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januaryembrs · 2 months

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I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE | Marc Spector x reader

Request: @happyhauntt says - okay i am BEGGING for a fic based on the song 'forest fire' by brighton (be warned that shit HURTS) but i fully cannot decide between poe dameron, steven/marc or spencer reid so i am giving you full creative direction and i look forward to getting my heart ripped out!!

Description: Marc had always carried her with him, since they were small kids playing pirates in the yard, before things got messed up by grown up feelings and burdens. It's not until he sees her twenty years later, he realises he should have saved her.

length: 3.9k

Warnings: Heavy warnings for childhood / domestic abuse/neglect (both from Marc and also reader has a neglectful father) warnings for alcohol, the cave scene, drowning, death etc. you asked for angst, so I served!

authors note: sorry this took so damn long, today isn't even my day off and I have been too exhausted to even look at my computer, but I hope you like it!

Before Randall was too little to be part of his adventures, Marc used to play on his own in the yard.

Usually that entailed kicking a football at the wooden fence that lined their garden, trying to knock it off his chest when it would come bouncing back the way he’d seen the professionals do it, even if it had led to three milk teeth coming loose already.

But there weren’t kids on his street to play with, at least that’s what he thought until the one day he kicked his ball a little too high and watched it fly right over the top of the fence, bouncing into the neighbour's yard, a soft “ouch” meeting his ears.

In minutes, a little head appeared over the wall, beady eyes frowning down at him, and he realised it was a girl around his age, maybe a little younger.

“Did you lose this?” She held up his soccer ball he was worried he was going to have to kiss goodbye to forever, the small digits of her other hand holding onto the fence tightly.

“Yeah! Sorry, I didn’t mean to kick it so high,” Marc said, and with no more explanation than that, she threw it over to his side of the partition, and her tiny head disappeared back below the fence line.

He felt stunned. He knew there were moving boxes over that way a couple weeks ago, but as far as he could see there was only a man living there on his own, a scowl on his face most days. Marc had seen him shouting at the other kids on his block to stop riding their bikes in front of his house because it ‘upset the dog’, though Marc had yet to see for himself this canine friend he was speaking about.

But there was a girl living there! A real life girl who spoke to him; granted he had lobbed a heavy soccer ball at her, from what her distaste told him, and he wondered if perhaps, despite the grumpy look on her face he realised mirrored the man he’d seen living there, that she might like to even make friends with her neighbour.

“Wait!” He yelled, running up to the fence where she had slipped away from him, grabbing on to the top and pulling himself up to the point he was on his very tippy toes and he could only just about see her yard.

The grass was unkempt, which was odd because Marc’s own dad cut the grass every fortnight, and there were planks of wood with nails sticking out of them strewn across the side of the shed she had used to pull herself up with. He fought the urge to cringe in disgust, because there, looking up at him from where she was making a daisy chain in the long, dry grass, alone in a pink plaid shorts and a white, dirt stained top, was the girl.

“Do you want to play?” Marc asked, his foot nearly slipping under him where he was trying to rest it on the wood to take a closer look, “I have tennis, or swing ball we could play?”

She looked interested at the mop of curly, black hair for a moment, before she looked back at the house that he had still yet to see any sign of a dog.

“I’m not sure my dad would like it…” She said cautiously, almost whispering to him, picking the soil under her nails.

“My mom could come around and get you, she could talk to him,” He offered, because this was when his mother was still mom and not Wendy.

Before she had yet to flip his world entirely upside down with her cruel hands and vicious tongue. Before Steven.

She seemed unsure, biting her bottom lip and stroking her arms like she was giving herself a cuddle. But she nodded, looking up at him, and he tried to hide just how excited he was to finally have someone to play with.

“I’m Marc,” He said, grinning at her, his tongue poking between the space where his adult teeth were only just growing back in.

She told him her name back, and it was the first time he understood what a crush was.

–

“Marc, I’m not sure we should be doing this,” She said, grabbing his hand so tight he thought his heart might explode.

“It’s okay, we come here all the time, don’t we, RoRo?” He reassured, looking back to where Randall, now a few years older and big enough to play with them, held onto the side of the cave, his own face nervous.

“All the time!” The little boy echoed, because Marc knew he had a bit of a thing for her as well, because she was older and cool and smelled like a field of flowers and he hated seeming like he was scared, even though he was.

He was just a kid.

They were just kids.

And being kids, they stumbled into danger without realising it, not even when the rain started coming down outside torrentially and they had to pause their game of pirates to run for cover. They hadn’t expected, in their childish excitement to continue the adventure, that the water would start pooling into the cave; that it would fill up like a basin, whether they were in there or not, and it wasn’t until the screaming started that they realised they were in the kind of danger that required an adult.

Marc was the first one to get out, his hair soaked, his heart racing, and he used a grown up word he heard his dad use sometimes because he could have sworn they were both right behind him.

And if that had been true, then where were they?

He called her name, debated going back in there himself to see where they had gone, then he yelled for RoRo, because she didn’t seem to be answering.

And there was only silence, except a clap of thunder overhead that said the rain was going to get worse; was not going to stop for hours.

Which was when he ran to get his dad.

By the time Elias got there, his glasses wet and steamed, his thick thatch of curls too similar to Marc’s soaked through, all he could see was a head of hair peeking out of the mouth of the cave, and his heart sank.

He dragged her out of the dark water, arms under her shoulders as he rolled her on her front and started patting her back, trying to get her to spit some of the water out, because her face was ice and her skin was soaked and her playsuit was ripped from where she’d snagged it on the rocks.

Marc remembered crying into his hands, gaze flicking back to the cave to see if RoRo was right behind her, if he was just waiting to be pulled out as she had been.

But there was nothing. Nothing but rain water and moss and those damn rocks he’d been gripping onto not an hour earlier.

His heart leapt when she spluttered finally, after his dad had thrown her over his knee and taken to giving her a one handed heimlich right between her shoulder blades. She spat the water out, her body shivering immediately, eyes bleary as they looked around as if she expected to still be in that dark hole in the wall, and Elias set her down on the grass to go look for his youngest son.

“Stay with her, Marc,” He barked, uncharacteristically sharp for him though Marc guessed it was fear, and took off towards the cave again. Marc pulled her into his arms, and it was only then they started wailing together.

They sat there for an hour when the rescue team finally arrived, a medical team with warm hands and even warmer blankets ushering them to the safety of the back of an ambulance, and the last thing Marc remembered for that horrible day was sitting on the stretcher with her pressed against his side, trembling under the reflective wrap they’d been tucked in that made them look like baked potatoes, wishing he had never suggested they go in that damn cave.

–

“You’re leaving?” She said, her lip quivering, her eyes lined with tears. They sat on his bed, his duffel bag already packed, his acceptance letter burning daggers into his head from his nightstand, “Military? Marc, just think about this for a minute-”

“I have thought about it. I’m not some dumb kid making rash decisions, I want this,” Except he didn’t, not really. What he meant to say was he wanted to leave, to run away and never come back, but the idea of never seeing her again was too difficult to think about.

She thought about it for a moment, and he held her hand when he saw her face really start to crumble then. “If you go, I’ll have no one left. You’re all I have,”

He didn’t hide the fact he saw how nervous she was when Marc would pick her up from her house and her father would see her out the door, a nasty, inebriated glare in his eyes at the Specter boy. He saw all the times she would tiptoe around the floorboards, the way he knew too well, as if she was scared of what would happen if she took up too much space, made too much noise. Or when his mother had been kind, way back before any of this had happened, and had fussed over her pretty hair, had piled food on her plate because Wendy said she needed the goodness, she had locked up entirely and looked at his mother as if she was an alien.

Even now, when they were both seventeen, nearly adults in the grand scheme of things, he knew her father was cruel.

“I’m sorry,” He said honestly, and he felt his own throat clogging up with real emotion he only ever let himself show when he was with her, “When I get a place of my own, I’ll come back here, and we can pack your bags together, and we can live far away from all of this,”

And it sounded like he was spinning her a fantasy; which he was. She felt like an idiot for believing him, for flashing him a small smile and leaning her forehead to his which was the closest they ever got to admitting how they really felt about each other.

He wanted to kiss her then, before he left to start his new life, one where they could be happy together, and he made a promise to himself that when he came back for her that would be the first thing he would do.

He could see it now; he would be in some kind of flashy car with the top rolled down, a man grown from the regime and fitness they would teach him in the army and she would come running to him like an angel parting the clouds, like a dream that was finally within reach, and he would kiss her then, so hard it would make up for the time they had lost, the time they had grieved together, it might even make up for that day she nearly died because of him.

So he left her, that fantasy of coming back to her keeping him going in the months of training, during roll call and exams and the small, clinical portions they would serve him in the military.

But that day never came. Somewhere between losing himself to the alter that had formed and led a full life separately to his, between hiding Steven from the ugly truth and becoming a mercenary after dropping from the army, he tucked the dream away as a what if, and he didn’t return back to that house where his mother had caused so much hell.

Not until the second day of her shiva, that was.

“Marc?” He forgot how sweet his name sounded from her lips, and he hated to admit it in the middle of his drunken state, but he’d wished he’d never heard it again in his entire life.

Because the second his front door opened, and a woman in a long black dress, heels and lace gloves stared back at him with a face that looked similar to a girl he once knew, only a notch between her brows that said she had done nothing but frown for twenty years, he wished he had never seen her again.

She was beautiful, more beautiful than he ever gave her credit for, yet she looked tired. Sunken. Like she had wept and screamed alongside all the frowning.

“Marc,” She said it more determined this time, pacing down the stairs to his home, her footsteps rushed and worried, “Are you okay?,”

He knew he must look like a mess. He hadn’t stopped crying for three days since he got the first phone call from his father in almost two decades, since he’d learned his mother had passed, and he was already a bottle of whiskey deep by the time he’d stepped out the cab onto the street he grew up on.

He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought she would be there. He guessed she would be far away from this place, just like he had been, in a mansion with a 401k and a dog and a neurosurgeon for a husband. She had always deserved it.

But here she was, grabbing the bottle out of his hand gently, rubbing a hand over his shoulder like not a day had gone by that they hadn’t seen one another, and it didn’t take him much convincing at all to pull her into a hug he had needed since the day he left.

“My mum’s dead,” Marc said, sounding like a little boy again when he wept into her neck, squeezing her body to his, and he felt her rubbing his back soothingly.

“I know, Marc, I’m so sorry,” She hummed, and she smelled like a fancy floral perfume he couldn’t afford to give her before, “I know you must be feeling complicated,”

He nodded, because he couldn’t have put it better himself. He felt complicated.

“I missed you,” She said, like it was a confession, and he cried harder, his face burying into the crook of her shoulder.

“I missed you too,”

“How’s Steven? Is he still around?” She asked, pulling him away to root through her pocket for the pack of tissues she’d kept handy for the day. He took a deep breath, rubbing his sleeved arm over his face to dry it even the slightest. He could feel his cheeks sopping wet from where he had sobbed in the back of the cab like a madman all the way here.

But she was still fussing over him, and she looked just as pretty as he had remembered her, sitting on his bed that day, if not only a little more tired under her eyes.

Ofcourse she had known about Steven. How else was he supposed to explain the times they would be playing boyfriend-girlfriend together and he would become a different person.

Sometimes Steven would remember her too, because it didn’t matter to her who he was, she was his best friend either way. He remembered a girl who smelled like summer, sitting on the swings and eating ice lollies together, taking it in turns to push each other, blue tongued and happy.

“Yeah, sometimes,” He replied quietly, as she handed him the tissues, “He misses you, too,”

She smiled at him with her lips pressed tightly.

“I take it you’re not coming in?” She said in a careful tone, and he shook his head quickly.

“No- I just can’t,” He said, tears welling up in his eyes in seconds, and she wrapped him in another hug immediately, soothing his hurt as fast as it had bubbled back up.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, you don’t have to,” She hummed, stroking down his back gently, and he hugged her tightly as if she was the only thing keeping him together.

He opened his mouth to speak when his front door opened again, and he worried for a second that it was Elias.

Instead, he saw a girl no older than five emerge in a cute, poofy dress that met her knees, her hair tucked into a neat braid, lace gloves matching her own as she lingered at the doorway.

And perhaps the thing that struck him the quickest; she was the damn near double of the girl he’d hit in the head with his soccer ball in that very yard.

“Mommy,” The girl said in a gentle coo, her eyes empathetic as she met his gaze, more empathetic than he knew children could feel. But, he supposed, if she was her daughter then it didn’t surprise him in the slightest.

His best friend turned, her face smoothing out into something peaceful when she saw her little girl, and he knew then she was born to be a mother. Nothing like his own, nothing like Wendy, and he cursed himself for not seeing it sooner.

She was a mother.

“Yes, baby?” She said, half stepping towards her child as the girl stumbled down the first step towards them, and she was quick to swoop her into her grasp and onto her hip.

“I need to use the bathroom,” The girl said shyly, peeking a glance at him over her mum’s shoulder, and she waved at him with tiny fingers.

He waved back, even if the sight of her had dumped a bucket of cold water all over his body.

“Alright, baby. Just wait in the foyer, I’ll come take you in just a second, I’m just speaking to my friend right now,” She said, stroking over the back of the girl’s hair softly, and kissing her chubby cheek. “Is that okay?”

She nodded, and her mum kissed her once more, plopping her back on the top step to direct her back into the house. And they were alone again.

She looked at him guiltily, stepping back towards him as she fiddled with her sleeves nervously, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get childcare and I don’t really know anyone in state anymore-”

“No, it-it’s fine,” He stammered, feeling her watching him for his reaction carefully, “What’s her name?”

“Dalilah,” She replied, rubbing hands up her arms to calm herself.

“Where’s her dad?” Marc asked, hoping he didn’t sound bitter, but the whiskey made it sound like a bite.

She shrugged, “He wanted the cars and the house when we split; I wanted her,” She said calmly, like it wasn’t one bomb after another to be dropped on him.

He knew nothing about her life. He had tried to run away from that promise he’d made her for twenty years, because he knew he would never be good enough for her; that he could never give her the happiness she deserved, even before he had become the Moon Knight.

At his core, he would rot her, ruin her. He would destroy her.

And yet hearing it was just the two of them alone, he felt like he could take out the piece of shit who ran out on them barehanded and go home to sleep next to her soundly.

He felt like perhaps, as much grief and anguish as returning back to that house had caused him, perhaps this was his second chance. His chance to be what she needed, to be something good.

He would be so good to them. He would give them everything if she asked.

“I’m not really in town much, especially with my dad still around,” She said, gesturing to where her yard still stood, full of junk and a dog that had supposedly been kicking strong for two decades, “But I would love to see you again. Lila has school most days so you’re free to come over any day of the week if you want it to be just us; I work at home,” She scribbled an address about two hours away down on a piece of paper, along with her phone number, handing it to his distraught face with a sad smile, somewhat hopeful he would take the olive branch she was shaking his way.

He took it with a nod, his bottom lip still trembling before he bit it hard enough to force it to stop. He would love to see her, if he would even allow himself something good. If he would just let go of the resentment for everything that reminded him of that time, he could see the two of them healing one another slowly, but surely.

She could fix him. And he could fix her. The way it had always been with them.

“Yeah, I’d love that,” Marc said softly, allowing her to grab him tightly one more time, “I really did miss you,”

She laughed, not properly more like a sad breath out, squeezing him to her, “I loved you so much. I never let you go, you know that?”

He tried not to sob, almost holding her so maddeningly hard she couldn’t ever leave.

But he had to let go eventually, and he watched her walk back up the stairs to where his family mourned, her face glinting with something hopeful, holding a flashlight out to him where he was walking around in the dark blindly.

He tried to smile back, though he knew it wouldn’t be the same, wouldn't be truly untouched by the grief he wallowed in.

And by the time he got back to his hotel room, alone, even more drunk, Khonshu had another job for him that would whisk him away for two weeks. But he kept her number, the piece of paper gripped in his hand tight, like he was determined to keep his promise this time around.

He dialled her number exactly fifteen days later, his body aching, his nose bloodied, but something lighter in his chest at the prospect of seeing her again. The light in his dark, the girl on the swings he’d once pretended to marry during their game of house (the rings had been tiny daisy chains she’d woven together just that morning, their officiant was Randall who could barely ride a bike let alone remember the vows he was supposed to say.)

Only when the phone got put through, a different woman answered, and the light flickered back out into something cold and dark and vengeful.

“Oh, oh god, you haven’t heard?” He swallowed thickly, “She was hit by a drunk driver last week picking Lila up from school,” The woman, her cousin, explained, her voice teary and solemn, and he didn’t doubt she’d had to make a thousand of these calls the past few days, “They said it was quick, and Lila went fast so she wasn’t in any pain- and she was only in the ambulance for ten minutes before her heart stopped so she wasn’t hurting long either-”

But he put the phone down, his eyes wide, his body numb, his chest empty and lonely.

Because the very last bit of good in him was gone; because everything he touched was cursed and tainted from the offset.

It took what felt like twenty cups of whiskey for him to black out that night, he knew sleep would evade him, he knew not to even bother trying. And Jake Lockely woke up for him, something mean and hateful in the black of his eyes.

He didn’t care who, but someone was going to pay for his cielo being taken from them.

#marc spector x reader #steven grant x reader #marc spector fanfiction #moonknight x reader #marc spector imagine #moon knight x reader #moonknight imagine #jake lockely fanfiction #jake lockely x reader #steven grant imagine

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loverhymeswith · 10 months

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Let's Be Alone Together || Part One

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x F!Reader

Summary: Ever since Tommy swore an oath to your dying husband, you've been a part of the Shelby family. Two years have passed and the two of you are still weighed down by grief but perhaps you can find solace in one another's company.

Word Count: 1.2K

Warnings: ptsd, mention of death, implied drug use, language, not beta-read

A/N: My first Tommy fic after embarking on a rewatch of Peaky Blinders. If there's interest in this, I have more chapters in mind!

Part Two

“Where the fuck is Tommy?”

Arthur Shelby’s commanding voice cuts through the buzz of chatter. Gradually, the small crowd gathered in The Garrison’s snug falls silent. Not as quickly as they would have done for Arthur’s younger brother, but he has their attention at least.

Glaring at the occupants of the private side room, the eldest Shelby brother takes another breath. “I said, where the fuck is-”

“We heard you the first time, Arthur,” Pol pauses her chain-smoking to interject. Even with the cigarette now resting between her painted fingers, her burgundy lips are pursed, displeasure evident in the fine lines of her face. “Shouting louder isn’t going to make him magically appear. Let’s just get on with it.”

Sitting quietly in the background - quite literally, you are tucked away in the corner of the room - it strikes you that they should have noticed earlier. The presence - or lack thereof - of the head of the Shelby family rarely goes unobserved. After all, Tommy is usually the one to call for council. For him to be missing, something must be wrong.

All eyes are fixed on the centre of the room as a discussion breaks out between Arthur and John on the merits of waiting for Tommy, so it’s easy for you to slip away. You’ve often wondered why you’re invited to these family meetings in the first place. A sense of duty to your late husband, perhaps? Ensuring you don’t feel left out? Or maybe it’s just their way of keeping an eye on you.

Two years have passed since Tommy swore an oath to your dying husband as they fought side by side in the Somme, and still the Shelbys treat you as one of their own. Pol, the family’s matriarch with a temper to match the size of her heart; sweet Ada who treats you like the older sister she never had; Arthur and John - a pair of brothers watching out for you as you navigate your way through widowhood.

And then there’s Tommy.

Tommy, who delivered the news of your husband’s death in person and held you while you broke down. Tommy, who put a roof over your head and food on your table when you could no longer afford the cost of rent. Tommy, who gave you a job and a purpose and a family.

You owe a lot to the Shelbys, but none more so than Tommy.

It’s likely your imagination, but sometimes it feels as if he acts differently around you. Like he’s more open with you than he is with the others. Maybe it’s the loss the two of you share. The grief that, given half a chance, might have swallowed you whole had Tommy not saved you.

But who is there to save him?

The streets are quiet at such a late hour, the rain having long since driven everyone inside so there’s no one around to witness your hurried approach to Tommy’s front door. You rap firmly, but you’re not surprised by the lack of response. Instead, you slip the spare key from your coat pocket. The one given to you for emergencies. The door opens with a soft creak.

Climbing the stairs, your heart races. The sweet scent of smoke fills your lungs and you hesitate at the bedroom door, suddenly fearful of what you might find on the other side. Tommy's habit isn’t quite the secret he’d like to think it is, but he’s usually so careful not to let it affect his business.

Upon entering the room, your eyes immediately fall to the bed. Tommy is stretched out across the mattress, but this is no peaceful slumber. Impossibly long, dark lashes kiss his pale skin as sweat beads across his creased brow. The muscle in his jaw works as his scarred fingers clutch at the rumpled white sheets.

“Tommy,” you murmur softly, once, twice, three times until his eyelids twitch.

A familiar yet unnerving pair of bright blue eyes fly open and his hard gaze instantly meets your own, his chapped lips parting as he rasps your name. “What are you doing here?”

Fighting off the instinct that makes you want to reach for him, you hold your position a few steps away. “You’re late for Arthur’s family meeting. They’re all waiting for you.”

In a flash, he’s sitting up, curses roughly spilling from his mouth. The movement startles you, not least because he’s dressed in only his undershirt and slacks, the sweat-dampened fabric clinging to his skin. He seems vulnerable like this - without the armour of his sharp suits, so perfectly tailored to the hard lines of his body.

Of course, you’ve noticed him. Despite your history, you’re far from immune to his striking appearance. Thomas Shelby has both the look and will of a Greek God. Beautiful and damned.

When Tommy’s attention lands on the pipe discarded on the bedside table, the briefest flicker of shame mars his fine features but it’s gone just as quickly. With a soft groan he begins to straighten himself.

“Do you need anything?” You ask, averting your gaze. Without waiting for an answer, you add, “I won’t tell anyone.”

You raise your head in time to see his lips twitch but there’s no smile for you. Not today. “What would I do without you?”

Your cheeks grow warm and you turn away to fetch a damp washcloth from the adjoining bathroom. The weight of Tommy’s gaze follows you across the room. “I should be the one thanking you,” you call over the sound of the running water.

Tommy waits until you’re by his side again before replying. “I promised him I would take care of you, didn’t I?”

“I think you’ve already gone above and beyond.”

A beat of silence passes between you, not awkward but not quite comfortable either. The scent of the smoke is slowly dispersing but a heaviness lingers in the air. Searching for something to say to offset the tension growing in your chest, you perch on the edge of the bed and angle your body towards him.

“They haunt me, too,” you murmur, offering him the washcloth. “The nightmares.” You might not have witnessed it first hand like Tommy, but at your steadfast request he had painted an unflinching picture of your husband’s final moments. Enough to ensure you plenty of sleepless nights.

Tommy’s piercing eyes search your face and you’d kill for an insight into what he’s thinking. To know what’s going on behind that unwavering stare. Despite your outstretched hand, he’s making no move to take the cloth from your hands.

Tentatively inching closer, you reach out and press the cloth to Tommy’s brow. His eyes shutter, feather-like lashes brushing his delicate cheekbones. Only when you’re certain he’s not going to push you away do you continue, smoothing the cloth along his temple and down to his jaw, carefully erasing the evidence of his troubles.

When his skin is clean you move to pull away, but Tommy places his warm hand over yours, keeping your hand and the cloth pressed against his skin.

“Does it help?” you wonder, almost breathlessly as you nod to the discarded pipe. Time might be ticking as the family waits but you find yourself in no hurry to return to The Garrison.

“I used to think so,” he tells you, firmly holding your gaze. “But now, I’m not so sure. Now…” He trails off. Turning his head ever so slightly, Tommy tilts his jaw until his lips brush against the tips of your fingers.

“And now?” you prompt hoarsely, as his warm breath fans your skin.

“Now, I think it might be better to feel something rather than nothing at all.”

Taglist: @a-reader-and-a-writer @crysxtal

#tommy shelby #cillian murphy #peaky blinders #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby fanfic #peaky blinders fanfic

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friccafracc · 2 months

Note

DROP THE FIC OR IM COMING FOR YOUR KNEECAPS

ALRIGHT OK BUT I NEED IT TO BE KNOWN THAT I HAVENT WRITTEN ANYTHING SERIOUSLY SINCE HIGHSCHOOL OK

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

“Something is after me. I know it is, I’ve seen it. It looks like a man, but I know that it’s not. It…. It’s face is like a mockery of something human- like- like if you asked someone who has never seen a human to draw or model a person’s face, their smile. No… I don’t think any human would be able to get it that wrong.”

“And I’m not crazy, alright? God, y’all probably get that a lot here, don’t you? You people specialize in crazy. Not that I’m anyone to judge anymore, given the shit I went through before coming out here. I didn’t even know a place like this existed outside the Usher Foundation. I just…there’s some weird, crazy shit out there I guess, and when I heard about y’all, I figured I should probably pay a visit. At least let someone know before I die.”

“I know I’m gonna die.”

“I suppose I should start from the beginning. My name is Joshua Nelson, I’m originally from the States–Memphis Tennessee. Now, if there’s one thing you should know about Memphis, it’s that nobody in their right mind should EVER move there on their own accord, ‘cause you’ll either get mugged or stalked or both. I was born and raised there, so I never really got the choice during the formative years of my life. I’ve learned to live with it, though.”

“I worked retail in a gas station before…well, everything. It was a shithole. The kind of building where, no matter how hard you scrubbed and no matter how much bleach you used, the stains and smell of smoke would never leave. Instead just…mingled with the citrus of the chemicals. It paid the bills, though, and I was never witness to a robbery, so I couldn’t complain too much. The customers were docile and if I noticed anyone shoplifting, I kept it to myself. I wasn’t getting paid enough to give a damn.”

“We had regulars that would come in on a schedule and regulars that wouldn’t. People who were just passing through the city or visiting family or friends. You get all types in that kinda place, and if you’re placid enough to any asshole who’s having a bad day, everyone gets along just fine. There were a couple of regulars who were friendly enough, though, that I remember their names. Miss Kelly was an older woman, short and heavyset–she was one of the friendlier ones. We’ve got a lot of talkers in the south and boy did she make sure I knew every exact reason for what her kids were getting up to, or what was going on in a reality show she was hooked on at the time.”

“George Michael, a thin man in his 40s, maybe, always came in whenever he needed a new pack of cigarettes, I think he was a chain-smoker, cause he was in there a lot.”

“And then…then there was Hunter. Now Hunter was a younger man, maybe college age. A little older than that? Poor bastard was hooked on something, that much anyone could tell. He was gaunt, a little twitchy, you know, telltale signs of drug abuse. I could never tell what specifically he was on, but then again, it was never my business to know. I treated him the same as every other customer, we all knew he wasn’t gonna cause any harm, he usually came in for food, chips and hotdogs and stuff and he never caused a fuss.”

“I think… I think Hunter is dead.”

“One day he came in, I think it was a Wednesday or something cause it was slow that afternoon, and he burst through the door. Well–maybe not burst, but he came in the building like he was racing to get indoors first before someone else. The guy was usually jittery and, I’ll admit, a little shifty usually, but this was full blown paranoia. It startled me at first, his intensity, and he made a b-line towards the back of the store and ducked behind one of the shelves. Maybe not duck completely like ducking for cover, but it was obvious he was hiding. It almost made me expect the police or some drug lord to come storming through the door, but nobody else came.”

“Hunter stayed pacing in the building for a good 20 or 30 minutes, periodically lifting his head to crane his neck and peer out the window or the glass of the door. I checked once or twice as well, but if someone was out there, I didn’t see them. Eventually the guy calmed down enough to buy something and when he approached the counter with his bag of Doritos he looked almost like he was going to be sick.”

“I asked him if everything was alright, but he just shook his head and left.”

“I didn’t see him again for another week or two after that. Obviously I assumed the worst. I theorized that someone was after him and when he didn’t show up when he usually did it was more than enough to confirm my suspicions. Be it cops or some random person on the street, I couldn’t decide which fate would be worse, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel for the guy at least a little bit.”

“Hunter was almost completely out of my mind when I saw him again. I was surprised. By all accounts, it didn’t look like anything had changed about him. Maybe aside from the fact that his posture was way better than it usually was when I saw him, but other than that, nothing was out of the ordinary.”

“Business went on as usual and when he came up to the till with a liter of coke, I offered him a ‘Welcome Back’ and rang him up.”

“When I turned back to him, he was smiling. For some reason it was like a pit opened in the bottom of my stomach. I couldn’t understand why, though. It looked like Hunter–patchy, unkempt stubble, greasy hair, thin face, sunken eyes. His appearance had never bothered me before, so I was struck with confusion that mixed in with the undefinable, sudden sense of dread.”

“‘Thank you,’ he said as I handed him his change. And he walked out the door. It sounded like Hunter, too.”

“Hunter returned the next day, and the next. Each time he was polite and quiet, and each time he smiled when I rang him up. I counted his teeth. They were straight and flat. When I counted mine in the mirror when I smiled, I saw 17 or 18. Hunter’s counted 24.”

“Maybe he has a dental problem that I didn’t notice until now, I told myself. Human bodies are weird. Sometimes you have more teeth than usual.”

“The fourth day he came in a row, I saw his eyes and his pupils were…swollen, is the only way I can describe them. I know what people’s eyes look like when they’re high. This was not that. It was like they almost swallowed up his irises completely, and they were dull. Dull in the sense that the fluorescents overhead did nothing to cast any reflections onto them. It made me want to writhe and squirm whenever he looked at me.”

“I called in sick the fifth day. I knew Hunter would be back in that gas station to see me. I knew it was to see me. And I knew that thing. That..whatever it was. It wasn’t Hunter.”

“I guess a part of me was always dreading that day. I had always heard stories about people being stalked from friends of friends. It was only a matter of time before it happened to me, right?”

“I saw Hunter at the grocery store the next day, posture straight and face split open into that smile with too many teeth. I didn’t have the mind to be polite. I turned completely around and walked the other way, trying to fool myself thinking that he hadn’t seen me. I kept a pocket knife on me after that encounter. I probably should have been before, but hindsight is always 20/20.”

“Each time I saw him after that, it was worse. On the street to my apartment, his eyes were too wide and his grinning mouth was slightly agape. A crude facsimile of delight as I rushed past him. I stopped going into work when I started to spot him everywhere I went. Every destination no matter how far or random, he was there, grinning at me. He knew where I lived, that I had no doubt. So I went to a friend’s one night hoping to throw him off. Maybe I could move out and lose him. Lord knows I didn’t have the money to break my lease early, but I was desperate.”

“My friend suggested I call the police, but for some reason I was convinced that wouldn’t help. Cops usually only made things worse in that town, and I had a sinking feeling going that route would only waste my time.”

“The final straw was the second night I was crashing on my friend’s couch. I was exhausted, the past few weeks spent sleepless and paranoid and I was ready to finally pass out when I heard a light, rhythmic tapping on the window behind my head.”

“It’s just the wind, I thought to myself. A tree branch or something scraping against the glass. The exhaustion was completely gone, my pounding heart and pumping adrenaline overpowering any lame excuse that I would be stupid enough to be reassured by.”

“I didn’t move from where I lay. Tap. Tap. Tap. Came through the window once again.”

“I don’t know why I laid there for so long, unmoving, convinced that if I didn’t turn around, whatever it was outside would lose interest and leave. I really, really wanted it to leave.”

“I lay still for what felt like hours, every muscle in my body wound up and tense and ready to leap into action at any given opportunity. I was praying the opportunity would never come.”

“I don’t know how long it was when the tapping ceased, but it was long before I finally managed to relax. It seemed like my strategy worked. What an idiotic thing to think. Like I was a child hiding from an imaginary monster in the dark. Like the logic of not giving a stalker any attention so it would go away was sound. No. I think it was that false hope that landed me in this situation.”

“Because when that tapping came again, I wasn’t prepared to turn around. But I did. I turned around and what I saw in the darkness through that glass was… I don’t know what it was. I know it had eyes and teeth. It was grinning, but its teeth stretched well beyond what would be the borders of its face. God, I couldn’t see its face. I knew it was Hunter, though. It had those same lightless eyes that stared back at me every time I closed my own. Dead and dark and dull and staring at me–eating at me, wide and gleeful and spilling into the shadow that I could only assume was a part of the creature, itself. Its form took up nearly the entirety of the window, blocking the outside world. It didn’t move.”

“I screamed. I screamed and closed the curtains and I hid. This woke my friend of course, and she came stumbling out of her room, looking bleary but alert. I tried to signal to her not to go to the window or do anything or to call the police. Thankfully she got the message and the cops were there within the hour.”

“They didn’t find anything. Or anyone, for that matter. I left out the…the monster bit, because I assumed it might land me somewhere I really didn’t want to go.”

“They were about as helpful as I thought they would be. Told me to call them again if I noticed any suspicious activity.”

“I booked my flight here that very night. I wasn’t going to stay in that goddamn city with whatever the HELL that thing was. I don’t want to end up like Hunter. I don’t want it to wear my skin.”

“It will, though. I know it will and it scares me more than anything in the world. And I know I can’t escape it, either.”

“It followed me here. I saw it. It was still grinning at me and it was still. Wearing. Hunter’s. Skin. The shadow that was cast over it made it so I could only see the whites of it’s eyes....its teeth.”

“I don’t want to die.”

#txt #oc fic #tma sona #tma oc #avatar of the stranger #ITS BEEN SO LONG SINCE IVE WRITTEN FIC...PLS BE NICEYS

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ay0nha · 8 months

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LIFE IS BUT A DREAM | SHANKS (OPLA)

SUMMARY: You had done unspeakable things, figuring it was an acceptable way to siphon your affection. You were young and blinded by false idolization. Shanks chose to see the best in you, even now, even after everything. He, too, was blinded by an image of you that hadn’t changed since you were young.

PAIRING: OPLA!Shanks x f!reader (Gold D. Roger's daughter)

WORDS COUNT: 3K~

WARNINGS: canon-typical things, enemies to lovers, jail, talk of death and things related, morally grey reader, ANGST, RUSHED ending, flowery language, injuries, blood, murder, random ocs (aka fictional villains inserts), idk really what the plot is besides just straight angst lol, etc.

A/N: I got a couple of Shanks requests, so I combined them all as they were very similar. Thank you SO much to @wood-white-writer for inspiring my reader and helping me along, and @togenabi for entertaining my rambling! I'm begging you to go check out their fics because they are *divine*. Enjoy.

The waves that thrust against the coast lulled you into a meditative state. It made the time pass with uncertainty. Even the briny smell of the warm breeze cradled you in a way that pulled the weight from your shoulders.

You never thought jail to be so idyllic.

It was tempting to postpone your escape for a bit longer; there were only so many opportunities to stretch your spine and rest. Yet, your left eye twitched, warning you your premonition was soon to be true.

It was on the simpler side, a vision of dark shadows intentionally elusive. The bars that separated you from the world were bent, promising damage from the strength that wasn’t your own. You knew he was coming. It was sooner than you thought, but you learned long ago that your foresight would never be reliable.

It favored him over you.

When you were younger, you thought you were crazy, seeing apparitions or former lives. However, as years passed, familiar faces began to fill your vision, showing truths you became excited to fulfill. But they became warped with opposing desires and reverberating fear wreathed with vindication.

It made things sour and sore. It allowed trouble to seek you out just to be ill-prepared for your counter. It wasn’t bravery that energized you, nor was it skill. Pure spite drove you to be the worst of all.

“On your feet.”

The serenity you had slipped through your fingers like warm sand. The guard repeated his command, using force to pull at the chains connecting your limbs. You couldn’t help but smile at what he thought was a punishment.

“Rumor has it, you’re hot shit.” The guard scoffed, voice echoing the dripping hallways. The way he trailed your body exposed his lust. “They’re not wrong by the looks of it…”

The guard’s weak come-ons warbled in your ears like a white noise. You used the moment to fulfill a repeated daydream. That liminal space presented your strength as you pulled your chains around the guard’s neck until there was no longer resistance.

The conversations were typically cyclical, feigned disinterest to disguise the anxiety your proximity created or those whose egos convinced they could charm you. You stopped paying attention to the rumors the more embellished they became. To some, you were a mercenary; to others, a frenzied psychopath.

The only truth they held was how deliberately unrestrained you were willing to be. There was no rhyme or reason behind it; at least you were close to convincing yourself of that. Regardless, it had gotten you far, the only thing you’d even consider reliable.

“You hear something?” The guard perked, pulling you harshly toward him. How brave of him to use me as a shield, you thought. Your attention returned when it sounded again, “Shit!—

The bang was loud—time had bested you.

You were lucky to recognize the canon’s whistle and use the commotion to regain an advantage. The current reality had yet to become your destiny. If you moved quickly enough, you wouldn’t have to catch your death in such a dilapidated place.

Maneuvering your body unnaturally, you felt for the knife hidden on your thigh. The guard was panicking despite training not to split on whether to keep his eyes on you or the trouble you unknowingly caused.

Using his momentary stupor, your chains wrapped tightly around his throat. It was better than any dream to feel the way the air caught in his body, never to be released. Any lingering struggle stopped when your knife found an artery.

The blood sputtered, feeling warm against your hands. It was messy, but its carnality evoked an almost erotic sensation that was inimitable. Plenty felt power connected to the strength it took to take away something vital. It corrupted them and blinded them from the true potentiality of the action.

It made life seem like nothing more than overflowing fragility. It was well-known time with the world and sea was limited, and eventually, everyone would end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. There was a purposeful lack of originality there solely due to fear of change.

Yet, when one danced with death, you became the music.

You wiped your fingers across your neck, rubbing the tight knots that met at your shoulders. The fresh blood would stain your skin, but you craved a performance. You readied yourself for the approaching marine boots. The staging was almost too believable, but every second was convincing.

“Fuck. Fuck—” The words tumbled from your quivering lip. You couldn’t think of anything else, repeating the curse. You smeared the blood on your shirt, a mindless move to rid yourself of taking someone’s life. “Help me, please. This man—I don’t—he came after me—the others are still back there, they’ll be here any moment—I didn’t know what to do—

“Still with the theatrics, eh?”

Your crocodile tears ceased to stream down your cheeks. The feigned, horrified expression turned into an unearthed fury. Shame on you for missing the stray red hairs at the nape of the guard’s neck.

“Shanks.” You greeted dryly. “You’re early.”

It was hard for Shanks to meet your eye. He was far from intimidated, but the wild look in your eyes made him hesitate. The years had been kind to you as if you traded your soul for youth. But it was a foolish thought that the devil would be so naive to make a deal with you.

“Was that necessary?” Shanks nodded to the man behind you.

“And I thought the canons were a bit excessive.” You tutted as if your opposing opinions were trivial. “And yet here we are…”

“Love—

You hadn’t believed in love, and you were ready to carry that grudge—until him. It wasn’t proper love, proving your skepticism in the emotion correctly. But it was the closest you’ve ever been, could ever be.

You had done unspeakable things, figuring it was an acceptable way to siphon your affection. You were young and blinded by false idolization. Shanks chose to see the best in you, even now, even after everything. He, too, was blinded by an image of you that hadn’t changed since you were young.

“Let’s get this on with,” You stopped him, moving swiftly to feel the body below you for anything valuable. “Tumole gave me up, then? That’s how you found me? Bastard.”

You smiled at the image: Shanks holding the poor man upside down, kindness still in his threats to find you. Violence was never necessary with Tumole, always one to ramble away anyone’s secret for safety. However, it was as though you subconsciously left a clue, but you knew the crumbs Shanks found weren’t worth it.

“You really wasted your crew’s time on me...” You stood, pulling your neck until it popped. It had been a while since you had a one-on-one with Shanks, but you knew he’d always pull his punches. “Must really be desperate—

“I won’t fight you.” He tracked your posture. Your exterior was calm, but with every twitch calculated, you were nearing rabid. “It’s not worth it.”

“Tell me, then, what I’m worth to you, Shanks?” You taunted. It was obvious what he wanted to say: saving. His emotion was always his weakness.

His pause was intentional, stalling of sorts to let the exchange sink in. Standing under Shanks ' gaze, your body had a new form of reprieve. A facade wasn’t necessary, but you weren’t willing to lose more of yourself to another.

Your anger dissipated into a haze. It pulled a frown from Shanks as your breathing steadied only to slow. The harder you blinked, the more you forgot your argument. Even if you had held onto it, the lump in your throat wouldn’t allow it to exist.

Shanks’ lips shaped your name, but all you could hear was a mild ringing, a buzz. His step forward elicited an instinct to step back.

“Don’t—” You spat. Your left arm was like static, numb from the shoulder down, an ironic consequence of dismissing your opposite. “—fucking touch me.”

Your vision was the last to go, allowing you to watch yourself crumble; your knees locked, and the palm of your hands broke your fall, exposing how blood pooled from your arm. When did that happen? It had nothing to do with pain tolerance or adrenaline; you were distracted by your vision, doing what you could to change its form.

However, your effort was useless to make sense of it. You read it wrong; forgetting things such as foresight was rarely linear. As the world around you closed in, clouding your vision, you realized the open bars weren’t an entrance to your cell. Rather, it was the exit Shanks carried you through with success.

You were never destined to win.

—

The dream always teased you with muddled memories.

They always started the same, a mirrored image of the room you grew up in. Only a few feet separated the sacks the headmistress would call your beds. Your fingertips felt the scratchy fabric of the cheap blankets.

When the dreams first began, you believed they were real, that you’d never left the dormitory of the dingy children’s home. But the feeling of the monochrome bedding was always wrong, your dream never quite getting the textures correct. So, there was no room for nostalgia.

It was as if you were stuck in a loop, hand rhythmically gliding across the bedding in hopes of softening it. It was neither tranquil nor eerie. Its structure was that of a fever dream, its kaleidoscope quality provoking you to interpret it.

Its symbolization didn’t go past you, but it always felt uninvolved—superficial even. At the time, your child wonderment knew no difference between the life you had and the life you were meant to exist in.

As any child did, you dreamed of silks and decadent food. Candies and luxuries. You dreamed of family and warmth. Hope drove those fantasies, but there was no point in clinging to hope when you found out you weren’t wanted.

Gol D. Roger. Pirate King. The name circled every coastal town and seeped into every deep forest. His mirth was enviable, and his skill indomitable. You wanted to hold indifference toward him, but every bounty you saw enamored you. He made hope seem regainable.

You looked down at your hand, seeing your hand change shape with each slow swipe across the bed. Your slender fingers became older, calloused. Experienced. Moving to see the palm, you saw the lifeline had ended and an elaborate red sleeve scratched at your—Gol D. Roger’s—wrist.

You flinched as if you were burnt. You wanted to rid yourself of the attachment by any means. But it didn’t matter when your blood was intertwined. There was no escaping your lineage, your father.

The longer you lingered with the feeling, your surroundings slowly morphed. A wind picked up but hadn’t raised chills across your arms—not yet. You wanted to stretch now that your hand became your own again.

However, a sway lulled you into your environment. The ships were always different, never ones you recognized. You’d like to praise your brain’s creativity, but you knew you’d step foot on every deck at some point in life. If you were smart, you would have noted each and every one. It was hard to when the horizon seemed so…

“The tide is strange…” You hummed. Although your voice vibrated in your chest, it felt delayed, like an echo of someone else.

A hand trailed your spine with warmth. Goosebumps littered your body. You hadn’t thought to fight them, knowing the touch belonged to someone who put far too much faith in you.

“Am I finally rubbing off on you?” Shanks matched your hum, creating more serenity than you could handle. It was purposeful to calm you and invite you in.

“No, no…” You echoed again, shaking your head. Shanks continued with his charm, making promises that the sea and he could fulfill. However, your eyes didn’t leave the shore, the tide much more vast than you’ve ever seen. “...no, there’s—There’s something changing it.” You paused, nausea hitting you boldly. “...someone…maybe? Don’t you feel that?”

Another laugh, more hollow than the last. You had yet to face Shanks, only trusting his touch. It started to burn when you finally turned to him. He was physically present, but his eyes were vacant as if a copy of himself.

“Love, just try and relax.” His smile was plastered, almost painfully. “Nothing's wrong anymore. Nothing will change—

You frowned. “Shanks—

“She won’t hurt us.” Shanks caught you in his hold. You finally understood the deception and recognized the wolf in sheep’s clothing. “She gave me her word.”

—

You jolted awake.

The image wasn’t explicit, but it made you squirm; your back arched against the deck’s railing until your fingertips touched the waves below. You never sunk or floated, but you breathed in the water and felt it swallow you whole with a salty taste.

Your chest was tight, careful not to suck in your breath too quickly. Despite still being bleary-eyed, you knew you weren’t alone. You knotted your fingers in the bed’s fabric to ground you. The room's scent reminded you to breathe before succumbing to your subconscious torture again.

“You alright?” Shanks called from the deepest corner of the room. He was swift to strike a match to see your condition for himself.

The candlelight illuminated the gauze that nurtured your stiff arm. Shanks reprimanded you slightly as you pushed yourself up. Shanks knew you well, understanding that you were already seeking an escape from whatever plagued you. The look in your eye told him you would run regardless of a purpose.

“What did you see?” His voice remained calm, tone unwavering with vigilance.

“I didn’t.” Your defiance was your only form of defense on his ship.

Slight relief came from how Shank’s eyebrow dared to twitch with frustration. It meant he was real. Your blood pumped slower at the unorthodox respite. You continued to move, to stand despite your sore body. Shanks was still blocking your way to the door, but you paced lightly to rid yourself of the jitters.

“You can talk to me.” Shanks knew you were frazzled, and he was determined to coax the cause out of you. “I understand why you’re—

“Daddy dearest has nothing to do with this.” You hissed, hating the assumption. “Don’t you understand there was a reason your beloved captain left me to rot all those years ago? When will you learn to do the same?”

Shanks didn’t lack sympathy for you, but he understood why your father chose to keep you away from the life that proved only to hurt you. Shanks intended to keep the promise he made to you before you learned it was by the instruction of your father.

“I gave my word.” Shanks countered. His word choice made you flinch, your dream still fresh. He softened to repeat himself. “I gave my word to keep you safe. This has nothing to do with —

“Safe with a pirate, eh?” You scoffed, picking up what was most likely a stolen treasure. You held no qualms with his lifestyle, but you refused the overlap Shanks wanted to share. “That’ll be the fucking day.”

You felt a needle of pain in your nose like you were near tears, the guilt settling the bile in your throat. The game of cat and mouse was getting old. It was a facetious argument you used for distraction. The bravado you held was angry and vengeful.

“I know you’ve heard the rumors…” Shanks sighed as if his strategy to coax a conversation out of you backfired. “Cain is spreading out, searching for you. She won’t stop this time.”

You dropped the small object of treasure back into its place. Any emotion was swallowed and digested. There was little energy left to pretend to argue. You needed to leave the room before you suffocated. Shanks wouldn’t block if you tried.

You lingered, waiting for him to spit out the obvious. “Look, I know you saw her—

“I felt her.” Your expression, even mixed with vulnerability, was composed with passivity. Your composure could fool most, but to a trained eye, your discomfort was obvious.

Your admission was desperate, breaking a tension that had filled the air. You wouldn’t crumble. You tried to hold it in, breathing evenly to suppress any sobbing urge. It was neither the time nor the place for added emotion.

“I need to know the full story.” He replied thoughtfully.

He mistook his demeanor for bravery, but his true bravery formed by being across from you. The only barrier seemed to be Shanks’ incorruptible moral code, a space where you couldn’t quite freely exist.

You wanted so badly to trust him. You sought his comfort. The feeling felt foreign, so you prickled.

“You already know how it ends. What does the rest matter?” You always leaned on pessimism. “I want nothing to do with this. With her.”

“I’ll be beside you the entire time,” Shanks promised, voice low and steady, reflecting his sincerity. You could make out the warmth he was willing to share, but you couldn’t accept it wholly.

“And my interests?”

Shanks’ expression fell slightly at your evasive rejection. “It depends on where they lie.”

In an ideal world, you’d like to think you and Shanks could be friends. Frankly, though, his compassion made you nauseous. Or maybe it was nerves. The feeling was always hard for you to distinguish. You wished the way he looked at you would warm your chest, but it only reminded you of how that was another impossibility.

Although you were still present, Shanks watched you flee. Your guard returned stronger, but he didn’t regret his words. Shanks’ eyes were pleading, and you went to chastise him, but you found something distinct there.

You didn’t know what to do with it, but to muse a buried thought. "...Empathy will get you killed, Shanks.”

“Then, I am a dead man walking.”

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cherrycheolcoups · 1 year

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seventeen fic recs - werewolf au [hyung line]

started: 05/14/23

updated: 05/15/23

doing these by aus first lol. link to my overall fic recs masterlist here: unavailable for now. working on posting the masterlist

BY MEMBER:

choi seungcheol:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | cheol's series: chains

pairing: werewolf!seungcheol x human!reader | summary: according to what he has heard from previous alphas before him, leaders should be strong, initiative, confident and not back down from whatever it is they are being challenged with. he also knew that when it comes to you, he suddenly feels as though he is chained up and being tortured due to the fact that you wanted to deny him as your mate; but why? | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. cheol's is titled chains

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | cheol's series: alpha, alpha part 2, alpha part 3

pairing: werewolf!seungcheol x human!reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, college au, fluff, angst, mild violence but like super mild | word count: 4,999 | summary: seungcheol's pack doesn't always fight with each other, but when they do, they make sure to blow every possible secret they can in the process. well, except for the fact that you're supposed to be his mate. he has to figure that one out on his own.

spotlight by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!seungcheol x human!reader | genre: fluff | warning: none | word count: 2,219

huff, puff by @thepixelelf

pairing: human!reader x werewolf!seungcheol (hints of reader & vampire!jeonghan) | word count: 1.1k | warnings: descriptions of blood, a bullet wound, and injury. kissing. implied desire to go further but it doesn't happen lol | synopsis: when an injured vampire shows up at your door, you're of course there to help. but your werewolf partner is more than a little wary of this vampire's intentions.

tales from the pack series by @gamerwoo | cheol's series: stubborn

pairing: werewolf!seungcheol x human!reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, kinda thief au, fantasy, angst, slightly fluffy??, drugging but it's not in an evil context i promise | word count: 2,281 [this count is for the first fic] | summary: you've heard the stories your relatives told you about werewolves when you were younger, but you always thought it was just a scare tactic to make kids behave. well, up until you woke up in a den full of werewolves

untitled fic by @97-liners | cont.: here

pairing: werewolf!seungcheol x vampire!reader | word count: 1k | just domestic fluff

yoon jeonghan:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | jeonghan's series: palace

pairing: werewolf!jeonghan x alpha werewolf!reader | summary: jeonghan felt the pull that you were alluring out into the atmosphere as you had found out about vernon and his mate's meetups. he didn't expect for his mate to be an alpha whatsoever, but he knew that if you also found out about your mate bond with him, you wouldn't be so happy either as you had to decide whether you wanted to keep your throne or be with your mate | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. han's is titled palace

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | han's series: rare, rare part 2, rare part 3

pairing: werewolf!jeonghan x human!reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, college au, some angst, fluff at the end, a little crack, smut (oral, fem receiving), unprotected sex, choking, begging, dom!jeonghan | summary: jeonghan hates studying. he hates class, and he hates college. he doesn't understand why he even thought it was a good idea to enroll four years ago. but then he met you, and while you were cold to him at first, it only took a few days without you for him to realize why

night life by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!jeonghan x human!reader | genre: fluff | warning: set in a nightclub | word count: 1,221

hong jisoo:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | shua's series: broken hearts

pairing: werewolf!joshua x human!reader | summary: after years of being in relationships that he knew weren't right, joshua already gave up on the idea of finding his mate, until you came along. his ideas of finding his mate made him feel even worse as he came to learn that you and him were merely doing the same thing to fill the void of the broken hearts you each had. however, the question unknowingly lingered between you both as you thought, what made the other like this? | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. shua's is titled broken hearts

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | shua's series: two timing, two timing part 2

pairing: werewolf!joshua x human!reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, fluff, crack, slight angst but u gotta squint to even notice it | summary: you loved being with josh; you loved everything about josh, actually. you had a few minor bumps to work out - and one big one - but sometimes, it was nice to just ignore everything and be together for a while

the healing place by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!joshua x human!reader | genre: fluff | warnings: this whole story takes place in a hospital, mentions of falling, concussions, blood tests and blood | word count: 1,536

tales from the pack series by @gamerwoo | shua's series: second chance

pairing: werewolf!joshua x werecoyote!reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, fantasy, angst, possible character death, a little bit of fluff but it's like angsty fluff | summary: after his mate died, joshua always blamed himself and never wanted to imprint again. however, fate has other ideas when he meets you: a young, energetic werecoyote that's quite the opposite of him. he insists he doesn't want a new mate - nobody's even sure if he's ready for a new one - but he can't ignore his instincts.

wen junhui:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | jun's series: attractions

pairing: werewolf!junhui x female reader | summary: there was something suspicious that was in junhui's mind when he found you as he was merely grocery shopping in the city. although you seemed as though you were innocent and kind, there was an instinct inside of him that was telling signs of a duality you might hold, and he was ready to figure out what that feeling was as he wanted to know you more. | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. jun's is titled attractions

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | jun's series: hate me not, hate me not part 2, hate me not part 3 | china line's: ours, ours part 2, ours part 3

pairing: werewolf!junhui x female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, college au, enemies to lovers, angst, fluff and some crack at the end, smut, angry/jealous sex, dom!jun, unprotected sex, a lil overstim | summary: jun had imprinted a while ago, but he just never told anybody and kept his distance. you were a seemingly quiet girl who only ever studied in the library on campus, but junhui still constantly went out of his way to impress you whenever he saw you. he just didn't know that his actions were doing the opposite of what he intended

a little bit personal by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!jun x female reader | genre: fluff with a lili-speck of angst | warnings: none | word count: 2,409

kwon soonyoung:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | hoshi's series: inflamed

pairing: werewolf!soonyoung x female reader | summary: the both of you were almost the same individual, if you were put in rooms that were conjoined to one another; except the only conflict was that you both resented each other because of the past that you both shared. attempting to avoid your mating bond was almost impossible, up to the point where their passions of annoying the other was much more enjoyable. | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. hoshi's is titled inflamed

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | hoshi's series: two is better than one, two is better than one part 2

pairing: werewolf!soonyoung x female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, a lot of crack in the beginning, fluff, angst but it ends fluffy i promise, beastiality jokes because soonyoung pretends to imprint on a chicken | summary: all soonyoung wants is to find his mate, but he's starting to lose hope. it feels like all of his brothers are imprinting, and he's left alone and feeling an emptiness he can't shake no matter how much love he's surrounded with. but then when he finally imprints, he completely messes things up, and he's afraid he can't fix it. the only help he has is a three-year-old that seems unfazed by everything

smile! by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!soonyoung x female reader | genre: fluff | warning: mentions people's mouths and braces | word count: 1,218

tales from the pack series by @gamerwoo | hoshi's series: imperfect

pairing: werewolf!soonyoung x female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, fantasy, angst, a little humor at the end, lots of mentions of sex, lots of mentions of death, a couple implications of suicide but it never actually happened, depression, slapping | summary: soonyoung has always been desperate to find his mate, often going out into town at night to fill the void of imprinting that he craves so much. then suddenly, you (quite literally) appear in front of him. he'd always dreamed and fantasized about what having his mate would be like, but the reality is nothing like he expected

jeon wonwoo:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | woo's series: fragile you

pairing: werewolf!wonwoo x female reader | summary: wonwoo didn't expect to find out that you, one of his long time best friends, was his mate. the only thing that was stopping him from actually telling you that the both of you were mates, was the fact that you vowed to him that you wouldn't fall in love with another werewolf, even if they were your mate. he understood what you meant and why, remembering all of the events that happened in the past with your ex. | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. woo's is titled fragile you

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | woo's series: perfect, perfect part 2, perfect part 3, perfect part 4

pairing: werewolf!wonwoo x tall!female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, college au, fluff, angst, crack, some suggestive comments but it's really tame don't worry | summary: as a mate, it's wonwoo's job to make sure you as his girlfriend are protected, healthy, and happy. therefore, he's always there to constantly remind you that he loves everything about you; including your long legs, and weird shenanigans that you always get sucked into by his pack mates

photogenic by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!wonwoo x female reader | genre: fluff | warning: none | word count: 2,049

by the moon by @wonwoonlight

pairing: werewolf!wonwoo x mage!reader (ft. seungcheol, jeonghan, jisoo, jihoon, minghao, chan) | genre/warnings: fantasy au but i kinda just make my own universe, angst, fluff, hurt comfort, a little action?, suggestive at the end, mentions of blood and kidnapping, implied sexual activities (no smut) | word count: 18k~

tales from the pack series by @gamerwoo | woo's series: protector

pairing: werewolf!wonwoo x female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, fantasy, fluff, slight angst | summary: if there's one thing wonwoo hates, it's feeling helpless; like there's nothing he can do to stop somebody he loves from getting hurt. it's happened to him once before, and he swears it'll never happen again. especially not after he meets you

untitled fic by @kimkiyum

pairing: werewolf!wonwoo x female reader | word count: 598 | warning: breeding

lee jihoon:

moonlust series by @sunlightwoo | hoon's series: easing in

pairing: werewolf!jihoon x female reader | summary: it wasn't easy being someone's mate knowing that they were someone that jihoon was going to have some sort of difficulty with because of how different they were in personalities. breaking down walls and emotions are easier said than done, when in reality its unraveling stories and secrets that could've been tampered with or hidden for different reasons. | this is a 7 part series within a series. each member has a different masterlist. hoon's is titled easing in

imprinted series by @gamerwoo | hoon's series: scarred, scarred part 2, scarred part 3

pairing: werewolf!jihoon x female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, college au, angst, mentions of an abusive relationship, jealous jihoon, mentions of blood/bleeding, smut, angry sex, sorta semi-public bc it's in a closet, unprotected sex but his pullout game is strong, jihoon trying to be a dom but reader being stubborn, fluff at the end tho | summary: you'd had enough experience with werewolves for this lifetime, but another one waltzes right into your life and, quite literally, grabs your attention. all you want to do is stay as far away from him as possible, but there's just something about him that has you going against everything you promised yourself you wouldn't do

coffee break by @a-mixers-serenity

pairing: werewolf!jihoon x female reader | genre: fluff, angst | warning: food & drink | word count: 2,205

tales from the pack series by @gamerwoo | hoon's series: unfamiliar

pairing: werewolf!jihoon x female reader | genre/warnings: werewolf au, familiar au, fantasy, kinda angst but kinda not???, a lil fluffy ig | summary: jihoon's never really been considered a warm or affectionate person. his pack teases him about what it'll be like when he finally gets his mate, but he doesn't worry about it. little do they know that his mate is a lot closer than they think

#cherrycheolcoups #werewolf au fic recs #seventeen werewolf au #choi seungcheol #s.coups #yoon jeonghan #hong jisoo #joshua #wen junhui #jun #kwon soonyoung #hoshi #jeon wonwoo #lee jihoon #woozi

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impactedfates · 9 months

Note

Helo helo hi I've been uuuh reading your HSR stuff and I lov all of them!! Aozjebeusnsjs

Aneeway!! Feel free to discard this request if it makes you uncomfortable in any way

Dan Heng + Vidyadhara! Sibling! Reader [purely platonic] where he just got news that another Vidyadhara is now like, being released from the shackling prison [Idk if you can even be released from there] and Reader is basically suffering the consequences from the isolation for so many rebirths and all that stuff [lets say he's been Dan Heng's sibling for all rebirths so it hurts more.. But hurt/comfort hshsb]

I'm sorry if the request is too specific because I haven't really been seeing like platonic sibling stuff with characters

I hope you have a great day!! Remember to hydrate and eat if you haven't already!! Stay safe!! o(>∀<*)o

A/N: Hello hello!! I've only written 1 HSR thing so far (by the time I got this, I hadn't posted the previous Blade fic), but I'm glad to see you seemingly like it! I'm a bit confused on the premise/prompt you've given me but I tried my best to try and write it anyways, hopefully this is somewhat what you asked for, and apologies if it's not o(TヘTo) And don't worry, I'll remember to hydrate, eat and stay safe! Make sure you do as well now :)

W.C: 919

Warnings: Hints of torture/abuse but not actually said (if I missed any pls say!!)

Extra: Dan Heng is in his Vidyadhara form + Reader is his younger sibling + The Shackling Prison description may not be accurate honestly.

The chains around your wrists still strained you. They still hurt. You didn’t even know why you were there, well, you couldn’t remember why you were there. Every reincarnation, you would find yourself being taken away and into the Shaking Prison. Quickly chained up and suffering the consequences of a guy you can’t seem to remember, but all you knew was that he was your brother and his name was Dan Feng?...Or did he go by a different name now?

Whatever the case, you started growing resentful of him, although you couldn’t remember. You knew that you were paying the price for what he did, and you’d be stuck in the loop of getting reincarnated and spending you 700 years in the Shackling Prison.

Dan Heng stood idly in Scalegorge Waterscape looking at the parted seas. Breathing in and out the tranquil air…until a yell alerted him, he turned around and saw the current High Elder, Bailu running to him with her maids in tow.

“Dan Heng!!”

“Bailu? Is something wrong?”

He asked, turning around fully and crouching down to be on level with the smaller Vidyadhara. She took a bit to catch her breath, the maid with her smiling apologetically at him. She stood up straight and began speaking, although rather quickly.

“There’s a Vidyadhara who recently got permission to leave the Shackling Prison because now you got your banishment lifted, people thought it was fair if they got released too and they’re asking me to meet and release them as well as help them settle back in b-because I’m the High Elder but I can’t…can you do it?”

Dan Heng blinked a bit, he understood what she was saying but he was rather confused. A Vidyadhara released because he was able to walk around the Loufu freely? Although perhaps the maid didn’t realise this was the case as she tried to explain what Bailu said in simpler terms.

“Bailu wanted to ask if you could take her place at releasing and showing this Vidyadhara around to get them settled in. The Loufu has changed a bit ever since they well…were sent to the Shackling Prison”

She explained, Dan Heng slowly stood up and considered it before nodding. It wouldn’t hurt right? Just to help them settle back in and then he can go back on the express.

Footsteps can be heard echoing the halls, your head darted to the door as your eyes narrowed. Feeding time won’t be till much later, you knew that due to how long you stayed in the prison. It was practically muscle memory at that point. But what entered wasn’t a cloud knight but…another Vidyadhara?

“...So…you’re [Name]”

He called out softly, walking towards you slowly. Your eyes widen a bit, you recognize him. You’ve seen his pictures a few times when people tried to jog your memory of who your brother was. You quickly tried launching for him, you were mad. He had made you suffer for so long and yet he acted so calm?

He didn’t flinch at all or move back. It wasn’t as if you were able to actually get to him anyways. You were still in chains and could only go so far.

“[Name]…”

He slowly started, it seems he was told about the situation in more detail.

“Go away Dan Feng, you did this to me! Y-you…why do I have to suffer because of your mistakes…why did I have to suffer your punishment”

Tears welled up in your eyes, as the chains slowly shook alongside your body. You sniffed a bit.

“N-now look…I-I’m crying…I shouldn’t b-be crying…I-it’s been so long s-since this started…I-I should be used t-to this by n-now…right?”

Your lips quiver, looking away from him.

“You have every right to cry…it’s just you showing emotions…it’s healthy to cry…so…please, don’t hold it in”

Your eyes slowly wandered to the taller Vidyadhara man. Before giving in to his words and letting the tears fall.

“D-Dan Feng…y-you’re such a scoundrel…I-I”

“I’m not Dan Feng…I’m just…a reincarnation of him…maybe that does make me him but…I won’t let my past leak into my future…please…call me Dan Heng…I want to fix the mistakes of my previous incarnation”

He speaks, slowly walking over and sitting next to you. Your eyes followed his figure slowly. You stayed silent, Dan Heng took this chance to continue a bit.

“I understand it’ll be hard to forgive me…even if I may not remember what happened…I just know you’re suffering due to the actions Dan Feng made…and because…we’re apparently siblings”

“Is…that why I’ve always been placed here…?”

“Correct…according to Jing Yuan who gave me more details…we’re related…in every reincarnation we face, no matter how many times we do so…we’re always siblings”

He paused for a bit, letting the silence set in before standing up, you heard the jangle of keys and the straining feeling of your wrists gone. You quickly stood up, nearly tripping over.

“I…thank you”

You nod a bit, slowly looking up at him. You were confused, the stories you were told, the things you heard about Dan Feng…and yet when he stood in front of you and how he spoke, how he acted, didn’t stay true to what you heard.

Then again, according to him, he isn’t Dan Feng, but Dan Heng…

“You know…’Dan Heng’…that isn’t far off of Dan Feng…like a letter off”

“Ha…yeah I notice that”

He nods, silence overtakes the two of you again before he extends his hand out to you.

“Come on…I’ll get you an Immortals Delight”

Hopefully I managed to make a good-ish hurt/comfort thing! 😥 Thank you for the request!! There’s currently 3 more in the line that I’ll be working on the coming days :) Feel free to leave more requests!!

#HSR #HSR x you #HSR x reader #Dan Heng #HSR Dan Heng #Dan Heng x You #Dan Heng x Reader #HSR Dan Heng x You #HSR Dan Heng x Reader #Platonic #Platonic Dan Heng x Reader #Platonic Dan Heng x You

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sublimecatgalaxy · 1 year

Text

Cruel Summer; Part 1

Pairing: JJ Maybank x Kook!Reader

Summary: The reader comes in from out of town to OBX with her family when she bumps into JJ (quite literally) at a party which spurs an awkward family bathroom situation and a 'get to know you' conversation.

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: Flirting, swearing, mentions of drugs and alcohol, mentions of family death.

Song: "Bellyache" by Billie Eilish

A/n: This fic, by the time I post it, will have been two months in the making. I've been planning and writing it for about a month and I'm so happy that @tee-swizzle helped fuel the fire behind my passion for this character! I hope you guys love it, this is part 1 of 5.

The Outerbanks has always been like a fever dream.

Warm amber skies, pristine blue ocean waves, green grass and flowering trees, seemingly perfect people.

It seems that the tourists and the natives are all on the same page, just different parts of town come with different responsibilities and different roles in the socioeconomic hierarchy of the island. Some people get up to go to work their asses off all day, fishing, selling, participating in good, honest blue collar work; but others are trust fund babies, people who hit it rich and decided to buy a big fancy boat and a big luxurious house right on the water. Both are lucky to live there but there’s downsides to each, I’m sure.

My family is… different.

My grandmother was a family woman. She and my grandfather would chalk up the money to take us to Outerbanks once a year, sometimes every other year depending on if money was tight. My grandfather worked with gears- creating and selling them- and he owned his own business and made an honest living so he was proud to spend it on his family for a nice vacation with his wife and loved ones.

There were about twelve of us at the time; we’d all pack up our things and make the long journey down to the island with bright smiles on our faces and excitement bubbling in our veins. It was exciting- it was all I looked forward to as a child when school would come to an end in June. I just knew that if I counted down, made the two month paper chain, we would soon venture down to Nags Head to kick back for a few weeks.

When my grandfather died, the family went their separate ways and we didn’t go back on our little adventure for nearly a decade. It was heartbreaking to see my grandmother not even want to touch any of the money the love of her life left behind, money he wanted us to spend on spending time together in his favorite place, but it was just too much for her. And when she died and left a ton of money to my mom and stepdad, we knew exactly what we had to do to make both of them proud.

We had a trip booked within a month after the funeral, planning to spread both of their ashes in their favorite places on the anniversaries of both of their deaths, which just happened to be one day apart by a decade.

Since we’ve been back we’ve done just that, scattered their ashes (with permission of course) and celebrated their lives as a family; just me, my sister Katie, my mom and step dad, all together under one roof. We’ve played games, gone shopping, gone to the beach (obviously) and overall just had a great time like we would’ve when Katie and I were younger. There is this lingering sadness, it’s no longer a group of us, we’re no longer being corralled by my grandma and grandfather and I kept help but sense this silence that just swarms around us which makes the blue skies look a little darker, the waves a little more violent and the heat a bit more harsh.

“Are you having fun?” Katie yells loudly over the booming music, long hair whipping in her face as the beach wind blows against us, sending shivers down my spine. I should’ve brought a sweater.

“Yeah, I’m having fun! Just thinking about how grandma and grandpa would not approve of us getting drunk under the age of twenty one with a bunch of people we don’t know.” Katie’s head tossed back in laughter as she grabs my hands in hers, urging me to sway with her to the music and I let her with a defeated smile. “Like it’s not exactly the safest thing to do.” She gives me a tired, deadpanned look and she reaches out to smack at my arm, disapproving of my caution that I always seem to be stuck with, even in situations like this where I’m supposed to be relaxing and letting loose.

“At least we’re not like the rest of our family, they barely go on any vacations anymore- they’re practically hermits.” I chuckle, letting her twirl me under her arm as my skirt flows in the wind. She’s not exactly wrong- there are pictures all over social media of their bland life, going to their nine-to-fives before coming home and drinking themselves into a stupor. I think that’s called depression but we’re not for technicalities in this family. “Gran and gram would be happy we’re living.” I smile foldly at her with a firm nod, knowing that my grandma would’ve loved the women that my sister and I turned into. We’re free spirits, just like her, taking leaps, smiling at strangers (especially those who are rude or mean), and we’re trying our best to carry on her legacy the best we can, with each other.

“You’re right.” I fall into her arms, wrapping mine around her in a tight hug as she lets a sigh of relief escape her lips. “Oh that note, wanna do shots?” I ask, pulling a squeal of excitement out of her as she begins to jump up and down, clapping her hands like an excited child.

“Now we’re talking!” She cheers, dragging in glances from those close to us and I feel my cheeks growing warmer at the unwanted but earned attention. “I’ve trained you well, young Skywalker.” She yells as I walk away, my eyes rolling at her overall silliness.

I sift through the crowd of people, bumping into teens left and right as I try not to stumble onto my ass, and I can see the bar in sight. So close yet so far. There’s about twenty feet of sand and young adults between me and the bar and I can practically feel the cold steel but before I reach it, I feel a cold substance dump down the front of my shirt and a mess of blond hair in front of me.

“Oh my god, fuck-“ I look up at to see a blue eyed boy, probably my age, standing, shocked, in front of me with a wide eyed look on his face, cheeks reddening in embarrassment as he looks square at my chest, or more at the red drink he just dumped down my bra. “You came out of nowhere.” Definitely should’ve brought a sweater. I’m still standing, surprised, looking at him with wide eyes as I try to think of what to say but nothing can come up but curse words.

“I’m sorry, shit!” I take a step away from him, going to escape and to deal with my awkward embarrassment elsewhere but the attractive stranger reaches out to wrap his fingers around my wrist seamlessly, pulling me back towards him as I gasp, hitting his chest with a firm thud. His eyes are kind and soft, hand reaching up in surrender to show me that he means no harm and, for some reason, I choose to believe him.

“Woah, woah woah- not so fast.” He nods in the direction of the bathrooms, silently offering to help me with the mess that he made and I take a leap of faith, nodding my head, allowing him to lead me hand in hand towards the bathrooms, away from the bar and my sister and the rest of civilization. Alone with a cute, random stranger… Maybe not the best idea to wander off with a random guy at a party but there’s something about him that just makes him so easy to trust.

“It’s fine, seriously, I’ll just go clean it off.” I call out to him as the noise from the party dies down and I jog ahead so I can turn around to look back at him with a shrug but he just looks down at my shirt and frowns.

“Let me help. I feel like a dick.” He pouts, reaching past me to hold the door open to the family restroom and I take one more look back at the party and, when I see Katie talking to a handsome guy, I decide to go ahead and step under the cute stranger’s arm into the bathroom without any questions. I hoist myself up into the vanity with a sigh, head thumping back against the mirror as I avoid looking at my ruined shirt, wondering how I’m supposed to clean up a red stain this big and have it actually come clean. “It’s my friend's drink anyway so I don’t care. I’ll get a new one when I come back from helping you clean up.”

“My knight in not so shining armor.” I laugh nervously with a gentle blush, watching him pull a few paper towels out of the dispenser before handing them to me and I try to wipe it off but to no avail, the red drink seeping further into my tan shirt with every wipe without care and I look up at the blonde with a frown. He looks nervous, biting at his lip as he watches me rub at the cotton.

“You know it.” He laughs awkwardly, taking the paper towels from me, wetting them before handing them back to me. “What’s your name?” He asks finally, leaning up against the wall in front of me, kicking his leg back to rest on the tile with a dopey smile on his face.

“Y/n. Yours?”

“JJ Maybank.” How cute. It matches him perfectly, his baby blue eyes and soft blonde hair- the fact that he’s so tall and handsome as hell- like a prince from a Disney Princess movie. Or maybe he’s more like the boy that the Princess falls in love with because he’s not a prince. “Nice to meet you, JJ Maybank.” I hold my hand out to him which he takes almost immediately, shaking it sternly with a bright, pretty smile on his lips. “Wish we could’ve met in different circumstances.”

“Nah, spilling a drink on a pretty girl is sort of par-for-the-course for me.” He blushes, reaching up to rub bashfully at the back of his neck, bicep tensing breathtakingly, and my brows pinch together in a teasing look of confusion, head tilting at him.

“Oh you have a habit of doing it?” I ask with a snicker, watching his face pale, his finger raising to point at me, stopping me before I can get the wrong idea.

“That’s not what I meant.” I giggle, slapping a hand over my mouth as he scoffs, reaching out to slap my knee. “Oh, so you’re funny?” He smiles sarcastically as he sends me a dramatic eye roll.

After a few seconds of silence, both of our eyes flicker down to my shirt once more to address the elephant in the room and we both wonder for a moment as to how we can clean my shirt or find another one in the meantime. It isn’t until JJ’s pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it in my direction that I realize what his idea is. My jaw drops as I look down at the shirt in my lap, not appalled at all but instead incredibly more attracted to him. How chivalrous.

“Take it.” He offers with flushed cheeks, leaning against the cold wall as I fight the urge to drift my eyes lower, seeing obvious and apparent abs in my peripheral vision as I desperately keep my gaze on his face.

Fuck me, please.

“Really?” I ask hesitantly, not sure if I should really just be taking a random person's shirt but I guess if it’s just out of the kindness of his own heart then… sure. He spins around on his heels, subtly offering me privacy as I slip out of my ruined shirt before throwing on his t-shirt that is definitely way too big on him which means it’s practically a dress on me.

“Yeah, it’s not shocking for me to be lacking a shirt.” His head tilts back so he can stare at the ceiling with a chuckle and- I watch him, the way his jaw elongates into an michelangelo type curve, his shoulders, his back- he’s just sculpted- after a few moments, I give him the okay to turn around. His pupils seem to dilate in size the minute he sets eyes on me, and I can feel myself flushing just from his heated gaze. Stupid boys and their hormones.

“So you’re from here? Obviously, that was a stupid question.” I scoff at myself, reaching up to facepalm but he reaches out, fingers wrapping around my wrist to stop me with a bright smile, almost asking ‘how could you tell?’ He takes a step towards me, almost stepping fully between my legs and I suck in a breath, trying my best to remember to breathe when all I want to do is just-

“Home sweet home, born and raised a pogue on the cut.” He shrugs proudly, arms fanning out as he bows dramatically and I give him a big round of applause which pulls a hearty laugh from him.

“I just learned that term not too long ago.”

“I was testing you, to see if you knew it. Most tourists don’t.” How could he tell I was a tourist? He winks, reaching out to pat the side of my thigh as he hops up onto the counter beside me, thigh pressing against mine and I suck in a much needed breath that I didn’t realize I was holding. What am I, twelve? Why can’t I just talk to this guy?

“We’ll I’ve been here a lot since I was younger so-”

“Honorary Kook.” He tips his hat to me with a shit eating smirk and he knocks me with his shoulder.

“Not a Kook.” I start but he cuts me off with the clicking of his tongue in a playful tut.

“You sort of look like one.” He sighs and, though I can’t completely tell if it’s a compliment, the way he looks me over, getting a good look before meeting my gaze, makes me realize he meant it in all the best ways. “Nice, expensive clothes, hell you can pay for the rental houses down here- that’s impressive.”

“I’m here with my family.” I huff, acting like that makes it any different but it doesn’t.

“Ah, a family of Kooks.” He says in a singsong voice but decides to cut me some slack by switching the subject after a moment of my defeated smiling. “Is that your sister you were with?”

“You were watching me prior to spilling a drink down my shirt?” I gasp, feigning shock as I press a hand to my chest, eyes widening at him as he suddenly flushes, face paling at his accidental confession and he nervously pulls his cap off to run a hand through his messy hair.

“That gave me away didn’t it?” He whispers with an awkward smile.

“Cutely, it did.” He laughs as I nudge him with my elbow, unable to maintain eye contact with him out of fear that I’ll explode from how damn cute he is. He’s so frustratingly handsome and funny and sexy- woah.

“How long are you down here for?”

“Three weeks. We got here a few days ago.” I offer, knowing exactly why he’s asking me and I feel overwhelmed with a new sense of excitement regarding this whole trip. Katie is going to hate me for abandoning her but she’ll understand when she sees him.

“Damn, well…” He pauses, hopping down from the counter and his bashful gaze stays focused on the ground. “Plenty of time for us to bump into each other huh?” His flirtatious offer makes me grin ten times wider, watching his hand reach out to take mine in his, pulling me back into him before I can escape from him, return to the party and not see him for the rest of the night.

But after this interaction, I’ll look for him everywhere I go while I’m on this trip.

“Guess so.” I smirk softly, reaching out to pat his shoulder with my free hand, not ignoring the dense, toned muscle beneath my fingertips. “You’re slick, I’ll give you that.” I laugh bashfully, looking down at his hand that still holds mine as I allow him to walk us towards the party. His thumb brushes gently across mine and I don’t miss the protective gaze in his eyes as he looks around, making sure we’re not only safe but that no one is giving us any eyes for us leaving the bathroom, him lacking a shirt and me gaining one. I can only imagine how this looks.

“I am a self proclaimed ladies man.”

“Self proclaimed huh?” I ask, brows pulling together teasingly. “I’ll back that up then.” He smiles excitedly then leans in towards me, lips brushing against the shell of my ear and I nearly trip over my damn feet at the feeling.

“I’m going to need to record you agreeing to that.” He whispers and I burst out in laughter, head tipping back as we reach the bar, his hand finally leaving mine, cold and empty, at my side.

“Hey JJ!” A pretty girl appears at our right about ten feet away and JJ pales and gives me an awkward smile before flagging the bartender down, ordering a quick drink before giving me his undivided attention once more.

“Shit I gotta go. Kie was expecting that drink like twenty minutes ago. Baby gets grumpy without her bottle.” He pouts playfully and I chuckle before motioning in her direction, feeling an evident pit in the bottom of my stomach at the thought of him possibly being taken.

“Girlfriend?” I ask nervously but he shakes his head with a wicked, devilish grin.

“Single.” He nods sternly, head tilting cutely at me as he asks, “boyfriend?”

“Also single.” I shrug, backing away from him slowly as he processes the new information, eyes swimming with mischievous ideas already.

“Alright… See you around Kook!” He sends me a polite tip of his hat with a teasing smile and, in return, I send him my middle finger and a wink.

“Not a Kook!"

#jj #jj x reader #jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #outerbanks #outerbanks fic #jj maybank fic #jj fic #outerbanks series #jj maybank smut #jj maybank angst

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jjungkookislife · 9 months

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Quarterly Fic Recs 2023 #3

Hello! I can't believe how quickly we've reached the third list of the year! I wasn't able to read as much as I wanted, but I hope you all enjoy these wonderful fics <3

Namjoon

baby fever @95rkives

summary: what was supposedly a peaceful morning stroll in the park, an unexpected encounter triggers namjoon’s intense desire for a baby, turning him into an adorable, baby fever-filled mess.

drunk in love @joon4eva

summary: you and whiskey are never a good combination. or: you’ve been in love with your best friend for years and you might tell him about it while drunk.

Jimin

menace @eoieopda

summary: Your shithead brother, Seokjin, is throwing his annual Valentine’s Day party. You didn’t want to go in the first place - and now his shithead friend, Jimin, is responsible for getting you there.

all mine @souryoong

summary: your new boyfriend can’t make you finish, but your ex boyfriend sure can.

thank you for your service @jiminniethemarshmallow

summary: As a servant of your kingdom, all Jimin wants to do is please you and service you in any way that he can.

Taehyung

high tide @kookslastbutton

summary: Due to Taehyung’s job as a cruise ship Captain, you are constantly miles away from each other. Weekly phonecalls help and this one gets a little nasty and a lot sweet.

Jungkook

something borrowed @alphabetboyluvr

mafia au

chained to you @hisunshiine

idol au

into the wild @bonny-kookoo

summary: The wolf pretending to be the grandmother, just to later swallow the poor red riding hood whole- is he attempting to gain your trust as well just to feast on your flesh later, once he gets hungry for a meal?

seven days @kithtaehyung

summary: you dump yet another guy that wasn’t up to your “ten day standards,” which leaves your cocky ass, very off-limits roommate to tease your single status yet again. but the teasing is always expected. what’s not expected, is the bet that you make without thinking. the bet that even though you give ten days, he wouldn’t even last seven.

and my man, thank you to my man @darklingjeon

dealer au

because, i love you ch. 12 @readyplayerhobi

summary: According to society, Jeon Jungkook should not be with you. He should be with a younger, hotter and thinner girl instead of wasting his time on you. It’s a good thing Jungkook doesn’t care what society thinks then.

things you don't know @btsgotjams27

summary: it’s been seven years since you last saw the boy that broke your heart. after moving back home, you try everything you can to avoid seeing him around town, but destiny has a wicked way of doing the opposite.

Yoongi

heartache @sailoryooons

summary: Unresolved feelings lead to nothing but heartache when you run into Yoongi at a wedding five years after breaking up. Especially when you realize that despite Yoongi have feelings for you, there is still another woman on his arm.

right here ^

summary: You’re tired of the revolving door of boys in your life. Yoongi is tired of watching you nurse feelings in the quiet of your apartment.

Taehyung

backstage @jeonqkooks

summary: what’s the best way to release energy for someone with an oral fixation?

champagne problems @still-with-koo

summary: you turn down taehyung’s very public marriage proposal. inspired by champagne problems by taylor swift.

Jungkook

6:42 a.m. @bangtanintotheroom

summary: Jungkook is ready to kick off a new day of loving you.

OT7/Multiple Members

cosmic collision @gimmethatagustd

summary: A responsible weedman, Yoongi always tests out new marijuana strains before selling them to his customers. When his supplier offers him a new strain, Cosmic Collision, Yoongi is eager to try it. What he doesn’t expect is the alien that comes with it.

Seokjin

the one with seokjin and without complaints @eoieopda

summary: you don’t want to arrive dateless to a wedding your ex is also attending. enter friend and local hero, kim seokjin.

musical chairs @ugh-yoongi

rival teachers au

lucky ^

things you said when you were drunk

view @noteguk

summary: in which seokjin likes to show people what is his.

sugar sweet @ditttiii

summary: Jin loves sweet things. Jin loves you. add it all together, stir the mixture up, and ta-da! There he has his dessert! Enjoy ♡ Or alternatively where Jin basically uses you as his damn plate and loves every second of it!

wash 'n dry @seokoloqy

summary: The one where Seokjin is the cute RA who catches you doing laundry at 1 AM and you both have time to kill.

thunder @/ppersonna

summary: you allow your best friend Jin to take you backpacking once per year. apparently, this year’s outing would be the wettest yet.

Yoongi

angel @/sailoryooons

summary: Yoongi never meant to keep coming back. You never meant to become Yoongi’s favorite. Being Min Yoongi’s favorite has dire consequences.

carnival of terror @theharrowing

summary: The carnival is in town, and it is unlike anything you have ever experienced. Will you make it out alive?

crescendo @/ugh-yoongi

established relationship

loose lips ^

friends to lovers

baby maker @shadowkoo

summary: You and Yoongi have been relishing the comfort of your newly married life, savoring each moment together. However, there’s an additional want tugging at your heartstrings – the thought of becoming a mother. That’s right, you want a baby. Yoongi isn’t sure if he’s ready for the journey of bringing a baby into your lives. But he’ll agree to anything that makes you happy, and if it’s a baby you want, it’s a baby you’ll get.

on your period @7ndipity

summary: Yoongi looks after you on your period

don't come yet @jl-micasea-fics

established relationship

night short #25 @euphoricfilter

make up sex

Hoseok

sensuous @delugguk

hot emo hobi @minisugakoobies

i'm yours @yoongiphoria

If you're making a mistake, it's bound to be your favorite one.

bad things come in three @hyungieyoongi

established relationship

hoseok drabble @here4kpopfics

brother's best friend

intoxicated @peachypinkygloss

summary: Drugs make everything better. Even sex.

bones @floralseokjin

summary: you were broken from a past relationship, and Hoseok wanted to fix you, but what price was he willing to pay? Would he end up worse off, or would you realise in time, that your best friend was the one…?

Namjoon

signed, sealed, delivered @fresh-outta-jams

summary: You’re in college when your soulmate tattoo finally shows up: an address. Sending a letter couldn’t hurt, right?

the rich man's crochet club @kpopfanfictrash

summary: When they were freshmen in college, Namjoon began a club with his six closest friends. The one thing they all had in common? V i r g i n s as fuck. Obviously, they couldn’t call the club the Virgins Club and so, the Rich Man’s Crochet Club was born. Until time passes and Namjoon is the only one left. Now, the Club has one, final mission: to get Namjoon laid.

not so dinner date @bangtaninborderland

idol au

breakfast @hamsterclaw

summary: Turns out your big dumb goon can make eggs.

everything slow @hobidreams

summary: your boyfriend catches you missing him with your hand between your legs, his name a moan on your tongue. it looks like you need a little help…

tonight ^

how will you spend the night with your man?

love language @rmnamjoons

summary: Exactly one year before one meets their soulmate, their love’s first words spoken to them appear as a tattoo on their wrist. When Namjoon’s tattoo appears, however, it’s not of words, but of the most beautiful set of eyes he’s ever seen.

there was a bug @/kimnjss

summary: you and joon have been best friends for years, unexpectedly his feelings start to grow more than platonic. deciding to keep this to him, joon stays as your best friend and roommate. things are going fine, until one night you’re forced to sleep in his room.

out of my league @ppersonna

summary: Kim Namjoon was never supposed to find out about your years-long hopeless crush on him. And he most definitely was not supposed to find out about it in front of all your coworkers in a company-wide meeting.

will you let me? @bratkook

summary: Namjoon wants nothing more than to see you stuffed full of his cum, and as his mind starts to wander with thoughts of the future, he has to know if you’d let him.

the package thief @/blog-name-idk

summary: You have a new neighbor who is incredibly attractive. Unfortunately, he seems to hate you for no discernable reason at all. Does he think that just because he’s hot, he can get away with being an asshole?

#i truly wish i had read more #but life got rocky for a moment #i promise i don't purposely exclude members #i read what's on my dash mostly #and i've been mostly reading drabbles bc i can't focus for very long #i hope you enjoy these fic recs <3

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userseokmins · 1 year

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secret wishes ◦ h.v.c.

💞 🄿🄰🄸🅁🄸🄽🄶: Hansol Vernon Chwe x gn!reader 📚 🄶🄴🄽🅁🄴: Fluff, Humor/Comedy/Crack, PLATONIC!au, Besties!au 💬 ⓌⒸ: 3.4k ⚠️ 🅆🄰🅁🄽🄸🄽🄶🅂: Food, One mention of alcoholic beverages, Reader gets a tattoo, Cheesy corny stuff, Everyone is a menace imho, lmk if i missed smth! 📝 🄰/🄽: what better way to make a fic debut on this blog than a (very belated) birthday vernon fic to my beloved @aceofvernons. Basically it's a love letter from one bestie to another but it got kinda out of hand sjjskakak I still hope you enjoy it 🎉 (also ty Nova for color correcting and giving me confidence 💖)

It's like waking up disoriented from a dream.

Vernon is suddenly snapped out of the daze Seungwkan had left him in moments ago. The man responsible for it is now standing next to him, barking orders out to at least five other people who are running around their tiny, shared apartment.

"Geez, you didn't need to make such a big deal outta things."

"Should've stopped me instead of pouting in silence in your abysmally dark room like always."

"It's not that dark," Vernon protests and scratches the back of his head, "and I don't pout."

Lilac strands flutter as he tilts his head and does the very thing he said he doesn't do: pout. Seungkwan spares him a look only to roll his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah Mr. Vamp. Maybe when a certain person isn't mentioned, sure." He jerks his head to the right. "Now get your lazy butt moving so I'm not tempted to take a hundred percent of the credit, love, and appreciation in your stead."

Vernon reluctantly peers into the kitchen. Mingyu is waving a spatula in a threatening manner at Wonwoo and their partner for eating and playing with the batter he's been working hard on. Peeking into the living room causes his entire body to cringe at Seokmin and his fiance who are supposed to be blowing up balloons. Instead, they're taking a break to giggle and kiss at one another's necks.

Ugh.

Seeking reprieve, he finally finds comfort stumbling next to Joshua, the seemingly only calm one among the other chaotic scatterbrains. With a kind smile, the maroon-haired man hands a loose end of the various paper chains he's looping together to Vernon, who readily takes it.

"You're pouting."

"I don't pout, Josh."

"Sure, sure. Unless it's about you know who."

"Seungkwan said the same sort of nonsense."

"He's not wrong. Otherwise he wouldn't be putting in all this effort for the both of you."

Vernon frowns. "He didn't have to."

"He did 'cause you were pouting. We all had to."

"I don't… ugh, whatever. All I wanted was something small but different."

"It's different that's for sure." Red bangs fly up when Joshua snorts at a sweaty Seungcheol stumbling through the front door, flanked by additional friends, to bring in an unnecessarily large table. "I know it's not what you normally do but I think it'll be nice."

"We like to do quiet things. Just the two of us. But everything's been screwed up this year."

Joshua's laughter is soft and melodic despite the underlying mockery Vernon suspects it disguises. "So, this surprise party and the commotion that came with it isn't bothering you. You're sulky because quality bestie time has been sacrificed since they went away."

Just because he's right doesn't mean he has to say it.

"I'm not sulking and I'm not sure what's so funny either."

"You are, my dear buddy!" He clasps his friend's shoulder reassuringly whose lilac hair cutely lessens the intensity of his perpetual frown. "After we celebrate, you'll get them all to yourself."

Vernon's nose crinkles. "Why is everyone being so insufferable?"

Not bothering to reply, the other man simply hums and stands to hang the completed portion of the chain. He can manage his grumpy younger friend who's now stapling the remaining rectangular pieces of paper a little bit too aggressively. The knowledge that Vernon will settle back into his easy-going nature once you return is inevitable.

It's just a question of how long all of them will be able to hold out until then.

By the time the sun sets, the fast-paced energy of the afternoon has dwindled down and the party preparations are finally finished.

"Are you sure it will be fine?"

"Honestly, Chwe! Do you not trust my baking skills?"

"More like I don't trust my fridge."

Seungkwan looks up at the exchange between a whiny Mingyu and indifferent Vernon. "Just don't open the fridge overnight and everything should be fine." He huffs, handing a stack of empty pizza boxes to Seokmin. "There's nothing but the cake in there anyways."

That must be enough to satisfy the dessert maker who obnoxiously puffs out his chest in pride. Wonwoo secures the last pack of untouched beer he'd brought in one hand and his partner's wrist tenderly in the other. Bidding everyone a good evening, he leaves with Mingyu following behind them like an elated puppy heading back home after a tiring walk.

"We'll take these and head out too," Seokmin supplies helpfully as he and his fiance finish gathering the final pieces of trash laying around. "See you tomorrow!"

Joshua is the last to go and jingles his car keys loudly before shutting the door with an exclamation of, "Enjoy the surprise!"

He disappears with a cheeky grin and swift departure before the opportunity to be questioned arises and Vernon turns to his unphased roommate.

"What did he mean by that?"

"Oh, you know him. Sometimes he's normal, more often he's not. Probably just wanted to re-remind you of that fact."

Seungkwan's statement is one that anyone can agree with. Figuring Joshua meant nothing as usual, it's already forgotten by the time Vernon's made his way up the steps.

Much later into the night, he's on a desperate search for something when you call but picks up nonetheless. No matter what he's doing, one thing for sure is that he'll always answer the phone when it displays your name. Because it's you.

But maybe that wasn't the smartest decision.

"Hello 'sol!"

"Hey bestie," the phone is cradled between his shoulder and ear as he rummages between the couch cushions. "What's up?"

"Nothing much, guess I just wanted to hear your voice."

A silly smirk halts him in his tracks. "Miss me?"

"Oh, how I long for you so!" The sarcasm lacing your words can't fully hide the smile he hears. "I've talked to you every day as always, it's like I never even left."

"Wish you didn't."

"You and I both. It's nice to be home but still…"

"We've always spent your birthdays together."

"Which is exactly why you should've come back with me!"

"Couldn't intrude on the fam like that."

You sigh. "No one would've minded, you're so dear to them." Mimicking your mother's voice, you continue, "Where's that lil Hansolie of yours? We enjoy his company so much, it's as if he's our son. In fact — we might love him more than our own child!"

Vernon laughs brightly. Bold and loud like he always does in your presence. You draw that part out of him like no one else can, setting him at ease to simply be himself. Comfortable. There are no appearances to uphold with you, no worries either. Everything melts away and it's easy to forget what he was all stressed about before you called. Until hurried feet pounding on the floor signify that someone is about to rush into the living room.

"I found them! I found the — " Seungkwan's happy skip halts upon seeing his friend on the phone and attempts to catch his breath after scrambling down the steps. But the keywords to the unfinished sentence roll right off Vernon's tongue out of relief without thinking.

"The rings?"

Even if he can't see, you perk up from your slouched position in the car and repeat eagerly, "Rings?"

Vernon shares a wide-eyed look with the other man in the room who hesitantly places the box on the coffee table. So much for being relaxed — he got too relaxed and ended up spilling the secret. Exposing himself like an idiot. He normally doesn't care that you are privy to everything there is to know about him but now…

Licking his lips nervously, he chuckles awkwardly. "Uh… yeah?"

"Did you get married or something in the week that I was gone?" you tease. "What's all this ring business about?"

"N-nothing. It's nothing big… y'know how Kwannie was… contemplating… um, engagement."

The man in question gapes and starts waving theatrically while mouthing silent charades full of utter disbelief and betrayal that are readily ignored.

Meanwhile, you snort. "Oh yeah, because that's definitely not a big deal at all. About time! But how did you end up with his rings then?"

Vernon turns his back on a dramatic Seungkwan in order to focus on organizing a believable white lie. "We… invited some of the guys over to talk it out and uh, he didn't want to lose them in the chaos because… he's still deciding and all that, you know… "

"Incredible," you mutter, "yet it seems like you lost them."

Panic, his brain screams. And maybe some shame added as well.

"But whatever, at least you found them." Somehow you seem to miraculously buy his pathetic excuse. Leaving the matter alone because you're distracted by a hearty yawn, he lets out a quiet exhale of relief while you stretch your neck out. "I'm tired."

Your best friend collapses onto the couch, feeling exhausted himself. "You should get some rest."

"And miss when the clock strikes twelve?"

"You've got a long day ahead, flying out after your celebration. You know you can stay longer if it's too much."

He's a little nervous saying that after everyone excitedly spent time to set up a surprise party but your well-being will always be more important to them over anything else.

Mingyu and his cake would survive.

"Puh-lease," you grumble and Vernon knows your eyes just have to be rolling, though you're actually glancing at your watch. "Don't you worry your handsome little head, I'll be right on time."

His eyebrows furrow. "On time for what?"

But you've already put the speaker away from your face, giggling like a gremlin in the background before you loudly cackle, "You're a horrible liar, Hansol!"

He breaks out into a cold sweat, even more perturbed when you simply hang up without even a farewell. "What is up with people today?"

"I dunno, what's up with you?" Phone held dazedly in one hand, Vernon turns to face Seungkwan's wrath. "Because suddenly, I'm engaged — according to your standards!"

"Sorry 'bout that. I'll explain everything when I give them their gift, okay? I think… I don't think they believed me anyway."

"Even Bookkeu wouldn't be fooled by that awful acting. Gosh, now I'm gonna feel bad about not proposing."

"Aw, c'mon Kwan. You know that's not what this meant."

Seungkwan's not really upset and Vernon knows that. Still. It's a subtle sting of a reminder that neither in the ten-year relationship have made a move for sealing that lifelong commitment. It would be a lie to say that it didn't occasionally eat away at the gentle-hearted man. Not that marriage was needed in every romantic relationship.

"I should've said Seokmin but that wouldn't have made sense either… "

"Those two? They're so attached to the hip they would've never handed over their rings to anyone. As a matter of fact though, I wouldn't give you mine either seeing as how you treated yours."

Vernon is quick to jump at his roommate and put him in a light headlock as faux retaliation, knuckles rubbing on the top of his hair while the latter yells in protest. They roughhouse as usual (this time staying clear of any lamp posts), nearly pulling off one another's clothes in the friendly tussle.

That's the position they freeze in when there's two heavy bangs on the door — Vernon with his hand fisted in Seungkwan's collar who has the former's shirt halfway up his torso. Inching closer to one another, they hold their breath. Peeking warily at the front door before meeting each other's terrified eyes that continue to widen in alarm when the beeping sounds of the code being entered starts after two seconds of silence.

They scream (very manly screams if anyone asks them about it afterwards) when the lock clicks open because who on earth knows their code and would break into their apartment at 11:56 PM?

"It's me!" You announce with a flourish — arms raised in exhilaration — only to lower them in confusion. "Oh. Am I interrupting something?"

Joshua glances around you to laugh at the two men entangled in what now looks like a hug. "Is that how you guys plan to defend yourselves? With a lover's embrace? You knew we were coming, Kwannie."

"I didn't know you'd show up at midnight!"

They step away from one another with disgruntled expressions and Vernon side-eyes everyone dubiously.

"You knew?"

Seungkwan's stuttered excuse is cut short when your (and everyone else's) phone buzzes and you excitedly cheer, "Happy gremlin birth hour to me!," and turn to a gobsmacked Vernon. "Aren't I gonna get my welcome back squish and squeeze?"

Of course, he could never deny you a hug. Especially on your birthday. Even if you scared the crap out of him by 'breaking in' when you're supposed to be far away with your family still, he opens his arms with an upward lift of his lips.

"Happy birthday, bestie. Now tell me, what in the world are you doing here?"

He takes in your appearance. Despite the off-and-on nap in Joshua's car on the way back from the airport somewhat helping, there's no way your animated behavior can hide all the obvious tiredness and jet lag.

You back away with a pat to his left bicep that has various rows of little black tattoo symbols encircling it, rocking back and forth on your heels.

"Wanted to celebrate my birthday with you!"

"You should have rested."

"I'm not a child, I wanted to surprise you!"

"But — " Vernon gestures helplessly to you, then the decorations he's sure you haven't noticed, and expects some support from his other friends but they have seemingly disappeared to give the two of you privacy. Plus, likely to escape him asking about the bizarre circumstances.

Gee, what wonderful pals.

"I know, I know… all of you put in a lot of effort. Especially Kwannie."

"I helped too!"

"But it was his original idea and organization, no? You'd never plan something like this."

"Why do you know everything, it's your birthday?" He groans in exasperation at your laughter. "It's supposed to be a secret and you're supposed to be surprised!"

"Ah, speaking of which," you eagerly roll up your right sleeve, "look at what I got!"

His eyebrows raise at the reveal of the ink that now circles over your skin. "Oh? You got tatted?"

"Yes! When I called after you got yours last year, the waitlist was so long I ended up just scheduling it as a birthday gift."

From afar, one might think they're the same as the ones dotting his arm. But upon closer inspection, he's more than pleased to see how you chose to have your own unique personality shine through. Miniscule versions of symbols that mean something precious and objects that seem to represent you best are outlined or filled-in with your favorite color.

"Beautiful."

You smile broadly at how awestruck your best friend is. "No, you."

"No, you."

"Fine, we're both pretty!" Vernon relents, well aware that this could go back and forth forever.

"That we are." You urge him to sit down on the couch and situate yourself next to him, right shoulder to his left, and grab his wrist. "Look!"

Extending your joined arms, you show him how your tattoos align almost perfectly. Then securing his other free hand in yours with the traditional pinky promise the two of you have done since childhood. He chuckles as you nudge him cajolingly with an elbow.

"I see."

"What do you see?"

"You just want me to say something cheesy 'cause you're in your affectionate era."

"It's the least you could do on my birthday."

A deep, weary sigh. "We're… each other's… better… half?"

The hands you have placed on his body tighten their hold as you squeeze hard in your excitement. He grunts as appropriate between your rambling, focusing mainly on when he'll be able to get circulation back where you're gripping, until you suddenly deflate.

"I messed it up. Stupid, sleep-deprived brain."

"You're not stupid."

"You're right, it's your fault."

"Mine?"

"I took the brain cell but now you have it back because we're together." Finally freeing the poor man, you stand in front of him and point. "Okay, let me try again so you'd better wipe your mind clear."

"Yeah, yeah." Vernon crosses his arms and pretends to look annoyed as if there isn't a goofy grin on his face.

"It was supposed to go something like this. We mirror each other, right?" You gesture to your tattoos again. "We're very similar, maybe even too similar at times. But," you flop down where you were originally seated, "we're also different! Different enough that we can compensate for each other's weaknesses and complement each other's strengths… you know, like you said — all that corny stuff."

"Cute."

"Like you."

"And you."

You lean in so close to Vernon that your noses almost touch. "Yeah, because we're besties and we look cute together. Okay, since I ruined the surprise and told you all my secrets, isn't it your turn now?"

"My turn?"

"Yeah, Mr. Rings."

"Ah… so that was your goal all along."

"Of course, I'm waiting with bated breath."

He raises his chin in the direction of the coffee table. "It's right there."

Despite teasing him about not wrapping it, you quickly snatch the velvet box before he can grab it himself. "Couple rings?" You put a hand over your heart dramatically. "Aw, you shouldn't have, Hansol."

"They're bestie rings, you dolt."

"Did you just call me an idiot?!"

"Yeah. With affection though."

You make a sound of disgust but return to the precious gift, lips curling upwards. "They're beautiful."

"Copycat."

"Stop it, you love me."

"I do."

"Then put it on me," you demand, handing him the ring box and wiggling your fingers in anticipation.

Vernon mumbles something about how impatient you are and to chillax. But he does as asked and gently takes the hand always used to pinky promise and bro-slap him. Sliding the ring on your middle finger, pleased when it's a perfect fit. Then, he does the same on his own and scrunches his nose in satisfaction.

"Perfect."

"I know."

He takes your hand back in his like before, and brings you into the kitchen. Identical rings brush against each other and the tattoos on your arms act like magical sigils to shield from anything that threatens to break through the personal bubble created by your joined hands.

"How did you figure out my ring size?"

"There are lots of opportunities because you don't fall asleep until some ungodly hour and happen to still be passed out when normal people awaken. So thanks for that."

You stick your tongue out at his snarkiness and receive a dollop of icing on it in return. "Mingyu makes amazing cakes!"

"So you knew about that too."

"Duh. And I know he'll be mad if you cut a piece."

"Two," Vernon deviously points out and places a plate down for himself.

It would be an absolute crime to not devour such a delicious treat, figuring it a waste to let it sit out instead. Making a gross noise of appreciation at the first bite, you couldn't wait to thank Mingyu later.

You get that opportunity the next morning as more and more friends from the day before tiptoe in one after the other per Seungkwan and Joshua's request. Quiet giggles and definite blackmail material when they sneak a peek into the kitchen to see you and Vernon fast asleep with your heads laying on the counter, limbs splayed all over the place and each other.

The two of you had chattered about everything, anything, and nothing at all. No words needed to be said even when a comfortable silence settled as the sun started to rise before both of your eyelids closed.

You were his best friend and he was yours. That was all that mattered. The strength of your bond meant that you were content just being in each other's thoughts, even at times you were far apart. Physical reminders like tattoos or rings were just the cherry on top of the cake that you had worked hard and spent years together on creating.

Speaking of cakes…

"My precious darling," Mingyu whisper-screeched from afar, "I knew you would be destroyed!"

He sighs, distraught, and Wonwoo pats him on the back. Their partner begins snickering when the tall man gingerly lifts up the new one he brought with shaking hands. "Good thing I made two!"

#elv writes #svt fanfic #seventeen fic #svt fic #seventeen fanfic #seventeen fluff #svt fluff #vernon fanfic #vernon fluff #chwe vernon fic #kpop fic #kpop fluff

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indeedcaptain · 4 months

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Regulatory Relations, chp. 13: The Children of Tarsus Redux

Hello everyone!! I hope you're having a happy Threshold Day!! Here is the big ole honkin monster of an installment for Regulatory Relations that has taken over my whole brain.

social media dry january was so much easier last year when i wasn't actively in a fandom. i just want to look at star trek memes so badly. see you all in two days!!!

Some things:

thank you so so so so much for reading. the response to this fic has been so joyful and supportive.

this story has gotten deeper and darker than originally planned, so I've officially changed the rating from "archive warnings not needed" to "graphic depictions of violence".

on that note: this is The Tarsus Chapter. content warnings for descriptions of violence, starvation, and death.

i wrote a song about Kirk and Kodos post-Tarsus :) if you're into that sort of thing I've reblogged it to this blog and the link is available here.

☆☆☆

At first, everything was dark. His room, the bed beneath him, even Spock’s hand in his--- all of it had vanished, replaced by the warm black nothing. He could not feel his body. He was not sure if he had one, here. But then he heard his name.

Jim?

Hello, Kirk said, or thought, and he sensed something that felt like Spock out in the darkness. It felt like his dry humor, his curiosity, the fierce energy of him coiled into waiting stillness. Can you hear me?

Yes, Spock said, and he sounded--- felt--- closer now. Are you in discomfort?

No, Kirk said, after a moment. But it doesn’t feel like the other times we’ve melded.

I guided your mind through what was necessary in previous circumstances. Here I have created space for you instead. Kirk felt the gesture of Spock’s mind, sweeping out around them. What you show me, I will see.

Cautiously, he thought of somewhere to start. Kirk cringed in anticipation of the nausea, the choking panic, but it did not arrive. He was uncomfortable, unhappy, flayed out and vulnerable, but he could physically continue. The Iowa farmhouse appeared, rippling out in vibrant color from the point that he thought he inhabited in this strange in-between space. The faded white wood paneling, the wide porch with the swing and its rusty chains, the windbreak row of trees, and the cornfield, stretching out as far as Spock’s mind allowed, were replicated as faithfully as if they were physically there. And then they were; Spock materialized at his side as his own body appeared beneath him.

Spock looked around. Is this where you were raised?

Yes, Kirk said, and as they watched, a child with sandy brown hair flung open the screen door, flounced down the stairs, and vanished into the cornfield. An older boy came out more slowly, accompanied by an adult woman with the same sandy hair. They talked on the porch, staring in the direction that the younger one had gone.

That was me, he said quietly. This is the beginning, I suppose. He had laid out in the cornfield for hours, watching the clouds pass through the sky as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes into the dirt beneath him. Kirk closed his eyes and pushed the memory forward, and when he opened his eyes again the sky had darkened and Jimmy was trudging out of the cornfield back to the farmhouse. He wiped the back of his nose with his forearm and let the screen door swing shut gracelessly behind him.

Akin to the strange logic of dreams, Kirk and Spock stood in the kitchen of the farmhouse without having moved. Jimmy sat at the wooden table, arms crossed protectively across his chest, as Winona Kirk pulled brochures out of a Starfleet-issue duffel bag.

“I don’t want to go to Mars,” Jimmy said.

“You don’t have to,” Winona soothed.

“I want to go with you and Dad.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Winona said. “For this posting, that’s just not an option.” Jimmy crossed his arms more tightly across his chest.

“Can’t I stay here?”

“Not by yourself.” Winona found the brochure that she had been looking for, the glossy paper reflecting the warm light and fluttering with the movement of the ceiling fan, and pulled the chair out next to Jimmy. “Look at this one,” she said quietly, and placed the brochure on the table in front of him. He turned away, staring out the window over the sink. “It’s not like Sam’s school. It’s all hands-on, all learning by doing. You’d get to be on a farm, just like here, with other kids. Dad and I could come visit you when we get leave.” Jimmy kept his gaze locked on the window, and Winona stood after another silent minute. She kissed him on the forehead and exited. When she was gone, Jimmy turned to the brochure. He frowned at it, but he picked it up and opened it.

Kirk knew what came next. He had been enchanted against his will by the promise of the experiential Farm School, and it would become his home for two beautiful years.

I wish I could just show you the good things, Kirk said. There were good things, too.

I believe you, captain, Spock said. Show me whatever you need.

Kirk crossed to the table where Jimmy--- his younger self, and it was hard to remember that he had ever been so young--- sat, flipping through the brochure. He looked down at the shiny pictures. They didn’t do it justice. I just need--- I need you to see what I saw. I think that’s what all this is about. Spock crossed to him, standing next to him, and even in the meldspace Kirk felt the comfort of his presence.

Kirk laced his fingers through Spock’s and remembered.

☆☆☆

Tarsus IV was the fourth planet in a small system in the middle of nowhere, Beta quadrant. It was Class M, with mostly mild seasons, and by the time Jimmy arrived, it was populated with eight thousand others, entirely human. It was not a highly developed colony; humans had only been there for twenty years, and it was technologically delayed--- no replicators, no transporters, only one government-owned high-speed comms relay to the rest of the Federation. Those who lived there were agriculturalists; scientists and farmers looking to conduct their research or make a living selling crops to the traders who passed through on their way to the further-flung starbases. After Jimmy had set his narrow shoulders, gritted his teeth, and taken the brochure upstairs to his parents, they had bought him a physical copy of a traveler’s guide to Tarsus IV. He read it back to front, over and over, until the spine crumbled in his hands and they replaced it with a digital copy on his padd. Six months after he had stormed from the kitchen and into the cornfield, the shuttle containing a newly twelve years old Jimmy Kirk touched down on Tarsus. He was met at the shuttle pad by two women in their twenties. Their names were Madeleine and Natalya, and, as Starfleet Academy graduates who had elected to take elementary teaching posts instead of a commission on a ship, they were impossibly cool and rebellious to a child whose parents rarely spent more than eight months anywhere. They took him to Farm School, where he was given three rough-spun jumpsuits to wear on outside days and a tour of the grounds. There were fields, a big house that doubled as a cafeteria and dormitory, a school building with classrooms and a gymnasium, and a contingent of laboratories built for little scientists with child-sized hands.

“Do you know what you might want to study?” Natalya was tall, blonde, and strong, and she and Madeleine both had been science track at the Academy. She led Jimmy through the different buildings, wandered through a wheat field with him, and then took him to the highest point on the campus so he could look out and see the sprawl of Farm School and the town beyond.

“Everything,” Jimmy said. For the first time in his life, Jimmy was judged by his own actions and interests and not by the reputations of his family. He could raise his hand in class and be called on by a teacher who had never taught his brother. He could take extracurriculars in engineering and make mistakes without being asked, “Didn’t your mom explain this to you?” He could shadow his tutors and tell them that he wanted to be a scientist without any of them assuming that he would be a captain, like his dad. For almost two years, he learned and grew and made friends with kids who cared more about his first name than his last.

For almost two years, he was happy.

Jimmy’s second summer on Tarsus IV was the driest on record. The swimming hole where he and a few of his friends spent most afternoons after their classes were over had shrunk considerably since the spring. The sudden thunderstorms that he had grown accustomed to the previous year were few and far between.

In late August, when they were on a break from their classes, Jimmy snuck into the patch of field that they had given him for his summer project to check on his crops: a small growth, only a few square yards, of yellow corn. He had hoped to have enough to make cornbread for his classmates once it had all reached peak sweetness. He walked slowly though the fields, brushing his palms carelessly over the purple amaranth that was his friend Laika’s project, one eye on keeping his feet in the walkways and one eye on the clouds above him. The formerly teal-blue sky had darkened considerably, and though he didn’t mind the rain, the teachers got nervous when any of them were out in a storm. The soil of Tarsus had a considerably higher metallic content than Earth, and they weren’t keen on testing the survival rate of lightning strikes on the children in their care. He walked faster.

His corn had grown to the right height, but as he brushed his hands against the stalks, they bent in a way that was unfamiliar. He frowned. He had spent the first twelve years of his life running through farm fields; he had long understood the way that the laws of physics exerted themselves on the stalks of late-summer corn. The stalks moved ponderously, with less structural resilience than he was used to. The ears swung heavily and drooped down more than he had expected. Jimmy reached out and grabbed one, thinking to pull it off the stalk and peel back the silk to peer inside, but he froze when it landed in his palm. Rather than the bumpy firmness of corn, it felt as though there was goo trapped inside the shell. He hefted the mushy ear in one hand and poked at it with a finger. His finger left an indent, meeting virtually none of the expected resistance. A single drop of a deep, metallic, mercurial blue liquid oozed out of the top and dropped to the soil below. He dropped the ear, and it hung morosely from the stalk, dripping blue ooze onto the dirt.

Jimmy turned and ran for the safety of the main house as the sky broke open above him. By the time he got inside, Natalya was standing in the foyer with a towel for him.

“My corn melted,” he said, confused, dripping rain onto the pale wooden floor.

“We can check it out when the storm is over,” she said, scrubbing his drenched hair with the towel. But it was movie night, and one of the littlest kids got overtired and set off a giggling fit that derailed everyone’s attention, and by the time Jimmy laid down in his bunk bed he had forgotten about the corn entirely.

Ten days later, during their first class after the break, Madeleine took them outside to check on their summer projects. Jimmy had fallen to the back of the group, play-fighting with Tommy, when they heard a dismayed scream from the front.

Laika wailed, “What happened?” She knelt in what remained of her amaranth. The proud purple bushels had veered decidedly towards blue and lay in mushy puddles, the flower heads shedding off the stalk in her hands.

“Laika, don’t touch that, get out of the mess,” Madeleine said, and stepped away from the group to flip her comm open. She said something quietly into it, out of Jimmy’s hearing, but her face, normally split by her wide smile, was pinched with concern. Laika stood, wiping the remnants of her summer project off her hands and the knees of her jumpsuit, and frustrated tears glinted in her eyes.

“My corn,” Jimmy realized, remembering, and took off running. He heard Madeleine shout behind him, but he couldn’t hear what she said and therefore didn’t have to listen. He skidded to a halt in the dirt after a few more seconds anyway, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The stalks still stood, half-bent, and the ears were still attached, in the loosest sense of the word. But whatever might have been growing inside had melted out, dripping down into the soil into noxious blue puddles.

Madeleine appeared over his shoulder and gaped at the oil spill that had been his summer project. “Let’s go, Jimmy,” she said, and steered him away, back towards the main house. They passed Natalya, standing with their biology teacher, Mr. Park, and the chemistry teacher, Mr. Lopez, talking next to the remains of the amaranth. Madeleine took them all inside and they played dodgeball in the gym until they were released for the afternoon. After dinner, Jimmy and some of the older kids played cards in the dorm until Madeleine called for lights out, and even Laika was pulled out of her mournful shell to play with them by the end of the night.

That was the last normal day.

One of the best parts of Farm School had been the food. There were no replicators on Tarsus, and Jimmy didn’t like the fake chemical aftertaste of most replicated food anyway. They bought food from the town and the other farmers, and got shipments from the traders that stopped through every month or so, but the majority of what they ate came from the farm itself. Over the next two weeks, the farm-grown food stopped appearing at mealtimes. Halfway through September, Natalya pulled all of the older children, thirty or so out of the one hundred at the school, aside before dinner.

“I think we all know that it was a very dry summer,” she said, and one of the boys started sniffling immediately in the back of the classroom. They had known that something was wrong after all their summer projects had died horribly, but Madeleine still showed them old Earth movies when they scored well on math tests and Natalya had taught the more flexible kids some of her gymnastics moves. The school schedule had marched on, and so, they had reasoned, things couldn’t have been too bad. But now Madeleine was here, her wide smile replaced by an unfamiliar strict line, talking to them without the littles present. It became impossible to ignore the changes that they had silently agreed not to discuss.

“Please, do not worry. We will take care of you. We’ve already talked to the governor, and help is coming, but until it arrives things are going to have to be a little different.”

The older kids voted to join the teachers in hiding the worst of the situation from the littles, and though it was not mandatory they joined the teachers in accepting limited rations to give the littles the last of the fresh produce. Jimmy sent a holo of his lab station to Sam with the caption, “still cooler than math school!!” and a message to his parents that said, “i miss you.” Over the slow civilian comms relay that the school had, neither of his messages would be received for a month at least. By then, Madeleine had said, Starfleet or one of the trade ships would have arrived and things would be back to normal. But it made him feel better to know that his messages were out in space, soaring from beacon to beacon towards his family.

“Summons from the governor,” Madeleine said cheerfully when she woke up the boys in Jimmy’s dorm room on a morning in late September. “Personalized invitations, too! Jimmy, your parents aren’t in the quadrant now, are they?”

Jimmy yawned, stretching, the morning sun warming the room through the white linen curtains. “Nope,” he said, half-asleep. “They’re still in Delta for a while, I think.”

Madeleine hummed, but she tapped something on her padd. “You and Tommy are coming with me and Natalya today.” Tommy hung his head down from his place on the top bunk.

“Me, too?”

Madeleine ruffled his hair, fluffy with gravity. “Better dress nicely. No holes in your jeans.”

“But they’re cool!”

“You say that now,” Madeleine said. “And in thirty years you’ll look back at holos of yourself and say, why was my clothing falling apart all the time?” She chucked him on the back of the head gently and left them to get ready. They rose, and dressed, and breakfast was sparse but Natalya snuck them each a cup of coffee and it helped to cut the hunger.

Farm School was on the side of a mountain, set above the main town, and its farmland was surrounded by forest. Someday, Jimmy thought, more people would live here, and there would be less forest, and Tarsus would feel less isolated from the galaxy as a whole. But he was glad to live here now, because Mr. Lopez sometimes led them on hikes deep into the woods to identify each of the birds by their song, and it was easy to forget that there was anyone else in the universe at all. Madeleine and Natalya led their parade of fifty down the hill, down the packed dirt road from Farm School that would meet the paved road that led into town. It was a familiar road; when there were holidays, or after the harvests, the governor’s office would put on festivals and the students would run down the road in packs of four and five to spend their credits on sweets and new books and clothing. The littles skipped between them, holding hands, but Jimmy and the other older kids didn’t want to waste their energy, not when they’d have to walk back up the hill in the autumn sun later.

They followed Natalya and Madeleine to the town hall. There was an auditorium there, in a drafty old hall towards the back of the brick building, where sometimes the local players would put on shows or traveling troupes would stage concerts. Today it would be nearly at capacity--- it sat almost five thousand people, and it was over half-full already. Madeleine narrowed her eyes at the presence of the governor’s security force, wearing their forest green uniforms, lining the walls and standing at the entrances, but she led them into a few rows near the back of the hall where they could all sit together. She and Natalya talked quietly with their heads close together while Laika pulled a deck of cards from her back pocket and dealt Jimmy and Tommy into a game of ratscrew. One of the littles, Kevin, stood over Tommy’s shoulder and asked too many questions, and two others, Ellie and Mira, slid themselves into Laika’s lap when it became apparent that Madeleine and Natalya would not be distracted from their conversation by their pleas for attention. The game devolved quickly from there, but the littles could be convinced to play Go Fish instead of the faster slapping game as long as the older kids pretended that it was cool. The other kids had distracted themselves similarly; a padd with books, a holofilm between two girls sharing a set of headphones, one of the younger kids with his ever-present sketchbook. The auditorium filled up around them, until the enormous wooden doors banged shut and Madeleine pulled them all to their feet to pay attention. The crowd fell silent.

A small door to the right of the stage opened, and the governor stepped out, flanked on either side by his green-shirted guards. Jimmy had seen him before, at the winter festival and harvest celebrations. He had wavy silver hair, and uncannily light brown eyes that Jimmy could see flashing in the stage lights even from where he stood in the back. Governor Kodos climbed the stairs to the waiting podium, and with a nod to someone offstage a microphone buzzed mechanically to life.

“Good morning,” he said, and gazed solemnly at them. “I appreciate every one of you taking the time to join us here today. It was short notice, but the community we’ve built here never shies away from pulling together for each other, does it?” Madeleine and Natalya exchanged glances over the heads of the kids lined between them. Madeleine rolled her eyes. Kodos continued, but Jimmy had a hard time focusing on his words. The auditorium was hot with the trapped body heat of four thousand others, and he wished that they had all sat before Kodos started talking. His attention drifted.

“...grateful for the sacrifices you have made thus far, and grateful for all those to come,” Kodos said. Madeleine’s head snapped up, and her eyes met Natalya’s. Jimmy saw, in the laser-focused line between them, that they had heard something that he had not, and the skin on the back of his neck crawled. Around them, the quiet listening stillness of the crowd shivered into an animal intensity, a predatory waiting. Natalya glanced around, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She and Madeleine passed something invisibly, silently, through the air between them.

In the space between one breath and the next Jimmy watched as his teachers shed their masks of civility to reveal iron ferocity beneath. They might have been science track at the Academy, but they were still soldiers. The crowd’s discontented energy began to boil over. Natalya grabbed one of the littlest kids, hefted her into her arms, and marched straight at the nearest guard, standing in front of an exit. Madeleine swept backwards as she shoved Jimmy towards Natalya and the door.

“Start walking,” she hissed. “Get the littles, get to the exit, and get out!” Jimmy turned, on autopilot, and shoved at Tommy’s shoulder. Madeleine doubled back to push the second row of students towards the door, putting herself between them and the guards lining the back wall.

“Move,” he whispered to Tommy, and they shuffled towards Natalya and the guard.

“She had an accident,” Natalya said, smiling. “Excuse us. I need to change her before it starts to stink.” The little girl in her arms hid her face in her neck under the scrutiny of the guard. Their line bunched behind Natalya as the crowd behind them started to yell out.

“Quiet!” Kodos’s voice boomed out through the auditorium, and for a moment everything went perfectly still. “I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.” There was one heartbeat of pure silence.

A phaser whined and discharged on the other side of the room. Someone screamed. Then five, seven, twelve other phasers fired. Bodies dropped to the ground. The crowd surged forward, out, away from the guards or towards them, yelling and crying out. Natalya kicked her guard in the knee, grabbed for his phaser as he fell, and shot him point-blank. Even as two other guards from the back of the auditorium ran towards her, she shoved the auditorium door open, revealing the cement hallway beyond.

“Go!” Natalya roared in pain as she staggered forward, a phaser burn eating through the shoulder of her jacket and revealing the muscle fiber beneath her scorched skin. She shoved the little girl in her arms at one of the older kids pushing by and turned, raising her phaser. As Jimmy passed through the doorway, running after Tommy, his heart in his throat and the cacophony of phaser fire filling his ears, he turned back--- to look for other kids left behind, or to look for Madeleine and Natalya, he wasn’t sure. He saw the bodies of his classmates, unlucky enough to have been in the last row and in the direct line of fire of the guards lining the back of the hall, curled together on the floor by their seats. Madeleine was sprawled over them, covering them, unmoving. There were piles of people, twisted together in awful ways, in front of the guards still holding phasers. And at the head of it all, Kodos onstage, hands clasped together, watching over the scene with a terrible calm.

The last time he saw Natalya, she stood in the open doorway between her fleeing students and the advancing guards with a half-charged phaser in her hand, blood dripping down her useless arm from the hole in her shoulder.

She screamed, “Close the door!” as she fired at one of the guards. Jimmy grabbed the door and slammed it shut, and he felt the reverberation of impact as something--- phaser discharge or Natalya or both--- hit it from the other side. He backed away, watching the door, but Natalya held the line. The door didn’t open. He turned and sprinted in the direction that Tommy and the others had gone as muffled screams faded behind him.

The backstreet behind the town hall was bizarrely, unsettlingly quiet. Natalya was gone. Madeleine was gone. Half of the students that they had come down with, maybe more, had been lost to the chaos in the auditorium. As Jimmy pulled the last door shut behind him, he saw Laika’s little gasp of relief. There was a question in her eyes, but he shook his head. There would not be anyone coming out behind him. They were on their own. Jimmy wound through the crowd to stand with her and Tommy, brushing his hand over the head or shoulder of a sniffling little as he passed through them.

“We can’t stay here,” Laika whispered, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Where…?”

“We have to get out of the town,” Tommy whispered back. Jimmy stared at the plain white door that separated them from the slaughter in the theatre. He saw Madeleine sprawled protectively, uselessly, over the bodies of his classmates, Natalya’s broad shoulders filling the last doorway like she could protect them all. His heart thudded painfully against his ribs. Inside his head, he was screaming and screaming and screaming, but it didn’t come out. He felt his soul splitting into two. One part of him shrieked and beat his hands bloody against the white door. The other part was as cool as porcelain, utterly disconnected from everything he had seen, unfeeling but for the desire to stay alive, to keep the last of his friends alive.

“We’ll go through the woods,” he said. Laika and Tommy looked at him, but he couldn’t meet their eyes. The white door burned in his vision. “We probably know the forest around Farm School better than anyone else. If we get into the trees we at least won’t be seen. Then we can go home and find Mr. Park and he’ll know what to do.” He finally looked at his friends, and when he met their eyes, they nodded.

“Hold hands,” Laika said. She raised her voice slightly. “Ten and ups, grab a little. Buddy system.” Their little crowd--- only thirteen of them left, out of so many more--- shifted, reaching for each other. Jimmy felt like his bones were vibrating with the effort of keeping himself steady, but a tiny hand slid into his, grabbing onto three of his fingers with a chubby grip and anchoring him. He looked down.

Kevin stared up at him with enormous brown eyes, and it was the first time that Jimmy had ever seen him at a loss for words. He squeezed, feeling the fragility of the younger boy’s hand, and settled his shoulders back, the way he’d seen his dad do, the way Sam did. If they could get back home, then Mr. Park or Mr. Lopez would be able to fix this--- whatever was still fixable. All they had to do was get home. They could do that.

“Ready?” Jimmy’s mind shut everything else out--- his own screaming, the white door, Natalya’s bloody braid, the bone of her shoulder--- except for the only thought that mattered, singing through him in time with his heartbeat: get home, get home, get home. Laika nodded. Tommy nodded, gripping the hands of twin girls who had only arrived on Tarsus a few months prior. “Let’s go.”

They ran down the back alley that stretched along the back length of the auditorium, and their footfalls echoed eerily in the silence after the deafening phaser fire. Laika, who had arrived on Tarsus before any of them and knew the town better, took the lead. They followed her sure, quick steps, and she zigged down another alley that would take them out of the town, away from the main road, into the forest. Jimmy could feel the effects of a month of rationing in the burn of his lungs and heart, the empty energy of his cup of coffee making him jittery on his feet. When Kevin lost his footing on the uneven stones, Jimmy hauled him up onto his back and stumbled on.

It was as Laika led them onto the narrow plain between the edge of town and the start of the forest that they heard shouts behind them. Jimmy whipped his head back, searching for the source, and the flash of a hunter green uniform made his stomach leap into his throat. “No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, in time with each footfall, and sprinted as hard as he could after Laika and the others. Kevin’s arms were clenched around his neck, and he could hear the younger boy’s muffled cries against his neck. He was almost across the plain, almost to the safety of the trees, when he heard the whine and discharge of phaser fire. He flinched to the side, but he was still on his feet. He was still running. Phasers discharged again and again, and the dry grass around him caught fire as he ran haphazardly towards the trees, trying to make them both a moving target.

Jimmy flung himself and Kevin behind the trunk of the closest tree. Pieces of bark exploded around him as phaser fire hit the other side. Jimmy slid Kevin from his back, pressing him to the ground.

“Are you okay?”

Kevin nodded, eyes wide and face completely blank. Jimmy thought that his own face might have looked the same. He wanted his parents--- but, no. If he thought about them, or the farmhouse in Iowa, he would never survive. He couldn’t think about anything but getting to Farm School with the littles and finding Mr. Park. Far-off phasers fired again and again, but his tree still stood. He looked up, and Laika was there, and Tommy and two other littles.

“Where is everyone else?” Jimmy’s voice was hoarse, scratching against his dry throat. His lungs still burned from the exertion of their flight. Laika’s eyes flicked reluctantly over his shoulder, out to the bare stretch of earth behind him. He dared one look over his shoulder. There were a handful of the guards from the auditorium, their pursuers, pacing the outskirts of the town with rifles in hand, and a trail of seven little crumpled bodies between the last of the buildings and the first of the trees.

Jimmy’s stomach heaved, but nothing came up. Stomach acid burned his throat. Tears stung his eyes. He heard a thin wailing, coming from Laika. He didn’t think she was aware that she was making noise. He closed his eyes and let the stony, unfeeling half of his brain take over.

“Get home,” he said, and Laika stopped wailing with a hiccup. “All we have to do is get home. We can do that.” He took Kevin’s hand in his again and held Laika’s gaze, before holding Tommy’s. “We’ll get the littles home. Mr. Park will know what to do.”

For a moment they stared at him, and Kevin sniffled. But then they nodded, and Laika turned to look at the sun before turning back to the woods.

“You know the way best,” he said. Laika loved to go birdwatching with Mr. Park. She had spent almost every weekend wandering through the woods, even when it was cold or rainy. “You can do this.” She nodded again, and she took the hands of one of the littles, and she led them up the mountain. Far from the main road, every step took them deeper into the trees until they couldn’t hear any sound but the wind through the reddening leaves and their own unsteady breathing.

They walked for two hours, taking a meandering route as Laika cast nervous glances in the direction of what Jimmy thought was the main road. As the sun started to slide down towards the opposite horizon, Jimmy caught her eye.

“All good?”

She chewed her lip nervously, glancing over his shoulder, but then her eyes snagged on something. She nodded decisively and pointed. Behind him, high up in an enormous tree, was the Farm School treehouse. “We’re close,” she whispered, and she led them on.

Farm School was as silent as a grave when Laika led their pack of six through the back entrance to the campus. They glanced around, but there was no one in sight.

“Maybe they’re hiding,” Tommy said. “Should we split up to look?”

“No,” Jimmy and Laika said, in unison. Jimmy shook his head as Laika said, “We should stay together.” Tommy nodded, and redoubled his grip on Mira and Ellie’s hands.

“Big house first,” Jimmy said, and they scuttled across the campus, through the empty fields. The grass had been trampled down, and any remnants of the ill-fated summer projects had been ground underfoot. They slipped into the main house silently, through an unlocked backdoor. The big industrial kitchen was empty, with the cabinets and closets thrown open like someone had rummaged through.

Jimmy pushed ahead to cross into the cafeteria, but Laika slowed, considering the empty shelves. “Someone took everything that was left here,” she said. “I don’t think the teachers would have done that. There’s not even salt left.” She was right, but there was nothing else they could do. They continued on.

There was no one in the big house. Not even bodies. Half the students had stayed behind that morning; those who hadn’t received a specific invitation to the day’s event. Jimmy’s brain reared back from the implications of that idea, and he put it from his mind. One thing at a time. They had gotten home. Now they had to find Mr. Park.

But he wasn’t in the big house, and he wasn’t in the classrooms or gymnasium. Jimmy turned in a circle under the dying sun, considering the shadows sinking over the campus. “The comm system is in the labs. It was in Mr. Park’s office, I think. Maybe he’s there.”

Laika nodded. She and Tommy looked at each other, and Tommy said, “I’ll stay with the littles in the big house. We’ll be in our room. You guys go look.”

Jimmy opened his mouth, ready to stop them from separating, but Laika shook her head, almost imperceptibly. They left Tommy with the littles and stole across the darkening campus to the laboratory building.

“I thought we said we weren’t splitting up,” Jimmy hissed, as they pushed open the door into the building. Laika considered him for a minute before she said, “Just in case there’s something we don’t want the littles to see.” Jimmy’s stomach dropped.

The labs were as silent as everywhere else was, but Jimmy’s ears still rang with the echoes of the phaser blasts. They tread carefully, fearfully, but every lab was empty. Mr. Park’s door, at the end of the central hall, was ajar when they reached it, and they exchanged uneasy glances. Mr. Park was quiet, and private, and his door was never open. But the comms unit--- an enormous, outdated, clunky thing compared to the sleek Starfleet one that Jimmy’s parents had kept in their Iowa house--- was on a table within.

Laika pushed the door further open. Jimmy crept in first. There was no one visible, but the comms unit was on. The front screen emitted a soft green glow. Jimmy approached it and tapped the playback button.

Mr. Park’s voice, harsh with his labored breathing, filled the room. They both jumped. “This is Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park, retired, sending an SOS from Tarsus IV. Something--- ah--- has gone terribly wrong. At first it was just a food shortage--- they said it was some fungus, but it was nothing I’d ever--- god! I’d ever seen.” Mr. Park’s breathing grew heavier, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Kodos has the only real comms relay, and he said he called for help, but I don’t think--- I don’t think he did. I don’t think anyone’s coming. And they took the kids. God, his guards took the kids. They had a list.” Jimmy turned to look at Laika, horror building in his chest, stealing his breath, but she wasn’t looking at him or the comms station. “He’s doing something. Kodos is up to something.” Mr. Park wheezed horribly, something wet rattling in his lungs. “This is it for me, but if anyone’s out there, monitoring any of these frequencies… get to Tarsus as fast as you can. While there’s still anyone to save. Park out.” Jimmy turned around to look where Laika was looking. A pair of dirt-stained work boots and two denim-clad legs poked out from behind Mr. Park’s desk. Laika shook her head, mouthing, “No, no, no, no,” and Jimmy grabbed her by the arm, towing her backwards.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, and she let him turn him from Mr. Park’s body and away from the office. Jimmy left the comms relay on but shut the door behind them.

“We can’t stay here,” he said, as they crossed back to the big house. “Some of the guards saw us running. They’ll come back for us.”

“The treehouse,” Laika said. “We’ll take the camping stuff and stay there. We can--- there’s probably some stuff we can still forage, at least for a few weeks, and drink from the streams. We can stay out there until help arrives.” Jimmy nodded.

“We can keep the littles safe. That’s what Madeleine and Natalya would do,” Jimmy said, and Laika’s lip trembled, but she nodded too.

The sun had set by the time they returned to the big house. They told Tommy what they needed to do, took all the camping supplies that they could carry, and left Farm School behind. As the six survivors headed back into the woods, towards their treehouse, their former home receded into shadow and was gone.

The four in-between weeks were fuzzier in Kirk’s memories than the beginning and the end. Most of the days blurred together in a mess of hunger and sleep, of stripping the bark off of trees with a knife and digging out the soft wood inside to eat; of telling the littles that collecting acorns was a game and whoever found the most would win; of the bright sharp days after stealing something worth eating from the town when they were brave or dumb enough to risk getting caught by the guards who still hunted runners on the streets. Kirk let most of those memories spin by them in blurry streaks, waiting for the memories of the days that mattered.

There was the day that the littles were too weak to climb the rope ladder anymore, and the big kids were too weak to carry them up. Jimmy packed up their sleeping bags and iodine tablets and tossed them down out of the treehouse, and Laika led them to an old animal warren that she had found while scavenging. Whatever large creature had created the den in the roots of the tree was long gone, and they crawled down into it gratefully. If Jimmy was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure how many more times he could have made it up the ladder before eventually falling--- the exertion made him dizzy, and his hands were too weak to grip the rope ladder. The den was more dangerous than the treehouse had been--- closer to town, closer to the ground, and every once in a while they heard deep voices of adults echoing through the trees. But they didn’t say so out loud.

In the beginning, before there was only the hunger and then the numbness, Laika and Jimmy and Tommy had harsh, whispered conversations about trying to save their classmates. What had they been taken from Farm School for? If terrible things were happening to them, shouldn’t they try to help them? They had no weapons, no help, no way to fend off an army of Kodos’s murderous guards if they tried to free their classmates, but talking about taking action kept away the urge to lay down and die.

Then, three weeks after the massacre, Laika came back with one expired can of sweet potatoes and a haunted, ragged look that Jimmy hadn’t seen on her before. He dragged her down into the den, catching her when she stumbled on her feet. Tommy leapt up to grab her other arm, and even with both of them holding on she trembled so badly that Jimmy thought she would vibrate out of her skin and into a puddle. They set her on the ground, used one of their hunting knives to wedge the top of the can off, and split the meager amount between the six of them.

“I saw Gemma,” she whispered, later that night. Jimmy sat, back against the wall of the warren, watching the tunnel entrance. Tommy lay with his back to it, one of the littles curled up against him for warmth. Laika sat cross-legged between them, no longer shaking but with a thousand-yard stare that seemed to burn through the wall of their safe hidey-hole, like she could see all the way back to the town. “There was a house with all the doors open, and I could see the kitchen… I thought I might get in and out, that there was no one inside.”

“Gemma was in the house?”

“Her parents live here,” Laika said dully. “Or, lived. They were all dead.”

Tommy closed his eyes. Jimmy said, “Starved?”

But Laika shook her head. “I don’t think so. They didn’t have food either, like I thought they might, but there was something else wrong with them. Their skin was all gray.” Jimmy shivered. “I looked everywhere, but that was all they had,” Laika said, lifting her chin at the now-empty can. “But they weren’t going to eat it.”

They sat in silence, listening to the quiet rustling of the trees outside, until Tommy unscrewed the lid to one of their bottles of stream water and offered it to Laika. She shook her head. “I drank enough out of their faucet,” she said.

“Fancy-pants,” Jimmy said, and he took the bottle when Tommy passed it to him. Laika laid down where she had been sitting, between Tommy and the wall, and Jimmy squeezed both of their hands before moving to lay between the littles and the entrance to the den. His bones pressed uncomfortably against the ground, but he curled up next to Mira and Ellie and fell asleep.

Jimmy woke up a few hours later. It stunk of warm skin, of sickness and rot. The earth was hard beneath his body. It felt like his hip bones, his tailbone and shoulder blades, each of his knobby vertebrae, were pressing a bruise against the inside of his skin where they rested heavily against the ground. It was mostly dark out, no sunlight to illuminate the rabbit-warren tunnel, only the faint light of a waxing moon providing any visibility. The shadowed bodies of his pack lay alongside him in gentle repose. He counted them off: one was him, two was Ellie, three was Mira, four was Kevin, five was Tommy. At six, he jerked to a halt. Something wasn’t right. Before he was aware that he was moving he had scrambled across the dirt to her: Laika, her brown hair a rat’s nest of dirt and leaves, unmoving.

“No, no, no,” he whispered, and shook Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, wake up!” Her unnatural stillness had caught his attention: now that he was next to her, he could see more clearly the graying waxy pallor of her cheeks and lips, the immobile smoothness of her eyelids. Tommy woke with a jolt, rolling over immediately. He pushed himself up with one hand and shook Laika with the other.

“Hey,” he said, his voice growly with sleep. “Wake up.”

Jimmy grabbed her other shoulder, shaking her, the other hand coming to rest against her gaunt cheek. “Hey. Laika. It’s not funny. Wake up.” But Laika did not wake up. Her eyes did not open. Her chest did not rise.

“Jimmy, what happened?” Tommy whispered.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said, disbelief raising his voice high like one of the little’s. “I just woke up, and I saw that---” He gagged, overwhelmed by the smell of dirty skin and death, sickness and rot. “Laika, wake up!” God, he was so tired, and so hungry, and there were only five of them now, and what would they do without her? She had been so brave, had stolen for them, had known the woods and the way around town better than anyone, and now she was so still and silent, and they couldn’t drag her back from wherever she had gone without them. He closed his eyes, and the cold, analytical half of him rose up and drowned the half of him that cried out at how unfair it all was.

“We have to move her,” Jimmy whispered as Tommy whimpered to himself, hand still mechanically rocking Laika’s shoulder.

“What? No! Why?” Tommy whispered back.

“We can’t let the littles see her like this,” he said.

“Where are we going to put her? We can’t bury her!”

“Down the mountain. Near the town. They won’t notice another body.” Jimmy hated the words as they came out of his mouth: practical, useful, awful. He wanted to lay down next to Laika, close his eyes, and follow where she had gone. But he couldn’t--- not with Tommy and the littles still here. Not with his last holo to Sam and his message to his parents still soaring through space. Tommy sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded. Jimmy nodded back and shoved Tommy gently. Tommy got up, stepping carefully around the sleeping littles, and gingerly picked up Laika’s ankles. Jimmy wormed his hands under her shoulders and bent his arms under hers, picking her up off the ground. They backed up to the entrance and Jimmy went as slowly as he could, arms burning with the strain of Laika’s weight, until he felt the cool air of the night outside of their den on his back.

Together they carried her down the mountain in the worst parade of two Jimmy had ever been a part of, and they left her on the outskirts of the town. Tommy kissed her forehead and cried. They held hands as they stole quietly back to their safe hole. They crawled back inside, each refusing to let go of the other’s hand, and fell asleep curled together.

When the littles woke up the next morning, and Jimmy pulled them all into the circle of his arms and told them that Laika wasn’t coming back, they were too tired to cry. But he felt their shoulders deflate, sinking further into themselves, and he held them closer. Tommy leaned against him, keeping Jimmy from tilting over, and their broken family of five slept most of that day away, letting the sun rise and set without them.

The next day, Tommy left them in the den to scavenge acorns. He came back as the sun slipped down below the horizon, staggering with exhaustion, his empty, distended stomach painfully visible as he held his bounty in the bottom of his shirt like an apron. Using two rocks and all the strength left in their arms, he and Jimmy cracked them open and scraped the meager meat out of the shells to distribute between themselves and the littles. The underbrush had died with the changing of the seasons, and Laika had held most of their knowledge about what plants were edible. Without her, they would have to survive on acorns and tree bark and water.

The morning after that, Mira cried and wailed and refused to open her eyes, curled around herself. Ellie moaned in sympathy, and Kevin sat next to them and talked incessantly about anything that came into his mind, just to distract them. But his eyes were dim and glassy, and more often than not his sentences trailed off before he finished them. The morning after that, all three littles refused to sit up and curled together with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I’m going into town,” Jimmy said. For a second, it seemed like Tommy would argue with him, to ask him to stay. But in the end he just nodded and pulled Mira against his chest, rocking her side to side. Jimmy left them like that. If Laika was right, and something other than starvation was killing the colonists, there might be something left for them to scavenge. He would find it and bring it back to them, and the littles would sit up and talk to them, and they would survive another few days.

The leaves had begun to fall from the trees. If he had counted the days correctly, and there was no guarantee that he had, October would start soon. Last year, that meant harvest festivals and a gourd that was certainly not a pumpkin but could be carved like one to be set out on every doorstep. Gemma had won the carving contest--- but he wouldn’t think about Gemma now. He dragged his legs, step after step, down the mountain to the town.

He didn’t see another living soul, but the bodies of the colonists were everywhere. On their front stoops, laying behind houses, on the main street, their graying, decaying corpses bloated and stinking. Some of them looked emaciated, their skin shrink-wrapped to their bones. But Laika had been at least partially right: not all of the dead looked like they had starved. Jimmy felt the knobs of his own knees knocking together as he passed the grayish-blue body of a man who looked like he should have been in the peak of health, except for the fact that he was dead.

He stole from doorway to doorway, peering around corners, moving as quietly as he could. But for the first time since the day in the auditorium, he didn’t see the green-shirted law enforcement agents prowling the outskirts of the town, nor guarding the waist-high iron fence that circled the governor’s house. He ducked around another corner, closer to the center of town, and stumbled over a pair of legs in dark pants.

He reared back, his heart in his throat at the forest-green jacket on the torso, before he registered the sickly gray pallor of the body’s skin. This guard looked like Jimmy imagined he did; sunken cheeks, deep circles under his eyes, and the bones of his knuckles jutted out of the skin like mountains. “Not even guards get fed,” he muttered to himself, and he felt a savage relief that those who had not been sacrificed, who had done the sacrificing, had not been spared the horrors that they had endured. He moved to continue onward before pausing. The guard’s phaser was still tucked into his holster.

Jimmy held his breath and bent over the body. It was stiff, unmoving, as he reached with shaking fingers to unclip the strap and slide the phaser out. He watched the body nervously, but it did not awaken to grab him. He glanced at the settings on the phaser, but he didn’t know what they meant, so he left them as they were and stuck the weapon in the waistband of his ratty jeans.

He had only taken one step away from the body when there was a crackle. He spun, horrified, but the guard still hadn’t moved. The crackling noise came again.

“My chosen ones,” Kodos rasped. His voice came through an ancient portable radio, clipped on the other side of the guard’s belt. Jimmy froze as that voice pierced through the fog of hunger and exhaustion, lighting up his brain with fear and anger. Why had so many people died, why had Laika died, and Kodos still got to live? Kodos coughed. “The grand experiment must end here. There is no path forward. Forgive me.” He wheezed again, voice quieting. Jimmy hunched next to the corpse and the radio, ears straining. “If anyone is out there, heed me. We must burn it down.” He reeled back.

“Burn it down. Destroy the evidence. Cleanse this place.” Kodos coughed, and then the crackle of another radio breaking through the static interrupted him.

“I hear you, sir,” someone else’s voice muttered, weak and ragged. “I can do it.”

“I owe you… a debt of gratitude,” Kodos said. Then the radio went silent. Jimmy froze on his haunches, consumed by his anger, replaying Kodos’s message in his head. Then something clicked, and he staggered to his feet. Blood dribbled slowly back into his weak limbs, but he forced them into movement. He turned back the way he had come and heaved his starving body back home. Kodos had called to burn it all, and someone had responded.

It had been a dry summer. It hadn’t rained in weeks. His friends were in the woods.

Lungs aching, muscles cramping, swollen stomach pinching in pain, he ran. Against the wishes of every bone in his body, he ran as hard as he could, straight down the center streets of the remains of the town, back towards the den and Tommy and the littles. He had to warn them. The woods were going to light up like a matchstick after the summer they’d had. They couldn’t have starved and survived for so long for Kodos to kill them like this, impersonally, anonymously. Madeleine and Natalya didn’t die in the auditorium so that Kodos could have the final word. Jimmy broke from the town and sprinted flat-out for the cover of the woods.

Stealth didn’t matter anymore. He screamed, “Tommy!” He sucked in huge, gasping breaths as his stomach threatened to rebel and his legs cramped and his knees ached. “Tommy! Get up!” He staggered through the woods, his vision going black at the edges as his body tried to collapse, but he shoved himself up and kept going, screaming for his friend.

Finally, up ahead, the enormous tree that had sheltered them--- and from the roots of it, an addled Tommy and littles emerging into the sunlight.

“Jimmy?” Tommy rubbed one eye, dizzy in the sudden brightness. “What happened?” Jimmy opened his mouth to respond when they heard it. Further up the mountain, something snapped and popped, then rustled, then roared. The fire caught.

“Run,” Jimmy said, grabbing Kevin and swinging him onto his back as Tommy grabbed Mira and Ellie’s hands. “Run!” His body protesting every step, his spine bending under Kevin’s weight, Jimmy and Tommy fled. Something cracked, and a hot gust of wind pressed them forward, singeing their hair and burning their backs. Mira started to cry. It was still somehow better than her half-dead silence from that morning.

“What---?” Tommy gasped out, footsteps pounding in time with Jimmy’s.

“Kodos,” Jimmy spat. “Fire.” Tommy moaned with fear, but when Ellie stumbled at their speed he hefted her onto his back. Behind them, the woods that had been their shelter and salvation erupted into an inferno. The flames caught the few leaves that hadn’t fallen and spread in a crown fire over their heads as they pelted out of the forest. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy could see it racing down the hill, almost even with them. Tears streamed down his face from fear and the smoke, which caught in his lungs, stung his skin. He could see similar tracks running down the dirt on Tommy’s face.

They had the littles. They had each other. They broke from the cage of the treeline as the fire leapt at their heels and caught in the dry autumn grass of the open plain between them and the town. The grass blazed up immediately, and Jimmy’s legs, his hips and back and shoulders burned with it. Tommy cried out and swung Ellie up too, away from the fire, her screams drowned out by the roar of the crown fire above.

Ahead, there was one patch of unburned safety that Jimmy could see. He cut towards it. “The road!” Tommy followed him, coughing as he ran, and they covered the distance to the hard-packed dirt as fast as they could. They staggered onto the dry earth as the plain behind them sparked and hissed.

Mira moaned, and the pathetic little sound broke through Jimmy’s panic as the pain of their exertion set in. He let Kevin slide to the ground, and the friction of the little boy’s clothes against his scorched skin was like being burned all over again. Ellie had gone very, very pale, the only shock of color on her skin the angry red of her legs and feet.

Tommy wobbled, and Jimmy grabbed his elbows, keeping him upright.

“Stay with me, okay?”

“It hurts, Jimmy,” Tommy said, and Jimmy didn’t dare look down over his shoulder to his back. His clothes were sloughing off of him, destroyed. Kodos couldn’t have him like this.

“Just a few steps more,” Jimmy said. He took Kevin’s hand in his and gently picked up Mira. “Can you walk with me? Just a few more?” Tommy wavered on his feet, but Ellie slid her hand into his and he nodded.

“It’s just a little further,” Jimmy said. “Then you’ll feel better.” There was a reservoir on the other side of town; even the farm’s irrigation system had been hooked up to it. Jimmy had never prayed as hard as he did that moment for there to be water in the reservoir still. Step by excruciating step, he led them down the road for the first time since the massacre day. Tommy fell silent and his eyes sometimes slid shut, but he held Ellie’s hand and walked on. Jimmy lost the feeling in his legs, but Mira let him put her down after a few minutes and she limped alongside them. The fear of guards or Kodos never really went away, but they didn’t see another living being on the road. The fire burned on the other side of the town, its roar muted by blessed distance and halted by the paved roads. Minutes later, or maybe hours, he was peering over the stone lip of the reservoir. The drought had done its damage, but there was a few blessed feet of water within. He found the stone steps leading down into it.

Jimmy walked the littles down into the water. They stood still and quiet as he stripped their burned clothing away from them before stepping into the water with them. Then, once they were carefully ensconced in the water where it was shallow enough for them to stand, he stripped his own clothing away. The phaser he had stolen, somehow still in his jeans despite his pell-mell flight, got dropped on top of his pile of clothes along with his t-shirt before he followed the littles into the water. He didn’t know if it was clean, but he couldn’t bring himself to care: it was cool, and there was enough to stand in, and it felt like heaven. Tommy’s clothes dripped off him, shredding as he pulled his shirt over his head, and his back was a mess of dirt and singed skin. But he sloshed into the water, eyes closing in relief, and the five of them drifted as the fire burned itself out on the other side of town. Smoke billowed overhead, clouding the teal sky with the angry black smog of organic matter. The ash fell like dirty snow. They still didn’t have anything to eat, but they filled their bellies with water, and it almost felt like being full. As the sun slipped down behind the horizon, they piled together on the day-warmed terrace steps and slept.

A high, distant droning woke Jimmy from his restless sleep, early the next morning. It wormed into his dreams, filling his mind, before his subconscious recognized it and he jolted awake. Kevin tipped away from him as he shot upward, scrambling for his jeans. Tommy’s eyes opened slowly.

“Where’re you going?” His words were slurred, but Jimmy didn’t have time to wait for him to wake up. If he was right, it wouldn’t matter.

“Shuttle!” Jimmy grabbed the phaser and his t-shirt, jabbed it into the waist of his pants and dragged it over his head. “I’ll be back!” His whole body felt alight with something he almost didn’t recognize--- hope, a hope so big that it hurt to breathe. He sprinted up the terraced steps, cocking his head to one side and scanning the sky as he ran. It was just past daybreak, the true teal of the sky still warming up from the inky black of night. He ran towards what he thought was the source of the sound, straight up the road from the reservoir towards the town. Maybe he could shoot the phaser in the air and get the attention of the pilot? They had to be looking for the colonists: whether it was a trader or a rescue shuttle or even just a random traveler, they had to be looking for the people who lived here. It must have already landed; he didn’t see anything in the sky. He followed the high humming of an active engine through the town square, past the cursed town hall, past the burnt husks of houses unlucky enough to be built from wood instead of brick. The land to his right was scorched black earth, ash as far as the eye could see. Eerie black fingers of burnt trees reached for the sky. He tore down the road towards the song of the engine.

“I’m here! I’m over here!” He hollered as loud as he could until his throat burned, but he didn’t see anyone. There was no movement, but the roar of the shuttle was growing so loud that it was vibrating the air around him. A shuttle meant people. People meant help.

Jimmy skirted the outer fence of the governor’s house, running along the northernmost edge. His hand brushed the iron of the latticework, and it trembled with the force of the engine. It had to be closer. He passed the back edge of the house and skidded to a halt.

The governor’s backyard was an enormous expanse of burnt grass and bushes, and parked in the center was a black shuttle. As Jimmy’s heart pounded and he cried out in outrage and disbelief, he registered three details in stark relief.

The first was that the Kodos’s guards had exchanged their hunter-green uniforms for black ones. Two of them held up a sagging gray body between them, and a third circled them with a plasma rifle in hand.

The second was that the shuttle door was open, and a fourth guard leaned out of it, reaching for the body.

The third was that the body was staggering to its feet, lifting its head. It was Kodos. He was alive. His horrible uncanny eyes were alight in his gaunt and crevassed face.

This was a mistake. This had to be a mistake. Help could not have arrived for him, after what he had done. What about the littles? What about Tommy? What about him?

He screamed out, “Hey!” The procession of guards and the devil himself paused, all four of their heads turning to look at him. “Help us!”

Time slowed as the guards looked at him, on the other side of the fence, then looked at each other. Jimmy grabbed the fence between them, shaking with the force of his hope and disbelief, and watched as they looked away from him and kept walking.

They kept walking. They were going to put Kodos on the shuttle and take him away and leave them here. Fury like Jimmy had never felt before rose like a tsunami within him, drowning out all reason and leaving only the knowledge that Kodos did not deserve to be rescued from the ruins of the colony that he had destroyed.

There was a phaser tucked into the back of his jeans. The cool metal of the barrel dug into his back. He took it out and, like he was shooting skeet back on the farm with Sam, sighted along it. He saw Kodos’s fine gray hair and craggy face on the other side.

He fired.

The head of the nearest guard snapped up at the whine of the weapon. He locked eyes with Jimmy and, without hesitation, stepped directly in front of the bolt of energy meant for Kodos. Jimmy watched in frozen horror as the phaser fire hit the guard and tore him open. He spun and dropped to the ground. Kodos glanced blankly at the body on the ground, just another sacrifice for him, and allowed the guard in the shuttle to grab his arm and haul him in. The guard with the rifle pointed it directly at Jimmy.

He had shot at Kodos and missed. The shuttle and the people on it weren’t going to help them. Jimmy stood his ground, phaser still raised, and glared at the guard, refusing to look at the rifle aimed at his head. He was going to die, but he was going to do it without flinching. In his periphery, he saw the last guard drag the body of his comrade into the shuttle. The blood from the wound glinted against the dirt in the early-morning sun.

The other guard came back around and pushed the barrel of the rifle down. “Leave it,” he said. “Look at him. He’s almost dead anyway.” With a final sneer the rifleman turned away. They swung themselves into the black shuttle, and the door slammed shut behind them.

Jimmy watched numbly as the shuttle lifted off vertically, soaring higher and higher until it was just a black dot against the blue sky. Then it was gone. He looked down again, and saw the blood of the man that he had killed drying on the hard-packed earth.

He threw the phaser as far as he could away from himself and, turning from the scene of his violence and failure, vomited up all of the water left in his stomach. He leaned back against the sharp metal of the fence and slid to the ground, staring blankly at the blackened edge of the prairie beyond the town. He didn’t know how long he sat there for before Tommy’s voice broke through his reverie.

“What happened?” Tommy was shaking him, panic on his face, and Jimmy felt guilty. He had meant to go back to them, but he couldn’t seem to shake the whine of the phaser out of his ears. It was hard to hear anything else over it. The littles hovered over his shoulder, their drawn faces pinched with worry.

“Nothing,” Jimmy said, with a glance at the littles. He coughed, stomach acid burning in his throat, and let Tommy help him up. “I think this house is empty now, though. Let’s see if there’s anything in there to eat.”

“Isn’t this the governor’s house?” Tommy dropped his voice low as the littles straggled behind them in a line. “You don’t think he’s…?”

“He’s gone,” Jimmy said, and his own voice was rough and unfamiliar.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jimmy said, and glanced down at the littles as Kevin snagged two of his fingers in his weakened grip. He led them into the empty house, and they walked quickly past the rooms where the bodies of guards decayed on couches and seated against walls, until they arrived in an enormous kitchen. It seemed to be made entirely of ceramic and aluminum, with two huge ovens set into the wall and a stovetop built directly into the counter. It was so different from the industrial-sized kitchen at Farm School, which managed to feel warm and cozy despite being built for mass production. This kitchen was cold and clinical. They opened all the cabinets and drawers, finding only utensils and pots and pans, before Tommy noticed a narrow door set back in a corner. He opened it, and revealed stairs leading down into a darkness that smelled like soil and rot. They both looked mistrustfully at it.

“I’ve got this one, Jimmy,” Tommy said finally, and left him standing in the kitchen with the littles. Jimmy continued to open cabinets and drawers, finding nothing but kitchen utilities, until Tommy climbed back up the stairs, wiping his hands on his already horrible pants.

“It’s awful down there,” Tommy said, but he clutched a can in his hands victoriously. “Like the summer projects all over again. But I did find this.” He wiped oily blue smears off the label, revealing a label for baked beans that had expired the year previous. They heated the beans up in a pot on the stove, reveling in the warmth from the electric burner, and the five ate directly from the pot with wooden spoons, just because they could. They dumped the pot and spoons in the sink without cleaning them.

They scavenged through the house, stealing blankets and pillows off of couches that were unoccupied, and found a room that didn’t stink too badly of decay--- a sunroom near the back of the house, through the windows of which Jimmy could see the flattened, desiccated grass where the shuttle had been. As the littles slept, their bellies not empty for once, Jimmy told Tommy, quietly, shamefully, what he had done. The sun was setting by the time he finished.

Tommy considered what he had said, turning the embroidered edge of a blanket over in his hands. Jimmy picked at the burned skin on his hands and tried not to think about the blood against the dirt.

Finally Tommy looked up, eyes flashing in fading light, and said, “Fuck ‘em. He probably deserved it.” Something in Jimmy’s heart unclenched. He and Tommy fell asleep facing each other, with a roof over their heads and the littles between them.

He awoke the next morning to shouting and movement, adults in red and blue and gold swarming into the room with phasers and comms. Jimmy flung himself upright, crouching over the littles, baring his teeth at the intruders before he recognized the familiar uniforms.

“Oh, my god,” the closest Starfleet officer said, a whirring tricorder in her hand. “You’re alive.”

The memories of the next month were a blur of pain and space. Jimmy and Tommy and the littles were beamed up together to the U.S.S. Valiant, where they were poked and prodded and tied to biobeds with IVs of fluids and nutrients. They were scanned with every machine in Medbay, it seemed, while the doctors spoke quietly to each other and refused to tell them anything about what the scans said. Not a single one of them stopped shaking for the first seventy-two hours.

After living feral for a month, adjusting to the sterility of a starship was excruciating. The littles screamed shrilly when Jimmy or Tommy were out of their vision. Jimmy ate a meal from the replicator and threw it up immediately. Tommy had to be sedated and restrained after the doctor tried to put him in the metal box of the dermal regenerator for his back. They refused to sleep apart from each other, and the whirs and beeps of the unfamiliar ship made it impossible to pretend that they were in their treehouse or the den. Jimmy whispered to Tommy that he was afraid of Kodos coming to find him, and Tommy held his hand in the dark of the room that they all shared. Under the harsh lights of the starship and after the dirt and blood and soot was washed away, their skin was an unhealthy gray, and every day medical staff took their blood and patted their heads and made nervous eye contact when they thought the children weren’t looking.

In the end, the captain and the first officer told Jimmy and Tommy, it was Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park’s last desperate call that got the Valiant to Tarsus in time. Kodos had never used the government relay to call for help, not even when the harvest first started dying.

Then there was the journey back to Earth. Tommy and their littles were shipped off to what remained of their families, and no one would tell Jimmy where they went. Jimmy’s own parents were waiting for him when he got to Earth. A week after he arrived home, Sam kicked his hospital door open and set up shop next to his bed while he slowly ingested three months’ worth of nutrients through an IV and finished regrowing his skin. Every night, he woke up screaming Kodos’s name, and his parents looked nervously at each other, and Sam stopped going home with their parents and instead dragged a cot into Jimmy’s hospital room.

Then Dr. Johns replaced the familiar Iowa family doctor that he had been seeing. Jimmy confessed that he wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t bear to be the only person breathing in a room, and he told Dr. Johns that all he could think about was Kodos coming back for him.

“Kodos is dead, Jimmy,” Dr. Johns had said kindly, reading the screen on the machine hooked up to Jimmy’s arm.

“You found him?” Jimmy sat up so suddenly he got dizzy, the hospital room swirling around him. Dr. Johns gave him an odd look.

“Governor Kodos died on Tarsus, Jimmy. In the fire that claimed everyone else.”

“No,” he said. “No, he didn’t. I told you, and I told the doctor on the Valiant. There was a shuttle! It came and got him!” Dr. Johns sat on the edge of his bed and pushed him back against the headboard with a gentle hand.

“Please, calm yourself,” he said. “You are very upset. You survived something awful. It is only natural that your thoughts are confused at this time.”

“I’m not confused,” Jimmy had insisted. “I know what I saw. And he got out.” Dr. Johns had a conversation with his parents outside his hospital room, and through the little window set into the door he saw his mother stare haughtily out the hallway window as his dad wiped a hand across his devastated face. Sam held his hand and said, “I believe you, Jimmy.” But Sam couldn’t convince their parents or Dr. Johns, and then Jimmy woke up from the same awful nightmare to find his old friends from his elementary school in Iowa standing behind his mom with balloons. They sat around him as he tried to sit up straight and felt the weakness in the muscles along his spine, and then after a painfully awkward hour they left, and he did not see them again until he started back at school the following year, when he only had to check in at the Dr. Johns’s clinic once a week for blood testing and dialysis. They said hi, and they signed each other’s yearbooks, and Jimmy skipped the school dances and football games and a lot of his classes to climb up to the roof of the high school and stare at the stars instead.

Then he got to the Academy, and he met Elise.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she said to him during their first meeting, her eyes twinkling. “We knew you were going to be special.” He talked about Kodos and Tarsus, and it helped, until it didn’t. She taught him how to hide the parts of him that the IVs and dialysis and dermal regenerators didn’t fix. He met Bones, and made friends, and he was surrounded by people who didn’t know where he had been and what it had done to him, and he was happier than he’d been in years, despite the nightmares and the panic attacks and the grief. He missed Tommy and the littles, but Elise said that she’d checked in on them and that they were doing well, and at the Academy he got to learn by doing and experimenting for himself the way he had at Farm School. Then he’d graduated, and worked his way up the ranks despite the ceaseless fear that Kodos would hunt him down someday, and eventually he became a captain and was given the Enterprise. The ghosts of Tarsus lived in him, but he had bricked them behind a wall that got thicker and thicker with every passing year.

It wasn’t until he had gone and fallen in love that he had been forced to reckon with the fact that he still carried those ghosts at all.

☆☆☆

The memory-stream faded, leaking away into the abyss. Kirk stood in the black of the meldspace. His whole soul ached with grief and remembrance, but there was a clarity to it. There was still a wound in him, one that had healed poorly, but in the telling, some of the rot in him had been finally cleaned away.

Jim, Spock said, and it was with a slight jolt of surprise that Kirk remembered that he wasn’t alone. Spock’s voice was ragged. I grieve with thee.

Kirk bowed his head, and he sensed Spock’s mind curled around his, protective, comforting.

I will take us from the meld now, Spock said. You will rest. And then we must talk about what you showed me. The rough edges of Spock’s voice were smoothed over as he reasserted his control, and Kirk felt a flicker of unease at his words. He had tried to convince the rest of the world that Kodos had escaped, and had failed each time. But then Spock said, without preamble, I believe you, captain, and one more piece of Kirk’s anxiety melted away. There was a sense of rising, as if coming up from the bottom of a deep pool, and the blackness lessened until Kirk felt himself reemerge from a very long tunnel back into his own mind.

He still lay on his side, Spock’s hand pressed to his face and clutched between his own. His arm was numb beneath him, and his eyelids were sticky with stillness. He opened his eyes as Spock pulled his hand back from his face, extending and clenching his fingers. Spock’s eyes opened as the familiar noises of the Enterprise around him floated slowly back into his awareness: the hum of the warp drive, footsteps in the corridor, faint beeping from far away.

“That’s what I saw,” Kirk said. “That’s what I did.” He rolled over onto his back and stared up at his familiar ceiling. He was tired, all the way down to his bones. He felt as though someone had wrung his brain out like a sponge. “Can we discuss this in the morning?”

“Certainly,” Spock said, after hesitating only for a second. His voice was deep with disuse. Kirk closed his eyes and waited for him to get up.

He did not get up.

Kirk opened his eyes and turned his head. Spock still lay on his side, watching him. Rather than the pity or disgust Kirk expected, Spock’s face was open and warm.

“What?”

Spock hesitated, before reaching across the space between them and resting his hand on Kirk’s bicep. “I am disquieted by the possibility of you having died before I knew of your existence in our universe.” His fingers flexed, tightening on Kirk’s arm. “I have never been more grateful for your refusal to submit to the law of large numbers.”

Kirk closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of Spock’s palm on his skin. He brought his other hand to cover it, his fingers brushing the back of Spock’s wrist. They lay next to each other, their breathing slowing until they were inhaling in tandem. The post-meld exhaustion pulled at Kirk’s mind, the gentle rhythm of Spock’s breathing lulling him to sleep.

“Jim,” said Spock quietly. Kirk forced his eyes open again, fighting the weight of his eyelids. “Would you like me to stay?” Kirk looked at him, trying to read his expression--- the Vulcan’s face was neutral, watching him in kind. But his arm was still stretched across the distance between them, his hand steady against Kirk’s arm. Spock had walked unflinchingly beside him through every memory of the worst days of his life; he did not think that he would begrudge him his company now.

“Please,” Kirk said. Spock’s hand pressed against his arm before he sat up swiftly and stood.

“I will return momentarily,” he said, and Kirk nodded. Spock crossed the room, retrieved his clothing from his half of the closet, and vanished into the bathroom. Kirk heard the air recycler kick on at his entrance, and he pressed his hands to his eyes.

Despite everything, despite his grief and trauma and the ghosts and his failures, he felt the irrepressible start of a crooked smile forcing its way onto his face. He felt lighter. He felt free. He had shared everything that Elise had told him could never be shared, and Spock had not run screaming from the room or removed him from duty. He had told Spock about Kodos and the shuttle, and Spock had believed him. Showing Spock what he had done, what he had failed to do, hadn’t been the end of the line. It was only the beginning of the conversation. And then Spock had reached out to touch him. He wasn’t alone.

Spock reentered in the tunic and pants he slept in, with his makeup gone and smelling faintly of mint. Kirk sat up. Spock met his eyes.

“You know,” Kirk said, before he could chicken out. “That couch is not the most comfortable piece of furniture to sleep on.”

“I did not object to it,” Spock said, but he clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head slightly.

“It’s not awful, but the bed is better for a proper rest.”

“Indeed,” Spock said slowly, and Kirk saw a hint of that daring steal into his eyes, glinting in the half-dark. “What do you propose, captain?”

“I think the most logical course of action is to share the bed,” Kirk said. “It’s been a long night. And we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“I had assumed the day would be the same size as all other days, but I am curious to hear why you think otherwise,” Spock said, and he crossed the room to the bed. Kirk scooted backwards so he could slide beneath the comforter, and Spock joined him.

“Computer, lights to zero,” Kirk said. He tried to steady his breathing, sink into the sleep that his exhausted brain wanted, he couldn’t. Though his brain unhelpfully, unsurprisingly supplied him with the image of the shuttle taking the governor away again, and he could still feel the lingering dread and exhaustion in his limbs, the fear that Kodos would hunt him down had lost a little of its strength. Even if Kodos did find him out here, he was only human, and there was a Vulcan laying in Kirk’s bed. Spock would tear Kodos apart if he came anywhere near him again. The thought was comforting, but he still couldn’t convince his mind to rest. His memories were too close to the surface. He lay in the darkness instead, listening to Spock breathe.

“Jim.” Spock’s sudden voice spooked him.

“Yes?”

“You are unable to sleep.”

Kirk huffed out a laugh. “Something like that.” He heard Spock shift, the sheets rustling against his sleep clothes. Then a long, hot arm snaked around his torso and pulled him backwards, until he was pressed with his back to Spock’s chest, Spock’s arm over his waist.

“You find physical contact soothing,” Spock murmured, and his breath ghosted over Kirk’s ear.

“But you don’t,” Kirk said. He should pull away, allow Spock his space, but---

“I do when it is you,” Spock said, and Kirk was shocked into silence. “I appreciate the confirmation that you are near and safe.” The warmth of Spock’s chest, the steady beating of his heart against Kirk’s spine, and his even breathing against his neck was doing more for him than Bones’s sedatives ever did. His eyelids grew heavy, and the whirling images through his mind slowed and dimmed, losing their sharp edges, as he breathed in time with Spock.

“Rest now,” Spock said softly, and he did.

#spirk #spirk fan fic #k/s fan fic #star trek fan fiction #fake married #regulatory relations #my writing

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