing to hide from Virgil, but with the vast solitude of the universe stretching before him it felt too open, too vulnerable, and too far from home, to entirely let go of his careful control.
“You don’t know any other space station operators around, do you?”
“No, it’s just…”
John’s heart dropped. Automatic apologies and fumbled farewells sprang to his mind as he reached out to sever the connection. He didn’t want to bother Virgil if he was busy.
His brother breathed in deeply and John looked up into a warm smile that swept away all doubts.
“Did you need something?”
“Just some company. Think I could float around for a while?”
Mercifully, Virgil nodded and John slumped forwards against a complicated knot in his heart filled to the brim with anger and grief, balanced by the cool balm of reassurance that he was not alone.
He was content to allow gravity to weigh him down despite his earlier words. Content to stare at the stars and know that his brother would be there if he was needed.
“They really did a number on you yesterday.”
Virgil was quiet and the statement was more pensive than probing, but it still sharpened every memory like a dagger in his mind. He couldn’t stay in that place for long, he hadn’t built up his defences enough for the conversation he knew Virgil was pushing for. He just didn’t have the capacity for a drawn out debrief.
“I’m choosing to forget yesterday.”
A warning, a hope, a prayer that Virgil would drop the subject.
“Scott told me. He wanted to haul you down.”
John looked back over at Virgil, trying to gauge his own thoughts. His brother’s brow was furrowed in obvious concern and he was chewing on his lower lip. John wasn’t ready to return, didn’t want to face the looks of sorrow and pity as he healed.
“Thank you for stopping him.”
“Hold on, I haven’t decided yet.”
“I’m fine.”
Virgil snorted in clear disbelief.
“Yeah, you said earlier.”
He blinked, unsure of the implications of that statement. Was his brother referring to the last time they’d run into such troubles? Had he said something in the haze between mission’s end and deep, dark sleep?
“Did I?”
Virgil’s face fell into a deepening frown.
“John, you signed off with me not twenty minute ago.”
“I was asleep not twenty minutes ago.”
His response was automatic and certain. He hadn’t lost any time. He would have known, he wouldn’t have woken in his own bed otherwise. There had been no confused wanderings in the night, no sudden startled awakening in the hallways leaving him wondering about the time that had slipped away.
In front of him, Virgil was shaking his head.
“We spoke for half an hour, it was definitely you.”
“It can’t have been.”
It can’t have been because John refused to believe things were getting that bad again. Because he refused to live in a world where he couldn’t trust his own mind.
“Well it was. Unless you’re hiding a clone up there to do all the heavy duty. And I haven’t received any panicked calls from Alan about finding you hiding in a cupboard while you were meant to be on the island.”
“Maybe.”
Because Virgil’s voice was light-hearted and masking his worries, and he refused to believe that his brother would lie to him.
He looked up at the camera array, wondering at what his ‘bird had seen. Wondering whose memory it would corroborate and if he truly wanted to know.
Virgil cleared his throat, interrupting John’s thoughts.
“You should come down if you’re sleepwalking again.”
“You don’t think it’s sleepwalking.”
The strain around Virgil’s eyes grew more pronounced. John could see ancient history reflected back at him, those long nights of failure still a point of tension and regret.
“You already know what I think,” said Virgil. “Come home, John.”
The electronic whirring in the background seemed to grow more intense, as if the entire station was waiting for his answer. This was his home although his brothers didn’t like to hear him say it. He knew every protocol, had made every program and she seemed to hum with renewed life the more complex she became. Station and operator growing together.
The thought of his ‘bird coming alive around him held him back, a surge of energy still thrumming in his veins. He wanted to be there, wanted to watch. He wanted to forget the memories sitting heavy in his gut.
“Just for today?”
There was a desperate plea in his voice, whispering to John that he needed to go home. If only for his brother. He closed his eyes, wrenching himself away from the wild fantasy that gripped him and tied him to his station.
“Okay.”
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Super Brothers (3/12)
Disclaimer: Superman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics.
Warnings: Child Abuse, Gender Dysphoria, PTSD and Anxiety, Character Death
Rating: T
Synopsis: Jon Kent knew he pretty much had the perfect family life, but something still felt wrong with himself. At the height of feeling like an alien in his own skin, however, his world got turned upside down when his parents took in a troubled child who embodied everything he felt he lacked. However, becoming a brother ended up being the smallest of the trials brought by adopting Christopher Kent. And being best friends with Damian Wayne has not exactly helped keep a neutral perspective on the matter.
A/N: Apologies for taking a bit longer to update this one, I had some extra work to get done in the last week and that cut into my writing time rather than my Animal Crossing time (who could have seen that coming?) and all my fics got a slight push, though I tried to get back on track by this one’s update. Ah, partial points for effort I suppose!
As always, I need to thank everyone. for the wonderful support that this story is receiving. It means so very much to me and I wouldn’t have the motivation to keep working and improving if it weren’t for those of you who promoted and commented on it! Shout outs to @mirrorfalls, @secretlystephaniebrown, @thistleknight, and @karagordon.
Chapter Three: The Runaway
Lor is in immeasurable pain.
He can feel his skin taut and broken across his back, too painful to lay on overnight. He can feel his cheek inflamed and pressing up against his eyelid. He can feel his ribs sensitive and cracked, aching against his every breath.
And the worst of it all is the way the rage against him has still not diminished.
In the past, Lor has been disciplined. It is not an unfamiliar sensation. But his parents finished with the consensus that a lesson of some sort has been learned. Lor even finds himself in agreement with them.
Not this time. Not today. He is hurt and they finished the discipline without any commentary or any softness to their expressions.
No, though, that is still not the worst. Not as Lor lays on his bed in hysteric contemplation alone in the dark.
The worst thing of all is that he cannot shut his eyes, cannot sleep, without the hideous cracking of Ti’ahl’s arm sounding off between his ears. The echos of her cries and the horror of the crowds reverberate throughout Lor’s body and send cold shivers through him.
His family is not loved when the masses of Jakuul bow. And Lor’s entire universe is turned upside down knowing this.
Before this terror in his life, Lor still did not have a full understanding of his world or his life. He is, after all, a child. But he thought he understood what he was to his father and mother.
He is the Last Son of Krypton. He is the future of the House of Zod.
But he also knows that not living up to such things means that his parents’ approval is gone. And if it is gone, bad things will happen.
Now, as he understands with the display involving Ti’ahl, those consequences are far greater than anything he could have imagined beforehand.
Suddenly, horrifically, Lor understands that his life is not the most valuable part of him.
And he is scared.
In the middle of the night, alone in his room, Lor feels the strongest impulse he has ever had in his short life.
Lor-Zod knows, without a doubt, that he needs to leave.
The instinct comes from deep within him — thoughts of the Phantom Zone and its endless prison, how escaping it meant never staying somewhere he didn’t want to again. He can see it, his old dreams of leaving for different worlds the moment he was scared or unsafe.
The only home he had ever known had been the promise of leaving the places that were wrong and painful.
And, now, Lor needs to go. He’s scared. It isn’t safe.
Thinking of his lessons on the sunstones, Lor moves, sluggishly and painfully through the palace toward the transportation lab. What little Kryptonian equipment and weapons they have managed to gather and to create — or have the Jakuul create — rests in there, including the Phantom Zone pod.
The spiral pod is bronze in color with no seeable thrusters, only a thin screen that allows its occupant to see outside the pod. It does not steer, does not operate as a ship in any way, but as a bullet to be fired in a singular direction. Once someone is inside of it, outside of a Phantom Zone Projector, nothing will be able to tear the pod off its course. It will phase through matter, it will burst through time and space. And whoever is within it will sleep until they are released, heal until they are done.
And that is all Lor needs. Peaceful, forceful sleep without interruption. He needs comfort and rest, to heal up his ribs and his back and his eyes so that when he is done, he can return to being what his mother and father need him to be.
So that he is not treated and left in pain that someone like Ti’ahl experiences.
He can’t imagine there’s something better, something in between.
Lor loads his burdens onto the pod and begins setting his coordinates. He has not lived out of the Phantom Zone long and can only think of a few places he can go.
One is Krypton, his home he never knew and is no longer there.
One is Earth, his father’s enemy, and his only other point of contact.
If he can make it to Earth and back, perhaps Lor can make it through anything else. Including his parents’ anger.
At least, that is his sincere hope.
Just like that, Lor leaves his family’s palace.
***
Father doesn’t look surprised by Damian’s intrusion on his meeting with Cassandra. He barely acknowledges that it means Damian is missing school and instead asks him if there is anything Damian would like for him to know.
Within Damian’s heart, he feels the judgment, knows the look of his father searching him for something Damian isn’t giving. It’s frustrating. It’s painful. And it’s a look he’s never seen given to Cassandra.
Damian has nothing to say except for what he feels is obvious.
“I am better than any of you see in me,” he informs his father haughtily.
His father gives him a sigh and waves him off, dismissive and annoyed. Like swatting at a fly.
“We’ll talk about it later, Damian,” Bruce Wayne says in a voice that is distinctly lacking Batman in it. It’s weary and light. Others in the family call it the Brucie Wayne voice, but for Damian, it’s something far worse.
It’s basically baby talk toward him.
Cassandra doesn’t get that treatment either.
“I doubt it,” Damian glowers, crossing his arms.
When Damian looks back up toward his father, he is met by sharp blue eyes piercing his own gaze. That is more like Batman. It sends a shiver down Damian’s spine.
Much better than baby talk, that is for certain.
“I have something important I need to discuss with Cassandra,” his father reminds him darkly. “Give us some privacy.” He gives a purposeful pause before continuing, “Please.”
For a few long moments, Damian stands cross-armed beside Cassandra, facing his father’s large executive desk. The entire suite is large and deceptively slick and modern. Devices and trick switches are hidden behind the ostentatious decor and smatterings of family photographs framed and preserved seemingly forever. Newspapers are mounted with new stories of interest over the decades.
Everything is large, squared, and imposing.
Just like their father.
When it reaches the point that Damian feels as though the silence is threatening to eat them all whole, he finally relents and turns around. It takes him nearly double the strides it would require his father to make to exit the room, just as it would take him twice the height to meet the same reach his father does.
Logically, Damian knows that the unspoken part of his father’s request for privacy was for Damian to continue from his way out of the room down to the street level where Pennyworth and the car would be waiting. Then Damian could receive a whole other lecture on manners and family and general behaving that he has received over a dozen times before.
He’s tired of it before he’s even done processing the thought of it.
Making an executive decision of his own, Damian does not leave for Alfred and the car but instead takes a hard left at the elevator shaft. Having memorized the blueprints — the actual blueprints — for Wayne Tower, Damian knows that in the blindspot of the stairwell security camera is an always taped off custodial closet. In that custodial closet is a secretive shaft that will lower into the bowels of the Tower itself.
Once a part of the robust subway tunnel system beneath the streets of Gotham, the old junction now serves as the open space for research and development of their nightly activities. At least, one of the spaces for R&D at least.
It is also the one place where Damian can open up the Oracle Network safely in Wayne Towers and check in on others without causing too much of a fuss.
Anyone who notices will assume it is Batman and everyone leaves Batman alone to his devices for the most part.
Stepping up to the large silver monitor screen, Damian watches as everything in the room begins to activate — light by light, display by display. It is a very sleek and intimidating presence.
His father is good at maintaining certain aesthetic sensibilities, Damian will give him that, at least.
Looking around, Damian sees the computer chair, built for the size and magnitude of Batman, and immediately jumps into it. His body impressively slumps into the cushions, leaving him staring straight ahead in annoyance.
Recovering from the momentary sag of his body, Damian scoots the chair up, hands gripped to the armrests so tightly his knuckles whiten. Then he leans forward to the keyboard and begins typing.
Using spy satellites is an unfortunate habit that Damian has picked up from his father, but he assures himself it is for good reason.
There is still something so wrong and disconcerting about the way that Jon reacted to Professor Pyg.
Few things dig themselves into Damian’s guts and leave him unsettled. His friend being hurt somehow by the madman was one of them. Whether it was Damian’s sense of guilt or genuine fear for Jon, Damian is still working out.
Either way, he wants to hone in on Metropolis and see how his friend is doing for himself.
It isn’t a difficult maneuver. There is already a preset coordinate to the exact location Damian needs.
Damian expects no less from his father, after all, there are a myriad of reasons to keep watch on the family and wellbeing of the most trusted and power being in the world, if not the universe.
He watches with vague interest as two figures — Superman and Superboy — approach the balcony of the Metropolis apartment in question. One has a suitcase, the other a backpack beneath his cape. Then, in a dash of color, they are both gone long before a less accurate or powerful satellite or camera would be able to capture them.
At least, Damian would hope so.
Leaning his head forward, chin sharply balanced on his palm, Damian tries to think of the expression on Jon’s face. It’s hard to tell, even with Wayne Tech advances, the nuances of someone’s face at that distance. The pixelation hides the crevices and intensity.
But Jon seemed to be smiling. Which is, really, all Damian wants to make sure of.
At the end of the day, Damian does not have many friends. The ones he does have are important to him.
And he’s still not sure that allowing himself to be in the equation frees his friends to have good things happen to them.
The thoughts are still heavy on his mind when the monitor and all of the Oracle Network change in an instant.
A red flash comes across the screen with a blare of a signal. Then again and again. It continues.
Damian jerks into sitting upright again. His shoulders drop as he looks around wide-eyed toward the different monitor screens.
Something is happening in Metropolis.
Reaching for the keyboard, Damian zooms out from the tiny apartment and widens his view to the city. Even above the city, there does not seem to be anything he can see at a distance. But, as he begins to wonder if he should switch to news coverage, Damian sees that the sky is the source of the danger alert.
Heading directly for Metropolis is a fireball the size of a car.
Before he even thinks about contacting his father or anyone else, Damian is leaping for the closest plane his father has been working on.
He knows he might not get there before the crash, but Damian is definitely going to be there to help his friend with the aftermath.
***
Jon still feels off-balance in the air. His leg wobbles a lot, the plank-like rigidness he needs to maintain for a smooth flight can still tire him. He’s working on it.
And it always feels easier in the morning with his dad.
When his pa smiles down at Jon, he feels like no matter how weird his thoughts for the morning, the whole world is going to be okay. That Jon is going to be okay. Because how can the world be anything less than perfect when Superman himself smiles like he means it at you.
Holding onto the straps of his backpack, Jon readies to part from his dad and head down to the Siegel and Shuster Middle back gym entrance, but his ears begin thumping.
Just like when he listened for his mother’s heartbeat earlier, Jon can feel every noise, every vibration of all of Metropolis at once. His jaw tightens and he tries to push the noises out. The screech and scream and bark and cry and pop all at once, but he knows that there is something still off about them. There’s something different from normal if he can hone in and direct himself to it.
He halts in the air, raising his hands up to his ears and begins mashing the heels of his palms into the ear canals. It does nothing to help him out, but he tries it anyway.
“Ow! What is that scratchy noise?” Jon can’t help but whine.
Ordinarily, Pa’s soothing voice would put him at ease, explain everything away. But it’s different this time.
Instead, Jon glances over his shoulder and sees his father also stopped in the air. Superman stares, wide-eyed and slack-jawed for a long moment before tensing up.
“Stay here, son,” Clark orders before disappearing in a dazzling whirl of red, blue, and yellow.
The whiplash of it all nearly makes Jon go crosseyed. He regains his position in the air, hovering with far less security than his pa manages to. Then he looks around in concern.
With a simple scan of the surroundings, Jon can see what got his father’s attention and it nearly makes him gasp.
Falling from the sky, seemingly from nowhere and at ludicrous speeds, is a flaming ball of metal aimed right for the city.
“Where did that come from!?” Jon asks clouds around him.
As to be expected, he doesn’t get an answer. But Jon does know what he needs to do next, even without an omniscient reply to his questions.
At full speeds, Jon pushes himself forward, his fists held out in front of him as he aims for the exact place in the sky where his father is lining up with the mystery object.
Even at his highest speeds, Jon is too slow to get there when his father first makes contact with the object and begins flying back, resisting with all his might despite the hurdling force. He is engulfed in the flames, slowing, but still heading for the skyline of Metropolis.
There needs to be more force on Pa’s side and Jon intends to provide it.
He swoops down between the city buildings and positions himself just like he saw his father do before him. He holds his arms out wide and holds out his hands to catch.
It feels like only a blink before his hands are filled with his dad’s cape, and Jon is suddenly falling back through the skies as well.
“Jon!” Superman chokes out between gritted teeth, straining with all his power.
“Pa!” Jon manages to get out alongside him
The particulars of their conversation are forced to wait as they buckle underneath the heavy metal and flames. Jon pushes into his father’s back, his father pushes into the machine, and they progressively slow as they drop through the sky.
“Feet! Flatten your feet!” Pa orders before showing Jon with his own.
Jon obeys, the soles of his tennis shoes directed toward the ground. It still shocks him when his feet hit and the air nearly leaves his lungs, or when he skids backward with the asphalt crackling beneath them. They keep moving, backward, with the space between them getting tighter and tighter as the broken roads rise up and push Jon into his father’s back.
When they stop at long last, Jon full bodily collapses against his dad and breathes a sigh of relief.
People are already on the streets, looking on in awe, which limits the conversations they can have out loud. That doesn’t keep Jon’s pa from turning on his heels, hands on his hips, and looking at Jon very seriously.
“Son,” he says sternly. “Go to school.”
“What, no way, you’re not going to let me even look in it?” Jon asks, circling around his father as widely as possible to get to the hull of the copper-colored machine. “It’s so weird and looks like a snail shell, I bet it’s an alien!”
His father is about to continue with words of wisdom or some all-important notes on responsibility, but Jon cannot hear them. He looks instead at the strange screen on the machine they stopped together and tilts his head. It’s fogged up, like the mirror after he uses the shower, and he can’t see in it. But he can see a strange, blue glow from within.
Squinting, Jon taps on the glass-like structure only to jolt as the metallic shell opens up.
A thick fog hisses out of the opening and forces Jon to wave it away from his face.
And when it’s gone, Jon looks into the face of another boy, no older than him, with strangely cut brown hair and a swollen eye and lip.
“Whoa!” Jon exclaims.
Then he is punched in the face with more force than he has ever felt in his life.
It hits so fast, so hard, Jon is sent soaring through the air backward, headlong into his father’s chest as the larger than life superhero moves in to catch him.
“Superboy!” Pa yells out in code that still can’t hide his horror or anger.
“Ow,” is all Jon can manage to get out, feeling like stars are still busting behind his eyelids.
By the time he’s set back on his feet, Jon can see that the boy from the pod is floating above it, eyes wide and confused. He turns to run.
Suddenly, Pa isn’t behind Jon holding him up anymore.
Jon realizes his dad is in front of him now, next to the boy, stretched out so his large, kind hand is wrapped almost gently around the boy’s wrist. It keeps the boy back, but he isn’t fighting, isn’t resisting. He’s looking at Superman with terror, tears in his eyes.
But Jon can feel his entire face swelling, he grabs at it and looks frantically to his dad. “Dad! He punched me!”
“Hold on, son,” Superman says without looking Jon’s way. He lowers his arm, the boy slowly dropping with it, head bowing and shoulders jerking uncomfortably. Then, Superman pulls the mystery boy to his chest and holds him. “Hold on.”
Confused and more than a little betrayed, Jon shakes his head at the nonsense and rubs at his aching face.
He doesn’t know what’s going on, he can’t even contemplate it. But he’s hurt and he has a bad feeling it’s going to get worse.
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Blame It On Touch (M)
Author’s Note: hi @gingersaysjump
Pairing: Jongin x reader (oc; female)
Summary: After working with Jongin for a while, you’ve come to realize his shyness only fades when he’s with you. The night after you sleep with him, you try to rationalize the difference between the Jongin who blushes at work and the Jongin who made you come - twice.
Genre: romance; smut; au
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: explicit sex; dirty talk; brief voyeurism; semi-public sexual situations
Word Count: 3,553
He tasted sweet when he kissed you, like fire and ice and bourbon. Heady, but that’s how you expected him taste. The fullness of his mouth demanded the fullness of you, and you had imagined, for weeks, that his mouth would know how to work against you, but never did you imagine it would want to.
Six months of working alongside Jongin, and all you really learned was that he was shy, that he was smart, that he was beautiful. Conversation didn’t come easily or naturally to him, but that didn’t matter. Not really. You were good at things like this, at lightening the mood and making even the most austere of characters smile. With you, he laughed louder, smiled longer, speaking with a confidence that could only come with comfort.
Six months of working alongside Jongin and all you really learned was that you wanted him, wanted him down to your bones and into the wetness of your core. When he laughed, you sighed, body responding to the richness, the pureness of the joy that seemed to bloom from the center of his chest, unbridled in its desire for bliss. When he smiled, you swooned, transfixed by the scrunch of his nose and the way light would ignite behind his eyes. And when he spoke….when he spoke.
Until him, you never really understood the way people would call their partners chocolate, honey, sweetheart - as if they were something made for devouring or as if the mere sound of their voice would turn their blood to sugar. When he spoke, you learned how to melt, capsizing under the depth and power of the sound, but never would you call him something as trivial as candy. He was coffee, a rich bitterness married with butter - coffee and pepper, heated, warmed, whelmed.
Until him, you never really understood what it mean to crave.
To really, truly need someone into the molecules of your DNA. For a long time, you thought love like that was pretty, pretty in a way real love absolutely could not be. That kind of desire would fade, almost immediately, upon the realization that the thing you want is human - human, and therefore flawed. And if it did not, it would fade upon the satisfaction of desire, of quenching your thirst through the belly of attainment, watered and no longer yearning.
And until you had six drinks in your system, until your work holiday party, you did not think you would ever tell him how badly you wanted him.
Truly, you don’t blame yourself, it couldn’t be helped. He arrived fashionably late, black suit jacket and crisp white shirt hugging his torso through benefit of high end tailoring. The amber light played with his hair, cascaded over his skin and made his lips appear pink and full in the deep set of his pout, enticing though altogether too innocent for a man who carried muscle beneath his clothes. Awkwardly, he tucked himself towards the corner of the bar, eyes scanning the room for someone familiar or food or you.
Across the room, you watched the way he bit his lip, ordered his drink and clutched the glass as though it were a cross, something sacred and something magical. Even from a distance you could feel his energy wash over your skin, making your clothes feel tight simply because he was magnificent and you were swollen with want for him. Feeling your eyes on his body, his gaze found yours, holding it as his lips bloomed into a smirk of delight. Running your lips over the rim of your gin and tonic, you smiled through the warmth and rush of blood in your cheeks, watching as his eyes traveled over your body, admiring.
Tension built in the center of your chest, building in intensity the longer his gaze hovered your breasts and hips, studying the way your dress molded to your curves. If only they were his tongue, his mouth, his hands, you thought. Inappropriate for a work event, but really, you didn’t care. He wouldn’t know.
Until he did.
The night after you told him you wanted him is a blur. Even know, sitting up in bed as you watch him sleeping beside you. You trace the even rise and fall of his back, smooth and supple, the soft strands of his hair as they splay cross the pillow, and each does little to remind you of how you got here.
That’s a lie. You know precisely how you got here.
In the Uber, his hands gripped the cheeks of your ass with a strength you didn’t expect for someone so lean. Straddling his hips, the tip of his clothed erection rubbed gently against your core, letting you know he wanted you, he wanted you, he wanted you. Against your lip, his kisses burned, searing hot and with a fierceness you would have expected from a man starved, hungry for affection as though he never received it at all. You wanted to apologize to your driver, felt badly he had to hear you, hear Jongin and the way he moaned in pleasure every time your tongue touched his. Holding his face in your hands, you ground down on his groin, laughing lowly as he parted from you, eyes fluttering in ecstasy.
When he pushed through your door, the first thing he did was unzip your dress, expose the expanse of your skin and study you in the moonlight. With anyone else, it would have been awkward, but he paused, fingers stilled in the effort of loosening his tie, lips parted on a sigh. Slowly, you stepped out, letting the fabric pool on the floor and still his gaze did not waver, looking and looking until your breasts and hips and and center ached to be drenched with him. You felt him then, as a ghost, watching him undo his tie and shirt, and wished for your folds to be stretched with him, complete.
He eased you onto the bed, sucking at your neck with urgency, desperate to live under your skin. You whined at the loss of contact as he pulled his lips away, leaning off the bed to undo his trousers, surprised at how vocal you had become in your desire, in letting him know exactly where you wanted him. This was not unusual. You are not quiet, and when things feel good, you make sure they happen again and again, but they don’t usually feel this good so soon, and so, as he undid his belt and you undid your bra, you told him.
‘I don’t want you to tease me tonight.’ Words slurring from the drinks in your system, your voice was unwavering, demanding. ‘I want you, and I don’t want you to waste time.’
Six months working with Jongin, but you wouldn’t have expected how serious he was in bed, how serious he took your demands. With his trousers undone, he pushed them down his legs, gripping his cock in one hand as he stroked and stroked his length at the sight of you. His tongue came out to wet his lips, head falling to the side in appraisal.
‘Spread your legs and pleasure yourself,’ he said, voice electricity along your nerves. ‘Let me see how you like to take it.’
Mouth running dry at the deep tenor of his voice, you nodded, suddenly silenced, and hooked your thumbs unto your underwear run them down your thighs. He studied you intently, stroking himself with a smile as you ran two fingers over the slick folds of your core.
‘Stretch yourself for me.’
The sound of his voice made your walls clench on nothing, hips aching to grind against him, demanding the solid hardness of his cock and hips. Dragging on hand down your thigh, scratching your nails into the skin, you cocked your head just to match his expression and pressed your fingers inside, thrusting slowly, gently enough for him to see every motion of your hand.
You set a slow pace, one that made you whine at the delicacy of the touch and made Jongin furrow his brow with the effort of wanting more. Pressing against your walls, you moved in and out of your core as your free hand began to grip the sheets, trying not to move to your neglected clit. The light built shadows on his torso, made the muscles in his abdomen stand pronounced in the contrast, and the sight of him like this, majestic and yours, made your fingers falter in their rhythm.
‘Turn over,’ he said, biting back a moan at the sound of your slick folds in the quiet room. ‘I want you on all fours.’
Sliding your fingers out of your center, your shook your head. Carefully, languidly, you moved along the bed to kneel before him, and ran your wet fingers over his lips, challenging him to taste you. ‘I sub for no man.’
Sucking your fingers into his mouth, he kept his eyes trained on yours as his tongue swirled around the pads of your fingertips, a moan rumbling in his chest at the intensity of your flavor.
He fucked himself into you with hard, rough thrusts, burying himself in you to the hilt. It did not matter how tightly he held you, how your hands pressed bruises into his back, only that he wrapped your thighs around his waist and pushed your knees to your chest, getting as deep as he could.
‘You’re fucking tight,’ he groaned, leaning down to catch a nipple between his teeth. Moaning, you arched up into his mouth, body starting to feel on fire with him. Against your breast, he laughed, delighted with the dominion he had over your responses. ‘I’m gonna fuck you hard enough you feel me when I’m gone.’
Yes, you remember exactly how you got here. Your body remembers too, getting wet once more at the sight of him, at the scratches you carved into the soft skin of his shoulder blades, and the bruise on your hip from where he gripped you the second time, saying my cock hasn’t had nearly enough of you, yet.
But what you don’t remember is why, how, or even when he would have fallen for you, too. Sinking deep into your memory, you remember falling in love alone, falling in love with eyes that did not linger on your skin. They did last night, likely because of bourbon and because the rules of the evening were ambiguous, and no one dresses that well for a work event unless they expect it to be taken off. In meetings, his gaze never stayed on yours too long. In conversation, he’s more attentive to the way your hands move rather than the way you speak, too shy to really see you and blushing once he does.
Studying him now, it’s difficult to reconcile the man who asks for help on spreadsheets with the man who bit bruises in your shoulder and collarbone; the one who sometimes raises his hand in meetings before remembering he doesn’t have to, and the one who told you to open your eyes when you come, I want to know I made you feel good enough to drench me.
You aren’t really sure how long you remain that way, just studying the full length of him as he sleeps, trapped between a state of awe and bewilderment, and not really understanding the difference between the two, but, eventually he stirs. As if feeling your eyes on him, Jongin curls himself into a small ball before stretching, testing his wingspan on the bend and sending a hand out in seek of yours. Instead, he finds the bend of your knee and the way the sheets stilt up around you, wrapped around your chest as the cool air makes your spine tingle.
Bleary eyed, he rolls over, pouting. ‘Good morning.’
You hate this, hate the way his voice already makes your thighs ache with the memory of him thrusting between you, mouth at your ear gasping your scent down. No, you don’t hate it. To be fair, you love it. Simply, you merely hate how weak it makes you.
‘About last night,’ you begin, tone sharper than you would have expected for so early in the morning. It’s 8AM on a Saturday, and so you shrug, accepting that absolutely nothing about this morning is truly normal or what you would have expected. ‘I’m not really -’
Jongin cuts you off, sleep disappearing from his features as he too sits up. ‘I’m sorry if it was bad.’
You add this to the list of things you would never have expected, mouth opening and closing as your brow knits together in confusion. ‘Sorry, what?’
Jongin shrugs, looking away from you as he usually does, blushing. ‘I’m not...I don’t…’
He struggles now, so unlike he was in the night, under the cover of the moon. It would be endearing if it weren’t altogether perplexing.
‘Are you about to tell me you’re a virgin?’ you announce, unsure what he’s trying to say. ‘Because...I really - listen, no virgin fucks like that.’
His eyes go wide, embarrassed. ‘N-No!’ he stammers. ‘I just don’t ever...do that. I don’t sleep around much...my number isn’t exactly high.’
For a moment, you simply blink at him, processing his meaning before you laugh, the sound echoing off the walls before you cover your mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ you say, reaching for him before retracting your hand, unsure where to touch. Jongin shifts in the bed, lifting the sheets up to his neck. ‘I came,’ you assure him with a smile. ‘I came, pretty fucking hard at that. I’m sure you felt it.’
Gathering his knees up to his neck, Jongin makes himself small, and nods. ‘I know...I did,’ he admits, quiet enough that your laugh still rings in your ears. ‘I just wanted to make you feel good.’
‘Trust me, you did.’ For him, you soften, studying the way he makes himself small, scared of rejection, of being told to leave, of being told he was not enough. You smother another chuckle at the sight of him, so lean and handsome and beautiful, but still so afraid of being unwanted. ‘But what I was going to say before you cut me off, was that I’m not really sure what you want. You’re quiet as hell at work, and I really admire you and you work ethic. You’re so smart, you know? Quietly diligent and amazing, and you don’t ask for much. You kind of hate being in the spotlight. I respect that. I just - really, even you must be surprised at the difference between last night and right now?’
As you speak, Jongin holds your stare, mystified. It’s the first time he’s watched you speak without looking away, without shaking his head, without denying the praises you give him. Now, he watches the totality of you, amazed you could think these things about him and amazed that you would want to say them at all. The surprise of it paints itself over his features, puts a wetness in his eyes that is only characteristic of shock. For a moment, you’re sad no one has really been honest about him to his face, or at least with this much confidence and assertiveness in their voice.
It makes sense, you think, you understand him. People aren’t this way for you, so you learned to be this for yourself.
Until he learned to, too.
‘I know.’ Dropping his knees, Jongin changes his posture, letting authority and strength settle into his shoulders. Lengthening his spine, he sits taller than normal, sitting cross legged and looking more like Adonis than the man you share a cubicle with. ‘I’m shy and it’s something I’ve tried working on a lot since I started working with you. It’s probably the best company I’ve ever worked for, but you especially make me feel comfortable. You’re so good at making people feel welcome and important, and you make me laugh. I’ve had a crush on you since day one, when you gave me the tour of the office. You’re amazing at your job, but you always find the humor in things, and you’re kind, and pretty.’
When he says it, he looks at you as though he’s looking down into your soul. You’re a lot of things with Jongin, and were a lot of things last night, but this is the first time you’ve felt vulnerable, witnessed. Perhaps, you think, it’s the first time you’ve let yourself, the first time you’ve let yourself be praised this way. And it makes sense it would be him to say it, because neither of you are this way - unless it’s for each other.
‘Bourbon makes me crazy - I don’t really drink very often,’ he continues, gaze still unwavering, ‘but I do when I’m in groups because that’s when it’s most hard for me to speak and at least it’s something to do with my hands. I’d blame it on the drink, but I didn’t have many. The only thing I can blame it on is how badly I’ve wanted to kiss you and date you since we met.’
You’re quiet in the aftermath, as though this type of confession leaves dust to settle around you, changes the air and the atmosphere. Now, the room feels different with him in it, no longer the acceptance you will have to share bed, a breakfast, or your shower, but, perhaps, you will have to share yourself.
‘I think now,’ he says, softly, and finally looking down at his lap, deflating, ‘would be a good time to tell me what you want…’
Stiffening, you shake your head, certain you said something that brought him here, to your house and to your body. He should already know, even if you do not. ‘Do you remember what I said last night?’
Jongin hums and nods. ‘Yeah. Why?’
You sigh, feeling yourself blush with your admission. ‘What was it I said because I don’t really remember.’
‘You gave me a list,’ he laughs, smiling up at you through his eyelashes. ‘You said you wanted to drink with me, dance with me, go home with me, and then -’ He cuts himself off, embarrassed. When he begins again, his voice is little more than a whisper. ‘You said you wanted to put your mouth on my chest.’
Immediately, you blanche. It’s hard to believe you would say that out loud, not just in your mind or your group chat, but with him. Idly, you move your head as you speak, unsure if you are nodding or fainting. ‘So not exactly explicit then, no?’
He laughs, really truly laughs, and lets the full colour of his spirit shine. It’s no different to the way he normally laughs with you, but after everything he has said, you see the difference, the real beauty of it. Jongin is not a brutally shy person, not enough to be isolated or lonely, but enough for you to finally realize that this laugh is yours. He does not sound this way with anyone else, and he’s been telling you so from the moment he met you.
It just took you both too long to say something.
Suddenly impatient, your mouth moves before your mind has a chance to catch what you are saying. ‘I want to date you, Jongin,’ you admit, watching the way delight pulls his lips into a brilliant smile. ‘I really, really want to try things with you.’
Reaching a hand to cup your cheek, confident and so unlike you a moment ago, he speaks, full and brave. ‘I want that, too.’
You could blame last night on a lot of things - on alcohol, on his tie, on his smile, on the way you drink to sometimes put things into motion.
But this morning, with Jongin moving inside you and demanding that you moan his name in the light of morning, the only thing you can blame this on is his touch.
#kai x reader#kai smut#kwriterskollection#exosnet#prettyboysnetwork#kpopwonderlandtag#jongin x reader#jongin smut#jongin fic#kai fic#kai fanfic#kai au#kai scenario#jongin au#jongin fanfic#jongin scenario#kim jongin
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Prompt #5: Vault (Eva)
(Also known as Corkscrew, Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead, or Schadenfreude. Because I re-read The Cask of Amontillado recently and because I’m in a silly mood.)
@sea-wolf-coast-to-coast
In which Eva fantasizes about murder again.
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How long has it been since she and Zheya shared a space? How many years have come and gone since the day she’d left Monarch? So many theatre seasons have passed by now that the name Evangeline is all but forgotten to the troupe and its followers. But Zheya’s star shines bright and vibrant, so much so that even the Laughing Magpie’s owner is coaxed from her shelter to watch its glow.
Zheya is resplendent in her role, the leading lady in the first showing of Coeur d’coeurs in five years. Envy tickles Eva’s spine like the teeth of a broken comb, but she keeps it low in her belly, too confused at the emotion to know what do do about it.
It’s almost laughably easy to convince Zheya to join her for drinks. One would think the Keeper to have a greater sense of self-preservation, but it seems the relative fame has gone to her head, just as it did for Eva. For a few initial moments, she entertains the thought of tipping an entire vial of monkshood into her drink. Zheya wouldn’t even notice, already tipsy from celebrations earlier in the evening.
How trashy, she thinks.
She wouldn’t have ever set food on stage with so much as a drop in her system. Though, Zheya has always been some degree of trashy, and not even in a way that she could pretend came back around to being classy.
But honestly, poisoning the whore doesn’t feel...poetic enough, she supposes.
There’s a well in the wine cellar that Eva draws water from, chilled and pristine, and reserved for her finest brews. It’s pretty funny to imagine Zheya toppling down the well heels over head. But her rotting corpse would taint the water, and frankly Eva’s too much of an artisan to allow that.
They talk of the old days anyway, and the redhead manages to get not only an apology, but a chain of compliments.
“How fine is the wine!” Zheya croons. “How charming the decor! Evangeline, you were always the best of us. Even now, your grace and beauty are so enthralling.”
Such liar’s words come flowing like water, plied from swollen lips as the Keeper imbibes glass after glass. For once, Eva’s kept them clear of any poisons, content enough to watch the idiot embarrass herself. Zheya insists on a tour of the Magpie, and soon they’re standing in front of the well anyway. The Miqo’te’s ears don’t seem to serve any use at all in the dark, because she’s watched her old troupe-mate trip at least three times on the way down.
Along the sturdy bricked wall is the smallest of nooks, lined with thick wool shavings to wick away moisture. It’s meant to save space, an extra little notch where she can stack the oak aging barrels. Her father had always insisted on keeping a stack of bricks and a pot of mortar nearby to patch any loose spots, and she’s kept up the tradition.
Zheya’s a wiry little thing, squirrely and long-limbed, but Eva has a full five ilms on her, and she’s built sturdier. It’s easy to haul her to the nook, easier still to turn her face into the wool and hold her by the base of the neck until she smothers herself in all her flailing. It’s easiest of all to brick her into the space, masonwork lined up perfectly to make it seem that the nook never existed in the first place. The smell won’t even be a problem with her squeezed so tightly behind the wall. The wool lining will sop up her bodily fluids, and in time...
“It was exquisite to see you again, Evangeline.” Zheya’s leaving, stumbling back up the stairs. How long have they been talking? “We really should catch up like this again soon.”
Eva waves her off, smiles sweetly, sees her safely out the door, and begins to mechanically clean the stack of glasses left behind, the fantasy still dancing in her subconscious.
A sennight later, when she learns that Zheya has died, she’s over the moon. Through no meddling at all on her part, the dumb bitch had fallen down the stairs at home and snapped her neck at a funny enough angle that her head twisted around like a corkscrew.
Eva laughs herself stupid, feeling joy and schadenfreude for the first time in years.
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Giving In
It had only been a few hours ago when Hancock had offered drinks to Piper and Sadie for a job well done. Before they could even order, Sturges ran into the bar and announced that the teleporter was finally finished. It turned into a party, the work of so many months was finally accomplished. All of Sadie’s friends were there offering her drinks. This was it. No turning back now. She would be off to The Institute in the morning. No one mentioned the deathclaw in the room. This was a farewell party; a premature wake. There was a real possibility that she might not make it back. However, everyone put on a good face, and the party had lasted into the early hours of the morning. Sadie had excused herself an hour ago, saying she needed to prepare for the next morning. Hancock wanted to go with her, but she insisted he enjoy himself.
He strolled through the street of Sanctuary, the last straggler to finally leave the bar. He patted his pockets in search of some Jet. He must’ve finished off the last of it during the celebration. It had been awhile since he and Sadie had stopped in Goodneighbor, or hell, any place with a good dealer. She had been so focused on gathering supplies for Sturges…He thought for a moment. The clinic was closed, Mama Murphy was already asleep…He did have another option. He didn’t want to disturb Sadie, but they kept their shared stash in a footlocker under her bed. She wouldn’t mind.
He let himself into her home. The lights were off, she must’ve already gone to bed. Hancock tried to move stealthily down the short hallway to the bedroom but came to a standstill when he heard crying. He hesitated only for a moment, a dark thought crossing his mind; If this was her last night, she wasn’t going to be alone.
Sadie was huddled on her bed. She felt guilty for leaving the party early, but it was going to be hard enough to say goodbye to everyone the next morning. Everything she had been fighting for, everything she had been working towards, led to tomorrow. But something gave her pause. Six months ago, she couldn’t have imagined that she would build a life for herself, thrive in this hellscape of an environment, find people who actually cared for her…the dichotomy of the situation weighed heavily. To save Shaun, she might lose everything. This was her son, her baby…she had to go. She tried to muster every ounce of courage she had. That’s why she listened to Nate’s holotape.
“I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are. But, we're going to anyway. You are kind, and loving, and funny, that's right, and patient. So patient…”
Hancock froze. It took him a moment to realize what she was listening to. He had never told Sadie, but he had heard snippets before. She would play her late husband’s tape occasionally when she thought he was sleeping or out of earshot. He always tried to give her privacy. He shouldn’t be listening. It felt wrong. He was interrupting something sacred, but he couldn’t turn away this time.
“I know our best days are yet to come. There will be changes sure, things we'll need to adjust to…”
Sadie let out a sob and curled in on herself. Hearing Nate’s voice was both a hurt and a comfort. She still mourned for him, still had a hole in her chest where her family should be. Her old life was gone, but with Shaun, she could start to genuinely heal. Hancock had never seen her so vulnerable before. He felt an anger in his chest. Nate was right; She was kind, loving, funny, patient, but Jesus, she was strong. Stronger than most people he had met. She didn’t deserve any of the shit dumped on her...And here he was, listening to her cry while he spied on her.
He cleared his throat and called to her, “Sadie?”
Shit. She had been too loud. She had hoped Hancock was still at the bar or passed out by now. Sadie shut her eyes tightly, trying to pretend she was sleeping, even as the holotape continued to play.
“…everything we do no matter how hard, we do it for our family. Now say goodbye Shaun. Bye-bye, say bye-bye…Bye honey, we love you.”
She thought her ruse had worked until she felt a weight on the bed and a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t want Hancock to see her like this. How much had he heard?
“Just checkin’ in on ya…everything alright?” he asked awkwardly. Of course, things weren’t alright, he chided himself, She’s been fighting like hell for half a year, and helping every charity case in the Commonwealth to boot. It seemed things were finally catching up, that she was finally feeling the weight on her shoulders.
Sadie quickly wiped the tears from her eyes and rolled over to face him. “Oh…Hancock, sorry, I-I didn’t realize how much noise I was making,” she apologized, “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was up anyway…” Even now, she was selfless. He felt a pang of guilt. If he hadn’t been so eager for another hit of Jet, she would be alone… it absolutely crushed him. He had been travelling with her long enough to know better. He should have done a better job at looking out for her. “Big day tomorrow…” It was all he could think to say.
“Is it? Had no idea.” she replied with snark, even though her voice wavered.
“Can’t blame ya,” Hancock grinned and sat down next to her on the bed, “Might get zapped out of existence. Still not sure Sturges and Tom know what they’re doing.” He chuckled at his own black humor, but stopped when he saw her face, white as a sheet.
“Don’t joke like that,” she said in a tense voice.
“Fuck, Sadie, I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly, “I was just trying-“
“I know…”
There was silence as she reached under the bed for the small footlocker. It was deafening to Hancock. He wanted to make things better, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how to handle the situation. She brought out two inhalers. Sadie inhaled, leaned against him, and let the jet flood her system. For the first time that night, she began to feel calm.
She offered one to Hancock, but he politely shook his head. “You wanna talk? Makin' me a little nervous over here.” He teased with an anxious laugh.
Sadie was silent for another moment. How could she begin to explain how she was feeling to this man she respected and cared for? He was so driven by bravery and justice, and she felt like a coward. Still embarrassed by the whole ordeal, she sighed and attempted to change the subject, “You know…I’m really glad I blew a hole in your storeroom.”
“Yeah?” he smirked with curiosity, “Not that I mind you singin’ my praises, but why’s that?”
“You’re the one person I can be myself around,” she continued, “I feel guilty for saying this, but being the Vault Dweller, the General, Agent Charmer, Knight Smith…even the Silver Shroud,” he smiled as she used her Shroud voice, “It gets tiring…Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for everyone’s help, and I’m proud of the good we’re doing, but I’m always on stage.”
Sadie put a hand on his knee, “With you, I’m…just Sadie. A ball of anxiety with a law degree. No judgements…just fire support and a shit ton of drugs…” she took a puff of Jet again, a weight off her chest, “You’re a good man, Mayor Hancock.”
He put his arm around her, “It ain't often wandering off with a stranger turns out this well for me. Never expected I'd ever meet my match…Nice to be wrong. You and me? We’ve done some real damn good out here. And I’m looking forward to doin’ a lot more.” he took her hand from his knee and held it in his own, she didn’t flinch in the slightest, “Just so you know though…” he purred in her ear, “You’re sellin’ yourself short, sister. Being boss is a lot of cleaning up other people’s messes. I understand havin’ to put on an act for political purposes, but I’ve been around for most of your characters…the roles might change, but your heart doesn’t.”
Sadie grinned, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, “You're not going soft on me, are ya, Hancock?”
“Hey, everyone's entitled to some softness,” he mused, “for me, it's pretty much everything below the eyebrows…I told ya before, you’re someone who's not willing to take things the way they're handed to you. You’re stronger than you think.”
They sat in silence again, her hand in his, the second Jet inhaler left untouched. There was so much she wanted to tell him, so much she wanted to say, “I’m terrified about tomorrow,” she admitted.
“I’m worried for ya too. I don’t want you going alone,” he mumbled, slightly embarrassed at how much he’d become attached to her, “I know…you can handle yourself in a fight,” he reassured her, “but I still don’t like it. The Institute is bigger than anything either of us has come across…” He hesitated, trying not to be selfish. “You don’t have to go right now,” he blurted out, “Maybe if Sturges and Tom do some more research we could go together, guns blazing-”
“You know I have to. I’ve already missed ten years of Shaun’s life. If I wasn’t chicken, I would’ve left the second Sturges told me the teleporter was working.” She criticized herself bitterly.
He tried to lighten the mood again. “Sure that thing isn’t built for two?”
Sadie shook her head, “Even if it was, we couldn’t risk it. Your people need their mayor. Besides, I don’t think anyone down there has ever seen someone with your…” she looked him up and down, “rugged good looks before,” she teased, “You’d be too much of a distraction.”
He goaded her with a wicked grin, “For you or them?” She gave a small laugh. He was happy he could still make her smile. “No need to butter me up,” his expression hardened, “I know you gotta do this.”
Their conversation dulled again. He knew there was more that Sadie wasn’t discussing. She had listened to every concern and story he had told about himself, sharing along the way, but always restrained. Ever since he met her, she had always put the needs of others above herself. It’s what drew him to her in the first place. Even the heist she pulled against him was done out of good intentions. Her desire to play Robin Hood for the Commonwealth had let Bobbi trick her.
The truth was, Sadie felt selfish. Everyone in this world had their own problems. She didn’t want to burden anyone with hers.
He tried another approach, “So, uh…what were you listening to?”
“The first day I woke up and crawled my way out of the Vault…Codsworth gave me this holotape. Nate had left it with him for safe-keeping right before…” she trailed off, tears in her eyes. She took another hit of Jet, “It doesn’t matter…just listening to ghosts…”
She knew she could trust her friends, especially Hancock, but she still hesitated. With the present objective, it was hard to talk openly with him. She cared about him. She felt guilty about just how much. She should be focusing on finding her son, avenging her husband…but somewhere between the chems and heroics, she had fallen for this man. She couldn’t admit it to herself, let alone Hancock. She didn’t give a damn about his condition or what others would think, but she had to keep things compartmentalized to stay sane. Find Shaun, takedown the Institute, live her life. Falling for someone so quickly after Nate’s death wasn’t part of the plan. It was too big of a risk, and yet, Hancock had become her life-line. He had saved her in so many ways. If anything happened to him, she wouldn’t know what she’d do.
“Hey, you’ve listened to enough of my sorry-ass story. Least I can do is the same courtesy. What’s on your mind?” He tried to offer solace.
This small act of kindness broke her. “Hancock, everyone is looking to me for answers and I have no idea what I’m doing,” her voice shook. Survivor’s guilt crashing down on her, “I don’t know why they took Shaun, why I was left alive, why I woke up…It should’ve been me,” she confessed in a small whisper. Hancock opened his mouth in surprise. She couldn’t mean… “I should’ve died. Nate was the one holding Shaun…What kind of mother doesn’t cling to her baby for dear life?” she asked bitterly. “If I had been holding him, it could have been different.”
“You were inside that monster’s head,” Hancock reminded her, “Kellogg would’ve killed you if you fought back.”
“Maybe it would have been better that way,” she said in a hollow voice. “Nate deserved a chance. He would know what to do. He’d have a plan. He was a soldier,” Tears were streaking down her face as she continued, “I tried to stop it…I hit the glass as hard as I could but it wouldn’t…I wasn’t…” she trailed off, reliving that moment. “When I woke up…I wanted to die. The Vault was a graveyard. Everyone I knew was gone. I spent hours trying to get out. When I did, I came here. Everything was destroyed or looted, but Codsworth…” she gave a faint smile, “he waited for us for two hundred years and he kept this tape for me the whole time,” she lifted the Pipboy on her arm. “It kept me going for a while. Helped me to remember what I was fighting for…then I met Preston, Piper, Nick…you,” her eyes met his dark gaze as she gripped his hand tighter, “You’ve helped me to survive, showed me that there was still good in this world. You brought my hope back, gave me friends…a chance at a family again…I’m risking my life for my child, I’d do it a hundred times over, but what’s going to happen to you when I leave?”
“H-hey, don’t worry about us, we’ll hold the fort down until you make it back. Smartest thing I’ve done is throwin’ in with you…” he put his arm around her shaking shoulders, “I was just kiddin’ before. I know you’ll make it back home. I’m sorry…I didn’t know how much this was weighin’ on ya. Should’ve been paying more attention. I understand your pain, but it wasn’t your fault. None of it was. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Like you told me, you can’t blame yourself. Gotta keep that in mind when you’re out there.”
“I didn’t think I had anything else to lose, but I do,” she shifted her body closer to his, “I can’t lose you.”
She was more kind than he deserved, than she had any right to be. She would never agree with him, but he thought she was perfect. It wasn’t about her looks, though he did consider himself lucky to be enjoying the view. It was her spirit, her soul. He thought the world of Sadie and was damn grateful she considered him a friend…True, he admitted to hoping for more, but he couldn’t expect her to take that seriously.
Which is why it took him by surprise as her lips made their way to his. It started off small and timid, but soon she was a woman possessed. His body matched her yearning intensity. He hadn’t felt a high like this since he started using. He let his hands roam and gripped her in a tight embrace.
It took his brain longer to react. This couldn’t be happening. Sadie was always affectionate, but the way she was kissing him so fervently, only happened in his hallucinations.
She shifted her weight and straddled his lap. This can’t be real...don’t act, just think… for once be the one with some damn sense. With a godlike amount of restraint, he abruptly broke off the kiss and left them both gasping for air.
“Sadie, I’m gonna be real mad if this turns out to be one big Jet flashback.” he laughed nervously and tried to deflect with a joke, “Don’t get me wrong, this feels better than the chems,” he smirked, “Okay…maybe eighty percent as good-“
“Shut up, you cocky bastard,” she went to kiss him again, but he held her at bay. He wasn’t sure how to proceed.
He rested his forehead against hers. “We shouldn’t…” he murmured, eyes cast down. He swallowed hard. He had been thinking, dreaming, of moments like this since he started travelling with her, hell, since she stepped into Goodneighbor. A disarray of emotions flooded him. He wanted to hold her closer, tell her how he truly felt, of how petrified he was of losing her…He should say no, tell her he wasn’t good enough, say he didn’t deserve her. Before he could decide what to say, he heard her whimper, “I don’t understand- I thought…”
He finally turned his gaze towards her. There was disappointment in her eyes. All of the burning energy she had shown just moments ago, now fading. She thought she knew how he felt. It was always implied, but never spoken. For reasons unknown, he was rejecting her. She needed to feel something, anything. She reached for him again. “We might not get another chance…” she said softly, tears coming to her eyes again.
“Sadie,” his tone was harsher than he intended. With emotions running high, all the talk of her dead husband, and the possibility of this being her last night on earth, he had to make sure he wasn’t just a convenience. “C’mon…you don’t want your last night to be like this…Believe me, I want to…but this…it’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not,” she said defiantly, her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “It doesn’t have to be…thought you weren’t the ponderous type? Damn it, we care about each other, right?” her voice cracked.
Hancock’s eye went wide. This wasn’t just in his head. He hadn’t been reading into things. He wasn’t just a warm body, she genuinely had feelings for him. He didn’t know what he could have possibly done to be this lucky. He started to feel his resolve melt away. She was right, an instinct took hold, and he should listen. He cupped her face in his hands and wiped a tear from her cheek. He smiled softly, “Damn right we do, Sunshine. I haven’t felt like this in a long time…” he sighed, “But you sure you want someone like me?”
Sadie searched his earnest expression. He still didn’t understand how much he meant to her. She planted a tender kiss on his lips. He didn’t pull away this time. “John…” she used his name in a hushed whisper that sent chills down his spine, “Of course I do…I have wanted this for a long time.”
He looked at her, dumbfounded, as if she were a dream, “You’re serious aren’t you?”
She bit her lip and gave him a pleading look, “Neither of us are good at expressing ourselves, but…I’m trusting you on this, should I?”
He grinned ear to mangled ear as he snaked his arms around her, “I ain’t got an escape route planned, if that’s what you’re askin’…Right now, this is exactly where I want to be.” He pulled her into a searing kiss.
Their fears for the future, their worries about the past, the things they couldn’t say to each other, all dissolved in this moment. Tomorrow be damned, tonight was theirs.
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Holy shit, I’m not dead! This just took a hell of a lot longer than I thought to get it to where I wanted it to be. Hope you guys out there enjoy it! Always up for prompts, headcanons, or whatever else you throw my way!
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How about a fic where the whole team goes to Lance's home town in Cuba, playing on the beach?
Thanks for the fun ask @aquaburst07 ! My apologies for taking so long this cold did a number on me.
**This follows the action of Season 6 so SPOILERS AHEAD!!!**
This is going to be the third part of the series after “Reforging the Bond” and “Through Your Eyes” There will be one more for a request, but it’s a side quest (a.k.a. 18+!)
Sink or Swim
Keith dug his toes into the dry sand, possibly in the hope he’d take root in his spot on the beach. Even though he grew up surrounded by the stuff, it just wasn’t the same as being here on the shores of Varadero, where the Atlantic joined the Gulf of Mexico. No barrier divided the two, and it would take a massive undertaking to do so. He mused at how two bodies of water flowed into each other and yet were separate.
Kind of like how things were with Allura. Or had been, at least. He thought they were two bodies flowing into the other as well. The current he had long imagined could not be altered was suddenly cut off by a cursed kiss and harsh words. The dam may have been designed by Lotor but Keith had built it himself.
He was happy they were at least on speaking terms again. Weeks passed and the discomfort had begun to subside, but the ease they’d long shared failed to resurface. Keith suspected Allura had begun to confide in Krolia, possibly because of her short history with the team. For that he was thankful, though, because his mother could advise her without bias. He’d never told his mom about his feelings for the Princess, after all.
And for her part Allura seemed happier. She had jumped at the chance to meet Lance’s family and relax with friends after spending so long working on Earth’s new defense system. In fact, the sound of her laughing and splashing in the water with Romelle, Lance, and Matt, made him think she was sounding a lot more like her old self. That made him incredibly happy, even if it did sting a little.
He chanced a glance their direction and was flustered when he immediately met her gaze. At first he expected her to look away but instead she smiled and waved for him to join them. Nervously he waved back, almost tempted to check over his shoulder to see if Pidge or Hunk were standing behind him.
Nope, he could see them in the distance looking for seashells. And Coran was sunning himself dangerously close to the water’s edge. If that was the case he was the only one left she could be waving to, right?
Just as he was getting his nerve up to join them he felt a gritty foot shove playfully at his back. Confused he let his head loll backwards to see Lance’s sister, Veronica, smiling down at him. She was holding two drinks and had a beach towel tucked under her arm.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked, briefly setting down the drinks to unfurl her blanket before he could even respond.
They’d only been in Cuba for a day and Keith had barely spoken with any of Lance’s siblings, so he wasn’t sure what his sister could possibly want with him. Maybe she’d heard about their contentious relationship, or how her brother viewed them as rivals. She didn’t seem angry though so– despite being annoyed that he was blocked from having fun with Allura– he decided to take the friendly approach.
“Sure, go ahead.”
He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered responding but figured it was still polite to do so. She flashed a bright smile of gratitude, handing one of the slushy drinks to Keith before planting herself next to him. After thanking her for the treat he sat for a while slowly slurping the mix of tropical fruits, wondering to himself why he’d never learned to identify poisons by their taste. Veronica was all of five-foot-two so not a danger physically, at least. He could take her in a knife fight.
“So Keith, how do you like it here?” Her question brought him back to reality, making him feel a bit guilty for making such wild assumptions about her.
“It’s nice. You must like living so close to the beach, huh?” he asked, hoping to keep the conversation to a minimum.
Veronica gave him a quick once-over before responding. “The scenery has gotten a lot nicer, for sure,” she answered with a wink.
Despite his social ineptitude Keith was beginning to suspect she might just be flirting with him. The flushed feeling in his cheeks seemed to confirm this. Granted she was certainly cute; her curly hair and bright eyes and sunny disposition were attractive features for certain. But they were more attractive on Allura, that he couldn’t deny.
Allura, the goddess playing in the surf. Her white hair pulled into a ponytail that bounced adorably as she chased the others with a bucket of water. Her dark skin and gentle curves perfectly complemented by a fiery red bikini. A bikini a top that tied around her neck and back.
Ties that looked dangerously loose and why wasn’t someone telling her to double knot them?
“Hellooooo! Earth to Keith!”
Keith’s eyes blinked instinctively as a manicured hand snapped fingers in his face. He hadn’t even realized that the woman sitting next to him had been trying to get his attention for several seconds. Despite managing to stutter out an apology he knew she wasn’t in a forgiving mood. Her eyes could have pierced a hole in his head as intently as she was glaring at him.
She didn’t break her focus until she noticed his focus had shifted to the distance once again. Glancing over her shoulder she let out a dejected sigh, her head dropping as the realization apparently set in. Then she turned her attention back to Keith, angrily snatching the half-finished drink from his hands.
“Look, I don’t know what your story is,” she started, “but you’re going to walk your ass over there and be honest with that girl.”
“I wha? Wh- who?” he stuttered. If he was hoping to play this off he was failing miserably.
Veronica stood grabbed her towel, shaking it off in his direction. Keith jumped up to protect his face from the blast of sand.
“What the hell?”
“Guess you have to go in the water now, don’t you?” she smirked. “Better hurry, you might miss your chance to come clean.”
Swiftly she turned to walk away, whipping her hair as she sauntered off to the spot where her brothers were hanging out with their families. Pausing for just a moment she looked back in Keith’s direction, winking at him but this time in a way that wasn’t in the least bit suggestive. This time is was like she’d given him the secret to a code he hadn’t yet deciphered.
After a foolhardy attempt to brush himself off he resigned himself to take her advice and jump in the ocean, figuring it would be way more effective than the showers posted near the dunes. He ducked into the waves a few times with the hope the current had done most of the work for him. As he emerged the last time he just happened to catch a glimpse of red in the corner of his eye. Instinctively his eyes rolled in that direction as red had become an important color to him.
Allura was looking at him, concern coloring her features.
Had she seen everything?
Allura had seen everything.
Well, most of it. She tried to pretend she didn’t see Lance’s super-hot sister approach Keith as the she herself was trying to get his attention. The others didn’t seem to notice her distraction at the sight of the seductress wooing the handsome paladin as he sat alone, far out of earshot.
And she was definitely proud of the fact that she didn’t outwardly cheer when Veronica stormed away, obviously after Keith had rebuffed her advances.
She did feel a bit badly for him having sand rained over his head. On the bright side, she thought, he’s in the water now. Despite the coolness of the day she felt a sudden spike in temperature as she watched the ocean bead around his chiseled form, his muscles accented by the outlines it traced.
“Head���s up!”
Matt’s alert came half-a-tick before the beach ball struck the side of her face. It didn’t really even hurt but for whatever reason she yelped as her hand rushed to cradle her right cheek. Embarrassed she hoped to simply play it off, waving her hand and playfully kicking water in Matt’s direction before chasing after the ball that had been pulled further out to sea.
By the time she reached it the water was much deeper, nearly covering her shoulders. She grabbed the ball, holding it high over her head triumphantly as Lance cheered her on. Or at least that’s what she thought he was doing. It was an obvious misunderstanding.
The wave that crashed over her head was far more powerful than the ones closer to shore. It swept her off her feet as she felt her body being sucked further out. Frantically she tried to gain a foothold as she struggled to keep her head above the surf. A second wave pushed her back down, sending her into a panic.
Suddenly a pair of arms came from behind and wrapped around her waist, pulling her to the surface. She sputtered as her rescuer swam parallel to the shoreline to an area where the waters were much calmer.
Right, Lance had told her about riptides. She’d completely forgotten.
As they came to a stop the grip on her loosened but didn’t let go completely. She could still feel the warmth of his chest against her back, his breathing labored. Something told her that if she turned around she’d be met with a very familiar face. And yet she hesitated to do so for fear her instinct was wrong.
“Allura, are you okay?”
Despite the fact that she’d almost just drowned she couldn’t imagine being more okay. Of all the voices in the universe it was the one she hoped to hear most. Maybe that was because it belonged to the man she’d loved for so long, who as always was the one to save her when she felt she could no longer breathe.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
No, that’s not what she wanted to say. What did she want to say? Words had always flowed so easily between them before, but now they were stuck in her throat and threatened to choke her.
Instead she turned to face him, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him tightly to her. To her dismay his body went rigid, his arms floating languidly at her sides. Her heart sank as she realized he may not have forgiven her yet. Perhaps he never would.
“Um, Allura,” Keith finally spoke, his voice cracking slightly. “I think you lost something.”
Lost something? Surely he wasn’t concerned about the stupid beach ball. No,he wasn’t looking out, he was looking up. So Allura looked up too, then to her left. Her right. Then over his shoulder.
Oh.
The something was the item that Pidge was trying to flag her down with. The red triangular flags that had been plucked from the ocean. The familiar top that should have been a barrier between their skin. She cursed the red strings that cruelly taunted her as they danced in the breeze.
“Keith?”
“Hmm?”
“Could you please fetch that for me?”
This time it was Keith’s turn to sputter. “Um, sure, I guess.” Finally he lowered his gaze to hers and she could see the pink that was spreading over his cheeks. “Let’s get you a bit closer to shore first, though.”
Allura swam obediently behind him, stopping once she had to crouch significantly to maintain her dignity. She watched Keith drag himself through the foamy waves towards Pidge, awkwardly accepting the offering of Allura’s immodesty with the grace of a child holding a smelly sock. For a moment she thought to be offended, until he made his next move which was towards the beach.
Rage began to boil her blood, the cool water surrounding her hissing steam as it lapped her skin. She watched as he raced for his towel, snatching it up quickly. Forcefully he shook the sand loose and threw it over his shoulder. If he planned to leave her stranded there while he ran off with the–
Ah.
Anger turned to embarrassment as the Princess realized he was headed back to her. Of all people to trust, Keith should always be the first. Well, maybe Coran. But Keith would certainly be next. He’d always been there for her when she needed him, even when she wasn’t willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s the kind of man he’d been since the day they met.
Once he reached her he held out the bikini top rather unceremoniously, waiting for her to grab it. Then Keith unfurled the towel, holding it end to end between his fingers. She realized he was offering her some privacy so she could stand to redress. He even had his eyes shut so tightly his entire face was scrunched up. Even though he looked much older than before he still had a boyish charm to him, she thought.
It took a few minutes of stretching and fumbling and barely getting a bow tied around her neck before Allura resigned herself to ask for assistance. Romelle had helped her put the top on that morning because it was rather difficult to tie a knot behind her own back. Add the difficulty of not getting her hair caught in said tie, the mission became nearly impossible.
So, she stood musing. For Keith to help her he would need to drop the towel. If he did that, she’d have no privacy. However, his shoulders were now much broader, and his chest, well….she was sure it was enough to block the view from the shore. Grabbing the remaining straps and holding them behind her she called Keith’s name to get his attention.
Three times.
The last time she raised her voice as she shot a glance over her shoulder. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else besides there. The third time she called he jumped and nearly dropped the makeshift privacy curtain.
“Yes, Princess,” he responded stiffly.
“Can you tie this for me, please?”
He cocked his head slightly and blinked back his surprise. “Sure, I guess. I mean, if it’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay,” she laughed in response. Did he think she would ask if it wasn’t?
“I’ll try not to touch you then,” he promised as he swept her ponytail over her shoulder.
“Don’t try too hard.”
Allura shocked herself with such a response, but Keith? He was even more unsteady than before. She worried that he might fail to tie it properly his hands were shaking so much. Still, she relished the feel of his fingertips as they brushed her skin. Once he finished she asked him to retie the one around her neck and thankfully he complied. Certainly he noticed the raised bumpy flesh on the back of her neck as his hands ghosted across it.
“All set.”
“Oh,” she responded, sounding somewhat disappointed. “Well, I hope you tied them properly. Can’t have that happen again.”
Keith laughed humorlessly at the statement, then cleared his throat. “Those knots will never come undone. You’re safe, Princess.”
Allura spun around wide-eyed upon hearing that. “Never? As in ever?”
“It would take my blade to get you out of that,” he teased, apparently amused at her panicked state.
Two could play at this game, mister.
“Then I suppose I’ll come see you it’s time to get undressed,” she retorted, poking him with her finger to emphasize her point.
To her surprise he simply narrowed his eyes and smiled suggestively.
“Room 111. I’ll be waiting.”
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TAGGED BY: @blue-pincushion thank you!!
TAGGING: hhhh I apologize I’ve been very out of it so I’m not sure who’s been tagged/done this, but if you haven’t feel free to steal
— BASICS.
▸ IS YOUR MUSE TALL / SHORT / AVERAGE ?
tall for a mobian, short for a human. he’s 4′11 which means he towers over most smaller animals, but to a human he’s... below average, for sure. not that reduces his intimidation factor by much I’d think
▸ ARE THEY OKAY WITH THEIR HEIGHT ?
yeah he’s alright. he doesn’t judge his own appearance much because his programming focuses a lot on working with what he’s got? like if his arm broke off he’d still keep trucking, so imagining himself but taller or shorter is not something he’d really think to do because he’s just working on operating the body he has. if he wanted to be taller it’d be so that he could be more intimidating, but also he’s pretty logical and understands he’d never fit through a single door then
▸ WHAT’S THEIR HAIR LIKE ?
none hair
▸ DO THEY SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THEIR HAIR / GROOMING ?
absolutely not. it’s one thing for him to seek out repairs to keep his systems operating within normal parameters, but things like scraped up paint and laser burns? he doesn’t care. if anything he’s pretty sure that stuff makes him more intimidating so he’s in no rush to get it fixed
▸ DOES YOUR MUSE CARE ABOUT THEIR APPEARANCE / WHAT OTHERS THINK ?
he doesn’t care what others think. however. he does want to be intimidating at all times, so he cares in that sense. he really doesn’t have the capacity to care about aesthetics and such, so like, if he looks clunky he doesn’t mind? but if people aren’t afraid of his big ol’ claws and frankly disgusting amount of guns, then he’s not gonna be so happy
— PREFERENCES.
▸ INDOORS OR OUTDOORS ?
either. indoors is safer from weather but also very confining if it’s built for mobian sizes. on the bright side, indoors can easily become outdoors with enough gunfire, so maybe indoors is nice because it gives him options
▸ RAIN OR SUNSHINE ?
sunshine. he’s watertight but if he’s taken any damage he’ll not want water getting inside his electronics. the sun can get hot but he’s equipped with some pretty heavy-duty fans, I mean, he was literally running around in a volcano in 06 for one example,
▸ FOREST OR BEACH ?
beaches aren’t great because sand can get up in his systems, so even though forests are full of obstacles that give his sensors trouble, he’d probably still prefer them to cleaning sand out of his weapons
▸ PRECIOUS METALS OR GEMS ?
precious metals are weak and generally unhelpful. there’s a few rare metals that are very important for electronics though so if those were included he’d probably pick metals
▸ FLOWERS OR PERFUMES ?
neither really appeal to him, but flowers are a physical thing that more people seem to like over perfume, so he’d just default to flowers
▸ PERSONALITY OR APPEARANCE ?
personality because he has no personal sense of aesthetics
▸ BEING ALONE OR BEING IN A CROWD ?
alone. he has like two or three friends and that’s not a crowd despite that colloquialism to the contrary so he’d never prefer a crowd. also he’ll just inadvertently beat someone up by moving around in a space that’s too tightly packed and that’s not ideal for anyone
▸ ORDER OR ANARCHY ?
anarchy. do what you want when you want and the only limit is your personal ability. he’d be living
▸ PAINFUL TRUTHS OR WHITE LIES ?
painful truth because I don’t know if he could actually tell a convincing white lie
▸ SCIENCE OR MAGIC ?
science because he can understand it. magic is ok but he isn’t equipped to immediately comprehend the rules of it, so he’d prefer to deal with scientific matters. of course magic isn’t really a problem either if it’s not messing with his ability to shoot things
▸ PEACE OR CONFLICT ?
conflict babey he lives to fight
▸ NIGHT OR DAY ?
either, his sensors work just about equally well at either time. in the dark he can’t really see color but also he doesn’t have to worry about glare off of shiny surfaces so... it’s a toss-up
▸ DUSK OR DAWN ?
neither really appeal to him in an aesthetic sense tbh nor do they provide any important function to him
▸ WARMTH OR COLD ?
cold because his internal fans have to run less to cool his electronics. that being said being below freezing isn’t good either as it makes his metal components very brittle
▸ MANY ACQUAINTANCES OR A FEW CLOSE FRIENDS ?
points at team dark
▸ READING OR PLAYING A GAME ?
playing a game probably because 1) he can just download book contents and 2) his programming pushes him to stay active so a game wouldn’t be bad. it’s just. he might have a little trouble holding back. like say if you wanna play basketball you may need a new hoop afterwards
— QUESTIONNAIRE.
▸ WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR MUSE’S BAD HABITS ?
-crushing things that don’t need crushing
-making zero effort to understand people’s problems if they’re not his team or otherwise close to him for some reason
-rushing into fights without thinking
-general hubris-related content
▸ HAS YOUR MUSE LOST ANYONE CLOSE TO THEM ? HOW HAS IT AFFECTED THEM ?
nope. if he did he’d probably throw himself into whatever other tasks he has though because he avoids thinking about things by shoving all his processes into whatever other routines he’s got. I don’t think he could feel truly sad but he would definitely be really mad and also kind of empty because he doesn’t know what to do now
▸ WHAT ARE SOME FOND MEMORIES YOUR MUSE HAS ?
a lot of stuff with team dark tbh... like he saves anything where he can tell that shadow and rouge are having a good time even if he doesn’t quite understand why they’re enjoying the thing. he does really enjoy crushing robots but if he wants to re-live that he can just go crush some more
▸ IS IT EASY FOR YOUR MUSE TO KILL ?
yeah lmao
but he’s not gonna just kill anyone ofc, his programming does account for allies and he knows he’ll lose the respect of his team if he hurts civilians, so he does go out of his way to avoid injuring people who aren’t his target. if you are his target tho start running
▸ WHAT’S IT LIKE WHEN YOUR MUSE BREAKS DOWN ?
like physically or,
im joking but I don’t think he could emotionally break down. the closest he could get is like... trying to process too many emotions at once. because, I mean, you know how computers get really slow when they’re trying to handle a bunch of different large things at the same time? it’s like that. but it’s also really difficult for him to reach that point because part of his versatility as a robot weapon is adapting to situations, and of course reallocating processes as is needed for him to run optimally
physically if he breaks down he will just keep going because, again, he’s made to be adaptable and he’ll fight til he can’t anymore
▸ IS YOUR MUSE CAPABLE OF TRUSTING SOMEONE WITH THEIR LIFE ?
yes but you better be his team or otherwise earn his respect because he’s only going to trust you with his life if he actually believes you can back him up
▸ WHAT’S YOUR MUSE LIKE WHEN THEY’RE IN LOVE ?
he isn’t
I guess for platonic love though he’ll keep better files on you. that sounds kind of creepy like that but it’s like... remembering people’s likes and mannerisms and stuff, so he can figure out how to act around said person better. if he’s avoiding saying something so as to not bother you then he definitely cares
#Ω :: memes#//consider: team dark cracking eggs on omega because his metal gets hot in the sun#//omega so hot he fries an egg
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Let's do something crazy: Valentino/Magnus
THERE WAS A TIME THAT VALENTINE MORGENSTERN STOOD FOR ALL THAT WAS GOOD AND NOBLE IN THE CLAVE. THERE WAS A TIME:
Valentine Morgenstern knows how frustrating this must be from the perspective of someone like Magnus Bane. Bane, for all his age and power, has always been a bit of a rogue element. The price of independence. His own fault really. His credibility isn’t what it could be; his alliances with the Clave strong but not strong enough. Bane’s greatest weapon outside of his considerable magic is that people like him better than they like other people. He’s popular. A Rockstar. He’s used to getting his way. Finding his words failing now on unsympathetic ears, unmoved by any appeal to familiarity or trust?
It’s almost funny.
“Are you not hearing what I’m saying? None of that is true!” He’s so angry now he’s at that strange desperate stage between completely losing it and crying. Warlocks. The older they get, the deeper, bigger, more unwieldy their emotions. Magnus is losing control of his to the utterly calm face of Maryse Lightwood. “People are dead! Someone is doing this on purpose and you need to do something about it. I’m telling you right now.”
“We are looking into, Mr. Bane. As I’ve been saying for the last five minutes. Do not make me remove you from this premise. I’m sorry for your loss, but the facts of each case stand as they are until such a time as new evidence is presented.” Hell, Maryse is good. She stares down a five-hundred (six-hundred?) year old immortal who is so angry he’s starting to lose control of his glamore and she never even blinks. “We appreciate the services you’ve rendered to the Clave and your diligence as a citizen in bringing us your concerns, but these matters are being handled.”
Which is when Bane telekinetically snaps her clipboard into fifteen pieces, the entire things shattering like glass in her fingers.
“You’re not handling shit,” Bane snarls.
Valentine thinks he’s probably going to have to intervene.
Maryse, again, doesn’t flinch though every single nephilim in the room grabs for their stele. She calmly holds up one hand to stave them off, never looking away from the warlock in front of her. Magnus doesn’t back down. He really should. He’s just used magic against a shadowhunter, however cosmetically, and Valentine knows that Mayse has made actionable mountains out of less. Buried people for less.
But Bane’s got this look, feral, but calculated.
No. Not here. Bane’s got no hold at the Clave, but he’s popular enough it will cause trouble. Can’t do it like that.
“I will give you a warning,” Maryse says reasonably. “Next time you bring magic to bear against me, I will have to detain you. I remember the courses you taught at the Indonesian Institute. I would rather not arrest a former teacher–”
Magnus laughs and the whole room shivers, aches with the potential energy of his fury, a physical presence in the room.
“God, you grew up, huh? They could put my eyes out in front of you and you wouldn’t flinch.”
Maryse narrows her eyes.
“The Law,” she says, “is hard, but it is the Law.”
“Fuck you,” Magnus says. “You’re a murderer and all the Writ in the world won’t undo it.”
Valentine separates himself from the doorway he’s been watching from and crosses the room. Magnus sees him coming and his expression immediately changed to relief. And why shouldn’t it? Luke and Jocelyn were favored students of his; they have him on speed dial. Too bad they’re in mission in London and won’t be back for a month.
“Valentine,” he says, pushing past Maryse. “I need to talk to you. No one else will listen.”
“Of course,” he says, clapping Magnus on the shoulder. “Apologies for the welcome. Let’s take this to a conference room.”
Magnus follows him. He’s agitated. A scent of static around him like its own pressure system. Valentine thinks, idly, how easy it would be to turn around and shove a seraph blade through the warlock’s stomach, wrench it up, watch every inch of magic fall to utterly useless in the face of direct action. Magnus is glancing warily at all the other shadowhunters milling through the halls of the Institute and on closer inspection it’s clear to Valentine the warlock’s not sleeping. That’s he’s ragged. Makes sense. A lot of his friends are being detained and disappearing.
Valentine shuts them in a conference room and Magnus immediately launches into a rant.
“Someone is framing downworlders. I can prove it. I have a dozen witness accounts, a forensic spell that’s admissible in court, and I’ll testify myself. Viggo and Verity were killed before those weapons were put on their bodies. This is a cover up. You have something wrong in your ranks, Valentine, and no one will listen to a downworlder, you have to—”
“Magnus. Calm down,” Valentine says. He crosses the room, placing a hand on the warlock’s shoulder. “I know. I know something is wrong. And I’d appreciate it if you weren’t. blowing things up in my foyer while I try to hunt it down.” He squeezes his shoulder. “It’s okay.”
Magnus stares. “You know?”
“Yes. I’m putting a stop to it.”
Magnus keeps staring at him, then the relief seems to catch up to him all at once and the warlock kind of falls back into one of the chairs at the nearby table, dropping his face into his hands and exhaling like he’s been holding that breath for a week. Valentine studies him. Bane isn’t that big really. A perfectly normal-looking man. Beneath the mohawk, the nail polish, the boots, the make-up, and the rage he’s actually just… this. A very stressed out and emotional creature staving off a panic attack in a conference room.
“Thank god,” he says. “I thought I was going to come in here and you’d tell me I was crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” Valentine says, moving to lean on the table beside Magnus. “I swore an oath to protect the people of this city. That includes your people.”
“Viggo and Verity were my friends, Val.”
“I know.” Valentine places his hand again on the warlock’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I’ve find who did this, I swear. It won’t be much longer now.”
Magnus reaches up, places his hand over Valentine’s. “Thank you. That… it means a lot.”
“No thanks needed, Magnus.”
The warlock looks up at him. Hmm. Valentine is old enough now to admit there are a few things he enjoys and one of them is having beautiful people looking up at him. Magnus Bane is one of the most powerful people in this hemisphere and he is, objectively, beautiful and right now he looks… ragged, exhausted, like he’s been in a fight recently, his make-up smeared from sleeping in it or going all night not sleeping and wearing it. His dark hari is touch-wrecked, the style ruined, his clothes rumpled. One could almost imagine this is what he looks like after someone fucks him.
Valentine wonders, idly, if Magnus’ cat eyes come out during that kind of thing or if he hides it.
“It is needed,” Magnus says. “The Clave needs more people like you. Looking for this. You understand. No one is infallible. Even nephilim are human and humans care capable of terrible things.”
“I know.”
“You have no idea how relieved I am. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No, Magnus. You’ve done enough.”
Magnus stands up and before Valentine can do anything about it, the warlock pulls him into a tight embrace.
“Really, Val.” He seems overwhelmed, his voice raw. “Thank you. I know I can trust you to make this right.”
The warlock is surprisingly sturdy in Valentine’s arms. He’s so… grateful. He’s leaning against him, his head tucked against his shoulder and its very odd how human Magnus can seem. How pliable. Valentine wonders what he could do with gratefulness this complete as he stands there, comforting one of the most dangerous men in New York, imagining the look on the half-breed’s face the day he realizes the mistake he’s made. He thinks it would be so… correct if Magnus would just fall to his knees right now.
Not for that (well, maybe for that) but just because that seems natural.
Magnus Bane built so many things for the Clave – the Portal systems, the ward walls, the rune apps, so many things. He’s so useful. He’s also still hugging Valentine long past it being strictly appropriate and Valentine should really let the warlock go. But there is something… about this. Knowing. Holding complete power over someone who has no idea, particularly someone as individually powerful as Magnus Bane – the vicious one, the summoner, binder, ward-worker.
Valentine suspects he could, if he wanted to, pull the warlock around and pin him to the table and he wouldn’t do anything to stop him. He won’t do anything to stop Valentine until it’s too late, the trap closing around an animal. There is a standing order, actually, not to kill Magnus if possible but to subdue him because of all the warlocks in New York… he’d have a place in the new world.
On his knees, of course, but a place.
“It’s going to be okay,” Valentine says, the way Luke or Jocelyn might. “Don’t worry, Magnus. You can rely on me.”
“I know.” He hugs the shadowhunter more tightly. “I know you won’t let me down.”
Valentine smiles.
#magnus bane#shadowhunters#shadowhunters fic#valentine morgenstern#crackship sh#rae writes#raewrites
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a scanner darkly
“imagine being sentient but not alive. seeing and even knowing, but not alive. just looking out. recognizing but not being alive.” -- philip k. dick, a scanner darkly
it ticks like the sound of a clock, a slow, steady rhythm as his eyes scrape the outside existence of the proto, a new model, an indistinguishable model. the proto looks back at him with eyes that glisten, blinking on cue, a curious head tilt and a frown on its face.
“is there something wrong?” the voice is deep, low. he’s handsome, of course, and appears upset and pensive. gael wonders if he’s making the man uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than he is himself. gael had developed the ability to recognize a proto at short glances, to know what their systems look like before even opening them. he’s never met one that passed his turing test absolutely, and while this one is no exception, its the closest he’s ever seen. there were nothing but small imperfections, subtle mistakes that seem less than human. this one was dangerous in that regard, its identity.
“no, you’re...” he didn’t know how to finish the sentence for a moment, his analysis coming back with no flaws, no issues whatsoever. whoever owned the machine, the man, sent him here without purpose. unless, of course, he sent himself. “perfect.”
he sees a movement, the proto’s hands reaching out, subtle moves towards gael’s own, an expression that reads too easily. he hesitates a moment, confused, before holding his own hands out. the proto doesn’t hesitate, grabbing his wrists and pressing gael’s open palms to its face, expression curious.
“how can you tell what i am? is there a difference?” the proto asks, wide, brown eyes staring back at him before moving his hands again, brushing its fingers against the lines in his palms. “i can’t tell the difference between them, which one is real, flesh and bone, and which one is like me. should i be able to?”
gael hesitates again, watching the machine with his eyebrows drawn tightly on his forehead, almost a loss for words as he thinks carefully. “you’re just.. different. built to mimic humans but not replicate us, not exactly. although, i suppose in a lot of ways, you’re better.” he finally decides, watching it run its fingers over his hands, feeling the pressure, the sensation of its silicone, how close it feels to skin. it runs something of a chill through his human arm and it shakes, just a little.
“ah, i see.” it says, grip changing on his human arm, moving its fingers towards his wrist, up his forearm before stopping at the bend of his elbow and then moving back. its hand tightens around his wrist, almost uncomfortably so but not enough for gael to say anything, too engrossed in its actions to ask it to stop. “i can feel it,” the proto says, “your pulse.” it pauses for a beat. “it’s irregular. you have heart problems.”
the comment unsettles him, though he isn’t entirely sure why. it isn’t uncommon for them to be built with such capabilities, to be able to detect human illness, disease, in the case of its owner collapsing being able to diagnose and sometimes even offer assistance while waiting for a doctor, but for some reason he feels nervous hearing it said in such a tone, so casually.
“it’s getting faster.” it smiles at him, dark brows pulling together, showing a little too much teeth. “do i frighten you?” there was a passing moment where it did, where gael felt as if he were in danger, when it suddenly released him, his hands falling loosely to his sides with a shocked look on his face. the machine just laughed, waving it off easily. “can i ask you a question?”
the tone changed so quickly he became even more so uncomfortable, uneasy. “uh, yeah, sure.” he responded, leaning back against his work table, arms crossing over his chest almost protectively, as if to make himself seem smaller.
“what do you feel? pain, pleasure... sensations, what are they like? i don’t feel those things, not physically. my programming tells me when to respond as if i’m feeling them, but i don’t.” its dark eyes trail from his face for a moment before locking back in. “you do, though.” it states, pretty face settling on a small smile, long lashes blinking slowly at him, eyes analytical. he very rarely finds himself this unsettled in his own shop, even the glitchiest of the androids at least showing patterns, sterile, or those that have consciousness showing tones in their voices. he clears his throat, shifting his position.
“pain is... well, it’s hard to explain but most people don’t like it. you feel it, and you never wanna experience it again. it’s the human bodies defense mechanism, it tells me what i shouldn’t be doing, what will damage my skin and my cells. pleasure is the opposite in some ways, you want to keep feeling it, but unlike pain, not everything that brings pleasure is good for you. sometimes there’s a mixture of both, and how people respond to that... varies. it either heightens the pleasure, or it destroys it.”
"then what happens to me when i do something i shouldn’t?” it asks again after a moment, that pensive look back on its beautiful face.
gael blinks, another chill creeping its way through his body, but this time he doesn’t respond physically.
“you break.”
there’s a long silence, and the machine stops blinking for just a few beats too long, like it’s processing, its expression far away before speaking again. “humans are... complicated. are we, protos, not?” the sentence comes as another question.
“no... some of you are.” gael answers carefully, not wanting to delve much further into the subject, not wanting to explain consciousness and all the complexities.
then the proto steps closer, too close, into his space, its hands returning to his skin but this time his face, thumbs brushing the area under his eyes, his cheekbones, his nose, his mouth, and gael stops breathing. he’s suddenly very much afraid, absolutely still with his eyes laser-locked onto its face, watching its eyes search his.
after a moment it seems to notice that something is wrong, soft expression turning confused again. “i do frighten you, don’t i?” it upturns his chin slightly with its fingers, a hand suddenly on his neck, running over his tendons, adam’s apple, and collarbone and his breath shudders, his apprehension forming into a full panic.
he finds himself trapped between his work table and the proto, frozen in place while its fingertips press to his throat in a way not exactly threatening but alarming. he wants to escape, to break way. he tries to keep himself calm, to push down the rising panic flushing through his body.
his breath catches, focused on the proto’s eyes that remain glued to his throat. his mind reels for something to say, something unoffensive, something to get him to let go.
“why are you here?” the phrasing is perhaps abrasive, but his tone is quiet, nervous. he can hear in his own voice that he sounds scared. knowing the proto feels his words under its fingers, the vibrations in his vocal chords, doesn’t help. “my diagnostics say you’re in perfect condition.”
“oh, well i-- there was--” the proto freezes entirely, its whole body stiffening. click. click. and suddenly it changed, its whole demeanor falling empty. it drops his hands, stepping away from him. suddenly it was synthetic, the humanity gael saw in it gone in an instant, like its bodies own defense mechanism. not pain, but intelligence.
“i believed i was having technical issues. i must have been mistaken. my apologies.” it says, a smile that only goes as far as its lips, its new disposition creating a scenario in which it had done nothing out of the ordinary, as if it had been nothing more than an average patient. “thank you for your time.” it finishes, turning away mechanically, a straight posture, solid bodied.
just as easily, it leaves, heavy steps and the wide swing of the door.
gael doesn’t move from his position for a long moment, breathing in the silence of his shop, his heartbeat thudding in his chest, shooting pain through his veins as he slowly calms himself down.
then, when he properly regathers himself, he closes for the night, and is greeted with disturbing dreams of the encounter.
#|| the will of one ( solo ) ||#{ uhh second times the charm???#{ also ignore my terrible grammar and time traveling tenses i wrote this in an hour and proof read it like 3 times and probs missed everythi#{ i also apologize if my switching between 'he' and 'it' in terms of the proto is confusing#{ in narration i want to use 'it' for the sake of not getting the two characters jumbled but in gaels mind its 'he'#{ so like it goes back and forth sdjfasjkdf#{ although i gotta admit that using 'it' is.... interesting and feels unnatural but using 'he' for both characters was very confusing#{ in terms of who was doing what
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Civilian - Chapter 1: Darkness
Previous Chapter: Prologue
Pairing: Negan x Fem!Reader
Summary: When you accidentally stumble onto Sanctuary territory, Negan takes you prisoner to ensure your arrival is purely coincidental. When no one from your group shows up, you end up becoming a citizen of the sanctuary and realizing just how dark your new leader truly is.
Chapter Warnings: isolation
Story Warnings: violence, gore, smut, slow burn, isolation, dark themes
Available on AO3 if you prefer to read there.
A/N: I apologize truly for such a long time gap between updates. I’ve been dealing with holiday stuff lately, and I work 12-hour shifts at night. I have quite a bit planned for this fic, but this chapter just really seemed like the reader was rambling a lot to depict her time in the cell. I apologize in advance that it’s a bit boring and there’s not as much of our favorite villain as we all would like. Also, I forgot to mention the fic is inspired by Wye Oak’s song “Civilian.” I listened to it on repeat, it just has an intense apocalypse feel to me.
Chapter 1: Darkness
The darkness wasn’t terrible at first. Spending most of every day in the scalding Virginian sun actually made you feel calmer in the dark, and this cell was no exception - after the impending panic attack had subsided, of course. You could still feel your heart beating steadily, your respirations coming at a quickened pace still yet. But after a few hours, the initial panic was fading. You were safe from walkers here. There was only one exit. You didn’t have to face the dangers of scavenging or being outside unprotected. Your fear was no longer sourced from your solitude; now it came from the thoughts of what would happen after your time here. Would that man, Negan, kill you on the spot? Would he let you leave? You thought again about how lean he was and how easy it would have been for any of his followers to take power from him. Why did they follow the older man so loyally? Were there any more followers you’d yet to see?
Questions built up in your mind that might not ever be answered, and in an attempt to distract yourself, you began to count the seconds - and then minutes - ticking by. Sixty seconds. One minute, two minutes, five, ten, fifteen. You stopped when you got to twenty-three, deciding that counting time was making you anxious all over again. You lost track of how much time you had spent in the cell. It felt like days, but no one had brought you anything so you knew that couldn’t be the case. You slid yourself down into the floor, your cheek resting on the frigid concrete, so that you could peak outside from the small slit of light under the door. You were disappointed as your eyes met with another concrete wall across the corridor. You knew what the place looked like before you had been confined to the cell, so you weren’t sure what you were expecting to see. Feet maybe, but with the amount of locks you were willing to bet were on the door, there was likely no need to guard you so closely. You were definitely alone.
You turned onto your back and attempted to fall asleep several times, but anxiety and worry tormented you, making it impossible to relax. You finally settled your back into the corner, facing the door and waiting. You wondered if anyone from your community would come looking for you. What would Negan and his followers do to them if they did? You vividly remembered the barbed wire glistening in the sunlight, wrapped tightly around his bat. It was ominous, certainly, but maybe just an intimidation tactic. Surely he would question your people before acting.
What worried you most was how you’d landed yourself in a cell over something as insignificant as the location of their community. Negan had said something about information, and that had sparked your curiosity. Maybe this group had a doctor or scientist that had vital knowledge about what had caused the dead to walk. You knew it was only wishful thinking, but a part of you had always held onto the possibility of a cure or antidote. Not having to see anyone else die or rot away to this damned disease? That would be all you could ever hope for. Before the end of the world, you had been a nurse. Wanting to help people had become second nature to you; it was what you were good at. When hell broke loose and you managed to escape the hospital you’d worked in, you holed up in your hometown for quite some time, collecting medical supplies and patching up people who’d been hurt. When your supplies dwindled down and most of your friends had departed to find their own families, you had been forced to leave for somewhere safer, with more supplies and food sources. Stumbling into a couple of kind people had been sheer luck, and you’d been with them ever since. Your role in your community was similar to your job before; you’d put dressings on everyone’s injuries, make sure they were eating okay, give what medicines you could, and monitor people feeling unwell mentally or physically. It’s what your mind kept lingering on: you could be killed or kept here, and that meant the people back home were going without medical care.
You barely noticed the sound of heavy, slow footsteps, before a voice cried out, “WHEN I GET OUT, I’LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU.” Huffing breaths and then a shrill yell kicked you out of your thoughts; a man’s voice a couple cells down, it sounded like.
With that, your calm demeanor disappeared. You felt yourself shiver at the echo of his deep voice against the steel and concrete corridor. He started to punch the door with his fists; flat, hard beats of flesh against the hard surface permeated the air, making you feel queasy. Your sanity was already stretched thin, a tightrope you’d been desperately clinging to balance on since you’d lost your group. Another man began shouting and you realized you were surrounded by prisoners, mad ones judging by the sound of their clamoring. Whoever’s footsteps triggered the men’s outburst began to grow louder. You expected to hear Negan’s dark timbre, but it was Simon’s loud voice that rang out.
“You all had better pipe the fuck down. I’d hate to have to tell Negan there’s an uprising in the holding cells.”
At the mention of Negan, the yells quietened into mumbles, and then silence. Simon’s boots grew louder still, and you scooted yourself up, as close to the walls in the corner as you could physically get. Three audible locks clicked before light flooded the cell, burning your vision. You raised your hands up to shade your face, shielding your eyes from the brightness. Simon knelt down in the doorway and addressed you, his voice quickly transformed from crass to serene.
“Okay, Doll. It’s been decided that your group isn’t coming for you, since it’s nightfall already and they would have to be suicidal or just plain stupid to go out in the dark.”
Your mouth was dry and your voice scratchy, but you’d managed to speak up, “I told you. I’m not trying to pull anything. I’ve never heard of this community.”
Simon nodded, “I know. But Negan’s got a lot of responsibility to keep the people here safe. And he doesn’t trust easily. None of us do. But he does have a soft spot for women. So I’ve been instructed to take you to the regular living quarters and make you a bit more comfortable. Let you get a few solid hours of sleep. Then he’ll talk with you and decide what happens next in the morning.”
Out of all the scenarios you’d imagined in your head - being beaten to death, thrown out into the darkness to become walker food, kept here until you rotted away - this had not been one of them.
“You’re not going to kill me?”
Simon laughed, “No. We might not be conventionally nice people, who is these days? But we aren’t evil either. Come on.”
He held a hand out to you and you hesitated. Should you really trust this man? You once again decided you didn’t have any other option at this point, and being anywhere other than this cell sounded great. If this was a trick or he was leading you to your death, at least you’d know soon. He helped you to stand; your legs shaky from lack of use all day. Once you had your balance, he pulled a pair of silver handcuffs from his belt.
“Sorry, kid.” He motioned for you to turn around.
You didn’t put up a fight, and let him handcuff your hands behind your back.
After your hands were secure, you walked alongside him, back out the way you’d come, and up a flight of industrial metal stairs. He led you down another hallway and through a pair of double doors, into what seemed to be an indoor flea market. There were various vendors, selling everything and anything imaginable. As you walked beside him, Simon continued explaining.
“This is our marketplace. Most of our people live on a system of points. Scavenging, going on missions, working, doing favors for Negan, all of that earns points. You can barter belongings, or use your points to buy things. Various foodstuffs, handmade clothes or blankets, weapons, room items, jewelry. It’s endless.”
Simon picked up a black crocheted blanket, a tank top, knitted shorts, a pair of dark jeans, a black tee shirt, and a few small soap bars as he walked you around the huge room. When he reached an end table near the door, a woman in a teal headscarf sat with a few notebooks and pens, holding one of the writing utensils out for him.
“Our form of “paying” for our goods,” he explained. When the woman looked up to see that it was Simon, she scribbled in the book herself and gave him a small smile before the two of you left the pay table.
Your curious expression did not go unnoticed by Simon, and he explained as he came to a stop. “A select few of us are exempt from the point system. We still have other rules to follow of course, but a few perks aren’t bad.”
You nodded, mentally questioning what an individual had to do to be an exception to the point system. You weren't entirely sure you wanted to know.
As you and Simon approached the same set of doors you’d entered moments ago, you noticed a woman leaning against the panelling, her arms crossed. Simon motioned her over and she pulled herself away from the wall, making her way over to you. She had her hair twisted into a blonde bun, a obsidian-toned tattoo contrasting the ivory skin on her neck, and a golden hoop nose ring on the left side of her nose.
“This is Laura.” Simon introduced her. You told her your name as well, out of respect, and she nodded.
“Laura’s going to give you the rest of the tour and make sure you get a hot shower and some food.”
Food was great, but the thought of hot water was better. You were sure running hot water was a luxury of the past, something that would be a mere story to tell future generations. Remembering what it was like to come home after a long night at work, standing bare under a hot stream of water cascading over you; it made your muscles tremble at the thought.
“That sounds amazing. Hot water.”
Laura chuckled a bit at your reaction. “Oh, trust me it is.”
Simon handed the items he’d bought to Laura, and clapped his hand on your shoulder. “I have to get going, but Laura will take good care of you. See you tomorrow.”
His touch made you flinch. Hours earlier, you’d watched their leader swing his bat around, threatening you. Fellow community members pointed guns and knives of all imaginable varieties at you, they’d shoved you into a cell like you’d murdered a handful of small children, and now he was fucking Mr. Rogers-level friendly. You felt the aforementioned tightrope of sanity you were still balancing on shrinking thinner.
Laura showed you a few more essential areas of the community; the latrines, the showers, the cafeteria, and a few of the living quarters. She’d said that was all she was permitted to show you for now, and when she offered for you to finally go grab a shower, she followed you. Not into the stall, thank God, but she removed your handcuffs and stood right outside, preventing you from escaping or wandering off on your own. As you stood under the near-scalding spray of water, you contemplated everything that had happened so far. These people seemed nice enough; after the threats, the barbed-wire bat, and the cell. They weren’t torturing or raping or slicing you to pieces. You hadn’t seen any vendors selling human body parts for soup. But it was blatantly obvious that they still didn’t trust you. And maybe it was wrong, but that just made you want to investigate this place further. There was bound to be something shady going on, or something of utmost importance that needed protecting. Simon had said it himself; Negan had a huge responsibility to protect the Sanctuary. And you couldn’t help but linger on why.
After you finally left the shower, Laura escorted you to the cafeteria and sat with you as you ate your meal; a leafy green salad and a marinara-smothered pasta that you couldn’t remember the name of. Cellentani? Cavatappi maybe? It didn’t matter now. Pasta was easy to make in large quantities and it had been one of your favorite meals before the end had come; you weren’t going to complain about it. You didn’t know if you were hungry or if the food was just incredible, but it made your mouth water and you didn’t think you could eat another bite once you had finished. Laura tried to make small talk, and you hadn’t been rude, but stuffing your face with pasta made it surprisingly difficult to carry on a conversation.
The place wasn’t nearly as crowded as it had been at the marketplace, and you surmised that it was getting late. Candles and low-energy lamps lit the corridors now, as the sun was absent in all of the large windows. The main area with the stairwells had previously been brightly shining with abundant amounts of sun whenever the men had brought you to your cell. Laura had recuffed you and led you through the dimly-lit halls to one of the living quarter rooms. It held two bunk beds, a full-size bed, and two floor cots. Three of the bunks were taken, and there were two people asleep in the full sized bed. Laura took your cuffs off again, handed you the items from earlier, and pointed to one of the floor cots and the small cubby area near the doorway you were currently standing in.
“Your stuff will be safe here. Try to get some sleep. Who knows what Negan will decide for you tomorrow.” You could tell she wasn’t trying to intimidate you on purpose, she seemed like a blunt, matter-of-fact kind of person. It still bothered you nonetheless.
When you changed into the tank top and shorts Simon had given you, stored your few belongings away, and started to try to get comfortable in the floor, you noticed Laura kept standing.
“You aren’t sleeping?” You asked, hushed so as not to wake anyone.
Grinning, she whispered, “I’m on guard duty for another four hours.”
She stepped outside the door, leaning against the wall outside of your room. They truly didn’t trust you not to escape. You didn’t really fault them for that though, because if given the opportunity, you couldn’t truthfully say you wouldn’t at least attempt to leave. Covering yourself up with the blanket Simon had given you, you adjusted onto your stomach and attempted to fall to sleep. Tomorrow morning was a mystery looming over your head like a storm cloud. You could be thrown out, defenseless. You could be kept captive. Hell, Negan could have you shot or stabbed to death by his bandwagon of followers. The worries were endless and daunting. What if someone back home was sick or injured and needed you? Would the group be out looking for you in the dark? They had more sense than that. You’d hoped so, at least. Would they think you left on purpose? Maybe they would be angry with you. Maybe no one would ever come looking for you. The nurse who left them all without any medical support, left them to die. You groaned, pulling your arms up over your head and ears, attempting to drown out the sounds of your own suffocating thoughts. After about fifteen minutes, the exhaustion in your bones finally caught up to you, and although your relentless thoughts never ceased to bombard your mind, you finally dozed off.
“Get up.” Unsure of exactly how much sleep you’d managed to get, you were suddenly being shaken awake. It wasn’t Laura standing above you this time; it was a man you recognized from your encounter early the day before. You couldn’t remember where he’d been standing, but he’d been pointing a weapon at you, that part was vibrant in your mind. You sat up, wiping sleep from your eyes and pushing your still-damp hair out of your face.
“Is something wrong?” It had to be early. Looking beyond him and into the hallway, the lamps were still lit. The sun hadn’t risen yet.
“...Negan wants to see you.” The thought of the older man made your stomach drop. This was it. Your entire future - how much longer you lived, if truth be told - dependant on a conversation you were seconds away from having. You stood and dressed in the jeans Simon had gifted you. Pulling your boots on, you left everything else in the cubby area. You stretched the sleep from your muscles before nodding to the man who’d interrupted your dreamless slumber. He cuffed you yet again, and turned to walk down the hallway, you following reluctantly on his heels. He didn’t speak at all, and you couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. The two of you walked up a second flight of stairs and down another corridor. Their distrust of you was good in one respect; with people escorting you everywhere, you couldn’t get lost. A likely possibility when every floor looked the same to you: all concrete and metal. The place reminded you of a prison, and it wasn’t just the cells on the bottom floor. The layout was all very similar. You assumed the building had been a mill or factory of some sort, but you had no clue as to what they would have made here.
Traversing one winding hallway after another, you finally arrived at your destination. The man you followed stood back as he opened a plain-looking door, the light eggshell paint on it chipping off at the edges. There was a long table in the middle of the room, and two lights hanging overhead, dimly lighting the place. Negan sat at the head of the table, in his same leather jacket from yesterday. His inky black hair was slicked back in perfect contrast to the surprisingly bright material of his white shirt. The bat was lying ominously on the table in front of him, and when you looked up to briefly meet his eyes, he was grinning at you.
“Long time, no see.” His voice echoed in the room and you could feel your heartbeats speeding up in your chest. The man who had led you here pushed you further into the room, before stepping in and closing the door behind himself. He approached Negan, holding out a key for what you guessed could only be your handcuffs. Negan palmed the tiny silver key, and the guard turned to leave. The door had quickly closed again, punctuating the fact that you were now utterly alone with the leader of the people who’d turned at least a dozen guns on you yesterday. Alone and at a disadvantage, the cuffs biting into the skin of your wrists as a reminder.
“So your people didn’t show up last night. What are we gonna do with you now?”
Read Chapter 2 here.
A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger guys. I’ll definitely update sooner than last time. And maybe even get myself on a weekly schedule? Happy Holidays, and remember comments/suggestions always welcome!
Taglist: @ohokaybyethen , @miiraal
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Crazy 8 Chapter 1
The door is unlocked. Come in and see the show. I put on quite the show. Or maybe I think I still do. But maybe you're not here to see the spectacle.
You wanna fuck? Please don't hurt me! I'm afraid! Go away! No wait! Let know put my mask. We all wear a mask.
I'm still in that basement! And I spend my hours of madness alone in the dark, apart from the mercy of he that did not give his life for me on the cross.
Don't be afraid. It's harmless. A simple point, I'm in the happy place. I can take off my mask. The show begins.
Suddenly waves of pleasure, worlds, no, universes beyond anything you could wildly imagine pour over you leaving you with no other option other than ripping your clothing off and getting your freak on. Yeah. You're gonna fuck without coming for air for days.
That's the story in a nutshell. But the insanity runs much deeper and you want to hear.
Did I slam last night, right hear in this room? Hardly. No, not at all! Doing so, well, at least at this moment would not help me get Sally Pickles back and that's all I want.
Who is Sally Pickles, you ask? Well, it's complicated and I'm not sure where to start.
Let me start from the beginning.
"Are you sure? Because once I push this plunger and it goes into your veins, you will be an addict. "Look around you. Everything you see and love, they're gonna go away.. Your gonna lose everything."
He didn't know me. sure. But he knew the Bitch, Tina, Crystal Meth and the world of insanity it gives birth to. In an instant I fucking knew I had been enslaved.
From that moment on my life was in ruins and I have struggled every moment of every day with the most life ruinning addiction on the planet.
They say it's a sex drug and it is. Well, at least for the first twenty minutes for the first few months., Later the apps on your phone call out to you and drag you away to search endlessly for what, I never knew and never found.
In the end it becomes only about finding someone who can "Admin," find a vein in your arm, and someone who isn't going to steel your shit.
That always proved impossible and it played deep into the worst of an unspeakable early life tragedy. It's like finding yourself forever locked in that basement with your abducter, outside the presence of a God that I am not really sure I want to be with, if he even exists at all.
I have overdosed 17 on the bitch and I wish I could even lie and make you believe they were all mistakes. But why should I give you the shallow comfort of believing that you could be smart enough to not make that mistake. It would be a lie and I want to tell you the truth.
From the second the 15000 pleasure endorphins hit your system it's only a matter of time. You are going to have come down and you are going to get some more and slam again. And that's when you do it. As suicidal idiation goes, clinically speaking, you won't kill yourself at rock bottom. You're in too much pain. But trust me, once you shoot up again the thoughts are still there and you are motivated. You are going to kill yourself.
Are you afraid? Do you still want to try it? I'll delve a little deeper. But how can I tell you without having you think me mad?
Truth be told, Meth is maness.
Sitting at my window, peering endlessly into the night at strange people outside my door, a white Chevy Vega Station Wagon pulls up outside my old first floor apartment and about fifty people, all appearing to be in their early twenties jump out and start spreading like fire ants at a picnic.
It quickly became toxic.
Running into the yard behind the two buildings vertically to the front of my own, they all gather at bathroom window of the Pentecostal minister who keeps the ugliest pigeon pea tree outside his living room window.
They are climbing in and out of that tiny window at the same time, exiting with brown bag lunches. Seeing me, they run behind my building and listen to my thoughts through the electrical outlets.
I have to warn Peggy, my friend not to look out the window or she might have to make them lunch.
But they read my thoughts, smashed her window and dragged my poor friend out, over the jagged shards sticking up from the window frame. As I say there in horror I could do only one thing, I called the police.
As the Orange County Sheriff's Department cars poured into the lot, Red, Philp's biggest customer, a man I loathed for his desire of my boyfriend, jumped out and yelled "Saddle up!" And quickly they all began jumping back into the car through the backseat windows that Vegas don't even have.
Running out in my underwear, thank God I had not come to grips with my being a transgender female yet, I began waving my arms intotal desperation, screaming "Stop them they killed Peggy!"
Then, suddenly there were bright lights and guns pointed at me.
"Please! I'll show you!" I waved my arm to lead them, but only one followed.
Standing at the scene pointing at Perry's smashed window, the deputy placed his hand on my shoulder and whispers, "It's ok."
Suddenly, we were standing alone in the Florida night. It wasn't real. "What the fuck is going on? Philip is going to think I'm crazy! "
"Phil Snyder? You're dating Phil Snyder?" " No! His name is Philip! " "Yeah. That's him. Let's go to your apartment and talk."
Back inside my apartment my apartment he said only four words "Get away from him." Then he placed a small piece of paper with a phone number on my kitchen and walked out.
In the morning before Philip got home, I guess I should mention that Philip cooked Crystal Meth for a living, I dialed the number. "New Horizons. May I help you?"
It was a drug rehab. I quickly hung up the phone and slammed. And shortly after that Philip came home with food from IHOP.
Looking back, before Tina, the bitch, I wonder. Would you believe that I used to be a body builder, that I would run five miles every day, that I was a vegetarian and later a pescatatarian?
I was impossibly strong, at my best benching 525. But that was with the help of the needle, yes, steroids. And that's when I met him.
My spotter, Bob, leaned over the bar and whispers "There's this guy who's been checking you out over by the treadmill." When I saw him, probably the cutest guy on the planet, I waved and asked Bob to leave.
"Hi. I'm Philip." I could tell he was smart. "Hi my name is Joseph." But he thought I was making fun of him and went to walk away. But I walked after him and apologized. And then he invited me to lunch.
Long story short,we end up at my place and it's getting hot. But holy fuck, 14 inches! And that's when I met the bitch. Three days and two 8 balls later we came up for air and ordered pizza. And when he saw me trembling he wrapped his long legs around me and held me in his arms. "I've watched you for so long and now if you want I will always be there to hold you when you tremble." It was,has always been and shall always be the most romantic moment of my life.
He moved in a few hours later and my life has never been the same.
You're always gonna try and slam more than the last time I quickly learned. I started seeing objects moving back and forth on tables and my Florida Windows, locked tightly, were opening and closing on their own, night and day. I thought Philip to be hard of hearing because he never heard the music that kept coming out of the air conditioner every time I turned it on. It was driving me crazy!
Finally Philip did an inventory of his stock, a 75 pound package hidden behind the false wall we had built in the closet and he laughed. In 16 days I had gone through 2 ounces 1.5 grams. I was already a full blown addict and I remember us jumping in the air giving high fives at the amount I had been using. I was a rockstar!
I had been alone for all my life and suddenly I wasn't. I no longer found myself hiding behind the illusions of who I was expected to be. I could finally take off my mask and reveal myself without gear of persecution.
Philip gave me a Meth allowance and he allowed me to invite friends from a list of slammers , Grand Slammerz as we were and are still known as, to Party and Play when he went out to cook a load every week or so. Sodom and Gomorrah had been resurected in our apartment.
For most and best part there was Philip and me, Vagita, Kevin the carpet tweeker, Leo Biggie, Angel, Gunner, Mike, Christian, and the occasional stray or random.
At one point I even partied with the Bolivian Consulate to Florida.
Now, a funny thing happens you're a slammer. You stop eating and about the only time you do drink is to wash the taste of the ass you just ate out of your mouth. So, I guess in a sense you do eat, if you consider ass a meal.
My slamming Had not distorted my perspectives to the point where I didn't realize that I actually had to eat though. Wait! who the fuck am I kidding? About the only thing I put into my body besides Tina, cock and Philip's cum was a single cup of plain, steamed white rice, one Sunnyside up egg and homemade, sugar free lemonade everyday, never more, never less. My best friend Vagita worried and was the only one who voiced concern.
One night when I was heading into the shower to get myself ready for a night with Vagita and the carpet tweaker I happened to get a glimpse of myself in the dresser mirror. Holy fuck! what the fuck? Who the fuck, no what the fuck am I? I had gone from being a bodybuilder, a raging bull, to a stick figure. It was insane. I ran into the walk in closet and grabbed my scale.
I have gone from 256 pounds with 14% body fat to an unbelievable 139 pounds with 8% body fat. I screamed for Philip and he came running in.
"Do you like it" he asked . I had always his my femininity behind my weight lifting. "I do?. It kinda makes my dick look longer. After that we both ended up slammed out of our minds, fucking in front of our guests all night and into the next. The aftermath was toys everywhere.
From that point though I realized that I had to increase my calorie intake. If I wanted to increase my slams beyond what anyone could believe. My passion had become to slam the most and eventually I reached a hight that no one I know has ever touched. I slammed an entire 8-ball.
But that's something for a later chapter.
I was never really a coffee drinker, but when you slam is by the gram, as I was, you end up alone in a room full of passed out tweakers from time to time and sometimes just in an an empty apartment after everyone has gone home.. So what to do? What the fuck do I do now? I would go for a walk on South Semoran Boulevard to the new hot spot, WaWa.
If you hadn't heard they serve coffee and oddly enough I was in the mood.
About the hardest choice in being a meth head is do I slam, smoke or booty bump. This coffee thing was insane. There were like 9 different types of coffee and a dozen different types of mills and creamers! I would always end up up choosing the Cuban and going with the Splenda and half n half. It was the best cup of coffee I had ever tasted in my life.
On this particular night, sitting there in the night, alone with my 18 ounce cup of Cuban heaven I was content just listening to the Florida night. It was the first time I had been alone and out in public in a couple of months. Philip was overly protective of me and I didn't mind it in the least. I actually loved the fact that for the first time in my worthless like someone needed me, someone beautiful needed me. We needed each other. Suddenly, I yearned to get home and sleep with him, wrapped in each other's arms with Sally Pickles nestled safely between us.
Sally Pickles. God I'm in such pain right now. God lied to me. Me never believe in God.
I met Sally Pickles on December 24th, 2013. My father had b-een murdered by my stepmother. She'd thought it the humane thing to do to stop feeding and hydrating him. By the time I'd gotten the call my dad was dead, just a heart beating inside a bag of skin and bones. I never got to say goodbye. Seeing how depressed I'd become, my Mon that bought me to meet Sally Pickles.
When I saw her sitting in her cage my heart was broken. The poor little girl was quivering in fear. And when I picked her up she look up at me and reaching her paws up licked my chin.
From that moment on there was not a time that we were not together for more than a couple of hours. But now she's been stolen by a woman who calls herself a reverend, a Pat Bumgardner of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York City. Again, long story, but we'll get there.
By the time I got home Vagita had left, the carpet tweaker had recovered about an 8 ball of shards of Tina from the carpet and Philip was in the shower. The three of us decided to head over for some IHOP.
The stuffed French toast was mind boggling, but I only had one piece. Sally Pickles ate the rest .
After that we headed over to Lake Eola Park and spread out a blanket so that all 3 of us could cuddle. Kevin was an amazing cuddle. We just laid there and unwound for a few hours. It was really nice, all three of us pressed against each other in the cool shade with Sally Pickles laying on my chest I finally fell asleep. I had been awake for 6 days.
That night Philip left to go cook and I that's when I met Christian, well, I guess I should say the first time I chose him from the list.
Christian was into getting fisted and if I'd had a dollar for every time I'd shot a load watching fisting videos I'd either be really rich or broke. I never could save a fucking dime.
It was kind of strange watching this guy come in with actual pro camera equipment. I mean, the fucking guy had some really good shit, all pro! So I was like, you can't film in here. This is Philp's apartment just the same as it is mine and I don't think he's gonna be happy. He laughed and asked if was tweaking. Then he asked if I could at least call him and ask, which was difficult due to where Philip was and what we were doing but reasonable and still early enough to do. So I made the call and because I was considerate enough of his privacy, he said we could.
My life is falling apart as I write this and I will let you know that this might be the last few days of my life. The horrible truth is that Sally Pickles was stolen from me by the church I'd mentioned and if I can't get her back I have no reason to not go for the unthinkable ounce slam, that this hell might finally find peace, wether or not there is a God and if there is, why did He punish me so harshly.
Philip is gone. His life ended on February 19th, 4 days after I finally broke down and said yes. I had agreed to become his forever. He'd burned his meth lab and left the laptop there. They'd found it recovered every fucking crumb of data and indicted him.
To give you an idea, the Sippie thing was on that hard drive. He never took into account that he had worn a fucking mask. We all wear a mask! So it was a mother fucking skull fuck! He was facing the fucking needle.
As my year was going, I had a Jesus freak neighbor who was making me lose my fucking mind. This son of a bitch wouldn't keep his fucking mouth shut! Having to wake up every morning to this psycho bsstard begging Christ to heal me had me over the edge and it had caused an argument between Philip, still in Florida and me, now in the Bronx.
The night before Philip took his life I had gone to a sex party behind his back. Itt had left my mind in a place I'd never known before and I had no idea what to do .This I ended up making a mistake I might regret forever.
Philip and I had an argument about my neighbor. Philip wanted me to just ignore him but it's fucking impossible to ignore someone yelling through paper thin walls at you at the top of their lungs.
My last words to the love of my life were "Ignore him? Like this?" and I hung up on him and blocked him. But I swear I never meant to hurt my baby.
I had seen a guy at that sex party and he had consumed my thoughts. We spoke only, a few words to each other and then we hooked up. He had entered the place in my heart where no living soul had ever been. His name was Ivan. He was everything I wanted Philip to be.
When the indictments were handed down he tried to reach out to me but I wasn't there! Oh my God! I wasn't there for him and he'd always been there for me just as I'd always talked him through his nightmares! I let him down and now he's dead and it's my fault.
To compound matters, my neighbor pulled a knife on me one Sunday afternoon as I was doing laundry and the cops were called. In the end, because they could not see the knife on the camera I was arrested and charged with filling a false report by the ultra transgenderphobia 42nd precinct of the N.Y.P.D.
They locked me in a cell with a toilet that wouldn't flush and had no water in it after several people had shit in it. It was fucking horrible. On top of that they marched prisoner after prisoner to my cell threatening to put them in with "The freak."
A few weeks later I saw him again Ivan, Ivan Dudnik. We ran into each other on a Friday and spent the most incredible weekend together. Then on Sunday, as we marched in pride he asked me to marry him.
It was God fucking dammed crazy. But there we were the next morning at city hall getting married.
I'll talk more about Ivan later on. But he did walk out on me 17 days later for a woman, the bitch, yep, you guessed it, Tina.
Now, as we go through what lawyers are calling the Armageddon divorce, Ivan has made allot of false accusations against me and I ended up having to spend 3 days in jail trying to clear my name. In the process Sally Pickles was to have been babysat by a church that stole her and gave her to a family within the church.
I will know within the coming 48 hours if I will get her back.
On top of all of this, as I ride the 3 train home right now to my shelter in Brooklyn, I do so mourning Steven, a guy I had just begun seeing. The bitch took him tonight.
She took Philip, she took Ivan and now she has taken Steven. Needless to say, about the only thing I'm holding on to is the hope that I will be with Sally Pickles before the weekend. If not, the bitch can have one more.
Life is just too fucking horrible right now. It's like trying to drink sour milk when you're blasted ass drunk off your rocker. All you wanna do is puke your life out.
I have to argue though. I love Crystal Meth and I live to slam 8 balls.
so I guess you wanna hear about it, the fucking crazy 8 as I alone know it. And that's ok just don't fucking pretend like you don't wanna know.
When I do it I have to be in a place where I can freak the holy fuck out for at least 3 days, out of the earshot of any good fucking Samaritans. Because there's nothing worse than having some dickhead worry about you when you are in the middle of an unstoppable constant orgasm. And that's what happens. As soon as the shit pours into my veins I start shaking and my dick starts shooting com like I was pissing it. I end up with mouths full and I make some fucking demon possessed noises. Then I catch my breath and the fuck fun begins.
It's me alone. Remember, I told you, someone who can find a vein who won't steal your shit? Impossible. Plus the fact that I have subway tunnels for veins, I do it my fucking self. And I have no problem fucking myself hard.
Break out the toys! It's time to play! Ok, just one now, actually two and I'm looking to up size. So I go for the 14 by 8 inch first and ram it right in! Instant second orgasm! I go with that one for about a day and half, leaving me perfectly ready for my own fist which I'm only able to take for a short while before I cramp and have to stop altogether. So I tend to put that aside these days. Anyways, at that point I usually break out the 24 inch and it disappears inside of me, no problem at all.
Shit! That's not what you wanted to hear.I guess I'm still trying to put on the show, quite the show.
You want to know how it feels. Tell the truth. You fucking know you wanna try it just once. Again, who the fuck am I to lie? It's scary as fucking death the first time and you really think you're dropping dead. It burns your lungs ice cold like a fucking bitch and no matter what, you just have to remember to keep breathing as fast as possible until the wave evens out inside of you. It's impossibly amazing.
The first time I did it I was just about to give Philip the distress signal for him to dial 911 but I looked down and he was enjoying the shower of cum I was spewing so I waited and was glad I had.
You really need to be with someone that knows what to do and won't panic. You need to listen and get talked through it or yeah, you're gonna panic and end up in the emergency room, jail or prison. I don't recommend slamming an entire 8 ball, needless to say. But you're gonna do what you want to do.
Just don't say I didn't warn you.
The biggest problem you're gonna have is psychosis, instant chemically induced psychosis. That's why you totally can't do this. You're not ready to see the demons, the fucking shadow people. And once you see them they see you and they never leave you alone. They listen to your thoughts. The voices are really real, not auditory hallucinations, but rather the voices of those who don't know they are dead because they were high when it happened.
For the most part, they gather in parks, where they feel at peace from those who cannot see them.
"Hey genius. Wake up." I was in Demetree park, naked with a 10 foot gator some 30 feet away. How the fuck did I get here? My ass is killing me! "Yeah. I tried it and passed out. When I woke up you'd placed a Craigslist ad to find you here ass up with this in you." And he pulled the dildo out. "
I'll never know just how many times I got pounded that night. There were allot of freshly used condoms there, not yet baked by the Florida sun.
I had been there for only one night. But for months people were asking me when I was going to hang out in the park again.
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Crazy 8 (chapter 01)
Most times, if not all, there's no one there except the occasional passerby and the rare someone. So, I sit there in silence, pondering, debating the inevitable words that always escape my lips, The door is unlocked. Come in and see the show. I put on quite the show. O.k. maybe I think I still do. And if you're not here to see the spectacle then why exactly are you here? Are you a cop? Hey you wanna fuck? Please? I'm really a good fuck? All I ask is, please don't hurt me! I'm afraid! Just don't expect me to share my shit! Oh fuck! Please don't leave! No! Don't go away! I can throw you a slam. No wait! Can you self admin?Let me know. I can if you don't fucking watch me. I'm gonna put on my mask! We all wear a mask.
I open the door and there's nobody there. It was the fucking shadow people.
I'm still in that basement! And I spend my hours of madness alone in the dark, apart from the mercy of he that did not give his life for me on the cross.
Don't be afraid. It's harmless. A simple point, I'm in the happy place. I can take off my mask. The show begins.
Suddenly waves of pleasure, worlds, no, universes beyond anything you could wildly imagine pour over you leaving you with no other option other than ripping your clothing off and getting your freak on. Yeah. You're gonna fuck without coming up for air for days.
That's the story in a nutshell. But the insanity runs much deeper and you want to hear.
Did I slam last night, right hear in this room? Hardly. No, not at all! Doing so, well, at least at this moment would not help me get Sally Pickles back and that's all I want.
Who is Sally Pickles, you ask? Well, it's complicated and I'm not sure where to start.
Let me start from the beginning.
"Are you sure? Because once I push this plunger and it goes into your veins, you will be an addict. "Look around you. Everything you see and love, they're gonna go away.. Your gonna lose everything."
He didn't know me. sure. But he knew the Bitch, Tina, Crystal Meth and the world of insanity it gives birth to. In an instant I fucking knew I had been enslaved.
From that moment on my life was in ruins and I have struggled every moment of every day with the most life ruinning addiction on the planet.
They say it's a sex drug and it is. Well, at least for the first twenty minutes for the first few months., Later the apps on your phone call out to you and drag you away to search endlessly for what, I never knew and never found.
In the end it becomes only about finding someone who can "Admin," find a vein in your arm, and someone who isn't going to steel your shit.
That always proved impossible and it played deep into the worst of an unspeakable early life tragedy. It's like finding yourself forever locked in that basement with your abducter, outside the presence of a God that I am not really sure I want to be with, if he even exists at all.
I have overdosed 17 times on the bitch and I wish I could even lie and make you believe they were all mistakes. But why should I give you the shallow comfort of believing that you could be smart enough to not make that mistake. It would be a lie and I want to tell you the truth.
From the second the 15000 pleasure endorphins hit your system it's only a matter of time. You are going to have to come down and you are going to get some more and slam again. And that's when you do it. As suicidal idiation goes, clinically speaking, you won't kill yourself at rock bottom. You're in too much pain. But trust me, once you shoot up again the thoughts are still there and you are motivated. You are going to kill yourself.
Are you afraid? Do you still want to try it? I'll delve a little deeper. But how can I tell you without having you think me mad?
Truth be told, Meth is maness.
Sitting at my window, peering endlessly into the night at strange people outside my door, a white Chevy Vega Station Wagon pulls up outside my old first floor apartment and about fifty people, all appearing to be in their early twenties jump out and start spreading like fire ants at a picnic.
It quickly became toxic.
Running into the yard behind the two buildings vertically to the front of my own, they all gather at bathroom window of the Pentecostal minister who keeps the ugliest pigeon pea tree outside his living room window.
They are climbing in and out of that tiny window at the same time, exiting with brown bag lunches. Seeing me, they run behind my building and listen to my thoughts through the electrical outlets.
I have to warn Peggy, my friend not to look out the window or she might have to make them lunch.
But they read my thoughts, smashed her window and dragged my poor friend out, over the jagged shards sticking up from the window frame. As I sat there in horror I could do only one thing, I called the police.
As the Orange County Sheriff's Department cars poured into the lot, Red, Philp's biggest customer, a man I loathed for his desire of my boyfriend, jumped out and yelled "Saddle up!" And quickly they all began jumping back into the car through the backseat windows that Vegas don't even have.
Running out in my underwear, thank God I had not come to grips with my being a transgender female yet, I began waving my arms intotal desperation, screaming "Stop them they killed Peggy!"
Then, suddenly there were bright lights and guns pointed at me.
"Please! I'll show you!" I waved my arm to lead them, but only one followed.
Standing at the scene pointing at Peggy's smashed window, the deputy placed his hand on my shoulder and whispers, "It's ok."
Suddenly, we were standing alone in the Florida night. It wasn't real. "What the fuck is going on? Philip is going to think I'm crazy! "
"Phil Snyder? You're dating Phil Snyder?" " No! His name is Philip! " "Yeah. That's him. Let's go to your apartment and talk."
Back inside my apartment he said only four words "Get away from him." Then he placed a small piece of paper with a phone number on my kitchen and walked out.
In the morning before Philip got home, I guess I should mention that Philip cooked Crystal Meth for a living, I dialed the number. "New Horizons. May I help you?"
It was a drug rehab. I quickly hung up the phone and slammed. And shortly after that Philip came home with food from IHOP.
Looking back, before Tina, the bitch, I wonder. Would you believe that I used to be a body builder, that I would run five miles every day, that I was a vegetarian and later a pescatatarian?
I was impossibly strong, at my best benching 525. But that was with the help of the needle, yes, steroids. And that's when I met him.
My spotter, Bob, leaned over the bar and whispers "There's this guy who's been checking you out over by the treadmill." When I saw him, probably the cutest guy on the planet, I waved and asked Bob to leave.
"Hi. I'm Philip." I could tell he was smart. "Hi my name is Joseph." But he thought I was making fun of him and went to walk away. But I walked after him and apologized. And then he invited me to lunch.
Long story short,we end up at my place and it's getting hot. But holy fuck, 14 inches! And that's when I met the bitch. Three days and two 8 balls later we came up for air and ordered pizza. And when he saw me trembling he wrapped his long legs around me and held me in his arms. "I've watched you for so long and now if you want I will always be there to hold you when you tremble." It was,has always been and shall always be the most romantic moment of my life.
He moved in a few hours later and my life has never been the same.
You're always gonna try and slam more than the last time I quickly learned. I started seeing objects moving back and forth on tables and my Florida Windows, locked tightly, were opening and closing on their own, night and day. I thought Philip to be hard of hearing because he never heard the music that kept coming out of the air conditioner every time I turned it on. It was driving me crazy!
Finally Philip did an inventory of his stock, a 75 pound package hidden behind the false wall we had built in the closet and he laughed. In 16 days I had gone through 2 ounces 1.5 grams. I was already a full blown addict and I remember us jumping in, the air giving high fives at the amount I had been using. I was a rock star!
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