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jawllines · 4 years

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“You’re really gonna go in there?” Y/N queries gently, and Harry only nods his head in response, reaching for the door handle. An urgent, delicate touch of Y/N’s hand startles him, looping around his wrist and dragging his attention toward her, “Shouldn’t we have a game plan if something is behind the door?” She asks, her hold on him tightening just a little, and Harry notes how soft her palm feels against his skin, “Like, let’s say we open the door and a behemoth is standing there, what do we do?”

“The only behemoth that could fit in this tiny room is the band from Poland, Babe, and I reckon they have better things to do on a Thursday night,” he retorts, clenching around the knob and tilting it down, “Now unless you want to hold hands in there. . .”

She lets go before he can finish, and he doesn’t have to look back at her face to know she’s irate. A small smile quirks at his mouth as he pushes his shoulder against the heavy door to aid him opening it, bracing himself to see something potentially horrid. . .

And there’s nothing.

Harry and Y/N are witches, they hate each other, and something’s coming

19K+ words

(A/N: Hiii!! So, I’ll be honest I know absolutely nothing about real witches at all, so what is in this story is not fact! it’s just an AU and doesn’t speak toward any of my real witches out there unless i accidentally got some things right. Happy reading, I really liked writing these guys I hope you like them just as much!!)

It was dark.

Both in the state of the sky and the feeling that slithered through Y/N’s body while she tended to the Brugmansia finally flowering in her garden. The shift in the air could have easily been inculpated by the cool breeze that blew past her face, shepherding clouds thick and heavy with autumn rain, but Y/N knew better than that. Those feelings typically bring her peace; the rattle of thunder soothes her aching bones while fat drops paint the pavement, wet the dirt to mud, and feed the drying grass.

This feeling made her bones rattle. It crawled beneath her skin like billions of tiny beetles unearthed within her vessels; her stomach churned, her shoulders were weighed down, there was a gnawing pain at her temples, so fierce she held her hand to them. The cold brass of her ring cools her heated skin. This feeling was vile, it was awful, for fuck sake what was causing it?

She stood from her crouched position and slid back into her store. Technically, she’d closed about three hours prior so she should have been home well by now, but when she’d finally gathered her things in her duffle at 12, she looked out the back window and noticed some of her moonflowers had begun to bloom. There was a small part of her that had been reluctant to step outside at all, but she needed to greet them and water them, no matter the odd, unfamiliar troubling sense that had initially confused her. She ignored it -- she thought maybe she was just nervous to say hi to them, sometimes she was.

(Flowers and plants hold a special connection with their caretaker, from a tiny seed to a flourishing garden, they place their lives in the care of the earth or a human. If not properly nursed, their wilted petals appear so quickly, a silent plea for water, or sun, or even a little attention -- Y/N found that plants liked a little attention. That’s why she spoke to them, she cooed and gave them well-wishes when she left them alone. They felt just a part of her family as any blood relative had, from the moment she had sliced the tip of her finger in a torn brush and the petal she’d touched afterward fused together her tiny wound. Her nan had always told her that maybe she was a bit closer to plants than others were, so she probably shouldn’t share this with kids in her class because they might be jealous of her (Y/N knows now her nan just didn’t want her getting picked on.)

It was clear to her now that this feeling was a bit more than that when her goose pimples sunk back into her skin after stepping into the warmth of her store. Though it was not just because she had been keeping her shop pleasantly warm as the nights grow colder and longer; she kept herself protected in here. In between these walls lied a sanctitude that kept all evil out, in all manners, of all species, besides two.

One of which is her bunny, Thumper, who in all ways but emotionally was her familiar. He was a ghostly white Holland lop, with big dopey ears that she slid her fingers beneath and flipped up and down in spare moments. She accuses him of being evil because he’s always nipping at her fingertips, demanding food with a stomp of his foot, and gives the silent threat that he’ll nibble on her plants if she really pisses him off (he stands by them, twitches his little nose and shows his two front teeth until she gives him what he wants -- it’s usually more hay). He’s nothing but a little, greedy nuisance that showed up on her step one day and hadn’t left since.

The other. . .well, the other was Harry Styles.

Y/N liked most witches, no matter their point of interest. She knew that there could be a certain level of distrust amongst the syndicate -- hexes, and curses placed upon one another, but she tried to stay out of that -- she held no disfavor toward most of the others either. Everyone connected with things very differently, what she may connect with might not be that of what her neighbor connected with and that was okay. Her nan’s emotions had been in accord with the sea, and even though Y/N spent most of her life fearing water, she bore no judgment.

What she does is done in the mind of good favor, of bettering oneself with the world around them in a way that would beneficial to not only them but the people in their lives. Open up otherwise closed eyes to the beauty of the spirit and soul they possess, and the beauty and soul that the world around them held. The town she had moved to at 20 was so rich in natural beauty, ponderosa pine and hemlock trees grew tall in an extensive, juniper green forest almost always clouded with thick fog, the soil was soft and fertile, the air was crisp and clean. She felt happy here and wanted the others around her to recognize how lucky they were to be in an area so free of sordidity.

There was an empty shop up the brick road of the older part of town, that had been crowded in cobwebs, leaves that had blown in from the broken window, and animal droppings. Her nan came to help her clean it up (her mum had too, but she was dog tired after her workweek so spent most of the visit asleep on Y/N’s couch), and did something short of absolving the land so that she could grow a garden behind the store, in the clearing of 200 or so meters before it meets the mouth of the forest. She sold herbs, people came to her for intricate, meaningful bouquets with flowers that could not be found in just any store (and she was good to her plants, so if she asked very kindly, and sent them with a packet that produced a very special brew when dumped in the water, they would live very, very, suspiciously long), plants that would liberate people of their aches and pains so long as they tended to them, journals of reused paper, scrubs, oils. . .there were many things. She offered classes too, to help people learn how to better cater to their flowers.

That had been a year ago, so she was still finding her footing, but not six months into this happy reality she had created for herself, Harry Styles had come to town. It took nothing but a few minutes of coming to contact with him that he was a bad apple, and when the once sweet-tempered town had begun mottling with dark splotches, she knew for sure. Harry was like her, but his book of shadows had pages filled with wicked words of revenge, conjuring demons and letting them wreak havoc. His business was more under the cuff -- he posed as a writer who needed a scenery change for his work, but Y/N knew it had to be more than that -- but he did his bidding in the night, seeding through clubs, in alleyways, in the forest. . .if someone knew about Harry, it was because they knew a guy who knows a guy.

And for some reason, unbeknownst to her, he refused to leave her be.

This is why it almost makes sense that the bell of her store would jingle brightly no matter the fact she’d locked the doors hours ago, and her attention would be brought to the pest himself. He wore a sweater that threatened to swallow him whole, and baggy, holey jeans he rolled at the cuff showing off his bat printed socks, stuffed into grandpa-Esque loafers. The necklace he always wears around his neck (a small pendant that she had never gotten close enough to make out) is sat atop of his sweater today rather than hidden beneath it as it usually is. His hair is getting longer, more unruly with his warm brown curls than it had been when she first met him -- she really hadn’t known he’d had curly hair until the more recent months when it had started growing out.

His eyes were always the same soft, crystal green that matched his character none, and a pawky smirk on his mouth as he dragged his fingers along the lavender jars placed on her shelves, “Shouldn’t you be home by now? I figure it’s past your bedtime.” He leans down like he is about to pick something up, and when Y/N peers over the counter, she sees him slide his hand beneath Thumper’s soft white belly and pull him up to his chest. That was another indicator that Harry was just no good -- he was the only human that he liked, and the little creatine didn’t even like her.

“Shouldn’t you?” She flips it, continuing to gather her things so she could head home for the night.

“You know these are my typical hours, Babe -- everyone wants to curse someone at 1 AM, there was a study done in the east end.” He pets between Thumper’s ears as he sets him down on the counter beside the cash register, before he reaches out for the wooden crafted incense burners, “Have these cheap little things been selling any?”

“Piss off,” she stuffs her phone into her purse, then flips through her things to make sure her wallet was tucked in there as well, “What do you want, Harry? I’m about to go home, if you wanted to come around to bother me you should have hours ago.”

Harry feigns a gasp like he does any time she curses, “Thought good little witches didn’t have such foul tongues?” He flicks the candle jar on her counter, an apple scent had been melting around the wick for the better half of the day, “I don’t want anything in particular, just passing through. You know you’re right in the way of the forest, don’t you? S’kinda of obnoxious when you’re trying to summon imps at the cave -- they hate the bloody “stench” of the flowers.”

“Good,” she retorts, “You shouldn’t be summoning around here anyway, this area’s off-limits.”

It was barely an agreement but still an agreement nonetheless -- if Harry left her be, she would leave him be because Y/N wasn’t an idiot. If he wanted a fight, Harry could start one and he would fight dirty. All she asks him is to stay away from her store and her flat, and to keep away from certain areas of the forest where the soil was always soft -- in return, he would do his activities, sometimes he would need her flowers for different spells and she would turn a blind eye to what he was doing. She does a few gentle protection spells here and there but otherwise, he’s a free man to do as he pleases, just so long as he respects her request. He’d seemed perturbed by the conditions none -- had even chuckled and said as long as he let her keep her “pretty little flowers” he could get away with murder.

A heavy, weary sigh leaves him, “Yes, I’m well aware,” he rolled his eyes before crossing his arms on top of the counter and tucking his face in his elbow, “Gimme a moment though, it’s warm in here and I was freezing outside.” He muffles into his sweater.

Y/N had almost forgotten what she had felt prior to coming back inside, but his words bring it clearly to the forefront of her mind once more. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, hearing the floorboards creak beneath her as she wondered if he’d felt it too. It couldn’t have been him -- no, he was powerful but by no means powerful enough to conjure up something like that. And she’d like to ask him, but Harry has never been someone who took her seriously -- he would just make a joke of it, probably, or tease her. It wouldn’t be worth asking.

But the feeling that she’d gotten is chewing on her memory, so she asks anyway, “Hey,” she began and the only indication that he was listening to her is the fact his fingers stopped tapping against the wood beneath them, “Did you. . .when you were outside, did you feel that?”

He picks his head up from the crevice of his arm, “You’re gonna have to be a bit more descriptive than ‘that’,” his brows are raised as he continues, “Are you talking about the new pleasant but cold breeze we’ve gained for autumn, or the gut-twisting odious one?”

Y/N looks at him impassively, “The latter, idiot.”

“Yeah, I felt it,” he ignores her insult, “What about it?”

The skin between her brows pinches, “Are you not concerned? It felt. . .bad,” she couldn’t think of a better word to describe it, “I didn’t like it at all.”

“Are you scared?” There is delight swimming in Harry’s gaze as he stands up straighter, “Don’t tell me Glinda the Good Witch herself is scared of a little frightening feeling? I thought you were tough as nails and all that, hm?”

“Never mind, forget I even brought it up,” she tried to dismiss it, as she slings her purse over her shoulder and plucks Thumper up to sit him in the cradle of her arms -- she knew better than to ask him like she might get any comfort at all from his words.

He steps up and in front of her before she could start toward the door, “Oi, listen scaredy-cat, I don’t know if you’re aware but I deal with shite like this all the time, which means I’ve got a few banishments spells up my sleeve. If it’s really something that awful, I’ll cast it back to hell, easy as that.” Harry follows close behind her as she exits the door, feeling the same shiver of fear slither through her body, “I do want to see what it wants first though.”

“Of course you do,” she utters in disappointment, “Just keep it away from my garden, please.”

“I’ll try,” he tells her just as she reaches her car before he dips into his pocket and reveals that he’d stolen a baggy of chamomile, “If I didn’t keep your precious garden safe, then I wouldn’t have anywhere to get enchanted chamomile, and it works lovely in a sleepy time tea, I’ll tell you that -- your lavender is shit though. Never puts me to sleep like it ought to.”

She pops open her car door, “Stop taking stuff from the store, or I’ll start lacing it with laxatives.”

“While you’re doing that, won’t you plant them Clathrus mushrooms? I reckon the imps would prefer them way more than the mums.” He looks serious -- not a trace of a joke laced in his features and somehow that leaves Y/N more irritated than if he were laughing at her as he spoke.

Her response is blunt, “No.”

“Listen --”

“Harry, I’m not going to plant mushrooms for the damn imps!”

. . .

When Y/N had met Harry, she was angry.

She had never been a very angry person. Seldom has someone or something truly has gotten so deeply beneath her skin that she felt the need to yell or grump about it -- mild irritation was never off the table, but true, unadulterated wrath and resentment? It was rare she ever felt the need to even make a snide comment. And that wasn’t to say she was better than anyone else, she was just mild-tempered and forbearing. . .it took a little more than a remark or two to make her angry.

But when she was angry, she was an amalgamation of vexation and fire, and there was no surer way to disrupt her peaceful demeanor than to compromise her flowers.

The day had been uneventful up to that point. It’d been a week since Harry had moved into town and Y/N was surely feeling the negativity that followed in his wake, but she was focusing on maintaining the tranquil, idyllic environment that she had around her previous. As much as she would have loved to seek him out, ready to squabble, tell him off for bringing any dark energy into such a calm place -- she had to come at it pragmatically. She and her friend Niall (who wasn’t a witch but knew about her) had both agreed that while it was aggravating, they didn’t know him. They did not understand the depth of his power, or what he was here for, nor had they understood wholly what he was capable of. Y/N had felt his presence, but Niall had confirmed it after hearing the underground chatter of a dark witch who made promises to turn glitter to gold.

She was on her way to her store. Though she was closed on weekends, she always went by to check on the flowers, water them, tell them about her day, and with her was Thumper who would be hopping around the grassy field and gnawing on the blades. It was very peaceful -- the time she spent with her plants -- so she always looked forward to it, but that day she was filled with trepidation as she parked her car. Something was off. . .not in the air, but with her flowers -- she could feel it deep in her marrow that they were in pain.

So she huffed it to the back of the store, and there she found Harry, two of her purple vervains nestled against his palm. He noticed her before she could even think to say anything, and something short of relief had flushed through him, “Oh thank fuck, you’re here,” he sighs, referencing her garden with a wave of his hands, “I cannot for the life of me remember what hazel looks like.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Y/N demanded, stomping toward him, but instead of shoving him to the ground like she wanted to, she dropped to her knees and caressed the remaining vervain, “Why would you pluck them like that? They aren’t ready!”

“Ready? They’ve flowered haven’t they?” His brows had been tilted while his mouth dipped in a frown, “I need them for an incantation, figured you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed these two. Aren’t we meant to help each other out?”

“You should have asked, you prick,” she pointed up at him, “And even if you had, I would have said no. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you’re really disturbing an otherwise pleasant place. I wish you would leave.’

Harry feigned hurt, placing a hand to his chest, “You wound me,” he mocks her, “Listen Glinda Good Witch, we all gotta get by somehow, yeah? Not all of us talk to plants or whatever it is you do. So do you want me to pay or --”

“Those won’t work for whatever it is you’re trying to do,” she cut him off, “If it’s something with cruel intent, it won’t happen -- they were grown to do good.”

“Which is exactly why I needed them from you,” he wiggles them in her direction, “Well, I need to get going. You’re awful in particular about a garden that is subpar at best. Wish you well, see you later.”

Then he left. No guilt, no apology -- he just up and left, and Y/N was livid.

(Later that night when she had explained the situation to Niall, he was nothing short of outraged, so they had tried to find out more about Harry. Anything about him, really, but he leaves a very little paper trail in his endeavors -- from public records they find that he’s 25 and from Holmes Chapel, and from a google search they find he has two books out, published online, and doing decently well. There was nothing else apart from that, he kept his socials pretty dry, and what he did post was nonsensical drivel.)

Y/N thinks about this, as she sinks into her tub, the burning water scalding against her skin. Harry had always driven her mad but he has never seemed half as angry as she was -- hell if anything he always seemed like he enjoyed it.

He was just absolutely rotten.

. . .

Harry thinks Y/N is just absolutely rotten.

There were many reasons that he had classified her as such, but namely what he was concerned about now was how she kept her shop closed on the weekends.

Who kept their store closed the entire bloody weekend?

It wasn’t so much that he wanted to see her -- Harry actually found the girl quite plaguy. Her opinions on his practice were priggish, not unlike the others like them he had met in the past. There has always been an unfaltering stigma that was carried with what he did, one that was quite hard to shake within the factions of other witches that are sprinkled across the world. He’s seen as careless, cruel, greedy, and selfish -- he doesn’t practice magic for the love of the world around him, to feel a deeper, spiritual connection with the fecund soil that covered the earth, or with the water gently slipping past rocks along a stream bank. They look at him and see someone who shakes hands with the devil and ruins lives for a cookie.

Harry lets them think as they wish, he has no patience to attempt correcting them. If they’d bothered to learn an inch about him at all before passing their judgment then they would have a clue about his true character, but the jury had already made the decision before Harry even realized he was on trial. They never really wanted to give Harry a chance, so he knew he would be hated no matter where he decided to reside. The pack mentality that they carry is the reason he has to move around so often though (more than any 25 years old was typically doing) he gets run out of a lot of areas because a group of soft witches decides he’s no good.

That’s what drew him to this place -- there was practically nobody. He could sense when there were more like him loitering around an area, and made an effort to keep a decently low profile so that he could stay around longer (but they always managed to find him), but here, he only sensed one. That had been good enough for him to know this was the right move -- the beautiful scenery surrounding them; the soft bed of dirt that Harry’s feet would sink into easily; the dense, damp fog that covered the forest floor in the early mornings; the lush, green trees and how life seemed to remain there when it was meant to be waning in the colder months -- all of that, had only been a plus.

When he’d met Y/N, he knew that she disliked him, but Harry had expected as much so it disturbed him none. If anything, he was delighted to have a purer witch than himself around, all things considered. There were no others that she could develop a hive mind with to drive him out of town, but she was no competition to the businesses that he provided, and when a decoction called for an obscure plant or an unsullied petal -- well, a Garden witch was not the worst kind to have nearby. She may be devout in her notions that Harry was a disagreeable, repugnant being, but she was good at what she did. Anything done with her plants was twice as effective as any other person’s flowers he’d used in the past, so it was necessary he bothered her often.

She refused to sell to him -- something about her doing business with a demon, or whatever she’d said -- but so long as he doesn’t go and cut them from the stem himself, she helps him out. Will give him the plants he needs, and in return, he doesn’t taint certain areas of the town and the forest that she declared were off-limits. It was a spoken commercial agreement that both of them went by and because of it, their lives near to one another were comparatively peaceful to any other situation Harry has found him in prior.

That didn’t come without its faults. They butt heads often, their bickering is nonstop, and Harry could think of many things he would rather do than have to stay in a room with her for longer than the ten minutes it takes him to get what he needs. It was fun to fluster her -- getting beneath her skin was an easy feat that he found a lot of joy in, and sometimes she gave him a run for his money. He always kind of liked making a normally mild-tempered person grump at him a little, if not for his impish ways, then so he could get to know them as their full self.

So he wasn’t mad that she was closed because he particularly wanted to see her, no, he was mad because he was exhausted. Absolutely drained. The business was incredible when you’re the only dark witch willing to do some questionable, immoral things, but that also meant long nights and incredible emotional toil -- it wasn’t a walk in the park to conjure up a bloody demon!

Ever since Harry had started this path, he’d had immense trouble sleeping at appropriate times, if he could fall asleep at all. He guesses this was what he gets in return for what he practices, and it could be worse so he doesn’t mind it too much, but it was still a hassle. It had been a good four years since Harry just had a good, peaceful night of sleep.

Up until he had moved here, of course, because the same little garden witch that thought he was the devil incarnate, made a tea he could brew that set him right to sleep. Kept him asleep the entire night too, which had always been an impossible endeavor spanning back to when he was a child, but there was something about her chamomile -- hell, it really knocked him out.

He tested his theory -- part of him thought that maybe chamomile was suddenly working for him, but no matter the brand that he tried, or the amount of tea he drank, none of it could compare to what Y/N’s did. When he visited her store, he took what he could to hold him off to the next time he came by. He hadn’t realized how low he was though when he had seen her last and she threatened to lace it with laxatives -- he should have taken two because he used his last bit the night prior to the one he’s suffering through right now.

And he could have gotten more this morning if she didn’t close her stupid shop on weekends!

If Harry were not positive that he needed to rest, he wouldn’t bother to be trying. There was nothing worse to him than the laying in his bed and waiting for sleep that refused to come...it felt like he was being stood up by a date. It hasn’t happened often, but enough that Harry could match the feeling low in his stomach, indicative of discontent and sadness while he waited. . . . .and waited. . . .and waited. . . .and waited.

It was useless -- the universe’s retribution for summoning spirits to the living world left him with what a doctor might diagnose as chronic insomnia, but none of the treatments did him any good. No mortal medicinal could soothe him of this ailment. So one would think he would be smarter about keeping a hearty stock of it at his disposal rather than one at a time, but Harry never claimed to be the best at planning ahead.

And now here he was, staring at his ceiling fan whirl, his cat at his side while he contemplated if breaking and entering her shop was against his morals (he had a few left, surprisingly).

God, she was so rotten!

. . .

“Have you felt weird lately?”

“Hm?” Niall’s face scrunches up in confusion, his mouth stuffed full of noodles he just slurpped into his mouth, “Wha’ d’ya mean?” He muffles out, reaching over to her side of the table for a napkin to dab at the corners of his mouth.

The record store that Niall worked at wasn’t too far from Y/N’s shop so if her day wasn’t too busy, she would step away from the store for her lunch break and seek him out. It was never a planned ordeal; Y/N would stop off somewhere to get them something to eat and appear at his storefront, the sharp ding of the bell knotted on the door alerted him of her presence. He was always one of two places: in the back, tuning the old guitars the owner would bid on different websites, or he was in the front thumbing through the record baskets, organizing and reorganizing them by name. Sometimes he would be sat behind the counter, with his feet kicked up just beside the register but Y/N scolds him for that (he’s always wearing a dingy, scuffed pair of shoes that have no business seeing the light of day, let alone be shown off to others).

His head would perk up, he would look toward the door, and his face would bloom into one of sheer delight as he would call over to her, “Oh, thank fuck! Thought I would go crazy if I had to listen to myself think for one more second.”

Today was no different. She brought him ramen from the place three buildings down from his own, where she bends down a street that feels more like an alleyway and the door is hidden beneath a brassy fire escape. The owners were always very kind to her, and since she came often and tipped well, they would give her free bowls if they were in the mood. Y/N never liked the idea of a one-sided relationship with a business, so she always brought them herbs, and gardenias to plant at home (they were the husband’s favorite). She takes their fliers and posts them up in high traffic areas too, and when they have their business cards made and an extra hundred or so, she slips them in the paper baggies that she gathers her customer’s things in before sending them on their way.

Niall was grateful. He did a little cheer, left his spot from behind the counter, and urged her to follow him to the back where the break room was located (if a customer came around he would hear the bell and duck his head out to greet them, but for the most part their Tuesdays were pretty uneventful). He told her he had sensed her coming so he already had two stools set out for them to sit on, and napkins placed in the middle of the table, but she’s almost a hundred percent sure they had been left like that last time she was here.

Try as she might to let her mind flee from the dark, hazed feeling that had overcome her last week, she couldn’t. Even as she listened to Niall prattle about some Gibson Les Paul custom that the owner purchased a while back, she struggled not to wonder what it was that was worming itself into her brain; slick tendrils of dismay overcame her. The true, unadulterated, execrable feeling only truly hits her in the night if she is outside the safety of her home or her shop, but otherwise, it was memories of this haunting aura that struck her throughout the day.

She couldn’t place her finger on it though, what it could be. There are feelings she garners when Harry summons certain spirits, but she can typically tell when he’s doing that, and they’ve never felt so. . .evil, before. What Harry deals with is evil, sure, but this was so smothered in turpitude that she couldn’t make it out. Like spilling black ink over a letter written in blue.

That’s why she asks Niall -- it feels too strong for it to be something only felt by her and Harry. It would also soothe her mind if someone had felt it as horribly and heavily as she did, considering it wasn’t affecting Harry enough that he would try to banish the damn thing before things went sour.

“Like, do things just not feel. . .off, to you?” She didn’t want to feed him any impressions of what she might be speaking about -- she would like to know if it were true to him. Niall is sweet as he could be, but not always when it was appropriate; he would tell her he did just to spare her from feeling foolish. It’s why she thought berets were her thing for about a month when really she looked like a washed-up indie artist trying too hard (Niall had agreed they weren’t her best fashion venture, but he certainly didn’t think they were that bad).

His face contorts in a pout as he mulls it over in his head, stabbing his fork into the noodles and catching a bit of pork on two of the pronks, “Hm, let’s see. . .” he looks like he’s spinning through a Rolodex, “I have not for the life of me mustered enough energy to have a wank in about a week, that’s some cause for concern,” when she responds with a blank stare, he holds his hands up, “Okay, fine -- Butternut was biting at the air when I took him on his walk the other night -- like. . .chomping at it, I was actually gonna ask you what that might be about.”

Now, don’t get Y/N wrong, any other time Niall would have told her that his great Pyrenees puppy was yapping and chomping at the wind, she would have brushed it off. “Niall, you’re just going to have to accept that he’s going to be a big, sweet dummy when he’s older.” But she was so desperate for something, anything -- because if something felt it other than she and Harry, then she wouldn’t feel quite as crazy.

“Sometimes it feels a bit like something’s watching me,” he tacks on at the end, taking the brown napkin from the stack in between them and dabs roughly at his mouth, “At night, when I’m walking Butternut, I get these chills but there’s no wind around.”

Y/N leans forward, thankful, “Yeah?” she presses, “Is it like -- describe it. What does it feel like?”

“Y’know, I do forget you’re a witch until times like these,” he leans back in his chair, a heavy sigh slides from his lips before he closes his eyes like he’s trying to place himself back at the moment, “I’ll tell ya what, it’s fuckin’ -- it’s a bit like I feel it right down to my bones, but then --” he opens his eyes, raises his closed fists and flicks his fingers out at her, “Poof, s’gone as quick as it came and I forget about it. My nan used to tell me that was the devil patting your shoulder, but if it went away quick s’because an angel kicked his arse out of there.”

It’s enough, Y/N decides, so she nods and relaxes back in her seat, “Okay, good.”

“Good?” His brows furrow, as he reaches for his can of soda and the aluminum can crinkles beneath his fingers, “Tell you that I get chills and you’re relieved? Should I be relieved too, or worried?”

“It isn’t anything to concern over, I don’t think,” she explains to him, “If anything changes I’ll let you know.”

Niall uses one of his fingernails to dig the dirt from beneath the other, “Did that Harry bloke muster some horrible demon up again?” His voice is laced with vexation. Niall wasn’t a hard guy to get along with -- he was loud and Irish, could chat up a storm about anything and everything, and while he could be scrappy at times, it was for all the right reasons. He was equanimous in most situations, even-tempered to a fair degree; if Y/N were in a situation where a cool, calm collected head would be the best approach then Niall was definitely the person she wanted on her side.

(Like when they had to drive home from a day trip to the massive lake just north of them, but the roads hadn’t been pretreated for the icy sleet that gripped the pavement. He drove them the whole way on the windy roads with little traction from the tires to the road, and was still bobbing his head and singing along to Ed Sheeran on the radio).

But Harry Styles? Oh, the mention of his name could dig right beneath Niall’s skin. Y/N would like to think that it was because he was so cruel to her, but she knows that there are two main reasons Niall is not too fond of him nor his craft. One of which is the fact that he slept with Liana (she happened to be one of Niall’s flings at the time -- there were plenty, but Y/N only remembered this one’s name because she shared it with a woody stem rooted to the forest soil that made for easy climbing), and the other, the fact that he had helped the captain of the opposing summer footie team with one of his enchantments to make them win. There are few things Niall cares for so deeply that he would dislike someone, but his sex life and his footie were two things a person just couldn’t mess up for him.

“No, it wasn’t him this time,” she clears her throat, pushing the rest of her ramen around idly, “It’s a bit too strong to be his doing -- more sinister too. He conjures mostly petty demons; the little ones that don’t have much better to do anyway. This is something. . .I don’t know, it just feels different.”

Niall sighs heavily, “Well, thanks for that, reckon I won’t be sleeping tonight,” he pushes the container away from himself to signify he’s done and when she takes a peek inside and sees nothing but a few noodles limp along the sides, “I like that you keep me in the loop, but sometimes I wish you would let me live in ignorance.”

“You know, I would apologize, but you’ve gone into an in-depth description of your arsehole to me so I thought any boundaries and forms of secrecy were long gone by now.”

His brows furrow features contorting into that of the same desperation he had come to her with two months ago, “Ugh, c’mon! You’re practically like a witch doctor or somethin’, I thought you would have a cream or something for it.”

“You had a hemorrhoid, Niall, for fuck sake! Even if I were a “witch doctor” then I would never let you put anything that came from my plants on your filthy bum.”

Niall stands, gathering their trash from the break room table but using his free hand as he passes her, he swats her shoulder, “You better be nice to me, or you’re gonna have to start eating lunch with Styles.” He steps on the level for the waste bin, throwing the trash in the bag, “Though I think you two would just end up hate fucking and the food would go cold.”

“No,” she rolls her eyes, “I would never let that Gremlin near my naked body.”

“Listen, I’m not saying I want the guy anywhere near your naked body,” he plops back down in his seat, “What I am saying is that you lot have such unbridled sexual tension it is practically palpable when I’m at the shop with the both of you. Maybe it’s ‘cos the two of you are the only witches, and opposites at that.”

Y/N snorts, “Maybe if we were in some enemies to lovers film, sure.”

After they finish their break, and Y/N realizes that she’s been with him for a little over an hour, they make plans to meet up tomorrow for a movie and she heads out. The air was cool -- when she had made her way over here the sun had been glittering rays down that bathed the world in gold, but it was now hidden beneath an overcast of thick clouds. Rain always carried a familiar scent just before it started to pour and Y/N had forgone a jacket, so she huffed her way back, breathless by the time she made it up the hill and saw Harry leaning against her door.

The sight of him makes her exhausted, but not in the usual way it does. He looks awful -- and typically he doesn’t! Y/N could admit that Harry was gorgeous; his hair always appeared soft, loose curls dispersed along the brunette strands, his eyes are a sea green, tender in his gaze when he wasn’t being an absolute prick and always bright (even when he was). His lips were pink, shaped perfectly, and his skin is typically smooth but even when he grows out his facial hair it still manages to look good. He had dimples. . .hell, Y/N would place a bet that he’d made a deal with the devil to look like that.

But today, he just looked worn down, and exhausted, like he might not have slept the entire weekend. His eyes were closed, his hands were in his pockets and his chin was tilted down towards his chest. If not for the way his head perked up immediately when her foot crunched into the gravel pathway leading up to her store from the small parking area (that was more so a beaten down, once grassy area now just dirt with tire tracks in it), she would have thought he was asleep standing up. There’s relief in his eyes when they meet her own, which she isn’t used to seeing from him, “Thank fuck.”

“You look horrible,” Y/N slides her hand into her pocket, pulling out her keys so she could unlock the door, “Budge over.”

“I feel it,” he rubs tiredly at his eyes, “Go on and open up quickly then. Why the hell do you keep your store closed on weekends?”

Y/N fits her hand over the knob, twisting it and shoving the door open with her shoulder. Thumper greets them at the door, nudging the top of his head against her ankle, “Do you work every night?”

“No --”

“I keep it closed on weekends for the same reason why you don’t work every night,” she heads toward the counter, settling her things down and reaching in for Thumper’s hay stash so that she could give him some, “What’re you here for? You usually come around to bother me later.” She chances petting at Thumper’s head for a moment, and since he was preoccupied with his hay he would allow it.

“Fuck!” Y/N startles, popping up from behind the counter, looking back up only to see Harry with wide, disgruntled eyes, “Where’s your chamomile?”

Her brows dip, “I’m out right now, so --”

“How the hell did you run out? Shit, what am I going to do now, hm? Shouldn’t you keep up with shite like this?” He’s going a mile a minute, he’s walking closer to her, distress was written all over his face and Y/N is alarmed to a fair degree -- Harry’s always seemed very collected and calm, it was seldom she ever seen him have more emotion than pure elation to fuck with her or displeased with her presence.

“ -- so I’m going to make more today. What’s going on with you? Why are you so pissy over it?” She finishes her previous thought, watching as he leans against the counter, propping his face up with his hand and she could now more clearly make out the bags beneath his eyes.

He rubs at his temple with the finger closest to it, “The only way I can sleep is with your bloody tea,” he grumbled, “That’s why I come around all the time -- well, that and to fuck with you, but mostly the tea.”

“Oh?” She reaches down, plucking Thumper from where he’d been positioned by her feet and setting him on the counter. He thumps his foot at her once but eventually makes his way over to Harry, sniffing at his chin before resting right before him. Y/N wasn’t necessarily doing it to be nice, but the energy he was exuding could really dampen the growth rate of her plants, and Thumper had a soothing way about him that drew all that negativity out. It was one of those odd little familiar powers that went unexplained for the most part. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged his shoulders, but the tension in them begins to dissipate as Thumper snuggles beneath his chin, “Reckon I pissed off some demon or summat -- usually it isn’t this bad. Without your tea, I can at least get to bed for three hours before waking up and catch cat naps during the day, but nothing was working this weekend. I think I’ve slept a total of two hours?”

“Christ,” she tuts her tongue, but her brain starts churning, “Do you think it has anything to do with that. . .with that thing, that’s around? That feeling?”

Harry huffs a sigh, “Fuck, here you go again -- Babe, listen, I can barely keep a coherent thought, so why don’t I just give you some money and you make that tea for me, alright?”

“That’s no way to ask,” Y/N chastises him, and though she is already beginning to gather the supplies she needs so she could go out and harvest her leaves, she taunts him, “You’ll have to say please, or I might just decide to wait on this batch.”

“Please,” he wastes no time in saying, “Pretty please harvest the chamomile so that I can sleep and I promise I’ll sit and theorize with you over whatever the fuck thing you’re feeling.”

Y/N could go through the trouble of doing a blood binding with him to ensure that he wasn’t lying to her, but she felt that was a little on the extreme side so she took his word for it. She could easily harvest her chamomile here at the shop -- she had two doors behind the counter, one that led to her garden, the field, and the forest outside while the other led to a backroom that was made into a little kitchen area. It was easier for her to do things here rather than at home and have to risk tainting them in transport; for the best results to any enchanted item, one has to seal it immediately and it should only be reopened prior to use.

She wouldn’t allow Harry to hover over her while she worked, so she sat him behind the counter and told him to not speak to any customers if they come through (“Wasn’t planning to,”) while she went to work. Y/N gave Thumper a look when he had started to follow her, and with a small thump of his foot (his way of saying Fine!) he hops himself into Harry’s lap and settles there. The tension once again eases from Harry’s features, soothing the pinch in his brow and the way his lips had been pursed in a frown.

It was silent as she set to work, and save for a few customers who filtered in and out (at least a dozen of them, only eight purchased something but her Mondays were always pretty slow so that was expected), there wasn’t much to disturb what appeared to be a dozing Harry. He looked much more peaceful than she’s ever seen him, and for a brief moment she contemplates sending Thumper back home with him, but she shakes her head physically as if to expel the thought from her brain. What was she going on about? She would give him his tea and send the heathen on his way. No matter how empathetic she felt for him (she had struggled with issues sleeping when she was a lot younger), there was no need to go out of her way. . .even if she could admit that the sight of him cuddling with a bunny was a little too sweet not to be documented somewhere.

She’s finished drying the leaves and carefully stirring them in the fine powder that she still had leftover from her last batch (there were many flowers from her garden ground up and enchanted with an incantation, which sounds like a simple enough task but the entire process took a little over a week -- the magic had to be purified several times, and the potential adverse effects had to be mollified. . . if she didn’t, instead of pleasant dreams of floating in clouds, her customers would be in an unsolicited astral projection) in a little over an hour. Y/N takes care to bag them delicately, adding a little extra in the two bags she would be giving Harry so that he would bother her less over it.

By the time she’s retreated from the back preparation room, she finds that Harry is awake now, eyeballing her Intimacy and Romance section. When he sees that she’s returned to the front, he holds up the small, cardboard parcel, “I didn’t know you doubled as a Pulse and Cocktails.”

“That’s a natural aphrodisiac,” she tells him, walking over to her empty chamomile shelf before she begins to fill it, “You might want to take some so your partners will actually desire you for once.”

“Oh, Honey,” he shakes his head, a look on his face almost like he pities her, “Don’ know a thing about how people desire me. Barely have to take my cock out for them to be gagging for it -- kind of how you are, but won’t admit it to yourself.”

Y/N kisses her teeth, “Alright lecher, come and get your chamomile then,” she plucks the two remaining bags from the box she brought them in and holds them out for him, “You should look into some spells to combat that though -- if a demon is purloining your sleep, then it’s probably still hanging around and like deluging your flat with negative energy.”

“Dunno’ if you know this, but I work with demons often, I’m always surrounded by negative energy,” he plucks the chamomile from her grasp, before reaching in his pocket and producing a small wad of cash that he places in her palm-- Y/N opens her mouth to decline it (she felt that his money was earned in a dishonest way and would not accept it for her flowers, because it felt as if she were disrespecting them. . .she would much rather give it to him for free), but he cuts her off, “Oh, hush and take the money. This is from a care package my Nan sent me, so it wasn’t earned in any rotten way, you spoiled brat.”

She sighs, clutching the money in her hands, “You still better keep your end of the deal,” Y/N tells him, “I want to talk about this. . .whatever that feeling is, around here lately. And I want you to be serious about it!”

Harry was already retreating, waving his hand up at her, “Yeah, sure thing, I’ll have my secretary get in contact with you --”

“Harry --”

“M’only joking. I’ll come around Friday.”

. . .

Later that night, with Thumper snuggled in her lap snoozing, Y/N looks into purging a home of sleep stealing spirits.

She’s only curious.

. . .

Sleep comes gradually, then all at once, like the shift between summer and fall.

Wind whistles past window sills singing shallow songs of change, while red apples ripen on their branches in the orchard during harvest season. The air grows colder in the mornings and at night, the day is still steeped in the sun’s benevolent kisses of heat at first until even that begins to wane. An aesthetic of reds, oranges, forest greens and golden hues occupy the minds of many as the leaves start to stain with color. Everyone waits with bated breath for true autumn to come around the corner.

And when it does, it’s with a cold slap of air against the face when they step outside. The air carries that distinct autumn smell, the world is chilly enough for thicker jackets and long socks, rain comes in sheets during the evenings, and the colorful leaves that had drooped from the trees adhere to the concrete, or in matted piles on the forest floor. Suddenly, the warm drink in everyone’s hand is a little less for the excitement and impatience for fall to begin, and more so to warm their cold palms from the onslaught of biting wind.

It isn’t autumn, and then it is -- just like sleep. Harry’s awake one minute, and then he’s passed right out.

Well, with Y/N’s help, bless her. Sure, she had been rotten before, but she made him a new batch and sent him off with two hearty bags full of tea that would soothe his worries and put his arse to bed. Plus, he had cuddled with her sweet little bunny Thumper for a while and he had a feeling the little bugger was exuding some sort of her soft magic unto him in the form of calming waves. When the rabbit sat in his lap, all the tension eased from his muscles and he sank into an otherwise uncomfortable chair like it was the softest mattress he’d ever been privy to. So by the time he came home, started the kettle, drank a mug full, and hot tailed it to his bed, he was asleep before his head could even quite hit the pillow.

It was so good. His dreams were pleasant, his sleep was heavy, and deep, and lasted around fifteen hours -- which in the grand scheme of things, made him feel a bit like a sloth, but he knew he needed it. He still couldn’t quite pinpoint what had happened that he just couldn’t sleep even a little bit, but he has no interest in investigating now that he had a full night’s (and partially day’s) rest. Plus, there was no time to do any exploring when he needed to make up for the work he’d missed in his time exhausted -- his powers are nowhere near as strong if he is tired, and it’s incredibly dangerous to be working with little sleep. He could mess up, and a mess-up could mean someone would likely end up possessed and -- albeit how interesting they are -- Harry’s intrigue with exorcisms ended after the seventh one he performed.

After he woke up, showered off, and ate brekkie, he sat down with his kitten and they cleaned his crystals and a few amulets before he set on preparing some of his finer elixirs, that he always waited until he was down to the last drop to begin making more canisters of considering how extensive the process was. It would be easier if he had someone else to help out, but the only other witch within 160 kilometers of him, he wouldn’t label as the type all too willing to help him break into a blood bank.

But he did have his kitten Oat. He was his little miracle -- Harry had been so sad when he learned that witches could have familiars, but the animal would come to him and he was supposed to just know. At that point, he’d been practicing for three years and the only feelings he could sense from any animal around him were fear and disdain, so he had thought that maybe he just wasn’t meant to have one. Which felt horrible. . .he loved animals.

One day, when the chill in the air rosied his cheeks and the cardigan he sported did little to shield him from the cold, he was taking a walk in the forest nearby. He’d left the trail, but not because he was working. . .if he were honest, he thought that the garden that Y/N kept out there was quite magnificent. It flourished even in the winter, a meadow of flowers that’s petals never frost, and the ground never grew hard. There was an air around it that made him feel warm and pleasant, so he visited often without letting her know. Which was what he was doing, walking through the small path that she had created so that she could tend to them (he’d seen her water them once when he’d come unknowing that she was there to cater to them).

And one moment he was looking at what he believed to be an oat grass, he heard a rustle from the bushes to his left that he looked toward (it was a bird flying away), and when his gaze returned to where it had once been, there a small kitten was laying. She was the kind of small that made his heart ache, with her eyes barely open as she yawned and stretched very wide -- she wasn’t there, and then she was. Harry always liked to say she was born from the soft soil of Y/N’s garden which was why her grey fur felt like clouds and she always smelled sweet as heliotrope. . .and, well, she smelled a lot like Y/N too. He may not be all too fond of the girl, but she did always smell nice.

She hadn’t grown bigger than one of his boots, the tiny little thing, but not because she was malnourished in any way (Harry always made sure she was well-fed), he just thinks she’s finished growing. He couldn’t tell her breed, but if he had to guess she was some mix between a munchkin and a ragamuffin cat. Harry knows all familiars have their duties and special abilities, but he wasn’t quite sure what hers was -- he just knew that he loved her to bits and pieces, and couldn’t ask for a better little ball of fur to sit on his shoulder while he made coffee in the morning.

What Harry did know, was that none of the demon’s he had ever conjured had ever bothered her, and she loved to be rubbed behind her ears.

So Thursday night, when the town grew quiet and the air was still, Harry ventured out with his tote bag slung over his shoulder. It was easy to move about relatively unseen in a place like this, that wasn’t so big there were people constantly looming around the corners of every nook and cranny, but wasn’t so small that everybody knew everyone’s business. It was a pleasant in between, where he could snake through the mouth of the forest, walk a trail and end up on the other side of town without having been seen by more than a few critters. He typically made this journey relatively late, without a worry or stressor in sight -- it only took him about an hour and a half to get everything done.

Today though -- today, he felt off. It hadn’t been immediately when he’d stepped outside, but after some time in his walk, goosebumps prickled his skin and the hair at the back of his neck stood on end. He couldn’t quite decipher what was making him feel like this when the wind hadn’t rustled the trees in a few minutes, but it put him on guard. He disliked the feeling and had only truly sensed it to this degree that night Y/N had originally questioned him about it. It was an unsavory sensation, and for it to even make him feel uneasy was saying something tremendous.

He attempts to ignore it, even though it only grew stronger the closer he was to his destination. He weaves through the trees, stepping over the thick roots, crunching over fallen leaves, and appreciating the scent of autumn as he goes. It was a nice night, despite the chill that ran just beneath his skin. . .it was the kind of night that he might go out on his balcony and sip on his tea until he grew weary enough to step inside. Oat liked to sit outside with him, curled peacefully in his lap and resting without a care in the world (she made him feel not so lonely all the time, which he appreciated immensely).

Harry was thinking about how that was precisely what he was going to do as soon as he returned home after he had emerged from the trees and walked through an expansive field, toward an old road that led him back into town and entered the blood bank (after melting the lock with one of his crystals). Though he sensed something strong when he was walking down the cold, dark hall. . .or someone that is, who -- before he could register their presence -- ran straight into him as they were peeling around the corner and nearly knocked him on his arse (but definitely knocked them on theirs).

“Fuck sake!” He cried out, steadying himself, looking down at the assailant, “Watch where you’re going, mate, or you’ll -- oh, Y/N?” He pauses, confusion laces through his brain as he recognizes her, “What’re you doing here so late?”

Y/N was on her bum, scowling at him as she gathered herself before flattening her palms to the cold, white tiled floor and pressing up to a stand, “I could ask you the same question.”

“It would be a silly one if you did, ‘cos you and I both know what I’m doing for a living,” he watches as she swipes her bum of the dust adhering to her sweatpants -- he had never seen her so dressed down before, in a dark-colored hoodie that just about swallowed her whole. She appeared much less ferocious this way -- not that she appeared very ferocious before, but he is always intrigued to see typically put together people in their sleep clothes. . .he thinks it says a lot about a person. From Y/N’s choice of pajamas, he could tell that she probably kept her flat on the side of too cold because she liked to bundle up. . .she felt safe that way, he would guess, and he would bet 50 quid that there was bunny hair all over it because -- despite his grumpy tendencies -- Thumper loved a good cuddle.

“I felt it again,” she says after a moment, her voice only above a whisper, though there was no security here -- or anyone, for that matter since the place closes at 7 PM, but her eyes still shift around like she’s a high schooler ditching class and the headmaster's down the hall, “. . .that thing, y’know, while I was getting ready for bed, so I followed where it felt grossest and came to check it out to see if it led me anywhere.”

Harry’s brows furrowed, “Well that was stupid,” he derides her, fixing the tote around his shoulder and shifting weight from one heel to the other, “What were you going to do if you found something, hm? Fight it off with your bunny and rose petals?”

Her scowl returns, “Piss off,” she utters before her gaze flickers to his tote and the reason he’s here becomes clearer to her than it had been before, “You shouldn’t be stealing blood. Isn’t that unethical?”

“It’s either this or siphoning it from a live vein, Babe, and while I’m aces at plenty of things, I have not been properly trained to set up an IV. I only take the blood that’s about to expire anyway,” He nods down the hallway, toward the refrigeration where they kept all of the baggies, “You might as well continue investigating while we’re here because it’s coming from that way -- plus you can make yourself useful by keeping the door propped open for me.”

In all honesty, Harry expects more fight than he was given considering how often she seems to object to every move he makes, but she merely rolls her eyes and starts ahead of him. The feeling does grow stronger the further they descend into the hallway and he knows Y/N can feel it too, from the way she shuffles just a little closer to him, and he can hear her breathing hitch to a small halt as they stood before the door and it felt like it had all been focused just behind the door. As strong as the taste of frozen orange juice concentrate, it made his face pucker just slightly as he raised his fingers toward the keypad and began punching in the code.

And there’s nothing.

Actually, as soon as they open the door, the dark, odious feeling that had been encompassing both of them disappears entirely. “Whoa,” Y/N pushes her hand against the door and keeps it open, taking one step inside of the room, “There’s a lot of blood in here.” His gaze flickers back at her, as she looks around, looking more intrigued than disgusted -- there was a lot of blood, 8 by 5-meter room just filled with it, so he could understand some of the awe. The more he returns, the less awe he feels, but he reckons that was to be expected.

“There are about five other refrigerators in this building too,” he tells her as he lowers to his knees, cracking open his tote, “This one’s computers are easier to get into though, and doesn’t say the date and time the amount was changed so nobody knows anything is missing. Easy peasy.”

Y/N nods, “Right. Stealing blood -- easy peasy,” she leans against the door, “What is it that you use it for?”

“It really depends,” he murmurs as he pulls out a rack, counting out the baggies he needed, “Some demons like blood more than ash, so they come when called and are more willing to help you out when given a little gift. There are a few spells that call for it, and elixirs are twice as potent — sometimes I have to drink it, which is...unpleasant,” he hears her shiver, “—but it makes the outcome better. All in a day's work.”

“Oh wow,” Y/N hummed, “That’s...different. I think the weirdest thing I’ve had to drink for a spell was doe milk and I felt guilty the whole time. Like I was taking it from a fawn that needed it.”

Harry huffed out a laugh — Y/N was a soft little thing, comparing drinking blood to milk — sometimes he forgets how sheltered her world of magic is compared to his own. It was easy to forget with all the spiteful words she could throw his way, but to see her out of her comfort zone. . .it’s refreshing. Not because she is less confident in her surroundings, but because she is more open to his own If someone would have told Harry they would be even remotely civil with one another in a room full of blood, he would have snorted before asking what they were snorting.

“I oughta call you Bambi then.”

He was on his last baggy of blood, checking the expiration date, and logging it into the computer when the dreadful feeling returned. Like a fly to rotting meat, it clings back to the room they were in tenfold. From behind him, a sharp clatter and Y/N’s squeal startles him to look back at her, “Harry!” She cried, pointing ahead of her, “The walls! L-look at the walls!”

Harry follows her finger, watching as a thick, black substance oozes from the wall’s coving. When Y/N had noticed as much, she knocked down a stray IV pole that had been left in here, and it lay at her feet where the same black ooze had begun seeping up from the trim of the floors. In all his time doing what he does, Harry had never seen something so odd, nor had he ever felt something this grotesque overcome his being. It makes him act quickly, and while he doesn’t speak, he does fix his tote over his shoulder and practically jog the short distance to Y/N, knocking her out of the room, grabbing the door by the handle, and swinging it shut. He had hoped to seal it in there, whatever it was, but when they look down at the floor, the goo bleeds beneath the door and they both take a startled step back, “Oh fuck me,” Harry mutters to himself, shaking his head.

“What the hell is this?” Y/N is panicked -- it’s very clear in her voice, and while Harry was a tad thankful not to be dealing with this alone, he can’t say that a soft which, who planted pretty flowers and made sleepy time tea was necessarily the backing he wanted in the event he had to exorcise a demon. He didn’t even have the proper tools for it. . .he didn’t know what he was exorcising, fuck sake -- “Harry, shouldn’t we --”

“We need to leave,” he states, pivoting on his heel and hustling down the hall, Y/N was quick to scurry behind him, though she still murmurs some protest.

“We shouldn’t just --”

“Listen, unless you have any idea what that is and how to clean it, let alone banish it to hell, I saw we have a better chance through those doors than we do staying in here for even a second more,” he told her, holding out his hands to the crash bar, shoving the heavy door open, only looking back to make sure that Y/N had made it through, seeing that the black ooze had been following them before he promptly slammed the door shut.

This was one of the back doors, so it spits them out to the graveled employee parking lot that dances along one of the many mouths of the forest that surrounded them. They’re both out of breath, adrenalin zipping through their veins in a tidal wave as their chests heave and they stare at the door. They wait for it to crawl beneath these doors. . .they wait for the building to either be overcome by sludge or combust from whatever sinister being had decided to preoccupy this space.

But nothing happens.

The wind picks up, the leaves rustle against the branches, and as if it were a gift from the Earth, the sordid feeling blew right away with it.

“What the hell was that?” Y/N asks for the second time.

Harry straightens out from where he’d been crouched, inhaling the cool air, appreciative to be in it.

“Do you think for a second, with my reaction, that I have any fucking clue?”

. . .

Y/N doesn’t have people at her flat often.

Actually, apart from Niall and a few maintenance men, nobody had ever really come over. Not for any particular reason, really, and not because she didn’t want them to necessarily -- the opportunity just rarely arose, or more so, she didn’t often allow it to. If she were going to meet someone then she would meet them somewhere else, and they would part ways after they were finished (again, apart from Niall, who would simply follow her home, kick his trainers off, and head toward her couch which he had told her was simply the comfiest he’d ever been on). Her home was her humble abode. . .it was where she came to destress after a long day, and where Thumper sometimes waited for her debating whether or not he wanted to nibble her bathroom rug to shreds.

Not to mention she had plants growing here too, and flowers that she held dear to her, and while people are more reluctant to go touching what isn’t their business at a store, they are much less disinclined to give that same respect to her plants. Once Y/N had a maintenance man over to fix her faucet and she’d walked out from her room to see that he was caressing her snake plant’s leaves. She couldn’t blame him -- the plant had a very encompassing presence about it and had a way of drawing people in if they weren’t careful. . .hypnotized by the way it made them feel. All of Y/N’s soil and seeds are charmed with special incantations and concoctions that took her years to perfect, she would be disappointed if they weren’t causing people to leave all semblance of professionalism to even for a moment feel as if they were in a room with such clear air, their lungs felt renewed and they deemed it necessary to get closer.

But then she had to apologize to her snake plant for nearly two days after! It had been so upset with her, she could feel it, so she started being even more careful about who she let in. If she was going to go out of her way to have someone over, then there was a good reason for it. . .or it was Niall.

And a demonic, gooey substance sweating from the walls of a blood bank, was well enough a good reason to have Harry over.

It took some coaxing on her part -- he was convinced that they needed to just go back to their respective flats and go to bed, but Y/N was adamant in vetoing the idea. “We’re supposed to talk tomorrow anyway, so we might as well just go ahead and do it tonight -- and you are not leaving me alone after whatever the fuck that was!”

After a good ten minutes, he finally relented as long as they could stop by his flat so he could get his kitten. Y/N hadn’t known that he had a kitten and thought maybe he would bring out some ragged-looking thing, but she was surprised to see through her windshield window that Harry was approaching her car with a small grey kitten. Her face contorts in the way everyone’s face might when they see something small and cute, “Look at her,” she coos once Harry opens his door, “What’s her name?”

“This is Oat,” he answered, holding her out for Y/N to pet, “Be careful, she’s vicious.”

Y/N pet at her head and Oat’s eyes shut as she nuzzled into her palm, “Oh yeah, what a panther.”

Apart from the nerves that had already materialized from what they had seen in the blood bank, she was a little worried about inviting him into her home. When she visualized her safe space, Harry was not typically who she saw sitting on her couch when she came in from the kitchen, holding mugs of warm tea. Yet there he was, introducing Thumper and Oat to one another (who merely sniffed each other, then immediately cozied against her olive throw blanket on the end of the couch), and Y/N is handing him his steamy mug.

“I’ve been thinking,” he began, immediately nursing the mug between his palms and lifting it up to his mouth for a small sip -- the steam disperses around his face in plumes, “And it wouldn’t make sense for. . .for whatever that is to just be a demon.”

“What?” She inquires, taking her seat beside him on the couch, her body twisted so she was facing him entirely. Y/N had adjusted the temperature to something that would be a bit more suited toward having a guest -- when she’s alone, she keeps it ungodly cold so she has an excuse to bundle up in her clothes and blankets. There’s nothing like feeling safe in a cocoon of various fabrics with Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the telly.

Harry strategically places the mug between his knitted socked feet, steadying it there as he begins to play with the thick, brassy tiger ring on his index finger, “Demons are strong, sure, but if they’re gonna be that strong there’s typically two reasons for it: they have already inhabited that area, or someone is controlling them behind the scenes. I would be more inclined to believe the prior, but I’ve been going to this blood blank for about a year now and unless there were some pentagrams I’ve missed or a gruesome ordeal that never made the papers in the past two weeks -- then there’s no reason for that to have happened at the hands of a spirit. Even a blood demon isn’t strong enough to make what happened in there happen, and they literally feed off the substance in the room.”

“So you think someone summoned it or something? I thought you were the only one around here that did that?” Y/N probes, trying to look in his eyes but she keeps getting distracted by his rings -- how many did he have? She thinks he nearly has one on each finger, and he’s plucking them off and placing them on different knuckles as he speaks. Y/N wonders if it’s something he does in response to a stressor, like how she picks at her nails.

“I’m the only witch that summons things around here, but not even I could conjure something that feels that vile.” He explained, fitting the last ring against his knuckle before he pops the bones in his fingers, and Y/N watches as the skin stretches and moves around the muscles in his hands, “I think someone is trying to manifest something without the proper safeguards in place. . .the lack of protection charms, crystals, and spells can invite much more heinous creatures to the living world. They feed off shite like that -- naivety. . .thinking that any person could decide they’ll have a demon carry out a job for them. It’s easier for them to take advantage of them that way.” Harry exhales, running the pad of his thumb around the rim of the mug— she’s given him the one that has intricate, realistic drawings of beluga whales on it, not for any other reason apart from that one was her favorite and she liked to see it in use, “And with a full moon coming up? Recipe for disaster.”

“Oh shit,” Y/N holds her tea closer to her being, “That’s why the feeling is so profuse and disagreeable in the air then, ‘cos they aren’t containing it right? When I was looking into a little bit of what you do, I read that there are containment spells so the demon or spirit doesn’t have free range to do as it pleases, but the spell is dependent on the demon in question and the severity of its power.”

Harry looked pleasantly surprised, “Yeah, that’s right -- what’re ya looking up what I’m doing for?” He settles into her couch, “Have you got a crush on me or summat?”

If Y/N rolled her eyes any further back, she thinks they would have done a 360 in her eye sockets, “I fell down a rabbit hole the other night when I was trying to figure out why you couldn’t sleep,” an impish grin slides onto his mouth, “And not because I’m “in love with you” -- I just thought it would be interesting to know if your insomnia was the reason of a demon because that would mean one of my items combats against that and wins. My. . .most of my magic is based on prevention when it comes to dark things like that, not really to fight what’s already there.”

“So your flowers don’t like -- I dunno, Little Shop of Horrors it?” He teases, motioning to her Hoya plant that had just begun to bloom for her, “I reckon when I think of plant magic, I think of you snapping your fingers and thorned ivy whipping around to slow assailants.”

“No, none of that,” she laughs lightly, shaking her head, “They’re much too nice and gentle. . .they only want to help. And I’m rarely in a situation where I would need thorned ivy whipping around.” Y/N locks eyes with Oat for a moment, whose eyes close nice and slow before she reopens them and Y/N thinks she might just melt, “What do we do then? How do we stop it?”

He slides a ring with teddy bears from his pinky and spins it between his forefinger and thumb, “There’s nothing to do -- if we don’t know who the problem is, then we can’t fix anything.” Harry shrugs his shoulders, and the action makes his already loose cardigan slide down his arms, revealing more of the cream-colored shirt he wore with Smokey the Bear on the front reading Only YOU! can prevent forest fires, “All we can do is wait for the next fucked feeling and hopefully run into the person causing -- oh,” Harry pauses, motioning toward her, “You’ve got a new friend.”

Y/N’s confused, brows knitted until she feels a paw press against her shoulder and the telltale purr of a happy kitty. When she turns her head, she finds that Oat has snuck her way up to her, and is now attempting to perch on Y/N’s shoulder. She presses closer to the back of the couch so that she had a better footing, and in return Oat bumps at her cheek with the top of her head, “You’re so cute, stop it,” she murmurs, and when she takes a breath through her nose, she smiles, “She smells like my heliotrope flowers too! How are you the familiar of such a grumpy, cruel lug, huh?”

“Oi,” Harry mutters, “I resent that. I’m not grumpy or cruel, you’re just rotten.”

A retort plays at Y/N’s mouth but her phone screen lights up from where it’s sat on the coffee table and strays her attention. She’s confused -- the only person who would be messaging her this late was Niall but she’s almost a hundred percent certain that he was supposed to be out at the bar tonight. It is him though.

Fuck me, have ya looked at the news? Is this that thing we were talkin bout?

Harry is a nosy bugger, and after reading the message with her he reaches for her remote, “You told him about it?” He turns on her telly, quick to open her TV guide, “So he knows about you?”

“Yeah, he knows -- turn to 3,” she tells him, and soon enough the local news is playing out, big bold letters on the blue band stretched across the bottom of the screen.

MAN TO BE CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTED MURDER ON GIRLFRIEND

He turned the volume up, so they could hear the news reporter who was on site. There was yellow caution tape stripped around a house, police lights, cops walking around in the back, and frightened neighbors who had left the comfort of their homes to investigate what was happening. The woman on screen had long blonde hair that whipped when the wind blew and muffled her microphone feed, her face set stony as she recounted the events as the police had told her, “. . .has no recollection of the event, and is claiming the “walls” were dripping in blood and demanding that he do it. Jacobs is being taken in for further questioning and pending a psychiatric evaluation -- his girlfriend Amanda Wilson is being rushed to hospital that’s all anyone knows right now. Back to you Tom...”

“Oh, fuck sake,” Harry groaned, shaking his head, “Now this is a problem, problem innit?”

“Was it not before?” Y/N takes the remote from him, turning the volume down, “Do you -- does that sound like anything you’ve dealt with? That would try hurting someone like that?”

He presses his knuckles to his eyes, sighing, “Not that I remember -- I’ll have to do some digging. . .this is bollocks, you know how bad this is for business? Nobody wants to mess with dark magic when shit like this is going on.”

“Aish, don’t think so selfishly. People are in danger,” she tsks at him, “And we’ll need to -- what are you doing?” She asks as he removes his feet from where they had been on the couch, reaching down for his loafers like he was about to put them on.

“S’getting late,” he responded, “I was g’na head home --”

“No you’re not,” she told him, her face dropping in borderline disgust as he seemed genuinely confused with her, his face twisting, “We experience something like that, then see the news, and you not only want to separate, but you want to walk all the way home, alone, in the dark? No way, that’s too stupid, you’re staying here.”

Harry’s brows dipped in, irritated, however, he did stop reaching for his loafers, “But --”

“Listen, we may not be fond of each other but I’m not letting you put yourself in danger,” she tells him, before adding quickly, “And you are fucking not going to leave me alone after that! Are you mad?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I’d be doing you a favor without bothering ya with my presence. Never thought Miss. Good Witch of the North would want me breathing her air for too long.” He ripostes and it reinvigorates any distaste for Harry that had been easing throughout the night the more they spoke. He always did that -- always made her feel like she was some stuck up prick who never gave him a chance, but she would have if he hadn’t started out being such an arse to her. Sure, the circumstances they had met under weren’t fantastic. . .she snapped at him for taking her flowers without asking, but he could have just apologized -- could have said sorry, and they could have started over but he was immediately put off by her she presumes, because ever since he’d been nothing but cruel to her. His knocking her out of the room in the blood bank was probably the first kind thing he’d ever done for her, and she isn’t a hundred percent certain that she wasn’t just in his way while he was trying to get out.

So she glowers at him as she pushes from her couch, “Sod off. I’ll get you some blankets.”

He almost immediately replaces the spot that her body had been with his legs, stretching out as far as he could and his feet flop on the arm of the sofa, “Reckon you should make me some of that tea though, so I can sleep.” He called after her. Thumper hops off and follows after her, while Oat finds her spot at Harry’s side and cuddles into where his cardigan’s extra fabric bundles. Y/N goes to the closet in the hall that leads to her bedroom, pries it open, and reaches to the top shelf where she keeps her extra blankets and pillows. Despite how irritated he makes her, she grabs him one of her heavier quilts, because even with her heat kicked up higher than normal her flat has very poor insulation, and the night’s into early mornings get pretty cold. She’s about to grumble at him that he better thank her for this and the bloody tea, but when she returns to the living room. . .he’s asleep.

Harry just fell right to sleep.

She’s confused -- understandably, she thinks, because she remembers how much of a fit he’d thrown about her tea and how she was closed on weekends so he couldn’t have any of it. Had whined how he wasn’t able to sleep without the tea, and she had only given him peppermint tea tonight, so there was no reason that should have put him to bed.

Yet there he was, fast asleep with his arms crossed over his chest.

Tutting her tongue quietly, she unrolls the blanket she had chosen for him and strategically places it over his legs. She is careful to move Oat so that she doesn’t suffocate under the covers as she pulls them over, up to Harry’s chest before replacing her in the spot she had snuggled prior. She pauses for a moment before she leaves them, taking in a completely relaxed Harry -- not that he doesn’t seem relaxed all the time, but he’s just. . .calm. His muscles have melted against her couch cushions, his brow has soothed and his amaranth pink lips are soft and parted. Gentle, easy breaths slip through his mouth. . .Y/N thinks that she likes him like this. Not spiteful, or crass -- this Harry doesn’t seem to hate her. This Harry is warm and comfortable enough to just fall asleep on her couch.

Thumper thumps his foot against the floor, his not-so-silent request that they go to bed and Y/N snaps out of whatever hypnotic state she’d been in watching him rest. She feels creepy but shakes it off, reaching down to pick up Thumper by his belly and cradling him to her chest as she leaves the living room, keeping her lamp on for him in case he wakes up to have a wee or anything.

It’s when she goes to the kitchen to grab him a bottle of water to leave at the coffee table for him, that she can feel Thumper judging her. This is only confirmed by the way he is looking up at her when she looks down at him, his small, pink nose twitching, and she can just sense him repeating Harry’s tease of have you got a crush on me or summat? -- it’s not like he hasn’t questioned her before. She reckons if Thumper could actually speak and not just implant little thoughts of his in her head through whatever little bond they have, he would be very free with his accusations about who she might have feelings for.

Y/N rolls her eyes.

“No, I don’t,” she disagrees with him quietly, “What do you know about crushes, hm? You’re just a bunny.”

. . .

It had been a while since Harry had worked.

Though he was always hesitant to call it work, all things considered. Y/N had once described to him that what he did was lurk around seedy clubs and wait to be recognized by a sorry sap that wanted something they didn’t want to put much effort towards, and Harry can’t necessarily say she’s wrong. He preyed on the lazy; men and women who couldn’t be arsed to obtain a goal without the help of a little magic no matter how negative, and Harry couldn’t really fault them for it. One, because sometimes goals are unattainable with literally anything other than a demon's help, and two because he gets a hefty wad of cash in his pocket for his trouble. How hypocritical could he be to deprecate their usage of dark magic when he is doing the same thing. . .when he relies on that more than anything, even the silly little romance novels he writes so that nobody questions where his money’s coming from.

It was a Friday night, and since he was no longer tied to the commitment of meeting Y/N to discuss the horrible, no good, terrible thing that was slithering its way through town and apparently spurring bouts of attempted murder -- he was able to visit a club. Though Y/N had made him lock pinkies with her that morning, telling him to keep his eye out for anything suspicious that may or may not have led to the events from the night prior.

Promise me that you’ll keep informed on what’s going on there, okay? And promise me that you’ll tell me about it.

The club he’d visited was one of the more popular of the four he frequented, and within the walls, amongst the gyrating bodies in scant clothing and sweat-drenched skin, were many of his regular clients. One of which had been blowing up his phone for the past week telling him how he desperately needed help, and he needed it ASAP. Harry finally replied to his message with a simple time that he would meet him, and that they would discuss the cost once he’s explained what is being asked of him. This guy, in particular, wanted many frivolous things, and typically his requests revolved around wealth, though Harry thought he had more than enough. And while Harry could do a few simple spells that would bring the money gradually and don’t come with the dangers that a demon will, he refuses. Harry has always told each of his clients that a spell and a demon could do the same thing, but demons brought faster results, albeit potentially precarious consequences.

And when it comes to summoning, things can get a bit tricky. If the person who is summoning is the person who will benefit from the demon’s will directly, then it may come with a price, and that price may or may not be hidden between the lines. Especially when it is someone who has no clue about the actual process, offerings that could be made without including their soul for the taking, and spells that could be done that would protect them. After doing this for so long, Harry had developed and harnessed enough power that it was rare a spell every backfired or a demon ever bested him, but if Bradley Evans tried this himself, he’d be good as dead.

This is why, no matter how this man grates every open end of his nerves with a dull blade, he continues to help him. Again, Harry gets paid an obscene amount of money for what he does, so he sucks it right up -- and it’s not as if this money is just for him. He has people to take care of, his own personal gripes with the smarmy, rich, meat-headed pricks that want him to summon Clauneck for a trip to the Bahamas matter very little in the grand scheme of things.

He’s leaning against the far back corner, at a table that he’d claimed for the night and a cherry mango cocktail that wets his lips and stains them red. He really isn’t scouting for suspicious behavior like he had promised to, only because his mind had floated elsewhere entirely. Like how, after so long of only ever being able to rest with help of Y/N’s chamomile, he was able to fall asleep without the help of anything. He had asked her about the tea that she and he drank prior to him passing out unprompted on her couch, but she told him it was just a store-bought strawberry tea that was a guilty pleasure.

It perplexed him greatly. He only remembers her demanding him to stay the night because she didn’t want to be alone (and if he’s honest, neither had he after the night they had), he remembers her standing and him stretching out on her couch, and he remembers asking her for the tea that would help him sleep.

And then he remembers waking, feeling refreshed, and renewed. Confused, but reinvigorated, he had a wee before poking around in her kitchen for something to satiate his grumbly stomach. Y/N was still asleep -- he’d peeked his head into her cracked open door only to find her dreaming peacefully, relaxed, and content. As creepy as it felt to stare at her as she slept, he did watch for a moment. It was different to see her without the accompanied scowl he usually coaxed upon her face -- the blissful gleam that exudes from her now is the same that he sees when she’s tending to one of her gardens.

He brewed two chai lattes in her Keurig with Oat on his shoulder like a bird and she woke as he was taking the second mug, setting it on her kitchen counter, “G’morning,” she yawned, Thumper hopping behind her, looking just as sleepy, “Did you sleep through the night? I made you a cuppa and kept it in the microwave in case you woke up.”

His heart had lurched. . .a genuine clench that Harry had not felt in a while.

“Oh,” he blinked at her owlishly, “I slept just fine, but thank you.”

“Mm, good,” she was so sleepy still, Harry remembers wondering if she was even fully awake speaking to him, “I have sliced fruit in the fridge if you want, for brekkie.”

It was a domesticated scenario that Harry had not been privy to.

Had it been her flat? Maybe the plants that she had strewn about the room were all enchanted, singing sweet songs of sleep that lulled him to sleep without him knowing. All he could recall was feeling so unbelievably comforted and no matter how cold it was in that damn flat, he felt so warm. . .so warm, and it smelled so good, and Oat was snoozing happily at his side. Plus she had wrapped him in this quilt that was heavy and smelled nice -- he thinks, in that moment, he finally understood why babies liked feeling contained in a swaddle blanket. Regardless of what happened at the blood bank, and what they found out on the news, Harry felt safe in her flat. And he probably wouldn’t have left either, if he didn’t have to work.

He’s so caught in his reverie, that Bradley’s arrival truly startled him. A clearing of his throat catches his attention, dragging his unfocused gaze from the crowd of dancers to Bradly, dressed in a Lacoste polo that thought was ugly but he would never say it aloud, “Oh,” he straightened up, bringing the rim of his glass to his mouth and taking a small sip of it, “Right then, what can I do for you? Another trip to Barbados?”

Bradley shakes his head a little frantically, and it's only then that Harry takes in the actual appearance of him, that surpasses the Lacoste and zeros in on the panic that decorates his face, “I need like -- like a demon protector or some kinda spell or -- I don’t fucking know, or something.”

“Oh --” his brows dip, “What’s wrong? Is something bothering you?”

He starts to nod, then switches it to a shake of his head, and that morphs into a shrug of his shoulders, “I don’t know man, I just don’t feel -- I don’t feel safe. I wondered if one of those demons from before were like. . .after my soul or summat.”

“Not possible,” Harry dismisses the idea, setting his glass down on the high round table, “When I work with them we make a spiritual, contractual agreement that they are bound to. If your soul was not on the table, then it will never be on the table -- it must be something else,” he thinks for a moment before a slither of realization stokes the fire in his brain, that sets the coals aflame and heats the cogs to a churn, “What -- explain to me what you’re feeling?”

“Like something is watching me,” he blinked, crossing his arms on top of the table and leaning most of his weight onto it, the scent of liquor wafts over Harry’s face when Bradly breathes, “It’s heavy and. . .it’s like swimming in ink. It’s horrible and frightening, and I’ve never -- I’ve never been one to rely on vibes, but mate, they were bad. . .they were like -- vile. Vile vibes, man.”

Harry thinks, while his description is repugnant, he knows exactly what he’s talking about, but there wasn’t much he could do. Harry can make protection spells that are generalized but he doesn’t believe that any of them are strong enough to fend off whatever this thing is. In cases like this one, sometimes dark magic is not good to fight dark magic, it can only make it grow and fester like a nasty, infected wound. He really did not want to try that out on Bradley. . .he may not be fond of the guy, but he didn’t wish anything ill on him.

“You wouldn’t come to me for a protection spell, for something like that,” Harry begins, “You would need --” You would need Y/N -- is what is about to leave his lips, but it drops away. As much as it’s true -- as much as Harry knows that the reason he felt the safest he’s ever had in Y/N’s presence was whatever protection spells she had put in place and strengthened -- he couldn’t. The thought of sending someone like Bradley to someone like Y/N, makes him feel sick. “Give me one second, yeah? Stay here.”

Y/N gave him her number that morning, telling him that it was silly for them to be unable to contact one another. Harry saved it into his phone and sent her a picture of Oat so that she would have his, but left it at that -- he had assumed, until this moment, that he would never have a reason to have her number. If he ever wanted anything from her he would just show up at her store.

But here he was, scrolling through his contact list to find her, pressing her number and holding his phone up to his ear. It only rings twice before she’s answered it, “Hello? Is everything okay Harry, did you get a lead?”

Harry laughs in disbelief, “What’re you, a detective?” He cleared his throat so he could speak over the music clearly, “I need you for something, and I’ll give you half. And before you get all high and mighty, it isn’t for anything bad -- one of my regulars is experiencing the same fucked thing we have only it’s more vile vibes opposed to blood seeping from the walls. Need a protection spell -- whatever you use for your flat and store.”

She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that Harry questions if his service dropped, but her voice reappears.

“Where are you?”

Fifteen minutes later, Harry is flagging Y/N down to his spot in the club where he stood next to Bradley whose friends kept coming around wondering if Harry was his pull for the night. Her jumper with a printed bunny right in the center made him chuckle to himself -- it was more than clear that she had not planned on coming out tonight, and if not for Harry, he thinks she would have spent three more hours at her store tending to the garden there if not for him. When she sees him, noticeable relief makes her shoulders slump, and as she gets closer, she reaches into her pocket, “Thank god,” she called over the music, “I’ve been in here for three minutes and if I got knocked into one more time I was going to lose it.”

She produces two things -- one is a tiny vial, with an unidentified green liquid, and the other is a small baggie of her tea. Harry takes both from her hand, “Thank you,” he murmurs, before dipping down closer to her ear, “Go over to that empty table near the bar, I don’t want this guy seeing you clear enough that he could ask you for anything ever again.”

Though she was confused, she listened to him, slinking her way over to the table while Harry turned to Bradley who had been looking at his phone, before both were placed in front of them, “Thank you,” he tells him, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. How much?”

“850,” Harry says without batting an eyelash. Typically his business runs closer to the thousands but he cuts the guy a break since he’s scared.

“Each or what?” Bradley asks as he fishes his wallet from his pocket, flipping the leather open and beginning to thumb through his bills.

“No, just 850,” he takes the bills from him, folding it between his fingers, “I shipped your crystals last week, did they come?”

Bradley nods, a big grin on his face, “Oh, fuck yeah dude, I almost forgot! I already transferred you the money for them right?”

Harry thinks it’s a shame that he doesn’t keep track -- he could really scam him if he wanted to, with these black crystals bathed in the water of Asmodeus (they increases stamina and aids them in not being shit in bed; it was a fucking full-day event to get Asmodeus to recognize the clear stream water, in an incubator that he checks every 15 minutes or so to see if the water has been touched red) “Yeah, you sent double the amount ‘cos your buddy wanted some too, right?”

“He loved them, mate, he’s way less narky too now that he’s getting his dick wet.”

Harry holds back a grimace, “Alright then, stay safe. You know how to contact me if you need anything.”

Bradley bids his goodbye and Harry seeks out Y/N, who is picking idly at her fingernails and bobbing her head slightly to the music. When he gets close enough to her, he starts on his spiel as he waves the money toward her,

“Listen, Babe, you used your plants to help him, honestly you deserve way more than this -- a fucking Nobel Prize probably,” he holds it out to her, “Here.”

She shakes her head, but not in the way she would if she were refusing it because she was disgusted by him -- no, instead she closes his hand around it again and presses it closer to his body, “No, no, you keep it, he’s your guy or whatever.”

Harry tilts his head, brows knitted, “But they’re your plants.”

“Yeah, but I would just feel guilty taking it from you so --”

He sighs, counting out 450 of it, taking her hand, opening her fingers, and sliding the bills into her palm, “Even split then. If you’re going to utilize something precious to you to help someone like that fucker, you deserve a little compensation for it. “

Y/N must realize that he wasn’t going to let it go, because she finally folds it in her hands, slipping it into her pocket, “What’s with that guy then? Why do you not like him?”

Harry can see it clearly; the image of his childhood self, his family struggling to make ends meet but going to primary school with the wealthier kids. The ones who laughed at his faded shirts, and holed winter coats -- who would ask him to their birthday parties and talk shit about the gift he’d scraped up coins for doing miscellaneous work around the neighborhood. He thinks about how he knew they would go home to kitchens full of food, and bountiful dinners that they would never appreciate, while Harry never took seconds because no matter how hungry he was, he made sure their bellies were as full as they could be. And Harry remembers how the headmaster did nothing to quell his worries because those kid’s parents could buy out the school if they wanted to.

He sees it all, and he hears it all, and for a moment -- selfishly -- it makes Harry wish he had never given Bradley the protection spell at all.

But he only shakes his head, “He’s just a prick,” he answers simply, before nodding his head toward the door, “Reckon we should get out of here, it smells like piss.”

It’s always a little easier to leave the club than it is to enter it, so they’re out in the cool air soon enough. A small line had formed outside since Harry had been in there last, and as they step out, a group of three is let in through the rope chain that the bouncer is policing. This part of town is always bustling late into the night, so neither feel the cold brush of fear they have been when they’re out in the dark -- or at least the relaxed way Y/N is looking around tells him that she’s pretty content.

“Do you want to get something to eat?” She asks him, pointing at the 24-hour diner right across the street, that had been strategically placed there because people who are drunk and high who just sweat out half their body weight love greasy food, “I skipped dinner today.”

“What a coincidence -- so did I.”

They got a booth in the far back corner, where the white and maroon tilted floor glistened wet from a recent scrub from the mop, and the air smells of lemon pine-sol. This along with the fact that the black leather seats were dusted of the crumbs that usually mottles them, Harry would assume that they had come just in time for their 12 AM clean up, where the first batch of besotted clubbers had left a mess and they were waiting for the second wave to come through. He didn’t miss the eye that the waitress had given them, looking them up and down like she was trying to decipher what state they were both in, but when neither of them wobbles in their stance, or slur through their words asking for a table, she relaxes and asks them where they’d like to sit.

After they get settled and order their food (Harry convinces her to get one of their malted milkshakes with him -- his favorite was strawberry and after she confessed that she never had their strawberry malt, he was insistent on her trying it), Harry’s curiosity is suddenly piqued as he thinks of something he hadn’t thought of before, “How did you make it over to the club so fast, hm? Do you just have jars of this stuff made laying around?”

Y/N sticks her clear straw in the icy glass of water she’d been poured, stirring it like there was anything to mix, and the ice cubes clink together soundly, “No, no, I actually don’t make protection spells unless I’m asked directly -- or usually that’s the case, but I was already in the middle of making some for you and me, so I had a little leftover.”

“For me too?” Harry inquires, genuinely surprised by the concept that she would make him something to keep him safe. She nods though, like it was silly that he thought she wouldn’t have, only this time she reaches into her purse and retrieves two much larger vials with little cork tops, and one bigger bag of the dried leaves, accompanied by a smaller one tied with red ribbon.

“I was doing some research while I was at work --”

“You do a lot of research, don’t you?” He cuts her off and she nods.

“Mhm -- and there’s this like. . .there’s this elder witch who lives an hour or so drive away from us who I think might be immortal, but that’s beside the point. She has this blog that I was scrolling through and she linked her email, so I messaged her and she sent me her number and told me to call her immediately.” She slides one of the vials over to him, along with the tree leaves, “When I did, she told us that we were in a little more danger than everyone else ‘cos like -- whatever this thing is could start trying to feed off of us, especially you. Said that we needed a potent protection spell, and I told her about mine. You feel safe in my store and in my flat right? Like -- like whatever that thing is couldn’t get to us?” He nodded, eyes fixed on hers, “So this is a version of that suitable for our bodies. The tea leaves are for your flat, and then this little bag here --” she points at the one tied closed with the small strip of red ribbon, “-- this is a tea version of it safe for Oat to drink.”

Not only had she made him some, but she also made Oat some too? As much as he disliked her before, he can’t help how this warms his heart, zipping through his body and makes him feel just as safe as he did when he was wrapped in her quilt snug on her couch. Harry wonders if this is what she’s like all the time with her friends. . .he wonders if this side of her, that researches and makes protection goodies, brews him a cuppa just in case he woke up in the middle of the night and comes out in the depth of night to the seedy clubs she despises just because he called and asked -- if that’s what they get to see. If that’s what he would have seen had their meeting been any different.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, taking the vial and the bags, looking at them against his palm, “A lot. You didn’t have to do this for me.”

“I did though,” she takes a drink of the water through her straw, “I may not agree with what you do but we’re the only two witches here and there is power in unity, even if our versions of magic are different. We have to be there for each other -- Thumper agrees, and that’s a lot coming from him because he doesn’t like much of anybody. . .he barely likes me,” she holds her hand up, the index finger of her other going from finger to finger as she lists off the ingredients, “So we’ve got fern, anise, leaves from the ash tree in the forest, fennel -- the nice old woman told me to hold off on the mugwort unless we’re planning on astral projecting or doing anything with divination, but if we felt that it was necessary we could wear a wreath of it around her necks. That’s an old wives tale though, I’m pretty sure.” She wiggles her fingers, “All that and a little bit of moon water, and we have ourselves a little protection spell! I dipped my finger in for a taste test and I’ll be honest, it’s awful and plant-y but I reckon we can toss them back like a shot and chase it with a sweet drink like juice or something.”

It hits Harry that he gave Y/N very little credit for what she did, but now as he’s looking at something that she’d made specifically with him in mind, that wasn’t just a glorified sleepy time tea, it puts some things in perspective for him. Sure, she’s been a dick to him in the past, but he was a dick too, about her magic. While he isn’t going to start kissing the ground she walks on, he decides then that he’ll be more mindful of her craft. Plus, from the amount of time that they’ve had to spend together in the past two days, she’s tolerable when she isn’t on her high horse about him summoning spirits and ruining the town. She’s even helpful.

“Thank you,” he repeats, “I really mean it, I appreciate this a lot.”

Y/N smiles at him and it’s a smile that he’s never been gifted before. A smile that makes him smile back, as she places her elbow on the table and holds out her pinky toward him -- she’s big on pinky swears, he’s finding.

“We’re looking out for each other, okay? I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine. . .I swear it.”

Harry locks his pinky with hers without a second thought.

#WRITING #WOOOOOOOOO #SPOOKY #YAHTZEE #I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE IT BECAUSE I LOVE IT LOADDS #AND I LOVE YOU LOADS #HAPPY READING :D #HARRY STYLES

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illegal-spiegel · 3 years

Text

Earwig pt.2

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugo x f!reader x Shoto Todoroki Genre: smut Warnings: threesome, spanking, choking, temp play, slight bdsm?, unprotected sex(always wrap it up!), degradation, and I think that’s it??? Summary: After Bakugo and Todoroki hear you talking about them in the locker room, they decide to give you a nice surprise Word Count: 3.5k A/N: CHARACTERS ARE AGED UP. Also, you don’t necessarily have to read part one to understand this but it’ll help you understand some of the comments they make and whatnot

Part One

You giggle and tease the girls as you head out of the locker room, stretching your sore body out. You smile and greet the boys who are already in the class, taking your seat in the middle of the classroom. It gave you a pretty good view of Bakugo but sadly not of Todoroki who sat behind you.

You pull out your phone and just start to do random stuff on it until class starts. You didn’t even realize class was starting until Mr. Aizawa started talking. You snap your head up and look around with furrowed brows. Normally, everyone would be chatting up a storm until the last second. Today though, only the girls were conversing quietly with each other. Most of them don’t sit near each other though, so they had to get up to stand around the classroom.

You look around suspiciously, trying to figure out why some of the boys are acting so weird. You sit behind Kaminari and in front of Kirishima. Normally, they’d be yapping your ear off about a new meme or something ‘manly.’ Today though? Nothing. You can’t turn around to look at Kirishima since class has started, and you’d rather not have Mr. Aizawa thinking you’re not paying attention. Again.

So, you just have to look at what’s in front of you. You can tell Kaminari is in a good mood thanks to his humming. Actually, he’s humming Jiro’s favorite song under his breath and keeps looking to his left at her. She seems to not notice this though since she’s writing down something Mr. Aizawa said.

Maybe you should be paying attention but you’re just too freaked out right now.

Next, you look at Ojiro who sits right in front of Kaminari. You can see his ears are dark red and he’s sitting very stiffly. After observing Ojiro, you look at Aoyama, who is pouting to himself as he stares at Mr. Aizawa, but doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

Yup, something fishy is definitely going on here.

You look from student to student until you reach Deku who is shaking in his seat and is as red as a fire hydrant. You’d be worried about him if it wasn’t for the fact that all the boys are acting weird.

You stare at him for a while, trying to come up with answers to why he and the other boys are acting like this. It’s not all of the boys either, from what you can tell. Koji and Sero seem to be acting like normal. You stare at the windows now, the gears in your brain moving faster than they have in a while.

Movement in front of the window causes you to blink and turn your focus to said movement. You’re met with cocky, crimson eyes who stare at you without hesitation. You stare right back at him, refusing to bow down to the handsome brat.

He suddenly smirks, making your brows furrow in response. He opens his mouth a little to slip his tongue out, taking his sweet time to lick his lips. Your eyes, obviously, move from his eyes to his mouth to watch the little show he’s putting on. This only causes his ego to boost more than it already is but you can’t help it. With you watching, he pulls his tongue back into his mouth before biting his bottom lip.

That’s when it hits you.

They heard! Those nasty, perverted, pigs!

A gasp flies past your lips before you can stop yourself, bringing all eyes to you. Except for Bakugo. He looks away to look back to Mr. Aizawa, who is also staring at you.

“Miss (L/n),” you stand as your name is called, your face as hot as the sun, “you seem quite excited about today’s lesson. Why don’t you tell everyone what you learned last from chapter sixty-nine.”

You flinch a bit at the number, your mind going back to the hallway when you said you’d want to try that with either of the two men you named. You huff and squint your eyes a bit at Mr. Aizawa as you start to recite a few things that you remembered from the reading. As much as you didn’t want to do the reading, you aren’t about to get left behind or have Mr. Aizawa hold this over your head just like every other mistake you make.

“Okay. Sit down,” he says, in what you swear is in a tone filled with boredom, in the middle of your response to his demand, making you shut your mouth and try not to glare at him. You do as you’re told and quickly plop down, crossing your arms over your chest.

You’re going to murder Bakugo and the other boys.

As soon as class is over, Bakugo is practically the first one out the door. Oh, that prick thinks he’s so sneaky and slick. You practically growl as you follow after him as quickly as you can without bringing attention to yourself.

He gets outside before you can stop him, your face getting hotter by the second the angrier you get. You bust through the front doors and search among the many bodies for unruly blond hair. You huff when you don’t see him, your hands clenching at your sides.

You quickly go back in and get your stuff, which you had left in your hurry to catch up to him, before leaving the school to walk the short distance to the dorms. Your eyes widen when you walk into the dorms to see Bakugo leaning against the wall, looking immensely bored. Well, that is until he sees you. A smirk then instantly crawls onto his face as his eyes look you up and down.

Your mood instantly plummets again as you swiftly start to march towards him, your face growing warm again. His smirk turns mischievous as he pushes off the wall and heads towards the elevators. He walks inside just as you reach him and quickly follow him inside, ready to reprimand him for eavesdropping on the girls and to ask who else heard.

“Bakugo-” is all you get out before the elevator doors close and your back is suddenly against the wall. You stare at him in shock before realizing, duh, he knows some of your kinks and what you want him to do to you. He presses his body against yours and then brings his hand to your throat, lightly squeezing it and watching your eyes flutter.

He chuckles lowly as he leans his face close to yours, his nose trailing over your jaw before his lips find your ear. “Well, I sure think I’m packing. Maybe that’s why my ego is so inflated,” he says lowly before nibbling on the lobe of your ear. You whimper softly and arch into him, wanting nothing more than to feel him hard against you.

“You weren’t lying, were you? This really is all you think about, huh? You’re such a dirty whore. I wonder who’d you rather have pounding into you while the other one puts that filthy mouth to good use,” he growls as he starts to grind against you.

A moan escapes you before you can trap it and lock it deep down inside of you. He kisses down your neck and, even then, you can still feel him smirking. “God, I hate you,” you growl, making no effort to push him away or stop him.

Why would you? You’ve fantasized about this almost, if not, every day.

“Oh, it’s not a matter of whether you hate me or not. Either way, you’re still desperate for this coc-”

He’s cut off by the elevator door opening, making him grunt. He pulls away from you but is sure to grab your wrist to drag you to his room. This is when you notice that he is taking you to his room, seeing as how you live on the second floor whereas he lives on the fourth.

He opens his door, practically throws you in, before slamming the door shut behind him. You almost start saying that maybe you two should slow things down when you find Todoroki sitting on the bed. When you lock eyes with him, you almost whimper. He stands up and places his hands into his pockets, his face not showing any emotion but his eyes are practically shining.

Bakugo comes up behind you and pushes his hard-on to your ass, starting to lightly grind against you. “I invited icyhot, hope you don’t mind,” he grumbles in your ear. This time, you do whimper. You don’t have to be facing Bakugo to know he’s grinning that evil grin he does when he’s about to do something bad.

“Well? Do you just plan on watching?” he snaps at Todoroki, making Todoroki huff a bit. He silently walks over and stands right in front of you, looking at Bakugo’s hands on your waist.

“Can I touch you?” he asks softly, looking up to meet your eyes. The fact that he even had to ask is so cute.

“I know you heard us today,” you start, reaching out to run your hands across his broad chest, “I know you heard what I want you to do to me,” you finish in a sultry tone, your tongue coming out to wet your lips. He watches the action before swooping down to connect your lips, a moan escaping you as Bakugo thrusts against your ass harder.

The kiss is messy and sloppy but you wouldn’t want it any other way. You gently pull on his hair, his hands going from your cheeks to slowly going down to your breasts. You gasp into his mouth when he squeezes them, your back arching away from Bakugo to press your chest further into his hands.

You hear Bakugo grunt before sliding his hands up under your shirt, bringing the cloth with him, When his hands meet Todoroki, Todoroki pulls away to allow him to take your shirt off. While Bakugo pulls it off, Todoroki is quick to reach behind you and remove your bra.

As soon as it’s off, Bakugo has his hands on your chest and making you moan with no lips to stop you. Todoroki meets your eyes before leaning down to start kissing down your neck, sucking and biting on random places. By this point, your clit is throbbing and your panties are completely soaked.

“Guys, I’ve been dreaming about this for a while. Can we speed up the foreplay?” you stutter out, your hands tugging at Todoroki’s double-colored strands of hair. He pulls away to look at you once more, panting a bit from his attack on your neck. Once he’s pulled back though, Bakugo is quick to push you forward before shoving you onto the bed.

“What was it you said you liked?” Bakugo asks sarcastically, his hands trailing down your back to your ass that you pushed into the air. “Oh, that’s right,” he says after a moment, acting as if the thought just occurred to him.

You cry out when he spanks you, causing you to arch your back and tightly grip the covers of his bed. “You don’t get to tell us what to do, whore. We are the boss of you, not the other way around.” You mewl lewdly at his words, your mouth watering as you wait for him to say more.

He spanks you again, causing you to moan loudly. You stare up at Todoroki when he moves to the other side of the bed, watching his face as he gently pushes the hair out of your face. “Don’t I need to be quiet? We are right next to Kirishima’s room,” you reason softly, trying to press your thighs together.

At this, Bakugo shoves your bottoms down and spanks you harder this time. This spank though involved a tiny spark from his quirk, making you barely be able to hold back a scream. It hurts but the pain is so delicious that you can’t help but to want another hit.

“I don’t care if he hears it or not. You probably want him to hear you so that he can come join us. Would you like that? Have another man here to fill you up with his cum?” Bakugo growls before spanking your other cheek the same way he hit you last time. You smack your hand over your mouth, tears springing to your eyes.

An animalistic growl comes from him as his free hand reaches forward to snatch your head up by your hair, making you stare up at Todoroki. “Admit it, you slut. You’d like that. Just like how you’re gonna love having me stuffing one of your holes while Todoroki stuffs the other one,” he says darkly.

A guttural moan escapes you as your eyes roll back into your head, your wet flower clenching around nothing. “Look at her. Maybe we should go over and invite him right now,” he threatens.

“Please, fill me up with your coc-”

You cut yourself off with a shrill moan when he spanks you again. You notice then that Todoroki has taken off his clothes and is currently pumping his hard length. Just like you thought, he’s long and thick. You wonder how big he is compared to Bakugo.

You gasp when you feel Bakugo’s length suddenly rubbing against your wet heat. “This what you want, huh? You want this hole stuffed by me, whore?” You nod your head with a whine, leaning your hips back to rub yourself against him. You’re quick to reach back and wrap your hand around his length, almost moaning at how thick and heavy he is in your hand.

You gasp again when your face is suddenly shoved into the mattress while his other hand snatches your hand away from him. “Did I say you can touch me?” he hisses. You feel him get off the bed and walk to somewhere else in the room.

You didn’t dare lift your head from the bed to look.

You inhale sharply when you feel Todoroki’s hands on your head, his fingers gently turning your head to look up at him. “You aren’t acting like the good girl I know you are,” he says softly, his already deep voice sounding lower than usual. You whimper at his words, it being better than anything you’ve ever dreamed. “How was that? Was that ‘deliciously dark’ enough for you?” he teases, a smirk coming to his face. You mewl at this, quickly nodding your head to show him how pleased you are. You just knew he’d talk like that once he’s riled up. You lean your weight on one hand and let the other reach out to him, starting to slide your hand up and down his member.

Your focus is pulled away from him when the bed shifts with Bakugo’s weight, your lip coming between your teeth when he forces your hand away from Todoroki to put them behind your back to tie them. Once your hands are tied up nice and tight, he forces you forward to where your chin is just over the bed. Bakugo has a tall enough bed frame to where you’re face to face with Todoroki’s hard member.

Now that you’re getting a better look, you see a vein protruding on the bottom that runs up his entire length. When your eyes reach the tip, you see precum gathering at the slit, making your mouth water once more.

“Do you think I even have to prep her? I bet she’s stretched out from all the times she’s shoved a dildo up her tight hole while imagining it’s one of us,” Bakugo says to Todoroki, his hand coming down on your right cheek again. Your body jumps with the hit to your already sore ass, a whining moan slipping past your lips. “Say, I wonder who she fantasized about more,” he says to himself as if he’s thinking out loud.

He brings his fingers to your sopping heat, pulling your panties to the side to spread your juices from your dripping hole to your clit. “She’s so wet. She loves the way we’re treating her, icyhot.” You turn your head to look at Todoroki’s face, finding that he’s biting his lip. You shudder as Bakugo takes his sweet time pulling your panties away, a strand of your arousal sticking to your panties as he pulls them down your legs. “God, you’re soaked,” he hisses, dropping the panties to your knees before grabbing your hip tightly with one hand.

The other hand goes back to touching your wetness, going against his idea of shoving himself right into your warmth. You moan when he gathers your arousal on his fingers and starts to rub at your swollen clit again, your eyes fluttering as you finally get some relief to the throbbing nub. With him pleasing you, you felt bad that Todoroki is just standing before you watching.

You shift your head forward and lick a stripe up the vein you were eyeing earlier. He hisses and brings his hands to your head again, his nails lightly digging into your skull as you suckle on his tip. You moan around him when Bakugo slips two fingers into you at once, your mouth going further down Todoroki’s length with each pump of Bakugo’s fingers.

When he adds a third finger, you accidentally deepthroat Todoroki and gag around him. You pull back quickly but keep your mouth around him, your tongue lapping at the head. “Look at you being such a good girl for me,” Todoroki says between pants, his hips starting to lightly thrust.

You hum in response, glad that you’re pleasing him. “She’s not a good girl. She’s anything but. She’s just a nasty little whore that wants us to use her as a sex toy,” Bakugo says behind you as he pulls out his fingers. You pull away from Todoroki’s member to wail when Bakugo finally pushes into you, stretching your walls out more than your fingers or toys ever could. “See? Look at her. This is all she’s good for,” Bakugo growls as he bottoms out before pulling his hips back to just snap them back against your ass.

You cry out in pleasure, your eyes rolling in your head for the nth time. You’re temporarily distracted when Todoroki turns your head back to his member and uses his other hand to grab ahold of his wet shaft. He then presses the head to your lips with a smirk, raising his brow up at you after holding it there waiting for you to open up. You instantly drop your jaw and stick out your tongue, his member sliding along your tongue towards the back of your throat.

You close your mouth around him and let him thrust since you’re having trouble moving with Bakugo pounding into you with each of his thrusts and moving your body. You moan with each of Bakugo’s thrusts, letting Todoroki feel the vibrations and making him grunt each time you do it.

You gasp around Todoroki’s shaft when his member suddenly starts getting really warm, making you become concerned for a moment before you realize what he’s doing. Before it can get too hot, he starts to drop the temperature and cools your mouth with his member until it’s as cold as ice. You moan loudly and clench around Bakugo, feeling Todoroki’s hands start to wander your back and do the same thing his member just did. Seeing Todoroki use his quirk on you, Bakugo decides to use his again.

You scream when Bakugo spanks you harder than ever before with his quirk, your scream thankfully being muffled since your mouth is full. Your scream causes Todoroki’s head to drop back, his mouth falling open as he starts to thrust faster in your mouth. Before you even realize, you’re cumming around Bakugo. Your body shakes a bit from the power of it, your eyes squeezing shut.

“That’s it. Cum with me stuffed in your tight hole. I can feel you pulsing around me,” Bakugo hisses, his hips starting to smack against your ass quicker and quicker. Todoroki starts to push deeper into your mouth, making him deepthroat you with every thrust. You moan when you can, your walls clenching around Bakugo and making your entrance cling onto him every time he pulls out.

It didn’t take long for Todoroki to shoot his load down your throat, some of his seed slipping past your lips and goes down your chin and neck. He stays in your mouth for a moment before slowly pulling out, your lips catching any cum that was stuck to his shaft.

Bakugo cums next, pulling out just in time to cum on your sore ass. He lets out a guttural moan as he does, his head tilted back when you turn to look at him. When he finishes, your legs are quick to give out and you slide them to lay down flat on the bed.

That is the best sex that you’ll ever have in your life, you’re sure.

“Next time, we are switching holes,” Todoroki says, leaving no room for questions.

“Fine. Ten minutes and you’ll get your turn,” Bakugo grumbles as he lays down on his back next to you. You grunt, both too tired to go another round but also too impatient to wait any longer to have them again.

┍━━━━━━━✿━━━━━━━┑

Again, characters are aged up

MASTERLIST

More with Bakugo

I lowkey wanna write a part three-

Tag List: ik some of you didn’t asked to be added but you commented on the first part so I figured you’d wanted to be made aware of the second part. Let me know if you want to be removed :) @bobasuki, @toxicfirewolf2020, @whoreforouterbanks, @on-jah-bruh, @eternal-0ve, @todorokishotolover, @lovemythos, @coolbabydumpling, @cathwritestragediesnotsins, @jabby16, @spitfyrefae, @living-the-husbando-life, @nikatastic, @courtneypaigemartin, @kac-chowsballs, @the-sander-fander, @dweebbblog, @inumorph, @earthfce, @m-jkttyl, @psicotropicwanderlust, @spicyhokage, @lifudesuka, @woahcalmdownjamal, @notyourmommy, @shotos-bitch-babie, @cece-lives-here, @nojammsss03, @honneymusterd, @fee-btheweeb, @an-unlikely-ghost, @shadowdreas, and @astroepiphany

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

Note

I may or may not have just sent the 3 word challenge in my real account instead of anon... I'm sorry. Please don't answer there. :)

When you post, post answering here please.

Again, much love,

📚🌻

Don't worry dear! Your identity shall remain a secret 🥰 Here's yet another fic with my Resident Evil OC: Gwen Winters (she’s an adult guys, don’t worry. However this is still an Older Man/Younger Woman relationship)

The words dear 📚🌻 Anon gave me in their previous ask were: Unruly, endurable and system. Please enjoy!

What happens in the gym....

Pairing: Chris Redfield x Female OC

Warnings: Swearing, Spoiler Free 😊

Genre: Angsty Romance

“Sure, throw me in the fire like you always do, Leon!“ Chris snaps, clenching his fists tightly as he glares at his best friend while the two stand in the dimly lit gym.

“Chris, you’re a BSAA captain, for the love of God! You should know better than to complain about something as little as this!“ Leon, while significantly calmer tone and demeanor-wise, is glaring daggers of his own.

“Why me, damn it?! And why her?!“ Chris is not done with his attempts to get out of the situation Leon’s trying to land him in and his partner’s honestly done with it.

“And why not?! You see the same potential I see, why would it be so hard to train her? She’s a quick learner, she’s disciplined when she wants to be and she’s already skilled to a certain degree. You’ve made soldiers out of total wimps before, why is she such a hassle to you?!“

“Because she’s disciplined when she wants to be and I guarantee she won’t want to when she’s around me. She’s unruly, selfish, arrogant and a Chris-phobe. I’m telling you, she hates me!“

It’s about time Leon’s had enough of this conversation. To be honest, he was done with it as soon as it started but he stayed, thinking he’d be able to change Chris’ mind but seeing as how this is a hopeless case, he’s just been wasting his time. “Does she? Or are you projecting your hate for her onto her?” Slinging his duffel bag containing his training gear over his shoulder, Leon finally makes that realization that these are ten minutes of his life he’ll never get back and storms out of the gym without another word.

Chris doesn’t attempt to stop him, in fact, he’s relieved he left. He sighs, silently hating himself for all the shit he said and how he meant none of it. It was all hard bullshit and he doesn’t know whether to be thankful or disappointed that Leon didn’t realize. Either way, he’s been cleared of possible suspicion, even if training the newest BSAA rookie still remains as his task.

Gwen Winters, she’s such a fucking handful. One cannot tell if it’s because she’s angry with the world, angry with herself or just straight up picked up on the habits of the family that took her in when she was rescued from Raccoon City where she was held as an experiment hamster. A chemistry project basically. Ethan and Mia were recovering from the events back in Louisiana at the time, still probably are, that is not some shit you get over, so they thought having another person in the house would help them. And help Gwen did. See, Gwen isn’t a handful with everyone. In fact, she’s a real sweetheart and Chris knows it too, despite his bogus claims. He knows she’s got a heart and soul of gold and is built with the will of a BSAA soldier already. All she needs is a bit better fighting skills and she’s good to go.

He sees how she acts with everyone around him. She’s been quick to make friends with Jill and his sister Claire and she’s even got Leon’s liking and trust which is hella hard to get, especially after all the shit with Ada. She’s overall a super sweet and lovely girl, even with him from time to time. He’s seen her welcoming, friendly smiles whenever he stops by the Winters’ home. He’s heard her laugh at the jokes he rarely cracks.

Then why does she act like she hates him so often? And why does he claim he hates her?

Chris is snapped back to reality by the sound of rough impact. It’s a very distinct noise, one he places immediately: the sound of fists hitting a punching bag. It’s the middle of the night, almost midnight actually, and knowing how lazy the soldiers on his team are, he can only assume it’s either his sister or Jill, given that Leon just left. However, they’ve had people sneak in to train for free before, so it’d be for the best if he went to check who was releasing some pent up energy on the poor punching bag. Judging by the intensity of the punches being thrown, sounds like the person might be angry as well.

And they have every right to be. Because they are Gwen.

Chris’ face goes a bit red at the sight of the infuriated rookie giving the punching bag her all, punishing it the way she’d want to do to her superior she just heard call her all the names she hates being referred by.

“Winters I-“

“Unruly?“ Punch “Selfish?” Punch “Arrogant?” Punch

She stills herself, sighing and wiping the droplets of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, “You say all that and expect me not to be a Chris-phobe?” She lets out a bitter laugh, rolling her shoulders before continuing her wrath over the piece of equipment she’s threatening to destroy. She hasn’t spared him a single look yet, something he’s rather grateful for because the last thing he wants to see is whatever her gaze is hiding right now. “I’ll talk to Leon.” She says, her voice leveled and breathy, far from the pissed off tone she was just using. This calmness is a lot scarier though. “I’ll tell him I don’t want you to be my trainer. To be perfectly clear, I never wanted you to train me in the first place. I’m just not the type to complain, you know. I’m not picky. Beggers can’t be choosers. I take what I can get. And you were all I was offered, but...” she trails off, delivering a particularly hard punch, “It’s not gonna work. I may not be picky, but I know when to draw the line. I know when I deserve better.”

“Kid, you really have no idea what the case really is here.“ He attempts desperately, taunted by the thought of acting on his instincts and approaching her even if that means being the recipient of one of those hard punches.

“You know, I’m strong. I’m skilled. I can hold my own in a fight quite nicely. I’m endurable. I’m not afraid to work my ass off and sweat and pant like a dog after workouts. There’s not a line I wouldn’t cross, but you still choose to make me feel lesser than any soldier you’ve ever come across, that’s really lovely of you, Captain Redfield.“

“Winters, please...“

“It’s ok, I won’t tell Ethan and Mia. I’m sure they’ll send you to hell over it. I’m not petty like that.“

He’s had enough. He’s had enough of hearing that hurt tone in her voice. He’s done hearing these words she’s so certain are true but aren’t. He’s done lying to her and to himself. Before he can even think twice about it, he grabs her by the arms gently but firmly, turning her to face him despite her hostile attempts to free herself from his hold like a wild animal caught in a trap. He’s surprised when she relaxes, probably seeing that as a quicker way out of the situation rather than struggling though if she tried to free herself any longer he would’ve probably let her go.

“Fucking hell, Gwen, listen to me.“ He looks her dead in the eyes, catching onto the spark of shock created by his use of her first name. But he also sees something else, something that looks dangerously a lot like tears. He knows she won’t cry, especially not in front of him, but knowing that he’s the cause behind the welling of those crystal droplets in her always shiny, always smiling eyes breaks him. When she doesn’t look away nor protest, he continues, “I can’t be your captain. I can’t be your trainer. I can’t be any of that. I’m a strictly professional man, and it’d be highly unprofessional of me to take you in as my soldier.”

“But why?“ She’s fully aware she sounds like a whiny kid - exactly how she thinks he envisions her sometimes - but she couldn’t care less. She wants and needs answers. She knows she won’t be able to fall asleep or keep coming back to the training center if she doesn’t get them.

It’s blatantly clear this is far from easy for Chris. His first instinct is to look away, let go of her, run away like he always does - not that she’d let him do such a thing but still. He’s finds the words impossible to spit out yet he oh so desperately feels the need to get them out of his system. And so, he gathers all the strength within him and finally forces himself to say it.

“Because a captain isn’t supposed to look at a soldier the way I look at you.“

Sure, it sounds cryptic as heck but he has no doubt she’ll catch on. Gwen is a smart and sharp girl, among many other things. She confirms this when barely three seconds after he’s said it, he notices her eyes widening

“Sir, I-“

“Don’t.“ He says simply, a small, regretful smile playing across his lips as his hand slides down her arm to take hold of hers, “I just admitted my dirtiest secret to you and you are still gonna remind me how unprofessional I am by using my title, Kid?“

She purses her lips, the shock momentarily replaced by her signature mild glare, “Well, you just admitted your biggest secret to me and yet you still choose to call me ‘Kid’, huh?”

He chuckles, letting his other hand repeat the movements of the first, “Sorry, force of habit.” His thumbs brush against her knuckles briefly as his head falls, his gaze fixating on where their bodies are connected, “You know, I didn’t tell you this to get myself any pity or anything. I just wanted you to understand and....wanted to get it off my chest. Ethan will kill me if he finds out, won’t he?” He suddenly asks, regaining the courage to look up at her once again.

She giggles, “Who says he’s gonna find out?”

Chris bites the inside of his cheek, shaking his head, “You’re right, there’s nothing really to find out abo-”

Gwen has never been a chatter nor can she tolerate when people beat around the bush so she’s quick to cut them off sometimes, no matter how rude that may seem or sound. However, just to clarify, her chosen method of cutting a person off isn’t always kissing them. Just saying - this is a special situation requiring special methods.

Taken aback by the sudden feeling of her lips on his, Chris’ eyes close automatically but not even a second later he responds to the kiss properly: wrapping his arms around Gwen’s waist as her hands travel up to cup his face. The kiss is short - too short if either of them is to be asked - but it’s worth all the words they didn’t say despite wanting to.

When they pull away, Gwen gives him a mischievous smile, “Now he could find out about that and then shit would go south. That’d suck, wouldn’t it Chris?“

He’s only ever heard her say his name twice, once in passing conversation with Claire and once earlier when she paraphrased his term ‘Chris-phobe’, both time spoken with some dose of dislike he now realizes was a cover-up all along. Turns out the two are a lot more alike than they initially thought. Regardless, hearing her say his name with fondness instead of bitterness makes his heart flutter, his body yearn to have her closer, his lips wanting to be in contact with hers again. But he’s a patient and self-controlled man, he’s nothing if not willpower sculpted in a human body, so he keeps his distance, waiting for her to pick the moves, waiting for her to make the decisions just like she’s his captain.

“Big time.“ He manages to say, voice coarse all of a sudden, barely able to leave his throat. “So it stays here, right?”

She giggles again, bringing her lips within an inch or two away from his, taunting him, threatening to break his self-control, “What happens in the gym stays in the gym, Redfield.”

Golden rules of discretion, ones he mustn’t break ever. Especially not when his captain - Captain Gwen Winters - holds so much power over him.

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alpacaparkaseok · 3 years

Text

Happy Holidays - BTS Style

OT7 Imagine/Reactions

Hey guys! I thought it’d be fun to to an ot7 holiday oneshot with all the members! So the following are seven different prompts from my prompt list with the seven members! Enjoy, and happy holidays!

18. “Why are you still up?” - Jin

Christmas Day had passed and gone, you were sitting in the middle of the front room staring up at the lights on the Christmas tree. Tomorrow would mean it was time to take everything down and prepare for the new year.

“Why are you still up?”

Jin enters the room wearing his new fluffy robe you had bought him more as a joke than anything; but he insisted on wearing it all day.

You shrug, keeping your eyes glued on the beautiful Christmas tree. “Just enjoying the last few minutes of Christmas.”

Jin comes up beside you, settling on the floor and sitting shoulder to shoulder. Grabbing a blanket from off the sofa he wraps it around the two of you, pulling you into his chest.

“Mind if I sit with you?” Jin’s voice is soft as he studies your face, visibly relaxing when he sees that you aren’t upset. Just contemplative.

Snuggling in closer to him, you laugh lightly. “Depends...did you bring snacks?”

Jin sighs, his hand delving into the deep pockets of his robe and pulling out a chocolate orange. “You’re lucky I love you.”

Sneaking a peck to his cheek, you giggle at how his cheeks redden in the dim light of the room. “Love you, too.”

20. “Merry Christmas, bub.” - Yoongi

It’s no secret that Min Yoongi doesn’t enjoy waking up early in the morning, and Christmas is no exception. That’s what he told you last night as you rolled out a sleeping bag in the front room, deeming it a perfect night to sleep before the Christmas tree.

You realized fairly soon that the hardest part wasn’t convincing him to sleep out on the floor - it was getting him to wake up in the morning.

You’d been patient, waiting until at least 7 before trying to wake him up. At first, he didn’t even budge. You poked and prodded at his puffy cheeks until he groaned, turning the other way.

“Yoooongi,” you coo, laughing as he dives further into his sleeping bag. “Min Yoooongi!”

Yoongi groans again, kicking at his sleeping bag until he can see your smiling face. He frowns back up at you.

“Whadda you want?”

A glance at the time shows that it’s already 7:30, obviously time to get things rolling. “It’s Christmas, Yoongs! Get up, we’ve got to eat and open presents! We’re supposed to be over at Jin’s by 10-”

Yoongi wraps his arms around you, pulling you down with him until you’re squished up against his chest. “Five more minutes.”

“But-”

Tipping your chin up, Yoongi dusts a kiss over the tip of your nose. “Merry Christmas, bub.”

Rolling your eyes, you give in, already beginning to keep time in your head. “Yeah yeah. Merry Christmas.”

6. “Snuggle season is the best season.” - Hoseok

“Is there any left?”

Hoseok peeks inside the giant pot of hot chocolate. “Yeah, you want a refill?”

I nod, handing over my giant mug that he gifted me earlier in the day. Hoseok makes a show of ladling the chocolatey drink into my mug, yelping when a bit hops out and nearly lands on his new sweater.

“It’s out to get me!” He declares, handing me the drink with a wary glance. I can’t help but laugh, shrugging as I walk away. We’ve just started “The Polar Express” as a nice way to wrap up our Christmas.

Hoseok steps over the couch from the back, making me hiss as he plops down beside me, nearly making me spill. “Hobiii,’ I mumble, carefully setting my hot chocolate down on the side table.

“Whoops,” he nuzzles in close to me. “Sorry.”

The movie unfolds before us as we watch on and comment on different things we enjoy about the movie.

“See, this is why winter is the best season,” I say. “I mean, what other season is so cozy? Just sitting and watching feel-good movies, drinking hot chocolate-”

“...snuggling....” Hobi mumbles under his breath, keeping both eyes glued to the screen.

I raise my eyebrows. “...yes. Snuggling. But you can snuggle whenever.”

Hoseok shrugs, snuggling in even closer to me. “Yeah, but this is the season of snuggles.”

Laughing, I brush his hair away from his eyes and watch as they widen as the movie. “Is that your main point for why winter in the best? How on earth would you defend that in a debate?”

Giving me a quick glance before returning his attention to the movie, I refrain from laughing as Hoseok is clearly a bit embarrassed.

“It’s easy. Snuggle season is the best season.”

Dropping my head against his shoulder, I go back to watching the movie. “Can’t argue with that.”

I can feel Hobi’s grin even though I can’t see him. “My point exactly.”

2. “Do you think anybody has ever used an ice skate as a murder weapon?” - Namjoon

Sitting amidst the piles of wrapping paper and ribbons, I look across the room to where Namjoon sits in a similar situation.

“Merry Christmas.”

Namjoon grins, grabbing a garbage bag and starting to shove the wrapping paper inside. “Merry Christmas.”

It’s quiet today, we’ll be meeting up with everyone else later in the day. For now, I’m content to sprawl out on the sofa with my new book that Namjoon got me. It’s a riveting true story, one that deals with betrayal, plot twists, and adrenaline inducing scenes.

Namjoon sets up camp on the opposite sofa, immediately diving into his new book as well. It’s a self-help book that he’s been going on and on about for weeks - he made it all too easy to pick out his Christmas gift.

The low tones of Christmas music playing from our speaker are the only sounds besides the occasional rustle of a page being turned. My book takes me on a ride, and before I know it hours have passed and I’m right in the middle of the action.

Namjoon breathes deep as though reviving from a deep sleep, looking over at me from where he lays on the couch. “We should probably get going.”

Reluctantly setting my book down, I nod. “Does this mean that I actually have to get ready?” Namjoon throws back his head and laughs, completely understanding the sentiment as he runs a hand through his unruly hair.

“Nope. I’m not going to, at least. You look great anyways.”

A few warm layers and a cold car later, Namjoon and I sing along to a few songs on the radio as we head across town. As the songs begin to change, I fall silent. Coming to a stop at a red light, I begin to ponder my book.

My face must reflect my contemplative state perfectly, because Namjoon chuckles beside me. “What are you thinking about?”

Blinking at him, I frown. “Do you think anybody has ever used an ice skate as a murder weapon?”

Now it’s Namjoon’s turn to blink at me. The light turns green, so I continue to drive, starting to wonder if I sounded a bit strange.

Once we’ve pulled into Jin’s driveway, I turn off the car and face Namjoon. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

Namjoon lets out a startled laugh, looking at me with bright eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t even realize that I never answered you. I was...busy.”

Furrowing my brows I hop out of the car, Namjoon linking my arm through his as we make our way up the sidewalk.

“Busy? With what?”

Namjoon’s head is pointed down as he grins, his dimple making an appearance. “I was busy falling in love with you all over again.”

My eyes grow wide before I burst out into laughter, Namjoon following suit. “You love me because of murder?”

Namjoon nods his head. “Definitely. What more could I want?”

Rolling my eyes, I see that everyone is already inside Jin’s apartment. “You...wow. We’re messed up.”

Namjoon winks at me. “In the best way.”

7. “Your toes are like ice blocks! Noooo stop touching me!!” - Jimin

“That. Was. Amazing.”

Jimin comes huffing and puffing inside the house, tearing off his beanie and scarf as he spots me. Taehyung and Hoseok trail in after him.

“I assume you had fun?”

Jimin laughs, his entire face lighting up as he begins to recount everything that happened on their sledding adventure.

“...and then Tae fell off his sled and literally rolled down the rest of the mountain! I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life.” Indeed, he’s in the process of wiping tears from his eyes as he finishes his tale, the other two boys having disappeared into the kitchen where the promise of food proved to be too much of a temptation.

I chuckle at the mere sight of Jimin, his cheeks still red from the cold and his eyes wide. “Sounds like a good afternoon.”

He nods, sliding onto the couch and laying down. He stretches his legs until he’s pushing against mine. I immediately hiss and retract my feet as his cold toes brush up against me.

“Your toes are like ice blocks!” I shriek, only making Jimin tuck his toes under my legs in an effort to warm them up. “Noooo stop touching me!!” Jimin’s evil laugh rings in my ears as I glare at him, promptly standing up to go to a different couch.

“Oh no you don’t!” Jimin shouts, launching off the couch and pulling me back down in a pile on top of him. “If you really love me, you’ll help me warm up.”

I snort. “Put some socks on! I’m not sacrificing my body heat for you!”

“Wait, so you don’t love me?” Jimin’s puppy dog eyes are hard to ignore; especially when he still has me locked in his arms.

“Gahhh you know that’s not what I-”

“Well then say it if you-”

“C’mon Chim, just go put some socks on!”

Jimin shakes his head, chuckling. “I’m alright like this, thanks.”

Wriggling around until I finally break free of his grasp, I roll onto the floor with a triumphant shout. Jumping up and sprinting into Jimin’s room, I hurry back with a pair of thick socks, taking the opportunity to throw them at Jimin who remains on the couch.

He shouts when the socks hit him on the side of the head. “Hey! What was that for?”

Coming up behind the couch, I begin playing with his messy hair. “That’s how I say ‘I love you’. Didn’t you like it?”

Jimin laughs as he slips his socks on. “It was perfect. But maybe we could take a less violent approach next time?”

I shrug. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

19. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find fresh flowers in the middle of winter?” - Taehyung

You’ve been out searching for over two hours, so your state of mind isn’t necessarily the best when you finally roll into the apartment at nearly ten o’clock at night.

Taehyung tends to be spontaneous - he has an affinity for sending you out on random adventures at the most inconvenient time - but tonight it was just cold enough to have you in a frustrated mood by the time you got back.

Kicking your shoes off in the entryway, you’re just about to yell out that you’ve returned when you realize that all is not as you left it.

The lights are darker, soft Christmas music is playing, and is that a poinsettia on the dining table?

Just as you’re standing there in wonder, Taehyung rounds the corner. He wearing a deep green sweater, just nice enough to tip you off.

“Ah, you found some flowers!” He gushes, rushing over to you and taking the beautiful flowers that you just bought from your grasp. When he’d begged you earlier to go out and buy some fresh flowers, you certainly didn’t expect to be returning to this.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find fresh flowers in the middle of winter?” You ask, still a little angry that Tae just sent you on a wild goose chase all around Seoul. Wandering into the dining room as though in a dream, the air is effectively knocked out of you when you see just what he’s prepared.

Taehyung’s voice drifts in from the kitchen, where he’s putting the flowers in a vase. “I know, that’s why I sent you away! I knew it’d take you a while, and I had to get everything set up.”

It’s a wonder that he was able to get everything set up and ready to go in just a couple of hours. The entire dining room is decked out in candles, beautiful placements, and a few wrapped presents lying around.

“Where’s everyone else?” You wonder aloud. After all, this is the shared apartment between all seven boys. Taehyung brushes past you, standing before the table and debating whether he should replace the poinsettia with the fresh flowers or leave it be.

“Oh, they’re gone tonight. I convinced them to...get lost.”

You can’t help but laugh, your frustration from earlier dissolving as you watch Taehyung place the fresh flowers on a side table.

“Ok, the food will be here any minute-”

“Tae.”

The man in question turns to face you, pure innocence spelled across his face. “Yes?”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh,” Taehyung chuckles, realizing that he’s kept you in the dark. “Right. Well, I just wanted to do something nice with you. For Christmas. Before we have to leave and I won’t get to see you.”

You heart melts at his words, and you follow him to sit down at the table. “So you did all of this?” He nods. “It’s amazing, Tae.”

“You really think so?”

You nod. “I know so. Thank you, darling.”

Taehyung nods, opening his mouth but the sound of a knock on the door cutting him off. “Oh, that must be the takeout!” Taehyung scurries off, leaving you in a fit of laughter as you realize that Taehyung, for all his fancy tendencies, is still just Tae.

The memory of the two of you eating cheap takeout on fine china is a memory you’ll keep for a long time.

5. “Where were you?” “Building a snow fort, duh.” - Jungkook

It’s freezing. Not the freezing that people say when they want to complain about how cold it is outside. Those people are weak. Those are the people that decide that they’d better stay inside because they can’t handle the slightest bit of cold.

No, today is actually freezing. Like, you think your toes my be amputated if you stay out here for much longer.

Huffing, you pull out your phone to see if you’ve received a text from Jungkook. You haven’t. A quick check at your conversation shows you the same thing: Jungkook telling you that he’ll be right out, and to wait for him beside the back entrance.

Well, you’ve been waiting for several minutes now outside the back entrance of the Bighit building, and you’re pretty sure you’d rather go inside and risk exposing your entire relationship to the world rather than dying a slow, cold death out here.

You’re in the middle of contemplating what your final words should be when you hear Jungkook’s unmistakable laugh from behind you.

“You look like you're freezing!”

Whirling around, you see the man that has put you through all of this suffering wading out of the tall snowbank, his beanie pulled down low over his ears.

“Where were you?” You mumble as your teeth chatter. Jungkook rushes over to you, rubbing your arms in an attempt to warm you up.

“Building a snow fort, duh.”

Oh, today might be the day you seriously consider murder. “Jeon Jungkook, I’ve been dying out here waiting for you! You couldn’t just-”

Jungkook shushes you with his woolen mitten, grinning at you like you’re confessing your love for him and not reprimanding him.

“It’s warm inside the snow fort.”

You blink, your train of thought shifting gears. “Does your snow fort take deliveries?”

Jungkook laughs, looping his arm around your shoulders and pulling you along. “Oh, absolutely. Wanna check it out?”

Giving in, you sigh. “Yeah.”

“It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You still mad at me for making you wait?”

“...ask me again after I’ve eaten.”

Jungkook laughs, guiding you toward his snow fort and promising to call up some takeout as soon as possible.

Merry Christmas!

masterlist

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hatterstan-shameblog · 3 years

Note

Here is the first one

Second :D

And last..he's looking at you 👀💦

ALRIGHT you know WHAT—

There’s…a lot going on here. So much so, that I have decided to create

CONTEXT

for these three images that is

COMPLETELY FAKE

because I think it’ll be a fun writing exercise. kind of a cringe move on my part, but consider: i have fun making up ridiculous lies about characters who don’t exist in real life.

(which is how I’m treating these, by the way. yes, they are pictures of kaneko nobuaki, but for my purposes, they are NOT actually him. they are distinct fictional characters who are not real.)

so if you’re feeling adventurous skip below the cut and watch me break it down:

Image 1: Accidental “Date” Makes Cousin’s Wedding Less Terrible Than Originally Expected

The year is 1999. Your cousin (who you are not particularly close to) is getting married…on a cruise ship. Your mother insists you attend. You insist upon spending 90% of your time sipping margaritas on the deck and flipping through the latest issue of Marie Claire while trying desperately not to think about the fact that you are surrounded by nothing but open ocean.

One of the (very drunk) bridesmaids tries to toss you a beach ball because you have been, and I quote: like, a total bummer this whole time. She misses. It hits the person next to you in the face. Great. Awesome. You think: well now who’s being, like, a total bummer?

Luckily the person who got hit in the face laughs the entire thing off. He says your friends seem…’lively.’ You say that’s pretty rich coming from a guy who looks like a rejected member of ‘The Clash.’ He insists that he left them, not the other way around.

You slip into conversation. You tell him that you’re here for a wedding. He offers his condolences. You accept them. He says he actually likes weddings—something about two people making a life-changing commitment speaks to him on a soul-level. That and the open bar, of course.

You suggest he crash the wedding. He says he’s not sure if he can make it—there’s a shuffleboard tournament that evening that he would just hate to miss, plus the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest is waiting on his bedside table just begging to be opened. You say that’s perfectly understandable, but, if he suddenly finds himself caught up on the latest All My Children gossip, he can meet you back here at four.

Surprise, surprise: he shows up. He’s wearing the same shirt he was before, but buttoned up this time—and with one of the most hideous neckties you’ve ever seen, which he apparently borrowed from the kind old man next door. Instead of complimenting his attire (because it is truly un-compliment-able), you take the opportunity to mention that this is a Titanic-themed wedding. He says that having a Titanic-themed wedding on a cruise ship is “kind of fucked up” and you solemnly agree.

Everyone is very surprised and pleased to see that you’ve brought a date—even the bride, who tells you that you’re “just like Jack and Rose.” You agree, much to her delight…until you say that, if the ship goes down, you also won’t share the door and let him freeze to death in the icy water. He insists he’d be the guy who jumps off the ship and hits his leg on the propellor—that’s his favorite part of the whole movie, and it’d be an honor to re-enact the scene.

The wedding is…a wedding. Vows, toasts, pictures—and you’re sipping champagne through the entire thing. The two of you spend the evening getting completely wasted and telling everyone a different story about just who your ‘mystery date’ is. Highlights include: the captain’s unruly son whose been tasked with following in his father’s sea-faring footsteps; professional cave-diver who discovered a new species of slug and is spending his reward money on a nice vacation; head of marketing who gives all those clever names to the nail polishes at OPI; the guy who folds everyone’s towels into animal shapes.

You end up where you started: on neighboring lounge chairs, with a margarita, and talking to this stranger who has recently crossed into “acquaintance” territory. You chat about how “My Heart Will Go On” is actually a good song, and he promises not to tell anyone that you said that. He also says that this is the best Titanic-themed cruise ship wedding he’s ever been to, and he can’t wait until somebody decides to do Jaws.

Eventually, you both stagger back to your rooms with promises of seeing each other at breakfast. Unfortunately, you have the worst hangover of your life the next morning and even the thought of ‘breakfast’ makes you want to roll over and die, so you don’t manage to stumble out of bed until it’s time to disembark.

You see him at port, and you each offer each other a little wave before going your separate ways. Six weeks later, you get a Polaroid of the two of you together, sitting at the bar and laughing at something that must have been very, very hilarious.

You don’t remember most of what happened that night, but you remember it was not as terrible as it could have been.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Image 2: Extremely Weird Guy On The Street Has You Questioning Your Sanity

It’s 6:00 in the morning—a truly terrible time to be awake, but a necessary evil. Your flight leaves at 10, and since it’s an international thing, you want to make sure you get there in plenty of time to get to your gate (and maybe sample all the fancy perfumes you can’t afford at one of those high-end stores that are always in airports.)

The streets are mostly empty, save for a few random pedestrians and a handful of passed-out salarymen snoozing on the curb. The sky a rainy gray-blue as the sun tries to rise behind the springtime cloud cover—it’s no doubt going to be another dismal day, as is common during this time of year. Hopefully there’s not too much turbulence on your flight…

You stop at a crosswalk, waiting for the little walking man signal to show up on the light across the way. You’re soon joined by another person—a man in a soft-looking jacket who supplies you with a small “good morning” bob of his head. You respond in kind, throwing in a small smile for good measure. It’s nice that he too understands that it’s entirely too early to be having any kind of conversation, even if it is just a simple verbal greeting between strangers on a street corner.

The light changes, and you both begin your trek across the street. Your fellow walker is faster than you—or, more likely, has longer legs and, ergo, a longer stride than your own—and is nearly halfway across by the time you get your wheeled suitcase over the curb. He seems decent enough. You hope he’s going somewhere nice.

It’s then that you make the mistake of looking up. It would have been much better if you had just continued watching the white painted lines on the road and thinking about how it reminds you of piano keys—and how you hated the six months of piano lessons your parents forced you to take in the first grade.

But no. You noticed someone walking towards you, and you just had to look up.

The first thing you notice is a rainbow tie-dye shirt. The second thing you notice is that the rainbow tie-dye shirt is on a very cheerful looking gentleman, who seemed to be bobbing his head in time with a song only he could hear.

The third thing you notice—and this one’s the real kicker—is the large blue-and-green reptile sitting on his shoulder. It’s bulging eyes are hooded in pleasure as it’s red-pink tongue darts out to eat the green something—maybe a grape or a small piece of melon?—from the rainbow tie-dye man’s hand. It is nothing short of a spectacle, honestly, and you feel a piece of your sanity evaporate.

The rainbow tie-dye man continues on, uncaring of your confused stare at his strange pet. You even turn around to make sure that you weren’t somehow hallucinating, and sure enough, there is definitely some kind of creature draped over this stranger’s shoulder. It’s tail even sways in time with the man’s steps, which is both cute and confusing.

Because it would not do to stand in the middle of the street all day, considering the existence of rainbow tie-dye man and his exotic pet, you do the only thing you can do: turn back around and continue on your journey. You need a coffee. Maybe with an extra shot of espresso, after witnessing whatever the hell that was. Something to set you right again.

“Was that…?”

The other man—the soft-coat long-stride one—is speaking low enough as to not draw attention, but loud enough for you to hear as you make your way towards the sidewalk. His expression reads ‘concerned, but trying not to show it’ which you suppose is the polite and mature way of handling the situation.

“…an iguana? Yeah,” you answer him, “I saw it too.”

The man’s brow furrows. His mouth puckers into a small frown as he considers…well, something.

“…Okay, then,” he concludes, shrugging his shoulders, “Hell of a way to start the day.”

“Yeah.”

And you both continue on your way. He turns left at the next intersection, you turn right—but even though your paths may now be different, you will forever share an unbreakable bond over the fantastical sight you’ve witnessed today.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Image 3: Near Death Experience At Open Mic Night

You are not a poet.

Well, not professionally, anyways. You’ve been known to dabble in the written word, often scribbling little snippets of rhyme in a notebook over your lunch break or tapping a verse or two into the notes app on your phone. It a kind of outlet, you suppose—a way to keep the creative energy that bubbles inside of you from boiling over.

It’s also worth mentioning that you are not a confident public speaker. Not since that unfortunate incident in the third grade where you forgot the single line you had in the school play and ran off stage, tears streaming down your face and—actually, no, you’re not going to think about that right now. Or ever again, hopefully.

So when your (tipsy) coworkers decide that it’s a good idea to push you onto the stage at the local dive bar’s open mic night—while shouting at you to “read the one about the night-blooming jasmine”—you freeze up. There are at least seven strangers staring at you, expectation rising with every passing second of your inaction. It’s nerve-wracking in the way that the third-grade incident was not, and you gulp against the nervousness that rises in your throat.

Shaking hands scroll frantically through your phone, looking for the requested poem—and after a few agonizing moments, you manage to find it. Your voice cracks rather embarrassingly as you begin to read, trying your damndest to get the words out right so you can slink back to the bar and drown the rest of the night in Chardonnay.

Everything is going well—or, at least, as well as can be expected—until you notice that the room is suddenly feeling very hot. That’s the last coherent thought you have before the room goes dark and everything falls silent.

Next thing you know, you’re staring at the ceiling. A man who you do not know is leaning over you, and his mouth is moving—oh, he’s probably trying to say something to you, but it’s very difficult to tell what he’s saying over the throbbing pain in the back of your head.

You ask him if you’re dead. It’s a possibility after all, that you’ve somehow died and landed yourself in some kind of special public-speaking hell. That’s what this feels like, anyways.

The man says no, you are not dead. You say ‘dammit’ in response. He tries to hold back laughter, offering to help you up by extending his hand. You take it and—ouch, ugh, ew, going from laying to standing is not a fun experience.

You thank him (albeit awkwardly) for helping you up, and he insists that ‘it’s cool.’ Passing out in front of an audience is not even remotely cool, but you nod and thank him again, anyways.

Before you’re able to converse with the helpful stranger any further, your coworkers have come to collect you. You are whisked away by someone from accounting, who offers to escort you home—an offer you gladly accept, very excited to leave the site of your failure behind you.

Safe to say, you never go back to that particular bar again.

#writings and such #thought you’d get me with a thirst post WELL I JUST THREW DOWN AN UNO REVERSE CARD BAYBEEEEE #‘he’s looking at you’ YOU TRYNA MAKE ME BLUSH CUZ ITS WORKIN OKAY???#fun fact: the second one was inspired by MULTIPLE real-life events #can’t wait to wake up tomorrow morning and regret this <3

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hotcheri · 3 years

Text

Always Something There to Remind Me (a Jen/Khalil Black Lightning fanfic)

DISCLAIMER: I own none of the Black Lightning characters. They solely belong to DC Comics and the CW Network. This is just my take on what could have happened after the show ended.

Prologue

Khalil's POV

They were meditating when TC crept into Khalil's mindscape like a thief in the night.

Well, at least, Khalil was meditating. He loved to empty his mind of all thoughts and focus on his breathing, relishing the mental stillness and the sense of peace he didn't have in his normal life.

Painkiller sat to the side of the mental dojo like he always did whenever Khalil was centering himself, a mocking sneer twisting his lips up as Khalil tried to ignore the rage that was baking off his mind twin like a rabid fever.

Painkiller was always angry, and the people he was mostly enraged at were the Pierces. Jen, to be exact. They lived in Painkiller's head rent free, and since Khalil shared the same mind as him, and almost all of his thoughts, the image of Jen was never far from Khalil. Pain in the ass Jen, who also happened to be Khalil's first love. What a mind fuck to love someone with all your heart while part of you needed to kill her and was in pure agony every second she was alive. Khalil didn't need anyone to tell him about mind fucks, having Painkiller relentlessly prowling through his mind was more than enough.

Every time TC appeared in Khalil's mindscape, Painkiller leapt up from his seat and started pacing back and forth in a tight little line like a tiger stalking its prey, hands clasped behind his back, nostrils flared, glaring at TC as if he wanted nothing more than to boot him out of his head after savaging him a little.

Too bad it's our head, and I'm trying to hear what he has to say.

The thought flitted through Khalil's mind grimly, and he sucked in a breath before opening his eyes and gazing at TC, who kept shooting quick little fearful glances at Painkiller. Khalil knew how he felt. Until he had started working actively with Painkiller, forcing the duality in his brain to coexist, he'd been terrified of him too.

"Uh, hi guys," TC started, his voice trembling as he looked around for exit points even though all he had to do was break the connection with the chip in Khalil's brain if he wanted to leave. Khalil supposed when someone entered a room and found themselves face to face with Painkiller, even if it was a virtual reality room, that person could get very scared very fast. In cases like that, logic was the first thing to escape.

Khalil liked the kid, had liked him even before he had locked Painkiller behind a firewall in his head and had shown Jen how to coax Khalil out of the safe space he'd created in his mind. Khalil knew without a doubt that the Pierces, especially Anissa, would have taken him out after Jen had blasted him with lightning to ward off Painkiller's attack on her family as he tried to complete the kill directive, because that's exactly what he would have done.

But TC had done the inconceivable. He'd managed to read Khalil's real thoughts, thoughts that had somehow filtered through the Painkiller operating system as soon as he set eyes on Jen. Thoughts that he must have been hiding way down in his secret heart, feelings that must have survived the A.S.A. mindwipe that transformed him into a lean, mean, biological weapon. As he lay prone on the table in Gambi's work station, on the verge of unconsciousness, his sharp ears had listened as TC, a total stranger, had his back.

"Hey. Who's Jen?" TC had interrupted the post fight argument, glancing around at the faces of people he didn't know.

Impatiently, with the touch of heat that Khalil loved and had missed with a sudden depth of emotion he hadn't felt since he was just track star Khalil, and not two warring parts of a government weapon whole, Jen replied, "That's me."

"He loves you."

And Jen's suddenly shaky, tear-filled voice had whispered, "How do you know that?"

TC's answer had been simple. "He told me."

Yeah, TC was good people. And even though the reunion between Khalil and Jen hadn't lasted, even though it had been bittersweet and doomed to fail with a painful, brusque ending, for a short, sweet time, he had been happy again.

But there was no use in thinking about that, no use in brooding over something he couldn't fix. With Painkiller in his head, being with Jen wasn't an option.

Painkiller was the first to talk, stepping forward as TC gave Khalil a half-hearted wave. "Oh, you must be crazy bringin' your ass here," he growled out in his distorted, angry voice.

TC took an involuntary step back, wringing his hands. Khalil could feel the fear in the kid increase as Painkiller stopped inches from his face, glowering down at him.

Raising a hand, Khalil talked to Painkiller like a patient parent calming down a tantrum throwing toddler. "I invited him," he lied, not caring that Painkiller would know that he hadn't.

Sharing his mind with a psychopathic, heartless killer sucked all the time, and keeping secrets was nearly impossible. Painkiller knew he was claustrophobic, that he loved trains, and that he thought about the one that got away daily. But when it came to people Khalil cared for, he didn't give a fuck if Painkiller knew he was lying to protect them from his rage. TC was a friend, and he wasn't going to let Painkiller's angry ass intimidate him.

"Don't think I won't kick your ass, too," Painkiller growled. Khalil fixed him with a steady look. He'd won more fights against Painkiller, especially after his return after a year long silence, and Painkiller knew it. After a few seconds, Painkiller sucked his teeth and resumed scowling at TC.

Spreading his arms out placatingly, TC asked, "What if I come with good and great news?"

A curious expression darted across Painkiller's face. Khalil caught it and grinned to himself. Psychotic or not, everyone liked the idea of good news.

"Speak," Painkiller ground out.

Swallowing nervously, TC said, "Tobias Whale is dead."

Okay, that was unexpected, and so was the rush of relief that coursed through Khalil's body, relaxing muscles that had been tense ever since he had started working for Tobias. Even though the A.S.A. mindwipe had taken all his memories and locked them away, they had been retrieved as soon as TC had put the firewall in his head, and so too had the underlying current of fear that always pulsed whenever he thought of Tobias.

And now his former boss, the man who had ripped out his spine and dumped him on the church steps when he was done with him, the evil torturer who had been responsible for leading Khalil over to the dark side was finally dead. Closing his eyes, Khalil sent up a prayer of thanks to a God he no longer strictly believed in.

Even after becoming Agent Odell's chief asset, Khalil still harbored thoughts that Tobias would come to him, eager to finish what he had started, wanting revenge for Syonide's death, the attempted robbery at the club before Khalil and Jen became runaways, and every single other thing he'd done that had pissed Tobias off. He'd reluctantly come to believe that a showdown with Tobias was inevitable, and even though his road to atonement had led him to Akashic Valley and a new life, he always knew that Tobias would eventually come for him. It was in his nature. But now this piece of good news had been thrown into his lap and Khalil took a moment to bask in gratitude.

Painkiller's reaction was the polar opposite of Khalil's restrained joy. Anger blazed onto his face and his brow creased as he listened to TC give Khalil the best news he'd heard in a while.

Sounding like a petulant child after being asked if he had McDonald's money, Painkiller groaned. "Damn. I wanted to kill him." He fisted both hands into his unruly curls and glowering up at the ceiling. "That's not good news." Turning to Khalil, his voice turned wheedling. "Let me kick his ass just a little."

With a quick glance towards Painkiller, TC cleared his throat before dropping his bombshell. "I've isolated the system code for the kill order. I can free you."

TC backed away till his back was against the wall, as far as he could get from a snarling Painkiller. When he got furious, Painkiller acted just like a wolf ready to attack. Luckily, Khalil had him on a mental leash. Ignoring him, Khalil focused his attention on TC.

"TC, what is your other news?"

Khalil let out a shaky breath, a glimmer of hope blooming in his chest.

At last.

"Good." Both TC and Khalil turned to face Painkiller, who had a look on his face so unnatural that Khalil didn't immediately recognize it. He looked like a doomed man seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Is he...is he happy? "Let's do it."

"But there's a catch," TC started slowly, plucking nervously at his sleeve as his eyes slid from Khalil to Painkiller and back again. Khalil sighed, motioning to TC to continue. There was always a catch and he knew that better than anybody, but for a second he had allowed himself to believe that getting rid of the kill order that brought such pain to both Painkiller and him, finally being freed from the chains that the A.S.A had wound around his body and in his mind, was ripe for the taking, with no blowback. "It's linked to everything you know and love about the whole Pierce family. If you break the kill order, you won't remember the Pierces at all."

The breath went out of Khalil all at once, leaving him feeling weak and boneless. He was glad he was sitting down, because if he had been standing when TC spoke, the strength would have ran out of his legs. And even though this was all in his mind, his physical body had stopped breathing for a second, and he felt his heart skip a beat.

This wasn't a catch, it was a fucking dilemma. There had to be another way.

Chewing on his bottom lip, Khalil found himself thinking about the technology he and Painkiller had found in Maya's safe house. Surely there was something there that would help isolate the kill switch without messing with his memories more than they'd already been messed with? Because this alternative that TC was suggesting... it wasn't fair. After leaving Freeland to keep Jen and her family safe and away from him, hell, after saving Anissa's wife from kidnappers, after everything that had happened in Khalil's life to get him to this point in time, losing the only good memories he had left just plain wrong.

"So what?" Painkiller asked, his top lip turned up into a snarl. Whether he was oblivious to the wave of emotion Khalil was weathering, or if he just didn't care, Khalil didn't know. Painkiller knew what he wanted. He was tired of the agony that came with not fulfilling the kill order. "They're pains in the ass anyway!"

In a chillingly calm voice that brooked no argument, Khalil stared evenly at Painkiller and said, "Shut up and sit your black ass down." Shocked into obedience, Painkiller sank down to the floor as Khalil looked at TC, a pleading tone in his voice. "TC, there's got to be another way around."

"There's none." Khalil could hear the despair in TC's voice, and he knew he was telling the truth. Of course he was. "I've checked and I've double checked."

Painkiller was still silent, and Khalil turned to look at him. "Damn!" He clenched his fist so hard that the veins in his arm popped out, but he took no notice. "You won't stop, will you? Sooner or later you're going to kill Jen and the rest of the Pierces."

Nodding sagely, like he had been the one meditating, Painkiller said, "Best believe. But I'm not nobody's puppy." He pointed at Khalil, his face stern and absolutely serious. "Cut the damn cord."

The muscles in Khalil's jaw worked as he stood up, turning his back on TC and Painkiller so that they couldn't see the emotions playing across his face. He wanted to be free of the kill code more than anything, needed Painkiller to be at rest so that he could figure out a way to become whole again. But the cost- losing Jen again- was it just too great?

Khalil closed his eyes, and suddenly, he was back on the Pierce's roof with Jen after Painkiller had broken free of the firewall for a couple of nasty minutes to wrap his hands around Jen's neck. He could feel everything in that moment, the wind brushing lightly against his face, the shingles of the roof under his sneakers, the terrified look Jen shot him before schooling her features into a coolness Khalil had never seen on her face. Both looks hit him like a ton of bricks.

She was scared of him.

Painkiller had shown her his true colors and had, once again, pushed someone he loved away from him. And what she had said had chilled him to the core, a sudden lump rising in his throat, and tears smarting in his eyes as she let him go.

"I can't love a weapon that's pointed at my family, even if it does have a soul." Her shoulders hunched pitifully as she wrapped her arms around her legs, all at once seeming far younger than her years. "See you around, Khalil."

He took one last look at her, her curly hair brushing past her chin, her eyes chilly and flinty in the dusk as she turned away from him, blinking away tears of her own. "No. You won't," he said, and with that, he had exited Jen's life.

Some things you can't go back to. The way Jen had ended things between them still hurt, and the realization that he wasn't going to be able to salvage things with her caused him pain that was almost physical, but if TC was able to isolate the kill code and erase his memories of her, the pain would go. All the pain would disappear, and his fresh start in Akashic Valley would be just that, a fresh start.

Behind him, TC started to say, "If you need more time, I can-," but by now, Khalil's mind was made up. There was no other choice.

"I always known I'd give my life for that girl." Khalil heaved a sad sigh, running a hand over his face as he turned to look at a nervous TC and an impassive Painkiller. Painkiller smirked, knowing what decision Khalil had made, and in that moment, Khalil hated him, the A.S.A., Odell- everyone who had gotten him into this situation. Especially himself. "Never thought I'd have to forget her." A nod towards TC. "Do it."

TC nodded dumbly, just as another thought flitted into Khalil's mind. If TC was able to isolate the kill code and erase some of his memories, wasn't it possible that he could remove his very worst memory?

Before he left Freeland for good after shooting Odell and letting Black Lightning deal with the evil son of a bitch however he saw fit, Khalil took a detour to the cemetery, picking a bunch of blooming flowers from the ramshackle garden of Mrs. Sutton, the Payne's old landlady. Khalil didn't think she would mind, she had loved Nichelle Payne dearly.

Once at the cemetery, he had laid the flowers on his mother's grave, sat down with his back resting against her tombstone and cried a little. Nobody had been around to see him; Freeland residents weren't crazy about going to the graveyard at nighttime.

"I shot the guy who made me kill you, ma," he'd whispered, his words blown away by the breeze as the tears blurred his vision. "I know you always said vengeance never pays, but I had to do it. I'm sorry, ma. I love you, and I'm so, so sorry."

Nichelle Payne had raised him to be the best in whatever he did, and what had he done in return? Snapped her neck, and the best excuse he could come up with was he'd just been following orders. The knowledge weighed heavily on his soul, and he knew that he would pay for it in time. Everything comes due. But if TC could somehow make him forget...

"I can try," TC said doubtfully, and Khalil raised his eyes from his clenched fists, remembering where he was through the sadness that engulfed his soul.

"No." Khalil shook his head, resigning himself to reality. "It's part of who I am, and I need to find redemption for it, or a way to live with myself."

TC opened his mouth and hesitated before shyly asking, "Do you want to- I mean, I could give you Jen's number and you could talk to her one last time?"

Painkiller groaned, storming around the circumference of the dojo angrily. "Can we fucking do this already? No more flashbacks, no phone calls- get this kill order the fuck out of my head!"

"Our head," Khalil reminded him. "And right now, I'm in charge." He bit his lip, wrestling with himself. Saying goodbye to Jen wouldn't make things better, it would just bring home the truth that he would never see his first girlfriend again, and even if by some weird coincidence he did, he wouldn't know her. It was stupid. They already said their goodbyes on the Pierce roof, what would he gain from this? "What's her number?"

Painkiller actually growled at this and stomped off somewhere. Khalil could still feel him burning in his mind, but it looked like he had opted out of being a part of Khalil's final goodbye. Not that Khalil minded in the least. Before Painkiller, his relationship with Jen had been special. He didn't want his insane mind twin tainting the very last moment he would have with her.

Courteously, TC severed the connection with Khalil's brain chip, promising to return when the phone call was over and start the process. Khalil stared down at his phone and punched in Jen's number before he could lose his cool. Meditation seemed like a lifetime away, it was all he could do to keep his heart from galloping away like a war horse.

Jen's phone rang once, twice, three times, and Khalil was just about to hit the end button when suddenly-

"Hi." Jen's bold, brash voice was in his ear, and Khalil forgot to breathe. The background noise was filled with laughter and music, a noise that Khalil associated with family time, even though he was never fortunate enough to have enjoyed family time with his mother working two jobs, his father in jail, and his brother running the streets with the 100. "You know you're calling from a- Anissa, stop!" Khalil closed his eyes, savoring the sound of Jen's hearty giggles as someone- Anissa, probably- tickled her or something similar. "You're calling from a private number, who is this?"

A male chuckle sounded, and Khalil recognized Gambi's voice sounding from the distance. "Probably a scam, hang up before they get all your info."

Same old Gambi, trusting nobody. A wistful smile turned up Khalil's lips, but he still couldn't come up with a thing to say. It was like all his thought circuits were down, and he wondered if Painkiller had something to do with it.

"Helloooo? Who is this?" Jen's voice turned speculative, and she gave a derisive snort. "This better not be TC playing with me again, how many times do I have to tell you I'm not going to prom wit' you?"

"I'm literally right here," TC protested in the background.

And Khalil found that he couldn't bring himself to say anything, let alone goodbye. He wasn't great with goodbyes, anyway, so who was he fooling? "Uh, sorry," he muttered. Why had he thought this would be a good idea again? "Wrong number."

In the few seconds it took for him to press the end call button, Jen's voice sharpened with recognition and she exclaimed, "Wait, that sounds a little like-."

Call ended blinked up at him from his phone screen as his pulse jumped in his throat. Safe getaway. Of course, he'd ended the call before Jen could say his name, or even more hurtful, the name of somebody else.

But fuck, hearing her voice was bittersweet.

"You hung up?" TC was back in his head, eyes gleaming with relief that Painkiller wasn't around.

Nodding, Khalil strove to keep his face blank and impassive. "Yeah. I'd rather remember her the way she was on that phone, happy, carefree, pain in the ass J."

She sounded happy and normal, like the old her, before the 100 had kidnapped her and she had discovered she had powers. She sounded like the Queen of Garfield. By coming back into her life even for a few seconds, he might jeopardize that happiness, and if there's one thing he wanted her to be after the events of the past few years, it was at peace and she wasn't going to find it with him.

"But you didn't get to say goodbye."

Pity was written all across TC's face, and once again, Khalil felt the wave of sadness engulf him. Did it ever stop? Even with his memories of Jen gone, would he really be at peace?

"I didn't need to." Khalil stopped, his shoulders slumped, and came to stand next to TC, who was still looking at him with that sympathetic look on his face. "TC..."

Looking up at him, TC said, "Yeah?"

"Don't tell her."

TC let out a dramatic gasp that made Khalil crack a smile, even though he had never felt less like smiling. "What? But I was just about to-?"

"No." Khalil shook his head resolutely. "Let her live her life." TC opened his mouth to protest, but Khalil talked over him. It was the only way. "You told me she lost the guy she was seeing, and she's already lost so much. Just- let her think what she's been thinking, that I left Freeland to live my life." He started pacing like Painkiller sometimes did, back and forth, his arms behind his back as he spoke. It felt like atoning for his sins. "I poisoned her. I almost killed her."

Interrupting, his voice utterly horrified, TC exclaimed, "That was Painkiller, not you!"

"Yeah, but don't you get it? He's in me, so even if I know that I'm not the one doing the poisoning, everyone else thinks it, because he's in my head wanting to kill all the time." Khalil stopped pacing and turned to TC, his face serious. "With the kill code gone, we can co-exist without the anger and rage that drives Painkiller. I came here for a fresh start and removing the memories of the Pierces will give me that." To show that he meant business, he clapped his hands together. "Let's do this. How's it gonna work?"

Getting back to business removed the pity from TC's face, and Khalil was glad. Seeing that look on his normally cheery friends face and knowing it was directed at him made him feel like even more of a shitty person.

Tapping his chin, Khalil asked, "So I won't remember that they're metas as well?"

"You'll forget about them. Anything related to them, too."

TC's eyes started to flash green as he went over the logistics of changing Khalil's life.

"No, you'll remember that, you'll know about Black Lightning, Thunder and Lightning, you just won't know their identities. You won't remember they're Pierces."

Nodding, Khalil said, "Got it." Actually, it sounded confusing to him, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. "But if I want to reinstate my memories, can't I just come to you and-."

TC laughed as Khalil made a casual popping noise with his tongue in his cheek. "No. You won't even know that your memories are gone."

"And you're sure they'll stay gone."

This was the most important part. What ifs ran through Khalil's mind with the speed of a Formula One car. If he somehow ran into the Pierce sisters on vacation. If he helped someone from a mugger and it turned out to be Doctor Pierce? If Black Lightning ended up in Akashic Valley like Anissa had and they ran into each other?

Shifting from one foot to the other, TC said, "Um, 90% sure."

"90?" Khalil asked incredulously.

TC shrugged. "That's an A."

"I used to get straight A's in school," Khalil said musingly. "And then Odell dropped a few Master's degrees into my head, but that happened after I stopped caring about grades." TC gave him a confused, yet concerned look, and Khalil said, "Let's get rid of these memories."

A few minutes later, Khalil was lying on an operating table, a brain scanner that looked like a crown on his head. Philky just happened to have one lying around, which was pure Philky, and after TC had uploaded his program into the lab's computer, he'd told Khalil's master of tech exactly what to do. Donald was on standby in case something went wrong medically. And Painkiller? He was still in the dojo, and Khalil could feel the excitement thrumming through him. Khalil didn't blame him; he was excited too.

A high-pitched whine started up, and Khalil felt a pinprick of electricity tickle his forehead as the process started. TC had warned him about this.

What TC hadn't warned him about was, as the memories left, they replayed in his head, almost like a flashback reel.

Khalil saw himself on the Pierce roof with Jen, giving her a chaste, shy kiss as she agreed to be his girlfriend.

He saw himself stealing into Garfield High and meeting up with Jen by the lockers after enduring more abuse from Tobias, knowing that she was the only person he could really talk to despite what had gone down between them. Sitting down in silence, not needing to say a word because their connection was that powerful.

He saw them running away together, Jen using her lightning powers in front of him for the first time and blasting the 100 hoodlums. How he'd kissed her later on and it had been electric, and the hottest kiss he'd ever had.

He saw himself (the memories were blurry around the edges, soon they'd be gone but so would the kill code, it was for the best but it hurt, TC didn't say it would hurt this much) sitting next to Jen in his special place, his private place, his favorite place, the abandoned subway car, eating ramen and reminiscing on how he had asked her to be his girlfriend, and he had been so shy when he gave her the necklace, something that had caught his eye in Freeland's jewelry store and he'd saved up for two months to buy it for her, a necklace he was giving to her for the second time because he loved her, and he'd lost her once and wasn't about to let her go again and...

The memories faded as Khalil's mind cycled through the deepest, darkest levels of consciousness, and there was only darkness, and finally, blissfully, peace.

(See more on ao3 or wattpad!)

#black lightning #fanfic #khalil payne #jennifer pierce #jordan calloway #china anne mcclain #wattpad #ao3fic

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songofclarity · 3 years

Note

Out of sheer curiosity, what do you think of Wen Xu. Any HC?

Two Wen Xu asks came in back-to-back and I could probably have answered them both at once, but I'll use your daring moment of sheer curiosity to focus on headcanons/theories I have for him, Anon~!

Similar to Su She, who caused problems while lurking in the background, I think Wen Xu, who also caused problems while lurking in the background, is our guy who has been inciting several other rising conflicts between the Qishan Wen and the other sects over the years. He doesn't need explicit orders to do this, mind you, because he is simply doing what any self-respecting son of the Qishan Wen Sect would do. Just like the Twin Prides look to the Jiang motto of Attempt the Impossible and the Twin Jades look to the 3,000 Lan rules, Wen Xu is also guided by Clan tradition:

The Wen Clan used the sun as the motif of their clan, signifying that they could "compete with the sun for radiance, match the sun in longevity." (ch. 17, ERS)

The sun, however, is beautiful and warm and radiant all on its own, which means he doesn't have to play nice with the other sects if he doesn't want to. In fact, it goes against policy to treat the other sects as equals! Therefore, with him being the predominant Wen outside Nightless City, it seems apt to assign these events to him:

1. Monopolizing all the prime Night Hunt locations and excluding the other sects, which made the other sects resent the Qishan Wen even more

Remember Jin Ling setting up those 400 golden nets? That's expensive and entitled! I imagine Wen Xu was our first Jin Ling, except rather than using 400 golden nets it's Wen Xu and his friends and Wen favorites who are staking claims on all the best sites. They're having a fun time and everyone else can cry about it! Remember that guest cultivators love being with the Wen Sect! It likely comes with plenty of favors, and Wen Xu as Wen RuoHan's eldest son had much to offer to gain and keep their support for the Qishan Wen.

2. Pushing the Waterborne Abyss from Qishan into Gusu Lan territory, making it a Lan problem and making the other sects resent the Qishan Wen even more

I headcanon that this event is what eventually prompted Wen Chao to daringly declare that he killed the Tortoise of Slaughter. Did Wen Xu declare that he had killed the Waterborne Abyss (which would sound absurd since the only known way to defeat it is to drain the lake and keep it dried out for years)? Or did he own up to how he simply got rid of the problem? Either way, he made Qishan safe, which is what any cultivation sect is supposed to do for their region.

The Qishan Wen are good to the Qishan Wen and the common folk beneath them. It's really only the other sects that take issue with them and see them as a threat.

*Please remember that the Qishan Wen Sect isn't an empire. They aren't trying to take over the world. They are simply seeking dominance and prominence, with all the power and prestige that comes with it.*

3. It's canon that Wen Xu led the attack on Cloud Recesses, that he accused QingHeng-jun of something to validate this assault, that he ordered Lan WangJi's leg broken when he stood in their way, and that he is responsible for the death of QingHeng-jun (whom I headcanon died due to critical burns from the fire)

The big question here is what, exactly, was Wen Xu/the Wen accusing QingHeng-jun of? It could be something real: neglecting his duties or even something to do with Madam Lan, since we really don't know her backstory. Or something overblown: having two sons who wear clouds on their ribbons, and clouds block out the sun, and those two sons did better than the Wen in the archery competition, so it must be an anti-Wen conspiracy, etc etc. (Wang LingJiao had to learn that logic somewhere!) The latter appeals to me the most, and highlights how Wen Xu was a role model for his little brother. The difference being that Wen Xu had experience handling other sects without getting everyone killed.

Frankly, that Wen Xu destroyed Cloud Recesses and got their Sect Leader killed and made their second Sect Leader go missing and all the other sects let him get away with it just reinforces, to me, that he has indeed been up to no good for a long time and that he is incredibly strong in his own right. Although Wei WuXian comments that the Wen Sect has a higher proportion of weak and incompetent disciples/subordinates, I headcanon that Wen Xu is not one of the weak ones.

But also Wen Xu is not bloodthirsty. He did what he needed to do and the only one left dead was the one that the Wens had a undisclosed problem with: QingHeng-jun. Wen Xu is strong but he has restraint. He never pushed anyone into a corner which could incite a rebellion, which was Wen Chao's mistake.

Until Wen Xu finally did push too hard:

4. It's canon that he went against Wen RuoHan's speech which effectively said to leave the Qinghe Nie alone. By ignoring how Wen RuoHan said that Nie MingJue would not bend, he pushed the Nie into a corner and bit off more than he could chew and got himself beheaded

All the Wens appeared to agree that the Sunshot Campaign was just an act of arrogance on the part of the other sects. The Wens did not take it seriously during those first three months, and therefore neither sought to squash it out or defeat it.

Wen Xu is what proves them wrong when he gets himself killed.

But what was Wen Xu doing in Hejian!? I headcanon/theorize that he was trying to end the Campaign on his own terms. Wen Xu was used to winning and used to the sects capitulating to Wen power and presence. Cloud Recesses was already destroyed and Lan XiChen is no threat, Lotus Pier was conquered and the Yunmeng Jiang were annihilated, and the Wens expected the Lanling Jin to come crawling back to them when things got too rough. This left the Qinghe Nie as the last foe, and thus Wen Xu went on his own prerogative to take Nie MingJue out and claim dominance for the Qishan Wen once more.

RIP Wen Xu

I don't say all of this to somehow make Wen Xu look evil--the Wens aren't evil and I don't understand why some readers want to dumb down the whole story by shoving them into a little evil box--although I guess I headcanon him as having a big head and being something of a bully lol. He's just being the same kind of pompous rich kid like Jin ZiXuan and Jin Ling except he has actual power and authority to back it up. The Qishan Wen are the biggest, richest, most powerful sect. He is the one who will one day inherit it as he is Wen RuoHan's oldest son. So he is both simultaneously protecting the Qishan Wen name as well as reinforcing it's power. He is endearing himself to his father by "fixing problems" and "taking care of unruly sects" before the problem even reaches Wen RuoHan's ears. Considering what we see and hear from Wen RuoHan, and how Wen RuoHan fails to make decisions he's not already being ushered into by a third party, Wen Xu and others are very much pro-actively promoting the Qishan Wen on their own terms.

Wen RuoHan is thus very happy with this loyal and righteous son of his! And it leaves Wen Chao striving to follow in Wen Xu's footsteps.

I headcanon that Wen Xu is much older than Wen Chao, like at least 10 years older if not more. (Who knows how old Wen RuoHan is? However old or young I want him to be at any given time! lol) This puts their relationship in a funny/annoying range of Wen Xu being the big brother but also old enough to pull the adult/parent card. Wen Chao has poor cultivation and he's the baby, which is why he gets Wen ZhuLiu as a bodyguard while Wen Xu, who is arguably quite strong, just gets to run around with his subordinates. Wen Xu is the jock big brother who pushes Wen Chao's buttons and it looks like they hate each other--but I also headcanon that Wen Xu likes seeing Wen Chao succeed in whatever dumb thing Wen Chao decided to do today and Wen Chao wants to grow up to as respected and powerful as Wen Xu (and Wen RuoHan) one day. They are not adversaries although there is competition and conflict between them.

And, as I mentioned before, we get Waterborne Abyss vs Tortoise of Slaughter competition between them. Both of them don't believe it! Father, he is not that competent!

Wen RuoHan laughs it out and disagrees, because he appreciates that both his kids are doing amazing feats. (Are they though? Are they???)

Then there are headcanons of Wen Xu and Wen Qing! Their families were close because they are family and their parents were BFFs! I have yet to decide if I want Wen Xu or Wen Qing to be older. Da-ge or Da-jie? One idea I like for them is that they were close as children, but maybe grew up and went their separate ways a little. That Wen Qing never renounced the Wen Sect makes me hold fast that she did love her family and clan, even if she didn't agree with what they did for their sect. Wen Xu wasn't a bad guy even if he did bad things. (She disliked Wen Chao but maybe she liked Wen Xu a little more lol)

I headcanon Wen Ning's outstanding archery involved Wen Xu giving him some hands-on assistance. (Da-ge? Da-ge...!) Like everyone else in the Wen Sect, I headcanon Wen Ning would have also wanted to impress Wen RuoHan and be noticed by him, too. They didn't keep it a secret from Wen Chao on purpose, it just turned out that way especially since most of the work was done by Wen Ning. (Wen Xu was at the discussion conference but he didn't watch the archery competition, instead teasing it was for babies in order to make Wen Chao cross. Wen Xu likes Wen Chao but he needs to grow up!)

There are also headcanons about his mother, but that's a whole rabbit hole of its own lol My main headcanon is that Wen Xu and Wen Chao have the same mother, but she had difficult pregnancies that resulted in them being born years apart. Madam Wen and Wen RuoHan had wanted a large family and sadly only had two sons. Wen Xu did not grow up short on affection, which resulted in him wanting to protect the Qishan Wen name even more.

I headcanon that Wen RuoHan is a good father and his relationship with Wen Xu was very good, although of course it does not come without it's own difficulties and conflicts at times. (Considering how terrible all the other fathers are, statistically there should be one good one, right?)

There are other random headcanons I could throw in here but I will finish this off by saying I don't have a solid headcanon on who is Wen Yuan's father, although I can see the poetic appeal of it being Wen Xu. Wen Xu burned down Cloud Recesses and said the Wen would help the Lan grow from the ashes. Wen Yuan grows up there as if reborn from the ashes by help of the Lan, given a new name and family, too.

(That Wen Chao is explicitly given a wife in canon makes me headcanon him as Wen Yuan's father though, as I also like Wei WuXian protecting Wen Chao's son for my own dark delight~)

I also tend to think of Wen Xu as someone running around and playing around and not quite ready to settle down. But Wen Xu with a wife and a family of his own? I would love to see it!

#asked from above #anon #wen xu #mdzs thoughts

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oneweekoneband · 3 years

Text

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages. (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time.

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift, she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

#taylor swift #folklore

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jackedspicer · 4 years

Photo

a bio for my xiaolinsona! she’s a work in progress so i’m bound to come back and change it. trivia and more in depth information is under the readmore :)

continued trivia:

she’d show up somewhere near the start of season 4

she’s used a LOT for slapstick. in fact she’s mostly a comic relief character

she’s guided mainly by emotions, is right brain oriented, and is a hands-on learner

there is a running gag where she frequently has bandaids on her fingers, hands, arms, or anywhere really

she’s a massive funk junkie. LOVES disco. she’s also a great dancer

when she comes up with xiaolin showdowns, sometimes she’ll base it off of fun recreational activities or things that seem harmlessly mundane, like mini golf..... tic tac toe.....dance-off...... rock paper scissors..... the showdowns themselves obviously end up being high-stakes and lethal as they always are, except they’re based off of goofy premises

she’s probably musically accented by grunge that’s slightly funky

when it’s funny, she occasionally will use huge words or make jarringly philosophical statements, eg patrick star’s “the inner machinations of my mind are an enigma” cut to footage of milk spilling

shes a lot like charlie kelly. in general. any charlie moment is just. Her. she’s a wild card and screams every line and huffs glue and tries to get the honey out of a hornets nest outside of jacks house because she thinks hornets make honey and she likes ghouls and she genocides the rats in his basement and sleeps ass to ass with him and is illiterate

she likes to do arts and crafts but they almost always come out as abominations. she’ll occasionally borrow some of jack’s tools to construct her latest atrocity, and she’ll refer to them by a wrong/made up name while she’s at it. “the hacksaw duey”, “the electric hole puncher,” ”the automatic pizza cutter”, etc. yes the projects and the bandaids have a direct cause and effect relationship. please refer to this video (and this channel in general)

youtube

imagine her sitting at a table and just doing this in jack’s lair... this video alone can be used to sum up so much of her. the technique. the bandaids. the blatantly wrong information that’s said with such conviction. the dark turn towards the end of the video. “superfluous protrusion.” the way it ends

continued trivia pt. 2, taken from my instagram

(i’ll get into this more further down the post)

fighting style because this is xiaolin showdown:

she has a very nimble, disorienting style of combat. using pokemon stats as an analogy, her highest would be speed by far, followed by attack, with her lowest stats being defense and special attack. this combined with her unrelenting nature makes her an excellent distraction and a general nuisance, but she doesn’t fare well in prolonged head to head battle.

favorite shen gong wu:

monkey staff, mikado arms, fancy feet, neptune helmet, hoduko mouse, woozy shooter (on herself), tongue of saiping, longi kite, indigo pyramid (on jack (cause it’s funny))

*the shen gong wu she’s most skilled with in battle are ones that trip up her opponents and cause status ailments. kinda like a prankster

backstory/analysis:

at her core, she’s a jolly, optimistic, humorous person, but her unruly, isolating childhood put a blow on her psyche. much like jack spicer, she’s been virtually alone her entire life - she was rejected by peers and adult figures alike since earliest childhood, and her home life was turbulent at best.

to ease the pain, at some point, she took on resenting and judging those around her as a means to cope. she has a holden caulfield-esque defense mechanism in play where if everybody sucks for this reason, or that reason, or those reasons, then she has justification for detaching herself from others, and she can derive her only source of self esteem from being better than them. this hurts far less than the devastating truth that she cannot connect with people on account of feeling so worthless and estranged from other human beings that she could never have the chance to be cared about by anyone. deep down, she’s in desperate, thrashing need of support and genuine human connection, and she has a warped perception of how she can achieve that.

she’s taken up evil as a hobby because it nurtures her desire to be destructive and, again, just like jack spicer, she engages in it as a way to feel seen. all press is good press, and the best way to make the headline is to cause some damage. what sets her apart from him in this regard, though, is that she takes all of her pain out on her enemies (in this case, the xiaolin monks) because she can’t stand how well off they are - instead, on the basis of their acceptance of one another, she sees them as goody two-shoes phonies who ought to be knocked down a peg. while evil to jack is both a means of getting much needed attention and a convoluted way of spending time with friends, to sid it’s a way to vent frustrations and a way to, well... still garner attention, but also spend time with a friend, except the friend is jack.

the other half of the reason she partakes in petty villainy is that it’s just... fun. she only got wrapped up in all this because she’d been restlessly putzing around somewhere remote, found a neat doohicky she planned on keeping, and when one thing led to another she wound up in a xiaolin showdown against jack. experiencing the chaos unfold revealed a golden opportunity she couldn’t pass up, so she asked jack to let her come with, debuting their partnership (i talk about this in further detail at the end of the post). goofing off and doing evil with him is so much fun to her! it makes her feel alive, a sensation and state of mind she never could fully achieve before.

noteworthy relationships:

jack:

they have a team rocket thing going on. not in terms of their interpersonal dynamic, but rather their role in the story, how much of a threat they pose as, their schemes, and even their overall attitude are reminiscent of the iconic duo; they’re petty, recurring villains with hearts of gold who aren’t above occasionally siding with the good guys.

even though they both are on the same tier of comic relief and general foolishness, the metaphor i like to draw is that jack is the left brain and sid is the right brain.

their personalities have such chemistry and they’re both so goofy that they effortlessly sync up. everyone thinks it’s REALLY annoying

they’re best friends! they actually care very deeply for one another, even if they might have funny ways of showing it. they may be evil, but they’re mutually the only and closest friend the other has ever had, and with that carries a lot of weight. think of it - the first person you meet who hasn’t been nothing but awful to you likes you and wants to be around you. What a concept

while their relationship is platonic, there are several gags implying a romantic element, even though nothing is ever outright stated. kisses on the cheek, bashfulness, other characters making fun of them (“where’s your DUMB little girlfriend?” “..........she’s not DUMB!!!!!”), domestic references (“am i sleeping on the couch”)..... it’s left ambiguous because it’s hetbait plain and simple. somebody asks them what they even are and they say Partners In Crime wym. jack asks sid What Are We and she fist pumps the flat of her own chest twice, throws a peace sign and says We’re Bros

their nicknames for each other include but are not limited to “jackass, jacky-boy, jack-o-lantern, smarty pants, wiggles, spack jicer, spack, mr spack, spackle”, and “shortstack, pipsqueak, sid the kid, champ, funky monkey, foxy (in a funny way, he’ll say it like Whatcha Up To Foxy ? while she’s like making a mess doing an arts & crafts abomination or just vibing bein her weird lil self.... it comes from a place of playful sarcasm and affection) (champ, funky monkey, and foxy are courtesy of @currentlyfallingthroughspace)

to piggyback off of the left brain vs. right brain metaphor, “heart vs. brain is how they think, right brain vs. left brain is how they act, and two halves of a heart represents their natural dispositions” is how my aforementioned friend put it. they both have a lot of heart and are ooey gooey on the inside, but the difference is that sid can grasp the intricacies of emotional/psychological matters while jack can’t (actually knowing how to EXPRESS this is another topic). it’s in the same way that jack can effectively plan ahead, use logical reasoning, and know where to go and how to get there, but sid is shabby in this department. “one is aware but doesn’t address it until it’s too late, and one can’t see it and doesn’t ask until it’s too late.”

another feature of potential conflict in all incarnations of them is the juxtaposition of sid actually being more down to earth than jack in the grand scheme of things. jack has the potential to go completely overboard, and whether or not he demonstrates the ability to catch himself on the event horizon will ascertain the outcome.

deep down, neither of them are truly evil, and they bring this out in each other as they ultimately contribute to the redemption of one another. how this actually happens is a lot rockier. sid has the intuition and self awareness to become increasingly cognizant of the fact that she engages in schemes as a way to bond with her friend, and, over time, she’s able to recognize that she’s simply been acting out, and she consequently softens up over time - but jack is much denser in this regard. he doesn’t consciously pick up on the same things she does and still believes that she’s drinking the koolaid as much as he is. the crucial dissonance in what matters most that had been incubating under the weight of things left unsaid emerges in a major falling out that challenges the nature of their entire dynamic and respective moral codes. i had a lot of help from the same friend with the following series of events and it’s really something that ought to be gone into detail on its own post, but a whirlwind brief summary is that jack becomes desperate from losing over and over so he comes up with this sinister plan that’s just too far, sid tells him to stop, they get into a nasty fight, sid leaves and makes it clear she’s not coming back, she goes to the xiaolin dragons for help, jack goes on an evil rampage but also loses his grip and has this mental breakdown because he lost the one person who’s ever cared about him (or so he thought), sid has the same brutal separation pangs but it doesn’t change the fact that jack is still doing what he’s doing, sid gets a firsthand view of a fight breaking out between the monks while she’s working with them and has a moment of clarity when she observes how they resolve it in such a healthy way, as they continue to work together and help her through the whole fiasco she realizes they’re not so bad, an entire excruciating series of events that’s genuinely too large to fit on this post unfolds and it ultimately ends with jack actually having to team UP with the good guys to stop what he started, and it ends with them breaking down, apologizing, and beginning their redemption BUT not without the illustration of several lessons that arose out of the complications of the entire thing...... the overarching lesson that’d been entrenched in their entire dynamic from the start, albeit corny, is that caring and being cared for was all they ever needed, and they learn to cultivate that within each other right under their own noses. it would be fun to have them stay as recurring villains forever, but seeing how much good is in their hearts is enough to make you wonder how they were ever evil.

xiaolin monks:

she thinks she hates them, but she doesn’t really. while her opinion of them is marked by resentment and distaste, she also holds them in high regard. a part of her wishes she could be friends with them, but the mental landscape she’s paved for herself doesn’t reveal that as an option. in her mind, she’s already been rejected by them. so why try?

the way she takes her pain out on them - people who had nothing to do with her traumas - can be summed up by the spinel su quote, “why do i want to hurt you so bad? i’m supposed to be a friend. i just want to be a friend.”

she gets chummier with them upon her redemption. out of the group, she gets along best with clay and dojo :)

bonus origin episode

this would be the imaginary early season 4 episode i mentioned at the beginning of the post. it’s more of a loose string of ideas tied together with reckless abandon but hey. the episode would open with jack feeling lonely and down on his luck to establish the theme that he kinda needs a friend (”wuya’s gone, chase trained his cats to get surly with me if i show up, my evil dream team won’t answer my calls....”). his sulking is interrupted by a shen gong wu alert and he’s like. whatever. i don’t need them. i’m still gonna do this on my own. even if it’s. ˡᵒⁿᵉˡʸ. fastforward to the scene i described where sid is putzing around with her doohicky (which i’m considering might be the neptune helmet) all by her sad miserable lonesome when suddenly some flying bloke in a trenchcoat who looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in years shows up telling her she’s got something he needs. she of course responds with something along the lines of “you know what? why don’t you try to take it from me since you want it so bad, mr big stuff,” triggering a xiaolin showdown. this is around the time the xiaolin dragons show up too late - but they’re grateful for somebody having been there to fight jack in time, even if they have no idea who they are. she has no clue what’s going on, but whatever it is, she LOVES it. she goes buckwild. she has a time. jack, on the other hand.... well, understanding how badly he needs that wu is certainly throwing a wrench in it, but he can’t help but feel like he’s having a bit of fun too. well, up until he loses. post-showdown, the monks kinda count their chickens before they hatch so to speak and they rush over to this new kid with a shower of praise, thinking they have a friend on their side. instead, she cuts them off, shouts to the guy who’s gathering his bearings (or lack thereof) - “hey! jack was it?” - and playfully tosses her shen gong wu in the air, catching it. “you look like you need this thing way more than i do. tell you what! take me with and i’ll let you borrow it,” is what she follows it up with, implying she wasn’t really that invested and only saw the whole thing as a fun game. jack and the monks are flabbergasted. what’s more bizarre is she did in fact ask to join him, something nobody’s ever done out of their own volition before. she talks about how boooooooooooring it is here and how that was soooooo much fun and to pleeeeeeeease take her with. he’s really iffy about it and doesn’t know if it’s such a good idea. he tries to make himself look cool, telling her “as IF, shortstack..........im afraid The Jack Rides Alone................................................. but-” and ultimately buckling because he can’t deny that it would be nice to have someone around.

#IM PROBABLY GONNA COME BACK AND CHANGE SO MANY PETTY THINGS BUT I HAD TO RIP OFF THE BANDAID #xiaolin showdown #xiaolin showdown oc #xiaolinsona #draws #btw her last name is question marks because i havent come up with anything yet #i have utmost confidence about this i literally think of her and jack as a duo even though shes not a real character #also it's important to add that i hope it goes without saying that a lot of her qualities arent direct translations of my own #her qualities are based on my own and are in some cases translated to represent how it would manifest in this narrative #sonas are tools u know. not being like THIS IS LITERALLY ME!!! cause its a bit different #for example my own opinions of the other characters and her opinions of the other characters differ. u kno for tha story #xiaolinsonabio

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yourdeepestfathoms · 4 years

Text

You Say Stuff Is Way, Way Too Go, Go Away

five times Orla caused a disruption and thought she was messed up for doing so, and one time someone assured her she wasn’t

ft. Good Big Cousin Erin

also: title from Stuff Is Way

TW: Vomit

-------------------

“I don’t like it, okay!?”

James’s outburst took everyone by surprise. His face flamed red as he began to shout in anger, spitting awful words about how terrible fried food was. Not that anyone expected anything less from a Brit.

“It’s too greasy! It’s much, much too greasy!!”

Underneath all the yelling, there was a whimper. It went unheard by everyone, however, as all the attention was turned on James.

“Even the smell of it makes me physically sick!!”

Silence.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that, Fionnula,” Michelle said. Then, in James’s ear, she hissed, “You’re a fucking embarrassment.”

“Get him out of here!” Fionnula ordered.

In a muttering, awkward heap, the girls (and Brit) began to file out--

“Oi!” Fionnula barked. “You forgot one!”

The gang stopped, turned around, and that’s when they finally noticed that Orla was on the floor, huddled in the corner between the wall and the counter, with her hands clamped firmly over her ears.

“Orla, let’s go.” Michelle said.

Orla didn’t move, though. She just scrunched her eyes shut and curled her fingers into her hair. She looked like she was in pain.

“Oh shit,” Erin muttered, then darted down to Orla’s side. She didn’t touch her cousin, rather let her hands hover over Orla’s lanky body, which she realized was wracked with trembles. “Orla. Orla, hey, it’s Erin.”

Orla pried one eye open, glanced at her, then slammed it shut again. A tiny whimper escaped her lips, and a piece of Erin’s heart broke off.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Erin told her. “Can I touch you, Orla? Is that okay?”

Orla nodded, and Erin had her securely in her arms a moment later. Orla nuzzled against her, but kept her hands placed firmly over her ears. James yelling must have set her off.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Erin murmured, stroking Orla’s unruly curls the way she knew her cousin liked. “Everything is okay… James startled you, didn’t he?”

Orla nodded wordlessly and buried her face against Erin’s chest. Due to her height, she was having to lean down, practically laying on Erin, but neither cousin seemed to mind the position.

Fionnula, however, did mind, and did not appreciate the scene that was going on in her restaurant.

“What part of ‘get out’ don’t you understand?” The woman said impatiently.

“Can you give us a minute?” Erin snapped. “It’s not the end of the goddamn world if we linger around for a moment! My little cousin is freaking out! Have some respect, will you!?” Then, in a quiet, soothing voice to Orla when she flinched and whimpered, “Shh, shh. Not you, Orla. I’m sorry for yelling. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Orla made a tiny noise in response. Erin tucked her head underneath her chin and held her closer, rocking her in slow, gentle motions.

“You still like being rocked, right?” Erin asked quietly.

Orla nodded.

“Wonderful. Just making sure.”

They remained there on the floor for awhile, ignoring all the stares and whispers they were receiving. Erin might have cared a little more if it weren’t her baby cousin in her arms.

“Are you okay?” Erin asked after a few minutes of silence. “Feeling any better?” Orla slowly uncurled herself from Erin, pulling her hands away from her ears. She looked tired and shaken, but slightly less traumatized.

“We can sit a while longer if you need,” Erin told her.

Orla shook her head and slowly stood up. She nearly toppled right over, but Erin leapt to her feet and steadied her.

“Take it easy, love,” Erin said, and the pet name slipped out without her even thinking about it. “No need to rush.”

Orla looked at her, blinking her bleary golden brown eyes, then latched onto her hand. Erin stroked her knuckles gingerly as she led her out of the building.

To their credit, Michelle, Clare, and James waited a moment before bombarding the cousins with questions. Unfortunately, “a moment” seemed to be more like a millisecond because there were suddenly a barrage of comments spewing out of eager mouths. Erin gave her friends an evil warning glare when Orla whimpered in distress at their volume.

“Sorry, sorry,” Clare apologized for her and the other two. “We’re just worried.”

“You sound like you want to hear the latest news,” Erin said.

“Can you blame us?” James said. “That was the most eventful thing to happen this week! What was that?”

Orla shifted uncomfortably. The discomfort on her face wasn’t an expression she usually wore, and when Michelle noticed it, she added for James, “He means you can tell us when you’re ready.”

“Better.” Erin said. She squeezed Orla’s hand. “Maybe some other time, okay? I’m gonna get Orla home. She’s tired.”

Orla nodded and rested her chin on Erin’s head, letting her eyelids flutter shut. It wasn’t an act to get away from the questions, she genuinely looked exhausted- both mentally and physically.

There was a scattering of agreements from the other three before Erin began to walk Orla down the street.

“Do you think Orla will be better by the time I steal that notice board from Fionnula’s shop?”

Clare and James whip their heads around to Michelle.

“WHAT?”

Orla wasn’t sure what woke her up- her brain not wanting to stay asleep any longer or the buzz in her head. Probably both.

It took everything in Orla not to whine out loud when she realized that buzz was an oncoming migraine. Of course.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was in Erin’s bed, per usual (she never slept in her own bed) nestled in a burrow of blankets. Erin was still asleep, sprawled out on her back with her mouth open slightly. If that John guy saw her like this, snoring softly and drooling ever so slightly, he would probably run for the hills. Orla giggled softly at that image, and that small sound rebounded uncomfortably through her head.

Footsteps made Orla perk up a little. They were a little distant, but someone was definitely awake. After waiting a few minutes, Orla released her head from the grip her hands had on it and got up, too.

Simply walking down the short staircase was difficult with Orla’s increasingly intense headache. She stopped on the third step and had to take a deep breath before continuing on. Luckily, she got downstairs without any injury.

When she got to the bottom step, she saw the kitchen lights on and her Aunt Mary heating up a kettle on the stove. The woman looked surprised, but smiled warmly when she noticed the girl.

“Good morning,” She said, “You’re up early.”

Orla waved and then shrugged, padding across the hardwood with her fluffy socks. She peered at the kettle curiously, like she was expecting a rose to sprout out from the lid. Mary studied her thoughtfully.

“Do you have any preference for breakfast?” Mary asked.

Orla shook her head. She would eat anything. Although, right now, her head was pounding enough to make her lose her appetite.

“Can I help?” Orla asked after a moment.

“Of course!” Mary said, pleasantly surprised. “You can start the eggs.”

Orla nodded. Mary made friendly conversation with the girl as the two of them began to cook breakfast, though Orla wasn’t much of a talker. Even if she was, Orla’s migraine began to get worse and worse until she wasn’t able to pay attention at all anymore.

“Orla? Orla!”

Orla reeled backwards, hissing in pain. She had no idea what Mary was yelling about until she noticed the egg in the pan was smoking. She ogled the pan with wide eyes, hands fumbling, and Mary had to turn off the burner for her.

“Orla, what has gotten into you?” Mary said, looking at the girl. “Maybe you should sleep in some more?”

Orla shook her head and backed away. She lifted her hands and squeezed her skull between her palms, like she was trying to keep a headache at bay. Mary noticed, along with the fact that something was very wrong, so she helped the girl over to the couch so she could sit down.

“Are you alright?” Mary asked, setting a hand on Orla’s back.

Orla shrugged.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Mary tried asking something else, keeping her voice low.

Orla hesitated, then gestured vaguely for her head.

“Your head hurts?”

Orla nodded.

“I see,” Mary frowned. She thought for a moment, then began to rub Orla’s head comfortingly.

Orla’s gaze snapped up at her with wide eyes. Mary quickly pulled her hand back.

“Sorry.” Mary said. “I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted to be touched.”

Orla tapped the top of her head. Mary furrowed her eyebrows.

“But I thought--”

Orla tapped more, so Mary put her hand back on her head, rubbing gently.

Orla pressed into the touch, closing her eyes in bliss. The pain from the headache began to melt away with each stroke over her skull, soothing her. She couldn’t help the content cooing noises she began to make.

Mary chuckled. “You like this, don’t you, sweetheart?”

Orla nodded. She keeled over into Mary’s lap and rolled over onto her back like a puppy seeking pets. She grabbed her aunt’s hand and placed it back on her head, even making rubbing motions like she was reminding her what to do. She sighed happily when the affection resumed.

“So much for starting breakfast,” Mary chuckled lightly.

The ride back to the house wasn’t very fun for anyone: Michelle, who was trying very hard not to swerve off the road because she was a tiny bit tipsy (don’t drink and drive, kids!); Clare, who was simply still reeling from what had happened at Jenny Joyce’s party; James, who was moping because he missed the one chance he would ever get to lose his virginity; Erin, who was stewing in embarrassment after all her accusations; and Katya, who had to sit with all of them in the same cramped car. But most of all, Orla, who could feel her stomach roiling as Michelle swerved haphazardly down a turn in the street.

“Erin,” Orla leaned forward to the passenger seat and tugged on her cousin’s sleeve with one hand, holding her stomach with the other. “I don’t feel good…”

Erin snapped her head around to her. “I thought you said you could handle it.” She whispered as if this discussion was some type of super secret spy mission, although Orla did appreciate her not shouting it to the rooftops.

“Mm-mmm,” Orla shook her head. She moved her hand from Erin’s sleeve to her stomach with the other.

Erin looked around at the dark road the car was speeding down. “Can’t you, like, hold it in?”

Orla swallowed thickly, trying to reign in her growing nausea, but could only shrug as an answer because she truly didn’t know.

“She doesn’t need to piss, Erin,” Michelle said not-so-secretly. “She needs to boke. There is a huge difference.”

“Yeah, one is not so easy to hold in,” Clare added.

“Thank you for your addition, Clare,” Michelle said. “We all definitely did not already know that.”

“If you vomit on me I will bust your nose in.” Katya said coldly to Orla, who shrunk away with a tiny whimper.

“Why did you eat so much if you knew you were going to be sick?” James asked Orla.

“It seems she always eat that much.” Katya observed. There was a hint of cruelty in her words as she smirked slightly and said, “Like a pig.”

“Oi! Don’t call her that, you bitch!” Michelle snapped, jerking around to glare at Katya (and not paying attention to the road at all).

“Watch what you say,” Erin hissed.

“What?” Katya said innocently. “I only say truth.”

“THE truth,” Erin corrected. “And it is not the truth! Just because Orla likes to eat doesn’t mean she’s a pig.”

“Erin…” Orla moaned, hugging her stomach even tighter. A sudden rush of saliva filled her mouth.

“Sounds like the definition of pig to me,” Katya said. She peered at Orla, apparently not noticing how pale she had gotten. “She even has chocolate still on her face. And shirt. And hands.”

“That means nothing.” Erin said dismissively.

“Erin…” Orla called out weakly again, but it still went unheard.

“Oh really? So you are allowed to insult me and call me prostitute, but I cannot say a word about your pig of a cousin?” Katya said.

“Stop calling her that!” Erin growled. “She’s not! You aren’t allowed to talk about my family that way, ESPECIALLY my little cousin!”

“Erin!!” Orla wailed.

“What?!” Erin whipped around to Orla.

And that’s when Orla threw up all over herself.

Naturally, the rest of the ride was driven in silence. Nobody really knew what else to say, so they all just stared forward as if one of them weren’t covered in her own vomit. They dealt with the smell by rolling down the windows and spoke nothing of it until Michelle parked outside the Quinn house.

“Night,” Michelle muttered. Clare and James echoed her phrase as Erin got out of the passenger seat and Katya climbed over James to go out the other door. Orla almost crumpled right out of the car, but managed to catch herself. Vomit poured down her legs from where it had been congealing in her lap for the past seven minutes.

“Erin,” She whimpered, staring teary-eyed at her cousin.

“It’s okay, Orla,” Erin told her. “Just get it out.”

“It really is not.” Katya said helpfully and Orla threw up again. Erin shot Katya a burning glare.

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Erin snarled. She went to Orla’s side and held her hair out of the way, ignoring how her fingers grasped tightly onto bile and digested chocolate marshmallow-soaked locks.

“No, because you did not at party.” Katya said. “Why should I?”

“Because my little cousin is SICK and you are just a BITCH, and so help me god I will STICK MY FIST so far up your ass that you will TASTE the coconut lotion I put on a few hours ago!!” Erin roared.

That was what got Erin’s family (and some old woman she vaguely recognized) to come storming out to see what the commotion was. And, boy, was it a sight. Michelle speeding off down the road before anything could be linked to her, a very pissed off Erin and Ukrainian, and Orla, who was covered in vomit.

“What is going on here?!” Mary yelled.

“I couldn’t handle it,” Orla gurgled, and then threw up again.

The gang arrived at the bus stop with Orla clinging to Erin’s hand like it was her lifeline. Orla had an expression of discomfort and uneasy on her face and she kept leaning down to bury her face against Erin’s hair like she was trying to hide. Something was wrong.

“What’s up, fuckers?” Michelle greeted them. She had a wide smirk, but her eyes kept glancing over at Orla with obvious worry.

“Nothing much,” Erin replied. “Orla’s going nonverbal today.”

Clare and Michelle nodded knowingly, sympathy suddenly oozing into their gazes. James blinked, looking slightly confused.

“But she’s usually nonverbal?” The Brit said, then got elbowed in the ribs by Michelle. “Ow!! I was just asking!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Michelle hissed lowly. She looked at Orla. “Ignore him, doll. He’s being stupid.”

“Yeah, he didn’t mean it,” Clare added.

Orla nodded slightly. She buried her nose against Erin’s blonde locks and kept it there until the bus pulled up. When they all crowded inside the vehicle, she would shudder in an awful way when someone’s arm would brush against her side or back. She seemed uncomfortable when someone other than her cousin would touch her.

Orla curled against Erin when they sat down, sandwiched securely against her older cousin and the window. Erin eased her to completely lay down in the seat, her head resting in her lap, brown curls sprawled out all over her thighs. Erin rubbed her back comfortingly, humming softly to help soothe her further.

“Is she okay?” James asked quietly when Orla had fallen asleep. Even with all the bumps on the road, the young girl didn’t wake up.

“She will be,” Erin answered. “I think it’s a burnout. So she’s pretty tired.”

“What caused it?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing at all.” Erin sighed and combed her fingers through Orla’s hair. “Don’t give her a hard time today, please?”

The other three nodded.

The group soon fell silent for the rest of the bus ride, either staring out the window or watching the semi-peaceful face of the youngest in the gang. Erin’s hand never stopped stroking Orla’s hair for the entirety of the trip to school, and when they finally arrived, she was hesitant to wake her cousin up.

“Hey, Ors,” Erin shook Orla’s shoulder gently. “Time to wake up.”

Orla’s eyes fluttered open. They looked darker than usual, weighed down by exhaustion and emotional fatigue. She blinked slowly at Erin.

“We’re at school, lovely,” Michelle said. “Unfortunately.”

Orla nodded and sat up. Erin helped her out of the bus, squeezing her hand comfortingly, while Michelle, Clare, and James followed like protective guard dogs. They all walked into the main hall for announcements, and Orla was instantly set off by the closed space.

“I know, Orla, I know,” Erin murmured when Orla whimpered in distress. “It’s going to be okay. It won’t last long.”

Orla stepped closer to Erin, practically pressed against her, but Erin didn’t seem to mind. She was more than happy to wrap her free arm securely around her little cousin to help her feel more protected.

Announcements soon began. Sister Michael’s voice boomed loudly through the microphone, causing poor Orla even more discomfort. Orla whimpered again and released Erin’s hand to cover her ears.

“E-Erin…” Orla croaked. Her voice was tight and pitched with anxiety.

“Breathe, Orla.” Erin instructed. “Breathe. It’s okay. It’s almost over.”

“N-no--” Orla gasped. “It’s too loud-- Erin, it’s too loud--” She crumpled to her knees, keening a strange kind of distress call, and rocked back and forth.

Girls started to turn and stare at the spectacle. Sister Michael stopped talking and pursed her lips with a mixed expression of annoyance, confusion, curiosity, and concern. Erin lunged down to Orla’s side and clasped her hands over Orla’s own to further help muffle the noise. Orla collapsed against her, sobbing into her chest. The poor thing was shaking so badly.

“Shh, shh,” Erin murmured. “It’s okay, Orla. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

Orla released her ears and clung tightly to Erin with her nails dug in. She was gasping and wheezing like she was having a panic attack, and she may as well have been with her symptoms. She kept whimpering and whining in elongated cries that cut Erin’s heart into tiny pieces. Erin held her tighter.

“Try to focus on my heartbeat,” Erin instructed, pressing Orla’s head to her chest. “Can you hear that, Orla? It’s my heart. Use that to ground yourself. You’re going to be just fine.”

“God, Erin,” Someone scoffed from nearby. Erin recognized it as Tina o’Connell. “Can’t you tame your retard?”

Michelle, James, and Clare froze in shock. Orla whimpered. Erin looked up slowly with an expression of murder in her eyes.

“Michelle. Take Orla.” Erin said, not breaking eye contact with Tina. When Michelle swooped in and brought Orla into her arms, she stood up and then began undressing. First, her scarf. Then, her blazer, tie, necklace, and ponytail. And then she threw herself at Tina in a flying tackle, screeching like an enraged banshee and swinging her fists in a whirlwind.

Pandemonium instantly broke out inside the room. Girls began to shout, a large crowd formed, nuns and teachers rushed over, and Erin and Tina fought violently on the floor like a pair of pissed off cats. James, Clare, and Michelle watched with wide eyes and gaping mouths.

“Your cousin is kicking ASS.” Michelle whispered to Orla. She began to tenderly stroke her hair like Erin had been doing. “You’re definitely gonna be okay, Ors. We’ve got you.”

It wasn’t long before Sister Michael broke through the crowd and ripped Tina and Erin apart with ease. Both girls were scratched up and Tina had a busted lip, but luckily there wasn’t much damage done. Unluckily for Erin, though, because she had wanted to beat that little bitch into a bloody pulp.

“She came after me for no reason!” Tina exclaimed once they were all dragged into Sister Michael’s office.

“No reason?!” Erin barked a harsh laugh. “She called my cousin a--!!” She glanced at Orla hanging onto her and then lowered her sharp tone of voice. She leaned in to Sister Michael. “She called my little cousin a retard. Was I supposed to just stand there and let her get away with that? While Orla was having a sensory overload? It isn’t her fault she reacted that way!”

Sister Michael looked at Orla, who hasn’t looked up from the floor since they entered. Both of her hands are grasping onto Erin’s arms and she had her face pressed against Erin’s neck like she was trying to hide. Tear stains were still glistening on her cheeks from when she had been crying.

“Is this true?” Sister Michael asked Tina.

“I--”

“Is this true?” Sister Michael repeated firmly.

Tina hissed underneath her breath and then grumbled, “Yes, Sister.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Sister Michael said. “Such language will not be tolerated in my school.”

“But she and her friends say stuff like that all the time!” Tina cried.

“They have never said such a disgraceful, disgusting, hurtful slur before.” Sister Michael said. “They may be hooligans out to drive me mad, but they aren’t savages. They know better. Unlike you.”

Tina sputtered, but wasn’t able to come up with a good reply. Erin had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning.

“A week suspension should give you enough time to think about what you’ve done,” Sister Michael said. “Now, out with you. Wait in the hall while I call your mother.”

Tina opened and closed her mouth several times, but wasn’t able to come up with something to say, so she stormed out in anger. Sister Michael waited a moment and then looked at the cousins. When she spoke, her voice was strangely soft.

“Is she alright?” She asked.

Erin glanced at Orla, who didn’t glance back at her. She lifted a hand and cupped the side of Orla’s head protectively.

“She will be,” Erin said. “The noise set her off. But she wasn’t having a good day to begin with.”

“I see,” Sister Michael nodded. “Is she okay to go back to class or would she like to sit down for a while longer to recover?”

Erin looked at Orla again, who didn’t seem to be in any shape to learn anything.

“I think we’ll wait a moment longer.”

Sister Michael nodded and gestured for the couch in her office. Erin guided Orla over to it and they both sat down.

“Oh, and girls,” Sister Michael said. “If Orla is ever feeling unwell again, stop by my office. It’s quiet in here. She can stay until she calms down.”

When it came to her issues, Erin, believe it or not, was the most patient. Erin repeated over and over, made Orla look at her eyes or her mouth, asked Orla to repeat, to show her that she remembered.

It was strange. Erin was sometimes the one to lash out the most, although she had her reasons and they were very good ones.

A lioness waiting to pounce. That was what Erin reminded Orla of.

(Orla tried to get herself to stop comparing to animals, but that sort of failed because she was still doing it. As seen here.)

Regardless, Erin was smart in a way Orla wished she could be.

(She tried not to think about that. She tried not to think about people being better at things than she is. She knew how those thoughts caught like hooks in her fish-mouth brain and tug and tug and tug and tug until she broke the surface, struggling to breathe.)

Clare and Michelle are usually good. They love Orla enough to not snap at her when she loudly goes “Huh?” for the fifth time in a row. They dealt with her strange mannerisms and comments as if everyone acted like she did. They played along with her when her brain made her skin feel like it was too tight. Michelle let her mess with her hair and jewelry for hours and Clare simplified things that might have been too much to take in.

They’re good with that. Orla loved them so much.

(She loved them enough to let them be, to pull herself away, to shut herself away in herself as best she can when she finds-- when she realized she’s not--

When she saw the clench of Michelle’s jaw and the twitch of Clare’s nose and the way they glance at each other, and it’s never mean, it’s never intentional, it’s just…

Orla knows herself enough to know when she’s too much, and she loves them enough to spare them the discomfort of having to actually tell her she’s too much, to figure out how to explain that she’s overstepped, to put into words that they have limits.

People have limits. Orla tried not to push them. She does.)

James is still new, and he’s doing his best, he really is, but it’s the adults who are the least patient. Adults try, they always try. Orla liked that they tried. But adults get a pinch between their eyebrows after the third time they repeat an explanation, like they’re starting to wonder if Orla is just being a little shit. Adults are quick to get annoyed, or to fake annoyance, and sometimes Orla can’t tell the difference. Sometimes it feels like there is no difference.

Still, she dealt with it. She always did. Always oblivious, air headed, Orla who doesn’t know better, who doesn’t know what she’s saying, who doesn’t know how to act like a normal person.

She didn’t know where this was coming from or how to stop it. She couldn’t. It was impossible. Impossible to ignore it, impossible to block it out, impossible to disagree with the things it made her think about.

And she couldn’t take it, couldn’t take it, couldn’t take it--

Everything became too much. Orla was too overwhelmed. She felt like she was drowning, suffocating, burning.

She felt like she was dying.

Erin had had enough of all of this when she found Orla collapsed in her bedroom, keening in pain. She kept saying over and over again that the lights were too bright, distant noises were too loud, her clothes were too tight. She had somehow managed to claw open her shirt around the sleeves and stomach before she was in her current position. Curled up and biting herself.

Before Erin came rushing in, noises from outside in the house were all encompassing, rattling Orla’s skull, eardrums threatening to burst. She squeezed her eyes closed, covered her ears, rocked frantically with her head bent to her knees in an effort to block it all out. But no matter what she did, she can’t, and that’s it.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she let out a loud, pained, keening noise as she cracked her head back hard against the wall behind her, digging it in firmly when she sank to the floor. She clawed at her shirt like fire ants were crawling all over her, desperately trying to get it off but it won’t, it won’t, it won’t. The material tears, eventually, but it doesn’t help.

Fuck.

Her head shook hard, side to side, side to side, repeat. She swore she can feel her brain trying to detach and fly out her nose. Her hands snapped to her scalp, pulling harshly on her hair and god-fucking-dammit, it’s still not enough. Her fingers left her hair with one last tug, loose strands of curly brown hair stuck between them, and balled into tight fists to strike down on the sides of her head. She pushed her feet firmly into the floor, thrashed and squirmed in the corner.

Nothing is enough nothing is enough why is this happening nothing is enough--

She slammed her feet down harder, dug the heels into the floor until her thighs ached. Then, she lifted one arm and clamped down hard and firm on her wrist with her teeth. Her other hand found her hair again, this time not tugging but holding it in a death grip and staying there.

She stayed like this, rocking and writhing and biting at her wrist with tears rolling down her cheeks, for what feels like forever. All she knew is she can still feel it- the lingering, bone-deep pain of the noises, eyes sore like she’s looked at the sun too long.

That’s when Erin rushed in. She had heard the commotion from downstairs.

The sight terrified Erin, to say the least. Watching her baby cousin spasm and sob and bite herself like a rabid dog made her blood run cold with fear. She snapped into action almost instantly, practically gaining wings due to her panic.

Orla didn’t register Erin as Erin. She didn’t even register her as a human being, just a presence she felt nearby. The touch she began to feel on her body, however, made her whimper in fright. First on her stomach, grazing lightly over scratches she knew she had carved in the flesh, then her head, where strands of hair had been pulled out, next her shoulder, over more angry red claw marks, and finally her wrist, with blood dripping down freckled skin. The hand was gentle with each prod, which was the only reason why Orla didn’t scream. She even relaxed into it a few times, almost cooing through her painful sobs.

But then fingers wrapped around her wrist and she bit down on them.

Erin hissed on pain, flinching backwards a little. She definitely hadn’t been expecting that.

“Orla,” She said softly, despite the pain. “Orla, let go. Let go. It’s just me.” She felt like she was speaking to a dog rather than a human being.

Orla showed no sign of hearing her. Her eyes were glassy, blank, and glazed over, which terrified Erin even more. Her cousin looked more dead than alive at this point.

“Orla,” Erin tried again. “Orla, babes, it’s me. It’s Erin. I need you to let go.”

Orla’s eyes flickered up a little for a moment before darting back down. Her entire body shuddered and she bit down harder for some kind of grounding. Erin had to grit her own teeth to keep from screaming as it felt like her fingers were about to detach from her hand.

“Orla--”

She winced at the increasing pressure. The skin broke open and blood filled Orla’s mouth.

That’s what snapped her out of her trance.

The girl lurched backwards with enough force to make the wall rattle when her spine connected with it. Erin ripped her hand back and shook it in the air to try and ebb some of the pain. There were marks left on her fingers, scarlet at the center and purple all around them. She hissed, shaking her hand again.

Meanwhile, Orla looked to be completely out of it. Her head was lolling back and forth across the wall, Erin’s blood still wet on her lips. Her tongue instinctively flicked out and her entire face contorted into a grimace. She blinked once, twice, then saw the bruising already forming on her cousin’s hand.

Orla was guilty, to say the least. She would not stop apologizing for two days and couldn’t even look Erin in the eye out of shame for what she had done. Erin, however, constantly told her it wasn’t her fault and she wasn’t mad. But it didn’t make it better. Orla still felt horrible for hurting her cousin.

That’s all she seemed to do. Mess up. Because SHE was messed up.

While at the market getting groceries, Erin noticed Orla staring at something. She shimmied over with the heavy cart and realized it was some kind of toy in the window of a store.

“Like that?” Erin asked with a light chuckle.

Orla nodded. “It looks so soft…”

Erin laughed.

Orla didn’t ask for the toy, rather just kept glancing back at it as they walked away. Erin watched her, and then a lightbulb lit up in her head.

“Mammy, I need some money.” Erin told her mother when she got home.

“Absolutely not.” Mary said instantly. “You already almost went over today.”

“No, it’s not--” Erin looked around, then whispered, “It’s not for me, Mammy.”

“Oh, is Michelle having you buy alcohol, now?”

“It’s for Orla.”

Mary faltered. “Orla?”

“Yes.” Erin nodded. “She hasn’t been well lately. I know you’ve seen it. And when we were at the market, she kept looking at this thing in one of the stores. I wanted to get it for her because it might cheer her up and--”

Some money was placed in Erin’s hands. Erin blinked in shock that that worked and looked up at her mother. Mary smiled.

“Go get Orla’s thing.” Mary said.

Erin lit up. “Thank you, Mammy!!”

An hour later, Erin returned home from the market, barely able to suppress her giddy grin.

“Orla!” She called. “Orla, where are you?”

Orla peeked out from the kitchen and Erin hurried over with her hands behind her back.

“I have something for you,” Erin said excitedly.

Orla tilted her head and Erin held out the ostrich beanie baby. Orla’s eyes went wide, mouth opening in a quiet gasp. She tentatively grabbed the stuffed animal and turned it over like she was trying to make sure it was real, then held it close to her chest.

“Like it?” Erin smiled.

Orla nodded rapidly. Erin laughed.

“I’m glad! I hope it’ll help, Ors. I know you’ve been a bit unwell lately. I just wanted to get you something so you’ll know you aren’t a burden or something. Because you aren’t.”

Orla’s eyes glistened, and then she sprung forward and hugged Erin tightly.

Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

#here it is bois!!!!!#enjoy :)#derry girls #orla mccool #erin quinn #michelle mallon #clare devlin #james maguire #sister michael #ma mary #my writing #derry girls fanfic #tw: vomit #you say stuff is way way too go go away

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guardianofjunmyeon · 4 years

Text

Finding Atlantis (part 10)

Genre: Action/Adventure, Enemies to Lovers, PirateAU

Description: 20 years ago the seas became angry. Unruly and unkind to any sailor, to any ship that dared venture too far out in her waters. Many a man has heard the tales of Atlantis, the lost city, the key the ocean. But fewer men know the tale of it’s missing child. The key to the ocean, the key to Atlantis but a lost little one. The power one would hold should they find this child would be nearly that of Poseidon himself. Thus, the hunt began.

A/N: these chapters are always so long i am so sorry !!! I love krystal and sulli don’t let the way i wrote them trick you into thinking i dont

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18

“MAN OVERBOARD! JUNMYEON HAS FALLEN OVER BOARD.” You stomp over to the edge of the ship and look back where you last saw Junmyeon. You left him behind.

You left Junmyeon behind.

“They bleed blue,” you murmur to yourself. “They bleed blue!” you shout to your crew. “If you have any doubt about whether someone is real or not, shoot first and apologize later,” you command. “Stop the ship now. I need two people with me to go rescue Junmyeon.” You secure your gun in its holster and make your way towards the dinghies secured off the side of the ship. “They’ve seen half of our faces so no one is safe from being assumed an imposter.” You pull your gun back out of its holster and add two more bullets to its chamber.

“Can I come with you?” Jongin places his hand on your shoulder and you tense at the touch. When you look into his eyes, for a second you feel calmed.

“Yes, but we need at least one more person. Have you had to fight a siren before?” you ask him as you make a mental note of what weapons you have on your person.

Jongin shakes his head. “The last time we were here we never left the ship, but I think that Chanyeol would be best to accompany us.”

“Bring him then. We don’t have any more time to waste.” Jongin bounds off to find the other pirate and you take quick steps towards Yixing who has reappeared back on deck crouched next to the body of the siren. “I’m leaving the ship in your hands. Jongin and Chanyeol are going with me. Double check that everyone else is accounted for and actually who they seem to be while we go after Junmyeon.”

“Are you sure you should do this? What if that wasn’t him?”

“Have you seen Junmyeon anywhere on the ship in the last 10 minutes?”

He closes his mouth at the question. You set your lips in a grim line.

“Like I said, we’re going after him. If we aren’t back in a reasonable amount of time, you know what to do.”

Yixing nods and stands up from his position near the ground. “Be safe,” he says gently.

You can’t promise him that you will, so you break eye contact and look towards the rocks that make up the island. There’s no way for you to know what you will face, and you’ll do whatever it takes to get Junmyeon back to safety. Your safety in all of that isn’t your priority.

“Captain, Chanyeol and I are ready when you are,” Jongin says, stepping into your line of vision with Chanyeol close behind.

“We’ll be back,” is all you can assure Yixing. Luckily he accepts it as he watches you set off towards the water.

Once the boat is lowered, Jongin takes charge of rowing in the direction that you point him towards. The ride is silent.

Silent?

“Do you guys hear any singing?” you question.

Chanyeol’s head tilts to the side curiously before his eyes widen. “No…I don’t think I’ve heard anything in the last few minutes.”

“I haven’t heard anything since the screeching…” Jongin adds.

You wonder if the screech was a warning sound to the others. Perhaps they have stopped singing all together to hide –now that one of them has been killed.

“Chanyeol, how often are sirens killed?”

He scratches the top of his head. “I don’t know. Not often. People don’t ever get close enough to be able to kill them.”

“Then they’re probably not very happy that we killed the one that made it on the ship, huh?”

“No duh,” Jongin huffs out.

It’s their own fault for climbing aboard your ship. You wouldn’t have been able to kill it had it not been right there next to you.

Laughter floats from the trees and you feel everyone aboard the little boat stiffen. You catch a glimpse of blonde hair in your periphery. It’s gone in a flash, lost in the trees along with the laughter, but you know that you caught sight of it.

“I’ve always fucking hated sirens,” Chanyeol grumbles out.

You have to say that you are beginning to feel the same.

“Jongin wait, take us to the left. I see something over that way,” Chanyeol points out a spot on the bank of the water where there seems to be signs of a recent disturbance. It’s wet with a trail large enough to be that of someone pulling themselves out of the water.

It looks like it could be where Junmyeon was able to pull himself on land.

Unless he was being pulled down, you know for a fact that Junmyeon could get himself to land. Outside of Yixing, he’s the strongest swimmer on your crew.

The only sounds that fill your ears are the tinkling of the waterfalls and the sound of the paddles hitting water and bringing you closer to shore. The hairs on your body stand at attention. Every sense on alert as you step out of the boat and look around the land.

Chanyeol squats down where the trail is located and touches it with careful fingers. Jongin hefts the boat far enough on land that it won’t be pulled back out to sea. You hear shuffling in the bushes to your right and reach for your gun. You feel itchy to kill something. Whether this be siren or some wild animal, you don’t think that you care. So long as you can shoot and release some of this pent up anxious energy.

Your arm loses all of the tension that had built up –eager to pull out your pistol- and falls limply to your side when Junmyeon comes stumbling out of the trees.

He’s limping and gripping at his arm as if in pain, his clothes are still soaked and he looks dirty and tired, but when his eyes meet yours he smiles.

“Captain,” he rasps.

Your nose burns immediately at the threat of tears. You make it one step towards him before you’re stopped and pulled back. You whip your head around to find Jongin grabbing your bicep with a look of desperation in his eyes. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly.

You don’t even get the chance to question him when the sound of a gunshot rings through the air. Jongin winces, and his grip on your arm loosens enough for you to slip out and turn back to find Junmyeon bleeding from the injured arm he’d been holding earlier.

His blood gushes out blue.

You stand frozen in your spot as the siren sneers and contorts Junmyeon’s face in a horrifyingly angry expression. It screeches shrilly and tries to limp back into the trees, but it seems as though its limp was genuine and that slows it down greatly. Jongin is tackling it to the ground while Chanyeol is busy putting another bullet into his pistol. Your mind whirs back to life and you run towards the siren and hold down its thrashing legs while Jongin controls its arms. It gets a solid kick to your shoulder before you’re able to hold it down.

Despite the dirt covering its body, you notice now that it isn’t bleeding anywhere outside of where it was hurt by Chanyeol. You wonder if they are unable to replicate human blood.

The siren writhes and you grit your teeth trying to hold it still.

“Where did you take him?!” you shout over the rustling of the brush from its squirming.

It laughs loudly and its back arches high enough off the ground that you briefly think it will start levitating. You and Jongin put more of your weight on it to keep it restrained.

“Where is the man you’re disguised as?” Chanyeol tries. He cocks the gun. The siren cackles wildly, nearly to tears, but makes no move to answer either of your questions.

“I don’t think it’s going to talk,” Jongin murmurs.

As if to agree with his words, the siren leans up as much as it can, looks straight into your eyes, and bites off its own tongue.

It spits it out right at Chanyeol’s feet. The once pink tip turns long, slimy and deep blue as it hits the ground. You feel sick at the sight of –what looks like Junmyeon bleeding blue from the mouth with a vile smile across his face. The three of you look at the tongue in surprise.

“No more questions then I assume?” Chanyeol asks you. He points his gun to the sirens head. Despite knowing that it’s just a monster, you don't think you’ll be able to watch someone kill, what looks like, Junmyeon. You close your eyes and turn your head away from him.

You nod your head and screw your eyes tighter together. You hear the single shot and feel the way the body stiffens and freezes beneath your hands. You only open your eyes when you feel a hand on your shoulder.

Chanyeol looks down at you sympathetically, and you let go of a breath that was trapped in your throat. When you look down at your hands where they are still holding down the siren, you see the grey skin beneath your palms and realize that you no longer feel wet clothing but the moist scaly skin of the dead siren.

It’s no longer Junmyeon.

You jerk your hands away and frown down at the body. Despite this being the third siren you’ve seen in its true form, you have yet to grow comfortable with just how horrid they look.

They cannot be something of nature. You wonder what made them into the creatures they are. Perhaps they angered one of the Gods and were cursed.

Whatever the reason may be, it’s none of your concern why they are the way that they are. They’re evil and have potentially hurt Junmyeon.

That's all that you dare care about right now.

“Let’s go,” you grunt out and stand to your feet. If you weren’t in a bad mood before, the sirens are doing a spectacular job of putting you in one.

Unsheathing your sword, you march towards the trees and slice through branches and vines with more force than needed to cut down the weak foliage that hangs down in your way. For a full five minutes you take your anger out on the nature that surrounds you as you walk forward with no plan.

“C-Captain-”

You freeze in your tracks at the tentative timbre of Jongin’s voice and realize in your stillness that your arms are shaking. You clench your fist tighter around the hilt of your blade.

“What?” you bite out, trying your hardest not to let your frustration appear in your voice.

You’re frustrated with yourself –extremely. The sirens have tricked you twice now, three times if you count being fooled into thinking that when you saw Junmyeon in the water that it was fake. The constant trickery makes you feel as though you aren’t competent enough to handle this mission. You are a seasoned pirate, you should be able to think rationally and not be tricked by silly deceptions like these.

You’re the god damned Captain of the Storm Chaser.

A Captain who has been fooled thrice now by illusions and lost a member of their crew in the middle of another trial. You're sick of losing members of your crew, sick of these trials, and especially sick of these god damned mother fucking death mermaids.

“Maybe one of us should lead? You seem a bit…tired,” Jongin finishes cautiously and looks over to Chanyeol.

“No. You seem like you’re on the verge of a fucking breakdown,” Chanyeol corrects easily. Jongin frowns and smacks the taller on the arm. Chanyeol is unfazed and offers nothing but a short shrug. “You do.”

You inhale and close your eyes. When you exhale you try to release the tension that has accumulated in your muscles. It only lessens slightly.

“I’m fine,” you start. You open your eyes and feel a fresh wave of awareness wash over you. You mind feels more cleared than it has in the last hour –even if it is only by a small margin. “I’m fine now. Just…let’s find Junmyeon and get as far away from this cursed fucking island as we can as fast as possible.” You grimace. “And let’s try not to get distracted,” you say more for your own sake.

Even with your head a bit more clear, you think that it may be a better idea for someone else to lead for a while. Wordlessly, you motion Chanyeol ahead of you in an unspoken command. He nods and takes out his own sword so that he can cut through the foliage.

As he trudges forward and you fall behind him, Jongin falls behind as well.

“Are you doing okay, Cap’n?” Jongin whispers. “You seem overwhelmed.”

“I am overwhelmed,” you state bluntly. Leaves and branches crunch under your boots. “This new situation with sirens and being tricked three times is wearing on my mind.” You glance from Chanyeol’s back to Jongin at your side. An empathetic pout rests on his face. You hold in the urge to pinch his lips to make him stop. “If it wasn’t stressing me out, then it wouldn’t be a trial now would it?” You try to make light of it. Jongin doesn’t seem moved by your attempt, so you set your lips in a line and focus back on the sweat dripping down the back of Chanyeol’s nape and into the soaking wet neckline of his blouse.

If you feel stressed, you can’t imagine what Junmyeon is experiencing. These are trials meant to test his commitment to getting home. You know that that must be weighing on him in a way you couldn’t even begin to imagine. This could be the last chance he has to return home and if this fails then it will crush him.

Determination flaring, you turn your attention to your surrounds to look for any signs that Junmyeon has been in the area. You have to finish this for him. Find him. Recuperate. Get him home. Not just for your or his sake. But for the sake of the ocean. Things are much bigger than you.

You have to.

Minutes pass before you finally catch sight of something out of the ordinary. Something glimmers excitedly in your periphery. “Chanyeol wait. Do you guys see that?”

You point in the direction you see the shining object. Chanyeol and Jongin squint towards it; Jongin gasps.

“Is that a sword?” he walks forward unexpectedly, steps eager, and you and Chanyeol rush after him once the shock of him abruptly walking towards it has passed. A vine smacks you in your face; you pull it down with an unnecessary amount of strength.

You are sick of this fucking island.

As your group approaches the object, it becomes clear that it is in fact a sword. The sword is driven into the dirt –nearly to the hilt- and the sun rays that are able to break through the trees above shine down and illuminate the metal. The sword looks like Junmyeon’s at first glance, and the emblem of a water drop etched into the bottom of the blade confirms it.

Jongin walks over and pulls it from the ground. You don’t even have a moment to consider that it may be a trap.

And then everything happens at once.

From the hole left in the ground where the sword was once buried, green mist sprays into the air. It’s light in color and smells floral –a bit like lavender. It fills the air quickly. Jongin drops the sword as if burned; you don’t see the body in the trees until it’s dropping down onto his back, tackling him to the ground.

Before you can call out, you’re knocked to the ground from the weight of a body landing on your back. Adrenaline pumps frantically and you muster the strength to toss the body off of you. “IT’S A TRAP!” you shout frantically, as if the words alone will save you at this point. With the words you take in a huge breath of the green mist and you feel your muscles weaken immediately. Laughter fills your ears as your eyes get heavier.

Poisonous gas.

The mist becomes thicker, and you can no longer find Chanyeol or Jongin among the fog.

“Get…help…” you murmur. The gas seeps into your lungs, into your pores, into any entry point that it can and paralyzes you. First your muscles, then your nerves, and then finally your brain. You slip into darkness without even being given the chance to put up a fight.

~~~

The recognizable sound of a rushing waterfall startles you awake. With a gasp your eyes fly open.

You can clearly remember the green mist and being tackled to the ground. Whatever was in the cloud that numbed you must have been some kind of a sleeping agent.

Everything is dark around you and stars speckle the sky above.

Hours must have passed since you were ambushed.

Though the sky is dark, the ground is alight with life. Bioluminescent mushrooms and plants speckle the dirt around you and are placed deliberately to your left and create a path towards the waterfall. Your shoulders are tense from the amount of time you’ve spent with your arms tied behind your back and crushed against what feels like a dead body. You wiggle your fingers to make sure that you can feel your hands with your wrists bound. The rope around your middle, securing you to the other mass, is tight and digs painfully into your abdomen.

You crane your neck to the side to see who exactly you’re tied to. Their neck is crooked in what has to be an extremely uncomfortable position, but they’re definitely breathing and just sleeping at your side. If you had to guess from the neck and shirt that you can just barely see, you’d guess that this body is Chanyeol. When you look to your other side you see what has to be Jongin hunched over the rope asleep and tugging you and Chanyeol’s bodies in his direction. You struggle to sit up and alleviate the strain being put on your body trying to accommodate Jongin’s position.

“Fuck, why’d they tie us together like this?” you hiss under your breath. The rush of the waterfall is loud and you feel droplets of water reaching your skin even from where you’re tied up a ways away. No matter how you try to twist your hands you can't loosen the hold of the rope.

Jongin and Chanyeol remain asleep.

The three of you are going to die here.

You are ready to accept that fate, but you continue to search for any way to escape. You might die, but not without some kind of a struggle.

In the middle of you rubbing your wrists bloody and raw from pulling and scraping against the rope, the waterfall begins to split down the middle. It parts like a crystalline curtain to reveal what appears to be a cave hidden in the rock face. Jewels twinkle inside of it. Through the cascading curtains out steps a figure that has become oh-too-familiar to you. You scowl and tense in defense.

The blonde siren smiles when she finds you awake and staring her way. She looks relaxed in her gown of water, illuminated by the greenish glow of the plants and fungi around you. She looks as if she has not a single care in the world. After neutralizing you and your men, you suppose she doesn’t.

Languidly she struts towards you, almost like she’s gliding on air. Her hair billows behind her even with the distinct lack of wind blowing. She looks ethereal.

“Our first riser,” she coos. Her skin is as smooth as porcelain and you can see now that even when she smiles, there is not a single eye crinkle or smile line. Clasping her hands behind her back she leans to each side of you to take a look at each of the still sleeping crewmen you’re tied to. “You must not have inhaled as much as they did. Interesting,” she comments offhandedly –as if making an observation to use later in further research after an experiment.

You can’t stop yourself from asking, “Who are you?”

The smile doesn’t leave her lips.

“I know you’ve been watching us. Are you the one who planned our ambush? The one who had my crewman fall off the ship?”

“You’re an inquisitive one, aren’t you?” She chuckles. A hand with immaculately decorated nails reaches out to stroke your cheek. Her nails shine like freshly cut diamonds in the dark. “Not quite as dumb as you look either. I was almost sure that first illusion of your little friend would be enough to distract you from the prince falling into the water.”

You flinch at her touch and feel anger at the insinuation that a single conversation with Baekhyun would mean more to you than Junmyeon’s life.

“Ah, but your question,” she yawns and stretches out long slim limbs. The crack of her bones is loud, unnatural. “I suppose I could spare you an explanation. You are to die here, so it would be kind to allow you the privilege to understand why you have met this fate, no?”

You decide not to respond. She continues on.

“I am the leader of this island, the head siren –a queen if you desire a more relatable title. I have led those who inhabit this island for centuries. We have seen many ships come and even fewer go, but you…strange one, are the first to kill multiple of my subjects.” There is a flash of rage in her eyes before cold indifference settles back in them.

“Wouldn’t have happened if you'd stayed off my ship and left my crew alone,” you say curtly.

She rolls her eyes. “Where’s the fun in that?”

You pull against the ropes again. The knot is tied too well. You won’t be able to escape unless you cut it. Your jostling seems to wake Jongin –if the groggy groan from him is anything to go by.

“Where’s Junmyeon?”

“The prince?” she waves a hand in the air dismissively. “Do not worry. He is safe. We do not plan to hurt him yet. He is too useful.”

“Useful?”

“His father. That cursed man,” she hisses. Insanity swirls in her eyes. “We were all beautiful, you know? Me and my subjects. Our beauty was coveted by everyone, but that damned God Poseidon turned us into- into this.” She stands to her full height and the illusion of a beautiful maiden changes into that of the monstrous figure that matches all of the other sirens you’ve encountered. Bile immediately rises in your throat. “He turned us into these disgusting creatures all because we let a single ship escape our island unsunk.” She laughs bitterly, but in her natural state it comes out gravelly and deep.

Jongin moans again at your side. The siren’s eyes flicker towards him in anger. “One ship of men got away and now we are doomed to live out our days as disgusting fish creatures. The prince will be our way back to beauty.” Her eyes slide back to you. She seems less unhinged as she continues on. “He will guarantee that we are restored to normal.”

Understanding hits you like a brick. “You’re going to use him as bait to get to Poseidon…”

You almost want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. If his father cared about him, he would have stepped in long ago. Junmyeon has told you about his estranged father and knowing what you’ve been told, you’d be truly astounded if he bothered to step in to save a single demigod son when he has tens of other ones. Especially not one who isn’t even in line to be king of Atlantis.

“Good fucking luck with that,” you scoff out.

A displeased grumble emits from her throat before she transforms back into the blonde maiden.

“Krystal!” She turns around at the new voice.

Another woman comes bounding out of the cave –her hair black, lips plump and a similar (almost translucent) complexion. “Krystal,” she says again. “There is trouble on the eastern side of the island.”

“Thank you Sulli. I will be there shortly,” the blonde siren, Krystal, says to the other. You hope whatever the trouble is kills at least half of them.

The siren Sulli nods after the acknowledgement from her queen and then runs back off without a single glance in your direction. You’d be annoyed if you weren’t already completely done with this entire situation.

“Looks like it’s about time that we kill you and your friends. Pity, I would have liked you to join us,” she looks beyond you and you feel a tug in the rope.

Jongin is awake. He doesn’t speak but the noise of discomfort he makes at her comment towards him is enough of a response you think.

“I think he’ll pass,” you say mockingly.

“Quite the mouth on you.”

“I’d like to think it’s my charm,” you smile, all teeth, without any emotion. It’s as empty as you feel.

Her lip turns down in discomfort. Done humoring you after your comment, she turns back around and walks towards the waterfall.

Rude.

You watch her receding figure until the water closes behind her –naturally, as if never disturbed.

When you turn back around, you knock your head into Jongin’s. “What the fuck-”

“Sorry I was…watching her,” he explains. He moves back into his space and you both squirm uncomfortably against your restraints, surrounded only by the rumble of the waterfall.

Minutes pass of nothing.

What is there to say?

You know that it’s been far longer than a “reasonable amount of time” that you’ve all been missing. The protocol that Yixing should be following is to search for you all for a total of 12 hours and then leave you behind if there is no sign of you all. It’s been at least 8 since you left the ship and from the way the sirens were able to trick you all, you think that making it seem like you’ve all vanished or are dead for another 4 will be an easy enough scene to conjure up.

After all you still have no idea where they’re keeping Junmyeon.

At the very least, you hope that they find him and get out and continue the mission.

“So…” Jongin flinches hard next to you at the sudden sound of Chanyeol’s voice. You aren’t as shocked to find him suddenly awake. “We’re gonna die here, huh?”

You take in a large breath and pull at your sore wrists again only to be met with the same amount of resistance. “Yeah…looks like it,” you mutter tiredly. Jongin lets out a whine from the back of his throat.

“Any last minute confessions before we die?” Chanyeol throws out. “Anyone in love with me? Now is your last chance to say it, unfortunately I will have to reject you.”

You’re too tired to snort in annoyance. You settle for an exasperated exhale.

“I put shoe polish on my lips once because I thought it was lip balm,” Jongin rushes out in a single breath –as if the confession winds him.

There’s a pause of silence.

Chanyeol giggles. You blink dumbly.

“You what???” You ask.

“We’re about to die, I can’t confess without judgment? I thought it was lip balm okay?!”

“I once stole one of Kyungsoo’s swords and blamed it on you Jongin.” Chanyeol’s confession comes next in an equally nervous rush of words.

“That was you?!” Jongin asks Chanyeol incredulously. The rope pulls as he strains to look at Chanyeol. “Kyungsoo was pissed at me for weeks! When we get out of here I am telling-”

“YOU CAN’T! IF WE DON’T DIE HERE THEN HE’LL KILL ME!” He lowers his voice in embarrassment. “You know I like him-”

“YEAH WELL TOUGH SHIT YOU DESERVE IT!”

“WELL I KNOW YOU LIED TO SEHUN AND TOLD HIM THAT THE DOG HE HAD FOR A MONTH RIPPED HIS FAVORITE PANTS BUT IT WAS REALLY YOU AND I’LL TELL AND THEN WE’LL ALL FUCKING DIE!”

Jongin nearly screeches. You barely follow the conversation since this seems to be stuff that happened from before they joined your crew. You listen to the two of them go back and forth whining and complaining for longer than you’d think they could keep up an argument as you contemplate sharing your own secret.

The Chanyeol liking Kyungsoo thing is news to you, but you aren’t all that shocked by it. If the way Chanyeol seems to all but live in the kitchens when he’s not needed in the artillery is anything to go by.

His confession makes you feel a bit braver about voicing your own. It feels like acid sitting on your tongue, but knowing that this could be your last night alive, you feel the urge to just say it. Aloud. You’ve been thinking it over for a few days and you may be dumb and stubborn but you are anything but stupid.

Jongin and Chanyeol are still going at each other and Jongin’s whining is almost teary as Chanyeol switches to lightly bullying the younger instead.

“I like Baekhyun.” You whisper the words to yourself, so soft that the crashing of the waterfall can drown it out. When neither of them acknowledge your nearly silent words, you sag forward in relief. You feel a bit lighter having said it and even more at ease knowing that you went unheard by the two men tied to you who are still arguing childishly.

“Shut up I don’t actually hate you, big cry baby.” Chanyeol huffs out.

“Really?” Jongin sniffles.

“Yes really, dumbass.” Chanyeol’s head turns as far in your direction as he can given your positions. “Wait what did you say Captain?”

You’re quick to try and brush it off. “Nothing-”

“That she likes Captain Baekhyun but everyone already knows that. That’s not a confession,” Jongin warbles out before just flat out collapsing forward in another wave of sobs. You have no idea how he’s able to have a full on breakdown but still angrily complain about your words. You’re so stunned by his crying that you can’t even try and deflect or defend yourself.

“Jongin…are you…okay?” you ask tentatively.

“No! Chanyeol is mean and you’re dumb and so is Baekhyun and we’re gonna die and no one is going to be happy!” He manages to whine out.

“He’s fine he just gets emotional easily,” Chanyeol whispers to you loudly (read: not at all). “It’s okay Jongin. I still love you even though when you cry you get extra cranky at everyone because we get to see how ugly you look with snot on your face.”

“Fuck you!”

The outrageousness of your situation makes you start to laugh so loudly that you startle yourself. There’s so much going on, you’re laughing more from the fact that you cannot believe where you are and what is going on rather than you finding a single thing happening funny. Tears fall from your eyes as the laughs keep bubbling out of your chest.

“She’s officially lost it,” Chanyeol grumbles. “It was only a matter of time. You’re crying and she’s laughing. This is not how I imagined I’d spend my last night alive.”

“For people tied up, you all sound like you’re having a lot of fun.”

“Holy shit! Where’d you come from?” You can’t see who Chanyeol is talking to, but you know the voice well enough to place it even in a thousand voices.

You try to crush the happiness that blossoms in your chest at being found.

At Baekhyun being here to save you.

You would retch at your reaction to him if there was any food in your stomach to throw up.

It’s not like he would leave Jongin and Chanyeol behind to die, you should have expected that he would come after them.

You close your eyes to try and squeeze away the last of the tears that had sprung to your eyes during your fit of uncontrolled laughter. The rope around your torso loosens and falls to your lap and you can finally take in a full breath for the first time in hours. Once the rope around your wrist is cut free you open your eyes and bring your hands up to your face to take in the crusted blood encircling your hands.

You’re hefted off the ground by your upper arms.

Spots dot your vision and you wobble dizzily on your feet. When you blink them away you come face to face with Baekhyun. If you weren’t exhausted and seeing stars, you’d think that you might see relief in his eyes. Fingers come up to wipe away the last of the hysterical tears lingering below your eyelashes. He’s shaking a bit.

There’s blood on his face. A mix of blue and red.

He’s real.

You fall forward to hug him before you can stop yourself. You feel him tense in surprise but he doesn’t shove you away the way you anticipated. Before he can reciprocate or even process what you’ve done, you let go and move away. You realize that Baekhyun hadn’t come alone when you see Kyungsoo being crushed in Chanyeol’s embrace and Jongin sandwiching him in. Jongin is crying into Kyungsoo’s sweat soaked back.

“How’d you guys find us?” you ask.

Kyungsoo forcefully pushes his way out of Chanyeol and Jongin’s arms. He acts annoyed, but you see the signs of happiness on his face. “We-”

Baekhyun jumps in to cut Kyungsoo off. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get out of here.”

“We can’t leave without Junmyeon.”

“Minseok and Seulgi have gone after him. They’re going to meet us by the dinghies,” Kyungsoo supplies. You notice now that he is also covered in blue and red blood. He’s real too.

You look down at the red blood crusting over your wrists and find matching cuffs of blood around Chanyeol and Jongin’s.

“They can’t fake human blood,” you tell Kyungsoo and Baekhyun.

“We know. We figured that out after we killed a couple of them,” Baekhyun says. You wobble again on your feet but catch yourself. “We should get you guys back to the ship. You need medical attention.”

“I don't know what was in the gas they used on us, but I know that I’m going to pass out if I don’t get food and water soon,” Jongin says.

You nod in agreement and your knees buckle.

“Kyungsoo, carry me back I can’t feel my legs,” Chanyeol whines dramatically before draping himself over the shorter. Kyungsoo sighs but doesn’t put up much of a fight outside of grabbing a handful of Chanyeol’s hair and yanking it hard enough to pull a shout out of the taller.

Jongin shakes his head but a smile graces his lips as he follows behind them.

“Can you walk?” Baekhyun asks you.

You look away from the receding figures of the others to look at him. “I’m fine,” you murmur. He cocks an unbelieving eyebrow. Stubbornly you take a step forward.

And your knees nearly give in.

Baekhyun catches you before you can fall and laughs one of his stupid laughs where it fades off and he sounds like he’s swallowing a load of his own saliva. You let him toss your arm over his shoulder and hobble beside him like a newborn with little use of their legs.

His arm around your waist is secure and he’s patient as he leads you out the way he and Kyungsoo came in.

“Thank you,” you start quietly. “For coming back for us.”

“We couldn’t just let you die,” he scoffs out. “Yixing would have probably had me and my men killed without you and Junmyeon there as insurance to show we’re needed.”

You doubt that. Yixing wouldn’t do that. Minseok maybe, but not Yixing. But you keep that to yourself.

For now, you’ll just enjoy being given the chance to live another day. And if you also indulgently enjoy the warmth of Baekhyun at your side holding you up…well, no one has to know about that.

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