Run Boy Run | Spencer Reid x Unsub!Reader | PART 1

Preface: Separated and cut off from the BAU, it’s only a matter of time to see who gets to him first: you or his team. Unfortunately for him, you don’t like to lose. Especially when it involves someone like Spencer Reid.

Idc about digital footprints I will flip and fold this man like an omelet, pound him like cake, whip him like cream, eat him like I’m tryna reach the bottom of the Nutella jar with my tongue--THE ENTIRE 9 YARDS, THE WHOLE KITCHEN, BATHROOM, BEDROOM, ATTIC, ROOF, DRIVEWAY, NEIGHBORHOOD, EVERYTHING

Disclaimer: This fic implies a forced relationship between Spencer and the Reader, plus psychological and physical coercion. THE READER IS LITERALLY A BATSHIT CRAZY CRIMINAL. I DO NOT CONDONE ROMANTICIZATION OF THESE ACTS IRL. I DO NOT CONDONE ANY ACTS OF THIS KIND IRL. THIS IS ALL FICTION. DON’T BE WEIRD.

This also isn’t proofread so yk

Warning(s): Mentions of kidnapping, mild violence, weapons

“It took me several months to rig this entire building like this, you know?” Your voice echoes from a hidden intercom wired through the entire office building. There isn’t a single room where your voice isn’t audible. 

Spencer stays tucked away in a corner office on the fifth floor. The exits had been blocked--doors welded shut during his time unconscious. He has his gun with him, but he’s yet to pull it out. He knows why you let him keep it. This is a game to you. A challenge. A sadistic game of cat and mouse. 

“I know you know this building. You and your BAU friends scoured it thoroughly a few weeks back. You know all exits, emergency exits, vent systems, shortcuts, and stairwells. So do I.”

Spencer flinches when he hears the faint ding of the elevator coming to the same floor. 

“I chose you for a reason, Spencer Reid. Your profiling skills are amazing. So is your ability to be a pathetic, whiny man. And I like that.”

Spencer slowly scoots to the ajar door to peek outside into the hallway.

“So, how about a game, Mr. Reid? I’ll go back up to the twenty-seventh floor and I’ll give you a two-minute head start. If you can avoid me for seven minutes, I’ll leave your phone by the first-floor entrance. If you fail to avoid me or fail to get to the first-floor exit within that timeframe. . . well, you’ll just have to find that out.”

Spencer’s body clams up. The cold slap of adrenaline shooting through his body.

“If you agree, slam the door of the room you’re currently in in the next seven seconds. If you don’t agree. . . then I’ll come to you, and you won’t have a chance to fight for your freedom.”

Reid’s eyes slide to the door right next to him. With a shaky hand he grabs it, but hesitates, letting out a quiet whimper before slamming the door as hard as he can. The sound echoes through the empty building.

“Good boy.” 

A few seconds pass before he can hear the faint ding of the elevator again. 

“In thirty seconds, run. And keep running.”

You sit yourself behind a desk, placing your radio to the left of you. Turning on the several monitors mounting the wall, you quickly flip through the cameras. Your eyes catch no movement on any floor or in any room. So he’s playing the waiting game in the cameras’ blind spots. It’ll take me a lot longer than seven minutes to check every floor and individual room. You briefly look at your watch. Forty-three seconds have already passed. I’m sure he’s counting as well. 

“What to do, what to do. . .”  You flip through the cameras one more time before pushing back from the desk and grabbing the radio. You walk over to the elevator and lean around the corner to press the buttons in a random order. Floor seven, floor six, floor eight. You walk away from the elevator as it closes its door, and head over to the emergency stairwell to follow it. You practically jump down the steps to keep in pace with the elevator. When you reach floor seven’s door, you stand in the entryway and wait. From the other side of the floor, you can hear the ding. If you can, so can Reid if he’s on the same floor. You stay silent and listen. He’s not here. You turn and make your way down to the sixth floor. Assuming Reid isn’t a triathlete, the connecting floors both above and below the seventh floor are the only realistic places he can get to in thirty seconds.

He won’t risk using the elevator, nor the stairs. He’s probably timing when he hears the elevator. Or he decided to book it.

You bring the radio up to your face. “Three minutes have passed. Did you know that? Are you keeping track? You’re a wonderful chase. Or hider, if you realize there’s no getting out of this.”

You decide to skip going to the floors the elevator is and head straight to the first floor. “Are you having fun? I do hope you’re not pushing yourself that hard. That fragile body of yours can only take so much.”

When you arrive at the door that leads out to the first-floor lobby, your eyes turn to the door handle. The powdery substance you left on it has a noticeable smeared handprint. The door’s unlocked--in fact, there’s an absence of a lock--but it was blocked from the other side. It was virtually impossible to pry open by someone like Spencer.

You grin and bring the radio up to your mouth. “I see you snuck by me to the first floor, Mr. Reid. You truly are amazing. Which means you knew I would’ve left the elevator unattended. I can’t block the elevator. You’re on it right now, aren’t you? Cute.” 

Spencer’s heart is pounding in his chest. The force of it threatens to throw him off balance when he moves. He keeps himself pressed against the back of the elevator, uncaring of the metal railing digging his spine. He wrings his hands like his life depends on his, and only lets them go when the elevator dings. He places his hand on his hip where his gun holster swings. He holds his breath when the door slowly slides open, mentally preparing himself to see you standing right in front of him. He stays still when the open lobby greets him, no sign of you. He nervously takes a step out of the elevator and looks around. When he sees the cost is clear, he makes a break for the exit, which remains unblocked.

He skids to a stop when he can hear the echoing sound of a handgun being cocked. He wants to turn around but is afraid to.

“Mr. Reid,” he hears you greet from behind him. “So close yet so far. Turn around. I want to see you.”

He turns around after a few seconds, raising his hands slowly. 

Your heart thrums in excitement when you see his eyes--wide and fearful. You don’t get too close to him, but close enough to make him uncomfortable. “You failed to avoid me before you got to the exit.”

“You weren’t in the room when I came here.”

Silently, you raise your hand and point to an open vent on the ceiling. His eyes follow your finger, and he swallows, now aware you had your eyes on him as soon as the elevator door opened.

“Did you like my powder trick?” You ask. “You have to admit, it was very intuitive.”

“What do you want from me?” Reid asks. “I don’t have anything of use. I’m a profiler, but that’s rarely useful outside of the BAU. I can’t cook, I’m meticulously neat, but I’ve been told it’s overwhelming--”

“Good thing those aren’t things that I want.”

He goes quiet, mouth shutting.

“I don’t care about all of that,” you say softly. “But I did choose you for a reason.”

“. . . what would that be?”

You run forward and he jerks reflexively, holding his hands in front of him in case you try to strike a blow. You shoot off the gun towards the floor and the sound in the confined building was enough to get him to move his arms to shield his face. You slide to your hip and decisively scissor throw him to the ground. 

He lets out a loud grunt from the impact and you stand up, pointing the gun directly to his chest. “Please--please, don’t shoot--just--what do you want?”

Spencer looks up at you with glossy, pleading eyes. His jaw trembles in held-back fear.

You slowly begin to smile, your heart pounding in your chest at the scene of Spencer Reid underneath you; at your mercy. “I can tell you what I want. But you won’t like it.”

Perfectly Fine

Prompt: Hi! I would love to read something from you featuring asexual Remus! - anon

it is project onto fictional characters hour my dudes

Read on Ao3

Warnings: discussions of the reality of being a sex-repulsed ace in a very allo world, nothing explicit

Pairings: none you heathens

Word Count: 1358

It takes them longer to figure it out than it should have and honestly, that’s on them.

But Remus is Remus, and that's perfectly fine.

It takes them longer to figure it out than it should have and honestly, that’s on them.

So it’s no secret that Remus’s particular sense of humor is equally as derived from what he finds funny and what makes the others the most uncomfortable. Logan did an analysis of it once and the results were 49%-51%. Which one is which varies but the quantities are incredibly consistent.

The trick is figuring out that the balance applies to Remus too.

And sure, the idea of Remus being uncomfortable is…difficult to remember sometimes, given that, you know, he’s Remus, but it’s there! It’s worth remembering! He’s a Side too! But considering his metric for ‘uncomfortable’ is wildly different from everyone else’s, it’s easy for them to overlook it. Maybe he gets some excitement out of grossing himself out too, maybe there’s a sick thrill in seeing just how close he can get himself to vomiting, honestly, who knows. Remus is Remus and that’s perfectly fine.

So here’s the big one that, again, took them way too long to figure out.

Remus is asexual. Not just asexual, sex-repulsed asexual.

Let’s reiterate: Remus is Remus and that’s perfectly fine.

It just…took them by surprise, is all.

“Wait,” Logan says, adjusting his glasses, “you’re asexual?”

“Those are the words I used,” Remus says, his head hanging off the couch.

“I—I heard you, I am…simply surprised,” Logan settles on, closing his notebook and setting it aside. “I would not have guessed that Thomas’s Sides would have different sexualities or romantic orientations.”

“What does it matter, Pocket Protector?”

“It doesn’t, it’s interesting to me.”

“Does that mean that all of us could potentially have different sexualities?” Patton’s head pokes above the counter as he digs for the good muffin tray—not the one Janus swiped three hours ago, of course not—in the cabinets. “Or no?”

Logan shrugs. “I imagine it would be possible, though I find it likely that at least some of us share Thomas’s.”

“My ears are burning,” Roman announces, plopping onto the couch next to his brother, “what incredibly gay thing are we talking about now?”

“Yeesh, Princey,” Virgil mutters, recovering from flinching horribly into the chair, “don’t do that, you scared the hell outta me.”

“Sorry, Virgil.” Roman taps Remus’s leg, hanging up over the back of the couch next to his head. “Why’re you upside-down?”

“Why’re you right-side up?”

“Remus…prompted a discussion on sexualities,” Logan says carefully, sparing a glance at Remus, “and we were debating the question of if we, as Thomas’s Sides, all have different sexualities.”

Remus kicks Roman in the head. “Told them I’m ace.”

“Oh, that makes more sense.”

“Really, and here I thought Remus beginning a complex introspective conversation was the height of character accuracy.”

“Payback,” Virgil sniggers as Roman startles horribly as Janus appears from behind the couch. “All jokes aside, I’m with L, I, uh, didn’t expect Remus to be ace.”

“Why not?”

Janus scoffs. “Couldn’t be the number of sex jokes you make on a daily basis, not at all.”

Remus shrugs.

“I think it’s just surprising considering how comfortable you are making the jokes, kiddo.”

“The fuck makes you think I’m comfortable with them?”

“Lang—what?” Patton’s head pops up again.

“A wild Patton appears!”

“Has Thomas…ever been interested in Pokémon?”

“What do you mean, comfortable?” Patton tilts his head, focused entirely on Remus and not the others making Pokémon jokes. “Are—are you not comfortable?”

“Remus isn’t exactly known for his ‘comfortable’ sense of humor, Padre,” Roman says, leaning back on the couch to make eye contact around Remus’s legs.

“But—but that—hold on.” Patton stands up—“ah! More Wild Patton!”—and puts his hands on the counter. “Remus, why would you make jokes that make you uncomfortable?”

Remus eyes him from upside-down. “Why does anyone do anything?”

“Sheer, absolute boredom, yeah, yeah, we get it,” Virgil sighs, “but it’s a good question, Remus.”

Remus just shrugs, only for it to dislodge him from his precarious position and slide toward the floor. Roman watches him collapse into a graceless heap and rolls his eyes, lying down on the couch.

“Hey! You stole my spot!”

“You’re the one who moved. Hey—!” Roman squawks in surprise as Remus throws himself on top of him. “You’re squishing me!”

“Too bad for you.”

“Remus,” Janus says softly, “are you…does sex make you uncomfortable?”

“Like maggots are crawling through my bones!”

The living room is quiet for a moment, enough to make Remus push himself up and stare around at them.

“What?”

“Sex isn’t something shameful, Remus,” Patton says patiently—and wow, isn’t that a surprise— “I promise.”

Remus rolls his eyes. “I know that, it just makes me want to rip all of my skin off and start over.”

“Why?”

“It’s bad enough I have to live in this meat sack,” he grouses, flopping back down and eliciting a soft ‘oof’ from Roman, “don’t need to be consciously reminded of it.”

“...‘meat sack?’”

“Oh, sorry, Lolo, ‘flexible container of mostly water.’”

“That’s not—well, yes, I suppose that is more accurate,” Logan says as he adjusts his tie, “but why would you choose to refer to your body as a meat sack?”

Remus shrugs. “’S not like I’d choose to be in this fucking thing. Evolution fucked up when it made us this way, at least we aren’t fucking horses. Oh, hey—“

“No,” Roman interrupts, “no jokes about that.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Remus?”

“What do you want, Snake-Face?”

“Are you…uncomfortable with your body?”

“Every day! It’s awful! I wish I didn’t have one!” At Janus’s muffled noise of heartbreak, Remus cranes his neck to look up at him. “Oh, relax, I’m fine, discomfort is part of my existence.”

“But it shouldn’t have to be.”

Remus huffs a sigh when he realizes that everyone else is looking at him with a similar amount of concern. Well, except Roman, but Roman gets it so that makes sense.

“I may or may not be being slightly dramatic, I am fine.”

“Can confirm,” Roman hums lazily, “comes with the Creativity gig.”

“Look, I just don’t like that it’s—it’s—“ Remus’s gaze lands on Patton— “look, Cookie Monster over there is allergic to cats, right?”

Logan frowns, glancing back and forth between them. “Yes, what does—“

“He’s not gonna die from it and he can still be around them, he’s just hyperaware of when there are cats and he can’t spend a lot of time around them without being really uncomfortable, right?”

Logan blinks in surprise. “Yes, I understand what you’re saying. Very clever analogy.”

“I am Creativity, you nitwit.”

He rolls his eyes fondly. “Of course.”

“So,” Virgil says cautiously, waving a hand at him, “you’re…good?”

“Yep. Goody-goody gumdrops, that’s me.”

“As long as you never say that again, fine.”

Roman gives him a hug. “I’m proud of you, Re, coming out is hard. Especially when you have to give people a vocabulary lesson when you do it.”

“Thanks, Ro-Bro.” Remus’s grin widens. “Does that mean I get to pick the movie for tonight?”

“What? No! It’s my pick! Hey! Hey!” Roman squeals as Remus starts to poke his belly. “Don’t! Dohohon’t!”

“Let me pick!”

“No!”

“Boys,” Janus sighs, reaching out and using his six arms to separate the twins, “that’s enough. Roman, what movie are we watching?”

“Pacific Rim.”

“Hey, wait, that’s what I was gonna pick!”

“See? There you go.”

Logan perks up immediately. “Does this mean we finally get to watch a movie with no romantic subplot?”

“And batshit physics.”

“We can overlook the batshit physics.”

“Whoa, L, what happened to you?”

“I…may have a greater appreciation for the cinematic depictions of the machinery.”

Patton just rolls his eyes and gets back to searching for the muffin pan. No movie night is complete without fresh baked goods. Ah, there it is, although he could’ve sworn he looked there a few moments ago…

Anyway, they end the conversation in the same place it started.

Remus is Remus, and that’s perfectly fine.

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Sweet | Jung Jaehyun (TEASER)

❤︎ Jaehyun x reader  ❤︎ Fluff, Smut, Smut, Smut, Angst, College AU, Established relationship ❤︎ 4/4 for LOVE MONTH SERIES: Boys Don’t Cry

Summary: Jaehyun has always been in love with you but he thinks so highly of you that he never tried pursuing his feelings for you. All throughout your college years, Jaehyun endured every heartbreak secretly whenever you have a new boyfriend and can only love you secretly in his own ways. Wild. College years was wild and its all because of Jaehyun. After college, you and Jaehyun parted ways but life will reunite you again in the most shocking way. Jaehyun’s wedding.  

Warnings: Sex, sex, sex, and loads of sex, unprotected sex, loss of virginity, making of sex tape (with consent), making of amateur porn? (with consent), mentions of alcohol, mentions of other idols, swearing,  college students who just wanna have fun haha, kissing and touching, fingering, and slight nipple play, mentions of having sex with Johnny.

A/N: PURE FICTION. PURE FICTION. PURE FICTION. Will be out hopefully on his birthday wahahah

Flashback

It was very late already and some crazy person is ringing your doorbell nonstop. This couldn’t be Jaehyun or Johnny obviously they don’t need to ring the doorbell because they live here and they know the code. That’s why you were surprised that Jaehyun is the one ringing it and turns out he is batshit drunk and can’t even remember the code. “Where is Johnny when you need him” you murmur, “Jae, help yourself too. I can’t carry you all the way up to the fourth floor,” you said sternly to the handsome guy clinging on to you, breath smells like alcohol, eyes lidded but can still appreciate your beautiful face.

When you finally carried him successfully back to your place, without any hesitation he puked on your sleepwear and smiled so sweetly at you like he did nothing wrong. You wanted to slap him and wake him from his drunken state but Jaehyun was quick with his hands and unbutton your sleepwear and used it to wipe the small amount of puke on the floor.

You cover yourself with your arms and walked straight to your room and get a clean shirt before you take care of Jaehyun. He was murmuring “sorry” as he sees you walk away from him and weakly sit on the floor with dirty clothes and hope that you will come back to him.

When he sees you all dressed up again with a damped cloth on your hand, he smiled and spread his arms like he’s about to give you a hug. “Why are you acting cute- here hold this while I remove your socks” you hand him the damped cloth and proceed to remove his dirty socks and throw it with your dirty sleepwear. He looks at you lovingly as you wipe his face with the utmost care, looking at your lips and thinking about kissing it but no. He may be drunk but he won’t do that to you.

“Go on a date with me,” he says while you continue to wipe his face and help him take off his hoodie. You giggle and boops his nose before you stand and help him to get on his feet, “try asking me again when you’re sober” you opened his room door and told him to don’t forget to change his pants and greet him good night.

But after a few minutes, you’re all tucked in bed and half asleep already when you feel a pair of arms cage you. You can still smell his breath and figured maybe Jaehyun is clingy like this whenever he’s really drunk, which rarely happens.

“It's so sweet, knowing that you love me. Though we don't need to say it to each other, sweet. Knowing that I love you, and running my fingers through your hair. It's so sweet” he sings a few lines from Sweet by Cigarettes After Sex and smells your hair until his breath tickles your nape.

Sweet. He’s not only clingy while he’s drunk, but he’s sweet too. “I think I like you more when you’re rarely this drunk” you turn your body and faced him. Seeing Jaehyun with sleepy eyes, lips curved in a weak smile, but arms conscious enough to keep you near him.

“Then I’ll get drunk every day if that makes you love me”

THE TEASER IS BETER THAN THE FIC ITSELF BUT STILL I HOPE YOU READ IT AHAHA HERES THE LINK

Ace VI [Shitshow]

pairing: bakugo x fem!reader 

genre: humor, romance 

TW: violence, cursing, angst, fluff

Summary:

 Shifting into My Hero was a total mistake, all those tiktoks you watched on a daily about shifting somehow convinced your brain to take part. Now the question is how to wake up, and most importantly, DON’T GET ATTACHED TO STUPID DRAWINGS!

A/N: 

HI! New chapter! Kinda late! Sorry! Let me know if you wanna be mentioned in the taglist! Here’s Shitshow!

{ACE MASTERLIST}

After that shitshow, you took a nap. 

It’s not that you passed out, no no. 

You definitely did not pass out in Bakugou’s arms. Nope. 

You simply took a nap. A three hour nap. You just so happened to fall asleep while he was holding you. End of story. 

To be fair, you had a really tiring day, and it was only 4 in the afternoon. 

You woke up in an alternate dimension with no clue what was going on whatsoever, and then realized you had superpowers. In fact, a power so super, it was difficult to control. 

Once you came to, you realized you weren't in Gym Gamma anymore, but instead in someone’s room. 

Hmm. Smells like cinnamon. 

As you looked around, you found Midoriya and Todoroki holding ice to their heads and Bakugou cleaning up the dried blood down his ears, grumbling about how this ‘always fucking happens’ and ‘why do I even fucking bother’. While you were lied down on a bed, Bakugou was looking at the hanging mirror and Midoriya and Todoroki were sitting on some beanbag chairs. 

When you made a quick move to rub your eyes, Midoriya stood up and walked over to you. 

“Y/N! You woke up! Are you feeling better?” Midoriya asked. 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Where’s Hiro? And where are we?” You asked as you moved to sit up. 

“Whoa, slow down there, Y/N.” Todoroki moved to push you back down. “Hiro’s taking a nap under the bed. His tail’s hanging out.”

At the sound of his name, he crawled out from under the bed to check up on you. Moving your hand to pet his fur, he sat on Todoroki feet. 

“I think your wolf is sick. He’s acting quite odd. Earlier he kept rubbing up against me.” Todoroki told you with a deadpan expression. 

“No, Todo, I think he just wanted a few pets. And he’s a husky, not a wolf. I don’t think I have enough talent to train a wolf.” You quirked an eyebrow at his comment. Jesus how dense is this guy? 

“Where are we anyways, it looks familiar but I can’t straight out recognize this room.” You ask, checking out the room. 

There was a few posters hung up, a couple of model airplanes on a shelf, along with school books. A desk was at the corner of the wall, piled with papers, a laptop, and a couple comic books. There was a couple of shoes on the floor, and some clothes sprawled out. And it smelled strongly of men’s cologne, but it wasn't cheap or tacky, it was for sure expensive, like the type a celebrity would wear. And caramel. Your nose was filled to the brim with the smell of caramel. 

“We’re in my room dumbass,” Bakugou says as he turns around, finally getting all the dried blood out. “After training, the four of us usually end up here for whatever goddamn reason. Even though I’ve said more than once that you fucktards aren't allowed here.” He said rolling his eyes complaining. 

“Okay Mr. Attitude, I didn’t order an extra side of sarcasm with your stupid ass answer. But thanks for taking care of me, I guess.” You said giving him a small smile of appreciation. “I like your room by the way. It’s very, Bakugou of you.” You said as your smiled widened to a full grin. 

“I’m sorry, just how the fuck did you use my name?” He said giving you a small, but semi playful glare.

“Moving on,” Midoriya said pressing his lips together, trying his best to prevent a smirk from showing up. “Y/N, your control is has gotten a little worse.”

“You’re control has gone batshit crazy.” Todorki butts in with a small smile. 

“Well, I mean, I wouldn't put it that way,” he says giving him a slight glare. 

Todorki’s smile grows wider, giving Midoriya a small shrug. 

Turning back to you, Midoriya begins going on about how you had an amazing control for a quirk so powerful. “It was insane. You could be the angriest person in the room, angrier than even Kacchan-” 

“Highly impossible, this man is a chihuahua incarnate.” You said, giving a small smirk, finally moving to sit up so you can semi-look them in the eye. 

“Okay princess, you’re lucky you’re injured and I’m feeling nice, because if it were up to me, your attitude would've been given a check a long ass time ago.” He says turning to you to give a small scowl. 

“Anyways,” Midoriya cuts in, giving both of you an annoyed look. “You’re emotions could be overflowing, but you always managed to keep your quirk in check. However, in the last couple of days, I’ve noticed you become slightly more agitated, up to the incident that happened last night, and then this morning, waking up to a pounding headache and in what you call an alternate dimension.” He says crouching down a little to be at head-level with you. 

“Yeah, I don't really understand that.” Todorki says, furrowing his eyebrows. “You were completely fine yesterday, other than being a little bit quieter and more snappy than usual. How the hell did your conscience manage to switch you out to a different dimension where you believe this is all fake?” He turns giving you a confused look. 

“Look, in all honesty, I don't know. All I know is that you guys were like, in this T.V. show I watched a lot, and then I woke up IN the T.V. show. Like literally yesterday I was attending my online classes, I scrolled through my phone a little and then I took a nap. Next thing I know, I wake up here, no memories of this place, or any of you. Shit, I know what memories you guys claim to have with me, but frankly those are all experiences I’ve read in like fan fictions” You say.

“What the shit is a fan fiction?” Bakugou asks, giving you a very much confused, yet judgmental stare. 

 “Not important,” you claim, blushing. These guys do not need to know that you’ve literally read about them fucking your brains out, especially Bakugou. God knows you’ll never hear the end of it. 

“And everyone keeps talking about this incident that happened last night. But nobody has filled me in. You mind telling me what's going on?” You ask, giving each of them a questioning stare. 

“Last night you went out to train your quirk.” Midoriya says. 

“You’ve said you’ve been feeling off for days. When I tried to talk to you about it, your bitchass got all pissy and then stomped off.” Bakugou says looking away, a little pissed off at the way past-you pushed him away. 

“When we went to go check on you, your were losing control of your power, your hands covered in this blinding light before it took over your entire body. Aizawa had to come out to stop you because you were screaming in pain really loud. Once he turned off your power, you had blood oozing out of your ears and  you were passed out.” Todorki says, not giving much attention to you, as he was too busy giving out stiff pets to Hiro. 

“We called out to Recovery Girl, but she said the only thing we could do is make sure you get a good nights sleep and hope you wake up better in the morning.” Midoriya says giving you a soft stare. 

“Jesus christ that sounds like a shitshow.” You say, rubbing your temples in hoping to relieve some of your stress. 

“You can bet your ass it was. You weren't even supposed to go to train today, but Tweedle Stupid and Tweedle Stupider,” Bakugou says giving Todoroki and Midoriya a harsh glare. “decided to test out your control again. Apparently the fact that you may not be okay didn’t cross their pea-sized minds.” He growls. 

“Hey! You know just as much as I do how important it is for her to maintain her control. We’ve gotta see where she is. After all, she’s got one of the strongest quirks in the class.” Midoriya says defending his actions. 

“Dude, she’s literally the only person who could keep up with our crazy training schedules. And,” Todorki says giving him a glare right back, “you forget that she was also a target at the training camp. Only difference is I managed to grab her out of the League’s hands. Her quirk is literally wanted everywhere. If she doesn’t get her shit together soon, she can end up in danger real quick.” He states. 

Sheesh, what a fucking reality check. 

Well, as ‘reality’ as this dimension gets. 

taglist : lanaxians-2

The Casket of the Armadillos (by Edgar Allan Nope)

A Psych Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat

@febuwhump day 9 - buried alive

Summary:  When Shawn confronts a grad student turned murderer, he learns a very important lesson a very hard way: Don’t piss off English nerds - especially the homicidal ones. 

Characters: Shawn, Gus, Juliet, Lassiter, Henry

Words: 5,924

TW: panic attacks, buried alive, claustrophobia

Note: If you liked this classic lit-inspired Psych fic, you can always check out this one I wrote, inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird: The Finch and the Mockingbird 

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this! :)

I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up.  Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones.  For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.  In pace requiescat!

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”

Her name was Olivia Hale, she was a twenty-three-year-old grad student at UCSB, and she was working on her doctorate in American lit.  She was attractive in a cute librarian sort of way - short and petite, with long, curly auburn hair she kept in a bun and oversized glasses with thick lenses, and a smattering of freckles across her slightly upturned nose.  She knew a little bit about everything when it came to literature as a whole, a rather impressive amount about American literature, and absolutely everything there was to know about the life and works of one Edgar Allan Poe.

She was also batshit crazy and currently pointing a .22 pistol directly at Shawn’s head.

“Don’t move,” she growled, disengaging the safety.  

Shawn did a cursory glance around the empty classroom, looking for anything at all he could use to his advantage, to distract her or attack her with or - worst case scenario - to use as a shield.  But Olivia had found him snooping around on the tiny fourth floor study room that she’d been given to use by the department chair as her thesis headquarters.  She’d really made herself at home here, piling books and journals and what seemed like hundreds of loose sheets of paper on every available surface.  

But he was stranded in the middle of the room, with nothing close enough to use as a weapon, and so Shawn used the most powerful tool he had, one that had saved his life and many others, wooed women all over the country, and ordered more chili cheese dogs than he could count.  

He started talking.

“Look, Olivia, I get it,” he said soothingly.  Slowly, in the most non-threatening  manner possible, he lowered his hands.  Olivia gripped the pistol tighter but didn’t shoot.  “I know what happened.  You didn’t mean to kill him.”

Her eyes were wide and fierce, her lips pursed into a thin line.  “No,” she admitted.  “It was an accident.  But he was going to--”

“Yeees,” drawled Shawn, slowly raising his left hand and putting it to his temple, very well aware that he was probably pushing the limit with all of this movement after she had expressly ordered, at gunpoint, for him to stay still.  “I see it.  Dr. Graves was feeling guilty, wasn’t he?  A fifty-five-year-old professor with a fancy PhD and tenure, and a devoted wife and three kids and two grandkids, to boot.  The perfect life.  But oooh, it wasn’t enough for him, was it?”  

Shawn immediately answered his own question, something that he had become exceptionally good at over the years since he was usually the only one who could keep up with himself.  “Of course not!  What’s the perfect job and family when you’ve got a smokin’ hot, super smart student in her mid-twenties who thinks you’re the most impressive man on the planet?”

She sneered, and Shawn noticed with some trepidation that the hand holding the gun trembled just the tiniest bit.  When she spoke, her voice warbled with rage.  “My age and appearance had nothing to do with it - and even if it did, there was nothing wrong with our relationship!  We were perfect for each other, intellectual equals.  We were on each other’s levels - he was my soulmate!  So don’t you dare belittle what we had like that!”  

Ah.  So he had hit a nerve.  This could now go either one of two ways, in Shawn’s extensive experience in being held hostage: Either she would get fed up and send a bullet screaming through his body, Garth Longmore style, or she would let her emotions distract her, and cause her to make a stupid mistake.  Obviously, Shawn hoped for the latter.  

Now Shawn had to make a choice, because he could proceed in one of two ways: Either he could back off and try from another angle, or he could further antagonize her into (hopefully) making a mistake.  Naturally, Shawn went with the latter.

“Sure, sure,” he agreed airily.  “Older men and younger women do it all the time.  But to say there was nothing wrong with your relationship?  The man was married, and you were his student.  I’m not the headmaster here -”

“Dean,” she corrected sharply, and this further proved that Shawn had pegged her correctly as a know-it-all literature wunderkind who had to be right one thousand percent of the time.  “This isn’t Hogwarts.”

Shawn gave a tiny shrug.  “To be honest, all big schools look like Hogwarts to me.”

“Because you have the mind of a child.”  The words were accusatory and patronizing, but Shawn flashed a dazzling smile.

“Thank you,” he said.  Before she could respond, he continued his earlier thoughts, “Even though you were the ‘perfect couple,’ you were furious with him for even suggesting that you stop seeing one another.  The affair was too risky, and he missed his wife.  He wanted to tell her the truth, fix things.”

“It would have ruined everything!” Olivia hissed, and the sound of her voice sent shivers down Shawn’s spine.  There was an unhinged quality to it, something raw and dangerous that he hadn’t sensed before.  He fought the sudden urge to backpedal as far away from her as possible.  “We were perfect together!  And if he told his wife and she let it slip, I would be kicked out!  All my research, all my time and work here, everything would be gone!  He had no right to make that decision for me, to take away my future!”

“Maybe,” said Shawn, and it was like he was watching from outside his body, because he knew that what he was about to say was a big mistake, but he was helpless to stop the words from tumbling from his lips, “you should have thought more about your future before you pursued your married Shakespeare teacher.”

Fury etched itself into every feature of her face, turning her from a beautiful librarian to a feral monster, but her voice was slow and measured as if it was taking every ounce of self-control she possessed not to shoot him where he stood.  “He taught Southern. Gothic. Masterpieces.”

Shawn tried to backtrack, to undo whatever damage had been done by his unpredictably big mouth.  “But,” he pressed.  “Killing him was an accident.  You didn’t mean to push him down four flights of stairs.”

She considered this.  “No, I didn’t mean to kill him,” she reaffirmed, and then an odd calm smoothed out the angry crevices between her eyebrows - the peace, perhaps, of having come to an important decision that she knew was absolutely right.  Shawn recognized the look because he’d seen it on others’ faces before (very rarely, if ever, had he seen it upon his own).  “And I don’t think I will kill you, either.”

Whatever Shawn had been expecting, this wasn’t it.  Everything about this woman screamed insane and vengeful.  If Shawn lived, he would turn her into the police, and she would go to jail for a very long time.  She was incredibly intelligent - surely she knew this!

And then she clarified, and the world started to make sense again - though Shawn would have honestly been perfectly content in this alternate reality where the bad guy suddenly has a miraculous change of heart.  “Well,” she amended, “I won’t kill you directly.  I’ve never shot anyone before - I only have this little guy here because I’m a young, pretty girl on a big college campus, and I have two night classes.  Besides, your death shouldn’t be so easy.”

Shawn swallowed.  “Olivia, you don’t have to do this.  You haven’t intentionally killed anyone yet.  If you turn yourself in now and cooperate, your sentence will be a lot shorter than if you kill me - directly or not.  Because make no mistake, even if you kill me, you will still get caught.  The SBPD has some damn good detectives, and they’ll bring you down even if I don’t.”

She didn’t respond to him directly.  Instead, her expression was flat save for the dark gleam in her eyes, and she intoned words that in and of themselves had no meaning to Shawn, but that still managed to strike a chord of fear deep inside of his soul.  “‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.’”  Shawn was utterly unnerved by this point; it was like she had been taken over by something both sinister and incredibly well-spoken.

And indeed, in many ways she had, as Shawn soon found out, she was quoting the beginning of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Presently, however, Shawn had no context for her strange words or sudden shift of demeanor.  His skin crawled and his heart pumped with more get-up-and-go than he’d ever been able to muster in his whole body before.  “Uh, Olivia…”

“Move,” she ordered.  

This time, though it was contrary to his nature, Shawn did what she said without arguing.  This side of the student, with stolen words sliding evilly from her mouth, was a million times scarier than the enraged Olivia who had very nearly shot him between the eyes.

She marched him out of the room and down the three flights of stairs to the main lobby of the English building.  It was dark outside, nearing midnight, and Shawn kicked himself for thinking he was clever for coming to investigate this late.  He’d thought she’d be at home sleeping.  He should have realized that as a grad student, sleeping was the one thing she wouldn’t have time for!  And now he was in very deep trouble, alone, and no one knew where he was.  He should have waited until morning, until the building wasn’t deserted, should have at least called Gus and told him what he was doing.  But it was a college campus, and she was a tiny little literature nerd - it should have been safe!

As she forced him down one flight of stairs, then two, then three, and finally, into a stairwell off the beaten path that had to be unlocked with a key card - which she had - she continued to encant, her voice slowly losing its flatness and growing into something twisted and sing-songy with every word.

“‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat.  At length I would be avenged; this was a point, definitely, settled - but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.’”

“Olivia--”

It was as if she hadn’t heard him as she shoved him into the basement, and now her voice stilled from a chant to a slow, measured whisper..  “‘I must not only punish but punish with impunity.’”   

Shawn wasn’t sure what impunity was, but it sure as hell didn’t sound good.

Their final destination ended up being a small, partially finished storage room near the back of the basement.  Dusty boxes and rusted cabinets and archaic old computer monitors lined the walls and cluttered most of the walking space.  Shawn was reminded grimly of a school supply graveyard.  

Olivia stopped him when they came to a brick wall that had been busted through to fix some issue with the pipes - Shawn saw the water stains on the concrete floor near the break in the wall, and there was a brand new water pipe joined to an old, yellowed one at about eye-level in the small open space between the bricks and the drywall beyond.  Shawn also noticed that the new bricks had been neatly piled up near a sealed bucket that almost certainly contained mortar, right outside of the hole.  Someone was in the process of walling this section back up.

“Nice wall,” Shawn joked, relieved that Olivia had finally stopped her creepy recitation and desperately trying to lighten the mood and bring things back to some sort of normal - honestly, he’d take being threatened with the gun again to the horror movie stuff he’d just witnessed.  “I bet all the other walls are jealous of it.”

It was a lame joke, but her eerie dramatics had him all kinds of messed up.  He expected her to tell him to shut up, or to threaten to shoot him again, or to actually shoot him, but instead she asked him a question in that same cold, calm voice as before.  “Have you ever read ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Shawn?”

Shawn blinked.  “I make it a point not to read anything that’s not a magazine from the 80s or WikiHow articles on ‘How to Escape from Dangerous Forest Animals.’”

The corner of her lips lifted in a mockery of a satisfied smile.  “Good.  Then you’ll get to experience it for yourself, first hand.  Just wait until you get to the ending!  You’re going to love it.”

Somehow, Shawn doubted that very much.

Still holding the gun on him with one hand, she reached her free hand into the cross-body bag she wore and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.  Shawn groaned.

“Come on!  What college student just carries handcuffs in their school bag?”  Then he remembered that this particular student had until recently been having a passionate affair with her teacher.  “Wait - never mind.  It makes perfect sense.”

She laughed, even though what he said wasn’t even remotely funny.  The sound of it was strange and discordant - light and tinkly with a threatening undertone that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  Then she gestured at the hole in the wall and ordered, “In.”

Shawn had known it was coming, but had tried to shove that knowledge into the corner of his mind - something that was quite difficult to do for someone with a photographic and eidetic memory - in an effort to convince himself that even she wasn’t that cruel.  He tried to appeal to her one last time: “Olivia, it’s not too late to stop this.  I mean, are you really going to do this to another human being - seriously, look at this place - it’s dusty and moldy and I’m almost certain there’s no room service!  If you’re going to chain me to a pipe, why not do it in a five star hotel?”  When she nudged him with the gun, eyes gleaming with something dark and triumphant, he reluctantly stepped into the small space and implored, “I’ll even settle for a seedy motel off a poorly lit backroad.  I’m not too picky.”

She didn’t answer him as she stood on her tiptoes and handcuffed Shawn’s wrists around the pipe, cinching them so tight that the metal dug into his skin and he doubted that even his dad’s lessons on escaping handcuffs wouldn’t be much help here.  Already he could feel his fingers going numb, and his shoulders and back had started to ache from the hunched position he was forced to take due to the height of the pipe and the awkward angle of his arms.  

Well, Shawn thought glumly as she smiled at her handiwork and carefully backed out of the small space, maybe all wasn’t lost.  Surely someone would come down here and find him. This place was dusty, but it couldn’t be abandoned - work still needed to be done down here, after all.  And he could always yell for help once he was sure Olivia was gone.  She was booksmart, but maybe she wasn’t criminally minded.  He might be in for an uncomfortable night, but in the morning someone would find him and he could have his vision and the cute little psychopath would go to jail for a very long time.

He waited for her to leave, but instead, she used a crowbar to pry the lid off the bucket of mortar, and the pit in Shawn’s stomach became a whole-ass trench.  He should have seen this coming - his heart pounded madly against his rib cage as if trying to free itself, with or without him.  He couldn’t blame it.  “Olivia, please,” he said, and this time, there was no joke, his voice imploring and terrified.  “You don’t have -”

Again, she cut him off.  “How would you like to hear a story before you die, Shawn?” she asked in a tone so casual that she could have been asking him if he wanted to grab a taco.

“How about you tell me a story and then I don’t die?” Shawn bargained weakly.

“Mmmm… If you stay alive, my whole life will be ruined,” Olivia reasoned.  “And I have worked far too hard to allow that to happen.  So.  You just stand there - quietly - and I’ll tell you the story of Poe’s most beloved tale of revenge.  I won’t tell you word for word, of course - we don’t have time for that - but for posterity, I do have it memorized.”  She sounded grotesquely proud of that fact.  “It’s my favorite of his stories, after all.”

And so, as she slowly began to brick up the hole in the wall, with Shawn trapped, helpless and in a dissociative state of panic, she told him the story of two men with really stupid names that Shawn somehow managed, despite his raging fear, to file away for later as possible nicknames for Gus.

“Our story starts in Italy, during the carnival, and our narrator is a man named Montresor, who has a grudge against his once-friend, now-foe, Fortunato…”

The story was an interesting one, even to Shawn, who preferred watching over reading and especially over listening any day.  And as it turned out, Olivia was a really good storyteller.  If he had been in any other position, Shawn might have actually enjoyed the suspenseful tale of revenge.  

But as he stooped there and was forced to listen, all he could think about was about how terrified this Fortunato guy must have been, and then he started wondering how long it had been before the man hadn’t been able to hold his bladder or… other things… anymore, and then about what had happened when he was too tired and dizzy to stand up, if the manacles on his wrists had pulled so hard against his flesh that they cut into him, and if lack of water or oxygen killed him first, all the while he knew that he wasn’t asking these questions for the sake of the fictional character.  He was asking them for himself.  Olivia had made it exceedingly clear - for a literature scholar, she was surprisingly un-subtle about any underlying meanings or motives - that Fortunato’s story was now to be his story.

It wasn’t until she had begun discussing with rapture the brilliance of Poe’s use of the Italian carnival as the setting of a story about murder (because of its abandonment of social order, whatever that meant) and had built up all but the last two bricks, leaving a hole around Shawn’s eye level, that came to the most horrifying realization yet.   He’d been so focused on his own thoughts and fears with Olivia’s words washing over him like an acid bath that he’d barely registered that the dim light in the hole had been darkening incrementally with each new brick placed.  Now he came to the bone-chilling understanding that once she placed those last two bricks, he would be completely in the dark.

He was going to die, alone, terrified, and in utter darkness with fear as his only friend.  He thought in that moment that he might die of a heart attack before he could even think about dehydrating or suffocating.  Honestly, it sounded like an easier way to go.

“Well,” said Olivia finally.  “I can’t say that it’s been a pleasure to meet you in any way, Shawn, but I suppose I should thank you.  Ever since I found out about this unfinished wall down here, I’ve had this unscratchable itch to recreate the titular scene from my favorite Poe story.  You gave me the means and justification to do it!”

Shawn was so overcome by the surging sea of fear and early-onset claustrophobia that he couldn’t even muster up the gumption to make a joke about the word titular.  Instead, as Olivia knelt down next to her bag, rooting around for something, he jerked madly against the handcuffs, desperately searching for any give in the metal or the pipe he was handcuffed to (or even his wrists, at this point he wasn’t picky).  But the pipe was new, and it was sturdy, and so was the fitting that connected it to the old one, which itself didn’t seem too keen on budging, either.

A sick grin teased at Olivia’s parted lips.  “Oh, Fortunato tried that too.  But then he stopped crying and struggling and chose to die with a shred of dignity.  But I highly doubt dignity is something you’re capable of.”  

And then, with the finality of fitting a lid to a coffin, she slapped a piece of fluorescent pink duct tape over his mouth and a fresh wave of panic ravaged Shawn’s everything.  He didn’t remember this happening in her retelling of the story!  Then again, the Fortunato guy had been sealed into catacombs deep underground.  Shawn was in the basement of a heavily trafficked university building.  Someone would actually hear him if he called for help, so she took his voice away from him too.  He couldn’t even sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” to pass his time or distract him from the inevitable.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that he would die in the dark, he would die in the quiet too - and silence was, as his incessant need for chatter plainly proved, Shawn’s worst enemy.

“Goodbye, Shawn,” Olivia said, and she added one brick, layered on the mortar, and then gave her captive one last satisfied glance before adding the last brick and leaving Shawn in total, impenetrable darkness.  He would never forget that last, terrible look in her eyes before his world went black - she was no longer human; she had elevated herself to the level of the storytelling gods and she relished in the twisted power she held over the life of another human.

As her footsteps clipped away, her voice, obscenely gleeful, called out, “In pace requiescat!”

***

The next ten hours were the worst of Shawn’s life, and they consisted of five main elements all bundled together into a nightmare that would stalk him for the rest of his life.

Cold.  It was the middle of January, and though it couldn’t have been less than forty-five degrees outside, the basement - especially behind the walls - was chilly, and with the musty smell and the dust and the pitch black, Shawn was reminded far too much of a grave and knew that he might as well be in one, because this was going to be his.  It was the kind of cold that bit deeper than the skin and wormed its way into the very core and dug its icy fangs in and refused to let go - the chill of death, an open invitation from the dead to join them in their home beneath the ground.  He shivered a lot, but he couldn’t be sure if it was the cold, or the panic.  It was probably a little of both.

Dark.  The darkness that surrounded him had an unreal nature that could easily trick the eyes into thinking that they were already closed.  It was oppressive and thick, pressing in from all sides, inky black water dredged from the depths of the sea.

Shawn had never been a fan of the dark, but neither did he exactly fear it.  That changed the second that the last brick was put into place and he found himself in a darkness so severe that were in not for the feeling of floor beneath his feet he could have been suspended in the depths of space so remote that not even stars could reach.  The darkness swarmed his senses - it had a physical presence, and it didn’t lessen, never permitted Shawn’s eyes to adjust to it in the slightest.  It just hung there, surrounded him, assaulted his mind with its infinite arsenal of nightmares.

After experiencing true darkness, Shawn would never sleep without a nightlight again (which unfortunately meant he couldn’t judge Gus anymore for using one, either).

Pain.  At first it was just the pull of his shoulders, the ache in his back.  Then, about five minutes after he’d been sealed up, he realized his wrists were screaming with agony - he must have torn them badly when he fought to get away, but the adrenaline staved off the pain until now.  He vaguely wondered how deeply the cuffs had cut - it felt like the skin on his wrists had been flayed - but quickly remembered that it didn’t matter where he was going.  

Then there were the hunger pangs, and they mingled with the cramps from holding his bladder longer than he ever had before, and at some point muscle spasms in his arms and chest and legs joined the choir of suffering.  At one point, he shed a few tears, but they could have just as easily been from anxiety or exhaustion, which itself produced its own kind of pain - he longed to sleep, but his body refused to allow him even that comfort until the very end, right before he was rescued, as if he were being forced on pain of death to endure the pain of death right up until the very moment of his painful death.

At least he didn’t have too much trouble breathing.  There must have been a crack somewhere in the wall in front of or behind him, because fresh air was entering somehow.  He did, several hours into his imprisonment, begin finding it difficult to pull in a full breath, and by the time he was rescued he was giddy with light-headedness, but he didn’t know if it was from the air quality or exhaustion or panic or from being forced to breathe only through his nose for hours, but he really didn’t care.

Quiet.  Even worse than the cold and the dark and the pain was the quiet.  The tape over his mouth prevented him from doing the one thing that could bring him comfort in even the most difficult of situations.  Talking was what Shawn did - he utilized mindless prattle to distract bad guys, to make people underestimate him, to quell fear and panic in himself and those around him, to annoy and wheedle those whose opinions meant the most to him (and who he was most afraid to be real with), and most importantly, to distract himself from all the pain and baggage that his exceptional memory had filed away for him throughout the years.  Talking nonsense meant that he wasn’t thinking about or acknowledging the parts of himself that arguably needed the most attention, those bits that were scared and unsure and hurt and vulnerable.

Shawn had always detested silence, and now it had invaded so intimately that even he could not drive it out.

And all of these culminated in a constant, agonizing state of absolute, unrelenting fear.  

Panic attacks are horrific things that take your natural instincts in potentially dangerous situations and turn them against you in the cruelest of ways.  They suck the air out of your lungs and make your heart pound so fast and so hard that you are convinced it’s going to give out in pure fatigue and never make it to that next beat.  It makes your skin crawl like there are thousands of spiders nesting there, and your chest hurts and your breath is short and stunted and you know you are dying, that the next breath will be your last, but it isn’t, and the fear just continues and sometimes you curl into a ball or rock back and forth or scratch at your skin.

Panic attacks generally last anywhere from five to twenty minutes.  Shawn was stuck in a state of raw, unfiltered panic for ten hours.  When the EMTs at the scene took his heart rate, it was 160, had been the entire time he’d been buried in a collegiate tomb, knowing that he was going to die.

Put simply, Shawn Spencer spent ten hours in his own personal hell.

***

It was nearly three in the afternoon when Detectives Juliet O’Hara and Carlton Lassiter, with the help of a frantic Gus and a worried Henry that tried his damndest not to show how worried he was, made the final connections in the case and tracked down the woman who had slept with and then killed her lover like a hyper-intelligent, book-loving black widow.  Juliet and Gus remained on the college campus to continue investigating while Lassiter and Henry went on to the station to question Olivia.  She had refused to say where the missing psychic detective was, however, and only offered one bitter phrase, spoken in another language that sounded to the questioning party like a curse being placed on their heads: 

“Nemo me impune lacessit.”

It was Gus who figured it out after Lassiter related the cryptic saying over the phone.

“I know that phrase!” he exclaimed to a swell of raised eyebrows.  “It’s Latin! It means no one wounds me with impunity!”

“You speak Latin?”  Juliet seemed impressed.

“Not much.  But I recognize that particular saying, because it’s from a story that gave me nightmares my entire sophomore year of college.”  He shuddered.  “It’s from the second-most terrifying Poe story.”  He didn’t elaborate on what the first-most terrifying one was, largely because he didn’t want to give the others fodder to use “The Tell-Tale Heart” against him like Shawn already did.  Then the full implications of the words sunk in and he gasped, “We have to find Shawn, now.”  The horror in his expression sent a chill down Juliet’s spine. 

“Gus - what the hell are you talking about?”  Henry was no longer trying to hide the panic in his voice.

“It’s from ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Gus clarified, his own panic making it difficult to express himself clearly.

“Guster, this is hardly the time for you to have a glass of wine,” Lassiter barked.  “Now stop talking in riddles and just spit it out!”

But Juliet had now made the connection as well and answered for Gus.  “Oh my gosh - isn’t that the one where the guy is sealed into a wall and left to die?”

The dread in Gus’s eyes said it all.

“He’s got to be somewhere on campus,” Henry reasoned, and his voice shook the tiniest bit.  “Lassiter and I are on our way back to you now.  In the meantime, check with the school and see if there are any places that are easily accessed and under construction.”

No one said it aloud, but the possibility that her words hadn’t been a hint at all and that Shawn was somewhere else entirely hung in the air amongst them.  It was funny, Juliet thought - though it wasn’t funny at all - she urgently needed Gus’s theory to be right, because otherwise they would have no leads, but at the same time, she was terrified of the implications if it were true.  

Her heart felt as sick as Montresor’s when he placed the last brick as she and Gus raced to the administration building and prayed they weren’t too late.

***

When they broke through the wall, the sight that greeted them was one that would never leave them - any of them.  Even Lassiter, who made it his sacred duty to remain unfazed by anything his job threw at him was visibly disturbed.

A moment of silence, a beat where time stood still and everyone was afraid to move, and then - 

“Shawn!”  The four rescuers surged forward as one, but Henry got there first, his trembling fingers groping for a pulse - thank God, but it was racing, dangerously fast, and in the background he heard Lassiter radioing for an ambulance.

Shawn woke up as Henry gently peeled the hideous pink duct tape (an affront to all duct tape everywhere) off of his mouth.  It wasn’t a gentle waking, a flutter of eyelashes or the murmuring of a name - it was violent and erratic, fueled by terror.  

Henry had had to deal with panic attacks before - mostly Gus’s when he took the boys camping together, but once or twice when Shawn was really young and he’d had a bad dream.  This one was the worst that he’d ever seen - Shawn woke with a muffled yell, panting through his nose, writhing, tears streaming down his face, eyes squeezed shut against the trauma he’d been subjected to, and he threw himself against the handcuffs so fiercely that Henry feared he’d break his wrists.  

Soon his wrists were freed, though, and Henry, with the help of Lassiter, helped a weakened Shawn out of the wall and into the basement and lowered him to the floor.  Henry sat with him and rubbed his back and spoke quietly to him, Juliet took his hand, and Gus reassured him while Lassiter ran up the stairs to check on the ETA of the ambulance.  

Twenty minutes later, Shawn had been placed onto a stretcher and carried up the stairs and out into the sunlight - sensing the warm rays, he opened his eyes only to pinch them shut again as the brightness after so many hours in the dark nearly blinded him.  He had been given something to calm him down, and he would be going to the hospital to be checked over and observed overnight, and a psychiatrist would be sent in to evaluate him in the morning, and everything was moving so fast that Shawn leaned over the side of the stretcher and deposited the remnants of the last thing he’d eaten, nearly twelve hours before.

“There’s one thing I still don’t get,” he gasped as he was eased back onto the stretcher.  “Where do the armadillos come into her plan?”

The EMTs exchanged a concerned look at the stretcher, probably wondering if there had been some carbon monoxide poisoning after all.  Gus, however, just rolled his eyes.

“Amontillado, Shawn.  It’s a kind of wine.”

“The story is called ‘The Casket of the Armadillos,’” Shawn argued stubbornly, going so far as to cross his arms over his chest, pulling at the IV in his right hand.  

Gus was going to argue, to insist that he’d actually read the story (and why the heck would someone fill a casket with armadillos?), but then Gus saw the plea in Shawn’s hazel eyes, that need for jokes and silliness, and understood that his best friend was clinging onto his last shreds of control.  

“You know what - I forgot,” Gus corrected, shaking his head and giving himself a light smack on the forehead for good measure.  “It is ‘The Casket of Armadillos.’”  He glared out at Henry, at Lassiter and Juliet and the EMTs, defying them to challenge his claim.  No one did, but they all shared a similar baffled expression.

Well, they could deal with their confusion, Gus thought protectively as he watched Shawn and Henry disappear into the ambulance.  Shawn had been through a night of unspeakable horror, so if it was armadillos he wanted, then it was armadillos he was going to get.

(pt 6/? stevetony ocean’s 11 au, ao3 link in bio)

“You’re out of your goddamn minds!”

Steve, admittedly, has to acquiesce to that. “It’s never been tried before…” he says, in an attempt to appeal to Fury’s daring and ambitious side.

Fury scoffs. “Oh, it’s been tried, three times, unsuccessfully. What do you have that the other three didn’t?”

“A divorce,” Bucky mutters under his breath. Nat steps in his foot under the table and he attempts to hide his wince, to no avail if Fury’s raised eyebrow suggests anything.

“I know casino security and these guys… they have enough ammo and people to occupy Paris. And even if you manage to make it out of there, with your money and your life you seemed to have forgotten that you’d still be in the middle of the fucking desert!”

“Would I go to you with a half-assed plan?” Steve challenges, then amends after Fury’s look, “Would Nat let me show you this with a half-assed plan?”

“Fine.”

“They’re Laufeyson’s places.”

Fury pauses for a second. He knows exactly why Steve and his little, soon to be expanded, gang came to him: he has money, an entirely justified vendetta against the greasy little fucker, and incredibly misplaced trust in Steve Rogers.

“If you’re going to steal from Loki Laufeyson you better be prepared for the aftermath. This sort of thing used to be civilised. You’d hit a guy, he’d whack you. Done. Laufeyson… at the end of this, he better not know you're involved, not know your names, or think you're dead. Because he'll kill you, and then he'll go to work on you.”

“I know,” Steve says, simply, “we’ve gotta be careful, precise. Well funded.”

“And batshit crazy,” Fury adds. “Who you got?”

“Well, we’ll need an AV guy…”

Bucky watches the patrons of a coffee shop go about their daily routines, bleary-eyed students amongst immaculately dressed businesspeople interspersed with tired parents desperately trying to console their children, eventually finding Clint despite his seemingly desperate attempts to blend in with the haggard students, if his dress and general demeanour is anything to go by. Clint spots him barely a second after.

“What do you need?” Clint asks, pressing a hot drink into his hand a minute later.

“Can’t I just visit a friend?”

“Sure. Just a little sus’ that you’re making a social call less than a week after Rogers’ got out, don’t you think?”

Bucky grunts and doesn’t even question how he knows that Steve got out, instead, he presses a plane ticket and an address into his hand. “You better make it. He’s planning on taking down Loki,” he tells him before he does a significantly better job of blending into the crowds.

“...a demo guy…”

“Thor?” Steve suggests. Nat shakes her head.

“Overseas.”

“Technically,” Sam interjects, “on the seas.”

Steve doesn’t groan aloud but it’s a near thing, “Don’t tell me he’s with…”

“Hey, last I heard he’s settling fantastically into the pirate life!”

“With a guy who takes advice from his pet raccoon.”

“With a guy who takes advice from his pet raccoon.”

To be fair, Steve doesn’t actively hate Quill and his gang of modern pirate mercenaries, he’s even worked with them before. But he does actively believe that Thor can do a lot better, though, if he’d blown up a small, mostly desolated Norweigian town and was on the run he too would go to sea.

“Well, who else do we have?”

Natasha watches from the safety of a cop car as alarms start blaring and, consequently, a stream of young, pretty criminals get arrested, Carol trailing behind at the end. She waits another minute, lets the real cops cuff her before she swoops in, flashes a badge and tells the disgruntled cop to “go get my partner, tell him we got this.” Under the guise of roughly handling her, she passes a set of materials to her, “That enough?”

Carol nods as Nat reminds the officer to go get her fictional partner. She hears a loud snap from behind Carol and she mutters “Thirty seconds.”

They make their way through the yellow tape, “Steve here?” Carol asks, tossing her makeshift explosive into an abandoned squad car.

“‘Round the corner,” Nat confirms, unlocking her handcuffs and tucking them into her pocket, “ten seconds?”

Carol grunts. “Almost. Be good working with professionals again.”

“Okay,” she says, after a beat, “go!” They both start running as Nat yells to her ‘colleagues’.

“Get down! There’s a bomb! Everybody down!!”

Amongst the chaos and mayhem, Carol and Nat manage to slip away mostly unnoticed; a baby in a strolling blinks distrustingly up at them as they pass them and their father, who appears to be very engaged in a phone call that seems to have taken a turn for the worst, but aside from that, they’ve made a fairly clean break.

“Captain.”

“Major.”

“Matt?”

“Isn’t he still mad at me?”

“He’s also still working pro bono for cherry pie.”

“You knock,” Steve tells Sam when they find themselves in front of a door that grandly declares that this is the location of Nelson, Murdock & Page.

Sam looks only slightly affronted. “Why me?”

“Matt doesn’t like me.”

Before they can carry on bickering the door swings open, and the man in question appears before their eyes. “Matt likes the Steve Rogers that doesn’t make him defend an undefendable case.”

“Aw, you think I’m undefendable?” Steev mocks, electing not to comment on the fact that 1. Matt talking in the third person heavily disturbs him, and he’s been to Jersey, and 2. he plead guilty.

“Ignore him” Sam interjects.

“Often do.”

“We have a score. Big one. Vegas.”

If emotions could radiate from people, Matt would be screaming suspicion and distrust. He doesn’t do well in casinos far too much input, though he has enough faith in Steve that he’s pretty sure he’ll never actually cross the threshold. “I’m the whole list, aren’t I?”

Steve looks in betrayal at Sam, “He’s the whole list?” Sam, as he also often does, ignores Steve.

“Combination of cons. One night. $150 million between us.”

“You’re lucky it’s a slow week,” Matt grumbles, before he shuts the door in their face.

“Well. That went better than I thought it would.”

Sam just rolls his eyes and shoves Steve in the general direction of out.

“Eight should be enough, right?”

Nat shrugs, mentally ticks through their current roster and matches the skill sets to jobs and watches Steve do the same.

“You think we need one more?”

Nat shrugs, tilts her head. She could do it, Matt could probably do it but...

“You think we need one more.”

Nat shrugs again.

“Okay. we’ll get one more.”

Steve doesn’t often get the subway. It brings back… interesting memories. This time, he’s not going particularly anywhere, just watching a guy who looks barely old enough to graduate high school - by recommendation of JJJ. The train comes to a sudden stop and all the commuters sway forth with the air of people who have come to expect it land have given up fighting it, like a child with a broken backpack, with the exception of Parker. He, committing subway etiquette blasphemy, bumps into a guy who looks like he believes he’s too good for the subway, sleek, well-dressed Wall Street type. Steve has fond memories of breaking into guys like his houses. Parker, in one of the smoothest lifts Steve’s ever seen, takes the guy’s Apple watch and his wallet, muttering a shy, bashful, “Sorry,” after.

Steve follows him, unnoticed, as he gets off the packed train into an even more crowded station. He’s not in any rush: he’s done this before. Parker fluidly dodges the crowds with the ease of a kid who grew up here, who grew up blending in without any intention of hiding.

Steve brushes up against him, without acknowledging him in the slightest and forges on, plan fulfilled. All he has to do it wait. Then, out of pure curiosity, he doubles back and follows him through a series of back alleys until he reaches the backside an apartment complex flirting with ‘decrepit’. Parker takes maybe two steps back before swinging himself up 2, 3, 4 floors via the fire escape. A broad skillset could get one very far in this world.

Up in apartment 4C, Peter Parker empties his pockets to find the Apple watch and, instead of the overstuffed wallet, to his dismay, he unpockets a business card with a name, location, and time. Well, if he’s going to be kidnapped at least the culprit has been kind enough to give their name - possibly an alias, the primary location - a relatively popular diner, and the time - dinner.

When he gets to Ditko & Lee, a man, steely-eyed and ruggedly handsome with the beard, makes eye contact with him. On the tabletop next to a half-drunk cup of coffee, there’s the wallet from the Wall Street guy. Against all better instincts, Peter approaches him.

“Who are you?” Peter asks, a name just doesn’t cut it for him.

“Friend of JJJ,” Steve replied. Peter supposes he intended to be vague and somewhat mysterious and elusive, but to Peter’s admittedly limited knowledge, Mr. Jameson doesn’t actually have that many friends. “Sit down.”

Peter sits.

Out of his jacket pocket, Steve brings out a plane ticket and places it parallel to the wallet. He keeps his hand over it. “This is a plane ticket, job offer. In or out, right now.”

“What if I say no?”

Steve shrugs. “We get someone not as good and you can go back to… petty pickpocketing, Peter Parker.”

He considers it. It could be a trap, what for, he’s not entirely sure, but he’s come across many a shady person in his life. Steve is definitely shady, but he feels like he wouldn’t screw him over. Peter thinks it’s the eyes.

He looks down at the wallet and the ticket, equidistant from him. One or the other. Take it or leave it.

Steve, as a test for more his own enjoyment than anything else, decides to signal a passing waitress for a refill. When he turns back to the table the wallet is still there, but the ticket is gone.

“That’s the best lift you’ve done yet,” Steve had, at the very least, expected to feel it. Maybe he’s losing his touch, getting soft.

“Las Vegas, huh?”

Steve shrugs. “America’s playground.”

 “I didn't know you owned casinos?” Steve said rolling over to face Tony properly. It’s stupidly late, a kind of late that’s really far too much into the next day to really, feasibly be perceived as stupidly late and really, is stupidly early, early enough that the sun’s begun it’s daily rise, streaming in soft, pale dawn light through Steve’s loft’s windows. They’d stayed up the entire night, just talking, actually getting to know each other.

“Technically,” Tony said, fighting a yawn, “I don’t. A subsidiary of Stark Industries owns the bank that owns some of the casinos down there.” His hair was messy, not intentionally, black-and-white photoshoot in a workshop that’s actually very well composed soundstage, but ridiculous bedhead messy. Steve rarely found Tony not gorgeous, but right now, curled in his comforter, light casting long, lazy shadows dancing around the room, Tony seemed so vulnerable and trusting and open and he knew it was way too early for words as strong as these, but he was falling, he’s falling hard and fast and all he could think was I love you.

So instead he made a stupid joke. The type that you would only find even the slightest bit funny if you had been awake for over a day and now found yourself in a situation where time moved like sticky sweet syrup, where urgency had never bothered to be invented, where you’re so drunk on intimacy and love you can barely see what’s ahead of you, and honestly, in that moment, in the moment where nothing else exists and it feels like the world was made for you and for them and for you to be together in that moment, you can’t care that you can’t see what’s looming ahead.

“Casino’s are like… fairgrounds for adults. With greater consequences,” Steve wasn’t sure if the sentence even makes sense, but Tony giggled and he found that he couldn’t care for grammatical structure and other such follies.

“America’s playground,” Tony mumbled, far more interested in pressing feather-light kisses to Steve’s jaw, tender and loving. Maybe, Steve let himself think, let himself hope that he felt it too. Hard and fast and damned foolish.

Amor Culebras

I Am A Hostage? WTF?

*I do not own the characters and thus this is a work of fiction*

I walked into the gas station to buy a drink. Only to hear the tell-tale click of a gun cocking next to my head.

"Wrong gas station, princess," a husky voice said.

My eyes flowed the gun, revolver, back to a man I had just heard about on the news. About a handsome thief named Seth Gecko. I knew my bad day just got significantly worse.

"Richie, take her and put her out of sight, " he called behind him.

Richard or "Richie" as he was known as was the younger brother to Seth. He was also the brain who cracked the safes in banks of which they robbed a lot of.

"Come on," he said. "Nice and easy."

Seth pulled my arm and put the revolver behind my head. My eyes fell on Richie. He was more handsome than his older brother, but I couldn't really focus on that at the moment. He points another gun in my direction and signaled to walk towards him. I let out a breath and took the four steps that closed the gap between him and I. Once in his reach his big, warm hand wrapped roughly around my arm and pulled me towards the back of the gas station.

To be honest I wasn't entirely sure I would live to see the end of the day if I did anything against them. They weren't known to murder unless they were forced into a corner. I stood a better chance of getting out of this alive as long as I did everything they told me to do.

"Hands," Richie ordered.

I looked at the floor and raise my hands. He put several layers of duct tape on them. I really didn't want to give him any reason to hurt me.

"Look at me," he snapped harshly.

I raised my head quickly and met two very distinctive beautiful blue eyes.

Crap, I thought.

I have a soft spot for blue eyes. This was not the time to be thinking about how gorgeous he was.

"Quiet or Lights out, got it?" He said waving his gun near my head.

I nodded taking a deep breath. He turned me around and pushed me gently towards the drinks in the refrigerated area at the back of the gas station. He gently pushed on my shoulder to make me sit. Then walked back to end of the aisle. I could feel my heart slow down. All I had to do was sit quietly and I could go home. Not a hard task.

It was then that I noticed the Ranger on the floor bleeding from a shot in his chest. How I missed that in the first place was beyond my current comprehension. I knew I was in real deep shit. I had no room for error. I looked up at Richie astonished.

"See, he didn't listen and that's what happened," Richie said with a menacing smile on his face. "You're not going to make me do that, are you?"

I shook my head no.

"Good girl," he said.

Of course I would be the one to find out that the younger Gecko brother is batshit psycho. Beautiful and crazy. Just my luck.

"Richie, all good?" asked Seth.

I almost forgot he was there.

"All peachy," he said giving me the crazy-eyed smile again.

I heard the door open again and this time things would spiral quickly out of control. I saw Richie go on high alert. I put my head down and prayed to whatever higher power would hear me. The cashier interrupted me by shooting Richie in his hand. The blood hit me in the face. I froze when he fell back and his head hit my knees. He seems in a trance or something. Those beautiful blue eyes were glassy and distant.

I looked from his eyes to his hand that had a gaping hole in it. Seth was in the background yelling. I heard 'grab' and 'hostage' before I was yanked to my feet by Richie with his good hand. His arm came around my waist and his cologne filled the air around me. I knew I was being used as a shield. There was another Ranger pointing a gun in my direction.

"Let her go!" the Ranger shouted.

He really wasn't in a position to negotiate my freedom. Richie had the gun pointed at my head again. My heart thundered in my chest. I could see Seth not far from us. He had the entryway blocked. I knew that either I made it out of the gas station or no one was. The Ranger was still arguing with Seth.

"She gets a bullet if you don't lower your weapon, Ranger," said Richie.

I was really worried that the Ranger would try to play hero and get me killed. He seemed to be thinking hard. His partner was telling him not to sacrifice me. I was still trying to figure out how he wasn't dead already. That's when I saw Ranger lowering himself and his weapon to the floor.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Richie dragged me with him to the entryway. Seth was already pulled up with the car door open and waiting. I was pushed in and Richie followed behind me. The car fishtailed and I was thrown into Richie's lap. I heard him grunt from taking my full weight against his chest.

"Ow!" I heard Richie gasp.

"Sorry!" Seth yelled.

The car righted itself and I realized that I was sitting on the injured hand. I quickly shifted into the area between them. Then I looked at Richie then Seth.

"Seth," I heard Richie snap.

"What?!" He retorted.

"What now?" He said gesturing to me.

"Fuck if I know," he started. "Cut the tape. She can nurse your hand Mr. Genius."

I looked at Richie and put my hands up so he could cut the tape. He sighed angrily and pulled out a weird looking white handled knife. I stared at his face so I wouldn't freak out with a knife in the general vicinity. He cut the tape and left me to pull it off. I did.

"You ever treated a gunshot wound before?" he asked when I looked at him again.

"No," I said softly.

He raised his eyebrows in a quick motion.

"Cut off a part of this shirt and tie it around my hand," he said handing me the knife and a shirt.

I quickly did as he said and gave him back the knife. He and his brother exchanged a look I didn't understand.

"The princess has a brain," I heard Seth say.

"Princess has a name, Seth," Richie said sounding offended.

"No shit Sherlock," Seth quipped."Is she your girlfriend or something?"

"No, but we kidnapped her. We could at least ask her, her name," Richie said absently rubbing his injured hand.

"Emerald," I said quietly.

"What?" they said.

"My name is Emerald. Or Eme, for short," I said after taking a breath.

"Seth, we stole a precious gem," Richie chuckled.

I saw Seth smile out of the corner of my eye. Great! They found my name amusing.

"Well, Eme. If you're a good girl you will make it through this without getting hurt," Richie said putting his arm around me.

His cologne and blood smell surrounded me. I shivered without being able to stop myself.

"Don't be scared." Richie laughed, leaning closer. "I don't bite. Hard"

He looked like the poster child for crazy with that grin on his face.

"Richie, knock it off," Seth snapped.

I got the sense that there was some kind of double meaning that I didn't catch. I mentally wasn't entirely realizing how much danger I was possibly in.

"What?" Richie asked in a half-joking manner.

His arm was still around my shoulder. I tuned out their conversation because I was busy enjoying his warmth. I didn't realize they were talking to me until Richie said my name and turned my head to face him.

"Emerald, you in there?" He asked.

I blinked slowly coming back to planet Earth.

"Yeah," I said quietly.

"Good," he said and opened the car door.

It was then that I realized we had stopped at a hotel.

"Let's go," he said holding out of his hand.

From the Beginning Chapter 3

Bonjour, mes chers! I'm finally back and settled in and looking for a job, but until that has to be worried about enjoy the latest chapter!

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Summary: Danny Fenton was a simple, sixteen-year-old teenager who loved fast food, video games, and getting a B on surprise pop quizzes. He’s also the half-ghost teenage hero Danny Phantom who defends Amity Park from ghost attacks on a daily basis. Somehow, the ghost attacks make a lot more sense than crushes, friendships, and falling in love with someone he is definitely not supposed to be falling in love with. It was a lot easier to separate Phantom and Fenton before, but now it’s getting harder the more he learns about himself. Just who was he? The dorky son of scientists who loved the stars or the hero that protected the town. He’s starting to feel like he won’t like the answer. (Iambic Prose) (Prequel to Guardians and Partial Show Rewrite)

<<First Chapter>> <<Last Chapter>><<Next Chapter>>

Chapter Three

::

“I’m pretty sure most people would label this as torture, you know!” As promised, Danny had come to the library the next day at around ten- Okay, he had woken up a little before nine, but then he had to eat, reassure his parents, talk to Jazz, and then he had to eat something else where his mom’s food had looked poisoned, and then he had to actually find his way to the library considering Clockwork had just formed a portal for him the last time. Still. It was already almost three, probably, and Danny was dying. “Why do you have so many books!”

“Surprising as this may seem to you, there’s quite a few books that exist out there in the world.” Ghostwriter seemed to be as cheery as Sam when a new Hot Topic opened, which, yeah, pretty terrifying. “Those go over in the spiritual growth section.”

Looking down to the glowing books he was currently killing his back with, Danny stared for a solid five seconds before he looked back to Ghostwriter. “Is that… Is that a joke?” It was almost bordering on a pun. Ghostly spirit-y books being put in a ‘spiritual growth’ area.

“Unfortunately, the Ghost Zone doesn’t seem to have a system when it comes to filing, so I’m forced to make do with what I can. Second floor, fifth shelf from the northeast corner.” Wha… What? “Oh, honestly. It’s right past the section on Geography.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how the Dewey Decimal system works,” Danny grumbled, flying the books up to the second story and, seriously, this library looked way smaller on the outside. The second story was even more pretentious than the first one, too.

Like, okay, the library was covered in purples and whites and all that, but the second story had white railings that looked to have carved flowers or vines or something like that on them. It was stupidly pretentious. Not to mention the bookcases on the first floor were arranged like a goddamn maze, Ghostwriter using his powers to levitate them around to different places whenever he felt like it. Danny could get re-organizing, but this was just ridiculous.

Danny ended up staying there until at least six judging by how worried Jazz was when he finally got back, and the second day wasn’t much better. It seemed that he was there eight hours a day easy - although it was nice that Ghostwriter managed to find non-poisoned food for him to eat around ‘lunch.’ So, yeah, free, non-poisoned food. It definitely could have been worse.

By the third day of his guilt apology offer, it wasn’t so bad. The library was quiet and peaceful, which, yeah, kind of surprising in the Ghost Zone, but it was nice. It was also kind of fun to get lost in a simple task like shelving and ordering books. Yeah, alright, so, okay, maybe he had mis shelved a few books here and there, but Ghostwriter seemed to always find them quick enough, so that was something.

His back had even adjusted to the stupidly heavy books he was always flying and carrying around, and after that it really was kind of nice. Maybe he’d even get a part-time job in a library back in Amity Park if the whole ghost fighting thing ever settled down. It really wasn’t all that bad.

It was even nice making a ghostly friend who wasn’t totally batshit crazy - okay, so, maybe the guy got lost in his books pretty easily and tended to slip into rhyme and sometimes forgot Danny was even there until he almost crashed into him or tripped over him due to having his nose stuck in a book while he was walking, but, really, they all had their quirks - even if Ghostwriter’s had ended up leaving Danny near crying of laughter when the man had tripped over him and ended up on the floor in pure confusion. Just the thought had Danny snickering to himself again.

“I know what you’re laughing about.” Shit. Putting on as innocent an expression as he could, Danny huffed when the man didn’t buy it for a second. “You should be more careful where you choose to sit-”

“Dude, I was bending over to pick up a book I dropped.” Danny couldn’t be sure, but he was almost certain that Ghostwriter was blushing. It was great.

“My point stands.” Sure, it did. “Now, you were telling me about your sister before you went away with the pixies.”

“Before I- What?” Went away with the- What did that even mean? Was it some kind of ghost phrase that maybe meant-

“It means you were lost in your thoughts,” Ghostwriter laughed. Danny was still getting used to the fact ghosts could laugh and not sound evil. “It’s something you do remarkably often.”

“Yeah, well… It’s just that Jazz is always trying to help with all this ghost stuff, but it’s not- She’s not- It’s not safe, you know? At least me and my friends have had time to get used to fighting ghosts, but she hasn’t.”

“You haven’t thought to help her get to the level you’re on now? From the stories I’ve heard, it seems you were rather bad at all of this yourself when you first started.”

“That’s the point, though. I don’t want her to start ghost hunting period!” It was dangerous. At least Sam and Tucker knew how to use the weapons, and Danny had ghost powers! Jazz was- She was great, but she wasn’t ghost fight great.

“You should be fighting with each other, not against each other,” Ghostwriter tsked. He tsked. “My older brother was always further along in physical attributes than I was, but he always took the time to help me catch up, so we could fight alongside each other.”

“Why would you two even need to know how to fight- Nope, no, nevermind, too long a story and I need to prove a point.” Ignoring Ghostwriter’s ‘cough,’ Danny shook his head. “Look, Jazz is- She’s not a fighter, you know?”

“However, it sounds like she wants to help you. You’re siblings. No one is going to understand your struggles better, and the important part is to keep each other safe while fighting together.” Yeah, but-

“Look- Look, okay, you’re a younger sibling, right?” Waiting until he got a nod, Danny continued. “You should get it, then. Sometimes we have to protect the idiots who never even think of protecting themselves.”

There was a long moment where Danny was ready for Ghostwriter’s next argument before the ghost gave a small nod. “I see your point.” Ha! That was a win! A win on a technicality or something or whatever, but still a point! “I still believe that you should allow your sister to help, however.” Ghostwriter hummed, tone of voice turning casual. “She seems smarter than you, after all, and certainly a little more intelligence could never hurt.”

“Oh, ha, ha.” Still… Ghostwriter kind of had a point, himself. Jazz was smart, and she probably could help them without getting involved in an actual ghost fight. Maybe… Maybe he should start bringing Jazz more into the ghost side of his life. “Alright, c’mon, where are these books going now?”

Following Ghostwriter’s directions and random conversation starters was pretty easy after getting over his initial wariness, to the point that it felt like hardly any time at all before he was on his last day of break.

He had meant to help finish with the entire main level and get all the cases and shelves looking great, but, well… He may have gotten distracted reading the books rather than actually sorting them- It wasn’t his fault, though! They had finally gotten to the fiction books and there had been a pile of sci-fi books and, okay, look, Danny wanted to be an astronaut for a reason, okay, this was basically training for that.

“So, this is where you disappeared too, then.” Shiiit. Ghostwriter had found him. “Oh, please, I’m hardly going to take away a book you’re actually reading.”

“Hey.” Danny frowned up at the man, ready to argue and complain before he saw the plate of food he was holding and oh, yeah, he could eat.

“Honestly, you’re like a puppy the way you just perked up.” Wha- He was not a puppy! “Which book did you get distracted by?”

“In my defense, this was a danger the second you wanted me to shelf the science fiction stuff.” Danny tilted the book, so Ghostwriter could see the title before he was carefully setting it away from the food. He was kind of wary about damaging books after everything, which, yeah, definitely not gonna hurt a book when Ghostwriter was right there.

“You like science fiction, then?” There was no need to sound so surprised about it. “Mm, I shouldn’t be too shocked. Your parents did build a portal into a world full of ghosts.”

“I still have trouble believing that, some days.” Like, yeah, okay, ghosts. Ghosts were a normal, everyday part of Amity Park, now. So, ghosts, but also ghosts.

“If it helps, I still have trouble believing what I am, now.” Ghostwriter picked up the book Danny had been reading and started flicking through it, Danny staring at him and… He had forgotten, but the ghosts had been human once, too. He was used to the nutjobs like Skulker and Technus, but how many ghosts were like Ghostwriter who were still human? “I’m curious, what would you say was your favorite book?”

“I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure asking that question is, like, blasphemy for a book lover.” Mostly because he had asked Jazz that question once, and she had looked at him as if he had asked her to murder a child in front of him. “Shouldn’t you hate that question?”

“You would think,” Ghostwriter laughed, taking a seat across from Danny at the table. “I actually find that asking someone for the name of their favorite book reveals a lot about a person.”

“Yeah, alright, Sherlock- And that’s not my favorite book.” Watching the man bite back what was probably a laugh, Danny sighed and leaned back in his seat and, right, favorite book… Nn. “Does favorite author count?”

“Oh? That right there says even more about you.” Ghostwriter was fucking with him. He had to be. Looking up, he saw a grin that showed the man was definitely fucking with him. “I’ll accept it just this once.”

“Ha ha.” Leaning forward and grabbing his sandwich, Danny took a bite and swallowed before glancing up to Ghostwriter again. “Don’t laugh.”

“I would never.” Somehow, that was a hard one to believe. Still, it wasn’t like his favorite author was bad, just not that well-known.

“My favorite author is M. J. Anderson.” Seeing the expression forming, Danny pointed at him. “I said don’t laugh!”

“I wasn’t going to.” Oh, wow, he denied that rather quickly. “I just- I suppose I’m surprised that of all the authors you could pick, you choose that one.”

“Hey, Anderson had a lot of really great books- I mean, have you read The Soundless Clock?” The other’s expression looked like some weird combination of embarrassment and amusement, Danny crossing his arms and choosing to ignore him. The Soundless Clock is one of the best books to have ever been written, and Star Gazers isn’t very far behind, either.” That had Ghostwriter laughing.

“Star Gazers? That book read like it was written by a sleep-deprived college student who had one too many cups of coffee! It’s riddled with small plot holes, grammatical mistakes, and the narrative seems to switch from Star to Ches at some places!”

“You mock it, yet you’ve read it?” A helpless little shrug was the only response he was really given. “Okay, yeah, the book doesn’t read the best, but that doesn’t- That doesn’t affect the story, you know?”

“Oh? What do you mean?” The ghost was up to something, but dammit, Danny had a point to prove!

“It’s- Ah, jeez, man, it’s hard to explain, but it’s like- The book isn’t the best, but the story is. Like, okay, yeah, it reads like it was still a rough draft, in some places, but it was a great story. It was all about being scared to leave home and leaving anyways because of the idea of what’s out there. It was about being sheltered and alone and not knowing what it was like out there but wanting to find out! It was a story about- About exploring the galaxy and being able to one day say, ‘Ah, yes, I know that star, and that one, and that one, and I know all their stories.’ It’s- It was a book about adventure and space and- And- Dude, that book is what made me want to be an astronaut!”

“Did it, now?” Ghostwriter had a small, silly little smile on his face, one cheek propped up on his hand as he stared at Danny. Deciding that he didn’t even want to ask, Danny quickly took another bite of his sandwich. “You seem to adore Star Gazers, but you still think Soundless Clock is better?”

“Well, yeah.” Right. Time to defend his books again- God, he had become his sister. “If you say anything bad about that book, I think I might have to fight you again.”

“Alright, then. Tell me what’s good about it.” That- Well. That was a very long list, but it was one Danny was willing to share- Or… Maybe not a list.

“Andrea didn’t want to be a hero.” Ordering his thoughts, and, yeah, okay, this was actually a good way to start it. “Yeah- Yeah. Andrea didn’t want to be a hero, but she became one because no one else was going to do it, you know? She was a kid off the streets, but she got into trouble and lied about it and then- Oh, man. She ended up on possibly the coolest ship in the entire world and she hated it just until she stepped on and realized she loved it. She was shit at every job they gave her, but then she worked on the ship and fixed it up, and that ship- That ship is a main character the same way Hogwarts is a main character in Harry Potter.

“But, Ghostwriter, man, dude, she basically went from this little kid who didn’t know what she was doing to a hero because she could help, because- Because she could, you know? She was there, and she knew she could help, and so she did.” That… The Soundless Clock had always been his favorite book, but there were even more reasons to love it, now. “She became a hero and even though she went through some really horrible shit, she still kept going. That… It was a great story.”

“Not including the plot hole in the chapter on the Airship Gala-”

“Fuck you, that was not a plot hole, that was foreshadowing.” That got the man’s attention, Danny smirking. “Looks like you don’t keep up with the fan forums. I mean, that guy- Oh, man, you don’t create a character like that and never use him again.”

“I suppose, and yet, there’s no sequel.” Yeah, and considering the book had been published in the eighties… “I like to think that the man she met was actually the friend of her mother’s and the Admiral.”

“Really?” Huh. That was- That was actually a pretty good theory. “I can see it. Oh, man, a sequel would have had so much potential.”

“There’s always hope,” Ghostwriter grinned, leaning back in his seat. “Thank you, by the way, for telling me why you love those stories.”

“Oh, uh, sure?” Such a weird ghost. “So, right, okay, shelving the sci-fi books. Where are these going?”

Much to Danny’s surprisingly disappointment, the end of the day came far too soon, Ghostwriter and Danny managing to talk about their favorite books before circling around to talk about their siblings and then ghosts and everything in between. It was great, and then the entry area of the library was clean and looked amazing.

“So, uh, I guess that’s that, then.” It looked a lot neater and a lot less dusty after everything, so Danny supposed Ghostwriter sort of knew what he was doing. “Five days of library cleaning.”

“You did better than I would have expected.” Oh, jeez, that was a compliment. Startling as Ghostwriter lightly touched his shoulder, Danny looked up to him to see the man giving a smile. “Apology accepted.”

“Good- Good. Now I don’t have to worry about being trapped in another poem, at least.” He was actually pretty sure he had seen that book when cleaning. He was also pretty sure he hid it under a couch somewhere. Maybe. Probably. Could have been behind a stack of books on one of the shelves. “So, uh, guess I’ll… Guess I’ll head out, then.”

“Danny.” Oh, shit, wait, Ghostwriter knew his first name? Well, technically all ghosts probably did, but all of them just called him ‘boy’ or ‘Phantom’ or ‘whelp.’ “You really should talk to your sister.”

“Oh- Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, I should.” Jazz… She deserved a real explanation for everything, and Danny was sure she could help them in her own way. Probably. Maybe. “Right, so, um… Bye?”

Ghostwriter chuckled and gently pushed Danny out the door and- “If you ever need a quiet place to read, my library will always be open for you.” With that, Danny found himself floating outside Ghostwriter’s library, the doors closing shut behind him- No, not closing. There was a sliver of a crack that showed he could easily push them back open.

“Always open, huh?” Danny had just made a friend who was a ghost. That was… That was great. “See you soon, then, GW.”

::

“Door’s open!” Opening the door, he had just knocked on, Danny poked his head into Jazz’s room and took a quick look around. She seemed to be organizing her backpack for when they went back to school and honestly. “Hey, Danny. What’s up?”

“Oh, well, see, I kind of- I maybe thought- It’s actually pretty funny-” Danny babbled as Jazz grabbed him by his wrists and effortlessly steered him into sitting down on her bed. “Rude.”

“Yes, I am. Now, what’s wrong?” Oh, boy, that was a question. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Yes- No- Yeah. No, yeah, yes, there is.” Right. He just had to tell her… Well. “I… I kind of think there are some things we should talk about. It… It might take a while, though.” Everything would mean over a year of ghost fights, worries, fears, and injuries. “Will you listen?”

“Always.” There hadn’t even been a second of hesitation, and that was all the courage Danny needed to relax against the bed and give a grin.

“Well, it all kind of started last year. You probably remember when Mom and Dad couldn’t get the portal to work, yeah? The whole accident? It- I mean, you’ve probably figured it all out by now, but there’s a bit more to it all…”

“You have my attention for as long as you need it, Danny.” Right. That- Well. That was all he really needed, right now.

“Okay, so it all started with Mom and Dad’s bad engineering and this stupid button.”

Lemon Cakes and Pie

Summary: Reader owns a bakery in a small town where a group of demons decide to throw a party. An injured Dean Winchester is in need of a hideout and a helping hand.

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 2 401 (it got away from me…)

Warnings: Canon typical injuries and swearing, I think

Prompt: “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to kill me.” (marked in bold)

Beta’d by the one and only @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms 

A/N: IT’S SO FLUFFY! This story is for the lovely @impala-dreamer‘s OP4A Challenge! This is also the first fan fiction I’ve posted on Tumblr… *gulp* I didn’t even like this storyline when I started writing it, but I think it turned out fine in the end. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

In the small town of Plainville, Kansas, everything was as the name suggests; plain. Although the town initially got its name from the actual plains it was situated upon, one could argue the applicable meaning of the word had shifted over the years.

You owned a small but fairly successful bakery in the middle of town. You were very proud of it, as you had saved money for most of your life to start your own bakery. Last year you had even won a state award for your famous lemon cakes. You had the diploma framed and hung on the wall behind your counter, reminding you that dreams really can come true.

Every morning started out roughly the same; you waking up at 4 am in your cozy suburban home for one, just a few blocks from the bakery. You always got up straight away and got ready in a jiffy, out of the door by 4:25 am, getting on your bike and arriving at the bakery five minutes later. Breakfast had to wait until you were done with your morning chores, but coffee was a necessity to function so that was always where you started.

The day progressed as any other Thursday would, with the exception that rain was pouring down like there was no tomorrow. You had fortunately been inside all day but the clock neared closing hours and the rain didn’t seem to subside. You would have to brave the storm if you ever wanted to get home and eat that last carton of chocolate ice cream you had in your freezer. Not to mention catching up on your Netflix watchlist. Thursdays were sacred to you; the one day of the week when you indulged yourself in whatever your latest television obsession was.

After hearing the doorbell chime and seeing the last two customers leave the bakery, you walked over to the front door and turned the Open sign to Closed. Through the window you saw people jogging to their cars, trying to avoid getting soaked in the rain. Poor Mrs. Rosenberg was walking her white terrier Muffin, named by yours truly, in the park across the street. Neither Mrs. Rosenberg nor Muffin looked particularly content with the situation.

Especially not when a thick, black smoke surrounded Mrs. Rosenberg and- Wait... What? No. What? That most definitely had never happened on a Thursday before. In fact, that had never happened at all.

The rain kept hammering down as Muffin jumped up and down, barking at the intruder. The smoke around Mrs. Rosenberg grew more intense as the old lady was seemingly frozen in place. Muffin, bless him, started pulling at her skirt and trying to get her to move away from the threat, of course with little success.

All of a sudden the black smoke charged at Mrs. Rosenberg and dived straight down her throat. After a little struggle she went completely still and proceeded to glance down at Muffin. The terrier let go of her skirt and bolted in the other direction, as fast as his little legs could manage.

Just when you were about to reach down and lock the door a man came bursting through it, causing you to stumble backwards. He quickly closed the door and locked both the first and second deadbolt. He even pulled down the blinds! You didn’t know what to think, so you did the next best thing and put your mind on autopilot.

“I-I have closed the shop for today,” you stammered as you backed farther away from the stranger, trying to reach the false safety behind your counter. He didn’t really seem to take any notice of you.

That’s when you noticed the bleeding. This, for some reason, stopped your retreat. That and the fact that when he finally turned your way you were struck, like a flash of lightning from the sky, by the most gorgeous face you’d ever seen.

Well, not to say that his body wasn’t just as impressing, at least from what you could tell by his tight fitted jeans and that snug black t-shirt he wore under a blue flannel shirt. You were shamelessly staring at his muscular arms and shoulders when he snapped you out of your not-so clean thoughts.

“Hey! Do you have any salt in here?” the stranger said, now starting to rearrange the nearby tables and chairs by the windows, stacking them on top of another, subsequently covering the view from your big windows.

“Um, yes? But I don’t think your problem is low sodium levels right now, I’m pretty sure you need a doctor for that cut,” you said, pointing at his left hand that was pressed against his abdomen. “Stitches,” you clarified.

“Salt!” he barked at you. “Now!”

“All right, all right!” You raised your hands in surrender and fetched the nearest salt shaker, placing it in Dean’s outstretched hand. His face quickly went from showing impatience to complete confusion.

“What is this?” He tilted his head in confusion. “No! This won’t do. I need like a big bag of it!” His serious expression made you turn on your heel and heading straight for the storage room in the back. This man was either batshit crazy, which would explain him being too good looking to be true, or simply suffering from severe blood loss. Either way, there was apparently no use in arguing with him.

When you handed him the largest bag of salt you could find he quickly ripped open a corner and started pouring the salt in a thick line along the windows and the door.

The only thing you could think of asking him was “Who are you?”

“Dean Winchester. I’m a demon hunter,” he stated, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

“And I’m Y/F/N Y/L/N, cake baker,” you mimicked. Dean just stared at you. Apparently this guy had no humor. “Seriously though, do I need to call you a doctor, or perhaps some sort of a psychiatrist?”

“I’m not crazy, okay? There are real demons out there. A whole lot of them.” He let out a sigh and ran his free hand through his hair, seemingly trying to calm down. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in right now, but those monsters that you had nightmares about as a kid, they really do exist. And some of them are outside right now.” His eyes told you to trust in him and just accept the explanation for what it was. You took a deep breath to gather your thoughts.

“And that black smoke thingy that attacked Mrs. Rosenberg was a demon?” Dean nodded. “Is she a demon now?”

“She’s possessed by one, yes.”

“And the salt?” you asked, pointing at the now finished salt line, covering both the windows and the door.

“It protects us. Demons cannot cross it.” Dean said as he shrugged his shoulders.

“Of course. That makes perfect sense,” you said, mockingly.

“Hell, you don’t have to believe me, I just needed a place to hide and ride out the storm until my brother gets here.” He glanced back outside through the blinds, muttered something to himself, obviously not liking what he saw. “Do you have a steady hand, Y/N?” Dean said, out of the blue. You were so taken aback that you didn’t really think before answering.

“I’d like to think so, yeah. I decorate all the cakes by myself.” you said, gesturing towards the counter, displaying a few cakes in various sizes and themes.

“And do you know how to sew?” You knew where this was going now.

“The ‘patching-up-a-pair-of-jeans’ type, yeah. The ‘saving-a-man-from-bleeding-to-death’ type, nope. Uh-uh, no way.”

“Yeah, well you’re all I got, sweetheart, so you will have to do. My brother is most likely still an hour drive away from here, and I won’t have that long unless you start patching me up right now.”

“Okay,” you whispered and quickly went to the back room, gathering up anything and everything that you might need. Of course, most of it was just guesses from your part. Although, you’d like to think that all those hours watching Grey’s Anatomy were more than just a waste of time.

“What happened to you anyways?” you asked when you got back and started organizing everything on the floor, opening gauze packs and thread a needle. Dean had already lied down behind the counter and propped up his head on his rolled up jacket.

“I think someone stabbed me with a window, it’s all a bit fuzzy.” Dean removed his hand and looked down on the wound. “Well, fuck. There’s still a piece of glass in there. You will have to pull it out and then patch me up immediately, or else we’re gonna have a bloodbath in here. You ready?” You shook your head; you would never be ready for something like this.

“On the count of three; one tw-” You pulled the shard of glass out as fast as you could, quickly pressing a bunch of gauze on the now weeping wound.

“Ow! What the hell?!” Dean grumbled.

“I’ve heard that it hurts less when you’re not prepared for it,” you said, matter-of-factly, as you started to clean up the wound with antiseptic.

“Yeah, well, that’s bullshit.”

“Good to know.” You carefully removed the gauze and took your prepared needle in hand. After taking a deep breath, or two, you got to work. Dean hissed when you did the first stitch, but seemed to collect himself.

“I need a drink,” he grunted.

“You and me both. How am I doing?” You were only halfway through stitching the wound, and blood was still gushing out and trickling down his side. Dean followed your gaze to the now soaked-through gauze he held below where you were stitching.

“Well”, he grunted as he threw the old gauze to the side and grabbed a new one, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to kill me.” He must have seen the horror in your eyes because he started to chuckle, only to have the chuckle turn into a coughing fit.

“Give me some credit here! I’m not even close to being a medical practitioner… I bake lemon cakes, for crying out loud!” you pleaded, desperation filling your voice.

“If I make it through this, remind me to try one of your famous lemon cakes,” Dean said, glancing up at your diploma.  “Although, I’d rather have pie...”

“If by some miracle you do survive this, despite my poor excuse for a patch job, I’ll bake you any pie you want. Just don’t die on my floor…”

“I’ll do my best.”

Half an hour later you were cleaning up the mess you’d made on the floor and Dean was absentmindedly holding his hand over the now-bandaged wound while looking through the blinds after possible danger. There were apparently still a bunch of demon-possessed citizens roaming the streets in search for… well, anything they could get their hands on. You turned your head in Dean’s direction when you heard the low rumble of a car coming to a stop just outside your shop.

“Looks like my little brother is finally here to save the day.” You got up and went over to Dean, looking out and seeing a sleek, black, classic car parked in front of the bakery. The driver, you could see the family resemblance, rolled down his window and pulled out a megaphone. When he started chanting something in Latin, you turned your head to Dean with a puzzled look on your face.

“Exorcism,” Dean said, apologetically. Right. Why not throw in a little 70s horror movie vibe? This situation was clearly not scary enough. The people gathered outside started to It looked like they were screaming. When Dean’s brother finally finished his chanting the black smoke came flowing out of them and they tumbled to the ground.

“Are they dead?” you asked, not sure if you were ready for the answer.

“No, just unconscious,” Dean clarified. They watched his brother get out of the car and head towards them. Dean unbolted the door and let him in. The brothers patted each other on the back, before turning to you. Even though Dean had explained that this was his little brother, there was nothing ‘little’ about him. The man was a giant! The brother took a step forward, extending his hand.

“Hi, I’m Sam,” You shook his outstretched giant’s hand, feeling smaller than ever. “I hear you saved my brother’s life” Sam said, smiling gratefully at you.

“Yeah well, I’m pretty sure he saved mine from those demons, so I’d say we’re even,” you said and smiled back.

“Nonsense.” He turned to Dean. “May I see it?” It was evident that the brothers cared deeply for one another. They had probably been through worse than this, considering how lightly they took this whole situation. You couldn’t even begin to understand what it must be like to be a hunter. Thank God for your bakery!

“Good work, Y/N,” Sam said once he’d finished examining his brothers wound. “Looks like he’ll be as good as new in no time.” Sam sent an encouraging smile your way, and you couldn’t help but feel proud over your handiwork. Binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy had finally paid off.

The brothers offered to drive you home, even though the danger was gone, just to make sure you got inside safely. They pulled up the Impala right outside your house and followed you to your door. You hugged Sam goodbye first, promising him you were seriously going to consider learning Latin.

“Thanks for stitching me up,” Dean said, as Sam made his way back to the car. “If you ever pass Lebanon, give us a call,” You exchanged numbers and hugged, making promises of keeping in touch.

“Remember, you still owe me that pie!” Dean called back with a big grin on his face, winking at you as he got in his car. You smiled and waved at him.

You stayed on your porch until they had left your driveway and rounded the corner. You turned around to head back inside, knowing full well that when you woke up tomorrow you would see the world in a completely different way. At least there were people out there, like the Winchesters, protecting you from things that go bump in the night.

Shamelessly tagging some lovely people (pls don’t kill me ;)):

@hannahindie @trexrambling @katymacsupernatural @ravengirl94 @emilywritesaboutdean @percywinchester27 @charliebradbury1104 @luci-in-trenchcoats @kathaswings @atc74

I'll take you way back (Trixya) Chapter 2 - Bramble

A/N: I hope you enjoying this as much I’m loving writing it. Again want to get across the fact this story is fictional and I’m not saying these things happened they are merely inspired by time frames.

In this chapter Yekaterina is Katya and Patrycja is Trixie. It’s a sad chapter so count yourself as warned. Enjoy!

Chapter 2: Romanov Russia

2017 “Do you think you can manage to do something with the Viking markings that were in the painting?” Kim had been on the phone to Brian for around half an hour. It had started out by her telling him her ideas about the fashion and had finally gotten to the cosmetology aspect of the call. “Yeah, so are you including the hat or not because you didn’t sound so sure.” “It’s just a bit out there but then again so were the Vikings. I’m going fabric hunting today so I’ll call you later. Bye.” Brian said a quick goodbye before the line cut off. He supposed that if Kim was starting to work out materials maybe he should work out something. He’d been staring at a blank sheet of paper all morning. It wasn’t like he couldn’t think of what to do, because he had a vision in his head, but his mind wandered elsewhere. His mind was back in the museum with the curator with the crazy fashion sense. He wondered what outfit he’d throw together and what exhibit he would radiate passion about this time. Tapping his nails against the table for a little while longer Brian decided that he would find out for himself. On the walk he didn’t complain about the hills, or the length of the journey. Instead he figured out an excuse to talk to Brian again. Interested in history? That wouldn’t work, he was silent most of the time and showed little interest until Brian spoke. Vikings was just too out there? But what about Kim, why was she not there. That’s when Brian decided she to say a small white lie and say Kim was busy with family. It wasn’t a reach, Kim was actually busy and normally spent time with her family when she could. Walking through the doors Brian paid the admission and began his search for a certain batshit crazy man. Scouring the exhibits he was near yesterday Brian found the blue-eyed man in the middle of a conversation. Brian looked at the nearest piece to busy himself until the blonde was finished talking. Occasionally he would steal glances over his pale shoulders at the man. His fashion today was even more interesting than the last day. Whilst yesterday he had opted for a brown jumper over a shirt and jeans, today he had chosen a bottom down shirt partnered with shorts. Whipping his head back around Brian chastised himself for letting his eyes linger on the man’s thighs longer than he should have. When Brian saw that he was done with the conversation, he approached the man. “Hi, Brian.” Blue eyed man turned to look at the brunette and flashed him a white smile that had Brian rooted on the spot. “Fellow Brian, why hello there, what brings you back to the establishment.” The curator did have an oddly charming way he spoke. It wasn’t quite how most people would phrase things. “Don’t tell me your friend, what was her name again?” “Kim,” Brian answered. “Kim, right yeah, don’t tell me Kim didn’t like the Vikings after all?” Brian seemed so down over the fact of Kim not liking the Vikings it made Brian feel bad for the lie he was about to tell. “It was just a bit too out there for the project, unfortunately.” Brian gave a small smile. “She asked me to come back and see what else we could work with. Do you think you could help?” “Absolutely,” the smile was back on Brian’s face and that made the brunette happy. “But first, a joke.” “A joke?” Brian was slightly confused by his suggestion. He came here to hear him speak about history not to listen to jokes. “What’s a day without any laughter?” So, Brian listened to the joke. “What do you call a ghost’s poop?” The brunette snorted slightly at the joke. Really that was what he was going with? “I don’t know.” “Boo boo,” Brian tried to keep a straight face as the curator wheezed and flailed. Although he tried he failed as he let out a small chuckle because of the other man. “Now that’s out the way, what part of history would you like to travel to today?” Brian thought long and hard as the other man patiently waited for a response. “I don’t know, what’s your personal favourite?” “Ahh, so Romanov Russia it is then. Are you familiar with the story of the Romanovs?” Brian thought for a minute but his mind came up blank apart from one thing. “Isn’t there a Disney movie about them or something?” That elicited another wheeze from the man that Brian found himself drawn to. “Funny you should say that because that’s exactly what the exhibit is about, well almost. You see it all started when…” Russia, 1918 Word around the streets was that the Bolsheviks had executed the Romanovs. Every last one of them, the Tsar, the Tsarina, and their five children. But rumours spread secretly that the youngest daughter, Anastasia had escaped. Yekaterina was sat quietly writing away at her desk whilst Patrycja hummed away to herself in the shower. It had been a peaceful night for them so far. Patrycja had come back from the market with a beaming smile on her face, carrying a loaf of bread and Yekaterina had managed to fill another two pages of her scribbled handwriting. At first it had been hard for the two women to adjust to couple life in Russia. They had to be very private all the time and anyone who asked was told they were cousins, they lived together because it was easier to afford rent. At the market whispers could be heard about searches being carried out by the Bolsheviks and that instantly had Patrycja worried. Most people would just accept that she and Yekaterina were cousins and ask no more questions, but this was the government, the police, and the people who had power to check. They had never faced anything as a couple this challenging since they first met. Lathering her blonde hair in shampoo, Patrycja let her mind roam throughout all the possible scenarios that could ensue. She only hoped that their humble home wasn’t searched. But if it they were looking for Anastasia then they would surely look everywhere, their small house included. In the living Yekaterina had lit a few candles to help warm the house and provide light for when the sun set. A loud knock of the door interrupted her from boarding up one of their windows. Yekaterina slowly began to walk over only to find the door be flown open. Three large men stood at the doorway staring back at Yekaterina’s small terrified figure. This was it, she thought. They know, the gig is up and they’re done for. “Ma'am is your husband home?” Yekaterina had to hide her disgust at the word husband and she shook her head. “I am not married, I live here with my cousin.” The men took steps inside the small room. The centre man looked at both of the men to his sides and nodded. As the started to walk back into the rest of the home Yekaterina spoke up. “Please, my cousin, she’s in the shower.” One of the men let out an evil chuckle at Yekaterina’s plea. “Please, she can’t hear in the bathroom, she’s nude. Let me tell her to put some clothes on.” Yekaterina desperately tried to bargain with the men. She couldn’t stand the thought of any of these greasy old men in suits seeing her angel without any clothes on. “We’re just looking for Anastasia Romanov, so long as you are not hiding her you and your cousin will be fine.” The centre man shoved Yekaterina into a corner in the living room as she desperately tried to look over his shoulder to see the other men. She couldn’t believe what was happening. From the shower Patrycja could hear loud bangs and her heart instantly jumped in her chest. Turning off the water of the shower, she grabbed her towel from the side and wrapped herself tightly in it. Stepping out of the shower, Patrycja walked gingerly over to the door and unhitched the lock. As she opened the door she found herself pushed against the cold wall of the bathroom. Tightly gripping the fabric of the towel to her chest, Patrycja tried to slow her breathing. The only sound from the home was the shattering of different items as the hit of various walls and the floor as they are thrown. Patrycja could hear her heartbeat and could feel it in her throat as she fought back the tears. Yekaterina was praying they wouldn’t look under the one bed and in the shoe-box. She could easily say how she slept on the measly excuse of a couch but she couldn’t deny the photos hidden in the shoe-box. “What do we have here,” Yekaterina felt a lump form in her throat. “A shoe-box?” The lump got larger as she swallowed away her fear. This really was it, she thought. They were goners. In the bathroom Patrycja knew what they had found. They were found out and soon they’d be paraded for the people to see as they were executed. To think the search had almost gone without a hitch and they would carry on as usual was naive of Patrycja to believe. “General, you are going to want to take a look at this,” the man with the shoebox said. “We found ourselves a pair of liars and criminals.” The man guarding Yekaterina in the corner walked away reluctantly and allowed her a bit of air. She couldn’t keep back the tears as she let out strangled sobs. The man who found the shoebox walked over to her and crouched down to her crumpled figure in the floor. “You better shut up, sweetheart, or the consequences won’t be too pretty.” Patrycja felt physically sick. She could hear the cries coming from her love and let the tears roll down her face. She heard a loud scream come from Yekaterina as she was kicked in the stomach to make her shut up, and her heart wrenched. It was torture to listen to her love scream in agony. 2017 “They had to hide their romance, that is awful,” Brian said on the verge of tears. “Well they lived in Russia, they would still have to hide their love now. It isn’t the most accepting country ever,” Brian said with a hand placed on one the other man’s shoulders. “What happened to them?” “They were paraded around the market before being executed. It was brutal and humiliating but they died next to the woman they loved.” Brian struggled to hold back the single tear that rolled down his face. Bringing a hand up to his face he instantly wiped the tear away. “Why is that awful story your favourite?” The blue-eyed man looked at the brunette with a sad smile on his face. “Because it reminds me that I could have it so much worse than I do. I live in a place that for some part accepts who I am.” Brian nodded as he struggled to comprehend what he was being told. Was Brian confirming that he too was gay? “Why don’t you go tell Kim about this, she what she has to say and if she doesn’t like it, I’ll be here tomorrow with a brand-new story to tell you.” The two men said their goodbyes and the curator let their hug carry on a little longer than maybe he should’ve. The brunette left the museum with an even larger burning passion to get to know the man teaching him history.

Lord of Shadows Review - SPOILERS

Lord of Shadows. FUCK THIS BOOK.

That’s what I said out loud to myself as I finished the final page. What a ride.

What an incredible journey from start to finish. Cassandra Clare is one of those rare creators who just gets better and better with each release. Her writing is top class and it frightens me to think about where she will be in five or six books time.

The basic story of the book is follows. Annabel Blackthorn is bought back to life by Malcolm Fade, who didn’t die in Lady Midnight like we thought, he sacrifices Arthur (RIP) to do this and so he nobly died in place of his family, good for you Arthur.

Annabel has the black book which the Seelie Queen wants for some “unknown” reason, she tasks Julian with getting it for her, and she promises him that she knows a way to break the Parabatai bond so he and Emma can be together. Julian then has to arrange the players into place, have Kieran testify that the Unseelie King is plotting against the Nephilim, and that the Queen has agreed to help them if she gets the book and the Cold Peace is broken. Seems straightforward enough right? Wrong.

Enter my now most hated fictional character of all time, as I like to call her, Zara FUCKING Dearborn, that bitch. She is a racist, big-headed, lying bigot and I can’t wait for her to die.

Zara as well as a group of others make up the Centurions, an elite force of Shadowhunters who study at the academy, they’re supposed to be the best and most skilled for their age, unfortunately, Zara is a big fat liar and makes up all the stories of her heroics, she’s basically a female Gilderoy Lockhart, she gets her Centurion minions to back her up on all her claims. And together with her cronies and her father they make up a group called The Cohort, basically the Nazi’s of the Nephilim world, who want to see a return to Downworlders being treated like crap, and branded with signs, and put on a register, so at this point Zara and her father are like Hitler and Voldemort teaming up together (shivers).

To escape the threat of Malcolm the Blackthorns portal to London (yay), and stay in the institute there, until the very end when they must go to Idris and present Annabel and Kieran to give evidence against Zara and the Unseelie King.

That’s when things turn to shit.

The Cohort arrive and start heckling Annabel, she is given the Mortal Sword so they know she is telling the truth when she reveals Zara is a big phoney. Annabel then goes nuts and kills some people, which I will discuss more later.

Throughout all of this we have Emma and Jules trying to not feel anything for each other, Emma pretends to date Mark so Julian will stop loving her, of course this fails and they end up seeking help from Magnus Bane and the Inquisitor.

We see some older characters appear, Clary confides in Emma that she is having dreams of herself dying, and that she turned down a proposal from Jace because she thinks it will be harder for him if they are married when she dies. Hmm. Her and Jace then go on a secret mission to the Faerie world, we���re not sure what that mission is yet, but I have a pretty good guess.

Now to talk about the individual characters.

Emma, I feel doesn’t get a whole lot of progression in this book, aka she’s still an awesome badass, she manages to kill one of the seven warrior Faeries (I forget what they’re called) which is said to be near impossible, though I feel that has more to do with Cortana than it does Emma, but we will see.

Julian, this guy scares me, he is the perfect liar, I think Kit mentions that Jules would be great as a con-artist, he perfectly slots puzzle pieces into place, he’s a genius, I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, he’d do anything for his family and for Emma, I will be very interested to see how his arc continues in the next book after what happens at the end of this one.

Mark, sweet, sweet Mark, he pretended to date Emma just so he could curl up on her floor and talk and not feel so alone, someone hug this guy! I feel like him, Kieran and Cristina are headed for a throuple situation, they all seem to gel so well, and I still love how he speaks to people, its hilarious.

Cristina, still a  great character, very caring, and I’d love to see more of her with Jamie and their long friendship with the Fae.

The Twins, Ty is my favorite character in this trilogy HANDS DOWN, he is written SO well, Cassandra has definitely done her research on Autism, I used to know a boy at school who also had it and he acted almost the exact same way, the sensations, the music, its scarily accurate. Livvy, my heart broke, I thought we were headed into a Harry, Ron and Hermione type friendship, sweet, fierce Livvy, rest in peace up in heaven with your parents and uncle.

Dru, this is who I actually thought was going to die, she seemed to be getting neglected right up until she meets Jamie, who is keeping the Seelie Queen’s secret child well….a secret, for reasons unknown, clearly Sebastian is the boy’s father, I won’t go into detail about my big theory surrounding the queen, the boy, Sebastian and Clary’s death as I’ve already made a post about my theories regarding that, but if Cassandra pulls this off, there will be some very upset fans.

I won’t really talk about Tavvy, he doesn’t do much except play with Alec and Magnus’ kids and throw tantrums, he’s seven, I forgive him for that.

Kit goes through so much growth in this book, he is so likeable, he’s our “way in”, the normal one who we can relate to because he grew up in the human world, believing himself to be a mundane. The Herondale is strong in this one, sarcastic, handsome, and grows very close with the twins, he’s going to become Ty’s rock now Livvy is gone, I still can’t work out if they’re going to become lovers (the gay is strong in the Blackthorn family) or just Parabatai.

Diana, “No way” I said out loud when her origin was revealed, she used to be a man, I certainly didn’t see that coming, what a revelation! I really felt for her when she poured her heart out to Gwyn (who is actually a big softie), that’s been her big secret this whole time, I’m sure that bitch Zara will find out and reveal all at some point but Diana is strong, she’ll get through it.

 I’d like to point out how seamless it is that the situation Malcolm and Annabel faced with the clave, is almost the same situation as the one Julian and Emma are facing, a forbidden love ruled as wrong by the law. Interesting the parallels we can draw from this. I almost feel like sometimes I’m reading about Incest, because the Parabatai relationship seems to be like siblings, strong, reliable and unconditional, it almost feels wrong reading about it, but its not like Cassandra Clare hasn’t touched on this subject before.

Also, Robert Lightwood was the other big death of the book, Annabel kills him as well as Livvy, she could have just dropped the sword and called it a day, but nope, she has to go bananas, thanks for breaking my heart Annabel, you bitch.

  My predictions for the next book. Julian will go batshit crazy on a quest for vengeance, and Emma will be the only one who will help him through that.

Mark, Kieran and Cristina will grow closer and we will learn even more about Cristina’s close ties to the Faerie world.

The Queen will get the book, kill Clary and resurrect Sebastian using her blood. I know his body was burnt but I think there will be a twist, she’ll create a new body or use the child to host his soul.  I detailed this theory more in a previous post, so check out the full details if you’re interested.

I’m pretty sure this ending will lead into a new trilogy, one where we get points of view from all the present characters, the Blackthorns/Carstairs clan as well as the Herondale/Lightwood clan.

Also I think Simon and Isabelle will appear, as they’re really the only two from the original series not to appear in the Dark Artifices yet.

 Stunning book, such a shame we have to wait until 2019 to see what happens next!

5/5.

Journey to the past | Xiaojun

✦ Xiaojun x reader ✦ Fluff, Smut, Angst, College AU, Established relationship ✦ 5/5 for HOLIDAY SERIES: Once Upon A December

Summary: You hated each other with a passion and you’re both willing to give each other a hard time. Always. Until you both realized that you secretly have feelings for each other. When Xiaojun finally admitted it, he did everything he could to make it up to you and when things are falling into place, a tragedy happened wherein your memories on how XIoajun won your heart was erased and all that’s left is when you hated him so much.  

Word count: 6,960k

Warnings: Unprotected sex, blow job, face fucking, mentions of other idols, swearing, mentions of accidents, ex Jaehyun,

A/N: PURE FICTION. Not a love triangle fic. And I changed the ending to sad ending. WATCH THE VOW! ITS MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!

“Are you happy with me?”

“Hmm. I don’t know, you tell me?” you let out a giggle as you put down your pencil and swing an arm around your boyfriend while you two look at the dress you designed for a very much awaited fashion show.

“The way I see it yes,” he kisses your neck, loud and wet sounds of kisses surrounds your small studio. “You love every bit of my handsome being” Xiaojun added as he nibbles your ear and turns you on.  

“I'm sure about loving you but I'm not sure about the handsome part-“ and before you could even finish your sentence he attacked you with tickles that weakens your knees and fall on the floor slowly as you laugh your heart away, feel your heartbeat so fast, feel your body get warm. And when you’re both lying on the cold floor, both smiling and catching your breaths he asked you a question that will forever change your life.

“If you’re happy with me, marry me”

It was suddenly quiet.

“Huh?” you said, eyes wide when you saw that he’s not joking.

“I was planning to ask you to marry me once I convince you to go to bed now and sleep early. The ring is in our room, what do you say?” his hold on you tightens as he waits for your answer, eyes hopeful, heart racing.

“That's the crappiest proposal ever but I love it. Yes”

And finally, Xiaojun can breathe again and stop being nervous. He was so happy that he can’t believe you actually said ‘yes’ this time. “Yeah? You’ll marry me? Hmm?” He kisses you again and starts tickling you but soon the playful moment turned into a passionate one. You feel his cold hands creep under your thin blouse and feel him lift it without breaking the kiss. You did the same with his dress shirt, unbuttoning it without wasting every moment you could get with those amazing lips. “I think we should bring this to our room and you know… so I can propose properly?”

When your boyfriend, now fiancé, was putting the ring on your finger, you couldn't help but think of how he waited for this moment patiently. And how he endured all the heartbreak you have put him through but still, he stayed and waited.

You don’t know why the sex felt even greater now that he finally put a ring on your finger or maybe it’s just because your love became even stronger for Xiaojun and he feels the same. Every kiss, every touch, every thrust he gives you tonight felt warm like you’re about to melt any second. Your toes curled so many times even though you’re not on edge yet.

“Ooh baby” you moaned out and reach for his arm, he asked you ‘what do you want?’ while kissing your collar bones while he’s balls deep inside you. “fuck me from behind” you request, and without any hesitation he pulls out and turned your body, spreading your legs and lifting your hips effortlessly. He licks your opening first before he thrust in again slowly, his hands are perfectly placed on your ass cheeks, spreading it and watching himself slide in and out of you smoothly. He saw you grip the sheets and furrow your brows when he finally hit the spot you oh so loved. Xiaojun then grabbed your hand and intertwined it with his, seeing the ring shine from the soft light from the lampshade. You cannot see it, but your fiancé is blushing like crazy seeing that ring on your finger while he fucks you good.

He doubled his pace, kissing your shoulders as you tighten your grip with his hand. When you clenched around him, Xiaojun lost it and came before you could. “Don’t pull out yet- fuck I’m almost there” you moaned out, accidentally overstimulating your boyfriend for you requested over and over again, 'don't stop'. Your knees gave up and you both flopped on the mattress with heavy breathing and sweaty bodies, smiling at each other as you both enjoy your high.

After he cleaned you up, you snuggled in bed with fresh new sheets and enjoying this very sweet moment while you two let your engagement sink in. “You know I thought you were going to say, no or not yet” Xiaojun admitted.

“Hmm. That’s reasonable, we’ve been through so much already. I can’t blame you” you said.

“Who would have thought that you will marry the person you hated the most?” you both giggled at what he said and tightens his embrace, and right then and there you remember how you used to hate his whole being during college.

Xiaojun’s mere existence annoys the shit out of you.

You thought that your morning with your boyfriend Jaehyun will be peaceful after having your morning sex and Jaehyun offered to make you breakfast. But now your morning is perfectly ruined by his roommate Xiaojun as he eats his cereals in front of you, feet on the table, hair messy, and still wearing his pajamas despite having his morning class in twenty minutes.

“I heard you moaning this morning. Is Jaehyun really that good?” he teased you and Jaehyun, watching your boyfriend smack his head playfully.

“Yeah I’m that good- Xiaojun we have class may I remind you. Dude, go shower already” Jaehyun hands you a plate with freshly cooked pancakes, “Just let it go, babe. He’s just joking,” he says when Xiaojun left the table to go shower.

“Yeah, and I don’t like his jokes. Seriously Jae, live with me instead of this… person” you whine and enjoy what he cooked.

“He’s been my best friend since we were kids and were basically family so, can’t do that” he explains kisses your forehead as an apology.

You and Jaehyun started dating during your first semester as a senior together. You were this perfect fashion student slash valedictorian that suits Jaehyun’s prince charming image and the most popular guy on campus. Everyone thought you’re made for each other and well, perfect for each other.

Except for Xiaojun.

Instead of having the time of your life during your senior year with your handsome boyfriend, Xiaojun comes in and ruins everything. You have nothing against Jaehyun and Xiaojun being friends but sometimes Xiaojun is a handful that you can’t stand it anymore that you and Jaehyun fight because of him. Like that one time you and Jaehyun were having sex in his room and he forgot to lock the door and Xiaojun came in barging in his drunken state. Jaehyun had to pull out in front of him, cover you, and get dressed before he basically drags Xiaojun out of his room.

“Babe, I’m all he’s got. I’m sorry, please don’t break up with me”

After graduating together, you and Jaehyun got a place and lived together for a few years. Xiaojun is still present in your lives, not present like your college days but still, he’s annoying whenever he’s around.

Turns out you don’t need Xiaojun to make you realize that you can’t be with Jaehyun anymore. You and Jaehyun broke up simply because you can’t see a future with him but he didn’t take it well and blamed Xiaojun instead. It was a peaceful breakup but Jaehyun didn’t want to let you go and the moment he lost you, and blamed his best friend and cut ties with him.

“Sorry I’m late, my boss won’t stop at anyothing especially fashion week is just around the corner” you apologize to your girlfriends as you give them a kiss on the cheek one by one, “So what did I miss?” you added.

“Oh, nothing just a few shots of tequila. You know what to do” your friend says as she pours you a few shots to make it up to them and in no time, the tequila had you dancing with your friends and strangers on the dance floor. The place was blurry and all you can see is a dark place illuminated by colorful laser lights and shadows of people dancing.

You are drunk already, and so are your friends.

And the next thing you know is you woke up naked in a stranger’s bed. Body covered by blue thin sheets and your head hurts like hell because of the sunlight. “Sorry about that” he then closed the curtains and hand you a cup of coffee. His blurry image became clear when he flashed you that familiar smirk.

“Small world Y/n” he started, “Why don’t you have a shower first and go change the have breakfast with me” he says and pointed you his bathroom before he leaves you alone.  

As you force yourself to go shower, still clinging to this thin blanket to cover your naked body while you try so hard to remember how did you end up in Xiaojun’s place. First of all, you don’t know that he has his own place already, and second, why would you ever go to his place. You shook your head and shower your thoughts away until you feel clean. You were sure that you and Xiaojun did not have sex because you perfectly remember his figure leaving the room last night and even turned the lights off.

“Want me to fill you up with what happened to you last night?” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee while smiling because you look cute in his clothes.

“Yes please,” you said while you take a sit as far away from him. Everything looked entirely wrong, but you feel like you’re in the right hands instead of waking up with a total stranger.

“For starters, we were at the same bar. Found you throwing up in the men’s bathroom- believe when I tell you that I am shocked. You were batshit drunk and throwing up on the toilet, you were a mess. Your friends got drunk and they can’t take you home, so I volunteered” he explained hoping that you will believe everything he says.

“I remember undressing last night, after you turned off the lights. Thank you”

He raised his cup of coffee like he’s saying, ‘I’m annoying but not a pervert’. Little did you know that he loved taking care of you. It was his first time doing it to you last night, but it felt great to finally give back. It was always you who takes care of his drunken ass back then in your college years. Even though you hate him and Jaehyun is the one making you change his clothes back then while he cleans Xiaojun’s puke, he was always thankful for you and Jaehyun.

He then gave you a plate full of food he prepared and gave you some pain killers for your headache. Xiaojun was looking at you lovingly, it’s been so long since the last time he saw you eat breakfast across the table with him.

“Shit I have a meeting” you got up from your comfortable seat and put a few fruits in your mouth before you look around for your things. “I’m sorry about this, I’ll treat you to dinner. Here-“ you fidget on your phone and hand it to him for his number while you fix your coat.

Everything happened so fast. After he saved his number on your phone, you were gone again. He didn’t even have the chance to say he's sorry.

After that fateful day, your job made you busy for the next few weeks and you forgot to call Xiaojun. Until weeks turned into months, you thought that calling him at such a late notice will make you look like you’re flirting with him, so you stopped yourself from calling him.

Even when you really want to.

Today was one of those moments when you realize that you’re the only single lady in your group of friends. You were completely fine with being single of course, but everyone was just flexing their dates in front of you and you can’t help but think of Xiaojun and ask him to be your plus one in a friend’s wedding but then again, that sounds too desperate of you so you dropped the idea.

The wedding was beautiful, you’re glad to see your friend happy in the arms of the right guy and you wish the same things for yourself too.

While you were busy tearing up in the corner with a glass of champagne in your hand, you felt someone put a coat on you and you can’t protest further because it’s Xiaojun. You were sure you didn’t send him the text, you didn’t even compose the message. It was just a thought, but he is here in front of you.

“Small world huh?” he said, with a smile that melts your heart in an instant. He looked so handsome with that loose tie that you unconsciously fix without hesitation. Xiaojun was taken aback when you came closer to him, turned his head to the side, and just let you do what you must. “Sorry. It’s just a habit, I work in the fashion industry so,- sorry” you stepped back and cling to his coat, he just smiled and nod his head.

“Want to dance? Come on no one knows we used to hate each other here” he winks and asked for your hand which you gladly gave in and let him sway you under soft music as you let your friends gossip on the side.

“Are you friends with the groom?” you asked, trying to start a conversation to make it up to him for not calling.

“Neither, my cousin is invited she made me her plus one” he snorted and you let out a giggle. Thankful that you’re not actually stealing him from anyone.

“I wanted to say sorry. About everything. Me being an asshole to you during our college days, and your relationship with Jaehyun. Were not friends anymore, he cut ties after you broke up with him”

Hearing Xiaojun say his sorry to you actually warms your heart as he continues to sway your bodies side to side. But hearing that Jaehyun stopped being his friend because of you, breaks your heart. “I didn’t break up with him because of you. H-he knows that, how can he say that to you”

“Well, that’s years ago. It’s fine Y/n,” You hum to what he said and enjoyed the moment further because it’s not every day you get to dance with a handsome guy. “I think you should come home with me before you get yourself drunk and go home with a total stranger” you both giggled at what he said, smacking his arm playfully because he’s so smooth.

Later that night you’re back to his apartment, and you’re not just back for the sake of having a nightcap at his place.

One thing led to another and you caught yourselves kissing on his bed, still fully clothed and with no light in his bedroom, just a small light from the lamppost outside which you thought is even more romantic than the moonlight.

You were just kissing and the sexual tension is building up fast but none of you wanted to move or ruin this sweet moment but he had to ask you, “do you want to do it tonight?” He asked softly kissing your neck and lips while he waits for your answer.

“I want to but, it feels right to just kiss you the whole night. Is that okay?” You smiled at him, cupping his face with your cold hands which he catches quickly, and shower it with kisses.

“Of course” he then starts kissing you again. Way softer this time, hands intertwined with each other. The night ended with pure kissing and no funny business, something you least expected from Xiaojun.

The morning after, you and Xiaojun promised to see each other again despite your busy schedules. He was so scared that you might hate him again the moment you step out of his place and forget that you and him shared something special in his bed last night. The morning was full of stolen kisses and reminiscing while you watch him make you a hearty breakfast before you both head to work. It was so hard to leave after breakfast and you think it’s cute how you two feel the same way.

A date is followed by another date, then another one, until you two stopped worrying that your hate for each other will come back. The getting to know each other phase was intimate, you now knew things about Xiaojun that he never told anyone before, except you and Jaehyun.

“I always envied him. For years and years, I see the way you loved him, how you take care of him and I can’t stop myself for wishing the same things for myself, you know?” He admitted. You hug him tighter and let him feel your guilt. You saw a smile on his face and quickly planted a kiss on your lips.

Xiaojun is not perfect. He has imperfections and those imperfections are part of the many reasons why you love him. Truth be told you’re not perfect too, but Xiaojun loves you as if you are. For him, he would rather accept each other’s imperfections rather than losing each other.

You knock on his apartment with a few take-outs in your hand and decided to have a surprise dinner together. He hasn’t texted you for two days straight now and you’re starting to get worried. When he opened the door, a tired Xiaojun welcomed you. Eyes tired, dark under eyes and he smelled like he hasn’t showered for days.

“To what do I owe this pleasure” he kissed your forehead and helped you with the stuff you brought for dinner. “You look nice, you go to work looking that beautiful?” He added and weakly winked at you.

“Baby, you look like shit” you rake his greasy hair, dirty but you don’t care.

“I’ve been working on this game for days now, I’m so frustrated already” he whines while he prepares the meal. “I need hugs, kisses, and sex maybe?” He was always quick to turn your moments around and the next thing you know you’re laughing so loud while you’re enjoying the food. For a moment there, he forgot that he was stressing about this game he was talking about because you make everything better with your mere presence. He wanted to tell you that this apartment of his was like a bat cave before you came in, and now that you're here gracing him with your presence, it's like every corner of this place lit up automatically.

After dinner and while you were washing the dishes, you felt Xiaojun's arms cage you while you're busy scrubbing the plates, "Thanks for the visit," he says kissing your nape and your neck.

"Are you shooing me already?" you joked.

He let out a low giggle and felt his hands wander on your waist and on your sides. “Can we do it tonight?” there was no sign of pressure in the way he asked you, he was caging you with his arms as you wash the dishes and kissing you lovingly.

“If we shower first, then yeah”

“Together?” With wide eyes, he asked you.

“No silly” you giggled, “go shower first,” you sealed it with a kiss, and without hesitation Xiaojun head to his bathroom and clean himself.

He wasn’t joking when he told you he needed sex, the man was so stressed indeed that you see his table in his bedroom all messed up with papers, dirty cups of instant ramen on the side, and his computers with a lot of codes that you don’t understand.

“Found you” he whispers behind you. The smell of his shampoo and soap lingers around the room. You turned your back and smiled at him, kiss his exposed chest, and ruffle his wet hair.

“Next time you’re stressed with work, tell me. I’ll do my best with you, okay?”

“Sorry” he kissed you on the cheek, “I’m so used to being alone that I forgot we’re in this together from now on. I’m really sorry” you told him it’s okay over and over again but he tells you he’s sorry still.

After you have the most amazing hot shower you ever had you found Xiaojun waiting for you in his bed, and looking incredibly hot with only wearing his glasses and nothing underneath those thick sheets. Even his bed felt amazing, you feel like you’re lying on a cloud with an angel beside you. A naked angel. While you’re only wearing your panties and his oversized shirt.

“Your apartment feels like home” you admitted and went on top of him, flopped in between his bare legs, letting his soft cock poke your lower abdomen. His hands immediately go on top of your shoulder to give it a tight squeeze and massage it for a few seconds. He figured you might be stressed with work too and he didn’t even bother asking you if you’re fine.

He wanted to talk more, but too late. You’re already naked under the thick sheets, kissing him down and you’re on your way to give him the best blow job ever. You kissed his lower abdomen, hearing the man underneath you grunt and get excited. You stroke his soft cock while you continue to kiss him and tease him, lick a few stripes before you play with his head. When he’s finally hard and ready, you slowly bobbed your head and glide your tongue as you take him whole. You didn’t waste your time anymore and gave him what he wants, you reach for his hand, put it on the sides of your head, and let him thrust in your mouth. It was filthy despite being the first time doing such sexual activity, but you did not care.

Spit was all over your face, Xiaojun then covers his face as he tries his best not to cum so soon. He stopped on purpose, giving you time to breathe and giving him time to control himself. You crawl up to him after you wiped the spit on your face and spread soft kisses on his body, “it’s okay to cum in my mouth, why did you stop?”

He was quiet and still catching his breath while you grabbed his cock and pump it slowly. You kissed him and told him you’re on top for tonight just because he’s the one who needed stress release. You leaned on him before you line his cock and Xiaojun’s mouth was quick to catch one of your nipples with his mouth and suck it. Tongue swirling, teeth biting, and softly pinching it before you ride him.

His hands are on both sides of your hips while you slowly go down and swallow his cock with your pussy. “Mmm” you moan out and feel the stretch that Xiaojun gives you, it has been way too long since your last fuck and that explains how tight you are. You feel his grip tightens every second and when he’s finally fully inside you, he let out a loud moan to express how good you make him feel.

You lean forward and kissed him before you roll your hips, grab his hand, and made him grip your boobs instead of your sides. "I'm yours" you whisper. The first roll of your hips felt fucking good for both of you. You watch your boyfriend part his lips beneath you and ask for more which you gladly gave him by fucking him slow and deep that lustful sounds came out from your mouth and Xiaojun is loving all of it.

"You sound great, try moaning my name? Hmm?" he request, mouth parted, eyes lidded and full of lust.

"Xiaojun" you moan out. But you didn't do it on purpose, his name unconsciously escaped from your mouth because he's kissing your neck, pinching your nipple with his left hand, and drawing circles on your clit with his right hand. You did not miss how his fingers and his sweet whispers are the ones who put you on edge and eventually hit your high when he added more pressure on your clit. You tried pushing him away because the pleaser is too much, Xiaojun slowed down for your sake.

"Is it okay if we continue until I cum?" you can only nod with his request. A few lustful kisses, moaning, and sharp gasps here in there, he trades places with you effortlessly fucking you at a really slow pace because that's what you both needed. Your right knee is folded so he could thrust deeper, now it’s your turn to part your lips, furrow your brows and ask for more. Unconsciously, your thumb brushes on his lips while you cupped face and without hesitation, Xiaojun put your thumb in his mouth and sucked it while he fucks you hard.

It’s obvious that he’s near already when you see him turn his head from side to side and his slow and deep thrusts became hard and piercing. He was catching his breath, eyes shut and moaning loudly as he's letting you know that you're the one who made him feel good.

“Good?” You asked sweetly to him, and nod his head weakly while feeling his body warms up and shoots his cum inside you. He kisses your lips, your neck, and your knee and he told you, “I love you” you giggled and raked the hair covering his face, “you seriously told me you love for the first time while you’re still shooting your cum inside me?” you watch your boyfriend get shy in the cutest way possible.

The night ended sweetly with Xiaojun kissing your legs while he cleans you up, and letting you play with the game he has been working on. Spending time with Xiaojun is like an escape from reality, very addicting and you never want it to end. Maybe that’s why you always cling to him in your sleep.

Waking up with your arm around his body has become Xiaojun’s favorite thing now and you sleeping with no clothes on is just a plus. He covers your exposed body because you’re making him horny first thing in the morning with those perked up nipples but did not waste his opportunity to kiss you good morning. He started kissing you on your neck, down to your collar bones until you’re awake enough to swing your arms around him and return the kiss.

“Sore?” He teased you and you snorted because it’s true. “Breakfast?” he added, still looking at you lovingly and secretly thanking the universe for bringing you together again.

During breakfast, it seems like you two can’t get enough of each that he wanted you to sit on his lap while you have breakfast. The morning was full of giggles, nonstop teasing, and tickles. You give him a piece of bread and he will give you a kiss in return, his hands are perfectly secured around your frame, and his eyes... oh his eyes are only fixed to you.

“I’m the worst boyfriend,” he says while drawing small circles on your knee.

“No, you’re not”

“Last night while I was massaging your shoulders, I did not miss how you grunt and let out a relieving sigh. It’s obvious you’re tired too-“ he shook his head and went straight to the point, “Live with me, that way we can sleep peacefully at night. Come home with each other, massage each other’s back. Let me be a better boyfriend”

The fact that he wanted to be better for you even though he’s already doing so much makes your heart thump so fast because of pure joy. “Xiaojun do you know that you’re naturally sweet?” You cup his face and kissed his lips and hope that the way you kiss him will make him understand how happy you are right now. “okay, let’s be better for each other... and massage each other’s shoulders” you placed your arm around his shoulders and pulled him closer to you, making the kiss more intense and soon you can hear each other moan deliciously.

Moving in with Xiaojun was a big change, you still hated his weird habits like how he hates doing dishes but now he has you to straighten him up. At night, you spend time with each other after a long day from work, may it be making dinner together or eating takeout and end the day with great sex and sleep with tired bodies. When the sun is up, you start your day right with morning kisses that you will never get tired of, have breakfast together and if you have enough time, you and Xiaojun will fuck before going to work.

Then again, at the end of the day, you come home from work excitedly and he will stop whatever he’s doing to welcome you home, continue his day, and spend it with you.

No more worrying for each other, no more not seeing each other for days. You are each other’s home now.

Of course, there's no perfect relationship and even though you love each other like crazy there will be moments that you can’t avoid no matter how hard you try. Since Xiaojun is a game developer, he’s all about fun and being spontaneous while you on the other hand are always uptight and you always want to stick on schedule. Your personalities always contradict each other so you fight like crazy sometimes but never sleep until you fix the problem, compromise, and work things out no matter what happens.

Xiaojun has your heart and you are each other's weakness.

The once huge change or shift in your life is now your normal, and home. In the span of being together for two years, you and Xiaojun settled with each other happily.

And that happiness is a great push for Xiaojun to ask you to marry him.

It was a beautiful proposal, complete with wine, steak, and the diamond in that ring is so big that your eyes widened at the size of it.

But you sadly refused.

Cold. That’s the perfect word to describe how the night went. How a supposedly passionate night turned out to be. Even the bed is cold and for the first time, Xiaojun turned his back on you. But of course, you reach out to him not because it’s the right thing to do but because you love Xiaojun so much. You hugged him from behind and hope that he will hear you out, but he was the one who talked first.

“Not ‘never’, just ‘not now’ right? You love me right?” The sound of Xiaojun’s voice weakens you. He sounds so weak, sobbing, and sniffing as he waits for your answer.

“I do love you. Please don’t think that you’re lacking, it’s me. I’m not yet ready to be married- oh baby I’m sorry I put you through this” you hugged him tighter and cried with him but even though you’re both crying he never forgets to make you feel loved. He dried your tears and kissed both of your eyes and kept you close to him until you fall asleep.

After that fateful night, it is as if something shifted in your relationship and Xiaojun became sweeter, more mature, and you fight less. Of course, he was still heartbroken about you refusing to marry him, but he would rather be rejected than be stupid enough to leave you.

In time, the failed proposal became an inside joke to both of you. Like that one time, you wanted to have sex with him but he teased you instead of giving you what you want.

“Only married couples have sex baby. If only you said ‘yes’ back then, right?” He says while kissing your exposed collar bones and secretly unbuttoning his white dress shirt. You giggled at what he said decided to bite back, “try fucking the word ‘yes’ out of me tonight then” you said. And with quick hands, he undresses and you did the same.

A year already passed since you refused to marry him, and now that Christmas is just around the corner Xiaojun decided to try again. Hoping for the best of course, but he has a great feeling that you still haven’t changed your mind.

“If you’re happy with me marry me”

It was suddenly quiet.

“Huh?” you said, eyes wide when you saw that he’s not joking.

“I was planning to ask you to marry me once I convince you to go to bed now and sleep early. The ring is in our room, what do you say?” his hold to you tightens as he waits for your answer, eyes hopeful, heart racing.

“That's the crappiest proposal ever but I love it. Yes”

Who would have thought that married life was hard but you two managed it perfectly? Just as you thought that Xiaojun poured every bit of his love to you during the time that you were dating, well you’re wrong. For Xiaojun it’s not hard for him to pour more of his love into you because for him, you’re like a Russian doll that has different layers, different you, you’re like a leaf that changes color for the better and all he has to do is love every change.

“Well, I want a boy and girl,” he says while looking at the ceiling with you, arms wrapped around each other and talking about having a baby someday.

“Hmm. Okay. But with four years interval, please. Being a mom is hard. At least that’s what my friends told me-“

“But I doubt we will stop at having two kids, I think we will end up having five. I need to develop more games” his eyes grew big upon realizing that what he just said. You let out a laugh, turned to your husband, and kissed him because he’s too cute.

Everything was perfect. A year married and everything is smooth sailing. It’s like there’s no hint of you hating each other back then because you love each other deeply now.

Until one night, Xiaojun was late to pick you up from work and you waited for him while enjoying the falling snow and can’t wait to throw one at Xiaojun for being late. Everywhere was white and the snow is pretty thick that you didn’t see a car crossing the street at the same time as you saw your husband on the other side of the road.

It all happened too fast. One second he was smiling at you and the next thing he knew you’re lying in the middle of the road.

The accident put you in a short comatose but that’s not the worst part of it.

Xiaojun prayed for your recovery day and night, stayed with you at the hospital, and left work in the meantime to take care of you. One night, he was holding your hand tightly and looking at your wedding ring, whispering ‘i love yous’ and ‘please wake up now’ over and over again... until you actually did.

It was like a miracle when he heard you grunt, saw you move your head, and furrow your brows. He called the doctor as quickly as he can and watch them do their job, excited to finally talk to you, excited to tell you that he loves you and that he was so scared, he thought he lost you.

“Y/n, I am your doctor. You were hit by a car two days before Christmas under a snowy day after work”

It was quiet for a moment as the doctors and the nurses give you some time to let it all sink in. But the first thing that came out to your mouth is,

“Jae? Is Jaehyun alright?” You asked weakly.

‘Jae’ a word Xiaojun hasn’t heard from you for almost five years.

“I’m not sure who that man is, but your husband is here” your doctor looked at the man seated behind, and to your surprise, it was Xiaojun. And the moment you see Xiaojun’s face clearly under the soft light of your hospital room, your heart thumped so fast and you don’t know why it's doing that.

“H-he’s not my husband. He’s my boyfriend’s best friend. Can you please call Jaehyun?”

Xiaojun did not know what to do. Does he really have to call Jaehyun because you asked him to? But he’s your husband... “You can’t remember me? W-what am I? Or who am I?” Xiaojun asked softly, careful not to stress you but he is very frustrated and broken right now. “Y/n, I’m your husband. Were married”

You look at him. Long and hard as if you’re telling him that you don’t have time for his sick jokes, you were in an accident for goodness sake. But while you’re looking at your husband with disgust, Xiaojun never thought he would see that look you gave him again. After years and years of being together and happily married... now you’re back at being disgusted and annoyed with him.

“Get out”

You said when you saw your wedding ring and some pictures of you and him on the side table. Xiaojun followed your request with a heavy heart and you see it in his face. But everything is too much. You don’t know what’s heavy to take, you getting hit by a car or waking up with Xiaojun being your husband.

Later that night, Xiaojun came back to your room just to check up on you and found you sleeping soundly. What happened earlier hurt him but it will never change his love for you. With all his bravery he said the news to your family and admitted that he is in need of help. “She can’t remember me as his husband, I think it will be better if you guys come here and take it from here. I don’t want to pressure my wife” even his frustration is obvious thru the phone your mom thought.

The next day, you were glad to see your parents but not exactly glad to see Xiaojun arrive with them. He was quiet the whole time the doctors were explaining the things you need to do in order to regain your memories and your parents are talking and filling you up with the years you don’t remember. “By the time you can leave the hospital, it’s better if you go back to your normal routine,” the doctor said.

They were going on and on to how much of a good husband Xiaojun is, how he’s taken care of you for years, how you used to be so in love with him. But every word that your parents told you seemed so strange and new to you. How? Why? Why him? Are the questions you want to be answered now but your head hurts already. “I can’t take all this in one day” you asked them to stop. “It’s getting pretty late too, I think you guys should go home and we’ll do this… when I need it”

In the next few days, you asked Xiaojun to stop seeing you or visiting you anymore just so you can think of a way on how to deal with this at your own pace. You also told him that you will be staying with your parents from now and they can take care of you without him. “I’m your husband, I can’t just leave you Y/n” he said sternly.

“I know- Xiaojun I’m thankful that I have you now and you’re all honest to me and my parents like you. But I feel like I don’t know you right now, am I suppose to come to your house and play house with you?”

At this point, Xiaojun can feel his heartbreak into pieces. He can’t do anything. He thought that you asking him not to see you anymore was heartbreaking enough that he wanted to punch the wall. But when he saw you remove your wedding ring, that made him weak and hopeless.

"Don't leave me. Please don't do this"

“It’s not divorce, Xiaojun. Maybe I will remember you tomorrow or next week, who knows? But right now, I’m lost and I know that I have to take care of myself-“

“But I can take care of you. Think of this baby,” he came closer to you, desperately held you close to him, and surprisingly you liked it. Like your body remember Xiaojun’s warmth but your mind can’t. “We met again two years after you broke up with Jaehyun. Leaving Jaehyun was a decision you made for yourself. Then I came along and won your heart, we dated and now we're married” you watch tears in his eyes fall which you unconsciously dry with your thumb.

“And this is another decision I’m doing for myself. If you love me or care for me, you would let me go” you asked of him, with all the softness you have left for the man.

You gave the ring to him and thankfully he accepted it, although he begged a little more but, your decision is final. Knowing that what you’re doing right now is basically torture for him and it breaks your heart too, but what can you do? You don’t remember him as your husband, and you just know him as the person who annoys you the most.

All he can do now is wait for you to regain your memories and hope for the best. But even if you hate him again, he will still love you fiercely and wait for you to come in his arms.

Resident Evil 7 : Review

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Resident Evil 7 : Review

Why would an author write a Resident Evil 7 review?  It’s a video game, after all.

Because this author plays a lot of video games.  More on that in the near future.

(Also because I have access to a blog platform and the absurdist millennial belief that anyone cares a spit about my banal thoughts.)

The TL;DR version of this review is as follows: purchase this game.  If you’re a fan of the franchise (which I’m not, really) or a fan of survival horror (which I am), you’ll love it.  I might recommend waiting for a sale (I didn’t), since it comes in a bit short for its price point.

Alright, now for the long version.

Selling Point 1 : You’re Not Helpless.

I’m pretty sick of helplessness as a game mechanic.  If a game is only scary because the player is helpless, it’s secretly not a very scary game.  Anything can be scary if it’s done in low light with tense music and ALSO YOU’RE HELPLESS.  This entire trend is even more absurd because, very often, the player character is walking around an environment often littered with weapons.  Look, Outlast scared the shit out of me, despite having some of the most eye-rollingly ‘shock’ moments in gaming history, but at a certain point I started rooting for the monsters.  The player character may be a journalist, but he’s a journalist walking through halls full of possible improvisational tools!  Pick something up!

People and, by extension, fictional characters, have a tendency to create tools and even weaponry with pretty much whatever is at hand.  They don’t call it ‘The Stone Age’ for fun, they call it that because the tools and weapons were made from stone.  Human beings are so desperate for tools and weapons that we literally made them out of stone.  But apparently our frightened avatars in modern horror games are too busy panting from terror to stop for a second and gather tools.

[/rant]

Resident Evil 7 assumes your character wants to make and use tools and weapons.  That assumption changes everything.  The environment is littered with resources, from big fuck-you-up guns to various chemicals and herbs to garden tools.  It creates a more interesting dynamic than helplessness.  Holding an ax gives you a sense of possibility, of strength.  Swinging it gives you a sense of power.  Whacking it into someone’s neck in a moment of desperate terror gives you an inch of control.  Turning around to find the corpse mysteriously missing…

One of my favorite horror games ever was FEAR (and its sequel, FEAR 2.)  It armed me from the start.  The game handed its player a series of awesome, fuck-you-up guns.  And then it peeled away the frail veneer of your confidence and dropped you into a situation far beyond your depth.  Resident Evil 7 does something quite similar.

Selling Point 2 : A Dreadful Sense of Intimacy

The primary setting of RE7 is a sprawling plantation estate in rural Louisiana.  It’s a family’s property.  A fucked up family, but a family nonetheless.  And the banality of that fact, the familiarity of a house’s interior, serves to create an unsettling intimacy.  Family photographs, sports paraphernalia, book shelves, kids’ trophies, etc… the details of a family history are all there.  There are even receipts and passive-aggressive sticky notes.  And the player is pressured by game mechanics and curiosity to check everything, to look into every corner, to experience as thoroughly as possible this maddening juxtaposition of the familiar and the grotesque.

Perhaps this is what I like most about the game: the minimal scope.  You are a lone human maneuvering through a minuscule slice of the globe.  The massive, overarching lore of the franchise is missing.  The vast scale of backstory is unimportant.  This is a game about the protagonist and the antagonists and very little else.

Franchises tend to bloat.  Scale expands and exposition piles up.  This game, ‘reboot’ or not, solves that problem with a sharp, indifferent knife.  It delivers what it needs: a tightly-focused story.

Selling Point 3 : Something For Everyone

Horror is lush with sub-genres.  RE7 does its best to tap as many as possible.

Supernatural horror is immediately dangled in front of our faces.  Body horror is omnipresent.  Sci-fi horror is the franchise staple.  RE7 even incorporates moments of splatterpunk and, of course, general action-horror.  Oh, I almost forgot, there’s a whole SAW-inspired puzzle-solving section, too.  Not to mention shades of Chainsaw Massacre throughout…chainsaw very much included.  Which also reminds me that southern gothic archetypes and references are everywhere in RE7.  There are also cosmic horror references, though that particular sub-genre doesn’t make any real appearances in the game proper.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s something for everyone.  And though the run-and-hide mode of helplessness horror isn’t an expressed requirement of the game, running and hiding is often the wisest course of action.  So they’ve got that, too, if you like it.

One might worry that the ‘dash of everything’ approach might overclutter the game, but it doesn’t.  It provides different levels to the gameplay and, what’s more, always seems in service to the story.

Selling Point 4 : Sadistic Antagonists

I saw an article online lamenting the ugly gameplay necessity of key gathering, narratively lampshaded with the idea that the antagonists want to make it hard for you to escape.  The article pointed out that the antagonists didn’t bother reinforcing the walls, blocking the doors, or bricking up the windows.  I imagined that such measures would take away some of the ‘fun’ for the antagonists.  As much as they claim they don’t want to chase anyone down anymore, they seem to get a wicked joy out of doing just that.  If they made it too hard to escape, they’d lose the ecstasy of chasing down the desperately hopeful escapees and butchering them!

Such is the rabid sadism of our front-and-center antagonists.  Quite early in the game, during my second playthrough, I discovered myself gravely wounded by my pursuer.  Instead of finishing the job, he set a healing kit down on the floor and cooed at me to use it.  Once I’d patched myself up, he even gave me a headstart before coming after me again.  So, in my mind, the key hunting has nothing to do with making it difficult for me to leave; it has everything to do with providing the antagonists with entertainment.

These batshit crazy sadists provide the main antagonism.  Hordes of faceless monsters provide secondary, supporting antagonism (the ‘nameless goon’ variety, mostly.)  And then, behind it all, there lurks a vast, faintly-inhuman force (oh, wait, I guess those cosmic horror references make some sense after all).  Each layer of antagonism serves a purpose both to story and to gameplay.  The front-and-center villains are charmingly psychotic and extremely terrifying.  The nameless goons provide tense, strategic combat.  And the terrible intelligence behind the whole show creates a layer of moral and intellectual questions the game would otherwise lack.  It’s quite an exquisite array of enemies.

The Downside : It’s a Bit Pricey.

Currently, the game goes for $59.99, not including DLCs or soundtrack.  My first playthrough took 10 hours, my second took 7.  There’s an in-game achievement for managing it down to 4.  Though it’s a bit replayable, if only for the sheer moodiness and the awesome realization of its setting, replayability isn’t its prime directive.  I’ll certainly be prancing through it a third time, but I’m a particular sort of person.  In the main, I doubt most people will go through it more than twice.  So what that settles down to is that the base game provides, say, 10-20 hours of gameplay for a ~$60 price tag.  No thanks.

It was worth it, for me, because I love the genre and I’m utterly sick of helplessness horror.  I’ve played through twice and will be playing a third time at least.  I enjoy the game from a gameplay perspective and from a horror theory perspective.  I also sprang for the DLCs, not yet available for PC, which I hear add significant replayability–but we’re not discussing the DLCs, are we?  No.  We’re discussing the cost of the base game.  And the cost of the base game, unless you’re a weirdo  like me, is simply too high.

But I guarantee it’ll be on sale in the near future.  So if you’re the patient sort, you’re in luck.

Final Thoughts

RE7 provides an excellent experience.  It’s nerve-wracking, unsettling, frightening, and fun.  In my original 10-hour playthrough, I sweated and panicked through the first 2 hours like a man on the edge.  For the few hours after that, my mood shifted between anxiety and joy.  Anxiety at every door, every corridor, and every corner; joy at my increasing competence at solving my dilemmas.  Most of the last hour was spent in full action mode, all sound and fury and laughter.  It was an incredible emotional journey.

In my second playthrough, I was more confident.  My relatively eased anxiety allowed me to appreciate the setting and the art of the game more deeply.  The narrative flow, the peaks and valleys of fear throughout the story, etc.  It was during my second playthrough that I really fell in love with the game.

So, yes, it’s an exquisite game, an excellent bit of interactive horror media, and a decently written (if also unevenly written) story.  My only dismay is at the price tag, a number I think is a bit high for people less fanatical about their devotion to horror media and video games than I am.  But I suppose that’s for them to decide.